What Is It?
The most important document a freelance web designer or web developer has to create is a contract with their client. The contract is the written mutual agreement between you and your client stating what you will deliver, terms of your payment and what happens if things go awry. In part, it consists of all the items that were discussed beforehand. These items may have been mentioned in advertising, discussion or a written or verbal proposal.

Why Have One?
The reasons for having such a document seem obvious and some of them are. However, there are less obvious benefits you gain by having a written contract. The solemnity of the legal jargon, list of stipulations and the formality of signing impresses on both you and your client that you are making a commitment to each other. That is a very important psychological milestone. A third reason for a written contract is it provides the accepted opportunity for both parties to express their expectations of and obligations with respect to the project. Another reason is to prevent you from doing unpaid work. The contract limits what you are required to deliver. Without that, you may find yourself doing a lot of work for free in an effort to get the final payment for the website or application. The reasons just keep comin’… Having a contract forces your client to truly think through what they are asking for. The typical client will have a general idea of what they want, but they haven’t made the effort to think it all the way through. After all, that’s why they hired you. But, if you don’t help educate them and make them understand exactly what they will be getting, you run the risk of them being unhappy and you gong un-paid. Providing your client with a well written contract will help them think it through.

Tip: Write the most complete contract you possibly can and use it as a template. Review the template after each project and see if there’s anything you want to add to it. If your contract template is clearly written (and it will be) you will be able to simply remove any part of it that isn’t relevant to the the project at hand. Don’t forget to re-number of re-letter the sections below as required.

What Should It Include?
As stated above, the contract should include three things: what you will deliver, terms of your payment and what happens if things go awry. Let’s start with what you will deliver.
This should contain the following:
1. Overview: The name of the website and the major features/functions it will have.
2. Phases: If the work is to be completed in phases, enumerate and describe them here. You may want to include a schedule of client or stakeholder reviews, revisions and testing. Be sure to include what will be delivered at the end of each phase. Be specific. Name the of pages, describe what functionality will be included in the particular phase, etc. If completion of a phase is dependent on the client doing something, explicitly state that here.
3. Ownership: This is extremely important and you should discuss this before you surprise the client with it on the written contract. Typically, the graphic designs are owned by the client. But, there may be aspects of the work you want to retain ownership to. Some people think you should somehow copyright the design of the site. If the rights to the design pass to the client, it would prevent you from using that design, again. But, here you get into complications of what constitutes the design. Usually, a client owns all the HTML, CSS, XML, Javascipt and simple PHP/ASP files (eg. contact form) that comprise their site. In fact, you should, unless you’re trying to ensnare them in some sort of weird maintenance scheme – and you shouldn’t do that for the sake of our industry’s reputation and your karma. If you are a web developer and write a full blown application with a database backend, that’s another story. You may well want to keep the copyrights to that. If there’s any uncertainty in your mind talk to a lawyer, preferably one who specializes in the areas of copyright and intellectual property law. Actually, you should talk to a lawyer, anyway. I’ll cover that in a bit more detail below.
4. Maintenance: Include any maintenance or post delivery work you will be providing here.

The next section is about your compensation.
1. Compensation: State your hourly rate and the expected number of hours (calculate the total) or a fixed rate for the project.
2. Payment Schedule: Be sure to get 33%-50% upon signing the contract. Any “client” who balks at that is refusing to commit to the project. They are wasting your time. State when the remaining payments are to be made with reference to deliverable or project phases. Do not simply say, “Upon completion”. That’s a good way to never get paid.
3. Payment Terms: State the amount of time they will have to make the payment after receiving your invoice. For example, “Payments are due within 15 days of the invoice date. Late payment charges will accrue at the rate of 1.5% per month.” You may also want to state that no additional work will be delivered until the account is current. If you do say that, indicate the effect it will have on the overall project schedule.

TIP: The contract needs to be more “more perfect” than your final product. It is a real, live sample of your work. If there’s a problem with the final site you deliver, you can fix it. If there’s a problem with the contract, your client might not sign it. Then, where are you?

