Sustainable Support: The Right Way to Make Your First Hire Part 1

Summary In part one of this episode of the Catapult Effect podcast, host Katie Wrigley speaks with Kate Lenihan, founder of Rise Hire Consulting, about how overwhelmed solopreneurs can find and hire the right virtual assistant. They discuss why the first VA hire often goes wrong, the importance of thorough onboarding, and how to evaluate whether your VA is truly moving the needle in your business. Kate also introduces the Eisenhower Matrix as a tool to help entrepreneurs prioritize tasks and stop treating everything as urgent.

Takeaways

• Finding the right VA is crucial for entrepreneurs — skill set AND values alignment matter.
• Most first-time hires fail because entrepreneurs look for a "unicorn" instead of hiring for their most urgent need.
• Onboarding is the most important and most overlooked part of the hiring process.
• Deep, intentional interview questions and test tasks help uncover the right candidate.
• Regularly evaluate whether your VA is actually moving the needle in your business.
• Create a "future pace list" of tasks to delegate as the relationship grows.
• Not everything is urgent or important — use the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize wisely.
• Taking a pause before making decisions leads to better outcomes.

Where to find Kate

Rise to Hire Website
Rise to Hire on Instagram

Resources

• Website
• Free Mini Cogno Mondays
• Learn more about Cognomovement
• Try Cognomovement for yourself!
• Book a call with Katie

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:00)

Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. I am your host Katie Wrigley and as you already know season four is dedicated to entrepreneurs and anything that we can do to make that life easier of an entrepreneur. If you are not an entrepreneur or business owner you may not realize there is a reason that they say it is not for the faint of heart and there's a lot of those reasons but today I am bringing in an expert that is here to make your life easier in your day-to-day work, Kate Lenihan So stay tuned.

That is coming up next.

Thank you for joining me today. Kate Lenihan is a founder of Rise Hire Consulting, a hiring and delegation expert who helps overwhelmed solopreneurs step into their CEO role by hiring, training, and systemizing their first virtual assistant. With over a decade of experience in online marketing, she has worked with hundreds of small business owners, including roles with Amy Porterfield, Susan B. Zimmerman, and leading virtual staffing agency. Her 90-day program, the Hire to Rise Roadmap,

transformed overwork entrepreneurs into fully supported leaders with a trained VA, streamlined systems, and 10 plus hours back each week to focus on growth. Welcome to the Catapult Effect podcast, Kate. I'm so excited to have you here today.

Kate Lenihan (01:42)

Thank you so much, Katie. I'm excited to be here and have this conversation.

Katie Wrigley (01:45)

Me too getting a VA the right VA is so important in the life of an entrepreneur and so many people prevent themselves from getting that support That they need but before we go into that Kate I would love to know a little bit about your background and what led you to want to run the rise higher consulting agency and support entrepreneurs the way that you do

Kate Lenihan (02:08)

Yeah, it's such a great question. Thank you. So my biggest passion, I, so I'm going to start out right out of the gate is when I do my matching, I typically use personality assessments. And because I'm such a big fan of personality assessments, I myself in an Enneagram type two, which is colloquially titled the supporter or the helper. And one of my biggest joys is seeing

people who are pursuing their passion, whether they're a coach, a wellness expert, a real estate agent, whoever they are, really stepping into their genius or stepping back into their genius and delegating everything else that doesn't bring them joy. And when we create space, when we get together, when we create space for that and they get their time back, they get their creativity back and they're able to trust someone,

and build a long-term relationship with that person to help build and scale their business, the sky's the limit. And that's really why you start your business. You start your business because you're passionate about this thing. And then here comes all this other stuff that you're like, ⁓ I have to do the accounting and I have to do the social media and I have to do the calendaring and all the other things that maybe you're not passionate about. And that's where hiring the right person comes in.

Katie Wrigley (03:24)

Yes, and you're so right. We have to wear all the hats when we're an entrepreneur. the marketer, we're the social media expert, we're the accountant, we're the bookkeeper, we're the person providing the service or the product, we are doing the customer support, we are every hat in there. And it gets really overwhelming sometimes. So how important is it that you find the right match in a VA, Kate?

