The biggest mistake I make when I started my first business?
I tried to do everything.
Learned website design through two weeks of trial and error
Learned how to film and make (bad) ads
Painstakingly taught myself how to edit
A YouTube short from my first online business: reselling AirPod Cases
Learning these skills took me hundreds of hours.
While it did make me a better entrepreneur, I didn’t have time to do the most important thing of actually growing my business.
Years later, I discovered a more efficient way to grow my business without doing the building:
Freelancers.
Why you should hire a freelancer
They are experts. You are not.
Here’s a short story to explain.
After working on the Business Deconstructed website for weeks, it still looked unimpressive.
I had experience in website design from my past businesses, but I thought a freelancer could probably do design better than me.
The results?
Before (my design):
After (freelancer design):
It took the freelancer only 15 hours to get what would have taken me 50 hours to make. Not to mention, the quality was much better,
Also, most freelancers are flexible. You can negotiate prices paying them per project or based on hours.
And if they’re good?
You can easily rehire them.
Freelancers you should consider hiring:
Designers: Freelancers who do websites, logos, graphics, or anything design-related. Unless you are very skilled at design, they will do it much better than you and for a very reasonable price.
Video editors: Having learned video editing, it takes a lot of time and skill to master. If you want to save hundreds of hours and speed up your content workflow, work with an editor.
Tech/platform specific freelancers: This includes all of the confusing stuff: website fixes, automations, tracking pixels. Some of these minor problems will take a very long time for you to fix, while a freelancer can do it in minutes.
Save yourself a lot of time and sanity. Hire a freelancer.
When should you not hire freelancers?
If you can’t afford them
If you can do it yourself faster and with better quality
As an entrepreneur you always want to trade your money for time.
The more time you have, the more time you can spend on strategic and deep work that freelancers can’t do.
That said, for tasks both you and freelancers can do, it is almost always a good decision (unless the reasons above apply) to hire a freelancer.
How to work with freelancers
1/ Find a reputable freelancer.
The two platforms I recommend are Fiverr and Upwork.
They have a list of qualified candidates, and you can look at their skills, reviews, portfolios, and more.
They also allow contract deals and payment by hour or by project, which is very helpful.
2/ Give feedback
Look at the work they do and give feedback!
Feedback is so important. The freelancer may be doing work they think is good but is completely off with your style.
Don’t expect them to know what you want.
3/ Rehire them for a longer period
A good freelancer is worth rehiring. Not all of them will be good, so save the contacts of the people you worked with.
Pro tip: Give the freelancer very, very specific examples of work that you want. A lot of freelancers model their work after the examples you give them.
Ex. For the Business Deconstructed website, I gave the freelancer the highest-converting websites within the business newsletter niche.
- Warren