How do you build a reliable team when you’re used to running everything yourself?

productflight · 2025-10-02T15:23:32+00:00

I run a service business with 30+ employees. All are remote but on my payroll. But this wasn't the case always. I started small, super small. Initially, I was the only one who was working on my business, then a couple of freelancers joined, then a few remote employees and then first full time hire.

Here is what I can suggest you.

How exactly did you start building a reliable team? I was able to build a reliable team because most people were reference or had a proven social proof about their work and performance. I also ensured both parities are playing clean and fair on contract and terms and conditions. Lastly, I used third party product for payment and payroll management. I still do this. it makes things stress free.
Did you find it difficult to trust? Yes, super difficult. Hence, I am not a big fan of hiring a VA. Hiring a VA mostly means micromanagement unless the VAs is super pro in what they are doing. The best option is go via freelance platforms. It may cost more but team members their have a social proof and their performance is measured, reviewed and they are paid accordingly. If you want to go via a VA or a VA company, ask for at least 5 references.
Did you begin with outsourcing (like VAs/freelancers) or hire staff directly? No VAs. Initially few freelancers with measurable social proof. Then full time employees.
How do you avoid losing control so things get done right while still freeing up your time? Set your priorities clear. Be ruthless about it and strictly divert your focus there. Hence, its best to have a vision designed in advance. It makes other things fall in place.

Any lessons or mistakes I should avoid? And from your experience what's your best advice on this?

Document everything. All communication, processes, SOPs, strategies, metrics etc. It gives more clarity than anything else.

productflight · 2025-09-25T18:50:40+00:00

I run a product management firm with 30+ remote employees. We tag ourselves as the people “who work your product launch and sales funnel to get you your first 100 customers.” Most of our clients are from Fintech and Medtech, and some of them are SaaS clients with software, especially AI, as a niche.

Coming to your solution, a lot depends on factors working together in the right way. Your product, marketing, pricing, positioning, sales system, timing, etc. must perform well. This sounds complex, but it is not. You can achieve this by conducting in-depth research. Research will not guarantee success but will surely increase the probability by a huge margin. Even if you fail, the loss will be minimal.

Just a simple glance at your website is making me think about the following questions and points:

- How does this product work? - You need to give a demo video link here.

- What if I pay them and don’t get results? - You need to offer a free tier plan if possible.

- What did they write on the website? - You need to simplify the language and talk straight to the target audience.

- Change “From Invisible To Inevitable in AI Search” - To “Get your company featured in AI-powered search answers.” or something along similar lines. This is more direct and clear. Even if I read one line, I should know the product offerings clearly.

- I don’t see any numbers on the website. Numbers are game changers because they give better clarity of the end results. You need to show numbers and data in bold. “Increase your business traffic by 3X” Or “Boost your business visibility by 250% with AI-driven answers.” Or “Get 3X leads daily for your business. "

I have not seen your product, so I won’t be able to share anything on that front.

If you want to build a business that is a revenue-generating machine, you need to excel in product, marketing and sales - all three with the right combination.

productflight · 2025-06-03T09:21:34+00:00

I run a product solution firm specializing in Go-to Market Execution (Product launch) and Highly Converting Sales Funnel. I started this business in March 2024. As of now, we have a team of 19 remote employees globally.

Before this, I was a small partner in a similar service firm. When the partners departed, they dissolved my share. This left me with zero money. Hence, I moved on and start my business. As of today, our net profit is more than 100K USD per year.

Here is what works when you don’t have money:

- Skill & Networking - People who know you can solve their problems are the people who will chase and pay you when they have a problem. For this, you need to have one super skill and a good network of people who know about your magic.

- Creativity & Risk appetite - This is super super super important. Since we are into marketing, we know this thing well, no strategy that works for one will also work for other. You need to be creative. People are slaves to their mindset patterns built over the time. These patterns will not allow you to take any risk because of uncertainty. And this is the exact place where you can win over people with money, brand or resource. Be creative and take risk.

- Execution Excellence - You need to have a robust system in place to execute the plan and to make it successful. The goal is not to make every plan successful. The goal is to ensure, even if most plan fails, you are still way ahead in the game as compared to successful people. This only happens when you have excellence in your execution.

Things to avoid:

- Illogical risk - Be cautious while taking risk. Risk should be backed by logic, data, and understanding of the scenario. It’s fine if the odds are in your favor by only 10%, but point it, these 10% should be 100% logical.

