Field Guides / Team

Making your first hire in a video business: the fear, and the maths

The fear of the first hire is always the same: what if I hire someone and then the work stops? It's a fair question, but staying solo has its own cost: your income stalls at the limit of your own hours, year after year. Audit a week to find the hours that shouldn't be yours, check the profit can carry the hire through a trial period, start part-time or with a contractor, and hire to staff once contractor fees start to look like a salary.

Why does the first hire feel so dangerous?

The first hire feels dangerous because a wage is a cost every month, and the work that pays for it isn't guaranteed.

I know this one from the inside. When I ran my production company in the early 2010s, turnover sat at about £250,000 to £260,000 a year, roughly $500,000 Australian, and I finished within about ten grand of that number every year. It took me a while to see why. I was terrified of hiring anybody, and I avoided it for three years.

Most owners at this stage are running the business like a freelancer. Everything is in their head, and they believe their way of doing things is the only way. The first hire is less about the money and more about letting go.

The capacity you free up doesn't sit idle. If you hand off the editing, you won't be twiddling your thumbs. You'll have room to think about strategy, pricing and the next client.

When is the right time to make the first hire?

Start the first hire while you still have room in your week to train someone. Once you're consistently above about 80 per cent of your capacity, it should already be in motion. At 100 per cent there's no time to train and no margin for error, so clear some of your own week first.

A second trigger we've used in member plans: scale the team when contractor fees exceed what a staff salary would cost. Until then, part-time help, contractors and a virtual assistant (VA) buy the hours back.

How to decide what to hand over first: the one-week time audit

Seven days logged in 30 to 60 minute blocks, sorted into four kinds of work, gives you a list of hours that shouldn't be yours. That list is the first role.

1. Log a normal week as it happens. Write down what you did in each block. Don't tidy your behaviour for the audit.
2. Tag every block. CEO (strategy, sales, leadership), Manager (oversight, approvals, resourcing), Specialist (shooting, editing) or Admin (emails, scheduling, invoices).
3. Question each task before you hand it over. Would the business suffer if this stopped? If not, stop doing it.
4. Start with the low-level work. Client changes, lower thirds and social cut-downs shouldn't be yours anyway. There's no such thing as a three-minute change. By the time you've opened the project, relinked the files and exported, it's an hour.
5. Total the hours and pick the first thing to hand over. Done looks like a number: the hours a week the first hire would take off you.

How to work out whether the profit can carry the hire

Two numbers decide whether the profit can carry the hire: what a day of your time earns in margin, and how much the business can spare while the new person settles in. Here's one suggested way to test both.

1. Value a day of your time. Use the margin a day of your time leaves in the business. Why knowing your numbers lets you price with confidence shows how to build your floor and your margin per day.
2. Divide the monthly cost of the hire by that margin. The answer is how many of the returned days have to go into selling, pricing or billed work for the hire to pay for itself. If you can't say what you'll do with them, the role isn't ready.
3. Choose the trial length and check you can fund it. Ninety days is a sensible trial, because that's about how long a VA typically takes to become fully effective. The bought-back days start small and grow over the trial, so check the profit you make now can cover three months of the cost on its own.

If the numbers don't work yet, look at price first. When you sell more at higher prices, you can afford to hire good people. How to price a video project is where that starts.

How to make the first hire safely: part-time, contractor or VA first, with a trial

Keep the first commitment small and reversible: a few hours a week from a contractor or a VA, a written outline of the role, and a review date set before they start.

1. Start part-time, with a contractor or a VA. The salaried role can come later. If the first hire is an editor, How to hire a video editor covers the interview and the paid test.
2. Write the role outline before you look for anyone. Use the template below.
3. Record the process for every task you hand over. A screen recording of you doing it, the steps written underneath, and a definition of done.
4. Brief the work, then step back. The instinct is to grab the mouse and show someone how you'd do it. The better move is to give them the problem, the parameters and an example, then let them work out how to do it.
5. Put the review date in the calendar on day one. At the review, decide: continue, change the role, or stop. Done looks like someone else doing the task to your definition of done without you in the room.

A worked example

In round numbers, a part-time contractor who takes 64 hours a month off an owner needs four of the eight days returned to earn their cost.

These are round numbers for illustration, not market rates and not a member's figures. The time audit finds about 16 hours a week going on admin, client changes, lower thirds and social cut-downs.

The other four days give the owner room to think about strategy. If current profit can't carry the $6,000 trial, the work is on price and margin first.

The mistakes that undo it

Most first hires that go wrong trace back to how they were set up.

• Seeing only the big number at the end. Everyone sees the big number at the end, and then they don't pay a lot of attention to all the detail in between: the monthly cost, the days bought back, what those days earn.
• Hiring for relief. The week feels lighter, and the bought-back days drift back into delivery and admin. At the review, check what those days actually went on.
• Holding the new person to your 110 per cent. Don't put out work at 110 per cent when at 85 it could be more than adequate for the client's needs. Judge the work against the brief.
• Expecting speed before competence. A learning curve and slower work in the first weeks are normal. Reassigning tasks or overcorrecting early sabotages the trial.

The rule of thumb for a first hire

We use business profits to buy our time back: start with the hours that shouldn't be yours, and hand them to someone part-time before you commit to a salary.

The benchmark is the old adage: hire slow, fire fast. Take your time choosing, and make the call on the review date.

Hold yourself accountable

Which of these have you taken on or put in place recently?

• You know what the first role would cost each month and how many days it would give back.
• You've logged a full week in the time audit and handed off at least one low-level task: client changes, lower thirds or social cut-downs.
• You've briefed someone with the problem, the parameters and an example, then let them work out the how.
• You've used profit to buy back time, rather than waiting until you feel ready.

Your one move this week

What's the one thing you can commit to implementing this week? If you're not sure, start here.

Add up what you paid freelancers and contractors over the last twelve months and put it next to what a staff salary would cost. That one comparison tells you how close the hire really is.

One thing executed every week creates 50 strategic moves a year.

Related tools and guides. How to hire a video editor (the interview and the paid test), Why knowing your numbers lets you price with confidence (your floor and margin per day), Client Profitability Calculator, How to price a video project, How to move from one-off video projects to recurring revenue.