Detailed Notes
In this episode of the Building Better Developers podcast, hosts Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche explore business growth strategies, focusing on when and how to scale effectively. They emphasize the importance of preparation, automation, and strategic delegation, ensuring that growth is sustainable and beneficial rather than chaotic and overwhelming.
Read more: https://develpreneur.com/business-growth-strategies-when-and-how-to-scale-successfully/
*Actionable Business Growth Strategies for Entrepreneurs*
To wrap up, the hosts challenge listeners to take actionable steps:
1. Audit your daily tasks – Identify what can be automated, delegated, or eliminated. 2. Create a job description – Outline the tasks and responsibilities of a role you may need to hire for soon. 3. Implement automation where possible – Look for areas in finance, marketing, and operations where automation can save time. 4. Prepare for employee onboarding – Develop documentation and policies in advance to streamline the hiring process when the time comes. 5. Set clear work boundaries – Treat your business like a structured organization, even if you’re still a solopreneur.
*Stay Connected: Join the Develpreneur Community*
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
*Additional Resources*
* Growing Your Brand and Business – Suggestions For Any Entrepreneur (https://develpreneur.com/growing-your-brand-and-business-suggestions-for-any-entrepreneur/) * Spend Time Or Money – The Best Approach To Growing (https://develpreneur.com/spend-time-or-money-the-best-approach-to-growing/) * Hiring Talent: Strategies for Building Strong Teams (https://develpreneur.com/hiring-talent-strategies-for-building-strong-teams/) * Scaling with Contractors and Employees: A Strategic Guide to Business Growth (https://develpreneur.com/scaling-with-contractors-and-employees-a-strategic-guide-to-business-growth/)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] oh there we go and we are recording um let's go look did we not have something on let's see last time around podcast ideas no nothing terribly useful there last time we did Ai and we did processes and procedures and such yep um um yeah leveraging AI for business and business Automation and templates uh we've done hiring scaling with contractors elevator pitch overcoming barriers and business financing let's do um sort of the same thing as the scaling let's do a little bit of like like when and how to grow because this is actually something that is near and dear to my heart right now oh I think I remembered what the other one was it was something around marketing branding or like social media that is too big I can't even begin to think of where we were going with that one I think marketing was more like maybe how to get clients or how to was it did it have to was it something we're going to talk about that with regards to Ai and basically like I think we did we talked about like templates and stuff like that and consistent message yeah no I thought I thought I think it was just something around like not so much Ai and that but just like marketing your business like getting your business out there or maybe finding customers something along that lines I'm don't remember exactly what it was but it was something along those lines yeah I'm trying to think it's something that would just like sort of fall into place for that and I am not right now well is a little different well maybe won't H because usually we go like we get them both and we're just like Bam Bam but maybe we'll just like figure out where we want to go with the second one let's see how that goes let's just try it that way and see see how that one goes let's see get a little less of my my ADD I have just enough to be like for people that care I can see that uh yep close enough here I'll just do that and then it doesn't matter no like this so I'm like a little bit more so I'm a little shorter and that means I [Music] can that up I'm to bring that out like that okay first world problems and a little three two one well hello and welcome back we are continuing our season continuing our series continuing our lives basically we are building better developers this season we're building better businesses and we are also develop andur I am Rob Broadhead I am one of the founders of develop andur also a founder of RB Consulting where we are what they called a boutique consulting firm in our case what that means is we sit down with you understand your business and then we help you craft a way forward we look through all of the stuff that's out there the technology sprawl that exists whether it's already there with your business or whether it's just out there in the world and through simplification automation integration and Innovation we put all those things together and we tie it all up in a nice little bow basically for you and say here you go here's here's what you need to do for today here's how you can leverage technology along with a road map and a plan so that we're not coming back six months later and saying okay it's a whole new world and you've got a whole bunch of new stuff we're actually going to help you build for the future whether that is software whether it's stuff that we build for you whether it's stuff you buy whether you have to build a team as well and a and maybe even entire organization around it we can help you navigate those Dangerous Waters good thing and bad thing bad thing is it's not one of these two sides of a coin right now bad thing is is just life is freaking chaos right now in the middle of like downsizing and working on selling a house and business is all like business is booming which is a good thing in itself but it's just like lots of stuff going on crazy times exhausting it's just like I lay down at bed at 8:00 the other night and I was suddenly out cold it was just one of those like I didn't wake up until like 2: and then of course I was automatically Wide Awake couldn't go back to sleep other problems uh good thing is that we sometime in the past well months ago now converted the family over we all converted over to new phones a whole new uh provider self provider and because we did that because we moved we got all these little coupons and stuff so now we're going to add a new iPhone to our family fairly soon like maybe uh maybe not today but maybe tomorrow so that's always a good thing is adding a little bit more like new high-end technology it's probably a little bad because it's not going to be my phone but hey as long as it's in the family that's what counts also counts but he's not in the family and I know we look like twins separated from birth but is Michael on the other side go ahead and introduce yourself hey everyone my name is Mikael Mage I'm one of the co-founders of building better developers otherwise known as veler I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help small to midsize businesses clinicians really look at their software stack figure out what their business needs for software we use similar tools like Rob we use automation uh testing but what we do is we come in with a quality assurance mindset we look at your processes from the user stories we help you identify the processes you need to streamline your business and make your life easier and let the technology work for you not you work for the technology good and bad this week good I am probably about 20 almost a month into detoxing getting