Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

When I started my software development business nearly 3 decades ago, someone told me (paraphrased) "Beware the technician who has a skill/passion that they love so much that they decide to leave a job they hate and do it for a living...They are just building themselves another job that they will eventually come to hate."

And by technician I mean anyone who can do/make things with their own hands and creative energy. It is probably very dated now, but I highly recommend anyone thinking of starting their own business to read Robert Gerber's "The E-myth Revisited".

In a nutshell, every business owner has to realise that they have to wear three hats - that of Technician, Manager and Entrepreneur. All three require energy and different skills, and it is very rare that one person will have requisite skills in all 3 fields, so outside help, or more learning is needed.

View on HN

I want to second this comment. I have run a business for about 18 years and still growing. I hired a business management mentor to help me, and he made me read e-myth revisited. Which was also part of his business class at the local college.

I hate doing some of the work, but I enjoy the overall, that it's well worth it for me to slog through the things I don't like. But no matter what happens, I now am a permanent business person. Maybe something just happens to you when you want to make something and be in control of it.

Mixing dreams with reality takes the ability to see what is actually possible and dismiss useless criticism and accept wise criticism.

I could be doing better, as I enjoy the technical side of things too much more than the other parts... oh well. This guys' story about the coffee house is a huge warning to many people, but to me, it's a specific warning about not doing your homework before diving into a project of any kind.

If they had, they would know the exact numbers before they started, and then they would not have started. At least they are sharing their lessons with the rest of us.

so did you have a face which was well framed by all 3 of the hats, did you bring in outside help, or did the business fail?

I brought in outside help (partner). Business is still ticking along nearly 3 decades later (though original partner has since left), so I guess it sort of worked. Hardest times though, was one of us forgot to wear one of the hats for an extended period, and just got comfortable or focused on wearing it.

Wow, congrats on your success. Very impressive. The Blaze site looks great BTW. Would you be willing to share some of the secret sauce of running a successful software shop for nearly 30 years?

Thank you! Full disclosure, Blaze is my second software business, and has been going for 22 years now. My previous one ran for about 8 years.

In short, it is really about providing great customer service. I am lucky enough to work in a small town where word of mouth referrals are critical, and doing a good job and genuinely caring about your customers gets you noticed and gets people to stick to you loyally.

Plus I have a genuine love of learning about how other businesses operate, and get a kick out of improving how they can run using my software.

But as I get older, I find that my energy levels aren't suited to one on one development and constant support, hence my second all cloud based SaaS startup in my sig - really it is phase 2 while I scale back my personalised face to face customer support and explore a more distributed way of doing things on a global scale, rather than local.

Thank you for your reply. Much appreciated.

I'm just getting started on this path, and I'm really starting to see that like you said, excellent customer service--not beautiful code or elegantly applied computer science principles, etc.--is the most important thing.

Now I just need to figure out how to establish that network and reputation. Thanks again!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com