Hey, this is Overpass Insights! My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, I'm going small again.
Alright, so today, I come to you with my head hung low and a little
bit of sadness in my heart, because I spent the last couple of days moving out
of this nice big office into a smaller office. I talked before about the
importance of scale and being able to scale up your business, to be able to
scale up your apps, all that kind of stuff, and if you're going to scale you
have to rely a lot on processes or get the right people in. And make sure the
economic conditions are good. And sometimes, those things all work in your
favor and sometimes they don't and sometimes you just make mistakes along
the way. I'm kind of guilty of making mistakes along the way and of course, we
have all the Brexit stuff. But it's not really a very good excuse because lots
of businesses are thriving. But you know, you learn as you go. So the client
business is actually doing really well. The clients are really happy but I found
that as we're adding more client work on to what we were doing, I was working even
more long hours. So, in the end, we had to be more selective about which
clients we brought on and then it became of course a point of we having more
money going out than coming in. So then, rather than keep scaling up, I had to
make the decision whether or not to keep going the way we were going, possibly
going to a bit of debt or to scale down again and regroup. And I decided to scale
down again. Scaling up is not easy but scaling down is a lot more difficult.
It's a lot more difficult letting people go. I still have the team's overseas, we
still have all the clients. The clients are happy, but I was just
getting to the point where I thought we need to relook at our processes, do
things a little bit differently if we go forward and have to scale back and
regroup. And it's a bit embarrassing! It's a bit embarrassing, you know, got the
sign on the wall, all this kind of stuff, and had to go
up and then have to go small again, but you know... Aside from a bit of
embarrassment and losing a bit of money, I guess everything's okay. And the
new office is - and when you're gonna notice I'm in the new office in the next
video I do, but it's just gonna - that's just gonna be just me. It's gonna be like
my cave. There's gonna be devices everywhere, I'm gonna go back to the days where I
have like the keymap of webstorm up on the up on the wall, or whatever
reference material all I have up on the wall. It's just gonna be like a coders
den, right? I'm just gonna go to small again. Which in a way I'm kind of looking
forward to it. But still... So, do I consider this a failure? That the fact that I went-
I'm on my third office in the last year - so I went from a small office to this
little larger office to a larger office back to a small office, do I consider
that a failure? Yeah, kind of. I have a tendency to beat myself up about these
kind of things but, if I didn't do it, I would still be thinking about doing it
now. I'm glad to have done it because I'm gonna do it again. I just
need to pull back and regroup a little bit. And still have my
developers, my team's overseas and we have a lot of people I work with
that work from home, which is actually much more convenient. But you know, I just
thought I would share this with you. Because you, guys, are gonna notice the
next time I do a video it's gonna be in a different office and also I have
nothing but respect for people who give things a try.
I'm tired talking to app developers who tell me about their app idea and say one
day they're gonna do it and never do, and I much prefer to talk to app developers
who say I released my app you know version one didn't really take off but
we're gonna do version 1.1 we work it we're learning from our mistakes we're
going forward and then we're gonna do version 1.3 and we're gonna keep going
and if that doesn't work we're gonna move on to the next app and that kind of
stuff I love that I admire that in people even though I have a tendency to
beat myself up about things like I'm gonna show if I am the king of wallowing
in my own misery so you know it's one of those things had to step back and think
if I was given if I was giving myself advice what would I say to myself it
would be dude man you tried this you know you're gonna try it again because
that's what you do right and I think what was getting to the point where what
was more money going out than coming in and I'd to think we're not going to be
able to service our clients as well we it's better to have fewer clients which
we could service really really well then they're bringing in lots that we just
were dropping the ball all over the place and and I found myself in the
situation where I was hoping for a bottom of the ninth grand slam which if
you don't know baseball is like very rare it's like filling up the bases and
then hitting it out of the park in the bottom of the night when you're behind
and I thought that's not right it's better to take the foot off the off the
gas for a little bit and slow down which is what I'm going to do so we're still
going to do the videos I'm still doing overpass I'm not giving up on things
although when I wallow in my misery I do I do consider it it does pass through my
mind I think yeah you know what I'm just gonna go back to corporate life I'm just
gonna go get a job right and but then I remember then I remember what that's
like and I think he'll know what why would I do that things aren't that bad
right and you know what but the thing is the app income is better so we talked
about passive and active income the active income and it might be just the
way that was doing things before we don't really have recurring revenue with
clients it's more it's more like project after project in a way it reminds me of
Tarzan swinging from vine to vine he swings and he hopes that next vine is
gonna be there and sometimes it isn't but the app income oh thank God for the
app income that just keeps coming in the passive income so Quito that's always a
goal does it build up the passive income but anyway I just wanted to be open and
upfront with you guys you know sometimes things go really well sometimes they
don't go so well it could have gone a lot worse if I didn't before you know if
I don't see what's going on and you're always making course adjustments and so
forth so anyway everything's gonna be still fine with the channel we're still
gonna keep doing these videos we're still working with all the clients we're
still taking on new clients but we're just strutting restructuring things at
how we do it and just going small and I'm going back to kind of the way that I
miss being just having that little space of my own where I could just sit, put
put the music on and code, just looking forward to that. So anyway,
that is it for today, let me know what you, guys, think. Have you ever been in a
situation where you had to stop, pull back and regroup because - and
did you beat yourself up about it? Maybe it's just me who does that. So anyway,
that is it for today. I'll talk to you, guys, again next time.