Episode 79 Transcript

Banoo Behboodi

Welcome to the Professional Services Pursuit, a podcast featuring expert advice and insights on the professional services industry. I am really excited about our episode today because it's going to be themed around the season, which is Halloween. So grab your chairs and favorite snacks because I'm joined by Brent. We're going to tackle today's session by sharing some of our experiences, drawing from a collective 40 years of fun, challenges, and spooky stories of missed deadlines and all the fun that comes with working in consulting and professional services.

Brent Trimble

Well, this is a really special treat because you and I don't get to co-host together often. For our listeners, Banoo and I are very close colleagues and really enjoy working together. I'm delighted for this Halloween treat that we get to spend an hour or so together. This is going to be super fun.

Banoo Behboodi

It is. I'm excited.

Brent Trimble

As you noted, we have two interesting perspectives on the professional services industry. You've done a lot on the inside of the house with embedded services doing implementations, and you're going to have some fantastic tales of woe from that. I started my career in the fee-for-service industry with marketing services, advertising, digital, and spent some time in management consulting. Both of those fields are rife with really spooky experiences that I think our listeners will relate to and hopefully find humorous.

I'll start off with one of my nightmares. There have been many of these, and we're in an era now where we've got generative AI and applications work very smoothly. The iPhone is just an amazing utility, with more computing power than the space shuttle. But several years ago, when you launched a marketing campaign for a big brand, one of the things you would do is build a website. A lot of our listeners will remember this; this is the famous marketing microsite. When you launched a brand or a product, whether it was a beverage, a sneaker, or a new consumer packaged toothpaste, there'd be some online advertising to assault consumers with banner ads, paid search, and of course, your digital team would put together a microsite.

I had the privilege of working for a large holding company brand in New York City, which will remain nameless, and serviced a lot of global brands, which will also remain nameless. I was one of those guys who, while I dealt with client relations, had a modicum of technical acumen. You wouldn't want me coding websites anymore or doing Javascript or JS or databases, but I had enough intuition to understand technology and try to keep us from falling into avoidable landmines. There's nothing scarier, I think, in professional services, than launching a product or a project, crossing your fingers for a client, and having something go awry that you could have foreseen.

So let me set the stage. European client. I'm working in Manhattan. We're launching a cellular mobile device for a major, major brand. Lots of creativity, everything you’d think of when you think of advertising in its heyday. Lots of creative juices flowing, tissue sessions, multiple rounds of revision with the client, feedback, late nights—always late nights in advertising in New York, those types of things. It culminates in a brand launch with a complex microsite featuring lots of interesting elements. We were really pushing technology at the time. Things like hovering over a face and having different skins applied. But this was 8 or 10 years ago, right? So Snapchat filters hadn't been invented. We were really pushing the limits of technology.

I'm naturally a cautious person, or perhaps I have a degree of preparedness. So I said, "Okay, let's look at all these campaign assets, Banoo. We're going to launch a website, there will be display advertising, PR, and an event or brand activation in the city somewhere. All of this will come together, and we have to choreograph it."

The website presented a couple of challenges for me. I thought, okay, this particular site is going to demand a lot of computing power from the end user. Some listeners will remember that 10 years ago, these extremely elaborate microsites required significant processing power. Many were built using Macromedia Flash, which immediately kicked in the processor fan due to the high demand. We were launching with millions of dollars in advertising.

So I wrote this little plan of preparedness, a manifesto to the technology team. I said, "Hey, guys, I've run some numbers. If the millions of dollars in advertising translate to a 1% view-through or click-through rate, these are the concurrent users we can expect to hit the site. This is a lot. Should we consider load balancing? Maybe some different nodes or hubs?" At the time, I don’t think Cloudflare was really a thing. But anyway, I wrote the plan. Banoo, you and I know, we do a lot of math for clients. We do a lot of proformas. It was like a once-a-year performance test. Call me crazy.

And you know how it is, right? The tech team, the creative team, they don't want to hear from the account guy. What does this guy know about technology? I mean, come on, it's going to be fine. Famous last words. It's going to be fine. We've tested it. We've done this before.

The other spooky thing about this project, which a lot of technology users will, I think, nod in affirmation, was we launched it on a Friday night, East Coast time. It's tough to do technology pushes, right? But I think the seasonality, the activation, I said maybe we should have some folks hang out, make sure we kick the tires on this thing.

