How do you treat your best client? Lemme guess. You drop everything for them. You take care of them during evening and weekend hours — even Sundays. You do this with an “of course” attitude.
You don’t serve them begrudgingly, do you? When they pop up on your radar or have a big project with a looming deadline, you step up. Their projects receive quality time in fairly big hunks, don’t they?
Entrepreneurs and especially solopreneurs seem to struggle with this one. I get it. I’ve been “working on” treating my business like my best client for more than a dozen years.
This is the first year my business is listed on my whiteboard directly underneath my best client. It’s doing almost as much good as working on getting it to that spot has so far: nearly zip.
I’m no business coach; I have one. She’s fantastic, but the poor thing has been trying to get me to be more selfish on a personal and professional level for the better part of a decade. I have a giant toolbox I glance at for a millisecond before I dive into client work. I know what to do. I have a great support system. It’s gotta be tough watching me turn away from what might be possible if only I gave my business more TLC on a consistent basis.
“Hmmmm …” I thought as I glanced at my calendar this morning. “That’s important.” I wasn’t looking at my self-imposed deadline for doing a blog post; I was looking at a reminder for a client project. Then I remembered the topic for this blog post. I was going to start on it last week.
It’s perfectly ironic. I’m blessed to have a growing business; I asked for this; I created it. But what about taking care of my business?
I’ve been here before. Grow, grow, grow. Take foot off accelerator. Survey the landscape. Coast. Get slow. Build a bit. Momentum and referrals increase. Grow, grow, grow … OPEN TOOL BOX. CLOSE TOOL BOX AND DIVE BACK INTO CLIENT WORK.
I’ve been so serious about hiring a virtual assistant that I created a request for quotes (it’s still on my desktop instead of up on the site where I might actually find one). Now it’s tax time. I have a great tax guy, but prep is necessary on my end. When will I carve out time? What would I do if my best client needed me?
Have you found ways to treat your business like your best client? I’d love to hear what’s working!
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