When friends are clients

Often there’s no way to avoid it: some of your friends may be clients. Some of your clients may become friends and community.

This came up recently because a member of our Learning Community was struggling to craft an offer that was sustainable, priced in a healthy way, and didn’t overwhelm her.

Now, the way that offers are often created is that you think about what a client needs, and so you craft the offer around their need. Our process for Crafting an Offer has a bit more involved than that, but that’s the essence.

This is not unreasonable at all, and can be a powerful way to craft at least the beginnings of an offer. But, if you are crafting that offer around someone who is a friend or close community member, then you are going to go astray.

Why? Because there are things that are appropriate for friends, but not clients.

There have been plenty of times that close friends have struggled with business issues. For them, I’ve talked to them while walking the dog, or after dinner, or on a weekend.

Our member had been doing all kinds of things for a close friend who was sorta, but not exactly, someone who might be a client. It felt good to her to give to her friend.

But when she thought about creating an offer that gave all of that to just anyone who was a paying client, the offer felt exhausting. “How is that going to work?”

It’s not going to work.

I strongly believe in mutual aid and care as a pivotal part of how life works best. I also believe that in smaller, human-sized communities, we can’t help but play more than one role with people; friend and practitioner, for instance.

In early stages of business development, it’s much more likely that a certain number of clients will be close to you, just because you haven’t yet done the marketing work to weave together an audience of more distance relationships.

Please, for your own heart and sustainability, please do not craft your offers based on the natural and generous care you would bring to friends and community. Those are “extras” that flow with joy because of the (hopeful) mutuality of the relationship that stretches beyond a single role of client-practitioner.

Instead, craft your offers based on those single role clients, because then you’ll have the best chance of sensing in your heart, in your belly, in your being what feels right when someone is purely a client.

If you give that generosity out to all clients, you’ll burn yourself out, and be plucking apart the precious weaving of community care that we are all so dependent on for a healthy world.

With love,

Mark Silver, M. Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every act of business can be an act of love.

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