I was speaking to one of my clients a while back.
He had been working with me for around six months at the time and was pumped because he had just had his best quarter ever in business.
It always makes me happy when my clients get results in their business, but his story, in particular, made me smile.
I’ll get to why in just a moment.
But first a little background story.
Before my client set up in business on his own, he was billing in excess of £400K per year working for one of the big firms.
And like a lot of top billers, he thought to himself…. Why am I here making money for this company, taking a fraction of the commissions when I could run my own business and keep the lot.
Sounds like a smart idea.
And not at all uncommon.
But working for himself, he wasn’t able to replicate his results.
In fact, he had been hovering at just over £200K per year. Almost half of what he feels he’s capable of.
And he was pissed off,
Frustrated,
Felt like a failure,
a fraud,
He was beating himself up about it daily and was beginning to fall out of love with the whole thing.
And you know what… He reminded me of myself…
Because when I started my first Recruitment Business, I went through exactly the same thing…
And it made me question EVERYTHING…
Was it all luck before?
Did working for a big firm make it easier?
Am I good enough?
Why couldn’t I do it?
Were people only buying from me before because of my good looks? (Ok, perhaps that last one was made up)
I began to doubt what I was capable of…
I dreaded going to the office to face another day of what I saw as failure…
I dreaded coming home to my family to pretend everything was all happy and good…
I didn’t want to socialise because I knew it meant telling a lie when my friends would inevitably ask “how’s business?”
I shut off completely…
And when you have these doubts… Even if you keep it to yourself, the people closest to you can always tell…
You can put on a front all you want…
But they can see it… Even if they don’t say anything, they ALWAYS know…
So back to my client and why his story made me smile more than usual…
As I said, he just completed his best quarter EVER…
But it wasn’t the financial successes I was happy about…
Don’t get me wrong, that’s all well and good…
But the thing that made me happiest was that his friends and family had noticed the difference in him…
And in his words. He was actually starting to enjoy his business again…
More confidence, more belief in himself and only just scraping the surface of what he’s capable of…
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