Question: What’s a win mean to you in your profession or craft?

There’s the thrill of landing a new client. Securing a big project has its own heft in momentum and self-esteem riches. Taking great projects to the finish line is a whole other echelon of success relatable by anyone who’s put in the dedication and hard work.

Here’s how a few PDX professionals defined their “wins”:

"Meeting my daily quota of billable work so that my boss doesn't fire me." "Learning things you didn't expect to learn on the way… so like unexpected things coming up, but in a good way." "It's a win if I'm on track with my projects." "Sometimes just having everything go as planned is a win… with no bumps in the road, or crazy unexpected things coming up." "It's a win if I have a productive day, whether that means completing a task on my list of things to do, or making progress." "Wins have various degrees. A win is when you added value to your client that was more than equal to your compensation." "It's getting something done faster than expected, with a better quality end result than expected."

Everyone has their own definition. Winning isn’t so black and white across industries. It’s interesting to see the grays come to life.

Building momentum is a win to me.

Here’s to one of my favorite work songs to fuel you through the rest of this post:

Since I spend most of my days thrashing through research, trial, error, testing, and executing, I have to be extremely aware of any nuggets of value or insight that I can gather. This means that any discovery is a big win. Or, perhaps I’ve just conditioned myself to believe so. Nevertheless, it’s a fantastic trip.

I recently had the great pleasure of inviting clients into the office to give some feedback about our services at their recent event. It was a great chat. We snacked, broke the ice by catching each other up to our respective lives, recalling the event (now a few weeks old), and then went into a few survey questions that touched upon why the client chose our services and how we performed.

As I hopped onto my train home, I listened to an audio recording of the meeting. There were strong points, witty comments, sharp criticisms, and a lot of great conversation captured in those 20 minutes.

As for the spoils...

I received three meaty testimonials that may supercharge future marketing projects.

There’s something magical about hearing customers describe why they loved your service in their own words. It’s devoid of marketing or sales language. No cliches or kitschiness here. You can’t make this stuff up.

We also scored a premise for a very interesting download for potential clients inspired by our conversation, as well as an opportunity to become a reference guide to a community Wiki page, leading to beneficial linkage.

Not bad for a conversation, some food, and open minds. Though the project is far from completion, this was definitely an epic win.

For everyone out there getting your own wins, a tip of the hat to you. In the words of a strange pal of mine, get there.