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Things they don’t teach you running a business by yourself
- yread 8y agoThe rollercoaster is real and I somehow haven't expected it even after diligently reading HN for years. I'm afraid that if I have to go back to normal work it won't feel like life anymore and will be terribly boring
- poulsbohemian 8y agoSpot on. The seasonality and ups /downs of even well-established small businesses is exhausting. I've met way too many execs / owners of $10-2MM businesses where 99.9% of that is riding on 1 or 2 clients. Scary.
- mrskitch 8y agoIt's funny cause I've heard it so many times, but it never really sank in. I always assumed folks were just saying that, but it's super-hard to cope with. I lay awake at night from glee and border-line depression because of it. Growing thicker skin and being more steadfast goes a long way, but it's hard to practice that.
- cbluth 8y agoYo Joel, super rad to see you here. I'll check out browserless
- sivers 8y agoA great book on this subject is “Start Small Stay Small” by Rob Walling : https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall Rob was running ten simultaneous businesses by himself, (and he has a few kids), diligently managing and tracking his time to run each one as efficiently as possible, and tracking it to make it easy to sell the business to someone some day with a specific intruction manual and estimate of how much time it would take to run that business.
- drumttocs8 8y agoDo you have any other recommendations on the subject? Your book recs are great by the way. I only wish they were tagged or categorized to really dig into a certain subject! Thank you for doing them.
- r0fl 8y agoSivers book summaries are the best! Thanks for making them available for the public. I have avoided a few duds by using your list and gone to listen to some great audio books because the notes intrigued me. One of my favorite bookmarks in my browser
- mrskitch 8y agoThat's really fascinating to me. Optimizing for an acquisition might also come with a nice bi-product of keeping the business , itself, more self-sustaining. I'll have to give this book a read, thanks for the suggestion!
- ironjunkie 8y agoHey! Nice to see you on HN :) Every once in a while when I want to discover a non-fiction new book, I head to your book list. Once of the best out there IMO. Your summaries are very much on point.
- victor106 8y agoI learnt a lot just listening and reading a lot of advice from Sivers. He is awesome
- adamqureshi 8y ago
- erikrothoff 8y agoOne thing I learned that after a while it gets super easy to convince yourself that just 15 minutes of playing outdated online FPS games is OK, then 2 hours later you're still playing, and nobody is there to say "What the hell?". Is this normal?
- sharemywin 8y agoof course it is but that's also a recipe for struggling to get by. if you don't master time management and money management your sunk on your own.
- erikrothoff 8y agoSounds like you've been through similar things? What helped you master time management? We're bootstrapped so the only money management problems is really related to (wasted) time management.
- thisisananth 8y agoI was addicted to browsing during my work. I knew I was wasting my time and it is not helping. I would resolve to not so it again. Then slowly I would fall back into my old ways. What helped was realizing that it is easy to do something 100% of the time than 95% of the time. Previously rationalized when I was getting distracted by telling myself it is just for 5 mins which inevitably resulted in more rationalising and realizing only after an hour. Now when I get distracted and realize it, I just stop it there and then and get back to work. I also made some changes like having specific internet time and strictly avoiding it during other time also helped. Read the book deep work by Cal Newport. It has these and various other ways to focus more. https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692 https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/...
- shinymark 8y agoI found the same to be broadly true for me. One small tip to break the habit - use your hosts file to straight up block distracting websites on your work PC. You can still read them elsewhere when not working. This really helped me break the subconscious habit of checking distracting news sources. And yes, I blocked HN on my work PC.
- hkon 8y agoIf by they you mean bloggers, I think you are mistaken.
