suit come up first. Hey Aloha and welcome to Stan the energy man this week. I'm Stan Osterman from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies and we're here today to talk to a gentleman who's actually just got into town from the West Coast with some some great ideas and great thoughts on maybe how we can help our electric electrification of our transportation grid and get more charging stations out there for electric vehicles and maybe even get some charging stations out there for hydrogen vehicles which of course we know that's my favorite. So we'll be talking to a gentleman named Toby. Toby Kincaid from Oregon and he's gonna tell us all about what he's got in store for the rest of the world. Toby welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much. So let the audience know kind of how you got into doing what you're doing because you haven't been doing it for a couple weeks you've been doing it for a long time. No as long as I've been breathing it seems but well when I was a little kid I remember the Vietnam War and it was disturbing as a little kid all of this violence and so forth but at that time my brothers helped me build a little mini bike and in the field nearby I could run in the mud and I had a 35 cent allowance for my chores so I could fill my tank for 25 cents 10 cents for candy happy kid. The oil embargo hit so it's 1972 suddenly I couldn't fill my tank I was like hey this is a serious matter energy really matters. So that with the kind of war going on really kind of made me very introspective as you know probably any kid is at that time I remember walking to school it's 7th grade and it's cold Oregon morning and freezing and I'm like well how do you do it how are you gonna power this world and at that moment the clouds parted just slightly and the Sun went bing and I went oh yeah the Sun it powers the natural world why not the industrial. That's actually that's actually a really great analogy because you know here we are burn and fossil fuels to make electricity in Hawaii in particular and in reality we have buckets of sunshine falling down on us all the time. Oh I think it's the best kept industrial secret you know not all gold is buried that's right in a one square mile of sunlight you know what's that worth in a year well at 10 cents a kilowatt hour do the math it comes out about 130 million dollars a year so if I went to someone had a square mile and said you know I'm gonna mine 130 million dollars a year of gold out of your land you might say well I can tell you there's no gold on that land and I would have to say you know not all gold is buried. That's true. So it's a tremendous resource and it's worth an amazing amount of money and a value because we can use it directly. So you have the epiphany by the Sun hitting you in the forehead but how did you get from you know being a kid and going I really care about this stuff and I care about energy to doing what you're doing now well I when I got into school in the college I wanted to study physics and minored in history and I went through a few years got to my senior year and did a couple of conferences I had a solar powered laser satellite I called SoulSat and it was from the literature a little yellow dye you could pump with the certain wavelengths of light and in a in a laser you get this tremendous output so I went around the country trying to get some support for this and Martin Marietta liked it and they go well that's interesting where did you do your doctorate I'm like well actually I'm a sophomore they're like okay go back to school get your masters and you know get your doctorate and then come work for us I thought you know I I'm not sure if that's the right path for me so at that moment when I should have kept continuing to graduate I thought no I'm gonna start my own company so I started solar dying at that time and how long ago was that well that was in the mid-80s so it goes way way back at that point and then once I started to form the company I thought well I'm gonna work on the technology and so I thought well solar energy is optical why not use optical systems to concentrate it use the sunlight as a raw material and then optically process it and see if you can get a better result and I'd run all around and and and try and get some support for this but it was a little controversial because photovoltaics was going more for a thin film and they were going for exotic materials and and the electrical engineers I met just maybe we're not trained so much in optics and and so it wasn't very popular so I kept with it and kept on it and and built what I called the Mariposa which was this kind of linear concentrators and boosted the output about three times so it was very interesting but it was when I I kind of went to move to Cambridge in Massachusetts I thought okay I'm gonna figure out what's the ideal fuel and so I went to the MIT library the big marker engineering library wonderful library and I started to I thought what I want to do is list all of the fuels methane propane butane ethanol kerosene gasoline everything and list all of the exothermic energy you could get in all of the different characteristics and so I was finally ready after a month of typing this into Lotus one two three there we go that dates me a little bit so I was ready I'm gonna say now what's the best fuel so I thought well the best fuel would have to be powerful so let's sort everything in terms of the exothermic energy and combustion and from from least to most and hit sort boom top hydrogen hmm oh that's interesting hydrogen I thought hmm well that's why they use it in the space shuttle in the external tank I don't know that's interesting next question what would be an ideal fuel well it would have to be clean so list all of the combustion products from toxic to least hit sort don't do the top listen hydrogen what oh hydrogen okay oh clean I get it when you burn hydrogen you get hydrogen oxide which is H2O and I thought well that's pretty clean so I thought that's interesting we got two hits on that you know two for two two for two so then I thought okay what's the next thing well it has to be available so I thought okay I've listed all of the available feedstocks yeah that hit sort three for three hydrogen I went okay wait a second this you make it from water yeah and the water is everywhere you know covers the planet you know we're mostly made of it so it was just tremendous and it was at that moment I thought okay there is no debate about what is the best fuel everyone was saying should we do this we do this no no no no if physics matters the answer is very clear it's water-based hydrogen did you do another sort that said by weight well at that point I didn't get to that point I thought there it is because those were the three big ones and of course you can add many many more but it's just an incredible amount of power in in this material the simplest material in the universe is really one of the most incredibly useful so for me it was like oh my goodness that's an epiphany yeah so I wanted to go forward with that you know we were talking the other day I told you that I had some visitors and one of