Your First Hire

Show Notes

Ladies, I want to talk to you about getting the help you need for your business so you can focus on the things that matter — and give you the much-needed rest you deserve.

 

This is for everyone struggling with trying to find someone who can help shoulder the burden of running an online business by themselves.

 

In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about hiring in your business, what it looks like to hire someone for the first time, when the time is right, and how hiring can help with the bottom line.

 

Resources mentioned in this episode

• How to powerfully ask for help in 3 steps 
• Clarity call with Khalida
• Black Girl Business Bar community Facebook group

More on Khalida

 

Khalida DuBose is a business mentor specializing in sales strategy. As a previous crowdfunding coach, she supported more than a thousand crowdfunding campaigns and project creators in their quest to bring their dreams, passions, and ideas to the world. Now, she focuses on helping women of color who are early-stage online business owners as they navigate the entrepreneurial journey. For more information on Khalida, visit khalidadubose.com.

 

Follow Khalida on Instagram @khalida.dubose. You can email her at [e-mail].

 

The Black Girl Business Bar is produced by Zuri Berry (@ZMCPodcasts). Music by Vincent Tone and Die Hard Productions.

Creators & Guests

Host

Khalida DuBose

Business + Mindset Coach

Producer

Zuri Berry

Principal Producer at ZMC Podcasts

What is The Black Girl Business Bar?

The Black Girl Business Bar Podcast is for Black entrepreneurial women who crave practical information to implement in their businesses and careers. They want tips and tactics that work and they want on-the-go mentorship that will make a difference in their businesses, projects, and lives.

Hosted by business coach and crowdfunding expert Khalida DuBose, the Black Girl Business Bar is all about letting Black women know what's possible for them in their entrepreneurial journey.

If you're in a place right now where you're interested in figuring out what it looks like to start growing, scaling, taking things off your plate, or simply to have more support in your life and your business, then you're in the right place.

Welcome to the Black Girl Business Bar Podcast. I'm your host, Khalida DuBose. This podcast is all about helping you as a woman of color increase your sales, overcome mindset blocks and giving you the practical information that you need to thrive in your business and life.

Today, I'm going to talk to you about hiring in your business, what it looks like when it might be time and how it can help the bottom line of your business.

All right. Per usual. This show idea comes from women, just like you, who are trying to figure out their business. And in the last few weeks, I've been on many calls with women who seem to have one unifying desire or a few unifying desires, I should say. And those are to not work so much in one area of their business, or to focus on a specific area of their business, their life.

And for some of them, it was to step away from trying to be perfect and into a a more authentic place where they can really focus on growing their business the way they want. So I wanted to share some insights I had around a solution that will help them to do just that, which is hiring or outsourcing.

All right. What hiring looks like. Let's start there. So hiring, just so we're clear because I know when I first started thinking about hiring and people were mentioning to me, maybe you need to hire somebody, I got a pit in my stomach. And so I want you to realize that hiring can look like a lot of different things.

For some people hiring is simply having somebody work in their business, like three hours a week, three to five hours a week, to help them with a specific task, to help them with a specific project, that may or may not end. For other people, that could be working in their business 10 to 20 hours a week, you know, kind of having like a part-timer.

I would also say that hiring could be like outsourcing on sites like Upwork, or you could be outsourcing in a way where like myself, you have somebody there who is there on a regular basis, but they're another business owner and they're working as a VA and you're their client.

So it can look a lot of different ways. I want you to keep that in mind.

And my recommendation is that if you're going to hire somebody and this is the first time it's brand new, that you just start off with giving them a project that you can work through on like a like a project basis or starting them off with a couple hours a week on one specific task in your business so that you can kind of get a feel for them. They can get a feel for you. You can get used to what it feels like to work with somebody, if this is your first time, and that can really help you to kind of ease into this new arena of working with somebody or hiring somebody into your business.

So like I said, I know how nerve wracking it can be. Easing yourself in is probably just the best thing you can do for yourself.

All right. So when is it time to hire? So that's the question that everybody wants to know. Is it the right time for me to hire in my business? Am I making enough in my business to hire? I would say the best time to hire and your business is before you think you need to hire.

I.E. before everything is on fire, before everything's exploding, before you're like, okay, I'm burned out and I have to take a step back in my business.

Make sure you have a little bit of margin before you're ready to hire. And margin, you can think of margin as a little bit of income that you can use to hire with. If you're just hiring somebody for a few hours a week, this might take very little income. So keep that in mind. And then also make sure you have a little bit of flexibility where you can really show that person the ropes, where you have enough time to answer their questions as they're getting started with you. Because I think that really helps get the relationship off to a really great start.

