43: 2 Steps to Help You to Determine Your Next Hire

In this episode, I discuss the challenges of deciding who to hire next to help move your business forward. Drawing inspiration from Theresa Lowe’s teachings, I share two key strategies: creating an org chart based on roles and responsibilities, and conducting a detailed time audit to see where my time is spent. These steps helped me identify the 'domino person' I needed to hire to relieve stress and optimize efficiency. Join me as I walk you through these techniques and provide valuable insights from my own experience.

Streamlined And Scaled Podcast with Theresa Loe: https://open.spotify.com/show/59klpQLdrc8BW3S0gQVMf3

Jasmine Star/Theresa Loe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ChS3HL64f8

Responsibilities Chart (example): https://www.canva.com/design/DAGs4mRJqoU/Vzlib9rNi7tUMFsIoUviGA/view?utm_content=DAGs4mRJqoU&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink&mode=preview

Transcript

 I am Beth Whitworth race car driving quilt making CPA firm owning wife, mom, and boss. I'm here to help you build a business you love by sharing all of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the excellent sides of working in this industry. It's not always easy, but after many years, I can finally say it's worth it.

Let me guide you on your journey to accounting with confidence.

Hi, and welcome to Accounting With Confidence. My name is Beth Whitworth and I am. Talking today about something that I find people seem to struggle with. They struggle with deciding who is the next hire, who do they need in their business to help them move it forward? So today I'm bringing you a confidence booster.

This will be a short episode with a couple of key. Items that I have learned that help me figure out what's the next step, who is the next person that needs to be on my team to elevate, to relieve stress, to get us moving in the right direction? So a few years ago, it was probably 20 20, 20 21, I was listening to the Jasmine Star podcast and she was interviewing with a woman whose name was Theresa Lowe, and she helped people by teaching them how to streamline and scale.

That was the name of her podcast. Streamline and Scale There. Teams and she, you know, by putting together processes, by putting together a really good hiring system and a really good onboarding system. And I was really drawn to what she was saying. So I started listening to her podcast and like I said, this was back in 2021 when things were a little different in the world.

We were in the midst of actually kind of the beginnings of the pandemic. And what was happening was that some people who had things that they had been doing pivoted to start doing some other things because their industry was maybe shut down. So Theresa had put together prior to this a course. I was able to take that course, and I will tell you that, you know, since that time, she has since gone back to the industry that she was in and she was in some filming and she was, she's just really dynamic person and so shout out to Theresa Lowe, so you can't get her course, but I am going to give her credit for teaching me these two things, these two steps that really help me identify where I need.

To focus to get someone else on the team. Now, I will say her podcast is probably still out there. You could listen to those episodes and I listened religiously. She's not still creating new episodes, but streamlined and scaled. Theresa Lowe, her last name is spelled LOE, and I credit her for helping me make some really good decisions in my business.

And before that, I will say that I struggled, and maybe you do too with, okay, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I have a lot of work to do, but who should I hire? Who can I afford to hire? Who does it make sense to hire? I can do this stuff faster than if I trained somebody else to do it. So maybe I, you know, hired to some other, other roles.

I mean, it was always a struggle. Who was next. And in the accounting industry, it was always one of those things where you felt like you had to have the workload in place in order to hire to that. So if you knew you had work coming, you would want to plan to have somebody in place that could do that work.

Well, it doesn't always work that way, and it's not always the best way to hire. So, like I said, I took this course from Theresa and learned two things. The first thing I will say is the. The making the creation of your org chart. Now, this is not the titles of people, this is not kind of the wish list. It's the, the responsibilities.

What responsibilities are in your business. And so when I created my org chart. You know, there, there's me up at the top and then there was nobody in between. And then there were what I would consider about four areas. And there was, so there was like sales and marketing. There was production, which is, you know, getting tax returns done, getting client work done.

There was operations, you know. Keeping the lights on, getting the bills paid, getting hire, hiring people and getting them into the system and getting all of those types of operational things. And then I also had another section that was my podcast that has been something that was very important to me, that I wanted to make sure that I.

