Not all bad clients are as obvious as Stormtroopers at a landspeeder check-point. In fact they may not be bad at all – just like we discovered Darth Vader really did have good left in him.
You’ve probably been approached at some point by a person who you’d love to work with. They’re fun, smart, and realize you are worth the fees you charge. There’s just one problem.
What they really need doesn’t fall into your expertise.
Yes you could do it. You probably could do it halfway decently. And because you’d give them a great rate and be able to build a relationship that makes it all ok… right?
Nope. Following that slippery slope of justification is exactly how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. He didn’t start out with evil intentions, or plans to be the ultimate bad guy. He wanted to make things better. To save the Republic and his secret wife Padme.
Good clients can be bad for you and your bottom line.
I can hear you thinking, “Is she crazy? Did she really just tell me that good clients can be bad for me? That’s like saying water is bad for me!”
You’re right (except for the crazy part). I am saying there are times water can hurt you, and there are times good clients can hurt you.
Expertise Just Outside Their Needs May Be Worse Than Halfway Across the Galaxy
Alternate Title: Drinking salt water won’t fix thirsty
Imagine you’re extremely thirsty. Someone plops a bottle of bleach down next to you. Are you even slightly tempted to take a sip? No! You know the effects of drinking bleach will be far worse than feeling thirsty.
Now imagine someone sets down a glass of water, and tells you it’s from the ocean. It looks crystal clear, its cool, and you are parched. A sip would take the edge off wouldn’t it? It’s water after all, not poison.
You take a small drink, and for a moment you feel better. Then your thirst returns, stronger than ever. Desperate for relief you gulp down about half the glass. Uh-oh.
Not only does your mouth feel desert dry, the saltwater you’ve ingested is now sucking water from your cells!
Telling someone you can help them when you’re almost-an-expert is like offering a thirsty person saltwater to drink. It’s close, it’s available, it looks good, so yeah they’ll buy it to try and silence that need. Unfortunately that momentary relief you’re offering will result in a loss for their business, because you aren’t the real thing.
When Your Expertise Shortcomings are Discovered You Can’t Disband the Senate
Alternate Title: Of course I’ll tell everyone there’s salt in your water!
In Star Wars when the Emperor didn’t like the feedback he received from the Senate he simply disbanded it. That is not an option for your business.
While the effect won’t be as immediate or dramatic as drinking saltwater instead of freshwater, your client’s business will feel the effects. At some point this dream client is going to realize your services really aren’t all they could be. They realize your not-quite-an-expert efforts are actually costing them money. You’ll find yourself wishing this was a movie, one that was going to end soon.
Of course your target customer is going to know or interact with others who would be prospective clients. Guess what? Those prospects are going to get an earful about your salty water.
Jedis Don’t Spend Time Daydreaming About the Future
Alternate Title: Be a hero by finding a bottled water vendor
When Luke first went to Dagobah for training Yoda almost wouldn’t train him. Yoda was worried Luke focused too much on the future rather than the present. You may also lose out by by focusing on possible future business from a current role that isn’t your strength.
Consider you’ll spend a great deal of time and energy trying to fulfill a service that doesn’t match your skills. More time than it would take for a similar project that did fall within your expertise. Add in the risk of completely alienating the client and you’re out a lot of money.
What if you invested a bit of time upfront to find and connect your prospect with a highly qualified expert that did meet their needs? Rather than just grab what’s at hand (saltwater), why not walk a few hundred feet, flag down a bottled water vendor, and bring them back to the prospect?
“But then they’ll think I’m not an expert at anything. They’ll never hire me.” Whispers that sneaky voice of insecurity (Emperor Palpatine). Not true! In fact both the prospect and the really-an-expert will remember and appreciate the connection. Plus you’ll have instant credibility in the future with both of them when you do claim to be a top expert.
The Force is with The Numbers Whisperer® when…
Alternate Title: I help people grow their profit and have fun doing it
I experience the not-quite-an-expert situation quite often in my business. As The Numbers Whisperer® I often get asked if I’m a bookkeeper (no), a CPA (no), or a Quickbooks Consultant (absolutely not). Now I understand and can apply accounting principles, I keep my own books, and I do have a working knowledge of Quickbooks.