I think it's another great time to hire in the, or I should say these are probably signs that it's time to start hiring is when you know, someone else can do a task that you're doing in your business and it takes you way longer than it takes them.

They're able to do it much quicker. They probably can do it at a much more economical rate than what you would pay yourself. And so as time. To hand over this task, especially if it's something that you've done multiple times, you're kind of good at it, but it's still taking you way too much time and you can really show them like, hey, here's my process. And you know, I want to pass this off on you.

And I would say also another sign of it being time for you to hire is when you really have a desire to just go to the next level, that's going to look different for everybody as well. So maybe you're in the solopreneur stage where it's just you and you're doing everything content, sales calls, and onboarding clients and you know, all the pieces.

And maybe it's, you know, you're taking yourself from solopreneur to small business with a little bit of support, or maybe you're already a small business and you have a couple of support people, and you want to add on another person or a few other people because you have some defined tasks that you want them to do in your business that are going to help, you know, move the needle forward in your business.

So I also think that a really, really good time for you to really, to start thinking about bringing somebody on your team to help you out as if you're stagnant in any areas of your business.

And I know that can sound kind of counterproductive. Like if you're stagnant in sales, visbility or something like that, you might think, well, why would I want to hire somebody? I can't afford it. You know, what if I can't keep it up. But I would say that I think this is the perfect time to bring somebody on your team who can take over some of those projects that are just busy work, which I'll talk about in a second. And so if you're finding yourself kind of stagnant, like you're not getting on sales calls because you have all these other things to do, this might be a time to give all those other things to somebody else and start focusing on the areas that really are important.

I'm just going to say, in a nutshell, when you hire people, it really frees up a lot of your energy to focus on the things that you really need to focus on. We have a limited amount of energy in a given day, week, or month, and using it on the things that are most important in your business will yield the best results.

I think we can all agree on that. So it really allows you the mental space to focus on areas of your business that you need to like, for instance, to create new programs, to manage clients, to get new clients, right? That's, that's the role and to get new clients, because that does take some energy.

It helps you to focus on your marketing. So maybe you want your marketing to start to look a certain way, or you want to use specific marketing channels, but you really haven't had the time to sit down and piece together exactly how you want it to look because you're just trying to pump out, you know, content and spray it everywhere and see what's working.

I.E. you just really need some support so that you can take a step back. It could help you with your overall decision-making about the strategic direction of your business. And honestly, it just really allows you some time, some downtime to rest and relax so that you can rejuvenate that energy that I was talking about.

So if you're always in your business and you're always working, and if you take one day off, it means that content not getting pushed out or your Facebook community is not being managed or your newsletters not going out or whatever's happening, if you're always worrying about those things, you're not going to relax. Even if you're sitting on the couch, watching TV, or even if you're in the kitchen, cooking, your brain is still somewhere else. It's still thinking about the tasks that you need to do. And maybe you can squeeze it in before the gym tomorrow. Maybe you can squeeze it in before bed.

And I think finally, like hiring somebody also allows you to just focus on the things that you're good at, stay within your zone of genius. So for instance, if you're a coach, if you are a designer, if you're a therapist, if you're a podcast manager, whatever you do in your business, that's the thing that you got into the business to do.

So when you hire people to help you with other tasks and allow yourself to be supported, then you really get to, you know, narrow back in on your zone of genius and get better and better at what you're doing.

So another thing that I really loved, , when I finally hired in my business was that it gave me the ability to kind of take a step back and see my business from a different angle. I was always doing everything and had my hands in everything. Right. So then my personality type, very Type A, meant that I started to obsess about the content, obsessed about what things look like, obsess about what the processes were.

And so when you kind of step back and you hand that off to somebody, what you're doing is you're learning to trust other people. And you're saying, you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, when my assistant is posting something for me, I never have the same critical eye as I do when I'm posting it.

So that was an added benefit that I wasn't expecting that when my assistants posting something it's really been helpful. And when she takes something and looks at it, or she writes something. I have a much more objective feedback than I did with myself, you know? So I would especially say that, you know, keep in mind, like one of the biggest benefits of hiring in your business is if you find yourself always doing the busy work.

Because you don't want to do the tasks that are kind of scary. That was, that was kind of a telltale sign for me, that I was just focusing on these things where that we're not going to move the needle. They were not going to get clients. They were not going to help me to eventually have the impact. They weren't going to help me do anything.

Even projects like, launching this podcast. I needed a lot of time and space to think through this and to create and get used to doing something new. And it was really, really nice to have somebody there, a few people there supporting me while I was doing it.

All right. So I'm going to share with you guys just a little, little story, cause I love stories, about when I first hired and what that all looked like. So the first couple months in my business, I immediately thought, okay, I'm going to probably need somebody to help. And so I was in Facebook groups and I came across a couple of posts with people asking if they could do internships around content creation or graphics, et cetera.

