Revisiting Email from Clients Past | Jul 12th 2008
Last week I deleted a proverbial “stack” of email from my computer going back as far as 2002. I couldn’t resist reading through my old messages nostalgically, kind of like I do when I rifle through old photos and birthday cards.
I think what surprised me most is that my client roster is entirely different now than it was from 2002 through 2006. Part of that is the nature of my work, which is very event driven. Clients launch campaigns and those campaigns end, so I’m no longer needed. Often clients hire me as a stop gap until they can find a more permanent internal solution. This means a fresh set of new clients on a regular basis, and quite a long list of dusty email messages from people I no longer work with.
As I read through my old client emails, many of which contained long strings of correspondence within the messages, I noticed a pattern. I tend to start off new client relationships very proactively, follow through reasonably well throughout the life of a project, then wrap things up quickly after about three to six months – whether the client is ready to do this or not.
I’m not sure if this is some kind of “startup fever” on my part or it’s just, as I said above, the nature of my work. But regardless of the reason, I have to admit that I love the excitement of winning new work and starting off fresh with new clients. Ironically, this is also one of the most stressful and costly aspects of being self-employed.
As my email plainly demonstrated to me, I’m stuck in an unending cycle of starting new things, only to end them when the paint starts to fade, so that I can devote my time to starting new things once again.
I have a strong suspicion that this isn’t entirely productive. Would it be so bad, after all, to work with the same group of clients for more than a few months to a year at a time? On the contrary, I think it might be very nice to take it down a notch and focus on something other than honing my sales skills. It’s amazing what you can learn from some dusty old email. I’m almost sorry I deleted it all.