Author: brianjohnson

I had a thought today that the longer it takes to get a client a proposal, the more you need from them, and the less prepared you seem, the less likely you are to get that client.

Here are some observations and pieces of evidence to support that:

• One of the main reasons a new potential client reached out to me was because, “The company we are currently working with has spent more than four weeks putting a proposal together. It seems like they don’t really have experience in this area.”
• Particularly for larger potential clients, they have been excited to work with me and have lost interest as time went on and I requested more resources from them. And that’s before I even sent over a proposal and price. They most likely just lost faith that we would be able to handle the project as well as a competitor.

I think it is pretty clear that making the proposal process as easy as possible for a client will make them more likely to work with you. That seems pretty obvious, and it makes lots of sense. But how to accomplish that may not be so obvious, especially with complicated projects.

The problem comes when there is ambiguity. When the client isn’t sure what they want but they want you to give them a proposal, it’s extremely difficult to give them a number.

In the past, I’ve done my best to work with them and try to narrow down what would be included and tried to quote that.

But now, I think that what I need to do instead is this:

In situations where there is a great deal of ambiguity in a given project, act as the consultant, figure out what would be best for them, and put together a proposal outlining exactly what you plan on doing even when most of what you’re proposing isn’t something you’ve talked about yet.

After writing it out, it almost seems obvious! We are the expert, we know what works, and clients are looking to us to provide these things to them. Make assumptions and suggestions as needed.

After all, why not? If they don’t like something you’ve included, they can and will ask you to change it. But if you give them nothing and instead spend tons of time trying to get them to make up their minds, you’ve lost the sale and now you’re back to square one.

Additionally, if you’re making the decisions, you can better steer them towards great solutions that will add value. If they are coming to their own conclusions, that will often not be the case.

So from now on, just do it! If you need more information, just make assumptions and state them explicitly. Just watch out for scope creep and you’ll be fine.

If you want to get in with bigger clients, you need to be the expert and not just the contractor.

A thought occurred to me today. I should be planning for extra time between projects. So for instance, if I think my next five projects are going to take two weeks each, I might add in a couple 1-week periods to my timeline where no project is planned.

Why is this?

A number of reasons! The first and most obvious is that it allows for some wiggle room if projects go past their deadlines. Currently, if one project goes over, all of the remaining ones will be delayed as well, which causes problems.

No one will be upset if a project is done early. But a project done late tends to upset people.

The other reason is because sometimes projects come up that have very strict timelines, and might require us to complete it right away. Obviously we don’t want overbearing, entitled clients who want to take advantage of us, but occasionally there are great opportunities that require immediate attention. If I have extra time between projects, I can take these on as they come up.

And sometimes it’s not even totally new projects. Occasionally I’ll have dormant clients who I’ve given proposals to show up out of nowhere wanting to act on their proposal. Sometimes, when I originally met with them and wrote the proposal, it was a time when I could take on their project right away. But perhaps now I’m booked out for months.

It’s nice to have the flexibility to be able to work with these people, and with the originally suggested timeline.

Overall, it will allow me to be much more flexible with which projects we can take on, and will also remove some stress and problems caused by getting behind schedule and having it create a domino effect.

Of course there might be downsides, but I don’t think they are even close to the benefits from doing it. Really the only thing is that when I’m writing proposals, I’ll have to tell potential clients that we wouldn’t be able to start until a further point in time. This could be enough that some of them decide not to work with me.

That’s fine, though. Realistically, the only time that would even be a big problem is if I didn’t have any projects lined up. But if I didn’t have projects lined up, there wouldn’t really be a wait, so that wouldn’t happen.

So I think it’s definitely something I should do!

Gaming has come up before in this blog, and I find I keep learning little life lessons from my experiences in gaming.

A little background to make a point: sometimes I like to play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in short bursts to train my aim in first-person shooters. There are maps where you can train weapons quite efficiently.

Sometimes, I’ll do this practicing in the middle of the day, when I could be working. Historically, when I’ve done this, I’ve made sure to go “offline” in Steam and Discord in an effort to hide the fact that I’m playing games in the middle of the day.

And the thought hit me… Why am I hiding it? Why don’t I want people to know?

Well, it’s because I don’t want people to see me as irresponsible and unable to stay focused on work. That would be weakness.

And then I thought… What if I reframed it, and wanted to “show off” that I have a job where I have the option of playing games in the middle of the day? Suddenly, it seems like a positive thing. In fact, it seems like the exact type of thing I see people sharing on social media all the time. If I cared about such things, I might even do it myself.

I realized that the reason for both reactions is that I want to hide my weaknesses from others and yet display my strengths. Almost universally. People might post negative things on Facebook, but they rarely reveal actual weaknesses.

Someone might post, “I’ve had a really hard year” but never, “I’ve been really irresponsible and and suffered as a result”. Because having a difficult year but sticking through it is a strength. And people love sharing that.

