Specializing is definitely key… I specialize in minimalist clean user centric designs and although it would have been easier to specialize in making cheesy flash splash pages at first… now I’m getting the rewards of my original strategy by getting clients who come to me for this specific qualities. Plus, the whole “love for what you’re doing” comes back into play: that’s what I love, that’s what I’m good at, and that’s what people hire me for, and yes they pay me “more”… Life is good ;)

Flexibility can be important depending on what you do… I’m flexible in the sense that I’ll always try to learn new things and incorporate something different every time, push myself in new directions… But more often than not, I”ll turn down updating preexisting websites built with tables (I specialize in semantic XHTML/CSS for my designs…) or poorly coded sites because it’s just not economically viable in terms of time invested… Instead I usually try to sell them a complete redesign, which is generally what they really need anyway, they just don’t realize it.

I got a little carried away here… What I originally intended to comment on was the “patience” bit. I think part of it comes from experience. When you first start as a designer, you put 100% effort in making the best design possible and your ego gets smashed into pieces when you get comments from people who don’t know anything about design. “How could they?!!” you think. When that happens a few times, you start to realize a few things (well, some designers don’t… I know a couple ;) and you change your approach. You start to really understand (not just conceptually) you’re not designing for yourself but for your client. Instead of making the “best” design, you make the most adapted to their needs. And here comes the little trick I learned that I wanted to share: when you get your client’s comments back, instead of internally fighting their opinion and thinking “your version makes so much more sense,” think about it as a new challenge: “how am I going to incorporate these new crazy changes without effecting the design quality/integrity/functionality/etc…” Then clients. feedback becomes a chance to improve yourself and your craft instead of a source of frustration… And everyone wins – you don’t even need “patience” anymore :)

Wow… that was a long comment, sorry about that!

@Jamie – where are you based? UK?

Kind regards
Henry