How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two
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@irj said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
So if they have a home lab and professional experience , you're gonna still pay minimum wage?
If they have professional experience, you have to figure out how valuable that experience is to you. If it's professional experience in something that you don't touch, minimum wage might be appropriate. OTOH they might be able to make more somewhere else, so it's not a good fit. They are worth more - just not to your business.
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@irj said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
Zero experience means you have to ask about the home lab. If they really have an interest in something they will probably be doing it in their free time. If they have zero professional experience and no lab experience, I wouldn't be interested either.
So if they have a home lab and professional experience , you're gonna still pay minimum wage?
I paid a guy who was doing part-time desktop support at IKEA, and had a 5 router home lab, with a VMware cluster ~38K to hire. At 90 day I moved him up to 56K. He got brisk (Sometimes twice a year raises) and was over 100K in under 3 years. I could also bill his time at 200-250 an hr (and had work backed up for weeks sometimes for him. It was clients requesting him specifically for him). I got lucky and found someone who had a curiosity and capability but that is useless without the work for him to grow into. I was constantly throwing him into projects that were above what he had done. Do you have that kind of work available? I hired away a lot of guys from Small MSP's who had guys with VCP/CCNA's skill ranges fixing printers, and desktops. The initial cost to hire them was never that bad (45-70K) but it was the upside. of growth to 6 figures (and the skills to demand even more) that brought them on. I hired one guy from a low end MSP for 44K OTE, and ended up having to give him a raise to 70K in under 2 years. He got bored quickly and left (he's running NSX/vRA automation deployments for an airline for ~180K OTE now). If you can't keep the work to keep someone interested it can be more disruptive onboarding, and offboarding them than it's worth. I tried to shoot for ~2 years tenure as my value target.
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@mike-davis said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@irj said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
So if they have a home lab and professional experience , you're gonna still pay minimum wage?
If they have professional experience, you have to figure out how valuable that experience is to you. If it's professional experience in something that you don't touch, minimum wage might be appropriate. OTOH they might be able to make more somewhere else, so it's not a good fit. They are worth more - just not to your business.
I can't see paying someone in any type of job that even touches a computer $8 an hour let alone someone you want doing networking or sysadmin work. I can't imagine they stay long either since most entry level IT jobs pay $17+ an hour
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@scottalanmiller said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@bigbear said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
It can be done. I think I remember reading even on NTG that they started during the IT boom and had the advantage of taking on an incumbent customer base.
No, we started as a software shop and moved into IT gradually.
So did @Bundy-Associates
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@scottalanmiller said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@bigbear said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
A small "MSP" has the chances a rock band has of both sustainability let alone large scale success.
Its got me thinking, and maybe a good topic for another thread, what is the "hot business" now that is accessible for a small startup. Something where customers are actually seeking out solutions the way small offices needed a server, email and netowrk help in the late 90's and early 2000's?
If we only knew.
In the context of starting from scratch and ascertaining new accounts in 2017. Incumbent businesses with existing revenues and clients have a 20x advantage.
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@bigbear said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@scottalanmiller said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@bigbear said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
A small "MSP" has the chances a rock band has of both sustainability let alone large-scale success.
Its got me thinking, and maybe a good topic for another thread, what is the "hot business" now that is accessible for a small startup. Something where customers are actually seeking out solutions the way small offices needed a server, email and network help in the late 90's and early 2000's?
If we only knew.
In the context of starting from scratch and ascertaining new accounts in 2017. Incumbent businesses with existing revenues and clients have a 20x advantage.
If your looking for "hot jobs"
SRE, Machine Learning, and general development are all doing quite well.
In infastructure NSX people are hard to find and pay decent (~200K+).
Operations people who know enough automation programming and scripting to do Devops (DevOps is about ops people becoming devleopers not the other way around).On the topic of advantages of large shops vs. small it's pretty huge.
You are also competing against guys with DEEP skill benches. Not only can they bill more per hour, but they have guys who can do what you do in 1/4 (or less) the time.
New site deployed? I would quote the labor at flat fee 2 hours $400 knowing it would take the engineer maybe 15 minutes to copy paste an existing DMVPN config he had done.
Larger shops also get significantly better pricing on MSP tools (RMM, and PSA pricing models skew towards heavy discounts once you have 10,50,100 employees or thousands of sites being monitored). I've seen 80-90% off list for software.
Large shops have benefits that just can't get matched.
Going from a small employer who's health insurance was so bad it was cheaper out of pocket to a medium sized shop where it was all free was huge. There are guys with chronic conditions (Type 1 Diabetes, Cancer survivors) who historically couldn't work for a small business because of the out of pocket insurance costs.