Clients, everyone's just waiting with bated breath. The website gets pushed to production. We're all familiar with what that means, wait for the DNS to populate, all that stuff. Advertising starts to flow. Imagine my surprise at 3 a.m. getting woken, and I’d probably only gone to bed an hour or two prior, by my client in Europe in the south of France saying this is probably the worst call you want to receive while I'm at Cannes. And I'm here with my delicious glass of Rosé and I'm here with the CEO of this major telecommunications brand. And lo and behold, I want to show on the website, and I'm getting a 503 error or some kind of error.

I was like that does stink and that's horrible and you're right. I didn't want to receive this call at 3 a.m. So imagine me now, I'm rousing technology folks at this very wee hour, and I've never been one of those types of folks in my career who relishes in schadenfreude or I told you so, but I said, hey, remember me, the guy who warned about too many concurrent users? Well, guess what? The CEO of this public company is now at the beach in France, and he can't access his website, which they’ve paid millions of dollars for.

A couple of hours later, I get this email from our tech lead and he goes, I've got some good news and some bad news. I'm like, I can't imagine what's good right now, but let's hear it. He goes, well, the good news is your marketing program has worked and there's thousands of people trying to access this website. I said yes, almost as if we could have calculated that in a proforma based on a percentage and forecast concurrent usage, right?

Banoo Behboodi

Imagine that.

Brent Trimble

Imagine that, and I have my memo. The bad news is we didn't load balance this, and now we have to switch servers. So there's another 12 hours lost. We missed the window and tarnished what could have been an extremely successful brand launch.

Banoo Behboodi

Actually, I was thinking it would be fun to take us back in history a little bit. I know some of the listeners probably don't remember this, but do you recall where you were, Brent, during Y2K?

Brent Trimble

Yeah. Oh, gosh. Yes.

Banoo Behboodi

It was a scary thing, right? I mean, the world as we know it was going to end.

Brent Trimble

Planes were going to fall out of the sky.

Banoo Behboodi

Right. Exactly. And it was all dependent on people getting it right, and I was one of those people. I was actually in charge of a Fortune 50 company’s Canada operations, leading that project of making sure that they were ready for Y2K.

Because you can imagine a Fortune 50 type company, they've got very complex operations. So irrespective of how much you try and dive in and think about all the use cases and test and have plans, you are bound to miss something. So it was just as important to basically dive in and make sure that you have contingency plans in case things go wrong and a tree of people escalation should something happen.

It’s one of those end-of-the-world type movies where you're preparing for.

Brent Trimble

Oh, yeah. I remember.

Banoo Behboodi

I tell you, it was one of the most interesting and enriching experiences I had because of the fact that you had to touch on every aspect of the business. Whether it was the IT systems or the operations and processes around them, all of it was critical. If there were no system, then your processes had to be robust enough to continue serving your customers. We had to ensure everything was bulletproof. I remember expecting my third daughter and being at a New Year's party, unable to take it anymore because we were literally counting down to see if all our plans for the last two years worked, hoping none of our contingency and escalation plans would be needed.

It's one of those situations where, in the end, nothing happened — no event. It was almost a letdown because everything went smoothly. The world didn't end as we knew it. But this was a result of the extensive preparedness that everyone undertook. We took it seriously; everyone did, anticipating the worst and preparing for it. As a result, we had the best outcome, with very few impacts taking place.

Brent Trimble

And you know what's interesting about Y2K? The level of preparedness. I mean, people paid attention and took it really seriously. It was like, now when we read in the news about doors falling off of Boeing airplanes, you wonder, gosh, did we lose something along the way? Because I feel like we were really preparing for things properly back then.

When we think about spooky stories in professional services, I think we'll both have some infamous client stories, and I've got a few, and I'm sure you have a couple of demanding clients. I've had the benefit of having some fantastic clients over the years who are great friends to this day and great colleagues. But early in my career, I was forged by fire by, I think, still to this day, a client who's legendary and perhaps might stumble on this podcast and listen.

I'm going to keep this person anonymous, but I was working, I think it was my first job actually in professional services, at a marketing services firm in not in Manhattan, but a smaller city in the state of New York. As it is the case or was the case, and sometimes is still the case, this agency gave their largest retainer account, which was a large telecommunications account, to their most inexperienced person—probably 25 years old—me and said, hey, go run this.

It was a great shop, great times. We had legendary holiday parties, everything you can imagine—creativity and fun to be had, people making career-limiting decisions at the Christmas party and the award ceremonies and coming back into the shop the day after a big party and finding people sleeping under the conference room table, that kind of stuff. Stuff that today, oh my gosh, did that stuff really happen? Oh yeah. All the time.

