Studying Roots? Or Picking Fruits?

I’ve been notic­ing a trend lately that’s start­ing to aggra­vate me a lit­tle. And I hope you can bear with me through­out this rant, as I do expose a few inside tips for you in the process.

This trend is one that speaks not only to the state of busi­ness (and online mar­ket­ing), but also to the char­ac­ter of some of the peo­ple run­ning them.

Warn­ing! This arti­cle is not sug­ar­coated. It’s a lament of sorts, and uses lan­guage that is a lit­tle stronger than the norm. The les­son might even dis­ap­point a few peo­ple. So if you’re look­ing for some kind of feel­good Pollyanna or rose-​​colored crit­i­cism, back away now. You’ve been warned.

So, what’s this trend? It’s…

… scarcity thinking.

Let me backup a lit­tle. You see, I’m in the ser­vice indus­try. Sylvie, my lovely fiancée, is in the ser­vice indus­try too. I do copy for clients while she pro­vides mar­ket­ing and cus­tomer sup­port assis­tance. Often, for the same clients.

And as such, we pro­vide ser­vices for a fee.

Ser­vices are ren­dered, clients are billed and we expect pay­ment. That’s our busi­ness. That’s how we profit. And that’s what we absolutely love to do, too.

Unlike most other copy­writ­ers or con­trac­tors out there, we have a track record of not only cre­at­ing results for our clients but also work­ing hard to serve other peo­ple and help make them a killing while we’re at it, all the while earn­ing a mod­est liv­ing doing so.

That’s OK, since it’s some­thing we love to do, and what attracts us to this indus­try that has been so kind and gen­er­ous to us. We are giv­ing back to it, whether it’s in the form of help, prod­ucts or ser­vices. And that’s the key les­son I want to con­vey here.

(But I’ll get back to it shortly.)

It’s kind of ironic though, in some poetic way, that we help trans­form some peo­ple into mil­lion­aires — or help exist­ing ones make mil­lions more — while we charge very lit­tle for it, which only amounts to a frac­tion of their win­nings. That’s fine too, since choos­ing us and our fees is part of what makes them prof­itable in the first place.

We want to see our clients suc­ceed as much as we want to suc­ceed. It’s an exhil­a­rat­ing feel­ing, really, when our clients achieve suc­cess with our help — the kind of suc­cess so many aspire to.

And that’s why we charge the fees we charge — and clients pay us hand­somely, and will­ingly, for our help. Per­son­ally, I charge $10,000 for a saleslet­ter rewrite, and $15,000 for a brand-​​new saleslet­ter. And I no longer take on clients directly, although I do run an agency where I out­source, super­vise and per­son­ally review copy work for clients, called “Copy­writ­ing Crew.”

Recently, how­ever, we are slightly chang­ing course some­what for a vari­ety of rea­sons. Beyond being ser­vice providers, which we will con­tinue to be, we are also mar­keters our­selves. We’re all mar­keters. But we have become more so in recent times.

You see, lately Sylvie and I decided to focus more on sell­ing our own prod­ucts so we can start mak­ing some of the same kind of money, and reach the same lev­els of suc­cess, our clients are enjoy­ing with the help of our skills, ser­vices, knowl­edge and assets.

These assets include expe­ri­ence, edu­ca­tion and fail­ures we have both paid dearly for, includ­ing many years of hard labor absorb­ing count­less losses and mak­ing huge finan­cial invest­ments into our own education.

(I remem­ber when I first started out, I wrote a lot of copy for free or for pit­tances, and did so for many years until I learned and earned the chops that allowed me to charge the out­ra­geous fees I charge today. Sylvie is cer­tainly no different.)

And now, as a result of all that hard work, Sylvie and I are crank­ing out prod­ucts of our own and speak­ing all over the world. For exam­ple, our next gig is in Atlanta, then Los Ange­les, Las Vegas, Lon­don (UK), Bal­ti­more, the UK again, and so on.

She speaks on out­sourc­ing, I do on copy­writ­ing. And together we speak on cre­at­ing prod­ucts and con­tent sites using short­cuts we’ve learned and tested.

