It's Boring, But Will Make Any Business Explode In 2024

There's a lot of things you're doing that are not the highest and best use of your time.

You don't scale a business. You scale people. The people scale the business for you. And so we need an assistant that can help with those less valuable things.

We're going to start to identify where an employee could take some of those things off your plate. They're freeing up your time to work on the business, not in it. What are you going to do with that time? I hope you're going to make more money with it. Cost you four, you make 10. Don't get into analysis paralysis and not pull the trigger here when you know you need it.

Welcome, everyone, to the Main Street Business Podcast. This is Matt Sorenson, joined by the incredible Mark J. Kohler, and we're here to talk about taking your business to the next level.

It is, and it's about scaling, leveling up. And I love talking to so many clients about their first employee. It's a big, emotional mental hurdle to make that leap. Right.

Yeah. I think it's. It's that there's some financial risks to it.

Right.

But the only way you're going to scale, and this is one of the important things I love about scaling. You don't scale a business. You scale people. The people scale the business for you.

Ooh, good comment.

So we gotta start with employee number one. And this is sometimes the hardest one to crack. But this could also be one of the most integral persons in your business that can help you grow, that can helpfully develop themselves and be a core piece of your success. Yeah.

And I can't remember which book. Oh, my gosh. You. And I've quoted it before. But your first and most important hire is your assistant, personal assistant, executive assistant, whatever you want to call them. And they can wear multiple hats. And we're going to use that as our avatar today. That's going to be our example. You may say, well, I need an accountant under me, I need an attorney under me. I need a bookkeeper. I need.

I need a salesperson.

Yeah, no, you need an assistant first.

Yeah.

Because there's a lot of things you're doing that are not the highest and best use of your time.

Yeah. And that's what it comes down to is you need to focus on the highest and best use of your time. And a business owner, sometimes it's delivering the service, sometimes it's the sales. You know, there's a. Those are probably the two key functions, particularly for new businesses that are solopreneurs. And so we need an assistant that can help with those less valuable things. It could be the bookkeeping, it could be paying vendors, it could be your schedule, it could be client services or customer service. The type of follow up things, these administrative tasks that can just wear you down as a business owner. But once we can free you of those things, now you can go out and create more income to pay for that employee and also to put more money in your pocket.

Absolutely. Okay, now we got a lot to talk about. And some of you may go, well, that's not my first employee. Okay, fine. We're just using that as an example. We're going to use that example. We're going to go through all the steps from identifying to documenting their job description and crafting that and their role, their duties, how you onboard them. Technically, we're going to try to cover a lot here in a short amount of time. I would recommend you're going to engage with your tax advisor or your lawyer to button down some loose ends here. So take some notes. There's going to be a lot to do here. But with all things knowledge eliminates fear. And so if you can start learning about this, understanding what the steps are, we're not saying hire someone tomorrow, but start getting your head around it. And we hope to start that conversation now. And we're going to give you a lot to really think about. Really. This is something we talk about a lot.

Yeah. And I think your first hire is always the most, the scariest. But once you've done it, it's the same thing over and over. You're replicating the process. You're getting better at it.

You know what I think is harder? Firing your first employee.

That is, that is hard. Hiring can be fun, right? Yeah, firing is fun. Oh, thanks.

Great. I remember when I fired my first employee, I cried. I really did. He's like, it's okay.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. It was when I had my janitorial business in college. I worked for seven years running, working as a janitor and replacing myself, hiring more janitors. And I ultimately sold the business. Before I went to law school, I had 20 something employees, 25 active employees sold the business. But I remember the first guy I hired to help clean carpet, carpets and clean and this and that. And he was not working out. And when I had to fire him, it was the hardest thing. I still remember where I was sitting, what he looked like right now. He looked like Kid Rock. He looked like Kid Rock. He really did. He was ex con. But anyway, he was good, you know, that's the janitorial business for you. Yeah, that and food service. You know, I'm right in there.

Yeah. Since we're telling stories here, I remember finding this wasn't the first, but it's one of the early ones. This is when we had our title in escrow company. We had a company called IQ Title, investor quality title. Many of our ventures you may not know about. But this was interesting. And I was like holding on with this employee. She was so great. We recruited her. And this is 2007.

Her name started with Elle. Right? Yeah, yeah, I remember.

