Welcome to episode 310 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Let’s talk hiring, so a lot of us tend to, and I’m totally raising my hand on this one, guys, wait too long to hire help, and so today I want to talk about some ways you might know it’s time to hire help, and some different ways that you can get help, because I think there’s a lot of perception around, “You have to have XYZ, and that has to work,” and that doesn’t necessarily work for everybody, because we all have our different needs. We all have our different strengths, and that’s okay. That’s totally okay.
All right, so let’s start with how you might know it’s time to hire someone?
Number one, you want to make more money, and you have no time. Not in a you need to trade more of your time of money, kind of one to one thing, but it’s hard when you’re slammed with keeping up with the business you’ve got, to do two things. A, market your business, so you continue to have consistent income, instead of that peaks and valley roller coaster kind of vibe, when it comes to your money, which sucks. Okay. There’s no two ways to talk about it. It blows, but you also don’t have any time to grow anything outside of your one to one offerings.
Maybe you want to create a passive income product, to not necessarily replace your one on one, but to supplement it, or maybe you want to create a group program, so that you can serve more people at a lower price point, because you know that there’s a group of your audience, who really wants to work with you, but they can’t. They can’t swing your one on one rates yet. They’re not there yet, so you want to have a lower cost group program, or something like that. Maybe it’s you want to have the time to create a passion project. Maybe it’s a book.
Maybe it could be anything, really, but to have that space, and that time to make more money through some of those other avenues, you got to get some of the stuff off your plate, and now we talk about this a lot on the Your Biz BFF podcast I do with Brandy Lawson, where we talk about not just delegating, but deleting, and so that may be something you need to do, but there’s going to be some of that stuff that does need to get delegated, and it does need to get put on someone else’s plate, so that’s a really good indicator that it’s time. Number two, there are things you are avoiding that have not been done in a very long time.
A personal example of this is my accounting. Before I handed it off, it would sit, and wait until, quite frankly, I absolutely had to do it, which is usually tax time, and then I’d have a year’s worth of receipts, and invoices, and just stuff to input, and check, and verify, and find, and it sucked. It sucked hard, and so it ended up usually taking a lot longer than it needed to take, but also, I really, really, really needed to get someone else to do it, and so that’s what happens now, is I don’t do it, but if there’s something like that for you, it could be keeping up with your social media, it could be your accounting, it could be getting started with consistent content, it could be getting transcriptions for your podcast, another one for me.
It could be absolutely anything. If there’s something you’re avoiding that you know can’t be deleted, it can’t be skipped, it needs to be done, that’s a good indicator that it’s time to hire, so those are the two things I want you to focus on, on initially. I think, a lot of times, we think, “Oh, it’s time to hire a VA, because someone in the world told me that that’s the only way I’ll be successful.” The frustrating thing with that is usually you don’t know what to give them, and worse yet, you don’t know who to hire at all, because you don’t actually know what you want them to do, and we’re hiring somebody who can do the things we need done, so look at those two things.
Look at you need to create space, so you can make more money, or for your own life. Maybe you’re just flat burned out, and you need to get stuff off your plate, that’s acceptable, too, and then number two, there are things that you are avoiding in your business that cannot be deleted, that have to happen. Like your bookkeeping. These are really good indicators, “It’s time to hire someone.”
Let’s talk about what that looks like, and what that process is, so I have hired a lot of people in a lot of different ways, but for me, it always has come down to my most successful experiences have been where I worked with someone who could do exactly what I needed them to do. Instead of hiring someone who could do nine things, I hired one person who could one thing, and I hired another person who could do the other thing, and so in a lot of cases, I can get somebody who can do two things great, but I think my initial instinct was always to hire one person who could do all the things, so my initial instinct was, “Awesome, I’ll get a VA,” and having been a VA, I should have known better, but I did not.
Because I tried to find somebody who was a generalist, and who could all the things, and here’s the deal, is I ran into a lot of me having to train, which is a part of hiring someone, absolutely, but I wasn’t training them to do things the way I needed to do them. I was training them on straight up how to run their business, how to work with my business, how to do every single task, and that was taking a lot more time, and it just wasn’t working out. Instead, I’ve started shifting to hiring people to do exactly what I need, so if I need somebody to do some website work for me, I don’t hire a generalist VA. I hire a VA with web knowledge, or I hire … I will straight up go to a developer, and I will talk to a developer, and say, “This is what I need.” On the flip side, if I need social media help for our clients, or I’m trying to get some of my stuff off my plate, I’m going to hire somebody with social media knowledge.
Because I’m not necessarily just paying that person for their time, or for the execution of the task. I’m also paying them for the knowledge they have, and in some cases, this means I pay a little bit more than I would to have a generalist do it, but in the long run, it saves me time, and it saves me money, because it’s done right, so that has been a big shift in mindset for me. Really understanding that I’m hiring for the job. In addition to that though, I have to hire for the personality. I have to hire somebody who I’m going to get along with, and who I’m going to trust, and I think that’s probably been the biggest pain point for me, is hiring someone I trust.
Because, I, like a lot of you listening, I’m a bit of a control freak. I know. It’s almost unheard of in the online entrepreneur space, or really even any kind of entrepreneur space, but as business owners, we tend to be a little bit controlling, and we also tend to think that we’re the only ones that can do anything, which is totally false. Because, some things we suck at, guys. I know. It was hard for me hear, too, but it’s true, and so I’m big on that trust factor, so as soon as it’s dinged, or it’s lost, I can’t go back. It’s been really important for me to find people who I got along with really well, and could work with really well, and could trust to get things done in a way that they needed to be done, and the best way for me to do that has been referrals.
