Hiring Your First Employee

Business brain, episode 481 for Wednesday, September 6, 2023. Greetings, folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a topic or a couple of topics and we analyze them together to help tune our business brains so that we can each keep on living that charmed life. Sponsors for this show are fast growing trees.com businessbrain, where you can go and save 15% off your entire order between now and October 15th. This is a business that I love. We'll talk more about it in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean.

That's cool.

I'm glad that Fast Growing Trees is.

Yeah, man, it's a great.

They've grown that business a lot.

They have fascinating story and it's a good business. Like it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we'll talk about that in a little bit. I did something unintentionally like I didn't set out to do what I'm about to describe this weekend, or at least not with the term in mind that everybody uses. But, you know, we just came off this Labor Day weekend. I wound up having most of Friday sort of flexible as well. So I kind of had like four days off. We finally here in New England had decent weather. It was like in the 80s and sunny every day. That has not been the case this summer. It's been raining like crazy, you know. Yeah, it's just, which is fine. I mean, I don't want to complain about the rain too much when I know that there's people that like their, you know, homes are burning and stuff because it's too dry. But it's, it's not been typical here. It's, you know, we've, we've had really kind of not ideal weather. And we wound up with this weekend with ideal weather. I had no gigs. I had a gig Thursday night and then nothing all weekend. We had nothing really scheduled all weekend. And our daughter is home from Italy for. She's home for about four weeks. She's got about a week and a half left. And, and this was like the first weekend that we didn't just have like things jam packed in like, like you kind of do. And so I wound up having essentially having a staycation at home. I really kind of stayed away from work all weekend. We didn't go nuts. We went out to eat a couple times and we, you know, we did a couple of things, but we didn't like cram our schedule full. We spent a lot of time sitting outside in our patio by our fire pit and in the hot tub, just chit chatting. And yeah, I did a couple of chores around the house here and there, but it was, it was the closest thing to a staycation that I have ever had. And in fact it wasn't until about 10 minutes before we recorded that I realized that's kind of what this weekend was. It was like. It was like we were somewhere else. It was like we were away, but we were home. I never quite understood that term before. As an entrepreneur, Shannon, I didn't think it was possible really. You know, and certainly having our daughter home was the catalyst to this. Otherwise I definitely would have just gotten into my normal routine of, of doing whatever it is I'm going to do. It's probably some work, some mornings and some chores and you know, you know, filling it up with like, well, we should invite people over, we should go out and we should do this. It's. What are we doing with all this free time? And it was, it was truly fantastic. I like, I highly recommend it if you can possibly trick your brain into letting you do. Certainly wasn't intentional.

Yeah, we've done a few episodes about, you know, unplugging and really trying to get away. It is really important and good for your, Good for your brain, good for your body, you know, kind of get rejuvenated sometimes. It is. I find it difficult as well. And I think that sometimes it is good having that catalyst. Like.

I know, yeah.

My, my daughter and her fiance, when they came out like back in July, we did all kinds of stuff with them. We went to Napa and then we went on hike up in the redwoods and stuff that I would not be doing during the week. And so it was nice to, to. To get away. It was good.

Yeah. I'm. I'm curious. You have, you have some vacation homes now. I, I understand that you have turned your vacation homes into businesses at least.

When you're slippery math, David. Slippery math.

No, I understand. And like, I think it's great. I'm. I'm not questioning any of this. Yeah. But my. Where, where, where. What I am curious about is are there times when you're at your vacation homes where it feels like you're on away somewhere or does it feel like you're at your house and you need to do the things to keep it up to date and like, like how does that work for you? Is it, is it just a mix of the two? And it's never one or the other.