Kate Lenihan (03:49)

It's the most important thing in finding the match. I will say, right? And I've been in, I mean, when I worked with Amy Porterfield, when I still do work with and work alongside Sue Zimmerman and many of the VAs that I matched back when I worked for the agency are still with the clients that they are matched with. And it is because when you take stock of not only what you need help with in terms of tasks, projects, deliverables,

Katie Wrigley (03:52)

Yeah.

Kate Lenihan (04:17)

but you also take stock of who is going to fit in your business with core values, with personality traits, with how they show up, how they communicate. All of those things really tell the tale of how successful the long-term relationship is going to be. And that's really, if you're going to take the time and dedicate the energy and commit the resources to onboarding somebody and training them on your business, your voice, your customers.

all of the things in your business, you want it to be a long-term relationship because you don't want to have to repeat that process. So finding not only the person who has the skill set and who can do the thing, but the person who is going to treat your business as if it's their own from a character and caretaking standpoint too is so is all is all there is to it.

Katie Wrigley (05:11)

love the way you said that treating your business as if it's their own. Like, yes, you want to have that level of buy-in there. And I know you're more of a small business focus, but a stat that I heard in corporate popped into my head and it really speaks to what you were just saying, the importance of finding the right person, because the bigger you get, the more expensive it is. I remember them saying, it's hundred grand every time we have attrition. I'm like, what?

Like what, how that what? Like that is how much it's costing. And the company that I was working for at the time had twice the attrition rate as the rest of the industry for a lot of reasons I'm not going to go into. I don't want to bad mouth anybody. But I learned a lot there, but that was one of the like blew my mind. And we don't tend to really look at those expenses when we're in a small business and think, okay, like I just.

Kate Lenihan (05:42)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (06:06)

basically just wasted all that money with the wrong hire. So what is it about the first time someone goes to hire someone? Why does that usually not work out? And I just went through this myself. So I want to add a chime in with whatever you say is the expert with what my experience had been. Because it was someone who was absolutely wonderful, adored her, really wanted to keep working with her, but it wasn't a good match. So what is it that makes entrepreneurs kind of pick the wrong person out of the gate?

Kate Lenihan (06:28)

⁓

I mean, this is so variable and really on a case by case basis, like to really dissect it, you have to dive into each part of the hiring process. And I think so when I work with clients, get really the very first thing we get really clear on is kind of a brain dump of every task they're doing inside of their business. And we, we really audit those tasks to

be what do love to do and what do you hate to do and what lights you up? What are the things that you're like, this is what I want to spend all of my time on? Because that's your clue in terms of where you need to be spending your time and energy and talents. When when entrepreneurs hire though, or solopreneurs hire for the first time, a lot of times they're looking for a unicorn.

And when I say unicorn, mean, they want somebody who's going to be able to manage their tech funnel and also post on social media and also manage their inbox. And the fact of the matter is, is that's probably three different people. And so getting really specific and clear on the most imminent needs. So maybe, your inbox is you're drowning in your inbox. And so that's going to be the most urgent thing we want to outsource because

That's where leads come in. That's where people try to contact you. That's where people are like, I didn't get the lead magnet I opted in for. You want to really be able to nurture people there. so getting clear on the specific role first is one of the falter points, if you will, to where people kind of don't mess up on their hiring process. I would say the other kind of

red flags in the process I see from a high level is in the interview not going deep enough with questions or getting enough buy-in, kind of baking in test questions in the interview questions you ask to really get a clear understanding. It's with AI and with everything else, it's kind of easy to fudge over on an interview if it's surface level.

But when we go deep and we really ask thoughtful and intentional questions, it can uncover a lot. And then finally, the other piece of this that I, it is a hill I will die on, is the onboarding portion of hiring is so wildly important because so often what I see is solopreneurs will be like, I hired my first VA, my business is gonna be fixed. And I'm always like, let's,

Katie Wrigley (09:15)

Yeah.

