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At some point in your new location-independent business, you hit a wall. You’re making money, clients are coming in, and suddenly you realize something uncomfortable: if you keep doing everything yourself, your income is capped. You can either work 120–130 hours a week or you can delegate. There is no third option.

This post is about how to delegate correctly, who your first hire should be, and how to avoid the common mistakes that turn delegation into a nightmare instead of a relief.

The Alpha 2.0 Business Rule: No Employees

Let’s start with a foundational rule.

You do not hire salaried employees.

No W-2s. No full-time payroll. No long-term employment obligations. In the Alpha 2.0 business model, you hire contractors only. This keeps your business flexible, low-risk, and location-independent.

That said, hiring a contractor does not mean randomly posting a job and grabbing the first person you see. Delegation starts long before you talk to anyone.

Before you hire anyone, ask yourself a brutally honest question:

Do I need to do this at all?

Many tasks feel necessary simply because you’re used to doing them. That doesn’t mean they’re actually important. For example, if you’re just starting out and trying to land your first few clients, hiring someone to make social media posts is almost always a waste of money. It doesn’t directly generate revenue, and it distracts you from what actually matters.

Sometimes the best delegation decision is eliminating the task entirely.

If the task really does need to happen, the next question is whether it can be automated.

Tools like Zapier, n8n, or other automation platforms can often replace large chunks of repetitive work. In some cases, you can automate 80–90% of a process and eliminate the need for a human altogether.

If you don’t know how to automate it yourself, that doesn’t automatically mean you need an ongoing hire. You can bring in a specialist for a one-time project to build the automation, pay them once, and then never think about it again.

That’s often far cheaper—and far cleaner—than hiring someone indefinitely.

If you genuinely need a human being involved, the answer is almost always one of two roles:

• An admin person
• A technical person

That’s it.

Your first hire is not a salesperson, not a marketer, not a finance person, and not a manager. Early-stage businesses don’t need those roles yet. They need someone to remove low-value work from the founder’s plate.

The good news is that admin and technical contractors are usually the least expensive people to hire globally. This is one of the hidden advantages of the Alpha 2.0 model: your earliest hires are also your cheapest.

Ongoing vs. On-Call Work

Once you know who you’re hiring, you need to decide how you’ll use them.

Some roles are ongoing. For example, customer support or email management often needs to be handled every day or every week.

Other roles are on-call. A technical contractor who fixes your website or updates systems might only be needed occasionally.

Clarifying this upfront prevents confusion, resentment, and wasted money. Don’t pay for full-time availability when you only need occasional help.

When hiring your very first contractor, it’s usually smart to find someone who can do multiple things reasonably well.

Why?

Because complexity compounds fast.

Managing one person is manageable. Managing two people is not twice as hard—it’s three to five times harder. Communication overhead, coordination, and decision-making all increase exponentially.

It’s better to hire one capable, flexible person and stretch them a bit than to immediately build a mini team you don’t have the systems or experience to manage yet.

This is where many business owners get stuck.

“I can’t hire anyone because they’ll screw it up.”
“I have to do this myself.”
“No one can do this as well as I can.”

That may all be true—and it doesn’t matter.

You do not need someone who is 100% as good as you. In fact, if you tried to hire that person, you probably couldn’t afford them anyway.

What you’re looking for is someone who is 70–80% as good as you.

That is more than enough.

Yes, they will make mistakes. Yes, they will do some things differently than you would. And yes, that is still far better than you doing everything yourself and permanently capping your income.

Perfection is the enemy of scale.

Delegation Is Not Optional

If you insist on doing everything yourself, your business will hit a ceiling. For most people, that ceiling is well below the income level required for real freedom.

Delegation is not about laziness. It’s about leverage.

The correct process is simple:

1. Ask if the task is necessary

2. See if it can be eliminated or automated

3. Hire an admin or technical contractor if needed

4. Prefer one flexible person over multiple specialists

5. Accept 70–80% competence and move forward

If you follow that sequence, delegation becomes a growth tool instead of a source of stress—and your business can finally scale without consuming your entire life.

AI did NOT write this article. The article comes 100% from me and is 100% my content. However, AI was used to transcribe this content from some of my other social media which is why the voice is a little different. It’s still 100% my content and not written by AI. AI will never “write” my content!  Remember that you can always go to calebjonesblog.com and subscribe to my Substack if you want articles physically written by me with no AI involvement whatsoever.

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