Because we Run them as businesses. I often, it can often feel like I constantly looking, thing. Looking at things with a different eye in the sense of, oh, I need to fix that, or you know what some guest is going to, you know, it's going to be a problem, this doesn't work, or this looks like somebody could get hurt, or I need to paint this. So the way I deal with it is, especially when we go up with, with guests or friends, I. We always go up early and I can walk around, my wife can walk around and we can go, oh, I'm going to fix this. I'm going to do this and do this. So by the time people get there, we can sit and relax because otherwise I will. I find myself working the whole time. Even when people are there. I'd be like, oh, I gotta go down and do this. Oh, I gotta do that. So we've just changed the structure. And even when we go up by ourself, we'll go up like on a Thursday and say, hey, you know, we're gonna work all day Thursday, get these projects done. Maybe part of Friday, but then Friday afternoon through, you know, Sunday or Monday, we're going to enjoy the place.

Okay, so you actually schedule it. You really do I have to? Well, yes, you have to. I realize people might not have to, but it's different. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we have a, we just bought a new, A new place that it's supposed to escrow. Supposed to close today. I'm going to get the keys tomorrow. So that'll mean. Yeah, thanks. Driving up there tomorrow or the next day and starting this all over again, where I'm going to be just walking around, going, okay, and listing projects and timelines to get things done, keeping it organized. Otherwise I have to have like this structured enjoyment. Otherwise I just, I just work all the time.

I know. I like this idea of structured enjoyment because I mean, and I, and I understand it like, especially after this weekend, like, I feel like. I feel like a door perhaps opened for me this weekend where it was like, oh, yeah, I certainly like this. I mean, I had a lot to do today and I did a little bit of work. I knew there was like yesterday morning, uh, we. We recording this on Tuesday. So the morning of Labor Day, I knew that there was something I wanted to get out essentially first thing once the week started. And so I just did that yesterday morning and got that out and, you know, maybe spent 30 or 40 minutes doing it, but before everybody else woke up because I got up a little early and then it was Just like, all right, well, now we're just going to chill for the day. It was really a fascinating thing to see our house differently. I. I will acknowledge that I don't know that this would have been possible had we not created some additional outdoor living space last year. That. That really has been. It has changed the way we view the house because it is this. This sort of area of our property that we never used before. I mean, it's connected to the house, but it was just off of one corner. We really never went out there. It was never quite even finished. It barely had grass growing. And now we have this beautiful patio and a fire pit and a hot tub and stuff. But like that. That's where we spent a great deal of our time this weekend was just sitting out there, you know, and hanging out.

Yeah, that's really nice. I think it's really important. And also, you know, I feel like I've been kind of grinding for 25 years. So it's. I love being able to sit. Like, my thing is Sunday morning, right? Sunday morning. I want to sit on the deck. I want to have. Enjoy my coffee, maybe even hang out till midday there and just relax. And it does something for me because I feel like, okay, you know what? This is very simple, but I feel like I've earned this few hours to relax.

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Yeah, that, you know, we did it. We did an episode on this a few year, a couple years ago, episode 356. And we talked more about what type of employee you should hire first. You know, and I think, Dave, you're, you were kind of leaning into, you always hire a salesperson first to, you know, help grow and.

Well, more more specifically, yes, sales will help you grow. But the reason I like the idea and it only works if it works for your business, but the reason I like that idea is when you hire a salesperson, in theory, they will contribute immediately and directly to the bottom line. So there's nothing nebulous and it has nothing to do with the employee. It's all about you or me as the entrepreneur. Right. I need to be able to justify their cost. And a great way to easily do that is to literally see them bringing in dollars for the business and then that.

I think that's Great. And on the. On the flip side, if you're the sales type person.

Yeah.

Or the rainmaker, you know, I was always the guy, you know, finding the deals and everything. So hiring an assistant was critically important to me because it freed up so much of my time.

Yes. I like that. Yeah.

So it just depends on the role that you play. If. If you're not the salesperson, maybe you're the creative person and you'll go, wow, I really, you know, I have this stuff and I need to sell it or I have these, you know, whatever. You're selling these services and you go out and find a salesperson. But maybe you're the person out meeting with people and you're like, well, I just can't get these jobs done in time. So I need to hire a technician.

Sure.

