What Pro YouTubers Wish They Knew Before Making Their 1st Hire
Hiring your first full-time team member is a huge milestone. It’s also one of the fastest ways to lose focus, blow money, or box yourself into a role you never wanted.
Most creators wait too long to hire. Then they rush it. Then they wake up six weeks later with someone who’s technically helping but creatively slowing things down. Most creators who do YouTube full time have been there.
The good news is that you don’t have to feel that pain. Here’s what pro YouTubers wish they knew before making their first hire.
Start with a System, Not a Job Post
Before you write a job description, write down what your workflow actually looks like. Where does your time go each week? What do you love doing? What’s draining you? Where are things falling through the cracks?
As Angus Parker, general manager of Ali Abdaal’s content business, put it in his conversation with Jay Clouse in a recent video: “I think it's very easy in this creative space in this modern world to operate at 300X speed and not actually stop and think what does my current system look like and where are the bottlenecks where am I currently spending my time.”
When a Spotter Studio Partner mapped out his own time, he realized 70% of it was going into editing something someone else could do better, faster, and without burning creative energy. That clarity changed everything.
Hire a Teammate, Not a Department
The most common mistake creators make is hiring three freelancers when they really need one full-time teammate.
Yes, it might seem easier to grab a freelance editor, scriptwriter, and thumbnail designer. But now you're the manager, constantly coordinating timelines, files, and feedback loops. You haven’t bought yourself time. You’ve bought complexity.
That’s why your first full-time hire should be a multi-hat generalist. Someone who can edit but also manage a Notion board, write when needed, coordinate deliverables, and eventually grow into your right-hand operator.
You’re not building a huge team yet. You’re building trust with one person who can grow with you.
Use the 4 Step Hiring Process
Hiring isn’t magic. It’s a numbers game. The best creators use a clear funnel to get from hundreds of applications to one great teammate:
- Ask Your Audience - Post on multiple platforms. Promote multiple times. Aim high.
- Filter Automatically - Screen for pay expectations, time zones, required skills.
- Review Thoroughly - Ask for a Loom intro or short task. Personality and clarity matter.
- Do a Paid Test Project - Always. This filters for action, not just enthusiasm.
As Angus put it: “...CVS although helpful I kind of don't really give us a full picture of of the person and essentially we learn not to hire the CV not to hire the resume and we didn't actually do that at all but the the mechanism that we've got now is that every single job description that we put out people need to record Al Loom of some description.”
Let the work show you who’s right.
Document Your End-to-End Video Creation Process
Once you’ve made a hire, your goal isn’t just onboarding: it’s offloading.
If everything lives in your head or Slack threads, you’re not setting your first hire up for succes. You’re babysitting a process. Instead, build repeatable systems: templates, creative briefs, storybeat outlines, examples of past videos you loved (and didn’t). Drop them into one living workspace your editor can reference and run with.
When it comes to Spotter Studio, adding your first hire to your workspace can be very helpful to better understand all the ideas you are working on and how you plan on bringing them to life. They will know what is just an idea, which ideas are in development and which ones are actually on the calendar and when you are bringing them to life without pinging you every hour.
Final Note
Hiring someone full-time isn’t about scale. It’s about getting your creative time back. The more you treat it like a system, and not a leap of faith, the more it pays off.
So if you’re stretched thin, don’t just hire to survive. Hire to thrive. Hire to offload. Hire the kind of teammate who makes your next video idea even better than the one you imagined.
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