I was a freelance web developer once (both full- and part-time.) I remember my 1-person thing being exceptionally uncomplicated. Project work was easy to find, and money wasn’t my key motivator. I did it because I enjoyed it.
Eight years later (today,) I co-own a 10-person thing called Electric Pulp. As much as I prefer the new thing to the old, it’s far less uncomplicated (that was a double negative for anyone keeping count.)
A recent conversation has me thinking just how different the two efforts really are. EP is far more ambitious than anything I ever did as a freelancer. But while the business aspects of what we do seem to scale really well, there are other aspects that have gotten a little crazy.
How so, you ask? Let’s count…
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Drift
In your efforts to land more of the work you want to be doing, you’ll often find you’re doing less of it yourself. Scale demands you spend an increasing amount of time away from your core discipline (unless corresponding and reviewing documents is your core discipline.) It’s a frustrating correlation if you stop to think about it. But who has time?
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Balance
I hear people say they work 80-hour workweeks as if it’s some kind of endurance triumph. Personally, I just think it just shows your life balance is whack. Mine has been that way for years. As a business owner, your balance is subject to any / all spikes in demand. One day you realize that you just scheduled time off to clean your garage. WTF?
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Flexibility
There’s a widely held belief that business owners control their work schedule. Somebody made that up. Small businesses typically allow very little buffer between down time and demand. Call it another frustrating correlation - the more successful you become, the less time you have to play.
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Accessibility
Regardless of your efforts to set up effective lines of support, certain issues will always find their way around them and into your soup. Each of your clients holds a panic button, and you’ll be amazed at how easy it is for them to convince you to put down your life and pick up their urgent request at noon on a Saturday.
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Nerves
If your standard client holds a panic button, you can bet there will be a few that hold voodoo dolls made from locks of your hair. If you’ve ever handled mission critical applications for large companies, you know what I mean. And, as a business owner, you’re intimately linked to each and every one. Stress is one aspect of business that scales very easily.
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Productivity
Productivity gurus will convince you to only check email / voicemail twice daily. They’ll explain the evils of multitasking. And they’ll tell you to avoid meetings like a van with tinted windows. But rolling these ideas into your daily flow will quickly demonstrate the amount of unproductive tasks you need to handle in the course of a day just to keep the world happy. Business owners rarely have the luxury of being hyper productive.
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Clutter
Being a small business owner will convince you that ADHD is a talent. Non-stop attention demands come at you from every possible angle except the one you plan for. Someday, a clever pharmaceutical joint will go to market with the exact opposite of Ritalin.
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Hiring
One way to make up for suck productivity is to surround yourself with producers. It’s a great strategy, but it only works if you can find the right people. Maybe we’re picky, but I can’t think of a time that we weren’t struggling to find more of these right people (right now, we’re looking for several.) Being understaffed means you get to work more hours. On the bright side, though, business owners are exempt - you won’t have to pay yourself overtime.
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Sleep
Get used to having less of it.
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Money
Some people love to think about / talk about money. Others hate it. I’m somewhere in between. Wherever you fall, you’ll be loving it, hating it, or somewhere in betweening the hell out of it. I’m amazed at the number of times in a day financial considerations come into focus. It’s no longer just about the work.
People tend to think of scale simply in terms of revenue. It’s the obvious indicator. But there’s more to consider if you want to stay sane. EP is 11 years old, and while all of our business indicators say one thing, it’s apparent we need to focus more on keeping quality of life in check.
It seems to be a common thing. Small business owners get so engaged in what they do, they (we) loose sight of the impact that work is having on their life. If you’re a freelancer (or a small business) looking to scale, you’ll need to work hard to scale all aspects of what you do at the same pace. It gets a lot more difficult to adjust if you let it get behind the curve.
It is posts like this that limit a company like IDC :). Thanks to you Aaron, I am now even more apprehensive to hire that search copywriter/journalist that we so need. Why? I do not manage people well. I expect you to work, create your own balance/schedule, and get your crap done as expected. With scale, this appears to get lost - I am trying to slowly prove otherwise (2 full-timers, 2 part-timers and it is working well - yet 1 of the 4 is me).
I do think the best model is to partner, outsource, contract all non-competencies and focus on what is done best. Yet, that requires planning ahead for time delays and coordination or schedules.
What I used to view as wasted overhead (i.e. a Great Project Manager) may just be the best addition to a scaling team. That may be the direction to head…I need to ponder and make sure not to screw up balance.
