275: Jen’s Framework for Hiring and Training the Right People

Hey there. Jen Cura has done what most of us think is almost impossible. She's been able to hire and train the right people to produce her handmade products. And she's done it by developing a process that identifies the right people to hire, and then she trains them in a really special way that allows Jen to spend her time marketing and growing her sales, knowing that her product is being made perfectly every single time. It's a smart, simple process and what I love most is any one of us can use it if you're established or even if you're hiring your very first va. So come listen. I'll see you on the inside.

Welcome to the E Commerce Roadmap, the podcast for store owners who are growing their sales without spending a fortune on ads. Each week, you'll learn actionable strategies and tips that will fast track the growth and profitability of your E Commerce business. So buckle up and join your host, Susan Bradley, as we dive into the work that will grow your sales this year.

Hey, everyone. I am excited for you to meet Jenkira because she is one of the smartest business owners I know. She has a process that she's going to share with us today that is actually life changing. In fact, Jen, just thinking about you in our Mastermind group, I think that, like, your life is the envy of so many members of the Mastermind because of your three month cycle. We'll talk about that in the episode. But you really have managed to do something with a handmade business that I think most makers only dream of in that scale. It's pretty amazing. So I want you to just take a minute, tell everybody a little bit about you, about the Patchwork Bear, like when you started, how hard it was, because when people hear what you do, they're gonna go, what? How hard? Why? And really, when you knew you had a real business and that you didn't have to do all the things yourself, I would love it if you would share all that. I'm gonna stop talking.

Oh, my gosh. All that. Okay, let's see, where do I start? It's Jenkira, obviously. And my business is the Patchwork Fair. We're a clothing keepsake company. So that's. Everybody has clothes that they have saved away, whether it's baby clothes or a T shirt or even clothes from someone who's passed away. We take those clothes and turn a teddy bear so that it's more than a bear. I feel like we make more than teddy bears. We're making a bridge to the past. We're Helping people save the memories that their clothes have. So that's in a nutshell. That's my elevator pitch of what I do.

Ah, it's so good. And you've been doing this for a while.

So I've been doing this for about 20 years. And I started when my kids were young and they were babies. So I have three kids, and the Patchwork bear is, like my fourth child. So it started like most hobby businesses, and I started making quilts with matching bears, and that turned into making memory bears out of people's clothes, because I quickly realized I needed something that was different, and that is something that people can't get anywhere else. And so making a bear out of someone's clothes is definitely different.

Yeah. Something they can't get anywhere else and something a lot of people couldn't even do.

Exactly. So something unique and different. But what I didn't realize was the unique and different came with a lot of time, a lot of labor costs, a lot just hide everything. So very involved process for making a bear.

Yeah. So I. I didn't know that you started 20 years ago, and this is long before Shopify. When did you start, like, actually growing your business online so it wasn't friends and neighbors and people in your community?

I really started. I feel like I had a second birth of my business in 2017, so I was selling them at craft shows. I had a website back then. It wasn't easy. There was no such thing as social media marketing, none of that stuff. It was in 2017, I got a phone call from Oprah, and we were. The memory bear was picked as one of Oprah's favorite things, which was amazing. But up until then, it was really just an elevated hobby. So I was excited, and then I panicked because I didn't know how to make these at scale. I didn't know what to do. Like, the excitement quickly shifted to, what do I do now? As I had a high touch, high cost of labor, highly custom product that required a high degree of trust. And it was just me and maybe two other friends that were helping me.

And so were you in your house, working in your house then?

At this point, I was getting ready to move out of my house into my first sewing studio. So it was a small studio in Princeton, New Jersey, and we were getting ready to move in there. Thank God, because then I could work.

Out of there some bears for Oprah's massive audience. So were you on Shopify at that point in 2020?

I was on Shopify at that point, yes. I actually was In Shopify for a few years before that. So thankfully I had that in place.

Yeah.

