For a couple months now I’ve seen it coming: the need to hire someone to take over some of what I’m doing, so that I can do more. I think the one thing that shocks most people who’ve never run their own business is that you don’t get paid for all the time you work. What do I mean?

Think about working in a corporate environment (I started my business life as a Corporate SEO). If someone calls to talk about a contract, you send it to your sales team. If you need copies made, you can drop them off with the Admin Assistant. When you receive an invoice, you forward it over to Accounting. If your computer goes down, you call IT and go out for coffee. And, at many companies these days, your pay is direct-deposited so you don’t even have to go to the bank.

All of those services fly out the window when you go out on your own. You are your own IT, Admin, Accounting, HR and Management teams. All of that in addition to the fact that you need to get your work done every day. But you can’t exactly send a client an invoice with “5 hours - Fixed my computer” on it, can you? And that is why people who have only worked for companies are shocked to find out I may only do 20 hours of “work” per week. Except that those 20 hours of work took 40 hours of supporting effort. Even getting paid requires me to drive to the bank to deposit checks a couple times a week.

So, a few months ago when I stood with a total of 9 clients and could see my work-hours quickly outgrowing my ability to be more efficient, I began to work on the next challenge: what do I hire out? Assuming I could only afford one employee at the current volume, do I hire an Admin Assistant to take calls, make copies, and help organize meetings? Should I hire a sales person to manage my current contracts and help me find new ones? Should I attempt to find another SEO/PPC expert to take on client work (and if so, how can I be sure I can trust them to uphold the level of quality I demand for my clients?)? Or should I bring on an intern and hope that the amount of smaller-tasks I can hand off to them will outweigh the training time?

I am notoriously demanding when it comes to resumes. I often say that the minute I find the first typo I toss the resume, which is not far from the truth. I expect that one-page of writing shouldn’t be difficult to produce, and that you should have it so polished by the time you’re ready to send it out that I won’t find a thing wrong with it (from a technical perspective anyway). When I receive a five-page resume, or one written in the third person (another story for another time) I have to wonder what some people are thinking. So what’s the best way to get a job with Untouchable Marketing? Don’t send a resume.

As it turns out, the old adages about networking are correct, and knowing people is often greater than knowing anything else. I am going to try out an intern-esque position on a contract basis for the next 15 weeks or so to see if the outsourcing of tasks outweighs the training time. The candidate is actually family of a good friend/business partner who’s situation is well-suited to working from home. He’s qualified and never had to submit a resume.

How will I judge the outcome as a success? Like everything I else I look at numbers. I will feel the experiment is worthwhile if the dollars I pay are returned 2x in either hard dollars, or client approval (as measured by frequency of emails and number of referrals). If the experiment doesn’t meet this goal, then at least I was able to help out a friend and find out that I need to look for a partner or an assistant next.