At first this galled me, all these people looking to hire someone, why don’t I just do it and get the business? But I could almost feel Emperor Palpatine whispering in my ear, “Good… good. Use your fear and anger.”
I realized questions about services I didn’t offer were an opportunity.
First they give me the chance to establish credibility. I let the person know that isn’t my core skill set and suggest alternatives. Over time I’ve collected names of reputable people who can provide these services, and I offer guidance on what to look for when hiring someone.
These questions also give me chance to highlight what I do and how I can help them. Accounting is a critical task that needs to be done to understand what has already happened. I use the information generated (aka the books) to look forward, to plan for my client’s future.
I help people like you tackle their fear of numbers, understand how to achieve their profit goals, create an easy to implement plan, and have fun doing it. Learn more now about about how I can help you grow your bottom line.
Final Thoughts
Have you ever offered a current client or prospect some saltwater to drink? Do you have a redemption story to share like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker? Have you found a way to successfully drink water from the ocean and not suffer the osmotic power of salinity?
Yeah – there’s a big difference between complimentary skills and tangential skills. Tangential skills are distracting; they don’t net you a clear ROI because you can’t ease the learning curve across things you already know by connecting dots.
Complimentary skills are skills you can leverage your existing experience with. Better still, these keep you honest because you can clearly identify boundaries rather than, “I do these two eclectic things combined”.
In college, I snagged a CIS (business programming) and Marketing degree combined. It was damn-near heresy. Only 2 other folks graduated with the same combo; it turned out to be a really valuable thing when I landed a job at HP as a business analyst. CIS and Finance was the real crazy path – and those folks probably went to work for Mint, H+R Block, etc…
Anyway, your analogy of salt water made me think of the theory of “mirror milk” explained in Radiolab’s Mirror Mirror – Alice in Through the Looking Glass says, “Perhaps mirror milk isn’t good to drink” – and she’s right. In organic chemistry, there’s a property known as chirality – the best way to think of it is like handedness of molecules. Flip a compound’s chirality (left to right, as in a mirror) and you might have the deadliest poison known to man – from something as simple as milk.
Don’t tackle tasks you aren’t meant for, even ones that look deceptively delicious. Great post, great analogies!
Virtual fist bump for unusual dual degrees – I have a dual degree in Math & French, with an almost minor in music. Knowing your degree combo makes lots of sense when looking at your business now.
I love the concept of Mirror Milk. Never heard of it before, or chirality, something new to explore!
The ability to provide guidance is as valuable to clients as expertise, isn’t it, Nicole? Being able to tell clients the questions they should ask about web design, SEO and social media helps them get a better service, even if I’m not the one providing it. Great read! (Well, you can’t go wrong with sci-fi! 😉 )
I love how you phrase that Sharon – The ability to provide guidance is as important as expertise. Yes!
FAB and fun read, Nicole! And even though I’m not a sci-fi buff, I get it.
I light up like a Christmas tree when someone asks, “Melanie, do you know anyone who does (fill in the blank)?” I love the opportunity to recommend my fav’s who possess talents and skills not in my repertoire. It always pays off! How? Inevitably, these same folks recommend me. It’s reciprocity at its best. Win-Win all the way! 🙂
Success in business involves being crystal clear on your strengths and weaknesses. I’m not too proud to say I don’t know it all.
I have to admit, though …
It’s sometimes uncomfortable to say “Gee, I really don’t know how to do that.” It can be a test of your courage and confidence … and a teeny little sting to your ego. But it sure beats the heck out of offering someone saltwater to drink.
Malcolm Gladwell would call us connectors. We like to collect people and resources then share with others. For me the ability to say I’ve got a great person for you really helps with the sting of saying, “I’m not the right person.” It’s still tough, but being an entrepreneur isn’t for wimps.
“Telling someone you can help them when you’re almost-an-expert is like offering a thirsty person saltwater to drink”. Love this line Nicole. It will I believe become part of my collections of great one-liners, credited of course to the number’s whisper!
It is so true that we are often tempted to take on stuff we don’t have expertise. We can also be tempted to take on stuff we do have expertise in but no longer wish to do. Like I have been considering doing a logo design. Maybe not. Thank you for your amusing take on this subject, I so don’t want to give anyone saltwater to drink ever again!
