Be Careful What They Tell You, Tales of Running A Small Web Design Firm |
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By: Zach Katkin Posted: 2007-01-23 23:31:36 |
| I was surfing online for a minute today and learned this 2000 bloggers thing has exploded. Basically this guy Tino has decided to create a list of 2000 blogs, all using images of the authors. I heard about it over at 9rules and asked to be included. As you can see I was fairly early to jump on the bandwagon and have received a good number of links and a healthy amount of traffic thanks to the project.So I decided to start clicking around my picture to meet those around me and stumbled upon a great post by Christine Kane about business advice. I was driving home yesterday too, thinking about all of Unique ID’s upcoming projects, we have some exciting in-house products we’re developing, but also lots of proposed client work.Proposed client work.As Christine’s blog notes running a business does not coincide with emotions. Emotions are deadly to a small business. You don’t want to get too heated, lose staff or clients, you don’t want to get too attached and begin to discount your services or provide too much as an employer. But, emotions play a huge role in running a business. Running a business is an emotional roller coaster.I have received tremendous highs when I have pitched an idea to a client and they are very interested, or when a friend or colleague has come to my company for a proposed web solution that will integrate this and that and will cost a fortune and might just keep us busy for a whole year. But, I have to tell you, more often then not, things fall through, especially the big projects, the projects that people spend time and money preparing for.If you are a small web design firm, or any business for that matter, you have to be ready for the barrage of requests and invitations that will occur. People will try to jump on your band wagon, they are excited for you, they are excited for your businesses potential and the potential it has to make them money and promote their own goals. And they will come to you with ideas and suggestions, and proposals. But, keep two simple rules in mind:* take it all with a grain of salt and* don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.I remember about 6 months ago we had a development/construction company come to us looking for about 10+ websites for a number of planned communities. It was going to be an exclusive deal. We would work through a third party (they would mark up our prices), but we would just develop, no client interaction, they would gather all the content, info, etc. perfect. I was excited and kept trying to push the project along for a few weeks. But, things slowed down for the construction company, they didn’t realize the costs involved, content was going to take awhile, a number of different things came to light and the project fell through.This has happened too many times to count. A proposed plan has fallen through, or a friend or colleague has presented us with what appears to be at first glance, the perfect client, but nothing ever materializes. |
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