033: Is Now the Right Time to Hire?

Hey, have you heard there's a new style of CEO on the block. The modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, family and impact. And her corner office looks nothing like what you'd see on Wall Street. It's a kitchen t your grandma's lake house, a spacious home office, the living room floor maybe surrounded by kids and crayons or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Because when you embrace your role as modern CEO, you will have more freedom, more profit, and more fun. Most importantly, you'll fall in love with your life and a business in a way you've only dreamed. Trust me, this isn't a pipe dream reserved for only a select few. You are the modern CEO. You are creating a business and life you love. Because a better business means a better life. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Amber McHugh and I am really excited to be here with you today continuing our how to Clone Yourself series. But before we dive in, I just wanted to share a couple of things because I'm back from summer break as I sit down in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia right now recording this episode and as we chat today I had a six week summer break which is pretty incredible. I gave all of the scoop around that summer break and how it went down and what we did and how we made that possible in the scoop, literally the scoop email that I sent out last week. If you didn't get the scoop and you want to get the scoop and get some extra behind the scenes info on how we're doing life all around the world and how we do business. Please sign up@ambermceh.com and we'll make sure you get the scoop on a regular basis. So we also that was totally made possible by how to Clone Yourself, which is the series we have been going through from how where is your time going? Right. How we spend our time as leaders, how we build systems in our businesses. And now we're stepping into the hiring phase before we move into the leadership phase. So right on time. I tell you, I try. I try really hard. Sometimes I get a little bit off, but I try really hard to practice what I preach. And as we come back today to chat about how to clone yourself, I'm thinking, boy am I thankful I set myself up and leveraged the how to Clone Yourself methodology over the years because it makes incredible things possible for you, for the people that you serve, your clients, your customers, and for your team members. So let's be sure we leverage all of the how to Clone Yourself process, including my friends, the hiring process. Today in this episode, we're going to dive in to the first step you need to take if you're gearing up to hire. So stay tuned and listen up for that as we near the end. But before we get there, we're going to talk about the idea of how do I even know if it's the right time for me to hire? So I've got four different examples I'm going to walk you through that were signs and red flags for me that it was time to do something different and it was time to get some help. Because let's face it, it is very easy in our technology savvy environment and in the world today to DIY it all. In fact, just this morning I was DIYing a flyer on Canva for a professional networking group I'm in. And so it's very possible to stay in it all of the time. But it is a trap. It is a trap to stay in DIY mode. After all, there's a software for almost everything. And as you scale and grow, you're going to have to step away from the computer a little bit and continue to lead the business and separate from running the business. As you grow and scale your business, as your mindset shifts, you may find you need actual people to help you grow this thing. Because great companies are made up of great people. It isn't the technology that runs the company. It is great people like you listening to this episode now that run great companies and that lead great companies. So we're starting to make a shift in mindset and how we lead and run. And I want to separate those two ideas how we lead and run the business, and more on that in a little bit. But it's very much a middle class mindset that continues to DIY everything. In his book Business Brilliant, Louis Schiff reveals that nine out of ten times, self made millionaires and billionaires will outsource something when they believe someone else can do it better than they can do it. Let me repeat that. 9 out of 10 times, self made millionaires and billionaires will outsource things when they believe there's someone else that can do it better than they can do it themselves. Conversely, nine out of ten times, people in the middle class will continue to go at it all alone. I can totally relate to this, both as a female, because men and Women perceive and work through this process differently. And as someone from the middle class, I grew up smack dab in the middle of the middle class. And for a long time, I would absolutely try and do it all myself because frankly, I could. There was technology for everything. I was savvy. I could kind of figure things out. But that doesn't necessarily mean I was doing it well. And in fact, I catch myself still doing this today and still coming up against this mindset. Just before we left for summer break, my husband and I were preparing for a dinner party for eight friends. So it was a dinner party for 10 adults. So we had to divide and conquer. What was on our to do list? You know, you