[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Have you ever found yourself in a position where your current work load is driving you off the ledge? You have so much to do and every day you fill up your planner with a long list of to-do’s? Or how about you have SO much to do and you know it, but you find yourself doing the “easier” ones and keep pushing the harder or more time consuming ones off. Lastly what about that “I wish I could take a nap right now instead of doing this” feeling even though you know that that checklist of yours is NOT going to do itself.
All of the above I have experienced and truthfully way more often than I would like to admit. It wasn’t until I realized that this was really happening way too often for me to decide to take a step back, hire a business coach (who also became and still is an in incredible mentor in life), and figure my you know what out.
Some of the questions I asked myself were, “why don’t I want to work on this stuff? I used to love it!” and “Why am I procrastinating and thinking about taking a nap at 1 in the afternoon instead of working on marketing emails and client templates?”
My realization? I was burnt out and ready to level up. What do I mean you might ask? Well for 4 years straight I had been sending out over 100 marketing emails a week, scheduling and working on hundreds of advertiser campaigns on my large Instagram channels, and SFS’sing 30 plus times a day (if you don’t know what that means read this blog about it). Literally every single day I was doing this…EVEN on vacation. I was burnt out MAJOR! I still LOVED my work but realized that I was at a point where I was ready to level up and move forward to working one on one with clients to help build their Instagram presence organically and help them turn a profit from their following.
How could I build this side of my business while still making money from phase one of Berman Media PD? It became glaringly obvious. I needed to hire someone. I was SO scared! I had to accept in this moment that I was going to have to take a few steps back, make a little bit less money for the time being while I grew phase two, and relinquish the dying need to be in control of every little thing.
So I did the dang thing. I went out and found someone (after lots and lots of asking around/interviews/research etc). The girl I chose ended up being the perfect fit for so many reasons. Not only did she teach me a TON about the business growth concept, but she also showed me that all my hard work for the last 4 years was not going to be in vain. I truly thank God every single day for her and since she has started working for me I have gone on a WORK FREE vacation and ummm AMAZING!
I want to share with you 3 big things that I learned in the process of hiring my very first employee. I hope that for any of you facing this in the coming months or year you can take a piece of this with you on that journey.
It is ok to hire someone who be “smarter” than you!
In the searching for someone process I was really taken back by the level of Instagram knowledge that many of them ALREADY had. I was over here just thinking that I was going to have to teach them everything! NOPE! With the girl I hired specifically I was SO happy to find out that she actually had a ton of background knowledge of the platform. She also came from a marketing and graphic design background. Due to this she came in with a very good understanding of advertising, how to do marketing emails to potential clients and what I like to call the bulldog mentality when it came to generating business. That is something you just cant teach!
What she also came with was what her and I call the “secret sauce.” What is it you might ask? She had REALLY big ideas for how to level UP the kinds of clients that we were working with and how to take our already 2 million follower page to the 3 million and beyond range. After years of working for a company that sold 14k a month branding packages she had a really good idea of how to weed out the crappy clients and chase after the bigger ones. Half of what she was describing to me on the phone and in person I barely had ever heard of.
Invest the time in proper training. Rushing it never wins!
When it comes to training I went into overdrive on this one. We had an initial start date or “takeover” date as we liked to call it, but that quickly got changed as we realized we had more to cover before that happened. While we were initially upset that we had to push back the start date, I couldn’t be happier about having done it!
The training process for this “takeover” included WAY more than I thought it would. At first I had her write an outline of questions she had about the work she was going to do. Why? It gave me an outline on how to attack coaching her. We ended up breaking it all down into 4 stages that involved topics like “day to day routine outline” and “how to create content” and a ton more.
In addition to countless outlines that I created for her, we also did bi-weekly zoom calls that allowed us to go over the outline bullet point by bullet point to allow ourselves the opportunity to talk through some questions she may have about each one of the steps.
The last part of our training involved screen share videos. TONS and tons of them. I honestly probably did about 30 of them spanning from 1-5 min long on various topics that were easier “shown” than written about and also allowed her to be able to go back and review them later on if she was stumped by something.
My takeaway from this? Invest the time in the outlines, the calls and the videos. I am so glad that I did because when takeover day came she was SO prepared and within the first week I knew she was going to crush it. As a self-created business owner who was trusting my 4 year old baby with someone else, there was NO better feeling than knowing it was going to not only continue to do well, but thrive!
Positive praise goes a really long way
When it comes to hiring someone there is one thing that surpasses all others in importance. In my case it was ensuring that she felt incredibly valued. Why? Because she is of HUGE value. It’s almost like having a mini me only even better because she came armed with ideas above and beyond where I had been on the thought train.
Did I mention that taking on a new position is stressful no matter who you are or how much experience you have? It can be overwhelming and therefore it is up to us (the ones who hired them) to make sure they feel like they are doing well. Think about it this way.. you didn’t put all that effort into training them to just see them leave because they feel over worked and undervalued.
Make sure they know their value to you. Praise goes a really long way especially when what they are undertaking is no small feat. Tell them how grateful you are for them daily. It doesn’t take long!
Related article: 2 Reasons Why My “Tribe” Of Ladies Changed My Business
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