I cannot believe how busy I’m getting now.

I now find I leave home somewhere between 8am and 10am, and often get home between 5pm and 7pm… sometimes with 1 or 2 computers to work on…

That doesn’t leave me with much time to actually work on them, so I often need to catchup over weekends. I can see that this kind of workload could easily continue… my efforts (marketing, customer service, SEO, etc) are all starting to pay off.

I have already handed my phone over to my lovely wife, Mandy, who now books customers and does some purchasing, invoicing, and some pickups and deliveries.

Now I need to carefully plan what I need to do in the future. I can see a few options:

1. Keep going, and don’t let fatigue catch up with me…
2. Deliberately slow down (and have to turn away customers… which I have worked so hard to gain)
3. Take on some contractors for additional work (I’ve already got someone in South East Brisbane… but not much work in that area yet… and a part-time web designer (Great work Ryan!))…

Point 3 is where I’m heading, but I need to be very careful, as I don’t know if I have what it takes to “inspire” people, recognise who I can trust, and generally manage people… I’ve never really been management material, and I don’t know if I will enjoy heading down that path.

But then again, I’ve had few problems being accountant, salesman, secretary, purchasing officer, webdesigner, SEO consultant, technician, and marketing manager, for Computer Aid.

If I need to relinquish any of those roles, then I need to do so to someone I can trust, and in a way that will keep costs low.

I can see 3 roles for contractors:

1. Independent: they are a lot like me, they can do most things, and are good with customers. I just need to keep an eye on overlapping territories.
2. the super geeks… they can only work on computers in a “back office” situation… they are good with technology, but shouldn’t be allowed to face customers
3. The specialist (eg website designer)… these can also fall into categories 1 and 2 above, but are good for specific “time consuming” jobs( like website design).

How to expand? I really don’t know.

I’d like to avoid franchising… I don’t like the idea of a huge $ hit when buying a franchise… so I couldn’t do that to someone else.

Licensing sounds like a good idea, but there is very little info on how best to do it.

Hiring employees, is not an option (just too expensive at this point). 

So, for the moment, it looks like subcontractors are the way to go… I take a small % of what the customer pays, and the subbie gets the rest… No huge upfront fees for the contractor, but they will always be tempted to go out on their own (and not pay the computer aid fee), and take many customers with them… I guess every business runs that risk… I just need to minimise it somehow.

Is there anyone out there, who is good with computers and people, who wants to work in northern Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, or South West Brisbane? Pay is variable and inconsistent. Apply within 😉