Watch where struggling founders spend on growth: the $2,000 conference, the $5,000 mastermind, the course bundle gathering digital dust. Now watch what they won't do: pay a skilled specialist thirty dollars an hour to just fix the thing. I've hired social strategists at $20 to 30 an hour who moved my accounts more in a month than a season of events, because they weren't inspiring me, they were WORKING.
“You're an expert once you know more than everyone else.”
The by-the-hour playbook
- Hire globally for defined problems: audit my profile, build my hashtag sets, restructure my content calendar. Scoped tasks, visible output, no retainers until they've proven out.
- Judge by portfolio and a paid test task, never by vibes on a discovery call. Talent shows up in the first small deliverable.
- Ten hours a month of a real specialist beats forty hours of your own amateur effort in their specialty, and frees your forty for the work only you can do.
- The same discipline applies to knowledge: before buying the big-ticket event, ask what specific outcome it purchases. "Exposure to ideas" is rarely worth the plane ticket; a named skill installed in your business almost always is.
None of this is against community or learning, I run a membership; I believe in rooms. It's against using inspiration purchases to avoid execution purchases. Your business rarely needs another epiphany. It usually needs eleven specific things fixed by people who fix them for a living, at prices that would embarrass your conference budget.
Claire's own numbers
The framework, step by step
- 1
Hire globally for defined problems
audit my profile, build my hashtag sets, restructure my content calendar. Scoped tasks, visible output, no retainers until they've proven out.
- 2
Judge by portfolio and a paid test task — never by vibes
on a discovery call. Talent shows up in the first small deliverable
- 3
Ten hours a month of a real specialist beats forty hours
of your own amateur effort in their specialty — and frees your forty for the work only you can do
- 4
The same discipline applies to knowledge
before buying the big-ticket event, ask what specific outcome it purchases. "Exposure to ideas" is rarely worth the plane ticket; a named skill instal
Claire's own framework from this essay, in the order she teaches it.
Source: Claire B. Soares, from her own travel business and live trainings.
Common Questions
Is it better to hire a specialist or take a course?
For a defined problem, hire. Ten hours a month of a real specialist usually beats forty hours of your own amateur effort in their discipline.
How do you hire a specialist safely?
Judge by portfolio and a paid test task rather than a discovery call, and scope the work to visible deliverables before discussing retainers.
What should you ask before buying a big-ticket event?
What specific outcome it purchases. Exposure to ideas rarely justifies the flight; a named skill installed in your business almost always does.
Written By
Claire B. Soares
6× Condé Nast Top Travel Specialist, Certified AI Consultant, and founder of Travel AI University. $3.4B+ in enterprise travel software sold to Google, IBM, Boeing, the federal government, and the DoD; $16M+ in luxury travel sales with Up in the Air Life.
About Claire
