Welcome back to the profitable nutritionist podcast my friend. I’m Andrea Nordling nutritional therapy practitioner and founder of the profitable nutritionist, where we help holistic nutritionist and health coaches make way more money and help way more people so they can live their dream lifestyle as an entrepreneur, which is amazing. Is that you? Are you one of those people perfect. So glad that you’re here. So on today’s episode, we are talking about hiring help, Big Gulp like, oh my gosh, panic, right. This is a topic that I have really changed my tune on over the last few years, which I’ll explain in a minute. It is also a topic that I coach my clients on a lot inside the streamline and scale mastermind, because my clients in the mastermind are making $50,000 or more a year in their business. And they are definitely at a point where either they are totally buried into dues each week, or they are and I mean, at that point, they’re barely keeping their head above water, which is making it impossible to grow their business or they’re actively bringing on help. And they’re hiring part time contractors to delegate to which is amazing. And they’re feeling the relief of that time that they’re getting back. But they don’t know how to make sure that they can afford to pay them month after month, and make sure they’re managing them while and that is the stressful part about the hiring all that to say, when you were making around $50,000 A year or so in your business, I think you should definitely be considering hiring some help. And I did not do that. So that is what I’ve really changed my tune on. But even part time help can make a huge difference, which is what we’re going to talk about today, the competent hires framework that I’m going to go through in this episode, is how you do that how you bring on contractors to help you with tasks in your business without stressing about how to afford to pay that person ongoing. So if that’s you, if you’re making at least $50,000 a year in your wellness business, and you want to grow it but you don’t know what to even do next, to make that possible. You’re just like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna keep doing the same thing over and over again, just to keep my head above water every week, because I don’t even know what I would change, then you need to apply for one of the remaining spots in the upcoming September group of the mastermind applications. For the remaining spots are going to be open August 8 to the 16th. You can get all of the details on the mastermind at the profitable nutritionist.com/mastermind. But the short version is this over the course of 12 months together in the mastermind, which is going to be September 2024 to September 2025, you will completely change the way that your business operates by upgrading your systems and processes or creating systems and processes if you don’t have much for those right now. And you’re going to change them to fully automated and streamlined so you can set up your business to scale to six figures multiple six figures very competently by this time next year. Now, how do we do that? You may be wondering, how does that happen? Well, in the mastermind, you’re gonna be introduced to a very specific four step process for upgrading and automating your marketing and your lead generation first and foremost. So your email list is growing and converting to hot client prospects on autopilot 24/7. That is priority number one, we are also going to make sure that your offer is streamlined and scalable, which means either a group program that you can scale or a one on one offer that you can scale by having new or existing contract practitioners that are going to deliver the one on one services to your clients. So we are not maxed out by your time availability and can get a lot of that back by the way. And then we are going to also be automating your daily and weekly tasks and routines into a really well oiled project management software. This is priority number three is getting your back end processes and recurring tasks automated in a project management software, which is going to minimize a lot of the busy work that you are doing week to week. And it’s going to also allow you to confidently delegate these processes and tasks to others over time, because you actually have them documented. Then fourth, and lastly, you are going to have a solid three year business plan mapped out quarter by quarter with small doable projects. And some of those are going to be hires each quarter so that you spread out the workload and you accomplish all of these projects without adding more to your schedule. We do not want you to be overloading way too many things all at once, which as entrepreneurs, especially high achieving ones that are making a lot of money you’re probably used to doing you’re probably used to getting everything done yesterday. And that’s not gonna work in the long term. So we spread it all out over a three year period, quarter by quarter. And then in the mastermind, we help you implement that quarter by quarter. So best of all, I think in as part of the mastermind inside that container, you get all of the systems, the templates, processes, job hiring scripts, and full support of me and the profitable nutritionist team every step of the way. We are very transparent and generous with all of our stuff. All the things that we’ve created. We just hand over in the mastermind so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I also would almost say this I hesitate to even mention it because I’m not planning to ever offer this again. So if you’re listening to this episode after the September mastermind has started and you can’t get in on this group, it’s not going to apply to you. But for the September round of the mastermind, which again is September 2024, to September 2025, every participant is getting a quarterly one on one strategy session with me. So we can get even more nuanced and specific with the actions that you’re going to be taking month by month, I have never offered one on ones like this before. So this is a one time offer that I’m going to be doing this round. But I won’t be offering that again. So sorry, if you’re listening to this episode, in the future, you won’t be getting the one on