If everything goes as planned, no problem. But, life isn’t that predictable. Your client may decide to cancel the project, fail to provide the content or decide you didn’t deliver as promised. Anything can happen. The goal of this section of the contract is to make sure you get paid for your work and to stay out of court if things get ugly.
1. Limitation of Liability: A standard limitation in your contract should be the exclusion of consequential damages. These are losses that are not caused by a specific act but the consequences of an act. Suppose someone’s website is supposed to be finished by November 30 so it’ll be up in time for Christmas shopping. You try, but the site is late. Without this Limitation of Liability, they can sue you for lost revenue as a result of the site being late. You don’t want that.
2. Binding Arbitration: To help you stay out of court, your contract should state that all disputes will be handled by binding arbitration. Arbitrators are typically retired judges doing a little freelance work of their own. You can who say who will handle the arbitration and who has to pay for it.
3. Choice of Law: This should be stated and it should be the state or province in which you reside. That way, if you do get sued, you won’t have to travel to a different state or country to appear in court.
4. Cancellation: Without this section, there’s no way for either party to get out of the contract other than by fulfilling it or committing a breach of contract. Things are always changing in life and you should provide a way for either party to gracefully terminate the contract in such a way that you still get paid for any work you have already done. You also want to keep your client happy and comfortable with your business arrangement. So, this section of the contract should also protect your client. For instance, they’ve cut you a check for 50% of the cost and they decide to cancel after a week. You should have a schedule in this section outlining exactly what you will refund to them based on the time period involved. Don’t forget to include how many days you have to refund their money. Also, include some formal routine they have to go through to make the cancellation valid. A written request sent by certified mail is a good way to go. Make sure they really want to cancel your contract and aren’t just reacting to a temporary situation that’s put them in a bad mood.

Maintain Control
If possible, you should provide the contract. The client is already holding the purse strings. If they also want to provide the contract you might as well be their employee. The exception to this, of course, is if the job is so frappin’ lucrative that you’d be nuts not to go for it. Even then, show the contract to your lawyer before you sign it.

I’m No Lawyer. Get One.
I am not a lawyer and nothing I have said should be construed as legal advice. What I have provided is my ideas for what should go into a web design contract as well as my layman’s understanding of what these sections mean to you, someone trying to make an honest living creating websites or web applications. Your use of this information is at you own risk. Before you enter into any contract, I advise you to seek legal counsel.

World Standards Day – October 14, 2009

Of course, all web developers know IP stands for Internet Protocol, FTP is File Transfer Protocol and SNMP is Simple Network Mail Protocol.  But, what about the standards authority alphabet soup? Sure, you know W3C. But IANA (a personal favorite) or NSSN or ICANN? Here’s a list. Learn half of it and you’ll really impress your clients. Sometimes a little name (or acronym) dropping is a good thing.

W3C – The World Wide Web Consortium – http://www.w3.org/
The W3C was founded in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability.

ISOC – Internet Society – http://www.isoc.org/
The ISOC is a professional membership society providing leadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet and is the organization home for the groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards.

NIST – National Institute of Standards and Technology – http://www.nist.gov/
The NIST is a federal technology agency that works with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements, and standards.

IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force – http://www.ietf.org/
The IETF is a large, open, and international community of Internet professionals concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet.

ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – http://www.icann.org/
ICANN is a non-profit corporation that was formed to assume responsibility for the allocation or management of domain names, IP addresses, protocols, and root servers.

IANA – Internet Assigned Numbers Authority – http://www.iana.org/
By tracking valid protocol values, MIME types, and other Internet numbers, IANA preserves the central coordinating functions of the Internet.

NSSN: National Resource for Global Standards – http://www.nssn.org/
NSSN serves as a central point to search for standards information from many sources and serves as an important gateway connecting those who seek standards to those that supply them.

The Organisation for the advancement of Structured Information Standards – http://www.oasis-open.org
OASIS is a non-profit, international consortium that creates interoperable industry specifications based on public standards such as XML and SGML. OASIS members include organizations and individuals who provide, use and specialize in implementing the technologies that make these standards work in practice.

United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitations and Electronic Business – http://www.unece.org/cefact/
This group works to improve the ability of business, trade and administrative organizations to exchange products and services. It encourages organizations to contribute and help develops its recommendations and standards.

ECMA – European Computer Manufacturer’s Association – http://www.ecma-international.org/
ECMA, known for its ECMAScript standard, is an international association founded in 1961 and dedicated to the standardization of information and communication systems.

