Hi-
I’ve got more work than I can do, and I’d much rather hire someone to do the businessy stuff and do the fun stuff - the coding - myself.
So this makes me consider a business manager of some sort. Not full-time, this would just be a few hours a week to take care of routine tasks and help me make some biz decisions.
Has anyone done this? Any advice?
Thank you in advance - this would be a big step for me, and I’d rather do it with your advice!
Kim
It sounds like you’re mixing two roles, a office / business manager who runs operational issues and a decision maker. Depending on what you want someone to help decide you will quickly leave the realm of basic employee, a little help, and need someone much more invested in your business.
Hiring on a truly part time basis is difficult… who wants to work just a few hours, who is qualified that can. So let’s break it down a bit… what types of activities do you see them doing?
If you had a business manager, what would that person manage? It sounds to me like you are essentially a freelancer - you enjoy coding but not the business end of things. So, really you aren’t trying to plan, build, or a business. Being a freelancer is a way of ‘doing business’ but it’s not really a business in traditional terms as much as it’s a single person doing work for money.
So, if you had a business manager what would that person ideally do for you?
Sorry it took me so long to respond, and thank you very much for your input. You both kind of said the same thing - what do I want this person to do? And that’s a very good question. I can’t answer it, so figuring that out is the perfect place to start.
On your website you say that you are ‘proudly a sole proprietorship’. Are you sure you really want to engage someone to help you grow out the business? I see a lot of freelancers who keep struggling with their businesses because they forget that they don’t want to grow a business - instead they just want to be a freelancer.
If you want to move up in the freelancing world rather than actually growing a business (very different things) then you need to concentrate on raising your rates/revenue more than anything else.