the 12 month mastermind is a big change also from previously, every other round of the mastermind for the last two and a half years, which has been six months per mastermind round. So we’re taking this what we were doing in six months, we’re stretching it to 12 months, and giving a lot more support with the implementation so that you can get a lot more done together with the support of me and my team and your peers in the mastermind is the same investment, but 12 months instead of six months. Again, that’s a big change. So applications for the next round of the mastermind, which will be opening for September to September, September 2024 to September 2025. The applications for that round will be open August 8 to the 16th. That’s the important date that you need to know right now, applications are open August 8 to the 16th, you can get on the waitlist at the profitable nutritionist.com/mastermind. Again, to get all of the details on that page, and then the link to submit your application for one of the remaining spots. As soon as they open up. Applications will be reviewed in the order that they’re received. And after acceptance into the mastermind group for September, you’ll be able to either pay in full or choose a 12 month payment option, which is also new for this round. So okay, you have all of the information there on the mastermind, if this is you, if your business is making at least $50,000 a year, you need to strongly consider getting yourself into the mastermind room. All right. So let’s now get into one of my favorite things to teach and coach on in the mastermind, which is the confident hires framework. Do you have any guests on how this framework came about? Well, I bet you do. It’s from my experience, and my clients for that matter, not feeling confident to hire even when I was super overwhelmed at times and I desperately needed to delegate, I was not confident hiring help. And I’ve also seen this with many of my clients in the mastermind as well, that don’t feel competent hiring for a few different reasons. Here are the reasons I’ve seen. And if you are feeling the same way about one of these is also applying to you. First of all, they weren’t sure if they were ready to hire someone. They just were like as a time. I don’t know, am I ready? I don’t think I’m ready. I don’t feel ready. Probably not ready. Okay, that’s number one. Number two, they didn’t know what to hire someone for first. This especially comes up when you’re just barely keeping your head above water week to week. And it seems really overwhelming to even figure out how you would possibly figure out what to hire someone for. It’s like I need help with everything. And I don’t have time to help anybody learn how to do any of this. And you don’t know what to hire for first. Okay, that’s number two. Number three is they’re afraid to hire someone and then not be able to keep paying them month after month. It’s a big commitment, right to be able to hire someone to afford to continue paying them kind of a big deal. And they think oh, I just I don’t know if I’m ready for it. I don’t know if I can keep paying for them. So I don’t want to do it. Or number four, they don’t know how to explain what they do or how they do it. Because it’s all in their head. They don’t have any documented processes. And it just feels so hard or next to impossible to teach someone else to do those things. So they talk themselves out of hiring. Okay, one of those four things not sure if you’re ready. Not sure what to hire someone for first afraid that you can’t keep paying them or you just don’t even know how to explain or teach someone what you even need help with. The competent hires framework solves all of those problems. So let’s break it down. First of all, if you’re asking, should I hire someone? The answer is probably yes. If you’re even considering should I hire someone to help me with x? The The answer is probably yes. People usually do this way too late. And I for sure was guilty of this, I did not hire help in my business at any meaningful level until I was making well over $300,000 a year. And at the time, that would mean that was all I knew it was all I had done. So it was like okay, this, this is the way I really regret that I wish that I had brought in help, especially with some admin type stuff, some tech stuff just behind the scenes recurring tasks that I was spending a lot of time week to week doing. In retrospect, I mean, it wasn’t a ton, but it was enough that it made a very significant difference when I was no longer doing it anymore. But of course, at the time, I was telling myself that this isn’t taking too much time, this isn’t a big deal. So all that to say if you are in that same boat or you think it’s fine for now, maybe it isn’t fine. For now, maybe it would be so much better if you took the available energy that you have right now because you’re only going to be getting busier in your business and you took some of that time and you started offloading the stuff that someone else can do way better way faster and actually enjoys doing in your business that is kind of bogging you down A lot of us really feel that way about recurring tech tasks. So anything tech related, or follow up related with clients, or just you probably know what that is. And we’re gonna get into that more in a second on exactly what you can be outsourcing. But you’re probably starting to formulate a list, whatever that is for you. If you’re thinking I mean, maybe I should be hiring someone answers probably yes, you probably shut. People do this way, way, way too late, mostly because they want to feel secure and safe, that they can sustain the higher, that’s the reason I hear the most often. So I just want to make sure that I can sustain it. And the truth is, your thoughts about it and your beliefs are what are going to drive this not the timeline, there’s no amount of money in the bank that’s going to make you feel safe and secure about the higher it’s your thoughts about it. So if you’re thinking, I’m not sure this, like my income is really unpredictable, I don’t know, it’s not a sure thing, that’s going to have you doubting, the higher. Now, if you change your thoughts to something more useful, I’m going to give you a few suggestions in a second, you’re much more likely to make it work. And to figure it out, here are some of the thoughts I would highly recommend thinking instead about outsourcing some tasks in your business. First one is the sooner I outsource these tasks, the more money I’m going to make.
