Do you even know what these are?

Spurred on by a post I saw on LinkedIn, I started to re-listen to The Blue Ocean Strategy by W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

It's a topic I first became aware of through Nintendo - they stepped out of the red ocean with the Wii - no longer trying to compete on performance and technical specification, leaving Sony and Microsoft to the red ocean, defining their own blue ocean where the previous competition became irrelevant.

Move forward a few decades and whilst the Wii U missed the mark, the Switch has become a massive seller, and often a second console to PlayStation and XBOX owners.

As a business owner, the concept of shifting into a blue ocean is utterly appealing.

In my early days from launch in 2014, I did try to compete with others in my field and was always trying to beat them on price. Then I started watching content from Chris Do and a few others in the creative space. I joined Desislava Dobreva's BBS group almost 4 years ago, and combined, realised what I was missing, what was keeping me from moving forward, why the 'competition' and prices were irrelevant.

Have I created my own blue ocean? I'm not entirely sure as yet - it keeps me thinking to this day on quite what that means for the web design and digital marketing industry.

What I have done is create a unique business - a virtual agency built on collaboration with other experts in their own fields, ones who also don't try to compete on price - ones who understand their own value, believe in their own approach.

When I think about the work I love to help create, those businesses who are willing to step away from the norm are always the best to work with.

Those who understand that talking about themselves on their websites is not the way to go. That our skills in grasping and working on their individuality, their uniqueness, those elements which lift them above the norm, the 'competition' position them so much better than how many designers and agencies still opt for (even those who themselves like to say they are different....).My ideal client is one who isn't going to tell me what to do - who understands that whilst challenging what we deliver is expected, is not always going to involve us yielding to every request.

If you are happy to stay in the red ocean, to have a website which you may not even realise is as mundane and out of touch with your audience as it is, that's fine.

I am here to offer a different approach - but I'm not here to convince people who are not open to challenge in return.

Not everyone will understand the difference we deliver - and that's great, there are plenty of web designers and agencies out there who will provide what you want instead of what you need, even though you think otherwise.