My grandmother was a tall woman with beautiful blue eyes that were as twinkly as stars in a clear night sky. She had curly white hair that framed a face with barely a wrinkle on it and she had a cheeky grin that belied the fact that she was, for most of my life, anyway, “old.” Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Grace Davidson Robertson Crossman immigrated to Canada in her mid-twenties. As a younger woman, she had been a force of nature, and our family has many stories of her determination, grit and ferocity. My father and his two sisters, Jean and Edie, had grown up during the Second World War and had referred to her, behind her back, of course, as “Old Blitz.”

I knew her as Grams.

Grams did not have an easy life. She had left school at age 13 to work to support her family but she was what we would now call a lifelong learner. Even in her 90s, she could carry on a conversation about politics that would put most politicians to shame. She and my grandfather, a tailor, had struggled through the Great Depression raising three children, partly thanks to the small salary Grams earned working as a health care aide in a retirement home. Grams was an amazing do-it-yourselfer.

A great student of genealogy, she loved trailing back through the years to find out about her ancestors. I’m not sure she was intrigued by their stories, particularly, as she was not what I would call a fanciful person in any way. But she felt connected to her past and felt rooted in her Scottish ancestry.

I never saw Grams drive a car or do anything more technical than make toast, but I think she would have been amazed at the scope and possibilities the Internet presents. I thought of her while my team and I worked through our recent website makeover. Three life lessons I learned from my Grandma helped, and I thought I would share those today for anyone else who is focused on a web project:

1. Be determined, even ferocious, in your efforts to see the project through. Have you ever heard anyone say, “Wow, I can’t believe how fast and easy it was to replace our website”? This project takes time.
2. Learn everything you can. The web is an ever-changing beast and the more you know about how it works, the better your decisions for your web presence will be.
3. Stay rooted in what’s important to you. Your website is a reflection of your business, not your web designer’s. You may have to adapt your plan for good reasons, but stick to your guns. We were lucky to work with Agenda Marketing a company that puts its clients first. Not all website designers are as receptive.

Grams has been gone for 20 years now but she is still an important part of the fibre of my being. I think it’s neat that one person can have such a powerful influence on another. We are all influencing other people in one way or another, and our websites are one of the ways we do that. Let’s make them count.