Ask Me Anything with Bernadette Boas

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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at BlogTalkRadio.com/SheddingtheBitch. The bitch, or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone. How are you on this beautiful day, on this beautiful Tuesday? On this beautiful Ask Me Anything episode of Shedding the Bitch. So today is all about you, your business questions, your career questions, your life questions, and today happens to be all about business. So let me explain a little bit in regards to Ask Me Anything, just in case whether you're listening to this live or you downloaded it and are listening to it after we've broadcasted, there's always an opportunity for you to get your question, story, or challenge into us, into me specifically, in order for me to then be able to provide you some advice, some tips, maybe some tough love. Every once in a while we have to do that. However, it's always in a way that will allow you to you know, do better, get better, do different than maybe where you are right now if you're stuck or you're just having a challenge or you just need some advice or a big kick in the butt. So you can do that via Facebook or Twitter anytime, Shedding the Bitch, our pages on Twitter and Facebook. Post your question, story, or challenge. It comes to me immediately. Of course, Deborah is out there of Parker House Virtual Services. She's out there manning the radio board, the soundboard, as well as she is our social media guru. So should I get anything from you out on Facebook or Twitter, I will be sure to get that into me and I can get to you as soon as possible. And then what I do is, say you do it the first week of the month, I bring it actually here onto the program The first Tuesday of every month is our Ask Bernadette or Ask Me Anything episode, and I can drill into your question even further than what I can put out on a Facebook or Twitter post. Then— excuse me— then you also have the opportunity to call in, which you do right now, anytime, 1-818-572-2910, as we broadcast and ask your question and even have a conversation with me should you want to kind of speak to me directly in regards to that question. You do not have to provide your name or any personal information if you choose not to— want to. Excuse me. But at least you'll have an opportunity to have a conversation with me and actually almost like your own personal coaching session right here on the program. But like I said, you can do that anytime throughout the month. I'll get back to you as quickly as possible throughout the month and then bring it here onto the program. You can also email me directly at BernadetteBoas@sheddingthebitch.com. Most of the questions that I get are actually through LinkedIn, so just find my profile on LinkedIn and send me a private message on LinkedIn as well. So that is our Ask Me Anything. Anything episode the first Tuesday of every month. Then I always welcome you to go back and download or stream our past episodes. We've had some great ones, everything from how do I hire a coach and what is the difference between coach, mentors, and sponsors. We've talked about how to get unstuck should you need to shed your stuck bitch. We've talked about Overcoming excuses, kind of how to shed your excuses, bitch, and a number of other episodes. Obviously we've been on air for the last several years, so you can find all of those episodes in multiple places. You can go to iTunes onto our Shedding the Bitch channel on iTunes. You can go to our sheddingthebitch.com, scroll down the home page, you'll find the the button for the radio channel and download any of the episodes there. Or you can come right here onto blogtalkradio.com/jettingthebitchradio. And if you want and choose to as well, while we are broadcasting, you can go on to BlogTalkRadio, find the episode for today, scroll down, and there's a chat room. And I am always online on the chat room should you choose to want to converse via the chat function. And so there's a number of ways and various means that you can make sure that you're getting the support from the Shedding the Bitch community that you need. Let's see what else is going on. Obviously you can hear the scratching in my voice and this ongoing cough. Unfortunately it isn't anything more than allergies and the pollen that seems to be coating everyone's cars and houses and lawns and sky recently, especially over the last week or so, and we have another couple weeks of it, at least here in Atlanta. I actually have a guy here right now as we speak out there cleaning my car. I love those home services. I might have mentioned to you Yoshi is a gas delivery for your car., and they then do any type of services on your car such as putting air in your tires, cleaning your car. They do a number of things, changing your oil. So I've gotten spoiled recently because the price of the service is basically the, the cost of going to the gas station. And actually, we're going to talk about that as part of one of our questions for today, which is just about hiring, when to hire someone. And we'll talk about how you need to recognize when there are certain tasks that you have in your personal life or business life that is— well, let me see what I'm trying to say— less valuable for you to then hire someone or delegate to somebody, such as this person cleaning my car, because it'll save you from having to do and take that time out of your business day in order to do it. More on that