text: Then, I’d invest the time and money into executing on that strategy. If you’re looking for someone to do all of the needed things and you only have realistically ~$10k to spend this year on SEO (because paid acquisition should take up a large chunk of your budget), you’re going to need to spend your time budget moreso than if you had a much larger budget.
  This isn’t to say that you cannot then hire someone on a freelance basis to then operate some of these channels, such as your media spend, where you do not have the time or the ability to gain the skills to do it well, but starting off looking to hire someone cheap to operate is not the right way to go.
  In fact, this is exactly how I operated Credo until mid-2017 when I began bringing in more consistent help.
  In 2016, I ran Credo very lean. We did ~$100k in revenue as I also consulted. Business was growing well throughout a lot of business and personal changes. I remember well sitting in a coffee shop in Hayes Valley between appointments working with a developer I found through Codeable on some Gravity Forms improvements.
  In 2017, I worked with a few consultants. I worked with a copywriting consultant for a quick audit and an hour of phone consulting as I worked through some messaging changes for the Credo homepage, and at the end of the year I worked with a friend who built a business very similar to Credo in the past on some technical recommendations and strategy for moving forward.
  2018 is where I started to use services like Verblio (at the time Blogmutt) and my friend’s content company to actually produce content for us. I’ve also consulted with email marketing professionals and designers, and in the middle of the year I hired a Denver-based friend to partner on our redesign. You could also use a service like Venngage to build charts.
  In Q4 2018 I finally hired my first full time employee, and now my friend who did our redesign is also working with us half-time. We are also continuing to work with a few consultants and service providers on areas of the business.
  My recommendation is definitely colored by my own experience with Credo, but also from seeing many businesses with smaller budgets come in looking to hire someone for their needs without understanding what direction to run first in order to get the most return for their business.
  Invest in knowledge first, use your time budget, and then look to hire for the areas outside of your areas of expertise and passion.