I was in the same situation, but for about five years. I founded an agency with a friend in pursuit of greater creative freedom, but as it happens ten bosses (ie. clients) are somewhat more stressful than just the one. During those five years I barely saw my kids, worked most weekends and didn't take holidays for the last three years at all.
We were mostly working with SME's and trying to grow the company to a point where could score some bigger clients, on several occasions we very nearly did. We got behind in our taxes when some large projects got cancelled and ended up taking out a bank loan secured against ourselves personally. The quality of our work deteriorated as we took on anything and everything to make ends meet, to pay our expanding team, hoping our big break was just around the corner.
When I finally called it quits we were about £60k in debt, shared between three partners. Telling our employees we had to let them go was hard, but I was surprised at how well most of them took it (they actually felt bad for me), to my relief all of them found employment again within a few weeks. I kept on working with my clients myself by working in evenings and weekends finishing everything off, it took about a year to shut down entirely, but every month it got a little easier. Our clients expressed some annoyance but they were mostly understanding. A couple even said that they didn't know where they could find another agency as good to work with as us, which was heartening.
The successful agencies I have witnessed experiencing fast growth never had any small/medium clients; their founders worked for a larger company and took some big clients with them, or they worked client side and their previous employer became their first big client. Either way their initial clients were huge and there was very little of the painful bootstrapping I experienced, so if you don't have big clients now expect a tough slog (or a lucky break of course, but counting on that pretty much gambling with your own time)
The whole experience cost me about £20k in debt and maybe £200k in lost earnings over what I would have been making had I been freelancing instead. It's been a year and a half and I've managed to pay back my debts and finally get a mortgage on a house, that, had I not started a company I could very nearly have bought outright by now. The time I should have spent with my kids is lost (I fooled myself that I was doing it for them, but in retrospect really it was more of a 'we've come this far...' mentality) but I'm trying to make it up to them now as best I can.
My advice to you would be to freelance, as a programmer you can work all around the world, remotely if you please and get paid decent money (We all know guys who only work part the year, and spend the rest travelling, others who work remotely from Bali or something). I'm freelancing now and I feel more free than I ever did running a company.
We were mostly working with SME's and trying to grow the company to a point where could score some bigger clients, on several occasions we very nearly did. We got behind in our taxes when some large projects got cancelled and ended up taking out a bank loan secured against ourselves personally. The quality of our work deteriorated as we took on anything and everything to make ends meet, to pay our expanding team, hoping our big break was just around the corner.
When I finally called it quits we were about £60k in debt, shared between three partners. Telling our employees we had to let them go was hard, but I was surprised at how well most of them took it (they actually felt bad for me), to my relief all of them found employment again within a few weeks. I kept on working with my clients myself by working in evenings and weekends finishing everything off, it took about a year to shut down entirely, but every month it got a little easier. Our clients expressed some annoyance but they were mostly understanding. A couple even said that they didn't know where they could find another agency as good to work with as us, which was heartening.
The successful agencies I have witnessed experiencing fast growth never had any small/medium clients; their founders worked for a larger company and took some big clients with them, or they worked client side and their previous employer became their first big client. Either way their initial clients were huge and there was very little of the painful bootstrapping I experienced, so if you don't have big clients now expect a tough slog (or a lucky break of course, but counting on that pretty much gambling with your own time)
The whole experience cost me about £20k in debt and maybe £200k in lost earnings over what I would have been making had I been freelancing instead. It's been a year and a half and I've managed to pay back my debts and finally get a mortgage on a house, that, had I not started a company I could very nearly have bought outright by now. The time I should have spent with my kids is lost (I fooled myself that I was doing it for them, but in retrospect really it was more of a 'we've come this far...' mentality) but I'm trying to make it up to them now as best I can.
My advice to you would be to freelance, as a programmer you can work all around the world, remotely if you please and get paid decent money (We all know guys who only work part the year, and spend the rest travelling, others who work remotely from Bali or something). I'm freelancing now and I feel more free than I ever did running a company.