She was, I describe as maybe a bit of a tortured soul. There was like an Anna Wintour type quality to her that needed to escape, so The Devil Wears Prada, just exacting, maniacal expectations. I'm a high-effort, high-output kind of person and I also have high expectations, high expectations for myself and the team. And we would just work murderous hours for this person to try to achieve these. The creative team just writes in a statement of work. And this is the same with professional services, right? When we do an implementation, we write how many rounds of revisions or what the change order strategy is. We would put it, oh, we're going to do three. It’ll be 15. "Well, this just doesn't hit the mark." I'm like, "Okay, well could you be more specific?" We’d just go back and forth like that and just legendary, murderous. No one wanted to work on the account, but I held it together and to this day will clink glasses with people that I run into from those days and say, "Gosh, remember when this person said X or Y?"

But I remember this particular time where we'd gone through these creative revisions and we're talking about the strategy and the brief and I was just going through a logical progression. And I can only imagine that this is early days for me, but having some repartee with this client. And she says, "Stop" and puts up her hand to me. This is very non-millennial behavior. This is back when people had really lively disagreements and we didn't go to HR. We resolved them as adults. And I look around, I'm like, "Are you talking to me?" She’s like, "Now stop. I just have a question to ask." And I said, "Okay, what is it?" "Why do you talk so slowly?"

I collected myself because I don't know, I don't think anyone had ever said that. It's like, would I talk too fast? Would I talk too slow? I just collected myself for a second, and I looked at her and said, "Because I don't like to repeat myself." And then we were off to the races. I mean, it was a knock-down drag-out. But I think to some degree, pushing back and not laying down because the challenge in marketing services and fee-based consulting is you always want to please the client, right? I mean, it's a service environment. It's akin to waiting tables in a high-end restaurant or bartending, and you want to serve. You want to succeed. You want the client to be happy and successful.

There comes a time when it can turn into abusive behavior and send the creative staff to a therapist's couch, but I remember that. There have been some tough ones since; she was the toughest, and she was the first.

Banoo Behboodi

I want to take us to mergers and acquisitions, just at a slightly different angle. Consider the cultural and geographic differences when a North American company acquires a European entity and has to merge them.

Brent Trimble

Oh, that takes Augusts off.

Banoo Behboodi

It is. Yeah, exactly. We don't appreciate it necessarily. And I think it's just that cultural difference, coming from America, going into, let's say, a situation where you're in charge of integrating a company that's been purchased in Europe.

I remember we purchased the company just before Christmas, and this company had a tradition of having a huge Christmas party, the ones that you're referencing, where everyone drinks it up. The North American company that had acquired this company had actually stopped having these types of parties a long time ago, as you know. Traditions are waning, and now people are having a lunchtime get-together or something similar for Christmas.

Brent Trimble

With a little charcuterie plate from the local grocery store and some plastic cups.

Banoo Behboodi

Exactly, so there are fewer of the ones that we used to have earlier in our careers, but I think it's more of a tradition in Europe. And the company sent me, literally three weeks into the acquisition, to the kickoff. Yes, we've acquired you, we have all these great intentions. And then they sent the person who's going to lead the mergers and acquisitions to this Christmas party to represent the acquiring company.

Brent Trimble

You were like Ebenezer Scrooge.

Banoo Behboodi

I've never been this uncomfortable in a situation trying to mingle with people. It was a consulting company we had acquired, so the assets were the people. There were all kinds of uncertainties around what was going to happen to their jobs, and here I was at a festive Christmas party. Everyone was seeing the inevitable with a merger and acquisition, and I was the only one representing their doom.

Brent Trimble

You're from McKinsey and you’re like, "We're here to raise revenue and cut expenses."

Banoo Behboodi

Yeah, that's it. Everyone was hospitable. They tried to make me feel fit in, but it was a night that I will not forget. It was very high stress just because I knew the position I was in, but not necessarily because anyone made me feel that way. It was definitely high stress.

To that point, there was so much that we went into this not knowing, which made the journey uncomfortable for not only the acquired company but also the acquiring company. There are complexities like the Workers' Council. The Workers' Council, for example, in Germany and other European countries, drives so much, and that concept is so foreign to us in North America.

We took over and tried to analyze and look at the groups of people, the talent. There was huge talent. Some of the talent that had joined the company were unique in the area of expertise they had. There may be one or two in Europe or North America, just very rich talent assets. And again, you had the anxiety around being acquired, the cultural change of an American company acquiring, and that American companies and European companies have very different cultures. How is that going to work out?

