Theresa Tran, of Tease Marketing, once said something to me in a conversation that resonated heavily, “You have good, cheap, OR fast, you get to pick two.” After mulling it over in my head for a little while, it made perfect sense. And as I broke off to go start my own business, it’s something I chalked up as a cardinal rule.

“You have good, cheap, or fast, you get to pick two.”

I have been on my own freelancing (or running my own business) for nearly six months, a few things have occurred to me. Cheap is a relative term - relative to the client paying the money as well as relevant to what you’re making across the board for all projects. Good, when doing business for yourself, isn’t so much an option as it is a requirement. And lastly, fast is the speed at which we do business period - people want everything yesterday. So do clients really ever pick two out of three? Or do they just automatically assume to run the table. After all, the customer is always right.

First off, if you aren’t looking at the project as your project, then you will never be able to manage expectations correctly. We aren’t building and selling widgets here - we have a process, it takes time, and we know how long it will be. People come to us for this expertise, and us getting walked on isn’t part of the deal. Good, cheap, or fast is as much your choice as it is your clients.

If you don’t care so much about the work as you do about getting the business, then cheap, fast, and shoddy may be your ideal option. But always keep in mind, shoddy work doesn’t ever get you more clients. Not everything need be brilliant, but maintaining your own standards, regardless of the client is important to sustainability and longevity. Most importantly, it cements a reputation.

The problem with doing work fast is the risk involved. How often do we take on work where there may be a few “hairy” areas that we haven’t quite done it before. It may be browsers issues, it may be programming functionality, or it just may be a whole lot of work we don’t see. If you agree to do work fast, make sure you are getting paid enough to bring in more people if need be.

Again, cheap is a relative term - almost one that can be thrown out the window. I think the most important thing is to be able to walk away from a project if you don’t feel happy about price tag. Remember, the promise of exposure only applies to 5% of the times it is promised. Don’t work for free. Don’t overcharge.

Avoiding the Big Carrot, or Not

As with any “advice,” all of this stuff is easier said than done. In fact, as I began writing this post - I had a project that had to be good and fast - go awry.

The bigger the carrot the bigger the bite - I committed to something because in theory it could be done (assuming nothing went wrong) and it was a client/project that when added into a portfolio made it considerably beefier and more legitimate. Thankfully when this project did go awry, there was budget to pull in extra people with fresh eyes. You stare at anything long enough and you’re just going to make your problems worse.

“Grandma always said, haste makes waste”

So the lesson learned, for me, is to set realistic goals with fall back plans - a goal isn’t realistic if it involves my team working 16-18 hour days trying to build something complex. When you’re tired, work gets sloppy. The culprit in this case can easily be guessed, IE6, and troubleshooting bugs at the eleventh hour when you should be arriving at a solution is painful. We ended up having to put up a placeholder page to encourage users to download IE7 or Firefox 2 - something I have never had to do. We had a fix within a couple of days, but missed our deadline - the one we agreed to.

Shackleton would shake his head, “Leadership on the Edge,” is stressful - not your little web project.

Hopefully, the character of our little conglomerate was defined in crisis and we can move forward with a fresh set of lessons learn - or maybe we cave and lick our wounds behind desks at an agency, but for some reason I don’t think that will happen. The big eye opener for me with this particular project was the stress - working for yourself is just bigger. Bigger projects, bigger dollars, and bigger stress - handling that is a skill set in its own. My goal is to practice what I preach. Best of luck to me, and to anyone who reads this.

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