Portable Application Standards Committee – http://www.pasc.org
Source for all information about the IEEE PASC Family of standards, PASC meetings, and other related materials. Includes IEEE POSIX.

XNS Public Trust Organization – http://www.xns.org/
The XNS Public Trust Organization works with the Internet community to determine the future direction of the open Extensible Name Service (XNS) protocol. XNS is an open, XML-based protocol for identifying and linking any resource participating in any kind of digital transaction.

OpenStandards.net – http://www.openstandards.net/
OpenStandards.net is a not-for-profit organization connecting people to open standards and the bodies that build and foster their growth.

UPDATE March 3, 2010 – This page from anidan.design has lots of interesting and useful articles! Definitely worth checking out.

Here’s a great resource! It’s a list of specialized freelancing blogs aimed at various web disciplines. The original list is much longer, but I only grabbed the sections I thought would be appropriate for my readers. To see the rest, follow the link at the bottom of this post. Or, visit the oDesk blog main page.

TOP BLOGS FOR FREELANCE SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS:

1. Joel on Software Developer Joel Spolsky has blogged over a 1,000 times on the topic of software management, including “The Absolute Minimum Every Developer … Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets.” This blog has a discussion group and many articles have been translated into other languages.
2. Computer Zen Learn software development news–along with nearly 40,000 other subscribers–and “programming life” from Scott Hanselman. His blog includes 168 entries on bugs, as well as his HanselMinutes podcasts.
3. Code Better Brendan Tompkins and Darrell Norton founded this very popular blog (with nearly 30,000 subscribers), which has multiple contributors. All are in the business of teaching developers how to (what else?) code better and there’s a little freelance advice as well, in Jeff Lynch’s entry “Finding Freelance Work.”
4. Code Monkeyism With 1500 loyal readers, Stephan Schmidt’s regularly writes his programming blog, which is all tech and very little fluff. While he has a hefty focus on Java, he also has a lot of entries on general software development.
5. Warren Seen Australian software developer Warren Seen has been dishing out how-to’s on his blog since 2006. Besides his how-to’s for programming, he has a great post from 2007 for every freelance developer called “Why I’m Assertive With My Clients.”
6. Eric.Weblog On this blog you’ll find software engineering advice from Eric Sink of SourceGear, who even throws in an entry perfect for freelancers about becoming your own boss.

TOP BLOGS FOR FREELANCE WEB DESIGNERS:

1. Smashing Magazine This blog of web designer innovations and issues is based out of Germany–but don’t worry, it’s all in English–and has almost 99,000 subscribers, a forum, and tons of advice posts like “75 (really) Useful JavaScript Techniques.”
2. Noupe News and helpful information for web designers from the best of the best, and they have nearly 22,000 subscribers. A sample of the blog’s advice? “10 Ways to Automatically and Manually Backup MySQL Database.”
3. Vandelay Design Almost 13,000 web designers subscribe to this blog, perfect for freelancers, especially with posts like “77 Resources to Simplify Your Life as a Web Designer.”
4. Wake Up Later You can’t go two links in the work-at-home web-design blogosphere without someone mentioning Samuel Ryan’s blog, which features free resources and tips for freelance web designers, like where not to use Flash.
5. DevSnippets This blog is a brainchild of Noupe, where members submit web design and development codes as posts, like this one about navigation menu techniques.
6. Six Revisions This blog offers information and helps for web designers and developers, from Jacob Gube and others, and it’s full of archived freebies, like these 20 denim textures.
7. Full Frontal Freelance This unique, short-form blog (tumblelog) gives advice for freelance web designers by pulling links from all over the blogosphere. It’s like a million blogs in one. Intrigued by a post title, like “How Not to Write Like a Designer”? Click on the link and wake up in a whole new freelance or web design blog.
8. CSS-Tricks Blogger Chris Coyier leads this blog, a popular community for web designers, with a forum of 1500 members. It should be no surprise the site gains popularity every day, with great posts like “So Your Client Has a This Idea … and You Think It’s a Bad One.”
9. SitePoint At least ten different bloggers have had their work spun into one here, with topics like web design and development issues for freelancers, like “5 Rarely Used CSS Properties.”
10. I Design Studios Web designer Selene Bowlby blogs her tip for freelance web designers here, like her post on the essential web development tools.
11. StylizedWeb This web design trends and tutorials blog from Ross Johnson gives away a lot of freebies, and discusses the future of blog design in this post.
12. Bokardo Blogger Joshua Porter’s tips for website design and development, along with posts like this: “Who Cares How Pretty Web Sites Are?”
13. Best Practices This freelance advice blog, written for web site designers, features great posts like “Stripping HTML Tags From User Inputs.” It also includes a lot about how to handle your clientel.
14. Woork This new-in-2009 blog offers good advice for web developers, like useful scripts for platting charts and graphs on a site, and is run by Antionio Lupetti.
15. Regular Geek Internet design with a healthy dose of social media tips thrown in by the blogger himself. Thinking of learning a new programming language? Read this first.

