Have you ever had a difficult client? Have you ever got stuck in your head and spent more time thinking about the client and how you can make them happy than you did actually doing the work? Have you ever had a bad day that was caused by someone not absolutely loving what you created for them? Today’s episode is for you. It’s going to be, I want to say a little more vulnerable and a little bit more motivational than the content that I usually put out, but that’s one of the things I wanted to do on this podcast.
On my Instagram and on my blog, I typically will stick to marketing content. That’s what I do for work, that’s what I’m selling, that’s what I do for a job. But I really wanted this podcast to be a space for just honest conversations and that’s what this is. Today, I’m excited to share three things that I think we just need to remember when we are what we’re selling, whether it’s our work or our brand. It is hard not to take things personally. So here’s my advice when selling yourself!
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Table of Contents
Advice When Selling Yourself as a Service Provider or Personal Brand
Today I want to talk about something that I don’t see anybody talking about, and that is when you are the product, service provider, personal brand, basically when you are what you’re selling, it can be really, really hard.
Not necessarily to make the sale because we all like to buy from people, but I mean when we deliver our work and not every single person likes every single thing that we’ve ever created, every word that I’ve written, every photo you’ve taken, whatever your service is. We all care so deeply about our work and it is so hard to kind of separate ourselves as a human from the work that we are creating.
So today, I’m sharing three reminders for you that I hope will be helpful because they have gotten me through a period of time that was very hard. I didn’t have this issue as much when I was selling destination weddings because in my head I was selling destinations, resorts, and wedding packages. My primary focus was on selling a dream that I wasn’t 1000% responsible for. I was only responsible for some of it.
Fast forward to today, it is totally different than this marketing agency when somebody hires me and I am responsible for selling it, start to finish doing the work, and then delivering it to them. Any issue that they have is likely my fault, my responsibility, all of the things.
I love the work that I’m doing, but definitely that first year was such a hard transition because I was really forced into it. I went a hundred percent into it. I burnt out. I was stressed. I was working with anyone and everyone because I had lost a ton of income that was expected to me through the year based on contracts that were then voided because of force majeure, all of the things.
I love the work that I’m doing now, but definitely that first year was such a hard transition because I was really forced into it. I went a hundred percent into it. I burnt out. I was stressed. I was working with anyone and everyone because I had lost a ton of income that was expected to me through the year based on contracts that were then voided because of force majeure, all of the things. So here are 3 reminders that I hope will serve as advice when selling yourself, especially when it starts to feel really hard.
1. You Can Fire Me But You Can’t Hurt Me
I want to channel Princess Diaries energy here for a second. But the moment when Joe tells Anne Hathaway, “nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent”, I feel like we need to channel that kind of energy into our business more often than we are right now.
And let me just kind of explain this. One time (and this was a LONG time ago) I had a client who made me feel, and this is not on them, this is on me, so terrible because they didn’t like my work. I kept trying. They had purchased a big package, I needed the money. So in my head, I needed to make this work. And they weren’t unkind, they just didn’t like the work. And that really spiraled into burnout, into thinking that I didn’t want to do this anymore, thinking that I was trapped or stuck.
I spent so much time and mental energy thinking about this one client that then I was spending all my time on this and I would drop the ball with other clients. I would feel like nobody liked my work, even though objectively now that I’m through it, it was just one client who didn’t like my work. We obviously weren’t right fit. And like I said, they were not unkind and this is not on them. I just couldn’t shake the “Why don’t they like my writing” but what it felt like was that they didn’t like ME.
Advice When Your Selling Yourself as a Service Provider
I want to speak to someone who’s in that place right now who is having trouble making a client happy with the work when we feel like WE ARE THE WORK. And I just want to say they can fire you, but they can’t hurt you. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or that you do bad work. The very worst case scenario is that they fire you or that they discontinue the partnership and they’re not thrilled.
And that sucks. I don’t want to say no big deal, but it’s not the end of the world and it doesn’t need to be something that you bring home with you. So my mantra is, your client can fire you, but they can’t hurt you, and it’s okay. It’s normal to have partnerships end and we don’t need to hold on so tightly to everything and make sure we are everyone’s best hire ever.
