5 Reasons Not to Work with Me
- I provide very little documentation
The strategy we’ll create together is ultimately yours, so formal documentation needs to be created on your end (with help and support) so that it doesn’t get rejected by your organization’s immune system. And I’m confident you know exactly what I mean by that.
2. I will (probably) never buy you a coffee
My clients don’t want a five dollar coffee—they want to transform the way they create and keep customers. Maybe some people can do it, but I can’t fit in a bunch of coffee appointments and prolonged strategic thought into the same week. This goes double for dinner, drinks, gifts, etc. We entirely forgot to acknowledge Christmas one year, and I’m quite confident it will happen again.
3. I don’t believe laughter and business are mutually exclusive
On the Apollo 11 mission, as the astronauts began the procedures for returning to earth from the moon’s orbit, they laughed and joked throughout. They even—initially jokingly, and then increasingly seriously—meticulously confirmed that the spacecraft was pointing in the right direction. Your job might be more important and serious than one of humanity’s most profound and historic achievements, but I’m pretty sure mine isn’t.
4. I’m a real pain about time
Meetings with me will end on time, and if you’re delayed getting me feedback or responses to critical questions, that will change the final date of the project. There’s just no other way to make sure that I never, ever miss a deadline, which is my priority. If you can’t trust your marketing partner to do something when they say they will, how could ever you trust them with anything else?
5. I’m on the pricier side of things
We only take on a few projects at a time so that we can give them our full attention and focus. There might be a way to give business owners a personalized marketing strategy based on their wants, likes, and skills—and the tools and motivation to do the work to make it work—without a lot of focused effort, attention, and in-depth conversations with experienced practitioners, but we haven’t found it yet. And we’re honestly not looking that hard.
But what’s all this about anyway?
I know this post was a bit much, but thanks for sticking with it. And I also know that you know exactly what I’m doing here.
But I had a few people ask me what I meant by values influencing your tradeoffs, and how those tradeoffs can select for ideal clients. As you immediately realized, all of these reasons why you shouldn’t work with me are also reasons why someone would love to work with me.
Does being so clear and honest about my tradeoffs turn some people off? Of course! But only the people who would have a bad time working with me.
The people who would have a great time working with me now know it—and they know why in clear language they can express to other people who might want to work with me, too.
This is, of course, the simplest and starkest way to express my point—but here it is, in its barest form.
In your own marketing, add in your creativity, your personality, and your brand on top of your values and on top of your tradeoffs.
But values and tradeoffs first, everything else after.