A few days ago, a mysterious-sounding story bubbled up in several corners of the Internet where I make my home. Its title:
“The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell”
BCG in this case is Boston Consulting Group, a big international consulting company.
And the story sounds mysterious… until you realize that $16k isn’t very much money for a big corporation like BCG. So whatever this guy had to tell can’t be that shocking. Still…
I found the article interesting and surprisingly familiar. And if you are a freelancer or consultant of any sort, I think it can be valuable for you to hear.
In a nutshell, this former BCG-er’s article says three things:
1. Consulting clients often don’t know why they’ve hired a consultant. It’s a kind of cargo cult thing — just something that businesses like them do.
2. Consultants often have to make their work fit the client’s foregone decisions. Even if that means supporting foolish or wasteful actions.
3. As a result, the consultant who wrote the article burned out. His pay was good. His workload was small. And yet, his motivation, as a result of 1 and 2 above, was even smaller.
Perhaps you see where I’m going with this.
I’ve had similar experiences working as a freelance copywriter. Not with all clients. But with enough.
I’ve been hired by clients who only wanted a sales letter because of direct response buzz in their mastermind. Often this meant the client had no real need of a copywriter, because there was zero hope they’d make any money from the copy I wrote.
There were other situations where the client was more experienced… but also very set on doing things that were clearly a bad idea. In this case, whatever expertise I could bring to the project was like trying to stop a runaway train by throwing a pillow at it.
I found both cases to be frustrating and demotivating work — even when it was well-paid.
And so, over time, I started screening out clients like these. But often I still didn’t screen well enough.
That’s one of the reasons why these days I’m trying not to take on new copywriting clients. Instead I just look to partner up with businesses, in a way where I simply get a share of the money that I make for them.
Like I said, I thought the BCG guy’s experiences and my own might be useful to you if you are a freelancer or consultant also.
That said, there is a good chance that you have to simply live all this stuff… and experience it on your own skin before you learn.
Still, I wanted to let you know about it. It might save you some wondering if there’s something uniquely wrong with you… and maybe it will even help you move more quickly towards work freelance or consulting work that’s more motivating, and less frustrating.
And if you want more like this:
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