Very simple. The sooner I get these off my plate, the more money I’m going to make. Because our brain wants to think oh my gosh, I’m just going to lose money. If I’m paying someone to do stuff, I’m losing money. And it’s forgetting to realize that you’re actually going to make more money when you get these things off your plate. So you have to intentionally remind your own brain of the truth, which is the sooner I outsource these tasks, the more money I’m gonna make in my business, boom. That’s an empowering. But second, now is the best time for me to be training someone. This is definitely true. What is the saying The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today. That’s pretty much how it is with training someone to take over any roles in your business, you’re not going to get less busy, there’s not going to be a day or a time where you arrive and you have a completely overflowing full bank account, and nothing on your calendar. And you’ve nothing but time to bring someone in and train someone and nothing but endless resources monetarily to pay them know that is never going to come your brain is going to lie to you and tell you that someday that will happen. But it’s not, you’re just going to get busier. And so the time to rip off the band aid and do it is not the best time to be training someone is right now, another thought that may release or view here is I always figure it out. This is a go to thought for me, I think it served me very, very well over the years. So I’m gonna offer it to you too. I always figure it out. And you will, you will figure it out. Also, to wrap this up, a great thought about hiring is I’ll never get into a situation I can’t get out of just remind yourself of that, that you’re not you’re not committed for life to any decision that you make here. And you can trust yourself, you’ll never get into a situation you can’t get out of you will figure it out. But nothing happens until after you commit. And when I say commit here, I mean commit to hiring someone. And necessity is the mother of invention here. So you have to commit, you have to decide, yep, I’m going to do it, I’m going to hire someone. Take a deep breath, and remind yourself that you always figure it out. Now is the best time for you to be training someone and the sooner you outsource these tasks to this person, the more money you’re gonna make great decision, okay, any hire you make in your business needs to be directly or indirectly paying for themselves, I’m gonna say that, again, any hire you make in your business needs to directly or indirectly be paying for themselves directly, it means they’re bringing in funds and revenue into your business. Like maybe this is a salesperson or a marketing person, or somebody that is working with your clients and upselling them in some way. There’s different variations of what that could look like. But they’re bringing in money directly and paying for themselves. That’s ideal, very easy to track or indirectly paying for themselves because they are freeing someone else up in the business probably you to go make money and bring in money and pay for themselves. So either directly or indirectly. But there have to be mechanisms in place for tracking how this person is paying for themself. This is also going to come down your brain when it comes to hiring, you’re not paying them, they are paying them. I will say that again. You don’t pay them, they pay them. So for each role in your business and in your company as it grows, this might be hard by the way to think of you might be thinking I do not even want to have a big company. I don’t want to have a big team. None of this applies to me, but my friend, this can and should apply to you. Okay, because even a small business can still be operating so much more efficiently with the help of a small lean and mean team. Okay, so you don’t have to have goals of millions and millions of dollars. Although I would question why wouldn’t you but that’s a bad guest for another day. You don’t have to have those big goals. You can just be thinking how could I be more efficient in my business and free up more of my time? Well, the way to do that is to have help and the way that you do that at scale is by making sure that all of your help is paying for themselves, you’re not paying them, they are paying them. Alright, that means that you need to know what the metrics are, we’re going to use an industry term here of KPIs key performance indicators, what are the KPIs for each role? Now KPI is a fancy word for what metrics, what things are, we going to track to make sure that this hire is either bringing in the revenue or freeing up someone else to bring in the revenue to pay them? Alright, there’s a way to do this, we have to track it, I know that it’s not going to surprise you, if you listen to this podcast for any length of time, then I’m gonna go back to data. And I’m going to say we need to use some data, okay, we need to get some actual numbers here, and we need to analyze them. That’s all part of the process, your brain is gonna freak out about any big decision in your business. And then we can use some numbers and some data and some evaluating it to calm it back down. That’s the name of the game.
So the big goal here is to make sure that your hires in whatever role you’re hiring for is going to pay for themselves, you’re not paying for them, they are paying for them. So to fill in that equation, and to know how they’re going to pay for themselves. We need to quantify two variables here. First of all, how much money is there? And second, how much time is there? Like, how much money are they bringing in? And how much time are they freeing up, these are important things that we need to know. And to do that, you need to be brutally honest with yourself on where you are currently spending your time, and where you are currently spending the funds in your business. Indecision around anything in your business comes from confusion and avoidance of knowing your numbers. So we got to know the numbers, right? This is why accounting and bookkeeping, and regularly reviewing your numbers, revenue tracking, all of that is priority number one, first and foremost, but so is tracking your time, gotta be honest about where your time is being spent, especially in the mastermind container I see my clients in they’re really wanting to avoid tracking their time. And the reason they want to avoid that is they know, they are overworking, they know that they are spending Sunday nights getting ready for the week, they’re working into the nicer working weekends, they’re working way longer than they want to be. And then they kind of lie to themselves a little bit about how often that’s happening. And you know what we need to not lie about it, we need to be very, very honest about where time is being spent, because that data is going to inform what role to hire for next. We’re gonna talk about that in a second. But first of all, let’s talk about the time and the money debt that we incur in our businesses. If you rack up a bunch of money debt, hiring someone, for example, and that that hire doesn’t work out, what would you do to fix it? The answer is, you’d make more money, and you’d pay off that debt over time. Right? But if you rack up a bunch of time debt, by not hiring someone, which means you’re wasting a lot of time, what do you