MBA1489 Hiring a Website Manager

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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar AR where we get to the bottom line of business every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn should you or should you not hire a website manager and if so, how do you do that? How do you find them, how do you source them and how do you make sure that you're paying the right rate even if you're a techie, Even if you enjoy the behind the scenes of your website and it might be a good idea for you to hire a website manager. I'll explain the pros and the cons and what to look for when you're hiring somebody to take care of your website, your most precious asset in an online business, it's where you do business. So much to cover. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I can't stress this enough. If you are technically sound, if you know your way around your website, if you built your website from scratch, you may still want to consider hiring a website manager. What is a website manager? Well, it's somebody that's going to manage Your website. Pretty obvious, right? But no, let's talk about what exactly that means. That means anytime you need a change to your website, it could be as little as updating a blog post to creating a whole new landing page or page on your website, or adding images or media, or building out a whole funnel for a new product. Every time you make some sort of change in your business or improvement or, or addition or new product, this is going to require you to update your website. Now, most of us just roll up our sleeves and do it ourself. But if you ever have done this before, have you ever timed yourself, you're spending hours on this, a small tweak. And most of us do spend that much time because it's our baby and we like to play around and fiddle. But when somebody's dedicated to do this for you, they go right in. They're very surgical, they get it done and they're out. And they save you time and in the long run, money. But a website manager does more than that. They make sure that all your security is up to date. Your SSL certificates, your domain is renewed properly, your hosting is up to snuff. You're not, you know, slowing down visitors. You have the right hosting and the right bandwidth. They'll make sure all your integrations are working, whether you integrate with your CRM or your payment processor. They're basically tech support for your website, which is again, one of your biggest assets in your business. Now for most people, they're like, this is a no brainer if you don't want to deal with the tech. But some of us like the tech. I mean, let's put it this way. I am a founder of a tech company. I built every single website for all my businesses myself. I manage them all myself. But I've come to the realization recently I need to hire a website manager. And we have. Because it's time I'm spending that I should not be spending. As the leader of the business, I shouldn't be fiddling with the website. Really. It's a lot of fun and everything like that and it's a good way to kill a few hours. But my time is better spent, you know, helping the team, making decisions, making the right hire, communicating the vision, driving the team forward. I'm the leader, I have to lead. And if I'm spending time fiddling with the website, that's not the best use of time. And if I'm honest with myself, I spend a lot of hours frustrated, trying to get something done because I forgot how it all works or I have to look up, you know, something on like stack overflow to learn a little bit about how to adjust something. I might have forgot how to do something in CSS or HTML. You get the point. There's also a lot of time spent, you know, updating your security patches and SSL and domains and all that kind of stuff. And you're hosting, so you're going to save a lot of time. Now how do you find one? Well, the best thing you can do is get a recommendation. So ask any of your friends and family that has somebody that does their website maintenance that takes care of their website. You can post it on social and crowdsource and run some interviews interviewing these people that are recommended to you. A recommendation is always best because they can tell you a little bit more about working with them and, and not just the work they do. You know, when you go to somebody's website or read their CV or resume, you kind of get an idea of their experience, but not how it actually is to work with them, to communicate with them. And when you have a reference or recommendation, you can speak to somebody and ask them directly, hey, how is it working with this person? Is it easy to contact them? Are they reliable, all that kind of stuff. That's how we found our website manager. But what if you don't know anybody and you don't have any recommendations? Well, here's my recommendation for that.

Go on.