myself off of caffeine anxiety's dropping so feeling much better getting a little more normal-ish sleep for me uh bad side uh the weather again is turning funky we go from these weird seasons in Tennessee we have like two Winters two Springs all this weird stuff right now we the temperatures dropped again but now we're up to like 30 to 40 mph winds and it has just been a weird howling day I can't tell if someone's knocking at the door or if it's just the wind that's not it's usually like you get two seasons in a day is part of the problem you can get this stuff it just it gets gets a little bit out of hand as does occasionally some notifications so I'm going to turn that off this episode we're going to talk about little bit when and how to grow and not really just I mean we always want our company to grow we always want our business to grow but it's really more about the process of going from maybe solopreneur or startup into a business and maybe you start we've talked about you know contractors employees but it's starting to add an employee here or there maybe you know our contract here or there and then moving up now there's a lot of different ideas around this the challenge to this though is that the the biggest idea the most important thing the one that most people will tell you is a key thing is to be able to be able to do the growth in time to support whatever that new work is so for example if you're someone going to have a bunch of new customers you want to have your team in place to be able to support that customer customer or those new customers you don't want to get all the customers and then have everything falling down about your head and shoulders and go oh yeah I need to expand that in itself is very very challenging and I'm going to push you in this one to think about um essentially expanding yourself more than your company because it is there is a whole line of thought around you know you've got certain number employees that support a certain number of customers and as they grow then you have to have more employees and you can do some metrics around that you do some things that can sort of you can sort of math your way through it and say you know if I need one customer you know one employee to support four customers if I go to eight customers I need two employees that kind of stuff you can sort of figure those things out there's other stuff around it we can use we can use technology and things like that to leverage our people better and to grow but there's generally some sort of a you know like we can apply some formulas to it and make it work I want to talk talk about the tougher things which are the things that you do and this is particularly when you start out and I mean totally I'm G to confess this is totally something that I'm running through right now is that when you start out you have to do everything now if you're lucky if you're smart or lucky or all of the above then even when you start out you're already pushing things off to other people you start out already with an organization of some sort even if it's like uh virtual assistants or contractors or something like that or even like one-offs where maybe you've uh maybe you need to have like a web page your you know website design and so you just go and do a little project based thing have somebody do your website boom you're done you're off and running however you do it if you do it the the easier way you from the start are building your your organization and everything in a way that you can very easily scale that out and sort of carve off pieces and put them those elsewhere if you're like me and some larger number of people that are out there I think because if you listen to any of the entrepreneurial type businesses out there a lot of what the challenge is is when they take those steps to grow from small business or side hustle into something real and they now have to scale up because now all the things one all the things that they did and that they knew and that they assumed are no longer useful to anybody else because that person is not going to know and assume and understand what you did nor do they know the history or anything else so one of the first things you have to do is figure out what do other people know so for example if I hire somebody I may know and not even care what my like PTO policy is and some things like that if I hire an employee I may not even honestly if I'm doing a side hustle I may not even know when I get paid or how much I get paid employees like to get paid and they like to know what they're going to get paid it is not going to be a happy place if you're like surprise you got a little paycheck or surprise you got a little bit more it should not be surprise should not be part of your paycheck unless there's like bonuses or something like that so you need to set things in place now there one of the ways we can do this because I don't want to just complain it would be fun but I'm going to throw some extra stuff out there one of the things we can do is we can at some point before we take on our first employee is we treat ourselves as our first employees we start thinking through what does it look like for for employee and basically get yourself in the habit of working for yourself so it is things like setting business hours setting some and we'll talk some more about this Michael doesn't know it because I just thought of a great topic for the next episode but we're talk more about this but it's things like setting your work hours it's things about having a workstation having work supplies having a work phone number a work website uh if you have virtual machines or you know class stuff like your Google or Amazon or Microsoft or any of that it's having a a work environment it is also things like utilizing tools for work there's a lot of people and I've even done that like I've got right now I have a DropBox account that is on a nonwork email because it's been around forever and I always just used it for work stuff and then some other things as well but primarily there and now I finally got points like oh I got to find a way to like move that off or figure my crap out so you want to be able just like with banking we've talked about like have a separate bank account make sure that you've got all of that stuff set up and that's more the the legal side but there's also the Practical side of things like having a work device a work environment uh the documentation around it is things like when when do you take holidays even if you work on a holiday because we all do when we're side hustling you should say have something like okay you know for example like in America July 4th is going to be a holiday I am not going to work even if I'm going to work I'm going to say it's a holiday so I'm going to tell my customers we're Clos that day you know things like that you may still work but you need to have something so that when you have an employee you can say Hey you get to take a day off unless you're a miser and you're like no you never get to take a day off in which case you're not going to have an employee that long think about benefits things like and you can even treat yourself a little bit it's like okay benefits is we're going to have pizza Fridays and we're going to go out and grab a piz if it's just you you're going to get fat pretty quick but like have a slice of pizza Fridays or something like that start thinking about things that are they going to