do to fix that? Well, you have to make more money to pay off the time debt over time. But it will have taken even longer even though the result is the same. So let’s just do it. Now is the point, let’s just not waste a bunch of time, let’s put some money forth, to make some hires to make some decisions. And that is going to speed up the process so that you don’t incur debt, an actuality in either department. All right. This is something that we coach on a lot in the mastermind, especially we talk about the topic of time debt and money debt. And I always pose the question, when I asked my clients about this, when I say what comes up for you around the topic of time, debt and money debt, what do you prefer? I always ask them is this 2x thinking? Or is it 10x thinking. And what I mean by that is based off of a concept in a book, that’s a great book, by the way, it’s called 10x is easier than to x. And the concept in the book is that if you if you are looking at the day to day, and you’re really in the weeds in your business, it’s 2x Thinking meaning you’re always looking at a maximum of how you can double the results you’re currently getting. Because that’s where your your brain has really comfortable living, it knows how it can iterate on what’s working right now. And get make it two times better, you can get to x better, and our brains can really comfortably do that. But to 10x like 10x anything, we have to completely change the playbook, we have to completely change the strategy, because what you’re doing right now isn’t going to work at 10x, the process the mechanisms will completely break. So when you take your brain to 10x thinking and you think what would this look like at 10x? If I was making 10 times more money than I am right now, what would have to change my business? Well, that’s a completely different problem solving, then how do I double? How can I make this 2x better, because you can maybe work more to do 2x What you’re doing right now, you could maybe just hustle harder and work a little bit harder and get twice the results that you’re getting right now. But you can’t do that and 10x the results? Probably you just very unlikely that you can do that. So the problem solving that comes in at that stage of the game when you’re thinking 10 eggs is that you have to hire you have to have help. You have to leverage some systems and some automations and for sure delegation so that you can get to that 10x results. So when I asked this in the mastermind, I’m like, Okay, what comes up for you around the topic of time and money debt, which or you’re more comfortable racking up time debt or money debt? And what’s the story around that, and then is that 2x thinking or 10x thinking, this is kind of interesting to explore, right? You can usually catch yourself pretty quickly, and see where you’re in 2x thinking, and when I bring this up, it’s it’s really doesn’t mean that you have to be 10 axing anything in your business, but it will show you very quickly what systems are broken. And what you should be spending your time on. If you think I’m going to 10x instead of 2x. That shines light on where you probably do need to hire help, okay, or where you’re wasting a lot of time. So let’s get into that. What does it mean? How do you do it? What is this hiring help? Like? What is she talking about? Does that mean a W two employee in your business? What does it mean? Well, first of all, that might be different for everybody. So consult your CPA on that I’m not giving any tax advice, I’m not giving any legal advice. But I will say that in working with a lot of people and having quite a bit of experience with this, for most people, it will be contract help, especially in the beginning. So that means you aren’t paying someone’s benefits, you’re not paying their taxes, you are like they are their own business, and you’re paying them as a contractor. So let’s take some pressure off with that, first of all. Now, you may be wondering, are you hiring somebody that lives in the same country as you domestic? Or are you hiring somebody overseas, and that is also a decision that is totally up to you. I will say that in my company, we do both. And there’s pros and cons to both but the American dollar and a lot of my clients are in the US or Canada. So I’ll say the dollar goes really far overseas. And so for that reason, there are some real advantages to hiring overseas. And it’s actually not very hard to do that, you can get people that are pretty much experts in a lot of tech tasks, in particular, overseas very inexpensively. So to do that, you would do that on a freelancer website like upwork.com, that’s one that we use quite a bit. There are some other agencies that we also use. And I’m not going to get into that, because that’s a little bit separate. But there are other ways that you can have agencies that hire contractors for you, you give them the job description, and they go find it for you kind of like a headhunter, for contractors in these types of roles. So there’s different different options, but I think a real easy go to is upwork.com. Okay, if that’s what you’re looking for, or if you’re going to be hiring domestically, then you’ll have a different process here, you might be looking on indeed.com, you might be, you might just know, someone that gets recommended to you might be in your warm network telling people, Hey, I’m thinking of hiring for data. Roll next. And you might just have someone that falls in your lap, which also happens quite often. And I think that that’s the best tool. So alright, that I think is going to answer questions on the logistics of where do you find the people but now you need to figure out what role is going to be the best to be hiring for in your business. And I want to say if your business is not at the level where you are imminently looking to hire someone, it’s still great to be listening to this and thinking about when you will be like when will that be on your radar? And what will you be doing now to prepare for that. So I still want you thinking through this framework and the exercises I’m going to give you all right. And then just remember, of course, you’re not going to feel ready. And this is not going to feel perfect ever. It’s a work in progress, always. But your willingness to just try is going to be so much higher if your mindset is one of curious experimentation that you’re testing, and you’re tracking, and you’re never gonna get yourself into a situation you can’t get out of, you’ll very quickly know if this isn’t working. Okay, so just know that be curious and calm your brain down that you’re testing and you’re tracking, we’re going to have a lot of stopgaps in here to make sure that you’re evaluating and testing instead of just jumping into a long term relationship with a hire and hoping that you get a good one. That’s not the way to go. Because you very well may not make the right hire the first time or the second time or the third time. Who knows, but it’s okay. Alright, so step one is going to be getting back to that concept I talked about about time, debt and money debt, you have to know how much time you’re spending and how much money you’re spending on the tasks that you are going to be delegating to someone in your business. And to figure out what you even want to be delegating. We have to figure out where are you spending your time?