them asked me a question about the the amount of energy and hydrogen compared to other bad they were talking batteries yes and so I went back into one of my references and I looked and and it broke it down by amp hours per kilogram mm-hmm and when you look at amp hours per kilogram lead at acid batteries were 55 and there were a bunch of them in there in the hundreds and five hundreds and six hundreds and then you got to hydrazine fuel cell was like two thousand and something mm-hmm hydrogen was 26,000 amp hours per kilogram so I mean it was it blew every other energy storage source away absolutely that's your weight component that's your weight to energy component so it would even work well on airplanes we just oh absolutely yeah and it's at your point is wonderful it's not a little better it's completely better yeah and that makes it I think a done deal so now you see why I'm such a hydrogen I do people keep asking me questions when I find the answers I'm even more impressed with hydrogen so and you've had the same experience absolutely and it's amazing that the the world doesn't seem to want to yet embrace it but we have to kind of push the movement now the battery as you know is is really an important thing it's the key to renewables it's the key to everything we're doing with the grid work and with the EVs and so forth and we look at the physics of a battery there's all kinds of batteries there's gravimetric batteries there's there's mechanical batteries there's inertial batteries there's cryogenic batteries there's magnetic batteries and of course there's chemical batteries mm-hmm so everyone's looking for what's the best you know anode cathode and electrode and it was Michael Faraday who actually invented those terms because he was doing all this stoichiometric work and that's really going to be the key to it is this tremendous power that you can do so when Faraday was working in his lab in 1839 and with Grove who on his deathbed said actually it was Faraday who invented the fuel cell a lot of people say it was Grove but actually it was Faraday he's the master it was it's an amazing history that at that moment they begin to realize people in the world who were still concerned with fossil fuel back then because they didn't have it mm-hmm Germany didn't have any oil for example so when they did electrolysis and discovered hydrogen through that means what did they call it in German what do we call this they said Vosser stuff water stuff not very creative but certainly described so we've had this knowledge for a long time and as we've gone through history the great French and veteran mass show who did these beautiful concentrators he was very excited about hydrogen and he would use his concentrators and at in 1872 they didn't have solar cells so he took sebeck's little thermal pile concentrated sunlight on it made current and voltage and then electrolyzed water and here's this guy in 1872 in France making rocket fuel from water and sunlight and we think we're high-tech and we think we're high-tening well before we get to an amour with hydrogen which is very much you got me going now let's talk a little bit about what you've actually developed here so you've you've developed some smaller scale solar-based charging units both electric for quick charging cars and hydrogen fuel cell or see me hydrogen electrolyzers for charging up hydrogen vehicles exactly why don't you tell us a little bit about especially how somebody from Oregon where I don't think there's so much sunlight is here that's why we love it I've been there before how you ended up coming up with that that formula and and give us a description or talk about how how your system works certainly now when we do fast charge it's all about voltage if you ever you just plug into a single line it's 120 volts you go up to 220 that's more of a faster charge we mentioned we call it a quick charge or level 2 but it's fast charge when you get to 440 and 480 volts okay so the big issue now with EV is normally people plug it into the grid and that's fine in Oregon that's very easy to do we have a substantial grid but here in Hawaii you have an island you have a small area very remote very difficult to get these fuels so when I was working in Oregon as it applies to here I realized that even though we don't have a lot of sunlight it is so valuable we can put that sunlight to work mm-hmm so we've been working on the battery issues and normally when we do fast charge stations I work with a great engineering firm EV4 the chief designer chief engineer Hans Vandermeer he's excellent he designed these beautiful structures that we see that can hold these canopies and he's been working on DC to DC fast charge using lithium ion batteries okay but here's the thing about lithium you know there are many chemistries but if we look at the energy density of lithium if you hold a kilogram 2.2 pounds how much energy can we really store well about a quarter of one kilowatt hour then you take two pounds of hydrogen and we can get over 30 kilowatt hours so there's 120 times difference mm-hmm now as everyone moves into lithium ion of course we have all the smartphones and laptops but maybe it's not so simple to say hey to power the grid we just need more of those so that's what really pushed towards the hydrogen so now what we can do instead of creating hydrogen from natural gas or plugging into the grid and taking that and creating kind of a lot of stress on the grid the idea here is a standalone solar platform about the size of a house system but it all comes down into a fast rapid charge and the idea is let's put the charger where people go which is the parking lot okay so you charge where you park and that's the concept we're developing okay and and how many kilowatts is that on PV array right we use four kilowatts okay so during the day one little station if you only had that small size we have different flavors that go up and up but if you did that we can create a small amount of hydrogen that we use as the storage battery okay so we're kind of using a water battery mm-hmm and what that really comes from is you know back in the 1800s what we're let's do the 1700s what was the big engine technology well steam engine right and that's an external combustion engine okay in the next century the the 19th century what was the big technology well an internal combustion engine and then in the 20th century I would say it's the jet engine because it was lovely lovely turbines and and but all of those are still heat engines mm-hmm so what's going to be the breakthrough in the 21st century and so that led me to developing the notion of a water battery but it's really an electron engine so we're going to convert variable electron inputs solar wind or peddling a bike but it's variable but if you got lemons we're going to make lemonade so we take that we start with water we use electrolyzer the water will break the the electrolyzer will break it into gases the oxygen we vent the hydrogen we store then on the other side we have a fuel cell stack so that when the hydrogen goes in you blow the air into it you get most of the energy and the water will come back into