Knowing When & Who to Hire!

Summary

In this episode, Branden Sewell discusses the critical importance of hiring for business owners, particularly in the home service industry. He emphasizes the need to delegate tasks to focus on what one is best at, the financial implications of hiring, and the inevitability of making mistakes in the hiring process. Branden encourages listeners to take action, learn from their experiences, and ultimately strive to get off the ladder and build a sustainable business.

Takeaways

Hiring is essential for business growth.
Identify tasks that consume too much time.
Delegation allows you to focus on your strengths.
Hiring may require financial sacrifices.
Mistakes in hiring are part of the learning process.
You can learn from bad hires to improve future decisions.
Trusting others is crucial for business success.
The goal is to build a business, not a job.
Take action to achieve freedom in your business.
You can start getting off the ladder today.

Chapters

00:00 The Importance of Hiring in Business
07:43 Understanding the Cost of Hiring
12:30 Learning from Hiring Mistakes
15:46 Taking Action to Get Off the Ladder

Keywords

business, hiring, delegation, leadership, entrepreneurship, home service, growth, mistakes, freedom, scaling

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:01.454)
Hi everybody, Brandon Sewell. I am the owner of Seal Pro Painting located in central Florida and I am also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast. And we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. Today's episode is going to be a solo episode so let's jump into this. What I wanna talk to you guys about today is when is the right time to hire?

And I think there's really two points to go over. One is either when you are not skilled enough for a specific task that has to be done in your business or two, when you don't have enough time. So I think those are two demands that require hiring. Now, let me go back and say this. There are identifying patterns or

you know just

systems I guess you would say that successful businesses have and the reality is if you look at a successful business one thing I can guarantee you as that the owner does not do everything and also like when have you ever seen a very large very successful organization that revolves around just the owner doing everything it's just not

It's not realistic. It doesn't exist. And it's not possible because as you grow and as you scale, you cannot do everything. There's only so much that you can do as a business owner. So the reality is, is you have to realize one of the things that you are going to have to do is hire. You're going to have to learn how to bring people in. You're to have to learn how to delegate so that you can focus on one, what you're good at, and two,

Branden Sewell (02:02.53)
have the time to focus on the things that you're good at. If you are spread thin, if you're doing things that you shouldn't be doing and you're taking away from what you are great at, then your business is going to suffer and ultimately you are not going to get off the ladder. So if you want to get off the ladder, you need to identify those two things. What's taking up too much of your time and what

Are you doing currently that you are not great at or somebody else could do better now? You might ask yourself or you might be saying to yourself. Well, I'm the best at what I do like nobody can do Sales as good as me. Nobody can market my business as good as me. Nobody can do the work as good as me Nobody can offer as great a customer service as I can

And right now I'm going to tell you that is probably not true. There's probably someone that can do it as good, if not better than you can. So then the next question is, like, by giving away or delegating away a task, what could you get back in return? So you have to identify, okay, well, if I give up sales,

and what am I and I'm not doing all the sales. I'm going to get my time back to focus on what in my business and how is that going to help me grow and whatever that thing is that you focus on as the owner should be the thing that you're great at and will help the business to move forward. Now I will say this to ultimately your goal is to give up as much as you possibly can to delegate and to

give people responsibilities and authority to make decisions in your business because the more that you can remove yourself the more that the business can be a business and not a job. Right? It can function without you and not require you in the day to day and that's the ultimate goal, right? Is to get our time back to build a business not a job and to have freedom. I think that's one of the main reasons why we all start a business.

Branden Sewell (04:21.1)
Now you have to be willing to hire. And I think another thing that you have to consider when you're hiring or deciding that you're going to delegate certain things in your business is you have to realize what it's going to cost you. It's going to cost money. Payroll is your biggest expense. So you have to realize like you may be taking a pay cut or you may be delaying or prolonging the time.

that it's going to take for you to get a raise or pay yourself more from your business. And so you have to be able to realize that and be okay with it. You can't expect that, I'm going to delegate these positions and be spending X amount of money and just instantly get, you know, see the benefits of that and make tons more money. You know, it might take time.

for you to grow and scale and then slowly increase your personal income from your business. you know the reality too is like maybe hiring somebody looks like you're taking a pay cut. And I don't know maybe that's the case maybe it's not but I'm just saying those are things that you need to think about.

