by Kathleen Batalden Smith, Founder of Smiling Tree Gifts & Smiling Tree Toys
When I first started my home-based business, I was the shipping department, the accountant, the marketing team, and—on most days—the cleaning crew too.
Running a business from your home can be incredibly rewarding, but it’s also all too easy to fall into the trap of doing it all yourself for far too long. In the early days of launching Smiling Tree Toys, and later Smiling Tree Gifts, I wore every hat and told myself that was just “how it had to be” if I wanted to succeed.
Looking back, I now know that there were three key hires I should have made much sooner. These roles didn’t just help relieve my workload—they would’ve created space for me to grow the business and be more present in my life.
Here’s three key hires I wish I’d made earlier and why they made such a difference.
1. Shipping Manager – The Key to Scaling Without Burning Out
In the beginning, fulfilling orders felt like second nature. Personalize this toy truck. Engrave that set of corporate desktop blocks. Wrap, pack, ship, repeat. But before long, I realized that every order required a slightly different process—and that lack of standardization was costing me time and sanity.
Custom orders got delayed. I’d second-guess whether I had included the right insert cards. Shipping systems were…well, they weren’t systems at all.
For far too long, I believed I was the only one who could handle it. After all, I knew all the nuances. But here’s the truth I wish I’d embraced earlier: If you don’t document your process, you can’t delegate it. And if you can’t delegate it, you’re stuck doing it forever.
What I’d do differently today? I’d start by simplifying my processes as much as possible and documenting the exact steps for every type of order scenario—down to which packaging to use and how to organize our queue. Then I’d hire and train someone using that guide.
This one hire would’ve allowed me to truly unplug for things like maternity leave. Instead, I worked through the early weeks of my babies’ lives—tired, emotionally stretched, and divided in attention.
It breaks my heart a little now. I would’ve given anything for full days—or even partial days—where I wasn’t thinking about the next shipment while nursing my newborn or playing with my toddler.
And this isn’t just about fulfillment. It’s about building a systems-dependent business, a concept from the book Traction by Gino Wickman. Even if you’re a solo founder, design your business like someone else will run it one day. That’s how you make growth sustainable—and life more livable.
2. Bookkeeper – Don’t Let the Numbers Drag You Down
I spent years manually recording every single sale from Etsy and Shopify into QuickBooks.
Every. Single. Sale.
Product-level detail. Discounts. Shipping fees. Payment processor fees. It felt like I was doing my civic duty for the IRS… but guess what? I never once used that ultra-granular data for anything meaningful.
Instead, I unnecessarily buried myself in an accounting jungle – one I didn’t need to be in – for hours each month.
Eventually, I realized I could have (or better yet had someone else!) simply record monthly summaries: total revenue, total discounts, shipping collected, platform fees, etc. The deep-dives? I could pull those from Etsy and Shopify analytics whenever needed. All that time I spent reconciling one $28.00 toy transaction? Completely unnecessary.
Hiring a bookkeeper didn’t just save me hours—it gave me mental space. I stopped dreading my monthly check-ins. I could focus on storytelling, product development, and strategy instead of spreadsheets and sales tax reports.
Outsourcing the bookkeeping role in your business doesn’t mean giving up control—it means setting yourself free to focus on the right things, like making three key hires to drive growth.
3. Social Media Manager – Because Consistency > Perfection
Social media was always on my to-do list…right underneath 47 more urgent things.
I’d get to it “when I had time,” which more often than not meant I didn’t get to it at all. Or I’d post once, then go silent for three weeks. Missed opportunities to organically grow our reach stacked up year after year without me even realizing it.
The worst part? I had a story worth sharing. We had beautiful, handmade products, so much potential behind-the-scenes glimpses our followers would’ve loved, and a mission rooted in sustainability and family. But without consistent visibility, we stayed hidden.
What would I do differently today? Make key hires, like a part-time Social Media Manager, early on. Someone who could come onsite to capture behind-the-scenes content. Someone who could prioritize video (because let’s face it—algorithms love it). And someone who could create a bank of evergreen posts we could reuse and recycle.
It’s not about flashy production or fancy trends. It’s about showing up consistently and authentically.
Hiring a Social Media Manager earlier, even if just for a few hours a week, wouldn’t have just grown our audience—it would’ve helped me stop feeling guilty about the silence.
4. The Bigger Picture: Build Systems So You Can Step Away
If I could go back and tell myself anything in those first few years, it would be this:
“Kathleen, the goal isn’t to do everything yourself. It’s to design a business that can run without you, even IF Just For a few days.”
One of my deepest regrets as a home-based entrepreneur is not creating enough space to be fully present—not just during maternity leaves, but during those sweet days of my kids’ toddler and preschool years. I longed for stretches of time where I wasn’t mentally running through to-dos while being “on” as mom.
Those early years are fleeting. And they’re harder to enjoy when you’re mentally tethered to an inbox, a label printer, or QuickBooks.
The freedom to step away only happens when your business is built on systems, supported by three key hires, not on your shoulders.
5. Hire Sooner, Breathe Easier
If you’re running a home-based business and juggling it all right now, hear this: You don’t have to keep doing it all. In fact, if you want to grow and stay sane, you shouldn’t.
The goal of hiring, especially relating to the three key hires above, isn’t just to offload tasks—it’s to buy back your time. That’s the powerful message of Dan Martell’s book Buy Back Your Time. The more you free yourself from the day-to-day grind, the more time you have to strategize, create, and dream up what’s next. You can operate at a higher level. You can build a business that brings more freedom, not less.
So ask yourself: What task drains you the most right now? And what’s stopping you from hiring someone to take it off your plate?
For many online business owners, a virtual assistant is a natural first hire. But before you take on the first person you find on Upwork, read here for 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring A Virtual Assistant.
Even just starting to document your process today can pave the way for that first (or fifth!) hire tomorrow.
Ready to See What Delegation Can Do?
If you want to see what sustainable, systems-driven growth can look like, come take a peek behind the curtain at Smiling Tree Gifts and Smiling Tree Toys. We’re a husband-wife team that’s built a family business from our peaceful corner of the Minnesota prairie. We’ve hired for the positions I’ve mentioned above and more – from woodworkers, to engraver operator, to email marketer, and recently a business manager – and every single one of these hires has been a game-changer in only the best of ways.
Don’t get me wrong, I still stay plenty busy overseeing a near 7-figure business on top of being mom to four, wife to Justin, running our household, and chasing after dogs, cats, and chickens. I certainly don’t have everything figured out; I will always have more to learn, refine, and improve upon. (And as a creative at heart, I’ll probably also always have more ideas than hours in the days!) But the one thing I know for sure? I’d never go back to trying to do it all on my own.
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