Agency

In a way, positioning is fake for a brief period of time. You’ve noticed just enough patterns to gain some credibility. Then you make the most of that driver’s permit to keep exploring, keep learning, and keep articulating insight. Eventually it feeds on itself and then you step into your expert clothes and really fill them out.

Take out a piece of paper or an index card and jot down everything you would love to find in a client.

Your only real control is to withhold your expertise. And although withholding expertise is the only leverage real experts have, it can be a powerful one, indeed.

any time a brand new client emails me requesting an estimate on a project, I have a pre-written response that I am able to send in a matter of seconds.

I also don’t require a new contract for each project. My contracts are written, in a sense, to be a meta-contract that oversees the entire relationship through multiple projects. Once my client has signed a contract with me, they’ll never have to do so again.

Dealing with deadlines, mastering the crafts of editing (at Encyclopedia Britannica) and consulting (at Institute for the Future), dealing with clients, and trying to fashion myself into someone who looked like a Productive Worker, didn’t leave a lot of time for reflection about why I was working the way I was.

that you are serious about being paid, just as serious as you are about delivering the results