Free playbook
Scaling a service business with AI
I founded division5 in Albania in 2015. Hiring here meant taking people with no track record, because most people with a track record had already left. So we trained them, and that forced me to write down everything a founder is normally allowed to keep in their own head.
This is what was left after a decade of that. Six diagnostics, each ending with something you answer in writing, because a diagnostic you do in your head is one you flatter yourself through. At the end you will have a named constraint, a re-sorted list of what genuinely needs a person, and a first ninety days that does not start with buying software.
What is inside
The bottleneck has your name on it
What stops when you stop, and which of the three reasons it is.
Re-sort every recurring task
Three buckets. The third one grew and almost nobody updated their list.
What actually changed, and what did not
The cost of a first draft went to zero. Judgement did not.
The order is the whole thing
Four steps. Starting at step four is the expensive mistake.
When word of mouth runs out
Referral is not a channel. It is a ceiling with good manners.
Culture carries all of it
If software does the junior work, the path that made your seniors is gone.
The playbook came out of this article, which is the story rather than the work. Read that first if you want to know whether any of this is worth your hour.