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What would YOU want to know if you were just NEW to the webmaster biz?
What kind of advice would YOU have wanted to receive when you started in the biz? Put another way, what have you LEARNED from the biz that you can impart to a friend starting fresh today?
Here's a few that REALLY HELPED ME grow my company from a one man operation to 40+ employees and growing:
1) Do NOT be afraid to start small -- Giant companies are built one experience, one satisfied customer, one solved problem at a time. Many people have this "Get Rich Quick" and "Something for Nothing" mentality. If you have those notions, lose them... QUICKLY. While things may be small when you're building, things happen for a reason and it's your JOB to maximize your personal education from each client and from each project.
2) It takes Money to make money but TIME is also money -- Not all of us can start off with $$$$ in venture funding. Indeed, sometimes having too much seed capital ends up with the company members feeling pampered and just friterring the cash away. I ought to know, I used to work for a venture capital firm in the Dotcom Mania of late 90's. We funded several companies millions of dollars. All of them have gone bye bye. I didn't want to repeat the same mistakes. I started 2 companies: 1 with $2000 in 1998 and 1 with $4000+ in 2003. My 1998 academic services company now makes $85 to $120K a year CONSISTENTLY since 1998. My second company is now at over 40+ employees. How was it done? By realizing that some types of companies need FOCUS and TIME more than CAPITAL. By studying our customers and giving them what they wanted, we were able to turn the time we used in thinking up new services and enhancing customer value into MONEY. It is not QUICK nor is it EASY. But it can be done. Don't ever think you don't have enough money. If you have TIME you can turn it into money to fund your business.
3) It is ALWAYS your fault -- The most crippling mentality to have when it comes to business is to always blame another person for your failings. Lose this. Even if it seems black and white that it is not your fault--OWN the situation and understand how you ALLOWED things to happen. It is only if we 1) OWN our failings and 2) LEARN from them that we succeed.
Anyway, those are the 3 core principles that I implement across all my online businesses. They work for me and I'm sure they'll work for those who take the time to implement them.
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