be things that you would like to have at the place that you work and start implementing that with yourself before you even start bringing employees on because then when you do bring on employees some of these things will be in place and you will be able to either hand those off to somebody to help manage and and administer some of those stuff or you'll be be able to inform your employees what uh the culture is like and things like that now I know that seems weird when it's like just you because you are the entire culture basically but it is useful to start putting those in things into place and get those Wheels in Motion because what you don't want is a situation where you're like and I like I said I've lived this as I got all the way through I've got a nice big I'm overwhelmed which is usually what I do I grow it so to the point where I can't possibly handle it anymore and then I start carving pieces off well the thing is at some point you have to carve those pieces off beforehand you have to be working on that stuff and then you're going the first couple of employees it's going to be painful it's just so hire people that you know have got thicker skin or whatever it's going to be because it is it can be very painful to get that crap out of your head so the sooner you start the sooner you try to do it and honestly you'll thank yourself because some of that stuff you'll do it you'll come back six months later you're like oh yeah that's what I was thinking so now 6 months after we started this podcast I'm going to throw this over to Michael and see if he remembers what our topic even was so thanks Rob and we were talking about when in how to grow and our business ourselves um within our business you kind of touched on a lot of different topics I kind of want to take this and dissect this from a different angle so one of the things as entrepreneurs as developers when we build our businesses we unless you're lucky and you have endorsements investors free money uh we have to bootstrap a lot of things so we take on a lot of things on our plate at the beginning and we essentially have to do everything so we're overwhelmed by necessity one of the things and I think it was Tim Ferris in his book years ago that I read was don't look at as you're growing your business or you're running your business don't look look at it as you are an employee actually look at it that you're the owner how can you extract yourself out of the company or out of the business how can you hand off the tasks so that your business can run self- automated essentially what if you got sick or what if you got hit by a bus or what if you had to take time off how is your business going to run without you so one how I want to tackle this is when you want to grow your business as you're building the business what are the things like Rob mentioned that you can hand off to other employees what can you automate essentially every test that you do look at it through a microscope and say hey is this something I should be doing is this something I can automate is this something I can hand off to a virtual assistant is this something I need to hire someone else to do because one of the benefits of doing it this way is if you have these uh policies and these procedures in place you can start hiring people then start pulling in the business and then your business is already in a state to scale and grow without you being the bottleneck because early on in the businesses we are the bottleneck we are so passionate we are the business the business is us in our minds no one can run this business but us yes we hire people to do tasks but we are the only ones that can run the business and that is the mindset you need to break you need to look at your business as it is a job it is your business yes but as Rob said work for yourself so establish yourself as the business owner then set yourself up as an employee and then figure out how to carve out your role for other employees or other uh contractors or virtual assistants so that you can divvy up the work hand it off and know when to scale or when you need to scale versus like said he gets overwhelmed with businesses and then he needs to run out and hire people in software development this is typically when we need to test our applications because the companies didn't hire the QA people we're ready to go to production and now suddenly we need to hire 20 or 30 people to test our software at the last minute we find all these bugs this the deadline shift you don't want that you want to be better prepared and scale to necessity versus scale to um not diversity but um to scale Under Pressure you want to scale ahead of time be ahead of the curve instead of being behind the ball and really stressing and trying to keep things moving forward but then maybe lose a customer because you can't meet the demand so these are just some an alternative view to some of the tips that Rob mentioned uh the other thing to think about is you know that handoff look at again review your process is what are you really doing that you need to be doing that you can't hand off one of the best things I've ever done was to essentially go out to all my billers or all my um vendors and set up autopay I literally once a month go look at my invoices look at my bank statements balance the register and everything's paid I don't need to go do bookkeeping except for once a month that saves you time because if you get a letter from a biller and you're like oh I got to pay this you forget to pay it you get late fees you go pay it today oh tomorrow you get another one you got to go pay it that time adds up so those are either things you can automate or if you have a virtual assistant have that mail go to a PO Box let them pick it up let them handle so just look for things that you can strip out that you don't need to be doing that and and even of it this way is it something that anyone should be doing is it something that you can just automate and forget and then it's gone it it's handled you know maybe review it once a month once a quarter just to make sure you know the money's still going where it's going your credit cards haven't expired but that's just one of those little things that you can think about that you can apply to many different areas of your business if you have websites you maintain different websites set up rout you know routines where they do daily backups or weekly backups if it goes down have it send you an alert little things again you can set up where you don't have to manually do it you can get an email or you can just get an alert saying hey something's not working that's when you go pivot and take the time to work on or you have someone else go do so those are just some tips and ideas that I see on when and how to grow uh your business and even yourself because in your daily lives what are some of the things that you're doing that you are wasting time on or that you could badge or similarly automate you know look at ways that you can carve back time that you can basically get time back and still get things done so you definitely went a different direction in that um and I think I'll sort of like I'll stay off of that because I think we've we've gone into the you know the automation piece uh at in depth uh so I do I do want to Swerve us back into the the challenge side of it um and this is really it is it's it is along the same lines of automating is that you you have to first identify