As my consulting business matures, I’ve noticed some changes in it. I’m working more and more with the same people and organizations, all of whom now fall into more or less the same social and professional network. It’s nice in that I can be slightly less formal about the work and I feel like I’m part of this particular network. I like feeling like I belong somewhere even as I rove from project to project. But I’m also realizing there’s something specifically hard about not being new to my clients anymore, and it reminds me of a similar process that happens to shiny new people who move to town and take a community by storm and then suddenly find they are less interesting and new than they used to be.
The longer you work or play with the same people, the more you let your hair down and the more time they have to see your true strengths and weaknesses. We first show off our good side and are praised for it–as consultants, it’s how we get business, as new kids in town, it’s how we make friends and establish a social network. Also, people enjoy new things and then at some point, the novelty just wears off. It’s a vulnerable feeling once you’ve messed up the first (or third, or tenth) time and people have noticed, even commented, and also when you realize that everyone can see your weaknesses as well as your strengths. It’s also vulnerable when people start to take my good qualities for granted and not see me as shiny and new. What it’s meant for me as a consulting professional is that the initial reaction I got–you hung the moon, you are the smartest person ever–has given way to more criticism (you are good at x but less good at y) and in some cases, people passing me over for new jobs.
I don’t know what I expected would happen as my business grew and matured; I don’t think I had any specific expectations. But I was somewhat unprepared for THIS phenomenon. I guess I thought that since I am constantly taking new jobs as a consultant that I would constantly meet new people and go through a similar process over and over again of making new relationships, impressing people with my best face, and leaving before they realized too many of my faults or before the novelty wore off. It’s nice to see the same people and to watch the projects grow, but I wasn’t really prepared for how it feels to be passed over for a job not because people don’t know how good you are (which is how it feels when strangers don’t hire me), but because they know me too well.
What will the next phase be, I wonder? Are people such neophiles that eventually I’ll stop being hired by the same group at all and have to find a whole new set of clients? Or will we settle in and I’ll be hired for some jobs, but maybe not the ones I’d have been hired for if I were still shiny?
