At some point in your freelance career, you start wondering whether the next level requires another person.Maybe you’re booked out. Maybe too much of your week disappears into work that drains you. Or maybe you’re tired of being the person who must write, review, approve, fix, and send everything.

Hiring sounds like the obvious solution.

Unfortunately, a rushed hire can take a manageable problem and give it access to your clients, your calendar, and your bank account.

In this episode, I talk with Michal Eisik, an agency founder and the creator of ScaleTribe, about how advanced freelancers can hire without creating a fresh layer of chaos. Michal has grown her own agency from a solo operation into a global five-person team. She has also mentored more than 600 freelancers through CopyTribe, Profitable Freelancer, and ScaleTribe.

She knows firsthand that most hiring mistakes happen before the job is posted. People get overwhelmed. They need help yesterday. Then they hire the first available person who seems smart, pleasant, and reasonably competent.

That person may be excellent. They may also be excellent at the wrong things.

Michal explains why you should first get clear on your motivation. Are you trying to break through a revenue ceiling? Buy back time? Escape draining work? Move from execution into strategy and leadership?

Your answer changes the role you should create and the person you should look for.

We also discuss Michal’s “zone of drag”: the work that drains your energy, slows you down, or prevents you from focusing on more valuable activities. Your zone of drag can show you where to start, but “I hate this task” isn’t always a good enough reason to throw it at someone else.

You still need enough familiarity with the work to define success, create a useful brief, and recognize quality when you see it. Otherwise, you’re left with blind trust or micromanagement.

Neither one buys back much time.

Michal shares a practical process for lowering the risk:

• Define the responsibilities, outcomes, skills, and personal qualities the role requires.
• Ask candidates for three relevant samples, not a giant portfolio scavenger hunt.
• Start with a small, paid test project before handing over a major deadline.
• Create a clear brief so the person doesn’t need telepathy to succeed.
• Review larger projects at the 30%, 60%, and 90% stages.
• Give direct feedback while also pointing out what the person should continue doing well.

We also talk about the replacement ladder and why administrative work is often a sensible place to start. Often—not always.

Michal recommends tracking your time and looking at your actual business instead of blindly following an online formula. If admin takes two hours a week while delivery consumes thirty, a junior practitioner may buy back more meaningful time than a VA.

Then there is the management part.

Hiring someone does not automatically remove you as the bottleneck. You can build a team and still become the “approver of everything,” where every email, decision, and deliverable waits for your blessing.

To move beyond that role, you have to let capable people make decisions. You have to accept that most mistakes are not fatal. And you have to build a culture where people communicate problems quickly, own the outcome, and learn from what happened.

Finally, Michal gets candid about the numbers.

Hiring is not a productivity trick. It is an investment. You need predictable revenue, healthy margins, pricing that can support good talent, and enough room in your calendar to train the person. Michal says the first month is usually training-heavy, the second still contains plenty of questions, and meaningful return on the hire often begins around month three.

You cannot hire someone on Monday and disappear until the gorgeous finished work arrives.

Rude, but useful.

If you’re considering a VA, subcontractor, junior practitioner, project manager, or your first full-time team member, this conversation will help you replace guessing with a more thoughtful plan.

Key Points

• Start with your motivation: The right hire depends on whether you want more revenue, more time, relief from draining tasks, or a move into strategy and leadership.
• Audit your zone of drag: Identify the recurring work that drains you, slows you down, or keeps you away from higher-value responsibilities.
• Define the role before finding the person: Clarify the work they will own, the outcomes they will produce, and the skills and qualities they need.
• Do not panic-hire: Availability and general competence do not guarantee fit for the specific role your business requires.
• Vet with relevant evidence: Ask for three relevant samples and an explanation of why each one applies to your project.
• Use paid test projects: Start small, contained, and low-stakes before trusting someone with important client work.
• Create useful feedback loops: Review work at the 30%, 60%, and 90% stages so the person can course-correct before the end.
• Avoid becoming the approver of everything: Decide what truly needs your review and allow team members to take ownership of nonfatal decisions.
• Expect a training period: Plan for roughly three months before a new hire begins producing a meaningful return.
• Check your financial readiness: Predictable revenue, sufficient margins, and appropriate pricing matter more once you are supporting a team.
• Treat hiring like a CEO decision: Building something bigger than yourself involves risk, management, investment, and the possibility that you will get a few things wrong.

Notable Quotes

“Don’t hate something so much that you just close your eyes and say, ‘Take it away and make magic,’ but make sure that you have enough of a handle even on that stuff that you can delegate strategically.”

“When you are approver of everything, you are the chief bottleneck officer, CBO. So nothing can happen without you, which means that things get stalled, projects get stalled, and what’s really important, especially for a perfectionist like me, is to sit down and think: What really needs my approval, and where can I let go?”

“Giving positive feedback isn’t just a nice thing to do. By pointing out what they’re doing right, they know to do more of that.”

“Scaling, hiring, building a team, that is a CEO move. That is something that involves risk, it involves a long-term investment, you are going to fail a couple of times—we all do. So it’s really important to remind ourselves that with risk comes reward.”

