Don't carry the world on your shoulders
Are you in charge of almost everything in your startup?
This is the story about how I put so much pressure on myself.
When I was 25, I had this great idea of creating a fascinating online store, just like Forver21.
I was into buying and reselling clothing and accessories.
I was excited about the idea of owning my online store.
But after a few months reality hit, I found myself wearing many hats.
- The graphic designer
- The web developer
- The legal department
- The photoshoot coordinator
- The administrator
- The Interviewer
I just felt exhausted.
During my career helping other entrepreneurs, I've seen many of them trying to put as much weight as possible on their shoulders. You don't have to.
What can you do when you're starting out?
- Reach out for guidance and connect in online communities.
- Read as much as possible about others' experiences.
- Keep it simple! Outsource a Virtual Assistant (VA) or Project Manager. You'll buy time. (If possible)
- If you have a small team, delegate. I was perfectionist and it costed me time to learn to delegate.
- Don’t be too harsh on yourself, take some time off. Meditate and learn how to breathe.
I failed at it because I couldn't keep the pace and didn't have proper guidance from experts in my niche that have been through the same situation and succeeded.
Prevent yourself from draining out!
Great advice! When you wear a lot of hats, there’s no shame in asking specialized people for help and advice (or paying them for work).
I went through a similar experience, also very early on...
Though, I did it with the aim to learn every aspect of the business I was building.
Then, when it came time to delegate, I would have the wisdom to know:
By no means am I suggesting that anyone do this now thought. We have communities like IH that can help, the wealth of information about how to do things grows exponentially, and finding the right people to work with has (thankfully) become much easier.
Interesting! How did the project work out for you?
It started as iOS app + game dev co., and grew to a small team (all remote) that built entire platforms for blue chips and start-ups.
That's great, @nighbird. Congrats! Are you still running it?
Pared it down about 6 years from inception, after I partnered with a client to co-found a startup based on the platform we built for him.
I recall that the marketplace for such dev services (iOS+Android) was getting very very crowded, and app stores were saturated. So it that was a good time to move on and take on a new challenge.
@nikwen, have you found yourself like that at a cross-roads? What did you do in that moment?
Sounds great! You got out when you saw a better opportunity.
Yes, I'm currently trying to manage doing everything on my own and I haven't found a perfect solution yet. Sometimes I focus completely on one thing (e.g. development or marketing), sometimes I try to do a bit of everything every day. To be honest, I'm still looking for a split that works well for me.
If you have any advice or guidance on this, I'd really appreciate it. :)
I'll speak from experience, and leave you to interpret what would be best for yourself...
At the time, I was faced with deciding on one of two directions (bearing in mind this was my only source of income):
The deciding factor for me was how would I free up my time from focusing on projects for clients, and working on my own app projects. So, I chose the latter.
It was then a case of deciding how to optimise for freeing up my time and maintaining consistent cash flow. In what order could I extricate myself from aspects of the business and delegate to others who were better at doing those particular things?
These are the things I did and in this order:
As the company was in early stages, and needed more credibility (and more projects), I chose to work with a few marketing agencies to assist with approaching clients and sourcing projects. Once the flow of incoming projects was consistent, and earnings were steady, then I moved onto the next step.
I found a team of developers (over eLance (now UpWork)) to work with full time on back end components of these projects. And then, over time, expanded that to Android, then iOS. For iOS and Android I created a sort of pool of potential folks to work with, as not everyone was available all the time (initially).
This then left me with focusing on:
This worked well for a while. Though, once I saw that the market had changed significantly (i.e. started to get saturated with competing firms/teams) I felt it was time to jump onto a project, and happily at that time I was close to a client with his project and he asked me if I would become a co-founder and CTO.
Now the issue at this point was: what to do with the app dev business? I couldn't devote time to focusing on new client business, as launching the new venture needed 100% of my focus and time. And I struggled to find anyone to take it over from me. And with the state of the market, I felt it was time to make the commitment to focus on the new venture. So I pared down the app business, and switched to the new venture full time...
Hope this is helpful...
Thank you so much for your in-depth account of your experience, @nighbird! That was super helpful.
I love how you approached this so strategically.
And I guess you're right there. One of the central questions is: how do I free up time? And, by extension, how do I stop the business from taking up all of my time? I'll have to think about that more.
All in all, you gave me a lot of really good thinking points there, with utilizing marketing agencies being one of them.
Again, thank you so much!
P.S. If you enjoy talking to other founders, I'd be open to having a chat over Zoom anytime. If you're busy, also no hard feelings. Totally understand that, too. :)
You’re right. I mean now we have these kind of communities as a huge resource. Back then, I had none.
As an entrepreneur, one thing I learned is that I have to work in multiple areas that I am not comfortable with like marketing and business. Fortunately, I have joined a entrepreneur's virtual community where I can always get some great advice from other bootstrappers that know much more than me about those areas.