something it's sort of like what is the problem what is the task what is the the the repetition and for automation we do that because like what is the repetition what am I doing what what is the thing that is sucking up my time when we want to expand it's not that much different because it's what is it but it's it is a little bit because it's what is what is taking my time that I don't need to it it gets a little bit more into uh priorities and some things like that because there are some things that you need to do like for example let's say it is networking of some sort it's talking to people it's reaching out there and and having a human touch it has to be done automating it actually negates the whole value of it but it may be that you're not a people person so maybe it's better for you to go hire somebody that does sales and marketing and networking and some of those kinds of things and then there are some things that it's just it's not uh gets back to little the idea of the value proposition is is this the best spent use of your time what is it that you bring to what is your secret sauce what is your skill what is your value set that you bring to the table and then honestly everything that's not that you should be looking at ways to carve that off now challenge for the week is to look at your day and write up essentially and this should be something you don't have to get nuts like just even five or 10 minutes is write up essentially like a I say like a a job proposal or position description of what would it look like if you were to hire somebody to do this set of tasks so for example it could be something like I don't like accounting let's say so I'm going to go in and I'm going to I want somebody that's going to balance the books you know every month let's say they're going to deposit checks um chase down you know uh maybe they're going to deal with receivables and things like you know payables and receivables and Chase those down and SWAT vendors away or whatever they need to do I basically put down a job description for that and then the followup to that is going to be what do you need to give a person to be able to do that now there may be things like user IDs and passwords and stuff like that which is fine but even those you should have somewhere like have a booklet or a document or something of like this is the stuff for this process and just start that and grow it because and then this is sort of a rinse and repeat thing so once you've done that for a little bit go pick another area and another area and another area because sooner or later what you're get up you're going to have like a lot of nice little notes at least if not documents or organizational structure of like oh cool I need to really hire this person right now boom I've got a lot of stuff because trust me you don't want to do it in reverse if you go hire the person and then you're having to do it it's usually while it's very busy and you may even be doing stuff like I don't know downsizing and selling a house and having your Co your company growing and like all that kind of stuff at the same time so you want to try to get ahead of the game just like everything else is let's try to get ahead of the game on that so that's your challenge and I think he'll thank me for it somewhere down the road when you do grow enough that you're like oh wow I got to like offset that stuff I don't have time for it anymore but you do have time to send us an email right now so shoot us an email an info develop ur.com and let us know what you think where where would you like us to go next what are some questions some topics suggestions all that kind of goodness because we are here for you and we want to make sure that we are going down paths that you guys want us to go even if it's some crazy little Rabbit Trail let's make sure that it's one that we are all at least entertained by if not informed as well you can also reach out to us on the developer.com site we have a contact us form you can leave us comments and responses pretty much everywhere including the developer n Channel out on YouTube uh there's just anywhere you see podcast you can leave us review there and leave us notes and comments and things of that nature out on X we are at develop andur there's a develop andur Facebook page we are everywhere it's sort of so wherever you're looking for somebody we're there and if you're looking for us somewhere and we're not there let us know and we will get there so we will we're doing our best to just like you know get out there get a nice big footprint because we want to connect with you because that is what it's all about is this community and all of us helping each other pushing each other that iron sharpens iron kind of thing is like let's be you know better developers all around that being said go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material we went all over the place so we could go anywhere with bonus it feels like uh one of the things that just comes to mind because you mentioned um like bookkeep hiring bookkeepers and that kind of briefly especially starting out with a new business or if you are not a bookkeeper type person it might behoove you to get a CPA or a bookkeeper at least a first year or two to help you set up your finances your bookkeeping uh because I'll tell you it can be a pain a real pain um I've been doing this for 20 some years restarted the business trying to redo a new set of books and because of the Law changes every year with taxes something got funky and thankfully I have a CPA and they were like uh we're something's wrong we're off by a couple thousand in expenses here um he was actually higher in expenses than I was but we had the same amount of data so it was one of those funky things so things like that if you are struggling with it don't struggle that is the time to look for help and maybe that could be your first step in basically handing off a task yeah I think the struggle is always going to be a good sign that there's a problem there's a challenge there's something that needs to be addressed I think the I think it goes back to my bonus I'm just going to double down a little bit on the a little bit on the challenge in that is make sure and you should be doing this anyways is we should be taking notes as we're going through things we should have notes along things like you even like customer interactions and stuff like that one things you can do that I guess is a good bonus is when you have meetings and these days a lot of our meetings are on Zoom or some similar kind of thing and when you've got these kinds of things out there use a recording feature you often will maybe have to ask but just say especially like a sales call or anything like that that's that's talking with the customer customer interaction say hey is it okay if I record this because what you're going to be able to do is one you're going to be able to go back and get the details and make sure you didn't miss anything but two then you can also share that with people in the future and say oh by the way here is the history of how we got here and that has proven to be invaluable to me there have been several times where we didn't have the time or anything else to have everybody available sometime the employees didn't even work for me when we first started talking to them to the customer but it allowed them to get a feel for the customer and what's going on and what the project is and all