You may find yourself too busy to keep up with work, that's a great problem to have. Now, it's time to get some extra help with your business. Here's how to go about it. First, identify the scope of the need. What will you need help with? Is it administrative work like responding to emails, phone calls, booking appointments? Is it marketing, handling your social media, making flyers, updating your website, blogging copy-writing? Is it sales, qualifying clients, running demos, preparing contracts, and managing your pipeline and paperwork? Is it a specialized or technical skill, animation, video editing, photography, development or graphic design? The second step is to decide a pay rate depending on the exact tasks you need this person to do and the value of that work to the business you can determine what you can afford to pay. Think about if this is going to impact the cost to deliver services to client or maybe it's just part of your general business overhead. Does the person need to know specific software or understand your customer's industry? Check out the market level rates on a few platforms for freelancers to see what people are charging with the required skills. Consider whether you have time to train someone or you need someone with a high degree of skill right away. Consider whether you're comfortable with remote or in-person, if remote, do they have to be in the same time zone or country? If in-person, do they have to be in your office and do you have a spot for them? Rates could be dramatically different depending on location and the working conditions. The next step is to find great candidates. Ask trusted freelancers and friends to see who they recommend in your area or remotely. Often they're working with someone great but they can't afford to give them enough hours so it makes sense to refer them to other freelancers for work, this allows all of you to stay fully productive and earning at freelancing. Consider finding great candidates on freelancing marketplaces. The advantage of either of these methods is that you get to review recommendations before selecting who to interview. The next step is to interview and assess the candidates. You want to make sure that you are hiring someone who does this specific type of job that you need better and more conscientiously than you can and you want this person to do a great job and lighten the load for you. They also need to be skilled in the areas you need, good at following directions and understanding what you need, confident enough to ask clarifying questions when they need more information. Trustworthy, believe me, a background check and social media scan can be great at assessing when someone doesn't tell you in an interview. They need to be a good fit with your personality, you don't want someone exactly the same as you but you also don't want someone who clashes with you and annoys you. Step 5 is you need to hire very carefully. You might want to hire a contractor if it's short-term project-based work and you don't have to supervise them when they work independently and they don't have to interface with clients. This contractor relationship may be the way to go. You'll need to share a contractor agreement with them and both of you will need to sign it, that agreement will outline the policies you'll both abide by while working together. The scope of work will contain the specific responsibilities of the contractor and the rate you'll pay. You'll then need them to fill out a W-9 form and issue 1099 every year by January 31st if you're both in the US. Or maybe you really need to think about hiring an employee. You may need to hire them as an employee in certain circumstances if you have enough steady work for them, if they need to represent your business to customers or produce the main work of your business you may be required to classify them as an employee. Make sure you review your local legal requirements before hiring your first employee, your payroll company should have some great resources for you. First, you send them an offer letter and a job description, you check on the practices in your location to see if an employment agreement is the norm. You'll need to confirm if they're eligible to work in your location. In the US this is the I-9 form and requires a photo identification verification. Consider what if any benefits you can offer them and how that might grow over time. You'll set expectations about goals performance the timing of reviews and potential for advancement in your business, then you'll add them to the payroll system as an employee and register all of the processes associated with withholding and taxes. Make sure you produce an employee handbook to discuss all of the policies and procedures upfront in writing, your payroll company may be able to supply a template. When either type of teammate joins your business make sure you spend time welcoming orienting and training them for success. Step 6, building a network of reliable freelancers, you may wish to keep a database of people you've worked with were whom others have recommended; their skills, location, contact information and rates, this will put you in a great position to reach out quickly when you or a friend has a need