And where are you spending your money. So let’s just acknowledge that step one is going to be tracking your revenue and your expenses and your time. So for at least two weeks to get a really good representation of where you’re spending your time. I want you to do a CEO time audit. Have you ever done a CEO time audit before? So if you haven’t, I give the entire step by step process, including the software that we use to do that in episode 118. So know that you can go back to Episode 180 It’s called time audit three step process for actually taking Friday’s off. And listen to that podcast after this episode, that’s episode 118. But first and foremost, you need to do a CEO time audit so that you know where your time is being spent. And that is going to be very, very insightful for you. If you follow the process that I teach in that episode 118, it’s going to show you how to categorize the tasks that you’re currently doing so that you can see where you’re at. Right, then the time tracker we use is called toggle, I teach you how to do that, in that episode, it’s all going to be categorized, so you can see where you’re spending your time. And that gives you your baseline. And the reason it’s important to categorize the tasks that you’re doing. So you can group them into similar buckets, basically into departments of where you would be hiring help for in the future. Again, even if you are never going to do this, and in your mind, right now you’re like, I’m never going to have a team like that I’m never going to have departments in my business, just humor me, okay, this is going to make everything in your life easier and make your business run so much better. So just humor me, there are three departments that you need to be thinking through your marketing and sales department, your operations department, which is all of your admin tasks, back end, Human Resources type processes. And then you have your fulfillment, which is where you are fulfilling to your clients. Okay, so marketing and sales, operations and fulfillment. And every task that you’re currently doing right now falls into one of those three buckets. So knowing which bucket each task falls into, it’s going to be really helpful, because you can start to see where there similar tasks grouped together, that someone who has a specialty in any of those areas could start taking some of your tasks. And at a higher level, you would have a leadership team in charge of each of those, like someone in charge of each of those three departments. And the other contractors in those roles, or employees at that point would be reporting to that person instead of you. So longer term, it’s just a great way to be thinking about what an org chart could look like in your company. And if you just died at the use of the term org chart, and you think, no, this is way too corporate, I am never going to run a business like this, I just love my lean and mean shop that I have going on right now, hey, I totally respect that as well. But like I said, Humor me, okay, do a CEO time audit and categorize the tasks that you are currently doing. So you can see where you’re at. And you can just have a baseline of where you’re spending your time, it’s going to be so insightful. That’s step one. And then step two is going to be to review that data that you just got, and make a hiring plan for one new hire at a time. And you’re going to start with the lowest hanging fruit that is going to free you up the most. So this is where you’re spending 80% of your time right now, whatever that is, if it’s admin stuff, that’d be your operations. And you’re doing a lot of behind the scenes, you know, back of house type stuff, that would be and this could be your tech, this could be just the day to day this stuff that is that you’re probably not excited about can you tell I don’t love the tech stuff. Maybe you are excited about it. I don’t know like that. That’s a thought I probably shouldn’t project on the world. But the operation stuff is the back end of your business. Okay, so if that is it, and that’s where you are going to be bringing in someone first, this is the lowest hanging fruit because it is going to free you up the most all right? Maybe it is fulfillment with your clients, maybe that’s what you’re going to identify is taking up the hugest amount of your time. And if that’s the case, then that’s where we need to look first, how can you have somebody else coming in to help automate some of the tasks that you’re currently doing there, whether they’re interacting directly with your clients or not, or if they’re supporting you and supplying you with some of the assets. So I’ve seen in the mastermind, I have clients that have support with creating follow ups to client appointments, but they’re not actually reaching out to the clients one on one, although they could then I also have some other students in there that have their business setup, so that they have support coaches, and support practitioners for their clients. And the clients are directly interacting with those support coaches. So there’s multiple ways you can do it. But if fulfilment is where you see that, that is taking up the hugest amount of your time, that’s probably where you want some support next. And we can do that with automating through some softwares. And with actual people. So that would be the direction you would go. If you are seeing that marketing and sales is where you are spending the majority of your time, then that is definitely where you want to be looking at hiring some help. Again, this is could be in automating some of the recurring tasks that you’re doing, if it’s like scheduling emails, or talking to clients, one on one sending messages, like I mean, there’s so many variations of how people market and sell that that’s like not a list that I’m even going to go through. But if you see that marketing and selling is really where you’re spending a ton of your time, then that’s where you’re going to want to look at alleviating some of that by having support to come in and help you. So figure that out. What is the one new hire that you’re going to make next? That is going to free up the most of your time and your bandwidth, the one new hire that’s not to say that over the next year, there’s not going to be more because there are, but we have to start with one and only one at a time. And if this the only thing that you hear, during this entire podcast episode, I want you to hear that you do one at a time, this is going to take you much more time and energy and bandwidth to properly onboard someone into your business than you think it will. It always says it’s like, when you are renovating a house, and your contractor says it’s going to take a month, you know, it’s going to take two, this is the same kind of thing, it’s probably going to take twice as long as you think it’s going to so just plan for that plan luxurious amounts of time and space as much as possible. And know that you’re only going to be onboarding one person at a time. Okay, now remember, this is a work in progress, you’re not going to feel ready, you’re not going to feel like it’s perfect, just remember that. Alright, step three, you’re going to create a job description for this next role, this one roll that you’re going to be hiring for next. And you’re going to set KPIs remember, those
