The idea is that you make the company look bigger than it actually is, and go after projects that are at the upper reaches of your capabilities or beyond. This is a good idea when you want to grow your company, as it can allow you access to larger projects and more profitable markets.

Unfortunately, “Punching above your weight” can easily become “Getting knocked out” when you can’t actually deliver what you have promised. To move to the next step, a company needs razor sharp internal processes, committed, expert staff and a clear direction. It’s a big gamble, and it’s double or quits.

There appear to be two ways of doing business: Firstly, do everything right, keep within your focused area of expertise and grow steadily. Secondly, expand quickly, promise the earth and worry about whether you can deliver it afterwards. This appears to lead to poor, rushed projects that take too long and do not deliver, and a lack of confidence from the client.

Way 1 gains long term customers that trust you to tell the truth and deliver what you promise. Way 2 gets you the business in the short term, but means you don’t learn how to manage the project properly and the client will probably jump ship as soon as they can and hire someone that can do what they promise.

Ok, I am officially old. I never really enjoyed going out on the piss much, only the alcohol made it bearable. That sounds odd, but I hate town, I hate pubs and I pretty much hate people. It’s all so pointless for me. I want to get stuff done, not talk bollocks for hours on end and then feel crap the day after. It’s over.

So I am going to get stuff done. I run a business to keep myself busy and keep myself sane. I find it fulfilling, satisfying and I make some money too. Seems like a better thing to do than listen to people witter on more than I already have to

Korzybski’s Science and Sanity has got me thinking about the semantics of daily life.  Some say it doesn’t matter, but I feel it does.  I don’t want to be bombarded by meaningless communications.  Today’s pointless words are as follows:

• “Fully” - Often used when it is not actually true, or cannot even be true. Example - Putting “fully modified” in  a car advert.  What is “fully” modified? There is no standard to measure this against. Nonsense.
• “Affordable” - Again, there is no fixed point to measure this against. Who can afford it? Millionnaires? Tramps?
• “Budget” - Often used to denote the cheapest version of something.  A budget can be large or small. Over use of this word turns its use into nonsense.
• “Relationship” - When used only to denote a romantic relationship.  Any two people that exist have a relationship. People need to be more specific.  Even when actually talking about what is commonly called a romantic relationship, nobody seems to know what that means to them aside from the cultural norm of dating, fucking, then living together as pseudofriends that try and control each other (but I digress, that is a separate issue).

Closely related to meaningless conversation are advertising slogans.  Now I don’t have a problem with advertising or slogans in principle, just when it has no actual meaning.  Take a mythical but realistic example:

• Chris Smith Builders - Doing it right every time (usually in some curly bullshit script font, possibly WordArt)

Ok Chris Smith, you are telling me nothing by this apart from that you have no imagination and don’t value your business enough to employ a designer to sort out your only public facing communication.  People judge you on first impressions.  Get a name, and a considered tagline.  Get your design laid out by a designer, not your mate Dave.  It will only cost you a couple of hundred pounds, probably a day’s profit for you.

As far as the tagline goes, doing WHAT? How is the QUALITY of that action measured? Are you really doing it right EVERY time? That is unlikely.  Taglines make me weep.  A good one will convey the whole philosophy of the business in one snappy sentence.  A bad one is just a waste of letters.

Vauxmoore , the Nottingham Vauxhall specialists, have just had a new site from FCS Websites . The new site uses some jQuery trickery for the internal tab navigation, and Jamie’s awesome FormLord jQuery plugin for the contact form

Click the image to visit their new website.

I spoke to a potential customer for a website today, and it wasn’t good. He thinks he knows how to make websites because he knows how to load Dreamweaver. He doesn’t like “gimmicks” such as the beautiful, easy to use and classy Lightbox image viewer. He doesn’t want to pay very much. He is basically ignorant of what is involved in a quality website, and offensively opinionated with no concept of what his visitors will want to see. He only cares about what he wants to see.

Bear in mind this guy couldn’t even log in to a control panel, and asked if he could change his name servers from an FTP session within a web browser. It is often said that your bottom few customers (in terms of budget and pleasantness) will sap all your time, end up comissioning shit websites that you don’t want on your portfolio and will make you wish you had told them to fuck off in the first place. I think I’ll pass on this client…