I realised today that it's been something like 3 or 4 years now since I actually made an outbound call to a potential client. Either warm or cold.

And as you probably know, I'm a great believer in not chasing, After a potential client has called me and we've spoken, I drop them a couple of follow up emails. But if they don't bite, I let it go and just continue with my regular value-added email follow up.

Now I'm absolutely certain that I could have won a bunch more business if I'd been more aggressive about outbound calling and chasing.

But you know what? I'm doing pretty well without needing to do all that.

I don't enjoy it, and one of the big advantages of having a lot of inbound leads is that I just don't need to do it.

In business, you sometimes have to go outside your comfort zone. Push yourself to do what's right and what's needed even if you don't personally enjoy it.

But how long can you keep that up?

Not very long I reckon.

One of the things about having your own business is you can shape it around what you want to do. If you're not enjoying your business, you might as well have a job really.

And the thing I've found that gives the most control and the most options is to have a steady flow of leads coming in to your business.

With a steady flow of leads (and a decent nurture system like email marketing) you can pick and choose who you work with and what you do.

If you find you're working with people you don't really want to work with, or on projects or topics you're not enjoying as much as you could my advice is that rather than trying to “fix” those relationships and projects, you should focus on bringing a lot more leads into your pipeline.

That way you can choose to work on the things you find the most fulfilling. With the people you enjoy working with. You get freedom.