that kind of stuff so there's a lot of value in that so feel free to hit record wherever you can a lot of this stuff is digital it's very easy you can just buy more hard drive space if you need it that being said you're GNA do us one more thing I I want to TCH on to that because not just meetings but if you find yourself doing repetitive tasks or doing like setting up a website or installing servers you can use screen recording or Zoom record what you're doing these could be good training materials to use for when you hire new employees that is um yes that actually is a great one I've used that several times um I would definitely recommend that as well where you just you know some of these tasks it is like setting up a computer installing something going out to you know set up an account on a website or a cloud provider SAS or whatever it is those kinds of things even like navigating on your laptop or whatever there's a lot of stuff that is it's just easier to just record it and do it just like we do tutorials all over the place you can do tutorials all over the place as well and they are very valuable and a lot of companies are doing it so even if it's like a little Loom or one of those it's just like a 30 second video you will trust me it will it will help you immensely one more time we'll get back to this so we will be back we are not done we've got another episode and then many episodes beyond that so go out there and have yourself a great one and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
oh there we go and we are recording um
let's go
look did we not have something on let's
see last time around podcast
ideas no nothing terribly useful
there last time we did Ai and we did
processes and procedures and such yep um
um yeah leveraging AI for business and
business Automation and
templates uh we've done hiring scaling
with contractors elevator pitch
overcoming barriers and business
financing let's do
um sort of the same thing as the scaling
let's do a little bit of
like like when and how to
grow because this is actually something
that is near and dear to my heart right
now oh I think I remembered what the
other one was it was something around
marketing branding or like social
media that is too big I can't even begin
to think of where we were going with
that
one I think marketing was more like
maybe how to get clients or how to was
it did it have to was it something we're
going to talk about that with regards to
Ai and basically like I think we did we
talked about like templates and stuff
like that and consistent
message yeah no I thought I
thought I think it was just something
around like not so much Ai and that but
just like marketing your business like
getting your business out there or maybe
finding customers something along that
lines I'm don't remember exactly what it
was but it was something along those
lines yeah I'm trying to think it's
something that would just like sort of
fall into place for that and I am
not right now well is a little different
well maybe won't H because usually we go
like we get them both and we're just
like Bam Bam but maybe we'll just like
figure out where we want to go with the
second one let's see how that goes let's
just try it that way and see see how
that one goes let's see get a little
less of my my ADD I have just enough to
be like for people that care I can see
that uh yep close enough here I'll just
do that and then it doesn't matter no
like this so I'm like a little bit more
so I'm a little shorter and that means I
[Music]
can that up I'm to bring that out like
that
okay first world problems and a little
three two one well hello and welcome
back we are continuing our season
continuing our series continuing our
lives basically we are building better
developers this season we're building
better businesses and we are also
develop andur I am Rob Broadhead I am
one of the founders of develop andur
also a founder of RB Consulting where we
are what they called a boutique
consulting firm in our case what that
means is we sit down with you understand
your business and then we help you craft
a way forward we look through all of the
stuff that's out there the technology
sprawl that exists whether it's already
there with your business or whether it's
just out there in the world and through
simplification
automation integration and Innovation we
put all those things together and we tie
it all up in a nice little bow basically
for you and say here you go here's
here's what you need to do for today
here's how you can leverage technology
along with a road map and a plan so that
we're not coming back six months later
and saying okay it's a whole new world
and you've got a whole bunch of new
stuff we're actually going to help you
build for the future whether that is
software whether it's stuff that we
build for you whether it's stuff you buy
whether you have to build a team as well
and a and maybe even entire organization
around it we can help you navigate those
Dangerous Waters good thing and bad
thing bad thing is it's not one of these
two sides of a coin right now bad thing
is is just life is freaking chaos right
now in the middle of like downsizing and
working on selling a house and business
is all like business is booming which is
a good thing in itself but it's just
like lots of stuff going on crazy times
exhausting it's just like I lay down at
bed at 8:00 the other night and I was
suddenly out cold it was just one of
those like I didn't wake up until like
2: and then of course I was
automatically Wide Awake couldn't go
back to sleep other problems uh good
thing is that we sometime in the past
well months ago now converted the family
over we all converted over to new phones
a whole new uh provider self provider
and because we did that because we moved
we got all these little coupons and
stuff so now we're going to add a new
iPhone to our family fairly soon like
maybe uh maybe not today but maybe
tomorrow so that's always a good thing
is adding a little bit more like new
high-end technology it's probably a
little bad because it's not going to be
my phone but hey as long as it's in the
family that's what counts also counts
but he's not in the family and I know we
look like twins separated from birth but
is Michael on the other side go ahead
and introduce yourself hey everyone my
name is Mikael Mage I'm one of the
co-founders of building better
developers otherwise known as veler I'm
also the founder of Envision QA where we
help small to midsize businesses
clinicians really look at their software
stack figure out what their business
needs for software we use similar tools
like Rob we use automation uh testing
but what we do is we come in with a
quality assurance mindset we look at
your processes from the user stories we
help you identify the processes you need
to streamline your business and make
your life easier and let the technology
work for you not you work for the
technology good and bad this week
good I am probably about 20 almost a
month into detoxing getting myself off
of caffeine anxiety's dropping so
feeling much better getting a little
more normal-ish sleep for me uh bad side
uh the weather again is turning funky we
go from these weird seasons in Tennessee
we have like two Winters two Springs all
this weird stuff right now we the
temperatures dropped again but now we're
up to like 30 to 40 mph winds and it has
just been a weird howling day I can't
tell if someone's knocking at the door
or if it's just the
