HELP! my gf wants me to leave my 4yrold biz..need advice

[pepe]

Don't take advice from people on forums. Most of us haven't even had the patience to read your full post, let alone spend more than 5 minutes deciding what you should do with this major life decision.

Some ideas: Instead of asking "do I go with A or B?" ask "can I do A and B?" Another tactic is 10/10/10. "If I decide to get married and have kids right now, how will I feel 10 minutes from now? 10 months from now? 10 years?" These ideas help you get perspective. People online do not.

There's an amazing decision framework called WRAP. Here's a summary: http://heathbrothers.com/ot/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The_WRAP_Process_one_pager.pdf

for my girlfriend, she does not see it as "can I do A and B" that is why I am forced to think "do I go with A or B"

Never heard of the 10/10/10.

I guess for me, I get married and have kids now, how do I feel in:

10 minutes: youth feels wasted
10 months: going through the motions and probably hating it
10 years: no clue lol

 

[DeletedUser12]

What is your agency doing to adapt to the client changes (besides downsizing)? Offering different services?

I had a friend with an agency who basically made a subset of the company that focused on smaller businesses with a 'packaged deal' for online marketing. The smaller company is still going strong and the bigger agency is basically dead because it was too hard to bring in the big clients consistently.

 

[Member]

Is there more money left in the market that you're losing because your partner can't make sales, or has your company grown to it's limit based on the available amount of money companies have to spend in the country you're in?

It sounds to me like your product is good (winning awards) and there are other competitors, so there at least WAS money left in the market a couple years ago...

Does your partner suck at sales? My knowledge of govt. contracts is that it's often determined based on price, so you could still win govt. contracts through price wars against your competitors. When getting contracts from companies there is more wiggle room you can create through good salesmanship. If there are only 3-4 competitors as you say, all the big companies must be going to them for their work, which also seems to me like your partner sucks at sales.

Have you ever gone to meetings with your partner? Have you watched him interact with clients? Is he doing anything to create connections with the "buyers" at the companies you want to get contracts with? Is he hustling hard or does he pull back to rest once he has secured a project that will save you for the next couple of months (just waiting for cycle to repeat)?

Could you cut an employee and hire another sales person to support your partner? Outsource the fired designer's work to a cheaper asian country (assuming you're not in phillipines/etc.).

 

[Worldisyours]

Look if i was in your position, I would give her the boot, let her go get her family guy.

I see these things too often man. You think its easy being a boss and getting there. You have to make sacrifices and tough decisions to get to where you want to get man.

Get rid of burdens if you have the power to

 

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[Mattie]

Those big mountains you build in your mind, they're blocking the view. The past is the past. It doesn't exist now. Nothing you can do about the mistakes. The future isn't here yet. Right now is all you got to create something from nothing. Debt's there, but why worry and stare at it, you're wasting your energy on the mess instead of creating something from nothing. For women I'm surprised she's still there. I don't know to many women that wait 9 years to get married and have kids. Usually they're in a hurry, and want to be like married now. My guess is she may be tired of waiting. Your biological clock runs out some point. Your patience runs out after 9 years. She probably has a bunch of people saying, he'll never do it, get rid of you. lol Just telling you what I usually hear from women. Yes, sounds like your procrastinating in all flavors of responsibilities. Fear of everything in front of you because you're staring at the problems of the past and not looking at solutions right now.

 

[AubreyJ]

Honestly, if I was you I would probably stick with it. If you where able to make it a profitable company at one point you can probably do it again- Just work your a$$ off, fine tune your business, figure out what isn't working, fix it and then try to make a profit again.

From a females perspective (or at least my view on it) as far as your girlfriend goes, I think that you should end things....of course this is purely based on what you provided in this post, but from what i read it doesn't seem like you want kids and it doesn't seem like you really want to get married. I wouldn't want to have to pressure my boyfriend into proposing, and I definitely wouldn't want to pressure my husband into having kids. Kids and marriage are huge life changing decisions and if you aren't 100% ready for it, don't do it.

 

[TrestonIngle]

Two acronyms, WCCA & WADM.

 

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