Smartest Hires for Your Online Coaching Business: Who You Need on Your Team [Ep 10]

Welcome to the Thriving therapyneur podcast. The show for ambitious therapists who are ready to unapologetically make more money, scale their impact and build their dream coaching business. I'm Carly Hill, therapist turned coach turned CEO of a seven figure online business. I created the Thriving Therapeneur podcast because I'm obsessed with helping big hearted therapists outgrow the office and build successful and sustainable online businesses. So if you are wondering how you can continue to make an impact without sacrificing the life you love, welcome therapreneur. This is exactly the place for you. Think of it like the business school we never had. I am so excited to dive in with you. Let's get started. Hello Therapreneurs. Welcome to today's episode. I'm your host Carly Hill and we're diving into the smartest hires you can make when starting your online coaching business. I have made so many mistakes when hiring the wrong people first and I'm here to talk about how you can hire revenue driving roles in your online coaching business to help you grow and scale efficiently. So let's get started. The first question is who is the first hire that I should make? I get this question all the time. It's usually going to be one of two people. So it's usually going to be a virtual assistant, AKA a va or it's going to be an appointment setter. So we're going to go through what all of these roles can do for your business and when it makes sense for you to hire them. So when we think about a virtual assistant, they can really be the jack of all trades in your business. They can handle a wide range of tasks allowing you to focus on what you do best. So if they can handle some of the tedious tasks, you can focus on driving revenue in your business. They could help you manage emails and scheduling. They could handle customer service inquiries, they could organize any digital files and documents. Maybe they assist you with some social media management. They could build out automations. I love having my VA do this for me. Making simple website changes, creating Canva graphics. I also have my VA do this for me. So when you can come up with an idea, they could help you make it pretty so you don't have to spend hours in Canva trying to move a circle around. They could create lead magnets for you, they could book appointments for you, they could manage your calendar, they could conduct market research and they could compile reports for you. So maybe you want to be on podcasts and you want to start getting into Podcast guesting, you could say, hey, this is my niche, this is the problems that I solve for people. Go do some market research and find podcasts that I could be a guest on and get me all of their contact information so that you could easily pitch to them. Maybe they're going to process invoices for you or manage expenses or possibly just pulling reports. They could coordinate with other team members or freelancers. So like I said, truly a jack of all trades. They can be invaluable to your business. And this is going to look different as time goes on and what you have your VA do for you. So I challenge you in the next week to just start making a list and jot down all of the tedious tasks that you're doing that you don't necessarily enjoy doing that could absolutely be delegated to someone else. And when you are training your va, try to make video trainings where you can repurpose. Because what if you have a turnover and your team member leaves you? And this is a best practice guide to creating canva graphics. It's a best practice guide to conducting market research. When you hire this new person, you don't have to do this whole training again. You can just tell them to watch the video training and the best practice guide. So that's some words for wisdom there. Now let's go over what an appointment setter could do for you. So they focus on reaching out to leads or prospects, AKA potential clients and getting them to book a discovery call or a consultation call, whatever you call it in your business. And they're following up to secure the appointments and this is crucial for maintaining a steady flow of potential clients. They're also going to do a lot of the pre qualifying for you. So they're going to have conversations on behalf of you and your business so you don't have to be slammed in the DMs or slammed in the emails replying to all of these people, answering questions to all of your prospects. They're going to do that for you. They're going to weed out all of the unqualified leads and then they're going to book the qualified leads, they're going to set them, this is why they're called an appointment setter. Onto your consultation calendar or if you have a sales representative, they would put them onto your closers calendar or whoever is taking your consult calls. But when you're starting off and you are running a high ticket business, because we do sales calls and high ticket and this is what I specialize in teaching, you want to have somebody taking the sales calls. Usually it's going to be you at the beginning. But you can have an appointment setter to help manage your community, have conversations on your behalf, answer questions, and they could set the qualified leads onto your calendar. Appointment setters can also do both outbound and inbound lead generation, meaning they can go outbound and they can actually go help you find leads. Or if you have an inbound sales system and you have paid advertising and you have funnels set up where leads are coming in, this is where they can kind of sift through them and set only the qualified leads. So they can do both inbound and outbound and they are trained to do so. This is an actual position. I know if you're new to the online coaching business, maybe you've never heard of an appointment setter or even a closer before. This is new verbiage, but this is something that you can Google. There's Facebook groups for high ticket appointment setters and closers where people are constantly looking for jobs and hiring. There is certifications that people take to become an appointment setter where they learn how to have qualified conversations and deal with prospects to set only those qualified leads onto your consultation calendar. Now, when we think about what's going to be driving revenue, this is why one of our first one to two hires is either going to be a virtual assistant or an appointment setter. So if it is that virtual assistant, they're doing the tedious tasks so you can focus on bringing in these leads or if you're doing some of these tedious tasks, you have an appointment setter who is helping you bring in these leads. Now, virtual assistant you can get for $10 an hour, if not less, depending on where they're located. And an appointment setter is only commission based because this is another fear that comes up when you're just starting your online coaching business