How one job created a great relationship with my client and made me over six figures

One of the first things I did when starting my business was to have a clear idea about how I was going to drive revenue. This for me was to take on work that had decent budgets. This also meant I would only take on work that I could do with my skill-set; that had a timeline that was right for the job and most importantly that generated profit. I ran my business for the first few months parallel to my full time job that I wanted so desperately to quit. There were a couple of small contracts I took during this time that made me money, but one in particular is what I call my first big success story. 

The big one
This job consisted of developing an online tracking system for the Medical industry. A good friend of mine referred me to one of his contacts who was looking to develop this software. The project seemed interesting enough that I took a stab at it. The reason why this was my first success story was because when I approached the client, the job itself had all the ingredients necessary to be a huge failure; and it was my core set of principals that made a difference and turned it into a great success.

Recipe for disaster
The conversation with my client started out with him saying he had a web application that needed to be completed. He had previously hired a full time programmer and according to him the application was only 100 hours away from completion. I decided to take a look at the client's business rules, the business plan and the software that they had developed during that time. The whole thing did not make much sense and the software did not follow the functionality from the business rules. In addition to this, the software was poorly written and it was riddled with bugs. 

Business ethic at play
I then talked to my client and broke the news that there was not much I could do with what he had and if I were to take his 100 hours all I would do would be to waste his time and money. I knew then that this was a big recipe for disaster and I could not take what he was offering. I told him if he wanted me to work with him, it had to be done the right way. This meant starting from zero and making sure the business rules were properly translated to well-defined wire-frames and UML modules. I told him that was my bottom line and the only way I would commit to developing such demanding application. In addition to this, there was so much complexity to the software that I could not put a price to the total project, so we settled on an hourly charge of $50.00/hour. I thought at the time that I would either engage in projects that made sense or else I could jeopardize my entire business and this is what I did with this job. 

Shocking reaction
My client surprisingly agreed and we got busy. We moved throughout the project life cycle meeting all milestones and finally producing a great product. The entire software to its demo version was developed in 3 months and ended up billing around $21,500. I call this my first success story because I turned a super bad deal into an excellent business relationship that brought success to my client as well as me. I did it because I operated with the same level of principal on which I founded my business and this alone ended up teaching me an invaluable lesson.

How did $120,000 happen?
My client ended up loving the product and finding over 250% growth in his business after the release of the software the first year. This success created more opportunities for me supporting, improving and customizing the application for new clients. The demand grew to the point that my client hired my business on a steady support and development contract soon after the first development stage was completed in September 2007. My client continued hiring my business in 2008 giving me about $12,500 on support and development. Business kept booming and we ended up agreeing on a steady support and development contract providing 7-day customer support and software enhancements for all his clients that has yielded steady $25,000 per year since 2009.  

Conclusion
Running your own business is riddled with challenges, successes and failures. The idea is to have a clear work ethic and use it as a road map to steer your decision making towards success. Sticking to a defined set of principals will always give you the necessary tools to do the right thing for you and your clients. It will enable you to turn a bad deal into an awesome one or simply get out of bad ones quickly. This one job alone started at the beginning of my business in 2007 and has continuously given me a decent return which has made me over $120,000 in the last 6 years and counting. In addition to this, doing the right thing for my client and my business has paid off with a great business relationship and has taught me an invaluable lesson.

Thanks for reading, please take a minute and leave me a comment and share it with your friends. Questions are also welcomed if you have them. Please come back for my next article where I talk about my first big failure where I compromised my business core principals and how it almost destroyed my business.