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When you need something done but lack the skill, is it better to learn it or hire a professional? Today's caller faces exactly that with her course illustrations.
My side hustle is an online health coaching company called Run Life. Another coach and I teach courses on weight loss, race training, weight training, and overall wellness. Our course content is developed in-house, and we often need custom graphic design — for example, illustrations of the body with certain muscle groups highlighted, progress charts, meal plans, and worksheets. The problem is that I'm not skilled at graphic design. So my question is, should I put in the time and money to learn design myself, or should I contract out my graphic design needs? I want to leverage my current skill set, but my path to income has a huge hurdle when I think of paying someone else to do all my design work.
These illustrations sound genuinely important and hard to produce — drawing anatomical detail isn't easy to learn. Even though paying someone feels like a hurdle, hiring out is the right call here. Since she's just starting, a platform like Upwork or Fiverr is a great fit: post a detailed project for bidding (the more specific, the better), and be open to working with talented people anywhere in the world to keep costs down. The best case is you find someone you can work with for a long time.
One thing that helps either way: instead of learning graphic design (a profession of its own), improve your visual literacy so you can communicate direction and feedback clearly — better results, lower cost. And in the long run, for many businesses, investing in quality design is worth it.
Have a question? Visit SideHustleSchool.com/questions.