Resources Mentioned

• Michal Eisik’s website: http://michaleisik.com/
• Connect with Michal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaleisik
• Watch the free Hire Without the Backfire training: https://www.michaleisik.com/opt-in/scale-webinar-ac
• Check out the Freelance Cake Community: https://www.freelancecake.com/community

Watch This Episode

Transcript

00:01
Hey there, welcome to the Freelance Cake Podcast. I'm your host, Austin L. Church,  founder of the Freelance Cake community. The goal of this show is to help full-time committed freelancers get better leverage. As the sworn enemy of busyness and burnout, I have no desire whatsoever to see you work harder. So I reveal the specific beliefs, principles, and practices  you can use right away to make the freelance game more profitable and satisfying. So chill out, listen in, because the best is yet to come.

00:39
Welcome to another episode of the Freelance Cake Podcast. At some point in your freelance career, you start wondering whether the next level of growth requires help. Maybe you've hit capacity limits. Maybe you're spending too much time on work that drains you. Or maybe you're simply tired of being the bottleneck in your own business.

01:02
My guest today is Michal,  M-I-C-H-A-L, Eisik. Michal is the founder of ScaleTribe and an agency owner who has grown her business from a solo operation into a global team. She helps freelancers and business owners scale through better systems, smarter operations, and intentional hiring.

01:27
In this conversation, we talk about one of the most misunderstood growth decisions freelancers make, hiring. Michal explains why so many hiring mistakes happen before a job is ever posted. She explains how to identify your quote, zone of drag and what end quote I should say. And she explains why understanding your motivation for hiring matters more than choosing a VA, subcontractor, or employee.

01:56
We also explore how to think about role design, delegation, and the replacement ladder, a practical framework for deciding what to hand off first and when. And if you've ever wondered about managing people, giving feedback, or losing quality control altogether,  you'll appreciate Michal's perspective  on avoiding the trap of becoming the approver of everything.

02:24
Finally, we discuss the financial realities of scaling, the training period that follows a new hire, and why building a team is ultimately a CEO decision, not just a productivity decision. So if you're considering hiring, subcontracting, or building a team of any kind, this episode will help you do it more strategically and with a lot fewer regrets. All right. Sit back and enjoy my conversation with Michal Eisik.

02:54
Michal, I can't believe I talked you into doing this again. Thank you for coming back and talking to me about hiring without the backfire. I have so many questions, but I'm going to start with a kind of trope. Like let's say that I'm a marketer. I'm four years into freelancing. I'm doing pretty well. I have no idea who you are. I really need to know who you are. Tell me who you are so that I can begin to be like, Oh, I think she's the sort of person who can help me fix a problem.

03:48
Sure. So my name is Michal Eisik. I am an agency owner and the founder of an academy with several programs for freelancers and business owners. One of my programs is called ScaleTribe, which is focused on solopreneurs who are ready for the next level and want to scale, whether that's through products, more streamlined operations, building out a team or a combination of all three.

04:16
So that's my most recent program. I'm currently running my second cohort of that. So my brain is very much in that scaling mode. And personally, I grew my agency from being a solo operation. I founded it in 2018, made my first hire in 2019, and today have a small but mighty team of five people across the globe. And it's been an amazing journey and a joy and that's really why I created ScaleTribe to help freelancers who are ready for that next step.

04:55
That was very well said and very succinct. I commend you, especially since brevity is never my strong suit. So now you've got my attention. I'm a marketer, been at it for four years.  I've started handing off maybe some design projects because that isn't really within my wheelhouse. Although I know how to use Canva. Maybe I do the same with copywriting. I haven't burned out, but

05:26
I have bumped into the ceiling several months recently  and kind of like you said, you know, I guess in 2019 you hired someone I'm starting to think, maybe that would be a solution for me. Is that instinct to hire right? Is it potentially concerning or dangerous? What's your take?

05:53
So I don't think there's a right or wrong here. It very much needs to align with your personality, your season of life, and your underlying motivation. Why are you really looking to hire? Is it because you want to break past a revenue ceiling? There's just not enough time in the day you find yourself booked out, turning down opportunities right and left, opportunities you would really love to take on. Are you looking to hire because you find yourself spending too much time every week on tasks that drain you, that suck out your energy, and you wish you could spend more time on higher impact stuff? Are you looking to hire because you've done your work, you're really good at your craft, and you've been doing the same thing for five, 10 years, and now you're ready to move more into a strategy role and oversee operations rather than do all the work yourself?

06:47
And I think it's important to figure out what your motivation is. And it could be a combination, but like even pinpointing your primary motivation, because that will shape your hiring process, who you hire and how far you take it. Like if your core motivation is revenue and you want to hit $2 million in revenue or even a million dollars in revenue, and you don't think you can do that alone as a solopreneur. If that's the case, then your hiring process is going to look different. It's probably going to be more robust and  you are not going to be satisfied with just a superstar VA who takes away your admin work. So I think it's really just very individual and you have to sit down and think hard like, why do I want this?

07:41
Which if I'm already bumping into the ceiling, I might be more accustomed to just running and gunning and putting out fires rather than being much more strategic. So that's a really good piece of advice right out of the gate. Stopping myself and saying, why do I want to do this? You have a concept that I find really interesting, which is zone of drag. So before we get deeper into talking about whom I might want to hire, would you explain what Zone of Drag is and why people need to get clarity around that before almost anything else?

