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Business success is dependent on a solid financial foundation & success looks different to everyone & there is a lack of equity of access to resources and information for small business owners and independent contractors & there is a societal narrative making us believe “balance” is our ultimate goal & … There are so many “&”s that impact being your own boss. Let’s have some frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success.
Molly Beyer: [00:00:08] Welcome to The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond, the podcast where we have frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success. Each episode is a reminder that success isn't one thing, it's a whole lot of ambiguous ands. Like, subscribe, or follow and let's explore these ambiguous ands.
Molly Beyer: [00:00:35] Hello and welcome to The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond! I'm your host, Molly Beyer, and I'm here to lead you through frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. Today, I want to talk about hiring employees, specifically how to build the avatar of the person that you want to join your business. Last time, we talked about culture and capacity and using that to build out our avatar of the people we want to work with. Today, we're going to use some of those similar ideas in building out the people we want to have work directly for and with us. So much of the time when we hire, we focus on really building a role with specific tasks. We write out a job description, list the qualifications and responsibilities, and yes, that is important. People will read it and determine whether they're qualified. Job applications do that well, at least we hope they do it well. But here's what I see that's often missing, especially in small businesses, and that's really hiring the right person to fit your culture. And don't get me wrong, we see it in big businesses too, but we can't control them quite as much.
Molly Beyer: [00:01:46] So now this isn't just about experiences or skills, it's about really who you are and how you operate and who should exist alongside you in this business. And that really is why vision, mission, and values are really so crucial to define for yourself and your business. For me, my vision is making the world a better place through great bookkeeping. So that vision really guides every decision that I make. Every choice, every hire, every strategy is filtered through: does this fit our vision? Does this align with what we're trying to do? If the answer is no, then maybe it's something for the future or a collaboration opportunity outside of my core business. But that focus, knowing who you are and what your business stands for, is the foundation for hiring the right people. Because in everything, culture comes first. And now, culture isn't always just this warm, happy feeling. Culture really is operational. It's a system. It's your filter, a consistent tool, a guide, a retention strategy, a capacity planning framework. Because yes, culture does create warm feelings when people feel like they belong in it, but this is an operational strategy for your business. Because again, your culture defines and is defined by how you communicate, how you recover from mistakes, how you make decisions, how you handle busy seasons, how you protect boundaries, how you respond to stress. And when you're honest about your culture, again, this is not our aspirational culture, but our actual culture today, you start to see what kind of person will thrive with you and what kind of person just simply won't.
Molly Beyer: [00:03:25] And that honesty, that clarity, that willingness to really look at your business as it truly is, that becomes your hiring superpower. Because people who thrive in your culture feel like oxygen. People who don't feel like friction. You can train skills, but you can't train alignment. So in my business, again, our values are basic and that's an acronym for balance, accountability, support, integrity, and communication. These values drive everything that we do. And that's not just with our clients, but it's also with our employees. So when I write a job description, the first part is the biggest part. And it's all about our culture. It's who we are. It's how we operate. It's the difference we're trying to make. It's how we interact with our team and our clients. And then I list the skills and qualifications needed because again, those are important. But one of my favorite lessons from one of my favorite mentors was 'hire for personality and train for skill'. Because the right person aligned with your culture can learn the specific skills that they need. But a highly skilled person who doesn't fit your team can actually destroy your business culture completely. So this again, is where creating that avatar comes in. And it's really a focus on a who and not a how. Now you hear me talk about the Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan books a lot. So this is a lot coming from the book 'Who Not How'. This book's simple idea is: don't focus on how something gets done, focus on who can do it. So if you have your culture in place and a clear idea of who you need, you can build that avatar pretty easily. And that's exactly what my manager and I did. And we did it over the last 18 months as we sat in, defined, and prepared for growth. So a lot of our questions along the way really involved, again, defining our culture. We wanted to know who we were helping, who we weren't helping, what makes us unique, how do we interact with our clients and with each other? And then we start talking about what values do we need in someone who is going to join our team, and also how much chaos can they tolerate? Because here's the reality, I'm pretty chaotic. I am not super organized. I am not always emotionally consistent. And that's okay. And I've really learned to embrace that part of myself. But I need someone who can handle that while also balancing and complimenting the team. So what ended up happening is we had a plan to increase a little by outsourcing, but the company we wanted to work with closed that portion of their business. We couldn't find another business that met our values in the way we wanted to operate. So we decided it was time to hire internally, and we were in that moment where we should have done it already, and we'll talk about that in an upcoming episode about growing even before you feel like you're ready.
Molly Beyer: [00:06:20] But here we were. We were hitting a capacity wall we really should have hired two months ago, but then now it was obviously way past time. So here is a good time again now to talk about capacity. We talked a little bit about it last time. Capacity really isn't planning like the numbers on a spreadsheet. It's emotional capacity, it's mental capacity, logistics capacity, team bandwidth and really the pace of the business that you can realistically manage right now. And many business owners really do hire too late, just like we did, because they're maybe only looking at workflow and not trajectory of that workflow. I fell into this trap this time with many of the things that I talk about on this podcast. I say things that I need to hear and adhere to myself.
[00:07:09] So we've also talked a bit in past episodes about reflection and strategy. And so these are some reflections that tie directly into the creation of this person, this avatar to hire into the business. What projects do you want to accomplish next year that you didn't have time for this year? What opportunities did you turn down because you were too overwhelmed? What bottlenecks are you tolerating, and heads up on bottlenecks for small business owners, nine times out of ten, you are the bottleneck. What tasks drain you the most? What do you wish someone else would just handle for you? If your business grew 25% tomorrow, what would break first? That was what ended up happening to us that caused us to need to outgrow our capacity really quickly as our business grew significantly, really fast.
Molly Beyer: [00:08:03] But this is how you build your avatar out of these sorts of questions. And because we already had these questions answered, this became easier. So here we are now with our avatar and are hiring later than we should be. But we put out our application. Again, it was a very culture driven application so that people really had a good understanding of who we are, what we do, and how someone would need to fit in with us to succeed on our team. When we started interviewing, our very first interview was just pure and utter chaos on my end. I was just showing up as about as ridiculous of myself as I could that day, and she just rolled with it. She handled all the energy, answered all the questions, asked really good questions, and really, it felt like we had known each other for a really long time. Through that conversation too, I realized that she was just checking all the boxes on that avatar that we had created, literally every single one. By the end of the interview, I almost hired her right on the spot. And as we were reviewing with each other after my manager even said, 'yeah, I saw you getting ready to hire her right away'. And I almost did because we really had created her. We had put her out in the universe, and said, 'this is the person joining us now'.
Molly Beyer: [00:09:24] And when that time came, there she was. It was so easy because we knew exactly who we needed. All the how and what the tasks and responsibilities are. Those are just data. Data doesn't create a cohesive, high functioning team. Personality, fit, and shared values do. So whether you're hiring now or planning for the future, talk to your team. Or if you don't have a team, talk to some of your trusted peers. Start building that avatar of the person you want, the who that's going to fit into your how. Focus on culture, on fit and shared values first. Remember that most skills can be taught. Once you know the who, everything else just falls into place. The right person will show up exactly when your business needs them. Remember that hiring is more than just filling a role. It's really about building the culture, protecting the vision, and ensuring that every new person moves your business forward, not just in output, but in harmony with your values.
[00:10:24] Thanks so much for hanging out with us again today. We'd love to hear your feedback on today's episode, as well as any requests for future content. Drop a comment or suggestion and join us next time for more frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. Please also like, subscribe, or follow so you never miss an episode. And until next time, I'm Molly Beyer, and this has been The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. Have a wonderful day!