Three-year growth 1,021%
Twenty-two. That’s 21 more employees than NetSteps had during its first four years of business — and it wasn’t for lack of things to do. “It was me, myself and I for a long time,” says Derek Maxfield, founder of the company that provides technology solutions for direct sales companies and their distributors. “I was sales, support, development — all of it. I worked myself into the ground.” The ground-bound entrepreneur is a familiar story, but NetSteps’ stunning growth — which Maxfield is quick to credit to his team — is anything but.
I’ve been a programmer for a long time. I studied computer science at BYU, and I was working in Web development when I realized there was a way to make Web content dynamic. Someone could manage it and it would have easy-to-use interface Web pages. It wasn’t a new concept. But no one was doing it quite right.
I moved to Salt Lake and worked for a company in the network marketing industry. They were doing back-end stuff — things like commissions and storing the tree in the downlines. On my own time, I started making a product called Replicated Websites that allows each individual distributor to have their own site.
I worked on it on my own time. I’d get up at 4 in the morning and work on it for a few hours. After 18 months, I wrote a business plan and raised some money. I took the dive and quit my job, which was scary. I’m not much of a risk taker.
The risk was mitigated by the fact that I had a product ready and clients ready to use it. I didn’t feel like I was jumping into the abyss — every step felt like a natural progression. The biggest risk was when I started taking on employees. Before that, I was only affecting myself. If things didn’t go well, I could go out and get a job. But if I hired someone, I was responsible for them. So it was me, myself and I for a long time.
Hiring my first employee was agonizing, though in hindsight, it was so obviously the right thing to do. I had been working myself into the ground. I was sales, support, development — all of it. I met with clients to do sales pitches during the day, and then I did the actual coding for three or four hours at night. It was tough, but I wouldn’t do anything differently. We grew when the money was there to grow.
There was a lot of bootstrapping, and I’m glad there was. I got a lot of advice to get a big SBA loan, and I’m so glad I didn’t. I thought if a business couldn’t survive on its own cash flow, it couldn’t do well. I didn’t realize that was an unusual way of thinking.
We’re a software company, but we got our start as a relationship company. I had a personal relationship with our first five clients, and they trusted us because of that. They knew if they paid us all this money, we would follow through. Our founding principle has been to under-promise and over-deliver. More than make money — I want to exceed expectations. There are no skeletons in our closet. People can call every one of our clients and they’ll hear great feedback. I’m more proud of that than anything else.
The biggest growing pain is letting go. I can’t oversee all the projects anymore, and that’s hard. I’ve had to learn to trust my employees and give them the freedom they need. It’s strange, though. When I was in Paris on business, they hired three people who I hadn’t met yet. That’s a weird feeling, but it’s time for it to start happening.
The company has changed quite a bit over the years, and it was strange to wake up one morning and realize I have this company that has HR issues, that deals with insurance, that deals with all this stuff I never really thought about. For so long it was just a bunch of developers, and I was in the fox hole with the guys. Not anymore.
Flexibility is everything. Our product is always changing, always growing. Because of clients’ requests, I can never put a cap on it, and that’s just the way it’s going to be. I’ve tried to embrace that rather than get frustrated by it. And it’s served us well.
We’ve been blessed with the right clients and the right employees coming along at exactly the right time. I can’t think of a better word to describe it then “blessed.” I’m grateful for everyone that’s helped get the company to this point. There’s no way I could have done this by myself. Q
Hiring my first employee was agonizing.