Hire Your First People

The one thing

You cannot do everything yourself forever. At some point the work is bigger than one person, and that is a good problem.

Start here

For a long time, doing it all yourself is the right call. It keeps you close to the customer and cheap to run. Then a day comes when the work no longer fits inside one person, and holding on starts to cost you more than letting go would.

That is the moment to bring someone in. Start small. One person doing the clearest, most repeatable part of the work, the part you already wrote down as a system back in Stage 3. That written page is what makes a new person useful in days instead of months.

What to do

• Find the one task that eats your time and does not need you. The repeatable one, with steps you can hand over.
• Bring one person in on that task first. Give them the written how-to, watch the first few times, and fix the page where they get stuck.
• Be clear from day one about what the work is, what good looks like, and how they get paid. Vague arrangements go wrong slowly and quietly.

The fear, named

The fear runs two ways. You are scared of the cost and the responsibility of paying someone, and you are scared of handing your work to anyone who might do it worse than you. Both are real, so go in with open eyes. A salary is a promise you make every month, finding the right person is genuinely hard, and in many places hiring formally comes with rules of its own. Hire slowly, into a clear task, and only when the work is truly bigger than you.

Your move this week

Write down the one task you would hand over first, and the written how-to a new person would follow to do it. You do not have to hire yet. You have to know exactly what for.

You are ready when

Someone else is doing work you used to do, brought in properly against a clear task and a written how-to.