Ask HN: I cannot afford to scale…

Self-limiting belief. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever you want to call it, this one single sentence will kill your business.

If you are providing a higher quality service than the competition, then guess what? You should be charging more.

If you're not getting the clients you need when charging more ... well, your marketing sucks. Position yourself as a premium service. Provide a better experience and charge for it. Get customers by encouraging referrals, etc, etc.

Look at Apple. They charge twice as much as their competitors for the same hardware. Why? They provide a premium experience and they charge extra for it.

Why are you competing on cost?

Raise yours. Find new people willing to pay the increased rates.

Oddly enough, I've found raising prices to make people MORE DETERMINED to get you sometimes.

Aim to get to the point where it takes you the same amount of time to deal with 1 customer or 100. What would that process look like?

Maybe something like...The client hires you, you assess the requirements, send details to the translator and then all future project messages go straight to the translator (or a virtual assistant), you fix unusual/unique issues and issue the invoice. Rinse & repeat.

If you're entering into lengthy e-mail discussions try to find recurring topics/issues across all of your clients. Can you refine the requirements gathering process at the beginning of a project to save you time at the end?

Anticipate the standard number of hours needed for support and add a percentage onto your prices for "support issues". You can happily say this price also includes x amount of after-care.

If your client chooses not to have this added on up front you can say that unplanned support hours cost $xx. Knowing that your time is a premium ensures they are clear and concise with you from the start. Fixed price jobs are prone to requirements creep.

You're paying in so much time by reading long client e-mails, replying to them and then forwarding important info onto your translators. Maybe by discussing with a client on a recorded Skype call instead of e-mail you cut time needed down to 1/3.

Analyse your working day. Any repetitive task can be automated/outsourced made quicker or eliminated completely.

What types of task take up your day?

How long does it take to get your computer ready in the morning? Add programs to start-up, get frequently used websites saved to permanent tabs. Is filing paperwork/accounts simple? Any task over 10mins needs to be considered.

I know it sounds wrong but you've got to work yourself out of the business as a critical cog. You (i.e your time) are the bottleneck stopping you making more money.

Maybe having a virtual assistant for a few hours per day would be a low cost way of helping with communication back log. They could take info out of mails and forward to the translator working on it in a template. Or they could read mails and highlight the critical info for you consider.

It sounds as though your business is at a turning point where your job role needs to change to progress, move away from day to day work and more towards finding new clients and streamlining.

Your overall job is to remove obstacles for yourself and those that you employ.

Best of luck!!

Edit - just saw the question. The problem right now is not that you don't have a partner; it's that you don't charge enough for the work you're doing. Adding a partner is going to create another set of distractions and issues.