When to Hire Help: Calculating the True Cost of Your Own Labor

"I'll just do it myself to save money."

This is the mantra of the burned-out entrepreneur. In the beginning, wearing every hat is necessary. But as you grow, doing everything yourself becomes the single biggest bottleneck to your profit.

You think you are saving $15/hour by packing boxes. In reality, you are costing your business thousands by not focusing on high-level strategy.

In this guide, we will break down the concept of Opportunity Cost, calculate your "Effective Hourly Rate," and tell you exactly which tasks to fire yourself from today.

---

The Math of Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is the profit you didn't make because you were busy doing something else.

Let's assume your business makes $10,000/month profit, and you work 160 hours/month.
Your Effective Hourly Rate (EHR) = $62.50.

Now, imagine you spend 10 hours a week answering customer support emails. You could hire a Virtual Assistant (VA) to do this for $8/hour.

• Cost to Hire VA: $80/week.
• Cost of YOU doing it: $625/week (10 hours x $62.50).

By "saving" $80, you are effectively lighting $545 on fire. You are paying yourself a CEO salary to do entry-level work.

The 4 Buckets of Tasks (Eisenhower Matrix)

To decide what to outsource, audit your time for one week. Categorize every task into one of these four buckets:

The First 3 Hires for E-commerce

Don't know where to start? Here is the standard hiring path for a scaling Amazon/Shopify brand.

1. Customer Service VA

Cost: $5 - $10/hr.
Why: Answering "Where is my order?" is emotionally draining and breaks your focus. A VA can use templates (Macros) to handle 90% of tickets.

2. Supply Chain / Operations Manager

Cost: $15 - $25/hr.
Why: Managing inventory levels, creating shipping plans, and dealing with freight forwarders is complex but process-driven. Once you document your SOP (Standard Operating Procedure), someone else can run it.

3. PPC Specialist / Agency

Cost: $1,000/mo retainer or % of ad spend.
Why: Ad platforms change daily. Unless you are obsessed with bid adjustments, a specialist will likely get a better ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) than you can, paying for themselves.

How to Afford Help (The "Profit Buffer")

"But I can't afford to hire!"

If your margins are so thin that you cannot afford $10/hour for help, you have a pricing problem, not a hiring problem.

Your product price must include a buffer for labor.

• Bad Price: COGS + Shipping + Profit.
• Good Price: COGS + Shipping + Labor Overhead + Profit.

If you calculate labor costs into your unit economics from Day 1, you will always have the budget to hire when volume increases.

FAQ

Where do I find VAs?

Upwork: Good for specialized, project-based work (e.g., "Write this listing").
OnlineJobs.ph: The gold standard for finding long-term Filipino VAs. Excellent English skills and work ethic.

Should I hire full-time or part-time?

Start part-time. Hire someone for 10 hours/week. As trust builds and your SOPs improve, increase their hours. Jumping straight to a 40-hour salary is risky if you don't have enough work prepared for them.

What is an SOP?

Standard Operating Procedure. It is a document or video that explains exactly how to do a task. "If you can't write it down, you can't outsource it." Use Loom to record your screen while you do the task, then hand that video to the VA.

Conclusion

You have 24 hours in a day. You cannot scale time.

The only way to scale your income is to disconnect it from your personal labor. Hiring isn't an expense; it is an investment in buying back your life so you can focus on the $1,000/hour decisions that actually grow the business.

Action Step: Open the calculator. Add a line item for "Labor Cost" (e.g., $1.00 per unit). Does your profit margin survive? If yes, start writing your first job description today.