In fact, being ser­vice providers, we have a unique priv­i­lege and per­spec­tive not too many other mar­keters out there have. That is, work­ing closely with these million-​​dollar clients, we have amassed a wealth of strate­gies and an inti­mate knowl­edge of what works… and what doesn’t.

We see a lot of what goes on behind the scenes. We get to see what a lot of mar­keters don’t. And we are also privy to their fail­ures — as well as their suc­cesses. Hir­ing us (or buy­ing our prod­ucts) is like work­ing along­side these top mar­keters and get­ting a chance to peek inside their minds.

How­ever, this is where it gets sticky.

Here’s the thing: what irks me and pisses me off to no end is that, while we’re suc­cess­ful imple­ment­ing some of the prod­ucts, tools and strate­gies we’ve learned, and while we speak on how these strate­gies have helped us make a lot of money too, many peo­ple of late seem to have taken advan­tage of us because of it.

I’m talk­ing about abu­sive clients.

Yes, it’s abuse, pure and sim­ple. Per­haps not con­sciously ill-​​intended, but nev­er­the­less dis­re­spect­ful, harm­ful and selfish.

You see, they think that, since we’re “suc­cess­ful,” then we can accept and tol­er­ate low fees, demand­ing clients, exact­ing work and bel­liger­ent peo­ple in our ser­vice businesses.

To them, we can “take it” on the chin. We should accept that they can nego­ti­ate with us to no end, ask us for unlim­ited free work, milk our gen­eros­ity and will­ing­ness to serve them for every­thing they can, and… even decide NOT to pay their bills!

No, not because they think we don’t deserve it (not at first, any­way), but because they try to drop their own crises into our laps. Includ­ing crises that have noth­ing to do with the projects we were work­ing on.

Case in point: one of Sylvie’s clients has refused to pay his bill. Going back and forth with extremely long emails (some­times 4–5 times longer than this very post!), they minutely dis­sect every lit­tle dis­crep­ancy, every lit­tle detail, every lit­tle gray area, every lit­tle mis­take (and that’s per­ceived mis­take) — only to jus­tify not pay­ing their invoice in the end.

Granted, we’re not per­fect. We do screw up from time to time. But in this par­tic­u­lar case (and in many oth­ers), we didn’t. In other cases where we did, we promptly refunded, extended, resolved or overde­liv­ered as much as we could.

But with this par­tic­u­lar client, we’ve pre­sented mounds of doc­u­men­ta­tion to prove that every­thing was done exactly as requested. After spend­ing hours read­ing their emails and try­ing to make sense of it all, some­thing hit us.

After some inves­ti­ga­tion, we dis­cov­ered that the client lost money in the stock mar­ket recently, and that’s why they are fight­ing their bills with tooth and nail. But rather than cour­te­ously ask­ing for an exten­sion or some kind of con­sid­er­a­tion, they are wig­gling them­selves out of charges for ser­vices rendered.

Even worse, they are vil­i­fy­ing us in the process.

Sadly, it’s not their unwill­ing­ness to pay. It’s their inabil­ity to pay, and thus their exces­sively fussy attempts to avoid pay­ing their bills, and even con­demn us as final resort — even threat­en­ing us.

(After we con­fronted them about their recent losses, they have seem­ingly “dis­ap­peared” from the face of the earth. Ugh.)

The bot­tom line is that they’re expect­ing us to pay for THEIR mis­takes and losses and poor busi­ness deci­sions, includ­ing losses that have, indi­rectly, noth­ing to do with the projects we helped out with. They expect us to take a loss ourselves.

As ser­vice providers, we have con­trac­tual agree­ments and oblig­a­tions. We have ful­filled ours with the expec­ta­tion that they ful­fill theirs. But we never agreed to share in their prof­itabil­ity. We’re con­trac­tors, not investors or partners.

Do you ask for a refund from your lawyer, even if you lose your case? Do you expect to refuse to pay your doctor’s bill, even if you’re still sick? (Try telling that to a col­lec­tion agent.)

Just as much as a lawyer is not respon­si­ble for win­ning your case or a doc­tor for your good health, we are not respon­si­ble for how our clients run their busi­nesses — and how prof­itable they become. There are too many vari­ables, and we are not inti­mately involved in how they run their businesses.

