One of the most difficult tasks for a web designer is finding that initial group of clients to get your business off of the ground. Once you have a strong base of satisfied clients under your belt and you’ve built up a nice portfolio of sites, it is quite easy to keep a steady stream of income going on the referrals alone. Word-of-mouth will get you more leads than you can manage at times but how do we get that first batch of clients?

Too many web designers make the same mistake (I did too). You see a new business sprout up and you search Google to see if the business has a site already. They don’t! There’s a potential client that desperately needs your services, right? Not exactly.

Read on to see how I do it and be sure to leave a comment with your own insights!

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One of the key traits entrepreneurs share is that their minds are never at rest. Entrepreneurs have a perpetual drive to imagine the next big product consumers will want and then race to deliver it to market. We see new restaurants popping up in our towns at a feverish pace or lawn care companies filling our mailboxes with postcards offering to maintain our yards at great prices. This begs the question–are chefs selling food and lawn care business owners selling affordable maintenance for our yard? Perhaps not.

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I paid my bills this weekend and was again stricken with my monthly sickness when I saw my Comcast bill. My bill this month was $144 for HDTV, digital cable and cable modem service. I didn’t order any pay-per-view movies nor did I have any premium channels such as HBO or Showtime. I do have the DVR from Comcast but this $144 per month seemed very excessive. I gave Comcast a phone call to find out what could be done. I was prepared to cancel the television portion of my service to save a good bit of money. Long story short, I didn’t have to cancel a thing.

All it took was a five minute phone call and I was put on a new rate plan. When it is that easy, it is definitely worth your time to do the same! Read on to see how I did it!

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Over the holiday weekend, I met someone that “purchased” a number of Christmas gifts at a big box retailer since the store has easily exploited rules for returns. This form of stealing needs to be carefully examined by stores because it is far too easy for people to exploit. We all know of ways of getting promo codes by searching sites like Fatwallet but those are legitimate ways to save some cash. The method I saw used this past weekend is simply stealing but the companies completely condone it through their exchange methods.

Over the weekend, a large retailer had a sale on 2GB Sandisk flash cards for use in digital cameras. The cards normally sell for $49 but were on sale for a mere $19! The $30 savings was phenomenal and helped a number of people get some great gifts. However, through the company’s return policy, people can easily exploit the store for their own gain. Here’s what happens:

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It is hard to read the news or turn on the television without noticing a new story on global warming and then hearing great ideas to “go green.” We’ve seen light bulb innovation in the form of CFL’s, solar panels being used for alternative forms of energy and massive changes to automobiles through the use of hybrid vehicles. These are all great steps forward but there’s still one relic in our homes that remains greatly unchanged–the toilet. Sure, we’ve seen the gallons-per-flush specifications for toilets decrease in an effort to save the water our civilization greatly depends on but I’m not convinced this is enough.

To really save water with toilets, manufacturer’s need to devise a hybrid toilet that mixes the water-saving technique of the men’s urinal with the traditional toilet. The urinal is a brilliant water-saving device because a lot of water isn’t needed to rinse away the waste. Why isn’t the same true for toilets?

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You’ve surely noticed by now that the New England Patriots are currently in the midst of a perfect season in the NFL. Everything is going their way and the nation has taken notice. The media coverage is phenomenal and most sports shows are devoting a great deal of time to this amazing team. While watching the game against the Pittsburg Steelers yesterday I heard John Madden mention that the Steelers have been studying tapes of the Patriots all week in order to find weaknesses. This happens for every game played in the NFL but it then made me think back to my own job and how I study our competition to find ways of exploiting their soft spots. Once the wheels were turning, I realized that the New England Patriots are just like any other business and we can see quite a few similarities between what happens on the field and what happens in our own lives. In no way am I a Patriots fan–even so, I think they are a facsinating team to watch and learn from. Let’s have a look.

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Customer Service in America is generally so poor in quality that the topic has become an embarrassment for so many businesses. The old adage, “The customer is always right” may not be true but it was a guiding light for employee behavior and response to customer issues. That phrase has been lost along with all semblance of customer-focused service and I think it is time we overhaul our thinking towards this crucial aspect of business.

I have been paying close attention to the way businesses treat their customers for quite some time now. In order to write this post, I started opening my eyes even further to see what I notice with the businesses I frequent. The problems are often simply annoying and not enough to drive me away entirely yet many are simply too much to take. Let’s take a look at some of the general problems we are all encountering and try to come together in the comments section to start a discussion on the subject.

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Television shows such as “Flip That House” on the TLC Network are definitely exciting to watch. They tell the story of flippers purchasing horrendous properties, going through the trials and tribulations associated with the renovation, and end with a gorgeous home and the potential for big profits. There’s always a troubling scene at the end where the proud flippers go through the finances of the deal and illustrate what was paid for the home, the cost of the renovations, and the “potential profit” figure. This number is what keeps us watching the show as it is often quite high for only a month worth of actual work on the part of the flippers.

Does this number tell the full story though? I hold an active real estate license and I’m here to tell you that it absolutely doesn’t. DailyBrilliance readers are very bright and I’m sure you already know there are other costs that the show isn’t telling you about but have you thought about what these costs may be? I have and I have put it together for you in this article. Take a look–flipping isn’t all roses.

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