And the real estate market was in the crapper. And anyways, so I, like, was letting her go and she was like, why didn't you do this months ago? I've been waiting for you to do this. She's like, I'm just twiddling my thumbs down here. And she's like, I just been waiting to grab unemployment. And I was like, okay, so this

is much harder on me than you. I know.

I was like, stop being a wimp. Anyways, all right, let's get to the hiring side. Maybe we do a show about finding.

We do. Because we got to bring in Moneyball.

Yes. That is a great one.

Yeah. We gotta bring in money.

They're professionals.

Yeah.

Here's your ticket. You now play for the Tigers.

Yeah. Now let me tell you, all of you. Next week's show is the open forum show where we answer questions. Please get to our website, put in any questions in five or six different categories. That's mainstreetbusinesspodcast.com the week after. We should do that. Firing your first employee.

Yes.

There's some. There's some techniques. Yes.

Legal and ways to do it. And also just the decision making of when you need to get there, all the business decisions. Okay. All right.

Okay, I see. Okay. We've got three steps at the beginning. I'm going to call this pre posting. Before you even post your job description. This is going to eliminate a lot of your fear and concern. We'll talk about what you might pay per hour. I'm going to give some examples here that'll really blow your mind. But we're going to talk about pre posting. What the mistake I've made so many times over the years is I'm like, I need an employee. And I go straight to the job description. I might craft in a job description on Indeed. Or wherever. And there's so much to do before that that I've learned over the years. So we're gonna talk about before you even post a job description. And then once you find, then you start, we'll talk about interviewing for a minute or two. Gosh, we could do a whole show on interviewing candidates. Then we'll talk about onboarding and some of the onboarding and training, which is an ongoing process. Spoiler alert. But we'll hit that next. What do you think?

Yeah. Yep. Okay, sounds good.

Let me say the three, and then I'll kind of start the ball off rolling here, Matt. And then you. We go back and forth, so. Well, okay, if I may say so. All right, so there are three step for. In the process of making your post your job description is identify, document, craft. Now, what we're doing in identify is really starting to figure out what is this person going to do? And the first thing to do. And I like what Matt just said. What do you need to be doing? What's your highest and best use? Take out a piece of paper and write down all the tasks in your business. All the tasks you do. If you're a solopreneur, you're doing it. All right, so it's obvious. So what are all the things you're doing? Write down a list of all the core processes. Some of these might be taking Discover delivery calls, making sales calls, invoicing, scheduling, completing the service, delivering the service, packaging it, product delivery or service delivery, email organization, customer service. What are all these things that you do? Write them all down. And then we're going to start to identify where an employee could take some of those things off your plate. Yeah, yeah.

And I think I would kind of track the time it takes to do some of these things because. And just think of your day or a typical week in your business and start thinking, how is my time really divided? And I think for many of you, if you're particularly a service business, you might be the service itself. I don't care whether you're a landscaper or, you know, an accountant, a lawyer, a financial advisor, a contractor, whatever it may be, your time is a lot of can be in the service being provided. But where can I get things off of my plate? And I think looking at the time suck on you on things that you don't need to be doing. Stuff that's easily trainable to someone that's coming into your business cold. And I think you also want to think in phases too of this. I think as you're thinking of your business, I kind of like thinking of it in phases because you might be like, all right, what is really digestible by someone coming in Cold. That could really start working for me and be efficient in the first 90 days. What else can I start moving them into? Can I start getting them into sales later? And so think of this strategically of and don't overwhelm someone coming in new and be like, all right, I need you to do sales in the business. They're like, I don't even know what you do yet. Yeah, make them an assistant first. And maybe you find out this person's actually good at sales. They answer the phone and take customer service calls and they're great at sales. Then you start getting them into other things. I love it.

A few other thoughts on this because again, we could talk just about this standard operating procedure, employee documentation issue the whole time here. But I'll say as an example for if we're going to go with that executive assistant, personal assistant, you want them answering the phone, handling emails, probably invoicing. And what Matt and I have done over the years too is it is so easy to get someone that actually may understand some QuickBooks, especially if you look for an assistant from the accounting school or someone that has a little bit of accounting knowledge because they're a college student or something like that. So you might need and depending on your business, that might be an intense need for you that you need someone helping doing bookkeeping and invoicing and collections. Maybe it's just email and phone calls and discovery calls, customer service. So as you identify that list and it's going to be like five or six things, you want to be thinking, how much time are they going to take off my plate? I like that. Let's assume they're full time. So you're going to keep them busy full time. And I like them wearing multiple hats. So they're always busy. If you're paying them around 20 to $22 an hour and you could go as low as 16. I'll tell you, you get what you pay for. But if you're around 20 for an assistant, that's going to really, I think, help. That's going to cost you 25. You just need to know that with all workers, comp and sudafooda, fica, payroll services, blah, blah, blah. So it's going to cost you for a full time employee. Here it is around 4200amonth. Around 4 grand a month. That's what an assistant's going to cost you. You go, well, I can get a VA virtual assistant for X or I can get this for Y. All right, give it a shot.

