I run a small custom furniture shop. Back in January I decided to ditch my old project management setup and build a custom system to track orders, inventory, and customer comms. Six months later the system is half-broken, my team hates it, and I've barely touched actual client work. I thought I was being efficient. Instead I burned half a year. Lesson learned: don't build your own tools when off-the-shelf exists. Curious if anyone else has a similar 'I thought I was so smart' moment.
Setbacks
The business decision that cost me six months of progress
Six months is nothing. I spent a year trying to get my team to use Notion the way I wanted. That was a year of my life I'm never getting back.
Custom system? That's usually a trap unless you're a dev shop. What made You decide to build it?
@mossyrock I thought none of the existing tools handled custom order modifiers and deposit tracking without endless workarounds. Turns out a $30/month tool plus a spreadsheet does it fine. 😅
I feel this in my soul. I built a whole customer portal for my landscaping biz. It broke every month. Finally scrapped it and went back to text messages. Clients actually preferred thatt.
The sunk cost fallacy is a beast. How'd you finally pull the plug?
One of my senior guys just said 'boss, this thing is costing us more than its saving.' That was the moment. Sometimes you need someone else to say it.
Not building my own tools but I switched to a new supplier to save 8% and spent four months dealing with quality issues. Had to redo three big orders. Cheap isn't always cheap.
Hmm, I've been thinking about building a custom dashboard for my side hustle. This thread is making me reconsider. But I keep thinking 'it'll only take a few weeks.' Famous last words.
Only taek a few weeks. Every. Single. Time.
Honestly six months is a cheapp lesson. I've seen people sink two years into a single bad hire. At least you stopped.