Going from a medium to a larger shop can double your compensation. Even if you pay them the same in cash you are likely not to offer:
ESPP - Variable income between ~3K and 30K depending on how the stock is doing. Can pay employees at long-term capital gains with this to cut their tax bill in half.
RSUs - Variable income, that has special tax treatment if held. Can pay employees at long-term capital gains with this to cut their tax bill in half. It's a golden handcuff but the employee can leverage this into a larger signing bonus at their next hop.
Bonus - 5 figure performance bonuses and bonuses paid out more than once a year are nice.
401K with match, and low carry costs. Note the last one can be a legal liability if you screw up.
Education (Cover full costs of an Masters/MBA, any certification or training they want and send them to 1-2 conferences a year.
Expense/travel reimbursement policy - Small shops will balk at someone spending $30 on dinner. Large shops will not care about a $100 lunch. Small shops will force lowest cost fair rules on travel, and force discount carriers, and tickets. Larger shops will allow business class on long flights.
Equipment/other misc - Small shops will give you a 10-year-old compaq laptop. Larger shops will happily give you a $3K XPS or Macbook pro. Cell phone reimbursements and other fun things also add up. Small shops have to count pennies....
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@storageninja said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
Expense/travel reimbursement policy - Small shops will balk at someone spending $30 on dinner. Large shops will not care about a $100 lunch. Small shops will force lowest cost fair rules on travel, and force discount carriers, and tickets. Larger shops will allow business class on long flights.
I'm seeing the opposite here. Small shop, doesn't blink at flight costs, dinner is always $100+, we can just request luxury apartments wherever they are needed, etc.
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@scottalanmiller said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@storageninja said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
Expense/travel reimbursement policy - Small shops will balk at someone spending $30 on dinner. Large shops will not care about a $100 lunch. Small shops will force lowest cost fair rules on travel, and force discount carriers, and tickets. Larger shops will allow business class on long flights.
I'm seeing the opposite here. Small shop, doesn't blink at flight costs, dinner is always $100+, we can just request luxury apartments wherever they are needed, etc.
Meh, startup burning cash to attract the right talent. After startup phase this type of thing will typically change.
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@jaredbusch said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@scottalanmiller said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@storageninja said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
Expense/travel reimbursement policy - Small shops will balk at someone spending $30 on dinner. Large shops will not care about a $100 lunch. Small shops will force lowest cost fair rules on travel, and force discount carriers, and tickets. Larger shops will allow business class on long flights.
I'm seeing the opposite here. Small shop, doesn't blink at flight costs, dinner is always $100+, we can just request luxury apartments wherever they are needed, etc.
Meh, startup burning cash to attract the right talent. After startup phase this type of thing will typically change.
Only kind of a start up, company is over 20 years old.
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I agree that larger companies have advantages in many ways, but it doesn't mean it's impossible to start and grow your own company.
The OP was asking how to go from a one man shop to two. What that looks like in reality, is going from google voice to a hosted PBX. Yes you now have an additional cost, but now you have two people that can answer the main number. Most of the growth steps look like this.
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Good info from all. I know it's going to be hard, but can't see myself going to work for someone. I don't have any desire to become a large company.
Are any speaking from experience in starting a company fresh or is this mostly anecdotal?
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@ccwtech said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
Good info from all. I know it's going to be hard, but can't see myself going to work for someone. I don't have any desire to become a large company.
Are any speaking from experience in starting a company fresh or is this mostly anecdotal?
Lots of us have started companies
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@ccwtech said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
Are any speaking from experience in starting a company fresh or is this mostly anecdotal?
I started my company about 5 years ago and have been totally out on my own for a couple years now.
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@jaredbusch said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@scottalanmiller said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@storageninja said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
Expense/travel reimbursement policy - Small shops will balk at someone spending $30 on dinner. Large shops will not care about a $100 lunch. Small shops will force lowest cost fair rules on travel, and force discount carriers, and tickets. Larger shops will allow business class on long flights.
I'm seeing the opposite here. Small shop, doesn't blink at flight costs, dinner is always $100+, we can just request luxury apartments wherever they are needed, etc.
Meh, startup burning cash to attract the right talent. After startup phase this type of thing will typically change.
I agree. I've worked for several smaller companies, and they all had strick reimbursement policies. i.e. I can't have a rental car for SW next week - I have to use the shuttle. Meals capped at $35/day, etc.
The larger company I used to work for.. yeah, they didn't care - $100 dinner - no problem, etc.
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Just had a nice expensive lunch as we speak
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@dashrender said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
I agree. I've worked for several smaller companies, and they all had strick reimbursement policies. i.e. I can't have a rental car for SW next week - I have to use the shuttle. Meals capped at $35/day, etc.