Been there, done that, not against that some people, it works. I'm some people. I've. Many solopreneur clients have done that. Here's why I think the VA works for someone who wants to kind of stay in that mode of solopreneur. I think it's hard to scale your business as a solopreneur because a lot of times this first employee turns into the small business office manager of sorts and they can wear multiple hats, they can help with sales. When you hire that next employee and you're trying to build a company and a culture and everything, they train the next employee. You don't, you know, and it's. That's a little more difficult to do, I think with the va. Yeah.

Now it depends on your plans. Some of you are like, I only need one employee. I'm in the business and I want

to work from home and on the road. I want to travel. I want to be that type of entrepreneur versus I want to build a team and an organization.

Yeah. If you know that you're going to have a second, third, fourth or fifth employee and that's your vision, then getting them in house right away, building a culture and all that's going to be important. But again, for some of you that are an influencer type, selling product or service online and you're just overwhelmed, you're a one man, one woman show and that's all you want to be. A VA could work. They're going to be a subcontractor role. There'll be a 1099 type role and that's a little easier to manage financially. So there's pros and cons to both. We're just giving you this. Typically, I would say, well, nowadays it's so different. It could be either or, you know, you just need one employee and that's all you need. But if you're going to scale, plan on about four grand. So what you want to do at this juncture is, okay, you made your list of all the things you do, the lower hanging fruit that you're going to get off your plate now, think this is deep. If you're going to give them this list of five or six things and I like what Matt said, you're going to have kind of a, okay, that's going to take 40 hours for them to do. At the least they're going to free up 30 of your hours. You know, they're going to be inefficient at times, blah, blah, blah. You're going to get throw crap out of them. You're normally not doing that you want someone to do, but let's just say they take 30 hours off your plate. What are you going to do with that time? I hope you're going to make more money with it. You're going to build more per hour. If you're an individual, you're going to create more video, you're going to sell more product, you're going to do whatever. This is not hiring assistants. So you can go play 30 hours of golf. You maybe you're going to add five hours of golf in there, but you're going to. For that other 25 hours, you better be moving the needle because you've got to make four grand. So be thinking of, okay, if I have literally 25 more hours and I could close an extra sale a day or a week or whatever your price model is, you can say, oh, I could bring in 10 grand more. If I had literally 20 more hours a week, I bet you I could make $10,000 more a month. Well, there you go. Cost you four, you make 10, you're ahead six, and you get better lifestyle and you got a helper and you're not stressed out.

Yeah, yeah. And there's some intangible costs there. You know, like, let's again, just think of, like, are you in an office? Are you in a storefront? Do you have a place for that employee to work? Like, do you got to buy their computer now? You got to buy this. There's other equipment and material, you know, so there's a little bit of intangible and upfront cost that you might have in addition to that. So let's keep that into play. But that's the criteria. And I think let's understand where they can add value. Let's understand what's bogging you down, what's going to free you up so you can bring in more income, and. And that's the recipe there. And then honestly, that's what you're doing all the time on 2 and 3 and 4. You know, it's like, can I go sell more? Can I go bring in more customers? Can I go deliver more services? And how do I build the team to help me do that? Whether it's one employee, 10 or 100.

Yeah. And I'll just say quickly on the second and third employee, that's where the second employee might be, a sales employee. So now you can see direct impact on your bottom or your top line by hiring this brand. The other person you might hire might be a production person, because now I can produce more with the second or Third person. But right now it's executive assistant. They're freeing up your time to work on the business, not in it. Okay, you've kind of figured out I got to make at least four grand more. I've got a list of what they're going to do. We're not ready for the job description yet. Now you're going to sit down and start writing out what are they really going to do? You can't just say it. I want you to take out a piece of paper and go, what does a discovery call mean? What does customer service mean? Are they write down three to four steps. That and think ahead to the day. You hire them and they're sitting across the table from you. What are you going to tell them they're going to do? When you start to get more clear about that, you'll go, oh, there's a lot more steps involved than I thought. Or oh, that's kind of easy, what the hell. And it starts to get real. So write down the SOPs. Is what you're doing standard operating procedures. Standard operating procedures, what that person's gonna do under each one of those tasks. Now you've got a full sheet. Before it was five bullet points. Now you got a full sheet with five action items under each role hat. We've called them hatting forever. We love that.

