The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 81 Degrees
Working with clients is a crazy business.
On any given day, you can have one client who thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread and only minutes later field a barrage of criticism from another one.
It’s a good way to facilitate a psychotic break if you aren’t prepared.
Here’s one way to think about this…
Working with clients is a bit like story time at the library. Everyone is sitting around the circle reading. The problem in the client world is that everyone is reading a different story!
Client A has a “story,” Client B has a “story,” and then you walk in and sit down at the circle with a story of your own!
“The client said he would call, but he didn’t. What does that mean? Was it something I said?”
[INSERT YOUR STORY HERE]
“The client said he was happy with my work, but then he went and hired X to do the next project. How did I screw that up?”
[INSERT YOUR STORY HERE]
“I haven’t heard from my client in a while. I wonder if he’s mad or something?”
[INSERT YOUR STORY HERE]
We’re all very good at story time. We’re especially good at weaving fairytales about what every action our prospects and clients take might mean. Our stories are riveting because we have an intimate understanding of our listener. We know our fears, our weaknesses, our insecurities. We even know all of the dark secrets we would never tell another soul! We know every one of our buttons. And we use our little stories to push all of them… sometimes all at once!
There is no amount of money that can make up for this. So it’s a good idea to just DEAL with it and do the work to put an end to story time.
What happens if, for just a moment, you could liberate yourself from story time? What if you could walk away from the obsession with giving a meaning to everything and just learn to observe and respond to what is and what is not?
What would be left?
I’ll tell you what’s left. It’s something called FREEDOM.
They don’t teach you about this stuff in business books. For the life of me I don’t know why because it’s a huge part of making it in this business without going nuts. And that’s why I talk about it often.
Success isn’t just about what happens on the outside. If it was, there wouldn’t be so many miserable people around.
It all starts with becoming aware of the stories. You have to get out of your story and learn to just watch it. Eventually, you get good at that and then move on to the next step, which is to stop telling a story at all.
It’s work worth doing.
Couple of final things for today…
- The window is currently OPEN for the Platform Express Service for a few more days. If you understand the client attracting power of a Platform, but don’t have one, or don’t have one that works, that’s what this is for. Over the past months I’ve worked with professionals all over the world including consultants, artists, fitness pros, real estate professionals, designers, audio experts, lawyers, and even a business owner who sells wigs. It doesn’t really matter WHAT you do. If you need to attract clients and you’re an expert, the Platform approach works. Register now.
- Tonight is the deadline to get grandfathered in to any of the coaching programs I offer. After tonight, the bar gets raised and the month-to-month “no commitment” model goes away. There’s not much in life that you can accomplish without commitment so it really serves no one to offer it. Get onboard now.