Something to think about if you are a service of any kind.
But, especially if you’re do freelance copywriting.
Many years ago, my pal Michael Senoff interviewed the great, and esteemed and insanely prolific copywriter Bob Bly. And in that interview he quoted someone (name escapes me) who said something about clients that was so profound at the time, I all but tattooed it on the back of my hands so I could see it whenever I typed anything.
Something that explained a lot of dumb client decisions.
But also explained a lot of brilliant client decisions, too.
And, overall, made me a much better copywriter, a more discerning copywriter as far as who I took on as clients, and a much more patient copywriter when it came to dealing with clients altogether.
Anyway, here is what he quoted:
(paraphrased – but this was the gist of it)
“I can deal with a client that is arrogant. I can deal with a client who is ignorant. What I can’t deal with is a client who is both.”
What does this mean?
It means ignorant clients who don’t know anything, and know they don’t know anything, and stay in their lane and let you stay in your lane to do what you need to do to make them more sales are great.
Arrogant clients, on the other hand, are also great.
You may not “like” them, but they can teach you a lot.
In fact, I liked very few of the arrogant clients. But I am the first to admit what I did like was the results that happened after humbling myself, shutting up, and just taking their advice. They are arrogant because they are successful, not the other way around.
These two kinds of clients above are like “unicorn” clients.
If you have them, you’re a fortunate soul indeed.
But then… there’s the clients who are both ignorant and arrogant. They’ve never written a single ad probably in their lives. And even if they did, the rest of their marketing did the real work, and their copy just happened to work. They most likely got their training from a goo-roo spouting theory while prancing around a mastermind room or seminar stage. Or they read a single book at some point, and suddenly they’re the Second Coming of Gary Halbert.
But in reality, they don’t know anything.
Have no real experience at all.
Just know how to parrot what someone else said, did, thinks.
It’s like Johnny Utah’s boss in Point Break tells him on his first day at the FBI:
“You may have been in the top 2% of your class at Quantico,… but out here you have exactly zero hours of experience in the field. You know nothing, in fact, less than nothing. lf you knew you knew nothing, that’d be something, but you don’t.”
That, in my experience, was the ignorant & arrogant clients.
Anyway, here’s why I bring it up:
You won’t learn a single thing from them. Nor, probably, will you learn anything from ignorant clients (that’s why they hired you.) But the arrogant clients? The ones who absolutely know what they’re doing, have the track record to prove it, and aren’t going to let you or any other copywriter screw up what works for them?
Gold.
Again, you may or may not “like” the arrogant ones.
I had some huge blowout fights with a couple of mine.
But ultimately they made me much better.
And for that, I am grateful, even I think they’re SOBs.
If you want to learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:
Ben Settle