- poulsbohemian 8y agoBeing an exec in someone else's business and running my own show, the hardest things have been the most basic: 1) Managing people. 2) Collecting from clients. 3) Finding and cultivating clients for the long run. It's that simple. What's interesting is, I don't recall ever touching on those issues with any depth in my undergrad business classes. Sure we studied "best practices" in hiring, managing, layoffs, etc, but that's very different than the day-to-day of building a team from scratch and getting people to produce at their best level. Likewise, I took a lot of financial management and accounting classes, but that's totally different from some jerk customer who decides they just don't want to pay their bill out of spite, forcing you to litigate, where the dollar amount represents potentially months of payroll. There are so many things like this that are _basic business_ and yet until you've been there, it's hard to really know how to prepare for it or build the skills for it.
- mediaman 8y agoI agree. I never did an MBA, but have talked with a lot of people who did. Collections, financing (not the high falutin' corporate finance they teach, or corporate accounting, but small business finance: small business loan mechanics, covenants, banks versus ABLs versus factoring vs equipment leases), basic labor regs, how to sell, how not to underprice, how to discover customers' "real problems", how to manage performance, how to deal with an otherwise good employee going through personal problems, how to write a good job posting that doesn't read like it was written by an HR drone, etc are all things that don't seem to be commonly covered subjects. The only solution seems to be to go do all those things and make the mistakes, but I think much of it could be accelerated through good training.
- aaavl2821 8y agoI read an interesting comment either here or on IH the other day about the difference in emotional investment when you're running your own business vs working for someone else. It was something along the lines of "why is it so easy to take feedback on your work from a boss, but when the same feedback comes from a customer it is so much more personal. at work its a lot easier to ship something that's good enough, but for some reason everything has to be perfect when you're working for yourself" I totally butchered the quote, and wish i could attribute it properly, but i thought it was a valuable perspective
- matchagaucho 8y agoAnother great learning opportunity is to look at the millions of other small businesses around you. The coffee shop you're sitting in to write code... the proprietor has: * Payroll expenses * Marketing, Sales, Promotion * Rent * Recruiting * Supply chain * Inventory and storage * Utility bills * Legal entity structure * Accounting / taxes Fundamentally, all small businesses have the same core challenges. Indie software shops are not much different.
- paulkon 8y agoHow many of these could be outsourced to trusted third parties?
- mikekchar 8y agoAll of them. That's what an employee is :-) You can find services to do most of these things too. However, all of these things eat into your profit margin. If you don't actually want to run a small business, probably the better idea is to invest your capital in somebody else's business.
- bisRepetita 8y agoNone. I exaggerate a bit. I don't mean to be negative, but you always need to monitor, check, manage. Employees or third parties. In my experience, you never "outsource your worries", you just manage them better. Third parties execute what you want them to execute.
- jasonkester 8y agoIndie software shops are not much different. Ah, but count the items that a one-man software shop can strike off of that list above. Fundamentally, Indie Software Shops come with a crazy unfair advantage to nearly every other form of business. No rent. No payroll. No inventory or storage. No recruiting. No Utilities. It's just not fair, but nobody tell anybody. Even non-brick-and-mortar businesses like the Lawyer in that list have to deal with most of those downsides. More importantly, no amount of working from home, by himself, will get a Lawyer into a position where he's lawyered up a piece of Law that people will stumble across and pay him money for every month without any effort on his part. That, for us, is the business model. It's a pretty cool gig we have.
- girzel 8y agoAfter ten years of muddling through, I'm finally coming to the conclusion that I was never meant to run a business. By this point, the mere thought that I might give this up and work for a company that would pay me a regular salary and provide health insurance, where I would have colleagues who would support me and take care of all the things I'm no good at... just imagining that scenario brings tears of relief to my eyes. I'm not a programmer: I work in publishing, promoting Chinese literature in English. I am supposed to split my time between actual translation and editing, and running projects to promote our books and publishing consulting jobs. Project management is horrible; continually worrying about the direction of the company is horrible; four and a half hours of writing emails in the morning is horrible. I am supposed to be spending half my time translating and editing, but it doesn't happen. I am desperate to fuck off with a book and a dictionary into a quiet room and work, but there's an endless number of niggling details to take care of. If it doesn't give you a high, don't do it. If it takes your high away, DON'T DO IT.
