How to gather your A Team without a permanent hire

Two weeks ago we established that being a solo-preneur can suck when you get burned out doing too many things yourself. So how do you go about building your A Team, aka. your success team to help you run your business?

Well, number one it doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a full-time or even part-time employee. These days there are many more flexible options; it just takes some creative thinking about how to make things work.

Three Ways to get help without hiring:

1. Pay for services:
Yep! Just straight up pay for someone to do a job or project for you.  When do you do this?  When you need someone local: like a cleaner, an assistant to do errands, or someone to come do a tradeshow with you.

Biggest Benefit: It allows you catch up in other areas of your business/life and a single job can be used as a ‘try out’. If it goes well you can ask them to do more work for you, and if it doesn’t you won’t have the awkwardness of terminating a contract. This is especially great for continuing services like laundry, a personal assistant or social media management.

2. Barter or Swap:
This is also great if you need someone local. I actually have been approached a few times by people needing coaching who wanted to do a swap services. It has worked out great for me.

Biggest Benefit: If you need to carefully manage your cash flow this can really help.

Tip: You must ask yourself “Do I really want what they offer? “ If the answer is no then kindly decline. Otherwise you’re just making yourself busier.

3. Go Online:
There are many virtual assistants who can help you out with social media scheduling, typing, emailing, data entry, blog writing etc. Freelance websites like Elance and Odesk are great ways to find people. I personally have used Elance and LOVE IT!

Biggest Benefit: Easily locate a person for a job with the exact skills you need and have the option of setting your budget at the outset. Hiring internationally also means you can use time zones to your advantage!

Tips: Know exactly what you want and how much you are willing to pay. Do you value experience or price?

Less experience = cheaper price, but might take longer and you may either get a dud or a diamond. I prefer to give the person a chance and help build them into a diamond. It keeps my costs low and helps me build a relationship with them.

More experience & referrals = costly but the quality is there.

For example, if you need a promo image that is going to be on all of your marketing material and be printed out on large posters then you want a professional. If it is just for Facebook then you may make a different choice.

There you have it: three choices on how to build your success team. There are more, but this is a great place to start.

photo credit: StockMonkeys.com via photopin cc

Finally, whichever way you do it, here is my TOP TIP:

Design the business relationship.

Clear and detailed expectations make lives easier. Outline everything that might be involved and know how you want it to be done, such as hours involved, how to communicate (ie. Email or phone), the approval process, etc.

Designing personal and professional relationships is a specialty of mine. I look forward to sharing more about this. But in the meantime if you have a question drop me a comment and I’d be happy to answer it for you.

xo
~ Diane