How I Lost a Client and What You Can Learn From it ðŸ§
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again,
this time more intelligently.
I am sure most of us have faced failure in some form, throughout our life. It's a part of nature that we cannot escape. However, what really defines you as a person is how you choose to react after the situation.
Hoping to help fellow indiehackers, I recently published a blog post where have shared a personal story from my entrepreneurial journey.
If you would like to read the entire story in detail, you can visit this link -
https://ruttl.com/blog/how-we-lost-a-client-because-of-delays-in-development/
If you would like to read the shorter version, you can continue reading down below. 👇
Background
In 2018, a Canadian business approached my design agency Brucira for a website project. The project duration was over 6 weeks and they were paying decent money.
At that time it was just me and @siddhitaupare running the business. None of us knew coding and the client needed both design and development . We didn't want to loose them so we said yes to the dev services as well.
Challenge
We hired 2 freelancer developers who use to work during night time on the project. Even though we delivered an amazing design, the development took more time than anticipated. I use to spent 4-5 hours daily with developers just to ensure that our design is getting implemented pixel perfectly. Despite of all these efforts, we stretched the timeline to another 3 weeks.
The client got furious and dropped the project in middle without paying us. We couln't even cover our base price and had to pay developers from our own pocket.
Lesson Learnt
- Always under promise and overdeliver. That's the key to entrepreneurial success.
- Always say yes to an opportunity but have your backups ready.
- Always hire experienced people while taking risk.
Entrepreneurship is a tough game where if you give up, the business gives up. If you want to be a part of this journey thinking you would drink mojito on the beach, you are clearly in the wrong place.
Birth of ruttl.com
This experience made us wonder if we can bring down the post development review time. The idea of ruttl came the very same year.
Ruttl is a feedback tool that allows you to leave comments on live website and make code edits if required. So, basically the review process that took me hours can be done in minutes.
I have recently began handing out exclusive access to indiehackers only and would love for you guys to try out the power of ruttl for yourself!
You can begin using it at https://app.ruttl.com/signup
Now that you've read my story, have you learnt something important in your journey? Share it in the comments 👇 and let's trade our wisdom with the community!
Hope you guys have a great day! 💯
I once hired and paid a contractor on Upwork to build "file upload and processing" functionality into my app.
Months passed by and I then discovered "formidable" a NPM module that does exactly what we paid for and more with better reliability for free.
The lesson learned is to try and build as much as possible with free technology and old-school do it yourself programming before spending your valuable money on talent.
Haha that's a great lesson learnt indeed!