Mr. Blandings Builds His Web Site
There is a WONDERFUL movie from 1948 called Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas. In it, Grant and Loy dream of leaving their cramped NY apartment for the wide-open spaces of Connecticut, where they plan on renovating an old farmhouse, but end up building. From the beginning, their best friend Douglas is the voice of doom and reason. At every turn, he tries to advise them against certain things, but they go off and do them anyway, always realizing afterwards that their friend was right. They have setback after setback, and each time the price tag on their dream house goes up, up, up. And every step of the way, we laugh our heads off at the stupidity and chagrin of Grant and Loy, as well as the wisdom and wise cracks of their friend Douglas. But the interesting thing is, Grant and Loy are right in the end.
Yes, they make a ton of mistakes and end up paying about three times what they set out to spend. But as their friend Douglas points out near the end of the film, what they end up with is beyond estimation. Often, in business as well as life, where we end up cannot be weighed against the price we had to pay to get there. If we had known in advance what we would have to pay, we would never have gone there. But now that we're there, we can't imagine being anyplace else.
This especially applies to building a web site, because building a web site is like building a house. If a house is your most important expense as a family, a web site is your most important expense as a business. The days of just having "something" on the web are gone. Today, the web drives business and your web site is your house in that ever-changing, and often stormy, environment.