gotta set the table, you gotta get the food, you gotta make the sides, you gotta get the drinks, you gotta clean. It's a hefty to do list when you're planning for a dinner party. So setting the table was something that was on my to do list only because I claimed it. I personally had a vision for how I wanted the table to be set. And I was really excited to bring this vision to life. We had new linens from a local textile company called Sabahar. They're incredible. So I was really excited to get these and to share them with our friends. And I wanted some crystals on the table and I wanted some candles, and I wanted to make sure we used the brushed gold silverware, not the mismatched silver silverware from our everyday drawer. So I had a vision, right? You can maybe imagine it with me, my husband, I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure if he could execute on this vision. I mean, he cares about the details, but I don't know if he's going to care about crystals and candles. Oh, and not to mention, time was running out. I had to choose between taking my daughter to a friend's birthday party and staying there with her like she wanted me to because she was a little bit nervous. And setting the table. As I was going through this in my head, like, ah, I've got to set the table and I gotta go to the birthday party and we still have to do these things for the food, my husband said, if you really want to, I'll wait for you to set the table, but I think I can do this. Boy, was he right. He was perfectly capable of setting the table. I was holding onto something that I certainly didn't need to because I had a vision for it. And honestly, I was a little excited. It was a creative outlet. It was something fun to do, but it didn't need to be on my personal must do list. It was my job to ensure the table got set. That's all that needed to be happened. It was my job to communicate my intention and my vision for how I wanted the table to be set. Since I did in fact have a vision for this. And my husband didn't really care. He just knew it needed to get done. No big deal. I can do it, you can do it, whatever. Yeah. If you've got something in mind, let me know, just tell me. Just communicate it to me. So I recognized this as an opportunity to again, practice how to clone yourself. And part of this is communicating the vision, if you have one, like I did in this instance, around the table and like we do in our businesses. Of course, when I returned home after the birthday party, the table was perfectly set in that instance. I felt cloned, 100% end to end cloned. And I realized this is exactly what it's all about. I had a vision for how this thing would get done, but I didn't actually have to do the work for it to be done in this case, perfectly. In fact, it's better in some instances if we do not do it all ourselves. In this particular case, it gave me the opportunity to spend time with my daughter in a way that she wanted me to show up for her and which is something I value more. I'm just backing it up for one second because. Because I value that relationship and spending that time with my daughters more than I value how the table gets set. Right? But I was still holding on to this idea that the table needed to be set in a certain way and that I had to be the one to do it, which was in fact, a reality that I was creating in my own head. And there was a totally different way that this problem could be accomplished through this how to clone yourself process. It's about feeling cloned. It's not about getting someone who would do things exactly how you would do them. In fact, that is far from what we want. We don't want a bunch of people who would do things exactly the way you would do them. We want people who will complement what each person brings to the table. It's the same thing that happens in our businesses, right? The work must get done. But you don't necessarily have to do it all yourself. In fact, it's better in some instances if you don't do it all yourself, because you can leverage yourself across multiple activities, multiple product lines, multiple projects, different aspects of your business. You get leverage when you use the how to Clone Yourself process. So this is all possible for you too. Whether it's setting the table, choosing between setting the table and going somewhere with your children, whether it's choosing between two different projects. In your business, we have to prioritize our efforts, yes, but we can multiply our efforts when we clone ourselves. When you leverage strong systems builds out your team, you are going to be able to double, triple or even 10x your efficiency while simultaneously lowering the amount of time, effort and energy you put into low impact yet necessary business activities. Let me pull out a line from what we just said and repeat this. When you use the how to Clone Yourself methodology, you will be able to double, triple or even 10x your efficiency while lowering the time, effort and energy you put in. It is a beautiful thing and I'm telling you it is possible. In other words, it is time to find yourself a clone. Now I've already confessed, cloning is a total misnomer. You don't want to clone, you want to feel cloned. What you actually need is someone who can partner with you on your business, complement your skill sets, fill in the gaps, do the things you hate doing much more efficiently than you can do them. As