Kate Lenihan (09:17)

the breaks a little bit because now, you know, and then two weeks later they're like, well, she didn't deliver on what I thought she was going to deliver on. And the question then really becomes, well, when you delegated it, how much did you share? Did you share why? Did you share what success looks like? Did you share what, you know, the goal of the deliverable? Who's it going to? Why is it important? Right? The more information a new person has about your business, the more buy-in you get from them, the more

commitment you get from them and the better they're able to say, ⁓ okay, so this is a really integral process of the client experience. And so I want to make sure that this client feels seen and validated so that then Katie looks like the hero in the business and looks like the expert that she is. really giving that clear direction, clear communication, and it is a time and energy investment upfront when you're onboarding someone to give them all of this information.

but I promise you it will pay dividends.

Katie Wrigley (10:21)

100%. I love that you said that. And as I reflect back on the hiring process with the VA that I unfortunately had to let go and again, nothing against her. if I was she where she shines is podcast editing. She's absolutely amazing at it. She has a knack of like zooming in on the most important pieces. Like she's so good at it, but I wasn't doing that much. I wasn't doing enough podcasting to have her continue to do that. And much to your point.

Kate Lenihan (10:40)

Hmm.

Katie Wrigley (10:49)

I was horrible with the onboarding process because I'm not very naturally organized. So that's something that I was looking for in the VA that I just hired. I lucked out, found another agency that ⁓ before you and I met, like I said, it was bad timing. ⁓ But the document that he came back with, he asked me all those in-depth questions. It was super clear. This is the work Katie does. Cognitive movement is the modality that's part of it, but that's not what we're pushing.

Kate Lenihan (10:53)

Sure.

Katie Wrigley (11:18)

or what we want awareness around. want people to understand that this, and it's a crazy ass looking ball. So this is part of it, part of the hurdle. It is so cool. And the ball is actually really intentionally designed, but that's, this can be a distraction if you aren't focused on like, Hey, this ball can actually help you sleep. It can actually help you go from five to six figures in your business. As you're continuing to grow, it can help get rid of a fear of success. It can help get rid of a fear of failure.

Kate Lenihan (11:26)

That's so cool!

Katie Wrigley (11:48)

Like those are the things that people are looking for, not cognitive movement. They're looking for the outcome and they got that within the, was like, wow, okay, yes. So I was very interested to keep going and really want to continue this conversation because for my albeit somewhat limited experience so far, I've had other VAs in the past and it was a nightmare, especially with appointment sending and lead gen. And I want to ask you about.

Kate Lenihan (11:58)

Mm.

Katie Wrigley (12:17)

a distinction here because I'm seeing a lot about you what you just talked about with the organization of the inbox, the social media management, the appointment booking, and those are often very different skill sets and not everybody accelerates at all of them. And much to your point, actually have someone who handles my social media stuff. And then I have the VA who's focused on appointment setting and prospecting first, and she's doing an incredible job. And she's also super, super organized.

and she's really good with automation. So I'm like, she's my unicorn, but she's not doing this. So she's probably really good with social media, but I've already got that covered. But ⁓ now I'm losing track of where I wanted to go with that.

The appointment setting and lead gen thing, especially on LinkedIn, you see a lot of people, and I don't know if this is a, this may be an Alex Hormozi quote or not, but my friend, Kalika actually says this a lot is like people on LinkedIn, they're trying to marry you on the first date. So like they send you a message and they are blasting you with their offer. It's like, I don't know you. I don't know if like any, like, and so if someone was looking, because that does tend to be

Kate Lenihan (13:14)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Wrigley (13:27)

where entrepreneurs, especially heart led entrepreneurs who tend to be the ones that gravitate towards me, social media may not be their best fit or they may not be great at going from a cold to warm audience, which is definitely one of my own weaknesses. So what would you say to that person that's looking for that inbox organization, social media and the rockstar badass appointment center that understands the importance of

building that rapport and allowing that person to be seen and heard as a valued human being they are not a number that people are trying to push to or sell to because no one likes that.

Kate Lenihan (14:08)

And if I'm understanding correctly, your question is how do you train the VA to to see it through that lens?

