That consultant who told me to stop offering setup services was dead wrong

I had this guy named Dave who runs a big ecommerce agency give me advice over lunch six months ago. He said I should only do product listing optimization and never offer store setup because it eats up time and doesn't scale. I took his word for it and turned down three Shopify store build projects over four months. Meanwhile my income dropped by about $2,400 because I was only picking up small tweak jobs. Last week I finally took a setup gig for a local candle brand in Austin and it paid $850 in just nine days. Dave was thinking about scaling an agency not about keeping a solo freelance business running. Has anyone else ignored advice from someone in a totally different situation?

3 comments

3 Comments

garcia.cameron15h ago

That Dave guy probably hasn't touched a store build in years like you said... he's up in his agency tower thinking about profit margins and employee billable hours. I had a similar thing happen with a mentor who told me to drop my web maintenance packages because they were "low value" and I should focus on big redesigns. That advice cost me about $1,600 over three months because I kept turning down people who just wanted me to update plugins and change text on their sites. I finally took one back on and it led to a full site rebuild for a real estate agent within two months. Those small setup jobs and maintenance gigs are how you stay afloat when the big projects dry up, and they build trust with people who pay you again and again. Dave's model works for Dave but us solo people need every honest dollar we can get.

waderamirez1d ago

Man that "doesn't scale" advice is for people trying to build a 7 figure agency, not for solo guys like us. You turned down $2400 in work based on some dude's theory about what works for his specific business model, that hurts. I get why he said it, but offering setup services is literally how you get new clients who stick around for the smaller tweaks later. That candle brand you helped will probably send you more work and tell their friends, that's how solo freelancers grow not by saying no to money. Dave probably hasn't done a single store build himself in years, he's managing teams and worrying about margins. You live in the real world where an $850 job in nine days is a win, not a waste.

the_laura1d ago

That same "doesn't scale" logic is why my local coffee shop stopped doing custom orders and lost half their regulars, sometimes the small stuff is how you build a real connection.