TOP BLOGS FOR FREELANCE DESIGNERS:

TOP BLOGS FOR FREELANCE GRAPHIC DESIGN

1. David Airey This blog highlights David Airey’s work and methods for logo design and, thus, marketing is also heavily covered in this very popular graphic design blog with over 10,000 subscribers. His November 2008 take on the economy and contract design work encourages and inspires.
2. You the Designer With nearly 10,000 readers and plenty of freebies, this blog by Gino Orlandi even has its own forums. Of the best posts: “5 Ways to Optimize Your Portfolio for Local Traffic”
3. Designers Who Blog As the name suggests, multiple designers share guidance and ideas, but also simply review other designers’ blogs in posts. In other words, this blog is a portal to a hundred other useful blogs and some cover more than just design.
4. My Ink Blog This helpful graphic and web design advice blog, created by freelancer Andrew Houle in 2008, includes the post “5 Things Every Freelance Designer Should Do.”
5. Brian Yerkes This site covers a lot of territory including design, blogging, marketing and freelancing, all with posts from the blogger himself, Brian Yerkes. The must-read is a post offering the 50 characteristics of freelancers who won’t succeed.
6. Graphic Design Blog Freelancer Tara’s blog gives tip on contract graphic design, illustrating and web design–and is growing in readership. Don’t miss her regularly scheduled and insightful interviews with other freelance designers.
7. All About Freelance This very helpful blog covers tools and tips for freelance graphic designers and web designers, and was written by one of their own.
8. I’mJustCreative In this blog, Graham Smith offers his readers logo inspiration and creation tips, marketing savvy and social media discussion.
9. CrazyLeaf Design Blog Here, multiple authors share concepts and tools for both graphic design and web design, with many tutorials archived.
10. Method to the Mayhem Calvin Lee of Mayhem Studios gives his thoughts on design, marketing and promotion through this blog, especially in his recent post about branding yourself through Twitter.
11. Design O’Blog Here you’ll find tools from Niki Brown, plus 216 posts about graphic design. Her tips for success and inspiration are worth your time, but she also happens to cover web 2.0, design ethics and more.
12. Design for Users Blogger Kristi Colvin speaks to design, marketing, social media and more. However, her message to designers (which is “get a mobile web site“) really shows her freelance savvy.

TOP FREELANCE ILLUSTRATION & ANIMATION BLOGS:

1. Animation Tips & Tricks The senior animator of Industrial Light and Magic, Shawn Kelly, hosts this beautiful blog that guides animators (even while selling AnimationMentor.com) through topics like how to proceed after you’ve been given the storyboard (by Nick Bruno).
2. Chewing Pencils Freelance cartoonist and illustrator Matt Glover doles out great advice for others, such as “The Isolation of the Freelancer.” He should know, Matt is one of many contract animators who works alone.
3. Coghillustration Cartoon illustrator George Coghill offers advice, not just his work. Freelancers can enjoy this entry which answers the looming question “Can a Solo Freelance Artist Make a Real Living?”
4. Illustration Castle This is a great blog of advice for illustrators from talented Canadian artist Heather Castles. One of many topics is how to use iPhoto to catalog your illustrations.
5. Character Design This artist interview and gallery blog is a must for animators, complete with the Character Design Forum where members can share ideas, critique each others’ work, etc.

