On the heels of yesterday’s post about being your awesome self with clients, I want to share a couple more things with you.
On Biznik, an indie biz community I hang out with, a Graphic Designer posed a question about getting more business in his small town. You can read the whole schmeal here. I offered him a few slices of wisdom, but one thing I offered could apply to a lot of freelance/independent creatives. I see this a lot. In fact, early on in my career I was not only guilty of the practice, I made it my mission in life. Wrong mission, as it turns out.
Puffer Fish Syndrome, or making yourself look bigger than you really are.
You decide to hang out your shingle and offer your creative services to the universe. You’re one of those people who don’t sit around dream stuff, you actually go do it. I shake you warmly by the hand. Awesomeness.
Do yourself a favor and just be one person if that’s what you are. For a moment I need to be your best friend and tell you that your slip is showing before it’s too late.
Nobody is fooled that you are a big company. Trust me, potential clients know. And they will either move away from you very quickly or they will call you out and pummel your confidence into toast crumbs.
It’s a natural tendency to want to look big because you want prospective clients to feel like you can handle anything they throw at you. So you pump up your web site to look like you’re a multinational conglomerate with global reach and weekly phone meetings with Steve Jobs. Weekend parties at Elton John’s, an E-Holywood True story being made of your life, you know what I’m talking about.
Listen, don’t be big yet. Just be you. Build a reputation through small businesses and projects you can handle without acting like a big shot. When you start getting so much work that you have to think bigger and hire other creatives to take up the slack, guess what? You’re officially bigger.
Like I tell my 13-year old son, don’t be so impatient to become an adult. You’ll get there anyway.
So here’s a suggestion that you can apply right now that will help change how clients work with you (or decide to). It’s #3 from my interaction with Patrick, the Graphic Designer:
On your web site (which is nicely done), take out the “we” language and replace it with “I.” Since you’re not really a big firm (yet), people will relate to you better when they see you as one dude. It sounds counterintuitive, but sometimes the smaller you are the easier it is for people to see themselves working with you.
Try this tweak on your own site. See if it changes anything for you. It certainly did for me. It’s also a load of stress you don’t need to carry around because you’re not pretending to be something you’re not.
Outsource your personality?
The other thing that I had to share with you is an excellent post by Sarah Bray about Twitter and outsourcing social networking.
First of all, I have to say that I dig the video post. I don’t like reading entire video blogs or vlogs (sounds like a cancerous growth), but a video post now and then is pretty cool because you get to see and hear the voice behind it all.
Sarah hits the nail on the head and this goes right back to all that stuff I said earlier. If you’re one person, be that person whenever you interact with clients and your network.
When you get so big that you can’t handle it all yourself, then hire some people to give you a hand. This is actually a paradox, because what this should do is make it even easier for you to be one person in your closer personal interactions. Even if you’ve got a humongous company, you’re still you.
Don’t forget to be you.
I was totally guilty of this when I started out, too. Now I see it for what it is — the sign of a well-meaning newbiepreneur. I’m not sure who told me my slip was showing, but I’m ever grateful that it discreetly happened.
Yay! Even Sparky Firepants shows his slip sometimes! (Wasn’t that the moral of the story?) :)
Great point! And I think it applies to more than just pretending you’re a big company. There’s pretending that you have tons of clients when you don’t, trying to impress by claiming loads of followers or supporters you don’t have.
I made this mistake. Funny how when I said “I think about 12 people listen to my podcast!” I found out that it was actually a few thousand. People can smell a rat, even if they don’t see the actual slip.
@Sarah My slip not only shows sometimes, I’ve even lost my dress once or twice. Or dropped my trousers. Whatever.
And it *is* well-meaning, right? Most newbiepreneurs (awesome word) I know came from big companies. It’s easy to think that to be competitive you have to look big.
The funny thing is, when I was at a big company, we used to get frustrated when the “little guy” would beat us out in a bid on a job. I can laugh now, I’m the “little guy.”
@Joely Smell a rat, yes! So true.
You know those internet businesses who claim to be rolling in cash just from their blog? They paint the pretty dreamscape of sunning themselves by the pool, sipping rum and collecting cash that they hand to the nanny to wipe their baby’s bottom.
While I bet there are a handful of people who are actually doing that, what I keep discovering is that some of the Big Time Internet People are working a full-time job and pulling a little bit of money in from a lot of hard work.
When they’re up front about that, I feel like supporting them. I want to share their success!
When they’ve been selling themselves as huge success stars and I discover they can’t pay their internet bill because they got laid off, I get… cranky. I feel gullible and lame (so I go pour more rum and give the nanny the day off).
So it pays to be… what’s the buzz word this week… authentic. :)
I’m at that in-between stage where I’m honestly not sure which pronoun to use. Sometimes it’s just me, sometimes there’s another person involved. I feel weird saying “we,” but I’m not sure how to bring up the possibility of another person without it. If my whole website is “me me me,” then it comes as a shock to hear there might be a collaborator. What happens when sometimes it really is just you, and other times it’s another collaborator in the background? Feeling awkward… Like a 14-year-old boy whose voice keeps cracking.
@Kelly I feel that way sometimes, too. At what point do you become We? Good question.
The thing is, I think you’re still a “me,” even if you become a “we” for certain projects.
Okay, that was a really weird statement. I swear I’m not smoking anything here.
So far when I’ve brought people in to work on other aspects of a project where I’m not an expert, I haven’t had anyone freak out. Not openly, anyway.
I wonder what other people think about me vs we in business? I’d love to hear more thoughts on that.
I think my business has reached the level of success it has (you know, with six homes around the world and a nanny who wipes my cats’ bottoms) because people know it’s just me and they want to connect with a real live person, not a faceless corporate entity.
Promoting myself as something I’m not also goes against the basic principles that I teach to my clients about authenticity and not trying to be someone else. Gotta be a role model, even if it WOULD be cool to be perceived as a bazillion dollar company.
Hey, Sparky
I totally agree. I did this once upon an iteration or two back in the old days. I don’t think anybody clued me in, but reading my own drivel made me puke buckets so I changed it. You gotta be you, I gotta be me, and somehow that works a lot better.
The same attitude has dripped over into my public persona — I try not to say “we” unless it’s something that my wife/business partner and I do jointly, otherwise, it is just little o’l me, out there competing with the big monstrous corporations.
It definitely helps keep it real.