So I ended up interviewing three women, two really never got back to me after the interview. And then one got back to me and we started working on my content. But what I found was that she kind of always had something coming up or there was just kind of a lot going on. And so there was usually just a reason why we couldn't connect. We were in two different countries, across multiple time zones, and so I quickly was just like, okay, this is not the route to go.

And it also really doesn't align with my values. I really feel like we should pay people to do the work that they're doing, even if they're new. And so it didn't really sit well with me in the first place. And so I talked to her about being an intern for like a month and then, you know, potentially starting to pay her. But we didn't really even get that far.

So the next step was I went, I found this-- actually this agency found me on LinkedIn and they pitched to me, you know, to use one of their virtual assistants who could help me along in the areas that I want to help in content, creating graphics, et cetera.

I decided, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to work with this for a month. Cause like I said, it's really nice to just have like a chunk of time where you're working with somebody to see how it's going to work out.

And so the virtual assistant that was assigned to me was a young woman from a different country. And again, I think one of the biggest problems there was the difference in time zone. For me, it was really tough in that month, because it was very hard to communicate with somebody who was like 10 hours ahead of me. Right. So that was number one.

And then number two, what I learned from that situation was really, really needing to have very clear expectations and very clear directions on what you need. And so I spent the month feeling like I was going over things multiple times because I would assign work and then it wouldn't get done. So anyway, this is not for me to complain. This was actually a wonderful experience to have, because what it really taught me was that I needed to make sure I understood the process before I hired somebody.

I needed to make sure I knew what I wanted them to do. And even before knowing what I wanted them to do, to make sure I knew what it wanted, what I wanted to look like. So in my case, I was talking about just creating graphics and content. And so what I did was after I worked with that young woman, I spent some time playing around with Canva, and then I started designing all of my own stuff.

And so when I finally hired my assistant, now, she kind of had like this library of what my aesthetic was when it came to creating graphics. And then there was all of this content that I was creating, that she was able to go and like, look and pull from so that she could repurpose, because my thoughts are still my thoughts. And still we write and create fresh content each week. But now we kind of have like this library of content that we can go back and use if we need to.

That was my experience. And it really taught me like, hey make sure you're super clear on what you want, because it can be really hard for somebody else to meet that expectation if you're not clear about what it is. Secondly, I really wanted to work with somebody who was a little bit more local. So my assistant does live in the United States. Not that I'm opposed to like working with people across different time zones, but just having like a really super clear process so that everybody feels like they're supported and everybody knows what their duties are, et cetera. Right.

So that's what I learned. And then I hired my current assistant this past February. Like I said, we just started with a trial period, but I loved her immediately. And then I quickly started like, I think when you trust people and they follow through and everything, the communication is clear. It's really wonderful. And so I just started giving her more and more responsibility. But what I really have loved is that she has been able to grow with me.

And even though, we're still in the same year, I have experienced a lot of growth in that time. So it has been really wonderful to just start with a project, work through it, us talk about different processes, her tell me like where she could be helpful, and then me like really leaning into that support and allowing her to help me.

Before hiring her, I already hired my podcast manager, I think about six weeks before. And so I got a little bit experienced with just collaborating with somebody else, you know, keeping a deadline or, you know, he gave me like to dos when we were developing the podcast and really sticking to that. And so that was kind of my starting point where I was able to work with him very professional and then, you know, go on to working with my VA, very professional too.

And I would say the last tip in all of this is when you're hiring somebody is just looking for people who might be a little bit more priced than what you thought you wanted to spend.

Because I think that when you pay people a premium, the work is more premium. And clearly that won't be true for everybody. But for most people who are charging a premium price, they're probably gonna do pretty good work. And to calm our nerves, we can just do those projects on a month basis, see how it's working, and then if it's working, hold on to that person, because it is really hard to find people who gel with your vision and people who you want to grow with you and your business.

So I hope this was really helpful for you. If you're thinking about hiring somebody, let me know, send me an email if you have any specific questions. And also if you need any support around this, I would love to hop on a clarity call with you and we can talk more about what you're thinking in terms of hiring, or if you are even at that stage or what might need to be put in place before you get there.

All right, friends. Thank you so much for hanging out and listening to the black girl business bar podcasts. If you haven't already please hit that subscribe button. So you never miss an episode. If you found today's episode helpful or had any aha moments, I would be honored if you would share them with us by rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts, your reviews and your ratings really help the show to grow so that other women of color can find this podcast. I also invite you to reach out to me personally at [e-mail]. I've been getting feedback on the podcast and I just absolutely love it. I love hearing from all of you.

And as always friends, we're dropping episodes every Tuesday and we can't wait to see you back then.