Mentor Morning: Bad client

Toilets and creative work.

I’ve told my toilet story many times to students, seminar attendees and in coaching sessions.

I’ve always suffered from anxiety. Still do. Early in my career looking desperately for ways to reduce my fears I stumbled on a simple solution.

I’d go to the men’s room. Sit quietly and make a list of my accomplishments. Then, after a few minutes I was able to face whatever I was anxious about.

A friend of mine sent me a toilet story that included making a particularly bad deal. The kind of deal we’ve all done. The kind of deal I’ve done more than once myself.

The story…

“I’m reliving one of those moments, watching myself yield ground and accept a crappy proposition because ‘it’s a good cause’, I’ve got no better prospects in hand at present, and the client has dangled a bigger project, with a real budget, later in the year.

“I imagine a comic sketch where a plumber arrives. The plumber’s prospect has a broken toilet and says…

“’Well look, I need this toilet fixed but my budget is only $100. Let’s get that out of the way before you start working on it. Will you do it, or should I call someone else?’

“I think about what plumbing as in an industry would look like if the world were awash in hungry plumbers.

“Or if you could get your toilet fixed on the internet by someone in Indonesia, say.

“Or if everyone had agreed that fixing toilets is fun so it shouldn’t cost that much.

“Or maybe you could knock out 100 toilets at a fixed rate with new technology that makes it faster & easier…so it should cost less and less and be commoditized for the benefit of all.”

Join us…

We’ll share tales of bad clients, bad deals and dealing with the anxiety that pushes us to cave, 10-noon Saturday March 7th.