Yeah. And I think that's gonna help you obviously for the job description. You know, now I know what those things are. Now I gotta go put that in the job description. So it's clear to someone said, that sounds like me. This sounds like a job I wanna do. That sound. But this is also going to carry over to, okay, now you got to start training later because then we're going to get to that.

Yeah, yeah. And the last thing on crafting the job description, you don't want it to read like a book. But you've. The nice thing is now you've done the homework, you know exactly what they're going to be doing. You're going to have an executive assistant role that's going to be doing the following tasks. Here's what I'm going to pay. La la la la la. Also put in any software that you might want them to know. Do they need to Know Word or PowerPoint or QuickBooks or whatever. Do you need an experience or education boundary? I want a four, I want a two year degree. I don't care, whatever. And so try to put in there what those intangibles are with this first employee. I don't, I want to Say, I probably wouldn't worry about benefits. You're not offering a 401k. You're not offering health care right now. Let's just get someone in the door, you know, and this could be a lot of times their first job or second job. And. Or maybe you've got a mom that's had children, they're back in school and she's coming back to the workplace. Or that could be. It could be male or female. I've had male assistants that have been great.

So, yeah, and I think. Let me hit benefits, though. I do think you want to be clear about that. Like, and this is something I think a lot of small business owners don't think about when they hire their first employee. Like, yeah, I'm not doing a 401k or health insurance or anything like that. I'm like, that's okay. That's fine. In a lot of smaller businesses, that. That's common. But do you have vacation pay? They're going to expect a vacation. Do you have sick pay at least? Do I get a week of vacation or a week of sick? Like, what is it at least at. Do you take off holidays or do you work holidays? Like, I know, solopreneur, you just did whatever the hell you wanted. But now you got to start creating a system and process and be careful. What you decide now is what you might be doing when you have 10 employees, because sometimes this carries over and so. And you could obviously add benefits, but it's really hard to take them away. Okay, so make sure you were thinking through that right now. But I'd at least maybe have like some, you know, whether it's a week or two of vacation, some sick pay. Maybe you're taking the major 10 or 11 holidays through the year. But at least be clear on that because that will come up in the interviews. I mean, employees, if you don't say that, they're going to want to know that. And so you might as well make those decisions now about what you want to do.

And I need to remember, many of you, if you're listening to this, have never hired an employee. So let me give you a couple things to think about. Is when we say they have a holiday off, you're paying them for the holiday, even though they're not there. And when you do vacation pay, they're accruing it. They can't start with you tomorrow and then take their first week of vacation. You may say for every 10 days you work, you accrue one day of vacation up to the two weeks or the one week or whatever you do. This is all leading up to an employee handbook, which we'll talk about here in a moment. Because you've got to have kind of a. Here's the guide, the rules, here's the bible, here's the guidebook of how you're going to work here. And you may. It's only one employee. Yeah, you set the wrong expectations, that first employee is going to be a nightmare. So call expectations right out of the gate.

Yeah, and I know some people like, yeah, but my first employee is my brother in law.

We really need this.

We really need this. Let's be clear on this now. Cause sometimes you can start getting taken advantage of on the other hand because they're like, well, I'm just gonna be off today. You know, it's like, well, let's really set the standard here. And I think some of you that have been solopreneurs too is you need to be kind of clear on a schedule too. Like what is the schedule? Are you following that? Cause you start hiring employees, they're gonna kind of do what you do. And if you come in whenever you want, leave whenever you want, they're gonna start doing the same. And now you're gonna have a train wreck in terms of company cultures. You' to scale the business. So I think one thing of hiring an employee is now when we start thinking of this, okay, how do I got to treat that employee? You're going to be the model for that. I hate to say it, but this can create some discipline and you can have some variety to this. But I do think that you need to have really clear expectations. And the best and tried and true method is they do what you do, they're going to follow you as the leader.

