Freedom’s Twin Value
Jeffrey Czajka • July 1, 2025
During the first part of July, our country has a heighten focus on freedom. Everyone gets excited for barbeques, parades, fireworks, and all the celebrations that go along with the founding of this great country. We celebrate the freedom to choose, to be, and to have the beliefs, values, and opinions that each of us hold so dear. We LOVE our freedom.
As a society we apply this freedom to pursue any profession or career we desire. It is in fact, our “unalienable right” to pursue happiness. Free from any Governmental interference or control that tells us what to do or how to do it. We aspire to have great things earned from the rewards of our efforts. It is this aspiration that drives our efforts to iterate, expand, and create. As employees and business owners our efforts combine to make the macro economy grow.
While the value of freedom that we all cherish and celebrate on the 4th of July is alive and well at the beginning of the month, it quickly fades. Not because we don’t want it any more, it has become unimportant, or something has taken it’s place. That passion diminishes significantly by the end of the month because we get confronted by it’s twin value that is so toilsome.
What many do not know, or at least do not realize, is that the twin value of freedom is discipline. You cannot have true freedom without discipline. Do you want to get in shape? You need to have discipline to workout and eat right. Do you want to grow your sales? You need to have the discipline to do prospecting and sales. Do you want your business to grow? You need to have the discipline to manage all the departments; not just your favorite one.
In our professional lives (and maybe our personal lives too), we often say we have the freedom to choose what to do. We believe our freedom allows us to delegate or leverage a tool or out source a function. This can result in cultivating an intitled mentality. We gave “them” a responsibility and we are then entitled to the result we expect.
While we are free to choose, that choice also entails an outcome. Telling your sales team their quote does not alone ensure their success. Did you have the discipline to research their skills to see if they were even capable? Did you have the discipline to provide them the resources and tools to enable their success? Did you have the discipline to check in with them on a regular basis to track progress?
On the radio this morning, the daily call-in question was “would you rather have a raise or more feedback from you boss?”. They said their online poll had something like 65% of respondents say “feedback”, but a higher percentage of those calling in said “more pay”. Interesting… While this question may spark good interaction with the radio show audience, it oversimplifies a very complex topic for all parties involved. There is base pay, variable compensation, bonuses, benefits, time flexibility, time off, and so many other things to consider when designing (or accepting) a compensation package which makes looking at the two radio options very situational. Personally, I’ve always found this topic very interesting and revealing when talking with owners/managers. Compensation policies explain a lot about employee retention, productivity, and customer service levels. It also requires the right person to be the in the right job. In the end, there are a ton of creative and impactful ways to attract, retain, and reward employees to achieve growth for everyone. As the radio poll suggest, it is not all about the money, but the money is important.
During a recent conversation with one of my consulting clients today, they made a comment justifying their lack of activity this past week because they want to focus on quality over quantity. Immediately, my internal fallacy detector went off! It doesn’t matter what industry or profession you are in – you could be a financial advisor, business banker, loan officer, wholesaler, dentist, optometrist, family practice, psychologist, a lawyer, CPA, engineer, or any other service orientated profession that needs to build a client base while delivering their services to paying clients – this fallacy of quality over quantity applies to you. It’s a great point to dive into if we truly want to experience exponential growth. There are so many impacts that we could discuss on this topic. To one extreme, focusing on too high of “quality” could turn you into a “whale hunter”. You might land the big one, but are you able to stay in business until it happens? Another extreme is, are you educated or experienced enough in your specific profession to be able to handle the “quality” you aspire to work with? Only seeking high “quality” clients typically goes with less but bigger clients. At this point in your career, are you okay with concentration risk? Each client is a larger percentage of your business and if your “quality” client leaves you, a larger percentage of your revenue leaves you too. One way to better understand this dilemma of quality and quantity is to look at building a client base from a game of numbers perspective. Each industry / profession (and person) will have different numbers, but no one is perfect. Not every prospect you meet with becomes a client. Whatever your ratio is, it applies to prospects of any quality level. If you need to get 10 prospects to gain 1 client, you can’t obtain 5 prospects and then justify it by saying “I’m focusing on quality over quantity”. Say what you want, but if you need 10 and get 5, at best you get half a client. Now since we are dealing with real people, you can’t get half, so reality says (more than likely) you round down and get zero. Another reason why people say such fallacy is they are mentally searching for justification of poor performance. On one hand, it might just be laziness. (We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and rule that one out.) More likely, it is poor execution skills. People may not know what to do. If they know what, they many do not know how. If they know both, they may not be very good at it. For many people this is a combination problem they need help solving. You may say, one “quality” client is better than 3 “inferior” clients. That may be true. No one would rightfully argue against quality control measures being in place. That said, if your object is exponential growth over a short period of time, you can never sacrifice one for the other in this equation. You must uphold your quality control AND do the quantity needed. If you deliver both quality and quantity at the targeted levels, the best thing that could happen is you arrive at your goal early. The worst thing that happens is you reach your goal on the intended deadline. If you miss the goal, you probably had the wrong metrics. Building a clientele is a professional exercise comprised of art, science, and execution. It is good to define your quality control measures, but you still need to do the appropriate amount of work to get the job done.