When you read books about entrepreneurship, one of the common themes you’ll find is learning how to let go of tasks and hire a team. Whether it’s in the form of staff or freelance contractors.
You are one person and you can’t do it all.
This is something I’ve thought a lot about as it pertains to my voice over business and my coaching business. Sometimes it feels like there just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to get all the work done and still have time left over for more important things, like family.
Many recognized entrepreneurial writers and bloggers all talk about Fiverr as a brilliant place to find and source affordable freelancers for your projects.
Recently, I signed up.
I even started looking for a couple freelancers for projects I had in mind.
All the while, though, something didn’t feel right about it.
Double Standards
I’ve been an outspoken critic of Fiverr, as it pertains the voice over industry. It erodes rates, and causes nothing but problems. I don’t care what argument you throw at me, I don’t believe I’ll ever be convinced there’s a good reason to be offering your professional voice over services on Fiverr for those rates.
How, then, in good conscience, could I source freelance talent through the site thereby eroding rates in other professional industries?
I couldn’t. That’s what didn’t feel right.
To hire someone on Fiverr would be hypocritical of me.
Doing It Right
So within an hour of signing up for my profile, I changed direction.
I went to another website and posted my project for more than 4 times some of the rates I was seeing on Fiverr.
If I expect to get paid fair-market-value for my voice over work, I believe I have a responsibility to pay fair-market-value to the people I hire.
So that’s exactly what I’ve started doing.
Hiring Freelancers
There are many different tasks you can outsource to a freelancer, and it’s still more affordable than you might think.
Before you say you can’t afford it, let me ask you a question.
How much is your time worth? If you paid a freelancer a sum to conduct tasks you aren’t great at or don’t enjoy doing or shouldn’t even be doing in the first place, and in turn you were able to devote the time and effort you saved to more productive things… like looking for and booking voice over work, is it worth it?
I heard a great analogy once when it comes to investing in your business.
Let’s say you’re in Vegas and you found a slot machine that pays $10 for every $1 you insert. What would your gambling budget be?
In other words, if you can invest in things that pay for themselves and produce great profit, it’s not a question of whether you can afford to do it, but whether you can afford to not do it!
