Tightrope: Hiring's not a hassle if it helps your business grow
— -- It's that time of the year when we say goodbye to the summer and move full time back into work and school. For those in school it means hitting the books. For those of us who are entrepreneurs it can mean drumming up more business. And, more business can mean that you will need more help.
Hiring can be one of the toughest things facing an entrepreneur, and a lot of people avoid hiring for that reason. I have met many entrepreneurs who will stretch themselves thin by taking on a greater work load than they can effectively handle, instead of hiring additional help. Many of them tell me that hiring is burdensome.
But don't waste valuable time thinking that you can do it all yourself. Most often hiring help when you need it can be the gateway to building a successful company.
Make hiring less of a burden by taking time to identify exactly what you need in an employee. Take the following story as an example:
Paul remembers with horror that when he started his accounting business, he did not have enough staff around when he needed them. "There I was with a client, discussing their financial matters, when the phone would ring or somebody would show up at my office, and I had to repeatedly interrupt my client's time. It was awful!"
"I thought I'd keep costs down by not taking on any additional help, but it wasn't worth the aggravation experienced by me and my clients. I actually lost business, because some of my clients didn't come back."
No, you really can't do it all, even when you want to. Something is bound to break down somewhere, and you don't want that happening in your business!
The flipside of this story is to provide yourself with the maximum amount of support staff that you can, as Paul found out.
Paul went on to say, "I began to hire a few key people I needed around me. First, I found a wonderful woman to come in and answer the phones, do light paperwork, things like that. She was instrumental in freeing up my time so that I could spend quality time with my clients."
Once Paul hired help, his accounting business picked up to the point of him being able to hire another CPA part-time. This move took a lot of the load off of his shoulders and allowed him to concentrate on the things that he needed to get done. Plus it enabled him personally and his business to appear more polished to clients and potential clients.
You can never have enough good support personnel. The busier you become, the more you will need people to lighten the load. The key lies in finding the right people. Don't be reluctant to consider part-time help, or if, like Paul, you have a business that is seasonal, hire people during your busy season. I have often hired people that I only need for a short time from temp agencies. They have the ability to provide your company with the most qualified candidates by prescreening people; all you have to do is make the final selection.
Good help is the lifeline of your business and can take you and your company to unlimited success.
Gladys Edmunds' Entrepreneurial Tightrope column appears Wednesdays. Click here for an index of her columns. As a single, teen-age mom, Gladys made money doing laundry, cooking dinners for taxi drivers and selling fire extinguishers and Bibles door-to-door. Today, Edmunds is founder of Edmunds Travel Consultants in Pittsburgh and author of There's No Business Like Your Own Business, a six-step guide to success published by Viking. Her website is www.gladysedmunds.com. You can e-mail her at gladys@gladysedmunds.com.