And with Oprah, you have to be on Amazon as well. So I got onto Amazon then. So now we're talking in my brain, my little bears have to be made. I have to start making, being able to make them and people won't wait six months for me to make a bear and sew all the eyes on all them. So it just started. It is. It jump started the business. And it got me my brain thinking outside of hobby and really more I am a business. It validated me. It kind of lit a fire under me to see, okay, this is real. Let me see how far I can could take this.

Wow.

And so your first barrier was how am I going to fulfill the orders that this is going to generate? So what you.

After I panicked. After I panicked, I realized I needed to figure out how to hire. I was making everything. I was having some people help me cut, but I was doing everything from start to finish, from cutting the clothes to sewing and stuffing the bear. I was even hand embroidering the eyes on every single bear we made. I had to really stop for a second and buckle down and look at everything in my process and what I do and how to streamline it and how to get more efficient and how to scale this super hyper product that I have.

Because your unique selling proposition was basically the reason you get sales. So you really couldn't change that.

No.

And there's no way to automate it because I'm very particular because we're. Because the high, the trust factor, they have to. I have to convince people, I don't know to send me their most sentimental clothes so I could cut them up.

Yeah. And you have to convince them to pay you before they even send the clothes. They pay for the bear.

Yeah, exactly. So that was my dilemma and that's where I started. I understood I couldn't scale it, but I knew there was a way I had to try to figure out because the proof of concept just from Oprah made me. Yeah, that's hard to figure it out. Yeah, exactly.

Well, let's just talk about the process for a moment so everybody can be clear. So Jen's bears, they're around 200? 200 and change?

Yeah, yeah.

She has lots of different products, but around $200. And so somebody has to buy that product. And then do you send them instructions about how to send you the clothing?

Yeah. So there's a whole process. And this is actually what I started to document because I Started to just basically brain dump everything that has to happen from when an order is placed to when the person receives their bear. Okay, so basically I. I was making lists of what I do and how it gets done and. Cause I love a good spreadsheet. It was creating SOPs when I didn't know what an SOP was, like Standard operating procedures. I thought I was just making lists, but I was basically creating a framework for what would eventually become my SOPs.

Yeah.

And so with this, I was thinking about this, and back then, now it feels like so second nature, but it was like pulling teeth trying to figure out because it's very hard to quantify what you do in a day.

And oh my gosh, it's so hard.

It's really hard.

So my coach yesterday, and she's like, what I. I got to do, I'm wasting time or I'm busy, too busy. I don't know.

I don't know. So that was always that. It still continues to be a struggle of mine. But do it.

How did you like actually, So I.

Was thinking about the way that I actually did it. So my background is in architecture. I was used to be an architect before I was doing this. And I approached it that way because you only know how to do things the way you do things in architecture. There's a specific way you approach the building process. So there's different phases. So there's like schematic development, design development, construction documents, bidding construction. So it's. There's a flow to it. So I approached the bear very similar to a building. So anybody could do this, I guess, with whatever they're making or whatever their product is. Start from the bottom up the foundation and work your way up. So I took each part of the bear making process. I took it apart from the beginning to the end, and I created a workflow and I segmented those flows. I created different parts of it similar to the building. Like how you do that. I created a workflow segment and then I took each one of those segments and I made them standard and repeatable phases. So say someone orders a bear, then we need to tell them the shipping instructions and what, how many clothes to send and all of that stuff. And now we have that in order. And I have those sort of lined up as far as the steps of what to do. And then we receive the clothes. Now I need an order of how me at the time would do handle every time the clothes come, how do I tell them the clothes arrive safely, how do I make sure the clothes aren't mixed with other things. And I'm doing all. Everyone has a specific request. How do I keep track of those? So I made lists and each phase had a specific focus and a goal of what I wanted. So in each level of what I was doing in this bear making process, it. It was broken down into bite sized chunks.

Yeah.

So in Advocate put a name to it like this. Yeah.

