Mr_Underhill
New Member
I nearly killed a profitable business by growing too fast.
A few years back, before AI went mainstream, I launched a content writing service.
It took off immediately. We saw a few gaps in the market, were able to capitalize, and the work started to roll in. We actually weren’t spending much on advertising, and a lot of the work was returning clients or word of mouth referrals.
We quickly found our writing staff to be fully booked, delivering around 12k words of content each day — this worked out to about 2–3 quality articles. It was manageable and profitable.
My partner and I decided it was time to scale the business.
We started accepting larger clients who wanted commitments with massive orders. Our revenue jumped quickly, but the business started to feel stress. In our minds, the clients were happy, and work was getting delivered. We both knew there was always a level of stress in running a business, so we naively didn’t see the writing on the wall.
Eventually, a client approached us who would double the revenue we were making each month.
My partner and I both knew this was going to be risky, but the money was too good to pass up....and this is where we almost killed the company.
Quality quickly began to slip, and it was impacting all of our clients. We didn’t have time to proofread as thoroughly due to the volume of work that was being produced. We started bringing on writers quickly without proper vetting, and their work ended up being shit. My partner and I found ourselves rewriting the majority of their work, or scrapping the article altogether. This smooth operation quickly turned into a nightmare scenario.
Deadlines were being missed frequently, first our huge client, and quickly the regulars.
The business started to completely unravel at once. We were giving articles to regulars for free or heavily discounting them.
The big client was getting pissed, and we decided to finally refund him his money and eat the loss. It sucked.
Luckily, we were able to recover and repair the relationships we had with our clients, but it definitely took time and was not easy. We gave away a lot of 50% coupons and worked for free for a bit.
Here is what I learned through all of this.....
Revenue will expose your weaknesses. It will not fix them.
If your systems are not built to handle the workload, do not take it on. Your growth needs to be manageable. Your standards cannot slip, and you MUST protect your reputation.
The money always looks great in theory, but you cannot outrun a crumbling infrastructure.
Curious to hear about anyone else who found themselves early on drowning in opportunity, or an early mistake you made.
A few years back, before AI went mainstream, I launched a content writing service.
It took off immediately. We saw a few gaps in the market, were able to capitalize, and the work started to roll in. We actually weren’t spending much on advertising, and a lot of the work was returning clients or word of mouth referrals.
We quickly found our writing staff to be fully booked, delivering around 12k words of content each day — this worked out to about 2–3 quality articles. It was manageable and profitable.
My partner and I decided it was time to scale the business.
We started accepting larger clients who wanted commitments with massive orders. Our revenue jumped quickly, but the business started to feel stress. In our minds, the clients were happy, and work was getting delivered. We both knew there was always a level of stress in running a business, so we naively didn’t see the writing on the wall.
Eventually, a client approached us who would double the revenue we were making each month.
My partner and I both knew this was going to be risky, but the money was too good to pass up....and this is where we almost killed the company.
Quality quickly began to slip, and it was impacting all of our clients. We didn’t have time to proofread as thoroughly due to the volume of work that was being produced. We started bringing on writers quickly without proper vetting, and their work ended up being shit. My partner and I found ourselves rewriting the majority of their work, or scrapping the article altogether. This smooth operation quickly turned into a nightmare scenario.
Deadlines were being missed frequently, first our huge client, and quickly the regulars.
The business started to completely unravel at once. We were giving articles to regulars for free or heavily discounting them.
The big client was getting pissed, and we decided to finally refund him his money and eat the loss. It sucked.
Luckily, we were able to recover and repair the relationships we had with our clients, but it definitely took time and was not easy. We gave away a lot of 50% coupons and worked for free for a bit.
Here is what I learned through all of this.....
Revenue will expose your weaknesses. It will not fix them.
If your systems are not built to handle the workload, do not take it on. Your growth needs to be manageable. Your standards cannot slip, and you MUST protect your reputation.
The money always looks great in theory, but you cannot outrun a crumbling infrastructure.
Curious to hear about anyone else who found themselves early on drowning in opportunity, or an early mistake you made.
