Money isn’t everything, it just happens to be the foundation for everything.
Posted on
2007-Nov-10
at
11:54
These are some insights that I’ve gathered since I started my business. Some of these lessons were learnt the hard way. These are some of the more important points that I have included.
Money isn’t everything, it just happens to be the foundation for everything.
I would be lying straight if I said I didn’t care about the financial aspect and just did my job for the love of the art and industry. This is one of the first lessons I learned early on. Even if you’re not thinking about money, your client has to think about how much their company will rake in sales. The bottom line is you all have to survive somehow. Everything goes back to the bottom line.
Image is everything, communication is key and confidence instills trust.
There is no room for hesitation. If you don’t have the capabilities to perform the task, don’t be afraid to say that you cannot handle that aspect of the task. Turning down business is not a negative as it leaves more room for client confidence in those jobs that you can take on. Show them enough confidence that you can or cannot take on specific jobs and they’ll most likely return in the future for different tasks.
Your technical skills bring in the money, your people skills bring in the business.
Survival of the fittest as it’s a free for all out there. Go to networking events, pursue good standing client relations. Make friends, pass out business cards, advertise yourself.
Don’t be afraid to ask for the most reasonable price.
There’s no shame in asking for the most reasonable price and be prepared to reject anything less to the point of turning down business. Price sets your image so compromising it is a negative. Setting a lower price than a project is worth only lowers your value and I’ve seen some smaller clients try tactics like scope creeping, waiting out a time period or even allude to the fact that there are plenty of your competitors in existence. Once you lower that price, your clients will always see you in that lesser light and expect lower prices. Stand firm. They’ll either pay the price if they want you bad enough or good riddance to your benefit.
You have to ask for the sale.
You have to make your sales intentions clear that you plan to try your hardest to win the client’s business and any future business.
You never stop learning.
Even in technical subjects where I would consider myself to have advanced knowledge in, I am still constantly surprised by how much I don’t know and have yet to learn.
Stand firm on your decisions and don’t look back.
What’s done is done. You can’t undo the past but you can correct your mistakes, create solutions and learn from them. Just don’t let the same mistakes repeat itself.
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#0000FF
Posted on
2007-Nov-9
at
01:33
The striking words and the client's tone left chills running up and down my body as I repeatedly comprehended in my mind the idea that the pictures were not loading properly in his Firefox browser so close to the completion of the project. (I would later have lunch with him and casually mention that he didn't sound too happy about the website's temporary failure to load pictures only for him to reply, "Don't worry, you would know if I was p---ed off, I would have started the conversation with WHY THE F-CK...") Until then, I did what I knew how to do: I started by debugging the code followed by isolating certain parts of the code and then introducing new code to replace the old ONLY to see that there was no visible problem. It wasted about three hours of my time and in the end, I was eventually able to solve the problem.
You know that backslash / ?
It was facing the wrong direction.
These are just some of the entertaining daily chaos I'll be documenting in future entries of this blog. My name is Kevin, I am 21 years old and I started a small interactive design house right out of Sheridan's Advertising Program last year. I have self taught skill sets in graphic design, Flash/ActionScript2 as well as PHP/MySQL. My business mainly provides interactive solutions in Flash as well as graphic design services. A few of my clients since I started this business include: Wunderman Toronto, Proximity Canada, The Department of National Defense and Alert Music.
Some of my prouder works includes the complete interactive design for the rock singer Kim Mitchell http://www.kimmitchell.ca as well as providing promotional branding materials and design for various high profile brand companies.
Some of my not so proud works include being the graphic artist who ended up laying out the Dragon's Den website for CBC (long story for another time).
As well as sharing interactive design experience and business insights, it is my secondary hope to use this blog to attract new prospective business to build the company's client listing. Feel free to visit http://www.cineblueone.com
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