Hiring vs. Doing it all Yourself

[jnjsarauer]

I run a one-woman writing business, but there are times I burn the candle at both ends because I'm nervous about bringing in anyone else to help me. It just seems easier to me to keep doing things myself if I can. Are you still running your business solo, and if not, did you bring in employees at start-up or has it been a gradual process?

[AWorker]

I always prefer hiring other people to do the boring and grunt work for me,especially when i start-up a new bussines and need it promoted.I usually take a look at my earnings and judge if its better to pay someone or to do it by myself.Even if sometimes you might meet difficult persons to work with,in the end you still have profits hiring someone when the job is related to grunt work.

[Fergal]

Hiring your first time employee is a huge stepping stone in the development of any business. Having to pay out a wage every week or month is a huge financial commitment that needs to be carefully planned for.

It also brings on human responsibilities arising from the fact that you have to work closely with someone, you will be their boss and you will have to ensure that they have enough work to remain productive and make a profitable contribution to your business. On top of all that you take on a large responsibility for the career development of another person and you may have the misfortune to have to terminate the employment at some time in the future.

Have you considered the possibility of hiring someone on a freelance or a contract basis? The Internet provides access to a huge pool of freelancers in almost every imaginable field. Your obligations and commitments to a freelance employee may be somewhat less than they would be to a full time permanent employee.

[carefree]

I think there are two perspectives ...one what kind of satisfaction do you get from the wrok done. would you have done it better yourself??? if yes than sometimes you get annoyed by the standard of the work.
two.... ok fine let the other person do the job and if you dont like it ... you can be mad at him i.e if he is paid ...( you dont have the privilage of scolding on freelancers )

what is ur opinion guys .. ???

[yen]

Depends what you are hiring the person to help you with. For instance if you run a restaurant business and you are hiring a cook, just make sure that the person does not turn the table against you. If you are hiring people to work for you, go only for positions which is less important and yourself should focus on other things far more important like finance and planning.

[kewlchat]

Doing it all yourslf is good if you can actually do it all yourself..
for large bussiness this might not be possiable.
But fora smale new bussiness if you do it all yourself id suggest doing it as much as you can anyway :)

[xtremeliquid]

There are many times that I think hiring people would be great. Other times, I love working alone and it makes me feel confident in myself that I could do such a task alone. Nonetheless, if you feel that a staff is necessary, then you should probably go get one if you feel that the work is too excessive.

[jeni_fini]

It sounds like you have a lot on your plate. It is a good idea to hire someone to help you, maybe with the small odds and end stuff. That way you can concentrate on what is your main priority. It is hard, hiring your first employee, mainly because you have to be able to trust that person. If you knew someone personally that would be interested, a person you know you can trust, I believe this would be the best. Sometimes this just doesn't always work out that way and you have to depend on someone new.

What you have to do is really think about if you can do this alone, and if not, try to find someone, after doing your research on that person.

[melbel]

It really depends. If you can make more money doing work with something else, then it would be more profitable to hire someone to do some of the grunt work.

[exinRex]

yeah it really depends...if you can still handle your grunt work all by yourself then go ahead...but if not?..you probably hire somebody else to help you, but be sure that "somebody" really work hard to help you...:)

[Royer]

That fact depends on a lot of things. If you still are able to do everything yourself, why to hire somebody cause that would just be a lost for you. But if you don't have time and have too much work than hiring a new employees is a good step cause it will only lead you to success.
I still don't have any employees cause I don't have a big business and I can do everything by myself.

[sridatta]

Monetary Evaluation of Time is important rather than thinking whether one can do the work himself or hire someone to do... In other words, he should evaluate the value of his time in terms of money.. If it is greater than the salary that he is paying to a hire, then its good.. Otherwise, he is losing.. Work Load, Commitment, Finance, Profit.. everything matters..

[spirited]

Personally I like to do everything myself since I can't trust anyone else to do it the way I want it. This applies especially when I'm working on a project and I'd prefer doing everything from the bottom to the top just on my efforts, but this is a huge problem when it consumes too much of my time and it takes weeks, and perhaps even months, to finish it but I enjoy it so much more. The bottom line, it depends on your preference, whether you can be stubborn (such as me) or have no problem distributing your work.

[rickyou]

I particularly think that everything should be done on my own until I know everything, then I will outsource my job.

[zerzis]

I particularly think that everything should be done on my own until I know everything, then I will outsource my job.


Its immpossible to know each and everything and you will get bored by doing so many things together..which may also affect the job done. Try to spend some bucks for quality work.

[Junroe Inc.]

Like the traditional motto says... "No man can be an island". You should look out for qualified persons who can help you out in your goals, so your business can be much better.

[paul]

Actually It depends, for me if the work load is quite heavy, then i delegate. Otherwise i prefer to work alone. Just analyze the pros and cons and go ahead.

