When you've worked with a client for a long time you tend to build a rapport - they listen to you, they challenge you - and you often feel you just 'get' each other.
And when a lot of your client base is long-term, your day-to-day workings can become very much relationship-based at the expense of being work-based. Great from one perspective (life can seem easy) but dangerous from another (you can get lazy).
It quite often takes the introduction of a new client to give a kick up the arse you didn't necessarily know you needed. They don't know how you work. They don't know the agency. They don't want to talk about what you did at Easter with the family.
They're interested in getting the work done on time and within budget. Nothing else.
You have to ask the hard questions and do things properly to impress and justify your money - two things that can be brushed under the carpet sometimes with the long-termers.
Everyone likes to have the cushy clients. The clients you know inside out. The clients you wine and dine.
But you don't really understand what you might be doing wrong until a new kid comes on the block and reminds you that every day should be a school day.
Getting back to doing things properly, getting back to basics.
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