Elana Rudick

So during the pandemic, that was something that I realized because I was so used to going to network events and all of a sudden that was cut off.

No more client in-person meetings.

So I still wanted to really maintain those relationships that I had been cultivating for so long and to keep growing as a person and as a designer.

So I made it a point every day I called three people.

And I did this for a year.

I would call three people and touch base with them, whether I'd worked with them once, whether they just reached out one time and the work never went through, just to say, hey, how are you doing?

The pandemic was a huge talking point.

It's very easy for somebody to have something to talk about because we were all going through this shitstorm together.

So how are you navigating?

How are you navigating this?

What's going on in your world?

And I would have people breaking down in tears on the phone and telling me about their lives.

And usually we didn't talk about business at all.

But a lot of those relationships that I worked on during that time are people that I still work with now.

And it changed the type of relationships that I have with clients and suppliers where there's a huge trust.

In that situation I was mentioning before where we were looking to do creative services and pivot and they looked at me like, are you crazy?

And I said, I looked at them and I said, I know you can do this.

And they trusted me because we had built that relationship up and that was leveraging the soft skills that I had developed.

There's an illusion with clients that we are the experts, we know everything.

And yes, it's not fully an illusion, like we do know what we're doing, but I also think nobody knows what they're doing.