The flu and business scalability
November 10th, 2009 Posted in businessSo, I’ve been thinking lately a lot about scalability in the business, mostly because I’ve been running a cold (transforming into full blown flu-like symptoms occasionally) for the last 2 and a half months. I know it’s mostly the weather (my nose hates the cold) and the lack of rest, but it has driven home a point that I need more backups.
Backups in terms of the work getting done on-time. I’ve mostly been able to make it to work regularly, shipping orders out and updating the site during this period, but it’d have been nice to have a little more leeway. Sure, I have the wife and Alison; but neither can do shipping well since they both have full-time jobs.
Which means I really should start considering part-time help. And we are finally at a stage where having part-time help in this area would be quite useful. It would take the time I spend doing shipping (which is a relatively simple job) and transferring it to revenue generation activities (i.e. marketing).
On the other hand, there are a number of things we need to do before we hire someone - including sorting out payroll, getting a better physical location for shipping (right now I’m squeezing past boxes of packing material to get at games) and frankly, trusting someone alone with our board games.
However, this is going to have to be the next step to keep up with our growth. So among other things, I’ll also need to look into documentation to teach the part-time employee(s). Ah well, better to work and consider this now rather than later when its too late.
