This week’s question from our portal “Ask Us Anything” comes from Scott:
When I interview potential clients and it’s not the right fit for one reason or another, I sometimes feel tempted to accept them anyway. My mind justifies it by saying if I take this project, I can use the revenue to fuel marketing that will bring in the clients I actually want. Is that a reasonable approach?
That is a very roundabout way to try to get the clients that you want. What you’re describing is essentially funding your real goal by detouring through a bunch of work you don’t actually want to do, and hoping that eventually the detour pays off in the form of the right clients showing up. It rarely works that cleanly, and in the meantime you’re spending your time, energy, and attention on relationships that don’t align with where you’re actually trying to go.
You should be focusing in on the specific things that bring you the clients you actually want, not taking on work you don’t want to do as a workaround to get there. That might mean your marketing spend grows more slowly for a period, or that you have to be more disciplined about turning down revenue that doesn’t fit, but the tradeoff is worth it, because every mismatched client you accept also takes up bandwidth, capacity, and mental energy that could otherwise go toward the clients and the version of your business you’re actually trying to build.
From a universal, spiritual perspective, this also matters more than it might seem on the surface. When you send a split idea out into the universe, it creates confusion. If part of you is saying, “I want ideal, aligned, high-value clients,” and another part of you is simultaneously saying, “but I’ll also take whoever will fund that eventually,” you’re sending two contradictory signals at once, and the results you get will reflect that confusion. You’ll end up with a mix of clients that don’t fully represent either intention, and it’ll feel harder than it needs to.
You have to send a singular idea: this is what I want, this is what I want in my life, this is what I want my business to be, consistently, without wavering on it. That consistency, held without exception, is what actually starts to show up in your results, both because it changes your energy and your presence in every interview and every sales conversation, and because it forces you to make cleaner, faster decisions about who’s actually a fit, instead of talking yourself into “good enough” opportunities that pull you away from what you really want.
