One idea for your company would be to make sites that require several employees to build. This way no employee would be able to easily steal your idea.

An extreme example is the About.com site. It’s basically a HUGE content site with lots of advertisments. It has over 1.8 million HTML pages. The site has been sold recently to New York Times for a sum estimated to be of 410 million dollars.

Of course you can’t develop a huge site like About.com with 4-5 employees. It was just an extreme example. But maybe you can make a very good web site on a hot subject, rake in a lot of advertising dollars, and then maybe sell it to a large company.

About delegating: when I was still working from home, I used to lead a team of 4 developers. I asked them to send me timesheets twice a week, and I also met them once a week. This used to eat a lot of my time, but I still had a lot of freedom.

One of the most important things for delegating successfully is to find the right people. This can be hard, but once you find them, things will be a lot easier. The method you use to find potential employees is very important. You may pay a large sum for an advertisment in a magazine, and find mediocre candidates. Or you may simply go to an online forum, publish an ad there, and find an excellent candidate. Experiment and do what’s best for you.

It’s also important to test them - have a difficult test ready, and ask them to complete it. I used to take the hardest part I could find in my project, and give it as a test to all the candidates. This way I tested them with a real-world problem instead of using a made up test.

Making employees sign a non-compete aggreement is a very good thing. It’s also good to have a lawyer write the non-compete aggreement. This way it will be expressed in legal terms, and your employees will know that it’s a solid, serious contract.

One thing I do to test a potential employee’s ethics is to ask him to show me source code he wrote for his previous employers. I make sure that I ask the candidate to show me important source code. If the candidate aggrees to show me or to let me copy such code, then he failed the ethics test, and it’s a no-hire.

I know that you may not be able to apply this to your company, but maybe you can design your own ethics test.

In the US there is a very standard “non-competition agreement” that employees sign. Every employer I’ve worked for had me sign one. The document basically says that you will not compete with the employer while you have the job, and there can also be a clause that bars you from doing it for a year (or more) after you leave the job.

I can imagine how it all builds up with a web development firm. And I am really happy to hear such a knowledgeable ideas.

I should had been more accurate while describing my position. I am building web sites but not for my clients, the websites are self alone, stuffed with adverts. The traffic is mainly from SEs which is the main private area I don’t like to share with an employee. I can’t also teach how to make good advertisement that sells, what tricks to use to gather traffic etc.

Only solution that I thought up was to let my employee sign some terms about not using the ideas that he have learnt and not doing the same kind of job for his own which I don’t know if it’s not a comedy and if these terms are possible to be observed.

I was thinking about running the web design firm and building pages for clients, but I decided not to. I would lose my freedom. If I am independent without any crew around me, I am freer to design my days as I like to. Even with delegating, there’s too many hours needed every day to let the wheel spinning, am I right?

Thank you very much for your book tips. Me, avid reader, is very happy for them

Btw could I know what profession are you delegating if you don’t mind?

delegate work and ensure it’s done right” book

by Dick Lohr. It’s also available as an audio

book and you can listen to it. It’s simply

excellent, and will teach you to delegate

properly.

About your web development business: you are

thinking in “what happens if I delegate this

job to another guy” style. From a business

point of view, this is not the optimal way to

think about it.

Try to think more about where you want to go

with your company:

“I want to have a web development firm which

will consist of myself and 5 employees, and

because of this I ask myself these questions:

1. What compelling advantages can I offer to my

clients?

2. Which of these are advantages that a lone-

gun web designer can not offer? How can I

increase these advantages?

For example, a serious company which wants a

web site may want to work with you simply

because you have a firm, have over 200 clients

served and can provide references, you can give

them a legal invoice, and if the next day the

designer is hit by a bus, there will be someone

to continue the work.

Also being as professional as you can in

communicating and dealing with the client can

put your company ahead of 90% of the web

development freelancers out there.

Delegating means that you don’t have to avoid

unpleasant tasks such as typing text. You can

hire somebody to do it. Many freelancers refuse

to do boring things, so you have an edge over

them.

Try to offer your client full services related

to web development - scanning, photography, on

-going web site maintainance, SEO, Google

AdWords management, e-commerce, PHP

programming, etc.

There are some advantages that a company can

offer and that a lone gun web developer simply

can not offer.

If you offer your clients advantages that

freelancers can’t offer, you can also charge

more for your services.

3. How can my firm work more efficiently than a

lone gun web designer?

For example, if you hire a professional sales

person, the firm will get new web development

clients a lot faster than a lone gun web

developer can.

If you buy a reseller web hosting account which

can host 100 sites, you can offer your clients

inexpensive web hosting that a lone gun web

developer can’t.

4. What advantages can I offer a web developer

that working as a freelancer can’t offer? You

may offer job security - the guarantee that the

developer is paid.”