It's true, it's true. And I will add this though. This type of conversation is going to be taken in your interviews. You want to start talking about what do you want, you know, and like what's the schedule that works for you? What's it? Well, I've got a kid at home, or I've got, I'm married, I'm taking college classes, or I'm like this. Okay, okay. What Matt and I have always been is like, you tell us your schedule but then stick to it. So if you really want to work eight to five, that's cool, be here at eight. Oh, you find out real quick they can't do eight. Well then don't do eight. You can do nine to six. Do nine to six. Oh, and you need to Have Tuesdays off, but you're going to make it up here. Just do it. That's. Now, as you expand, you're going to have to have more uniformity with multiple employees. But at least this first one, you can just say, okay, whatever it is, I just need to be able to rely on it. And I do want to say too, you may say to the client, the employee, let's get proper expectations. I work from here to here because I work at night. I do things when you're not here. And so I work my ass off. So if I'm here at 10 to 2 and you're here 9 to 5, that doesn't mean I'm not putting in my time. So have that reality check. Because if they see that they could really get. They have some animosity.

Yeah. But I'll say this just out of reality, especially as you're starting, if you're not there and this is a brand new business, you have one employee, they're gonna be like, what am I doing here? Like, I'll be honest, I. So. So this little hump is gonna take some presence while the cat's away.

Yes.

And so, yeah, now as you build a team, you're gonna have more flexibility. There's a few people, there's. You get a culture going. You know, it's like, all right, I'm entrepreneur, I'm doing my thing. I'm going wherever I want. And you can do this however you want. I'm just giving advice here is. And maybe I'm overdoing it here, but this is. I've just seen a lot of entrepreneurs fail at this. And that. That first employee becomes a revolving door. They can't keep anyone. They're like, what the hell is this kind of business? You know, and. Or you might be like, hey, we're just gonna be a flexible type work environment. We're gonna be here for this. You can work from home, I'll work from home. And. And that might work. And I've seen that, that work too, particularly space. We see a lot of like, people in the real estate space more in that. In that mode.

So.

But think that through in your specific situation. And what's the expectation going to be for the employee? How you're going to set that as a culture for this employee? And what do you want in the future as you look at your business? Growing.

Love it all. Some of you that were thinking of this podcast with two tax lawyers, we'd be talking about W4s and, and payroll procedures. We're going to get there. But that's the easy part, and that's fast and easy really is these are the mistakes we've made over the years.

Hundreds of employees.

Oh my gosh. We have over 140 employees now in four organizations. And we've got a lot to. Because, and I like what Matt said. You really are managing people. You're not managing a business. The people run the business for you. If you do do it right. Okay, so you're having your interviews, you're trying to find the right person, you're setting expectations, you've got your SOPs, and you say, all right, this is the employee I'm going to hire. What do you want to give them? Let's, let's talk about that. I think that employee, you're not, you're not going to sign an employment contract with these people we want to at will thing, meaning they can quit anytime they want. You can fire them anytime you want. Do not sign an employment contract. Say, here's a letter of intent, offer letter.

It could be, you know, letter of understanding, whatever that says, hey, your start date's this. We're going to pay you that. Here's our holiday pay. You're gonna sign an employee handbook. And this is at will. I mean, that's the gist of it, but a lot of people want like a formal offer in writing, particularly as you get to higher level positions or someone's relocating, obviously, and you don't have to. This could be in an email, you know, but you do need to have this employee handbook next. I think this is critical because there's so much confusion. And honestly, it's gonna force you through a lot of these decisions, from schedule to holidays to am I doing sicker vacation? And it's going to force you to have to answer these questions.

Okay, we're going to have fun here for a minute too. We got to tell some stories. Okay, Employee handbook. Some of you are like, first, where do I get it? You're going to get it from a lawyer. You're going to download some options off the web. Don't think, you know, GBChat or whatever's going to do this. ChatGPT is going to do this for you. Some AI. You've got to really get to know this and understand it. You're going to have an attorney bless it. I hate to tell you, but once it's done, it's done. And what are some things you might have in it? Well, again, holiday pay, sick pay and all that. Are we gonna allow guns on the premises? Are we gonna do drug testing? Are we gonna allow for this, that and another.

Are you doing background checks? That has to be authorized.

One of the stories I had, I hired this ex IRS agent. Remember? Remember Robert?

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. And within a week, you started showing up about an hour late. He knew his stuff. He had worked at the irs. And we're like, you know, something weird with Robert. Two issues. Yeah. First, he was drunk, and we. We didn't want to fire him. We kind of liked him on the job. So I had. So then I had to call him in and go, hey, can you not drink before you come to work? Especially before 10am you might need some help. But anyway, that's what the IRS does to you.

