Dov Gordon (@dovgordon) helps consultants, experts, and small professional service firms build a steady, consistent, predictable flow of ideal clients. He also tells us why it’s important to take “Seddon Days” by putting our priorities in perspective and what we can learn by pondering the gravity of The Last Webinar.
The Cheat Sheet:
- As a business owner, why would you ever take on a client who’s not a good fit?
- What was The Last Webinar, and what does it mean to take a Seddon Day?
- Ask yourself Mike’s five questions from The Last Webinar.
- Do you postpone life for work? If so, why are you working?
- It’s not morbid to consider the welfare of your loved ones if you should shuffle off your mortal coil before they do — it’s practical.
- And so much more…
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Are you a small business entrepreneur who loves what you do, but you’re having trouble attracting a consistent flow of ideal clients? Or maybe you’ve just lost your way and you’ve forgotten why you’re working so hard.
In episode 484 of The Art of Charm, Dov Gordon joins us to discuss how he helps business owners like you build simple marketing and selling systems that bring in all the clients you want. He also shares what it means to take a Seddon Day and how saying goodbye to an old friend made The Last Webinar he ever did continue to teach lessons that live on.
More About This Show
When you run your own business, it’s important to have clients. But as you’ll discover over time, some clients are better than others — and it’s not all about the money. Sometimes you get clients who demand more than they’re willing to reciprocate. Other times, you get clients who are never satisfied. Once in a while, you’ll get a client who just isn’t a good fit for a number of reasons that maybe aren’t easily identified. And unless you can learn how to spot and shed these bad fit clients, they’ll continue to be bad for business.
“In order to say no to a client who’s not a good fit,” says Dov Gordon, adopting a point he once heard from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People author Stephen Covey, “you have to have a stronger yes burning on the inside. And what that means to me — and in what we do — is why would you take a client who’s not a good fit? You take a client who’s not a good fit because you’re afraid that you won’t be able to find a client who is a good fit. Or you won’t have enough business otherwise. But once you have a simple, repeatable process — a marketing and selling process that you know works — it’s a lot easier to say no to a client who’s not a good fit, which is of course the right thing to do for everybody.”
But sometimes it takes a big event to drive home the urgency of making difficult decisions sooner rather than later — but also taking a step back to reflect on what’s really important in life. Enter the story of Dov’s friend Mike Seddon and The Last Webinar.
The Last Webinar
Mike Seddon was a member of Dov’s Joint Venture Master Mind group. He also happened to be a good friend. One day, Mike dropped the heavy news that he only had a few weeks to live — a few months, tops. For a 51-year-old like Mike, this should have been devastating news. For close friends like Dov, it definitely was. But as Mike wrote at the time of his revelation to Dov, “He was surprised at how well I was taking the news and I told him it was because I had no regrets. I’d [built] a business to give me a life I wanted.”
“I proposed to Mike that he put together what we called The Last Webinar,” says Dov. “And a big part of that reason was because I figured, hey, here’s this guy who suddenly has his whole life turned upside-down or sideways. The way he sees everyday things — the way he sees everything — I’m sure has just shifted. And I wanted to know how he sees things. I wanted the benefit of that perspective, because I like to learn from other people’s experiences.”
Mike Seddon passed about three months after his prognosis. But from The Last Webinar and the circumstances around it came the idea of Seddon Days — proposed by community colleague Nick Jervis — as those days when you take a step back and reflect as a way to ensure you’re getting the most out of your time.
“As a society, we don’t take enough time to step back and remember what we’re really trying to do, reflect on how well we’re doing it, and what small change [we] need to make,” says Dov. Taking a Seddon Day is a way of doing this while honoring the spirit of its namesake.
Time is short, but it will pass us by before we know it if we don’t take pause to consider the implications of our actions (or inactions).
Mike’s Five Questions
When you’re taking a Seddon Day — whether you decide to set aside an hour or 24 hours — these are the five questions Mike recommended we ponder:
- What is my why, and am I living it? Do you say you’re doing what you do because of your family, yet you work so much that you never get to spend time with them?
- What does success look like? Are we chasing dreams that either don’t make sense or aren’t really what we want? Do we pursue mastery over our challenges or follow dead-end temptations?
- Am I enjoying the journey? Have you given yourself permission to take the best road to your destination? Don’t forget to look around and appreciate the scenery on your way there.
- Am I hanging out with the right people? “A true friend,” says Dov, “is someone who really cares about you enough to tell you what you need to hear, even if it’s not what you want to hear.” Have you surrounded yourself with people who hold you to a high standard and goad you into being better? (Regular listeners know we’ve talked about this quite a bit on The Art of Charm.)
- What would happen to my loved ones if I was no longer around? As Mike’s situation should drive home, you never know what tomorrow’s going to bring. But the truth is, nobody’s immortal (at least not yet). We should make as many preparations as possible to ensure the welfare of our loved ones just in case our mortal coil is shuffled off sooner than theirs. Consider how life insurance, financial planning, and a last will and testament will make things easier for them during an already difficult time.
Be sure to check out the resources below for links to not only Mike Seddon’s legacy, but for valuable tips Dov has to share that we didn’t quite have time to address in this episode. We squeezed a lot out of our limited time together, but we easily could have kept going for another hour!
THANKS, DOV GORDON!
Resources from this episode:
- Mike Seddon’s Fund Raising for Shakespeare Hospice
- Life Is Short. Turn Off Your Computer by Matthew Kimberley
- The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
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