MBA902 Better to Hire Early or Late?

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So you're either going to hire them early or late. Which one is better? This is what we're going to discuss in today's episode. This is really important because when you're hiring people, you really need to budget how much you can really afford. You need to figure out how much impact will this person make on your bottom line. And of course you want to make sure you can afford them. You don't want to hire somebody and not be able to pay them a few months down the road. Not only that, you want to make sure that you don't go under. You're not snowed in under where you hire so late, where things are slipping and you should have hired them a whole lot earlier. This is a tough question, a tough decision a lot of us have to make, especially at the start of our business, especially when we're starting to expand our business beyond ourself. I'm going to give you all my tips, all my experiences when it comes to hir people and specifically when to hire them. If you're in this position where you're trying to hire somebody right now, I feel for you. It's not easy, but after this episode, it'll get a little bit easier. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Let me say right off the bat that the question, should you hire early or late? Is a little bit of a tricky one, because early and late is really relative. A lot of people hire for positions just because they believe they need these positions filled, because they think that any company needs these positions filled, whether it's the head of sales, whether it's an HR manager, whether it's a copywriter, whatever it is. Some people just believe certain positions should be in every business. And that might be true in some businesses, but in a lot of businesses, I would say not especially an online business, you could pretty much run everything by yourself. Yes, you're not going to expand and you're not going to scale. But at the start, every online business I started, I did myself all alone or I was with somebody else. Like, I teamed up with Nicole, and we did everything at the start. Every business we've had, Whether it's the $100 MBA or webinar ninja, before we built out our team, we did every single thing ourself, every single role, every single position that we have today, either Nicole or I did those tasks. Now, you might be thinking, how is that even possible? I mean, you have a team of 25. Are you telling me that 25 people are doing the work of two people? Well, yes and no. We're able to get a lot more done quickly because we have more people. Now, what would normally take me three or four months to complete takes me maybe two weeks now because I got more hands, I got more people working at it. So I'm able to, you know, produce more and grow faster. But I'll give you a perfect example. With the $100 MBA, I scripted every single course. Every single video was shot by Nicole. Every video was edited by Nicole. I appeared and taught every single video. I put the website together. I did all the marketing, I did all the email. I set up the email, we answered all the customer support emails ourselves. I can Go on and on. But the point is that we did everything. But that's not sustainable. You can't do that year after year. We did that maybe for the first year, and then we made our first hire. Who was Cindy, who was our head of customer service? She took care of all of customer service for us. So she took that off our plate first, and so on and so forth. So you get the point. Now you might think, wow, Omar, you hired Cindy late. You should have gotten her to do all that stuff for that first year. Let me tell you why she was not a late hire. Or if she was a late hire, it was better to hire her late. Number one, when you're first getting started in your business, you have no idea if this thing is going to work or not. Let's be honest, I've been doing business for a very long time, and you do not know anything until you put things out in the market. You got to let the market decide if this is going to be a seller. Obviously, you're going to do all your due diligence. You're going to market, you're going to sell, you're going to do everything you can to make sure that your product is a great fit for the market. But if you have no customers, you have no revenue, and therefore you can't spend money to hire somebody. So at the start, you're going to have to just check it out, see if things are going to work. And you got to keep your expenses down as much as possible so you can recoup any losses. So if you do make any sales, you have a profit. Right? So. So that's number one, you don't know what you have yet. You gotta make sure that you're successful, that this could be a sustainable business, that you validate this business before you make any hire. This is just from my own experience. I would hate to have to hire somebody and then six months down, I can't pay them. I want them to be committed to me, so I gotta be committed to them. Right. Number two, and I think this is a huge point, it's always great to know the ins and outs of a position before you hire it. You have to have some sort of knowledge of what position you. You're hiring for. So when we hired Cindy, our first hire, I could tell her right off the top of my head, I didn't have to refer to a job description. We wrote a job description, of course, so she can know what the job is, but I wouldn't have to refer to it. I could just Tell her right off the top of my head, this is what the job is. How do I know? I do it every day, you know, so I know the job very well. I know what's required of her. I know what it's going to take for her to be successful. I got to say, hey, this is what success looks like in this job. And everybody loves that. When you're hiring somebody, you tell them this is how you win, and you give them exactly the instructions. It makes them feel so much better because they have a blueprint for success. They know when they're doing a good job. There's nothing worse than being hired for a position and you're just kind of lost, and you're just like, I don't know if I'm should be doing this or that. What does the company really need? What are the priorities? When you do know the position inside and out because you've done the job, it's going to be a whole lot easier for you to hire for it because you can be very descriptive about what the position is. Now, this is not going to work for every position. You know, I run a software company as well, Webinar Ninja. And when we hired our first