

Lessons Learned: Three Years of Running a Software Consultancy - bcardarella
http://reefpoints.dockyard.com/2014/12/28/lessons-learned-three-years-running-a-software-consultancy.html

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bcardarella
This is a continuation of the series I've published over the past three years:

[http://reefpoints.dockyard.com/2013/12/22/lessons-learned-
tw...](http://reefpoints.dockyard.com/2013/12/22/lessons-learned-two-years-of-
running-a-dockyard.html)

[http://reefpoints.dockyard.com/opinion/2012/06/21/lessons-
le...](http://reefpoints.dockyard.com/opinion/2012/06/21/lessons-learned-six-
month-of-running-dockyard.html)

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jchung
Props for sharing your actual revenue and profit numbers. This ended up being
much more interesting than the title suggested. I was most interested in the
two times you almost had to shut DockYard down. What do you think your
employees and customers will feel seeing that you almost had to close DockYard
twice, as well as what your revenue and profit figures are?

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bcardarella
Posting profit & revenue hasn't hurt us in the past. I'm pretty open with our
numbers with everyone at DockYard, they knew what those were prior to this
post.

I'm pretty sure everyone at DockYard knew of our difficulties earlier this
year. We never had a sit down "this is a problem" type meeting but it has been
talked about quite a bit. And I went over some of this at a panel I was on a
few months ago.

As far as clients go, our problems weren't quality related they were cashflow
related. Which I'm sure many people running a business are all too familiar
with. Cashflow problems can shut you down faster than anything else. We are
pretty confident that we now have a plan to mitigate these issues. We'll see
how this pans out in 2015 however.