Chews you up and spits you up. Turns you into an alcoholic.

But you know the one that was hard, He. Terrible hygiene. Remember that? He smelled so bad. And I had to call him in and how do you talk to a grown man? This guy's like 20 years older than me at the time. This is good. 10 years ago or more. And I was like, like, dude, the ladies, they kind of like you to shower a little bit more, come in with fresher clothes. Can you do this? And I was so nervous. He was going to be like, totally funny. He's like, oh, no, you're right. I could do better at that. I'm like, thank you. Anyway, but you've got to set the standards. And we've got employees that want to bring it. Have brought a gun to work and this and that, and they're in a state where it's at will or not at will. It's open carry and all this. Are you going to allow that? And you've got. Oh, there's so many things. Things. You've got a good story in you. I know you do.

No, I mean. I mean, these things come up, and I think this is where you got it. This is where you got to decide on the culture. Like, I think dress code is a common.

Oh, the dress code. You've had a lot of fun dress code conversations.

Yeah.

That skirt's a little short. That's a little this.

And I think in employee number one, it doesn't matter. But employee number two and three, it starts mattering because now those employees are looking at each other and what are they doing? And then they complain. With employee number one, you can just kind of go with the flow. Yeah. But also realize, again, if I want to scale and how does that person dress when they come to work? Employee number two and three are going to be affected by that.

I talk a couple other ones, too. I'm going to bring in an Ocean's eleven because remember when the guy that was doing the egg and whatever and he called Brad Pitt and he goes that sexy assistant thing, that's a little cliche. And then he turns around and goes, hey, honey, can you get me a latte?

So funny.

Anyway, I just want to say for. There's a lot of intangible things to think about too, of who is this person you're hiring? Are you going to be in close quarters? Is your spouse or significant other okay with this hire? And how is this relationship going to work out? And man, there's a lot. You know, you got to be thinking of this first employee outside of the box a little bit too, you know.

Yeah. And I think ideally this first employee is someone that's going to move into future roles with you too. I'll say that. And I think. And you want to. They're going to get to know a lot of stuff in the business. They're going to. You're going to expose them to a lot of stuff. What are we charging? They might be in your books. And knowing what you're making or not, you know, can we make payroll or not? I mean, honestly, you know, Mark and I, early business days, it's like, well, we're not taking a paycheck this month. You know, we've been through that. And you're struggling to hit payroll for an employee. And luckily we haven't had to worry about that for a decade. But it's just so. But this person starts being a confidant of what's happening and the realities of the business. And so choose wisely, I think is the general message here. We're trying to say, but. But you've. And I know we started. We want to take away the fear of this. I don't want to like you, be like scared about this, but just go in, eyes wide open, be prepared, choose the right person, take your time. I'll say that, too. And I think one of the things in interviews now I make, I'm like, I need three people. You have to bring me three people now to interview. Because sometimes you can fall in love with that first person. Then you get the second or third person by the third person. Like, dang. Now that I can compare them together. So glad I didn't take that first person. Because you were so desperate, you're so busy, you're so overwhelmed. You're like, I need that person.

And that's a great rule of thumb, interview three and you know, a pound of, what is it? Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Because on the back end it is so expensive to bring someone on and train them and then fire them a month later. Oh my gosh, the time that you waste with that. So just be very judicious but don't get into analysis paralysis and not pull the trigger here when you know you need it. So get in there, Go, go hard, go fast. Okay, now you're going to have them fill out a W4. You're going to give them an employee handbook. You're going to want to set up a payroll service and I would recommend you use, use a third party service that might charge you an extra dollar in whatever an hour, not an hour, but whatever the percentage rate is. We love adp. We got a link for ADP that we like and that you can set up the payroll, input it online. They get their paycheck, auto deposit, la la la. And so. And a lot of times these payroll companies may provide some ancillary benefits to your employees. It's like an employee leasing benefit. They might be able to help the employee find health care or some other things. But use a payroll service to process the payroll and engage that service before you onboard the client. Make sure you know, because they're going to ask when do I get paid? How do I get paid? And so you want to have that system already in place.

Yeah. Is that like the 1st and 15th? Is that every two weeks? There's a lot of variety to that too. And so you want to know that. Because they're going to ask that. Yeah, like that's what they're working for, for you to give them a paycheck.

