EMPATHY

EMPATHY

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What are your clients saying to you? What are their goals? How on board are they to put in the work to get what needs to be done on their end? How committed are they to themselves and their future they envision?

Problems easily remedied by paying attention and really listening to what their needs are. All clients are not created equally!

Understanding this concept has advanced my growth as a creative and a business owner. I’ve learned that not all clients are good communicators as others. And you will have to spend a lot of your time extracting information out of them. Other clients are more emotional than what we might be used to. They cling on to and associate every pitfall as something that is happening to them instead of because of them.

Some of them are type A and others are too non-confrontational. Whatever the case, I’ve learned that the best place to start with any client is EMPATHY. Taking that time to truly understand what they are saying to me, what mental space are they in at this current moment? What things are they confronted with that may be blocking any results?

Knowing better what makes your clients operate gives you the tools you need to break down who they are, what their mission and message are to the world and how you can help communicate that to the masses. So slow down. Listen to what’s being said and not just to what you’re hoping they say and care. Your clients will thank you for it and you’ll be better off because of it. Everybody wins.

Take Pride In The Work You’re Doing.

Take Pride In The Work You’re Doing.

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Take pride in the work you’re doing. And If you hate what you do … quit! I’m not saying that we all need to be business owners because I know that not everyone is built for all it takes. But I do believe that life is enough of a struggle than to waste your time with climbing the ladder in an industry you hate or is failing to bring you happiness anymore.

It’s taken me time to figure this out, and I will keep saying it until I’m blue in the face. Find out what you are good at, your superpower. Then find your niche or the type of client/consumer you want to work with. Even if you have no interest in being in business for yourself, these same rules can be applied to how you can bring value to someone else’s business.

Even if you are Multipassionate and there are many areas of focus, what it is that only you can bring to the table? Focus your time towards it. Not only will the people around you thank you for it, but you may even start to like the person looking back at in the mirror every morning.

Note: How can you add value to the work you’re doing for your clients, your team, or anyone else your choosing to give your time to or share ideas with.

In The Business Of People

In The Business Of People

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So I guess you can call me a collaborator or a guide even a mentor of sorts.

I love figuring out where a person is stuck and working with them to find solutions, get them out of their comfort zone, and into a mindset that is built around taking action toward their goals. My job is to focus all of my efforts towards the development of artists and other creative professionals to get them unstuck, taking leaps of faith, and thinking clearer about the future of their careers.

Over the last year or so as I’ve transitioned from being a designer to THIS, I’ve found it difficult to explain what It is that I do. There are a few factors to this confusion. First, I’ve only seen my career through the lens of being a designer that produces an array of visually pretty things that sells products that I’ve never felt connected to. And then I kinda hate the terms coach, brand designer, marketer etc.  You can see how it’s been confusing to myself and to others to identify what it is that I do.

My passion for guiding creatives is because I’ve been in their shoes. Constantly looking for answers and people who can help me figure it all out. I am a creative thinker and I may use design thinking and coaching as part of my process. It just feels out of place to me to just be classified as one thing. So if I’m to go my own way, I need to develop a better way to talk about how I serve that allows an environment for me and my clients to learn from each other and grow on our own terms.

Thinking back, I’ve constantly been interested in one thing and one thing only. People! I’m interested in how happy we are as people and also in the steps we are taking to improve ourselves and the ones around us.

I have not other interest other than that because I believe that without the people in business, there is no business.

Find Your Niche.

Find Your Niche.

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Finding the best ways to keep money coming into power the machine that is my business is hard. That’s why I preach the gospel of being good at a few things vs. being okay at many. I tell my clients to look for their niche.

That one area where they know they can shine and provide value to their consumer. This will allow them to speak clearly about what service or product they provide. Making it easier for clients to understand how that product or service benefits their company and why they should hire you to do that thing you do!

TRUTH! It’s only been recent that I’ve started taking my own advice. I guess I had to see it work for others before I could see it working for me.

Staying The Course.

Staying The Course.

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For so many of us, staying the course is how we assume our businesses will thrive and be successful. And in most cases, this is true. I also think that walking that line too straight, not allowing room for adjustments that address your clients or customers’ needs can pose a bigger problem for us as small businesses.

