How a solo entrepreneur created a $34 million business without hiring a single employee or outsourcing
Have you ever watched the credits scroll across the screen at the end of a movie and been mind-boggled by how many people it took to create it?
To make a movie basically requires a small army of people, each specialists in their field, all contributing their unique part to it.
…Which is why it takes like 10+ minutes just for the credits to scroll by with the names of all the people involved in the movie.
(Like I said, an ARMY of people.)
And the same thing applies to games. Big game companies typically employ hundreds of people to work on a single game, with entire teams devoted to each specific aspect of game development.
Anyway, I mention this because there's a great story in the book "Ultralearning" by Scott Young about an indie game developer named Eric Barone who decided to take on a seemingly impossible challenge…
He decided to design, develop, and create an entire game all on his own.
Now, anyone who knows anything about game design knows this is a CRAZY challenge…
To do this, Barone would have to learn a mind-boggling array of complicated new skills and mesh them together to create an entire game by scratch.
An insanely ambitious goal. But it was his dream, and he was hell-bent on making it a reality.
So he threw himself into it with gusto and extreme focus.
To pay the bills, he worked as little as he could at a minimum wage job as a theater usher, combined with support from his girlfriend. The rest of his waking hours were spent pouring himself into his dream.
He had to learn and master a wide variety of complicated skills, including game programming, pixel art, sound design, and story writing. He even composed his own MUSIC for the game (which absolutely blows my mind) ??
Incredibly, it "only" took five years. And he completed it and launched it into the marketplace.
It was a resounding success. In the first three weeks on the Apple app store, it sold tens of thousands of copies and grossed over $1 million in sales.
Today it's sold over 10 million copies. And Eric Barone, just a one-man band with a dream, now has a net worth of over $34 million (!!!).
If that's not an inspiring rags-to-riches story, I don't know what is.
Anyway, I mention this because, as I was designing my site from scratch and getting the back-end technical stuff set up for my list, I realized how much easier it would be to just hire a web developer/designer to do it for me.
And a while back, a buddy of mine recommended I do exactly that. "Don't bother trying to set it all up on your own… just hire someone," he suggested. That's what he had done for his own site, and he didn't see the sense in doing it on your own.
But I disagree.
I WANTED to do every part of this on my own.
And as tedious and time-consuming it was having to learn everything from scratch, with plenty of trial and error and endless tweaking…
It was very much worth it to me.
And believe it or not, I thoroughly ENJOYED the process.
It was a fun challenge. And now I have a valuable skill and asset that I didn't have before.
Of course, I still have plenty more work to do on it.
But now it's just a matter of gradually adding to it and polishing over time. Which I can easily do since the foundation is already in-place.
Anyway, I'm normally a big fan of outsourcing. Particularly when it's something I don't enjoy doing and am not good at. (Such as cooking lol.)
But when it comes to the most important assets in your business (such as your email list and website), it's good to at least have a baseline level of competence in the technical details of how they work.
Because it gives you the power and flexibility to shape your business to your exact standards and specifications, and mold it to your exact taste.
Without having to run to a developer every time you need to make the slightest change.
It also saves you money, and frees you from the hassle of having to hire and manage someone. (Which is something I'm personally allergic to.)
Plus, having a variety of skills in your toolbelt makes you more valuable in the marketplace.
And even if you DO decide to outsource in the future, you'll be better at managing the people you work with because you've been in their shoes and you're not totally ignorant to the process. So you'll be able to give better directions and the end result will be better.
And honestly, it's just deeply satisfying to create something all on your own. It feels empowering. And you feel proud of your one-man (or woman) labor of love.
That's my view on it, anyway.
So if you enjoy these posts and want to learn my secrets…
My long-awaited email list is finally up and running, along with my "21 Cult-Brand Copywriting Commandments" cheat sheet.
So if you'd like to jump aboard and get free access to the commandments (as well as my BEST content, which I'll be reserving exclusively for my email list), go here: https://beaudschultz.com/
-Beau D. Schultz