Sure, we have a stake in our clients’ suc­cesses. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t last long in this busi­ness, believe me.

But why would we be moti­vated to accept the mere pit­tance we’re paid for our time? Why would we be will­ing to serve oth­ers, incur huge expenses our­selves and even bend over back­wards — often, unbe­knownst to our clients?

Why would a mas­ter mar­keter like us bother help­ing oth­ers — not just with prod­ucts but with our time and energy in pro­vid­ing ser­vices, when our time and energy could be bet­ter spent on cre­at­ing prod­ucts ourselves?

Because, quite sim­ply, we remem­ber how it was in the begin­ning for us. And that’s why we’re moti­vated to help peo­ple and train them on the short­cuts we’ve learned, because we were where they are. We know how it is to take risks, learn the ropes and lose a lot of money while wait­ing to become prof­itable ourselves.

Think about it.

Would you call up some­one like Armand Morin and tell him:

“Armand, we want you to help us for the next two months, call us every day and spend hours on the phone going through minute details with us on every­thing you do, record and give us every step you take, and we won’t pay you until we’re prof­itable, OK? Heck, we reserve the right to come back to you a year down the road and ask you to fix things, and we ‘may’ pay you then, if we have money.”

That’s insane.

You wouldn’t expect some­one like Armand to wait to get paid, even if he offered such a ser­vice in the first place. So then, why us?

Look at this anal­ogy: both Sylvie and I used to be in the food indus­try as a waiter and wait­ress. How log­i­cal would it be if, after a day’s work clean­ing off over 50 tables, we don’t get paid, and get a call two or three weeks later from our bosses, say­ing, “Hey, you for­got a table, come back and clean it” (or “I’ll dock your pay”).

Or worse still, “Some of your tables are dirty, so you need to come back in and do it again… and after that, I’ll ‘think’ about pay­ing you, per­haps in a few months if and when I get enough business.”

First of all, that would be ille­gal. But legal­ity aside, it’s also down­right abu­sive. In fact, if you think that anal­ogy is a lit­tle far-​​fetched, let me make this more log­i­cal and believ­able for you.

What if, as part of our job, we had to deal with bel­liger­ent cus­tomers who den­i­grate you con­stantly, and even get our pay­checks docked to pay for the free­load­ing thieves who leave the restau­rant with­out pay­ing? Heck, what about peo­ple who leave and fail to pay their bills because the food was bad or “didn’t sat­isfy their hunger” as intended?

(And there­fore hurt­ing the prof­its of the restau­rant owner, even though it was never the waiter’s fault?)

Believe me, it did hap­pen, and does hap­pen in the food indus­try more often than you think.

By the way, how we are treated says a lot about peo­ple. There was an inter­est­ing arti­cle recently in USA Today about how CEOs assess their staff based on how they treat wait­ers and wait­resses. It’s a very inter­est­ing read. Click here to read it.

Any­way, speak­ing of “not being part­ners” with our clients’ busi­nesses, admit­tedly, in some cases, we are part­ners and do agree to a profit share, such as roy­al­ties or joint-​​venture deals. But “vam­pires” are not lim­ited to clients, either.

In other words, it doesn’t just include the many clients who try to wig­gle their way out of pay­ing fees and con­trac­tual oblig­a­tions, as well as those who con­spic­u­ously try to usurp extra work from us (for free), suck­ing our time, energy, good faith and generosity.

Even joint-​​venture part­ners of late have failed to pay our agreed share, nego­ti­ate terms after the fact, attempt to pay us a smaller share for a plethora of rea­sons that have noth­ing to do with our own busi­nesses, and hound us for an exces­sive amount of time, energy and use of our assets in the process.

If I told you how many clients and joint-​​venture part­ners out there owe us money, you’d fall flat on your face. The total is equal to or more than a year’s salary of some well-​​paying waiter’s job work­ing in a five-​​star restau­rant. Includ­ing tips.

Now, here’s what’s sad about this.

We also have our own losses, expenses and busi­nesses to run. We also have employ­ees and con­trac­tors to deal with and pay for.

