There are so many little things that we do for our clients that most of our clients never know about.

Imagine you hired a painter to paint the outside of your house.

And, instead of doing 3 coats of paint like you agreed on, they ended up doing 10 instead?  How crazy would that be?

Well, I find that a lot of agencies have a tendency to unnecessarily overdeliver…

… over delivering on websites

… doing lots of SEO tactics when just the basics might do the job

… designing or redesigning things

… adding in bells and whistles nobody asked for

Don’t get me wrong.  I love to over deliver and create WOW experiences for my clients.  But there comes a point where it’s detrimental.

For years I was stuck in over delivery mode for two reasons:

1. I wanted to provide great service & quality for my clients.

2. I was SO worried about my clients not seeing results and not liking my work

The first reason was noble, but the second reason was me being neurotic and it wasn’t healthy.

I held so much fear over what I thought clients would think of the work I did for them.  But what’s funny is, I almost NEVER got a complaint.  Clients LOVED working with me.  I got TONS of referrals and words of encouragement.  But I still worried that they wouldn’t be pleased with the work I did.

It was crippling. 

I remember one time with this one client on a “snowflake project” that involved custom programming.  The reality was, just like the story about the 10 coats of paint, the client wasn’t paying me for this extra work, and would never understand or appreciate the kind of magic I was working to actually pull off. 

When they gave me feedback on it, I was crushed.  It wasn’t very bad or negative, but it wrecked my day and killed my productivity.  I was so hard on myself.  I contemplated just quitting.

Why was I putting myself through this?  Well, I came to discover that I was operating under the idea that “the more I do, the more I’m worth.”

This is such a backward way to live, but so many of us do it.

I so badly wanted to be worthy of my client’s respect and their money and my brain told me that the only way to be worthy is to work hard for it.

This is something I struggled with for years, and to be honest it still shows up for me from time to time.

If you’ve managed to tie your self-worth in your agency to the quantity or quality of work that you do, know that you’re not alone. 

I’ve found that simply being aware of this tendency and surrounding myself with people who know this is my tendency (or even struggle with it themselves) has been such a huge help, and I hope that sharing this part of my story is helpful to you. 

You’re already worthy.

If you’re curious about how to know if you’re overdelivering, or what a healthy balance is, apply for a coaching call with our Director of Coaching. Let's explore what's possible for you and your agency.