Other books to read:

E-Myth by Michael Gerber - teaches you

operations management for small businesses -

that is, how to organize your firm. It’s also available in audio book format.

Competitive Strategy-Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors by Michael Porter - the author doesn’t write well and the book is a bore to read, but the ideas are outstanding. It teaches you how to compete successfully.

I’m just not into eating cats, dogs, pigs, horses, cows, or any other disease-ridden carcasses. No matter how you cook it or what kind of sauce you put on it, it’s still a rotting corpse. Blech!

Btw would you mind to tell where you from are? I am from Czech.

I’ve been vegetarian for 2 years. In the beginning it was great. I felt better. My mind was more active, etc.

However at the end of the 2 years period I had problems: my mind didn’t work as well as before, I started forgetting things and I started getting sick more often than usual.

I went to 2 doctors and both said that my problems appeared because of a lack of proteins and B vitamins. So I started eating meat again, and the problems (lack of strong immunity, memory problems, thinking problems) improved rapidly.

It may be that different diets are good for different people. For Steve being a vegan may be the best, but for me eating a moderate amount of lean meat may be the best diet.

Macrobiotics consists of mostly cooked (dead) foods like whole grains, soups, and veggie dishes. I’ve personally found better health/energy results from eating more raw (living) foods, i.e. raw fruits and vegetables instead of cooked ones … raw foods like cole slaw, guacamole, and fruit smoothies. I still eat many macrobiotic foods like brown rice, but raw fruits and veggies are a bigger staple of my diet.

But I was still going on and off, eating normal food occasionally. It was until I split up with my gf, she wasn’t willing to sacrifice junk food for better health and I wasn’t strong-minded enough to eat strictly around her. She is young and sees no problem with her health now, so no reason to eat healthy.

It’s very very useful personal quality to see forward, to take a big picture of your life. Even if you have no problems with eating junk food, you will have for sure in the future. There are no shortcuts. Doctors are trying to make them, but it doesn’t pay off in the long run.

I have been 7 months strict macrobiotic now and starting to see the enormous potential of this system. You have to stick with it until your body cleans all the rubbish you have accumulated for years. After then you are getting better and better and you are feeling more energy, you sleep healthy, you are ok with 6 hours of sleep, you wake up very positively motivated and ready to work. Not only ready, but you’ll start to enjoy the work. Because you have enough energy and your body loves to spend it anywhere. It also cleans emotions from the bad ones. You are feeling much stronger, independent, because you really are. You are not afraid about your health, because you really feel how it’s improving. You have eliminated all unnecessary pills. For example here’s interesting characteristic list of healthy person and I can honestly say, this list is 100% true and I am getting all these characteristics “only” by eating healthy.
http://macro808.blogspot.com/2005/03/how-healthy-are-you.html

Steve, what you mean by “I replaced many of the cooked macrobiotic foods with raw ones” ?
Are you eating raw vegetables only? What about wholegrains?
Do you attach big importance to your daily diet? Are you controlling every meal you eat? Or you don’t care and don’t think the food have any much impact?

So, I take what little energy I have every day and put it into learning (I’m a study freak, I read a lot) and working. If I were truly rich (I decided that $3M in the bank is enough for me to live happily ever after) I would quit working, buy a van, fill it with books and travel through the country, and at the same time read.

Yes, I know, some people attach a spiritual meaning to life, and would probably dedicate their life to others. Me, I’m just a lazy bastard.

Leaving jokes aside, I have to do something about my energy level. It’s very low and it’s been very low in the last 15 years or so. Even had lots of problems in school because of it.

Good thing that I’m an entrepreneur, and I can make a living without having to go to work from 9 to 5 (which is very tiring for me) or to work long hours. I make a lot more than most other developers around me (however, keep in mind that I’m in Eastern Europe). It’s possible to be a successful entrepreneur even if you have low energy, provided that: 1) you study a lot, and are aware of current events so you can make correct, optimal business decisions almost all the time 2) you learn to delegate and then do it a lot.

So hard work is not the only way you can build a company.

However, if I could work hard my company would probably become at least 5x larger.

Neon, I notice you run a macrobiotic site. If you don’t mind my asking, what turned you onto macrobiotics originally? I dabbled in macrobiotics a few years ago, and my wife maintains the web site for Real Food Daily, a popular macrobiotic restaurant chain in L.A. I don’t follow the macrobiotic diet strictly, but I do incorporate many macrobiotic principles into my eating habits today, although I replaced many of the cooked macrobiotic foods with raw ones.

A good way to avoid work is to delegate a lot. If you are an entrepreneur, then you can usually choose which tasks to do yourself and which tasks to delegate.

People who have low energy, like myself, can often get a lot more done in a day if they take breaks often. Just try it, if you have low energy. Breaks help you manage your energy and avoid getting tired easily.