Chris LaFay

Fragile

I’ve been reminiscing a lot about how life has been running Classic City Consulting. A lot of entrepreneurs try a lot of new ideas, iterate quickly, shut down bad ideas quickly, and finally land on their “goldmine” a few tries into it.
On the other hand, there is me. While, I haven’t started multiple businesses, Classic City has gone through four unique phases over the years:

  1. Phase 1 (lasted 8 years): I was a solo contractor for a long time. I was the rare find of being both a designer and a developer. Agencies loved it as I was a “one stop shop.” Being a problem-solver, I was also able to dive into a lot of problems where no one knew the answer and was able to dissect code on a live website without breaking things. But, eventually, that grew.
  2. Phase 2 (lasted 3 years): You know, once you have some money in the bank, the first thing you should do is go hire a few people on salary πŸ‘‰πŸ» From my experience, that was not a great idea. I wouldn’t trade that decision for the world, as I learned a LOT over these three years. I hired a Sales/Project Manager, Designer, and Developer. We had a blast. But, the money only lasted so long in the bank…
  3. Phase 3 (lasted 5 years): We started putting together niche crews of contractors and staying as lean as possible. Mostly project work. I ended up reverting back to my Phase 1 tendencies and doing a lot of the work myself for the first year or two during this phase to gain back a lot of the money that was lost during Phase 2. Lots of growth during this period (financial, personal, etc.) as I was more intentional about surrounding myself with people that have been farther along in their careers. Years 3-5 of this phase, we grew YOY revenue by either 1.5x or 2x.
  4. Phase 4 (current): The business had to cut back some of the overhead we accounted for in the last year of Phase 3. Forced us to really hone in on what was important and what was not. We got serious about targeting our ICP for our outbound marketing efforts (we also got structured on our outbound efforts). During this period, we shifted the business model towards recurring revenue and finding clients who wanted to partner with us long-term on work. We also started saying “no” to potential clients that weren’t the right fit and sending them off to our agency partners where they were the right fit.

I was texting with my friend, Caleb Panter, who just recently started his entrepreneurial journey. When I asked him how it was going, he responded with:

Feeling the excitement of no ceiling and the fragility of a shifting foundation.

Caleb Panter

Whether you’re just starting out or have been at 16+ years, there is always that excitement of what’s around the next corner. The only boundaries are the ones you create for yourself (and some of those are good). But while you’re looking upwards at the infinite possibilities, the ground below you shifts and moves.

Things break.

Promises are broken.

We’re all human at the end of the day.

Don’t let the shifting ground scare you too much though.