If you’re a small business
and you have a large customer,
odds are…
your customer will try to
convince you to offer a service/product
you don’t normally offer.
The temptation is to say yes,
to grab this new business,
but there WILL be a price for agreeing.
A huge New York publisher
asked me to take on a large project.
I was excited and flattered
to be offered this opportunity
and said yes without thinking about it.
This project destroyed
my pen name’s readership (customer) base.
My brand also morphed
into writer-for-hire,
making it almost impossible
to sell one of MY ideas
into another publisher
(they want me to write THEIR ideas).
I took all of the risk,
ended up earning no money
and it will take years,
perhaps a decade to repair the damage.
Yes, I made the publisher happy
but that publisher is now
working with other writers
and not me
(because this pen name no longer
has the readership).
They cut ties without hesitation.
THINK about whether or not
you’ll take on special projects
for your large clients.
This is YOUR company.
Ensure that you’re calling the shots
and making the decisions.
K, I didn’t rad your blog in years. Amazing to see you still post every day. 🙂
Years or a decade? Come on. 🙂
It’s been a decade, Elisha!
Yep, I post every single day.
It keeps me current, pushing me to research.
How have you been?
Are you still building businesses?
It’s really amazing to see that kind of determination and persistence.
It’s so obvious that with that kind of attitude you can accomplish anything.
Myself? In the long term perspective I am actually disappointed that I haven’t managed to build a successful product business yet. I guess I am still learning whatever I need to learn from failing over and over.
The good is I managed to find an employment on 3 days a week which earns me the equivalent of a full time salary to support my family. So I have 2 full days a week to work on building a business. Just didn’t make much progress yet on those things I work on in those 2 days per week.
Thanks for asking.
Will refer to the other point in a separate comment…