Family business in IT

Foreword

Many thanks to jimmy_webs , who in the comments to the previous article gave me advice to write about 5 years in the family business. And to all those who left encouraging comments with a call to write more. Well, you asked for it yourself.

In no way do I claim to be an authority or a person who is wise through life experience. On the contrary, I understand that our company is at the very beginning of its development path. However, we have already covered some part of this path. I just want to share my own experience and I hope that this will help aspiring entrepreneurs make fewer mistakes.

Take a booklet or how it all began

I never thought of creating my own business. And my husband, as it turned out, never had the thought to create his own business. He constantly offered different ideas, I listened, nodded. Then she said it was too early. We must gain experience, make money.
How good that he decided to "listen to the woman and do the opposite." I chose IT outsourcing as the main activity, registered a company, and rented an office. Well, it's done. We must look for customers.
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I, as a person who, in his time, had defended more than one hour on promotions, handing out leaflets and conducting tastings, offered to make advertising booklets and walk around the neighboring offices. The idea was accepted and we got down to business.

The initial capital of 10 thousand rubles is all that we had at that time. Of these, 6.5 thousand were paid for the first month of renting an office, 2 thousand - to a familiar girl artist for illustrations for a booklet. And the booklets needed to be printed somewhere.

As it turned out, a friend of his parents had a color laser printer. He did not refuse to help us and printed the booklets for free. We only spent on paper and stapler. It is time to go through the offices of potential customers.
I took time off from work and my husband and I went around the offices in the city center all day. At first it was embarrassing, but then we joined. They enthusiastically told people what IT outsourcing is and how it will solve their problems.

After the promo campaign summed up. Conversion was 1%. Those. 1% of organizations decided to cooperate with us. And since we distributed 100 booklets ... Yes, we received our first customer. With a subscription fee of 2 000 rubles per month. By the way, this company today is our client.

Everything is not according to the business plan

Why have we chosen the main focus of IT outsourcing? Of course, this was not a spontaneous decision. We thought, thought, built business plans. As a result, they came to the conclusion that IT outsourcing is stability.

We argued like this:

• we find 10 clients for support, this will provide an income of 40-50 thousand rubles a month,
• then we take the employee who will leave on calls. Meanwhile, we are looking for 10 more new customers,
• then we take another employee and continue to increase our customer base.

The reality was as follows:

• on outsourcing 3 clients who bring 14 thousand rubles. per month,
• these customers always have something broken and instead of looking for new customers, you have to drive around the old ones,
• About once a month a client appears who needs a website. Website development costs 10-15 thousand rubles, there is no time at all, so you have to work on weekends.

In general, a business plan lived its own life, and business - its own. Although let's call a spade a spade. It was not a business, but a freelance with a monthly payment for renting an office. It was necessary to change something.

Alexander (my husband) decided to look for an assistant. At that time I could only help from time to time, as I worked in another organization. We have posted on the local forum an advertisement about finding an employee. The salary is small, but the work is interesting and hard.

So the first employee appeared in the company, with practically no work experience, but with burning eyes. This is what we were looking for. Sasha coached him on all fronts. Together they solved the problems arising from customers in IT outsourcing. Despite the fact that Edward worked 2-3 days a week, sometimes he rescued a lot and removed the load from her husband.

So, free time has become a little more. However, instead of spending it on business development according to the plan (remember, new customers -> stable income -> employees -> new customers), the husband began to pay more attention to developing websites. And over time, IT outsourcing has faded into the background.
It must be said that Sasha was interested in the web site from his school days, he constantly monitored trends, pumped himself as a specialist. Therefore, even the first sites developed in our company were very worthy and brought stable profits to their owners.

Goodbye data protection

In the meantime, I was engaged in the protection of personal data in medical institutions. Over time, information security has disappointed more and more. Heads of organizations (both budget and commercial) were concerned not about how to protect the personal data of their clients and employees, but about how to protect themselves from the state. Those. as much as possible to be covered with pieces of paper and to be ready to checks.

