Hiring your first employee

           How do you know if you’re ready to hire your first employee? Is it when you’re making a certain amount per year, or do you base it on being overly booked? The truth is you don’t ever have to hire, and a lot of people remain solo owners/operators for a long time. I want to preface this by pointing out how staying solo is also a great path. You have complete control over everything because you do everything yourself, and if used correctly, you can take as much time off as you want to and work as much or as little as you like. The risk of staying solo is if you ever have any physical issues, then the business can stop overnight, and to make it worse, you may not be able to sell the business for much at all, even though you earn “good money”.

You are ready to hire if you can honestly answer “yes” to the following five questions…

1. Do you have a healthy business retainer (a decent pile of cash)?
2. Would you be financially fine if you had to take home 30% less pay for two months?
3. Do you find yourself turning away work during busy seasons?
4. Are you willing to raise prices as needed?
5. Can you create and implement basic systems?

If you can’t answer yes to these five questions, then don’t hire. Stop here and work on getting a place where you can answer yes on all five of these. If you can answer yes on all of those but still feel unsure, then I’d encourage you to start small. Just hire one part-time helper for now as a way to try it out. Doing this will help you get your basic systems in place, and make changes before hiring a 2nd employee. Just like when you started the business by yourself and weren’t quite sure of everything, but started anyway. View this the same way, and just go for it! Here are four things you need to consider before jumping in, though…

1. Timing: Don’t wait until you’re overbooked. Hire a good 2-4 weeks BEFORE the busy season to allow time for onboarding, and training.  
2. SOP’s: Create standard operating procedures that explain exactly how we clean windows, talk to customers, and handle situations. Everything in your mind needs to be on paper so it’s clear and easy to follow. Short videos are good as well.
3. Onboarding: Create an employee handbook, company vision, mission statement, and core values, and automate paperwork with software like Gusto. Explain what’s expected and why you’re excited about the future! 
4. Realistic expectations: Don’t expect them to be at your speed or quality in the first month. Even 6 months later, they may still only be 75% of your speed, so you need to factor that into your new pricing. 

Now that I’ve laid up some really practical things to think about, I want to leave you with three powerful reasons you should hire if you’re on the fence about it…

1. Sell your business: You can put yourself in a position to not just have a job but have an asset to sell. 
2. Systems: Once you go through all of the initial hassles of creating SOPs and systems to follow, it’s done. If that employee leaves, you still have the same systems to follow from last time, so you can simply hire someone else without constantly going through the same hassle of setting it up again.
3. Earn more: You can only sell so many hours working solo. You might actually lose money on your first 1-2 hires, but eventually, you’ll find a good employee who actually sticks around, and now you can make money even if you’re on vacation that week. 

In conclusion, there’s no right or wrong way to operate your business because, like playing with Lego, it’s really up to you what you want to build!

Christopher Simmons