08:25
Yeah. So it's really a spinoff of the concept Zone of Genius, which was introduced by Gay Hendricks in his book, The Big Leap. And the Zone of Genius is really the tasks you are uniquely gifted at. It's where your natural talent, skills, and passion all come together. So it's the stuff that feels super energizing. It creates the most value and it's the hardest for other people to replicate. So I introduced the zone of drag as like the opposite of that. Leave it to me to bring in the negativity, right? And…

09:02
I'm with you. I'm immediately like, why didn't I think of this?

09:06
Yeah, I mean, we can all relate to the zone of drag. It's the stuff that dreams you. It's the stuff that prevents you from doing what you really want to focus on. It's the stuff you dread  and procrastinate and it slows you down. So what I really recommend business owners do when they're thinking about hiring is just sit down and list all the tasks that they do on a given week and then start bucketing them into different areas.

09:35
So operations, marketing, business development, execution, delivery of the service. And then for each task, give it a ranking. Is this zone of genius? Is this zone of drag? Is it somewhere in the middle? And then you'll start getting a sense not only of how many hours each week you might be spending in the zone of drag, but also which tasks you really want to start with if you had the chance to outsource.

10:07
Yeah, that's a really helpful way of thinking about it. And I think it's important. And this kind of dovetails into my next question. But I think it's important that you didn't just start with, hey, what are the things that you dislike? Or what are the things that you hate doing? It's the things that slow you down because my gut says, well, if I hate doing this, then I should get rid of it immediately.

10:37
But I think you would say that's not the best filter. Like what you hate doing isn't the best filter right out of the gate. Is that right? Or did I, am I misunderstanding?

10:50
So when you hate doing something, it is generally a fairly good indicator that that's not your superpower and you probably shouldn't be spending a lot of time on that thing longterm. The danger of rushing to delegate something you hate is that you will likely be doing it from a place of desperation. You will likely not have any meaningful process for that thing. You may not even have enough familiarity with that thing to know what good looks like, what quality looks like in that area. And so you rush to outsource it and then you have no meaningful way to measure the performance and see if the work was done well and oversee and have any kind of quality control.

11:36
So this is the annoying part, but I learned this from one of my mentors, Rob Marsh, who I am very grateful to. He said that business owners, small business owners should be familiar enough with every aspect of their business that they can have that foundational level of oversight. Like you don't have to be a QuickBooks expert. I hate QuickBooks. Like with a passion, I dread opening QuickBooks, but I have forced myself to become familiar enough with the platform to know how to generate a report. Because if I can't do that, then I will not be able to communicate meaningfully with my bookkeeper. I will not be able to oversee the work. I will not be able to get out of my bookkeeping system the stuff I need to get out of it.

12:28
So I guess what I'm saying is don't hate something so much that you just kind of like close your eyes and say, take it away and make magic, but make sure that you have enough of a handle even on that stuff that you can delegate strategically.

12:45
I think I made that mistake earlier this year. Like I wouldn't say that I hate marketing. I mean, I'm a marketing advisor, so I like it to some degree. But last year, one of my big ah-hahs recognizing that marketing was a bottleneck for growth, and if I'm the bottleneck in marketing, then that means I'm the bottleneck in growth. And so my conclusion was, oh well, I ought to hire a marketing coordinator to take some of those things off me, which is a good conclusion, but we didn't really have a marketing system yet. So I hired someone prematurely, cause I'm like, I made, I came to the right conclusion, which is I ought to delegate this. My timing was off because I then delegated this being some of the marketing work without having proper systems in place so that I could even provide that oversight that you're talking about, right? If you don't have systems, you just have to resort to like a blind trust or blind faith that the person is doing things or you have to micromanage because you're like, well, I don't know what you're doing. So tell me everything you're doing and then I'll tell you what you're doing right.

14:11
And then you save zero time and head space.

14:15
Yes. And so I've had to back off of that decision and think, well, I actually need to have the conceptual model like a system. I need to know sort of how marketing happens or it could happen without my direct involvement in every step. And then maybe I can provide oversight of that.

14:38
So I would add to that, by the way, that if you are marketing, if you're a founder-led brand and you are the face of your brand, then you got to be careful with outsourcing your marketing. You can hire a lot of support around the coordination of it, even like the scheduling of the LinkedIn post or the first draft of those LinkedIn posts or the coordination of events and speaking engagements, whatever it is, but you can't just abruptly give someone the reins to run your marketing…

15:10
Step out. See ya! Which to your point, is kind of, it's not what I did, but we recognized that because so much of the marketing stems from my expertise, my personality, my voice, that if we were to try to, if a marketing coordinator were even to try to repurpose content I'd already written, something long form, and turn it into short form, that person would like, like accidentally  cut it out of context in the wrong way.

15:51
And then wouldn't have the expertise to like reshape it and put enough context back. I'll tell you one thing, which might actually be helpful for people listening in that I'd like to hear your take on this. I was surprised that it was really just one shift that I had missed. Meaning I think a lot of us think that we can't hire because we actually haven't gotten creative enough. And in my case, I was like, well, I want a marketing coordinator. I just don't know how they can help with this. Well, I needed to change what this was. And that involves changing the format of my newsletter to simplify it. And then actually reducing the amount of content that I create.

