You’ve got tasks you hate in your business. I know I do. In fact, I’d love to never have to create my social media content calendar again. I’m crossing my fingers that this summer this task will be off my plate.

You are probably like me and daydream about delegating all the tasks you don’t love. Dreaming of when you only focus on the stuff you are good at because you have a team with complementary skills.

When you think about hiring help for your creative business, you might think about adding a team member as an employee, independent contractor, or bringing on an unpaid intern. Each of these comes with their own set of risks and benefits.

Hiring Team Members

Building a team is a multi-step process. And your first step (and one of the most forgotten) in hiring help is deciding the kind of team member you will have. What I mean by this is under the law your team members will be one of two types:

• employee
• independent contractor

Many business owners would like their team members to be independent contractors. It’s so much easier. Because with independent contractors, you don’t need payroll or worker’s compensation insurance. (Plus a host of other things.)

But putting someone in the wrong bucket can lead to stiff fines and penalties. You have plenty of things to worry about. And you don’t need to fret every night about getting caught by the IRS.

So to decide what bucket your team member falls in, we ask the question:

Who is in charge, you or them?

There’s no magic formula. It’s all about assessing how much independence you’ll give this team member. You’ll want to think about things like:

• Do you have the right to control how and when the team member performs her job?
• Do you provide her with the tools and equipment to do the job?
• Do you offer her benefits?
• Is the work she does integral to your business?

The more that you are in charge, the more likely she is an employee. The more flexibility she has, the more likely she is an independent contractor.

Your first step when hiring help for your business is to brainstorm. You’ll imagine what your team member will be doing. The what, how, when, and where she’ll be doing her job. Once you’ve done that, you can grab a copy of the checklist below to figure out what bucket she falls into.

Hiring Interns

I’ll never have an unpaid intern in my business. I’m okay with taking calculated business risks, but this isn’t one of those risks I’ll take. And that’s because I understand the likelihood of it being legal is slim to none.

Most U.S. businesses are regulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). (If you want to find out if you are an oddity and your employees are not regulated under this Act, you can use this tool.) The FLSA says that you must pay minimum wage to your employees.

And while FLSA does allow unpaid internships, there are strict rules for when it’s okay. Unpaid interns are only permitted if you create an internship program that meets these 6 rules:

• The internship program includes training similar to an educational environment
• The intern is the one who benefits from the internship, not the business
• The intern does not displace regular employees and works under close supervision of an employee
• The business gets no immediate benefit from the intern’s activities and occasionally the intern hampers business activities
• The intern isn’t entitled to a job at the end of the internship
• Both the business and the intern understand that the intern will not be paid

The reason your chances of having a legal unpaid intern is slim to none is because you bring on an unpaid intern because you:

• can’t afford an employee, so you hire an unpaid intern instead (meaning you don’t meet criteria #3)
• assign the intern tasks that are critical to running the business (meaning you don’t meet criteria #4)

Just like getting caught for misclassifying what name you give your team members, this one is a doozy too. So it’s just not worth the risk. You’ll sleep better at night knowing that you don’t have a huge liability hanging over your head.

Building a team is an exciting milestone in your business. But it’s also an area fraught with pitfalls. And an important time to make sure you stay on the right side of the law means so you don’t put all your hard work at risk.

Your best way to reduce risk when hiring help?

Classify your team members in the right bucket (grab the checklist below to help you do it). And then if you decide she’s is an employee, jump through the legal hoops to hire her.

What tasks do you daydream about getting off your plate? What roles will your first team member fill? Let us know in the comments.