Katie Wrigley (14:14)

Really more no, well, that is actually a great question to go into next, but more like what would you say to the entrepreneur who's looking for that skill set? Because it sounds like that would be a disparate skill set of maybe more than one person to handle all those roles like you were talking about earlier.

Kate Lenihan (14:31)

Yeah, so I mean, I think for the entrepreneur in terms of what to look for, how to ask those questions, it really comes down to examining your own process, right? If you have gone through the process yourself, if you have previously been in charge of the lead gen or the sales generation process.

What is it that you did that you found work? Was it referrals? Was it certain language that you used? I had a colleague that used the same language in terms of social media marketing. Like you wouldn't just go up to the somebody in the produce section, the grocery store and be like, Hey, come over to my house for dinner. You're going to be like, I see you like apples too. Right. You're going to, you're going to, you're going to connect on something in common. And so I think that when we consider what our business is doing, what service or product it is providing.

who our ideal client is and what's important to them, what results they're looking for, what desires they have, what problems they have. Being able to effectively then translate that to explain it to another human being and say, this is the goal, give me a sample funnel that you would create or a sample messaging strategy that you would utilize. And this doesn't have to be, this is sometimes.

the tiebreaker in an interview process is requesting a short test task from your candidates because it gives you a glimpse into who they are, how they're going to communicate, what is their iteration process in terms of coming up with a solution, coming up with a script, if you will, and really seeing if the language that they produce aligns with

everything that's available on the internet about you and your business so far. Like what resources are they tapping into? How are they formulating a message? Are they leaning into doing the research to find that person? And so it's a lot of words that I just came out with, but ultimately what I think the most important thing is, is building in intentional questions for an entrepreneur.

Katie Wrigley (16:33)

Thank

Kate Lenihan (16:43)

in terms of their process to be able then understand what the VA would return for them on their behalf to their clients.

Katie Wrigley (16:51)

Mm-hmm.

That was a fantastic answer. You did a lot of great words in a really good order there that made so much sense to me. And I'm like, yeah, I could have benefited from this a few months ago.

Kate Lenihan (17:05)

Sure,

absolutely. And I think, and you had mentioned a few minutes ago that you hired the VA because you're not super organized in hopes that she would help you become organized. And I always tell in my social media content, you don't have to have everything organized. You don't need an enormous playbook or anything insanely documented. You just have to know how you do it right now and what an ideal outcome looks like for you.

Let the person work through it and eventually as they get to know you, your business, your process, your customers more, they will be able to then iterate on it and make it better, more efficient, more organized.

Katie Wrigley (17:46)

I love that, thank you. And the next thing I wanna touch on is as entrepreneurs, it can be really easy to just get busy and get overwhelmed even when you have help. So are there any like mile markers or check posts that the entrepreneur can do to check in and say, okay, am I being supported right now? Or am I just really busy? And now this other person I hired is also really busy, but the needle actually isn't moving.

Kate Lenihan (18:13)

That is such a good question. And I think making sure that you're always working towards having your VA pay their own salary in terms of the scale that they're offering you is really important. And so one part of the onboarding process or the onboarding intake process that I have for my clients is kind of a future pace list where I have them write down future tasks that they can delegate so that when

Katie Wrigley (18:21)

Mm.

Kate Lenihan (18:43)

the calendaring feels like it's in really good place and email responses feel like they're in a good place, then what else are we handing off next? Is it now we're moving into organizing a task management system? Is it we're doing PR outreach, whatever that next task looks like, but creating almost a library or an index of future tasks to be able to delegate so that the entrepreneur

continues to free up more time to spend in the areas that they're really good, really passionate about and the thing that they uniquely are equipped to do.

