Craftsmanship
Saturday, March 8th, 2008I learned something recently about how I do my work. I learned that, sometimes, I was trying to be cheap.
When I started this business, I figured I’d better be competitive, in order to get more business. And I figured I would have to start with smaller clients. And that those smaller clients wouldn’t have as much money.
Therefore, I figured, I would have to charge them less money, and so, I would have to take less time doing what I did.
But the result of this, sometimes, has been that–yes–people have been able to get a good “deal” from me; but not necessarily exactly what they wanted.
I realized that it suits me to treat myself like a craftsman–like a fine cabinetmaker, for example. He makes sure every join is true. He finds just the right stain. He polishes every detail. Because he does these things, he feels great about his work. To the extent that he puts this much care into the thing he is doing for someone else, he puts this much care into his own life, and so his life feels worthy of him, and his work feels worthy of his time.
It doesn’t do for the craftsman to make sacrifices to his craft, justify that “the client would not be able to afford it, if I did everything I know to do, to do the job right.” To ignore details that he sees, presuming the client doesn’t care enough to notice them, or won’t spot them anyway. This makes him small, and makes him appear like a lot of other people–just getting by, cutting corners, and making do with second best. A lot of people out there never notice those little details anyway, and this makes him, like them, and so it makes him like a whole lot of other people.
And this confirms the belief that he was avoiding (and living)–that he is small, and not worthy to charge for doing top-quality work. It makes the work less fun, and therefore harder. The time spent in this way is tiring, and feels like a waste.
I have in part to thank Brandon Sinclair, who wrote The Web Design Business Kit, for this insight. He points out that, in a very crowded field of web design, one of the only real differentiators you have is really good customer service. Think about it: even if you have no real idea what the answers to the following two questions are, what do you imagine they would be:
- Roughly how many web designers would you guess there are in your area?
- Roughly how many web designers would you guess there are in your area, who:
- You know you could trust to handle every detail of your site with the utmost care, and make sure it gets done right?
- If something is not right, you could trust to fix the problem with the same urgency he would treat it as if it were his own?
- Who start and end every project centered around handling every detail towards achieving the following goal: to assist you in making more money from your business?
After having tried for a year and a half to “cut a few corners here and there,” I have realized that, every project I do where I treat myself like a craftsman, and care for every detail, will become a piece that my client will rave about, and make me successful that much quicker. But just as important: I feel excited about doing the work, because I am testing my edge, rather than slumming around the boring middle.