the self made millionaires and billionaires in Business Brilliant revealed, you want someone who is better than you in certain areas of your business. So of course how to clone yourself is a super fun concept. So we're going to keep on keeping on with how to clone yourself, but it's the essence of cloning that we're talking about. It's that feeling that we're talking about and it's the concept of multiplying your efforts and getting more done. So let's start to step into finding your partner in crime. But how do you even know if it's the right time for you to look for a partner in crime? I mentioned I've got four different examples that I have lived, I have experienced that prompted me to say, oh my gosh, you need to get some help with this. So I want you to listen and identify if you find yourself in any one of these scenarios. Because this will be your prompt to say, yes, it is time for me to find my partner in crime. So I get that feeling of being cloned. The first example is way back in 2011, so we're going to time travel back quite a few years to when I was really just starting out ambermceh.com as a consulting company and I was coming back from maternity leave at the same time. Audrey was about 12 weeks old and I had just conquered WordPress. For anyone who told me WordPress is easy, you can do WordPress yourself, you don't need help with WordPress DIY it, girl. Oh my gosh, you know, I just do not have the same skills, the same patience as the people who are telling me WordPress is easy, you can do this all yourself. Because while I got it done, it was a painful process for me to, to go through. Yes, I got my first website built on WordPress. Yes, I got my blog posts up. But y', all, it took me hours. I would spend probably eight times as long as some people did who actually have an aptitude or a skill set to navigate and code and set up email lists. I mean, I could do it, I could do it, I did do it. But it was not the best use of my time. And as I was going back to work, working that full time job still and wanting to be able to spend time with my new sweet baby girl Audrey and conquering and wanting to grow a business, I didn't really want to conquer WordPress, I wanted to grow my business. Yet I was spending at least 1 20th, 1 5th, 20%, one day a week. Let's break it down that way. One day a week, a full eight hours of a day, writing the blog post and then getting it published and sent out through email and then out on social media. It was not a good way to leverage my time. So what I did is I went onto odesk now upwork and I found the lovely Christine from the Philippines who could help me get my blog post up every single week. No more eight hour days. Probably six of those were spent tinkering around in WordPress, formatting, tweaking images, you know, just adjusting things so they were just right. I wasn't even going for perfect. I was just trying to get it, you know, just right. But once I got in there, just right was really hard for me to get because I kept tinkering and I kept tweaking and I kept playing around and I was not maximizing or, or best leveraging my skillset. But you know what? I built a system through the other series and the steps that we've talked about in this how to clone yourself series. And I built out that process and I handed things off to Christine with all of the content ready to go. And she said, I can't ever get this wrong. This system is just what I need to execute on this. And she executed on that perfectly every single week. Unless I didn't get her the content in time. Unless I tweaked the process and threw us out of our groove, right? But when I held up my end of the bargain, which was to deliver the content so Christine could get the post up, share the content that I had prepared by email and get social media posts out, this process was incredible and I was cloned. So red flag number one, if you find yourself spending hours on something that doesn't really feel like it's in your zone of genius, time to share that work with someone else. Now the second experience where I shared some work with actually my sister was in the photography business three Boudoir and at the time Joanna, my business partner and I had split up responsibilities. So she was doing a lot of the front end work. She was really great at updating our SEO. And I had built the website again, DIY on Wix and Showit. This time I was done with WordPress. I learned my WordPress lesson and it was much easier for me to work in a drag and drop interface like Wix and then Showit. But there are some, you know, there's some pros and cons to all the sites. So I'm not. This is not an episode about platforms. We can go into that later. But Showa and Wix at the time were a lot easier for me. So I had built the website. Joanna was doing SEO and she was taking inquiries in and getting our clients booked. We would do the shoots together, me as photographer and Joanna as shoot director and shoot stylist, leveraging her background as a model and then I would do the follow up. So I would make sure edits were done and that products were ordered and delivered after the client approved the final edits and the album design. But I realized after some time in that we had built a pretty strong system for product fulfillment, album design and edits. So I shared that work with my sister Jill. At the time she is no longer part of our team. She's gone on to do other things. Wait, I