16:46
Making one piece of content that was longer, richer, handing that off, and more importantly, doing a lot more podcasting. So all that to say, I am kind of the case study of doing it poorly. I guess maybe it's like a rite of passage, but I think we've established that it's pretty easy to hire the wrong person or to hire for the wrong role. Would you give me your perspective on what the wrong role looks like and why a misfire with hiring can be pretty costly.

17:32
So the problem is that many people hire reactively. Things start just getting overwhelming. You're drowning. You have very good problem, which is way too many clients, way too many projects. And it's like, help, I need someone yesterday. So when people hire from that place, they panic hire. And that means they generally end up hiring someone who is available, seems nice to work with, and fairly competent and is in their immediate network, like the first or second person they heard of. And subconsciously, they justify the hire and they convince themselves that it's going to be a good fit.

18:16
But what they didn't actually take the time to do, and I made this mistake myself, and I'll share the story in a minute, is sit down and write exactly which tasks and areas of the business this person is going to own and the tasks they will need to complete on a regular basis. And here's the third part that many people forget to do, like what skills and personal qualities do you need to successfully complete those tasks to perform well in those areas.

18:44
And this really does require some time and headspace of sitting down and actually mapping out what you want this person to do, defining the role, because VA can mean many different things to different people. And the same thing with project manager and even junior copywriter. What does that actually look like for you in your business? So by sitting down and actually defining the role, and defining for yourself the skills, the competencies, the personal qualities your hire will need, you are far less likely to fall into that trap of just hiring someone who seems pretty nice and competent overall. When I made a hire like this, it was also from a place of desperation. There was a woman I knew lived locally. I was always very impressed with her. She seemed super organized, put together, polished, articulate. And she mentioned to me that she was looking for a new job. She wanted to move on. And at the time I really needed someone. So we had a quick interview some back and forth and I was like, great, let's do it. And what I realized very quickly was that she was very competent in general, but she did not have enough marketing or general online and tech background in order to do the job.

20:04
I was just explaining such basic things to her, things I had taken for granted. And she really didn't understand. And had I really sat down and mapped out the role, I think I would have achieved that clarity a lot sooner and avoided the painful process because for her it was also very unpleasant. Like she is a very competent person overall. So it was really not fair to her that after a month or two where we tried to make it work, I had to let her go because I didn't really do my homework and vetting properly.

20:40
Have your ScaleTribe, clients, or even people you've coached made a bad hire and then just  said, guess hiring won't work for me? Like even if they hired poorly, like they didn't do it well, do they, do you see people developing this like false narrative that it just won't work?

21:04
I see it a lot with subcontracting. People have nightmare stories with subcontractors. And then after like three or four such stories, they're like forever, I am never hiring a subcontractor again. Like they disavow the whole concept and they're like, I will do everything myself ever and ever. And because it often leads to like very embarrassing or stressful situations where either the work you deliver is subpar or you are literally up all night fixing the stuff because it wasn't at the level it needed to be.

21:38
So we have a whole two modules on subcontracting at ScaleTribe, because that's really a whole topic unto itself. But I really try to talk them out of that because in my experience, if you set yourself upright, subcontracting can be very successful. And again, I think the core prevention here is preparation and not doing it from a place of help the deadline is next week, I need support now. So what I encourage my ScaleTribe members to do with subcontracting specifically is give out a paid test project to a subcontractor randomly, not when you need it, not when there's a deadline, not when the project is so massive, just a small portion of a project you're working on, outsource it to a subcontractor, see how they do.

22:32
And if they do well, then give them something a little bit bigger. In other words, test the waters and cultivate a Rolodex of subcontractors now, quality people who you know can deliver so that when the need comes up, you have five or six go-to people that you can get immediately and access that support. And I think if you do that, and again, it's a much more intentional proactive way of approaching subcontracting, then you're far less likely to deal with those nightmare fallouts. And we also talk a lot about the briefing. That's something that people really tend to skip. And I think that applies to in-house team members as well. The importance of a very comprehensive brief and not skimping on the clarity at that stage.

23:25
You are stacking up a lot of tools and even antidotes to common mistakes. And I just want to like recap briefly. Number one, knowing why you're motivated to hire in the first place. Number two, spending some time understanding your own zone of drag and putting the things that you dislike or the things that slow you down or the things that you may straight up hate, putting those in different buckets in terms of their, almost like their category in the business. Number three, creating a job description that encompasses like key tasks and responsibilities, skills needed, traits, maybe even some personality stuff. Doing a paid test on a small piece of project, of a project that has low stakes, meaning you're not desperate. And then even that smaller test project, making sure that there's a very clear project brief or creative brief. It sounds like so I even have something to match the person's work against because I know I've made the mistake of hiring someone to do a paid test and they would have had to have been a mind reader in order to like do what I wanted them to do, right? All of that sounds like you're dramatically all the things I just stacked up or recap like people will dramatically lower the risk that they one, find themselves in an embarrassing situation, two, lose a lot of money and three, get burned badly and decide never again. Does anything else come to mind before we switch gears a little bit? Anything else come to mind in terms of here's something you can do to avoid the most common mistakes?