that central tank so we've got this kind of water cycle where we've had a lot of work with electrolyzers and a lot of work with fuel cells we've been trying to put it down into one little package so that you have a wonderful battery that you never need to replace will last for decades and you get a tremendous potency so the idea in the charging station is just to put them into the parking lots I mean I really feel parking lots are going to save the world sure we have like 13,000 square miles of parking lot so if we can put these fast chargers on site whether they connect to the grid is optional you could connect them to the grid and then take renewable at night and run that electrolyzer or not do it and just place them where as you pointed out that there's grids have issues when you have a mismatch between production and demand so this would allow us to kind of plug-and-play and very quickly put these all around the island and that would alleviate that kind of range the range anxiety that people have okay we're gonna take a quick break here and we'll come back in 60 seconds to talk more with Toby about what he's got going in the parking lot okay so I'm Crystal if you haven't seen it before you better do it because you're all the information we talk about sex we talk about everything and nothing so we've got two gentlemen here gonna validate that right great kinkley and Roy what we've been looking at is the fuel some stacks are variable which is between 90 and 280 and then we step that ass yeah yeah yeah absolutely we just as a DC DC converter and then we go before 40 10 second something in Yiddish I think hey welcome back to my lunch hour stand the energy man talking to Toby Kincaid from all the way from Oregon and he's all excited I'm all excited we're talking hydrogen and you can't get me more excited and talk to somebody about hydrogen I'm just sorry so anyway Toby we're talking a little bit about you got a 4 kilowatt PV array on top of a single structure right and you've got a hydrogen electrolyzer down there breaking apart water and making a hydrogen and let an oxygen go and then you got a fuel cell that turns that back into power and you can actually bump that power up to those high voltages you talked about for a good quick charge exactly so so that's kind of the whole in a nutshell how your system works now here in Hawaii we've got some challenges with fast chargers because we have a lot of infrastructure that's old and a lot of people that are want to buy electric vehicles but like the condominium where they live only has two charging stations or they don't have any and the association doesn't want to pay for a new transformer in the building and you know that would only give them two more stations or you know and and then they and they want to spread the cost that when everybody lives there that's not popular if you had a hundred tenants and only 15 of them have cars but everybody else is paying for their charging stations right so sounds like your your kind of technology would fit really well especially when we get a majority of our people working during the daytime and they're in parking lots during the daytime and I'm just doing the math here you know if they're in parking lots in your systems designed for parking lots and we can get employers to say hey I'll incentivize my employees to go clean by putting these stations in and they can charge at work does that make sense absolutely a great point okay and that's where it goes to the economics you know normally we think of cars as the kind of the second largest investment but they're parked 95% of the time so as you point out why not charge where you're actually going to park the car anyway and so with this kind of pre-engineered system we can drop it in without touching the grid so that we don't have that demand charge or even overburdened on the transformers so this would allow as you said for the employer in the parking lot owner to kind of monetize or incentivize people using EV cars in their in their workforce or hopefully their guests so when if you want to go to a restaurant or a shopping mall or something wouldn't be nice if they said hey come to our mall and you get a discount or free charging and that's and that's very nice and also the fast charge is quick it can do an eight-hour charge in about 15 minutes well and that really allows people to just not modify their behavior or have to deviate to even go to a gas station and similar to what you do in your micro grids is you actually replace all of the infrastructure of mining and welding piping you know transporting railroading refining again so the whole notion of using liquid fuels from thousands of miles away becomes obsolete you've replaced it with the hardware and the gear that you have right on site where it's needed and that goes to that distributed model which goes to your point that you could put them in everywhere where people would go and make it easy for the owners of the property to actually finance this because they won't we will and then we'll allow them some monetization a small charge or something to help capitalize it so what we're going to do you know that the cost of something depends on how you pay for it so instead of having the burden upfront for the property owners to buy these either upgrading as you point out the transformers or even where you put the the trenching to take it from the grid if you're relieved of that you can just drop them in like you plant trees and a lot of you know property owners they don't want to be come fuel salesmen either right so you know you put the system and you manage it you run it then you know they they get payback on you know on their side a little bit and you cover the capital costs and and get payback on there and exactly so I'm a little bit I'm thinking about how much hydrogen you can actually make in a day with a four kilowatt yeah not very much so let me let me say there's a big sister here okay and the big sister goes up to 50 kilowatts a solar now we can put that in several arrays and then bring them into one base that is the electrolyser in the fuel cell in the 50 kilowatt version we can produce about six kilograms per day and that equates to about four to five hundred miles of vehicle range now if you have many of these stations even the one station can't fill up many many cars you can have so many available that actually it's convenient to just we'll have a green light and a yellow light and a red light and the green light says hey come get it and the yellow light says we'll give you a partial charge but when you have dozens or many of these stations the actual amount of electricity that are vehicle miles that we can create is enormous well could you also maybe put more storage and deliver hydrogen from a central location yeah absolutely in fact we would work hand and glove with that and I should say that we may create six kilograms per station but we'll have a storage capacity of say 20 kilograms so if someone didn't use that station that particular day no worries it'll be building up for the next one and then when we when the Marais and the beautiful hydrogen cars really penetrate the