How to Hire When You Have No Money | Rich Lessons

<p>Everybody wants to tell you about scaling and Series A. Nobody sits down and says, &quot;Here&#39;s what it actually costs to get one person helping you when you have almost nothing.&quot;</p><p><br>So that&#39;s what this one is. Between the two of us, we&#39;ve done it every way there is — freelancers, contractors, offshore, W-2, fractional, all of it. Some of it worked. Some of it cost us money we didn&#39;t have.</p><p><br>We&#39;re giving you real numbers. Real mistakes. The rules we follow now because we learned them the hard way.</p><p><br>Sheena tells the story about the freelancer who had one of HER OWN apps sitting in their portfolio. That one still gets us.</p><p><br>We also got into whether your first hire can just be an AI agent in 2026, and we don&#39;t fully agree on it. Let us know where you land.</p><p><br>If you&#39;re building with a small budget right now, this one&#39;s for you. </p><p><br><strong>WHAT WE GET INTO</strong><br>▸ Where we actually find freelancers, and which sites we prefer<br>▸ Offshoring vs outsourcing — people use these wrong all the time<br>▸ The 3 AM problem nobody warns you about with offshore work<br>▸ Why we don&#39;t fully trust 5-star ratings anymore<br>▸ How to vet a portfolio (including reaching out to their past clients cold)<br>▸ The freelancer who had Sheena&#39;s own app in their portfolio<br>▸ Milestones, escrow, and the upfront payment rule that saves people thousands<br>▸ Real numbers: what engineers and designers cost right now, here and offshore<br>▸ Why 2021 was the wildest hiring year either of us has seen<br>▸ When fractional work makes sense — and when it doesn&#39;t<br>▸ How much runway you need before you make a real hire<br>▸ What a W-2 employee actually costs (it&#39;s not the salary)<br>▸ Can your first hire be an AI agent? We go back and forth on this one<br>▸ Why the moat isn&#39;t tech anymore<br>▸ Our richest lessons: fire fast, and the order you hire in matters</p><p><br>━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━</p><p><br><strong>RICH LESSONS PODCAST</strong><br>Hosted by Sevetri Wilson Taylor and Sheena Allen</p><p><br><strong>LISTEN &amp; SUBSCRIBE</strong></p><p><br>Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rich-lessons/id1787798124</p><p><br>Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/40jGSUvVrMbxKcJ1ghE8kl</p><p><br><strong>WATCH &amp; SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE</strong></p><p><br>https://www.youtube.com/@richlessonspodcast</p><p><br><strong>FOLLOW RICH LESSONS</strong></p><p><br>Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richlessonspodcast</p><p><br>TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@richlessonspodcast</p><p><br>━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━</p><p><br>#RichLessons #HiringOnABudget #Freelancers #Upwork #Offshoring #StartupAdvice #Entrepreneurship #SmallBusiness #Bootstrapping #FounderMindset #WomenInBusiness #BusinessPodcast #FractionalWork </p>