I was in a very similar position to you about 2 years ago. I was running a company on my own doing great with revenue and profit. Currently, I have a 6 person company.
The way I ended up expanding was first starting to work with one other really great person. I ended up needing a professional sales side to the company and Lizzie came in and did that. She was also better and more experienced than me at hiring and managing others, so luckily, she was able to hire the person that is now my lead programer as a second critical hire.
Then we hired on two more developers.
During this time, the people I had that were "helping me with my chores" originally did more and more of that and began helping with other random areas of the business, and they became full-time employees.
At some point, one of our developers left.
So now it is me, Lizzie, our lead developer, a jr developer and two assistants who help with sales and chores.
I love it so much more than being on my own. It wouldn't even be necessary for me to program anymore, but I do when I want something done or it just makes sense for me to do it or I'm just trying to make the business better. My point is that my lead developer is so good, I can trust him to do a great job on any idea I have. It took a while to get to that point, but now that it's happening, it's awesome.
Lizzie now does so much on the business end (and has taken over most of my emailing) that I have freed up a ton of my time.
I now get to look at the bigger picture, figure out how to expand the business, manage people and have fun.
I think by far my favorite part about all this, is that now all I have to do is have an idea and I know that I have a team behind me that can make that idea happen. Also, I can go on vacation.
It seems to me that if you are making $2M, then a couple of really good employees at $125,000 should be able to help you bring in more money than they will cost.
I hope my story helps you. I think it worked out really well for me. I didn't really have a plan, I just got lucky in many ways, but I was also always paying attention and I trusted myself to know when someone was right to work with and when someone was not right to work with. In general, if I had to give advice from my personal experience, it would be to hire the best people you can. Make sure they are remarkable. And get rid of people that you have any issues with or aren't that good.
Thanks for chiming in. How do you keep their motivation going especially for a talented developer? Don't they just want to leave a small startup and want to work for biggies out there?
The profit sharing is what would hook me and, I'm sure, plenty of other entrepreneur-minded programmers. That's something you can do at a small company that a big company won't do. It also gives employees a since of ownership, and aligns their incentives with the company's. I believe Wufoo did something similar with great success.
Right, anything else in such a people-dependent industry is capitalist bullshit.
The company consists of the people in it, they deserve a direct share in the profits.
The way I ended up expanding was first starting to work with one other really great person. I ended up needing a professional sales side to the company and Lizzie came in and did that. She was also better and more experienced than me at hiring and managing others, so luckily, she was able to hire the person that is now my lead programer as a second critical hire.
Then we hired on two more developers.
During this time, the people I had that were "helping me with my chores" originally did more and more of that and began helping with other random areas of the business, and they became full-time employees.
At some point, one of our developers left.
So now it is me, Lizzie, our lead developer, a jr developer and two assistants who help with sales and chores.
I love it so much more than being on my own. It wouldn't even be necessary for me to program anymore, but I do when I want something done or it just makes sense for me to do it or I'm just trying to make the business better. My point is that my lead developer is so good, I can trust him to do a great job on any idea I have. It took a while to get to that point, but now that it's happening, it's awesome.
Lizzie now does so much on the business end (and has taken over most of my emailing) that I have freed up a ton of my time.
I now get to look at the bigger picture, figure out how to expand the business, manage people and have fun.
I think by far my favorite part about all this, is that now all I have to do is have an idea and I know that I have a team behind me that can make that idea happen. Also, I can go on vacation.
It seems to me that if you are making $2M, then a couple of really good employees at $125,000 should be able to help you bring in more money than they will cost.
I hope my story helps you. I think it worked out really well for me. I didn't really have a plan, I just got lucky in many ways, but I was also always paying attention and I trusted myself to know when someone was right to work with and when someone was not right to work with. In general, if I had to give advice from my personal experience, it would be to hire the best people you can. Make sure they are remarkable. And get rid of people that you have any issues with or aren't that good.