So we have the way that it is now. It's evolved over time. So we have order processing, there's order intake, there's design, sewing detail, and then shipping. If you think once I could break those down, I could think of them again as a whole. And how do I approach that? It was very helpful and it was a really good exercise to see what am I doing that I don't have to do and what am I doing that's important that I really need to do. And I got rid of all the stuff that I don't have to do that I thought everybody, all the customers needed. They didn't really need half this stuff. It was all just things I thought.

I had things like give an example of that. Was it communication pieces?

More than anything, it was communication pieces. It was too much information really about what kind of clothes, what type of clothes. This works, that doesn't work. You have this option. You have that option. I think it was almost information overload for a customer. Doing this helped me simplify it and actually clarified my messaging. Yeah, it's like cleaning your closet. Just keeping what fits.

Yeah, just keeping what fits. It's like cleaning your closet and just keeping what fits.

Yeah, exactly. And it just highlighted what I needed to focus on what the customer pain points were, what they didn't understand because a lot it requires what I do requires a lot of education. They have to know we can't work with leather and we can't work with thick outerwear and things like that. So you know that there's a fine line of what. How much to tell and how much to tell before people check out and send whatever they want anyway.

Yeah.

Or just don't even do it or don't do it.

And over time, because I said, I've been doing this for 20 years, people read less and less and less.

Oh, for sure.

These little bullet points for myself were also great bullet points for talking to my customer.

Yeah, it was really helpful.

And that was all around the time when you were on Oprah's favorite Things. And so once you did that, so now you've got it out of your head and on paper as a process and you didn't know it was an sop, but it became your future sop. Then how did you find people to help you? Because I'm sure you and a couple friends who are just like throwing you a bone, like they probably don't need it to pay their groceries or anything, whatever you were paying them. How did you then get to a place where you could fulfill a lot of orders?

It actually wasn't that hard. After I did this, I think the hardest part was coming up with was really tearing everything down and breaking them out apart into the pieces and the phases. Because once I did that, the way that we were doing it before is we would make the bear from start to finish. But when I broke em out into the phases, I realized I could hire people to do individual tasks that I had broken out. So now instead of looking for someone who knew how to sew, but also knew how to stuff and clothes and do all these things, I had, I basically had job descriptions.

Yeah.

So these lists, these. Now these soon to be SOPs were my blueprint for how do I hire people and what do I need. So now it was like it actually opened up a whole. It was very hard for me to find people who could sew. For example, I was looking for someone who could sew, so I found hobby sewers. And the way to kill someone's joy of sewing is make them do the same thing over and over again. I was just killing people's joy.

And that would create turnover for you, I'm sure.

Create turnover. And I was using friends, so that wasn't good either. So then it came down to this list. Helped me really hone in on what am I looking for. I'm not looking for a hobby sewer, I'm looking for a production sewer. I'm looking for that particular type of person who can do this particular task. Yeah, that helped with that. It helped me. I don't need someone who could sew. I need someone who they didn't all have to sew. I could use someone who would process the orders for me. I could find someone who could just do the machine embroidery. Now because I'm not sewing the eyes by hand anymore, I'm doing them machine embroidery so I could find someone who could do that. So all these different tasks and all these phases that I broke down in my project, which is the bear, they were job descriptions. And I found people who fit those descriptions. And at the end of the day I was thinking about how do I hire now that I have this framework? Because I could hire Any kind of person, really. It was like a game changer because I could pick people. I have the instructions for them. So I could teach anybody how to do what I do, but I can't teach work ethic.

Yeah.

Can't teach empathy. So once I figured that I know how to teach people, I had to find the right person and I had to decide what are the qualities of a person? What qualities does a person have that I need to get what I want out of that? And so for me and my business, because we deal with a lot of bereavement bears and we. It's very sensitive and we need someone empathetic. We don't need someone who's another bear and then and work ethic. Because I can't teach someone to work hard. I can't teach someone who to want to be there. I can't. And I don't want to convince someone to work for me.

Yeah.

How do you screen people for those things? Do you have a, do you have a spidey sense or do you have specific questions that you ask?

I have a horrible spidey sense. So no. I, I now I do. I've learned over time that first friends are great. I think in the beginning for people to hire. At the end of the day, maybe they might not be the best fit for as a work relationship. So now I have. I start with a type form and I put feelers out. I just throw it out there that I'm looking for stuff because a lot of people actually are very interested in what we do. A lot of crafters are because it's. Oh, it sounds like you craft all day long. I'd love to work there. But really we're working.

Yeah.

So this type form, basically it has a list of. It helps me try to discern what kind of person are you. Because like I said, I'm trying to find a fit versus versus task. Because I could teach them these tasks. I can't teach them how to fit into what we need and their personality types. I have the type form. I ask them obviously, like experience questions. But I also go into how. What is your personality? Are you detail oriented? Are you more a generalist? Are you an introvert? Are you more extroverted? Do you want to work at home or do you want to work in the office with everyone else? Do you want. What does part time mean to you?

Oh, good one. What does part time mean to you? Super smart.

So is it set hours every week? Is it. I'm gonna work 20 hours whenever I can work 20 hours. It's very different. And how you approach what they do is very different compared to what they think they're gonna do. So I think clarity of what their job is and what my expectations are. It. It fleshes itself out in this type form very much. And then if I that from going through that I get a better idea of they're what we're looking for and then they come in and they do a sample or they come in and they try whatever task it is that I'm looking for them that I think they're a good fit for.

Wow, that's really smart. I didn't even know that you did that. So I'm boo on me because we should have shared this a long time ago.

It's helpful. It's really, it's very helpful because I. It's my business obviously and I want where I work, I want to have fun where I work, but I want to be around people who have fun but also work hard and share the same sort of vibe because you can't undo negative energy. And that will just. Because what every task, like I said, every task leans in onto the next task. So we all work for each other basically.

Yeah.

I think what, what I'm just thinking about is the subtle way you get them to tell you in the type form really what they're prepared to do and what they're not prepared to do. Even though they might tell you in an interview that they are. You're actually just, you're actually just asking them first and then deciding whether there's a place for them to move on in the process or it's just a non starter right from the get go.

Yeah, it's more two way because what are their expectations? And I tend. I like to get moms to work or stay. Either stay at home moms or empty nester moms. There's different expectations of what work is. Yeah, like I said, people think they're going to come and craft and it'll be so fun or they'll be able to work two hours a week and maybe four hours the next week. So that kind of. That all comes out and it's it if we, if I get feedback both ways I give them and they give me then it's very clear what their position. And honestly because I have this list of tasks, if I like the person, I feel like they would work really well with the group there. It's easy to find something for them to do because they're all different types of jobs.

Yeah, that's really Good. I, I'm. I would love to know, once you've found someone who's a good fit and you have to train them, I feel like you've really mastered the process of training people too. Can you share a little bit about that? What does that look like?

What does that look like? Susan, let me think. I think if when I do hire someone, every step of the way there's different parts of it, everything is broken down. Cause I can only handle things in bite sized chunks. Every opportunity I get, I will explain what it is that I do and I would like them to do. And I always give them an out. If you don't like this, let me know. If this isn't for you, let me know. If I don't think you're a good fit, I'm gonna let you know. Because I'm. My personality type's a people pleaser. So if I take them on without asking these questions, I'm never gonna get rid of them because I don't want disappoint anyone. So I've learned over the years you have to just, you ask the right questions. And I have again, leaning on those SOPs and those lists that I made, when I break down the bear, it's very clear what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. Even though there's a design process to it, there's a formula to our design and very clear it's laid out. Everybody has the same one. Because while right now we have a. There's 11, 12, including me on my team, I don't necessarily need, I don't want a customer to know who designed it necessarily. It needs to be cohesive across the entire design team. So we have these lists of how we like things designed, how we want patterns to look, how we place them on the bear. And it's very easy to train someone to do that once you have all these things in place. So the part is already done by the time I'm training them. It's not difficult to train them.

And they can always refer back to the document.

It can always refer back to the document.

And would you also. So say you hired me. Don't whatever you need to sew anything but say you hired me to embroider eyes and generally finish off the bear, close it or whatever you do. So I would get an sop. I would also get a sample of how it's done. And then would someone work with me for a little while and like, how would you like? What I know is you don't necessarily have to do it. That's the part I, yeah, that's the.

Big part is that I, how do I take this baby of mine that I was doing everything and hand that off to someone and do it the way that I want it done? Because I'm very particular about how I want it done. And that's the beginning. We'll start with baby steps and everyone starts with. So say I have, I've also broken the bear down through that process into different price levels. So I have a simple bear which is just made from one shirt. So I will start a designer on a simple bear. And then they go, they learn the process from that. Then when they get better, they'll do two shirt bears. So I'm slowly feeding them more and more responsibility and more freedom until. And there's lots of touch points along the way so that there's a little, it's like driving your sort of self correcting as you go. And it's not, it's not. This is how I want everything done. It's. This is how we all do it.

Yeah.

More of a collective design process versus you have to do it my way or it's not going to be okay.

And I'm just thinking, because you have the sop, because they actually have a document that they can go back and refer to, it must give them some confidence that they're not going to be that person that's always doing it wrong, always asking questions that if there's a question, a gap in what they think they need to do next, they can always go back to that document. And it also on the other side, like for your team that is collectively working with that person means that they're not going to ask three different people and get three different answers. Everybody on that team is going to go back to that document and say this is what it's supposed to look like. And so it's actually really kind.

It's kind in its clarity.

Yeah.

Because if you're clear about expectations and clear about work, it's very easy to do. And then also it's enabled me to do, to pay either by piece or by hour. So if you get really good at it and I'm paying per piece, it's a motivating. It's very hard to quantify how long does design take. And so if I'm paying someone in by the hour, they could take three hours to four hours to design one bear. And then where am I now with a profit margin? There's that part of, there's the emotional part of Making a bear for someone's clothes. But at the end of the day, it's still a business and you can spend eight hours designing one bear. So the sops and the layout and the standards keep everything easy and simple and consistent, regardless of who's doing it. So we maintain a cons, a level of consistency, and a level of quality that I expect myself to do. Everybody does.

Yeah.

It's so smart. It's. And I've seen your bears, of course, and you don't do any ugly bears. Although I'm sure sometimes you get the clothes and go, what the heck are we gonna do it?

That's when we say it doesn't matter. The clothes they send, they'll love it because of the memories. So that's when you have to just say, okay, those don't really go good together, but they'll go. It's called Patchwork bear.

Yeah, you do a great job. I want everyone who's listening today to think about this, because I know I. When I was talking with Bethany on the podcast the other day, she's a multimillion dollar business. She has a lot of people running around. And one of the things that she would tell you is the hardest thing, hardest part of her business is the people. And then you've just. You've got 12 people, 11, I guess, in yourself, running around. And one of the hardest things for you before you solved this problem was the people. Like, it was a barrier to growth for a handmade business. But even a business that isn't handmade, it's a barrier to growth. There comes a time when you can do all this yourself. And so the fact that you got ahead of this before you had a disaster on your hands, because we all hear about it, somebody's got a bunch of people running around and. And yet they're still there working till midnight, fixing what somebody's done, not the way they want it or doing stuff that nobody got to or whatever it is. And so this process you created, this will work for anybody, I think so.

I've taken this process now that we've been doing it, and I see how well it works. I've taken it to the next level of not just the process of having the bear made, it's how do I run the business? That was my next step. When I started working with you in the mastermind, that was the next level of what I needed to do to grow the business. I took the same format of segmenting the process and the flows and creating different phases of what do I do. Every day. What is this I do every day? Why don't I have time at the end of the day? And time blocking and writing down everything I do just religiously for a year I wrote down everything that I did. I think I told you this when I was doing it and it was mostly for me to get stuff done. But then it also is a wake up call. It's like you didn't really get all that. You didn't do everything you said you were going to do. So I it the same for. I think it would work for any business because you can. As long as you're very critical and open about what it is that you need to get done and what the outcome is. You can break it down into smaller parts. And once I did that, I could see those tasks and it's okay. What do I do? What can someone else do?

Yeah.

And I can start. And so that led me. Now I have this year, I hired a business manager and she's doing all those things that were on my plate that I have to do.

Yeah. Yeah. And it also helps you see what you can let go, what doesn't actually contribute to the outcome you want.

Yeah. And I understand that can be a hard thing. First, the control thing can be hard because it is your baby and you've done all this. It could be hard to let it go to other people. It could be hard to let go a lot of your admin tasks because you feel those are important. So that's the honest part of it that you have to decide what is it that isn't you really don't want to let go of and you need the time for. And what you can let go of. So you have the time to do that.

Yeah.

Let's talk about that for a minute. Because you have implemented a lot of this. Like it's in a really mature, very organized way, which is so good. And I want to. I have a question for you about that later. But what I really want everyone to understand is what doing this has made possible for you and for the business. Because now all of a sudden you're not. You're not in the business, you're working on the business, you're leader of the business. And so what has changed for you since you did all this?

So much has changed. And honestly, so much has stayed the same. Because it sounds really good when you say it, but the reality is I'll like still slip and fall into old habits because they die hard and I'll fall into the comfortable of. I'm just Gonna go make a bear. Because I know I could do that. And it feels productive when I should not be doing that anymore. I should be doing what's moving. But you know, so when you say it like, oh, now you've done all this and now you're the leader of the business. It's. That's honestly the struggle now. And just going, hey, what are you guys doing? I would like I could do that. I just really staying hyper focused and targeted and I'm goal, I'm goal oriented. So if I don't have a goal ahead of me, I'll just, I'll fall back and I'll just annoy everybody else. But doing this because it's the long game and I've been doing this for so long, it's hard to see how far I've come because it feels like that's how it's always been. But it hasn't. And so now I'm realizing I had the time now in the last two year and a half to create a new product. I haven't had a new product since I started the business, but I had the time and I had the space to, to think about it and to develop it and to launch it the way I wanted to launch it and promote it the way I want to promote because I had the time. So it enabled me to find another.

Way to grow your business in a way that is to get you the outcome. You want to be more profitable. To have a product that's less hands on, like less high touch, that's like a more scalable product. And you would never be able to do that if you were still sitting at a sewing machine feeling productive. Because we all do this. I still remember in my first business going back to the screen print room and, and printing T shirts just to give my brain a rest.

Yeah. Cause it feels it. There's. Sometimes it doesn't feel as productive when you're doing the mental work. It feels very productive when you're doing the physical work of making things because you could see what your work produced. When you close your laptop, you don't see what you did.

Yeah. And I have to say to you that the imperfectness of it is so true. Like my coaching call yesterday was one of those how I've slipped into some habits again and how I need to. I need to guide myself back to that without saying it's all a dumpster fire.

I think that's the hardest part. It was easier to make bears, to be honest.

Way easier. Way easier. But it's so darn good. One of the things that I think I. I like what you said is so true. It feels like it's always been this way, and there's always a new challenge. But what. One of the things that makes you the envy of all the people in the Mastermind is you have this work hard, really hard. Two months, rest for a month, and you've gotten over yourself to the point where you don't feel guilty. If you're actually not at your workshop, you're not going, oh, they're thinking, I'm doing nothing all day. Well, you know the conversation in our head. So can you tell everybody how you came up with that and how that feels for you to. Actually, I know you don't live it all the time, but you have lived it a lot.

And we're all jealous, make it sound nicer than it actually is. So it's more. It's a mental thing. So I'm not sitting on a beach for a whole month, and I'm working for two months. So I have a workflow. I think it started mostly because, like most of us, we are crazy during Christmas, and then you burn out and you take a lull in January, and then you ramp back up. So I recognize that I work really hard under a deadline, and I'm everyone. I'm the most productive in that last minute. So if I take how I am and understand, that's how I work. I've broken down the year into promote, sell. Actually, I take it back. It's sell produce. So I'll spend a whole month in selling something or have a sale, have a. Whatever promo that I'm trying to push and get a lot of sales. And then the next month will be production because those orders will come in and we have to make the Bears. And then the third month will be rest and reset. So now I'm not laying on a beach, but I'm dialing back almost like in the new year in January. And I'm rethinking the next steps, but it's. I'm allowing myself to be less physically in it and more mentally focused and planning. It's this time and space to plan ahead. Yeah, reflect. Because you can't learn from what you've done if you're just always going and you need the quiet time. It doesn't have to be a month. It could be like, oh, whatever you can to go back and realize what you did well, what you didn't do well, and what you want to do moving forward. But if you're Always hustling and always going. There's still growth, but there's, it's less intentional.

Yeah.

So I like the way, I like the pace of it. And don't get me wrong, I've. It's the same, I'll fall into like sell, sell every month and then I'll burn out and be like, oh, I'm not supposed to do that. But it's a good goal. It's a good goal to have and it's a good way to keep my mind focused on different things every month versus the slog of, oh, I have to do this. Oh, I have to make payroll now. I have to do that. Oh, we have like, it's a good way to mentally reset.

Yeah, yeah.

It gives you more focus, time. For sure.

It does. So it's not necessarily rest on the beach rest, it's rest from the noise.

Yeah.

You said something so smart last year, sometime last year and it was the. What was it? It was like the result you want is in the work.

The magic you're looking for is in the work you are avoiding.

Right. And so this month gives you that time to do that work and to.

Do the work you're avoiding half the time. The work you're avoiding takes by the time you're finished, when you actually sit down and do the work you're avoiding, you're like, oh, that wasn't so bad. Why didn't I do that before?

Because you have no energy.

You have no energy. You think you're going to get to it at the end of the day. At the end of the day you're too tired to get to it. And then tomorrow you start the cycle over and feel bad that you didn't do it the day before.

Yeah.

So the sort of break month, not necessarily the reset month, gives its scheduled time to get that stuff done.

Love it.

So can't avoid it.

Question for you and sorry, I'm really working you hard today, but I'm just thinking about all of this so much because I think this, what we're talking about today is the difference between building a business that is a job for you and building a business that will create long term wealth for you. I think it's the difference and I think it's where most people stumble and get stuck and can't get past that. And so why I think this is important, this question I'm going to ask you is that when I think about people who are hiring some help, they're at that point, whether they're a maker or not, A maker, it doesn't really matter. But they're hiring and they're hiring someone who can. They really want to create someone who can do all the things that they don't have time for anymore. So they're hiring someone who's really looking to be a multitasker like, or they're looking for them to be a multitasker and do a lot of different things. But what you talked about, which I think is so powerful and everybody should listen, is when Jen really took the time to break down what all the processes were and then think about what the who she wanted to hire for each of those tasks. That's when you found real success with this. So if you're that person, you're maybe doing a hundred thousand dollars a year you don't like. It's always chicken and the egg. I can't afford to hire someone. I can't afford not to hire someone. Would you still do that at that point in time? Like maybe hire two people and get some tasks done and have them be part time? Or would. How would you approach that now that you know what you know?

Now that I know what I know, I would have started off with those processes in the beginning. Like you, you live and learn. So I, and I, I would do it more often because it's not a, a one and done type SOP thing because we learn as we go and we learn. If I did that, say seven years ago, we'll revisit it. I would do it again and I would not hesitate to revisit it and adjust as I need to. But I think the difference is I probably would. The chicken and the egg of hiring don't have time to train somebody. I don't have time to. I could do it faster myself. You know that hole, I lived in that hole for a very long time and it was very long hours and not a lot of reward.

Yeah.