Obviously, people started leaving, and you're trying to stand in front of making sure that you've quickly understood where your talent lies, who are your best that you want to put some kind of retention bonus in front of, and try to motivate them to stay and be patient with you as you try to figure it out. It was an amazing eye-opening experience.

I think the thing that I learned is going into a situation like that, it's critical not to assume but make sure you're prepared and have the experience. You understand the details. I'm telling you, one of the events we had was to make some decisions on certain individuals who would not carry on. We went with a plan to have the event, and half of the situations did not work out just because we had not understood the labor laws and everything within our capacity and capabilities that we were or were not able to do.

Again, the moral of the story was, when you are stretching into a global entity or an entity that is outside of your purview and in another culture, do the homework and really understand all the details you need to strategize accordingly, not according to what you know best.

Brent Trimble

That's a great moral of the story too, with services is that services are run by people and relationships and emotions and texture and different dimensions. We've had episodes talking about generative AI and agentic AI and so forth. And sure, some of that will replicate people, but it's hard to, I think, distill a services practice and persons down to spreadsheets.

I went through a couple M&A practices both acquiring and being acquired. I remember one of them, and I mean, you know the drill. The private equity firm comes in, they've got their 26-year-old kids who went to great schools and their briefcases, and they go through and they tell you how things are going to be. And you're, in the meantime, trying to run the company as well. And you're saying, well, wait a second, you're getting several millions of dollars fee for this. Why don't you go figure it out? But just knowing where all the spooky metaphorical bodies are buried and that there are landmines that are going to erupt and you can't distill personalities down. So I can only imagine how that must have gone for you being the Ebenezer Scrooge at the European Christmas party.

I've got a funny one. We're in this age of remote work, and I think this spooky story involves a client, travel, and, I don't know, let me dive in. We'll see what kind of category it fits into. I'm part of a company that has been acquired by one of the big four consulting firms. People can peek at my LinkedIn and they can discern which one it is. It's a great firm, and I had a fantastic experience traveling globally, selling the services of the acquired company throughout the portfolio. This led me to India many times, where I even got a residency visa. Lots of flights, traveling internationally 100% of the time—the whole nine yards.

We had this pitch in a city in India, either Hyderabad or Bangalore—I can't quite remember. I flew over a couple of days ahead of time and worked with the team on training. We went through pitch rehearsals, focusing on the choreography of a big client presentation. Our client welcoming team did an amazing job with flowers and petals in the lobby, and the sand drawings were fantastic. I love my colleagues in India, and it was a great time in my career.

We get ready; the room is prepped, and everyone knows what to say. I'm a preparedness person. I don't believe in going into pitches and winging it, because I think you're going to get a curveball or two or three. The plan disappears once you get punched in the face, but you've got to have a plan, or else you're in quicksand.

Minutes tick by, hours tick by. That's not uncommon in India. Maybe there's some traffic; who knows what's happened? Finally, about an hour in, the word comes that the senior client is not going to show up. So we talk amongst ourselves. There's plenty of other work to do.

I talked to the senior partner back in the US. The times almost have overlapped or he never slept. We all worked global times. I said, what do you want me to do? Should I spend the weekend here and see if this client shows up? And he says, no. And everyone's disappointed, but we figured the meeting might happen. And he said, Brent, just fly home.

So I'm like, okay. This isn't like Brent flying home from Washington DC to Boston or Poughkeepsie to Kansas City. This is like I'm flying from Mumbai to New York. So I weave my way through the traffic, go through all the connections, and I arrive. My wife had put on the calendar a little holding place. She wanted me to go with her to a medical appointment.

I should preface this by saying it was nothing life-threatening. It was very routine. But she said, I'd really appreciate it if you'd be here to listen to what this doctor has to say, and I say, absolutely. I'll go with you. I arrived probably 5:00 or 6:00 am, 7:00 am in New York, go through customs, arrive, see the kids, take a shower, and go with my wife to this appointment.

We're sitting there in the waiting room, and I look on my phone and there's a message. The client is going to be here tomorrow. I should preface this. Management consulting is known for murderous hours. You clock 80, 90 hours by Thursday and all that is true.

Anyway, he says, and this is a very senior partner who was pre-IPO, knew the CEO said, I would never ask you to do this, and this will not reflect on your rating or your career, but we feel like if you're in the room, it gives us a better chance to win. And it wasn't that I'm a great presenter on a pitch. I have my moments. It was more that the subject matter expertise was there for this particular client. It was an industry we were trying to break into.