[breeanne]

I understand your hesitation in bringing in someone to help with your business. We owned our own small business and it was doing great it got bigger so we decided we needed to employ people as we just could not keep up. I'm afraid this was a mistake. Most of the people we put on didnt care about keeping a good business name as the business was not their's, they treated us as if they where the boss and thought they could do anything they wanted. In the end we just put everyone off and closed the business and went back to working for someone it was just a nightmare. But on the other hand this dose not happen all the time and I know that now we just had a bad lot working for us. :rolleyes:

[pendelton]

zerzis hit a nail on the head. You can not know everything about any business, it can not happen.

As far as hiring people to work for you. Do it on a piece basis, and, if either of you lives in the US and you want to properly file taxes, use a Form 1099. Avoid any actual employees if at all possible.

Before hiring anyone for any meaningful work you have to have a good grasp on leadership, if you don't have that keep your business small. Part of this thing called leadership is to know when to let an employee go before your business is ruined.

[Fergal]

breeanne raises some very good points for consideration. The costs of hiring and employing staff can be extremely high. Much higher than their actual wages when you pay taxes, insurance / pension contributions and cover overhead costs required to keep the staff in place. Actually managing the staff also takes a lot of time and has its own costs. We need to be mindful of all these costs before hiring anyone and we should ensure that we have the cash flow resource needed to cover them.

pendelton's point is related and important. If you don't provide the correct leadership and management for your staff they will cost you a lot more than the return you get from them and this won't help anyone in the long run.

Many staff do not have an appreciation of how difficult it is to run a business and keep it afloat. They often operate under the misconception that all business owners are very rich. It can be useful to educate staff in these areas so that they feel a sense of ownership. Sometimes giving them their own little "business" to run and make profitable, within the organisation, can be extremely beneficial.

Your business does not have to be large for this concept to work successfully. What I'm referring to is giving staff members control of their own section of work and asking them to have an understanding of how their section contributes overall to the costs or profit of the total business.

[abiji]

Well i do it myself and get hire people too. Things that are not boring and need attention i get it done myself. Things like submissions etc i get it done from people at good prices.

If you have a lot of work and need to hire someone don't spill your beans.

[Fergal]

...don't spill your beans.

I'm not familiar with that phrase. Does it mean don't pay too much?

[mark-20]

personaly i would hire staff but it is completly up to you. if you can do it yourself then is more money for you so thats like where you have to weigh it up on the scales if you know what a mean. just think if you had staff think how much you would need to pay them but if you done it yourself how much money you would keep simple things like that can help you to make your dissiscion but there is no point restricting yourself when you can get staff and advertise all over the place for a good bissness

[pendelton]

Fergal, it means do not say too much. The 'beans' being your secret.

[mark-20]

I'm not familiar with that phrase. Does it mean don't pay too much?

us irish wont understand this lol, it means dont tell them what you know. confuseing isnt it. a had to ask my girlfriend what it ment lol.

hireing someone can be relly hand it is almost money for siting on your ass. but if you are motivated to do it is more money for kinda siting on your ass. a would do what you can do with ebay products to compare them. and have a look at what is the good points and bad points to see what will be best for you.

[Slacker]

Well if you can handle the work yourself, then just stay by yourself. If your workload gets too much, and one day it may, you shouldnt be afraid of looking into hiring someone

[sarahFreder]

hi, well running a small business individually is good but it depends upon workload you can take. it its really hard to finish the work in time then you ultimately require some one to do work with you. you can recruit people in online. i came across a site www.mazibo.com, if you want you can approach them. hope this helps.

[rachael24]

I think doing as much as you can by urself is the best option for you right now. Maybe get a trusted friend to assist you if needed?

[avi007i]

Well hiring is a very good option because you can give you attention to things which carry more importance. Morever maybe the person you are going to hire might have a better skill than you and you can make good profits.

[Nazreen]

When running your own business, be it small or big, you should both be doing it all yourself and also hiring at the same time. I confused all of you there, didn't I?

Anyway, what I'm saying is that you should try to do every aspect of your business like inventory management, auditing, admin and recruitment, marketing and advertising, website design, etc. I'm not saying that you become a master of all these because that's simply impossible but you should know every aspect of your business. By knowing all the ins and outs of your business, you'll be in a better position in hiring the best people for your business.

[pendelton]

Your have made an excellent point there Nazreen. Having at least an idea of what needs to be done, and a vague notion of how, is important.

[Footzilla]

I also agree with Nazreen. If you hire a person straight away, your business will be ruined. It's better if you first establish the business and then after a couple of months you should hire a professional person. It's better if you promote your business yourself at first.