later. I kind of went off on a tangent there. Anyway, so today what we're talking about, like I said, we're talking all business. So I'll give you an idea of what our questions are, and we have a fourth just in case we have time to get to it. But boy, we're into April and I'm still getting this 4th question I'll mention in a second. So we're going to be talking about hiring. We're going to talk about what are the biggest mistakes people make when hiring and when do I know when to hire someone for my business. Another question is, "What can I do to find clients?" This actually came from a fellow coach, a business coach, asking me about when or what strategies I use to find clients. So we'll talk about that. And then our fourth question, should we be able to get to it, is still about performance reviews. You would think by the end of first quarter into second quarter people are done their performance reviews at their work, and sadly, as I've known and experienced myself for decades in corporate, they tend to get delayed into April. And sadly sometimes May, but that's very rare these days. But someone's asking, so what do I do to prepare for my performance review that they have, actually I think it's next week. So if we get to that, we will discuss it, but if we don't, then I definitely will make sure that there's a post put out on sheddingthebitch.com, our blog, and then we'll share it out on Facebook and Twitter. All right. Let's see what else is going on. I think that's about it. It was a nice quiet week on a more personal note, so that's a good thing. And then from, like I said, from a Shedding the Bitch community perspective, just stay tuned and stay with us and connect with us and engage with us on Facebook and/or Twitter @SheddingTheBitch, and of course on sheddingthebitch.com. All right, we're gonna take a break. I'm gonna get some water. When we get back, we're gonna dive into these questions so we can get as much covered possible over the next 45-50 minutes. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business. Available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors: North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email deborahparker@parkerhouseservices.com. Deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back, everyone. All right, we have a busy, busy day of ask me anything questions from members of our community, and today happens to be all about business. Sometimes we get a mix of people in corporate, people who have their own business, and, and then people from, you know, just their personal lives having a relationship or some type of other question or challenge. Today is all about the business.

Both—

you can look at this from both an entrepreneurial perspective and if you are in corporate. But we are going to start this first question, and again, could go either way. How do I know when to hire someone? I've been working alone and I am overwhelmed and struggling. So how do I know when it's time for me to hire? Well, I'm going to first start with a real simple response to that. When you need or want to make more money, you need to hire somebody, because you certainly can't— though there's many, many, many solopreneurs out there, uh, who are doing everything themselves, but I can guarantee you those individuals are struggling in some aspects of that business if they are still trying to do everything themselves. Now, and when I say hire, hire might even be not necessarily on a W-2 on your, you know, payroll. They could be a 1099, so they could be a contractor. You could even hire somebody from a freelancer contract perspective. They're still contractors, 1099s. So say for instance, we're talking hiring an employee, which then brings in the HR element, versus hiring somebody from a contracting, consulting perspective, maybe even a coach, and/or you go to Fiverr or you go to Upwork or any of those other freelance portal sites where you can actually hire people to do graphics for you, to do branding for you, I have somebody that is helping me from a— my script, so a writing coach consultant. So there's a variety of things and ways that you can actually get what I'll call additional skill sets and additional personnel working with you in your business, so you're actually no longer a solopreneur once you start doing that. So that's what we're talking about. And you do that when, like I said, when you either need to make more money because you're not able to right now because you're working on too many things, or you want to. You're at a point where you're able to then, you know, go and spend some money in order to kind of spend more time focused on prospecting and marketing, networking and selling, pitching your business. Now I had a, a coach a long time ago. I went out on my own in 2008, and I would say this was 2000, late 2009 into 2010. And I had a business coach, and he said to me when it came to this question, every employee, again, whether it's a W-2 or 1099, they are there to make money for you. Even if it's the HR person, even if it's the administrator, your, you know, your assistant, or it's your finance or legal person, let alone your salesperson, your business development person, or your marketing person. Every one of those people that you bring into your business in any way, shape, or form are there to make you money or to see save you money, which in turn makes you money. So think about that, because that's really key. That's the mentality that you as a— in this case, a solopreneur— you're the