Would You Hire Yourself?

Here's an exercise that takes about thirty seconds and can be genuinely humbling. Imagine, for a moment, that you are your own client. You've hired yourself. You're on the receiving end of your own follow-up, your own responsiveness, your own attention, your own attitude on a Tuesday afternoon when you're tired and behind.

Now answer the question, and answer it inwardly and honestly, because nobody's watching: would you hire you?

For some of us that's a tough one. It's much easier to assess everyone else's service than to turn the lens around. But this is the exercise that actually moves the needle, because you can't fix what you won't look at. Are you providing the kind of service you would want to receive? Are you living up to the Golden Rule — treating clients the way you'd want to be treated in their shoes? That's not a rhetorical flourish. It's a diagnostic, and it deserves a real answer.

Four questions that tell the truth

“Would you hire you?” is the headline. Underneath it sit four more specific questions, and I'd encourage you to actually sit with each one rather than skim past. This is where the honest self-assessment lives.

• Do I recognize the total lifetime value of my client? In commission-driven work it's easy to see only the current paycheck. But a client's real value isn't just what they buy from you — it's that plus everyone they'll ever send your way over the years. Serve someone as though they're a one-time transaction, and you'll treat them like one. See the whole lifetime, and everything changes.
• Do I make my clients feel as important as they truly are? Most of us have said some version of “you're my only client!” — a tongue-in-cheek line the client knows isn't literally true. The question isn't whether you say it. It's whether your actions back it up, or whether you're just paying lip service to the idea.
• Do I know why my clients buy? Everyone has their own reasons for the choices they make, and those reasons never have anything to do with your needs. You might want the sale because rent is due — but your reasons don't matter to the client. Only theirs do. And here's the harder version: do you know why they buy from you specifically, and not someone else?
• Am I enthusiastic, friendly, and pleasant? Common-sense stuff — and still worth checking. We all have days when we feel less than pleasant. The question is whether the person across from you can tell, and whether “off day” has quietly become your default setting without your noticing.

The lifetime-value shift

Of those four, the first one reorganizes everything, so let me stay on it. When you genuinely absorb a client's total lifetime value, you stop doing the math on today and start doing it on the whole relationship. That single client isn't a paycheck — they're a decade of business plus a network of people they'll vouch for you to. Suddenly the extra ten minutes, the follow-up call, the small courtesy that costs you nothing but attention — none of it looks like a cost anymore. It looks like an investment in the most valuable asset you have.

What this means to you is that the client sitting in front of you is almost always worth more than they appear at this moment. Treat them accordingly, not because it's a technique, but because it's simply accurate. The professional who sees the lifetime serves differently than the one who sees the transaction — and clients feel exactly which one they're dealing with.

Why they buy from you

I want to press on the third question a little, because it trips people up. It's not enough to know why someone buys the general thing you sell. You need to understand why they buy it from you. That answer is rarely the price and rarely the product — those can usually be matched down the street. More often it's something about how you make them feel: understood, safe, taken care of. If you don't know what that something is, you're vulnerable, because you can't protect an advantage you can't name. And if you do know it, you've found the exact thing to keep doing on purpose.

How Prospect & Flourish approaches this

In the program, this self-audit is where the Service & Trust work gets personal. It's one thing to nod along with rules about serving for the joy of it or treating complaints as cries for service. It's another to put yourself honestly in your own client's chair and grade what you find. That's uncomfortable by design — I'd rather hand you a hard question you can actually use than a comfortable one that changes nothing. Run the audit regularly, not to beat yourself up, but to keep yourself honest: recognize the full lifetime value of the people you serve, make sure your actions match your words, understand why they truly choose you, and be someone genuinely pleasant to deal with. Do that, and the answer to “would you hire you?” stops being a worry and starts being your competitive edge.

Frequently asked questions