Should You Be Friends With Your Clients?
- Victoria Hogg
- Aug 14, 2025
- 3 min read
Wish you were here, friends! |
Hey, desk divas, how’s life? Are you a frood who knows where your towel is? Yup, the dreamy summer season has arrived and while IMPROV Inc. are on their holibobs (yup, we said it: holibobs), the world of work keeps turning. So what does a gear change or a shift in relational depth mean to your business? You probably don’t want to send your clients a literal postcard - but it’s important to pay attention to their work/life rhythms as much as to the standard 9-5 grind. This is where improv helps. Improv invites immediate connection; it draws a ‘Yes, And’ attitude and creates awesome active listening habits. All good signs of a good friendship. Hey - you relax. We’ll get the ice-cream. |
Should You Be Friends With Your Clients?
TRY IT OUT: Make Contact With Contacts!
Consider the low-hanging fruit, my friend.
Put a timer on for 25 minutes, open your phone and make a list of the last 20 people you called or texted; open your main social media platform and see who has similar interests to you.
Could any of these folks help you with finding clients?
Start a referrals ripple effect.
Reminding yourself of who you know will water a client drought.
“A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship” John D Rockefeller, US businessman and philanthropist
Something transactional…
When youngsters start out with helping others, they sometimes need incentives: a few coins for chores; a healthy piggy bank on the bookshelf; even a pat on the back can be reward enough for a job well done.
It’s when it tips over into feeling good about the work for the sake of the work itself that things get juicy. Tapping into that personal passion. Finding the verve, even (not the band, though they are great).
When passion for the job emerges, there’s a higher purpose. Improv is a fast-track to it: building connections that matter, that feed back into a group elevation.
Something relational…
I read recently a thought from Reid Hoffman, the longstanding American internet entrepreneur and co-founder of LinkedIn.
"One of the challenges in networking is everybody thinks it's making cold calls to strangers. Actually, it's the people who already have strong trust relationships with you - who know you're dedicated, smart, a team player - who can help you."
Mind you, Hoffman’s first gig was setting up SocialNet.com way back in 1997, which focused on online dating and ‘matching up people with similar interests, like golfers who were looking for partners in their neighbourhood’. Even then, he went all in on chemistry in business.
“Key personal connections can dramatically shape one’s life” Warren Buffett,
Something positively strategic…
Let’s talk about psychological safety. Trust matters in a relationship: if you don’t have trust, you’ll probably behave inauthentically.
Yann Magnan, CEO of 73 Strings, suggests that, when done right, “shared physical activity fosters deeper personal connections and productive discussions’.
This is true. It’s why Magnan holds fewer dinners with clients, preferring to have activity-based meet-ups instead.
‘Build it and they will come’, sure. Build it with good ethics and a commitment to truth? They will be positively transformed.
Friendship isn’t the goal: authentic connection is. Friendship comes along for the ride.
All the best,
Vic (and Paul)