[Nazreen]

When your business is already at the point where you cannot handle everything by yourself, it's time to hire people. When hiring people or looking for business partners, don't go to all your friends immediately and ask them to work for you or become your partners. You must first consider this very important concept about leverage - Work with people who have what you don't have. Usually your friends would have the same hobbies, same ideas, same perception and have the same social standing as you!

Leverage takes into consideration - RICE. I'm not talking about the rice that most asians eat but the following:

Resource ($$$ and Time)
Ideas
Contacts
Expertise

You must look and work with people who have $$$ (financial leverage) and time, who have different Ideas from you, who have different Contacts from you and who have different Expertise from you!

[pendelton]

Work with people who have what you don't have.

Spot on Nazreen.

[medumurty]

Yes I would like to start my own business and promote it rather than hiring as it poses lot of management skils and hence I come to this conclusion. I have started a small firm all by myself and I am managing it alone so far.

[kayeshayne21]

Me and my hubby had an internet cafe business and we do both the work in managing our own i-cafe. I am the one who is in charge of our services like encoding, printing, scanning etc. and of course I am the cashier as well. My hubby is the one who is in charge of the pc troubleshooting and assessing the customers if they have some questions.

[Fergal]

...I have started a small firm all by myself and I am managing it alone so far.

Congratulations with that and I wish you continued success. Do you plan on staying a one person business, or will you expand and hire more people?


Me and my hubby had an internet cafe business and we do both the work in managing our own i-cafe...

That's great, nothing like having a business partner that you can trust and rely upon.

[Chrisj0401]

I understand your hesitation in bringing in someone to help with your business. We owned our own small business and it was doing great it got bigger so we decided we needed to employ people as we just could not keep up. I'm afraid this was a mistake. Most of the people we put on didnt care about keeping a good business name as the business was not their's, they treated us as if they where the boss and thought they could do anything they wanted. In the end we just put everyone off and closed the business and went back to working for someone it was just a nightmare. But on the other hand this dose not happen all the time and I know that now we just had a bad lot working for us. :rolleyes:

In this case, if most or even all employees tend to not care about the business then clearly lack of leadership, hiring/interviewing/recruitment skills is lacking. Make sure to research on what it takes to have good leadership in a business, how to hire the right people, how to even recruiting the right people, and having very good interviewing skills is important to shell out the bad recruits.

I would hire as soon as I know I can afford to, need to, and cant handle doing it alone.. Once I'm settled with however many employees, I'll save up and expand. Then hire even more, then more, as a cycle.. Of course I'll only expand if everything is settled and running well, making profits.. ect..


breeanne raises some very good points for consideration. The costs of hiring and employing staff can be extremely high. Much higher than their actual wages when you pay taxes, insurance / pension contributions and cover overhead costs required to keep the staff in place. Actually managing the staff also takes a lot of time and has its own costs. We need to be mindful of all these costs before hiring anyone and we should ensure that we have the cash flow resource needed to cover them.

pendelton's point is related and important. If you don't provide the correct leadership and management for your staff they will cost you a lot more than the return you get from them and this won't help anyone in the long run.

Many staff do not have an appreciation of how difficult it is to run a business and keep it afloat. They often operate under the misconception that all business owners are very rich. It can be useful to educate staff in these areas so that they feel a sense of ownership. Sometimes giving them their own little "business" to run and make profitable, within the organisation, can be extremely beneficial.

Your business does not have to be large for this concept to work successfully. What I'm referring to is giving staff members control of their own section of work and asking them to have an understanding of how their section contributes overall to the costs or profit of the total business.

Sounds like giving stock options to employees, right?


I also agree with Nazreen. If you hire a person straight away, your business will be ruined. It's better if you first establish the business and then after a couple of months you should hire a professional person. It's better if you promote your business yourself at first.

Depends on how much funding you got when you start and depends on many other things like type of business... For me when I plan on opening my Digital Distribution service, I wont be able to do that alone. I'll need someone ether myself or another person, look for contacts/content providers, or looking for content to add to my library of content. Then a staff for phone orders (or hiring a firm to do this might work). Then a staff to online orders, which may be done with 1 person depending on how many order per day/hour. Then database/website maintenance, ether a staff or 1 person. Marketing/Advertising team, which can be done by a firm or your own team. This can't all be done by 1 person.. So it does depend on a lot of things if you really need staff or not.

[autap6]

I am alone, also for budget reasons. If I worked with someone else it would be with someone that can do something that I can't. For instance I am more a technical guy, so I would look for someone more commercial.

[Sahil]

Well, I would surely like to Hire anybody rather then doing work myself the main reason behind is that the Hired person will do more work then you. First thing is only that, that is because that person do not have to think about anything and he/she just have to think about his work because the part of thinking will be done by you.

Next thing if you choose more workers for you, you will get good results as well as they will be fast because the working efficiency will be now doubled. Before you can only do work but now you are any in good amount so it will effect the speed of work

Thus, I prefer to Hire rather then Working myself.

