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Hi Reader,

Are you trying to decide if you want to hire a website or marketing agency, or in-house employees to take care of everything? If you’re wearing too many hats, read on. I met up with April May of Smudge Ink at the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Summit and had a fascinating talk with her about how she shifted her thinking when it comes to employees.

April used to run her marketing in-house but switched to hiring agencies, which has been a game-changer for Smudge Ink. April told me that it’s been really helpful not to have a giant list of things she’s responsible for scraping together a team to accomplish. She’s seen first-hand that hiring people skilled at the work means better results. The work also takes less time because the two agencies she brought on are staffed with experts who focus on their areas of expertise.

I used to go up to employees, asking, “You seem like you could help me write a newsletter. How about you do that? Can you take a photo for social media? Can you help me with this caption? We haven’t had a post in a week.”

- April May

As a business owner with staff on salary, it can be tempting to ask yourself, “Why should I spend outside money? I’ve got all these people here that I’m already paying; I should get them to help me with all this!” Unfortunately, then you’re pulling them away from the work they actually need to be doing and that they’re good at – what you hired them for.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW

Interesting Clickables

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I've been featured on a new interview series called "10-Minute Ecom Success." You can watch here.
The Digital Marketing Skills Canada program is offering Growclass scholarships to help you improve your marketing skills. Enroll here and tell them Arianne sent you.
Christine on our team shared this interesting post by The Locavore in NYC about how her brick & mortar store can’t survive without an online presence. Pair that with Katherine Raz's fantastic Storefront Revolt newsletter. I'd love to hear more from you about how things are going if you have a local storefront.

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A Shopify website for m.a.b.e.l.

m.a.b.e.l creates new garments and accessories from vintage quilts in celebration of past and present makers. Owner Paige saw sales growing and brought us in to bring a fresh perspective and build an approachable, on-brand site that is a resource for inspirational (but attainable) products.

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