How can you REALLY tell it’s the right time to hire?
There’s a time in every online entrepreneur’s journey where you just need some solid help to get to the next level.
Maybe you’ve hired before and were frustrated with the level of support and performance.
Maybe you brought on a family member or friend to “help” with a few tasks, but the dedication you needed from them just wasn’t there.
Truth time: There’s no rulebook for hiring as an entrepreneur, and you certainly don’t learn how to hire, onboard and manage a team effectively in school. (In fact, most schools resoundingly teach students how to be a good employee, not a CEO, but that’s a topic for another day.)
If the people meant to support you draining you, it’s probably time to get a better team in place.
How do you know it’s time for a more effective team?
There are 3 really surefire signs to pay attention to. Let’s break them down.
1. Burnout is right around the corner.
As a business owner, blogger and online entrepreneur, you might be used to juggling dozens of responsibilities a day on your own. But odds are, you didn’t go into business to hustle 60 hours a week and overwork yourself to the point of exhaustion and depleted energy every single day.
When you begin noticing you don’t have the same energy and excitement as you used to have doing the tasks you enjoy, that’s solid evidence you’re nearing burnout.
Sometimes, even your most favorite tasks stop being fun and start feeling more like a burden, and that means burnout is on the horizon. Burnout is beyond the point of being tired -- it’s the result of stressful, unmanageable workloads and dissatisfaction with some areas of your work.
Often, it’s because you’re going it alone or without the best support in place.
A few signs of burnout include:
Feelings of being drained
You’re unable to cope with stress
You feel lethargic
Feelings of negativity toward work
Difficulty concentrating
Lack of creativity
Headaches, stomachaches or other digestion problems
Creating clear boundaries in your work life helps to combat burnout, like setting specific start and stop times, giving yourself at least a 5-minute break for every half-hour of work and allowing yourself to unplug (and maybe even not check your email) on weekends.
Self-care is also an enormous component of beating burnout — make sure you get fresh air every day, move your body a few days a week and stay hydrated.
2. Your capacity is completely booked up.
The next sign that you need effective help in place is that you’ve realized you have zero bandwidth to try new approaches, methods and strategies to grow your business.
Let’s run through a quick checklist to examine your capacity and whether you’re currently maxed out. Keep track of how many of these questions you answer “yes” to:
Are you not getting to all the things you want to do because there’s not enough time?
Are you unsure of what your priorities for growth are because you don’t have the capacity to examine opportunities and areas you could improve?
Are there things you WANT to do but you can’t because your energy and schedule are totally booked?
Are you unable to take on more opportunities or strategies, like repurposing old blog posts to enhance their SEO, increasing your number of posts published per week, communicating more with your community on social media or reaching out to brands you admire to partner with them?
Are you working so much outside your Zone of Genius that when you do finally get to work within it, it’s not as fulfilling as it once was?
Are you sacrificing time with loved ones or time you should be using for self-care to get more hours of work in?
If you answered “yes” to two or more of these, my friend, you’re at FULL capacity. When our time and energy is depleted day after day, there’s no space for new ideas or fresh approaches to fully optimize your business.
You’ve gotten this far on your own (or with so-so help), but think about how much further you could get with some amazing support in place.
3. You’re dissatisfied with one or more of your team members.
Now, if you’re thinking, This isn’t me! I have a VA and a proofreader. I’m all good. You might be right! But I want you to really think about your current support and how they’re freeing up space for you to feel empowered to create and grow immensely every week.
Do they always meet deadlines?
Does their work — whether it’s a designer or a writer or another creative support role — really match with your brand and voice?
Do you have to walk through a bunch of instructions and hold their hand, or do they “get it” and run with their tasks autonomously and with confidence?
There’s a difference between a writer and the right writer for you. A virtual assistant and YOUR best virtual assistant are very different people.
I want you to be sure your time, money and resources are being utilized to their best ability if you’re paying someone to support you and spending your valuable time leading them.
And you might also have wonderful people who simply have the wrong skillsets. A proofreader you enjoy being around, but who isn’t great at writing copy when you could really use help with copy, isn’t the best use of your resources.
Take a look at your team, and determine if you need to have any tough conversations for the benefit of your business.
You deserve to have amazing and high-quality support.
So, that’s it! Those are the signs that you’re in a stage where a more effective team could be a tremendous boost for your business. It’s my sincere hope that you take these signs and look at your own work life to see if it’s working for you, or against you.
And if you have any questions about what it looks like to get the right team in place, I’d love to be a resource for you. Leave a comment below and I will respond.