The beauty of running a small shop is that we are not big business. We have the flexibility to work closely with our clients and really drill into the core of their problems to get them what they need, sometimes even what they want, and a whole lot quicker too! Bigger companies need money and large teams of people to achieve one thing.

At first glance, this is alluring and we can get trapped thinking going bigger is better and this is the way we should go about running our business. And I can’t blame you for thinking this way. I get there myself from time to time. I have to remember all of my years spent working in large firms running accounts for some really big brands.

The lessons I have to remember from being on teams with upwards of 10 people at times, and those people are reporting to 5 or more people on the clients’ side to get approval on just pieces of the project. And if think about that for a second. It can take upwards of 15 people on a project to get one thing done. 15 people means 15 different opinions and levels of bullshit you have to weed through before we can even get down to the point of the problem and start addressing the reason we do this in the first place, the people.

Big companies have to spend as much time managing the people as they do tending to their clients. Staying the course for them equals less focus on the tailored client experience. Less focus on the end user and long drawn out deadlines, designed to support the salaries of all everyone involved. The advantages of us smaller companies is that we can work hard, work fast, and still take the time to serve our clients’ needs in the process.

Not staying the course does not have to mean changing your plans and goals regarding how you want to run your business. Just remember so situations may call for your to deviate some when your clients’ needs change. Lastly, run your small company as a small company and not a big one.

The Cost Of Not Facing Your Fears.

The Cost Of Not Facing Your Fears.

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I’ve just hit send on an invoice to my client. A few days later, I get a text that went something like this.

Client:

Hey Bryan, when can we talk? Got your bill and happy to pay but some things are still not complete. Like collateral items, want to wrap those up, thx. Lmk!

Me:

Hey (insert clients name here). We do have some incomplete pieces I owe you. As far as collateral goes, I think you have a specific list of things you need? Some things were put on hold as you did not need them at the time. Won’t leave you hanging without those. What’s a good time for us to talk?

No answer.

A day or so goes by before I follow up with an email that explains the work that was already completed and attached are a few other collateral pieces I thought he needed in the meantime.

Still, no answer.

After two weeks of no communication with my client, I let the thoughts in. You know the ones, the thoughts that tell you that you got this one wrong. The thoughts that make you second guess things. They harass you with overthinking what you might have done to make the client bug out and cut communication altogether?

What did you do?! I asked myself. You started this project brilliantly, held things together through the middle part of the process, then we get to the end and drop the ball? You never drop the ball BVO. What the hell did you do?

After going round and round about where things went wrong. I set out to find the place things fell apart. I made lists of things we had accomplished together. I listed the areas I know I had excelled in and then listed the areas I knew could use some fixing if I had to do it all over to do again. Shamefully I reached out to the mutual friend of my clients to see if he had heard anything because I knew there must be something.

After the better part of a week, I came up with nothing. There was no reason I could construct that could explain why I was getting the cold shoulder from my client. And that it was simply not my fault and clients are all crazy and that’s just how it is. So, I’m good. It’s not me, it’s them. I can rest now.

Then it hit me! There was one thing I failed to do. The one thing I promise to all of my clients at the start of our time working together. I always promise that I’ll always pick up the phone when they call with questions. And because I had already let the disruptive thoughts in, that was the one thing I neglected to do, get on the line and give them a call. In the whole two week time, I did not give them a chance to tell their side of the story and answer questions I had for them.

The phone rang twice before I secretly wished it will go to voicemail and I could leave a message. They picked up on the third ring. BRYAN! In that moment the stress melted off and fear faded. The voice on the other end of the phone was not a voice of someone who was pissed and avoiding talking to you or paying your invoice, or any other stupid thing I may have told myself. Instead, it was a voice of a person who had been through a lot in those couple of weeks and needed to shift their attention to other parts of their life.

In that two minute call, I learned that on top of the things you need to finish together he’d been thinking of how we can move forward working together. Needless to say, that was more than I thought was going to happen.

So the lesson I learned from this was simple. Doubt is inevitable and the quickest way to get past that fear of the unknown is to confront the problem and squash any self judgment before it happens. If the problem you have is a person, pick up the phone or meet up with them and get things out in the open today.