[metaperl]

"""Employees are a hassle, a waste of time and ploney and a psychic energy sink. You should avoid them at all costs. Your incredible secret money machine should have 0.834 employees-that is 83.4 percent of you, nothing more,no less. The remaining 16.6 percent of you should go for fun and rewind time"""

[OldSchool]

For most businesses, this idea is a little too hippy/artisan from my experience.

If the product is mostly YOU, you're going to burn out if you refuse to hire anyone to do those repetitive tasks that many, many other people can do for a modest wage.

For example only: you ship something physical, do you really want to spend 1/3 of your day, every day, forever, boxing up product and taking it to the post office?

If you've ever offered phone support, you know what I'm talking about too.

[anigbrowl]

There's a guy who lives in my neighborhood that blows glass; his specialty is blowing Klein bottles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottles). I know about him because2 or 3 days a week he shows up at my local post office right before it shuts, with a net bag that has 5-10 boxes in which he is shipping out to customers. He knows everyone at the post office by name and always gives them a big hello; he has printed and affixed the postage at his home/workshop, but brings them to the post office so he can see the tracking numbers get scanned. As there is no paperwork to fill out, and they know him, he gets handled almost immediately - typically someone will come out to scan the packages when they hear him arrive.

And since there is usually a line of people at the post office near closing time, invariably someone asks what it is that he's shipping (because it's unusual to see someone turning up with a bag of packages like Santa Claus). And he tells them what he does. Strangely, he never has any business cards on him (people always ask). So he asks them to give him their phone number instead. And they do. Now, I'm going froma small sample, but I've seen this repeat itself often enough to think of it as a schtick; at a conservative estimate, every time he drops off his packages, there's a 50% chance that he gets one new customer lead. He sells the bottles for ~$25-50 depending on the size, and marginal costs are pretty low. I'd say he's doing pretty well at his craft business, since he's shipping out a few hundred $ worth of product every time I see him, and more to the point he seems like he's having a really good time.

Obviously this sort of thing doesn't scale well, and imposes a ceiling on the amount one can earn. But as Adam Smith observed, while the division of labor may be highly efficient it's also soul-destroying. Running a one-man show like this is certainly a valid alternative to working in a shop where one is regularly called on for 'crunch time' or 'sprints' or 'hackathons'.

[flyinRyan]

>Strangely, he never has any business cards on him (people always ask). So he asks them to give him their phone number instead.

Did you mean the "Strangely" here? What he's doing is, in fact, very clever. A business card is a passive, easy thing that will rarely lead to further action. Asking for the phone number is a much better gauge of how serious the person is.

[anigbrowl]

Well yes, that's the point.

[jgrahamc]

Is that guy Clifford Stoll by any chance?

[anigbrowl]

Yes. I didn't mention it in the original story because I thought it would be a distraction. Do you want me to get you a bottle? :-)

[jgrahamc]

I ordered one from him a long time ago and for some reason the order got lost. One of these days I'll reorder. But thanks for the offer.

[jcromartie]

Finding a service to pack up and ship your stuff is an alternative to hiring an actual employee to do it. Outsource everything but your core.

[trhtrsh]

There are also tools/services/vendors that can help aren't full-blown employees, but, yeah.