The Client Letter
August 21, 2012
Sedona, Arizona
Cloudy 70 Degrees
Sometimes it’s really hard being all on your own in business. When you’re a single service provider, there are a lot of challenges you deal with.
How to scale is one challenge. How do you grow your business without working 24/7, tiring yourself out, alienating your family, ruining your health and working your way up to become a really “successful” miserable person?
I think the answer is to do it very carefully. In the end, you have to redefine what it means to be in the service business. You have to redefine how you work, what you do and how you get paid.
To me, saying “I have more business than I can handle,” isn’t a good thing. Because that means you haven’t figured out how to scale in an effective way.
Most people work harder to earn more. That’s a losing proposition in the end.
I don’t want more business than I can handle. I want a successful business and a full life. I want to increase the output (money) and minimize the input (time and effort).
How can you do that in the service business?
If we were all selling widgets, it wouldn’t sound so odd to say, “I want to do less and get paid more!” That sounds normal enough, doesn’t it?
But in a service business, if the provider says, “I want to make more by doing less…” Well, that just sounds greedy doesn’t it?
Sometime, somewhere, someone trained the clients that big dollars require big effort or suffering. And the worst part is, a lot of us believed them!
Fall for that at your own risk.
Did Bill Clinton “suffer” during his speech at the University of Albany? Probably not. Most definitely not. And yet, he received a fee of $200,000.
How’d that happen?
Well first, he asked for it.
And second, he realized that charging for time has nothing to do with anything that anyone cares about… ever.
If clients cared about buying time, they’d offer it on the shelves at Walmart. They don’t.
Charging for your time is the easiest way I know to hurt yourself. If you think it’s the fairest thing to do, I’d recommend you take a close look at how valuable you think you are. Because if you’ve thought about this and STILL charge for time units as your main business model, then your actions betray your real beliefs.
That might sound harsh, but I figure I’m only on this planet for a very short time. I have no trouble pissing off thousands of people in an effort to make them THINK.
Clients don’t buy your time, they buy YOU. When you understand that, then things get interesting.
How much can you charge for something that is truly one of a kind?
Only you have that answer.
Do something nice for yourself today. Stop charging for your time.