The executive assistant at a medium-sized plumbing company called us about a website. Not the owner — the assistant. And the first thing out of her mouth was that she needed to get everything together first. Everything meant everything. Every single bit of copy. Every page. Every word nailed down and approved before we could start.
You could feel the tension. This wasn’t someone being difficult. This was someone under pressure from an owner who wanted it right, wanted it perfect, and had put the weight of that on her shoulders.
What “Ready” Turned Out to Mean
We went back and forth. I told her she didn’t have to give me all of that. Oh no, it has to be right. It has to be this. I tried again. Explained that just writing out a list doesn’t mean it’ll look good online — formatting matters, layout matters, and if she hands me something that doesn’t work visually and I build the entire site around it, we’re going to have to change it anyway.
No, what do you mean?
That’s the moment. Two people in the same conversation, looking at the same project, and one of them can’t see that the wall she’s building between herself and the website doesn’t need to be there. Some people are just doers — head down, get it done — and sometimes they miss the forest for the trees.
So I asked her: can I use what I need, and then we can always add to it? Because that’s better. Give me what you have. Let me shape it. If something’s missing, we’ll handle it. You don’t need to hand me a finished product before I can start building one.
Quite a tug of war. But it ended up working out perfect.
And you could tell it was a relief. Once she realized how little she really needed to bring to the table — that the job wasn’t on her to deliver a perfect packet before the project could begin — the tension broke. Slowly I whittled that ideology down until the project was just a project again, not a performance review. Her business was not ready for a website the way she defined ready. But by any definition that matters, she’d been ready longer than she realized.
When “I’m Not Ready” Is a Different Question
Sometimes someone tells you they’re not ready and you can hear that they are. They’ve got the copy. They’ve got the money. Nothing is missing except the yes.
When that happens, I don’t pitch. I ask.
Based on what I’m seeing, you’ve got great website copy. You said you have the money. So is it a trust issue between you and me? Is it that you don’t trust our company? Or is it that you don’t trust yourself to be able to make it to the one or two meetings to sign off on everything? What is it?
And then from there, have the conversation. Because “I’m not ready” is sometimes true. But sometimes it’s a shield for something else — and the only way to find out is to ask what ready means to them and see if the answer holds up.
That assistant at the plumbing company wasn’t unready. She was over-prepared for a process that didn’t require it. The business was ready the day she picked up the phone. She just didn’t know it yet. And the moment someone told her that — not as a pitch, but as the truth — she could finally let go of the packet she thought she needed and start the thing she’d been putting off.
Yeetish Question
What if I don’t have all my website content ready before I contact a web design company?
You don’t need all of it. You probably don’t even need most of it. Give us what you have and let us shape it — that’s part of the job. The businesses that wait until everything is perfect before starting are the ones that never start. What you have right now is enough to begin.