The prequel
The TLDR version of the link was a business partner had is life totally derail but was still demanding to get paid. Closed down original business, opened new sole prop at same location under different name.
8 months later, life is looking pretty damn good.
I hired a couple folks
things took off
hired a couple more
totally had to restructure workflow to accomodate the extra bodies
expanded shop into a neighboring occupancy adding 50% to our shop space currently considering employee #5.
I am now pretty much where I wanted to be, more of a manager and meeting with customers wanting larger ticket jobs. Its practically a vacation compared to most of last year. I am still putting in some long days, but its long days just dealing with ordering parts and keeping tabs on all of the work in progress.
We just banged out a emergency server recovery/reload with about a $4K bill attached to it. Several new businesses have come onboard lately and most of the old ones are still around.
Its quite liberating to not have a partner looking over my shoulder griping about everything. All of my new people are being taught to be more customer friendly and I have some bonus plans in place for meeting turnaround time goals, on time arrivals for onsite techs, stuff that often seems simple. I do this because the customers could care less if you can manually remove a virus from a boot sector with a hex editor or assemble a new PC in 7 minutes flat as long as you are communicating with them and doing what you said you would do when you said you would do it at the price you quoted.