Ryan Roghaar – Develop an Onboarding Process and Follow up to Avoid Losses

Ryan Roghaar (Ro gar) is a serial entrepreneur, award-winning creative director, podcaster, author, and a business owner committed to building authentic end-to-end relationships for his clients—top management to the top consumer. His unique philosophy puts specific importance on human relationships and their inherent value in both business and in life. He believes that as a society, we are reaching a kind of technological saturation point which is leaving consumers anxious and yearning for tactile human experiences, and it is that core ethic that fuels his purpose—to bring people together. ‍From his office in Salt Lake City, Utah, or occasionally from his office-away-from-home in Barcelona, Spain, Ryan will offer enlightening insights on a huge range of topics in his humorous and engaging style. Relationships, business, design, art, creativity, marketing, podcasting, remote work, coworking, the music business, travel and the life of a digital nomad—Ryan has lived and studied them all—and he is happy to share his insights and experiences to help others explore fresh perspectives on business, lifestyle and new ways of working.   “As a contractor, not having the safety of contracts, agreements, a client onboarding process, you are wide open for abuse, and there's very little you can do about it.” Ryan Roghaar   Worst investment ever Delving into a new space Ryan’s marketing and advertising company deals with different clients in different industries. Finding new work is the norm for the company. So when a friend referred a client to them in need of their services, it was nothing new. The client, however, was in Cannabidiol (CBD) and medical marijuana, a market the company had never dealt with. Nevertheless, they were quite excited to try this market. Going against his intuition and better judgment Ryan did a couple of sales interviews with stakeholders in the company, and it was all going well until, eventually, he met the CEO. He immediately had a bad gut feeling about the guy's character. His intuition made him doubt the CEO but he looked the other way. Ryan went against what nature was telling him and pursued the relationship anyway. Blinded by desperation At the time, Ryan’s company was in great need of a win so they were a little bit blinded by some desperation. They had bills to pay, people to pay, and other business operating costs that had to be taken care of. So, this one time Ryan decided to overlook his intuition because the company needed the money. Unlike with other clients, they jumped right into work without dealing with the legal nitty-gritty first. They didn't follow their client onboarding process and had no agreements or contracts in place. So even though they had rules when signing up a new client, they didn't follow them, they just quickly jumped on their projects and went right to work. But, everything seemed to be working out fine. The client didn’t complain about their rates and was paying on time. Changing the project midway At some point, they decided to make a big packaging change. They were up against a deadline, as the client was going to pitch some large pharmacies and other...