Hiring What You Don’t Know

I remember taking a tour of a friend’s office and warehouse once. Okay, it was more like a compound. It was unassuming from the outside, but on the inside it was like a surreal toy factory.

Hiring what you don’t know

There were different divisions that handled some thousand or so products. You could walk through the hallways and see teams of people working on new designs and packaging. Then there were other groups working on catalogs and marketing. All typing away at their computers.

So I was a little surprised that the owner, the big cheese, the head honcho, really couldn’t use a computer at all. Here was a multi-millionaire that had started this business in a one room apartment with no money and built it into a powerhouse. But he could barely send an email. When I asked why, he said he hired people to do what he couldn’t do, or didn’t want to do, and spent his time doing what he was best at.

I’ve spent the past few days trying to figure out how to put an HTML banner on my site. This is not something that’s easy for me to figure out and I’ve wasted a lot of valuable time. So, I finally decided to take my friend’s advice and hire someone to do it for me.

I’m a big believer in constantly learning new things. When it comes to being a business owner, there is always something new to learn, especially when it comes to the Internet.

Learn how to delegate

But sometimes hiring what you don’t know how to do yourself is a better choice. Instead of spending the time to learn how to work on your car engine, it might be a better idea to just let the pros do it. Learn how to delegate.

In the past couple of years I, and many other business owners, have learned how to do more with less, and cut out any waste in the company. I think all entrepreneurs should know how to do most jobs in their business. At least know enough about them that you know what’s going on and can better explain to an employee or assistant. But, time is money, and when you get to a point that it just makes more sense to hire someone, hire the best person you can afford to hire and spend your time doing what you do best. Whatever that is.