Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Steven Freivogel. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Steven, appreciate you joining us today. One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?

Stories – everyone loves to hear wat goes on and I have two of them. One positive (among many I have had) and one negative (among a few of them) that I have experienced.

Let’s start with the positive. While I have never done any paid advertising as I get all of the business by word of mouth. Yes, all of it. I did get a woman who need several websites for her clients. These came about because I had done ADA compliance for one of her other clients through another person and hence, they referred her to me. so, she needed a bunch of websites for her clients. We agreed on a fair price with no issues or worries. I was not given much to go on which is most of the time and I was able to design and develop them in a quick turn around time. I sent the invoice to her and would receive an email on each one stating that “this is not enough. You need to charge me more” Now anyone would be ok with this, but I had agreed on a price and wanted to be fair since she was sending numerous sites for me to create. I would state that this is not needed, and she argued and stated that she would not pay me until I charged her more. Well in the end and surprised, I charged her more and she paid each and every one of them right away.

So, hear is the negative. I was asked via another business if I wanted to redesign a site for a children’s company. I was asked to come up with a proposal, cost and deadline based on what I had seen of their current site and franchise sites. Proposal goes into the owners and no issues. Meeting time comes (got to love those meetings) and I am on the phone with four company owners who do not know anything tech wise. They said the agreement looks good and another woman chimes in. I did not who or whom she was and what I found out in the meeting is the company was bringing on board a project manager who was a data analyst. No knowledge on design but ideals towards numbers.

Ok, no problem. I have dealt with issues like this before but this one is different. She had me meet at her office which turned out to be her home and asked me to work out of her office/home. I stated that this is not how I work since I have all the tools, I need but not there. Again, mind you some of the changes are on the fly and not in the proposal. She also brings on a graphic designer but not a professional one, but a junior level one and she asked me to teach her photoshop.

Wait, gets even better – lol – I told her I do not have time to teach her when I must get this site done. She says ok, let’s have a meeting. We all get on the phone minus the company with the business analyst, the junior graphic person, the original site developer/data admin and me. In the call, we are coming up with ideas on how or what to use to build the site out. I suggest multi-site WordPress as this would include the franchise sites. Great idea right – wrong…they decided to go with html for not one but all 7100 pages for the site and on top of this, the database connections to the old site were in cold fusion, The data admin suggested not to change this. So, I repeat on the phone – 7100 pages – all mobile friendly – UI/UX Design – one by one – 65 franchise sites and connect their data to cold fusion (this is super outdated) for the site and they all go yes… Here comes the kicker!

With each page built and now learning cold fusion on the fly, I had to do mocks in photoshop for each and get them approved BEFORE building anything out. All through the data analyst and the company. This no doubt led sometimes to several screaming sessions where my phone would rattle in my ear as it was so loud.

In all of it and over 9-month period, the site did get done with 7100 html mobile friendly pages.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I started getting interested in design and creativity more when I was taking a college art course. Upon graduation, I took a job gathering Internet cold call leads for a television sales company. They had a website but was basic and at the time, I was pretty advanced in computers but not nearly on the web as I am nowadays. I was playing with their ftp and learning what this was when they asked me if I wanted to work on their website. It was just I did not know anything about a website or how to do anything for it. Upon this, I would go online to find stuff to help. Now mind you, this was the early days of the Internet in the late 90’s – early 2000’s. I was making 7.50 but given leeway to learn on the job. After I worked for them for several months and continued to learn and read everything I could about web design and development online, I felt I had enough skills to get out in the real world. I tried a few jobs, even took a big tech job but it was not enough. I wanted to go for more and strive for more.

I decided to get my name out there, I took on any job I could. No matter the pay or what it was. I had taken the same concept that I was when I djed and used this for a company and web ideals. The first site I did was for my uncle. Pretty basic but utilized html for it. I think the second one was for a corvette guy and took the job for $25 bucks. I took on more and more and kept growing and growing, increasing my worth and my skills along the way. All of it by word of mouth, asking questions, grabbing any knowledge online in regard to the web and just trying to put it all into real world practice.

Funny thing is, I only read one tech book and it was Internet Marketing for dummies and on top of that 75% of the websites I have done or do, have all been word of mouth.

I try to be a one stop shop for clients. If I do not know it, I figure it out. Never turn money away, no matter what it is. Never also turn a client down. Work within their budget if they cannot afford it because they will be beyond happy and recommend more people along the way.

Do the best you can but think outside the box. Problem solves their issues before they even know it. Yes, you will in a sense “read minds” but you should after a while understand your clients and customer needs just by one word from them.

Setting yourself apart is not what you do, it’s who you are. If you offer more than the customer needs, they will always come back for other items. Be fair to your clients and don’t over charge – no matter the issues or headaches they can cause.

I am most proud that I have designed – coming up to this year – 3200 websites plus.

The things that I would like anyone to know about Black Knight Publishing is we offer fair costs; we are here to help you solve your problems/issues and we do a job that you will be proud.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I thought when I first started that it would take 14-hour days and all marketing (paid or organic) to get things going. I found out once I hit a knowledge plateau that it was just doing a good job, helping the person sole their issues, getting the work done quickly and one time and making it affordable that others would come.

I stopped killing myself and start working smarter NOT harder.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

It was 2003 when the tech bust hit and work dried up. No work and very little money were coming in. Tried all sorts of ways to get things going better and a huge struggle for 11 months. I almost put it all up and took a webmaster teaching job for a bit. Things settled down, started doing things differently (smarter not harder) and climbed out of the hole.

Started making my value and worth of what I could do mean something and tried to stand above others.

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