Quote:
Originally Posted by raymor
Minte just clised on a new building that's half a MILLION square feet. Most GFYers work from home or an office with no more than three people and their company never will grow larger than 1-3 people. I sometimes wonder what some of you do differently.
My business has paid the bills for 15 years in a row, so we must be doing some things right, but we never moved beyond 400 square feet. What's the difference between a businessman who feeds himself and one who takes it to the next level? In fifteen years we've grown to 3 1/2 people and are considering hiring another. I'd love to hear from the big guys what they did differently from the 95% who are "successful" and will never expand beyond the spare bedroom.
|
I'm definately not one of the big guys (only slightly larger then your company), but for what it's worth since we run similar businesses, i'll share my opinion on this.
I think the deciding factor when you take it to the next level is when it all simply becomes too much to manage on your own. On some days we have next to nothing to do and work on internal projects. On other days, we're swamped with support tickets and custom stuff. I have to code, do sales, answer support, prepare updates, quote custom projects, and chat/shoot the shit with clients to maintain business relationships. Right now, we manage really well compared to when It was just me at the start. I was always stressed out and would have a nervous breakdown every 2-3 months. It was too much, so I had to expand.
Let's say I were to hire a dedicate sales guy. Right now, I don't go actively seeking work - it comes to us from referrals and existing clients. If I did have someone actively seeking custom projects for us to do, we'd probably have much more work and require more staff which would be taking it to the next level. Hiring here is hard as hell with the whole porn thing, because poland is extremely religious so it's like trying to hire in the vatican. However, let's just say I could find staff. Without more work, I can't hire more programmers because they'll be sitting idle. Without more programmers, I can't take on that much more work rendering the sales guy pointless. Would need to deligate someone to a managerial position as well, because I don't want to be the only guy in charge and be asked a million questions all day from the staff on how this or that should be done because i'd get nothing done.
In a nutshell to me it seems like taking business to the next step isn't just growing slowly employee by employee, it's taking that big leap. I don't know how much of your biz is just selling strongbox etc and developing new versions of it vs custom projects vs whatever, but I try to think of it in the same way as having a store and opening up another branch. You take what you already have that works, and you make another copy of it. As for why I haven't done this yet - I want to get some more experience in hiring and managing staff before I take the big leap so I don't make any stupid mistakes. Another big obstacle to overcome I think is the cost vs profit margin. When I was working alone, my work was like 95% profit with maybe 5% costs (since i was creating everything using no materials, my only costs were computer hardware/software/phones/etc). With an office, staff, etc, the profit vs cost is much different and more similar to a traditional business and that was really hard to for me to adjust to.