Michael Bernstein’s Post

Some real talk for consultants experiencing Lean Times: TL;DR - When things seem rough or pipeline looks thin, you might be tempted to compromise your work by lowering rates or reconsidering policies you’ve created to protect your work and your well-being. DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO DO THIS. Story time: About four years ago, my partner and I put our heads together when we both noticed that something wasn’t quite right with a few of the client experiences we had been having. After looking through and being as self-reflective as possible, we noticed a pattern: we had a much harder time delivering great material, on time and on spec when we were working with clients who requested that we join their synchronous chat platform of choice. When we looked at it, when we joined client Slack channels, not only were we having a hard time getting clarity on work, we frankly just ended up being annoyed, wasting time getting involved in distractions, and generally just not having a great time. So we published a blog post called “Sorry, we can’t join your Slack,” and it remains to this day the most read post on our site. Fast forward to the past six months, which frankly have been a bit bumpy for us, as it has for many folks out there. On more than one occasion during this time, when we really wanted to go out of our way to demonstrate value given the circumstances, we got requests to join client Slack channels. I must admit - it was tempting. How could it hurt, right? Wouldn’t it show commitment and possibly be a check in our corner when it came time to reconsidering follow-on work and successive contracts? Were we just being petulant? But after some time and reflection, it occurred to me - this is exactly the time to embrace our values, avoid compromise, and strive to demonstrate value within the milieu of our core competencies. It also occurred to me that many other folks out there might be in similar positions, and might need some encouragement to stick to your guns, keep your value up, and ride through the storm, to the best of your ability, without having to compromise. And please note: we’re always looking for new clients to work with! Please reach out if you need marketing or sales expertise.