and you don't really have that much revenue coming through the door. How are you going to afford to hire and manage and pay a team? But they're bringing you revenue. And an appointment setter is commission based, meaning when they book and they get a set, they book a qualified lead onto your calendar. They are only getting the commission if you close the sale. That's one of the smartest hires you can make in your business. And then a $10 an hour, a $6 an hour virtual assistant is going to save you so much time doing all of these tedious tasks where you can bring in revenue. Again, another very smart hire, as you start to move into the growth phase and the scaling stage of your business where it's not a problem getting consult calls booked because maybe your setters are booking them, maybe you have ads running at this time and your consult calendar is flooded, which is a good problem to have. But it becomes a bottleneck in your business and you can't take all of the calls anymore. This is where you hire a sales representative. So then the setter would now be booking the consult calls onto the sales representatives calendar. This is another commission based hire. So they're conducting these sales calls with prospects, they're addressing any objections, they're answering any questions, they're telling them about your offer suite, they're closing deals, they're managing follow ups and then they're moving them into the correct organized stage of the pipeline. So it's one smooth organized process. Like this is what a full sales team looks like when you have both setters and closers and you can have multiple of them as your business continues to grow and scale. So it can really, really boost your conversion rates. It can drive revenue. Let's talk about another hire. So a content creator. This is a hire that I have made too soon in my business where they were helping me with social media, a social media manager, a content creator, and social media felt like a chore to me at the time and so I wanted to just hire out for it. Now we have to remember that posting on social media is the very first baby step to actually getting a paying client. And I think it's really, really important to be authentic in our content. People can tell whether it's coming from us or someone else wrote it or created the content. So still to this day I write all of my copy and my content. Now I have somebody who helps me with creating canva images because it's not the best use of my time. Not that I don't love doing it, but I always find that I go down a canva rabbit hole and I get caught up in the design. So it's, it's not the best use of my time. So instead I'm writing all of my captions and I'm telling my content creators, hey, this is what needs to go on. The images and then they're going and creating them. So don't hire out too soon for social media management or content creation and most certainly do not have them write the actual copy because you could get a copywriter. But again, when you are first starting your online coaching business, you're going to be wearing all of the hats. I think it's important to also learn how to write your captions and learn how to write copy when you're still learning your ideal client and understanding them almost better than they understand themselves. You need to learn how to write your copy first to then be able to audit your copywriter or content creators or social media managers work in and of itself. So you can have someone create infographics for you, social media graphics, but you could also have your virtual assistant do that for you. So food for thought on writing your own captions, writing your own copy, content creation, social media management. This could be a later hire when you have the profit margins to do so. Same thing with tech support and website management. So remember, when you are starting an online coaching business, you do not need a website. I can't stress that enough to my paying clients. And I even had a potential client who was interested in joining the Therapist to Coach accelerator say to me the other day, well, you know, it looks like most of your clients don't even have a website. They don't even have a huge following. I go, yeah, because they don't need a huge following. Vanity metrics aren't everything. And they also don't need a website. If you're posting on social media with intention and strategy, not just consistency or fluff, it's enough to bring in at least your first initial coaching clients. So when funds allow, investing in a website becomes a very crucial asset in your business. And I do recommend it. But I think too many people jump the gun and they think, okay, I've decided I'm going to have a coaching business. I'm following my llc and now what do I put on my website? Right, because they haven't even figured out their messaging yet. They're still in the market research phase. So really dial in all of your core messaging first and then you can hire out when you have the funds to do so. And you can get a website manager and they could pop it up for you. SEO, whole different ballgame. SEO usually takes six months to a year to pick up traction and you need to be pumping out content. So probably blogs, YouTube, maybe Pinterest, these are all SEO search engine optimization. So you don't have to have SEO, but it will optimize your website performance. And maybe this is somebody who you want to hire out an SEO expert. Again, when you're in the growth and scaling phases. Now, if you do have the budget, I would say absolutely, go ahead and do it. But I think there's an order of operations and most people, and you could disagree with me, but most People when they're first starting their online coaching business, they don't have all of these funds to fork out to do all of this at the same time. So if we're talking about the first couple hires in the order of operations of how you should hire, these are later hires that you could make. An online business manager, a marketing manager, later hire. This is for when you're scaling. It really becomes important when you're scaling. They can oversee daily operations, they can manage projects for you, they can help manage team members, they can help implement and manage marketing strategies, streamline your processes, they could analyze business metrics and KPIs. And I'll tell you, this has been a game changer in my business. Having a right hand online business manager, marketing manager, game changer. I feel like I just duplicated myself. I was like, wow, where have you been my whole life? This is so helpful. But I'm in the scaling phase so it made sense to hire somebody for this role. A client success manager. This is another person that you can hire. So this is important when it comes to client fulfillment. A client success coach, a success manager, whatever you want to call them. This ensures that clients have a great experience, they're getting support that they need, they manage the client onboarding, they