- graeme 8y agoWould I be right in thinking that the revenue from this is not particularly high? I think I might be happier working a 40 hour a week (remote) job if the pay were similar. But, after running a business for eight years, I am pretty sure I'm making more money than I could earn from such a job. The income is also largely passive. I need to upkeep the business, but sales happen without active involement. So I can downcycle when I want. Leaving this as a qualification to your comment. Not all bootstrapped businesses are equal. The OP described challenges of a successful bootstrapped business - even that is psychologically hard. But it's even harder if the business doesn't work, or only sort-of works. (My day sounds nothing like yours, not all bootstrapped businesses need that much email, or it can be delegated)
- girzel 8y ago> Would I be right in thinking that the revenue from this is not particularly high? Boy, would you! > Not all bootstrapped businesses are equal. The OP described challenges of a successful bootstrapped business - even that is psychologically hard. But it's even harder if the business doesn't work, or only sort-of works. And I think my first and most fundamental failure as a "businessperson" is a failure to recognize what works and what doesn't. Everyone I come into professional contact with is extra stoked about what we do. Everyone is complimentary, everyone is glad we exist. Very few people are willing to pay us. In the end, that means I've done my job wrong.
- graeme 8y agoGreat summary of of the challenges involved! Small bit of feedback on your site: I run a business, and am not a programmer. I use a programmer. I can't tell if this is something would use, or not. You probably don't want to optimize around this use case, but I was looking for a single line that might say "business owner who employe a programmer? Click here to see if this would be useful for you" --> leads to a description of how browserless helps my programmer
- Drdrdrq 8y agoUnless you know it would help you (as a manager), I would advise you let the programmer pick his own tools. You can still check with other programmers if his choices make sense, but be careful if acting on this information. Just make sure he uses some sort of CVS (Git is most common nowadays), other than that... any competent programmer should know about these things, and it is more likely that he finds out about them from their peers.
- graeme 8y agoWell, that’s the thing, I don’t know enough about the service to know if it is: * Something useful for my organization even if my programmer leaves, or * something useful for a programmer personally Me and my programmer do talk about stuff to be used by my organization. Which is mainly just him in tech terms, but i want everything documented to mitigate bus factor. So we talk generally about tools. Also if it’s a paid thing, that’s he’s using for working on my stuff, then I would pay for it.
- mrskitch 8y agoThanks for the feedback, this is something that has been brought up a few times, via folks from other backgrounds and positions. I'm still trying to think of the best way to tackle this sort of "personalization", but will keep this in mind.
- graeme 8y agoBrennan Dunn recently launched a servie for this actually: https://rightmessage.com https://rightmessage.com
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ajeet_dhaliwal 8y agoThanks for this, as a founder myself I completley agree with the ‘Be a customer of your product’ point. Spot on!
- redisman 8y agoI'd like to add: -Learn how taxes work or get an accountant -You won't be able to afford health insurance for your family (in the US)
- yoshamano 8y agoMaybe it's because I'm a rural Michigander, or maybe it's because I'm 35. Whatever the case may be, whenever I read a line such as, "It goes by many names: boot-strapped, solo-founded, self-funded, indie-hackers...etc... and it's pretty hot right now!" I have a visceral reaction. Around here that's just owning a business. No one cares about how it's structured or how it's funded. Trying to quantify your business to others in such ways is so much window dressing. That being said, the rest of the article was a nice read.
- mrskitch 8y agoDefinitely. Even the term "startup" is overloaded. Simpler terminology, like you mentioned, would go a long way to make newcomers feel more welcome. Thanks for the kind words!
