The Esthetician Podcast

Transform Your Esthetics Business by Hiring Smart: Recognizing the Right Time and Strategies for Successful Team Expansion

• Kari Jo

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Ever wondered when the perfect moment is to make that first hire for your esthetician business? Join me, Kari Jo Patterson, as I open up about my own hiring mishaps and offer a roadmap to avoid those pitfalls. This episode promises to guide you through the emotional rollercoaster of bringing someone new into your business. Learn from my personal journey of understanding the importance of strategic decision-making over desperation and how focusing on attitude and vision alignment can make all the difference. Together, we'll explore the transformative power of finding the right team member to not only ease your workload but also propel your business to new heights.

Feeling overwhelmed and ready to expand your team? Discover how to recognize the signs that it's time to hire, and understand the financial strategies that ensure your new employee contributes to your bottom line. I'll share the value of a virtual receptionist in enhancing client service and boosting revenue, offering practical tips you can implement right away. This episode is part of the Esthetician Podcast series and is filled with real-world insights and motivation to help you think like a visionary leader. Whether you're keen to build your empire or simply need reassurance about taking the next step, this conversation aims to empower you every step of the way. For further growth, consider joining my Fearless Prosperity Mastermind Group or exploring one-on-one VIP coaching opportunities.

To learn more about coaching please visit: https://www.karijopatterson.com

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Links You May Want to Check out:

Join the Client Building for Estheticians group to go deep in learning all the latest tips and strategies https://www.facebook.com/groups/clientbuildingforestheticians
Check out Kari Jo’s courses here https://esthelaunchacademy.com

Anniuncer:

Welcome to the Esthetician Podcast, where passion meets prosperity. Your host, Kari Jo Patterson, transformed from a solo esthetician into a successful business owner, achieving ultimate time and financial freedom by the age of 38. Kari is the author of Fearless Prosperity, empowering estheticians to build their empire and achieve financial freedom, and the creator of the Empire Growth System for Estheticians. Get ready for some empire-building wisdom Now. Welcome your host, Kari Jo Patterson.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Good morning everyone. Today I am tackling a question that I get asked all the time, and that is when do you make your first hire? Do you make your first hire? So, if you are in phase three of my fearless prosperity framework, this is the growth phase, or I guess technically you're on. You're just getting out of phase two, moving on to phase three. You are facing this decision. You're a little overwhelmed. You got too much work. You're looking to grow your business. Maybe you're not looking to step back from the chair. You don't really know this episode. I'm here to help guide you through this process and I've got some lessons that I've learned from my own and sometime messy experiences.

Kari Jo Patterson:

The first time I hired someone I'm going to be real honest with you it was a straight up disaster. Oh, the stories, the horror stories I could tell. I did not know what I was doing. I made every mistake that you could possibly make. I was so desperate. I had a facial clientele that was pretty big, but then I also had a booming lash clientele like booming, and I was about to leave for two weeks to go to Thailand Me and my husband. We wanted to get. We were going to go backpacking to Thailand when we got married just like the two of us and then we found out we were having a baby and we never did it. So we planned this big trip and it was going to be. I mean, this was going to and it was the trip of our lifetime.

Kari Jo Patterson:

But I had started a company. Now and my clients what was I going to do? I was going to freak out Like I was going to lose all my clients because I there was no one here to serve them when I was gone. And so I was desperate and I thought I'll just bring in someone to help with lashes. So I hired I was like I'll train you how to do it, let me find someone. I hired a hairstylist who she didn't really have a very big hair clientele and I brought her on as a 1099 contractor. I did not realize at the time that it was illegal in the beauty industry, just FYI. But let me tell you it went down super fast. And then that's when I realized I didn't even care. I don't want 1099s, like I need employees, because one she had absolutely no loyalty, didn't not care at all. She did things her own way. She ended up taking a few things. She even one day she didn. She ended up taking a few things, she, she even one day she didn't even show up for her appointments and there was nothing I could do Cause she was a 10 99. Oh, and then this was the great thing One. And then, when she left, she started texting my clients before she even called to tell me that she left. She started texting my clients to be like, hey, I'm leaving. And then, like, one of my clients texts me and is like uh, what's going on? And I was what. She didn't even tell me that she quit before she started doing that.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Let me just tell you, never hire out of desperation. It it is not just about filling the gap. It is about building a team member who's actually going to align with your vision. What is right? How do you hire After that disaster?

