Carina McLeod is very passionate about helping retail brands succeed in the online world. She has 18 years of experience in retail, and 15 years working with Amazon. She has spent the last 8 years supporting sellers and vendors to grow their businesses on Amazon. In 2017, Carina set up a consulting and marketing agency called Ecommerce Nurse, where she and her team help brands of all sizes reach their potential on the Amazon platform. 

Tell me about your process before you started to delegate, what did it look like before you began to pick it apart and give it to other people?

• McLeod says that in the beginning, she was trying to do everything herself, she felt as if there was a lot of opportunities here for clients, and never said no, which caused her to stretch herself thin. 
• It was clear then that she needed to delegate the workload, which was not an easy task, as she considered this to be her baby. 
• In essence, it was a make or break situation, she either had to delegate or sustainability would suffer.

How many clients did you have before you decided to delegate?

• McLeod said she had between 10-20 clients before she started to delegate. 
• She spoke to another consultant over what she does, and they asked her how many people she had on her team, and that caused her to realize she needed to start a team, as she was running things herself at that point. 

Tell us a little bit about this lightbulb moment you had. 

• McLeod sees herself as a doer, and never really saw herself as an entrepreneur until recently, as it developed over time. 
• She says she adopted a doing role and had to take a step back to embrace a management role. 
• As an entrepreneur, you have to develop over time, and find people to delegate into roles, and as she had this light bulb moment, she thought it was time to go out and search for support. 

How did you find upwork? 

• McLeod says Upwork was mentioned to her. 
• She made a post about what she was looking for and the skill set, however, she says she doesn't think she made it clear, as there was the initial nervousness with hiring someone. 
• As none of the Upwork applicants made her feel comfortable, she searched on other platforms, LinkedIn, particularly for an employee. 
• Trust is the biggest factor for her, and she ended up finding an old colleague she found that she ended up hiring in the end. 
• As her company progressed, she got over her trust issues, and at the time there were so many options for her, but having a person that ticked the boxes of being confident and trustworthy was important to her. 

Have you ever hired anyone on Upwork? Or did you just decide it was not going to work? 

• McLeod says she did hire someone, but because she was not clear on her post, they were not really for the role she needed. So, there were areas that it worked and areas it did not. 
• Both times she hired someone from Upwork, it did not end up working. The first was due to her not being clear, and the second time worked for a few months before it stopped and she was back to square one. 

How did you define the role? 

• When it came to defining the role, McLeod had to brainstorm what it was she could not do, and that shaped into a role she needed, which was an account management role. 
• She started putting that in place and then taking the description to the next level, which meant that she started to build out the role, highlighted what they needed and what she was looking for. 
• It was also important for her to look at the type of person that would fit into the role, as a lot of people have the skill set, but they may not have the correct personality fit. 

How did it feel when you were successful? 

• McLeod says that success felt good, and allowed her to feel comfortable and see the benefits of growth. 
• She has embraced her role as a business owner, a CEO, and ultimately an entrepreneur. 
• She has taken to her management role and built an amazing team through embracing this, and in turn, became a visionary and more creative.   
• She advises any entrepreneur to not be afraid to take the step towards building a team and hiring help sooner, because you will always think back and tell yourself you should have done that sooner, and this will cause you to be more successful. 

Resources:

Website: Ecommercenurse.com 

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