Why Clients Only Care About Pain

Here's a really hard truth: Your clients don’t care about your methodology.

They care about their pain.

We consultants (especially those of us in the Data/AI world) have a terrible habit of thinking about our work in an abstract way: process, approach, frameworks, technique, and nuance.

And our clients just don’t care.

Because all they care about is what keeps them from doing their job.

The disconnect is brutal and obvious in how it plays out once we start a project:

You care about systems. They care about problems.
You care about tech. They care about what it means.

And inevitably, that leads to us building solutions that they (if they’re being kind) might call garbage once they break.

Every time I partner with a consultancy to build a workshop for one of their clients, question number one is: “What’s your pain point today?”

Because thinking like a doctor and focusing on what's not working is what positions everything that comes after as worthwhile.

So next time you talk with your client, even if you’re mid-project, ask them what’s getting in their way *right now*.

I guarantee you’ll be surprised at what you’ll hear.

And you’ll be a better advisor to them for it.