I’m glad I could provide a valuable quote. In fact I think I need to make that into a Money Mantra card!
You make a great point about no long doing something. There the temptation can be even stronger because we actually are capable. It’s just not aligned with where our business is today.
You had me at the Star Wars reference. (Well played there, young padawan.) I confess this is one of my greatest challenges. Especially in the realm of web development. I’m very good at what I do – but what I do isn’t straight-up coding or non-WordPress-based sites. What I do also isn’t graphics. In both cases, I’ve developed a short list of people who DO do that, and do that quite well, to whom I either refer or subcontract with. I’ve lived through the fallout of the “can’t disband the senate” thing, and it is NOT.PRETTY.PEOPLE.
Thanks Annie, I mean Master Jedi 🙂 I’m sorry you’ve had to live through not being able to disband the Senate. Hopefully that you’ve shared how hard it is will help others avoid that fate.
I just love your analogies. I got a chuckle out of the title before even reading a word! I totally hear you on the “just get the business” part. Sometimes it seems like everyone wants that thing that’s JUST outside your area of expertise. We went through the same phase – just get the work already! But it really does drag you down. You can’t focus on what you do best or even what’s important, it probably takes ten times as long and if you have half a conscience you end up with impostor syndrome anyway! We do a lot better by narrowing our services and when something is even a tiny bit outside our core, we just say no. And if we have a resource, we happily refer people. There is slightly less consumption of Oreos that way 🙂
Analogies are fun to do. While I was working on the images for this post (all obviously photoshopped stuff is done by moi), my husband walked by. He said, “Cool you’re in a landspeeder with Luke and Obi One!”
I *think* the fact few Oreos would be consumed is a good thing…
I thought I knew Star Wars but now I need to re-visit it again…or…I am just getting more seasoned and the memory of the details just ain’t the same. I know when I first started I definitely offered up some salt water and threw in the bottle water after I got rolling to heal the thirst. And OMG yes…the questions are always an opportunity to share more and learn more. Thanks for the always present lessons to learn.
Michelle it’s more that I grew up on Star Wars, can practically recite every line from the original three movies. When I was a kid my Dad would try to trip me up asking the names of the different ships, attack vehicles (like the AT-AT) or obscure characters.
I think most of us have been guilty of the saltwater service, especially when we first start out. Now I’m happy to go out and get the best bottle water vendor in the area!
Awesome post, Nicole! I loved all of your points and analogies! Very well written.
Thanks Denisse, and welcome to the carnival.
First, let me say that I nodded and smiled along with this post the entire time I was reading it. You make such great points, and I’m also a huge Star Wars fan.
This was the highlight for me (and it made me laugh out loud): “At first this galled me, all these people looking to hire someone, why don’t I just do it and get the business? But I could almost feel Emperor Palpatine whispering in my ear, ‘Good… good. Use your fear and anger.’ I realized questions about services I didn’t offer were an opportunity.”
I think we’ve all been there, and when money’s tight, it can be easy to jump into the mindset of, “Well, I bet I can teach myself how to do that…”
For example, I often get asked if I do book layout/formatting and indexing, which I definitely do not do. While there was an initial temptation to try to figure out Adobe InDesign, I realized that I would just be diluting my services by doing something that I’m just never going to be that good at. Plus, I always feel much better referring a client who needs these services to someone who can *really* help.
Great post!
Love it when I connect with another Star Wars fan. I met a woman about two months ago who actually had this full color tattoo of R2-D2 on her calf!
Yes having the Emperor cackling in my ear has been a great deterrent. The power of a fertile imagination.
I just realized recently how specialized indexing services are (they even have their own association!). Good call on finding great resources for referral.
I feel I should reply with a Star Wars quote, but I can’t think of one 🙂 Good for you not caving and sticking to what you love.
Really liked the illustration of the glass of saltwater, too. Looks like it should do what you need, but ends up making things worse. Great post!
While Star Wars quotes are always appreciated they aren’t required.
When I lived in southeast Asia I would do a lot of snorkeling. You’d get really thirsty and be so tempted to just wet your mouth with the ocean water. Big mistake. That’s always stuck with me.