True story:
Before my mom retired, she was a pediatrician.
The small pediatric hospital where she worked kept piling on more and more patients, year after year, while not increasing the number of doctors.
My mom, and all the other doctors at the hospital, had to work longer and longer hours, hurry more and stress more, sleep less and think less.
Eventually, a kind of doctors’ mutiny formed. The doctors pushed back against the administration, saying that this was irresponsible, that they cannot handle the load any more, that patient care was suffering.
The administrators listened and nodded with understanding. “You’re absolutely right,” they said. “Something has to change.”
And so next week, the administration brought in a mindfulness coach to conduct a mindfulness training, and teach the overworked and overstressed doctors to breathe in more deeply, express their gratitude more freely, and work more efficiently during their 13-hour shifts.
I’m telling you this because maybe you’re telling yourself, “I’m not getting enough done. I’m too slow.”
And maybe you are — God knows I am.
But maybe you are just working too much. If so, no amount of productivity and efficiency training will help, and the only real solution is simply to work less.
This isn’t about mindfulness, but a change in how you make money… the kinds of clients or customers you work with… how much you charge them… and where you draw the line about what’s acceptable and what’s not.
Those are big questions. I won’t pretend I have all the answers for you, or a push-button Jack-in-the-box that will give you those answers.
But since this is a newsletter about marketing, let me point out some relevant facts:
– It’s easier to have time if you can sell to hundreds or thousands of people in parallel
– It’s easier to charge more if you have a captive pocket of people who look to you as an authority
– It’s easier to draw the line if you know for certain you’re not beholden to any one customer or client, because there’s more of them out there, and you know how to get at them
There are different ways to take advantage of these facts, and to make them work for you.
My personal choice is to have a small online audience, in the form of an email list, and to write them daily emails, and to make offers to them on occasion.
I’ll have an offer about building up an email list soon. Meanwhile, if you want to know how I write emails, and make offers inside them, and how you can do the same: