The Art of Business: Don’t Get Creamed Before the Recovery
Giving Away the Store. The tendency in rough times is to negotiate your way into a contract via concession after concession. While competitive bids are important, it does little good to slash your fees now. For one, rarely will you be able to renegotiate significantly higher fees later with this client, and secondly, you may find yourself booked up with low-paying work when a sweet job rolls in. Establish your absolute minimum, take jobs for less only when they offer a clear strategic advantage, like an entre into an new industry or an opportunity to expand your skills in an area that makes sense for you and your company.
Getting Away from the Basics. There’s a reason they’re called “the basics.” It’s because they truly are. Professional work habits, excellent customer service, best face forward, win-win partnering, appropriate use of time and technology for each project. They’re basic and they work.
Subcontracting to Cut-rate Vendors. Printers, web developers, prepress shops — there’s always someone somewhere who is willing to take on a subcontracting jobs at significantly reduced rates. It’s an attractive proposition; you charge your client for premium subcontract work and you pay with less-than-premium dollars, pocketing the difference. Unless you’ve rounded up a rare talent, the strategy had the great potential to backfire, leaving you with less-than-superior final product, a workflow nightmare, and unforeseeable headache that will never be worth the money you save. Find a good deal? Take it as long as it’s understood that quality is never negotiable.
Not Delivering as Promised. This mistake will kill you in good times and bad. Running a business means having to make lots of promises. Sustaining a business means keeping these promises. Sometimes it’s not easy. Sometimes you might promise too much, or it means having to spend more money than you would normally. But it’s the right thing to do, not only because of the ethics of doing what you say you’re going to do, but also because word travels quickly when you fail to keep your promise. Your reputation isn’t something you do not want to jeopardize ever.
Forgetting to Have Fun. Enjoy yourself, take time off, relax, remember why you love your work, spend an afternoon seeing a movie, create something for nothing. Aside from benefiting your heart and soul, fun is contagious in your work and in your dealing with other human beings. People like to be around people who have fun, people who are fun. Fun is good. Damn it, have fun, because it ain’t worth it if you don’t.
This article was last modified on December 14, 2022
This article was first published on June 17, 2002
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