About the Book

The lifeblood of any services business is its clients. Keep the customer satisfied, right? Too often, however, the client is demanding, vague, or unpleasant, and the task of keeping these challenging "partners" coming back falls to the client-facing professional known as the Account Manager, Client Partner, or Account Lead. These people can make or break a client-services business, because how they perform directly affects how the business performs.

In My Client is the Devil (And Other Myths), Revisited, Paul M. Drew, Dr. Steve Fedorko, and Dr. Mark McKinney take a closer look at the relationships between the Account Lead, the client, and internal teams. What is different about their approach is that they focus not on processes or techniques to make the client happy, but on how to help the Account Lead thrive, not just survive. People in high-stress jobs who know how to "manage the damage" will not only feel better, they will perform better, and their clients will, in turn, be much more satisfied.

The book moves through three sections that build on one another. Confidence is about managing your own emotions, steadying your thinking, and building the inner resilience to work well under pressure. Collaboration is about communicating with clarity, building trust, and understanding what drives the people around you, whether they are down the hall or across three continents. Creativity is about the Account Lead who never stops learning, and the practical habits of mindfulness, resilience, and reflective thinking that let you improve how the client thinks, how the team works, and what everyone believes is possible next.

It runs 264 pages of story, told through real client-service situations, followed by a 60-page field guide. That appendix holds the Think It Through Matrix, the Myths and Realities workbook, a feelings checklist, stress management in five and fifteen minutes, and more, all of it built to be marked up, returned to, and leaned on when the pace of work outruns instinct.

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Preorder the revisited edition now in ebook, paperback, or hardcover.

What's New in the Revisited Edition

• Relationship Capital, which is how every interaction with a client, colleague, or direct report builds up or draws down your account with that person. The authors call it the most important addition to the original.
• Four Modern Work myths, including the Obsolescence Myth: "My value is determined by whether I can keep up with the machines." The reality is that your job is to think, and AI's job is to help you think better.
• Work from Roam, on keeping your footing, your boundaries, and your confidence when the whole team is remote and the workday has no edges.
• Mind the Gap, on the gig economy, the invisible rulebook of culture, and the Help/Heard/Hug framework for reading what someone actually needs.
• The Sign on the Wall, on AI's hidden tax on attention and how to protect time to think when the tools never stop.
• A decade of Paul M. Drew's field notes and updated examples, brought back to the original authors and reworked together for a workplace reshaped by remote work, global teams, and AI.

Table of Contents

• Section One: Beginning. 1. My Client is the Devil
• Section Two: Confidence. 2. Work from Roam · 3. Easy as A-B-C · 4. You Gotta Believe · 5. Sticks and Stones
• Section Three: Collaboration. 6. Front of the Line · 7. Can You Hear Me Now · 8. Respect Yourself · 9. You're Just Like Me · 10. Mind the Gap
• Section Four: Creativity. 11. The Sign on the Wall · 12. If It Ain't Broke · 13. No Problem · 14. Charity Begins at Home · 15. Pay It Forward
• Section Five: Commencement. 16. Go Forth and Prosper
• Appendix: Think It Through Matrix · Negative Self-Talks and Realistic Alternatives · Myths and Realities · Feelings Checklist · Stress Management Strategies · How NOT to Listen · Myers-Briggs Quick Guide · Additional Reading