You are ready to hire when you can list fifteen hours of weekly work that somebody new could finish without you. The feeling of readiness never arrives, so our advice is to measure the work you would give away, rather than how tired you feel.
It is half past nine at night and you are doing the invoices again. Each round takes about forty minutes and somewhere in that hour you thought about hiring somebody, then you thought about payroll and put the idea down.
The fear behind that is reasonable, because an employee is the first cost that arrives whether or not the month went well. What we would tell you over coffee is that readiness is a measurement rather than a feeling, and the thing worth measuring is the work you would give away.
How do I know if I’m busy enough to hire someone?
Hours are the wrong thing to count, because the busiest owners we meet are busy with work that only they can do. Sixty hours a week tells you that you are tired rather than that a job exists.
The test we give owners takes two weeks and costs nothing. Keep a note of every task you do, how long it took, and whether somebody who has never worked in your business could do it after being shown twice. Then add up only the tasks you marked yes.
If that number reaches fifteen hours a week, a job already exists and you happen to be the person doing it. In our experience the total comes in higher than owners guessed, and it is nearly all small paperwork rather than the important work they hoped to pass on.
I can’t afford an employee. Is that the end of it?
Not on its own, because affordability depends on what you do with the hours you buy back. The wage is not the whole number either, since payroll taxes and insurance sit on top of it. We would work out the real monthly cost first.
Then do the sum in the other direction: write down what you would do with fifteen hours returned to you every week, in specific terms and this month rather than one day. If the honest answer is that you would do the same work slightly less exhausted, you are not ready yet.
If the answer is two sales calls a week you cannot currently make, the hire pays for itself in a way you can point at. Our advice is to put both numbers on one page, because separately they are only worries.
| What you notice | What you assume it means | What it usually means |
| Small tasks keep slipping | I am disorganized | The paperwork has outgrown the gaps between your real work |
| Customers wait three days for a reply | I need to be quicker | You are the only door into the business, and it is shut while you work |
| You cannot take a week off | I am indispensable | Nothing has been written down yet |
| Revenue is flat while your hours climb | I need more customers | You have run out of hours in which to sell |
What if I hire someone and there isn’t enough work for them?
Start with part-time hours, which is the cheapest answer to that fear. Ten or fifteen hours a week is a real job to the right person, and it lets you find out what you need before you commit to somebody’s whole week.
There is a second version of the same fear, which is that explaining the work will cost more time than doing it yourself. That one is true for roughly four weeks, and the fourth week is where owners either give up and take everything back, or start getting their evenings returned to them.
Am I ready to hire, or am I just disorganized?
Usually both, and the order you deal with them in matters more than the label. Owners wait to write everything down before they hire, and the writing never happens: the hours it needs are exactly the hours they do not have.
Hiring into a slightly messy business works, as long as the first month of the job is partly the new person watching you and writing down what you do. Ask them to type out each step as they take it, then read what they wrote and correct it.
Correcting is the only part that needs you, and it takes about fifteen minutes at a time – what comes out is written in language a new person can follow. Sigma Growth Specialists is called in at this point fairly often, and the work is never as unteachable as it felt at nine at night.
What to do about it this week
Our advice is to start the two-week note today on paper, with three columns: what you did, how long it took, and whether a stranger could have done it after being shown twice. At the end of it you are holding either a job description or your answer, and both beat another month of wondering.
Frequently asked questions
Should my first hire be part time or full time?
Part time in almost every case, because it lets you test the job before you test your bank balance. Fifteen hours a week is a real trial of your own ability to give work away, which is the part that usually fails. Adding hours later is a pleasant conversation to have.
Should I hire a virtual assistant instead of an employee?
An assistant working remotely suits work that arrives as clear, repeatable requests, such as sorting the inbox, scheduling and invoicing. It suits work that needs local knowledge or physical presence far less well. Look at your two-week note and see which kind of work is in it before you choose.
How much work do I need before I hire someone?
Fifteen hours a week of work that somebody else could genuinely do is the point at which the job stands up on its own. Below that you are usually looking at a contractor or a few hours of help, and above twenty-five hours you have probably been late for a while.
What if I hire someone and they leave after three months?
Some of them will, and the loss is smaller than you fear if you wrote the work down while they learned it. What you keep is the written version of the job, which makes the second hire much quicker than the first. Owners who lose everything when a person leaves are the ones who never wrote anything.
I don’t have time to train anyone. How is this supposed to work?
Training happens inside the work rather than before it, which is why the writing-down method exists. You do the task once with the person beside you, they write the steps, and you correct what they wrote. The alternative is doing that task alone every week for another year.
Do I hire someone to do what I’m worst at, or what I’m best at?
Hire for what you are worst at first, provided it is also work that repeats. Your weakest area is usually paperwork, bookkeeping or following up, and it is both teachable and quietly expensive when neglected. Keep the work that only you can do, at least until the second hire.
The bottom line
You will not feel ready, and the feeling was never the right instrument. Count two weeks of your own work honestly and the decision mostly makes itself, whichever way it lands. Sigma Growth Specialists spends a good deal of its time with owners at exactly this point, and the work usually starts with two weeks of notes rather than a job posting.
