Are you working with the right type of clients or customers, doing work that inspires you and rewards you on every level?
Well, you should be. And you could be!
The challenge here, is that many business owners and consultants are not choosy enough. They focus on what they fear [going broke] rather than focus on what they want. So, instead of only working for great clients, they decide to work with pretty much anyone who will pay them.
In doing so, they create a cyclical challenge, which many never recover from.
The cycle looks like this
They find themselves doing work for people, who don’t give them the freedom to do amazing work. After a while, the great clients won’t hire them, because they want to hire the ones who ARE doing amazing work.
I was prompted to write this, after receiving an email from a reader whose business is really struggling. She told me that she feels she has to take whatever work comes her way, because she “can’t afford to be choosy”.
She then explained what her cycle, was.
She said she was working extremely hard, doing crazy hours, yet she’s so broke that she can’t afford to turn away the low paid work that’s destroying her business. So, she accepts more low quality work and ends up undervaluing her time and doing work that makes her unhappy and pays poorly. The cycle then repeats itself.
Thankfully, any of us can break that cycle.
It’s your business: Take control!
Sometimes, especially when business is sluggish, it’s easy to forget a few critical facts:
- The marketplace doesn’t set your fees. You do.
- The marketplace doesn’t determine how much unique value you provide. You do.
- The marketplace doesn’t decide who you choose to work with. You do.
At any point, you can choose to draw a line in the sand and decide to reject low value or average clients. You can decide to solve better problems and charge better fees. You can decide to fix the marketing errors, which are holding you back from attracting the best clients.
Or you can take the easy route: To do nothing and then complain because your business is going nowhere.
The key here, is that YOU get to choose. More of the same or something better? It’s your move.