market then you just add a dispenser to make it a hydrogen station see here you guys talking about hydrogen again that's right well they're together you know they compliment but hey I just love the hydrogen I agree well what what makes it neat is you're using the hydrogen electrolyzer and fuel cell as your energy storage and energy production size instead of the grid right and that and that allows you not only to take care of hydrogen vehicles but plug in electric vehicles as well they're compliment each other and in reality that's what my office tries to do with everyone is and make them understand that transportation is going electric yeah and electric doesn't just mean plug-in vehicles it means hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as well and they do compliment each other and your system actually shows that well because you're using the hydrogen to produce the electricity when you need it so you making the hydrogen in the daytime you can charge at night using the the fuel cell to put the power absolutely and if we're good connected we can take renewable energy from night and run those electrolyzers and further increase the output right so this infrastructure that you're talking about the only way we could really get the numbers to work economically was actually to combine three separate industries into one piece of hardware so we combine primary power production right there on site the fast charge for the transportation network or hydrogen vehicle with the right dispenser and then I'm actually integrating as well the communication network so we can run hotspots the whole thing coordinated by smartphone app there you go so it's really this integration of all these formerly different areas now in the 21st century we have all these incredible technologies it's really almost as much as packaging it and putting it into a universal platform I just see cars or their smartphones chasing for the one station it's available well now there's a bit of that problem because they're checking you know is it available there's not too many charging stations but you're right it's gonna we might even monetize that part of it but they could bid why don't you tell us a little bit about where folks can get your books here then I want to leave a few seconds left for you to read your poems oh thank you well fast charge this is kind of the story of ev4 and these lovely structures and so forth and that's available on amazon.com and then the other book is the water battery where we kind of go through the history of energy and empire you know the ancient Greeks that defoliated the ancient Greece and even Plato wrote poems about how only the skeletons remain of the land he was his dear Attica you know only the bees can survive so the this idea of deforestation and energy crisis has been over and over again through through the civilization so right okay well this one's for you Dave Rolf wherever you are I've got a poet now that can give you some competition so hit a Toby Kincaid with your poem well you know truth is like poetry nobody wants to hear it but in this case I'm gonna have you and this is kind of called how we roll how do we move ourselves with axle and wheel we power our engines with unbridled zeal we pierce the dear earth for rock oils and coal we run off with ancient sunlight drilling like there isn't a toll and burn what we find no care for results just spew it all out like a snake when it molts we burn oils after siphoning off with no care to effluent at emissions we scoff no matter that only a few have the holes no matter what costs or tragic loss of souls to control holes in the ground is reward vast enough so what is this protest to all of this stuff yes the mercury will kill all the fish but it wasn't your first choice wasn't beef your best dish for centuries now we've turned to combustion to power our cylinders with vigor and gumption we've lowered the world to what have you got no matter the consequences just set off your shot but a funny thing happened on the way to our glory we used up the place and that's been our story we siphon the earth with wells like great straws sucking it dry with ever deeper draws that tomorrow it doesn't matter let's use it this way let's use it all up to our last breathing day now don't get me wrong I'm not looking to blame I'm not independent of this sad toxic game for I am a prisoner held to this bank to get to work every day I need a full tank so what are my choices do I continue to burn and justify my selfishness with each of us in turn blinded by the interest who sell you a fish and say you'll never learn no matter your wish well this is no good burning rocks to survive we'll burn ourselves out till nothing's left alive we're building a time bomb of overwhelming toxicity and told all the while just hold your complicity well the world's in trouble as we continue freefall the reality is terrible and can barely forestall that industry tells you what a beautiful suit forget all your woes well from an energy perspective the emperor has no clothes so do what is needed do what must come do what is obvious and use the great Sun decompose water into elements it comes from hold the dear hydrogen and vent the oxygen some and when you need energy upon your desire or command bring these gases together as fast as you can recombined in a fuel cell great power is found you get the electricity and the water back sound so use an electrolyzer and a fuel cell stack you get most of the energy and the water comes back thanks so much I love to be pulled and that was awesome and so Dave Rolf eat your heart out wherever you are because now you got some competition in Hawaii with Toby Kincaid so thanks Toby for being here and being on our show today and sharing great poem and some great books and a good discussion on hydrogen and plug-in solutions for the state of Hawaii which I think are actually really viable and I hope we start seeing more of them out there bless your heart thank you okay so thanks for being us here with us the stand energy man and we'll have to Toby back again I think we'll give him a couple weeks off and bring him back to to talk more about hydrogen and transportation so until next week standard energy man signing off nice job oh hope I didn't me and or too much I tried to answer your questions I found myself kind of drifting oh answer his question did you like the phone well that was fun and you're right that went fast right just why I'm astounded that you warned me saying so no look this is you know a quick don't don't worry about it and I'm like oh it's gonna take I don't know