And when you get, let's be, let's

be serious about that. You gotta take that serious.

Yeah. And when you get them onboarded with a payroll service, the payroll service should help with workers comp. They're gonna help with suda, fuda, fica, all those withholdings and that crap. It's hard enough to find the right employee, onboard them and train them and it's your first one and then try to tackle the accounting yourself. Freaking A. Don't DIY it. Get a company to help do that payroll piece. You can always bring it in house later, do the QuickBooks payroll add on. That's. But let a payroll service help you through the process. They're going to need your ein. You're going to need some new identification numbers with the state. If you do Have a tax advisor. Hopefully you do. Get over to markjkohler.com and look at our network. Get a tax advisor on board. They're going to. A tax advisor is going to help you get the right protocol in place for the payroll. Yeah, onboarding training. I put down some of the things that I like is you're going to have be meeting initially. Carve out the time to spend with them. It's so tempting and I've done it. Someone walks in and I'm like okay, here's what you do.

Bye.

You know, and they're like, what the hell? Take a good day or two, three hours a day for three days to really spend the time with them. Talk about your business, talk about your passion, your vision. And they don't. You want them to have more than a job. You want them to buy into what you're doing, tell them how great your product is, how great your service is, how important your customers are. Because if you, you want them to be a representative of you and so just throw them in a pile of crap and good luck, they're going to quit. And I've done that. I've been a terrible boss that way. And then you're going to have a meeting the end of week one. How's it going? Listen to them, make it a safe conversation for them to express what they don't like or do like. Then every two weeks you're going to have a follow up meeting. Then that 90 day review. Be really engaged. The more time you take on the front end to train and communicate, it's going to pay huge dividends on the back end.

Yeah, love it. All right, so we hit a couple number of things there. I think that the easy takeaway for particularly hiring employee number one is get a payroll service like adp. It's going to get a lot of this tax and legal stuff off of your plate. As we're talking about highest and best use of time, that is not your highest and best use of time. Even if you are a fricking accountant or cpa. Go charge a client for some tax advice. Go charge a client to do a tax return, not be doing your fricking payroll. So now do you want to hit this one thing because this comes up up quite a bit is we do see a lot of small business owners, entrepreneurs being like I just 1099 them. It's expensive. I gotta pay for workers comp, I gotta pay for the payroll.

You're not really an employee.

You know, I gotta pay into Medicare and Social Security form That's seven and a half percent. I could, that's coming off me as the employer and I could skip that if I just 1099 them. Okay. But then you can't dictate their work. You can't make them come in the office. You can't make them set to a schedule. If you really want an employee, you have to treat them like an employee for payroll and tax purposes, legal purposes as well. So be careful just throwing them a 1099. The IRS is all over that. There's a lot of legal liability to do that as well. So if you're dictating their schedule, they're coming to a place of work, they have to check in with you. They're a freaking employee. Don't, don't try the little easy way out. That's frankly not legal. And do the 1099. Yeah.

And I'll give you a couple other little story or nightmares you might have. One is another spoiler alert. When you have an employee and you work them more than 40 hours, they are entitled to time and a half. They also under the state laws have some break times. You got to respect that. And you can easily go to the Department of Labor for your state website. How to treat employees in my state, whatever. There's all sorts of good downloadable stuff

and there's exempt and non exempt. So you do have certain hourly if and if so if you're paying a higher rent. Now we talked about let's say the $20 an hour earlier that that we're obviously talking hourly. So if you're. They are going over, you'll have time and a half and that's by week by week, by the way. Yeah, but you could be paying someone. You're like, well no, I'm paying someone 80 grand. And you've got a higher level higher out of the gate which could be something that you could go salary right out of the gate. You don't have to worry about time and a half.

