[spp-player url="https://episodes.castos.com/wpbuilds/wpbuilds-episode-143.mp3"]
In this episode:
Discussion - Only doing what you're good at
So we all build websites... we do don't we? Perhaps we don't perhaps we're just involved with WordPress as a marketing expert, or a graphic designer. WordPress is useful to a whole slew of different job types which is great, but can also be a burden.
What I mean by that is that there are so many hats that you can wear in the WordPress space, so many jobs that are needed to get a website up, running and maintained, that it can be hard to keep up. No, I'm going to amend that last sentence, it's impossible to keep up. I'll wager a tiny amount of money that there is nobody out there who is great at ALL of the following jobs:
- Branding expert
- Communicator - project manager / sales / marketing
- Copywriter
- UX or UI specialist
- SEO specialist
- Digital Marketing Expert (funnels, A/B testing and analysing)
- Photographer / Graphic Artist
- Backend (PHP) developer
- Frontend (HTML/CSS) developer
- Javascript developer
Mmm... you see what I mean? But this is the range of skills that it would be desirable to have to be really great WordPress website freelancer.
Of course, I'm being unrealistic! There is no way that you can do all of those things at the same time, but I'm sure that at some point in your website building journey you've had a go at almost all of them? You have, haven't you? You've felt the pressure to say yes to projects that you knew contained elements of work that you were not comfortable with. You agreed to do a little photography on the side, because, well... how hard can it be? That little bit of Javascript to get that div to reveal when that button is clicked... how hard could that be?
Why do we do this? Why do we take on work that we are not comfortable doing?
- Maybe we want to make sure that the rarified work comes to us and so promising to do all-the-things ensures that the entire budget is ours to keep
- Perhaps we don't want to look like that person who does not know how to do something, when it appears that all the people around us can do all-the-things
- What about the fact that it's good to learn new skills and this project would be just the way to do that
- 100 other reasons that I'm sure that you can come up with
There are so many times when I've fallen into the trap of taking on work that I could not do at the time that I accepted it. Sometimes this was fine and at other times it was a complete disaster. I've had more sleepless nights relating to my inability to be able to execute on promises than I care to remember.
A possible solution might be to surround yourself with a bunch of talented people. People who are really expert at a small range of things, you could farm out the work to them as and when it comes your way and hope that they will reciprocate in turn.
In some kind of idealistic world you would find these people, you would get on with them, they would share equally with you as you with them and your work would never dry up. ALL of this being true, I think that the following would happen:
- You would collectively produce better work
- There would be less combined stress
- You would have to work less hours
- Your clients would be happier
- You would get more work because of the quality of your portfolio
You might have spotted that this plan has a name, it's an agency. Any agency owners (or freelance collectives) will be able to tell you the the five bullet points above are almost certainly not going to be achieved, in fact you'd be doing great to have three of them going at the same time!
Still we've got to try right?
Maybe not, maybe it's okay to try to do all-the-things. Know you limits and only do work that you can do, or you know that is not going to keep you awake too many nights learning. In fact learning is one of the best parts of this work. New things all the time, nothing stands still!
David talks about the Dunning-Kruger Effect - the psychological term referring to people who simply don't know that they're not that good at something and just assume that they are.
Perhaps we should all just get a healthy does of that and bluff our way through our next WordPress website project. Far more fun, and who needs sleep anyway?
