What should first-time adopters of content businesses do?

As a content entrepreneur, sometimes you may feel a weight on your shoulders.

After all, according to research from The Tilt, the average time it takes to launch a content business and hire your first talent is about 19 months, during which time you'll be responsible for all the tasks required to build a successful operation.

But if you are able (or willing) to expand your workforce, what would you hire someone to do?

“Entrepreneurs are visionary thinkers, so they need to hire doers,” says Kate Ertmann, founder of Kate Loves Math. “Even if you're a great doer yourself and you get personal satisfaction from being really good at any task, you're going to end up with a bottleneck in efficiency. In math, the word 'bottleneck' is used synonymously with the word 'limitation' in the world of optimization problems.”

Kate's first hire was a project manager: “I had had good experience as a project manager before starting my own business, but I knew that an entrepreneur's first few hires needed to lighten the load,” she explains.

It's taken Kat Margulis, author, reading coach, host of the Passion Project podcast, a long time to hire someone because, by her own admission, she's “a bit of a control freak.”

She is in the process of hiring an assistant editor and project manager so she can serve a larger audience. “My talents clearly lie in storytelling coaching and content strategy consulting,” says Cat.

Best-selling author and speaker Andrew Davis says that one of his first hires was a full-time logistics and operations person because he needed someone to handle the massive amount of travel, invoicing, and communications required to run a successful speaking business.

Rachel Smith, founder of Rachel's English, says she needed a general administrative support position but fired her first hire because he wasn't the right fit.

Virtual assistants are a popular first hire for content entrepreneurs because of the breadth of their job responsibilities.

Creator Wizard founder Justin Moore saved four to five hours a week by hiring a virtual assistant to help him curate his newsletter. “Now I try to spend as much time as possible doing what I do best: writing and recording videos,” he says.

A virtual assistant was also the first hire for Austin L. Church, author and founder of Freelance Cake. “Many consulting and business coaching engagements are difficult to delegate, especially if the other person doesn’t have the expertise,” he explains. “Reclaiming my time by delegating high-frequency, low-impact tasks like managing my inbox, managing my calendar, and setting up weekly newsletters has allowed me to spend more time on the areas that best suit my talents and drive revenue.”

Travelingmitch founder Christopher Mitchell went in the opposite direction and brought a business partner on board. “I never imagined how much easier (and better) things would become by not having to figure things out on my own,” he says.

Michel Martello, founder of Minima Designs, doesn't currently have a team, but he has hired assistants and junior programmers in the past, but he wouldn't have made the same choices if he were hiring now.

“I would leverage AI for most of the same tasks and instead spend more on hiring accounting and advertising consultants who specialize in selling digital products,” says Michelle.

Kate says that when hiring for any role, you should take the time to hire people with different and complementary strengths and traits than your own.

“Teams need harmony, not synchronicity,” she says. “A harmonious team needs each member's contribution to reflect the individuality of each member. Conversely, creating a team where everyone is in sync may be satisfying in the short term, but long-term synchronization in business is not sustainable.”

“The only way to survive external change is to intentionally build flexibility within. Synchrony leaves no room for flexibility.”

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