25:34
Yeah, so if you are subcontracting a larger project or even working with someone in-house on it, using the 30, 60, 90 feedback framework can be game changing. And by that, I mean making sure you review the work at the 30% point to give that 30% high level feedback. Are we going in the right direction? If not, what needs to change? And just more fundamental overarching feedback on what they did so far. And then 60% also a little bit more detailed, a little bit more granular, and then 90% is like the copy editing stage. And you can really avoid a lot of waste of time and heartache that way on both ends. So it's just a more frequent feedback loop.

26:34
Which if it's more frequent gives the other person more opportunities to improve.

26:40
Yeah.

26:45
Would you say that you personally are good at giving feedback and can you remember a time when the thought of almost like a performance review or giving feedback, you know, you just wouldn't have enjoyed it or you would have avoided it. Cause I imagine there are people who will watch this interview or listen to it and think, I just, I don't want to be someone else's boss. I don't want to  manage someone else. It's better for me just to do it myself so that I can avoid having to tell somebody they suck, right? But we go I mean I'm exaggerating a little bit but we go these places in our minds and we talk ourselves out of what is a good solution. Hiring.

27:33
Well let me just say that being a manager is not for everyone. If you hate people in general or you just dislike being around people and try to avoid communicating with humans as a general principle, then you probably don't want to be building out a team and you're better off…

27:54
You should still work solo.. [laughs]

27:56
You have to really know yourself. It's not for everyone. You have to be the kind of person who enjoys working with others enjoys the power of working as a team. I don't think you have to be the world's biggest extrovert, but you do have to find people more energizing than not in order to be a good manager. That's what I've found. And when it comes to the constructive feedback side of things, so it's so fascinating to me that you look at it that way of like, I don't want to be that person who says you suck because over the years, I think that I've actually ended up finding it very gratifying to be able to help people develop their skills and say, here's what you're doing right. Here's where you really need to improve. And like giving them that guidance and that stepping stone to get to the next level in their craft. And I think that that's one of the greatest kindnesses you can do. Obviously they're being paid for it and you're not doing this coaching as like a nonprofit thing. So if your coaching ends up being disproportionate to the value that you're getting, then you got to go elsewhere.  But helping people develop their skills is, a very, very powerful, impactful thing. So I think if you reframe it and you look at it from that perspective, not only could you be potentially getting real value, especially if the relationship is long-term, but you're not telling them they suck. You're giving them really pointed honest feedback that can significantly move their career forward.

29:44
Such a good reframe. You could take it a step further and be like, I owe it to them to help them improve. Wouldn't I want someone to help me improve? That is so good.

29:56
And I think also some of it is about expectations. So if you're clear with your subcontract or a team member and you say, I want you to know that when you get my feedback, I'm going to be very honest with you and very direct. I care about you. I want to see your success. And I also care about the excellence of the work that we produce. And that's what you can expect. That's what everyone on this team gets. And if you're okay with that, then let's give it a try. And if they're ready for that, then I think it'll be received very well.

30:30
Well, that changes everything, right? Especially if you tell people and I'll do my best to make it balanced. I'm always going to try to point out what I believe you're doing well, just as often as I point out areas for improvement. So I'm going to try to give you both. I mean, I think only an immature person would shy away from that kind of relationship, right?

30:58
By the way giving giving positive feedback. It's not just a nice thing to do to balance out the negative It's actually important and strategic because by pointing out what they're doing right then they know to do more of that.

31:10
They keep doing it otherwise, how would they know? There's a concept that you teach that I think is pretty cool called the replacement ladder. It sounds pretty simple, but you would say that most people skip this and then they end up paying for it later. So what is the replacement ladder and what does skipping it look like in practice?

31:39
So let me first clarify that the replacement ladder concept is not mine. It's from Dan Martell. He introduced it in his book, The Buyback Loop. And  what he recommends is replacing your time, buying back your time in stages. Starting from the very bottom, administrative tasks. Then once that's fully outsourced, maximized, you move on to delivery tasks. So if you're a marketer or a copywriter, that's like the actual marketing, copywriting, design work, whatever it is. Then you would move up to marketing tasks, which is what you hired for Austin, like a marketing coordinator. So you kind of skipped the bottom two. Well, you do have admin support, but I digress.

32:27
After marketing tasks, you would only then replace your sales tasks, hire someone for sales. And at the very top of the ladder is leadership tasks. So hiring like a COO or a head of marketing or someone who actually leads a department. And what I found, like this is my twist on the replacement ladder, is that this very much parallels the progression that I've seen work for my business and also the businesses of many colleagues and students.

32:57
So you start with the virtual assistant at the bottom, the admin tasks. Then you go up to a project manager and subcontractor for assistance with the delivery, the client management and the actual work. And then after the subcontractor, you move on to an in-house team member who's also doing the delivery, but on a more regular basis. And after that, you'll have some kind of sales and marketing support followed by a director.

33:26
So it's just a very neat structured way to think about hiring. And the reason most people recommend starting with admin is because it's the lowest stakes. It's the lowest stakes. If they mess up, the client is probably not gonna know about it. Like you're not dealing with client facing stuff to start. And it's also generally the most draining and can often be time consuming and just kill your focus and brain power.

33:56
So it's a great way to exercise your delegation muscles to learn how to document the process in a way that someone can actually follow it. And then once you get better at delegating, then you can move to higher stakes stuff like client facing tasks and delivery tasks.

