As a smaller company, we spend a lot of time in business development mode as I’m sure many entrepreneurs do, particularly early in their company’s history. In a lot of those networking/client meetings, we get asked who our ideal client is. The truth is, we are a small and nimble company so our ideal client changes a little bit with each project we take on, we get closer to the true ideal that most people want – people we enjoy working with, have money (or the forethought to have a plan to get money) and pay on time. It’s a bonus if their work is interesting, but not a requirement.
Truth be told, our true ideal client is a large-scale building owner that has a portfolio of at least 20 buildings that we can work through and help them plan long term for, that is where we shine. However, those are difficult to come by, and we enjoy working with smaller scale owners that value us as partners as well.
While we have an idea and are getting clearer on who our ideal clients are, we are also getting crystal clear on who our ideal clients are not. It isn’t someone who doesn’t value human life.
Over the course of my career I have two clients weighing the cost of a human life. I’m paraphrasing here, but both said something along the lines of “What is the cost if something falls off our building and hits someone?” They both said that…out loud…. in meetings. Not that I believe it’s ok to even think that, but they had the lack of empathy enough to say it out loud! I sympathize with building owners these days, there are a multitude of issues hitting them from all angles – increased vacancy, higher interest rates, increasing costs of utilities and taxes, new greenhouse gas initiatives, all while trying to run a profitable building and business. It’s not easy, and I’m sure I am missing a ton of things building owners must think about on a daily basis, but in the words of Stephen Covey, let’s keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing is that we are all in this together and we can find creating solutions that don’t involve putting the public at risk.
It is pretty safe to say that if you are wondering what the cost of human life is, you may not be the right fit client for us, and that’s ok, there may be a firm out there that is a good fit for you, but I sure hope not. If you are interested in finding an answer though, look no further than our friends in the insurance industry. They use the human life value (HLV) approach when figuring out how much life insurance someone should have.
Kevin M. Duffy
Principal
Duffy Engineering
