You’re BUSY! And I mean VERY busy.
. . . you’ve got to create your products,
. . . you’ve got to market your products,
. . . and then when you sell your products, you’ve got to create more products, and keep marketing your products.
And that’s before making time for your personal life – like is that even possible? Sometimes there’s just not enough hours in the day . . . and you start wondering . . .
Should I hire someone to help me with my business?
Am I even ready to do that?
Let’s discuss this today.
So, ready? Let’s dive in.
Let’s start by talking about if you are ready for it – because I think this is a big question that many of you have.
Hiring help can feel like a bit of a scary step to take when you’ve been working alone in your business.
No matter how long or short a time you’ve been doing it, you’re used to doing things by yourself. And bringing someone in can feel exciting, but also can be a little overwhelming.
You might be wondering if you’re jumping ahead too far.
What I hear the most when talking to someone about hiring help is that they imagined that their business would be bigger and more successful than it is right now before they start bringing the help. But that’s a mindset that you really need to shift because the reason your business isn’t maybe as successful and big as you want it to be is because you haven’t hired help.
And so when are you ready to hire help? Whenever you need it.
It may be that you’re not making as many sales as you thought you would the first time you hire some help — you might even not be making sales at all and already need to hire help — but that’s OK!
If you are reading this article, that’s the biggest sign that you’re ready — and here’s why.
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It doesn’t need to be this crazy big thing like hiring an employee, with all the legal implications of paying for retirement and taxes and all that stuff. You might get to that point, but that’s certainly not how most people start, and that’s not where I want you to start!
Because if you clicked on this article then I want you to start considering the idea of hiring some help today . . . and if you need help, bring some help in. But obviously don’t do it by hiring a full-time employee, start a bit smaller and more casual. So it could be a few hours here and there – it doesn’t even have to be really regular – maybe one week you need three hours, another week two hours.
It also could be project-based help. So say you’re working on something at the moment and you need a little bit more support. And then when that project is finished, then you don’t need to keep working with that person.
For example, maybe you’ve taken some new product pictures and you want someone to take those pictures and upload them into your listings. You could hire someone just for that project, and then be done.
Or perhaps you need someone to batch create 50 pin designs that you can then slowly release on Pinterest. Again, you can hire someone just for that task.
So keep in mind that hiring someone doesn’t necessarily mean hiring ongoing/regular help, it can be project-based too.
Then once you start making more sales you can delegate more tasks and possibly start having ongoing help.
Now even with ongoing help, I want to emphasize that you can literally hire someone for just one hour a week, so don’t think that there needs to be this huge commitment in terms of what it will cost you financially because it can just be someone that’s there to do one task per week.
So an example in this scenario might be that you hire someone to spend one hour a week scheduling your Instagram posts by adding them to your scheduler, for example.
Instead of hiring one person, you may decide it would be better to hire multiple different people that are each working two hours a week on different things.
This can happen when you have various tasks you need help with that you’re unlikely to find ONE person who can do them all.
So for example, instead of hiring one person for 10 hours a week, you might decide to hire 5 people who each work 2 hours a week: one is working on your graphics for social media, another one is helping you with your emails, another with product photos, the fourth one is scheduling your pins, and the fifth is doing your accounting.
So you’re essentially hiring 10 hours a week across five different people. Now again, you’re gonna think oh my god, five people – that’s a huge team. But the thing is, it’s not really because they’re not employees and they don’t come with all the responsibilities that come with employees.
They’re freelancers. They have a very specific skill set that you can use and they know how to manage themselves and their time as long as you are very clear about what’s expected of them each week or each month.
So it’s not necessarily going to add management time on your end.
Next you may be wondering “Where do I find these people?” There are many, many different platforms online for any kind of online help that you might need. Upwork is by far my personal favorite, I think 95% of people I’ve ever worked with I have hired via Upwork. But there are many others, also, that you can look at.
Now let’s talk about a few things you could outsource to free up your valuable time.
First I want to talk about hiring help online, which means hiring for jobs that anyone can do no matter where they are located – they can be in another country even, it doesn’t matter at all.
One great area to do this is to hire someone to create graphics for your social media posts and website. There are many people out there who do this, and it takes a huge load off your plate.
You can also hire a professional to take product photos OR edit your raw photos – this not only saves you time, but also remember, higher-quality photos sell more products!
Another great hiring opportunity is social media management. We all know how much of a time suck that social media can be! Hiring someone to manage your social media accounts can take a big load off your shoulders – they can write your posts, schedule them, and engage with your followers.
If you send regular emails to your list, you could also hire someone to write, upload, and schedule your emails each week.
You could expand an email role to include all of customer service as well. If you struggle to answer customer messages in a timely manner (or at all!), this person could answer emails and other messages you receive on Etsy or on your website. Not only does this free up your time, but it ensures that your customers get prompt responses and have a good customer experience when they contact your shop.
Product descriptions and website content are another great area to outsource. If you struggle to write good content for your website, hire a content writer to write it for you – and perhaps pay them to upload it as well.
If you are getting bogged down by all of the financials that come with owning your own business, hire an accountant to make sure your bills are paid and your books are balanced! This will come in especially handy during tax season.
Now in addition to hiring people online, you can also consider hiring someone local help you with tasks that are more “feet-on-the-ground” needs.
For example, you could hire someone to pack up your order and take them to the post office to mail.
You can also hire people to help you with certain parts of your production process. Maybe you could hire someone who spends three hours a week pre-cutting fabric, or sewing fabric pieces together for you.
I also would suggest you consider your personal life as well. I know that this is a tough one, you may think you can’t or like you don’t deserve it or that “it’s for rich people”.
But if you get a housekeeper to come and clean your house every couple of weeks for two hours, that is time you can be working on your business, so you want to think of it as an expense that you could essentially make back inside of your business.
So you will want to change your mindset and remember that anytime that you’re getting back hours, you’re either getting back a bit of personal time, or time that you can actually work on things that are more important than the things that those other people can do for you.
The final thing I want to touch on is how to prepare once you hire someone to help you.
First, you want to write a brief, clear expectation to make sure you are both on the same page about what you need them to do.
You also want to have a procedure to share with them.
So if they’re going to be uploading, for example, pictures of your products into your listing, you need to have the files well organized and clearly show what picture goes to which listing, which one is the main thumbnail, plus have a document that explains the steps for uploading the pictures.
If you hire someone to post your social posts on Facebook for you then you will have a procedure telling them how to log into Facebook, how to upload, etc – make sure that everything is clearly broken down, step by step, so that there’s no doubt and they know exactly what they need to do.
The best way to create these procedures is to do it yourself one last time and record yourself as you do it, or take note of the steps that you’re taking when you do it, so that you can just give someone those steps to use when they are doing it.
I also highly recommend having anyone you are considering do a test project (or two) before you hire them. So in this situation, you give them the one test project and pay them for just that test project so that you can see how they do on it and decide if they have the skills to do it long term.
You could even do two or three different test projects with two or three different people to see which one you enjoy working with most, which one was easier to communicate with, and who actually did the best job, then go and hire the person who is the best fit for the job.
So if you are ready to take that big step and hire someone – even if it’s just for a one-and-done project – like I mentioned earlier there are multiple places you can hire from. I have used Upwork myself, but many people ask me if they should hire someone off Fiver.
Before you use Fiver, there are definitely some things you will want to consider, and my article Should you hire someone off Fiver? will walk you through them to be sure the person you hire is going to be qualified to do the work you need done.
Thanks for reading, and until next time, aurevoir!
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