I make an effort to people I deem have made an effort. If it’s a clear copy paste blanket email then no.

I feel for you mate, had similar and it’s heart breaking.

A mere 6 hours per day counts as an addiction in your book? I think I need to be committed to a gaming rehab centre…

Video projection - branded content / corporate / social media stuff. Got into it by talking my way into a production company as free labour back when that was legal. Worked at a night club to fund. Later got offered full time and stayed until I was ready to go freelance. 3 years freelancing and it was time to set up a company and hire staff. £1m turnover this year and it’s going well. Not as fun as it used to be though due to the high amounts of admin and management, where I used to just film and edit.

I can relate and have faced some of these issues in my business. It’s very hard being a solo owner.

Have you considered hiring an executive assistant? Could be a different title like operations or similar. Someone to palm off as much admin as possible on and to use to free up your time? This was a revelation for me and turned things around. Slow at first while you train them, but once they know the systems your life will change.

Once they have taken a load off you can work with them to develop standard operating procedures for as much of what you do as possible. Once that’s done you’ll be able to outsource more of your job and by that point things should be night and day from where they are now.

In the short term, if there’s any chance you can take some liberties and do some shorter days etc then do try. Even if it costs some profit, if the business can weather it then it’s the best thing for the business anyway. Limp into Christmas and then try to recuperate ahead of making the new mission in January to make you redundant for as many of your current responsibilities as possible.

Hang in there

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You could probably afford to use your T&Cs for the MVP and then get them done properly as soon as you start to get users. Still a risk though, but a small one.

I rent out cameras, lenses and lighting equipment and it does pretty well. Still takes 1.5-2 years to pay off a £5k camera though… Lenses are great, have sone cinema lenses worth £20k new that most people don’t want to buy, but they’ll happily spend £250 per day on them for a shoot. Smoke machine is a dark horse too, goes out all the time.

It’s easier than you might think to be an empathetic and generous entrepreneur. I regularly deploy resources to solve people’s problems, be they employees, contractors or random acquaintances. It makes me feel good. If I acted differently, I could have more capital but I like be less fulfilled. You could just choose to not be an evil greedy person. In any case, this seems like something to worry about a bit further down the line.