There’s a point in every creator’s business where growth starts to feel heavy. This happened to me years ago when I had more content and more orders, but less time and less clarity. What I’ve learned in this season is that scaling isn’t about doing more. It’s about changing how the work gets done.
I did this by building what I like to call my micro team. I still do not have any full-time employees in my business except for myself. But I do have a few key people who support very specific parts of the business. My own team is micro in its work and capacity. Having a team set up this way has allowed me to scale the parts of the business that matter without sacrificing my own sanity or incurring the huge overhead of a large office and full-time employees.
And in the current digital-first work world, these kinds of microteams are easy to build and sustain.
Build Your MicroTeam
You might be wondering where to find the help that works for a digital-based team. You don’t need to guess where to look. These are the places I’ve seen used to hire team members for your brand.:
- Fiverr, great for quick, specific tasks (Pinterest pins, product mockups, simple edits). I use this a lot for simple tasks and easy updates that anyone with technical skills could handle.
- Upwork, better for ongoing roles (VA support, email marketing help, operations). Many of the US-based writers that I’ve adored over the years have been found on Upwork.
- OnlineJobs.ph, strong for affordable, long-term virtual assistants from overseas. Transparency note: I tried this, and it didn’t work for me, but I know many other digital business owners who have had success with it.
- FreeUp, pre-vetted freelancers, if you want less trial-and-error.
While digital platforms now make this easy, don’t disregard your local word of mouth. Many times when I am looking for a long-term team member, especially someone who needs to show up in person, I’ll just start asking around. I’ll test friends, post it in my socials, and ask if anyone knows someone who’ll be perfect for the role.
If you are new to this idea of building a micro team. Start with one role tied to revenue or time savings, not five random hires. Start by writing down everything you did this week. Circle what only you can do (this is your creative zone). Highlight what someone else could do with a checklist. Pick the one role that would free up the most time for you, or make you the most money. Then hire for one role only to start! This process is simple, but it removes a lot of friction when you’re first building a team.
What to Hire For
Here’s what I’ve actually seen work in creator businesses for delegating and handing off tasks:
1. Content Support, Think Batching & Repurposing
Instead of editing everything yourself, hire someone to cut 5–10 reels from long-form content, turn blog posts into Pinterest pins, including formatting captions and scheduling posts
A great example of this is hiring a social media editor to take what you filmed once and turn it into a week of content.
2. Customer Order Support
This is one of the fastest wins to hire for. If you handle your own customer support, you can delegate responding to customer emails, tracking orders or issues, and managing review follow-ups to a team member, and the role can grow as your own business grows. Instead of checking messages all day, you can review them once daily while your customer order assistant handles the workload.
3. Product Operations Tasks
This is where things really start to scale. Hiring someone skilled on Upwork to update product listings, check inventory levels, and coordinate with suppliers will free up hours each week that you can commit to the tasks in your creative zone. The tasks that only you can do.
An example of this is that you stop manually checking your inventory and have a virtual assistant flag what needs to be reordered weekly.
Micro Team Scaling Framework
Here is the framework I try to use when thinking of hiring and building out my own microteam.
1. Automate
This can be a team member or often even a software system. It’s worth the effort to look into software, AI, etc., for many of the simplest business tasks. If it repeats in my business, I try to automate it first
Something that happens every time:
- Product delivery emails
- Welcome sequences
- Order confirmations
- DM responds
2. Delegate
Anything that doesn’t require my voice or decision-making is something I try to delegate. As a creative though, this can be REALLY hard at first because everything should have my voice. If you also struggle with this, I’ve learned how to hand off parts of the process. Ie, the initial reel edit, while maintaining the end edit for myself to do. Handing off pieces like this makes it easy to get started delegating work.
- Editing
- Formatting
- Customer service
- Writing
- Data tracking
3. Expand
Only after I have the first two elements of the process working do I attempt to hire for expansion. The reason is that, as a business owner, I believe the expansion side is the most important part of my business to stay involved in for as long as possible. If I can build a microteam around the first two elements and I still need help, then I will look for team members to help me expand.
- New products
- New platforms
- New offers
For me, scaling this way has looked like keeping the creative direction in my own hands for as long as possible, systemizing repetitive tasks, and slowly layering in support where it matters. If you want to build this right and not waste a lot of time and money along the way, I suggest not building overnight, but intentionally over a season.
Because the goal isn’t to build a big team. It’s to build a business that runs consistently, is growing, and doesn’t rely on you doing everything yourself.
One of the books I’ve read that has been most impactful for learning to scale by building a team is The E-Myth Revisited. If you’re ready for this and want help figuring out what to automate, delegate, and focus on next. This is exactly the type of work we do in my coaching program. Find out more about it here.