Everybody, each one of us, would like to work with a pleasant and a happy client, right?  We feel inspired to work along with us. But this is not the story all the time, right? So during my career, I have faced many clients being an IT professional for the last 10 years. I have faced clients across the globe and there have been various types of them. Some being very supportive, some being very understanding. Suppose you are in a situation where you are not able to give them a proper solution, they will guide you through. So in that scenario, we feel really blessed that the people are there to understand us. And this will help us to work in a more learning phase. This is a good learning phase for us as being in support, or being in queue with, or maybe as an agency owner, or as a freelancer, or maybe as a company owner. You might be having your own employees. So while all this process was going on, there are a few things which I have learned, and today I am going to share with you all those little lessons which I have learned, and I hope that you will implement them in your career ahead. So yeah, successfully dealing with difficult clients. This skill actually, this skill will make you more influential and happy in your career. So if you develop this skill, this will help you in a lot way, apart from being a professional also. While you have to work with them, they are not much trouble actually. It's a smooth sale, you can sell all the phases of the project, or maybe if you are in support or in any other aspect as a WCOR or a QA clients. So I would like to know how many of you are having experience of 100% happy clients, 100% client satisfaction, 100% as a product service provider? As a product service provider? So that is actually next to impossible because all of us are unique. All of us are unique. So definitely the problem which we are going to face will be unique. Endless learning process, but the key and understanding, the basics.  I have various feathers in my cap. I've been a trainer, I've been a QA and presently I'm working as a freelancer. And in all these scenarios, I have actually, you know, learned quite a few good lessons, very good lessons. In four categories, the penny picture, you know, a niche over the project is going to come.  So they are least bothered about the product, the quality, nothing. They are not interested. And even if suppose you, okay, let's give it a start. If you aren't in this mode, they will be like, you know, if we add it in here, it's going to be so good. I think if we add it in here, you can also provide it with this one. I think it's like feature mode. This is like, if we define it in the scope, even after that. So every time we communicate with them, they always are in a mode of a money-minded set. You cannot take them apart from that. They always, they are in an under mode always. They are intolerable. They are efficient in many aspects also. And then they are demanding all the time. They are so much top-ative. When I say top-ative, they just keep on talking. They never listen. They never let you listen. They never want to listen to you. They are into always, you know, this negative aura is around them. The moment you come to know that there is going to be a call with them, you feel so drained. And there is this negative energy and aura, which is always, they never smile. They are never in a pleasant mode. So before talking to them or in any interactive mode, we never have an interaction with them. So that aura, that energy come across to us also. So very difficult people to actually handle. Most of our business owners, agencies, people who are freelancing and developers who are working apart from the regular job day, most of the times are, you know, targeting these two clients. They are indirectly actually. They are targeting these two clients indirectly. But actually, if you need to have a smooth sailing in respect of your profession, in respect of your business, we need to focus the thing in these two fields. That is the sophisticated and affluent. Now who are sophisticated clients? These clients are very educated. They are abreast of the technology. They know what they want and they are a good listener. If you try to educate them, they are good learners and they will appreciate that. And they will also provide us some knowledge which will build the trust, which is the most important aspect while going through the journey of creating a project. So beat phase one till the last phase of project till the delivery of the product. So these clients are basically, it's a two way. They will also learn and grow and we will also learn along with them. So this is a very good set of clients which all of us would like to have. The next one is affluent. Affluent clients are basically, they work on feeling. Does that particular product is going to make them feel good or not? Or whatever the service which they have acquired. So that is how they think. For example, in this room only, there must be a set of people who would like to go for a certain kind of mobile and there would be a certain group which will be like, I don't want this mobile, this doesn't make me feel good as in whatever the criteria is and they will go for the other thing. Irrespective of the features, they don't want to get trained with the features, they are not bothered about the money also. So affluent clients are basically who take decisions based on feelings. So these are the four major clients which we have. Now, difficult clients. Whenever the difficult client is going to communicate with us, we know that there is something which is going to, and we are in an alert mood. So there is this website which I want to develop. I am a very difficult client and I want to develop this website and I don't have much money, I don't have time also. I don't know what is it but I don't want this. I don't want this and I want you to create a website which should be next to Amazon or Hotstar with the logo of Spider-Man. So I want it to be very good. Since we have talked today only, I know that a website can be created in minutes or maybe in an hour. So by what time are you going to deliver me? A difficult client will be talking to you in that way. We are doing our best. We are just working so hard. So it was actually 10 seconds. But why didn't you complete it in 12 seconds? You wasted my time. And for a QA, that will be the beta version. The client really crits off. And up to them, the product, they are never satisfied. They always have one or two other things which they will trip up on. And then it will definitely, there will be a stage where we will regret why we have taken a decision, a good decision to work with these clients. So this is how it goes. So plan journey. We all like to have a client which is happy. But then with a happy client also, it is not like a straight ECG line where there is no, everything is like they have thought of something, we have thought of something and it is going to be a straight ECG line with no ups and downs. No, there will be many ups and downs in a fluent client, in educated, sophisticated client and in respect of the penny pinches also. There will be ups and downs. With the penny pinches, we can keep on negotiating time factor and lot many other things since they are not as into technical things. So we can keep on working with that. So it is never going to be easy with the other three clients which we have talked about. That is the penny pinches, the fluent and the sophisticated one. But with some of your clients it will be like this. Some with a few ups and downs, with others it will be more ups and downs. So it will be a journey, a good journey I would say. But with difficult clients, since beginning your