developer, you know, my knowledge of code is limited. You know, I know a bit of php, HTML, css, but not enough to be able to, you know, quiz or challenge or tell them what their job is. I would have to refer to some other documentation that I actually got some help from some friends that run software companies and saying, hey, I'm looking for a developer. What should I look for? This is what I'm trying to build. And really just being very clear with the outcomes I want from the project. So I didn't do that position beforehand. But, you know, this is an exception. And it's also not my first business. That's why I recommend that when you build your first business, it's something you know very well. It's your skill, it's your passion, it's your strength. You know, with the $100 MBA, this was not my first business. But it's a good example of this. You know, I've built businesses in the past. I love teaching business. I love teaching. I taught for over 13 years. I have a Master's in education. So this is my bread and butter. I'm the expert at this. So building out a team around that is gonna be a little bit more comfortable for me. So as you can see by waiting a little bit until you can replace yourself or a part of yourself with somebody is really Helpful because you get to know the position very well, you know how to hand over the position. You can have enough time to document exactly what the position is and all the procedures involved. So when you hand over, it's easy. And you can document either by, you know, taking notes, or you can do video screenshots of the tasks you do every day, whether it's customer service or whether they're like admin tasks. But not only that, the opposite is disastrous if you hire too early. Now, if you hire somebody too early and there's not enough work on their plate, it's a recipe for disaster. Because they're bored, there's not enough for them to do, so they're going to get lazy. That's just human nature. You want to make sure they have a full load of work. You can't just give them the job and say, hey, we're figuring this position out as we go. In the meantime, how about you tweet some things out? No, that's not a job and you're wasting a lot of money, to be honest. Now you might be thinking, hey, let's ease them into it. That's okay. The position will grow with the company. These are all things you don't know for sure. That's why you should only hire when you know for sure. You don't know if the position is going to grow with the company, and you don't know if they're going to stick around because they might be so bored. They'll be like, hey, I'm looking for a new challenge. Let me get out of this position and find another job. Very likely, yes, people work to get a paycheck, but they also work to become a better person, become a professional, to learn, to grow, to expand themselves. If that's not happening, if they're not being pushed to grow because the workload is so little, they're going to look elsewhere, they're going to try to find something else to do. Also, if they don't have much to do and you hire them too early, they're not going to have enough time to really work with the team. That's why I get really nervous when one of the people that we've hired has a lull in their workload. This happens in a lot of positions, like a designer. Sometimes the designer works on a project, has done all the designs, has helped out with the designs, but. But now the, you know, the coders, the developers are all working on those designs, implementing them, but the designer's really pretty much done. So I get a Little bit nervous because they're not doing much and they're not working with teammates gets boring for them. And also people like working with other people. They want to feel like they're part of a team, like they're part of something important. If that lull lasts more than a few weeks, you should be nervous. And that's why I try to think ahead and make sure that they have work to do even when there's a lull. Maybe there's some other project they can work on. Maybe there's something in the future that we're going to be working on that they can work on now. So. So be mindful of that. People generally like to work and feel like they're part of a team. Even if they're not a social person. They just want to feel like they're contributing part of the team. But if they're not doing that, it's going to start to feel unfulfilling again. People work for more than just a paycheck. Another problem with hiring early is that they might not have enough work. And you might start evaluating your finances because maybe your profits are not where they should be. And you'll be like, hey, we need to cut some costs. And that's the first thing you're going to look at is payroll. Because payroll is usually a large expense and you're going to be looking at, hey, this person in this position is really not doing much and they're getting paid full time or they're getting paid part time and they're doing like three hours of work a week. And even though you love them, you might have to cut them all because you hired them too early and you just burnt that bridge. You have a great employee that you're going to have to let go. Good luck trying to get them back. A great teammate, a great hire is like gold. Somebody that works well with your team, works well with you, enjoys the work, has a great work ethic, that has a great attitude. These are all very, very important. And if you have that, you hold on to dear life. Now I'm not saying that you just let them do what they want. I'm just saying that you make sure that you compensate them properly and you give them stability. And if you hire early again, you're losing the stability piece. Now as you can tell, I'm speaking from the perspective of somebody who's bootstrapped all their businesses, that has self funded all their businesses. Now obviously if you got investment from outside, somebody threw $10 million at your business, you might be thinking Hey, I got money to spend. I can make these hires. That's okay. Maybe and maybe not. It's a lot easier to spend money that's not yours. And sometimes you make poor decisions because of that. And you make quick hires because you think again. You need these positions filled, so be careful. Even if you're funded, stay lean. Keep your profits up. Once your profits are at a point where you can make the next hire, do it, don't do the opposite. A lot of people hire before there are even profits. That's a quick way to go out of business. Trust me, you got to have enough profit to reinvest in your business.

