Exit Funk, Stage Left
Filed Under: creativity, personal
You might have noticed that I was in a bit of a funk last week. Thank you to everyone who made lovely comments on my last post. I was feeling a little ashamed about my whining there, so I haven’t thanked or replied to anyone individually. I appreciate you all being there for me when I get like this. Thank you for putting up with it.
I’m seeing things more clearly this week, and I feel some energy returning. Part of the problem I suspect was that I had a really nasty cold, combined with coming down from all the excitement of being back home to see folks.
I’m focusing all my energy right now on becoming the best web designer I can. I think the time for exploring other potential careers is not when you’re scraping by as a freelancer. I’ve been slow to commit to life as a freelancer, worried about any number of things associated with it, but I’m slowly conquering those fears and starting to treat my business like, well, a business, instead of just a guy working out of his office all day.
I have plans to rebuild this site from the ground up, as well as build a photo store to sell prints of my landscape photography. Stay tuned for more about all that in the future.
Thanks for hanging in there with me. I will hopefully start to have cool things to show and share again soon.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Staying Positive
Filed Under: Writing Advice, creativity
I need to take a short break from writing blog posts today so that I can finish up my new business website and get things rolling on it. Instead, today, I offer you this link from Rusch:
Remaining positive sounds like such a minor thing. Yet it is the key to everything. Oddly enough, successful freelancers are the most cynical, hard-bitten optimists in the entire world.
We have to be. Who would believe in us if we didn’t believe in ourselves?
No one discusses remaining positive at a day job, unless it is a requirement of that day job. When I worked as a waitress, I had to smile at the customers and be nice. It was in the job description. The same rules applied, perhaps more stringently, at my very first retail job. We had to be so incredibly nice at that store that we were required (again, as part of the job description) to wish each and every customer a very nice day.
It’s a great post, and I highly recommend you head over and read it.
Personal Interlude: A Project Awesome update
Filed Under: creativity, personal
When I’m too busy to write a nice, well-thought out blog post ahead of time, then things are actually going pretty well.
Project Awesome launched a month and a day ago. Since then, I have had no more success in finding a job than before, but everything else has improved dramatically. Freelancing is going very well, with enough work to cover a couple of months, and I haven’t even marketed myself.
Rule #1 has been good. I have lost my temper a couple of times and shared it online, mostly dealing with computer failure. For the most part, I believe my attitude portrayed online has improved very much–you’ll have to let me know if you don’t think so too. I don’t always feel great, but I keep it to myself., which leads me to rule #2.
Rule #2 has probably had the most amazing impact on me out of everything. When I start to feel down, I remember this rule and push onward. In no time, I go from faking feeling good to actually feeling good. My writing has improved and my design skills have improved because I have decided to pretend I am great even if I don’t think I am.
Rule #3– I don’t think I’ve broken this rule. Nobody owes me anything, except my clients, and I take paypal :)
Rule #4– definitely. As I experiment with different topics for posts on this blog, I’ve failed at generating interest with some. But I take it as a learning experience, and it’s helping me tailor where I want to go next.
Rule #5 & 6– sharpening my talent is pretty much my driving goal in everything right now. I’m seeing fantastic results, I think.
I do like working. Even without a job, I find work. Things are fine.
All the rest, I think have been moderately successful as well.
To summarize, I feel much better, and I feel like I’m making real progress in my life goals thanks to Project Awesome. Opportunities keep coming, despite the dire situation of being laid off. Right now, I don’t miss the grind of an office job at all. My stress levels are lower than ever.
If it weren’t for the insurance issue (which I have yet to resolve), I could do this indefinitely.
I hope you’ve been enjoying the blog. I will get back on track with regularly scheduled high-quality posts tomorrow and over the weekend.
How to Communicate the Importance of a Modern Web Strategy to Skeptical Clients
Filed Under: Web Design
My college pal, artist, and teacher Ed asked last week:
I belong to a professional organization of teachers that has been slow to embrace internet technologies. I am interested in proposing improvements to their website but I am unsure how to communicate the ideas. What formatting do you suggest for a written proposal to an organization?
I’m going to broaden the topic a bit, because the answer to your last question is, I don’t know, and I wouldn’t try to convince an organization with a written proposal. In my work, which is primarily done for individuals and not organizations, I only write proposals to make it clear what we’re going to do after we’ve discussed it. I do the convincing before I write word one of a proposal.
In my experience, you’re not going to get very far with a prospective client, or very far with convincing your organization to update their website, if you haven’t sold them on the benefits. The easiest way to do this, in my experience, is to start with having them identify and acknowledge a problem.
For example, “we’re not getting any leads from the website.” Or, “I keep getting email about how hard our website is to navigate.” Management or the client can deal with concrete specifics. They have goals, sometimes ones that they don’t even know about, so your task in early meetings is to identify what those goals are and then explain how an updated technology can solve those problems.
Problems and solutions may be a good format for a written proposal as well, if you’re still determined to go down that route. Provide the problem, and describe the solution. Relate these solutions to the overall goals of the company. We should improve X because it will cause Y, which is good for the bottom line. Or whatever.
Explaining why certain technology is better than others, or why a website shouldn’t look like it was built in 1997 can be more specific and difficult. One thing I try to explain early on is that websites are about projecting an image. Your website should reflect the image that you wish to convey to your clients, customers, whatever. If your website’s image is that of an old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn, that might not be in line with your organization’s overall strategies.
There’s a lot of resistance to change in the world in general. Change is costly, it’s hard, and it doesn’t always result in improvements. I can understand completely why some people might become resistant to change because of that. How you convince them otherwise is no different a task than convincing a person of anything. Listen to their objections, consider them, and describe how you will overcome them.
Hopefully some of these basic strategies will help you, Ed. If worse comes to worse, find a competing website that does it better, and pull up the two sites side by side, and let them stare at it for five minutes. Then ask, “any questions?” I’ve never tried that before, but I wanted to at my last day job. Let me know how that goes if you try it.
How about the rest of you? How would you approach a skeptical boss or client that a website or other technology needs to be updated? Do you have any success stories or horror stories?
