People Over Profits

Once upon a time, Focus Lab didn’t have Core Val­ues. My mind­set at the time was that you can’t hire some­one then dic­tate what they val­ue. Sure, you can lim­it who you hire to only those who already val­ue what you do; but I didn’t like that lim­i­ta­tion. Rather than requir­ing team mem­bers share the same val­ues, we had a set of Core Stan­dards. These were stan­dards we held one anoth­er to, and strived to push each oth­er to con­tin­u­al­ly improve upon. They served as the foun­da­tion of behav­iors that drove us to chal­lenge our own sta­tus quo. This arti­cle is about one of those for­mer Core Stan­dards at Focus Lab. (The Core Stan­dards have iron­i­cal­ly since been replaced by Core Val­ues as my thoughts on the top­ic have evolved.)

You’ve prob­a­bly heard the phras­es Busi­ness to Busi­ness and Busi­ness to Con­sumer. These are cat­e­gories that define who a prod­uct or ser­vice is geared towards. They have pur­pose and make sense to me. I’d like to offer anoth­er cat­e­go­ry though. This is a cat­e­go­ry that every sin­gle one of us falls into, regard­less of what we do for our clients.

This is the Peo­ple to Peo­ple business.

Every­thing we do has a per­son on the oth­er end in some form or fash­ion. Whether we’re build­ing cars, bak­ing foods, sell­ing in a retail envi­ron­ment, or design­ing web­sites. Peo­ple are the com­mon denominator.

…it’s peo­ple who impact the prof­its; and prof­its that keep the engine running.

If you’ve been in any kind of busi­ness for long, you’re famil­iar with the impor­tance of prof­it. Prof­it is the mon­ey left over after you’ve cov­ered your costs in doing a job. Prof­it is what gives free­lancers and busi­ness­es the means to invest in what they want. Whether that means mon­ey you take home or oppor­tu­ni­ties to invest in new ideas. Prof­it is the lifeblood of any business.

So we have two key pieces to busi­ness we’ve iden­ti­fied: peo­ple and prof­its. They’re not direct­ly relat­ed all the time, but it’s impor­tant we con­sid­er the rela­tion­ship as often as pos­si­ble. After all, it’s peo­ple who impact the prof­its; and prof­its that keep the engine running.

There are three main ways we place pri­or­i­ty on Peo­ple over Profits.

Pri­or­i­tiz­ing Self over Profits

Have you ever been so busy that you can’t imag­ine tak­ing on a new client imme­di­ate­ly — but then an ​“amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty” comes your way and you can’t see your­self pass­ing on it? Either the mon­ey looks great, the client name, the project con­text, or what­ev­er? This is a tricky sce­nario to work through because tak­ing on more work can be detri­men­tal to many things.

I’m will­ing to bet I’m not the only one who has over­loaded myself with work and had my health suf­fer as a result. It didn’t take too long for me to real­ize my phys­i­cal and men­tal lim­its and allow those lim­its to inform my deci­sions. Some­times you just have to put your own health and well­ness over income oppor­tu­ni­ties. After all, what future good are you to your­self or to soci­ety if you’ve worked your­self to death?

Pri­or­i­tiz­ing Team over Profits

Anoth­er way to look at Peo­ple over Prof­its is in how a finan­cial desire or need impacts a team of peo­ple you work with. Whether that’s a team of oth­er free­lancers, or a team you man­age, your finan­cial deci­sions can often impact them. Some­times for the bet­ter and some­times for the worse.

An exam­ple of a Team over Prof­its deci­sion might be in work­ing with a dif­fi­cult client. The real­i­ty is that some­times we don’t do a stel­lar job at pre-qual­i­fy­ing clients and mak­ing sure they’re a good fit for us. Or maybe we learn mid-project that they’re just flat-out rude and dis­re­spect­ful to every­one. In my book that’s some­one who has to go. Their inter­ac­tions are neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing the whole team. That impact often seeps into oth­er projects and even time away from work.

In a sit­u­a­tion like this, I would place more val­ue in a healthy and hap­py team over the prof­it that the project might bring in.

Pri­or­i­tiz­ing Clients over Profits

The final major way we keep Peo­ple over Prof­its is by respect­ing our clients, old and new, above oppor­tu­ni­ties for prof­its. This comes in a few shapes and sizes but I’d like to share one exam­ple that prob­a­bly crys­tal­lizes it best.

A cou­ple of years ago we were hired by a guy who was ready to build the app and busi­ness of his dream. He was boot­strap­ping it him­self, which always makes it a lit­tle more per­son­al and close to heart. We did some fan­tas­tic work with him and every­one was excit­ed about the results.

Fast for­ward about 9 months and a major U.S. net­work reach­es out to us for near-iden­ti­cal work. It turns out they saw the work we did for this client and want­ed to hire us to do the same project for them. As you can prob­a­bly assume, they had a much larg­er wal­let to pay for the work. It was quite the lucra­tive opportunity.

Now, we didn’t have any type of exclu­siv­i­ty agree­ment in place with our orig­i­nal client. There was noth­ing legal­ly stop­ping us from doing work with the large net­work cor­po­ra­tion. That said, they would be a direct com­peti­tor to our client. They wouldn’t have any trou­ble bury­ing him in a busi­ness and mar­ket share sense. We felt like tak­ing the job would not be the right thing to do to our client. So we opt­ed to pass on the project.

We then took it one step fur­ther. We were able to con­nect the large net­work to our client direct­ly. Our inten­tion was to see if there was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for part­ner­ship in some way between the two. We had no idea where their con­ver­sa­tion would land: a part­ner­ship, and acqui­si­tion, etc. But we at least want­ed to go the extra mile in try­ing to help our client out.

In the end, noth­ing hap­pened. We didn’t take the work. There was no ​“amaz­ing sto­ry end­ing” with our client and the large net­work. But we know we made the right move. Our rela­tion­ship with our client, and our char­ac­ter as a whole, was more impor­tant to us.

What Are Your Priorities?

I think Peo­ple over Prof­its is a stan­dard every­one can and should hold them­selves to. Do you? Where and how? I bet if you think about your career so far you can prob­a­bly come up with a thought or idea you’ve had — or even an action you’ve tak­en — that demon­strates Peo­ple over Profits.

Give it some thought and share it with some­one today.