wind that's not it's usually like you
get two seasons in a day is part of the
problem you can get this stuff it just
it gets gets a little bit out of hand as
does occasionally some notifications so
I'm going to turn that
off this episode we're going to talk
about little bit when and how to grow
and not really just I mean we always
want our company to grow we always want
our business to grow but it's really
more
about the process of going from maybe
solopreneur or startup into a business
and maybe you start we've talked about
you know contractors employees but it's
starting to add an employee here or
there maybe you know our contract here
or there and then moving up now there's
a lot of
different ideas around this the
challenge to this though is that the the
biggest idea the most important thing
the one that most people will tell you
is a key thing is to be able to be able
to do the growth in time to support
whatever that new work is so for example
if you're someone going to have a bunch
of new customers you want to have your
team in place to be able to support that
customer customer or those new customers
you don't want to get all the customers
and then have everything falling down
about your head and shoulders and go oh
yeah I need to expand that in itself is
very very
challenging and I'm going to push you in
this one to think
about um essentially expanding yourself
more than your company because it is
there is a whole line of thought around
you know you've got certain number
employees that support a certain number
of customers and as they grow then you
have to have more employees and you can
do some metrics around that you do some
things that can sort of you can sort of
math your way through it and say you
know if I need one customer you know one
employee to support four customers if I
go to eight customers I need two
employees that kind of stuff you can
sort of figure those things out there's
other stuff around it we can
use we can use technology and things
like that to leverage our people better
and to grow but there's generally some
sort of a you know like we can apply
some formulas to it and make it work
I want to talk talk about the tougher
things which are the things that you do
and this is particularly when you start
out and I mean totally I'm G to confess
this is totally something that I'm
running through right now is that when
you start out you have to do everything
now if you're lucky if you're smart or
lucky or all of the above then even when
you start out you're already pushing
things off to other people you start out
already with an organization of some
sort even if it's like uh virtual
assistants or contractors or something
like that or even like one-offs where
maybe you've uh maybe you need to have
like a web page your you know website
design and so you just go and do a
little project based thing have somebody
do your website boom you're done you're
off and
running however you do it if you do it
the the easier way you from the start
are building your your organization and
everything in a way that you can very
easily scale that out and sort of carve
off pieces and put them those elsewhere
if you're like me and some larger number
of people that are out there I think
because if you listen to any of the
entrepreneurial type businesses out
there a lot of what the challenge is is
when they take those steps to grow from
small business or side hustle into
something real and they now have to
scale up because now all the things one
all the things that they did and that
they knew and that they assumed are no
longer useful to anybody else because
that person is not going to know and
assume and understand what you did nor
do they know the history or anything
else so one of the first things you have
to do is figure out what do other people
know so for example if I hire somebody I
may know and not even care what my like
PTO policy is and some things like that
if I hire an employee I may not even
honestly if I'm doing a side hustle I
may not even know when I get paid or how
much I get paid employees like to get
paid and they like to know what they're
going to get paid it is not going to be
a happy place if you're like surprise
you got a little paycheck or surprise
you got a little bit more it should not
be surprise should not be part of your
paycheck unless there's like bonuses or
something like that so you need to set
things in place now there one of the
ways we can do this because I don't want
to just complain it would be fun but I'm
going to throw some extra stuff out
there one of the things we can do is we
can at some point before we take on our
first employee is we treat ourselves as
our first employees we start thinking
through what does it look like for for
employee and basically get yourself in
the habit of working for yourself so it
is things like setting business hours
setting some and we'll talk some more
about this Michael doesn't know it
because I just thought of a great topic
for the next episode but we're talk more
about this but it's things like setting
your work hours it's things about having
a workstation having work supplies
having a work phone number a work
website uh if you
have virtual machines or you know class
stuff like your Google or Amazon or
Microsoft or any of that it's having a a
work environment it is also things like
utilizing tools for work there's a lot
of people and I've even done that like
I've got right now I have a DropBox
account that is on a nonwork email
because it's been around forever and I
always just used it for work stuff and
then some other things as well but
primarily there and now I finally got
points like oh I got to find a way to
like move that off or figure my crap
out so you want to be able just like
with banking we've talked about like
have a separate bank account make sure
that you've got all of that stuff set up
and that's more the the legal side but
there's also the Practical side of
things like having a work device a work
environment uh the documentation around
it is things like when when do you take
holidays even if you work on a holiday
because we all do when we're side
hustling you should say have something
like okay you know for example like in
America July 4th is going to be a
holiday I am not going to work even if
I'm going to work I'm going to say it's
a holiday so I'm going to tell my
customers we're Clos that day you know
things like that you may still work but
you need to have something so that when
you have an employee you can say Hey you
get to take a day off unless you're a
miser and you're like no you never get
to take a day off in which case you're
not going to have an employee that long
think about benefits things like and you
can even treat yourself a little bit
it's like okay benefits is we're going
to have pizza Fridays and we're going to
go out and grab a piz if it's just you
you're going to get fat pretty quick but
like have a slice of pizza Fridays or
something like that start thinking about
things that
are they going to be things that you
would like to have at the place that you
work and start implementing that with
yourself before you even start bringing
employees on because then when you do
bring on employees some of these things
will be in place and you will be able to
either hand those off to somebody to
help manage and and administer some of
those stuff or you'll be be able to
inform your employees what uh the
culture is like and things like that now