And, you know, I think those are very personal decisions that you have to make. very, you know, somebody like myself wouldn't be able to tell you how to make that decision and how it's going to affect you and your personal finances and your personal life. And, you know, you've got different goals and priorities than I do. You know, my personal finances, my goals, my priorities are much different.

then maybe yours are now maybe if they align somewhat then we could say I could say like hey you could make this decision and this is how it's going to affect you and this is going to be the result but if if we have completely different personal finances if we have completely different priorities if we have totally different end goals with our business then me telling you

Branden Sewell (06:44.94)
when and how I do something is not really going to resonate with you. But what I can tell you is that if you want to get off the ladder, you want to achieve freedom and you want to own a business and not a job, then you have to get off the ladder and you're going to have to hire. Now, the timing of that might look a little bit different for you. Your personal finances might look a bit different.

you know, who knows, maybe that there's just so many different ways that we could approach that topic. But ultimately, you have to understand that you're going to have to hire, you're going to have to delegate. And what you have to determine is how do your personal finances, your personal goals, and your priorities define when and how that's going to happen. But it has to happen. Like that's

That's not a question, right? Now, maybe that means like, hey, I'm going to make a sacrifice of, you know, taking on some debt for the business to get my time back to hire for position. And that's only a decision you can make. Only you can make that decision. Or maybe you say, hey, I'm not willing to

Take on any debt to grow the business or leverage debt to grow So I am not going to do that and by result, you know, might delay that process but know, those are all things that you have to Take into consideration when hiring You know and again, I'll say like it's scary it's it's hard to do

And I don't know that there's necessarily like a way for you to make sure that it's all perfect. You know, you're going to hire, you're going to make bad hires, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to make hires that you wish you wouldn't have made. You're going to, you're going to do all those things. You're going to make bad decisions, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to fall down, you're going to...

Branden Sewell (09:11.064)
have all of that happened, but you have to do it anyway. You have to face that reality and say, you know what? Well, you know, you're going to learn. You just go through it. You hire, you make those mistakes and you learn from it. And then the next time you hire, you're like, okay, this is what I'm not going to do next time. And another thing that I would say is like, don't beat yourself up over it. Like it's, it's, it's just the reality of being a business owner, you're going to hire.

And you're going to make bad hires and you're going to make mistakes and that's okay You know in 2022 I decided to hire a salesperson I decided that their pay structure and it was an awful decision never should have given them a base pay plus commission Especially for my first sales hire worst decision

If I wouldn't have done that, probably would have totally changed the outcome of 2022 for me, which 2022 was the worst year for me in business. Now I, but I learned from that experience and then I hired, know, I have a sales guy now he's worked for me since October and it's going great. But I made some changes. I pay him 100 % commission.

I've trained him better I pay him bi weekly instead of weekly. Those are all things that I've I've changed and I had to learn from those experiences I learned what I wanted in a salesperson versus what I didn't and and made a better hire. And so you don't figure those things out though until you put yourself out there and try you know same with my painters like.

Goodness, I have hired so many painters over the last almost eight years and I've made so many mistakes. I've hired so many of the wrong people, but every time I've made mistakes, I've learned from them and move forward and made better hires in the future. I've sharpened up my way of getting new employees. I've changed and sharpened up, I interview them.

Branden Sewell (11:32.751)
And what my requirements are and how I one board them has completely changed how I train them how I integrate them into the business. All of that has developed over time but guess what I got started by just doing it and falling on my face making mistakes picking myself back up learning and moving forward and the reality is is that what you're gonna have to do when you hire your.

You're going to have to be willing to fail and you're going to be have to be willing to go through that hurt and that pain because the reality is it's going to happen. Like there's there's no way you can get yourself so prepared and so ready that you avoid all of that and never go through it. If that's what you think or if that's what you want to try to accomplish. I can tell you right now it's probably not a very realistic goal.

And you're probably not going to grow. You're probably not going to scale. You're probably not going to get off the ladder. You're probably not going to own your business. You're going to own a job. You're going to stay on the ladder and you're just going to be trying to overanalyze and figure everything out to the point that you never do it. So let me just tell you this. Just do it. Just take action. Just hire. Just prepare yourself for the pain.

and the mistakes that you're going to make. And I know that's kind of like, man, Brandon, you're telling me that I'm going to fail. So why would I do that? You're telling me I'm going to make mistakes because that's the only way that you're going to grow. That's the only way that you're going to learn. That's the only way that you're going to go to the next level in your business is if you're willing to do those things. And if you're not, you're going to stay right where you're at and it's never going to change. So be willing to fall down.

Be willing to make those bad hires be willing to learn from them and be willing to continue moving forward and i can tell you that if you do that. You know it's not an overnight thing you know you're not going to.

