Often when I’m talking to prospective clients, they are apologetic. “There are too many pieces to this puzzle!” they will say, “I don’t know what to tell you that I want!”

I feel bad that too often we are made to feel that unless we have all the answers, we aren’t worthy of asking for help. I want to say right now, that I don’t expect you to have all the pieces of the puzzle neatly put together before we meet! My role in this collaboration is take your ideas, make suggestions, and come up with a plan for you. You have the business idea, knowledge or passion, and I bring the technical and design skills. Together we come up with a plan for your new business site!

Coming up with an idea for a business is labor intensive – and I use the analogy of giving birth a lot! It can be an elusive idea that takes months to corral into a concept you can verbalize. Once you have that concept, you start to think of how you can turn it into a business. Maybe you ask friends or relatives, some of whom will be supportive, and some who will try to stop you from getting started. It can be a mixed bag as you announce your “pregnancy” and suddenly everyone is an expert on what you should do – except you, who are still feeling very protective of your new project.

If you learn to listen to your inner voice and believe you are on the right path, you can continue to move forwards even if others around you are dismissive. Slowly the pieces of the puzzle will start to appear and things will fall into place. It is easy at this point to try to work out everything for yourself, but from experience can tell you that that often creates more anxiety than it eases! There are always more alternatives than you need, and it is easy to get bogged down trying to weight the benefits of two options until you lose sight of your real project.

Write down the concerns you have – or ideas that you have come across but are unsure if they fit in. A web designer who has already built many sites will be able to take your ideas and form them into a whole – or if any elements don’t belong at the initial phase, they are still safe on your list! I have a client who had a whole marketing scheme developed before we met, but had to rein in some of the merchandising ideas until there was a site with a product to sell. Now the site and product are developed, we are circling back around to the products, but with a much clearer idea of who they should appeal to and what the brand of the site really looks like.

So whatever stage your idea is at, you are still deciding which puzzle box to select, you a have a box of puzzle pieces but are scared to open it, or you have already opened the box and have puzzle pieces all over the floor, I can help you. It is time to sort out the pieces of the puzzle for your idea!