Brianna Sylver is the President and Founder of Sylver Consulting, an international innovation research and strategy firm. She’s dedicated her life to helping individuals and organizations to define their next opportunities for growth.
“First hire” is a phrase that can make any entrepreneur’s heart rate quicken. People equal overhead and responsibility, which is scary! But, consider this, without people, how are you comprising the growth of your organization? The answer is “significantly.”
Entrepreneurs often misconstrue “first hire” with “full-time employee.” This is far from the truth. Many times you can enjoy the benefits of having supports long before you need to familiarize yourself with what it means to have a payroll. You can buy a couple hours of people’s time or hire them for a project.
The trick to securing supports lies in your ability to articulate the skills you need and your adeptness at finding the appropriate people. So, here are 3 tips to help you define your exact support needs.
1. Make lists. Take note of all the different tasks – business and personal related – that you do in a day/week/month that cause you to feel frustrated, unproductive, and inferior. You’re likely either not the best person to be doing these tasks because they don’t align with your strengths Or, you’re likely doing tasks that are below your pay grade.
You might hire someone for a specific task (e.g. to build you a website) or you might hire an admin for a few hours a week. As entrepreneurs, every hour in the day offers you the opportunity to make money. If you can free your mind of the tasks that make you feel “less than,” you give yourself more time and mental space to engage in tasks that are revenue generating.
2. Consider how you might be leaving money on the table. Every entrepreneur with a growing business gets to a point where they feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Even if you’ve managed to get the “extras” off your plate per point 1, the revenue generating tasks associated with your business may still be more than you alone can handle.
To find the person best suited to help your business grow, you first need to specify where the roadblocks are in your business currently. For instance, are you turning away work because you don’t have the bandwidth to take it on? Are you not having the time to do the business development you should? Answers to these types of questions will help you define the role that needs to be filled.
3. Create your “must have” and “nice to have” list. Before you start to look for your supports, you need to define what is it that these individuals need to offer to your company. Anything goes on this list, from the actual tasks that this person will need to perform to an attitude that they’ll need to project to best fit within the culture of your organization.
Once you’ve got this list you’re ready to start your search. As you search, make sure you continue to use this list as reference.
Bottom line, it’s easy as an entrepreneur, especially when first starting out, to take everything on yourself. Not only is this not productive, but subliminally you communicate to the universe that you have all that you can handle. The right people will expand your company’s potential for growth. While making the leap initially might seem scary, once you do it, you won’t go back. Trust me!
