Six buildings. Rows of desks, phones ringing, schedules to fill. On paper it was a healthy operation. In practice, I spent my days on everything except the actual business.
Somebody didn't show up, so a shift was short. Two people had a falling out and now that's my morning. Hiring, training, turnover, then hiring again for the same chair I filled three months ago. I wasn't running a lead business anymore. I was babysitting grown adults, six buildings at a time.
The part I actually loved
Here's what took me too long to see. The part of that operation I loved was the machine. Where the calls came from, how a lead turned into a sale, what made one campaign print money while another one stalled. That's the work I was good at, and it's the work that made the money.
The buildings were just where the machine happened to live. And the buildings were eating me alive.
The buildings were just where the machine happened to live. And the buildings were eating me alive.
So I shut them down
Around 2017 I closed all six and told anyone who'd listen that I was done with call centers for good. And I meant it, the way you mean things you say while you're tired.
What I was actually done with was a version of the business that ran on me personally standing in it. There's a difference, and it took closing six buildings to learn it. The lead business itself never stopped being a good business. People raising their hands, someone calling them back, value changing hands. That never went anywhere.
What "done for good" turned into
These days I'm back around calls, and I didn't break my promise, at least not the real one. The version I do now runs on software my companies own: the dialing, the texting, the email, the lead management underneath it all. Systems handle what used to take a floor full of people and a manager with a headache. Nobody has to hope I'm in the building, including me.
Same business. Different machine. The full picture of what got built is at joedelfgauw.com.
What I'd tell you
If your business only works when you're standing in the room, you haven't built a business. You've built yourself a job, and hired yourself for it, and you can never quit. Figure out which part of the work is actually yours. For me it was the machine, never the buildings. Whatever your version of the buildings is, you're allowed to walk away from it without walking away from the whole thing.
Wish somebody had told me that before I signed six leases.
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