Like I said, with me as a writer, I have come to a place after working with many clients, where 95% are absolutely thrilled to work with me. And that doesn’t mean they love every single blog post I write, but for the most part I have a very high satisfaction rate. I want to remind you that feedback is not always about you.
Also, sometimes I think people just need to give their feedback. People have other things in their life and then focus on the fact that they’re mad that hiring you to take photos or you to design their brand didn’t make them a million dollars or something like that. A good chunk of the time, it has nothing to do with you and the other chunk, it’s just not a good fit. And that’s okay.
They can fire you, you can fire them. The partnership can end, but it doesn’t mean that it has to emotionally hurt you or make you feel a certain way about who you are as a person.
2. It’s okay if not every piece of work you deliver is the absolute best thing you’ve ever created
And let me also just say this, this is not a permission slip to do bad work and charge a lot of money for it. Absolutely not. We see this in the online space. So I am not saying that it’s okay to rush stuff, charge money, have people be unhappy because you aren’t really delivering what you’re saying or you over promise and under-delivered. I am not saying that that’s okay.
However, we all go through things and have bad days and we can’t think that every single piece of work we ever deliver or create is going to be the best thing you’ve ever created because it’s literally not possible.
And especially when you are a service provider who works month to month with me and my clients, I work with most of them for years. I have clients from year one in my business who are still working with me almost four years later. So that means, let’s say I’m writing one blog post a week that’s like 200 blogs over 4 years. It would be unrealistic to think that every single blog post that I wrote for them just got better and better and better.
That said, I hope that most of them did. I definitely think four years later I’m better at my job than I was on day one for sure. But do I have a busy week where I rush a blog and they maybe have a little more feedback for me than usual that happens? And not to say I love when that happens, but it’s okay. They feel XYZ about it. They’re right, I’m going to fix it. I don’t love that that happened, but I’ll learn from it.
Then, I can move on instead of four years ago me, which would’ve spiraled, it would’ve ruined my weekend. I would’ve spent so much time thinking about it that I would’ve fallen behind on other projects. It is just night and day difference.
So I want you to remember that it’s okay if not every piece of work you deliver is the best thing you’ve ever created because it literally won’t be. It can’t be, it’s impossible. So does that mean, again, to do bad work and charge money for it? Absolutely not. That’s not what I’m saying. We can care about the work we do and we absolutely should, but when we attach our worth to our work, it gets very tricky to look at our work objectively and see what’s going on.
3. You are NOT Your Job
So sometimes when something comes up, I think to think of myself as an employee and I had an off day. I’m not saying that you want people to be unhappy with you all the time and it’s no big deal, but it’s important to remember that outside of whatever service you provide, you are a whole entire human. Maybe you’re a mom, an auntie, a sister, a friend. You are so much more than your job. And I think sometimes, especially as an entrepreneur, it is hard not to take our work home with us. It’s hard not to take things personally. So that’s just my final reminder to you and just encouragement.
If you feel like it’s really hard to separate your worth and your work and you feel like you’re always the product and you’re always selling yourself, and it’s hard to deliver 100% of the time that you’re absolutely not alone. You just need to remember these things from time to time when you’re having a bad day or you’re working with a “bad client”. If you are an employee and have a bad day and deliver sub-par work, you do have to fix it. You have to care. You have to deliver good work. But you are also NOT your job and it’s important to remember you’re a person too.
Podcast for Female Entrepreneurs
I want this podcast to be a safe space where we can have honest conversations around business and marketing and being a human and entrepreneur. So these three pieces of advice when selling yourself, use them as your words of mantra. I had a friend the other day that was like, I’m literally writing this first one (they can fire you but they can’t hurt you) on a post-it note.
As a business owner, we want to keep our clients happy, obviously. However, I also think that sometimes we just take things so personally that we’re not looking at things objectively where it’s not like “we had a bad day”, it’s that “we don’t even know what we’re doing and nobody ever likes us”. Like this client said something negative and now I’m just waiting for the others to say it. It can be hard for us to look objectively at the quality of work we’re producing and experience we give our clients.
Then, sometimes this can spiral where you had one client give you a piece of negative feedback, and then you’re spending so much time fixing it, stressing about it, rethinking it, but then you fall behind on other clients and it can be a really dangerous cycle. And that’s what I don’t want for you because like I said, I have so been there.
LINKS MENTIONED:
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