CEO of your business. So you have to be thinking that way. How does everything and everyone that's involved in my business either make me money or save me money? Um, excuse me. And if you're in corporate and you are a hiring manager, not an HR hiring manager, but you're in— you lead up a team and you need to bring somebody onto your team, uh, so the question of when and whom are still critical to you. Same thing, they need to either bring skill sets and save you money and give you new skill sets to make you money, or they need to in some way, shape, or form pay themselves by the work that they do. Okay? Now, I don't mean pay themselves where they, you know, write themselves a paycheck. I mean that they earn that paycheck that you're, in corporate, giving to them. So that's first what I want to kind of plant the seed in your mind about when it comes to this question of when do I know to hire or, you know, contract somebody to help me with my business. It's when you need you need to make more money, when you want to make more money, and then that plan that is going to detail out how they will do that. How will they either make you money or save you money because you need to make money or you want to make more money. Now this plan, some people might call it a business plan, again, whether you're in corporate or an entrepreneur, any person who is building a team or has a team needs to have a plan for that team. Now, it doesn't need to be this, you know, arduous detailed business plan. I have a very even simple one-page business plan, but it should always discuss and kind of lay out not only for yourself but for your team kind of what your vision is for the team, what the goals and objectives are, how they're— how you and they will be measured. So the measurements, and it needs to have— and this might be just for you— your plan for when you go and hire new people or bring on and expand your team. So that would be the second thing. The first thing is that mindset about needing and wanting to make more money and knowing that anybody that you do hire needs to actually either help you make money or save you money. Now, how do you— can you really kind of put that to work for you? This I can't take credit for, but I have leveraged it since 2008 when I read this book, and they, they had this very, very simple way of a solopreneur to really look at kind of starting, growing, and managing their business. And that would be the E-Myth Revisited book by Michael Myers. It talks about really kind of defining your org chart. Okay, now the first thing I get when I talk to my clients about this, especially if they are solopreneurs, is, you know, an org chart, there's nobody in my organization. And I'm like, well, you're, you're, uh, absolutely mistaken when— if you have that mindset. Whether you're a solopreneur or you're a team of 100, you have an org chart. So every business has all the functions of a business, whether you're a solopreneur or not. It has the CEO, kind of the leader who defines the plan, defines the vision, and kind of leads the organization, most likely administrative assistant of some degree. You have HR functions, you have sales functions, you have, um, marketing functions, which can include everything from social media to, uh, traditional marketing, branding, all of that good stuff. You have legal, you have accounting, you have finance, which is the higher level than the accounting that I'm talking about. But you have all of these functions of any organization, whether it's one person or 1,000 people. And every leader, whether corporate or entrepreneurial, needs to understand that. And so, for instance, let's look at it from a leader perspective in a corporation, and then I'll move to the solopreneur that asked me this question. So even from a corporate perspective, if I were in corporate still, and I was a team leader, whether I had 1 person or 100 people, I would ensure that I understand every function in the organization, even though I'm not responsible for them. Like, you know, you're the head of a professional service organization. You're not responsible for HR, for sales, for legal, for accounting or finance. However, all of those Those roles and functions are critical to your ability to run and grow a profitable business. Bleh, can't even say those words. Now let's look at it from a solopreneur perspective. Whether you are one person or not, you are responsible for every one of those functions. You need to sell. You need a market. You need to know the legalities of your business. You need to, obviously, account.— in your business. You need to finance and report on your business. You need to administrate your business. You need to hire and have policies and procedures from an HR function perspective for your business. So you do have an org chart. Now, what your org chart looks like initially and what— how to get to where you need to then start hiring, which is the basis of this question, is you have to draw out an org chart, literally create an org chart, and you kind of, you know, name and title each one of those boxes. The CEO maybe has offshoot of an administrative assistant. Then you have HR, sales, marketing, legal, accounting, and finance can go together. And what are, you know, professional services if you have it, manufacturing if you have it, product development if you have it. But all those major functions. And then you put the people in that are currently working in those areas. Now, for a solopreneur, that's me, me, me, me, me, me, me