Kari Jo Patterson:

Basically, I needed to approach things entirely different. I wanted to hire, not out of desperation. I didn't need to at that point, because she was gone. I could have just In fact my husband, his advice, he didn't even want me to grow. He was just raise your prices, carrie. But I was, I had fear and I was like no, now I'm a hell of a lot smarter than I would have was, then I sure and hell would raise the shit out of my prices. I should have, that's what I should have done, but I was afraid to raise my prices because I didn't want to lose my clientele, and so I was like no, I just need to hire again, but I just need to do it the right way. So I don't know, maybe it was the right decision, but I decided I needed to get really intentional about it, and I knew I needed somebody who was a perfectionist, because I'm a perfectionist when I want perfection in lashes and I was going to be bringing on permanent makeup and you better be real freaking perfectionist with that.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Basically, I found someone who had no experience in aesthetics, but she had the right attitude, which was she does not cut corners, she does things the right way, and so she had a lot of potential. I found this out. She actually was in martial arts with me mixed martial arts. We did MMA together and there's a lot you can learn from someone in MMA, because if they're like really good, it's because they basically are very strong in technical skills, right? So if you have someone who come out, come go to do martial arts with them and they're not very good. Well, because they don't really pay attention to the technical skills. She's very technical, so, like you knew she was going to be really picky when it comes to everything else. So I knew she had the right potential.

Kari Jo Patterson:

I didn't even know if she wanted to work in the industry, but I just saw something in her and so I wanted somebody who could grow with me, and so I asked her if she would go to school and she told me no, I think probably like 500 times, I kid you not. I was like you should be an esthetician, you should go to school. And she'd be like no, no, no. I even went to her mom and I was like she should be an esthetician and her mom's like yeah, um, if you want to get to her, you're going to have to go through her husband or something. I was like fine, I'll go through her husband. So I went to her husband. I was like let me show you how this could work. And I basically and their biggest thing is well, I can't go to school because I'm not going to make money and I was like well, I'll tell you what.

Kari Jo Patterson:

In my state, iowa, like you don't have to be an esthetician to do permanent makeup. So let's start you off with permanent makeup. We can make you enough money, which we can make you more than what you're making right now working at I don't know the buckle or wherever she was working, and it will put you through school and then, when you get out, you'll just have so much more potential because we can make a lot of other things. And so I encouraged her. She agreed and I I just wanted somebody that was going to be with me for the longterm. I wanted someone that I could trust, I could teach her. Like I actually wanted to help somebody grow, cause I didn't want to be in this alone. Like I wanted someone I trusted. I wanted someone I could help grow and I taught her everything that I know, everything that I knew. That hire was the number one best hire that I made. She stayed with me for a very long time. She had so much potential and we grew together for a very long time. She became a very integral part of my business. But she wasn't just an employee. She was almost like a partner in helping me grow.

Kari Jo Patterson:

So here's the first question that you need to ask yourself before you get into hiring Do you have enough work for this person to stay busy or at least make what they need to make in order to survive. A lot of times, people get you, hire somebody on, and then they can't afford the amount that they're making, and so they just end up seeing you as greedy. But it's not really that you're greedy. They're making what they're worth, what they're bringing in right. It's just that they have financial problems on the back burner and so they've got to be able to survive off of building whatever it is. And do you have enough work that you could help them survive until they start thriving? That's the question.

Kari Jo Patterson:

When I hired my first real employee, I had more work than I could handle on my own, but I could not double her schedule, and so I told her up front listen, I'm going to give you some of my overflow of clients, but you are also going to have to hustle to fill the rest of your schedule, and I'm going to help you. And we're going to reach out to other salons. We're going to reach out and ask my clients to bring in more people. We're going to work on the SEOs together. We're going to do Instagram together.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Listen, if you're not overwhelmed yet in your business life. With everything that you have going on, it's possibly not the right time to hire, but if you feel like you are drowning in appointments or maybe you are losing clients because you can't keep up, this is a sign that it's time that you bring somebody else on. My next question is going to be can you afford it? Even say, when I was bringing on, I mean, those were my first service providers, but technically, the very first person I ever hired it was my virtual receptionist. You know I get people are like well, do I need to have a bunch of salaries saved up? Because how am I going to pay for them? Guys, you don't need to have a bunch of money saved up before you hire somebody, but what you do need to have is when you hire them, you need to basically plan for how this hire is going to help generate you money. So if you hire someone, they should either directly be bringing in income to your clients or they are freeing up your time to take more clients yourself. Maybe that's why you got to get that virtual receptionist.

Kari Jo Patterson:

When I hired on, I knew when I hired my employee, I knew that she would make money for the business by taking my excess of lash clients and doing the permanent makeup and stuff like that. I knew that I had, I would be able to. She would be able to bring in enough to justify her paycheck and I could help her in building her own clientele. If you can't see a clear way to monetize your hire, then you should probably wait until you can. Even with my virtual receptionist, she was directly affecting my revenue because she was responding to my clients like that Even though I didn't have my phone ringing. That's why I started with a virtual receptionist, not a receptionist in-house, because, like, what would she have done? She would have sat there all day long, because it's not like my phones were blowing up. Yet they weren't blowing up until I really brought in my second service provider. Right, that's when things started blowing up.

