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• You’ve had good success in one industry, but you find it’s declining – and there’s good growth in another sector
• You’ve been serving small clients effectively, and you’re ready to take on the big players
• You’ve been living in one part of the world, and have recently moved – or are planning to move – to another, so you need to build a client base in your new place
• “Doesn’t everyone know the information in this white paper?”
• “This blog post is just beginner level. How about something more advanced?”
Those are questions I frequently get from business professional clients when we’re discussing topics for blogs, articles and other forms of thought-leadership content they can produce. And they’re valid concerns.
Their most common answer? “I want to be sure you’ve done this kind of work before.” They want experience, and they want to be sure it’s experience for their kind of situation.
It was a $10,000 conversation, but that’s not what I earned from it. That’s what it cost me. And I’m glad of it.
This conversation over coffee took place in 1999, just after I’d jumped from a marketing job with a Big Four accounting firm, to start my own business. The meeting was with a business coach I’ll call “Judy,” as part of an initial consultation.
I’d told Judy that I wanted to build a practice working with professional services firms. But I’d been offered a contract to do PR work for a wood-stove manufacturer, quite outside my area of interest. Just starting out, even with a good cushion of savings, the $10,000 contract looked pretty amazing to me. And I’d grown up in a house that relied on a wood-stove for heat, so I knew the product.
Judy gently probed around that. Did I really want to step so far off my business plan and area of expertise, to focus on a consumer product? Wouldn’t the time I spent pushing wood-stoves be time I wouldn’t be building my profile with professional firms?