Evan Carmichael shows how to build a team with no budget for a handmade jewelry business. Bring on a partner with equity, recruit interns for school credit, or hire part-time remote workers for minimal pay. Focus your time on what only you can do and delegate the rest.
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How to start a team with no funds. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers. Love you guys. Hand done by the diva who wrote in to say, great vid Evan, I listen at you quite often, you've helped me understand so much. I have a question and comment actually. I have a handmade jewelry business and I need help with branding and marketing. I really don't know who to turn to for help with making my items because I'm the only one who knows what I really want to be made. However, I wanted to start a team to help me build my business and even to help them build themselves in the process. I currently do it all and I don't have the funds to pay anyone as of right now, hopefully soon, but I don't want to get burned out either. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. So, Handmade by the Diva, you are in a common situation a lot of entrepreneurs face. You're working 80 overwhelmed, overburdened, you're going to get burned out. Going this way, you're going to get burned out, and successful entrepreneurs are the ones who can build beyond themselves. So you are asking the right questions. How do I start building this team? Now you're thinking bigger picture because this has to be beyond just you. So I'm going to give you 3 strategies for for how you can build your business up, get a team on without using your big funds, okay? Number 1, get a partner. The most important thing that you need to figure out when you're building a team is what are you gonna bring to the company, right? What are your biggest strengths? Where should you be focusing? And then you bringing people on to complement all the areas that you're weak at or don't wanna do. I call that CEO time, right? Where are you spending your CEO time? The stuff where you're adding so much value to your business. That's where you need to focus almost all your efforts and delegate, automate, eliminate everything else. So if you're going to bring a partner on board, you gotta think, are you best at making the jewelry or at marketing it? And it sounds like you're best at making this stuff, right? You're reluctant to give up control of that, but you're struggling with the marketing and branding. So an option is to bring on a partner in the business who doesn't want to make the jewelry but wants to focus on marketing and branding and loves that stuff and lives that stuff and eats and breathes that stuff, right? Somebody who loves marketing and branding just as much as you love making jewelry. And you bring that person on as a partner in the business. And how you work it out is up to you. If they're going to be 50/50 partners or they're going to be a smaller percentage because you've already started this business. I would start them off in increments because you don't want to just give up a chunk of your equity and that's gone forever, right? Make them prove themselves. When they they can do this much for you and you've shown that you guys can work together, then they get 10% of your company. And then they get to this point, they get 20%. And the next point, they get 30%. Make them earn in, or they could buy in and give you money for it. So it's two different options. Doesn't cost you money out of the gate. It is an expensive long-term solution because you've lost a chunk of your company. But if you bring on the right person who you can work really well with, who has the same values as you, and who can bring a lot of benefit to your business, then it can more than pay for itself. So number 1 is get a partner. Number 2 is get an intern, and this is where you find a college or high school student to come in and work under you. You said you wanted to, to build a team and so that they could build themselves up as well. So it sounds like you're the kind of person who likes giving back, who wants to see people do better and get better, and that's a great mentality to go into as somebody who's going to be a boss, because you're not just saying, do this, do this, do this, do this. You're actually trying to improve them and help them grow. So if you want to get help on making the designs and making the jewelry while you're going to focus on the marketing and the branding, then you can have a high school or college intern come in and you can teach them, right? You can still come up with the design, but you can eliminate some of the better and they're gonna get stronger and they're gonna maybe come up with some ideas that may surprise you as well. The high school interns typically are free because they're doing it just for school credit and they have to show up because they want to get the grade for their school. The university interns are mixed. Some of them are free, some of them are paid, depends on the program, but still very affordable compared to hiring somebody on a, on a full-time job. So check out your local schools and see if there might be a potential fit to have somebody come in and help you make the jewelry. And number 3 is hire somebody part-time. A lot of people think, oh, I don't have the money to afford somebody to come work in my business, but you don't have to hire someone full-time. Evan Carmichael hired a guy to work with him for 1 hour a day, and that freed up more than 1 hour every day of my time because he was better at what he a lot of money when I was starting up my business, so I couldn't afford to bring on somebody full-time, even part-time, but like 1 hour a day, I could afford that. And that freed up some of my time. And so I'd encourage you to look at, can you bring somebody on even for 1 hour a day? It may be a friend, it may be a family member. People from around the world with tons of skills who can help you. Maybe not do the actual jewelry because you need somebody maybe local, but they can help you with your marketing and your branding, or maybe your admin work, or maybe the, the stuff that you hate doing in your business that, that you still have to get done but can be outsourced to somebody overseas. Just get that mentality where you can go out and hire somebody for as little as an hour a day or a couple hours a week just to alleviate some of the burden off of your shoulders so you can focus on the higher value stuff for your business and not have to spend a ton of money for that person to come in and help you. So in summary, number 1, get a partner. Number 2, get an intern. Number 3, hire somebody part-time. Believe. For those of you watching, like this video, you can support me by clicking on the link in the description, Leave a comment below, let me know what you think, ask a question, and click on my face to subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much, I'll see you soon.
