For Years, I Had a Number

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Two quick questions.

How much is being stressed out worth to you? Name your price.

How much dysfunction are you willing to tolerate? Name your price.

My answers to both questions used to be very different than they are today.

Early on in my career, I didn’t care about the stress. Bring it on. I was here to get shit done, no matter the cost.

I tolerated a lot from certain clients because I kept telling myself that we are all human, that I wasn’t in a position to judge, and that the end justified the means.

Now, I know my answers to both questions are the same: there is no price big enough.

I also know that those answers are not something I will compromise on.

I have found that high standards are rare, but when they exist in your work, excellence is born.

I am not talking about perfectionism. Brené Brown blew that wide open for me, and I never strived for perfection again.

What I aim for is excellence.

It’s important to note that if you are working with people who are messy in their personal lives, they are going to be messy in their work.

If you work with people who spend their time talking about the dream instead of building it, that dream is never going to be realized.

If you have a team of people who never make hard decisions, confront difficult situations, or are willing to get their hands dirty, the final product is going to be fluff.

People bring who they are into their work. Their strengths show up there. Their weaknesses show up there, too.

Over the years, I have learned that when values become misaligned, the work suffers.

I left a client who was paying me $5,000 a month on retainer because I didn’t respect anything they said anymore. We had made as much progress in six months as we had on the first day.

It was time to walk away.

At some point, staying became more expensive than leaving.

I ended my work with a client I had worked with for over a dozen years because their new team was producing work that looked busy without moving the brand forward.

Loyalty matters. But loyalty doesn’t require you to lower your standards.

I ended a contract once because the owner had become a monster in the community. They were constantly gossiping, yelling at customers in the business, and belittling anyone who disagreed with them.

I didn’t want my name attached to that.

The money was good. My respect for them was gone.

I have plenty of these stories.

What I care about now is being able to trust myself when I know it’s time to leave.

If the values between yourself and the people you are working with can’t find common ground, the work will suffer.

The public will feel it in what you created together, even if they can’t explain exactly what feels off.

Respecting myself and my integrity has caused me to walk away from a lot of money over the years, but it has also made new space for making money with people I value and respect.

You get to choose who you want to be each day in your life and your work. For me, there’s no separation.

So let me ask those two questions again.

How much is being stressed out worth to you?

How much dysfunction are you willing to tolerate?

For years, I had a number.

Today, I don’t.

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