Deciding When To Make Your First Hire

You know when to make your first hire, and when you can actually afford to make your first hire, when you are working at least 16 hours per day. That is the honest truth.

When you know exactly how you want your company to run and it proves that way in day to day operations, you will be able to determine what the first employee will add to your bottom line and it will also be easier to manage that employee.

The time to hire your first person is when a task or tasks begin to impede your ability to focus on building your aspiring concern. Sometimes that hire may be an intern or a trade for training arrangement, but delaying the decision to add staff may create unnecessary stress and could lead to abandonment of the dream of entrepreneurship. My first hire has been by necessity, my own executive right hand. I may be all things to all men, just couldn’t swing it for myself.

I personally feel that once you fully understand and figure out a technique or strategy that really improves your business, it's best to teach it to someone else, and then have them take care of it for you. This could easily be the first employee that you hire.

Once you have the experience down, it's all about relaying that information to someone else, so you can keep improving your business without sacrificing the time that's involved in repetitive tasks.

If you don't hire an assistant, then you are the assistant. It is impossible to ever raise yourself above regular wage unless you duplicate yourself in the form of an assistant. After six months in business you should have saved up enough money to pay for an assistant. If you are unable to earn the money to afford an assistant then you are in the wrong business. Your assistant should be a profit center and generate the income to support salary. Hire an assistant, teach them and grow.

Test the waters. Determine which "hat" you are going to do away with and hire a VA (virtual assistant) to see how new staff could be implemented and best used. They tend to be professional and need minimal training. VA's come in a wide variety of specialities (marketing, social media, accounting, PR, client service etc.)

For me it was pretty simple and has stayed that way. In addition to running the numbers I hire when I’m about to break. It started with one subcontractor, then another. Then employees. And now when someone is closing in on that point in their area we add another body. We’re self funded, and everyone on the team is entrepreneurial, so that’s the way it goes. And it works.

You hire when you exhaust your options in leveraging yourself with technology (both tools and passive income products), when you have exceeded the cost/benefit provided by outsourced services, and before your family concludes that you are no longer part of it. [ It also helps to accept the fact that you probably can't reach your goals alone - but some of us never do.]

I came to the conclusion to make my first hire after realizing that I wasn't earning my worth. It started with hiring people to cut my grass. I felt that I could be more productive doing other things than spending time cutting the grass. In other words, if I am "worth" one hundred dollars and hour why would I choose to do ten dollar an hour work. It was actually costing me to do the work I could have delegated to others.

When the combined efforts of 2 together exceed the performance of 2 working separately.

Don’t hire anyone until you have 150% of the money you will need to pay them. You have to have a cushion in case something goes wrong.

Don’t feel inferior to other companies because you’re working solo. Being a sole proprietor can have its advantages. However, the best time to hire an employee is when business picks up and 50 hours a week turns into 80 hours a week. You feel overwhelmed and you have no time for yourself or your family. At this point hiring a new employee is a good idea. And most importantly, it can also keep you from losing the passion for what you love to do.

You don’t wait. The moment you have the urge to launch a business in any way, shape, or form, you make a very specific hire. You hire a bookkeeper. If you are an entrepreneur, like most you are afflicted with unorganized-it is. There is only one treatment for this disease, there is no cure. You need a daily dose of bookkeeping/organization in order to stay afloat. If resources are short, hire part-time, half-time or even barter services. The time is now!

You hire your first employee when:

1) You would make money because of their efforts or

2) They bring in a necessary expertise you don’t have or

3) They free you up for more necessary, valuable and/or profitable ways to use your time.

Don’t hire until you are 2-3 people short, but make sure you have a minimum pipeline of candidates so you can hire quickly.

We are a startup that has built a powerful CRM software with just two co-founders and a team of contractors and freelancers. At every turn when we thought we should hire another person, we found that we could handle it comfortably within our current setup once we got there. To be honest, we are really surprised we have gotten so far with such a small team.

When a young business consists of just one or two people, that first full-time hire represents a doubling or 50% increase in your company’s manpower and throughput. That’s significant. It’s imperative therefore to know exactly how you’re going to use those additional 40-50 hours each week, and a loose approximation doesn’t cut it. You must identify the specific responsibilities of the new hire will and literally count the hours it takes to complete them.