I first started out in business thinking it was all about me, something I learned from behind-the-marketing scenes at the corporations which employed me. Then a few years later, I adopted the advice of various marketing business experts about clients: It’s all about them.

Yet that grovelling sort of mindset always felt phony and compliant.

“I will do whatever you say in order to get your money.” It made me feel powerless. It made me feel like a fraud. It made me feel cheap.

You and your client may be exchanging money, but you’re also involved in a spiritual exchange. I’m defining spiritual here to mean operating on something other than greed, some set of values that you and your business stand for no matter what.  (more…)