What am I doing wrong?

DB: Title: What are we doing wrong?Hi,I started an LLC a while ago as a side hustle. Some ideas fails while others have gained traction and worked nicely. I am a telephony person so most of my solutions were done on the back end with config scripts and MySQL. This works fine for a nerd on the side but does not scale well for clients. Clients want a management portal where they can do everything themselves. I understand the concepts on how this should get done, best practices etc. but I am not a developer by any stretch of the imagination. I am more of a scripter (and a good one). Any GUI's I have created in the past were PHP spitting out HTML forms (with barely any JS). I realized that I needed to innovate and build what my clients wanted.I first started by hiring someone on UpWork to create a re-write of the back and end front end. I knew this developer was not a "proper front end person" however I decided that I would learn from my 9-5 and give him free reign. He told me that his UI/web skills were not the best and I was OK with that. Any solution was better than what I had. The developer provided everything he said he would. Some of the problems that I had were - He used a language and DB that I did not know. If there were any issues I would not be able to fix it. If there were times that he was not available I was SOL. - He is a native Russian speaker so a lot was lost in translation. - I assumed too many things and didn't spell it out enough.With UpWork I have had projects where things worked out great and I have had cases where there were horror stories. My biggest issue with UpWork is not the talent but finding reliable people that can write me something and then support it. I understand that people working per project can't be there for life but I have had cases where people wrote some code and two tweaks later they were MIA.My partner wanted a more intuitive platform where the UI/UX was cleaner and easier to use. In the past I built my systems on multiple vendors (e.g. Digital Ocean for the telephony switch and other DO hosts for MySQL). I set up MySQL+Galera on my own on VPS instances so I could have redundancy (I did it across three different areas for best redundancy). Part of the issue that I was management. I was trying so hard to build it in a redundant manor that it was impossible to manage (the tool I used to sync files between the web and telephony server was "eating files" etc.). I decided for now to use AWS exclusively since they have lit everything that I need. In place of syncing files, backing them up etc. I would use AWS S3's object storage etc.I went looking for a new dev on Reddit. I found a young man in my area that was still in High School who has a head on his shoulders. This was in the height of covid where everyone was learning from home. He was able to attend class and code for me. Since he was young there were certain concepts that it took me time to teach him (mainly related to security). The project was about 95% done when he went to college. Ever since he has been there he has not had time to finish up the project. I told him that college and his future was more important than one client. I understand that he simply doesn't have the time to studying full time and developing. I am certain that if I push him it could get done however once the app is working if he is busy with school work and not available I have no one to to turn to.I went looking yet again and found someone a few hours from me (so in the same geo area). We had a call and everything sounded great. I explained what I needed and we clicked. The one thing that stood out was that he was very cheap. I point blank asked him why he was so cheap. His response was that he lived out in a small community, his expenses were not high and he was OK with the money he was charging. He started on the work and we were making progress. We were almost there and one day he disappeared (as if he never existed). His GitHub page was deleted (now has since been restored), His telegram user deleted, reddit user gone etc. It's like he deleted his online life. I did try calling and sending a SMS message to make sure all was OK but so far I have not had any response.I am beginning to think maybe it's me. How do others fine reliable, good and steady talent before you can afford to hire someone full time? see hubwealthy.com/wealthy