are the metrics, the key performance indicators, with a method to track them. So what do I mean by that, I mean, that I want you to be very specific, before you even post a job description, or invite anybody to interview for this role. I want you to know what you are going to be tracking to make sure that they’re paying for themselves. And to do that, you’re going to literally answer this question. What does winning look like in this role? I want you to answer that question, what does winning look like in this role? And then I want you to quantify it with how do we measure the winning? What are the actual numbers that we’re going to use to measure if this person is winning? Yes or no? What are the things that we’re going to be measuring, and we’ll talk more about some examples of that in a second. But that’s step three, you’re going to create the job description with the KPIs and a method to track them. And when I say a method to track them, I mean that you just need to have a spreadsheet. And they need to have this could be a Google Sheet, where the person that you hire is responsible for tracking those three things that you’re going to be measuring and putting them in the spreadsheet so that you both can see them that’s as sophisticated as that needs to be. But you need to have a you need to have this in play, you need to be thinking ahead, and knowing that that is something that’s going to be coming. So I want you to do that in step three here. When you’re creating the job description, set the KPIs, just three of them or less, which are the metrics that you’re going to be tracking to make sure that this person is winning. So answer the question, what does winning look like in this role? Alright, step four, is to commit, just commit, you’re gonna do it, it feels imperfect, you’re not sure what the heck you’re doing. Of course, you don’t, you’ve never done this before. Or maybe you’ve never done it for this role before. Or maybe you do have a ton of experience with this from a different job, and a different past career. But you’ve never done it for yourself before. And it still feels very foreign, whatever it is, doesn’t matter. Of course, you’ve never done it before, do it anyway, commit, make the hire, and you’re going to do the hiring after you give a test project, a paid Test Project. Alright. So this is part of the process, especially for contractors, you want to pay them for their work, this is not something they’re going to do for free, but you are going to be very transparent that you are giving them a test project. And then you get to decide what that test project is. But it’s going to be something that you’re going to use. So for example, in my business, we have people do some copywriting sometimes. And when we’re going to have them do copywriting, they will get a podcast episode, for example, and a transcript from the podcast episode. And we will say, can you turn this into a blog post, and we will give them some direction on what kind of blog posts we like what we want that to look like. And we will give them that episode. And as a test project, we will negotiate a rate. Yep, this is your test project. If this works out, well, we have an opportunity to hire you on longer term, we have lots of these that you can do, just as an example. And then maybe we’ll do three at once. Maybe we’ll give test projects to three different copywriters, but they’re all going to be different podcast episodes and different blog articles, because hopefully, we’re gonna be able to use all three of them. And we don’t want to have triple of one. So I say that because I’ve seen people before think, Oh, I’ll give the same, the same test project to three different people. And I’ll see which one is best. And I really wouldn’t recommend that. Because if you’re paying for something, you want to be able to use it no matter what. So you’re gonna get a test project. And if the test project goes, well, you will first of all, if it doesn’t go well, you’re going to do some evaluation, is that because you are unclear in your expectations? Is that because your communication wasn’t great? Or is it because their communication or their follow through wasn’t great? So do an honest evaluation there? I find a lot of times when a test project doesn’t go well, it is because of the expectations not being properly set or communicated in the beginning. And I’ve certainly gotten a lot better at that. And so as my team so the results that we get from those test projects are a lot better than they used to be. But if I’m honest, that’s usually the problem. So I don’t just throw out any submission that isn’t a plus plus plus and say no, I would never hire this person. Yeah, I gotta do some evaluation first and is that a them problem? Omar’s that an us problem. So do that. If it is not a win, and it’s not a you problem, then you’re not going to give any more time and attention to that potential candidate, okay, then they’re done, you send them on their way, and you move on. That’s okay. We’re not marrying anybody here, we’re barely even dating. Okay, we’re like, maybe it showing up for a quick coffee date here with these test projects. But if someone knocks your socks off, and they’re promising, then you may give them a few more test projects, or you may invite them into a one month trial or something like that in the role. Now, this is the beauty of hiring contractors, you are not obligated to anything, everything is negotiable, you’re going to set the terms. And you’re going to do it with the goal in mind of really,
how do I want to sit like really holding this person’s hand, okay, I don’t even know what role you’re hiring for. But I just know from experience and with coaching a lot of people on this, that you’re going to do a lot of hand holding, and by hand holding, I mean daily check ins at first, okay, you’re going to have this person be checking in with you and letting you know how it’s going. So they’re going to have a little evaluation format on their side, where they’re going to report to you what’s going well, what isn’t going well, or what is confusing to them, and what they think they need as far as support to fix the problem. If there’s any problem, and you’re gonna have just like every day, they need to just send you the answers to those three questions, that’s a daily check in, you may have them send it to you and you review it. Or you may do that verbally on the phone, you may do that on Zoom, you could do it with a loom video, I’ve done all of these things, they all work, but just know that daily, you’re going to be hand holding and checking it with someone, they’re going to have a lot of questions, you’re going to have a lot of clarifications to make, especially if you don’t have processes in place already for this role. You’re all figuring this out together. Okay. So it starts off with every day check ins, and then it goes every other day. And depending on what the role is, and how high touch this needs to be with you or with someone else on your team, it might go to weekly, but it’s for sure weekly, you’re you’re checking in with these people weekly. And on these check ins, which is going to be daily at first and then every other day, and then maybe twice a week. And then weekly, you are reviewing their KPIs. Remember, everybody is onboard from the very beginning with what winning looks like in this role, which really comes down their brain, by the way, because they know exactly what they need to be doing. They know what’s being measured. everybody’s on the same page about what the goals are. So that’s really helpful for them, by the way, and it’s really helpful for you. So then you’re reviewing these often. And if they’re not hitting the numbers that you need them to be hitting, and again, we’re going to talk about what some examples of that could be in a second. But if they’re not hitting those numbers, then it’s a conversation starter here. Why do you think that is? What’s the number wrong? Do you not have enough support? Is there something that’s confusing? Do we need to lower the goal? If so why would that be what like, what do you need to get us to this number, and you just have really honest conversations about that. Because everybody is very transparent about how they are paying for themselves and what that needs, like what numbers need to be hit what the KPIs are in the metrics to measure that. So that they’re paying for themselves at tell them what winning looks like in their role, early and often. And how they’re measuring it so they can report it to you. Just remember, that’s a critical piece of this. So you might be wondering, right now, what are some of these jobs? What would that even look like? I’m gonna break this down into the three different departments that we talked about before. So first