A great example of this actually just happened the other day. I’m currently working on launching a new private community right inside of the membership site for Hit the Mic Backstage, and in fact, by the time you hear this, it will be live, and the members will know about it, so what’s cool about that is this is now some place that I can control. Totally control the user experience. It checks all the boxes. It’s exactly what I wanted in a private forum, and best of all, I’m not building a hugely incredible part of the value, and a hugely important part of the value in my membership site, on real estate I don’t control.
I don’t own, in regards to like a Facebook group, so that’s really important for me, so I needed to go in and deal with some FTP stuff, so that I could get the community area talking to the WordPress membership site on my website, so that they could be friends, and that the one log in page would work, and all of this stuff. This was something that was ridiculously simple, and I understood the process, but I don’t know very much about, and honestly, I was a little afraid I was going to break it, and so I reached out to a friend of mine, Brandy Lawson, who does a ton of web stuff.
In fact, does website builds for clients with her team, and who works on online presences for people, and who has been building WordPress websites for years, and who runs WordPress meetups in Phoenix, and who has intense, not only knowledge, but connections with people who know their stuff, so instead of going on Fiverr, or some kind of site like that, or running into my Facebook groups, and saying, “Hey, can anybody help me?” I reached out to someone I trusted, and tapped her network, and said, “Hey, I need a developer who can do like five minutes worth of work. Do you know anybody?” She had a name back to me within like a couple of hours. I emailed that person, and I had the whole thing done in less than twenty-four hours, at a great rate, and then flawlessly.
We ran into one hiccup, because I screwed something up in sending it to him. He went in, and fixed it, and knew immediately what the problem was. Whereas, I would have spent days, and a lot of tears trying to figure out what was wrong, and I had total trust in handing everything over to him, because I took that first initial step of reaching out to someone I trusted, and knew would know who could help me, so when you’re ready to hire, the first thing I want you to do, tap your network. There could be somebody in your existing network who can provide the service, or who can give you a referral, so before you run into a Facebook group and say, “Hey, guys. I need a VA,” start tapping your inner circle. Start talking to the people in your network. Your Online Biz BFFs, your in-person biz BFFs, your networking connections.
Start talking to those people about who they’ve hired, about who they’ve used for the task that you need. That’s going to go a long way to setting up, not only just a solid get along relationship, because if the person you like gets along with them, it’s more probably that you’ll get along with them as well. It’s not always perfect, but it’s more probable. They’re have definitely been experiences where Brandy and I have both worked with someone, and she has gotten along with them great, and I’ve run into issues. That happens, so it’s not a sure thing. It’s not perfect, but it’s going to give you a whole lot of leverage ahead of, “Here, let me Google, and see who I can find.” Okay.
The next thing I want to talk about is if your network doesn’t have anybody, and maybe you do want somebody who can take on a few several, or a few different, a few several, a few different tasks. I would check out a resource like IVAA, so it’s the International Virtual Assistants Association. I was actually a member, a really active member when I still had my VA business, and that is still my go-to to hire VAs. Now, again, not every proposal is perfect, not every project I’ve worked on with people out of there has been perfect, because I’m not hiring IVAA.
I’m just using it to connect with a community of Virtual Assistants, but I also know that there are some truly amazing business owners running out of IVAA, and submitting those RFP, or Request For Proposals, and finding out exactly what you need, is a matter of sifting through those things, but it’s a great place to start, versus again, Googling and praying, so tap your network, and if your network doesn’t work, check out IVAA, or start checking out your then maybe go to your Facebook groups in targeted areas, and say, “Who are you using? Who do you love for information about? If you have a favorite expert?”
I get this question a lot. I have people who come and ask me, “Hey, I want to hire a VA who specializes in social media. Do you know anybody?” It’s really cool, because we have some really awesome social media people in Hit the Mic Backstage, so if there’s something that I can’t help you with, or you’re not at a place where you want to invest in the way that our management services work, that’s cool. There’s a ton of other resources that I can connect you with, so tap into your favorite experts.
If you have a person you love, love, love, love when it comes to content marketing, and learning about funnels, and something like that, go into their community, and look for people. Reach out to them, and their team and say, “Hey, I’m looking for somebody who can help me with XYZ. Do you happen to know anyone who does that?” That’s going to be a great way to get information. All right, so find out if you’re ready to hire. Have an honest talk with yourself, and then do it. Tap your network, look at the people in your circle, look at resources, look at your favorite experts, find somebody who can help you with the task you need.
Either on a one off basis, on an ongoing basis, I’m really lucky because I brought Charles in to help with a ton of stuff, so he helps sort of in the day to day things, and we bring people in to work on a project basis usually. We are expanding the team. We’re going to be bringing in somebody else, either late this year, or early next year, to help with more of the customer service for Hit the Mic Backstage members, and managing a lot of the sort of general inbox stuff. Doing a lot of traditional admin stuff, and so, again, figure out what you need right then, and go from there. Okay. All right. Here’s the thing. I just want to leave you with this one last thought. If you saw the title of this show, How to Know When It’s Time To Hire and When, “Oh, my God. I need that.” It’s probably time to hire. Okay. All right.
If you have questions, have thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Come on over to the Facebook page. Check out the post for this episode. Give me your thoughts. Leave a note on the page. I’d love to hear from you, and of course, if you haven’t yet joined us, join us on Hit the Mic Backstage, because we do have the brand new very exciting private forum, where we can have conversations like this, and also, it’s a really, again, it’s another great community to tap if you need help with anything. We have members from all different sorts of backgrounds, and we would love to welcome you. All right, check that out, and I will see you guys on Friday.
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