I've had a professional services business for a few years now (licensed professional). I spent the first two years just learning how to do projects on my own and deal with clients, and the third year heavily into marketing and networking, as well tightening up my services and pricing. Lots of ups and downs, lots of mistakes, but starting to find a rhythm. I'm at the point this year where I think I've finally distilled what I do into a repeatable process as much as i can. Not automation, but basically a process that's mostly (80%?) the same for every project so there's not guessing and reinventing the wheel every time. My projects are basically 50% client facing, developing a project conceptually through successive meetings, and then 50% implementation. I've been able to outsource probably half of the implementation, but not all of it. I'm finding it very difficult to even consider outsourcing the client facing part since it's so personal and also relies on my individual skill and design sense. At the moment I'm solo, with some contract help and consultants. Knock on wood, but I'm finally starting to see the results of my year-long marketing effort, and I'm basically on the cusp of not being able to handle all the work. I can do 2 to 3 projects at a time, with a little bit of peripheral work from older projects. I'm at 2 right now, have another not quite signed, and like four proposals out (my win rate is 30-40%). i'm not in a place where i want to raise my prices any more than i have (they've tripled), because the projects i'm getting are connected to my networking efforts. rejecting a project with an unreasonable price would be a waste of all the effort put into the contact, and might turn my hard-won referral sources away. I'm not sure what the next step for my business is. I can either go the contract direction, or the employee direction. I'm apprehensive about outsourcing parts of the client facing design work to contract workers, because it something you have to care about and have discussions about. contract workers are more mercinarial. in my career i've never done this part remotely-- its always been in a collaborative studio type environment where your boss checks in often and periodically sits down and works with you. the thing is i'm not set up for employees, and i feel like its a huge jump. if i did it, i don't think i'd want an office and would like to try it remotely, but i'm not sure how effective it would be. a seasoned designer would probably work, a less experienced (aka affordable) person would probably not. there's also an incredible amount of hr/accounting/admin work that comes with it, so i'd be trading one heavy work load for another. i'm also very nervous about having work for an employee to do, and the money to pay them. like this year is panning out okay, but the first half was dead. i do not like the idea of hiring someone and then laying them off 6 months later because the market is bad. employees also require a lot more money than the money that goes in their pocket. anyone here have experience with scaling something beyond a single person operation? professional services tend to be different than other types of businesses, so the typical scaling advice you read in books and online doesn't really fit.   submitted by   /u/HiddenCity [link]   [comments]