Trust, clients and the freelancer

Out of the box thinking

We’ve all been there. We hire a professional to build something we love, then second guess it’s main focus. We ask the question to a few friends (who are in a similar mindset as we current reside) and they all echo your worst fear. The professional is wrong, you’ve made a mistake. You quickly dial in something safe and let it rip. You feel a sense of calamity avoided and calm descends. Over the next few months your work that you’d hope to get to the next level doesn’t. The professional you hired has reached his/her limit you say, and promptly start looking for someone who “gets” it. Just like a patient looking for a second doctors opinion.

Overthinking leads to reduced output

The worst thing to hear in any clients email is “focus group” (“Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell has touched on this). These flawed polls are a group of people giving answers which they feel are overall good answers, and sometimes they are. In a business world this can be the difference between success and failure of a product launch. Listening to input from others is great, but what information has been given to them prior to the questions? Have you shown them buyer personas or outlined the campaigns focus and target to hit? These groups are always good-hearted, but the simple randomness of peoples thoughts is a bit of a moving target, it’ll depend on their mood, what they feel the product/brand means, what they ate for breakfast and what they listened to in the car. So many variables to form an organic feeling on a subject they may or may not care about. This veritable smorgasbord of information makes it hard to create something of focus and brand alignment. When handed too much information the brain overthinks, it processes so many what if’s it can become overloaded, this overload in the form of overthinking sends you into a bit of a tailspin, your brain fights for control and narrows the field to what it knows as safe. Overthinking literally is playing it safe, and the brain is very OK with this, after all, the status quo is usually what it wants.

Let your instincts drive you

You spent time talking to the professional, you like what they do and they bring a new vision to your table. They look at your target market, and existing clients, they plan to help you grow your enterprise. As business owners we are required to assess and make decisions that will take us out of comfort and into the unknown. This process is supposed to be uncomfortable, as it’s stepping out into a place that has new rules for you. Thinking as you have has done you very well, and change sometimes can be not so good, think of that one logo re-brand you saw recently where you hated it vs the old logo (remember the uproar of the new Instagram logo?). You have to break some eggs to make an omelette, taking micro risks are part of the fun of running our businesses.

Let the artist/freelancer/professional try something new for you, yes it can feel scary, but it could be the new era that you’ve been dreaming for.