Why is my project taking forever? (Rant)
Wondering why things are taking so long?
Let's start by telling you a little about myself. I'm Andrew. I work 6 days a week as a truck driver, although hopefully not for long as I would like to do this full time. Alongside that, I run this business, support my wife's business, and have a toddler at home.
A typical day in my life goes like this:
- Wake up 4:30AM
- Leave the house by 5:00AM
- Work my day job as a local truck driver.
- Get home anywhere between 1pm and 5pm, as every day is different.
- Come home and sit with my toddler for about an hour, and if it's early enough we both take a nap
- Go to my desk and work this business until dinner
- Have dinner with the family, and spend ~20 minutes after with them.
- Go back to my desk and work until 8:30 - 9pm
- Spend about an hour with the family again
- Sleep
- Repeat
As you can tell, I don't give myself much free time, so most of that time gets put into this business.
I take on a couple projects at a time, but not many. Usually, due to most of my current client base being like me and running their business' on the side. So their response time when I request things is usually a little slower as well. This being said, mostly every project goes smoothly without any issues.
Now to the projects that take forever.
I want to start this by saying I am not a mind reader. I say this because every business is different, and offers their own unique products or services. You want to show off those products/services and not someone else's. You would want your website to match your products or services. So if I ask for something, such as images, product listings, category structure, etc. it is usually because I need that thing to make your website match you.
When I ask for these things, it is usually done through my portal software (if you are a current or past client, you know what this is). The cool thing about this software besides it being everything from project management, documents, billing etc., is that when I send a message with a request it let's me know as soon as you opened it. Kind of like iMessage, Messenger and all those things.
So when you open a message and I don't hear anything back for days, weeks, or months, your project gets pushed back, or gets put on hold until I get an answer.
Now if you open it and message me a couple days later and say "Hey I got your message, I am super busy but I will get you what you need asap", this is perfect.
Not answering me not only hurts you by taking longer to get your site up, this hurts me as well. And here's why:
When I get inquiries about larger site builds, I look at my current work load and all my open projects. I may have to push the inquiring project out a little to give myself time to finish others by their deadlines. So when you don't answer me, there's a very large potential that you are costing me money. While I understand money isn't everything, there's also the point that I am doing this to grow my business, and support my family the best I can.
The Contract:
At the beginning of every site build, a contract is signed by both myself and the client. One of the clauses in this contract states that 424 Solutions (me) can terminate services at any time for any reason without refund. Have I ever done this? No. Should I have? Probably quite a few times, but I am too nice of a person. Will I start doing this? Yes. I need to keep my business running as smoothly as I can.
Other Reasons For Delay:
There can be other reason your project is taking longer than expected as well.
- Always changing your mind about how/what you want done
- Extremely complex functionality (this is usually discussed in the beginning, so should be expected)
- Adding more requests to your project outside the original scope of work
- Family emergencies (If it is on my end, this is communicated right away)
These are much easier things to deal with, and I usually handle them well.
Conclusion:
Now I know this is basically just a long ranting session, and new clients may be asking themselves "Why should I ever use this company?" Take a look at all my 5 star reviews. That's one reason. But you don't have to use me. You can go and hire someone off of a job board site if you'd like. But if you want someone who is down to earth, takes pride in their work, and is just another hard working American, than this company is for you.
/end rant