We also have to pay our bills and run a busi­ness out of our own pock­ets, as well as take risks and absorb losses in the interim — with the full expec­ta­tion that we’re get­ting paid, par­tic­u­larly after ser­vices have been ren­dered and credit has been allot­ted to these clients in the beginning.

But unfor­tu­nately, some clients and joint-​​venture part­ners expect us to take an even greater loss on their behalf. So we become respon­si­ble for their busi­nesses, too, in some dis­jointed way.

Sad, really.

But hey, we’re rich and suc­cess­ful, right? Sure, we can take it. We’re big enough. We can lose a few thou­sand dol­lars here and there. No prob­lem! Heck, we’re so rich, we can even take care of the national debt and oblit­er­ate world hunger in the same fell swoop. I mean, why not? Our clients are try­ing to run their busi­nesses and we’re not. They have prob­lems and bills and staff and expenses, and we do not.

We just do this for fun.

(Ya, right.)

Not only that, just like in any busi­ness, some of our con­trac­tors, part­ners and staff are incom­pe­tent, too. While we may be privy to our clients’ fail­ures as well as their suc­cesses, we too have our own to deal with. With the lit­tle (but huge) suc­cesses we achieve, we also suf­fer as many fail­ures. And lose as much money.

But that’s not our clients’ prob­lems. They’re ours.

And that’s exactly the point.

Some of our employ­ees and con­trac­tors have to be trained, paid for, and some­times even let go, either due to incom­pe­tence and fail­ure to effi­ciently com­plete tasks given (in addi­tion to hir­ing other work­ers to get the job done for our clients, we still have to pay for their ser­vices rendered!)…

… or because of their inces­sant whin­ing and com­plain­ing that “we’re not pay­ing them enough.”

Believe me, it has happened.

In fact, we have some peo­ple who used to work for us, and now work for our clients. They lit­er­ally stole our clients. Granted, some have with our reluc­tant approval because we are under­stand­ing and gen­er­ous folk, but oth­ers try to with mali­cious intent only to “get back” at us. Even when they were paid above indus­try aver­ages and our con­tracts included non-​​compete clauses!

Worse still, some who now work for these clients have now bar­ri­caded us from them, vil­i­fied us using (and spin­ning) pro­pri­etary infor­ma­tion against us, con­vinced our clients to switch us for com­peti­tors, or given us a bad name so that the client would no longer use our ser­vices let alone not pay their bills with us.

It gets even worse.

Some clients, such as my copy­writ­ing clients, have come back for revi­sions to their copy almost a year after the project was hired — and sim­i­lar to the free­load­ers above who dis­sect their bills to no end, these copy­writ­ing clients nit­pick their projects, nego­ti­ate end­lessly and metic­u­lously tear apart promises made squarely and solely to take advan­tage of us.

Just so you under­stand, here’s a lit­tle his­tory: over a year ago, I fired all my vam­pire clients at the time. I refunded over $60,000 of projects I either had pend­ing or already com­pleted, only to stop the hem­or­rhage and their attempts to keep grind­ing away.

And now, even with that deci­sion, they are strangely resur­fac­ing and creep­ing back into my business.

What’s worse is not that I’ve allowed them to “resur­face” (I’m very selec­tive with my clients and have been since that time), but that some good, reg­u­lar clients who have acted in good faith, even for years and well before I fired my vam­pire clients, have now mutated into these resource-​​sucking beasts.

In addi­tion to the fact that we’re still owed a ton of money in unpaid bills and com­mis­sions from joint-​​venture part­ners, and refunded close to $100,000 in fees in the last year alone (either out of good faith or to get rid of vam­pires), some, to this day, still try to bilk us — and milk us — for every­thing they can.

It’s infu­ri­at­ing to say the least.

But, there is a pos­i­tive les­son in all this.

In the final analy­sis, being ser­vice providers gives us a lot of advan­tages over the aver­age mar­keter, but it also puts us at a dis­ad­van­tage. We’re prime tar­gets, now. And sad to say, it speaks vol­umes about the char­ac­ter of some of the peo­ple out there.

Granted, peo­ple who under­stand the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ple I wanted to teach you today — yes, there is a les­son in here — give us no prob­lems at all. But it’s not because they’re easy to work with. It’s because they know the power of this impor­tant lesson.

