Lessons from Ten Years of Building for Others

A few weeks ago, I was cleaning out an old hard drive and found the first website I ever built for a paying client. It was a single-page site for a local landscaping company. The fonts were wrong, the contact form didn't actually send anywhere, and the hero image was stretched beyond recognition. I remember being so proud of it at the time. I also remember charging two hundred dollars for the whole thing.

That was a little over ten years ago. Since then, I've worked with dozens of small and mid-sized businesses, building websites, running marketing campaigns, managing projects, and doing whatever else needed doing. I've been a freelancer, a contractor, a one-person department, and occasionally something that looked a lot like a co-founder without the equity. Along the way, I learned a few things that no course or certification ever taught me.

The work changes, but the real job stays the same

Early on, I thought my job was to build things. Websites, email sequences, landing pages. The deliverable was the point. If the client asked for a five-page site with a blog, I built a five-page site with a blog. I handed it over, sent the invoice, and moved on.

It took me a few years to realize that the deliverable is almost never the actual point. What the client wants is a result. They want more leads, or a better first impression, or to stop feeling embarrassed when someone asks for their URL. When you understand that, the conversation changes completely. You stop taking orders and start solving problems. That shift -- from executor to advisor -- is the single biggest thing that changed my career.

Pushing back is part of the service

There was a time when I said yes to everything. The client wants a carousel on the homepage? Sure. They want to add a fourth revision round to a project that already had three? No problem. They want to launch the site on Friday even though half the content is still in a Google Doc somewhere? Let's make it happen.

I thought being agreeable made me easy to work with. In reality, it made me a pushover, and it made the work worse. The turning point came when a client asked me to do something I knew would hurt their site's performance. I took a breath and said, "I'd recommend against that, and here's why." I was bracing for them to be annoyed. Instead, they thanked me. They told me it was the first time someone on their team had actually pushed back with a reason.

That taught me something I carry into every engagement now: clients aren't hiring you to agree with them. They're hiring you because you know things they don't. If you never push back, you're not doing your job. You're just doing what you're told, and there's a real difference.

Scope creep is a relationship problem, not a contract problem

I used to think scope creep was about having better contracts. Tighter statements of work, clearer deliverable lists, more specific language. And yes, all of that helps. But after managing enough projects, I realized that scope creep almost always starts as a communication failure, not a documentation one.

It happens when the client doesn't fully understand what they're asking for. It happens when you don't ask enough questions upfront. It happens when both sides are too polite to flag that the project has quietly become something different from what was originally agreed on. The fix isn't a better contract. The fix is a better relationship -- one where both sides feel comfortable saying, "Hey, this has shifted. Let's talk about what that means."

These days, I build those check-in moments into every project. Not as formal milestones, but as habits. A quick message that says, "Just want to make sure we're still aligned on direction." It takes thirty seconds, and it has saved me from more billing disputes than any clause in a contract ever did.

Trust is built in the small moments

When you work with small businesses, you're usually working directly with the owner. That means the stakes feel personal to them in a way that's different from a corporate gig. Their business is their livelihood, sometimes their identity. Handing a piece of it to a freelancer or contractor requires real trust.

I've learned that trust isn't built during the big presentations or the final launch. It's built in the boring, in-between moments. Responding to an email within a few hours instead of a few days. Flagging a potential issue before it becomes a problem. Following through on the tiny things you said you'd do, like sending that link or updating that spreadsheet. None of it is glamorous. All of it matters.

If you want a client to trust your judgment on the big decisions, you have to earn it on the small ones first.

You can lead without a title

For most of the past decade, I haven't had a leadership title. I've been "the web person" or "the marketing contractor" or just "Lauren who handles the website." But I've been leading the whole time -- steering strategy, making recommendations, coordinating between vendors, setting timelines, and occasionally being the one who has to deliver bad news about a deadline.

Leadership without authority is its own skill set. You can't mandate anything. You have to persuade. You have to make people want to follow your recommendation because it's clearly the right call, not because you outrank them. Honestly, I think it's made me a better leader than any formal title would have. When your only tools are clarity, competence, and communication, you get very good at using them. I've written more about how I approach this work if you're curious about my background.

Know what you're worth, and then charge it

I spent the first several years of my career undercharging. Not by a little -- by a lot. I was afraid that if I raised my rates, clients would leave. Some did. But the ones who stayed were better clients. They respected the work more. They respected my time more. And the ones who replaced them came in already understanding that good work costs money.

Pricing is one of those things that feels like a business decision, but it's really a mindset one. You have to genuinely believe that your experience, your judgment, and your ability to solve problems have real value. That took me longer than I'd like to admit. But once it clicked, everything else got easier -- the conversations, the boundaries, the quality of the projects I took on.

What actually matters

Ten years in, I spend a lot less time worrying about what's urgent and a lot more time thinking about what matters. The urgent stuff is always loud. A client needs something by tomorrow. An inbox is full. A site is down. You handle it. But the things that actually move the needle -- building real relationships, improving how you work, getting better at saying no to the wrong projects so you can say yes to the right ones -- those things are quiet. They don't send you notifications.

If I could go back and tell that version of me, the one charging two hundred dollars for a broken contact form, just one thing, it would be this: the technical skills will come. The tools will change every few years anyway. What will set you apart is how you show up for people, how you handle the hard conversations, and whether you care enough about the work to tell the truth even when it's uncomfortable.

That's the job. Everything else is just details.