When I started selling books on Amazon, about 3 ½ year ago, my life was a lot slower than it is now. Yes, I was married, had a house and a full-time job but my job was a lot different than it is now and it didn’t keep me as busy. The most important and biggest difference between now and almost four years ago is my beautiful daughter. Things in life just seem to take over and get busier and more complicated as each day passes and this is the main reason I decided to hire an employee. About a year and a half ago a lot of things came together at the same time to make this happen. I’d like to share with you briefly as to how I finally made the decision to hire my first employee.

About a year and a half ago my mother got laid off during this wonderful economy we are in right now. As luck would have it, her husband, my step father still had a good paying job and they were able to get by just fine without my mother’s income. Previously, she had expressed some interest in helping me out with the books and since I was always trying to find time to do everything myself I thought it was a great time to bring my first employee on board, my mom. The one reason I was able to afford this was because I had built up my business to where I had plenty of sources lined up and I was making enough money to pay an employee. At first it was a little difficult for me to let go of certain aspects of the business as I was used to doing everything on my own and my own way. After training my mother on how to do the tasks, I began transitioning more away from the day-to-day activities and was able to concentrate more on my full-time job, my family and taking more of an ownership role.

As time went on my mother began to feel overwhelmed due to all the tasks she had on her plate; from picking up the books, scanning, creating FBA orders, listing, fulfilling orders and customer service, it was just too much for one person to do by herself. While she was doing everything just as I taught her, she didn’t have the experience I had. We began looking at the possibility of hiring a part-time employee to help out with scanning. I hired a good person and things went really well. Now I have two employees working for me.

So, the question I want to help you answer is how do you know when to hire your first employee?

There are three very important guidelines you should consider:

1. Make sure you have a consistent recurring amount of income that can warrant an employee. You may have more things to do than you have time to do them but if you’re not generating the income to support an employee then there is no way you can hire someone. So, first be sure to have a consistent and reliable amount of income. Be sure to have regular sources lined up and make sure you are going to be able to generate a consistent amount of income to hire that employee.
   
   
2. Decide what pieces of your business you want to hand off to someone else. For me, as I mentioned, I didn’t want to do the day-to-day scanning anymore. I wanted to be dealing more with the executive decisions. If you have read my blog for a while, you will know that I buy books in bulks and not singles. The process is to find the books, a couple thousand books at a time from big dealers, bring them in and just start scanning them and see what we have. Frankly, it bored me to scan book after book, look at prices and throw them in the pile they needed to go to. I would rather give that task to someone else and it really didn’t require a lot of training. Once I had someone reliable (and who could be more reliable than my mom!), it didn’t take long to do the training. Once trained to do the scanning, hook up the laptop and know what to do and when to do it, it was smooth sailing from there on out. Now it was just a matter of me transitioning off that responsibility and I could focus my time on lining up more sources.
   
   
3. Figure out if you value your time more than money. The reason I say this is because labor is by far the biggest expense I have in my book business. I spend around two to three hours a week maximum working on my book business. This process came about slowly and gradually while training my mom and the other employee on how to run nearly all aspects of the business. At this point, I simply act as a consultant and steer the business in the right direction from an owners’ perspective. The time that has been given back to me by hiring employees has been wonderful. Prior to bringing them on board, I would spend close to 20-30 hours away from wife and daughter as my office is away from my home; my family time was definitely neglected. I also didn’t have time to do anything for myself.

Being able to hire an employee has also given me the opportunity to not only grow a successful business, but to also look into other ventures, such as, eBizControl and my new inventory receiving project yet to be named that I will have more information about later. I am beginning to transition and merge my technology background with my Amazon seller background. I will soon be offering some services that I have been wanting ever since I became a seller and it will benefit other book sellers. I can’t wait!

In conclusion, hiring employees is what has made my book business so successful today. I believe my book business would have been closed down a long time ago without them. Just like with most things in life, when you get bored with something, you end up becoming uninterested in doing the routine tasks and move on to something else. There were some aspects of my business that I simply grew tired of; like I said, with the scanning and picking up the books. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing you may as well not be doing it. Instead of simply throwing my arms up, saying I quit, this sucks, I found someone who would like to do those tasks. My mother loves scanning books and she enjoys trying to find treasures, as she calls them. So it was a win/win situation for both of us; my mom is able to find the “treasures”, make some money and I was able to progress onto other ventures and leave the things behind that I would rather not do.

Do you currently have employees?  Are you thinking about hiring one?  Let us know in the comments!

I started selling books on Amazon about three and a half years ago. During this time of my life, things were a lot slower than what they are now. Sure I was married, had a house,  and a full-time job, but my job was a lot different than it is now. I had less to do, was not quite as busy, and more importantly, I didn’t have the beautiful daughter that I have today. Needless to say, my life has gotten a lot more complicated and a lot busier since then.

This is one of the reasons I decided to hire an an employee. I hired my first employee about a year and a half ago. A lot of things came together at the same time to make this happen.  My mother is the first employee who I hired. About a year and a half ago, my mom got laid off from her job. Luckily, her husband, my stepfather, still had a good paying job, and they were able to get by just fine without my mom’s income. She had expressed some interest in helping me out with the books, and due to the responsibilities I had, I thought it was a great idea. I had built the business to an extent where I had plenty of sources lined up, and was making enough money to be able to afford an employee.