[kutuhiphop]

yep it depends actually...

if u have spare time and can do it alone, why not?


but if u really need help, u should hire someone or ask some friend that can help u and run the business together

[sigma]

It all depend on the cost. If outsource is cheaper, always outsource
I will only do it myself if it is very important or it is high cost, else always outsource.
If i can do it but hire other people to do is cheaper, then i will outsource too

[Fergal]

The "Hiring vs. Doing it all Yourself" question is actually a very important one, in terms of how successful your business can be. If you want to create a successful business you simply can't do it all yourself. There are parts of the business that you will need to outsource or hire people to implement and manage.

You need to learn how to hire people or successfully outsource some tasks if you wish to succeed.

[pakidesigner]

when i hire some one, it is always when i find the hardest job to do myself, and i have time problems to deliver the project. i do contract with the person and that's how i do hiring, mostly it happened the one i hired, start doing there own work and become my competitor.. i don't know how to cure this pain.

[Fergal]

when i hire some one, it is always when i find the hardest job to do myself, and i have time problems to deliver the project. i do contract with the person and that's how i do hiring, mostly it happened the one i hired, start doing there own work and become my competitor.. i don't know how to cure this pain.

What kind of work have you been hiring people to do?

Perhaps they were already your competitor before you hired them?

[sigma]

when i hire some one, it is always when i find the hardest job to do myself, and i have time problems to deliver the project. i do contract with the person and that's how i do hiring, mostly it happened the one i hired, start doing there own work and become my competitor.. i don't know how to cure this pain.

Yes, this is a pain. And therefore i never outsource the whole project to only one personal. Normal i still will follow up the project and prefer to break it down to two or more part. For example, When i get project on link building, then i will listed down what kind of link building need to be carry out, for example,
1. blog commenting
2. blog post
3. dofollow forum posting
Then i will hire 3 person, each of them only do one item. In this case, they are more focus on special work and dont really know how the whole link building project is going on

[Fergal]

That's something I've learned as well Sigma. The more specific you make the task, the better the chance you have of getting a positive outcome. When I started out I made the tasks much too broad, when I was hiring. Not surprisingly, this often resulted in poor quality work being returned to me.

[GekiDan]

For me, I like to do it myself, unless I really don't know how to do it.
I know how to write simple articles and make a couple of website banners so I don't need to hire someone to do that for me.

[Fergal]

For me, I like to do it myself, unless I really don't know how to do it.
I know how to write simple articles and make a couple of website banners so I don't need to hire someone to do that for me.

Which do you prefer, writing or design? What could you achieve, if you concentrated on the one that you are brilliant at and hired or outsourced the other tasks?

[ahmedemad]

It really depends. If you can make money do the other works

[kutuhiphop]

For me, I like to do it myself, unless I really don't know how to do it.
I know how to write simple articles and make a couple of website banners so I don't need to hire someone to do that for me.

yep..the same thing goes with my online magazine business...i did all the writing things...

but somehow i dont really know about making a website, and i have to hire people to do the things...

[GekiDan]

Which do you prefer, writing or design? What could you achieve, if you concentrated on the one that you are brilliant at and hired or outsourced the other tasks?
I prefer designing. But also like to write about stuffs that I really like. Especially what you see on my blog. But on your second question, sorry, butI can't seem to understand it. ><"

[Fergal]

Sorry if I wasn't clear GekiDan. I read a theory before about the benefits of spending your time working on what you are brilliant at and outsourcing or hiring someone to do everything else. The author talked about what you are brilliant at, in terms of what you really enjoy doing and what you are naturally very good at doing. So, something that is a pleasure to work on and that you are good at, without having to make a huge effort.

The author's view was that in order to be truly successful we should spend as much of our work time as possible working on what we are brilliant at and hire others to take care of the rest.

[GekiDan]

Oh. I see. Thanks for the explanation. Well, I rarely hire article writers for my blog since I didn't make it to earn money. I just made it to kill my free time and share some news and information to other people who share the same interest as I am. Putting Adsense on my blg is just a bonus. :D

[kurama]

maybe it's depend on you, if u can do it yourself you don't need to hire someone..
but if you are busy and can't do it maybe you need a help by hiring someone to do it..

[JezC]

This is really a question of work life balance and how much you can take on without going insane...if its too much to prevent that, then you need to hire, until then, do it yourself.

[electroman]

on starting, i do it myself!Well as the business grows bigger, i start hiring more and more people! That's how it works for me ;)

[EditingAudio]

It's a good idea to hire at least one other person at least part time. You can hire them for less than what you make. Why not make more money?

[AshleyWhiteBusin]

You can hire one by one then if you feel like you are expanding, then you can hire more. I bet you cannot do all those things all at once especially business accounting.