Service vs. Product based business

[puckman]

I have a service based business(business services) I want to be creative and create new products, whether they are sites, actual products, ecommerce etc. With the services, I can leverage my expertise, but the time and opportunity cost is very high. I have created a few businesses and done ok, but I am always creating service based businesses that require a great deal of my time, typically 7 days a week 12 hours per day. I have always had trouble hiring, because my standards are high, and I usually hire people who dont even have high standards on their own work, even if they are experienced in the field.

I enjoy offering my advice and consultation, but feel I am ready to build my own product/site etc. Anyone else in the service business find this to be the case? Especially if you are doing ok financially, which makes it even harder to 'pivot'?

 

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[Brander]

I enjoy offering my advice and consultation, but feel I am ready to build my own product/site etc. Anyone else in the service business find this to be the case? Especially if you are doing ok financially, which makes it even harder to 'pivot'?

1) Good help is hard to find in any field
2) Well, I was in the high-end website development 11 years ago, did quite well, but got burned out.
3) Transitioning to Saas has been something of a revelation (and I had to do it to get my sanity back) - it's still a lot of work initially, but once it's done and automated, you only have to worry about bugs and new features and MAYBE support (on your own) for about 6 months max. (if you have no funds at all, which is not the case for you). You hire after that.
4) I work 2 hours a day max. (That's why you see me here answering 2 or 3 questions daily ), some days I just go racing for an entire week and the business is fine.

Why not try testing products alongside your existing business? I assume you have a customer database you can supplementally use for the launch (even if it is untargeted)...

 

[puckman]

1) Good help is hard to find in any field
2) Well, I was in the high-end website development 11 years ago, did quite well, but got burned out.
3) Transitioning to Saas has been something of a revelation (and I had to do it to get my sanity back) - it's still a lot of work initially, but once it's done and automated, you only have to worry about bugs and new features and MAYBE support (on your own) for about 6 months max. (if you have no funds at all, which is not the case for you). You hire after that.
4) I work 2 hours a day max. (That's why you see me here answering 2 or 3 questions daily ), some days I just go racing for an entire week and the business is fine.

Why not try testing products alongside your existing business? I assume you have a customer database you can supplementally use for the launch (even if it is untargeted)...

Testing and rebuilding at night is what I am going to have to do. You are at where I want to be, but I need to devote this initial work and capital to make that happen. I can use saas products for what my services do, essentially cutting out the manual work.