If you’re a professional services provider, by definition you are a helper. You’re in the service business. You want to serve others using the expertise and experience you have developed over many years. You’re on a mission.
It’s a problem, though, when, as a solo or small firm practitioner, you take your mission so seriously that you allow the following statement to come out of your mouth:
“I just want to help everyone.”
I see this mindset of helping in solo and small firm professional services providers, particularly those for whom the “new car smell” of their business hasn’t worn off yet. (Larger firms don’t have this problem–that’s one reason they’re larger.)
When you start your firm, the enthusiasm you have for your business mission is buoyant. Everywhere you look, you see someone who needs your services. You’re the proverbial hammer that only sees nails, always and everywhere.
One way to know if you might be affected by this mindset is guilt: when you’re honest with yourself, you feel guilty when you don’t help everyone you meet or who is referred to you. You can’t bring yourself to admit that you and your service offering isn’t the best fit.
The worst offenders, I’ve found, want to argue with me and claim that they’re different. They are so passionate about what they view as a calling that they see that calling as “special” or somehow above it all.
If you’re one of those people, you’re not serving either the world or yourself very well.
Problems with the Mindset of Helping
To be blunt, operating from this mindset isn’t generous and helpful. At its worst, it’s the opposite: arrogant and selfish. You can’t physically help everyone because there’s not enough of you and your firm to go around. There’s a limit to both your knowledge and your bandwidth, whether your firm is just you or whether you have people working with and for you.
Further, operating from a mindset of helping is a terrible business model. It’s not even the way an effective non-profit is run, much less a for-profit enterprise. Even non-profits recognize that they have limitations on resources and people. They focus on a particular social problem often in a particular geographic area.
Finally, what the "helping everybody" mindset does to you and your practice can be corrosive over time. When you regularly take on clients who aren’t a great fit, you end up with unhappy clients. They expect something more or different than you can deliver. Moreover, you cannot price your service to mismatched clients that effectively, because they don’t see the same level of value which you’re able to provide to other, better-fit clients.
An Antidote for the Mindset of Helping
If you are affected by this mindset of helping, here’s the shift you to make: you must quit thinking of yourself as a helper. Quit telling the world that you just want to help. Quit feeling guilty about not being able to help everyone.
Instead, view yourself as an agent of transformation.
Helping and transformation are two entirely different concepts. I liken it to the difference in a medic and a physician. A medic helps, often in life-saving ways, yet a medic is not there to heal. A medic exists to get patients to physicians whose work helps start the healing process.
As you think about your clients, are you providing bandages or are you delivering a service which fundamentally transforms?
Here’s an example: if your expertise and experience is with SaaS companies, then you know, without doubt or equivocation, that you can transform such businesses and the lives of their owners.
You’re a physician, and a great one.
So why would you take on a multi-location veterinarian practice? Sure, some of your business knowledge can be applied to that business. You can possibly help around the edges, but you’re not the best fit. The odds are low that you can bring about the jumpstart that business owner is looking for.
In this case, you’re the medic. It’s a start for that client, but it’s not what they ultimately need.
When you act from this place of generosity, you’re ironically doing something vital for yourself and your practice: you’re saving your bandwidth and your energy for those instances in which you are the physician, those clients who are best-fit, recognize the value you can heap upon them, and are willing to pay for that value.
It’s a better mindset to operate from, and it’s the best way to be truly helpful.
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John Ray advises solopreneur and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing to change the trajectory of a business and the lifestyle choices of a business owner. His clients are professionals who are selling their “grey matter,” such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
John’s book, The Price and Value Journey: Raise Your Confidence, Your Value, and Your Prices Using The Generosity Mindset, will be released later this year. The book covers topics like value and adopting a mindset of value, pricing your services more effectively, proposals, and essential elements of growing your business. For more information on the book, as well as John's podcast, The Price and Value Journey, go to pricevaluejourney.com.
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