Hi guys,
I love reading the posts and discussions here on TRH and find the community to be really helpful. I am opening this discussion as I need help with something I plan to do. This may also help those who are planning to do the same : switch from a one man (home based) business to an office and employe setup.
To save your time, I’ll try to tell my story in short. share what I plan to do and what I need your help with:
What I do…
I completed my college last year and joined a company in Pune, worked there for 8 months and left the job. Most of my college years, I was involved in blogging and freelance development work, so when I left my job (in Feb this year) I continued doing the blogging and development work.
So, currently I am working as a freelance WordPress developer, working from home. I also do affiliate marketing and manage a few affiliate and fun sites (this, this and a few others). I blog occasionally on Gyantastic.com. Also, I just launched my first premium WordPress plugin and it has received good response (and sales). I also own a couple of other sites that’re not doing well but I plan to do something about them soon.
Now, I do this all alone from my home office (my bedroom) and things are starting to get really unmanageable. Although I’m making enough money (a couple of times more that what I did in my day job) but it’s starting to be a lot of work for a single person.
What I plan to do…
I know most of you guys here must have had gone through same phase when you were alone with all the sites and freelancing going on parallely, but then expanded to open offices and hire staff to help you.
Now I am planning to do the same. I need some content writers for my content site ideas and SEO guys to help rank them. Also I’ve tested the plugin market successfully and want to scale it so need some good WordPress developers. Then I also have a lot of freelance work from repeat clients that i am not able to do alone, so need developers for that too.
And most importantly, I want all this to be managed by the staff as I want to start with my new startup idea.
For all this I’ll need to get an office and hire employees. But I have no idea where to start. And need your advice on this.
What I need help with…
I live in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh and plan to open my company with an office in Pune. I don’t want to do it here as it’s not an apt environment for finding good IT employees and the overall environment is not fit for an IT startup.
But I don’t know where to start.
How to get an office? And where?
How to hire employees?
How much budget should I keep for this? (I have some savings and funding is not an issue)
How long will all this take?
Guy do drop in your valuable suggestions what I should do and how I should be thinking about this. It’ll be a great help.
Thanks in advance.
Ram
Follow me on Twitter: @ramshengale