of all marketing, here’s some potential positions that you may want to be thinking about hiring for in marketing, a content creator, a Content Manager, an ads manager, a copywriter, a sales manager, somebody to do sales for you, an affiliate manager, if you have other people that are promoting your products or services, you might have a social media strategist, if you’re active on social media, a podcast manager, or a Podcast Producer, those are all things in marketing. And if you are hiring for a marketing position, you would want to have KPIs that are representative of the sales that are going to come from those marketing efforts. So what I see people, like put their sights on or try to optimize for is views, or vanity metrics, things that in theory, would lead to sales, but maybe don’t actually lead to sales. So I just want to pose your KPIs for a marketing position really need to be sales related, we need to be making sure that the marketing efforts are resulting in qualified leads that then turn into clients. So maybe that’s a certain number of clients per month. Maybe that is a certain number of qualified leads that get into a booked in console calls. Could be different depending on what your business structure is. But you need to be optimizing for qualified people that are going to become clients. That’s what marketing is all about. That’s what sales was all about. So make sure that any KPIs for those roles are geared in that direction, then you can definitely just Google KPIs for any of these roles, like good KPIs for ads manager, for example. And you’ll get a bunch of ideas. But I want you to critically look through a list of any ideas you may get and think, Is this going to be optimizing for the right thing? Is this optimizing for more leads? Or is this optimizing for the right leads that are going to turn into clients or customers, so make sure you’re thinking about that. Now, in fulfillment, here are some of the roles you may be hiring for a customer success manager, somebody that’s whose entire job is to make sure that your customers are getting amazing results, measuring those results, getting data about it, and even proving that that’s a customer success manager, you might have a curriculum designer, if you have an online course, or some sort of an online program, we might have a curriculum designer, you could have support coaches, like we have in the TPN program, where those are coach coaches that come in and support with written coaching. And with coaching calls to my clients, which is a beautiful thing. We also have a Community Manager in the TPN program, that someone whose entire job is organizing and managing the engagement and questions in our online community, all fulfillment oriented, because this is the delivery of what people bought. So this is fulfilling the client obligations, anything in fulfillment is going to be client facing. Again, you can Google KPIs for any of those roles. But what you want to make sure that you’re optimizing for is that the people that are impacted, which are your clients by this role, are going to be spending more money with you or more likely to refer new clients to you. So think about that their success is more, so you’re going to be measuring KPIs in fulfillment roles that your clients are getting, are having more success, they’re having a better experience, it’s faster, it’s better, and they are much more likely to refer at that point or to keep spending money with you. So you want to be optimizing for them getting better results, more sustainable results, faster results with the KPIs in the fulfillment department. Now in operations, you have things like an operations manager, a virtual assistant, an online business manager, an executive assistant or an admin assistant, any contract human resources, although your business would have to be pretty big to have something like that. Any tech virtual assistants is all operations, right? So any of those positions, you could have KPIs around how much time things are taking, and making sure that it’s not taking too much time, they have to report to you the, like, amount of tasks that they’re finishing in a certain amount of time. Or, you know, you could I’m not even gonna say that one. Actually, I’m not gonna say that one, I want you to Google KPIs for any positions that you have in operations, and critically, look through what those suggestions could be. And then ask yourself, if I measure this, and we hit our targets for it, is that person going to be paying for themselves? Are they going to be freeing up time from me or from someone else, to be bringing in more revenue into the business because that’s what needs to happen. So I’m not going to use my example I was going to use I’m gonna let you just hit the Google do that for yourself. But ultimately, you are setting the KPIs, which are the guardrails, the metrics that we’re going to be reviewing, that person in the role is going to be reporting them to you, and then you’re gonna be reviewing them together to make sure that they are paying for themselves, and that everyone knows what winning looks like,
and we are winning. Okay. Now, the interview process is fun. And you might be wondering, what does that even look like, especially with somebody overseas, potentially. And that’s a contractor, this isn’t an employee position, it’s probably different than any other interview process that you’ve ever done anywhere else in your life. So let’s talk about it. First of all, you are going to do the test project. And if that goes, well, that lends itself nicely to saying, hey, let’s get on the phone, or let’s get on Zoom, and have a more formal interview, in which case, you would schedule that. And then you would discuss the test project. And you would make a decision and you would find out from them. You know, what went well here? What did you like, what did you not like you would go through the job description, again, ask if they have any questions, and then make a decision, you know, ask some questions. Obviously, I’m the interviewer as you do, and make a decision to extend an offer if that if the interview goes well. And when you do that, and you extend an offer. Remember, you are not marrying this person, you are not like you’re you’re not making a lifelong commitment. This is still how do I want to this is still performance based, okay? So they still need to be hitting their numbers and performing at the level that you have set forth in your very nice job description with the KPIs that you’ve set out. everybody’s on the same page. So your hiring timeline for doing this is a critical consideration. This is what we’re going to wrap up with. I want to suggest when you Do this, especially when you’ve never done it before, that you create a timeline for one to two, maximum, three hires over the next 12 months, maybe it’s just going to be one, by the way, and that’s totally fine. But I want you to give yourself luxurious amounts of time to implement this framework, and to really think through the process and not to rush it. Okay, I want you to give that person that you’re going to be bringing in and maybe that first one isn’t going to work, and then you’re going to hire again for that role. And you’re going to test it out again, and maybe it happens a few times. And that’s okay, before you get the right person in the right seat. Give yourself that time, okay, give yourself time to be picky, because this is your business. And this is someone that, especially if it’s one of your first hires you’re going to be working closely with, so you need to have a personality match with them. And you need to have everybody’s expectations on the same page, as far as how much time and attention of yours they’re going to get. So you need to make sure that you have long enough time horizon planned out that you can give that attention. Okay, so two to three maximum hires over the next 12 months would be my suggestion, unless you are going really, really, really fast in your business right now. And you need to have more hires than that, in