Taking the First Big Hit

The first big hit came two months and four days into the quarantine. Steve sent me a text that read, ‘Call me when you can.’ I knew something had gone wrong. As the head of client relationships, he often would share the quick good news in a text. But texting to ask for a call was a sign that something was bad.

I called right away. “Steve, what’s up?”

“I just got off the phone with Mark. RedBrick is pulling back.”

“How much?”

“A lot. They want to pause half of the work we’re doing with them, immediately. The last two months have been really tough for them and I think they’re having to tighten their belts in every facet of their business,” he said. “I did everything I could think to do, but this is happening.”

We had worked with RedBrick from our earliest days as a young agency. As we’d scaled, they’d given us more and more chances to work with them. At this point, they were our largest client. This cut was going to hurt.

“Mark said that he knew we had a thirty-day clause in our contract that restricted them from making any sudden changes, but he asked if we would consider waving it. They need to start the change immediately.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him yes, of course. I reminded him that just like always, we want to be the best partner we can be for them.”

I had complete faith in Steve’s decisions on client relationships. By always making sure we treated our partners the way we wanted to be treated, we’d earned industry-leading client retention rates. Now was not the time to change that.

Key point: Build trust with your team, particularly with your leadership team. Their ability to make calls in the moment, knowing you have their back, is critical during times of high stress. As a leader, trust-building should be a priority, and a constant effort should be put toward it.

“That was the right call. Is the next step to prioritize the work going forward?”

“Yep. Already started that process.”

“You’re the best. I’ll call Rachel. I think this will force us into Scenario Two, but I’ll double-check with her to see if there’s any wiggle room.”

“Sorry, Will. I know this wasn’t the news you were hoping to get today.”

“True, but we knew there was a possibility of something like this. We’re as prepared as we can be for it, and you did all the right things,” I said.

As soon as we hung up, I dialed Rachel.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked.

“What makes you think something is wrong?” I asked.

“You only ever call me out of the blue if something is wrong,” she said. Apparently, just like Steve, I had a tell.

“Yes, it’s bad. RedBrick is pausing fifty-percent of their work starting immediately. I’m pulling up the financial dashboard now. Let’s make the adjustments so we can see what the impact is.”

As I logged into the dashboard, I could see that she was already in it. She adjusted the revenue, and sure enough, it dropped us in the range to pull the trigger on Scenario Two. It meant twenty-percent salary cuts across the board.

“Okay, Will. We’re looking at salary reductions.” She reiterated what we both were seeing.

“I was really hoping we wouldn’t have to do this,” I said. “I assume we need to implement the cuts right away?”

“We do. But this is why we told everyone salary cuts were a possibility; so that they could prepare.”

It was true. We had been very clear about this from the beginning. We’d done what we could to help the team be as ready as possible. Rachel and Martha had talked to each person over the last month, offering guidance where needed about ways to budget, knowing this risk existed.

“Okay, I’ll craft a note to the leadership team and set up a call with them for later this afternoon. And since tomorrow is Huddle, I suppose we will tell everyone on the team then,” I said.

“Sounds like a plan.”

We hung up, and I sat for a moment to think about what this meant. While it was true that we hadn’t had to resort to layoffs like many other companies, this brought us one step closer to that step. If we couldn’t hold steady from this point on, we’d lose team members. And that was something I was going to try my hardest to make sure didn’t happen.