in every one of those boxes. Now, as a CEO of your own business and/or corporate business, your job is to replace me, me, me, me in every function other than the CEO's function, unless you find yourself to be a better salesperson or marketing person or HR person than the CEO, and then your goal is to then find somebody who you can have oversee and run your business. But every one of those boxes initially, which freaks, freaks solopreneurs out, even small business owners, like say they have 2 or 3 people, I tell them, you have to create your org chart, you have to put those people in that you have. Like right now, my org chart, has me, it has Deborah Parker House Virtual Services, right, in those functions. It has Phil now, it has my accountant who also acts as my CFO, my finance person. I have the person who helps me hire, although I, you know, I, I pretty much— that's my name right now. And then I have a kind of a subset of somebody that I also use. But whatever your org chart looks like, you have to lay that org chart out, and then it's your, your goal and objective to then replace your name with any people that you need to help you run your business. Now remember, when you need or want to grow your business or make more money, uh, you then know when you need to go out and, and hire. But how do you really know? All right, so The first question and the first actual struggle and challenge many entrepreneurs have is they run up against the fact that they don't have a skill that they need. They don't have the talent that they need. They don't— they're incapable of doing two things at once. So, you know, all of a sudden they're finding themselves that they have to go out and market themselves, they have to sell themselves. But they don't have time to do social media. They don't have time to build a website. They don't have time to do the hiring or even qualify or even help define the policies of hiring. Whatever the case might be, you all of a sudden find yourself at a point where you're no longer able to do something yourself on top of everything else that you're doing. Now, that would not necessarily— now that I've been in running my business for, you know, 8 to 10 years on my own. That I wish hindsight 20/20 in 2008, 2009, I got on top of that faster because I probably spent through 2010 trying to do especially the social media marketing and selling all on my own. And trust me when I say in this day and age, let alone in 2010, 2011, when here I have my business coaching and consulting business, I'm writing a book and needing to market that, I'm starting a radio show, need to market that, let alone execute that. But the minute you're feeling a strain and you're finding that your revenue-generating time, which we'll talk about in a minute, is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, therefore there's no way you're ever going to make more money, if you're taking it out of your revenue-generating time, that's when you need to say, "Okay, I need to go and hire somebody, need to contract somebody, need to engage somebody," whatever the case might be. Now, I should say, and I'm going to make a note of this so I make sure I also put it in the blog post afterwards, is In 2011, maybe 2012, I had a team of about 18 people. I paid for one of those people. So when somebody is sitting out there right now listening to this and saying, "Oh my gosh, she's expecting that I have all this money to go hire all these people or engage and contract all these people," no, I'm not assuming that you have that, and I would never assume. Because we're all, you know, entrepreneurs. Some of us are on shoestring budgets, and of course there was a time I was, and there's been times since, even with a full docket of clients, that I have to invest in, you know, doing other parts of the business that aren't generating income for me, and therefore I have to find the means of still hiring or contracting people in order to be able to do what I want to be doing. So how did I get that team of 18 people? Well, I identified the skill gap. So that's the other thing that is going to tell you, you know, is not only that you no longer have the time, but you don't have the skills, and therefore you need to go and hire people. Well, if you're in a business and you've built relationships and you have something that other people want to be a part of, You'd be stunned at how many people are willing to help you and recognize that maybe you can barter an exchange for no-cost services. So if you find that you have a social media or a marketing or a website or a branding or an HR or whatever the case might be— sales, you're going to have a more challenging time. Someone's not going to go out. Necessarily and sell for you unless it's selling for you on a big-ass commission. So what I did for a number of years is I said, okay, if you were to find me a client while you're out there selling your own stuff, if you were to sell me and sell me a client, I'll give you 40-50% of the earnings. I eventually got down to where I was doing 20-25% because that was more the affiliate alliance type of fee structure. But I was willing to give it up because I thought 40%, 50% of something is better than, you know, giving 0% and getting nothing because you're not paying them. So, definitely various things you can do to also be able to bring on and hire people. But we're talking about how do I know when to hire. So, one, your org chart is full of you and you need to replace you with someone else.

