Anyone else making good money but feel like their business is held together with duct tape operationally

★★ signal-medium r/entrepreneur · ↑ 92 · 💬 143 · 2026-04-05 · kw: any tool that · open on reddit ↗

Tool

Chase, Meow, Pandadoc, Notion

Issue

$600k revenue business operates with fragmented systems across 3 PM tools, email-based contracts, and undocumented financial processes; when founder was out 3 weeks, vendor payments missed and invoices lost due to lack of documented procedures.

Cost

unstated

Recommendation

Standardize on single tools per function; document SOPs; commit to one banking platform with built-in invoicing/bill pay; Pandadoc (for contracts), Notion (for PM) mentioned as stabilizing choices

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

We did about 600k this year which is great but if you looked behind the scenes youd think we were still a 2 person operation running out of a garage. Our project management is scattered across 3 different tools nobody agreed on and half our contracts are still Word docs we email back and forth and our financial setup was basically the same Chase account I opened when we first started, that we were paying stupid fees on for stuff that shouldve been free. Things really fell apart when I had a minor car accident back in march and couldnt work for about 3 weeks. My business partner had to handle everything and he realized he had no idea how any of the money side worked because it was all in my head. Vendors werent getting paid on time, invoices were getting lost, it was bad. He panicked and moved our banking to Meow that his cousin told him about, switched our contracts to Pandadoc and started using Notion for everything else just to keep things from falling apart while I was out. Came back and realized how fragile the whole operation was and were at this weird stage where we make enough to need real systems but not enough to hire someone full time to build them. Is this just what it looks like at this stage or did yall figure out a way past it without hiring a COO?

Top comments (7)

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[score=21] Silent_Confidence_39

You should write down your SOPs you will be surprised how much it helps down the line. I’ve written them for many companies and during the process you actually realize what decisions you need to make to streamline everything.

[score=33] WarmConnection2538

Youre at the stage where the answer isnt hiring someone its just picking one tool for each thing and sticking with it. We did the same thing bouncing between banks trying to find the right one and it was a waste of time and once we just committed to one that didnt charge us for every little thing and had bill pay and invoicing built in everything got alot simpler

[score=7] BuiltWithSubs

I'm in this same position right now. I own a painting business, last year we did ~800k in revenue which is a lot for a contractor doing sales and project management but not enough to hire anyone. You flip between making a lot of money with no time to making no money with a lot of time. I decided to hire both a sales rep and a project manager and it's forced me to grow whether I like it or not. The time you get back to work on the business is way more valuable than you think.. it's given me time to build out a door to door team, spend a day per week on content which drives our meta ads. We're on pace to do 1.2-1.5 million this year (depends on a few commercial contracts coming through), only netting around 10-15% but it's the foundation that allows you to tighten everything else up. Hire before you're ready, it forces you to grow or stay small, neither is bad/good, just different preferences.

[score=4] hamsterwheelin

Hi, I do small to medium business operational excellence for a living. Ask yourself, "am I working in the business, or on the business?" As others have said, you don't necessarily need to hire someone, just need to put tools in place and define them for everyone. Slow down now, to speed up later. Reach out if you'd like to know more.

[score=11] SlightedMarmoset

Surely everyone knows this is an advertising piece??

[score=3] Responsible-Milk-259

My entire life feels like it’s held together with duct tape. It’s been like that for 25 years now, somehow everything still functions as it should. 🤷‍♂️