Ep. 04 Who should you hire first?

Hello and welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast. The podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing your work. My name is John Jonas and this is episode four. Who should you hire first? One of the big questions I always get asked is, John, who's the first person I should hire? What's the first role I should hire for? So this morning I was working with my 8 year old son. I asked him to clean up the living room and he stood there confused. I don't know what to do is what he said. And I was like, well, just start picking things up. I don't know what to pick up. Okay, start with that over there. Start with that set of toys. So then he started working on it. And I've seen lots of people who won't get started hiring someone because they don't know who to hire first. They're stuck in this analysis paralysis stage. So I have really good advice for who do you hire first when you go to hire someone in the Philippines? And this goes contrary to what most people will tell you. Most people will tell you to find something that you don't know how to do and outsource it. And I think that is terrible advice. So my advice is find something that you do know how to do and outsource that. So when you go to hire your first person, you have four different things in your business. Four different types of things that you do, things that you know how to do and that you're good at and that you like doing is box number one thing. Box number two is things that you know how to do that you're good at but you don't like doing. Box number three is things that you have an idea of how to do or what to do. You're not really sure about it. And box number four is things you have no idea how to do. So most people tell you, go to box number four and outsource those and stick with box number one. And to me that's bad advice. I am a programmer, I'm a good programmer and I like programming, but programming doesn't run a business. And so what most people's advice would be is to do programming. Well, you can't run a business like that. It doesn't work. If you're really good at social media management, social media marketing, like that's fine, but running a business doesn't run on social media marketing. So my advice is find something that you do know how to do and preferably from box number two, something that you don't like doing and hire someone to do that. And there's a bunch of reasons why. Number one, you know exactly who you're looking for. If you're hiring someone to do something, you know how to do, you know what skills they need, you know what to write in your job post, you know what to search for when you go to look at profiles. So find someone to do something you know how to do. Second, you know how to teach that person. So in the Philippines, training is really important. They thrive off of it. It's expected when they start a new job. In fact, they have a word for it. They call it on the job training. And it's part of their culture. If you hire someone and don't provide them anything, they are very concerned about letting you down and you create a situation where they're likely to disappear, which is the worst situation. Because you have spent your spe good effort recruiting someone, finding someone, getting them to work for you, and then you lose them because you don't provide them any training, that's bad. And it's really hard to run a business like that. So if you know what to do for this person you're hiring now, you know how to tell them what to do, you know how to teach them. Third, once they do the work, you have expectations of what the work looks like because you know how to do it. And so it's easy for you to give feedback, it's easy for you to see success in this. And then last, working through something with, with someone where you teach, they do work, you give feedback, they do work, you get it done is a really, really fulfilling and educational process. If you get it done, you, you get something done really well. You get that thing off of your plate and out of your mind basically forever because of their, because of how loyal the people in the Philippines are and gets you to accomplish something that is done. And now it's, now it's off of your plate, right? So my recommendation for the first person you should hire is someone to do something that you know how to do. Now, if that's not the thing that you want to do, that's fine. Like you want to hire someone to build your website and you have no idea how to do that, that's fine. But my recommendation is still to hire the other person first. Then once you've had the experience of working with someone in the Philippines, you understand the culture, you understand what to expect, you understand how communication works. Now it's acceptable to go off and hire someone to build a website for you. Something that you have no clue how to do. Just recognize when you hire that person to do something that you don't know how to do, you're going to increase your work time. Because now instead of getting something off of your plate, which you did with the first person, hopefully, and so now you're working fewer hours when you hire this person to do something you don't know how to do. You have to manage a process that you don't understand, because if you don't manage the process, it's not going to work. And now you're working more time doing something you don't really know what you're doing, and it's really not easy. And so you're dedicating less time to other things. And it's. It just. It messes with your brain when you try and do that. Not that you can't do it. It's just not the first thing you should outsource. So first thing you should outsource, hire someone to do something you know how to do something, preferably that you're good at and that you don't like. You know, if it's something that you do like to do, that's great, too. I hired a programmer early on and I was concerned about it. I really like programming and I didn't stop, but he augmented what I did, and it became apparent immediately, like, oh, yeah, he's better than I am at this. And over time, it bec, oh, yeah, I need another programmer and I need to step away because I need to do more marketing, I need to do more sales. And that's when my business really started to grow, was when I started outsourcing the things that I knew how to do. My name is John Jonas. Thanks for listening to the podcast. I'll see you in the next one.