address any client issues and feedback and they can really help you increase your retention rates, help you get better testimonials because the client had a better experience. And they can help you ascend your clients into additional offers that you may have a backend offer, right? Because they're having a great experience, the results that they came here for. And so then your client success manager can upsell them into your next offer in ad manager is another later hire. So when you get to the point in your business when you're sick of doing organic marketing, you have proof of concept and you're ready to turn on ads, which is something that I would recommend once you have proof of concept and once you know how to do organic marketing. So I teach both organic marketing and paid advertising. I would say most high ticket coaches go straight into teaching paid advertising and I don't recommend that. I think that there's in order of operations like I was saying earlier now, even when you turn on ads, you do not want to outsource. In my opinion, you do not want to completely outsource right out of the gates. You need to know just to a certain extent what you're looking at, okay, how things work. It's best to consult with an ads manager first. So maybe you meet once a week. Maybe you meet twice a month and you're sharing your screen and they're looking at all of your ads and your numbers. Maybe you have a spreadsheet and you're tracking different numbers. But handing it off completely at the beginning stages usually does not make sense for financial reasons because you need to have a positive return on adspend. It's called roas and it needs to be high enough before investing heavily in adspender management, which can cost you thousands of dollars. So understand and pay once a week for consulting to improve your skills. Ensure that you can get your return on ad spend up and then once it's up and it makes sense, or you can hire out completely, then you can do so. So they're going to optimize ad campaigns, they're going to conduct market research, they're going to help you with testing your creatives with targeting. And this is also a breath of fresh air when you can completely get this hands off. But it's going to be a while before you get to that point. Let's talk about some other hires. We have a graphic designer, we have copywriters. So and I spoke on copywriting a little bit earlier. With copywriting they could write sales pages, landing pages, email sequences, scripts. You could also have ChatGPT do a lot of this for you. Okay. They can write videos, webinars or templates for them at least. But I mentioned earlier how important it is to learn how to write your own copy to maintain authenticity. And people can easily detect inauthentic content. So staying true to your voice is really going to be crucial at the beginning and just learning the muscle of actually writing copy to begin with. And then you can hire out and you can find a lot of these people on Fiverr F I V E R R and you can find really good deals to hire these people out for one off projects. So a lot of these people can be, I mean maybe your virtual assistant, your sales team, those are people that you're going to want to keep in house. When you get to the point of hiring an online business manager, that's going to be in house. But if you are creating a bunch of new funnel pages or you're creating a bunch of new email sequences, you could do a one time hire out for a copywriter, but it's going to be important to hand them over all of your core messaging and content that you already have so they can have context when they actually go to write this copy for you. A graphic designer, this could be really nice for creating high quality marketing materials. So when we talk about social media graphics that could be again done by a va, that can definitely suffice for more elevated content. I would say the graphic designer is worth the investment. So for example, for my podcast cover I had my graphic designer for my book cover, graphic designer for a journal I published a couple years ago, graphic designer for everyday social media post or a lead magnet. You can get a VA or a content creator to do that for you for a lot cheaper to wrap up everything Today we talked about hiring revenue drivers in your business. Usually it's going to be a virtual assistant or an appointment setter first. As you move out of the foundational stages of your business, you can keep going with a sales team and you can hire a sales representative. You could get an online business manager or a marketing manager. Be careful hiring too soon for an online business manager or a social media manager or a content creator. Again, your VA can do a lot of this stuff for you. A website's going to be great. It's a crucial asset in your business. But remember that you don't need a website in order to get paying clients. A Client Success Manager this is going to make sense for you when you need help with client fulfillment and you have a lot of clients in your online coaching program. That's when it makes sense to hire a client success manager. They can help you take off some of this client management load. It's going to give great experience for your clients inside your program. When you start with ads, you don't need an ads manager completely outsource. You can just consult with them until you have your roas at a good point and then you can completely outsource. I've also heard of a lot of people getting taken advantage of when it comes to ads and outsourcing too soon. Graphic designer Remember that can be for your higher quality marketing materials, but anything kind of day to day basic, you could have your VA do that for you. In a copywriter you can get but you really want to maintain authenticity and learn how to write copy yourself first. But then when you're strapped for time and you do know how to write copy, you could hand it out over to someone. And again you can find freelance copywriters on platforms such as Fiverr. But you're going to want to be able to have the skills and the eyes to audit their work and make sure it's reflective of you and your brand and your business. So while you may be wearing many hats initially, strategic hires are going to help you scale efficiently. Remember that staying authentic. Understanding the core aspects of your business are very key for long term success. So I hope this episode was helpful for you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in and happy hiring. I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Thriving Therapeutics podcast. I hope that this episode has inspired you to reduce burnout, work smarter, and see the freedom potential you have as a therapist. We would love to have you inside the Therapist to Coach Accelerator Facebook group where we have live trainings and cheat sheets on all things marketing, sales and adding coaching ethically and legally. I am here cheering you on and I'll see you around.