I know that seems weird when it's like
just you because you are the entire
culture basically but it is useful to
start putting those in things into place
and get those Wheels in Motion because
what you don't want is a situation where
you're like and I like I said I've lived
this as I got all the way through I've
got a nice big I'm overwhelmed which is
usually what I do I grow it so to the
point where I can't possibly handle it
anymore and then I start carving pieces
off well the thing is at some point you
have to carve those pieces off
beforehand you have to be working on
that stuff and then you're going the
first couple of employees it's going to
be painful it's just so hire people that
you know have got thicker skin or
whatever it's going to be because it is
it can be very painful to get that crap
out of your head so the sooner you start
the sooner you try to do it and honestly
you'll thank yourself because some of
that stuff you'll do it you'll come back
six months later you're like oh yeah
that's what I was
thinking so now 6 months after we
started this podcast I'm going to throw
this over to Michael and see if he
remembers what our topic even was so
thanks Rob and we were talking about
when in how to grow and our business
ourselves um within our
business you kind of touched on a lot of
different topics I kind of want to take
this and dissect this from a different
angle so one of the things as
entrepreneurs as developers when we
build our businesses we unless you're
lucky and you have endorsements
investors free money uh we have to
bootstrap a lot of things so we take on
a lot of things on our plate at the
beginning and we essentially have to do
everything so we're overwhelmed by
necessity one of the things and I think
it was Tim Ferris in his book years ago
that I read was don't look at as you're
growing your business or you're running
your business don't look look at it as
you are an employee actually look at it
that you're the owner how can you
extract yourself out of the company or
out of the business how can you hand off
the tasks so that your business can run
self- automated essentially what if you
got sick or what if you got hit by a bus
or what if you had to take time off how
is your business going to run without
you so one how I want to tackle this is
when you want to grow your business as
you're building the business what are
the things like Rob mentioned that you
can hand off to other employees what can
you automate essentially every test that
you do look at it through a microscope
and say hey is this something I should
be doing is this something I can
automate is this something I can hand
off to a virtual assistant is this
something I need to hire someone else to
do because one of the benefits of doing
it this way is if you have these uh
policies and these procedures in place
you can start hiring people then start
pulling in the business and then your
business is already in a state to scale
and grow without you being the
bottleneck because early on in the
businesses we are the bottleneck we are
so passionate we are the business the
business is us in our minds no one can
run this business but us yes we hire
people to do tasks but we are the only
ones that can run the business and that
is the mindset you need to break you
need to look at your business as it is a
job it is your business yes but as Rob
said work for yourself so establish
yourself as the business owner then set
yourself up as an employee and then
figure out how to carve out your role
for other employees or other uh
contractors or virtual assistants so
that you can divvy up the work hand it
off and know when to scale or when you
need to scale versus like said he gets
overwhelmed with businesses and then he
needs to run out and hire people in
software development this is typically
when we need to test our applications
because the companies didn't hire the QA
people we're ready to go to production
and now suddenly we need to hire 20 or
30 people to test our software at the
last minute we find all these bugs this
the deadline shift you don't want that
you want to be better prepared and scale
to necessity versus scale to um not
diversity but um to scale Under Pressure
you want to scale ahead of time be ahead
of the curve instead of being behind the
ball and really stressing and trying to
keep things moving forward but then
maybe lose a customer because you can't
meet the demand so these are just some
an alternative view to some of the tips
that Rob mentioned uh the other thing to
think about is you know that
handoff look at again review your
process is what are you really doing
that you need to be doing that you can't
hand off one of the best things I've
ever done was to essentially go out to
all my billers or all my um vendors and
set up
autopay I literally once a month go look
at my invoices look at my bank
statements balance the register and
everything's paid I don't need to go do
bookkeeping except for once a month that
saves you time because if you get a
letter from a biller and you're like oh
I got to pay this you forget to pay it
you get late fees you go pay it today oh
tomorrow you get another one you got to
go pay it that time adds up so those are
either things you can automate or if you
have a virtual assistant have that mail
go to a PO Box let them pick it up let
them handle so just look for things that
you can strip out that you don't need to
be doing that and and even of it this
way is it something that anyone should
be doing is it something that you can
just automate and forget and then it's
gone it it's handled you know maybe
review it once a month once a quarter
just to make sure you know the money's
still going where it's going your credit
cards haven't expired but that's just
one of those little things that you can
think about that you can apply to many
different areas of your business if you
have websites you maintain different
websites set up rout you know routines
where they do daily backups or weekly
backups if it goes down have it send you
an alert little things again you can set
up where you don't have to manually do
it you can get an email or you can just
get an alert saying hey something's not
working that's when you go pivot and
take the time to work on or you have
someone else go do
so those are just some tips and ideas
that I see on when and how to grow uh
your business and even yourself because
in your daily lives what are some of the
things that you're doing that you are
wasting time on or that you could badge
or similarly automate you know look at
ways that you can carve back time that
you can basically get time back and
still get things
done so you definitely went a different
direction in that um and I think I'll
sort of like I'll stay off of that
because I think we've we've gone into
the you know the automation piece uh at
in depth uh so I do I do want to Swerve
us back into the the challenge side of
it um and this is really it is
it's it is along the same lines of
automating is that you you have to first
identify something it's sort of like
what is the problem what is the task
what is the the the
repetition and for automation we do that
because like what is the repetition what
am I doing what what is the thing that
is sucking up my time
when we want to expand it's not that
much different because it's what is it
but it's it is a little
bit because it's what
is what is taking my time that I don't
need to it it gets a little bit more
into uh priorities and some things like
