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Ask HN: How to automate?
I am a single founder and I started a start-up a few month ago and accidentally(!) I got too many costumers. I mean it was a side project just to earn some money to be able to build my main start-up. I invested 100$ dollars, 25 days of designing, coding, writing the content and marketing. In the first month I made 20.000$ and this was very motivational to advance. By the time I got much more costumers, because of uniqueness of the product spreading the word-of-mouth. Idea was simple, helping students from Azerbaijan, to apply to the internships in Germany, German universities, language courses, and so on. But because it must be a side project I must automate the process. I hired 3 guys to help me, working from their own home as the freelancers. I am the only one, who knows every bureaucratic details how to come to Germany, and at the same time speaking azerbaijani and german. I teached my freelancers how to answer to the costumers, every detail. So must freelancers automate my works, and so I can only advance the company and grow. But now I noticed, because I teached these freelancers everything about our company, they ignore the costumers contacting to us and after that they contact the costumers personally and get the work personally done. As you see, I lost half of my routine costumers. Now I can't figure out, how can I automate the process. I thought about building a platform, where costumers and freelancers can only communicate, without ability to speak with them out of this platform. But no chance, at the end of every conversations, they got the emails, and working with them personally.
Working in an office is also not a solution. Does anyone has an experience like this? I appreciate any advices.
- rasim 15y agoI think online chat tool can be made, where your workers and costumers could speak, without giving their contact informations. Second, you must pick-up your workers carefully, for a new start-up it's very important.
- zeynalov 15y agoThank you for your advice. The problem is, the costumers must send their CVs with their contact informations. After that, workers do the work personally by contacting them.
- t-crayford 15y agoPut a non-compete in your contract with your freelancers.
- zeynalov 15y agoI tried to do this but they must be my full-time contract workers due the rules in Germany. Because they a freelancers, in very different cities (I have to find freelancers both speaking German and Azerbaijani and they are very few here) I couldn't hire a full-time office workers.
- teyc 15y ago1. Split your workers into departments. No one single worker should handle all the processes. 2. Use forms to guide people through the process. It will make your processes easier to automate. 3. Take some upfront payment. That will discourage customers from dealing with your employees on the side.
- zeynalov 15y agoThanks for the great tips. Splitting the process to the different workers is a good idea.
- teyc 15y agoAnother trick that I learnt from somebody else is to hold one key process to yourself. Someone I knew gets clothing manufactured in China. But before it is sold, they do an adjustment to it that is not known to the factory. Just as Coke has its "secret recipe", you have to make clear to your freelancers that you have a secret step. It will be enough to discourage them from running away with business.