When You Should Start Hiring People. (Hint: It’s Probably Right Now.)

Yes, even if your business is pulling in just $20,000 a year, you probably need to start hiring people to help your business grow.

I can’t say what exactly your business needs at this moment. That’s for you to figure out.

But I can give you a few examples of people you should consider hiring, even if your business is still generating paper-thin profits.

Start by hiring people who will make you more money.

The first person I hired for my copywriting business was someone whose job was to schedule my day-to-day. (He’s basically a personal assistant, but there aren’t any coffee runs involved.)

And here’s the critical detail: I hired him before I had a full 40-hour work week for myself.

Why?

Because he created accountability for my daily actions. He made sure I was using at least 8 hours a day to work on my client’s copy, and if I didn’t have any clients, he scheduled cold calls, emails, and blog posts that would help generate more interest in my services.

I was probably only making about $500 a week when I first hired him, but for about $100 a week, I increased my productivity and found so many more clients than I would have if I weren’t on a schedule.

Skip the web designer.

One of the first services most entrepreneurs pay for is web design.

But even my own sales page was created with WordPress and the OptimizePress plugin. These are cheap services that cost about $200 maximum.

(Compare that with the $5,000 or so you’d spend on a professional, customized website.)

And here’s something that most entrepreneurs seem to forget:

No one is going to buy your products or services just because the website has a custom design.

What compels people to make a purchase is salesmanship. That can be done in copywriting, presentations, or simply over the phone, but there has to be a conversation.

Otherwise, you’re just paying for a pretty billboard.

Hire someone who can do the job at least twice as well as you can.

This goes back to the web design example: if I create a sales page on OptimizePress and compare it to a professional web designer, is the pro design really twice as good as my cheap amateur version?

More importantly, will it make twice as many sales? Probably not.

But when someone hires me to write copy, they usually get two or three times as many sales. (And that’s counting the clients who are professional marketers themselves.)