I’m sure there are lots of social reasons why this is the case. Social status is important, and inflating your public image improves your social status. But that’s for a social scientist to really explain.

I can’t help but think, though, that all social media and public communication is inherently dishonest as a result. You’re only ever getting half of the picture.

You see everyone’s strengths but they are hiding all of their weaknesses. This might be one of the biggest reasons social media is making people so unhappy. We already know that people see the lives of others, and can’t help but compare them with their own lives.

I feel like now I understand why that’s so damaging. You’re literally being bombarded by the best of everyone, and none of the bad. I guess in today’s day and age, you have to suffer alone, thinking you are the only one with weaknesses and actual problems.

It also makes it all the more meaningful when someone actual opens up and is honest enough to share their weaknesses. They are no longer trying to inflate their social standing in front of you.

Maybe it’s not even others that are the biggest problem. Maybe people aren’t even honest with themselves, and hide all of their own weaknesses with themselves with rationalization or even just willful ignorance or delusions.

That’s a very interesting thought to me. There are lots of repercussions of that.

Everyone not only wants to actually have high social standing, they want to feel like they have it. They want to feel like the are great, and have lots of strengths and are generally doing better than average. And for many people (half of all people, technically), that’s going to involve some self-deception.

It also can explain a lot of behavior. Like, (to bring things back to games) take cheaters in video games. Cheating in many games is rampant. To many of us, it seems completely pointless. Yeah you win, but… You cheated. You didn’t demonstrate better skill, and by all accounts, you are in fact worse.

And yet people do it. I think it’s because it still feels good. They can trick themselves into feeling the same way others do when they win fairly. They feel the same sense of accomplishment and strength that others do by actually demonstrating their strength. They are willing to completely ignore the fact that they don’t deserve it.

There are tons of areas this could address, but I think I’ll stop here for today and leave it for another post.

I feel like I am too easily persuaded by powerful arguments.  In the absence of a counter-argument, I often find myself believing and agreeing with things that may even be opposed to my original belief.

Now, I firmly believe that it’s important for people to be willing to accept other viewpoints, even and specifically when they are contrary to their previous ideas. But where do you draw the line? At what point are you just floating in the wind without any ideology to ground you? Are you lacking in critical thinking if you are that easily persuaded?

In general, I think people are too stubborn and closed-minded, to the point of complete ignorance. So I guess I’d rather be too far on the open-minded end of the spectrum. But too far either way and you’ve got a problem.

Jordan Peterson, the Canadian clinical Psychologist and professor, actually speaks of “ideologies” in a negative context. My understanding of his work is that ideologies tend to pigeon-hole people into specific beliefs and ideas, without the ability to accept new information or conflicting conclusions. People with strong ideologies cannot learn and grow.

In his works, he has also said that it’s important when listening to the ideas of others that you allow yourself to believe what they are saying and to truly be open to the possibility that what they are saying is true. I think I’m definitely at that level, but what if I’m too far?

Perhaps the logical next step is to allow myself to be persuaded and convinced, but then to take a step back and analyze this new information and think critically about it to determine its truth.

So for now, I don’t think its necessary to be more closed-minded by any means. Just to take in new information and then reflect on its truth after the fact.

I’ve realized recently that even if I have grandiose ideas that could change everything, within a week or two I’ve almost completely forgotten about them.

At the time I came up with them, of course, I thought that I would never need any kind of reminder. Self-assured of my own profundity, I assume that they are so important that they will be top-of-mind forevermore.

But, that’s not how things play out.

In this blog, specifically, I’ve had ideas and written already about things that I think have the potential to seriously impact my success. And yet, most of them lie dormant; not only not acted-upon, but not even remembered.

Fortunately, I think it’s just a major human weaknesses that we get all excited about things (perhaps rightfully so) and then naturally get distracted by other things or bogged down by the trivial. Unfortunately, it is a serious weakness, and without some kind of mechanism to counteract it, has the potential to completely derail ideas that would otherwise prove extremely valuable.

Now, for the most part, I don’t think I need to go to lengths such as adding calendar reminders about every post and idea that I have. I tend to ignore those anyway.

I’m thinking that I need to regularly read my old posts. And if they hold up to the test of time and hindsight, perhaps create something more permanent. Implement them into my processes.

For now, I think what I’ll do is institute a rule where I either read one of my articles per day, or two every time I actually write one. Over time I can determine whether this is adequate.

Hopefully it will be enough to stay on top of everything and nurture the good ideas and implement them in my life. If there are ones that turn out not to be very relevant or useful, maybe I’ll create a new category to exclude them.

Either way, I think it’s critical to use this kind of self-reflection as more than just an outlet to dump ideas where they will fade away, just so I can clear my head. It needs to actually be useful!