Over the past two days I have sat in two meetings where I was asked a question that I really wanted to answer yes to (in order to look good and probably get their business) but the honest answer was no. Can you guess what I said? I said no. That’s how we roll, we shoot strait about everything, whether it benefits us or not.

Another situation I was in recently involved being asked by a potential client to review another web company’s website proposal. On first glance the proposal looked like a total rip off, and I told the potential client that. The conversation went on from there and the potential client became more and more interested in using our company instead based on my initial thoughts about the proposal from that other company. Then, as I finished looking through the other web company’s proposal I realized what this other company was really intending to do for him, which made their price very reasonable. So, even though I knew I was likely losing his business by telling him this, I told him anyway. He went with the other web company, and I went home glad to have done an honest days work.

If we can’t be proud of the work that we do, we don’t do it. This includes refusing to do several things that could make us money. A few things we don’t do are:

• Bad design. If a client really wants something that we know is going to hurt them in the long run, we will kindly steer them away from it. We don’t do bad design. Period.
• Black Hat SEO. These are SEO practices that break Google’s rules or try to “hack” the Google algorithm. We do SEO work the right way, making sure the results are good, and our clients’ sites don’t get black listed.
• Mislead anyone in any way. If we think our client is trying to mislead the public we will pass on the project. We don’t work with con artists, and aren’t willing to put our reputation on the line for a client that is shady in their business dealings.

We work very hard to provide very high quality custom websites at a reasonable cost to our clients. We have spent years refining our offerings and making a name for ourselves. We are very proud of what we do and the work that we have done. As a result, we shoot strait with everyone about everything.

We are who we are, and we don’t try to be something we aren’t. Usually that wins us business, sometimes it loses us business, but at the end of the day we have to be true to ourselves and let those cards fall where the may.

photo credit: Bullseye via photopin (license)