How To Onboard Your First Employee - The Ultimate Guide Ep. 014

Ready to unlock the secrets to making your first W-2 hire seamless and efficient? Discover the essential steps to grow your team without the headaches in this episode of Brightside Business. Join me as I share my journey of scaling my family's business to seven figures in under two years. Learn the nuts and bolts of payroll, disability and workers' comp insurance, and why having an employee handbook is crucial to protecting your business. This episode is your go-to guide for transitioning from independent contractors to your first full-time employee.

We'll break down the importance of annual reviews, deciding on PTO, and crafting a detailed job description that sets clear expectations. This episode is jam-packed with actionable advice for online entrepreneurs who are ready to take their business to the next level by building a solid and reliable team. Remember, while I share my personal experiences and practical tips, consulting a legal professional for tailored advice is always a smart move. Don't miss out on this fast-paced, tactical guide to scaling your business with your first hire!

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Transcript

Joey Young: 0:00

Welcome to Breadside Business, where we talk to online entrepreneurs like yourself about how to grow to seven figures and beyond. My name's Joey Young. I helped grow my family's professional services business to seven figures in under two years and I learned a lot along the way. One of those things is how to hire somebody. Let's say you're in the point in your business where you've had some 1099 independent contractors doing some tasks for you or maybe you've never even had one of those yet but you're ready to hire your first W-2, your first employee. You're getting to the point where you're like, all right, I want to put someone on like a solid part-time, full-time salary position. They're going to get a title, they're going to get responsibilities, they're not just going to get delegated tasks. How do you actually go through and hire this person? There's a bajillion descriptions out there on the internet how to do this. This is a really condensed, easy to digest version of it. I should say I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is not accounting advice. I don't have any degrees or anything like that. I need to give that particular professional advice. This is coming from someone who's just done this a bajillion times, so please contact your lawyer if you want to get legal advice for your state. But here in New York we have some particular laws that I'm going to leave out because I'm assuming you're not listening to this from New York Not everybody's from New York.

Joey Young: 1:17

So how do you hire somebody? Quick, step-by-step, very tactical episode here. Let's talk through it. Let's say you're hiring someone for fulfillment. Let's say you have a program and when you sell your program to someone, they get in there and you want someone to run the fulfillment end of your program after you've sold them on it. So how are you going to hire this person?

Joey Young: 1:38

Well, first of all, you got to figure out some basics. Payroll is number one. There's a bajillion companies out there that do payroll. For online companies, gusto comes to mind. There's a lot more. They can help you get set up very inexpensively. You need disability and workers comp insurance. This is the non-sexy stuff business owners don't like to deal with. But if you're growing and you're hiring employees, you need to be able to pay into these systems because at some point some one of your employees is going to get hurt. They're going to want to take some time off, let's say maternity leave or something You're going to need that disability. We just use a company that our friends recommended. There's a million companies that provide disability and workers' comp insurance.

Joey Young: 2:18

You need an employee handbook. It doesn't have to be extensive, it doesn't have to be super expensive. You can go to like Rocket Lawyer and just get you know something pretty templated. You just need something to protect your butt. The employee handbook is not there to tell them how to do their job. It's a labor law book to protect your butt as a business owner. So once you got all those tactical, necessary things legal things aside and again go talk to a lawyer if you want actual legal advice this is not legal advice.

Joey Young: 2:48

You need to decide a few things for this person you're hiring for your role. You need to decide what is the annual review schedule you're going to be on with this person a performance review you decide. You know, is that going to be attached to their wages, being raised to their raise, or is that going to be separate? And how much PTO are you going to give this person? There are certain laws around that that when you write your employee handbook they'll tell you you need to have a certain amount of sick leave, you know, depending on your state and stuff. So you know, make sure that you look to your you know employment law handbook, legal counsel for how much PTO you need to give to a W-2.

Joey Young: 3:27

Secondly, after that you need a job description. So a job description is just a specific understanding of what they're going for. Everyone's seen a job description before. It's basically a job summary, responsibilities that they'll have in the job. So that's a bullet point of what they're responsible for. Education and experience you need to be able to be hired for this role. You can have a required education experience and a preferred education and experience. If you want, you need to include the work location remote, in-person, hybrid and who they report to on this job description. Really, what's most important for a job description especially if you're like a brand new, this is your first hire is what is this person's metric? They're gonna be responsible for, what are they aiming for with their job? You need to have real clarity for this hire. What are they responsible for? And we'll talk more about that later so you can include that on the job description.

Joey Young: 4:23

Then, once you have a job description and let's say they've looked at that, you want to actually hire the person. It's time for an offer letter. So an offer letter is a document, a one pager, that just basically explains here's what they're agreeing to, here's what you're agreeing to. It has the title of the role they're being hired to. It has the title of the role they're being hired to. It has the pay that they'll be receiving, the hours they're going to work and the details of the PTO. So it's basically just like a fact sheet on. You know, hey, I'm hiring you, I'm paying you this, you're going to do this, you know X amount of hours per week and here's your pay, here's your PTO, just so everyone's on the same page. Best practice to get that signed so there's no confusion down the road. You can always pull it out if there's ever any questions about what they got hired to. So that is an offer letter you send them after they've reviewed the job description and they want to accept the role. You send them the offer letter to sign and then you sign it and then it's official. It has a start date on there as well, of course, on that offer letter. Official, it has a start date on there as well, of course, on that offer letter. Then you got to fill out an I-9 form and a W-4 form to be able to put them into your payroll system. Maybe your payroll system will help you out with that.