You—

there is less time for you to go sell, so you're recognizing that you are never going to be able to grow if you're constraining your selling time. And then you recognize also that you have skills— or, I'm sorry, you have a skill gap that you need to fill, skills that you do not have. So you recognize that and you say, "Okay, I need to go and—" and find somebody to help me with that. Now, let's go a little bit more tactical as to how do I really know when I need to hire someone. Let's go beyond just knowing that your time is getting constrained, that you don't have skills that you need. This is really what I put my clients through to help them realize that they're spending time doing things that they should not be doing and they should be hiring. And that is that you— that your hourly rate or hourly value in your business is greater than the task itself. What do I mean by that? Well, you have— everybody has 2,000, roughly 2,080 hours in a year. Now what I tell my clients to do is get down to your hourly rate based on what it is you want to earn. All right, so if someone comes to me and says, well, Bernadette, I want to earn $100,000 in my business, and I'm like, great, what's your hourly rate then in order to make $100,000? What do you need to then go out and make sure that you're earning in your business on a regular basis. And I'm not even talking about if you're a billable person. I'm talking about if you're selling something, uh, and/or you're selling your own services and therefore billable, um, but you might be doing fixed. It doesn't matter. So 2,080 hours total in the year, you want to make $100,000, therefore your hourly rate will be 2,080 hours into that $100,000 and you'll get your hourly rate. Which I should have calculated it beforehand because I know I'll screw up in what I make that to be. Uh, and Deborah, you can always like sit there and calculate it and jump in because I, I don't want to spout or something. Um, and I should have done that, and you would think it would be easy, but you know, I'm on allergy medication. I'm not going to do it because I'll put my foot in my mouth. So, but that's how you do it. 2,080 hours, you want to make X month you know, number of dollars in the year of gross income or gross revenue, divide that 2080 into that number, you'll get your hourly rate. So, let's just say, let's just say that's $200 an hour. I don't think it is, but let's just say it is. I think it's $50. Look at that if you, between 9 and 5, those are your revenue-generating hours for your business, for the majority of businesses. You might work in a business that's international, therefore your hours might go from, you know, you might determine that it's noon to 10 o'clock at night because you have to be on calls and/or available to your clients. Deborah's texting me. $48.08, yeah, roughly $50. Okay, so let's go with the $50. That $100,000 is your yearly revenue you want to earn. There's 2,080 hours, so that's $48 roughly. Let's round it up to $50 to make it easy. Now, so that's your $50. Any hour you're out of your business, not working on your business, you're losing $50, okay? That's how you need to look at it. So, if there are things in your day, in your revenue-generating hours, that you're unable to— you're unable to go and sell because you're working on something in those hours, you have to determine if that task or activity is less than or greater than $50. If it's less than $50, you should be delegating it to somebody else, because obviously You don't want to be spending time working on a $30 task when you could be earning $50. Make sense? Let me repeat that. If your hourly rate is $50 and there's something like social media that you could be hiring somebody for $10 an hour, $15 an hour, $20 an hour, $25 an hour, $30 an hour, you're not anywhere near $50 yet. Then it's much more valuable for you to delegate that out or hire that out or contract that out to somebody else and pay them that amount of money, because you could be out there selling and making $50 an hour. All right, now I even work with my clients because what I'll have them do is make a list of all the things they do in a given day over a 7-day period. I don't care if it's getting gas. I don't care if it's mowing the lawn. I don't care if it's running errands for the husband or wife or the kids. I don't care if it's marketing or doing social media or on Facebook and Twitter. I don't care what it is. I have them make that list, and I have them determine if what tasks on that list are equal to or less than their hourly rate, or what I'll call hourly value, because that's what it is. Your value to your business to generate the, the yearly revenue you want to generate is your hourly value. So if you determine that there's tasks in your business or in your personal life that you're doing between your revenue-generating time, which we'll talk about in a minute, then you need to either hire that or delegate it or contract it out. And there's tons of options for doing that, which we won't get into right now. All right, so that revenue-generating hour— or yeah, that revenue-generating time— again, if you're kind of the typical business and the workday is 9 to 5, and you're working in a business for yourself, and/or you're in, um, corporate and you're still in a position where you're supposed to be earning money for the company then your revenue-generating hours might be 9 to 5. If that's the case, then you can— should only be scheduling sales, prospecting, marketing time in your 9 to 5. That's going to create and secure, um, revenue for you. So yes, marketing is fine, social media is fine, branding is fine— things that are helping you move the, the ticket to selling your products and services can be considered within that revenue-generating, um, list of the things that you must be doing. And anything else that you're doing in your 9 to 5— personal errands, going to the gym, going to the dog park, you know, washing your car and gas— like, that's why I mentioned at the top of the hour about the guy that's outside washing my car. I determined that the $25 he's charging to come to my house— actually, it'll