It doesn’t take a genius to know that if a consultant, coach or creative have no clients, then they go out of business. So it’s natural for these business owners to spend TONS of time making sure that their clients are happy and well taken care of.
The only problem is that MOST of them spend so much time focused on their Client’s Businesses, that they end up forgetting to FOCUS on their own!
Focusing on your business entails partaking in the following activities:
- Measuring Growth
- Forecasting
- Optimizing Operations
- Minimizing Inefficiencies
- Scaling
- Business Development and Sales
- …. the list goes on
I’ve been coaching Creatives for the past few years, and what I noticed is that they go through these ups and downs because they find it difficult to pay attention to their client’s results while monitoring their own. Many of them have told me that they felt that it’s a conflict of INTEREST for them to focus on their own business. They’ve told me that the time it takes to focus on their own business is time that’s taken away from their clients.
I’ve been there…. I’ve done that…. And I had to change.
While there is some truth to that statement, the reality is that the more you focus on your business, the more you’re able to increase the value you provide to your clients. As long as your growth is apparent through your work.
I was at an event a few weeks ago and one of the speakers who was promoting their book told the audience why they decided to even write one. They were mentioning that whenever they would do speaking engagements, the audience would inquire on what they should do next. And they didn’t have the bandwidth to speak with each one of them one on one, so they HAD to write a book!
I never thought about it that way.
They actually said that they felt selfish by not leaving the audience with some opportunity to take their insights home with them.
Now THAT is called having a perspective of scale to your business!!
Another friend of mine has been doing marketing consulting for a while, and he began to spend a considerable amount of time training himself so he was able to take on different types of projects, however he felt horrible because he wasn’t able to service some of the referrals that he was receiving.
He ultimately realized that his clientele was beginning to change because the level of value he was bringing to the table was dramatically greater because he FOCUSED ON GROWING HIS OWN BUSINESS.
Let me be clear…. YOU MUST FOCUS ON YOUR CLIENT’S WORK. But you must also focus on growing the value you bring to the table by focusing on your own.
If you’re a consultant, coach or creative, I highly encourage you to spend at LEAST 3 SOLID hours per week on some of those activities outlined above and determine how you will measure your growth throughout the year so you don’t end up one of those business owners who gets burnt out because they failed to focus on their own business.
