A Lesson I'm Learning: Don't Do Everything for a Customer

Those who know me well know that I pri­mar­i­ly work with paint­ing and remod­el­ing con­trac­tors. You’d think I could work with any­one who is a painter or remod­el­er, right? No! Not every paint or remod­el­ing com­pa­ny is the right fit for me. I tried to make it work by tak­ing on just about any com­pa­ny who asked me to work with them. I com­pro­mised. I should have just said no to those who were not a good fit. Here is an exam­ple of what I mean: I took on a cus­tomer last year who had almost no cash. This client want­ed more leads from their web­site. I asked how their site was doing, and they told me they get vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing from their site. I could see why. It was old and poor­ly designed. Part of the prob­lem was that they did­n’t have a lot mon­ey. Yet the real prob­lem is they did­n’t think their web­site was all that bad. They did allow me to make changes and upgrade the design, but they want­ed it done for pen­nies. So I com­pro­mised. I did­n’t use my amaz­ing design firm: Pio­neer Design. I did what a lot of oth­er agen­cies do: I used anoth­er com­pa­ny who cre­at­ed a cheap Word­press Tem­plate site. It saved my client prob­a­bly 75% as opposed to a cus­tom site with Pio­neer. It did­n’t take long before the client start­ed want­i­ng to cus­tomize a tem­plate, make changes, etc etc. and after