They may expect top qual­ity, and get top qual­ity as much as we pos­si­bly can, but they do so with, and because of, the clear under­stand­ing of this pow­er­ful yet sim­ple principle.

So, what is it? What is this mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ple that can help you in your busi­ness? What pos­i­tive can you pull from this lament­ing (albeit ther­a­peu­tic) dia­tribe you were so gra­cious to read up to this point? Sim­ply, it’s this…

The law of karma.

Quite sim­ply, “what goes around comes around.”

Call it “karmic mar­ket­ing” or “mar­ket­ing karma.” The con­cept is, what you give out will come back to you. And often, it mul­ti­plies along the way. So if you’re gen­er­ous with your time, energy and of course money, it will be paid back to you. Often, in spades.

(It has for us. We’ve seen this hap­pen in our busi­nesses, and it shad­ows the lit­tle hand­ful of neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tions expressed in this arti­cle. And we thank the Uni­verse for the many bless­ings we received as a result.)

How­ever, if you give out neg­a­tiv­ity, it will come back and bite you, too. And some­times, it can bite really hard. But what­ever you do put out, real­ize that it can either bite you or bless you.

The choice is yours.

Whether you have a scarcity men­tal­ity or an abun­dance men­tal­ity, it per­vades in every­thing you do. It shows in your arti­cles, in your teach­ings, in your rela­tion­ships, in your friend­ships and in your busi­nesses. And of course, in how you hire, treat and pay other peo­ple, too.

To me, I believe all the seem­ingly neg­a­tive things that are hap­pen­ing lately are lessons. Things that tell us a lot and teach us a lot. Bless­ings in dis­guise, if you will. And it is my sin­cere hope that you see those, too. (Includ­ing the crises and prob­lems and losses in your own business.)

Every­thing, includ­ing the good stuff, teaches you some­how — and will come back to you when you grasp this amaz­ing con­cept. From giv­ing great ser­vice, teach­ing and help­ing oth­ers, and bend­ing over back­wards, to pro­cess­ing refunds when asked, pay­ing bills quickly, and above all, accept­ing that good work is worth every penny. (And in the end, you really do get what you pay for, includ­ing what you fail to pay.)

Sure, we’re all human. We screw up as much as the best ones out there. (Per­haps that’s our karma.) But we do rec­og­nize it and real­ize it, and we don’t mind doing what we can, in our power and within rea­son, to resolve it.

But there’s a dif­fer­ence between try­ing to fix an error, cor­rect a mis­take or resolve a dis­pute, ver­sus try­ing to dig for errors, exag­ger­ate mis­takes and cre­ate dis­putes out of thin air only to jus­tify one’s scarcity mentality.

What you give out comes back to you.

Some­times, many, many times over.

So, what can you do?

Admit­tedly, busi­ness is busi­ness is busi­ness. But have, or strive at get­ting, an abun­dance men­tal­ity. Do as much a you can to overde­liver. Try to under­stand people’s sit­u­a­tions before you jump to con­clu­sions. Treat every­one with respect and dig­nity. Never take advan­tage of oth­ers. Always strive for win-​​win.

And above all, be gen­er­ous with your time, your energy and your money, as it will all come back to you — some­times in sur­pris­ing and unex­pected ways.

Here’s a quote from Jim Rohn I’ve had hang­ing on my wall for years. It’s a great quote because it also applies to abun­dance think­ing. The gist of it goes some­thing like this: “While some are study­ing the roots, oth­ers are pick­ing the fruits. Suc­cess depends on which end of this you get in on.”

As a final note, if you want to know how to be a “sweetie” and apply the laws of karmic mar­ket­ing to your busi­ness, a great resource is my friend Alice Seba’s prod­uct on how to become an Inter­net mar­ket­ing sweetie and, if you’re an affil­i­ate or JV part­ner, affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing sweetie.

Get these prod­ucts. There are some great lessons in there and remark­able insights into the world of abun­dance think­ing. Your new­found abun­dance men­tal­ity will pay incred­i­ble div­i­dends for you and your business.

And that’s a promise you can “take to the bank.”

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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