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Don’t Be Afraid to Obsess About Your Work
When you are building your own business some obsession cannot hurt
During the twenty years that I spent in advertising, I came across quite a few weirdos as clients. I have always been an empath and it made it easy to work with me — for them, not always for me. I was always there, beyond the professional relationship we always formed some sort of bond too that made them overshare their personal lives too. I was not only their strategic partner but in lots of cases, I was also their therapist.
But as I truly believe that people buy people and not services, I didn’t mind connecting with them.
I once had a client who was slightly obsessed with the brands that he was responsible for. And when I say slightly, I really mean a lot. He spent days and nights worrying about sales figures, media results; he wrote copy and he started to learn design so that he could help us — the agency — come up with the best possible layout and headline.
He was an annoying busybody and a nervous wreck. He gave us extra tasks when he wanted to try out yet another creative approach, only to go back to the initial proposal of day one. We burnt a lot of energy just to jump through the hoops he pushed in front of us.