that because there are some things that
you need to do like for example let's
say it is networking of some sort it's
talking to people it's reaching out
there and and having a human touch it
has to be done automating it actually
negates the whole value of it but it may
be that you're not a people person so
maybe it's better for you to go hire
somebody that does sales and marketing
and networking and some of those kinds
of things and then there are some things
that it's just it's not uh gets back to
little the idea of the value proposition
is is this the best spent use of your
time what is it that you bring to what
is your secret sauce what is your skill
what is your value set that you bring to
the table
and then honestly everything that's not
that you should be looking at ways to
carve that off now challenge for the
week is
to look at your
day and write up essentially and this
should be something you don't have to
get nuts like just even five or 10
minutes is write up essentially like a I
say like a a job proposal or position
description of what would it look like
if you were to hire somebody to do this
set of tasks so for example it could be
something like I don't like accounting
let's say so I'm going to go in and I'm
going to I want somebody that's going to
balance the books you know every month
let's say they're going to deposit
checks um chase down you know uh maybe
they're going to deal with receivables
and things like you know payables and
receivables and Chase those down and
SWAT vendors away or whatever they need
to do I basically put down a job
description for that and then the
followup to that is going to be what do
you need to give a person to be able to
do that now there may be things like
user IDs and passwords and stuff like
that which is fine but even those you
should have somewhere like have a
booklet or a document or something of
like this is the stuff for this process
and just start that and grow it because
and then this is sort of a rinse and
repeat thing so once you've done that
for a little bit go pick another area
and another area and another area
because sooner or later what you're get
up you're going to have like a lot of
nice little notes at least if not
documents or organizational structure of
like oh cool I need to really hire this
person right now boom I've got a lot of
stuff because trust me you don't want to
do it in reverse if you go hire the
person and then you're having to do it
it's usually while it's very busy and
you may even be doing stuff like I don't
know downsizing and selling a house and
having your Co your company growing and
like all that kind of stuff at the same
time so you want to try to get ahead of
the game just like everything else is
let's try to get ahead of the game on
that so that's your challenge and I
think he'll thank me for it somewhere
down the road when you do grow enough
that you're like oh wow I got to like
offset that stuff I don't have time for
it
anymore but you do have time to send us
an email right now so shoot us an email
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about is this community and all of us
helping each other pushing each other
that iron sharpens iron kind of thing is
like let's be you know better developers
all around that being said go out there
and have yourself a great day a great
week and we will talk to you next
time bonus material we went all over the
place so we could go anywhere with bonus
it feels like uh one of the things that
just comes to mind because you mentioned
um like bookkeep hiring bookkeepers and
that kind of
briefly especially starting out with a
new business or if you are not a
bookkeeper type person it might behoove
you to get a CPA or a bookkeeper at
least a first year or two to help you
set up your finances your bookkeeping uh
because I'll tell you it can be a pain a
real pain um I've been doing this for 20
some years restarted the business trying
to redo a new set of books and because
of the Law changes every year with taxes
something got funky and thankfully I
have a CPA and they were like uh we're
something's wrong we're off by a couple
thousand in expenses here um he was
actually higher in expenses than I was
but we had the same amount of data so it
was one of those funky things
so things like that if you are
struggling with it don't struggle that
is the time to look for help and maybe
that could be your first step in
basically handing off a
task yeah I think the struggle is always
going to be a good sign that there's a
problem there's a challenge there's
something that needs to be
addressed I think the I think it goes
back to my bonus I'm just going to
double down a little bit on the a little
bit on the challenge in that
is make sure and you should be doing
this anyways is we should be taking
notes as we're going through things we
should have notes along things like you
even like customer interactions and
stuff like that one things you can do
that I guess is a good bonus is when you
have meetings and these days a lot of
our meetings are on Zoom or some similar
kind of thing and when you've got these
kinds of things out there use a
recording feature you often will maybe
have to ask but just say especially like
a sales call or anything like that
that's that's talking with the customer
customer interaction say hey is it okay
if I record this because what you're
going to be able to do is one you're
going to be able to go back and get the
details and make sure you didn't miss
anything but two then you can also share
that with people in the future and say
oh by the way here is the history of how
we got here and that has proven to be
invaluable to me there have been several
times where we didn't have the time or
anything else to have everybody
available sometime the employees didn't
even work for me when we first started
talking to them to the customer but it
allowed them to get a feel for the
customer and what's going on and what
the project is and all that kind of
stuff so there's a lot of value in that
so feel free to hit record wherever you
can a lot of this stuff is digital it's
very easy you can just buy more hard
drive space if you need it that being
said you're GNA do us one more thing I I
want to TCH on to that because not just
meetings but if you find yourself doing
repetitive tasks or doing like setting
up a website or installing servers you
can use screen recording or Zoom record
what you're doing these could be good
training materials to use for when you
hire new
employees that is um yes that actually
is a great one I've used that several
times um I would definitely recommend
that as well where you just you know
some of these tasks it is like setting
up a computer installing something going
out to you know set up an account on a
website or a cloud provider SAS or
whatever it is those kinds of things
even like navigating on your laptop or
whatever there's a lot of stuff that is
it's just easier to just record it and
do it just like we do tutorials all over
the place you can do tutorials all over
the place as well and they are very
valuable and a lot of companies are
doing it so even if it's like a little
Loom or one of those it's just like a 30
second video you will trust me it will
it will help you
immensely one more time we'll get back
to this so we will be back we are not
done we've got another episode and then
many episodes beyond that so go out
there and have yourself a great one and
we will talk to you next time
[Music]