be $40 by the time he fills up my gas tank and washes my car— is much more valuable for me to spend that money than to— so I can go and spend the time finding a coaching client or speaking engagement or whatever that's going to generate my revenue hourly value. Alright? So that's what you need to look at. What's your hourly value? What are the tasks that are equal to or less than? And that's what you need to do— that's what you need to use to determine when you should be hiring somebody. Alright? And then once you do that, you kind of— you don't hire a second person, and we'll talk about this in a minute. You don't hire a second person. You just hire that first, first, and make sure that you've done it right. Make sure that you understand that it's bringing value, that they're either saving you money or making you money by hiring, delegating, or contracting that individual. And then you move on to doing the next. The goal is that org chart we discussed, putting me wherever me, me, me, me belongs. Either all of them or some of them, those functions of running your business, and then taking yourself out and replacing yourself with either a W-2 or a 1099, it doesn't matter. It's just not you, if those tasks or those functions are less than or equal to your hourly value. Now, most entrepreneurs will leave themselves in the CEO position, in the sales position, especially those two are priority, and then they'll start hiring in the marketing function, which is fine, but sometimes they stay in the marketing function longer, and then they eventually move themselves out, and they start hiring in the HR, legal, accounting, you know, product development, those other functions. So it just depends upon what your business plan that we talked about at the very beginning of this. Says as far as what your vision and your growth plan is. All right? Make sense? Wow, that took up a lot of time, but it's very complex, and I gave you a lot of tips and things to consider when it comes to when you need to know or when you know when you should be hiring somebody. Okay? All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to get to these other questions if it kills me, especially questions 2 and 3 regarding now that you've hired people, what are the biggest mistakes people make when hiring, which is key to that first question, and then what can I do to find more clients as a business coach? And if we get to it, which is risky at the moment, we'll talk performance reviews. All right, we'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to NGTaxSolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email deborahparker@deborahparker.virtualservices.com. Va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, this is our monthly first Tuesday of the month Ask Me Anything episode. Stories, questions, challenges you're having in your career, maybe you have your own business like we're talking about today, maybe you work in corporate, or maybe you have a life question that you need answered. If I can't answer it, I will make sure that I get one of my experts and one of my gurus in my network to answer it for you and to give you that tip, those tips, advice, and sometimes tough love that we make sure that you get in order to move yourself forward. All right. Our next question is still in the vein of hiring.— and it didn't come actually from the same person, surprisingly enough, because our first question was about when do I know— when should I know when to hire someone in my business as a solopreneur, and/or maybe it's the second or third person, when do I know when to do that. This question is about the hiring process, though. I had a client come to me, actually an older client— past client, I should say. Past client, and came to me about a couple weeks ago and said, you know, I've been just struggling. I've hired 3, 4 people in the last year, year, 15 months, and none of them are with me anymore. Either they've quit or I've had to let them go. What am I doing wrong? And I can certainly share with you mistakes, and I will, mistakes people make when hiring. But that wouldn't be the first question I can ask, and I didn't ask her. I had to ask her, well, what's your process? All right. Now this is the key. She didn't have one. All right. So my first thing about what are the biggest mistakes people make when hiring is that they don't have a plan. Going back to that question we talked about earlier in regards to, you know, when do I know when to hire someone? You have to have a plan. You have to kind of— even if you don't know who you're going to be hiring right now, you know all the functions that you may need to hire one day. Now, say you don't have the time. Oh my gosh, talking about, you know, going back to that earlier conversation about hourly value and whatnot. You certainly don't have time to sit down and really lay out every job description, every role that you might need in a business. No, you don't. But that org chart very simply could tell you all the different functions. Very quickly, for instance, under marketing, it's just not marketing anymore. It's not that traditional marketing. It's social media. It's even within social media, it's video versus written post or blog articles or a number of things. You have to understand what it is you need in your business and therefore what might translate into the type of people and the type of hires that you need to make. So not having a plan. And what I find especially— well, actually I shouldn't say that. In corporate or entrepreneurial businesses, oftentimes a leader who is hiring is desperate to hire someone. So they have no plan, and then you add in desperation because they need somebody. Then they just take anybody. And that, you know, that becomes catastrophic, uh, for a solopreneur or a small business owner, um, more so than even corporate. You know, corporate, they can absorb that mistake. In entrepreneurial businesses, they can't afford that type of mistake. So you definitely need to lay out your plan. And since we talked about that already, we won't talk— spend a lot of time there. You— then you need to, when you do know you