Was doing. And so in this org chart you're putting in each of those departments, the responsibilities. So who's responsible for publishing the podcast? Who's responsible for getting payroll done for clients? Who's responsible for getting the email out every week to your clients so that you have some marketing going on?

So once you define each of those roles, and I did it with, I kind of did a probably something in. It was Windows, it was whatever their, their way. You could kind of put post-it notes all over the place. So I had colored sections and I filled in the Post-it notes with the roles, not the titles, not anything but the responsibility.

And I did that. And then the next step of this is to go in and put who is currently responsible for those things, who's currently responsible and. Other than in the production area, which for me is getting tax returns done, getting financial statement work done, getting client work done. My name was in most of the boxes, so I could see where, you know, it's all in the podcast stuff.

It's a lot of the operations, it's all the sales and marketing and it was, you know, so all the, a lot of the administrative work. Not a lot of production, but a little bit. But I wasn't necessarily the one in charge of that. Well, I take that back. At the time I was taking this course, I was responsible for a lot of that, a lot of that.

So when I put this together, it really highlights, okay, some specific areas that you could say, what if I hired this? What if I took this off my plate? And what, how Theresa referred to it is that Domino person, if you hired this person, they could do all of these things and things would start to fall into place.

So it became really apparent from my org chart that I needed to do something to get work off of my plate, not off of anybody on my team's plate. And. That was very enlightening. So this org chart was really something that helped drive who my next hire needed to be. So the second thing that I will say you need to do, and what Theresa taught me to do is you need to do a time audit of where you are spending your time.

So especially if there are things that, like me, where I was wearing all the hats for a lot of the, the areas. Go through and spend a week or two weeks clearly tracking how you're spending your time on every activity, every activity in your business. So for me it was how much time was I spending managing the team?

How much time was I spending doing the internal accounting for the firm? How much time was I spending doing sales? Marketing subscription agreements. How much time was I doing client work? And what client work be getting very specific. So this is a very detailed time audit of yourself. And by doing that, I mean you're going through what admin functions are you doing, what accounting functions, what networking functions, everything that you are doing, and.

A week is enlightening, but two weeks is even better so that you can really identify where you're spending your time. And in conjunction with that org chart, you can see if I were to hire, say, you know, more administrative time. So if I was to hire somebody into the administrative role, what things could they immediately take off my plate?

And how much time is that freeing up from me? And yes, maybe you're giving it to somebody who's going to take a little bit longer. But it's off of your plate. It's no longer hours that you have to allot time for. Or in my case, sometimes things would just get behind. You know, I wouldn't be able to keep up with getting the subscription renewals out.

I wouldn't be able to keep up with finding time to go to another networking event. So if you do this time audit and can identify things, you are able to then say, okay. This makes sense to hire to this specific role. So what happened when I started using that process where I did the org chart, I then I did the time audit and we identified, and this is when I was still going through her course with Theresa, we identified that I needed kind of that, that second in command that.

I was at the top and there was nobody between me and the rest of the team. And so there was, I was managing the team. I was doing all of those pieces and keeping track of the due dates and keeping, you know, I, I had no management. It was me and I was management, I was leadership, I was, I was. All the things.

And so it clearly identified. Now I will tell you, you know, whenever you are looking at things, when it comes to hiring everybody's one, we're in weird, in weird environment for hiring. Sometimes it's really hard to find people. Sometimes it's really expensive to find people. Sometimes you. Just can't find the right people.

And that's a whole nother episode on what I do now as far as hiring and what I, where I put my ads and, and how I express what our firm actually needs. But before I even get to that point, I do this analysis to figure out who is my domino person? Is it administrative? Is it management? Is it production?

You know, where do we need to find time? Where do we need to put money into someone who can take. Time off of you so that you can do things to either free up your time to do less work, meaning you're gonna spend time doing your favorite things or with your family or traveling or whatever it is you wanna do.

Or is it it's gonna take things off your plate so that you can do more revenue generating things. Things that maybe you are, um, really good at sales and you don't have a lot of time to do the sales, but if you did the sales, you could really grow well. If you find the person to take things off your plate, to give you back those, that those hours, that's the goal.