34:14
Oh, and one more thing I would just add, by the way, this is also my addition to the replacement ladder, especially if you're a parent, I would say before outsourcing and hiring admin, see if you can max out on your household help. Maybe if we're going to be like very Gen Z, do like, I don't know, household maxx, you know, with a double X. Like cleaning help max. I know. I have to come up with a better term, but something like that where we don't realize how many things we do around our home that we probably don't enjoy. And can much more easily be outsourced even than admin.

34:59
So just an example, I have an errand guy who literally does errands for me, like things that can't be delivered, tasks that need to be done in person. So he's picking things up for me, taking… if a car needs to be repaired, he'll take the car to the shop to be repaired. And I pay him by the hour, he's phenomenal, he really appreciates the work. And it's amazing because I don't enjoy that kind of thing. I dread it. So, you know, that's just been a very easy and exciting thing for me to outsource. So I would encourage especially parents to think in that direction as well.

35:42
It's important to start valuing your time highly before you start trying to scale. I think you may have already answered this next question, but I'll still ask it anyway. Again, I'm a marketing consultant. Let's say I'm thinking about two different hires, either a VA to take admin off my plate or a junior marketer who can do billable work. How should I think about that decision? Should I just stick with the replacement ladder? Is there a right answer?

36:25
I think this goes back to what we said at the beginning about auditing your time. Because if you audit your time and you see, you look at your time tracker, and by the way, that's another thing, you've got to track your time religiously if you actually want to know what's worth outsourcing and which tasks are eating up most of your time. Because a lot of the stories we tell ourselves about how much time we spend on things really don't line up with reality, so looking at that data, if you see for example For whatever reason your business is structured that you spend really minimal time on admin like you've set it up so streamlined that you spend maybe one to two hours a week on admin. And in contrast you spend a lot of time on delivery. If that's your situation then perhaps in that case you would want to consider hiring a marketer first because that's going to most meaningfully buy back your time.

37:25
That's good. Again, it comes back to what is your motivation? What is your specific situation? Don't be searching online for the recipe or formula. Slow down and actually look at your own business. Okay, so you have a two-part system or process for vetting subcontractors. Take me through that.

37:54
So I kind of touched on it before. The first thing is send me three relevant samples. And I use the word relevant because that's really important. Don't throw a website in my face. Don't throw a portfolio at me so I can spend three hours sifting through your samples from the past three years. Send me three relevant samples. I'll describe the project that I'm looking to hire for and send me the samples you feel are most relevant to that kind of project, including an explanation for why.

38:24
Why do you feel these samples are relevant to this project and demonstrate your ability to deliver well in this project? Because that also says a lot about their approach and their thinking. Once I've reviewed the three samples and they seem to be high quality work, then at that point I would do the paid test project that I mentioned and would make sure that it's small, contained, with a solid brief. If that goes well, up it to something more complex.

38:54
Nice. Makes a lot of sense. You have all these little systems. I'm guessing a lot of us, if we tried to hire without the systems would flounder and yet it's also true that if you haven't done a lot of hiring before, you don't have the system, so it kind of seems like a chicken and egg scenario. What do you do first? Do you document your systems or do you hire someone and then build the systems with the person you hired?

39:32
I don't think there's a right answer to that question. I think you can do it both ways, but with a caveat. I wouldn't say to hire someone and build that system for them. Whenever you hire, you have to have a system to start with. You can ask for feedback and see how your hire is implementing that system and then notice more gaps and refine it together with them, but you need to have a starting base. And what I would say though is you don't need to like dedicate a month to process documentation.

40:11
I think people overcomplicate this a lot. So you know that you're hiring a VA next week and you want them to do these three specific tasks, very simple just click the Loom button and video yourself going through each of those tasks and then it's amazing what you can do now with the LLM. You take that transcript from Loom or whatever video recording tool you're using,you pop it into chat GBT you get it…

40:39
We actually have a very detailed prompt for this in ScaleTribe, but you can also come up with your own prompt. You get it to not just refine the transcript, but identify gaps in the process, identify what's not clear, where are the ambiguities, make suggestions. So you refine the process that way, and then boom, you have a starting point for your VA next week. And the whole process for creating that process should not take more than 20 minutes, depending on how complex the process is. Yeah.

41:10
Yeah, and I'm guessing some of the A students listening to this would tend to be a perfectionist when creating these systems. What advice do you have in that department? Like, just go. Like when people when you see people getting trapped in perfectionism and like over building or over engineering systems, what do you tell them?

41:38
I think it's a tricky area because on the one hand, a gap in a process could lead to wasted resources, especially if that process is repeated many times. On the other hand, the tweaks and the perfections that a lot of us perfectionists spend time on are not actually high impact changes. So something I like to challenge myself to think about and also have started this with my team is, is this a high impact change? Are we adjusting the process meaningfully? Like an example of a meaningful adjustment to a process would be like a big warning. If this happens, then make sure not to do why. Some kind of like dangerous scenario and how to handle it. So making sure that that's reflected in your process, that is very important because that can prevent embarrassing situations, lost revenue, whatever the process is. But editing your process to kazoo so that it could get an A plus for writing  and brevity, probably not a very high impact change.

