Have you heard of The Good Work Myth?
If you do good work, clients will find you.
Well, scientifically it’s not true. Research proves it over and over.
Now don’t misunderstand me. I totally believe that doing good work personally rewards us, makes us feel good because we did the right thing—not to mention the client feels good.
However, simply doing good work and waiting for clients to find you means you’re flirting with disaster. Because in this market they probably won’t find you.
I was working yesterday with a long-time client who is just having a miserable time grasping this truth. Her words, “I just want to do my work,” rang so strongly for me. I hear it all the time.
“I just want to do my work.”
“I just want customers to arrive.”
I just…it doesn’t work that way.
We are all wonderful subject-matter experts. We know so much more than our customers do about fitness, financial health, weight loss, stress management, money management, car repair, anti-aging, real estate, back-office support systems, conquering our emotional demons, making ice cream—you name it. And that’s the way it should be.
We are the trained experts. That’s one of the reasons we began our businesses in the first place.
Trained business experts??? Most of us have little education or acumen there.
That means we have to master business dexterity in order to deliver our beloved work to paying customers…for whom we do good work.
Master these four skills, and your business thrives:
- Leadership: of you, your team and your customers
- Marketing and sales: they go together; you can’t succeed without both
- Financial acumen: you must be able to read and understand your financial statements (you don’t have to create them)
Mastery of these four skills brings insights into how to find customers, sell more easily and gracefully, market through social media, increase your customers and feel the joy in your heart from great work deliver to more and more people who value what you’ve done with them.
Go forth and do great things,
Martha and Chris