What I’ve Learned From Hiring My First 5 Steem Freelancers

Before Steem, I never started a business or hired an employee.

There were close-calls towards entrepreneurship - I started a “business” of watching people’s dogs for them while they went on vacation when I was in middle school. But that was just me, so it was more like an individual doing gig work, and less like somebody starting an entrepreneurial business.

Entrepreneurship has nothing to do with ambition and everything to do with hiring at least one employee. If you legally incorporate with the government and start paying somebody to do something, you have an entrepreneurial business.

If you don’t do those things, you aren’t an entrepreneur. Thus, even though I did a lot of creative / business-oriented things with my music and in school from age 0 to age 25, I never was an entrepreneur. This realization dawned on me - in a positive way - towards the end of 2017, age 26.

From Freelancer to Entrepreneur

In 2017 I truly realized that I was a pure freelancer. All of my work had always been work-for-hire gigs, no long term contracts, working for various people and organizations.

It wasn’t a problem to be a freelancer. In fact realizing that I was clearly not an entrepreneur helped me to focus on the right kinds of learning, developing the skills to get better freelance gigs and to do better work.

Most importantly, it helped me realize what I had to do if I wanted to become an entrepreneur. Technically speaking I had to hire someone - but more broadly, I had to build a steady enough source of income to support the cost of an employee.

In-Betweener: Hiring Short-Term Freelancers

I’m nowhere near ready to take on a full-time or even steady part-time employee. Luckily the Steem blockchain offers opportunities to “dip your toe” into entrepreneurship - hiring freelancers for one-off gigs.

Thus I posted some Steem gigs.

At first I started small with a single gig:

The first Steemian I hired was @atopy, who made some great thumbnail logos for my Steem posts. Here are some examples of her work:

If you haven’t seen these on my blog yet, you will start to notice them. It’s a great relief to have themed thumbnails that I can use to make my blog pop out visually.

After this I was already getting a taste of how useful hiring people can be. It would have taken me at least an hour per image to make them myself, and they would not have looked as good. Instead, I spent 10 minutes hiring somebody and got great quality.

I went ahead and posted up some more Steem gigs.

Hiring 5 People at Once!!

Here was my first large batch of gigs:

Shout out to @voronoi for giving me a bunch of upvotes on these. The ability to have the Steem blockchain provide partial compensation for the employer is an awesome incentive to hire people on Steem.

After about 48 hours I looked at the applications and was able to hire four Steemians. I found a logo desgner, book layout designer, an editor, and a community liaison. It was awesome.

And now I’m learning a new lesson of entrepreneurship: Organizing a full staff of people is hard work!

You have different people working on different things in different time zones, different personalities, it’s a lot to keep track of. You have to try and make sure that the work happens in the right order and at a consistent level of quality.

You also have to manage the budget - no small task if you can’t afford an accountant on top of everything else you are doing lol.

I’m lucky to have the @musiciansguide project, a non-profit endeavor funded by the Steem blockchain with major support from @sndbox, as a way to learn and explore these ideas. It would be harder to come up with the funds to hire people, if not for that.

What I Learned So Far From Hiring on Steem

Three lessons:

(1) It Isn’t Hard to Hire a Freelancer on Steem

It really isn’t. Put aside 5 steem, then post a Steem Gig asking for graphic designers to create a thumbnail image for your next post. Pay the winner 5 steem. This is a very simple and enjoyable way of testing out the Steem Gig concept.

(2) It Is Complicated to Hire Multiple Freelancers for One Project

When you start to hire multiple people, the complexities stack up immediately - coordination, legalities, your own time management, and much more - so be ready for that when you leap into larger hiring projects.

(3) Hiring People is Crucial to Increase Your Output

The more you delegate the faster and more efficiently you can get things done. It also often leads to higher quality work. Learning how to be an entrepreneur is a crucial skill for any person who seeks to do great things.

More Lessons on Entrepreneurship to Come

I hope to spearhead more conversation and community around the topic of Steem Entrepreneurship. This blockchain offers the potential to empower many new people to enter the entrepreneurship space, and we’re just getting started.

What do you think? Have you hired anybody on Steem? If so, how was it - and if not, why not?

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I saw some of the gigs when you posted them. And followed you in case you posted something in my wheelhouse. it's great that you are taking steemit to the next level by basically creating a new business on the site!

Thanks Ray

I saw those Steem Gigs of yours in my feed, all four of them at once. I was hoping there'd be something for me, but unfortunately none of that stuff is really my skill set. Maybe the E-book one as I'm sort of okay at writing, but I don't really know much about the subject material.

I'd love to work for Steem. I mean, I do, every time I write on here, but you know what I mean. If your project ever needs any software work I might be interested :)

Very useful and interesting post. Great to hear about about your success on Steemit and making the transition from talent to hire to true entrepreneur, congrats! As someone who's wanted to hire talent off Steem, but underwhelmed by the quality of [Steemgig] posts I've seen, it really helped me see it's a solid, effective option and not a big potential time-waster. Thanks and keep on rocking that creativity!

Thank you! It'll be nice when we have a more organized way to list and apply for gigs.

Ah yes! I subconsciously noted your branding when the posts went up. I, an graphic design expertler, made mine in MS Paint. The professional’s Photoshop.

Work Skills: MS Paint, Karaoke.

Dude, you've just opened my mind up to stuff I never even thought about, and reminded me of things I had forgotten. Thanks for the great piece! Paying freelancers with Steem...need to remember that it's actually currency...Can't wait to see your next post and some updates and advice :)

Indeed it is actually currency, it is really worth its equivalent value in USD.

I like that you are experimenting with this. I'd love to move a lot of my productive work to "blockchain"... making small steps toward that.

Could you tell me how to practice busines with steemit

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