This situation was depressing, although in my heart I understood that the likelihood of running into heavy fines from the state was really great.

I was more and more fascinated by the idea of ​​joining my husband. I read Lebedev's Kovodstvo, Ogilvy's About Advertising, Suele's Clients for Life, and other books that cause a burning desire to act. But it was terribly scary. What do I know about the business? About website development? About IT support?

The impetus, as you know from the previous article, was the implementation of a large order for organizing the protection of personal data in the network of car dealerships.
Then I earned my annual salary for 2 months and decided to leave the protection of information.

And what will I do?

Now we worked together. I took up content, prepared information for new sites, processed photos, filled sites. Then she took over the maintenance of all documents, for this I had to learn the basics of accounting and tax code.

Soon we realized that it was important for customers to offer not only website development, but also their promotion. After all, what is the point of a website if visitors do not find it? In general, I was instructed to deal with SEO, which I did.

At first it was scary. Yes, and the first two orders for promotion as luck would have been unrealistically complex: the construction of houses and a hotel in Gelendzhik.

With the development of sites easier: developed the site, signed the act, closed the contract. And in SEO you have been working for several months and you hardly see the result. And what if it doesn't work out? What if the site does not reach the top ten?

But what a thrill it is when your website goes to the first page of search results for all requests!

Who am I? Or a slight digression

I was not sure whether to write about my thoughts and experiences. But on the other hand, if you are not interested in the description of my spiritual torments, just scroll through the article further.

And while I pour out the soul. I was a valuable data protection specialist. I was repeatedly invited to work in large Moscow companies, offered a good job and a high salary. But the choice was made in favor of the business. And this is not a choice from the category of “made and forgotten,” for a long time I doubted the decision made.

I was busy filling the next site or preparing a report to the FIU and was tormented by the thought: “What am I doing? I'm losing my qualifications! ” Felt that further and further away from the protection of information. I didn’t know where I was going. All this content, SEO, bookkeeping seemed so irrelevant, that anyone can easily learn. What will I write in my resume? Will anyone take me to work?

In this state, I was probably a year. She shared her doubts with her husband and he explained that I did not see the point. Yes, I am losing the qualifications of an information security specialist. But the choice is made, what is the point of rushing? And in fact, I acquire invaluable skills in another field. I create and develop business. I'm a businessman.

After that, I told myself that the information security was over, I put an end to it and forbade myself to think about it. The heavy stone fell from my shoulders and I gave myself even more to my now only business - business development.

Where do employees go

Among our clients was a guest house in Anapa. And we thought that it would be great for a guest house to place a 3D panorama on the site. We naturally couldn’t do them, but when did it stop us? Need to try! The client expressed his consent, we entered into a contract and began to experiment.

As we did these panoramas is a separate sentimental story, but this is not the point now. Edward was very interested in the process and realized that this is exactly what he wants to do. After some time, he opened his studio and is now developing virtual tours. And he's doing very well.

I think we charged the staff with our enthusiasm. Looking at us, practically of their peers, they understood that they needed to try. We didn’t hide that it would be incredibly difficult, but we didn’t dissuade them, helped with advice and shared our experience.

Subsequently, 3 more employees left us precisely with the goal of opening their own business.
One of the programmers working for us decided to open an online store, the sales manager was a company providing electrical installation services, and the girl administrator was engaged in the provision of IT outsourcing services.

In the bottom line, one of 4 of our former colleagues managed to stay in business. I think this is not a bad statistic. Being an entrepreneur is very, very difficult. But it was easier for us than the others, because we were together. I think, one by one, we would not have done it. I would definitely not have done it.

What's next?

Well, I think that's all for today. And in a week I will tell:

• who is still in the family business;
• how we abandoned IT outsourcing and raised prices by 2 times;
• Why I do not like Sberbank.

To be continued ...

PS read the sequel:
Family business in the field of IT. My three golden rules
Family business in the field of IT. Time making money
Family business in the field of IT. How we launched our first service
Family business in the field of IT. The first six months of our startup life
Family business in IT. How we put together a team