Kaspars Brencans | Posted on March 25, 2016Hiring The Best Freelancers/Freelance Teams
It’s no secret, the world that looks like it’s made up of large corporate companies is really a giant whirlpool of small expert teams who go by the job title “consultant” more often than not. They are abundent, they are (usually) highly skilled, self-driven, and most importantly they are eager to work on projects.
So what’s the problem? Why can’t you seem to get your team to work together?
If you’re new to being a business owner or you’re just starting to get to the point of trying to hire people to help you run your solo-enterprise, then this is a huge step to take. It’s also a very frustrating one for anyone who hasn’t been trained on how to hire people.
Tip #1: Knowing what you want, but being able to accept it may be completely wrong
This is a BIG thing. We all know stories of entreprenuers like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford who refused to accept the “it can’t be done” statement. They both spent years of their lives overcoming that obstacle and ultimately changed the world forever. In every day business though, this is rarely the case. What I am talking about here is being able to clearly define the outcome you want, communicate that to a freelancer/consultant, and being able to accept that you may have unachievable goals.
I’ll give you a great example! I once had a customer who had a very high priced product, it was a water filtration system. I told him the pricing seemed incredibly high, it was easily 4x the comparable filtration systems and he was even out pricing the actual manufacturer. Being top dog isn’t a bad thing, but being higher than the actual manufacturer means you’ve got a serious uphill battle in presenting value to a buyer. In addition to that, he had set his goals based on a $0.01-$0.02 per click cost on Facebook. I told him no way, that wasn’t possible. At the time Facebook was inflating up to $0.25 per click easily, and they were expanding like crazy.
The clients response? He told me he found a training course that promised a way to get clicks in his price range. I went through the course as he had asked–I mean hey, I’ll take my own advice and if I’m wrong I’ll gladly admit it and sell this new expertise to my other clients. As it turns out, the training was nearly 2 years old at the time I started watching/reading. No good. On top of that, some of his targeting recomendations could have gotten my client black listed from advertising on Facebook. Definitely no good. Of course, the client didn’t like that feedback and shortly after cancelled our arrangement. What’s the point in hiring an expert if you aren’t going to seriously consider their advice?
Tip #2: Don’t try hiring people without any money, and without credentials.
Trying to convince someone to work for free is downright next to impossible. It’s also totally possible, but usually that’s around the startup areas like Austin TX or Silicon Valley. If you’re just starting out and don’t know something and want to try and convince someone to help you do it for free, at least have a compelling background that tells the person they’ll get actual paying work from you or a connection of yours in the future.
As a marketer, I’m constantly approached by budding entreprenuers who have the next big thing but don’t know how to market it. Actually, I’ll be frank when I say they don’t know how to market or sell, and it’s usually a very awkward conversation. I’m always asked by people who have no credentials to tell me they can be successful at this, they have no money to start, and on top of that they can’t sell because they have no idea how to. That’s not a place to be in that gives anyone confidence to start. Bootstrapping a business is not a bad thing, but get some traction first and make sure people actually want to buy your product. Or even better, do some testing to see if people even want your product before dumping any money into the development. I’ve seen hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted on projects that I could tell from the getgo were total failures. It’s a sad thing.
Tip #3: Have regular meetings to discuss progress.
This sounds obvious, but with the enourmous amount of blogs out there claiming that they setup a business and “forgot about it”, or some of these other audacious claims of how hands-off every business can be. The fact of the matter is, it’s just not universally true. Yes there are some businesses that can be mildly successful and hands-off, but to get something off the ground with a bunch of unknown variables is going to require attention, detail, and precision. How can you have any of that without even talking to the experts you’ve hired? From the start, go over a plan with your freelancers on how often you want to communicate with them, and specifically about what topics. It’ll be a huge life saver, both in time and frustration.
Tip #4: Give them permission to make decisions.
I know this is a super scary thing, but give your experts permission to make decisions without you. Your goal is the most important thing, and maybe they can accomplish the goal in a better way than you’ve instructed. It happens! Take off the ego hat, and take a deep breath. If you’ve clearly outlined the goal and purpose of what you hired your freelancer to do, they’ll accomplish it! I’ve had people come to me with giant tasks lists that are beyond ineffecient and outright ludicrious. I turn down projects like this, or clients who won’t take suggestions on how to improve things. Freelancers live and thrive off of freedom, so trying to hire them by detailing every single thing they do just produces friction. Now, this tip comes with a little disclaimer. Freelancers from certain countries just take marching orders. Hiring someone from the Philippines or India who has little to no work experience is likely just going to be a hard worker who only takes marching orders. It’s in their culture, and especially in the Philippines, Filipino’s don’t want to dissappoint you by doing anything incorrectly so they’ll take your instruction and just run with it. You’ll have to tell them to give you feedback if they think they have found a better way.
I had a woman who was helping me with lead generation, and she did a great job. A month or so into her project, she was doing so well and helped me get everything so well organized that I then ended up hiring her housemate to also help with the lead generation. Her feedback and guidance on how my instructions were written, the level of detail and clarity really made a big difference! I thought I had done a great job, but adding a new perspective was incredibly helpful and eye opening to see how someone else might interpret the instructions given to them.