Katie Wrigley (19:20)

love that. Thank you. And that's, ⁓ that's super helpful, both for my own experience going forward. Like if my calendar was just filled with client appointments, I would be over the moon. Because that's what I love to do the most like that, that getting to see people and work with people the way that I do. I do basically nervous system regulation with movement. And what happens when we start to do that is absolutely

Kate Lenihan (19:32)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Wrigley (19:47)

incredible. And that's where I'm lit up. That's my zone of genius. Like that's what I absolutely love. And so I've already got like, all right, let's start here. This is what I need the most. And then I'm already looking at, okay, if this works as well as it already has like, and I just want to pause and just say like the amount of weight that this new VA has taken off. She's this is her third day working with me. And I'm like, ⁓

Kate Lenihan (20:11)

and of

Katie Wrigley (20:12)

I have space and like right now I've been working so hard. like, I just need the space to have space. Like I don't need to be going into the next thing yet, but I already knocked off a whole bunch of tasks just because I had the space, whole bunch of tasks that I've been trying to do for the last month or two, got them done in the last two days.

Kate Lenihan (20:30)

and it's been three days with her and you're already feeling that. That's a big marker for success right there. Like that's amazing. And I think, I love that you said not jumping into, not immediately jumping into the next thing, right? because I think there's a couple of things I think, but the first is like the natural inclination is to jump into the next thing, the next thing to achieve the next, right? As entrepreneurs,

Katie Wrigley (20:32)

It's a girl.

Kate Lenihan (20:58)

typically we're a very like visionary action oriented bunch and we won't take a lot of reflection time and pause time to really regroup or recalibrate or anything like that. Now your line of work probably has you positioned a little bit differently because of that exact the work that you do. And so the other thing I will say in response is that, or kind of as an addendum to what I was talking about in terms of

what are the mile markers. It is so easy for an entrepreneur when they get busy, when they get overwhelmed to be like, well, I'll just do it. It's just faster if I do it myself instead of taking the time to explain it and pass it off. And not getting caught in that trap, just being aware of it, just being like, okay, why am I thinking that? Because yes, it might be faster in this moment, but if I take the extra moment, explain it, pass it off, then I don't have to do it next time.

or the time after that or the time after that. And so all of those things married together give you the space that you're talking about and give you that weight lifted.

Katie Wrigley (22:04)

I love that you said that and that's part of what you get with like from my perspective with the nervous system regulation when your nervous system is on overdrive, which being an entrepreneur can put you into overdrive and keep you there. And you are in that mode of just go, go, go, go, go. And you think that you have to do it right now and everything has to happen right now. And when you can pause in that moment, like you're talking about and say, okay, I know I want this done now, but

What is it going to give me if I take five minutes and do this on top of everything else? First of all, is this the most important thing I should be doing right now? And can it actually wait and maybe take a half an hour, an hour? So I teach my VA. And what is that going to give me back when I take the time to do that? And we need to have the nervous system kind of be able to breathe to be able to go.

Kate Lenihan (22:52)

Exactly.

Katie Wrigley (22:59)

As much as I want to do it today, this is not the most important thing for me to do and I absolutely can wait till tomorrow and that hour is going to actually give me back 40 hours over the next month because now my VA can do this for me and I'm freed up to do the things I love to do including the most important task that I should be doing right now.

Kate Lenihan (23:20)

Exactly

I got so excited about something you said in terms of the the handoff process the freeing up. ⁓ it'll come back to me. I'm sure at some point

Katie Wrigley (23:29)

The timing, the taking the pause, do I have to have it now? Because the nervous system is telling you.

Kate Lenihan (23:33)

yes.

One of the things, one of the tools I sometimes will teach my clients is the Eisenhower matrix, which is that urgent, important, not urgent, important. Like there's four quadrants and it's all based on how Eisenhower used to make decisions when he was a general. And because not everything can be urgent, important all the time.

And sometimes it's really hard as entrepreneurs to wrap our brains around the fact that not everything is urgent, not everything is important. Wait, what do you mean? And really marking those urgent, important, not important, not urgent with, how does this affect my business? How does this scale me? How does it move the needle in my business? Does it give me time back? Does it create revenue? All of these things are markers that help us understand.

doesn't need my attention in this moment.

Katie Wrigley (24:29)

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for adding that distinction in there to help people figure out like what is urgent. I love that that matrix and Eisenhower certainly knew what he was doing.