heartbeat will be on a pitch that will never be in a settling mode. So it will be a difficult ride for you. Yes, be patient of life with them. Don't waste your time treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease. The best thing which we can do is prevention. How we can prevent being a freelancer, being an IT agency or an IT business owner or as a developer, how we can sense as a marketing or sales team in the company how we can sense, how we can prevent a difficult client. Because we know the end result is not going to be good with them. So it's best to, the approach to make it as a preventable thing. The first thing is how to prevent them. So the prevention is the best methodology with the clients. We need to examine them first. We need to know what their target client is. The first thing we need to know and we need to understand their niche as well as our niche and their work and skill. We need to analyse our work and skill, what we are able to deliver to our clients. It should not be an open ended development company or a freelancer or a service provider. You know that you are agreeing for an architecture work also and you are agreeing for a doctor's work also as a content writer. There should be a niche on which your thought process can work well. So you should not, the first thing is you should be able to understand your own skill niche and the other thing is you need to understand what exactly they are into. Now, whenever the gut feeling, the moment you interact with them, you will have sense that it is not a good deal going to be. You will come to know it, the moment you interact with them or there might be an uncertainty of maybe or may not be. But there will be a, sometimes when you meet certain people or the team from which you are going to get the project, you know at the very instant that it is going to be a good deal. The moment you interact with them, you will know that there is that click yes, this is going to be a good start. There may be chances that it might go in a source state of situation but then in the very first thing you definitely feel that it is going to be a good cooperative work environment along with this. So gut, definitely you need to read those signals. In your website, you need to upload whatever your target is, your skill is, your process basically. How you work in your company or as a freelancer, what are your objectives, what are your targets? So upload everything on your website so that there is a scene in the client's mind that he is not coming online to you when approaching to you. He will have that scene. The scene will be planted in his mind that this is what I can expect from these guys as a service provider. So market yourself your work on your websites with maximum of FAQ, the process which you follow, the kind of work which you deliver. So that will be definitely a good thing for prevention, brief qualification on voting lessons. Now there is this request for proposal form, make it as detailed as possible what they work on, what is their requirement, what were their challenges in the past, and what are their challenges in present, what is their marketing budget, what is their timeline, what is their complete budget for the whole project. So that is, and make it as detailed, the timeline is very important. They are into also service industry, they are going to get the service from you guys. So you need to know the marketing budget also because we are not going to do that part. So they need to have that. We are not supposed to do that. If that is part of the project and the world scenario, it should be included in this course in the very big name because again the money factor will come and that will also, these guys will, this section of clients will, you know, I will include on that. So include and define in that request for proposal form every aspect and try to basically understand them as much as possible. The more you understand them, the more you understand them, it will be easy for you whether you are going to be able to deliver what they actually require. You know, that will be, as much as detailed it will be, it will be as much as easy for you. I would say try to create a client avatar, you know, where we can actually visualize them. That avatar will let you know the insight out of the team which you are going to work with, the client which you are going to work with. And that avatar will help the people who are in the back end who have never interacted with the client. So when they are, let's suppose they are in the QA, QA aspect, the QA will come to know that he can't do this in this, or the client support, he has to support. Okay, I will put a mail in it first, then talk to him. Skype call is coming, how much do I have to avoid to take Skype call, how to take it on the group? So that avatar that you create that is so clear, which is very clear and perfect, then, you know, it will be a whole together, an easy sale for you and your team. So this has to be a proper detailed one. The more it is detailed, the more it is easy for you. Road mapping consultation, provide them a PowerPoint presentation. If suppose you have taken them, okay, the thing is to avoid actually, but then let's suppose, if you have taken them, okay, okay, let's go, I will take this work, after that we will see, first take face, after that let's see, maybe he will appreciate my work, he will value my work, the team will appreciate it, and they will give me a good feedback. But with these guys, actually it is not possible because they are like, they work on all the aspects to make your life hell, because since they can't do the optimistic or the positive part of it. So it is actually quite difficult. So yeah, in this road mapping, you can provide them a preview of what all and how the case is going to happen. And yes, if they are interested in, they can pitch in and they can, you know, check some money to proceed with the first phase of the project. And which is good for you. This will help. But this is only possible once you have created that request for proposal form that proper avatar is there, you have interacted them, then you have made them clear your process and your niche and your skills very clear to them. This phase will only come after that because if those first phases are not clear, I don't think you will get the feel to have this consultation session with them. Until that, two things are not clear to you because you need to palate your things and you need to understand your own because, see, the client is going to, no matter how much we market, the client is the one who brings it, you know, organic clients, fellow clients. Let's suppose a web page or other social media, inbound or outbound marketing things are there in our system when we are working. So those things may bring you maybe one client or something, but then if a proper client, product is delivered properly, our service has been delivered properly to the client, then that client or any client will give you more clients, the word of publicity, the goodwill which you create in the market that will help you more in respect of having more clients or maybe that client may come