📈 TREE 624: Jeff Gill does the hustle

Yesterday’s poll put me in the mood to ask questions. I’m starting to think about FFOREST’s fourth year which starts in September. I want to make sure we are focussed on what works for you.

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I put in properly hard graft to build my design business. I went all over North Wales cold-calling people I thought might be good clients. It worked. I got clients. I did dumb things too. I wanted to use an image of Vladimir Lenin in a newspaper ad for double-glazing. The client said no. I learned that you need to know your audience. That same client fired me when he found out I was also making ads for his main competitor. That was fine though. I like his competitor better. I put in a stupid numbers of hours to get a menswear shop on board as a client. Then I told the owner I couldn’t deliver the ads he needed because I was going to Tucson for my sister’s wedding. He fired me. I learned to under-promise and over-deliver. Over the months I developed a decent reputation and people started calling me. After the first year, I didn’t need my salesman hat any more.

After two or three years, I was so busy I put my rates up to try and slow down the flow of work. My clients didn’t blink. I was just as busy but I had more money. The one thing I never did was turn down work. I was afraid that if I said no to a job there might not be any jobs to say yes to later. I never transitioned away from the hustle mindset. I needed the hustle to survive at the beginning. Once the business was established, It would have been smart for me to curate my clients more intentionally. Instead, my fear kept me saying yes to everything and I came a hair’s breadth from serious burnout.

In the early 2000s I presented this logo to a startup called The Fresh Pasta Company. They chose one of my other concepts instead. Like most new businesses, it failed after a couple years. I like to think it’s because they didn’t choose this logo. Obviously, that’s not the reason, but I like to think it is because, 20 years on, I still love this logo (even though I can now see about 15 things I want to tweak).

Manic Street Preachers’ Forever Delayed was one of my favourite compilations to listen to when I was working back in the day. This song is so stylish.

Different mindsets are required for different types of success. I mastered the hustle but didn’t understand the mindset I needed to properly develop my business. Do you know where you are in your work and what kind of mindset it requires right now?

Grow slowly
Jeff