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This is part 2 from John Cow/Jason Katzenback on how to grow a business through hiring staff. Enjoy!

In my previous post of this series “Delegate or Die - How to Hire Locally to Grow Your Business“, I talked about planning for moving your business into an office, today I am going to touch on what to look for in office space, how to find employees and how to hold interviews.

Office Space: SHOP AROUND!

As I mentioned in the previous post, I am speaking to you out of experience and sharing with you what I have found to work best through trial and error. I am telling you this because I hope I can spare you from some of the HUGE mistakes I made and finding my initial office was a big mess up on my part. You see, I was so excited to be moving out of my home office that I jumped at the first office that looked half decent, which might not sound bad but 2 months later I was packing up and moving again.

1. Location: You want to make sure that your office is easy to get to. The further you are from your office you will find that you start making up excuses as to not going to the office. Do not fool yourself and think you can hire an office manager and not even head into the office, this is something that takes time to put into place and your employees need your guidance and leadership.

It is also important to consider errands, supplies and restaurants. The more central you are to other resources, the less frustrating you will find it. If you need to get stamps, paper, repairs and even food, it is extremely frustrating when you have to plan hours of your day to pick them up.

Last of all, is your office easily accessed via a bus or subway route? If you are going to have employees, you are going to want to ensure they have no excuses for not being able to get to the office.

2. Lighting: This was another huge mistake I made. I first found a great looking office but it was in the basement of the office building and there was only one small window. I thought that I could get lights but believe me, nothing replaces natural sunlight and do not underestimate how important it is.

3. Room for Growth: This was my biggest mistake of all. I did not realize how much room one person’s work area took. You need to realize that once you sign a lease, you can not easily get out of it and room for growth is not an acceptable excuse.

You need to have a clear picture of what you expect for size requirements for a one year period. The recommended space requirement per person is 250 sq/ft, which might sound like a lot but consider that is only a little more then 15 ft x 15 ft and in that space you have to fit a working station, area to move around equipment and so on. Now personally I think that is a little much but I would never budget less then 150 sq/ft per person, you do not want people bumping into each other to move around.

4. Privacy: You are going to want to ensure that you have an office with a door on it. Your employees will constantly want to talk with you and ask questions and by having a door you can make sure that you can shut the door and have your privacy to get things done. I will talk more about this in the next post when I get into managing your employees.

How To Find Suitable Employees

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This is a guest post from Jason Katzenback, otherwise known as the current incarnation of John Cow (just like Dr Who, a new Cow is born each time the previous one quits the show)…

Have you heard the expression “No man is an island“… well perhaps to be more politically correct “no one person is an island”?

One of the hardest decisions any entrepreneur faces when starting a new business is the concept of delegating. At first we are more often then not responsible for all activities of our business including; research, planning, bookkeeping, webdesign and the list goes on and on. For most people this is not a problem for the first few months because you are in a start up mode where you are still getting your feet wet. As your business starts to grow momentum however, this quickly starts to become a burden.

Too Much To Do in Too Little Time

Suddenly it happens, you start looking at the clock and realize the day is done. Your spouse is calling for supper and you impatiently yell back “Give me a Minute”. You are frantically trying to get as much done as possible because of the complete and utter frustration of having too much to do in too little time.

Life continues like this for awhile and then suddenly tax time comes and you become exasperated because for the next week you will not be able to do anything but focus on getting your bookkeeping done and all your projects are on hold…. never mind the 150 emails you are getting every day.

STOP THE INSANITY!!!

If your business is at a point where there is revenue coming in and you just have too much to do in too little time, then perhaps it is time to consider hiring local employees to help. With today’s virtual world, there are many options available from outsourcing to hiring virtual assistants and depending on your situation these may be better options. If however you are ready and wanting to start an office with local employees then my hope is this post series will offer you some guidance.

Why Should I listen to YOU?

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A quick short post today as I’m busy getting ready with my final preparations to head for Canada (more on this soon).

If you are into search engine optimization you know the importance of back links. In a newsletter I sent out to my email subscribers back in February (you have to be on my blog tips newsletter) I told you about a neat little software tool from Neil Shearing called Real Link Finder.

The software lets you search the blogosphere for blogs that do not use the “no follow” tag (which makes links near useless for search engine optimization purposes - see this for more). I had a play with it and while it was okay at finding blogs, it was a bit hit and miss with the how on-topic the results were.

Just this week the “Jasons” (Jason Katzenback and Jason Potash) released a very similar software tool called CommentKahuna. There’s not much different with this tool compared to Neil’s in terms of functions, but since it runs its own search engine and queries a few other sites, the results can be different.

If you are looking to run a comment marketing campaign to build links and traffic, or if you just want to isolate blogs related to yours that do not use the no follow tag, both these tools are useful. The creators of the software do ask you to opt-in with your name and email address, but the program itself doesn’t cost any money.

You can get CommentKahuna here.

The Jason’s have a follow up product (surprise!) released today called TrafficKahuna, which I haven’t had a chance to play with just yet, but is some form of community traffic building resource. It’s not free and since I haven’t had a chance to actually use it I will reserve judgment for now.

You can find out more about TrafficKahuna here.

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My good friend Jason Katzenback of Portalfeeder fame contacted me about a new website he’s launching along with some other partners aimed at providing an outlet for Internet marketers to sell their products.

The site is called DealDotCom and here is what it offers to the public:

DealDotCom.com is the place on the web to find all the Internet Marketing products you really want for rock bottom prices. We sell products and services that help save you time and money when it comes to running your online business.

However the site isn’t live yet to buy products (September 18th is the grand opening) and at the moment since this is so new, you have a great chance of getting in early as an affiliate and to list your own products for sale.

If you have any Internet marketing products and you would like to add another potential stream of sales and source of affiliate referrals, now is a good time to join DealDotCom and list your wares. When the doors open, given the caliber of people promoting this, there will be some serious traffic heading to the site, so it poses a good opportunity for exposure for your product(s), especially if you act quickly like I am now.

Here’s my personal invite if you want more info -

http://www.dealdotcom.com/invite/2126/

I’m currently working with Jason to craft the right kind of offer for my blogging products and who knows, if I make a sale or two down the line it’s worth my time.

The only question I have - what’s with these dotcom.com domain names - seems a tad confusing if you ask me :).

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