take it back. She is actually part of our team. She does design for us. Now our website 3boudoir.com was designed by my sister Jill. She does amazing work. In fact, Our sister brand empowerandrise.com was also designed by Jill. So check those out. Actually, ambermceh.com was also designed by my sister Jill. So Jill is now she's gone, she's a nurse and she went to graphic design school. So she is absolutely multi passionate. But she's a part of our team still as a graphic designer. But way back in the day I needed someone to help Me with corresponding with clients after their shoots, with designing albums and with ordering products after client approved them. And we had systematized this and streamlined it so much that I knew someone else could step in and Jill was looking for some extra stuff to do. So she stepped in to help us with that and it was pretty much a dream come true. Jill actually has a systems mindset as well, so she streamlined that process even more. So today it has expanded and it's been handed off a few times. But it's really well streamlined and systematized and multiple people can do that and pick that up with little issue. Now what's beautiful about that is that I had that cloned feeling again and I was able to focus on more strategic activities that would further help us grow the business. Not to mention those back end and behind the scenes activities aren't my zone of genius. Maintenance mode is not my. It doesn't fire me up, it doesn't get me excited like strategy and business planning and business growth do. So I got to go back to doing something that was in my zone of genius, which further helped us grow the business. So if you find yourself buried in details and thinking this isn't my zone of genius, we've got this pretty well streamlined. I think we could get some help on this and I could focus on revenue generating activities. That's a sign that it's a time to hire your perfect partner in crime. Now let's say that you've grown the business and you find yourself thinking, I don't want to do this anymore. That was me when I was standing in the middle of a photo shoot and I thought, you know what? I love the experience we create. I love what our business does at three Boudoir. We create incredibly empowering experiences for women. However, I don't always need to be the person in every room taking the pictures. Because I was realizing as I was going through that experience, what I loved is loving up that woman, loving up our clients. I didn't actually love being the person to take the pictures. I didn't want to be in all of the photo shoots. So I thought, now if you can hear a little bit of guilt coming out in my voice, that's the guilt I was feeling when I was going through this decision making process. Wait, it's my business. I'm the photographer. I have to be the person to do this. It's my job. But I also knew in that moment that someone else could do that just as well or even better than I could do it. And it was Hard because Joanna and I, my business partner and I had the dynamic that I was the photographer and she was the shoot stylist and the shoot director. So what does that look like if we don't have that dynamic anymore? So we worked through it. I talked through it with my partner. I am so incredibly lucky that I have a business partner where we can be very open about all of these things. We're very supportive of each other emotionally, personally. And we also know it's business and we can figure anything out together because there are a lot of ways to solve a problem. And by realizing that, hey, I don't have to be the person in the room, I also realized that we could serve so many more women through this shift. And that got me crazy fired up. I mean, the idea that I didn't have to be in every single photography shoot and that means that we can serve thousands more women like that is really exciting. Because you guys, if you've ever been in a photo shoot, a boudoir photo shoot, you know that it is empowering. After a boudoir photo shoot, people ask like, wait a second, wait. Something's changed about you. I don't quite know what, but something's changed. I mean, unless you outright tell them that you did a boudoir photo shoot, then you can chit chat about that and energy level rise that everybody knows. But if you don't tell people, they're still going to notice something changed. It is an incredibly moving experience that will take you to the next level of confidence. But what I got excited about in that moment wasn't taking the actual photo. Although I love the process, I love the creative process. Again, just like the table, I knew I didn't have to be the one setting the table. I knew I didn't have to be the one taking the pictures. And we could have a whole lot more impact. So that's what we started to do. We hired another photographer who's actually a part of our personal network as well. She's a friend of my sisters. And my sister Maura also came in at that time to be the shoot stylist to compliment what Joanna was doing. So to this day, all of our photographers are trained through this process, and all of our shoot stylists are trained through the process and the experience that the model designed, my business partner, Joanna. So we've got this really cool thing that we have brought up a team of people who we are empowered and inspired by, because you know what, they're doing things better than we were doing them. So