What was your most painful realisation of 2012?

Mine: Changing a formula (that is working somewhat well) too much at once, without a way to get back to exactly the old way, can really bite you in the behind.

Earlier this year, I took on a bit too much work, hired help, took on a new marketing channel to support the new capacity, decreased prices (relatively dramatically) in hopes to increase volume and changed the service I offered so I could produce it profitably at the new price point.

Any one of those changes could have been a great boost for my revenue + sanity but doing them all in the same month spelt disaster for about 3 months.

Here's what happened: I had too much work and when I brought on new person, even though they were smart and competent, they still needed training. Because I was spending time training them, I didn't spend as much time on sales. (Lesson: You can't just hire someone expect them to know everything you know.)

We had leads but I didn't get enough time to call them. At the same time, a really interesting opportunity presented itself where I could buy leads from a competitor and be able to double the number of leads I had each month. The price was expensive per lead but one sale would pay for a month's worth of leads so I pulled the trigger. (Lesson: Don't spend time and money on marketing unless you have the time and money to dedicate to sales.)

At the same time, I had a nice chunk of change in the bank so I decided to do some experimenting with what we were offering. I lowered prices of websites we designed dramatically to focus on monthly reoccurring revenue ($300 + $30/month instead of the more $2500 + $10/month hosting) we normally charge on average. I also changed the service so it wasn't completely custom, which allowed me to deliver in a much smaller amount of time. Weirdly, sales crashed with this new price point. I can't explain it with reason but I have some theories. That's for another day. (Lesson: Don't mess with a sales formula by changing too much at once because you won't know what broke it or improved it.)

So now I had 2 heavy expenses and a product offering that wasn't selling as easily and when it did sell, it made a lot less money. Wow, what a dingbat thing to do, right? Well the decisions had sound logic behind them at the time :D.

Luckily I was able to restore my business model to the way it was previously after a lot of tweaking and ended up with something that worked better than before... but those 3 months were just plain bad.

Mine was probably that I will never be more "satisfied" with my day-to-day life even if my startup is a huge success. I need to find balance and tend to the moment and the people that matter in it.

Second was probably that you can make huge impacts on the health of your business by tending to your pricing and pricing model. Don't just copy from other products that might have way different usage patterns.

This is a big one, and one I'm in the middle of fighting with right now. As a developer its hard to release a product with your name attached when you know its not as good as it can be.

Releasing early means getting more exposure and possibly force you to realize your a writing something no-one earlier. What if though you are turning potential customer's away who are unimpressed with your first couple releases? Are those just considered write-offs and the cost of bootstrapping?

The worst ideas are often the most well-received and the best ideas are often rejected.

Realizing that my company needed to pivot away from a rapidly failing line of business I was really interested in into a growing and profitable line of business that I wanted nothing to do with.

There's a lot more to the story, but having to talk away from almost a decade and a half of work and some very dear co-workers/friends was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. But going into 2013 I think it was also one of the best decisions I've ever made.