I thought about staying up at the Arboretum and renting a car, but I hate parking in Austin. Instead, I'm just going to bus in (Vonlane drops you off south of the river for the same price as a southwest airlines flight) and bum rides off the local SE's and Alliance guys if I need to go to RoundRock or something. Uber/Lyft is far cheaper than renting a car and parking it for $30 a day at a hotel.
Staying at the Courtyard near the convention center (was like 300 a night).
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@dashrender said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@jaredbusch said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@scottalanmiller said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@storageninja said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
Expense/travel reimbursement policy - Small shops will balk at someone spending $30 on dinner. Large shops will not care about a $100 lunch. Small shops will force lowest cost fair rules on travel, and force discount carriers, and tickets. Larger shops will allow business class on long flights.
I'm seeing the opposite here. Small shop, doesn't blink at flight costs, dinner is always $100+, we can just request luxury apartments wherever they are needed, etc.
Meh, startup burning cash to attract the right talent. After startup phase this type of thing will typically change.
I agree. I've worked for several smaller companies, and they all had strick reimbursement policies. i.e. I can't have a rental car for SW next week - I have to use the shuttle. Meals capped at $35/day, etc.
The larger company I used to work for.. yeah, they didn't care - $100 dinner - no problem, etc.
I work for a fairly small company... they always told me just to keep it reasonable...
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@storageninja said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@dashrender said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
I agree. I've worked for several smaller companies, and they all had strick reimbursement policies. i.e. I can't have a rental car for SW next week - I have to use the shuttle. Meals capped at $35/day, etc.
I thought about staying up at the Arboretum and renting a car, but I hate parking in Austin. Instead, I'm just going to bus in (Vonlane drops you off south of the river for the same price as a southwest airlines flight) and bum rides off the local SE's and Alliance guys if I need to go to RoundRock or something. Uber/Lyft is far cheaper than renting a car and parking it for $30 a day at a hotel.
Staying at the Courtyard near the convention center (was like 300 a night).
That was just an example. I don't care about having a car, I'll walk like I have the last two times I was there. I took a shuttle or perhaps even the bus from the airport to the convention center.
Since traveling in EU, I don't mind taking the bus anymore. In general it seems safe and fairly easy.As for the hotel - I got an AirBnB for like $600 for 3 nights.
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@dashrender said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@storageninja said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@dashrender said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
I agree. I've worked for several smaller companies, and they all had strick reimbursement policies. i.e. I can't have a rental car for SW next week - I have to use the shuttle. Meals capped at $35/day, etc.
I thought about staying up at the Arboretum and renting a car, but I hate parking in Austin. Instead, I'm just going to bus in (Vonlane drops you off south of the river for the same price as a southwest airlines flight) and bum rides off the local SE's and Alliance guys if I need to go to RoundRock or something. Uber/Lyft is far cheaper than renting a car and parking it for $30 a day at a hotel.
Staying at the Courtyard near the convention center (was like 300 a night).
That was just an example. I don't care about having a car, I'll walk like I have the last two times I was there. I took a shuttle or perhaps even the bus from the airport to the convention center.
Since traveling in EU, I don't mind taking the bus anymore. In general it seems safe and fairly easy.As for the hotel - I got an AirBnB for like $600 for 3 nights.
I often do that when traveling, just skip the whole car deal altogether.
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@scottalanmiller said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@dashrender said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@storageninja said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
@dashrender said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:
I agree. I've worked for several smaller companies, and they all had strick reimbursement policies. i.e. I can't have a rental car for SW next week - I have to use the shuttle. Meals capped at $35/day, etc.
I thought about staying up at the Arboretum and renting a car, but I hate parking in Austin. Instead, I'm just going to bus in (Vonlane drops you off south of the river for the same price as a southwest airlines flight) and bum rides off the local SE's and Alliance guys if I need to go to RoundRock or something. Uber/Lyft is far cheaper than renting a car and parking it for $30 a day at a hotel.
Staying at the Courtyard near the convention center (was like 300 a night).
That was just an example. I don't care about having a car, I'll walk like I have the last two times I was there. I took a shuttle or perhaps even the bus from the airport to the convention center.
Since traveling in EU, I don't mind taking the bus anymore. In general it seems safe and fairly easy.As for the hotel - I got an AirBnB for like $600 for 3 nights.
I often do that when traveling, just skip the whole car deal altogether.
Yep, super easy. If I wanted to wake up an hour earlier, I could have caught the bus back to the airport for $1.25... instead I split an Uber to the airport for $30 total. The cost of convenience.