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ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the World of work From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything ADP Always Designing for People all right, I want.

To wrap up with some practical exercises you can do right now. If you're looking to hire for a position, number one, put a job description together. Do not Google for a job description. I want you to write down what their responsibilities are. What is expected of them? What does this person look like they're looking to hire? You know, not physically, but what kind of experience would they have? What kind of attitude would they have? A Good way to break down this job description is who, what, how. Who is the person you're looking for? Describe the person you're looking for. What skills do they have? What experiences do they have? What is the job description and how. How will they be doing it? What tools will they be doing? Will they be using any kind of software, any kind of tools? Are they working remotely? Are they working with teams, things like that? You're going to dedicate 30 minutes to an hour to write this up. And if you're having a hard time writing this, maybe you don't need to hire this position. You don't need it bad enough. Or worse, you don't know what this position is. If you don't know, how will they know when they get hired? What are you going to tell them to do? What are you going to tell them what their job is? So be super clear who you're hiring, what they're going to do, how they're going to do it. Number two, take a look at your budget. How much can you afford for this position? Let's say, for example, you know, the average salary for this person is $50,000 a year. If you're not making $50,000 in profit, you know, revenue minus expenses for the year, you should really think about not hiring for this position unless you're getting funding from somewhere else. Can't afford it. Gotta make sure you can afford it, right? This is especially true if it's not a sales job where the position itself is going to bring in more sales. You know, a lot of people can justify, hey, I'm gonna get a salesperson. I'm gonna get a person that's gonna run my webinars. I'm gonna get somebody to do this, and because they're in this position, they're gonna generate more sales, and therefore I can afford their salary. I can see the logic in that. But if that's not the position you really need to evaluate if you can afford this position. I'm really stressing this because the stress of finances is horrible. It's going to make you hate your job. It's going to make you hate your business. So don't put yourself under that pressure. And lastly, the risk of hiring somebody late, where you know there's so much to do and you're a little bit behind, is a whole lot less. The risk of that is a whole lot less than hiring somebody early where you pay them and you really can't afford them, and they're twiddling their thumbs because there's not enough work and then you lose them and you can't get them back. So keep that in mind. Again, this is just my opinion from my own experiences in business. I found that if I hire a little bit late, it's always better than early. All right, thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Don't forget that we have a whole bunch of great guides for you to download. They're free and it'll help you start your business or improve your business. Whether it's a marketing guide or don't forget we have a whole bunch of free guides for you to download over at our website. These guides will help you build your business as well as grow your business. Tips on building a great business website. Tips on how to market your business. How to teach and present. You can find them all over at100mba.net guides that's it for me today. But before I go, I want to leave you with this Hiring a new position is a lot of work. Nicole and I are actually going through the process of hiring a new position right now and it's taking a lot of time in our schedule. The last two weeks we've been going through CVs or resumes, going through the interview process of all the different candidates, going through different rounds of interviews, making decisions, discussions with each other. So make sure you make time to hire. Just don't think it's going to happen by itself. You know, you're going to make sure that you schedule for it in your schedule because it's going to take a hit. You know, you're going to have to let go of something in the meantime while you're hiring for this position. So plan for it and allot the time for it. Alright, I'll check you in the next episode. Take care.

ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.