Lorraine Ball

I always enjoy reading Seth Godin’s blog.  Sometimes funny, sometimes, serious, and frequently thought provoking.  One of his recent posts entitled Be Careful Who You Work For hit home when he said:

How many job offers with good pay have you turned down in your lifetime? How many clients? Compare that to how many times you’ve been rejected. That’s totally out of whack. Great marketing involves having a great product, and not every job (or every client) is worth your time or attention or love.I wish I had read this post earlier this year. But maybe I wouldn’t have appreciated it till I went through this experience.

We started working with client this past spring, our single biggest at that time. While I was excited about the revenue, there was this nagging feeling; we were not a great fit. A feeling I initially ignored as I deposited the retainer check in the bank.

The problem: they wouldn’t listen to us. Everything we recommended, they changed and changed, and changed, till the end product did not even resemble something we thought was a good idea. They nagged, and bullied, and monopolized our time. When the phone rang, everyone in the building tensed, hoping it wasn’t them.

When I wasn’t’ worrying about “That Client” I was nursing the emotional health of my team. The whole process was exhausting, and three months into the relationship we parted ways.

And while I missed the retainer check, I, along with my entire team, began to have fun again. It took a few months to recover, but today, I can honestly say, we have great clients, every one of them is worth both our attention, and love.

We will grow, perhaps more slowly because we will be selective, but we will enjoy the growth!

Sometimes this is how I feel when trying to figure out what to do next with the internet.

I used to hate Sunday night. I could feel the stress start to build as I thought about the week ahead.

Countless emails, innumerable voice mail messages, the anticipation of unexpected interruptions, and always, new requests and changing deadlines. These demands would culminate in a growing anxiety, a feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed.

And I know I was not alone in this feeling. For most small business owners, too much information, easy access, and not enough time created a recipe for frustration, dissatisfaction, and, potentially, illness.
But I don’t hate Sunday nights anymore? Why, because I built a planning window into my Friday afternoons. I don’t schedule appointments after 1:00, and most of my staff leaves early (which they enjoy) so I have time at the end of the week to organize, review, and plan.

I don’t get to all of these items every Friday, but over the course of a month, everything gets done once or twice on my Friday afternoon planning session. Continue Reading »