🚧 This is a Wonderful Day
Spotify searches, strategic failures, and another encounter with serendipity signage
✍️ Thursday, June 15, 2023
Right after I got The News I searched for “what to do when you lose your biggest client” on Spotify’s podcast directory. Not a single episode on this topic popped up.1
Of course not!
Who wants to admit — out loud and in the archives — that they’ve lost their biggest client?
In the past, I wouldn’t have ‘fessed up to this either, except for the fact that now it’s what I wish I could see, read, hear.
I long for something real about the rollercoaster of these moments, something running counter to an impulse to double down on an old strategy out of panic.
“If this were the dating world, I’d take the hint,” I said to my well-meaning friend who asked where I could find new clients like the old ones. “I would stop chasing the wrong men.”
My inner Business Police tsk-tsk me, reminding me that any good or responsible business owner would get straight to work on finding new corporate clients, and many people have already offered up advice along these lines: Who can you call? Who can you follow up with? How can you “win” new business?
I had been trying to win new licensing contracts for six years. One proposal fell apart the week the pandemic hit as we were on the cusp of signing the legal agreement, and several other prospective big-name-brand clients ghosted after receiving proposals, no matter what improvements to my process or pricing I experimented with.
It didn’t seem to matter how many revisions I made to my strategy, how many new books I read on sales and negotiation techniques, how many experts I involved who might be able to sell better than me (hopium hard at work!).
Something was not clicking. Sure, it could be the global pandemic happening in parallel to these efforts.
Yet I can’t help but wonder if maybe someone else could figure all this out, in this environment.
I have always tried to listen to what my business is becoming, what it is trying to tell me. I’m not saying that you should follow this strategy, but it’s one I honor: