Entrepreneur Gets Live Coached by Joe Apfelbaum

Welcome to another edition of the Breakthrough Maze. My name is Joe Apfelbaum, and today I am interviewing another amazing entrepreneur that's getting ready to rock and roll and throw the roof off her business. Are you ready?

Yes.

Go through the Breakthrough Maze today.

Hi, Joe.

Hey, so what's going on? Tell me what's going on in your life. Where would you like to have a breakthrough today?

So last time we talked, I had asked you about how to take my business to kind of the next step. I had started off doing some freelance recruiting work. And I had a couple clients, but I really wanted to get to the next step and bring on new clients and maybe even hire some potential people. So this week has been actually amazing. I was able to secure another client. So that's amazing news. And I— what was most helpful, I think, last week talking to you is just really simplifying things and talking about, okay, what is your goal? So I told you what my goal was, was to reach a certain amount per year net. And so I did the calculations and I can afford to bring on some help. So I actually have 3 interviews with 3 really awesome people that all have recruiting And HR experience. I'm really excited to talk to them and, you know, hopefully bring them on board and have them helping me and, you know, get things off the ground even further.

Awesome, awesome. So first of all, congratulations on closing a new client. You see, that's what the Breakthrough Maze is all about, to have breakthroughs and then to have the confidence to keep growing your business or your life or any area of your life. So that's really, really amazing. So now that your business is growing and you realize that, oh my gosh, I do have the ability to create some jobs and I can afford to do that within, within my goal, within the plan, the financial plan that I have. Now the question is, where are you stuck right now?

Um, well, actually, before I tell you where I'm stuck, um, I kind of want to be a little bit vulnerable right now and tell you about, um, where I kind of became unstuck after I lost After our last conversation. So in thinking about how to grow this business, I had to be really honest with myself and kind of address some self-doubt issues. And so that was like really, really helpful to, you know, have that honest conversation and see if I was kind of self-sabotaging or, you know, if I really at the end of the day really wanted this. And I came through that. And so I think that that's kind of a continual thing that you always have to challenge yourself and you always have to be honest and, you know, kind of reassess where you're at if you're like starting to have doubts or fear. Um, so to kind of answer your question of, you know, where am I stuck? That's definitely something that I'm always, you know, if that can kind of creep up on you. And then you have to like recognize it and then unstuck yourself.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think that's just, it's really helpful to have a mentor. You know, like these conversations are really helpful and just having support, you know, of your other business professionals and your family as well has really helped me in that area. I think my next challenge is going to be Having, you know, a quote employee and really making sure that they are adding value to the business. And so that's kind of my next challenge where I'm kind of navigating through that and not quite sure, you know, how to tackle that 100%.

Yeah, yeah. So you're not sure how to— so what I think I heard you say is that you're not sure how to tackle Having an employee now for the first time, you're not sure how to, like, what, what issues you're going to be having and what you need to set yourself up for success. Like, you don't even know where to begin there.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So I want to first say something about the fear thing. Fear stands for false evidence that appears real. So essentially the purpose of fear is to save us from dying, right? If there's a tiger behind you, It's okay to be scared, right? If there's a train coming at you, it's okay to be scared and take action without thinking. Just take action, get out of the way, right? The problem is that when there's a wolf— the problem is big bad wolf. The problem is when we're afraid that we're going to die, when really we're just afraid that we're going to look stupid.

Mm-hmm.

But the body doesn't know the difference between afraid that we're going to die or afraid that we're going to look stupid. To them, it's the same thing. Our brain has to differentiate with okay, let me take a moment and let me see. Am I going to die now if this happens or I'm just gonna look stupid? And if it's death, then don't do it. But if it's social death, right? If it's like oh, I'm gonna look stupid. I may not know what I'm doing. I may not look so smart, and I always want to be the smartest and da da da. Then you have to kind of challenge that ego and say okay, maybe I am okay making mistakes and have that mantra that failure is the road to success and really understand that. fear is really nothing. It's, it doesn't really exist. It's just this facade that we have to put on in order to protect ourselves. It's kind of like just smoke and mirrors. And one of the sayings that I came up with this year that helps me a lot is if you can distinguish it, you can extinguish it. That means if you could distinguish that it's a fear, you'll be able to extinguish the fears. If you could distinguish that it's a self-limiting belief, you can extinguish that belief and then create a new one. which will enable you in the future. So it's all about, and the reason why these conversations help speaking to a coach, speaking to a mentor, speaking to family and friends is because that helps you distinguish the fears. Because when the fears are in the back of your head, you're not analyzing them. They're just there and they're scary and they're real and they're there to protect you from death, but they're also there to protect you from success.

Absolutely.

So you have to realize that. And that's why they're always there. They're always there because you're not thinking about them. You're not strategizing around them and you don't have a plan. And when you create the plan, it just destroys the fear because Through clarity comes motivation. You cannot have motivation if you do not have clarity. You need to have clear goals, objectives, milestones, checkpoints. You know what you want to do. And with that goes the same answer. You're scared of hiring this employee. Potentially you're scared something will go wrong because you don't have clarity as to what you need to set yourself up for success. And when you hire someone, what's the first thing you need to do in order to make sure that you're successful with this person?

Well, you need to make sure that they're qualified and that you'll work well together. Um, and that the expectations are clear.

Um, so what does that look like? So knowing that they're qualified because you're a master recruiter, you know how to find qualified people, but how do you manage your expectations with a new employee that you just hired?

I think that I have to set very specific, clear goals and, um, make sure that we're on the same page of how to achieve those goals.

So give me a specific goal. Tell me, what is the goal? Did you write this down yet, by the way? Did you write the goal down for your employee?

Uh, no, I haven't.

Okay. All right. So how are you supposed to, how are you supposed to know what the goal is if you didn't write it down? How are they supposed to know? They're supposed to guess?

I've been brainstorming. Um, I'm interviewing them later today. So I was thinking that that would, I would do that next, but you're absolutely right. I need to write it down. Um, so my goal is, To— and also I kind of wanted to see their capabilities first too, because I might modify.

So what goes first? What goes first, finding somebody's capabilities or figuring out why they need those capabilities? Which one goes first?

I think it's a mixture. You know, depending on their background, they might have some capabilities that I didn't initially want to, or I wasn't thinking I would have them handle. But first things first, um, when I first thought I'm going to hire somebody, I wanted to have some help with screening candidates.

Excellent. So the job is clear. Once the job is clear, if you do not have a scorecard or a job description with a clear outcome and clear deliverables and very clear process goals and product goals, the likelihood of you succeeding is zero to none. You're not going to succeed. It's impossible because you're going to give them a task to do. They're not going to be sure why they're doing it or what they need to be doing. They're not going to be like, I just want to screen candidates. What does that mean? What does that look like? How many? What's the process of doing that? Is it all written down? What are specific tasks that they need to do? How do they need to report to you that it's done? What do they have permission to do? What do they not have permission to do? What's their level of authority? You know, the most important thing is having a project that has a beginning and an end. A by when, when, when you should start, when you should end, and what does done look like? What does success look like at the end? And if it's a very big project, how many checkpoints do they have in between to check in with you to see what's going on and tell you if they're moving along properly or not? And then what are the actual deliverables? What are the actionable items that they need to be doing each day, each hour, each minute in order to be able to get to the outcome? So if you can put this together and type it up and then review it during the interview, then you'll know if they have the capabilities of doing this. Because otherwise you're just going to be like, oh, maybe there are some more capabilities. Maybe they could do something else. And before you know it, they're doing something that you're not getting paid to do because they have that capability. And so they're randomly doing something like building your own personal brand or something else that's not going to help you make money. And before you know it, you're paying all these people money. to do things for you that are not helping you make money. And then you get stuck where most entrepreneurs get stuck in the world of SOS, shiny object syndrome. So, so in order for you to be successful, you need to be clear. You need to have clarity. You'll have the motivation. You'll get rid of the fear. Does that help?

Yes, absolutely.

Awesome. So, so where else do you feel like you're stuck right now?

Um, that's the biggest part right now.

Awesome. Right. So if you can get this done, what are you committing to do in order to make sure this is successful?

So I'm committing to basically creating a job description, um, and very clear guidelines of, um, the process, my goals, um, their tasks, uh, specific check-ins.

Um, And yeah, a due date for each thing.

Yeah.

That's super. By when? It's called a by when date. And also, you know, you, you may want to be able to do this for yourself as well, because let's say you had to replace yourself or different aspects of yourself, right? So there are different categories of things that you can only do and things that you can delegate out. So the things that you can only do, like maybe speaking to clients now or whatever it is, or sales or whatever, those are the things that you're going to handle. But Here are some other things that you're doing that are more administrative that you can hand out. That you can hand out maybe to people that are very not experienced, but they'll do a really great job for you because you really laid it out. So the things that you're doing, it's so important for you to take some time out of your day now while you still don't have a lot of clients and really document your whole role. Like every aspect of your role. And document the by when, the what you're doing, why you're doing it, what does done look like, a checklist. And you may— and it may look superfluous to you and be like, oh, why do I even need all this? First of all, you realize ways that you can make this better. So the better your process is, the better your product's going to be, the more profit you're going to have.

I'm so glad you mentioned that because, um, because I just got a new client, it's forced me to be more innovative and cut out extras. If it's not adding value to the process, it got cut immediately because I literally did not have the time to dedicate to Correct. So, um, I'm really glad you mentioned that because that's actually—

So everything that you're doing needs to be somehow documented. Again, you don't have to do everything at once, but the stuff that are most time-consuming, the stuff that you want to delegate and that you're still going to be doing for now, anything that you want to delegate needs to be documented, made more efficient, made obvious, like, and then hand— try to hand it off to somebody else and see what happens.

Okay.

Um, and that's going to help you succeed. Well, hopefully that you had some breakthroughs today.

I did. Thank you.

Awesome. And it looks like you have a commitment. So I look forward to speaking to you again next time on the Breakthrough Zone. Yes. Amazing job. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day.

Thank you, Joe. You're awesome. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.