So back to 2021. When I did this, I did this entire exercise and we determined that I needed a manager. That is when I put the ad out, but I determined what had to come off my plate. And now as a reminder, we are a 100% part-time firm. We're also a hundred percent remote, but we do permanent part-time. I don't hire 40 hour a week people.

And I will tell you, I suggest that you start. With that model. And I know people say, oh no, I can't do that. But what made it easy is that I didn't have to try to found, find 40 hours a of week, a week of work for this person. I needed to find 30. And when I looked at my time audit, okay, what? What things on my list could she immediately take off and would start to add up to 30 hours?

And by doing the part-time, I was less worried about having enough hours to fill for that person. And we have since, you know, we have only hired part-time since I, since I hired Sarah. So I identified and then I put together my 30, 60 and 90 day kind of onboarding of what I expected her to have done. And that included training and that included.

Taking over, reviewing client work, taking over, reviewing client tax returns, taking over, managing the due date list, and eventually that was taking over managing the team. So. It was not difficult for me to find 30 hours to come off my plate. And by doing those two exercises, you know, I figured out what roles I had to fill and what boxes could I lean into, where if, if I hired this person, they could take my name out of all of these little boxes.

Then also doing that time audit to say, okay, well what, what areas do I have that if they came off my plate would free me up to do more of this? Or working less in general or whatever. And for me it was, I needed to find time to do what I was somewhat passionate about and that I wanted to keep my podcast going.

And Sarah always brings me back around to that whenever I'm struggling to find the time. To keep the podcast consistent is that's, she says, that's what you hired me for. That's what you hired me for. So she's still working some, you know, 30 hours a week, but some weeks it's a little bit more, but it just.

It's a little bit depends on what we have going on, but it was, doing that exercise was the best thing I could have done. It showed me exactly who I needed to bring in what, what skills, what talents, what things that I hated doing that. Could, someone else could do. And not only did that free me up the time, but it also took something away.

That was really something that I didn't like to do. And it would, I'd procrastinate and I would just get kind of in that, you know, cranky, but a little cranky when you have to do things you don't like, but you know, they have to get done. You kind of don't love it and it makes you kind of, you know, re resist a little bit on getting some work done.

So. Definitely, you know, I would say try these two steps. You know, do an org chart of roles. Figure out what you need to, maybe you have no one in that role. So maybe you've got this sales and marketing that every business needs and you really don't have anybody. Not even you, is getting that done. Okay, well that might be something that you need to say, okay, I need to, I need to hire to that.

And then that time audit. Now the time audit. Like I said, it's very eye-opening. So, and then I would also say, you know, when you're first starting to decide who you probably consider, if you were hiring somebody for 20 or 30 hours and not 40. Just figure out, I mean, if you do your time audit and you're like, if I hired this person they could take 40 hours off my plate, then okay, then that's definitely worth the investment.

But I find that it is easier to, I. Budget for and to onboard somebody for a few less hours. So that's a different episode as well. So, okay, I hope this helps. This is the two things that if you work on that, that can help you determine who your next hire is. And by determining that, you can then, you know, figure out.

What skills you're hiring for, what the timeline is, what, how you will onboard them, how things will come off your plate, or someone else's plate onto their plate, all of those things. And so I think it's definitely something that Theresa opened my eyes to and we revisit this. Org chart whenever we're making another hire, really any hire, because I need to go in and update those roles.

I hope that I'm not on every single one of those little post-it notes on my chart anymore, so, all right. That's all I have for today. As a reminder, I am here to empower you to build a business that you love. So if you have any. Subjects that you would like me to talk about, if you have any feedback, you know, leave it on the, the comments on the YouTube video or click on fan mail, give me a text message so I can hear what you wanna hear about and whether you're, you know, enjoying what I am talking about already.

And in the meantime, I hope that you have a fabulous week. And I'll talk to you again soon.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Accounting with Confidence. My hope is that my experiences can help you navigate the realities of owning and operating your business. Please subscribe or follow the podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform so that you never miss an episode. Feel free to leave me a text by using the, send us a text message link in the show description and let me know how I'm doing.