And for contrast, here is another book from the early 2000s that, seems to have stood the test of time:

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

1: the entrepreneurial myth: the myth that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs

2: the fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work

> Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About...

You won't unless you have the money to hire one. Most experienced or want-to-be CEOs will want to be paid very well in addition to getting a big chunk of the company. What you need to do now is look for investors so you can build out a skeleton upper management rung, as needed, and get some employees.

The product is just the start. Now you have to build a company around the product. You'll need to get someone to increase demand thru marketing, someone to manage production and on and on. I bet you can do that yourself. Once you have a stable company then you can start to look for a CEO that may be able to help grow the company. If you were able to get the product to market, i bet, you can certainly build the company around it to move it further.

Read up on the process. Here are 2 books that will get you started:

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About...

https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step-ebook...

Good luck

I got a business coach, and took a small business course which connected me with other small businesses in my area. It was an invaluable lesson.

I was forced to read the book "E-Myth Revisited"[0] as my course material. It gave me incredible insight into delegating and many of the fundamental issues with running a small business.

Without my accountant and a few key, incredibly supportive clients, my business would have gone under a long time ago.

My business coach had started and sold a number of businesses, and was able to advise me on things that I would never have done on my own. Look for someone like this in your life, even if only temporarily.

My wife started helping with some aspects of the business as well, and I couldn't do it without her. You need help, period. I've trained 2 of my kids to build websites, one has moved on to college in some other industry and the other is interning at a bigger company (building websites). And I plan to teach my other kids as well, and have them help where possible.

What this taught me was that I can't do everything myself, and I don't want to anymore, it just sucks to do it on your own.

The best thing that happened recently is making friends with another local business owner, who also builds websites, but our business interests don't conflict, and we respect the others perspective a lot, so we get to hang out from time to time just to talk and have coffee. We understand the world in a way most others cannot. The struggle, the freedom and preasure, etc..

Keep looking for answers to your specific problems before giving up on your business.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...

Read the E-Myth. Great book about management.

I read the original, here's the newer one:

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About...

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About...

This is the "E-Myth Revisited" route, which to summarize is about decoupling the business from yourself and enabling other people to take "critical" work off your plate (because it really isn't that critical).[0]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abo...

For anyone who's interested in more advice like this, your friend's trick almost certainly originates from Michael Gerber's book The E-Myth [Re-visited]. Highly recommended reading for anyone starting a small business.

On GoodReads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81948.The_E_Myth_Revisite...

On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887307280

Read the E-Myth Revisited: https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About...

I can't imagine why I haven't made the connection, but this is inherently a part of the primary thesis of the best book on starting a company I've come across, The E-Myth (https://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Most-Small-Businesses-About/dp... and perhaps also see it's followup, which I can't vouch for: https://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abo...), which says you should write down your processes as if you were going to franchise your company.

This is the 2nd (or later, somewhat re-written) edition of the book referenced: - https://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abo...

I suspect it is this one based on the summary at Amazon "Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited should be required listening for anyone thinking about starting a business or for those who have already taken that fateful step. The title refers to the author's belief that entrepreneurs--typically brimming with good but distracting ideas--make poor businesspeople."

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0887307280

I strongly suggest reading The E Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, (https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Most-Businesses-Dont-About/dp/08...) or perhaps it's updated The E-Myth Revisited... (https://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abo...).

Besides being fairly short, and having a lot of general good advice, such as, to use my own wording, making sure every essential hat is worn by someone, e.g. you probably won't start out with a CFO, but make sure one of the founders or earliest employees wears it, it goes into a thesis that you should write up a manual of how your business runs as if you were going to franchise it.

Plenty of good justification for writing this up at some level of detail can be found in the other comments in this topic, although I'll admit the book is not oriented toward high tech businesses.

But they're still businesses, and for that focus I highly recommend, probably after one or more books on customer development, which refine many of the ideas in it, Walking the High-Tech High Wire: The Technical Entrepreneur's Guide to Running a Successful Enterprise (https://www.amazon.com/Walking-High-Tech-High-Wire-Entrepren...). It's a story about a company that made and sold novel at the time discrete semiconductor devices, how they did their customer development, how they realized doing custom work for various customers was a loser, etc. It'll help reify what you'll read in good customer development books.

Every one-man software business is different.

The canonical example is Bingo Card Creator:

https://www.bingocardcreator.com/

A book you must read for perspective is

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About...

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

http://www.amazon.com/The-E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses/...

i have recently read 'the e myth' which i would definitely recommend especially for the business/finance/planning side of things

http://www.amazon.com/The-E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses/...

Very astute observation that echoes the core message in Michael E. Gerber's brilliant The E-Myth Revisited [1]. I would add that if you're about to grow your business, you will have to find passion and inspiration in other areas in your professional life as you won't be doing the technical work you used to. Luckily, running a business means having the opportunity to explore many areas of expertise that are super interesting and rewarding, like human psychology, operations management, logistics, human resources, etc.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...

I recommend The E-Myth, a book that taught me to not only love process, but enjoy developing processes, evolving them, and training people up to work with them:

http://www.amazon.com/The-E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses/...

It's accessible and realistic, and a good starting point for getting your mind in the right place.

That's a pretty good book, although in some ways it recapitulates a lot of this one:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0887307280/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=de...

Here's my summary of Built to Sell, fwiw:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2011/05/23/summary-built-to-sell-...

I like your observations, especially #1. May I recommend this book before you give it another shot? http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...

Related to the pivot idea, I can's seem to find an asset manager that will work for my organization. They are either tied to business processes (e.g. selling products), don't allow custom attributes, etc. I work for a non-profit tied to govt/education and we have incredibly strict rules for managing inventory. Sadly, it is all being done by Excel and is a brutal mistake prone system.

I'm glad more people are recognizing this truth. Though it's not like no one ever pointed it out. I would say that this was one of the central points of the E-Myth books (E for entrepreneur) http://www.amazon.com/The-E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses/...

That said, it's possible "Follow your Passion!" is still a useful lie... I'm not sure, it's certainly a prevalent lie.

I've just wishlisted this on Amazon. Thanks for posting it. It follows along very well with what I'm reading from Michael Gerber's E-Myth (also a bestseller on processes)

http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...