need to hire someone, you need to lay up front not only that plan, you need to have a very clear detailed description of what that function needs to support. What are those tasks? What are those roles? What are those responsibilities? What are those skills that you need? What are the educational requirements? All of it, you need to ensure that you have that clearly laid out. You can't just go and hire a social media person. You need to know what, you know, what does that mean to your type of business? Social media for every business is not the same. So what specifically do you need to be hiring and have that person doing in order for them to be successful when they come and work for you? Because remember, They need to either make you money or save you money. So you need to be very clear and have a good understanding of what it is that person will be doing from the minute you hire them. Now, long before you hire them, you need to ensure that you're communicating that to them during the interviewing process, let alone, um, once they're hired and into 6 months, a year, 2 years into their employment. And that's the other mistake people make, is they not only not have a plan or they get desperate, they lack that clear responsibility, but they have little communication with their— with the person that they're about to hire and/or hire. And what I mean by that is, sure, they interview them, but the next biggest mistake people make is they don't have the interviewing skills that is needed in order to assess and make decisions on who they need to be hiring. Now, even if we take out the desperation and they just take anybody, say they aren't really desperate, they still aren't and they don't determine that they're not the right person potentially to be hiring anyone. To be interviewing somebody. Not everybody has good interviewing skills. Not everybody reads people the way you need to read somebody you're about to hire. Not everything is said that you can then assess and make decisions on. So, you know, the biggest mistake people make is the person doesn't kind of read or evaluate the person's behavior, the person's the person's words, the person's eye movements, the, you know, the way they're communicating. They're looking down, they're looking up, they're looking all around. So they're not real good readers of people. Excuse me. The other thing interviewing mistakes are is they're not asking tough questions regardless if they're desperate for somebody or not. They're not asking tough questions, meaning they're not really challenging the person that they're the person that they could be, that would be best for that job. They're not asking the right questions of people. So here they have a job description. They're clear on the roles and the responsibilities, but they brush over things. You know, I find this oftentimes when it comes to social media or marketing areas of hires. They're all worried about that person being able to do what they need to do in the business. They don't then recognize whether or not that person is good with engaging other external factors. So maybe they have to work with other marketing, branding, website development people or clients, and therefore they didn't really kind of assess whether or not that person is good working by themselves, working with their own internal team that they feel safe with, or they're good with working with third parties that then you as the hiring manager can trust that they're going to kind of represent you well. Oh, that's a disaster in the making if you send somebody out and/or even on a phone call and they can't represent you. So they're not asking the tough questions. They're not challenging. They're not asking the right questions. I already talked about not reading body language, you know, their eyes, their communication. Oftentimes, huge mistake, people are not hiring— interviewers are not telling the whole or the real truth of the matter. So say they are desperate and they're just, you know, they're shaking in their boots needing to have somebody.— and this happens a lot when it comes to websites, when it comes to branding people. They don't even know the right questions to ask, so they— and they're desperate because the first thing anybody's told is, "Oh my God, you have to have a website and a business card and, you know, so forth and so on." And so they get desperate and they don't ask the right questions and they don't tell the whole, you know, truth of the matter. Solopreneurs who are, you know, kind of quaking in their boots, they don't tell them, I'm new to doing this. I don't have a team and therefore, you know, you're going to be going through the growing pains with me. You know, corporate hiring managers don't really talk about their leadership skills, their leadership manner or style, the culture. It's a toxic culture, but they kind of brush over it. They don't talk about the fact of lack of diversity or how people are hired or not hired or promoted or not promoted or advanced and bonused or not bonused. They're not necessarily openly transparent and honest upfront. All of those are red flags and mistakes hiring managers make but also the person being hired, they make a lot of mistakes as well because they feel that only they are being interviewed when actually they should make sure that they're interviewing that hiring manager as well. Hiring managers, leaders, solopreneurs, they are too narrow in their search. I find a lot of times the hiring manager doesn't feel that they should be going after somebody really expensive because they're not going to be able to get them., you know, within their ability to pay. You'd be very surprised how that's not a true factor or true statement or true mindset to have, especially as the baby boomers are looking to retire. They don't need that big paycheck anymore. They're willing to help small businesses, new businesses, non-existing businesses that want to become a business. So you'd be very surprised. People don't do reference checks. You know, people even leave off references these days on resumes. If I was a— if, you know, when I hire within my own business and if I were