Push through the spike, hire at the plateau
Last Friday’s call opened with me admitting to a habit I’ve had for a long time, and it ended up setting the tone for the rest of the call. Here’s that part in case you don’t get to the replay.
For years, when a new project showed up, my reflex was to say no or push it way out. I’ve started to see that as self-sabotage. Every time I turned something down to protect my capacity, I was also keeping the business from growing past what I could personally do.
So lately I’ve been doing the opposite. When a client asks if we can start sooner, I offer an earlier start date instead of pointing them to my next opening months out. I’m pricing projects so there’s room to pay someone to help, and I’m planning to bring on more help rather than turning work away. That also means managing my own time better and trusting the people I hand things to, so I stop running the business like a solo freelancer.
One member added something useful here. He drew a line between saying no out of fear and saying no because it’s the right call. His advice was to push through the spikes, the busy stretches that come and go, and to hire once the extra demand turns into a plateau and stays there. The other side of it, which we all agreed on, is that saying yes to everything out of scarcity is its own problem. You want to take the risk with your eyes open.
A few other things that came up:
- Now that AI makes tools and prototypes cheap to build, what’s actually worth building? (Domain knowledge is still what tells you which ideas are good.)
- How can I use demos and internal tools as proof in outreach and proposals?
- How does putting out consistent public content turn into referrals?
- How do I present a proposal so it doesn’t sit in someone’s inbox and stall?
This is what the Friday calls are. Practical, collaborative, no bells and whistles.
If you can't make it, every session gets recorded and added to a private library that's chapter-marked and summarized, so you can find the bit that matches whatever you're stuck on. Sometimes you just need someone outside the jar to read the label for you.
Talk soon,
Brad