If you are a busy nurse practitioner entrepreneur running your own practice, there is a skillset that you really need to learn, and that is how to hire freelancers to help you get a lot accomplished and a lot of things off of your plate so you can focus on what matters most. Read on to learn all about finding and hiring and managing wonderful freelancers to help get things accomplished in your practice for your practice.

All of us as medical professionals are really focused on patient care and delivering excellent outcomes for our patients. We may not be experts at every other aspect of business. I surely know I am not. If you have no background in something you can find people who are super pros at those particular things online. Typically they’re on different job boards, we’ll talk about one in a minute that I use a lot, that are going to be able to help you find people to take those things off of your to-do list in a quick, efficient way.

Why Use Freelancers?

It’s always better to have a super pro doing your marketing than you stumbling along, doing it all wrong, wasting money, wasting time. Although hiring a freelancer obviously costs money, you have to think about the time investment, the stress of doing it yourself. That can be actually quite priceless if you can replace that.

What Kind of Freelancers Should I Hire?

Often it is project based, like, I need someone to help X, Y, Z, I need someone to create my logo for my company. That’s one very specific project you would hire them for and see it through the end.

Sometimes it’s more of an ongoing project, like, I need someone to do my bookkeeping five hours a week ongoing. And as I get busier, it will go up, up, up. Maybe I just need a tax advisor like a CPA who can give me some basic advice in a one hour consultation. Not necessarily hiring them for the long term, but doing the consultation. I’m going to get a lot of my questions answered and it’s going to let me start on the right foot.

How to Create the Perfect Post for a Freelancer Job Board

When you post online on a job board, you want to be very descriptive to make sure you’re hiring the right person. Be extremely specific about the deliverable, like what are you trying to get at the end of it, the timeline. How long do you expect it to take? What are you willing to pay or what is the range of payment? Really anything that matters to you. It’s also helpful to include some screening questions. Most websites allow you to do that, so I always add a few because you want them to go that extra step and answer questions that matter to you.

You want to quickly weed out people that are completely not a fit. Do you actually have 20 hours available a week to help me with X, Y, Z? Because maybe they’re looking for a full-time job or maybe they’re looking for two hour a week job. So you can kind of filter it that way.

Go-to Source for Finding Freelancers?

My number one go-to source for finding freelancers is Upwork. I have no financial relationship with Upwork other than paying them a lot of money. I am recommending them truly from my own experience. Upwork is a huge platform. You can find people in the US and abroad, you can find them entry level and super experts with tons of experience. I do recommend looking very closely at the reviews, the commentary on the reviews, the price point people list, their own description of what they can offer, and it’s fun.

I’ve hired many fabulous, amazing people on Upwork. Obviously it can be a bit hit or miss. I’ve also hired some people that weren’t so great. So whoever you hire, you have to keep a close eye and check in with them and make sure they’re doing what you want them to do.

 

In the day-to-day craziness, just don’t forget why you started your practice, what your goal is, where are you trying to end up, and this is gonna keep fueling you. Don’t get too caught up in the weeds of every little aspect of your business. You really should outsource some of the ticky tack stuff or the time consuming stuff or the stuff you just don’t know so you are leading your practice. You’re also managing the people that are going to run your practice. It’s definitely a learning curve. How to manage freelancers, how to stay in touch with them, how to communicate. It can be challenging. However, it can have huge payoffs if you do it right. Start with one person, kind of figure out how that goes. Learn the skills yourself and how to manage them. And then you can add on more and more over time.

 

If you need help find a collaborating physician, please reach out to us. We’d love to help, and I’ll see you next time.