TOP FREELANCING BLOGS:

1. Freelance Switch This extremely popular blog–over 35,000 subscribers and multiple writers–includes advice, news and opinions for freelance workers, such as this insightful post on nurturing relationships with clients you’d like to keep. Also on Freelance Switch: forums and podcasts.
2. Freelance Folder This site has a much-loved blog (almost 12,000 subscribers) in addition to its forums. The blog has over 20 contributors and contains useful posts like this one: “Why a Blog Is Important to Your Freelance Business.”
3. Guerilla Freelancing Someone “from the trenches”–aka Mike Smith–offers up great resources and helps for freelancers, even as he tells it like it is with this post: “15 Drawbacks to Working Freelance.”
4. Escape from Corporate America Career coach Pamela Skillings dishes work-at-home advice for freelancers, and even the occasional rant, like this one: “I Miss Sick Days.”
5. Web Worker Daily Blog of wisdom from multiple writers for those who utilize the internet for work from home. A must-read: “Office Space? Mind Space!”
6. Freelancing Blog This blog contains tips on working freelance (from proofreading to web design) from a team of writers. Among the best posts: “The Ethical Freelancer.”
7. Artic Llama Blog The goal of this blog is to build bridges between freelance workers and those who hire them, but some of the best posts are those like this one, advocating working on your laptop at a coffee shop.
8. Seth Godin’s Blog This one–with great stuff for freelancers, like this post about your profile picture–seems to make every blog list on the net. As for who he is? The only thing certain is that he’s the author of a lot of books, like The Purple Cow.
9. Roberto Alamos Freelance and business (on the internet) advice from Roberto Alamos, including “10 Tips for Effective Freelancing.”
10. Podcast for Freelancers Despite the name … it’s also an advice-heavy blog, with posts like “Procrastination: You Can Overcome It.”
11. The Berkun Blog This Scott Berkun is a real hot shot hero to the technically inclinced, but check out the archived blog entries–there’s stuff here for nearly every creatives freelancer, especially this lesson from a Dr. Seuss book.
12. Essential Keystrokes Though it’s written by a web designer, there is something on this blog for every freelancer, such as “13 Ways to Move Big Files on the Web.”
13. Anywired Self-employment advice from Skellie (of #10 in our Top Freelance Blogging Blogs) with plenty to offer freelancers–like this entire archived category of posts.
14. Self Employed Blog Blogger Eartha shares the things she’s learned in her own journey working through the internet, such as when to answer phone calls and e-mails.
15. oDesk blog We’re not gonna lie to you, we think our blog is pretty great. Just click on our “Freelancing Tips” archive, and you’ll know why too.

via 100 Top Freelancing Blogs | Freelancing and Outsourcing Tips, Commentary, Analysis, and News from oDesk.

For whatever reason, there are a lot of people who think the internet, and their participation in it, should be free. This is a huge problem for those of us who try to make a living providing the valuable service of creating websites. One of the main reasons I started this blog is to give you, the web professional, some insight on how to survive in this business.

This is such a great article, I wanted to re-publish it here. I got it from a wonderful blog called wakeuplater.com.

10 questions to which I almost always answer “No”:

1. Can you show me a mock-up to help us choose a designer/developer?
I fell for this once when I was young and naive. I made no money and wasted lots of time. Don’t do unpaid work for the chance to be paid — this wouldn’t fly in any other industry, so why web design? The best case scenario (though rare) is that you get a job with a client who knows that you’ll work for free when necessary. The worst case scenario is that they don’t pay you, and still use your stuff, knowing you don’t have the legal resources to do anything about it. Most likely though, you’ll just waste time.

2. Can you give us a discount rate?
There are A LOT of companies out there that do not see web design as a service worth more than $20 an hour. These should never be your clients. In my early post-college years, I used to value “getting the job” so highly, I would take on an inordinate amount of work for the pay. Let me tell you that it’s not worth it. Ever. Remember, you may be doing this company a favor, but on the flip side, you’re hurting your own future, and your family’s. Nowadays, I give my hourly rate immediately, and it weeds out many potential clients. It’s simple math really — if doubling your rate loses half your client work, then you’re still making as much in half the time. If you do excellent work, get paid for it – there will always be comparable “firms” charging double what you are.

3. Will you register and host my site?
Sure it seems like a good idea — free recurring revenue right? Well, maybe… if you can first get them to pay, and then if you can justify making $10 a month for the endless phone support you’ll have to give at all hours of the night. You see, once the client thinks that you are responsible for their email and website functionality, you WILL get called all the time when their email shows the slightest wavering or their website 404s for any reason on their home computer. Believe it or not, I’ve even known someone who had a client call about his cell phone functionality just because my friend hosted his site. Don’t do it…it’s not worth it. Give them a registrar and hosting company and let them sign up themselves.