I do what I can to scare people. Barry had a similar comment at railspikes.
By the way, we were rocking at five people - no issues. At seven, keeping things balanced got difficult. At 10/11, our biggest issue is keeping up with demand. 13 seems like a great number.
Joe and I have had a laugh about this. When we were both in corporate IT, we’d often say, “Man, if we were in business for ourselves, we wouldn’t have to answer to anyone.”
Good Lord, what a delusion that was. I’m more beholden to other people now than I could have ever dreamed about when I worked for the The Man.
I have sold my life to my clients. Each day, I wonder if I priced it right.
Entertaining stuff, but, yeah… you guys are freaking me out. I’ve been contemplating taking my own freelance thing full time, so this is kind of like a cold shower.
I don’t know that I’d call you guys “small,” though. Eleven years / 10/11 people / doing work for Guy Kawasaki and Incase… that seems like a long way from where I am today.
Hey Chris. I still see us as a small shop. Maybe not for long. Who knows? On your own thing - don’t let me scare you off. We can / could do a lot of things differently. Overall, everything is going extremely well. Our spikes have just turned into the baseline lately. Good luck with your jump if you take it.
@Deane - two fingers, pointing at eyes.
Excellent post, Aaron. I’m in a similar position, and I’m pretty sure I’ve experienced every one of these 10 points. Owning a small consulting/design/development business is fun, rewarding, difficult, and frustrating. It’s a lot of work, and it’s not necessarily the kind of work you’d pick if you had a choice. But I also find it addictive. I’m pretty sure that I’d have a lot of trouble adjusting to another job.
We’re at 6 people right now, by the way, and I feel like we need 2 more. But that just might make life more difficult.
Hey Jon. I’d have a hell of a time adjusting too - I think I’d just have to be decommissioned at this point. We bounced a couple of RoR leads to you last week, btw. Probably have a few more coming this week too.
[…] at Charisma18 ponders the The Good And Bad Of Small Business Growth. As somebody that expanded a freelancing business to a small business I can tell you that […]
“One day you realize that you just scheduled time off to clean your garage.”
Better yet is when you try to schedule time to clean out your garage, and the best you can do is pencil something in for two weeks from Saturday…
Aaron,
Great post. My company, ADS, is at the point where we are now hiring more full-time employees and are hiring our contractors as full-timers. We are also looking at benefits packages and payroll services. If you have any recommendations please let me know. It is very exciting, and as one who is more business oriented than tech oriented (though I did 8 years of IT/PM and 4 years of programming) I am most likely less apprehensive than others at going whole hog, and hiring/managing a team of people.
On a side note, I have been working like a machine for years with business/school/non-profit and thrive in the chaos. Bring it on!
Hey Sharif - some days it feels like that. It used to be due to procrastination - not any more.
@Robert - specifics are tough. There are accounting services that will come in to take care of billables/payables and/or payroll, but we actually have someone on the team that takes care of all that. We’ve tried to make our benefits as strong as an 11 person group can get (dental and vision are tough for small group.) If nothing else, it makes it easier to hire / keep the right people.
Good luck to you.
I can completely identify with what you have written as I am in a similar boat just that been sailing for slightly longer with 15 programmers now. Yeah there is much more money than I could have possibly earned alone but every “panic mail” at 2am wants me to go back to being single - but the resolve is usually lost in the glare of morning reality…. and hope… someday I will again have time for a vacation - a real vacation, not just something to blog about :)
Its actually very interesting to read this from the “other” side, because right now, as a freelancer, I am actually feeling pressure to “grow”, but really don’t know if I want to for the very same reasons you mentioned! I actually blogged about my frustrations about everyone assuming I wanted to expand! :)
The fact is that right now I am just trying to be a better designer/developer and do not feel “ready” to make the leap yet.
The more I think about these things though, I realise that I am actually not superhuman, and at some point, something will need to give. I hate this current position where I have enough work to fill my week, but am not yet confident/financially secure enough to think about paying other people, you know?
I have these romantic notions of growing later on… but yeah… I think making that shift from “I just play with Photoshop/Flash/PHP and get paid” to full “agency” is a scary thought!
Anyway, I am so glad the Freelance Blog linked to you — this was very informative and I have now subbed to the RSS :)
Hi Téa. A bit of perspective might be in order. I have two business partners. Scaling without that built-in support would suck. If you do get to the point where you’re looking to grow, I’d recommend looking for a business partner. It’s profoundly better.