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Comment by byoung2 | Hacker News Reader

It is completely ethical, and is the foundation of many business models across different industries (think general contractor for construction hiring subcontractors for plumbing, electrical, or tile work).

It is scalable as long as you are not the bottleneck. For example, if you are the only one meeting with clients and drawing up contracts, you will find yourself stretched pretty thin doing that. Imagine 50 clients all asking for status updates at the same time.

I would explore the possibility of standardizing your services and prices, and making it a self-serve model so clients can sign up and manage their projects through an app or website. Then you can free yourself up to just do marketing.

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I really like the idea of standardizing my services and pricing and it is something I have thought about. However, I charge my clients on a time and materials basis. If they come back 10 times with revisions because they are going back and fourth on a decision I don't want to eat that time.

The bottleneck is what concerns me the most. I would have to hire someone else, pay them a good salary, and train them to do what I do if I don't want to be the bottleneck. Finding a quality person and training them doesn't concern me as much as paying them. My margin % is pretty good but I am not billing out at $100 an hour. So that worries me.

Your business, as many people have assured you, is completely fine. It's actually a great service for some businesses.

Find bigger clients, this will allow you to keep your billings high if your worried about bottlenecks and hiring. Look into https://elasticsales.com/ for cold calling as a service.

Why not do both versions of the business? Create a separate brand and package together services, flat pricing and slap on a healthy markup to offset your advertising and marketing. PPC, Social Media, etc would be great for this.

Get that monthly revenue up and then build a team around your processes. Hiring will always be hit or miss - just make sure your hiring them for what they know and not what they can learn - if you want to save time.

Best of luck!

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