The best clients are the ones who want to make money
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010To my surprise, I’ve found that clients who truly want to make money are the best clients. I guess at some point I might have worried that such people would be ruthless, but I have not found it so. Clients who want to make money accept my best ideas. Clients who want to make money tend to be honest about what they want. Clients who want to make money tend to stay calm when things are bad – they are less emotional. Clients who want to make money do not sabotage their most successful projects.
However, clients who want to make money are rare. Sad to say, most of the clients I’ve had have been interested in acclaim. Most of my clients have been born into wealth. They grew up rich, so money is not much of a draw for them. What does appeal to them is becoming a little bit famous. During this last decade a certain amount of glamor attached to web startups, so they were drawn in – not so much to get rich, but to become famous. I found that these people lie about their motives – they will hire you and they will tell you they want to make money, but they will focus on areas, like music, which are glamorous but which get way too much investment. They avoid boring industries that might be highly profitable. They stifle money making ideas, and they never give an honest reason for doing so.
For all these reasons, I found this bit interesting:
You see, there are three types of people who want to make money:
- Those who want to be looked up to
These are the people who talk about having expensive cars, living in a big house, or having a hot model girlfriend. I will never do business with these type of people, because they don’t really want money. They are insecure and unsure of themselves and they think that having money is going to change this. The problem is that these people, once they get into a position of power, they will lose their hunger for money. Once they are being looked up to, they will lose their interest in the money and they will fail you.
You can see these people in that they want people to recognize them, they want people to ask their advice, they want people to pay attention to them. Fame and popularity will always be first for these people, and money will take a secondary role.
- Those who want to be comfortable
These people are even more dangerous because there are so many of them. They are poor, they are broke, and all they want is not to be broke. They say that they want to be rich, but once they start making $6000 a month and they can buy all the toys they want, and can have a kid comfortably, they are going to get incredibly lazy. These people are employees masquerading as entreprenuers. They don’t want to be rich, they just don’t want to be poor.
You can recognize these people in that they dream of getting rich and then retiring to some beach to drink cocktails and doing nothing. They work so that they don’t have to work, but that doesn’t work.
- Those who want to have more money
These are the people who see making money as a game, and can’t ever stop. All they want to do is make more and more money, and the toys and the fame are completely incidental to this. Do business with these people, partner with them, because when there is an opportunity, they will go along with it. They will not drop out of the game because they have got enough, and they will not drop out once they make a certain amount.
These are the people who don’t care about their dress or about what car they drive or that people know their name. And these are the people that you do business partnerships with.”