Two ways to know it is time to hire:

1) You are looking for more time freedom to do higher-level work. This may be a sign it’s time to hire your first admin/front desk/assistant. Someone who can help answer calls, file, create processes, do social media posts, schedule events, reply to emails, clean the office, and do basic sales. You know you’re ready for this if your $1,000/hour work is being interrupted by $10/hour work. (read that again!)

$1000/hour work includes planning your growth, hiring, managing people, firing, doing podcast episodes, going around giving speeches, doing your business plan, applying for business loans, marketing, and investing…if this work is being interrupted because you gotta answer an email from someone asking you what time you open tomorrow….it’s time to get an admin.

2) You’re on a track for accelerated growth. It’s time to bring on another service provider. I knew it was time to bring on another massage therapist when I was building massage strong when I was roughly at 80% of my physical ceiling. I knew that maxing out on my schedule was in the near future. You do not want to wait until you are fully maxed out in order to hire another service provider. That is the worst time to do it; you won’t have the time or energy to properly hire or train a staff member. Inside Thirty More, I teach my students to hire when they are around 70% to 80% maxed out on their books.

I am going to shoot off some of the mistakes that I see people make when they’re hiring:

Hiring Mistake #1)

Business owners often don’t want to spend the time it requires to actually find a great fit, (they’re usually hiring BECAUSE they’re short on time, so who has time to do a proper hire?) so they only interview like 1/4th of the number of people they should interview.

As business owners, we want a big pool of people to choose from. When I began Massage Strong, I would just accept the first or second person that applied. (spoiler alert: it never worked out great.) And it was coming from this thought that I could just train the shit out of them. It also came from the thought of “I don’t have time to search high and low for someone amazing, this person will do just fine.”

So with both of these thoughts, what I was doing was putting more workload on my future self. Like ‘future-Becca will just train the hell out of this person.’ But if at present time Becca would take the time to find someone that’s a better fit, future Becca wouldn’t have to pick up her slack and train on repeat.

Hiring Mistake #2)

The business owner will hire someone to fix a problem that they don’t know how to fix themselves, instead of finding the solution themselves and then having the new hire follow the owner’s process and strategy. If you’re hiring someone to fix your problems, you both will be left defeated. Know the difference between a hand versus a head. Most people reading this are hiring hands…or people to do labor. Hiring a head, like a COO or CEO, is someone significantly more experienced in business that can come in and help as a ‘head.’

Hiring Mistake #3)

Allowing people-pleasing into the room.

Let me paint a picture that I know so well: You need more service providers. Let’s say you own a spa….And you know you need an esthetician on the weekend and evenings. So you interview this amazing candidate who you really want to hire, who seems like a great fit and they say they can’t work evenings and weekends. But you hire them anyway. Because you can’t imagine them NOT working on your team.

This my friends is a people-pleasing mindset. I have done this. It is important that we know EXACTLY what we need for our company and we stick to this. Otherwise, we waste our company’s money and time.

If you need nights and weekends, you only hire someone who can come in nights and weekends. If you need someone with a special certification, you do not veer from that need. Let’s say you want someone with great grammar and punctuation skills because you know they are going to be the first point of contact via email every single day for your customers, but when you meet this candidate you just love them so much you throw that out the window and don’t even test their grammar and punctuation skills.

Have y’all done this? I know I have, which brings me to my next mistake.

Hiring Mistake #4)

Not writing out EXACTLY what you want your person’s role to be. If you’re iffy, they’re confused af.

If you aren’t detailed, they aren’t detailed.

This is a follow the leader type of scenario. If the leader says ‘get us more people on our email list’, but doesn’t show the person HOW to do it or the exact steps to take, this person could spend a lot of time-wasting their own time, their own energy, your time, your company’s money and your company’s energy. Before you even post the job, you should write out, down to the minute, exactly what they will be doing during their time.

Hiring Mistake #5)

Hiring cheap because you’re scared to spend money is going to give you less committed employees, higher turnover, more energy and time training new people, and will waste money from your company.

It is less expensive to hire and pay well once, then it is to hire and pay cheap multiple times.

Let me say that again. It is LESS expensive to hire and pay well once then it is to hire and pay cheap multiple times.

Hiring Mistake #6)

Owners not taking extreme ownership for how their new hire performs. If they’re crossing boundaries, then owner hasn’t been clear enough. If they’re not understanding, owner must train more. If they’re communicating in a way that owner doesn’t like, owner must take ownership of teaching the hire. Everything our employees do is because of how we show up as the owners. The sooner we take extreme ownership and remove all blame, the more we are in control of our company.

But listen guys, if you’re a business owner and are managing or hiring people, there is so much to learn through trial and error.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes. What I have learned deeply is that the few people that have gotten hurt by me as their boss, was because I wasn’t courageous enough to speak up, be direct, be clear, and my people pleasing and allowance of certain things like biting my tongue…were the things that created the riff in the end. That’s why I am such a big advocate of having the hard conversations, having very clear expectations and boundaries because the more clear the boundaries are the more room there is for freedom and creativity.

Love, Becca

PS: Inside my mastermind, I give you access to a video vault teaching exactly how to hire, who to hire, when to hire, and managing as well as firing. All the answers and guidance you’re looking for is inside of Thirty  More. We begin in July, but you have to pay and reserve your seat between May 1 and May 5. That is only a couple of weeks away…you can find more information about Thirty More HERE.

I am accepting free consults for anyone interested in Thirty More that fit the minimum requirements. If this is you, simply reply to this email to set up a consultation with me.