And now, for a real update…

I cheated a bit on that last blog, didn’t I? I haven’t really been updating lately because, frankly, I’ve been exhausted.

The good news is that last month was the best month ever in terms of revenue for Simpli. The bad news is that this month has a lot to live up to. While October 2004 was better than September 2004 by a large margin, the fact that we got a single large ($7400) order last month means we’re going to be hard-pressed to beat our September ’05 numbers this month. We’ve beaten the previous month in revenue every month except April this year, and that was because we had a $12,000 order in March. Our revenue graphs show a beautiful up-sloping curve for 2005, and I want that to continue.

To that end, I put up a sale for some dedicated servers on WebHostingTalk (a popular website for those looking for hosting) last week. It was our first WHT post for several months, and it generated massive publicity for Simpli. It garnered over 900 views and has given us 7 new customers so far. That’s 7 new dedicated server customers in 10 days, which means building servers, installing OSes, and dealing with a lot of questions (there are always configuration details that need to be settled when a customer orders a new server.) That’s in addition to our current customers, who (as always) are wanting to expand with more servers, more colo space, and more bandwidth! And it’s also in addition to Brandon leaving and Russ having to take on an entirely new role as lead system administrator.

All of this adds up to a hell of a massive workload, especially when you factor in Russ having to learn all of our system setup procedures and build new servers for customers who want them online now. I’ve actually started taking 2-4 hours a day to do support requests and make runs to our distributor. I could have posted another WHT ad this week, but wanted to give our staff a chance to catch their breath and actually be able to work on issues other than those requiring urgent attention.

I am a stress ball. I had nightmares last night and today I woke up in a horrible, overstressed mood where I felt like I hadn’t slept at all. Not healthy. The stress ball factor originates from me having to pull 12 or 14-hour days as well as driving Russ to work since he doesn’t have a car currently. To that end, today I told Russ to get a bike and take it to the light rail to work until he could get a car. That made me feel a lot better.

I knew I’d be a stress ball for a couple weeks, but I’m quickly realizing that all of these new customers add up to only one thing, and that is the fact that we have to hire someone else. Let’s look at this from a rational perspective. Brandon was pulling 12-hour days probably 2 days out of the week even when Ben was able to work full-time during the summer. Now that Ben’s back down to 20 hours a week, we simply aren’t able to get everything done. In fact, Russ has been pulling 12-to-14-hour days this week and Ben was here for about 25 hours total this week, and we’re still behind on tickets. Since the summer, when Ben cut back his hours, we’ve also added more than 20 new customers, who take up additional support time.

I’ve been reluctant to add staff since Simpli is in debt and I’d like to pay that off before hiring again, but if I don’t hire in the next 2-3 weeks, we’re going to be at a point where we won’t be able to take on any new customers because of the support requirements. In fact, in some way, I feel like we’re already at that point, since I didn’t feel comfortable putting our latest promotions on WHT this week due to staff overload. I don’t feel like I should shortchange my business and deny it growth because I don’t want to hire anyone else. After all, the more revenue we have, the more quickly we’re going to be able to clear the debt load and start doing really fun things with our profit (instead of just paying it back to our creditors.)

So the hiring-and-interview show will probably commence in the next 14 days, and we’ll be running down the growth path again. Perhaps I’ll actually be able to sleep well again by that point. 😉