42:53
Yeah. Knowing the value of your own edits, having some mechanism for stepping outside and asking yourself, is this going to matter? I found myself doing that. Editing copy in a document that might only be read twice a year. And I'm like, what am I doing? You have coined a term, approver of everything. And I suspect that just about every more advanced freelancer listening to this will know exactly what that is, even if you don't explain, but I'd like for you to explain what you mean by approver of everything and offer any practical advice you have.

43:44
Year, so approver of everything basically characterizes what I was in my business for a very long time. And the truth is I'm still really trying to move out of that role even more. Because when you are approver of everything, you are the chief bottleneck, chief bottleneck officer, CBO, right? So nothing can happen without you, which means that things get stalled, projects get stalled, and what's really important, especially for a perfectionist like me, is to sit down and think, what really needs my approval and where can I let go? So for example, when my project manager first started, she would send me all client-facing emails, like a screenshot for a quick look before she sent them out. Now, I think for a training period, that might not be a bad thing, but that needs to stop. That needs to stop.

44:50
You're like, I hired you because I want fewer emails in my life.

45:55
So I will say that when someone actually drafts the email, from start to finish and send you a screenshot, it still does save significant time and headspace. And at the end of the day, they are owning the responsibility of getting back to the client or the prospect, not you. So there is still value to that. And I do believe there's time saved. But with enough time working with a given person, they should be able to do that independently. And I once had a consultation with Joel Kletke, who is a wonderful copywriter, a marketer, a very wise person.

45:30
And he shared an idea with me that really stuck, is that most mistakes are not fatal. So  you will need to let your team members make mistakes and appreciate that most of those mistakes are not going to be fatal. Maybe the client will be upset. Maybe it'll send an angry email and you'll get on a call with them and talk it out and smooth things over and life will go on.

45:59
So having that mindset and reminding yourself like you don't need to prevent every bad possible situation, every negative outcome can allow you to let go more easily. And it's really work for a micromanager, for an instinctive micromanager like me, it's a lot of inner work, but I think it's a healthy thing, not just for business, but in life in general, it's like a really good muscle to strengthen.

46:28
There's another like side benefit of letting people make mistakes and then being kind and gracious and like charitable when they make mistakes. That earns so much loyalty. Most of us have had a boss or a supervisor or even a client who lost his or her mind over something that was not fatal, right? And so with the little bit of experience I have hiring and I've had people working for me when they make mistakes and I tell them it's okay. And then maybe even I helped them fix it. And then they see that I didn't overreact. They saw that I was reasonable. They want to keep working with me. And what's even more interesting is they want to do better next time., right? Whereas if you like beat people up for a non-fatal mistake, they don't get their loyalty. The only reason they stick around is because you're paying them, not because they are truly loyal. So I wanted to just point that out. I think it's really important to not overreact, but I just have a few more questions.

47:47
One more thing about that. I would just say that allowing people to make mistakes also reinforces a culture of ownership in your team. So it's not that Michal is going to prevent all bad things from happening so I can do like 80% of the work because anyway, Michal is going to polish the rough edges and prevent problems. But I'm doing the work, I'm shipping it, and I'm owning the results. So it really allows people to develop more ownership of their area. And the other thing I would say is that something I try really hard to convey to my team is that mistakes are okay, but communication matters so  communicate fast and clearly when there's been a mistake…

48:40
Don't leave me to find out about it. You come to me and tell me about it.

48:45
I think that that's this huge being able to own it being able to clearly describe what happened, what was the fallout of what happened and the steps that you're going to take to prevent this from happening again. I think that's the kind of culture you want to be building.

49:03
100%. That's so true. Okay. Few more questions and then I think you have something free to share. What is the most counterintuitive thing about scaling that you wish someone had told you and the thing that if you asked 10 otherwise smart freelancers, nine of them would probably get wrong? Does anything come to mind?

49:33
So I actually struggled with this. I was thinking about this question before. I feel like most freelancers are way too smart that I couldn't find something that nine out of 10 would not get. Sorry. That may have been unfair of me. But I wouldn't call this counterintuitive, but I would say it's often new and surprising to free answers. And that is that your gross profit margins for a successful, thriving business should be between 50 to 70%. And you should be paying yourself a salary, which is part of those expenses, part of your expense calculations. And that means when you actually sit down and think about the revenue for a given project and then calculate all the expenses associated with that project, including your time, you should be coming out with 50 to 70% profit margin. Because that also doesn't include your operating expenses, so all the other expenses which are not project specific. And that sounds like a lot, but it actually is really important for a profitable business. Like if you want to eventually sell your business one day, if you would show your business to an investor, like those are the margins they're looking for. So if your margins are at 20 or 30%, then you are either not charging enough or you need to streamline your operations dramatically.

51:09
So this is also like an important part of the scaling process is just auditing what is actually going on in your business and how profitable are you? Because if you, once you start scaling, you have to just think more in terms of is the business profitable rather than like, what am I coming home with? You're creating something bigger than yourself and you need to spend more time reviewing the numbers and thinking about those margins.