- dgudkov 8y agoOne of the biggest issues when running a bootstrapped company is retaining focus. There are so many cool features that can be added, but so little resources to implement them. Spending time on something that is not really needed pushes the point of profitability further and further. Basically, the goal is not to make a product that "doesn't suck" because it's not possible. The goal is to find the most optimal way to make it suck less. This is true for funded startups as well, but a bootstrapped business has a way smaller error margin for wrong product management.
- suleman11 8y agoYeah... pretty much right.... !!!!!
- suleman11 8y agoThanks
- eksemplar 8y agoEvery one of those things are exactly what they teach you in every one of these articles, isn’t it? What they don’t teach you is how to register a company, how to obtain trademarks or patents, how to do your taxes, what to deduct. How to follow laws you probably haven’t ever heard of. How to hire your first workers, or how to manage them. How to hire your first manager. How to do budgets, how to do pay checks, well how to do finances in general. I mean, it’s a good article, it’s just exactly the same as all the others.
- wnsire 8y ago> it’s just exactly the same as all the others Yup , this article is basically similar to the already existing thousands of "Entrepreneurs" stuff existing on Medium. >How to hire your first workers, or how to manage them It's really sad these days we cant get things that are actually intellectually honest , people are "ok" to "open" about stuff that has been written about X Million times , but now how about they fail to manage X or Y or choose to hire X instead of Z and turn out wrong. Really sad.
- jasonkester 8y agoI have, on occasion, contributed to the pile of "these articles" that you speak of, and I might suggest that the reason your things get skipped is that they're not particularly relevant. But just in case: 1.) Register the company: (optional) 1 hour finding and filling the "Sole Proprietor" form for your state. Or just don't bother. 2.) Trademarks and Patents: Completely unneccessary. 15 years in, I have none of these for any of my businesses. 3.) Taxes: Turbotax, click through whatever "business" one they guide you through and deduct what it says to deduct. 4.) Mystery Foreign Laws: Ignore them completely. If the European Cookie Popup Enforcement Division ever knocks on your door, follow their instructions. Until then, sweat things that actually matter for your business. 5-10.) Employee Stuff: Don't hire employees. As a one man shop, you'll find you can pull most stuff off yourself. Again, 15 years in, I've probably only paid 2 or 3 freelancers for short gigs outside my area of expertise. Their fees go in the appropriate box on Turbotax above, and never hit the threshold to need 1099s or anything silly like that. So I think the important takeaway is that most people tend to worry way too much about all the little administrative details. And it's a shame, because all that can do is scare you off. If you ignore all that stuff, and assume it doesn't apply to you, chances are it never will. Or at least by the time it ever does, you'll already be up and running, with money in the bank you can use to address it. Best of luck!
- projektfu 8y agoFor me, it's not that they didn't teach me, it's just that there are so many lessons you have to learn yourself through experience. It's hard to teach how to select, train and keep good employees, how to recognize toxic ones early and fire them, and how to deal with employees who are not bad but not great. It's hard to learn how to pace yourself while also growing the business. You can be taught communication skills but it's like learning a instrument, you need deliberate practice to succeed.
- madman2890 8y agoI started a company in south america (American here), and navigating the legal system has been the most life sucking thing ever. The idea was simple enough, but the execution from a legal perspective was something I was completely unprepared for. Also did this completely alone...That being said, the hard part is done ;)
- mrskitch 8y agoIt took me at least several weeks to get an idea of what the legal landscape even looks like, and what/whom I needed to engage. Definitely could be easier, and in its own way it is a gate-keeping mechanism I feel.
- fgheorghe 8y agoWe needed to know more reasons on why not to open a business. Tell us more about how hard it is. !(It helps)
- mrskitch 8y ago:) This is something I've been thinking about as well. I'll have to write up something more details and "when not to" as it's just as hard to pin down as "when you should." Thanks for chiming in!
- mrskitch 8y agoJust wanted to chime in and say thanks for the discussion here. One of my favorite parts of Hacker News is reading through comments and challenging beliefs I've held, and absorbing new ones. Lots for me to think about, and hopefully the community as well. Cheers!