Slog if you fall behind because you have to train someone. If you train them in bite sized pieces because you broke your process down, it's not going to take that long to train them. If you have your SOPs, they can train alongside you and learn it faster than if they were trying to do the entire thing all at once.

Yeah.

So bite sized pieces help me when I work and bite sized pieces help the business grow in incremental steps because I'm teaching them in incremental steps. We're not trying to take a big chunk out of everything. We're doing it in little bite sized pieces. So I could hire if I Could hire. In the beginning, I could hire one person to work for me two hours a day, but that was two hours I didn't have to do. And they were doing productive work because I could train them to do that one task really well.

Yeah.

So I think what I'm hearing is manage your expectations on what is going to come off your plate as you hire people. And you can't just hand them a stack of papers and say, okay, go do it. Go fill these orders. And then the other thing I'm hearing is the investment will pay off. But don't expect the investment to be. Don't expect top production within two weeks.

No, not at all. Don't expect it within.

Yeah.

Adapt and provide when you need to. But I think, yeah, it's not quick. It's not easy. I think the biggest, the hardest part was for me, I had the, the luxury of the Oprah.

Yeah.

That got me. That's. That was my oh, my gosh moment. I have to do it now.

It was a real business moment.

And I could see myself back then just keep on going because I wouldn't. I didn't have time to get off the wheel. And when am I gonna do all these lists? When. Who's got time to do that? I have orders to get out. But if you just take three days and figure out three different processes that you can separate and you can delegate to someone else.

You.

You lost three days, but you probably saved how many weeks in the future?

Exactly. So good. And how many years ago was Oprah's Favorite Things?

2017. So when is that?

That's eight years ago.

Eight years ago. So, yeah, so that's when I really buckled down and started.

So you have had a lot of success. You're very successful. And I know you have some big goals, but what's your focus for this year? What are you focused on this year?

It was a wonky year, but this year I finally launched. I have this new. The new product I was telling you about. It's an iron on pattern so people can make their own memory bears. So I thought about what's the biggest expense in my business right now is labor. So if I made this pattern and if I can make it an innovative pattern that's different from other patterns, the same way I made the memory bear, which is different from other teddy bears. This is a completely different pattern. You don't cut it. You just iron it onto your clothes and you sew on the lines. It's super easy. So I'm, I'm happy developing this part of it and this other branch because now I have a new product, another baby.

So that's your focus for this year, is to get it launched. And we were talking before we started recording and I think people need to hear what you said because you said it's hard.

It's not. I thought, oh, I know what I'm doing. I've been in business so long, I'm just going to launch a brand new product.

This is.

Look at me now, two years later, finally got it. And it was not one part of that was easy.

No.

Oh, I'll just make a pattern. How hard could that be?

Hard. It can be really hard. You just forget how long everything takes and have to do it like four or five times before it's the final.

Version and adjust expectations every day. I felt like. And. And pick it up and move on when you are sick of it.

Yeah.

And that's just the development part. And then you gotta figure out how to market it.

That's where I am now. I don't know how to sell this thing now. I'm learning. I'm figuring it's a different. It's all new animal. When I started, I always said I would do this for as long as I was having fun and learning.

Yeah.

This whole new learning process of a new product. It's fun, it's exciting, it's a pain and it's hard, but it's fun. It's different type of fun.

Where should I send people? Because this is so helpful because I think about like you're so successful and so for people to hear like a real breakdown of how you got from kind of a hobby business to scaling a handmade business like this. But also that you sit there and say it's hard and it's not perfect. Like it's important for people to know that because in our world of social media, so many people pretend like it is perfect.

Hard to look perfect, but for sure neat.

So where should we send people to see you?

Where's website is the patchworkbear.com or you could also go to memorybear.com make it easier.

Yeah.

Very good. Thank you so much for all you shared. I love working with you.

You're so sweet. Thank you, Susan. So much knowledge out of your brain.

I can't wait to see what this year brings.

Thank you.

Yeah, we'll see you soon. Hey, if your sales are slower than.

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