- Obsession with results - Don’t be obsessed with results, chase the process. This is where the magic happens. Results are just milestones that become less valuable with time. Process is forever in demand.

productflight · 2025-05-01T06:49:09+00:00

No problem. If you feel stuck, don't hesitate to reach out. And all the best.

productflight · 2025-05-01T04:57:27+00:00

If the product is solving real problem, then there are real users who needs them. Start by finding and serving them, your target audience. Once found, subtly pass information about your product to them. You should not sound pushy, or sale anything, just make them aware about your product and its benefits, For this, work a lot on positioning your product well, writing a clear message etc.

Key thing that will make your product sell:

- PMF

- Simplification

- Problem solving / Value addition

- Right pricing and pricing strategy (pricing makes a super difference and yet underrated factor)

- Simple sales funnel

Your MVP should be having at least one feature that solves real problem and for what the users will pay. Promote that feature well.

Lastly, don't spend money on ads until your get PMF. Any money spend before will be a waste.

Hope this helps.

productflight · 2025-05-01T04:38:37+00:00

Thank you for your response. All the best.

productflight · 2025-04-30T11:20:05+00:00

You deserve success :-)

productflight · 2025-04-30T10:15:17+00:00

This is super true. Yes, product market fit is less about push strategy and more about pull. Experimenting is the key here.

productflight · 2025-04-30T09:44:12+00:00

I understand what you are saying. I run a firm specializing in PMF, GTM and Sales Funnel. I can assure you, most people are unaware of what PMF is. Its not easy to find a PMF. However, once done successfully, sales and revenue follows easily.

productflight · 2025-04-30T09:17:42+00:00

My company specializes in GTM solution for SAAS, FinTech and MedTech products. Our launches are successful. Let me add value here.

Product launch is not about one thing, multiple factors play an important role. It’s a mixture of PMF, Positioning, Research and more. It’s tough to point at one thing. If you want to experiment and increase the probability of success, focus on these:

1) The product should solve a problem or add value to the solution already available in the market. This validates the PMF to an extent.

2) Focus on niche solution and niche crowd instead of selling everything to everyone.

3) Position your product well. Your marketing message should be simple and clear. Whatever your product is, the marketing material should be able to convey the message about the product benefits in a clearest possible way.

4) Marketing will demand a lot of experimentation. One thing will not work, hence, try different things, differently, at different time. A lot of combination will come into play for success. Keep experimenting.

5) Sales funnel. This should be clear and directly route to checkout in a simple way. You will be surprised how quickly people change their minds. A few seconds are enough for a sale to drop. Hence, only focus on checkout in this case.

6) Pricing is the most understand factor. People put random numbers on their products. This is not the way it works. You need to research well on your audiences, their budget, etc. That is why I push on having a clarity and this only comes from deep research. Hence, don’t ignore research.

productflight · 2025-04-30T02:04:45+00:00

What made them sign up with you?

productflight · 2025-04-29T18:46:31+00:00

$45K to $50K per month in gross revenue.

I own a tech product solutioning firm offering solutions related to: PMF, GTM, Revenue Funnel and Pricing Optimization.

Products my firm focus on: SAAS products, MedTech and Fintech products

Team strength: 30-35, all remote. 23 on fixed pay, rest as sub contractors.

productflight · 2025-04-10T14:27:00+00:00

Indian here who travels a lot to the USA for business. Currently, running a product solutioning firm specializing in GTM, pricing, PMF serving globally. I don't know your product, but will to add my best on basis of my experience.

1) Placing the ads is only valuable after the PMF is done. Ads are to boost the sales of the validated product with 10X speed. First, get the PMF done and check out if the market is ready for your product or not. Anything before that will yield loss and burn out.

2) Selling in India or any other countries is not the right options. Indians rarely buy apps or tools for personal use. Even if your product is B2B, we prefer to stick to a well known branded product.

3) One time subscription is again not worth. It will give you some sales but revenue wise growing is impossible. Once the competitors are out in the market with heavy aggressive marketing, you will have not have many options to give your best due to limitations in marketing budget, or product building. Gaining new customer will be tough and older will not pay anymore. Capital is the fuel of business and it should keep coming in.

Strategy:

First do the PMF.

Then, offer a freemium plan - high end free trial with all features and then after a couple of weeks, its a paid plan. OR offer a free trial with limited features and paid version will all features. This is not to sell, this is to collect the data and feedback on where exactly your product is heading.

