Freelancer, I want to open a company. Your experience?

Question

CRM

I turn to wiser colleagues for good advice!
How to improve your level and move from a freelancer to a company, i.e. open your own company and hire employees.
Worked for a firm. I started freelancing in parallel, the first orders went, payments started, it started spinning, I left work.
Now there are much more orders, they come from both new customers and old ones. I just physically do not have time to close everything, plus I see a huge potential in the development of related services and the development of new markets.
I hired a remote assistant, which, of course, somewhat reduced the load, but there are questions that I still don’t understand how to delegate to an employee.
I also looked at what offices are offered for rent, because. tired of working at home. We have a crisis in the country and we have cool offices for cheap - $5-7 per square, 25-30 squares, i.e. per month from $150 to $200 you can easily find a good office. Plus, you will have to buy equipment and furniture.
I have a number of questions for those who have already passed this stage.
1. Advise CRM for project accounting. Now I just keep notes in Evernote, I tried Bitrix, but returned back to Evernote. Satisfied with everything, except that you need to somehow set up a reminder, this kind of call to the customer, remind about payment ... keep records of mutual settlements with customers ...
2. Advise where to start - I thought at first to find remote employees, work remotely, but maybe it's better to put people in the office? At the initial stage, 2 people will be enough for me.
3. How to safely delegate work on maintaining and searching for clients, on finances and mutual settlements with clients? These are important questions and they take a lot of time.
There are many clients, mutual settlements are small, several times a month. It is necessary to somehow structure everything, set reminders of who should pay when, to whom when to send progress reports.
I will be glad to help. Thank you!
PS The sphere of my activity is website promotion and contextual advertising.

Answer 1

Goodnight.
1. With regards to CRM - try different solutions, as they say. I recommend paying attention to Megaplan, there is also teamer.ru/about , it is simpler, but in principle the norms. To start, the free version of CRM is enough, and then we'll see
2. You need to start by calculating expenses, an approximate income plan, a break-even point and other uninteresting things. It is important to understand that you are moving into business, which means you will be responsible not only for yourself, but also for your employees. I do not recommend reading tons of articles about successful entrepreneurs, business secrets and other crap - these are individual things, you yourself will understand everything when you start. Calculate what's what, if you have enough money - rent an office (working remotely or from home is a separate issue, not for everyone). As for a remote employee - if he is not too important, then this is a normal option - it will come out cheaper. If there are only two of you, then the loss of this person will be a serious blow, is it worth the risk? It is clear that his presence in the office is not a guarantee, but in any case it is more reliable.
I also advise you to initially come up with a plan for reaching new customers, the flow will dry up sooner or later. One of the most effective ways is high-quality, not stupid salespeople with a good percentage. Important - NOT stupid, believe me, this is very important.
3. As for accounting - try Elba or My Business, for starting a business - excellent services. With regards to the distribution of responsibilities - go from the benefits. For example, there is a premium client that is very dear to you - follow this project carefully. Projects are simpler and weaker can be transferred to an employee. Learn to pay attention only to important things, otherwise you will die.
In general, the crisis - the time of action. Good luck to you!

Answer 2

1) Do not rent an office until there is an urgent need. The most urgent need is you are 4+ developers and you have to saw something crazy together. Until then, you don't need an office. To sit in the office and even more so to hire employees, you need to be an individual entrepreneur or a legal entity. face. To open them, most often it takes from two weeks and at least 20k rubles. The office itself will look for, travel, repair, buy more equipment there, solve problems with it that constantly arise - in total, already 100 thousand in order to be able to start working in the office.
2) the office is almost guaranteed to force you to hire employees officially. In short, hiring an employee incurs 40% taxes on his salary.
ps Try trello, it's so simple and pleasant that you want to constantly sit in it and close tasks)

Answer 3

I really liked Canape CRM. Just made for webmasters.
You can set a quotation for a client, calculate the cost of the project in a calculator, make an agreement and immediately issue invoices. Customers can pay the bill immediately on-line.
There is an internal reminder system that is tied to the deal. You can generate simple reports.

Answer 4

You need to clearly understand that being a developer and freelancer is not at all the same as being a manager. This is a different direction. No matter how experienced a developer you are, it’s absolutely true - these are not just important issues that take a lot of time, this is a separate profession and a separate type of activity. Therefore, here you should rather make a decision - are you a manager or a developer?
For "How to raise your level and move from a freelancer to a company, i.e. open your own company and hire employees.", you do not raise your level, but go to another career branch altogether - from development to management.

Answer 5

Opened 6 businesses from scratch. The last time he opened a trading company: development, design and supply of equipment.
Made Borzo:
TOTAL
The costs are minimal. The benefit is maximum.
Whenever a business develops and there is no subcutaneous fat, it is necessary to strictly monitor costs. Such expenses as an office and so on, without urgent need, are best transferred to the second year of the company's life, when the client base has already accumulated and the company has subcutaneous fat, on which, in which case, you can live.

Answer 6

You missed one moment, as soon as employees appear, the amount of your working time for core activities will begin to tend to zero. At the same time, remote employees take up much more time than in the office. When delegating something to an employee, proceed from the fact that he will ruin everything more than you could imagine, and do not give him powers a little less than the limit at which he can destroy everything.
I mean, do not look for how and what is better, it will press in the process, solutions are found quickly. Better protect yourself from the bad.

Answer 7

I advise for reminding and setting tasks for other employees of todoist and trello.

Answer 8

For project management, task management and time tracking, I recommend Worksection

Answer 9

You are rightly told that working as a freelance developer and leading a team is not the same thing. Not the fact that it will not work, just the approach should be changed to a managerial one.
Now for the questions:
1. About CRM and workflow automation system - uses Pyrus in conjunction with amoCRM . These 2 tools completely cover the entire range of task and business process management activities and, in addition, all contacts and customer cards are stored in one place.
2. If you work as a team, it is better to start working in the office. It is possible and remotely - but in this case, coordination and interconnection are slightly lost.
3. You can try to outsource an accountant first.

Answer 10

Guys, and especially startposter, I am also thinking about opening a web studio / SEO studio. If you want to unsubscribe to me on the mail in the profile, or leave your contacts here. It would be interesting to talk, torment with questions if you already have studios or you are also beginners.

Answer 11

If the city is big, then there must be coworking there, try not to work in it)