we're having a higher quality of impact as we work with different women around the world as well. We've also been able to grow into six cities and we've shot with more than 10,000 women since we founded the company almost 10 years ago. So I want you to ask yourself, is there an opportunity for me to step out of the room and still have more impact? Is there an opportunity for me to step out of the room and for our quality to go up? Is there an opportunity for me to step out of the room to increase our business excellence? And if you're saying yes at any point during this story, it is time for you to think about bringing in a partner in crime. Whether it's a photographer or a shoot stylist or a co coach or you know, someone to manage your operations. Whatever it is, if you've thought of something, it might be time for you to hire now. This leads me to the first ever full time hire we made@ambermceh.com, our consulting company. In this particular instance, it's again, very different from the prior three. In this particular instance, I was really struggling with holding both the role of the CEO and visionary and holding the role of being the operational lead and running the business. So oftentimes when we're starting businesses, we are both leading and running the business operations. But as you grow your business and as you grow your vision for your business, you might find it's hard to to do both roles. In fact, I am an operations oriented person. I can get in the weeds on some business operations and be very happy doing that, especially as we're setting things up, as we're planning, as we're thinking about how we can strategically run our business operations. Guys, I love it. I've been doing it for a long time and still it was hard for me to fill both roles. So there might sometimes be things that you still really enjoy and that you're still really good at, but frankly, you can't do all of the things well. I was stretched too thin. It's like the time I fired myself from bookkeeping. I love getting in there and counting money. In fact, lots of research shows that it doesn't even have to be your own money that you're counting. Happiness levels go up when people count money. So I love doing my bookkeeping, but I fell behind on it, so I had to fire myself very similarly. Fast forward to early last year and I realized I really enjoy business operations, but it was not serving me because I couldn't do my role as visionary and CEO well, if I continued to stay in the heart of the operations role. So this is where I want to start to separate you as visionary, modern CEO and leader of your business and your life from the person who runs the business. And I want to ask you, are you both leading and running your business well, or is it time to find someone else who can help you run the business so you can lead this business really well? And that is the final story and scenario I want to put forth today. As you think about how do I know if it's time to hire? If you saw yourself in any of those scenarios, it might be time to hire. If you find yourself doing something routine over and over again that you know you could bring someone on and train them to do, think about it. Because we can repurpose and refocus your efforts on revenue generating activities, on marketing. Right. On thought leadership. If you find yourself doing something that you really don't enjoy, it might be time to hire for that. Because your energy is really critical to how you're going to run and grow this business and how you're going to lead this business. If you find yourself unable to lead at any given time because you are so far in the weeds you can't even get out to lead this business, it might be time to think about hiring someone. And if there are things that you are just not getting to like, you're procrastinating all of the things because you've got these other things you are stuck in the weeds on that you have to focus on, it might be time to think about hiring. Especially if some of those things that you're procrastinating and not getting to are important and vital to the growth of your business. So with all of that in mind, if you are ready to think about hiring, the first thing I want you to do is to think about the person you're going to bring onto your team. I want that person to be aligned to your culture. So bring someone on board who's going to align and feel good in a culture like yours. We all have different cultures. Whether we're intentional about our company culture and our business culture or not, it is there. Just like systems, whether we're intentional about them or not, we have a culture. We have a way of doing things, we have a way of being, we have a way of connecting that makes up our culture. So make sure the person you bring in will fit within that culture. You want to bring someone on board who has similar values. I've talked about this before and I will talk about it. Again, the book Delivering Happiness is a great book to check out as you think about values and the important importance of values. But essentially, values are going to help people operate in a similar way. They're going to help people show up in a similar way because values are aligned. What matters to us is aligned. So we're going to take care of what matters and we are going to grow and operate again, very similar to culture in a way that is aligned and representative of who this company is. So know your