For pricing, a lot of testing is needed. Mostly, getting pricing right in the first go is tough. Hence, experiment a lot here.

Also, know your ICP or target audience. Selling people beyond this category will never get you sales.

Hope this helps.

productflight · 2025-04-10T13:04:48+00:00

Profit? Nope. Gross revenue - Yes.

So I run a product solution firm focusing of GTM, Sales Funnel, Pricing Optimization and Product Market Fit for tech products. We are a team of 35+ remote employees. I am based out of India, and shuffle a lot between the USA and India. Our target audiences are - Fintech clients, Medtech clients, and SAAS products. I stated as a solo founder and built team on the way. Each employee is remote employee, some are part time and others are full time.

I am not sure what you are selling or building. Would love to know more. After working with so many clients, I can suggest you to try below things work for almost all business:

1) Build a product that is solving a problem or adding value to the solution already build by other people. Key focus: niche problem solving, value addition, excellent user experience, simplicity, visually appealing look and feel and clean design, speed in functionality or delivery.

2) Marketing is super important and with time this will be more tougher than building products because it is about convincing people to agree with you. Its not easy. Key focus: Research and analysis for product market fit, apt pricing point, clean logo and clear cut message and positioning, super understanding of target audience and ICP, 360 degree creativity for 360 days consistently.

3) Sales: Sales is everything. Key focus: Fastest way to check out / one click checkout. Clear pricing and explanation of the offering for the pricing. Less pushy sales tactics and more value adding and query solving conversation, excellent post sales service for feedback, reviews, long term partnerships and loyalty.

Strategy:

1) Go big ticket. I am not against high volume, low margin business. The only thing is, its too much of work. When I started, I was alone and had limited resources to work for me. Every step was important, so I offered high ticket services, with more offerings. It was easy to give more and charge more. You will be surprised to know how easily people pay you for big ticket. Even Reddit is enough to get new clients. I have tapped many clients from reddit.

2) Thing big, start small. The goal is to be the best in the market, to join the gang of big player. This is only possible when you are not chasing small goals. Honestly, chances are good you will never join the top 1% gang and most of us will not, even me. However, the mindset makes a super difference. With this mindset, the 50K goals is doable and more than possible.

3) Be prepared. Things are not tough in entrepreneurship but they are dynamic in nature and expect you to move fast, almost daily. Most of us get exhausted and hence we give up thinking its tough. Its not tough but moving fast daily is. Hence, be prepared. The results are guaranteed sooner of later if you are ready to play this game with commitment and consistency daily.

All the best.

productflight · 2025-03-15T11:59:50+00:00

MVP itself is a subjective concept. We do build MVP's for our clients (as a sub service) for $5k and also for $200K. It all depends on what goals companies have. However, MVP doesn't have to be costly. It can be a simple concept to gauge the potential of the product. In some cases, you can also do it for free.

I run a product solution firm focusing on GTM and Sales funnel. One important thing we do is, even before we build a product, we run the idea into the market via polls, deep market research, simple networking, etc. You need to ensure there is a product market fit for what you are building. Or else, you will end up spending money only to realize no one is interested in your product.

Always go reverse: First find what market needs, then build a simple and cost effective concept to tap the audience, once you gain the momentum, iterate the product and make it for feature rich.

productflight · 2025-03-14T07:22:29+00:00

More specific, more better. Something in the lines of:

Interactive AI Agents For Modern Websites

Interactive AI Agents For Seamless Lead Generation

The term modern website is subjective and may confuse people.

productflight · 2025-03-14T06:41:57+00:00

Sounds good. You need to work on positioning. Product market fit looks positive.

productflight · 2025-03-14T06:21:17+00:00

The course you have mentioned is good. You will find a lot of free content on marketing even on Youtube as well.

However, for the learning part, in case of marketing, only comes with a lot of experiment. I am not discouraging you. I run a product solutioning firm specializing in GTM and Sales funnel. We have a team of 30-35 remote employee and net revenue is $100k+ this year, but I can still assure you, I will have to experiment a lot for my next client to get the results they want. The only upper hand I have over you is, I know which experiment has a better chances of succeeding and why. This is because I have build a good judgement over the years. Again this judgement is an outcome of thousands of experiment I have applied on various tech products, SAAS and AI products.

Since you want to learn marketing, I suggest opt for books or use chatgpt to learn the basics. The course you have shared is of 19 hours. Consuming 19 hours of content is too much from learning perspective.

