Being an indie developer for 10 years feels too much for me.
I mean, once you do 2-3 games and you have a little success, I think you should use that notoriety to gather more talent and assemble a team. Forget starting a startup, studio, being an entrepreneur. I say you should continue doing what you do, but instead of doing all the development yourself and outsourcing the graphics or the sound effects, just bring them in.
A team of 2-3 developers, 1-2 artists, and a composer should level up faster. Watch Fullbright[1], they had amazing success together, while on their own they were.. just ok.
There are any former solo devs here that could share their story? What was the next step for them?
And in conversation, instead of talking about you “I’m this, I’m that,” make them talk about themselves “Tell me about this. Tell me about what you hope.” Open-ended questions elicit interesting responses. “I am interesting, and we talked about something I like, so now you seem interesting, too.” That's simple projection.
In a small team, if you can't toss a kudos for an employee once in a while it means that you don't know what he's doing, or he needs help to improve his work.