Starting your business will take a lot of work, but if you having the full time to do it, you are probably progressing faster than others. Customers get interested in the product or service that you offer, and so far you provide such value to them efficiently. But, there are much more customers around, can you offer your value to all of them? Or are you satisfied with your present customers?
Working for you is really good. Usually people start working for themselves because the time can be more flexible, they don’t need to follow orders doing task for others, and they get all the credit and the money. In less words, when you are working for yourself you are your business and you are your boss, BUT, did you know you can actually be a worst boss to yourself than your previous boss at work?
Let’s say, the product or service you offer can be also offered by a company, this makes it your competitor, and you got your customers because you can offer the same value individually, at a lower cost. Eventually you will get more customers, and this is great! But leads to more work, and you probably are fine with it, at the end you will get all the credit for your work, and you are earning more money, right? Well, you are bossing yourself into working more, thinking to get more money for the extra work. If you are fine working this way, it practically makes you a freelancer.
During an interview in 2012, Seth Godin mentioned the difference between a freelancer and an entrepreneur:
A freelancer is someone that gets paid for working, that means the more you work the more you get paid; an entrepreneur, gets paid while he sleeps, they build a business bigger than themselves.
How to make a transition and become an entrepreneur?
Since you already have a business by yourself, you need to dedicate full time to grow your business and get more customers, but at the same time you need to keep delivering your value and keeping your business operational.
In order to do that you need to delegate, to delegate you have to give the work to another person, so you have to find your first employee. So, to the point, you know for sure that you need an employee when:
- you either want time for yourself
or
- you want to grow your business.
If you have though already on hiring an employee before, either to have more personal time or to work more on grow your business; is certain that if you haven’t done it is because you are concerned you cannot afford the salary, you think that if you hire a person to do your job you will be giving your earnings to them, or maybe it will cost more than you are actually earning.
The key suggestions below will help you to overcome that barrier with your business, so you can begin to transform it from a one person project into a real company. Remember that, the first step to change from freelancer to a real business entrepreneur is to learn how to delegate your things to your first employee.
Think of our business operational work as a system
Systematize your business and your current work, when you need to deliver the value (product or service) to your customer, what are the inputs you need? Which tasks do you need to do step by step to deliver? Prepare a list of procedures, from beginning to end, in writing, of the whole operational work you do until you deliver to your customer. These procedures will make your employee’s work faster and more efficient, so that you can invest less time training your employee at the beginning, and your employee can do more in less time.
You don’t need a full-time employee
If you cannot afford a full-time salary, you can always start offering a part-time job, working half day or few hours a week. Hiring an intern or undergraduate as assistant is a good choice; it can be helpful both for you and also for them, because it will give them some work experience.
You can start by promising to your part time employee an opportunity for a full time job, once you get more customers and more revenue. This will encourage them and give them motivation to take the job.
Focus on marketing
When you have your employee, the first thing you need to do with your time is focusing on marketing, dedicate fulltime on finding prospect and paying customers to your business. This way you will cover the salary of your first employee, and increase your income, which you can invest in more marketing and developing your business.
If it all goes well, eventually you will need a second employee.
Which other factor you think is important when hiring your first employee? Please share your comments.