values as a person and know your values as a company and be sure you're bringing people on board whose values are aligned, because otherwise things could start to feel a little bit funky when you get into the tough situations or when you have. You have a process that isn't outlined fully yet and someone has to like, think, oh, what am I going to do here? If they can operate in a way that's aligned with values, you'll be in good shape even if you don't have systems in place. So you want to bring someone on board that's aligned to culture, that's aligned to values, and you want to be able to spell out the role and the responsibilities for the particular position that you're hiring for. Now, you've done a lot of good work and a lot of good thinking on this already. If you've been listening to the how to Clone Yourself series and participating. So you've got some of this framework and this structure in place already. But what is involved from a task perspective? What is this person going to be doing day to day? What are their core responsibilities? Break that down so we know what we're recruiting for. Right? You want to break that down so you don't bring on the WordPress person when you really need a customer service person. Right. So know what you're looking for in terms of responsibilities. And we're going to take that a step further when you define the key success measures for this role. That is, how will I know if I'm successful in this role? Is it because I respond to customer service inquiries with 24 hours or less? That's pretty clear. That's a pretty clearly defined metric, is it? That WordPress never goes down and all bugs are fixed? Cool. That's a pretty clear defined metric, right? This is so important to me personally because back in the day when I was in corporate and I would look at different jobs, I knew that I could sell, but I didn't want to be in a position that was rewarded and exclusively measured by the success of sales by A sales metric or commission role, right. That was primarily tied to sales. So when I would go look at jobs, I would look for that. And if I got a hint that this is a sales role, I could self identify that I am not the person for that role and I would self select out. And that is huge because that is going to help you grow your business and hire the right people. Because the wrong people are self selecting out. And the recruiting process can be tough. The recruiting process can be rigorous. So you want to make sure that you're putting these things in place that help people self select out. Now, in summary, when you start to recruit for this position, the place that you're going to start is with a role description. What is it that I want this person to help me with? What do I need help with most? And develop the role description that defines your company. Who you are, your culture, your vision, your values. So I can start to see that, yeah, I don't want to wear pants to work every day. So this is the right company for me. Because we're a no pants virtual organization. Right? You'll get people self selecting in and out already. The second piece is you're going to break down the responsibilities for that position. Then you're going to define what are the key measures of success for this position. So that you have those metrics very short term as people are self selecting in and out of applying for this role. And you'll have them long term. So when the person is brought onto your team, they'll be able to identify, yeah, I'm being totally successful in this role because this is what we defined as the measures of success and I am nailing it. So this role description is going to help you short term and long term. Now this is just the first episode that we are going to talk through some of the elements of hiring in. We're going to do the same in the next episode where we're going to get a little bit more into the nitty gritty of the actual hiring process. We're going to talk about compensation, we're going to talk about how you actually pay people. People, right? How do you get them the money? So we're gonna break down some of the tactical elements of bringing people onto your team and supporting them in an incredible way. Then the next episode after that, just to give you a little preview, we're gonna talk about your role as leader. Because today we started to differentiate between what it is to lead a business and hold the vision for a business and what it is to run the business. So one more episode on some running of the business and the hiring elements and then we're going to move to what it means to lead your business. But before we go, I want to remind you, let me know how your how to clone yourself process is going by sharing with me and tagging me in @ Amber McHugh on Instagram, on Twitter, over on Facebook and also start to craft that role description if you are ready. If you found yourself in one of the of those hiring mindsets, those are signs that it is time for you to craft your role description so you can step into the hiring process again. We're going to break down that hiring process next week. So if you are thinking about expanding your team, you are right on time. As we move through the podcast series, I cannot wait to grow your team with you. I cannot wait for you to have business business excellence and for you to feel cloned again. This is Amber McHugh. I am your host and I will talk to you in our next episode.