How do you know when it’s time to make your first hire?

While there are many different thoughts behind this, my experience is that this shouldn’t be solely determined by revenue but also by process.

That is, do you have a process that you are handing over to your new employee?

In this episode, we’ll be exploring how to give yourself every advantage that you can during the critical starting phases of your business to set yourself up for success.

Links

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Activate The Warrior Within https://www.adamliette.com/awaken-the-warrior

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Transcript

This is the smooth operator Podcast. I'm Adam Liette, director of operations for a seven figure online business and eight year veteran of Army Special Operations on this show begin with the tactical, nitty gritty of what it really takes to run a thriving online business. Because at the end of the day, operators lead the way. What's up Smith operators Welcome to this episode, hope you're having a great week, man, it has been a barnburner on this end. I know earlier in the week, we had my buddy Daniel Jones on and like Daniel is the VA guy. And like that's really his mission in life. And I love what he does. And how he really makes things a lot easier for us entrepreneurs by bringing people in, vetting them out, doing all the stuff that needs to happen. If you haven't heard that episode yet.

Go back and listen to episode 142. It's really amazing. And I'm really happy to have known Daniel. So before he was even on the show, we've been in communication for some time now. So it's good finally get them on. But really valuable information. And so in my mind, it opened up this Pandora's box of man that first hire, it's like, it's a big move for many entrepreneurs. And depending on who you're talking to, you're gonna get all sorts of advice on how to make that first hire. So I thought I'd give my personal advice as well, having made my first hire several times in several different ventures, but also, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs. And I get to see that stage where they're at where they're getting ready to add to their team. And this is kind of a thing that goes on over and over again. And so a lot of these tips are not just for that first hire, but also ongoing. If you make some of these tips, a habit, you're going to see success long term. And so like really be cognizant of that. The first thing, really to just get the elephant out of the room, like we are talking about an employee in this situation. So long term hire, anytime we're looking to bring someone into the team to make them part of that family part of that inner circle, you're going to be sharing things with them, they're going to be exposed to things and like, you're going to start to rely on them to get things done on an ongoing basis.

That's highly different than just a simple technician. So when I think of like, highly technical one time jobs, really I look for contractors, I like to hire them come in, fix a problem, pay them and that's it, you know, being clear about my expectations, the deliverables, timelines, all those things that need to come into play. So I mean, so often we're doing website setups, we're doing stuff for our, our content marketing, maybe it's like a video edit that you need of the bumper or stuff like that, like those are all pretty clear cut. And to be honest, like the hiring process for those kind of jobs is relatively simple. You just need the portfolio, you need to know they can do the job, they're in budget, like all those things. So like definitely think of like technicians is someone you're going to hire for a near term, solely because they possess something you don't technical understanding of a task that you need to have accomplished. And over the time that you're growing your business, you're going to hire so many technicians, it's going to be crazy, um, to the point where if I just don't know how to do something, even something as simple as like redirects on the back end of the website, where I know how to do those now.

But there was a time when I did it. And so I would hire people on Fiverr just to do a $25 job for me, just because I knew like for me to take the time to learn it just wasn't worth that investment. So what I like to do is I like to keep a Rolodex, like technicians that I've hired for specific jobs. So when I'm in that position, again, I know exactly who to go to. If they did a good job from you afford, they're likely to do it again. So I just don't, I don't hesitate about hiring them again. And just keep that Rolodex so I don't have to go through the search process and the discovery and looking for for their works. You know, it's just, Hey, that's my guy. That's how I go to but employees are a whole different bag. When we think about bringing someone in at the employee level. First off, I want you to understand one clear cut simple rule. If you only learn one thing from this episode, learn this bringing in an employee will not magically fix a problem. Instead, it will only be exacerbated by bringing them into a mess. So if things are a bit chaos on your team, if you're not really sure how to go about a specific process, the employee isn't gonna fix that for you. Especially if you're thinking about hiring entry level.

You need to have a clear roadmap for them to have success. You are the entrepreneur you are the business owner. That employee Success, I hate to break it this way, it's part of your responsibility. And there's certain things that we can do to set them up for success. So what I like to do is to make sure that before I bring an employee in, I have a process I haven't mapped out, I have clear, tangible deliverables, you will do this, then you will do that, then you will do this, if we think of something as simple as publishing this podcast, for example, it's a really clear cut process, do this do that do this, it's impossible to confuse those things, they are black and white, there's no gray in that area. And because of that, I can bring in someone to manage this pretty easily. Now, because the job or the task itself is really fleshed out, that means that person is going to be set up for success, and I'm doing that for them. So now I can hire off of different means I can hire for longterm culture fit, I can look at people that get me that start, you know, I feel like a certain connection with them, we have corresponding personality types, that's going to work long term.