Branden Sewell (13:48.685)
You're not going to just grow your business in, you know, like instantly, you know, and the other thing that I'll say is you can make really great hires that end up leaving. Like that was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. Had this amazing employee that worked for me, I think either just shy of three years or around three years. Amazing employee, best employee I've had probably. And and they left like that really sucks. And now

I just have not been able to replace that person. And so you could get lucky and hire a really great person, but everyone doesn't stay forever. And that's reality. It's going to change. Your business is going to go through different seasons. Your business is going to have ups and its downs. And you learn along the way. So I guess

You to sum that up is like there's there's no perfect time only you can really define what's gonna be best for you only your personal goals and priorities can shape and define what that looks like exactly for you. And. You know. But I think there's just that one principle that that you come back to is like.

If the goal and the priority is to get off the ladder, then hiring has to happen. And the way that you know who to hire is identify what you're great at and do that. Identify the things that you're not great at and hire for those and definitely hire to get your time back. And that's the ultimate goal.

Anyway, I hope that's helpful. I don't want to drag this episode out just for the sake of having more time. So I'm going to cut this one short. It's gonna be a shorter episode. But I feel like there was enough there for you to maybe be encouraged on moving forward with hiring. Some of you guys are, you know,

Branden Sewell (16:13.25)
working in your business, it's just you and maybe you've got like a helper or two. Look, you've got to get off the truck. You've got to get off the ladder. You've got to let go and you'll be amazed at what can happen if you can just let go. You've got to trust people. You have to be able to delegate authority to others.

and it's possible. There are great people out there who want to do great work and want to work for a great organization. Get off the ladder and build a great organization. Become a great leader. Invest in yourself. Learn. Grow. Never stop growing and learning. you know, if you do that, then you can build something that's bigger than yourself that you can leave a legacy with. So

It's all got to start with you letting go and getting off the ladder. And again, that's the ultimate goal. That's the reason I started this podcast is to help guys and girls like you who are trying to figure out how do I do this thing? How do I build a business? How do I get out of the field? And hopefully this has helped you or sparked some just

motivation, encouragement to do that, to take action and to get after it. So I had one guy ask me one time, you know, when do you think I can get off the ladder? And I said, today, if you want to. There's, you know, I started my business off the ladder. I started my business not painting and going out and doing jobs.

because I knew that wasn't what I was great at. Could I do it? Yes. But were there people that were better? Yes. And I focused on what I was great at and I delegated that. And it's worked ever since I started my business. you know, I'm like, I think to myself a lot of times, how do other great businesses function? And, you know, if they can find great people,

Branden Sewell (18:38.26)
If they can be off the ladder, then why can't I? Why can't I do the things that great businesses do? The reality is, is I can, I just have to do it. And I'm not gonna have it all figured out all at once, but I can figure it out along the way, but I've gotta take action. it's possible, you can do it. Go out there, look at the people who are doing it, and then replicate that.

You know, do what they're doing. Get a coach, get a mentor. Reach out to me, ask me questions. Love to connect with you if you're listening to this and help you figure out how to do it. But the reality is, like, you could be off the ladder tomorrow if you wanted to. And if you'd be willing to do the things that it takes. And I'm going to say this, it's not hard. It's just different. So anyway, hope that's encouraging.

And I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this episode up as always if you're watching on YouTube, please Subscribe to my channel I would greatly appreciate that if you haven't go to my YouTube Subscribe to my channel like my content Share it Comment on it turn on the notifications so you don't miss future episodes

but really would appreciate it if you would do that. Share stuff, comment, interact, engage. Please reach out to me. That's what I want to do. I want to build community and I want to help people get off the ladder and do that with you. So reach out. I would love to talk to you. You can contact me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, any of those places through my website.

The other thing is if you are listening on Apple or Spotify, please rate and review the show, please. If you're listening on Apple, go now, rate and review the show. Spotify, any other major podcast platform, that's gonna help the podcast get to more people so that I can help more people get off the ladder, help bring on better guests, help to improve the quality of the show. Also,

Branden Sewell (20:58.562)
what will help improve the quality of the show is down below I have resources for you. So I have partners that I work with. You know, I talk about them often, but jobber, nice job, call rail, gusto. These are all softwares and companies that I use to run my business. And I do get paid and I do get credit if you sign up.

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using any of those softwares to help run your business more efficiently or grow, then please use my affiliate links. And as I say all the time, too, please reach out to me so that I can help you integrate those into your business. I've been using all of those softwares for a while, and I know how to use them in a business and how to implement them and make sure that it's efficient.

and helping you get a great return on your investment. And lastly, you can support the show. So in the show notes, there is a link to support the show. You can subscribe and pay as little as like a dollar, $2, $3 a month, which just helps to support the show financially so that we can grow and scale this and help more people get off the ladder.

Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Off the Ladder podcast, and I will see you next time on the next episode.