This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
How can I hire my first assistant? Hey, side hustlers, welcome to the podcast. It's Chris Guillebeau here. In this episode, we're gonna help a reseller from Minneapolis go through this process of, in fact, hiring their first assistant. Bart in Minneapolis needs to get some help.
How can he find the right candidate, onboard them effectively, and handle any logistical aspects of expanding his team? So I love this because this is a very common challenge of busy side hustlers, when their business starts taking off and they're like, "Hey, I don't actually have that many hours to work on this, but if I hired somebody to do some of the minutia, or maybe it's not minutia, just to do stuff, do some of the daily tasks of the business, then perhaps I can devote my time to actually growing the business, like working on the business as opposed to working in the business, a crucial distinction. But of course, it's easier said than done. And a lot of people do kind of get tripped up along the way. Lots of things can go wrong.
You may not necessarily want to be a manager, so you have to figure that out. So let's talk about some steps Bart can take to ensure a quick and easy, or at least a smooth hiring process. Let's say that, smooth, may not necessarily be quick. But what all does he need to do? And what can you do when it's time to scale your side hustle the right way?
Detailed question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hi, I'm Bart, a reseller from the Minneapolis area. I've been running my business on the side for a couple of years now. And I'm considering expanding by hiring an assistant to help with administrative tasks and client communication and so on. I'm wondering how can I ensure a smooth onboarding process to integrate them into my workflow?
Additionally, I'm curious about the legal and financial implications of hiring an employee or contractor for my side hustle. What steps should I take to find the right assistant and set my business up for success as I grow? [Music]
All right, Bart, congratulations on growing this reselling business to the point where you're ready to bring on some help. And so for anybody in this situation, a couple of defining questions that you can answer from the beginning that will then make everything else easier, kind of determine the next step of the process. Because if you look online for hiring, it gets pretty complicated.
And there are great platforms and services like LinkedIn jobs and SIP Recruiter and others. Some of them have been sponsors of the podcast before. And those can be great if you're hiring somebody full-time or if you're really trying to scale a business, you've got some real budget. But in this case, it seems like Bart is just looking for some local help. And so that's actually the next key question.
Do you need this person to be local or not? So if it is somebody local, part-time, that kind of thing, then it's almost like, who do you know? Or who do you know who knows someone? And that's how a lot of those roles often kind of come to be. But if you don't specifically need local help, then there's a bunch of other things you could do.
So I've used a service called Zertruil. They're not our sponsor or anything. I'm a paying customer, Zertruil, Z-I-R-T-U-A-L. I actually found somebody who's great, who's been helping me with some things on the podcast. Her name is Deann, thanks Deann.
And there you can hire a virtual assistant who will do some of that admin work. There are other services, of course, that's just one. You can also hire somebody directly from Upwork or Fiverr, other platforms like that. I think at one point on the podcast, we had a whole case study of a guy who works with Filipinos specifically. He's got a whole agency of connecting Filipinos with people in the West who are looking for virtual assistants.
That's a whole process to go through. Either way, and whatever you end up doing, one thing that's really helpful, I think I use the word role, just define the role really specifically. Identify the tasks and responsibilities that you want to delegate to this new assistant, such as inventory management, customer service, shipping perhaps, and just craft a really detailed description that outlines not just the role, but those specific processes, like exactly what they do. The more time you spend on this, the easier it will be for you later because you can use that process with multiple people. And if you have a new process, something that that person ends up working on, ask them to help create the written documentation, which can then allow other people to do it as well.
So putting that time in documentation can be really, really helpful. It's something that I've tried to improve upon myself as I go. And then for these kinds of roles, whether they are in-person or virtual, doing a trial run, a paid trial run, just to be clear, like you need to pay them, but a paid trial run of some tasks, maybe it's a week or two, maybe it's 30 days, to evaluate their performance, their work style, before making a final decision. And that's just best for both parties, right? Because you want them to be happy about working for you.
You want everybody to be happy in the process. So I'm a big fan of those kinds of trials, documenting the work, creating some standard operating procedures, and then wherever possible, keeping things on a contract basis. Because once you actually go to hiring someone as an employee, that does get a lot more complicated. You're gonna have some tax liability for that person most likely. There might be some other responsibilities that you have, that you might not even know of.
So I think it's always good to start part-time on a contract basis, especially for side hustlers, when you are beginning to grow your business. So I could say more, but I want to keep things on point, action-packed. Bart, good luck, let us know what happens. Listener's always happy to hear from you as well, sidehustleschool.com, lots of resources, notes for every episode, and of course, a new episode every day. Thanks so much for being out there.
My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