which case, I mean, obviously, I would love to help you do that and get your booty in the mastermind. But if you’re doing this on your own, I would say maximum three hires in the next 12 months, so that you keep that sustainable. And you’re systematically offloading things off of your plate so that you can then look at what is the next round, and then you do this, again, you get someone up to speed, you get them creating systems and processes for their role. So that next time, it’s much simpler when you hire someone in that role, because there’s already processes created. I know a lot of my clients, and I definitely felt like this as well, a lot of my clients feel like I don’t have processes, I just do things. It’s in my brain, I don’t know how I do them. I don’t know why I do them, I just know that I do them. And I can’t teach that to someone. And the bottom line is you need to have processes, but maybe you’re not the person to create them. I know in my business, I’m not the person to create processes. I’m a big picture thinker. I think fast, I talk fast, I move fast. And I do not slow down to make processes. So what do I do, I’ve hired other people whose job is to create processes, for the things that we do, and to slow down and to document them. So that is, in my opinion, a much better option is to have somebody creating the processes for their roles and documenting what they do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And creating SOPs and processes for other people step by step to be able to follow to do that. If it is a job that is online, something they’re doing on a computer, which most things are in this day and age, that just probably means recording their screen and talking through what they’re doing in what order and how they’re doing it. So this doesn’t have to be incredibly complex, just know that someone needs to be documenting this stuff somewhere. And that goes for you, too, when it comes to explaining things that you just innately do. And your brain like I just respond to clients this certain way. Because I know that if they say this, I say that, well, you do have a process, you’ve just never articulated it before. So a great way to do that is to record yourself. So I do screen recordings all of the time, especially with things that I think this is going to be so hard for me to explain, oh my gosh, how do I teach somebody how to do this? Oh, it’s easier to just do it myself, believe me, I have all of those thoughts as well. And loom is my friend illumise, a screen recording video. So what I will do is I will just talk through what I’m thinking and why I’m doing what I’m doing, as I do it, for a great example of this is organizing testimonials in our business. We have a community manager that collects testimonials from our students inside our private student community in the profitable nutritionist program and puts them into a database. And for the longest time, I was responsible for going in and categorizing those testimonials. So is it was it a win about time management? Was it something about signing more clients was like how are we going to use this testimonial in the future basically, is the point of that. And I put off teaching somebody how to do this for so long? Because it felt like I just don’t know how to teach that. I don’t I don’t know, I just know. How do you teach someone you just know? Well, the answer is you screen record yourself doing it. And you just talk through the process. And I felt ridiculous. But for a week, when I was doing this, I would just record myself going through and I would say okay, well they said this. So I know that it’s like it’s a mindset testimonial. And this is why and I would categorize it as such. And I just recorded myself doing it a few times. And that became part of the SOP somebody made a process around it and then delegated it to someone else and I’ve never seen it again. So that’s one example that comes to mind of things that I didn’t want to slow down to have to try to teach someone and it felt very hard and it felt very impossible even though that’s a small example. It is not it’s not impossible. You have a process. I have a process for how we do things. We just need to talk it out and explain it to someone else who is better at turning that information in to a step by step process. All right, I’m gonna land this plane No, I hope you can see that there is never going to be a time where you feel more ready than right now to make your first or your next hire. That’s really what I hope you get from this. But when you make that decision that it is time to get some help, it is time to take some of this stuff off of my plate and have somebody else helped me when you make that decision, you’re gonna figure it out, go back and listen to this episode again, and get the guidelines in this framework and put them to use for you. First of all, make sure that you’re hiring for the role that’s going to free up the most of your time and bandwidth. First, by doing the time audit for yourself, you got to get really, really clear on where you’re spending your time. So you know what’s going to be the best bang for your buck when you’re hiring somebody and it’s going to take the most items off of your plate, give you the most whitespace back, that’s priority number one. And then number two, you’re going to allow 60 to 90 days of onboarding time, so that you have luxurious amounts of time to properly get this hire up to speed on what you do, and how you do it. And how they can best support you, or other members of your team, how you can best support them or other members of your team can best support them. This onboarding time is when the processes are documented. So they’re going to be documenting the processes, either you are going to be recording things for them. And then they put that into a step by step process, or they just create it. Regardless, it’s going to be rinse and repeat in the future. When you hire for this role, again, which you will do by the way, because it’s unlikely that this person is going to stay with you forever, and your business is going to keep growing. And so you’ll probably be bringing on more people in this role. But next time, it’s going to be much easier to onboard someone because you’re going to have processes documented, just remember that it gets easier and easier. And the more time of yours that is freed up by having people help you, the easier and easier it gets. Now number three, you’re going to have KPIs in place and a process for reporting them and analyzing them weekly at the very most, so that everybody knows what winning looks like in that role. And then you’ve ensured that the hire is going to pay for themselves, this is going to come down your brain because you’ve already taken into account how they are going to pay for themselves. If they do XYZ thing three, maximum three KPIs maximum, by the way, if they do, boom, boom, boom, these three things, they’re hitting these numbers, they’re for sure paying for themselves, you’re gonna figure that out in advance, and you’re going to just make sure it happens. Okay, this calms you down so much. If you want help hiring, by the way, including our exempt job posting templates, our interview scripts, our test project examples, all of the ways that we use all of this and put it into play. Remember, you got to get your application in for the September round of the mastermind, the applications are open August 8 to the 16th. And all of the mastermind details and the link to join the waitlist are waiting for you right now at the profitable nutritionist.com/mastermind. We would love to help you with this. If you’re listening in the future. So go to that page and get yourself on the waitlist for the next time doors are open. And with that, I’m going to set you free to go start doing some online shopping on up work and thinking about the next hire you’re going to make in your business while you’re doing your time on it. All right. Bye, Fred. Have a wonderful week, and I’ll see you back here next Tuesday. Same time, same place.