Kari Jo Patterson:

When I got my third, that's when, like I, I still kept my virtual receptionist longer than I should have. I should have brought her in a in-house receptionist sooner. But when I I got ADD guys, where was I going with that? Oh, but my virtual receptionist. She was bringing in money because she was providing my clients a better experience. So, like, if I was in the middle of doing a lash, I should do a whole episode on a virtual receptionist. But if I was doing like a lash client, right, and like I was running late or something, I would like pick up my phone really quick and I would text her and I'm next client 15 minutes late, right, and she would call that client and be like Carrie is going to be 15 minutes late. So my client I'm not wasting my client's time, right. If I needed to move people around, she was moving it around. She was always there to respond, like that, which got my clients better service, and it's not like she was doing it all the time she was at home. She was staying at home, anyways, okay. So, but she was directly affecting my revenue. And also one thing that I did that like affected our revenue is if I had someone cancel early in my schedule, she would call someone who was further out and see if they wanted to move up. Because if she could fill my schedule earlier, like it's easier to fill your schedule later, it's harder to fill your schedule the week up, but if you move some clients that are further out up closer, you know you're going to maximize. So she did affect my. Having a virtual reception does affect your revenue.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Okay, I want to talk about the emotions behind hiring, especially if this is your first time hiring. I want you to know it is scary. The first time you hire, I promise you, it is so freaking scary. You are putting your trust, you are putting your business into the hands of someone else and the first time I hired I was terrified. But here's the truth. You are never going to feel 100% ready. It's like having a baby. You're never going to feel ready, you're never going to really understand payroll or whatever, until you just start doing it. Hiring is always going to be a leap of faith. Always 100% it's a leap of faith. Sure, there are systems to help that make a calculated risk, but it is always a leap and you will make mistakes and that is going to be part of your process.

Kari Jo Patterson:

I had employees leave and let me tell you some of those departures were heartbreaking. I had one employee leave. It was my first employee that quit Jessica. I should bring her on. It was so heartbreaking for me and now, if you guys ever noticed in my podcast, I was like I use her name all the time because she affected me the most. It was heartbreaking. The first employee that leaves. It's awful, but there was a conflict that happened in my business and she didn't trust me to handle it. That was a really hard pill for me to swallow and it made me reflect on my leadership and make a bunch of changes, because I just did not ever want to feel that again and I didn't ever want to lose her, and so I've also had employees that stayed with me for years. They helped me build something amazing.

Kari Jo Patterson:

The key is is to learn from every single experience that you have and to keep improving. Here's some practical tips to help you make your first hire amazing. So look for potential, not perfection. My best hires were not experts. They knew nothing. My best hire knew nothing. She wasn't even in the sex field, but she had potential. They are the people with the right attitude and the willingness to learn. Those are your people.

Kari Jo Patterson:

Hire for growth. Do not hire a quick fix. Do not hire someone just to fill a temporary gap that you need. Hire someone that you can see helping you grow your business and set clear expectations Before they start. Make sure you're clear on what their role is going to be and how they are going to actually help your business grow. What does success look like for them. That girl that I got to come, I gave her a vision of what success was going to look like in my company and she stuck it with me and helped me do that because she saw the vision. You got to show them what it's going to look like. Show it, be in it for them. And the last one is you have to be prepared to invest in them. You have to.

Kari Jo Patterson:

So, whether it is training, mentoring or even helping them build a clientele, your first hire is every hire is going to require your time and effort on your part and you have to be committed to giving it. If you're an esthetician and you're ready to make your first hire but you are feeling overwhelmed, I want to invite you to getting on a strategy call with me. I specifically love to help estheticians that are ready to start growing a team and they need to learn the right pay systems. They need to learn the right way to motivate a team, how to pay a team. Definitely, book that call. It's a free strategy call. I want to thank you guys for tuning in with me on the Esthetician Podcast. Remembering hiring your first employee is a very big step, but it can also be one of the most rewarding. And you're not just growing your business, you are growing an empire, guys. So let's think like it Until next time, stay fearless, stay focused and keep on growing.

Anniuncer:

Thank you for listening to the Esthetician Podcast with Kari Jo Patterson. Each week, Kari brings you real-world lessons on how to grow your empire. To learn more about Kari Fearless Prosperity Mastermind Group, one-on-one VIP coaching opportunities and more visit Kari. That's wwwk-a-r-i-j-o-pattersoncom. See you next week for more insights and strategies on the Esthetician Podcast.

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