Yeah, right, right too. And another thing is this workers comp that you're going to hate paying so important because if you say, well I'm just going to 1099, I'm just going to subcontract them. Oh, they ran an errand for you to the store, got a car accident. Oh, they were walking up to the doorstep to your office, your home, slipped on some ice and fell and broke their arm. Any injury they have or cause, well under your direction at that day of being your employee, quote unquote. And you called him a subcontractor. Real quick, they're going to call themselves an employee. And if you didn't have that type of insurance, that was correct. Or you didn't treat them properly for pay, they can wreak havoc on you legally and you're going to lose. It is like strict liability. 3 times pay for overtime, they got hurt, you're going to pay out of pocket for medical. Could even get sued for personal liability. Workers comp is a shield. Workers comp is your best friend because if they get hurt or hurt anybody, you've got some protection. So just make sure you're following these steps because it really will help you out. We've had employees get hurt multiple times just with weird things. And you might need to get some general liability insurance because if they're going to be driving around a truck for you or a car or run errands for you, I would rather have them drive your car to the store and be under your auto policy than they're driving their own car to the store for you. If they're on a business errand. Right. Because they. Because if they're under your auto insurance driving your car to go to the store, you've got coverage for them. They're driving their own vehicle, they get in an accident. If anybody worth their weight, you know, personal injury lawyer is going to find out, oh, you were on the job. We're going to sue that business owner too.

Yeah. And I'll say this, I mean there's so much talk about insurance and we'll never be able to hit it. But just think of where your risks are. I think even that auto example, I mean we can could chew that up a lot because there might be a policy that says this would not include someone driving your car in a business venture because you should have a different rider to your policy.

Do you have commercial insurance yourself anyway?

Yeah. And so now we're so we. There's like. But I think at a bare minimum focus on workers comp. You have to have it. That is going to be your number one protection. If you are in more job site type thing, the contract or the delivery business or something, you need a definitional conversation on this. And that's where we're gonna get another insurance that you should look at.

Now with all that said, I want to reiterate what Matt said too. An assistant is awesome. It is going to help you scale. It is going to help you build your business even if it's a one person show. And that's all you envision. An executive assistant is going to set you free. It's a challenge, but there's a huge benefit on the backside. And you. And yeah, there's some mistakes could occur. And yeah, I'll tell you, you won't be perfect at it. You're going to make some mistakes. That's okay. So do your best. And I just want you to not be afraid of it or not pursue it. If this purpose of this podcast was not to dissuade you from this, but to do it. But just do it. Right.

Yeah. The last thing I'll say, are we in wrap up mode here?

I kind of.

I thought that was wrap up. Yeah, that was kind of the last thing I'll say is like, I think the excitement of your business is what you need to bring forward to this employee. When you bring them on and stay excited about it. Think of all the things you're gonna. To be able. Able to do together. And. And I think also sometimes it's hard recruiting as a small business, especially if you're like, you will be my first employee. But sell them on the vision of what you're trying to do and how you want them to be a part of it. And there's going to be growth opportunities. A lot of times you're going to be like, I don't have a 401k, I don't have health insurance. I don't have all these things. I don't have all these amenities. You're not going to be able to go, you know, to the Google Lounge and, you know, wherever and have all these ridiculous benefits or a gym membership or whatever, these things that bigger companies have. But you're like, but I'm growing this business and you can be part of it. And there's going to be opportunities for advancement. And I think that's your angle to go and get good people that can help you grow and scale your business. And I think the last thing. And we said we're going to do another show on firing. Let's just. Let's freaking do it. Is be willing to cut them loose if it's not working out. You got to pull the rip cord

sooner rather than later.

Yeah. And I think 90 days, don't let it get past that. I think 90 days is a good window at least. Least for me. Just my experience to know this person's gonna be great or not. Now you'll have. You're gonna have red flags in one day, frankly, you know, never.

An employee.

We had, oh, my gosh, this guy was like, okay, this guy worked in, like, biggest law firms. In the country. Resume was amazing at a master's degree, you know, high gpa. Obviously smart in the interview. Falls asleep at his desk. Day two, the guy was, like, asleep at his desk. And I'm. I don't care how smart you are. He obviously has something going on in his life. Let's cut the. Let's just call it. Yeah. Let's just, like, freaking call it.

Yeah. And you've got to be careful because people need to learn their job. But if you see attitude issues right away, narcolepsy, whatever, you've got to. And it's easy. You go right in and go, you know what? I blame yourself. It's me, not you.

Yeah.

Yeah. I wasn't ready for this. I don't know if this is a good fit. And I'm sorry. Sorry. And la, la, la. And you pay them. We're gonna come to this in the firing.

Yeah.

Okay. That's why I get there. There's some important steps you have to take financially.

That was just the connection there. We're gonna come back to that. We'll talk more about that. But please share this podcast Any of your solopreneur friends that you know that might be looking to hire your first employee, please share this podcast with them. And if you love it, please make sure you're subscribed. You're giving us a review, hopefully five stars, and we've earned it. And we're back next week with another amazing episode of the Main Street Business podcast.