Because I'm not just hiring someone that knows how to fix something that I haven't spent the time to do. Without this, you're going to spend your whole time really managing that employee correcting them. There's really no time saved whatsoever. So you go from spending 3040 50 minutes doing a certain task to spending 3040 50 minutes, managing that task being done. So it's kind of crazy. If you think about it, you know, we offload now we're paying more money to have a task done because we're having to do management over a task versus taking the time to just make sure it's clearly nested out, so that person can take it over. What I like to do also is whenever I'm in this position, when I'm considering bringing someone in for one or two or three tasks that I need to get off my plate, you know, I like to hire someone that's very versatile, and can grow into the business into a full time role. If you think about that list of things that you want to offload. I mean, really, we want to hire someone that can do all of it. But it's not the easiest person to find.

No one ever said this part was going to be easy. But when you bring someone in, you have them wear multiple hats. Ultimately, you bring that person in closer and it's less people to manage, that's a good thing. Ultimately, we want to really create the opportunity for someone to be able to grow their position into a full time job. And you see that from a lot of vas, if you go onto like Upwork, or one of the VA sites, you'll see these the people that have 678 different clients are doing work for and it might be the same job they might be just be posting to social media, but they're doing it for all these different companies. And the downside to that. And that really raises a red flag for me, because I have no ability to grow that person, they are capped at what I hire them at. However many hours, they're they're going to be working because they have all these other obligations. That's a big red flag. Because what happens when I need them more.

Now, they're going to be constantly balancing and trying to worry about appeasing all their different bosses versus me being number one, and I want to be number one, and you need to want to be number one as well. Because just like I said, You're so often asked this person wear multiple hats, just like you have been to this very point. So if we think about that, from an org chart perspective, I'm a huge fan of org charts. If you if you've listened to several episodes I've done about this before, you might be a solopreneur right now, or it might just be you and another person. But you still have an org chart, it might look like just you and that other person or just you. But think about it from a bit, take it one step further. And start double sliding people into their actual roles. Think about the capabilities of the business versus just clear this person, that person and that gives you like an idea of where you can hire. And when you hire someone for multiple seats, multiple different hats, you're putting them multiple places on your org chart. That's really a fun way to start to visualize the growth of your company and where it can go. And I think I can probably do like a whole hour training session on how to do that. And I probably should do that sometime in the future. When you do that, hire that person. Ultimately, like you need to invest your time into that person, train them, get to know them, treat them well. I like to in those first couple of weeks, I like to meet with them as often si can.

Daily preferred. It can even if it's only like for 510 minutes. You want to solidify that relationship. Give them an opportunity to ask any questions, get things clear cut And what you're gonna find is that that person grows into the role much quicker, their onboarding takes a whole lot less time. And they start to get a genuine stake in the business, a stake in what they're doing versus just coming in and you know, punching the clock and then going on their way to their other 17 other clients that they have, invest time in that person be different than other things that they've gotten before. Ultimately, like, my goal is to make them a true believer in my mission, because I want an asset that will be ready to grow with me, I want an ally in my business growth, someone I'm going to be able to rely on for years to come. Because hiring is kind of a pain in the neck, we know that. So why do we want to do it more, instead spend that time during onboarding to bring them in. Finally, I really want you to consider this, this is probably like big picture stuff. But you are not just offloading. When you bring in someone else. Yes, you're getting it off your desk, you're putting it on someone else's desk to do. But that's not all you're doing during this process.

By offloading, you're actually elevating your own contribution. So you might think that you're getting rid of social media marketing, or getting getting rid of the email marketing, you're not, you are elevating your role. So instead of being the tactical doer, you are the strategic guidance for that role. Understand. So you might not be the one in Facebook, creating the posts and posting them. But now you're in a position to cast the vision for what those posts should be doing. Just to provide feedback on what's going out, and direction on what we should be looking forward to in the future. Elevate your vision elevate your contribution and that person that you brought in to support you will feel some will feel like they that you still have a stake in the game, that you didn't just put them on an island to try to figure this out themselves. But also, it gives you that connection to what that activity is and allows you now to have consistent influence on how that activity is going to be run in the business in the future. That definitely elevates over time. But for this first transition, if you start with that mindset, not I'm elevating my role, elevating my contribution, you're going to avoid a whole lot of pains in the neck in the future.

Thanks so much for joining me, this is a fun episode to put together. It's definitely a lot to talk about a lot to consider. That being said, if you're in that process of being unsure whether or not you're you should be hiring. Honestly, if you're asking yourself the question, you probably already know the answer. For most of us if we are asking that the answer is yes. And you should have done it yesterday. But not always. Okay, there's no clear cut, here's when you're ready rule. Instead, I'd really advise that you have trusted allies to reach out to have a coach helping direct you so that you're making your ultimately ultimate decision from a place and a perspective of strength. And that ultimately will pay dividends in the long run. Hope this all helped. In the meantime, please go visit WWW dot Adam liette.com got a lot of tips and tricks on the site to help you through this whole process of building a team and elevating your own contribution. And if you haven't given the podcast a review yet, please go visit us on Apple. I genuinely appreciate it and until next time, this is all about elevating ourselves. So operators, my number two's the ones running the business. Go lead the way. Hey operators, I believe that within each and every one of us lies a warrior in waiting this warrior is able to conquer any obstacles that comes their way to discover how to awaken your warrior spirit and conquer what's holding you back. Go to Adam liette.com and join awaken the Warrior Within