So I decided to let her start. Things were a little difficult while trying to transition away from the day-to-day activities at first. I was not trying to concentrate more on my full-time job, my family, and basically take more of an ownership role. Things were going well until my mother began to feel overwhelmed by all the responsibilities: picking up the books, scanning the books, creating FBA orders, listing the books, fulfilling orders, customer service etc. She was doing everything, just as I would, but without the experience that I have. It was a little rough at first. During this time, we decided to hire another part-time employee to help my mother with the scanning. It turned out well. I hired a good person the first time and things were going well. So now, I have two employees working for me.

Now that you know my history and my story, how would YOU know when to hire your first employee?  Here are a few reasons to help you decide.

1. Make sure you have a consistent and recurring amount of income that can pay an employee. You have may have a lot things that you know you can have someone else do.  However, if you’re not generating the income to support bringing on additional help, there is no way that you can hire one.  So first, be sure to have a consistent, reliable, amount of income. Line up your regular sources (here’s an eBook that just might help) and have your ducks in a row before you think about it.
2. Decide what pieces of the business would you rather hand to someone else. For example, I didn’t want to do the day-to-day scanning anymore. I was tired of reaching in gaylords of books and scanning each and every one that came through the door.  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I buy books in bulk. I don’t buy singles. The process is to find the sources, get a couple of thousand books at a time on a truck, bring them in, and start scanning them to see what’s there. I wanted to deal more with more the technical and executive decisions. I wanted someone else to do the scanning.  Hiring someone to do this freed me to do an FBA shipment, or line up more sources; that sort of thing.
3. Decide if you value your time more than money. The reason I say this is because labor is by far the biggest expense that I have in my book business. It accounts more more than 50% of my expenses.  However, I now only spend around 2-3 hours maximum for my book business. I’ve done this by slowly but gradually training my mother and the other employee on how to run nearly all aspects of the business. I simply act as a consultant now, and try to steer the business in the right direction from an owner’s perspective. The time that hiring employees has given back to me has been wonderful. Prior to that, I would spend close to 20-30 hours a week away from home because my books are at a separate location. I was spending time away from my wife and my daughter; family time was being neglected. I also did not have time to do things for myself; I wasn’t able to ever relax.

Hiring an employee has also given me the opportunity to essentially put my book-selling business on autopilot but to also have the time to work on other things such as eBizControl, and my new project project that I’m calling codename “easy receive.” I’ll have more information about these later, but I’m beginning to transition to try to merge my technology background with my amazon seller background. Soon, I’ll be offering some services that I’ve been wanting to offer since I started as a seller.

In conclusion, one of the most important reasons why I hired an employee was because I believe that my book business would have been closed down a long time ago if it wasn’t for that. In life, you can sometimes get bored, uninterested, and just tired of doing a task. There were some aspects of my business that I simply grew tired of and was ready to just quit. But instead of simply throwing up my arms saying “I quit, I’m not doing this anymore, this sucks!” I hired someone to do it.

If you don’t enjoy a business, then you might as well not have it. I was able to offload those tasks to somebody else that actually enjoys it. My mother loves scanning books.  She calls it finding treasures. It was a win-win situation for us both. My mom was able to go treasure hunting and make some extra money despite losing her job, and I was able to invest my time elsewhere.

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My book selling business has been, for almost 2 years now, a one man show.  Sure, there are those times where I would pay a friend or extended family member a few bucks here and there to help me out when I was in a bind but for the most part it’s all been me.  I’m pretty proud of that but at the same time it’s been a little lonely.  Who is the one renting the truck to drive 3 hours to pick up a lot of books?  Me.  Who is the one processing orders every day?  Me.  Who is the one spending nearly 30 hours/week outside of a 40 hour/week job adjusting prices, tweaking listing rules and being the visionary for things to come?  Me.

Having a family and being in all this me time sometimes can get to a guy.  Why can’t it be we time with my wife and I?  Being in my early thirties now, I have a 16 month old daughter named Ella and a beautiful wife, Miranda.  Luckily, thanks to my book selling business, Miranda is able to stay home with Ella but with being a full time mom comes lots of meal times, bath times, and just being able to keep up with Ella so her time is short.  However, with the perk of Miranda being able to stay at home comes the toll that working two jobs has on my time and general psyche.  Sounds like catch 22, doesn’t it?  Well, if we can’t spend much quality time together then why not try to work together on this business and make it a family business but what could I do to make my wife help me when she’s already tired and busy?  Of course!  Pay her!

As with many families, we have our fair share of arguments including scuffles about money.  I’m constantly questioning her on her purses, shoes and the 27,564th toy she bought Ella and she’s always complaining that she needs some spending money that I don’t question her purchases.  Ding!  The lightbulb comes on!  Why not “hire” her as an employee and do the things that I’m not able to do during the day such as make calls, scan in some books or any other misc task that would help out the business?  Genius!  Not only do I get help, we get to spend some time together because it’s a “we” instead of  a “me” processing books now plus she gets cash to do whatever she wants to with.  Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

Miranda hard at work

Are you running solo with your book business but have a family that needs you to be around?  Why not combine the two and give your spouse a little cash from the profits for helping?  It sure has made a huge difference in our relationship, increased the business profits and has eased the stress a little when it comes to money.  It’s a win-win situation!

I want to hear your story.  Are you the solopreneur that is taking this book-selling thing by the horns with no help?  Are you selling books as a family or possibly have a friend or relative helping out?  How about using cleaning books as your kid’s allowance chores?  I want to hear about it!  Make a comment below with your story about how your human resource department looks like.  By this time next week, I’ll read all of the comments and choose the one I most enjoy and will reward the winner with a copy of my information-packed eBook Used Books: Big Business – The Secrets to Selling Books Online for FREE!  Just by telling me and my readers your story you could get my $27 eBook absolutely FREE!