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This is something I've been struggling with recently. After a few years of adding customers at a fairly slow rate, this year I've already doubled the amount of

This is something I've been struggling with recently. After a few years of adding customers at a fairly slow rate, this year I've already doubled the amount of customers I have. Unfortunately, it still isn't enough to hire an employee. I've gone from ramen profitable and doing freelance to fill the gap, to ditching freelancing altogether and working on the application full-time. The first mistake I made was not saying no to customers. I ended up putting in basically 3 months of work between two customers adding features that would only benefit them. After that, one of them still wanted more, but I was at the end of my rope at that point and told them no. Now, because I have more customers, I get a lot more support and feature requests. I've been trying to streamline support by setting up a better system for tracking these tickets as some have been slipping through the cracks. I've also been trying to put as much information in my support documentation as possible. Unfortunately, the feature requests have pulled me away from both of these efforts. There are just SO MANY feature requests. To deal with the feature requests, I've really had to rethink how my application is built. Some things that should have been easy to implement have taken a lot more effort because of sloppy work I did previously trying to get features out. On the plus side, it has made me grow a lot as a software engineer because I can see how everything has played out over the years and I have a much better idea of why things should be built in a certain way. The downside is there are some systems that work and customers depend on, but to do it the right way would be a gargantuan effort. At some point I want to just get rid of them, but it's going to be painful, like sawing off an infected limb. Once I get through most of the cruft with that, a lot of the new features that need to be implemented will be a breeze and that will hopefully free up more time for marketing, which I do basically none of. That's really the crux of it though. To hire employees I need more growth, for more growth I need to work on marketing. To work on marketing, I need to spend less time on support and feature requests.

JohnFen 2y ago
> Unfortunately, it still isn't enough to hire an employee. A word of experience about having employees: avoid it for as long as you can. Everyone you hire is expensive -- not only in terms of money, but in terms of the additional time they'll take up and hassle involved. My personal rule is "don't hire someone unless you're at imminent risk of losing a bunch of money if you don't".
- rickydroll 2y ago
  I wish I had learned this earlier. A couple of years ago, I hired a part-time assistant to handle invoicing and other financial matters, which was a major sanity saver. He noticed a couple of companies getting behind in payments faster than I would have and saved me from some financial potholes.
  - b20000 2y ago
    how did you find your assistant and how do you manage to trust him and what are the first or most important tasks you handed off?
    - rickydroll 2y ago
      I found him through a stroke of luck. My first need was for someone to get the invoices out in time and to nag me to keep my work log up-to-date. I was talking to some people about how to find an assistant, and they pointed me to my current assistant. How do I trust him? Time and experience. I started with small tasks and expanded them as we developed trust. That and I control all the money. If you're going to get an assistant, look carefully at your needs. Start with what causes you the most grief, what you hate doing, and what you avoid doing. For me, it's financial paperwork. He now keeps track of all the expenses and invoices and makes sure my accountant gets the data. This year, he can start giving quarterly updates to my accountant so I'm not getting a $$$ surprise on taxes.

JohnFen 2y ago

> Unfortunately, it still isn't enough to hire an employee. A word of experience about having employees: avoid it for as long as you can. Everyone you hire is expensive -- not only in terms of money, but in terms of the additional time they'll take up and hassle involved. My personal rule is "don't hire someone unless you're at imminent risk of losing a bunch of money if you don't".

rickydroll 2y ago
I wish I had learned this earlier. A couple of years ago, I hired a part-time assistant to handle invoicing and other financial matters, which was a major sanity saver. He noticed a couple of companies getting behind in payments faster than I would have and saved me from some financial potholes.
- b20000 2y ago
  how did you find your assistant and how do you manage to trust him and what are the first or most important tasks you handed off?
  - rickydroll 2y ago
    I found him through a stroke of luck. My first need was for someone to get the invoices out in time and to nag me to keep my work log up-to-date. I was talking to some people about how to find an assistant, and they pointed me to my current assistant. How do I trust him? Time and experience. I started with small tasks and expanded them as we developed trust. That and I control all the money. If you're going to get an assistant, look carefully at your needs. Start with what causes you the most grief, what you hate doing, and what you avoid doing. For me, it's financial paperwork. He now keeps track of all the expenses and invoices and makes sure my accountant gets the data. This year, he can start giving quarterly updates to my accountant so I'm not getting a $$$ surprise on taxes.