To help. So it. It's very specific to what your current needs are. But from. To back it up a little bit, I think, like Robert's asking, you know, what do I do? I have work. A lot of times I'm overloaded. Sometimes I don't have enough. So, you know, that is the challenge. So it, you know, you need to have some financial resources to carry you through those times that you don't maybe have a lot of work for that person.

Yep.

But you also have to have a system in place, a plan, if you will, for what they should be doing when things slow down or you don't have work for them. And that's where I kid. Like back in that episode 356, my whole thing was, you need to hire somebody that's super versatile, that can do all kinds of stuff. Especially as a small business owner, if you're just getting started, someone has to wear many hats. And I think that's very valuable too. And, you know, I get it. The salesperson, I get the whole assistant thing, but I don't know that your first employee can be a specialist.

Oh, no, that's true. They need to be able to do lots of different things. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So hopefully they can help you with making some calls, with building some spreadsheets. Maybe they, you know, even just running errands for you or help on your website. I mean, those are the kind of things I just remember that I was scrambling to do all at once and finding someone that could. That could kind of stick their head in. And then over time, we identified more skills that they were. They could focus on, like, you know, you're really good at customer service, or you're very good at the administrative side or the Website or the sales side, and then they go into those, those roles. So I, I'm, I lean towards hiring, you know, a generalist that is super reliable, that wants to bleed to build your business. The beginning, because you got to tell them it's going to be very hard. You know, it's not easy. And, and if you don't know what you're doing, like, I did not know what I was doing. I hired my first employee. It's up and down, and it's not structured as much, but they can have a dramatic impact on your business. And so there's, there are definitely people that are attracted to, to that kind of role.

Now, I like this idea of hiring a, like a talented person as a generalist. I mean, you have to have, you have to have things for them to do both for, for their peace of mind, but also for yours. Like, you need to see them doing things for sure. But yeah, looking. Looking for someone who has, who is just talented at the things that. At whatever it is they do. That's a good person to have in your organization, especially a first employee.

Yeah, yeah. And so I think that helps you balance things out. Where you're like Robert saying, he's like, yeah, sometimes I'm not busy enough to have somebody. Well, I would argue that you probably are busy enough for planning for expanding, maybe updating your website, creating some content on your site. So you want to get somebody that can help you write that stuff or, you know, and there's a ton of stuff to do, following up with previous customers, making sure your Google my business page is up to date and your reviews are coming in. I mean, I could sit here and name 50 things that, that you could assign someone to do that maybe wasn't directly related to what was going on in your business today, but would help.

No, but it'll help polish things up. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. In fact, maybe I would say that's a great list to start to build. And I want to do this together. You, if you. Whatever comes to mind. Shannon, you just said, you know, building your Google page, like building out all your socials, just making sure everything is consistent and up to date. Because I guarantee you, you've got at least one that's sort of like fallen by the wayside. Because, because you're, you're not focused on it. You don't, you don't have time to be focused on it, and you don't think about it as something you need to do until you hear two guys talking about it and you're like, oh yeah, that is something I need to do. Let's make this list together and then we'll publish it and you know, we can keep it as even a living document on the, on the site. And that way when you, when you're looking for something for someone that you are hiring or have already hired to do or heck, if you can't figure out what to do tomorrow, do this for yourself. Like it's going to make you feel productive. So send it in. Feedback. I love that feedbackusinessbrain Show. We want to hear from you. This is I, I, I, I love this. This is great. Yeah.

And, and real quick, you know, to back up Robert a little more, it maybe you need to look at your finances and maybe get a line of credit in place to help you bridge those times that it's not, you know, super busy revenue wise, but building wise for the future is important. So think about those things, how you'd carry yourself either build up your cash reserves, get a credit line, both ideally and that way you won't be so worried about when things are slow.

Absolutely. Again, FeedbackusinessBrain show is where we would like to hear from you. Please send in all of those ideas. Like the tinier the least, the more inconsequential the better because there's no such thing as an inconsequential change to your business. Send those in, keep on living that charmed life, and we'll see you next time.