Passionate, disciplined, specialized

Just the other day I re listened, for the 4th or 5th time, to an old episode of the .net magazine podcast. Host Paul Boag talks to his guests about what it takes to start and run your own web design or development business.

It’s a good chat and I can’t do it justice by recapping it here. Unfortunately .net mag has deleted the shows from their site, but if you can get your hands on it I recommend listening to it, it will be time well spent. But I wanted to talk about what Paul, Andy Budd from Clearleft, Pentangle’s Alun Rowe, and Jonathan Snook of Snook.ca fame think are the most important things to succeed in the business long-term. In order of mention:

Be passionate
Be disciplined
Be specialized

I agree that these three points apply to those going at it alone. But they are equally important for those who are employees, and even for companies.

Client’s can smell a non-passionate agency, or web designer, a mile off. If they can’t, sooner or later another agency will out-passion and outshine the zombie shop. Passion is also tied to being up to date and constantly learning new things, which is incredibly important to staying relevant.

Discipline gets the job done, money in the bank and food on the table. Slacking will kill your business, or at least hurt you badly.

Lastly - being specialized. “We do whatever the client asks us to do” is a sure fire way to announce that you, as an individual or an agency, is happy to deliver mediocre work. It’s impossible to be good at everything. Even huge agencies can’t do it.

Stop trying, start focusing and get very good at something. The clients and money are likely to follow.

This is an updated version of a post originally published at Sharpenr.net on 17 November 2007.