Client Management For Nice People: Jaw-dropping client experiences (and how they changed us.)

Massive Miss-communication

What started as a routine Shopify project turned into a digital nightmare when Kathryn Smith discovered her client didn’t actually own the website. Despite the legal red flags, the client insisted on moving forward—raising serious questions about trust, fraud, and professional boundaries.
This episode of Client Horror Stories opens with light banter between host Morgan Friedman and longtime UX and product strategist Tamara Adlin, but quickly settles into a story that reshaped how Tamara chooses clients and structures her work.
Tamara Adlin was brought in to help a blockchain startup build smart contracts—but quickly realized the team was rushing ahead without a solid foundation. Her efforts to slow things down for long-term success clashed with the founders’ chaos, leading to a hard but necessary split.