Great story, I'm jealous! Assuming by "run" you mean you own the shop, I would love to learn in more detail how you were able to leap from day-to-day programming to being able to afford your own company.
I see a lot of responses like that in this wonderful thread: I used to program for a few companies, then I got into management a bit, and now I own my own company. That's listing step 1, 2, 3, and then jumping to step 59!
I had been freelancing on and off for years, so I understood how those relationships worked. I started off freelancing on my own, then brought on a part time contractor to help take on some of the extra worked and scaled up from there. Now I have multiple contractors working all the time. I did the jump while also moving into the "nomadic" lifestyle, backpacking around se asia while building everything up, which kept expenses way lower than my nyc rent.
