I work hard. I work so hard. If I’m up and awake and not exercising or spending time with my family, then I’m working. But I love it. Running Rothman PPC and serving my clients and helping their businesses grow with AdWords is my purpose in life. I live to work, and I live to serve my clients.
But every now and then I take a day off and putz around the house singing Drake songs and eating Nestle Drumsticks. I’m weird.
But taking time off every now and then to be weird is okay. It helps me. It helps me reenergize my batteries and it gets the creative juices flowing.
Today was one of those days.
Today I was thinking about the people I interact with all week, both online and in person, and I realized that I no longer have “clients” or “partners” or “vendors” or whatever other detached corporate term you want to use to describe my relationships with people I do business with. “Clients” just doesn’t do justice to the relationships I’m forming and nurturing every day.
So if I don’t have clients, partners, and vendors, then what do I have?
What I have are allies. I have allies. I have people I trust and who trust me. I have people that I trade money and services with for mutually beneficial gain. I have people who look out for me and for who I look out for. We have each other’s backs. I have allies.
The world is a scary place. And I’m just talking about the business world. We’re competing with people from all around the world and all of us rely on rapidly changing technology that we don’t really understand. It’s scary.
So that’s why I like having allies. I like dealing with people I trust and who trust me. And that trust is earned trust based on past experiences. It’s a stronger bond than client.
Moral of the story? Turn your clients, partners, and vendors into allies. Create allies by living to serve the people you work for and with. Create allies by always telling the truth. Create allies by engaging in mutually beneficial business activities (aka make money by helping other people make money and achieve their goals).
Allies are all you need to survive in the scary business world.
Allies share ideas.
Allies pay their bills.
Allies pick you up when you are down.
Allies keep you level headed when you are up.
Allies aren’t price sensitive (they won’t leave you because the other guy will charge 1% less).
If you want to go up and down constantly, if you want to never achieve true business success, and if you want to worry about how you’ll making a living in the business world for 30 years, then have clients, partners, and vendors.
But If you want to go constantly up, if you want steady and sustainable success, and if you want to never have to lose sleep over business, then serve others, tell the truth, and create allies in your business activities.
Clients, partners, and vendors are for losers.
Allies are for winners.
And Nestle Drumsticks are for me 🙂
