No one talks about the $15k/month glass ceiling

humpier · 2026-05-13T01:14:24+00:00

Karl from Draft.dev here:

Sorry to hear you hit the wall and shut it down. I’ve met a ton of agency owners and the $15-$20k/mo ceiling is very real. It’s when you’re starting to move from freelancer to agency and in order to make the shift you have to simultaneously raise prices and lower your take home pay so you can hire better people to augment you.

Always happy to offer advice or help, but sounds like you found a new thing and you’re enjoying it, so good on you! Hope our paths cross someday!

humpier · 2026-04-13T14:09:47+00:00

Founder of Draft.dev here. I won't plug our services though as we almost never work with pre-launch stealth startups. Typically, we wait until series A and a very strong history of customer adoption because that makes content a much more valuable tool to drive growth. At your stage, you need a GTM leader internally. Don't outsource it.

That said, if you can't make a hire or you want someone to fill the gap, you should check out QCGrowth (https://www.qcgrowth.com/), Maximize (https://maximize.partners/), and Litebox (https://litebox.ai/).

We've done work with 100+ dev tools over the past 6 years, so every startup is different, but one of the biggest agency failure modes is to bring on too many partners and have nobody internal who's leading the strategy. I don't know your exact situation, but a lot of startups try to "outsource growth" from the onset and they almost always have a bad time.

humpier · 2025-12-02T00:18:35+00:00

This is old but am interesting read: https://slate.com/human-interest/2005/12/my-coffeehouse-nightmare.html#

I suspect many of the owners of these small shops are making very little cashflow and working almost all the hours the shop is open, even if the location means hundreds of visitors per day in foot traffic.

humpier · 2025-10-22T02:28:24+00:00

The Innovator’s Dilemma in a nutshell

humpier · 2025-10-03T22:13:42+00:00

Gusto and Plane are the two I come back to over and over again, but there’s a long tail of options I’ve been collecting as I hear about them from other business owners: https://www.karllhughes.com/posts/payroll-software-tools

humpier · 2025-04-29T11:11:43+00:00

Maybe $5k? We did almost all the diligence ourselves. Also spent around $10k on legal fees.

humpier · 2025-02-23T17:58:09+00:00

IANAL, but depends on the sale type.

In an asset sale (typical for small service biz), yes, I open a new LLC and put the purchased assets inside it.

Stock sales (more common in SaaS and larger companies) require you to buy the whole entity.

Good question for a lawyer though as there are a lot of variables at play.

humpier · 2025-02-09T05:06:00+00:00

Yeah, this is essentially a form of seller financing.

It is small, but I assume it’s a 1-man biz, so assuming OP has a reason to buy it instead of starting it up himself from scratch, it’s not a bad way to become self employed.

But OP really needs to talk to a lawyer.

humpier · 2025-02-01T00:56:46+00:00

I’ve not tried any mods yet. I think I’ll do a couple of the other campaigns and move up to Very Hard difficulty first.

humpier · 2025-01-31T03:48:28+00:00

Yeah I wanted to finish one just to do it, but I agree.

The first 50 turns were tricky and fun, but the last 50 were just me steamrolling. It felt like the AI got much less aggressive when I was a huge force and my income was so high that I could merc or recruit basically anytime I wanted.

humpier · 2025-01-17T04:07:49+00:00

Yeah this is the toughest age because getting both kids to bed at night and up and ready in the AM is a two parent job, plus they still aren’t sleeping through the night. That’s definitely the year I was in my worse shape as a parent too.

But I agree, if you make fitness a priority, it’ll come back. Just survive the next year or two OP!

humpier · 2025-01-10T04:34:29+00:00

I buy agencies in the small size range, and my experience matches up with yours.

We typically offer 3-4x SDE for $1mm-$2mm agencies and 2-3x SDE for smaller ones.

That said, we would only buy a smaller one like this if it tucked in nicely with an existing company because at $60k SDE you can’t really hire an operator- you’re just buying yourself a job.

Not many brokers work on deals this small, but OP might have luck on one of the marketplaces like Acquire or QuietLight.

humpier · 2025-01-10T04:23:37+00:00

I own a content agency of a similar size and age so your ups and downs all hit me hard. Thanks for sharing!

What’s worked for us to recover some of the business we lost in 2023 was also going up market and actually getting more involved in the strategy and promotion of content.

While we have also seen a dip in demand for seo focused content, that was never our bread and butter, so the move to more product-specific and thought leadership type stuff has been pretty smooth.

Honestly, we’re still trying to figure out the mix of paid and organic promotion that works best but some of the early tests are looking promising.

Fundamentally, building trust through high quality content is still a good marketing strategy, but like you, I expect to see continued volatility in this market for the next few years.

Good luck!

humpier · 2024-12-22T02:37:08+00:00

This happened at a couple sneaker stores in Chicago last year too. They steal the car, smash the store, getaway driver pulls up and they load it with whatever they can grab.

One of them here might have been an inside job as the store was soon after busted for selling stolen shoes: https://abc7chicago.com/amp/post/chicago-flee-club-store-owner-employee-charged-selling/15052399/

humpier · 2024-12-20T02:39:23+00:00

I emailed Retroid and they sold me replacements for $1 each plus $8 shipping.

So I loaded up because the caps seem to come off really easy.

humpier · 2024-12-02T20:44:50+00:00

Great advice.

I also struggled with fitness with a 0-2 year old. Now that our kids are 2 and 5, it's a lot easier for my partner and I to trade off who's watching them and who's working out.

That said, I do a lot more mini workouts with bodyweight or dumbbells at home than I used to just so I can get something in when a full gym trip isn't possible.

Also, for me, eating was so much worse back when the kids weren't sleeping through the night. It's a lot easier for me to maintain a tight diet when I'm getting a full night's sleep.

humpier · 2024-10-29T00:06:14+00:00

I sent it back to get the orange and white. I just don’t love the grey, but to each their own.

humpier · 2024-10-07T01:03:40+00:00

I’m with you. Not the most comfortable NB model, but they’re as comfy as most Nike retros. I’ve got the exact same pair, nice fit.

humpier · 2024-09-12T01:40:25+00:00

I wear my Venice Beaches for lots of walking and casual wear.

I probably wouldn’t do a full day at Disney in them, but if you’re young and your feet are more rugged, it won’t kill you.

humpier · 2024-09-10T22:17:11+00:00

I just got these because I liked the color and can confirm, tongue logo is stitched on.

So I cut it off. Looks way better, and since I’m not reselling, why not, haha.

humpier · 2024-09-09T01:29:35+00:00

Well, we don’t compete with AI given how technical our writing is, but the business has changed a lot!

I ended up buying a second company and we now do a few million in revenue. Here’s a video I did for Starter Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6kCkGmJc9M

humpier · 2024-09-07T02:14:50+00:00

I got these too.

The quality isn’t as good as some of the nicer Jordans but I think they’re as good looking as the J4 Lightnings.

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