The Client Letter
July 27, 2011
Sedona Arizona
I talk a lot about my former life as a church musician. Don’t worry, I’ll spare you all the gruesome stories for another day.
The purpose of brining it up now is that making a living as a professional musician is very similar to making your living as an independent professional like a freelancer, consultant or a lawyer.
One of the similarities between the two professions is that the person who is most skillful at their craft (i.e. copywriting, web design, law, etc.) is rarely the person who ends up being most successful.
The best copywriters don’t get the most clients…
The best web designers don’t either…
In fact, the folks who are the “best” at something often are the ones that struggle. There’s a specific reason why that happens, and that’s the purpose of today’s message.
When I was a musician, this always made me angry. The best players didn’t get the jobs, the folks who schmoozed and knew how to “play the game” got the gigs.
Arrrggghhhh.
For a “purist” musician (which I was at the time), that was a hard pill to swallow.
Little did I know that all of those “purist” thoughts I had going through my head were really immature and totally counterproductive.
Wow.
Now that I’ve been in this business for a while, I no longer am surprised by this whole situation. In fact, I know NOW that there are things in your business that are far more important to your success than how well you do what you do.
I think how you do what you do is actually on the bottom of the list.
At some point, we’ll dig into all of this on a deeper level, but here are the 3 ares you need to master, in order of importance. Imagine this like a pyramid, with the first item being the base, the second item being the second level and so on.
The items are:
1. Your Mindset
2. Your Business Skill
3. Your Craft
You’ll see that “what you do” is LAST on the list. And yet, so many independent professionals who “want more clients” think they have to invest time and effort at getting better at what they do.
They’re under the (false) assumption that once they achieve some level of excellence, then the clients will come running.
They don’t and they won’t.
Hopefully this message today will keep you from falling in that trap.
First, you have to get your mind in shape or else it will sabotage you at every turn.
Second, you need to develop your ability to market yourself, sell yourself and end up with clients putting checks in your bank account.
Finally, you need to be good at what you do.
Without mastering the first two items, however, you are going to struggle.
So if you want more clients or better clients, your mindset and your ability to sell are where to start.
Work on those… a lot.