How to Sell Advice

One of the interesting things that
I've noticed, the longer I've been

in marketing and doing advisory
services, but also agency work.

Is that the, the more clients I
work with, the more work that I do.

The more.

My work quality sort of spreads out.

It's almost as if
there's only so much say.

Juice or frozen concentrate, concentrate.

And the more clients I disperse.

My, my work ground, the.

The more, the more clients I take
on the more work that I have to do.

It's sort of the same
amount of juice that I can.

That I can use and it really just
kind of waters down the experience.

For the rest of my clients.

And as much as I like to believe
that I can do my best work for

an unlimited amount of clients.

I do notice that.

Particularly with the kind of clients that
require a lot of your tactical execution

and really in the weeds kind of work.

Not only does it have.

An element of cognitive
load, but it also has.

There's there's just a matter of time.

You run out of time and the day
you run out of energy in the day.

And even if you think you're
doing everything you can

to meet your expectations.

To meet the needs of your clients too.

Exceed the needs, ideally
would be your goal.

It's not just about meeting
the needs these days.

It's always about exceeding them.

But if you take on too many clients, It's
not that you're just going to work harder.

And yes, that's true.

And I'm not scared of hard work.

The problem is that.

There's really only so much juice
to squeeze from every piece of root.

From every day that you work.

And with that juice, maybe
this is a better analogy than

the fruit fruit concentrate.

But with that, with that juice, there's
only so much for it to go around.

So the fewer projects
and people you work with.

The the more concentrated that
experience is going to be.

Because of those things
like cognitive load.

And the ability to think
about the work you're doing.

The clients who work
with and their projects.

When you're not working with them.

So even having that downtime allows
you to kind of process the things

that they're working on, that you're
working through to prepare for phone

calls, to follow up with things, to
take care of those small details, the

followup stuff, the little things that,
that, you know, you need to do, but

keep getting put off and keep getting.

Put to next week or the, you know, the,
the, the tail end of the communications

that you never really finished a
wrapped up or tied up, you know, there's

little things that kind of don't get.

Quite fully done.

When you work with too many clients and
there's there sort of a fine balance,

and that balance may change for you.

That may change based on whether you are.

Getting great sleep.

You know, uh, the last couple of
years I've had a, uh, A new kid and.

And I've got another one on
the way in the next few months.

And.

Sleeve is definitely a factor so that I
know for a fact that there's just less.

Energy and hours in the
day to do all these things.

Plus get distracted by someone gets
a cold or the side of the other.

You lose a quarter of
a day, half a day here.

So you need a bit of slack in your room
just to account for those kinds of things.

And you may, you know, in my
case, get tired at 4:00 PM

rather than a five or six.

And, you know, you don't have as many
good, good, good hours in the day.

So it took up about kind of being
realistic about what's right for

you in this phase of your life.

Based on everything that's going on.

And how much you can put into your work.

But the real thing is there's always
a only so much juicy can squeeze.

It's not like you can
crank out more and more.

High quality work.

In a day.

You know, short of working more hours.

Even then I think you're still
sort of spreading out the amount of

juice in the squeeze, if you will.

So that's something I've just noticed
and I've been, always trying to

play the balance of when COVID hit.

I took on as many clients
as I could because.

Frankly they needed,
they were coming to me.

Uh, fairly in droves and, you know,
times are hard for a lot of businesses.

And I took it all on, but at the same
time, I had a brand new baby who wasn't

sleeping and it was a simultaneous.

Most difficult.

Uh, physically and.

Um, mentally.

Um, as well as the most challenging time
in my business, because there's a lot of

new clients, new work and new clients are
more expensive in terms of onboarding and

getting up to speed and getting results.

And they kind of get a
little bit projects, get a

bit easier as time goes on.

So, all that is to say is, you know, based
on your energy levels and everything else.

Are you maximizing the amount
of time in your calendar?

And other, and even.

You know, even if, whether you're
an advisor or otherwise, you always

want to have room to handle the
unforeseen work, to handle the

unforeseen calls that come up.

Okay.

Finally, there's going to be a client
that needs you to go above and beyond

your scope or have a difficult patch
or they're launching a new website

and you get, there's going to be more
required of you than your typical week.

And you're going to want that
slack in the system to be able to.

Pick that up.

So I think at the end of the day,
the mission is to produce the best

quality work you can not necessarily
to earn the most money that you

can cause that's shortsighted.

You're always going to be, I mean, The
ethics of shipping poor quality work

consistently and charging premium prices.

Is one thing.

And then the other
thing is just generally.

You're going to feel burned out and
you're not going to do great work.

And your client's not going to be happy.

So, what do you think that's going
to do for your personal life?

And so how's that going
to affect everything else?

So these are just areas that I've,
I've been playing with, especially

for the last few years, as I've
been teetering around the top.

End of.

As busy as I want to be.

I've been at max capacity.

And right now I just had
my, currently my best.

A month of all time.

And, uh, as I prepare to have baby,
number two, I'm thinking about.

Well, what is it?

That I need to trade off.

What is it that I have to say no to.

In order to continue doing the best
work that I can for all my clients.

Luckily, a lot of them are in a
mature stage of working with me.

They've worked with me for maybe
a year or more, many of them.

And therefore the work is
pretty steady and smooth.

That being said, you know,
it's all about balance.

So I just kind of wanted to share this.

Idea with you, you know, at some point
you're going to earn as much as you

can, but then when you get really busy,

Stuff starts falling off and
it creates a bad experience.

I had an experience once
with the freelancer that I

hired to do work for me and.

It was like pulling teeth.

Everything took significantly
longer than I'd hoped for.

And that was not fun for me.

And it wasn't fun for anyone.

And as a result, they'll
never get business from me.

Again, and I won't recommend them.

And so there's downstream negative
effects to getting too busy.

So it's, it's kind of better,
you know, there's a, there's

actually a running analogy where.

That I can kind of relate to that.

And I think I saw this in a movie
or something, but basically you'd

never want a really red line.

You always want to be at a certain level
of like pushing it until the very end.

And then you can, you can red line.

They cause.

Once you go past that red line.

Your body can't recover quick
enough to allow you to sustain

and run a, a good long race.

In the case of say like a marathon.

So it's all about finding
that balance, that right.

Heart rate.

That allows you to sustain for longterm.

And if you're in this for the
longterm, you're going to want

to build a sustainable business.

Yes, there are going to be sprints,
but you know, finding those times

to exert yourself and then having
the recovery is really key.

Otherwise you'll burn out and
I see it time and time again.

You know, people take on
more and more and more.

And the work software
is, and they know it.

And then that creates stress.

And then that creates cognitive
load and that further reduces

their ability to produce good work.

And the end of the day,
you're hard to do good work.

That's a reputation and you
want to do the best he can.

So I just wanted to share this with you.

Uh, I've been enjoying doing
a little bit of audio lately.

So if you're enjoying these, let me
know if you prefer me to just write.

Articles.

I'm happy to do that as well.

Then.

I'll.

We'll continue to bounce
around and do both.

But yeah, this idea of how much work.

Uh, is the right amount of work to do.

And that's what I've been
thinking about lately.

I hope this helps.