Like a lot of us out here, I have a one-person consulting shop, have had it for most of the past 20 years. Most years, I'm able to book between 1200 and 1500 hours, the last two have been about 1450, and that's kept me very busy, busy enough that this year I raised my rates 10% hoping to push one or two clients out...
Didn't work. My backlog at the beginning of the year was 2 months and growing. Then I landed two new clients in the same week with two good sized projects. I initially estimated the projects to each be 4 months long, so about 800 total hours; I've since discovered that they will likely push the total closer to 1000 hours.
Now I've gone the subcontracting route in the past. Pushed part of a huge project to another great developer, but I found that I couldn't effectively manage someone while still working on my own projects. Just a character flaw on my end; I can do one or the other, but I suck at doing both at the same time. And I'm not overly happy doing it either. And I get control-freakish about my projects, thinking no one can do it as well as I can... so there's that internal battle to fight.
So my first reaction on getting the extra customers was to shut down all marketing and prepared my family that I was going to be working weekends for a long while to keep up with the demands on my time. Which, as my wife said: "That's just what they taught you in business school, right?" Uh, no.
So I'm expanding my business. But doing it in baby steps.
I already knew someone who I had worked with in the past -- who had been a project manager, VP of IT, good skill set for managing projects and people -- and who was available, and he's now a project manager for me. And he went and got a developer who he had worked with for years and who is supposedly excellent (don't know yet, but I'm hoping it's true). So now I have a couple of extra people, working as subcontractors, not quite ready yet for real employees and I definitely didn't consider making them partners at this stage. Too early. I seeded them with the two new clients and I have another couple of good-sized projects from existing clients that I'm happy to let them take on. So that basically gets them to the 1000+ hours that I targeted for them for this year. My role with the team is to be quality control and to help manage the client.
So I have a mini-team, one project manager, one developer. The hope is that the demands on me for managing them will be less with this configuration than with a developer I'm directly managing. I also have tasked the project manager to get on the phone with his extensive business and personal contacts and find his team more work.
And I'm still fighting with my control-freakish tendencies by saying "it'll be good enough if the work is good enough." We'll see.
I'm compensating them with a percentage of the work (a bigger percentage if they find the customer), but still keeping enough that it'll be very profitable for my company and help me fund the stage that comes after this. The plan is that they bill 1000 hours this year, 2000 next year (by adding another developer), and then we try to get them to 4000 hours the year after that and everyone who wants becomes an employee and we take the next step in our growth that way. Good to set goals, right? Well, they agree that they can accomplish those goals and are working on what they need to do to make it happen.
Meanwhile, my backlog is still 2 months and growing for work I'm not handing off. My plan for me is to decrease my billable hours to 1200 this year. Don't know if that will happen, but it's my plan.
I find that now I'm hunting harder for new jobs as well. In the past, I was pretty lackadaisical about hunting for jobs, mostly just using Google ads to get customers to call me instead of trying to drum up more work from my contacts.
So... it's good now. New clients are happy they're going to get faster response than if I hadn't decided to expand, current customers are happier that they aren't suddenly on the backside of an 8-month backlog. And I'm happy that I don't have to worry about an 8-month backlog. And the two guys I brought on are happy that they have something fun to work on without the pressure of having to start a new business without any work in hand. So far: win, win, win.
But the journey is long. And there will be potholes along the way.
A year ago, I didn't expect that I'd ever grow the business past what I could handle. At that time, that was just me. We'll see if that's still true with what I'm attempting.
Didn't work. My backlog at the beginning of the year was 2 months and growing. Then I landed two new clients in the same week with two good sized projects. I initially estimated the projects to each be 4 months long, so about 800 total hours; I've since discovered that they will likely push the total closer to 1000 hours.
Now I've gone the subcontracting route in the past. Pushed part of a huge project to another great developer, but I found that I couldn't effectively manage someone while still working on my own projects. Just a character flaw on my end; I can do one or the other, but I suck at doing both at the same time. And I'm not overly happy doing it either. And I get control-freakish about my projects, thinking no one can do it as well as I can... so there's that internal battle to fight.
So my first reaction on getting the extra customers was to shut down all marketing and prepared my family that I was going to be working weekends for a long while to keep up with the demands on my time. Which, as my wife said: "That's just what they taught you in business school, right?" Uh, no.
So I'm expanding my business. But doing it in baby steps.
I already knew someone who I had worked with in the past -- who had been a project manager, VP of IT, good skill set for managing projects and people -- and who was available, and he's now a project manager for me. And he went and got a developer who he had worked with for years and who is supposedly excellent (don't know yet, but I'm hoping it's true). So now I have a couple of extra people, working as subcontractors, not quite ready yet for real employees and I definitely didn't consider making them partners at this stage. Too early. I seeded them with the two new clients and I have another couple of good-sized projects from existing clients that I'm happy to let them take on. So that basically gets them to the 1000+ hours that I targeted for them for this year. My role with the team is to be quality control and to help manage the client.
So I have a mini-team, one project manager, one developer. The hope is that the demands on me for managing them will be less with this configuration than with a developer I'm directly managing. I also have tasked the project manager to get on the phone with his extensive business and personal contacts and find his team more work.
And I'm still fighting with my control-freakish tendencies by saying "it'll be good enough if the work is good enough." We'll see.
I'm compensating them with a percentage of the work (a bigger percentage if they find the customer), but still keeping enough that it'll be very profitable for my company and help me fund the stage that comes after this. The plan is that they bill 1000 hours this year, 2000 next year (by adding another developer), and then we try to get them to 4000 hours the year after that and everyone who wants becomes an employee and we take the next step in our growth that way. Good to set goals, right? Well, they agree that they can accomplish those goals and are working on what they need to do to make it happen.
Meanwhile, my backlog is still 2 months and growing for work I'm not handing off. My plan for me is to decrease my billable hours to 1200 this year. Don't know if that will happen, but it's my plan.
I find that now I'm hunting harder for new jobs as well. In the past, I was pretty lackadaisical about hunting for jobs, mostly just using Google ads to get customers to call me instead of trying to drum up more work from my contacts.
So... it's good now. New clients are happy they're going to get faster response than if I hadn't decided to expand, current customers are happier that they aren't suddenly on the backside of an 8-month backlog. And I'm happy that I don't have to worry about an 8-month backlog. And the two guys I brought on are happy that they have something fun to work on without the pressure of having to start a new business without any work in hand. So far: win, win, win.
But the journey is long. And there will be potholes along the way.
A year ago, I didn't expect that I'd ever grow the business past what I could handle. At that time, that was just me. We'll see if that's still true with what I'm attempting.
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