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You have completed How to Run a Web Design Business!
You have completed How to Run a Web Design Business!
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Controlling Growth
3:57 with Paul BoagWhile growth is a common business goal, you must be careful not to grow beyond your means or desired scope. Staying small offers helpful advantages you might not have considered.
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So if all goes well you're going to find yourself pretty busy pretty soon,
0:00
and that's an exciting problem to have,
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but also controlling your growth is something you really need to pay attention to.
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As things go along, and you bring in new work, and you get a reputation,
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it's very easy to get into a situation where you start recruiting more and more people.
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It's probably a little premature for many of you to be thinking about this now,
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but just bear it in mind when you come to that day.
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Only recruit as a last resort.
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Staying small has a lot of benefits to it.
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Don't long after having a big company with lots of employees.
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Whey you stay small you've got less mouths to feed,
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and that means you got more control over your business
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and what work you do.
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You can pick and choose clients rather than having to take anything
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that comes through the door just to keep people busy.
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Also when you stay small, you have that ability to pick and choose,
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and that's such an important thing in terms of the quality of life
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and enjoying the work you do.
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The last thing you want to be doing is working on projects
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you don't find particularly engaging.
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It's hard to do that mind.
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Turning away work feels so difficult,
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but you need to be strong.
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Turn away projects that don't fit you, don't fit the kind of stuff that you want to do,
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and set realistic deadlines.
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Don't agree to do projects that are going to mean you are so overstretched
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that you have to take on employees.
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If you find it hard to turn away work or have more work than you can handle,
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I suggest trying to raise your prices.
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That's a great way of reducing the amount of work you get coming in.
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What a weird problem to be talking about.
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The fact that you want to reduce the amount of work.
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But the time should come, and increasing your prices is a good way to do that.
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Obviously you do that sensibly and over a period of time.
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You don't suddenly whack them up,
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although I know of one web designer, a guy called Andy Clarke,
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who doubles his prices on Fridays just to see what will happen.
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I think that may be a little bit of an ambitious thing to try
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but give it a go.
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Try incrementally increasing your pricing over a period of time
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and see whether that controls the number of projects you get coming in.
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Be careful of contracting out work.
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As I've already said, it has a lot of disadvantages to it.
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You really only need to do that as an absolute last resort.
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Also the bigger that you get as a company,
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the more personnel problems you're going to have to deal with.
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Sometimes you can feel like you're more of a manager
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than you are a web designer anymore.
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Know when you've got too big. You'll be able to sense it.
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You'll see your stress levels increasing,
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and if you reach that point you need to know that it's time to shrink.
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It's interesting, just as I'm recording this now we're actually going through a process
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of reducing our headcount down.
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We were as big as 20 people at one point,
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and we're now down to 13.
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To be honest, I think we'll get even smaller.
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Remember you don't get rewards for having lots of employees.
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Having lots of employees does not make you a successful web design agency.
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It's about having an enjoyable job that you love to do,
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and if having too many employees creates a problem with that
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then maybe it's time to reduce them.
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But that doesn't mean that you have to fire people.
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I'm not a great fan of that. I hate making people redundant.
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You will find that people naturally move on over time and just allow that to happen.
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So control your growth. Be the size you want to be.
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Don't allow your company to take on a life of its own
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while you're just running to keep up.
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