back ahead in future also. And he will recommend that also. So if we actually developed this skill to handle the difficult clients, they are actually good. So it's very important for us to deal with them rather than avoiding them, totally avoiding them. You know, so yes, the road mapping is important. Pricing, be very clear on your pricing aspect. Why? Because we are not, we are all into 100% business and we are not doing any charity or funded thing. So when the pricing aspect can be very firm and clear about your services and tell them this is effective and a priceless thing which you are going to deliver. So pricing is very important within. Practice and make realistic approach. The moment there are some things which you feel that they are not satisfied with and they are shooting mails of the mails. And again you receive another then another. So in that case talk to the team and then with the whole opinion and with the proper time slot if the client is in a very not in a good mood or maybe swearing or shouting also. So in that case define a timeline. But that timeline should be a proper timeline. It should not be something that will happen in the evening. And we will buy at the end of the day. It shouldn't be like this.  So if you have given a wrong timeline then it is not going to work. Don't try to be responded or it will be taken care of. End of the day. Just hold on. Talk to the people who are your leadership the team who are actually going to have. Because if it is a showstopper it is not going to be sorted out in a second. It is going to be. So whatever timeline you are providing provide it a proper one. So that the thing has been sorted it has been tested properly and then only delivered. So otherwise it will escalate and that argument that level of dissatisfaction will escalate only. Listen and let the client win. If it is a face to face thing or a mail just let them vent out. Let them here. Because if it is some kind of bad words are being used in Skype call and it is on your conference room it is full pitch. Listen. The thing which works is listen. It is a very good tactic.  Just listen. Because it is not personal thing maybe you have never met face to face about the dissatisfaction and why that complaint has come to you why because he is expecting the team is expecting some solution from you. So the best is let the client vent out and just listen to what exactly is the problem rather than going with the terminologies think listen about things don't let try to give a response. Because the moment you respond or you try to win you are lost. Because that is not our objective is our objective is to find out the concern or the issue and sort it out. If the client is rude apologize properly to the client admit that there is nothing you can do if you cannot do anything about it write a mail or face to face and we have tried to help you as much as we can accept it and let the clients also know about it. You don't have to fake it if you don't have the resource for it if you think that a resource can be taken care of and give you one or two then you can say so but if you think that it is not in your limit just clearly tell them don't let them hand over there. It is not good because that will be wasting hours and time watching the time of both the parties. So every client whenever they are at their full page you have to remain calm you don't have to take it personally and you use your best listening skills and try to understand basically what they are trying to communicate or where exactly they are having a trouble just sympathize sympathize doesn't mean like I am so sorry for you this is not sympathizing you need to say I apologize for all the inconvenience which you and your team is going on because sorry what it says sorry means you are not understanding you are not trying to connect with what exactly the client is trying to tell you sorry the moment you say it it means whatever you have said you haven't heard it sorry if you have said this means you have not understood because but if you try yes I do understand I am so apologistic about this and I will try to try to sort this as early as possible so that is a more better way don't use this term actually find a solution find a solution of it and give them a time frame or how how would you try to impact on it and every time if it is a face to face again you need to listen to the client understand what he is trying to say you need to remain calm and adjust your mindset and separate your feeling from the situation you are not supposed to let that feeling out we don't have to directly comment on it we just need to give that problem a solution rather than thinking about one comment and ending it give a small pinch this should never happen because they are going to get that thing this is a backfire that should never happen we are service providers we need to run the company for 100 more years so we have a wisdom view about the company to run it for the next 100 years so keeping that in mind all those things in mind try to respond in your communication conclusion is they are actually very valuable for us difficult lines they are very valuable for us they actually help us to grow as a service provider so never try to actually avoid them listen to them and try to deliver your best with more value which can add to their objectives and their values so I would like to quote over here Peter Duggar and I would say efficiency is doing things right effectiveness is doing the right things so let's be more effective thank you so much in the requirement and purchase order the proposals which we fill after that the purchase order all the requirements will be written there will be this amount there will be this timeline as a individual, as a freelancer if you get a project as an organization how to handle it that means I am a freelancer and I am taking a project so the organization how to handle it as an individual why? because in organization you have teams marketing team, sales team the leadership is there to take care of the things to understand the whole cycle which is going to happen they monitor if you are doing a little incorrect thing but when you sit in your room as a freelancer you have a project and this such difficult client is there it is more challenging so I recommend you to go for a detailed as I told you a detailed request for proposal form because that will help you to understand and create a client because if that is not there because we are never going to interact in person and you will be the only source for them so try to send them a link let them have a it should be a detailed one detailed one with all your insecurities also so they will fill it up if they are not filling it up or avoiding it they are not the one for you so I recommend you to avoid video calls avoid video calls because that will let them know your region you know and then because they are we live in all of us we know how the world is going on so then your choices your lot many other aspects which are there invisible then you may but if it is not required by go for a video call the second thing is after the mail and the communication is done you can definitely