Don’t Love Your Clients? 4 Powerful Ways to Get Your Passion Back
Let’s get real: being an agency owner is an exciting and rewarding career — but that doesn’t mean every PR pro is passionate about every client! It’s okay if you’re not feeling the love for a certain client, project, or task. Every agency owner will experience this at some point in their career — and you don’t always have to love your clients to be a boss at what you do.
What’s important is that you find your passion within yourself. Finding little pockets of passion is the key to loving your agency and career. When you reframe challenging projects, campaigns, and retainers as opportunities for growth and excitement, you can rediscover inspiration and get your mojo back!
I also did a video training on this topic, if you're craving more... Watch it here!
#1: Focus on What You’re Building Towards
PR is full of ebbs and flows. Not every day can be fun and exciting. That said, reframing those challenges by focusing on what you’re working toward can motivate you even when you don’t love your clients. Let’s take a look at how you can shift your mindset.
Establish a Vision
Having a clear vision for your agency’s future will help you work through these slower periods when you don’t love your clients. Sometimes the fulfilling part isn’t the day-to-day work — it’s the path you’re on!
Think about what success looks like to you. What niche are you working in? How are you splitting your time between the work and your family? What is your team dynamic like? Knowing you have all this in your future can help reignite your spark for your agency.
Set Motivational Goals
Set clear goals outside of client work that you’re making progress on every day. These goals can be about your agency (like bringing on a new team member) or your personal life (like starting a mindfulness practice).
Be sure to celebrate your progress on these non-client goals! You deserve to be rewarded for your hard work — both in and out of the office.
Kick Burnout to the Curb
Maybe your issue isn’t with loving your clients…it’s with the amount of client work you’re taking on! Burnout can zap your enjoyment super quickly. See if you can delegate a few tasks to another team member, or hire a freelancer to outsource the work that’s dragging you down.
Assess Your Schedule
Make sure you have time to work on your business, not just in your business, even if it means changing your schedule. Your agency should receive all the love and attention your clients do. You might not be feeling passionate about your agency simply because you haven’t taken the time and energy to focus on it!
Put in the Time
Dedicate time to back-end projects that will move the needle for your business and revitalize your enthusiasm — like revamping your website, curating a new brand aesthetic, or developing a proposal template for your dream clients (hint: we have an awesome proposal template in The Agency Accelerator to help you get started!).
#2: Ask Yourself What You Need to Be Passionate About a Client
We’re all passionate about PR, but how we all feel that passion is totally unique! Think about what YOU need to love your clients or projects.
Reflect on times you’ve felt super passionate when working with your clients. Ask yourself: What got me so excited and invested in those moments?
Try to identify common themes between these moments, like the types of products you were launching, the social platforms you used, or your deliverables. Knowing what motivates you is the first step toward reclaiming your passion.
#3: Create Opportunities to Cultivate Your Passions
Passion doesn’t just happen — you need to proactively create opportunities to experience passion and excitement in your agency.
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Change Your Approach
Try only accepting work you know you’ll be passionate about, or adjust your client projects and retainers to turn them into something you can be more passionate about.
Maybe you can upsell your client on a service you LOVE providing! You could also stop offering a service you don’t enjoy as much or work with your team to delegate smaller tasks. With that extra time in your schedule, you could offer a new service you love or spend those hours working on growing your agency.
Look for the Good
Along with those external changes, check in and be honest with yourself. If it’s a constant struggle to love your clients, it might be less about the situation and more about your mindset.
Shifting your perspective is a big part of cultivating your passion. Create space to highlight the positives about your client work more often. Try to focus on particular aspects of your current projects or retainers that make you feel passionate and excited.
Remember to celebrate your wins (no matter how small!) with your team. Take the time to sit in those feelings of happiness as you acknowledge your hard work. The more chances you give yourself to feel positive, the more satisfied you’ll be with your agency and clients.
#4: Accept that You Might Not Love Your Clients All the Time
Okay, hard truth time: you likely won’t be out-of-this-world passionate about all of your clients…
And that’s okay!!
We all want to feel passionate in our careers (especially as entrepreneurs), but not every day can be sunshine and rainbows.
There will be hard days filled with tough client conversations or tasks you just don’t love. It’s all part of the journey. You don’t have to love everything about entrepreneurship to appreciate the awesome parts of owning an agency!
Think about all the freedom entrepreneurship gives you! Being an agency owner lets you:
You can tailor-make your career to your liking! And that is something to celebrate — even when you’re stuck doing paperwork or running your numbers.
Every client is valuable, even if you’re not as passionate about them as some of your other partnerships. Whether a client is your absolute favorite or one you’re a little low on, you’ll still gain important industry experience while working with them. You don’t have to love your clients to view your partnerships as an opportunity to grow your skills and expertise.
Every client passing through your agency will make you a better, stronger PR pro.
As you work with more and more clients and accumulate more experience and expertise, you’ll be able to work with fun and exciting clients in the future.
Some clients push you toward what you’re truly passionate about. Use these partnerships as a springboard to work with your dream clients and continue building an agency you love.
Don’t let your clients get you down! It’s totally normal not to love your clients all the time. Check your perspective, remember your passions, and focus on the value of every opportunity — because it’s up to you to cultivate passion, excitement, and inspiration in your career!
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