I recently had the absolute pleasure to work with Maria Doyle of SELECT Consultants. Following is her story:
Four months ago I was broke, had just lost $6000 to a website development company who took $12000 of my hard earned savings and spent 9 months delivering an awful website that looked terrible and had none of the functionality I required. Opt- in? Huh? Affiliate bonus? oh that’ll cost you another $5000. Oh you want your LOGO included on the site? That’ll be another 3 months and another $5000. Timelines? What? Mobile responsive site? Oh that’s an extra too.
Pffft. 9 months of my life I’ll never get back, I was broke, dejected, thinking that B-School was a brilliant waste of time if I couldn’t get my dream site and business into some sort of functioning form. So I threatened court action and got a silencer with a cheque for $6000. Back to square one. Is it even worth my time? Will this ever actually happen? Can what I have in my head ever actually be turned into a reality?
Enter Michelle.
She listened to me wail and cry about what I’d been through to get to her. She took the existing site and critiqued it so badly I think I could hear the old developers weeping in disgrace. The thing was, I knew she was right, and after the next 30 minute ‘should we be working together’ chat, I instantly had faith that she knew what she was doing and would be able to deliver. She walked me through ‘wo to go’ how she could build the functionality that I needed into my site. Every ‘what about this?’ question was met with a ‘can do’ answer and a sensible solution, and if not, there was a ‘everything is figureoutable, we’ll work it out!’ approach. Marie would be so proud!
Right there and then I handed over the 50% deposit and over the coming months I watched my dream come alive.
Check out the magic we created right here: www.selectconsultants.com
I’ve never looked back. Michelle is an angel in disguise, and no words that I can put on the screen can really demonstrate what it is like to work with her, to bring your ideas, visions and dreams to reality, but here goes.
Michelle has a unique, complimentary skill set that is rare to find in one developer. Most large companies have 7 or 8 people doing the work that Michelle does, and the beauty of having all those skills in one person is that it all works together seamlessly. Believe me. Trying to get the likes of servers, hosts, domain registrations, email accounts, AWeber, s2Member, plug-ins, Affiliate bonuses, membership options, database filtering and all the other 3487 things that go into making a site function flawlessly, to operate together in harmony, is no mean feat and when you have ONE person who knows how to put all of that together and how to make them all sing one tune, you’re onto a winner. Michelle is that multi-talented technician and developer, who will work tirelessly to bring every part of the dream you have to life.
Add to that, her background is B-School grounded. She gets it. She understands every piece of marketing speak and business strategy that you get from B-School and knows how and why to implement it. Not only does she understand it, she understands how it relates to your business and how to make the best decisions for what you need. I can’t count how many times she came to me with several options (because she never comes with a problem, only solutions!) and my question back to her was – well if it was YOUR business, what would YOU do? Sensible solutions that work for my business and what I need. Seriously. Money can’t buy that sort of advice when it’s integrated into how your site is built.
So how can I sum up Michelle?
Is she a web developer? Well yes, in the strictest sense of the word but really? This is what you’re employing when you work with her:
The communication and people skills of an account manager: everything to do with your site build is managed by her – not some random other person whose job it is to make you happy but has no idea what developers do, can do or should be doing.
The technical skills of a web developer: she is across every piece of functionality you could possibly need in any scenario, and if she isn’t, she’ll work it out!
The guiding, protective sense of a business coach: I don’t know how many times Michelle came up with ideas for making the site better, content more responsive, passwords safer (seriously – I even got mamma bear emails reminding me how vulnerable I was making my site by having pathetic passwords) – there really is no limit to what she’ll do to take care of you!
A B-School Graduate, Believer and Implementer: does that even need explanation on how important that is for us B-Schoolers?
Add to that she’s conscientious, meticulous, has an attention to detail that is second to none and actually cares for the clients she looks after. These four months have been sprinkled with conversations back and forth at all times of the day and night when we’re both able to be working on the site together, countless laughs, giggles and whoop whoops when we’ve finally got something licked, to the point where we even had a virtual celebratory beverage via Skype when the site actually launched.
I was looking for a web developer. I found a B-School Babe who guided me through the process of bringing my dream alive and now have a firm friend who is going to be involved with my business and life for the forseeable future. Check out the site and tell me this woman doesn’t weave magic! www.selectconsultants.com
Michelle Millichip. Employ her. You’ll never look back!