Day 712: Browserflow Freelancers

Yesterday, I wrote about how I’ll be turning down requests for custom flows because I want to focus on scalable support (product improvements, better documentation, more resources for self-sufficient users).

A few hours ago, I got an email from my friend/mentor/very first Browserflow customer(!) Romain who said that he actually had more flows he wanted to pay me to build but hadn’t reached out because he knew that I’m trying to focus on other things. I felt bad about that because not only was I failing to provide support for building new flows, I was failing to support him with his existing ones: I had fixed some of his flows last month and told him that I’d look more into some others that needed updating, but I hadn’t gotten around to because of the launch and everything that came afterwards. (Thanks Romain for being so patient!) He suggested that I create a Browserflow forum or subreddit so that customers can connect with Browserflow experts who can help them build their flows.

I love that idea and I wrote a few days ago about how a marketplace like that is part of the long-term vision I have for Browserflow (how cool would it be to have other people making a living off of Browserflow!). But the community is frankly too small right now to support a marketplace where requests would be reliably fulfilled.

And then it hit me. Why don’t I just pay people to build these custom flows? It’s fine if I don’t have the bandwidth to do it myself, but it’d be kind of silly not helping potential/existing customers who wants to pay for the support.

The funny thing is that I played around with this idea several months back and even talked to a developer friend about having him join to build out these custom flows. That fizzled out because requests for custom flows were few and far between and I was mostly able to handle them myself, but now it’s become more of an urgent problem where I have more requests than I can handle and I’m actively turning down business.

So I called that friend again this morning and talked to him about joining as a freelancer, and he was down! This weekend, I’m going to start getting him up to speed with Browserflow so that eventually, he’d be as much of a Browserflow expert as I am. Then I could focus on scalable support while he handles the cases that need more personalized support.

I’m really excited about this because it feels like a win-win-win situation: Customers get the support they want, my friend makes some extra cash, and I can focus on solutions that scale support rather than spending all my time helping people one-by-one.

This also means that I can experiment with what it’d be like expanding the Browserflow team. While we’d be collaborating, our work would be largely independent because he’s building solutions on top of Browserflow while I’m enhancing Browserflow itself. This makes it much easier for him to be self-sufficient because once he’s ramped up, he can work with customers and provide solutions without any of my input.

This would also transition quite well into the marketplace I eventually want to have. As demand increases, I can add more freelancers, and eventually have a place where any of them could grab any of the requests that come in and independently work with the customer. All I’d need to do is train them (which I eventually hope to do largely with the help of scalable resources like tutorials, documentation, etc.) and they’d be ready to help people with their automation needs.

Exciting! Thanks x1000 to Romain because that email was the kick in the butt I needed to come up with an actual solution to the problem of me not being able to meet support needs rather than simply turning customers down.