So you’re a businessman, eh? You have a registered business, a proven product, and a growing client list. You’re passionate about your business and spend every waking moment at it. You’re confident that you know best how to deal with the problems of the business and you’re there to save the day in case anything goes wrong. You’re a specialist at what to do. No! You’re the best at what you do. Hiring someone else to do a client’s job would be short-changing your client, as you care deeply about your clients.
Two years into her course she was already bagging clients as the nascent web industry in
In 2004 Angela went solo; she whipped up a logo, drew up a portfolio and went into business as a free-lance web developer. Things started out well, referrals from her old clients got the ball rolling and she was making a decent living from her work.But as the clients streamed in and the money piled up things started going downhill. Angela found herself working 90-hour weeks. There seemed to be a new deadline to meet every day and she found herself carrying a blanket to work (for a few hours nap) on the nights before the deadlines. Feeling frustrated that she had become a slave to her work she started sub-contracting out work. This only made things worse. The subcontractors were not perfectionists like her and she found herself redoing almost 100% the work they submitted to her.
Have you ever been in this position? I know I was when I worked as a contractor.
[1] Name changed to protect identity
Comments
The problem is although I have empowered the staff,I find myself checking and re-checking their work and get so involved that all clients want to only deal with me.
Most times I feel burnt out. I know I should learn to trust and let go but the fear of failer drives me.
I also LOVE E-Myth.
Entreps. have to learn to delegate EFFECTIVELY otherwise the business will stagnate. Angela missed this.
Perfectionism is good (can be a great differentiator) but can also slow one down big time. Sometimes, "good enough" is okay. They say, dont sweat the small stuff....
As one well-farmiliar with the situation your client now finds herself mired in, I'd suggest that she:
1) Be extremely picky about the sub contractors she decides to deal with, looking out for consistency in quality of their work and their ability to deliver work as and when due.
2) Betting on the fact that all(good) developers invariably find themselves either swamped with briefs to neck-level or short of work at one time or other, seek to establish a long term working relationship with the developer(s) she picks, whereby she too can take the load off their shoulders when she's short of work and vice versa (this sense of quid pro quo should act as some sort of mutual quality check)
3) Keep expanding her network of developers to contract with one at a time until the capacity of this network outstrips the growth rate of her client base.
this way, she may even just find it more lucrative and less strenous to keep connecting her snowballing list of satisfied clients to one or more of the many talented designers there are out there (why run an inefficient factory when you can turn it into an efficient shop - what's important is the bottom line - right?)
As a freelancer myself, my business partner and I are actually currently working on a plan to start a free internet-based portal targeting freelancers in the tech industry. Membership will be strictly by refferal and vetting by existing members. with emphasis on quality and reliablity rather than numbers, we intend that it be an exclusive club of few but highly talented proffesionals who can keep tabs on each other's availablity for jobs of any scale.
Typical case scenario: I am a freelancer. I have been offered an exciting, lucrative but demanding brief. It will require a database guru, a graphic designer, an information archtitect, a flash animator and a photographer. I obviosly am not all that rolled up into one and besides, i already have three projects on my hands at various stages of completion. What to do?
A: I log into the TechClub's (that the working title)extranet and i view, for every category of proffesional, availability of each member on a calendar-based interface. Through the same extranet, i can contact members about my brief, receive bids for each bit of the project, assemble a team according to peer rating and bid amount, allocate work, avail and receive files, monitor feedback and progress and finally, inform the other members of my own availablity status during and after my project(s).
Neat Huh?
The gist of the idea is, if in my experience, i have found that i can trust and work with you, chances are I can as readily trust and work with other people you trust and have worked with and so on...
Its on that note that i'd be interested to hear what Angela thinks ....