to continue to hire, I'd make sure I followed up with those references because you'd be amazed at what you learn when you actually pick up the phone and talk to their past employers as to their behavior, as to the contributions they make or the drama they created. You know, so ensure those reference checks, even in today's world, that they're done. Now, obviously, you can turn all of those mistakes into, okay, so what do I do differently? So, you know, have a plan, have clear responsibilities, job descriptions, lay out a communication plan and a schedule. Of, you know, when are you going to engage and how are you going to engage this person, how are you going to onboard them into your business, even if you are a solopreneur, and what are you going to do to ensure they're, you know, regularly communicated to and incented and, you know, developed along the way. Lay out that interviewing plan. Make sure you're asking the right questions and the challenging questions. Open up your mind and, you know, break down those barriers of narrow thinking. Of who and how and how much you can pay and all those different things. You know, so flip all of those mistakes into, you know, what would you do to mitigate those mistakes? And I'll make sure I put those out on a blog post so you can actually kind of pull down a checklist of those things that you need to consider when hiring. Now, we're going to continue going because we're— short on time. And I do want to get to this question because it was a question I had 7, 8 years ago, and I actually— I'll ask this question on a regular basis because how you find clients and secure clients or business, even if you have products and services that you sell, you know, evolve and change. So recently I was asked from a fellow business consultant, you know, what are the ways I go and look and find clients? Now I kind of had to change up that question, not only for them but for you today, because I don't spend a lot of time prospecting right now because I do, one, take referrals, and that's really where I get my business nowadays, but also I'm focused on writing and finishing my script. So, I'm not necessarily looking for a full docket, so to speak. Yes, I am taking on new clients, but I'm just not— remember, there's revenue-generating hours and that hourly value. I'm not putting a lot of that full-time schedule, so to speak, toward networking and prospecting and pitching and closing business. Okay, so what are things that people should be doing if they're looking to, in this case, find new clients as a business coach, or you're just looking for new business? So, first question I would ask is, what are you doing now? You know, I always start with kind of where you're at at this very moment in time. So evaluate that, measure that, adjust what you're doing now, what's working, what's not working for you. Ask other people. Too long of a story right now, but I'll just tell you that when I went out on my own in 2008, I went around Atlanta, primarily Buckhead, and I wanted to meet every business coach. I wanted to meet every business consultant, especially those that were different than me and/or provided different coaching, consulting skills and services than I did. And very quickly, the reason is because I don't like to— I turn down business, but I don't like to say no to a client. What I'll say is, I'm not the right person for you, but I know somebody that is. And I make sure that that person, you know, that I'm able to take care of that individual even though I can't help that potential client. I can certainly find them somebody else and provide them a resource. So go out and ask other people. How they, you know, how they find their clients, where they find their clients, what type of clients do they target. Because again, you might also— a strategy is to build a network of affiliates, of alliances, of partners that you can all be helping each other. But what I find is that individuals don't know their perfect client, and we don't have time to go into all that, but if you don't know your perfect client or your fumbling in identifying who you should be prospecting and where those people are hanging out, then you really don't have a clear idea who your perfect client is. So spend time asking questions, evaluating that, researching it, finding lists, going onto LinkedIn to really understand who your perfect client is. Now, very quickly, how do you simply do that? You have to really understand not only who they are, because you'll get to that after you figure out what are the business problems you're solving and how do you solve them and what is the value you give them. And then those 3 questions, answering that will help you to say, "Oh, well, you know what? That might be best in retail or in technology or in healthcare," or they might be corporate versus entrepreneurial, they might be products versus services. Those 3 questions will answer all of those other things for you. What are the business problems you solve? How do you do it? And what's the value and the benefit that you give? And use those to lead you to who your perfect client is. And keep it simple. Keep it simple. Go out and help other people. Give away your services first. Have free resources. That you give away, ebooks, you know, tips, checklists, whatever the case might be. And I will write a blog post again specifically for this one and make sure that you have a checklist of all the different things that you could be doing, all right, to find your clients and different strategies people are using today versus even last year. Lastly, we had a question regarding performance reviews, and I did mention that we probably won't get to it. So I will— we've had this question before, so I will make sure there's a blog post put on SheddingTheBitch.com, also over on BallOfFireConsulting.com, so you can go and get answers to these questions for yourself from our blog post. All right? All right, thanks everybody, and for everybody here, I will look forward to having you next week for another episode of Shedding the Bitch. Everybody have a great week. Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.