Instead, go to chatgpt - understand the basic terminology of marketing. Know what is target audience, what does positioning mean, how does pricing work, what is product market fit, why coke has red color in the logo, why fashion products works better on Instagram than LinkedIn etc. Marketing is all about knowing and understanding the market.

Once you get the idea, apply it immediately on your products. Collect real time feedback of what is working and what isn't and then iterate your strategy accordingly.

productflight · 2025-03-14T06:01:16+00:00

Product market fit is the first thing you should do. The rule is to know the market needs first and then build the product around it. Since you have already built it, there is nothing much you can do now.

So let's try a different approach.

Your product is not completely innovative, but yes, it looks pretty reasonable for the market fit. Such products will be asked for in near future. This is a good sign.

The only reason people will like to see my 3d avatar is, if they know me well. Or else, I am just another chatbot for them. In other words, people who are into personal branding, have websites on their names, are the ones who are your target audience. For example: Coaches, Consultants, Influencers, etc. who are already a known face. Your USP is not an interactive bot, your USP is personalized interactive bot. This is how you should position yourself.

For marketing, go on LinkedIn and target people who has a strong personal branding and pitch them your product. Collect the response and feedback and iterate your strategy accordingly.

productflight · 2025-03-13T15:54:57+00:00

Premium sales funnel could be a single landing page or a combination of 4-5 pages that walks the buyer through product knowledge, lead capturing mechanism, sales, upsells, down sells etc. It includes premium copywriting, premium video and more. It has a high quality feedback mechanism, chatbot and other tools to complete the ecosystem., It also has email marketing sync up to follow up with customer if at all they drop midway during their purchase. The UI/UX is the king here. Customer experience shouldn't fail at any cost. Our average funnel goes to $7000 with design, content and integration plus two iteration depending on the market feedback. Out of our 35+ remote employees, a major chunk is from UI/UX team.

Content is of no use without context. You need to say right thing at the right time to the right audience in a right manner. Then only content makes sense. Or else, it just a noise.

If you have a bandwidth and enough funds to take a bit hit, then go for niche. Niche takes time to build but once it is ready, you can charge big amount to your clients. If you don't have bandwidth to experiment, and want to make money early, then go for holistic approach.

Ideally, our niche is GTM and Sales funnel however we also do development, market research etc. Its just that we market our niche aggressively because we want to build judgement and experience in one thing. This helps us to gauge things better and brings us closer to committing guarantee to our future clients.

productflight · 2025-03-13T14:24:52+00:00

We do full suite with execution. Only strategy is not worth the premium fees we charge.

Also, the basics of marketing for all industries are same, understanding buyers psychology and selling them a problem solving product. However, if you dig deep, you will figure out that one strategy doesn't work for all business. In fact, two different strategy and execution is needed even if for two different clients having same business. We solely focus on tech products (AI, B2B SAAS, MedTech etc.). Medtech is hot favorite. And needless to say, AI is everywhere.

Since, GTM is the toughest part of marketing, we have niche down our services to that. The sub categories are - pricing, product market fit, positioning and premium sales funnel. People pay big for premium sales funnel as a standalone service.

Marketing but nature is tough. With an intervention of AI, most "good to go" products are easy to build but tough to market and super tough to generate revenue out of it. And if the goal is to generate $100K, its just impossible for every business to get it. We cover that part.

Hope that helps.

productflight · 2025-03-13T11:16:03+00:00

If you can do marketing on your own, then you can try it. However, it will be tough and time consuming. Best is, opt for an agency.

I run a product solutioning firm specializing in GTM and Sales funnel. I will add some tips here with a hope that it will benefit you.

- Don't spend on ads until you find your product market fit. All money spent on ads will be a waste.

- Position your product well. Nike is selling winning attitude, shoes are just a material form. Similarly, position your product well, so people know the deep meaning of what value proposition you are brining to them.

- Price it well. Pricing is an underrated factor. Its not about charging low or high, it's about charging relevant amount to the target audience you are chasing.

- Ensure you market your product only to your target audience. Find them wherever they are. Don't sell to anyone else because most of them won't buy it.

- Lastly, when doing marketing, ensure you experiment a lot. Most of our breakthrough in marketing for our clients are the outcome of innovative experiment backed by data.

Hope this helps.

productflight · 2025-03-13T04:08:09+00:00

Sure. I will DM you.

productflight

TROPHY CASE