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I love owning my own business. Being a business owner means you wear a lot of hats. One minute I am the mailroom and the next minute a social marketing coordinator. It is almost like juggling!
I probably should have studied up on juggling, before I started our business. LOL! That is okay. After 20+ years, I have figured it out! 🤩 Not only have I figured it out for our businesses, but I teach thousands of fellow business owners how to do the same.
One of the big challenges for a lot of business owners is finding TIME! You cannot do it all. If you want to continue to grow, you do have to hand off pieces of your business to others. It is hard to trust someone else with your business for the first time, but you need to do it to continue to grow your business.
The BIG news . . . there are a lot of ways to get help for cheap or free! Today, I am going to share how to get cheap or free help to build your business.
Interns
One of the first cheap or free ways to get help for your business is interns. We love working with high school or college interns. You are providing a valuable service to them…experience and are getting some much needed support for you.
Most interns are willing to work for no cost, just to get good experience on their resume. Look toward your local college or for online internship opportunities. Most of our interns were recruited off our Facebook page and do not even work in the office. Scroll down below for some ideas on how you can recruit interns.
How to Find Interns
- Post on Social Marketing: We often post our intern opportunities on our personal and business social marketing. You be surprised how many intern opportunities you will find from this one technique. We created a high school intern program as a community service project for one of our online companies. With one post to Facebook on my personal page and we had 6 interested high school students. Their parents saw my post and immediately contacted me that their child would be interested in this opportunity.
- Contact Local High Schools: You can contact local high school counselors about the internship opportunity.
- Contact Local Colleges: Contact local college counselors about internship opportunities. In our city, we have several community colleges and a university.
- Contact your Alma Matter: As a University of Florida graduate, I like to help out my alma matter. Not only am I a mentor for college students, but our internship information is listed in their publications and website.
- Contact Other Universities and Colleges: You can also contact other universities and colleges in your state. They do not have to be your schools or in your city. We promote travel with our businesses and the Rosen School at the University of Central Florida is a huge tourism college. We are on their website with internship opportunities for their students. The great news about our online business. You can train and work with an intern on the other side of the country.
Barter
Have you tried bartering for stuff? I sometimes laugh that multi-million dollar companies will barter for things, but it happens all of the time. I think they are successful, because they know their value and know they can barter for things.
A super successful dentist office in our area was building a house on the beach. As you can imagine a house on the beach? They probably are quite successful and could just pay for construction. Instead, the dentist bartered for dental services in exchange for construction. Genius – right?!?!
We barter all of the time with our business. We currently have a part time assistant on a year contract in exchange for a trip to Disney World. Before paying for help, see if you can barter for help.
Independent Contractors
I love hiring Independent Contractors for social marketing, graphic design and more. You set the requirements and pay. They just handle the job. Do not think you cannot afford to hire someone as an Independent Contractor?
I have hired contractors to create graphics for our Pinterest and Facebook pages for only $5 a graphic. Even if you think no one is going to want that job for xyz price, you do not know until you try. You will be surprised. Post it on your social marketing to see if anyone bites to your job offer.
Help Sites
There are some amazing websites that offer help. One of my favorites starts at only $5! I have created logos, headers, answering machine messages, cartoons of our family for YouTube, and even a song for your YouTube intro (all for only $5). Craziness – right!!!
Fiverr
My favorite help site is called Fiverr. It is a website that people post “things they can do” for $5 and up. If you have a project, type in the box below and see if there is someone that can help you complete the task for only $5.
As you’re building your blogging, YouTube, or online business; keep these tips in mind to help you grow and maximize your time.
Do you have another way you like to get help for your business? Share in the comments below.