4. Can you copy this site?
Now you may think that I answer “No” strictly from a moral standpoint, and although that is true, there are other equally important reasons. First, if they’re copying a site, they have shady ethics themselves and the chances of you getting paid on time and in the full amount are unlikely. Second, doing this type of work reduces you to a monkey, and although some of your work may be like this to pay the bills, why purposely pursue it? Third, if it’s a true copy, the only benefit you may receive is payment – you really won’t get to use it for a portfolio or example work, and furthermore, this type of client is one you do not want work for in the future.

5. Can I pay for my e-commerce site from my website sales?
I hate to be the pessimist, but when I am asked this, I want to tell them that they most likely won’t make any money so they might as well ask me to do it for free. Yes, I know there are exceptions, so sometimes I will ask them about their business, marketing, and revenue plans, which 99% of them don’t have. They just thought that selling t-shirts would be a novel idea for the internet. I usually go into a spiel about having to support me and my family, and I can’t do it with speculative work — I then recommend Yahoo! Shopping or CafePress, and 9 times out of 10, they never get their site up anyways.

6. I have a great idea. Do you want to…?
Not much different from #5, but could be a much larger time waster if you buy in. Again, not trying to be a jerk, but if the person adds little to the potential business outside of speaking an idea, then any work you proceed to do is mere charity (which may be okay with you). But to be honest, I’d rather be charitable with my family and friends and make them partners for free versus partnering with a stranger. Trust me, if someone really has a great idea, he will make you partners AND pay you as well.

7. Do you have an IM account?
I might give it out if it’s to a person I can trust during an intensive project, but as a general policy, I tell clients that it’s my general policy not to. The reason here is obvious — you have a life and other clients beyond them. Many clients see you as an on-call employee, and this is bad. This is why you quit your day job…

8. Can I just pay the whole amount when it’s done?
I require 50% up front (unless it’s a huge job — then maybe 33%). I need that assurance that they have “bought in” on this project, and that I can plan on the income, pay bills, and eat. People who want to pay at the end are much more likely to back out after you’ve done tons of work.

9. Is there any way you could get this done tonight or this weekend?
Once they know that you helped them out one time, they will expect it in the future. Now you might choose to get extra done at night (I do all the time), but don’t start making promises about getting things done at night or on the weekends/vacation. I know a lot of freelancers that charge night/weekend hours as well, so that might be a possible route to take. Because the reason you freelance is for the freedom, right? Right?

10. Can I be sure you won’t use this work in anything else?
This is a very sensitive subject because most clients misunderstand it (intellectual property is a tricky subject anyways). In my Terms and Conditions that I require all new clients to sign, I make sure they know that (1) their code has utilized code from other projects which I haven’t charged them for, and (2) I will probably use code from their project on other projects, and (3) they own the code and implementation of the project (finished website), but not the actual code pieces (login system, image uploader, etc.). I pride myself in productivity and speed, and I need to use other code all the time to accomplish this. Not to mention that I sell stock Flash which I may need old code to help build. They’re not paying you to create code that they in turn will sell, so make sure they know that it’s the implementation and not the coding that’s theirs.

via 10 “Nos” for Freelancers.

This is for all you freelancers and web professionals. It’s really very funny, in a true and sad kind of way. To survive in the website biz, you absolutely must avoid bad clients. Seriously. Here are a few of my personal tips to help you weed them out:

1. Post your rates on your website. Be explicit.
2. Stay away from anyone who says their previous designer split on them.
3. Don’t answer classified ads from people asking for web help, whether or not they say they’ll pay.
4. Stay away if someone won’t give  you 1/3 to 1/2 of your fees upfront.
5. Just say “No” if  someone has an idea for a super cool interface but no content.
6. Don’t do “anything for anybody”. Pick a market segment and focus on it.

A Scofield Editorial

We’ve all heard the stat from the SBA: 50% of small businesses will fail within 1 year and 95% of small businesses will fail within the first 5. Why are we so good at failing? What in our DNA makes those failures stumbling blocks for some (those who give up) and building blocks for others (those who keep going)?

After a lot of thought on this topic, my conclusion was fairly simple: you’re a wuss and it’s costing you. Here are 3 things you can do to stop being a wuss and start making money.

