Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
—Confucius

Commonly offered advice when starting a business is to follow your passion. You find something you love and then figure out how to build a business around that love. The other side of the advice is to follow the money. Think first of existing and potential markets that offer the best chances of making a profit and build businesses around those markets.
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Many business reach points where they seem to be stuck. They’ve plateaued and the business has difficulty growing. No matter how much work is put in they seem to be held back by some arbitrary limit. Often the limit is us, the owners of these business. The limits are the ones we’ve imposed and if we can recognize how we’ve limited ourselves and our businesses we can break through the plateau and attain new levels of success.
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Over the last week an interesting conversation developed on my small business forum on the subject of collecting a deposit before beginning service based work like design. Standard practice is for web designers to collect a deposit for a project prior to starting work. There are some reasons why as well as a few issues associated with the practice.
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With every decision and action you take, with every message you communicate, you build your brand. Those decisions, actions, and messages will appeal to some more than others and in so doing will determine who your clients will be. Ultimately it’s your brand decisions that choose your clients.
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Search results for a phrase like “web design services” should quickly tell you there’s a lot of competition out there. Why should someone hire you instead of any of those other companies listed in the results? What is it that you offer that they don’t? What is it that you do better? How you answer is how you differentiate your business and stand out in a crowded market.
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