You have four options. Only one of them is me.
Hire someone, buy software and configure it yourself, carry on as you are, or have the back office built once and own it. Here is the honest version of all four, including the parts that do not favour me.
This page compares the $25,000 back office. If your problem is missed inquiries rather than operations, the front desk starts at $555 and the linked post does that comparison instead.
Sources at the bottom of this page. Check them, they are not mine.
The four options, stated fairly.
Each one is genuinely the right answer for somebody. The question is which somebody you are.
Hire an operations person.
The most capable option, and the most expensive. They handle judgment, exceptions and everything nobody wrote down. They also need managing, they take holidays, and when they leave, what they learned leaves with them.
Buy software and configure it yourself.
Cheapest on paper. The bill is your hours, not the licence, and it never appears on a pricing page. It also means you now own a second job: keeping the configuration current as the business changes.
Carry on exactly as you are.
A real option, and sometimes the right one. It costs nothing today. What it costs is the hours the Operations Map would put a number on, every month, forever, plus the ceiling it puts on how big you can get.
Have it built once, and own it.
Five roles mapped, built, tested, approved and handed over in accounts in your name. One fee. No salary, no subscription to me, and nothing that leaves. This is Siesie.
The comparison, line by line.
Year one, then what it looks like in year three, because that is where these options separate.
Operations hire
Right answer if the work genuinely needs judgment all day. Expensive answer if most of it is the same thing happening again.
Software, self-configured
Right answer if you enjoy this and have the evenings. The honest failure mode is a half-configured tool nobody trusts, which is worse than the spreadsheet it replaced.
Do nothing
Genuinely right if the business is steady, the volume is flat, and it is not costing you anything you mind. The Operations Map exists to tell you whether that is true.
Siesie
The one-person risk is real, so it is answered in writing: every phase produces a document, everything lives in your accounts, and nothing depends on an account I control.
A process nobody has written down.
Hire someone into a business that runs on memory and they spend six months learning the memory. Buy software for it and you automate confusion at speed. Every option on this page gets better after the mapping, which is why the map comes first and costs $2,500 rather than $25,000.
An agency, or a bigger firm.
If you want a team, a contract with a company behind it, and someone to escalate to at 2am, hire a firm. That is a legitimate thing to want and I am not it. What you get here instead is the person who scoped it being the person who builds it.
When not to choose Siesie. Read this part properly.
Every provider has a version of this page. Most of them forget to write this section.
If only one handoff is the problem.
Document that one handoff and keep your money. The five-role check on the Siesie page will tell you which it is, free, in about a minute.
If the work needs judgment all day.
If almost nothing repeats, there is nothing to build around. Hire a person. I will tell you this on the call rather than after the invoice.
If it is inquiries, not operations.
Calls and messages falling through is the front desk, and that starts at $555. Buying the $25,000 build for a $555 problem is a mistake I will not take your money for.
If you cannot give access or approvals.
The seven-day build depends on decisions arriving when the work is waiting on them. If nobody can give those in a working week, the timing is wrong and we should wait.
Sources. Check them yourself.
These are published figures, not my estimates. My own prices are the only numbers on this page that come from me.
If another option is right for you, I will say so.
The map comes first either way. Two weeks, twenty-five hundred, credited against the build, and if it concludes you do not need one, I refund it and you keep the map.