Upwork. Upwork is one of the best sites to find freelance part time, full time professionals that can help you make a hire, especially in the tech industry. Create a detailed job post, exactly what you're looking for, how many hours, what platform are you on? WordPress? Squarespace? Weebly, what kind of work you want them to do? Maybe you're going to update the blog posts, but you want them to update images or add pages or create pages for you. Write exactly what you want them to do on a regular basis. Also the soft skills, what do you need? Somebody who's a clear communicator, written in verbal, is willing to meet with you maybe once every week or once every two weeks, that's up to you. Is able to use maybe some of your project management tools like Trello or Basecamp or Slack. Pull all that information and post the job. Okay, now what you want to do is you want to look for people and you can actually invite people on Upwork to a job post. And what do you want to do is search for people that have experience. Trust me on this, you want to find somebody that has a Wealth of experience of doing exactly what you're looking for. I like to look for people in this kind of position have been doing it for at least five years. I know that sounds like a long time, but you're going to get the cream of the crop. And it may be a little bit more expensive than somebody who has experience, let's say three years, but it's going to be worth it. Why? Because when it comes to hiring somebody in the tech industry, you save money by paying more. Let me explain. If I hire somebody who's a senior website manager who's been doing it for 10 years, okay, with other clients, knows their way around WordPress back and forth and my where my site is WordPress and I ask them to work for me, let's say five hours a week, okay? This is just an example. Because they're so skilled, they can get more done in five hours at a rate of $50 an hour. So I'll be spending $250 a week, right. Versus hiring somebody for $30 an hour. Sounds like a bargain. Right? I'm going to need to have them do work for 10 hours a week, the same amount of work that one person will only need five hours for because they're not senior. It's going to take them 10 hours to figure things out and fix bugs and figure out what's going wrong. And you end up spending $300 a week instead of 250. See what I'm saying here? This is out of experience. I'm telling you. You get what you pay for when it comes to this type of talent. And you're gonna save money in the long run by getting somebody who's more efficient and can solve and fix problems and get work done quicker, more efficiently and cleaner so they don't have to go back and fix things later. I would emphasize you hire somebody that has very good communication skills, especially because your website's so high. You want to make sure that you can communicate with them quickly. They'll understand you and be able to implement and explain their side of the story as well, like their side of things, what they need to do, or their recommendations for your website. They're going to pay a premium for that, but it's worth it. It's going to save you time, it's going to save you money. And the way to find out if they're a good communicator, read the testimonials, read the reviews on Upwork. You'll see that previous employers will say, great communication skills, loved working with them. The other thing you want to look for is attitude. You want somebody who has got a upbeat, positive attitude. They're going to be a part of your business, a part of your brand. They're going to be working on a lot of front end stuff, meaning things that the public will see. They need to have a can do attitude. Once you find a few candidates, you know you want to invite them to apply to your job posts inside of Upwork. You can actually run interviews and chat with them. And my recommendation? Trial them out first, say, hey, we're going to try four weeks, see how it goes. If everything feels mutually good, like we both want to work with each other in the future, we can continue to do it indefinitely. And in those four weeks give them a project, give them something to work on every week so you can actually see and measure their work and meet with them regularly and do something where you have to communicate with each other so you can see their communication skills. Whether it's working on a project or working out a problem or updating pages on your site. This is one of the best hires you can make to save you time, but more importantly save you headaches. A website can get daunting. It can get complicated. It can cause some headaches. So get somebody to relieve those headaches for you.

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You might have noticed in today's lesson that you don't really need to hire somebody full time for this job unless you're constantly making updates and your business is booming. You're creating landing pages and split tests on a daily basis for most businesses they need a part time hire for this. Somebody that they can reach at any time for, you know, sort of an emergency or a quick fix. But just a piece of advice. Most of the best talent need a retainer. It doesn't matter what the retainer is, but they need to know for sure that you're going to commit to X amount of hours and be paid an X amount of hours every week. So even if you start small with five hours a week or 10 hours a week, it's enough for them to feel like you're committed and therefore they can commit. That's fair enough. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love it here, hit subscribe right now. It's absolutely free and we're on every single platform. Apple Podcast, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Overcast, Himalaya. Hit that button right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you like what you hear today and you're like, I would love to make this higher but I just don't have the budget, that's okay. You can continue to do what you're doing now. You can manage your own website. But when do you think you will make an extra, let's say $1,000 a month to pay for a hire like this? Just to get started? Five hours a week? Is it next month? Are you projected to grow by $1,000 extra a month in six months? When is it? Mark it in your calendar. Remind yourself so that you can make the hire when you are ready financially. Prioritize it because it's going to save you time and allow you to focus on more things that will help to grow your business. See it as an investment, not another to do item on your to do list. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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