When I was first thinking about starting up Hogtown Consulting I spoke to lots and lots of people to get all the advice that I could. One piece among many that I remember was on what makes clients want to recommend you, or not, ‘assuming you do a decent job they will recommend you if you were enjoyable to work with, if you weren’t they won’t’. That struck me as a bit shallow at the time I think.

However the more I think about that advice the more it seems like it might be true. Right now I’m looking for an accountant to help with my GST year-end. I’ve got several recommendations from people I trust, and when I look at the ones that look worth pursuing it is all about the ones that I will enjoy working with. Of course this is a business oriented version of the term enjoy, I want them to do a good job of my accounts and maybe save me a tax dollar or two, not go out for a drink. I think in this context enjoy means that they need to get what I’m about, what my priorities are and how I like to work, someone who does that I could enjoy working with and someone who doesn’t would be a chore.

So, like lots of that pre-startup advice, I’m coming to see a lot of sense in this particular piece.