Joey Young: 5:31

Then you want to schedule a kickoff call and the kickoff call is really important because it really sets the tone for your business and we'll get into some pro tips in a minute. But you want to lay out on this kickoff call. Here's the mission, here's the vision of the organization, here's the org chart. You know, if there's multiple people in the business, like, what are their responsibilities? Who do they report to? Just so they have like a basic understanding. These are the things that, like brand new business owners or scaling business owners forget to do. But it's so helpful, like I've. I've talked to employees who have not gotten basic understanding of the structure of the business they're hired into for six months after they've been hired and I'm showing them the org chart and stuff and they're like, oh my gosh, this would have been so helpful to understand. Here's the business people that I'm working with and what they do. Here's the major projects we're working on. Like this is just super helpful to lay out for someone on initial kickoff call.

Joey Young: 6:24

So on this kickoff call, you know, mission, vision, org chart, major projects you're working on the major goals your company is working on and maybe a short history of how you started the business. Then remind them of the responsibilities and key metrics that they have as part of their job. This is that key metric thing. Again, listen, you got to make them understand they don't just have a bunch of things they need to do. Their job is they are responsible for an area of your business and that responsibility ideally can be boiled down to a number. So if they have the responsibility of fulfillment for your program, for example, maybe their number is a certain customer satisfaction score based on the reviews of the program. Or maybe it's a certain retention number they have to hit where you want a certain length of time a client is paying for services, or a certain client lifetime value you're trying to have them drive towards. Or a certain conversion rate on re-ups for your service or your product. Like what's that number that that person is responsible for? So they're crystal clear this is their job.

Joey Young: 7:29

And then, finally, last thing at this kickoff meeting is setting up a regular cadence of communication. This usually looks like a half-hour weekly check-in call on a video call. During this weekly check-in call, you're checking up on them, you're getting to know them. You're understanding what they're facing. You're letting them vent a little bit if there's some problems. You're checking in on any reports or any metrics that they're working towards.

Joey Young: 7:53

It's a time for you two to get that face-to-face, and it's incredible how many business owners don't do this with their employees and then they feel like they don't know their own team because they're not doing weekly check-ins, especially when they're first hired. It's super important. You want to know and, like the people you're working with, you want to be friends with them. You know it's nice to be able to do this for you as a business owner too. So that's the basic steps and here's some pro tips.

Joey Young: 8:17

I want to have three pro tips as you're going through this process. The first one is always start with a higher degree of control and with a higher standard. See, a lot of business owners. They don't take their roles seriously that they hire for because they're a brand new business and they're just kind of figuring out as they go along. So they expect you know someone they hire to have the same level of dedication and passion for the business. But the reality is they're an employee and they're getting a job and they probably don't care as much about the business as you do. That's just the reality. So Don't make the mistake of assuming there is driven, there is disciplined, there is excellent at you at what you do. You need to set that bar high and have a higher degree of control at the outset of the relationship of them being employed, because it's always easier to release control and to let them set their own standards down the road versus starting out with low standards, low level of expectation, low clarity and then later on trying to ratchet up the amount of control you have and the amount of standards you're setting for them, for their job. I've learned this the hard way. Listen, it's not micromanaging. You're probably going to have to set a higher bar and a higher degree of control with new employees than you think you need to, because it's always easier to ratchet that down as you build trust and as they prove themselves than it is to ratchet it up later because you started out too low.

Joey Young: 9:44

Okay, second thing is be very clear about expectations. The number one complaint that employees have with their bosses, with the CEO of a company, is they don't know what's expected of them. So just address that clearly from the first meeting, from the kickoff call and then continually like don't let them guess about what you want from them. Have that metric that they're responsible for, and literally say, hey, if you can hit this metric, you're doing a great job. Period, okay, this is your job here. This is what I expect of you. If you hit this, I'm going to be really happy, you're going to be really happy, the business is going to grow, we're having a great time. So just be super, super clear more clear than you think you need to Say it more times than you think you need to what the expectation is for them and they're going to be really happy.

Joey Young: 10:32

And third, get to know them on a personal level. Like these people, again, are people. Ultimately, you want to be doing business with people who are your friends, that you enjoy spending time with. So you know, if you're not really good at remembering things about people's personal lives, like you know their kids getting married or there's a vacation coming up, or they have a certain you know thing going on with their mother-in-law and there's a problem, and you know there's treatment going on medically, and you want to remember to check in, like, make a note you know a weekly check-in note about that employee and just jot down a few things they tell you and follow up and ask about it. You know, be involved in their life, get to know them a little bit, have that personal connection, because in a world where people are jumping businesses and jumping jobs every couple of years, the people who stick around are A they have a positive work environment, it's fulfilling, but B the people they work with are quality and they enjoy working with the people that they work with. So create a space for that by interjecting some personal sides, some friendship, in the business relationships that you have with your employees. Hopefully that helps you frame how to hire your first employee. If this was helpful for you, hey, I really appreciate a review. Drop a like, drop a thumbs up, a five-star review All that really helps push the show forward. And the algorithms Any review you can write or subscribe or follow on whatever platform you're on. Please do that because it really really helps me out in getting this show spread to people who want to see it.

Joey Young: 12:00

And if you have a question for the show, I would love to hear your business strategy or your productivity question or just a problem you're facing in your business. I'd love to hear from you so I can address it here on the show. I can share it anonymously. Just email me with your first name, joey, at joeyhyoungcom. That's j-o-y-j-o-e-y-h-y-o-u-n-gcom, and you can also shoot me a question on my Instagram. That's at joeyhyoung, on Instagram. And hey, if you have any questions about your particular business, if you want some advice, definitely book a free consultation call with me. You can do that. There's a link in the show notes to book a 20 minute breakthrough call. We'll just talk about what your business is doing right now, any opportunities you have, any barriers you have and get you growing and breaking through any barriers that you have right now that you're facing. I'd love to help you out with that free 20-minute consultation call. So go ahead and book that and until next time, my friends, happy scaling.