So I look at the phone, I look at my wife, I look back down at the phone, I look at her, and she goes, you're flying back tonight, aren't you? Six hours later, I was on a plane back to Mumbai. We have the meeting. It goes well. It led to riches, glory, and grandeur because we landed this massive client and everything, and I still get a really nice bottle of scotch every year from this senior client for winning this deal. It's like a double platinum or double diamond or whatever they call it.

Banoo Behboodi

Oh, wow. Look at that.

Brent Trimble

I'm on the flight back, and this is two very long flights separated by eight or nine hours. In that course, I must have become a little bit dehydrated or something because I'm in business class. At this point, I’m flying so many miles. That's another thing with private equity, right? The business class travel thing. But this is a long haul flight, maybe 10 to 12 hours to Mumbai, whatever the case might be.

I just feel off. There's some tingling, maybe my face feels hot. The normal reaction is, let's go to the restroom, splash some cold water. So I get up, and I stand up and feel off. I step into the aisle, and immediately the tunnel closes in. Have you ever passed out or had a concussion? So I take a knee. Now for my listeners, I'm not a giant person, but for dimension, I'm about 6’2”, 200 pounds. I'm not small. So when I fall, it's not like the Mountain from Game of Thrones, but it's noticeable. I can hear in the distance some women maybe screaming. I can hear some china crackling. I hit the deck. I hit the deck hard.

I was down for maybe a minute. I awaken to another passenger with a little bottle of, I don't know, Poland Spring Water splashing on my face. Of course, there's a stewardess there, and they're helping me. I get to my knees, and I am like, just give me a second. I passed out. They're like, oh, we know. We saw you hit the deck. They usher me to the back of the plane, and there's a nurse on the plane. If anyone does any business travel, I am the subject of "is there a doctor on the plane" yada yada. So they get me in the back, and they put me in the little jump seat. They're like, you're big, so if you pass out again, we don't know if we'll be able to carry you. Do you mind sitting in the jump seat? And I’m like, it's fine.

Banoo Behboodi

Oh wow. You're it, Brent. I’ve always wondered about that.

Brent Trimble

Exactly, so I'm telling everybody. They had this medical kit, which is unbelievable. This is tier one triage EMT, military grade. They're taking my blood sugar level. They're taking my pulse. This is amazing. I've got a toothache. Can we do some minor surgery right here? So they do all this, and they're like, do you have any medical issues? I said I don't. I was like, I think I'm really just dehydrated and I'm tired. And I stood up quickly and I passed out. So they're like, do you mind sitting in this seat for the remainder of the journey just in case you pass out again? We don't know if we can pick you up. I'm like, yeah, totally fine.

So, here I am sheepishly, my shoes are off, and my hair's askew. I'm in this jump seat drinking orange juice for the remainder of the six-hour flight back. Of course, I like to make fun of myself. Whether it's the fact that I'm co-hosting a podcast or starting a text thread for my family, I'm like, "Hey, funny story, little medical incident on the move." I always remember that. I traveled an insane amount in a 24-hour period, won the account eventually, so it was successfully not spooky. Then, I had a medical incident on the international flight back and hit the deck unceremoniously. Probably my arms went up, knocked over some dishes, and I rode in the jump seat.

Banoo Behboodi

Where are those recordings when you need them? Oh, Brent, I had never-- Yeah, that's a great-- Well, it's a good story. It’s an entertaining story. I’ve got to say I’ve never heard it, so it's great.

Brent, this has been so much fun for me. We should do this again, I don’t know, maybe around Christmas or something. But, yeah, I think we need to bring it to an end. We really appreciate everyone joining us today.

Brent Trimble

We could have gone on for hours. It's a reminder that in professional services, wherever you are in the business ecosystem, it's really about people, relationships, doing work, and managing dynamics and conflicts. So, this has been amazing. Maybe we'll do a more cheerful episode around the winter holidays with tales of joy.

As always, thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you have any scary stories you'd like to share with us, we would love to hear them, whether they're about COBOL scripts, Y2K code hunts, or even security breaches (though those aren't as funny, so maybe not). Whatever the case may be, reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast@katana to engage, give us some ideas for episodes, and share your thoughts.

Thank you, Banoo. This has been great. I love when we get to have these episodes together.

Banoo Behboodi

Yeah, me too. Thanks everyone.

Brent Trimble

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