Small Business Essentials

I like Skellie better than Darren Rowse. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Darren Rowse is the owner of the very popular site Problogger, which gives tips to people who are looking to learn about blogging. Skellie is a young writer who he hired in late 2007 to be Problogger’s first staff writer. I don’t know what it is about her that makes the writing better than his; it just is to me.

Now, you may think this is a dig against Darren Rowse, but is it not—in fact, this is praise. The reason why I give kudos to Darren Rowse is because he is a very talented writer and yet he managed to find someone who is more talented than he is. I think that hiring people who have a high level of talent is the mark of strong leadership, forward thinking, and a commitment to quality. In my webdev/marketing company, I employ an artist for our web and print work. He does things with colors and imagery that I can’t even think up in my head. His talent exceeds my own in this particular area, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So why should you hire people that are better than you? The reasons include:

• Trust
  If you know your employees can do something better than you can, you are more likely to trust them to do this independently. By allowing your employees the freedom to do what they do best, you create a better product overall.
• Quality
  When a business changes hands, the difference in quality is sometimes extreme. The same could happen if Darren handed over some of the writing duties to a lesser writer—the posts on his days off would be obvious. This quality drop leads to a drop in your customers’ opinions over time. Top-notch employees mean that the quality is kept high whether or not you are there.
• Fresh Perspectives
  When new talent comes in to your company, they bring in experiences, skills and ideas that are different than your own. If you have hired good people, this new wave of ideas can increase the value of your product.
• Greater Options
  Perhaps your company has only been doing B2B marketing with a target of small businesses, and then you hire an employee who has more experience with marketing to medium businesses. (This scenario has a high probability, according to SCORE: "Talented people don’t move into identical jobs if they can avoid it," which means that your new employees might have the skillset to work for you but not the exact experience.) You now have 2 choices: let that employee expand into small businesses, or let your company expand into medium businesses.
• Efficiency
  Hiring people better than you means that you spend more time working and less time explaining anything to your employees.
• Cost Savings
  Having employees that do quality work means that you spend less money on redesigns or re-dos—and that money goes to your profits instead.

To keep your top talent, think of creative ways for them to learn and grow with your company, or incentives that make you an attractive employer, as they will not be learning their craft from you.

Just Remember: When hiring employees in a microbusiness, look for someone who does the task better than you can.