51:38
So good. My mind immediately went to like the downstream implications of undercharging. So if I'm trying to subcontract, but I don't charge enough and I'm looking at what I need to make on a project and therefore what I can afford to pay someone. If I'm undercharging, I may end up hiring the wrong person because I'm hiring purely on the basis of what I can afford rather than on the basis of I need someone who's going to knock it out of the park with this piece of the project. So what I hear you saying is if you have a much more realistic financial model and you start charging more, you can also afford better talent. And you see this sort of virtuous flywheel happen where better talent, better results. Maybe you do end up actually working less instead of working more. So thank you for sharing that. I'm not sure I had seen that connection before. All right.

52:46
Yeah, because I would just add another thing, that this is part of what causes people to get scared off from hiring because they hire, hire, hire, they subcontract, subcontract. And then they're like, wait a minute. I didn't really come home with any more at the end of the day.

53:06
I'm making less than my subcontractors.

53:07
And I had the hassle of managing someone. Of course, that's not worth it. So you really need to know your numbers if this is going to be worthwhile for you.

53:15
So good. Know your numbers. Okay, you  have shared so many gems, but I could not end this without talking about the valley, which is the way you define it, the period between I just made my first hire  and this is actually working. So what does the Valley feel like and how long should I expect to be in the Valley?

53:44
So three months is a pretty good estimate. It's funny, I wouldn't necessarily call it a Valley. Like I don't, I'm a pretty negative person in general, but in this case, I don't see it so much as a negative. I see it more as just like expectations, like there's a training period and it's going to take time until you actually get a return on your hire and that time is usually three months. At three months you should be starting to see a solid return on investment. So the first month is like training, total training, a lot of time spent walking your hire through processes. The second month you're hoping for fewer questions, but there will still be lot of clarifying questions. And by the third month, you're hoping to start seeing some traction and by month four, it should be relatively smooth. This really goes back to an idea I mentioned earlier, which is you can just hire and then say bye, see you in two weeks with gorgeous finished work. It doesn't work that way. Like you have to be psychologically ready to train someone. To be there to manage and like  once you're okay with that and you've actually created space in your schedule for that, you haven't overbooked yourself so that you are available to do that training, then you're setting yourself up and you're higher for success.

55:15
Can I ask just one question? You just talked about a sign that someone is not ready, which is they did not make any room in their schedule to train someone to make themselves available. They just hope that the person would work out and then they, in essence, go back to working independently, right? Do you think there are other signs that someone probably isn't ready to hire at least not yet?

55:44
So predictable revenue is a big one. If your revenue is really fluctuating, some months you don't really have clients and you just don't have that stability, then you're not in a place to hire. If your net margins, as I mentioned earlier, are less than 20%, you are not in a place to hire. You have no financial wiggle room. So you need to raise your prices or streamline operations or both. And if you are hiring tomorrow with zero processes and more importantly, no clarity for yourself on what the process should look like, even if you haven't actually taken those 20 minutes to record it, but it's more like it's all fuzzy and hazy for you,  then that's also a reason to hold off and wait.

56:39
Okay. I teased this earlier. You have a more complete training. When I say complete, I don't mean this interview is incomplete, I mean, it's that higher without the backfire is very linear.  Explain that quickly and then I'll make sure there's a link where people can actually opt in. But yes. What have you got for folks?

57:04
So I recorded a training called Hire Withoutthe Backfire, which covers the three most common hiring mistakes business owners make and how to fix them. It's like you said, very linear, very structured and very actionable, which is exactly what I tried to make my content. So if you are thinking about hiring, you want to set up your foundation, set yourself up for success. Have a watch. I think you'll get a lot of value. And the training is free.

57:42
Doesn’t get better than that. Michal, thank you. I was so looking forward to this. And as usual, you did not disappoint. This is just packed full of actionable stuff. And thank you. And as always, if there's ever a way I can support you, just let me know.

57:57
Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. It's always fun speaking with you. If I could just end with one idea, Austin, that I would love for people watching this to walk away with. I just wanna emphasize that scaling, hiring, building a team, that is a CEO move. That is something that involves risk, it involves a long-term investment, you are going to fail a couple of times, we all do. So it's just really important to remind ourselves that with risk comes reward. Like if you wanna keep things safe, then freelancing, solopreneuring is very safe. If you want a bigger outcome, something more transformative, whether it's from a revenue perspective, a quality of life perspective or both, then you're gonna have to take that bigger risk. Yes, you can do it strategically slow and steady, but it does involve some risk and you have to be okay with that and embrace it if you wanna get that reward.

59:08
Beautifully said. Good place to end. Thank you.

59:11
Hey, before you go, let me invite you to join our community for more established advanced freelancers. It's called the freelance cake community. One member named Michelle had this to say, I'm just so impressed by the quality of the conversation that's happening in the group. The in-depth questions, experiments and thoughts being shared are just so refreshing. And the other communities I'm a part of, it's all beginner questions, which is fine, but it's awesome to find a more advanced space where it's okay to ask more advanced questions. Thank you, Michelle. Here's a little more about the community. Each week we do live group coaching and live coworking. You get access to a massive resource library and obviously the community itself, which we host using Circle. Of course, the people are the best part of all this. It really helps to surround yourself. with smart, accomplished, and optimistic people who are out there taking risks and building the businesses they really want. If that interests you, visit freelancecake.com forward slash community to learn more and apply. You can find that link in the show notes. I hope to see you there.