go for a proper call a detailed call as much as before taking the project go take as many as calls if you feel that it is something which is not going to a right person or a dean to pitch in take as many as calls because with that also you come to know the patient level of the other person and you will understand their psyche to deal with their service providers how they have interacted with their service providers that is how they will you know talk to you communicate to you so if they are mature enough they will definitely respond nicely and properly to all the calls which you are making to them welcome your difficult category mother so what is your best advice to handle it sorry when non-technical client when non-technical client comes into your difficult column that it has become difficult for you to handle so how will you tackle it the client is not aware of how we work so we need to make him aware I have told you two things one is by marketing on your website sending you the link of the best proposal form a very detailed one the things which he is trying to avoid ask them all those things in call that I have sent you this link and in these three four start the timeline the process and your budget these three things have not been taken care of or you have ignored or you have not defined it so I would like to know more about it let them answer it push him to answer because that that is the area where he is going to screw you up later so it is better that you make him write those things actually I am just running a sort of firm and I have a team of twenty people so sometimes what happened I have a retaining client to whom I am just working for three to four years and sometimes what happens my team just made small mistakes and client just being so angry and they just want to fire us like even though we are working for three to four years for just small mistakes they are just trying to fire us and they just give us a last warning and all that like see this is what and this is what I am paying for you and all that so we will stop working so at that time how we convince them like see we have worked for three to four years and for such small things you are just leaving us and all that how we can convince them it has been how long you are working with them minimum four years four years now so you are running an agency a company with 10 to 15 people so those 10 to 15 people in four to five years are this is this team the same it is changing your team is changing on the other end is the team is same your client team is same they are almost same now what happened over here which I guess maybe I am not right about it the kind of service the quality of service which your dedicated team which was there two or three years back they were actually working very sincerely and very hard shouldn't have let them go they were as the client the team is not being changed they are used to that dedication that effort that sincerity which your team delivered so that is what is pinching them now what you can do is the first is you have to maintain them train your team train your team and try to guide them motivate them with your efficiency and with your hard work not directly that I have been working for four hours watch it, eat food if you want to sell then not like this but you show your caliber how much you determined or maybe there might be some people in your company who are actually since there when you started so you three or four of you guys you take some new skills to develop trust once you develop that trust ask your team to work in a certain in a manner in which the client will be happy again that is the difference the time when they are angry how do they calm down that time you need to actually listen to them and whatever solution you are trying to give them or whatever thing they are doing there must be three things or there might be two things or there might be one thing on which they are cribbing jot it down on the piece of paper ask what are the things collect all the mails calls which you have done till now and try to find out there might be three or four things on which they are cribbing jot it down and select a path there must be a navigation and you might be knowing how to sort it out I am sure you might be knowing how to sort it out so work on it on an emergency basis if you really want them to we will do it project management experience I have been to delivery manager since last two years so mostly as a delivery manager I was looking employee I mean a client who is actually difficult before escalation comes otherwise generally he was supposed to be understanding so in the whole session I think I have two points that I am able to add one thing is after experience I learn that the more transparent the clients are why is a client difficult whether they are by manager or they have some experience or we are on a delivery stage initially there is no client start up time so all those scenarios one thing is no matter how transparent it is there is nothing frankly speaking there is nothing so no matter how transparent the client will understand where the developer is actually struggling where there are actually several problems where there is a problem of medical skill where we are improving this really matters and with this we can control their anger on a level correct so that is one thing second thing or habit it is we generally keep in touch with the client when it is delivery time when our milestone is spring delivery at this time when the whole experience says we meet on delivery time before that the frequency is high what do we do what is your daughter doing what is their presentation going on our developer did a great job your project manager tell us about the benefits so the client will appreciate the client will understand that they are doing hard work and also making relations and whatever it is going to be delayed or something is wrong so tell us at this time tell us at that time that it is wrong but we are working on it without telling you so transparency and keeping touch with the client also will help their anger on a level if you like greet them on a certain time like they are very though they are disciplined but then they are tough to manage also but then if you greet them they will appreciate that but here if it is happening like suppose we have a need or a Diwali or our own things if they are not greeting us should not take it to the heart


How's it going everyone at Caleb here with late in sports cards next up tonight's Rob F has box number 20 of The sports card Almanac volume number two personal box edition. Thanks so much man box 20 for your Rob F Let's do it. Here we go. Yo, it's up Bradley. Yes, man. We were talking about earlier.  Yeah, the game was disrespectful not a good game at all Unless you're an abs fan Then it's a good game. Oh That's sick man. Awesome. Here we go Rob. How about 1819 flawless expensive flawless your Shaq on the legendary scrips auto 10 of 20 nice baby Shaq again Baby Shaq 10 of 20 there Expensive flawless right there 1819 flawless It's Luca Trey rookie year Very nice congrats Rob F. Very cool, man. We'll have that right out to your Rob