When you first start your business, you may have a particular vision in mind as to what kind of services you’re going to offer and how you’re going to differentiate yourself from the competition. You get all excited about your new venture, but for most businesses, the first few months can be pretty tough. It can be hard to attract customers and so you start to expand your vision a bit to try and accommodate a larger client base. While I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with this idea, it can prove to be quite a headache in the long run.

Marketing yourself to potential customers, you have to know what kind of products and/or services you can offer and what you cannot. I’m a freelance writer, for example. I specialize in writing things, but I know very little about coding, networking, or programming.

I was approached by a potential customer a long while back who wanted me to design their website from scratch, including the layout and logos, as well as the actual text. This was something that I simply could not do. As difficult as it was to turn down such a large contract, I could not do it because the customer would ultimately be disappointed with the amateur-ish website that would result. The content would be fine, but what about the rest of it?

This is where networking can really come in handy. If you’re good at writing and your friend is good at coding, you can “split” the contract and share in the profits. Know what you can do, but also what others can do better. Two heads are better than one, after all.