When first starting out, many business owners struggle with investing in hiring help. They know it’s a must to invest in a logo, stock inventory, build out the physical space, hire an accountant and a legal advisor, arrange and pay for all of the tangible things. Yet, when it comes time to hire employees, they pump the brakes, hard and fast… SCREECH!!!!
Why is this?
I believe it’s a mindset, a mentality. The belief that “I can’t afford this right now.” Or, “I’m the business owner, I’m supposed to be doing this.” Or, worse yet, “I’m going to save money and do it myself.”
It’s hard to see, but those thoughts are the result of your mind playing tricks on you. The reverse is actually true.
What happens is that when you are slow to hire, you are slow to grow. You start trading time for dollars. You become what Michael E. Gerber, author of the E-Myth, calls the technician of our business. You soon find yourself in the same situation I was at one time when my coach (lovingly) told me, “You bought yourself a job.”
Now I do realize we have to be mindful of your cash flow and finances. I am not suggesting you go out and hire a variety of employees/contract workers so you don’t have to do the work. What I am suggesting is you determine when it is right, when it does make “cents” to prioritize and plan for investing in hiring.
Start to really look at what you are doing in your day to day business. Then ask yourself, “What would I do with the time I free up by hiring?”
For example, my coaching business is mainly online and this is a new space for me. There are a lot of moving pieces in the back end such as email campaigns, blogging, updating my website, creating social media graphics, managing lead magnets, all the pieces of digital marketing. Can I do these things myself? Yes. Am I as good at it as the folks that I have hired to support me in these areas, No.
Just recently I increased my investment in the contractors who are assisting me by taking care of all of these things. I will be honest and transparent in sharing that I hesitated, I struggled with making that decision because it meant spending more money. I felt a little guilty about it.
Then I decided to look at it from a time management and dollars and cents lense. The key question I asked myself is the same question I suggested you ask yourself, “What am I going to do with the time that I am freeing up?” What I realized by doing that exercise is that I am willing to make that extra investment and commit to myself that I will use the extra time to network, make sales calls, create more content that will lead me to new clients. These are the activities that will allow me to serve more clients which will more than pay for the extra contractor fees I will incur.
And, that to me seems like a good return on my investment and a strategic way to grow my business.
I encourage you to look at your day-to-day operations as the business owner. Are you thinking like an employee or are you operating like a CEO?
I created a Hiring Guide to assist you with this process and walk you through the steps to making decisions that will help you grow your business. Access the Hiring Guide through THIS LINK.