Forget The Fear of Failure…It’s A Myth

This is a very real feeling, no doubt. But SO WHAT? Nobody WANTS to fail. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “Today is the day I fail!” That’s ludicrous. Instead, as intelligent beings, we are much more sly with how we manifest this fear. You see, it would be too simple for us to just admit we’re fearful, address the feeling, and move on. No that won’t work for us. We have to attribute our fears to others, an experience, or a reality we face that is the REASON we can’t do something. It might go something like this:

Sure that guy can make money, he’s got _______, and _______ going for him. Not only that, he’s been doing it for ______ years. Furthermore, he probably doesn’t have the responsibilities of ______ and ______ and ______ like I do.

Have you ever had a conversation with yourself that resembles those statements in any way, shape, or form? Do you see what you’re doing by making those statements? You’re setting yourself so low that before you even start something, you’ve talked your self out of it.

Here’s a better way to deal with fear of failure.

Sit down, and make a list of the top 3-5 things you are MOST fearful about regarding your new endevour, project, or business. Be real with yourself, don’t let that manipulative self take over and write the halmark version of what your fearing. Be REALISTIC. Be HONEST. Be SPECIFIC. Once you have a list ask yourself these questions.

1. If I was counseling someone else with the same fear, how likely would I tell them the chance of that actually happening was?
2. If this fear does come to pass will it cost me my family, all my savings, or my life?
3. If I didn’t have this fear, would I feel capable to pursue this project?

Most often, when you ask yourself the tough questions, you’re able to see that the actual thing you fear is something completely different than you may think. That fear of failure may be more a matter of your feeling inadequate, incapable, like you just don’t have what it takes (because remember, NOBODY WANTS TO FAIL). The point of this exercise is to identify the real reason we continue to fail before we begin. Are you willing to go there with yourself? Are you open to asking the tough questions? Are you willing to squelch the inner wuss so you can move forward with confidence?

Play To Your Strengths, Manage Where Your Weak

This ties in so well with the fear of failure myth. I’m not a PhD, and I’m not attempting to be one, but perhaps the reason we are so good at failing is because we spend so much time trying to improve our weaknesses that we forget to spend time on our strengths.

It’s human nature. We’re taught that weakness is bad. We’re told that we need to work on it, be better at it, just NOT do it.

While that may be well intentioned advice, it’s completely backwards if you ask me. Instead of spending so much time getting better at where your weak (and remember, I’m talking in the business world), spend 90% of your time playing to your strengths and hire out where you’re weak.

Maybe you’re great at writing salescopy but suck at web design. Maybe you’re unbelievable at customer support but horrible at vision casting. No matter the comparison, identify where you’re strong, identify a business that plays to those strengths, then manage your weakness (by hiring someone else). This has probably been one of the most valuable lessons to me personally.

Set SMALL Goals

Don’t be the, “I want to make $50,000/month this month,” guy or gal.

I can GUARANTEE you it won’t happen. If you’re trying to go from $0 to some huge number in NO time, let me save you the frustration and tell you the truth: it ain’t gonna happen.

Now instead, why not focus on something like this.

If $50,000/month is your ultimate goal (you can fill in whatever number that is), then take what you ultimately want and work backwards. $50,000/month is about $1667/day, $69/hour, $1.16/minute.

Next, identify something IN that goal as your FIRST goal. Meaning, take $1667/day and make that your first monthly income goal. $1667/month is $55.57/day, $2.32/hour, 4 cents/minute. That is a much more reasonable place to start, but it also does something sneaky to your brain: it helps you achieve part of your bigger goal, establishing success, and motivating you to the next level. Does that make sense? By establishing a small but measurable success in your bigger goal, you establish momentum and the sense of ability to go to the next level. You’ve accomplished something. You’ve achieved it. In your mind, you now know it can be done.

If you’re a planner by nature, this will be a valuable little nugget. Always be mindful of the bigger goal, but don’t spend so much of your energy trying to go from sea level to the summit of Everest when you haven’t even conquered getting to base camp.

So forget fear of failure and identify the real reasons you’re not pursuing what you want, play to your strengths/hire where you’re weak, and set small goals that are stepping stones to your biggest goal. Don’t be a wuss, and don’t let it cost you anymore!