Intuitive Marketing Podcast
Ditch the bro-marketing BS and embrace big sister vibes instead!
Your New Biz Besties Are Here
Welcome to the Intuitive Marketing Podcast, where we guide heart-centered entrepreneurs, changemakers, and purpose-driven business owners through the wild world of marketing with heart and soul.
We're Meg and Chelsea, your hosts and intuitive marketing experts who have teamed up to help you align your passion with profit and make a bigger impact in the world.
With solo episodes and our juicy joint chats, you'll walk away with strategies, tools, and inspiration to grow your business intuitively, attract your dream clients, and create a brand that feels authentically you.
Intuitive Marketing Podcast
#8: Empowering Your Business with Intuitive Support and Hiring
What if your business could thrive with the right support in place? On this episode of the Intuitive Marketing Podcast, Chelsea and Meg tackle the often daunting task of knowing when and how to hire help as a solopreneur. Drawing from personal experiences, we unravel the fears and hesitations that come with delegating tasks—like the fear of losing control and the uncertainty of ROI. By integrating intuition, through human design and mindfulness practices, we guide you to recognize tasks that drain your energy, helping you make more informed hiring decisions that prevent burnout and boost productivity.
Outsourcing is not just about offloading work; it’s about strategic growth. We explore the layers of hiring, from virtual assistants who manage the nitty-gritty, to strategic roles that demand insightful input. Sharing our own anecdotes, we highlight the balance between personal and professional life—like choosing between hiring childcare and delegating business responsibilities. Our conversation includes practical advice, like allocating 20% of your desired earnings towards resources that can help you reach financial goals, drawing on lessons learned from successful business ventures.
Building a solid support system is crucial for sustainable success. We discuss conducting time and task audits, a powerful exercise that reveals which responsibilities can be delegated effectively. By clarifying job roles, you can streamline the hiring process, ensuring you invest in the right support like tech and admin VAs, bookkeepers, or graphic designers. This episode emphasizes the value of an intuitive and intentional approach to business management. Stay tuned for our next episode, where Chelsea will share insights on essential business systems for success.
Ready for Support from Meg & Chelsea?
👉🏼 Looking for the Intuitive Business Community? Visit www.joinibctoday.com for all the details. We're here to help you step into bigger visibility. Bolder opportunities and greater impact with three coaching calls a month, hands on feedback, and a powerful network of like minded women.
👉🏼 We can take a deep dive into your client journey or your visibility strategy and show you exactly what's working, what's not, and how to fix it. Ready for clarity and a plan that actually works book your audit today at www.intuitivebusinessbydesign.com/audit
👉🏼 Explore the services offered by our marketing agency Intuitive Marketing Collective and request a free Discovery Call to explore how we can support your business. Go to www.intuitivemarketingcollective.com
👉🏼 Follow the agency on Instagram to continue to conversation beyond the podcast @intuitivemarketingcollective
Want to connect more with the hosts?
Follow Meg on Instagram @megoneill10
Follow Chelsea on Instagram @intuitivebusinessmentor...
Are you a solopreneur, drowning in to-dos but terrified to let go of control?
Speaker 2:Hiring can be so scary, especially when you aren't quite sure there'll be a return on investment, or how do you know when it's a better use of your time to not be doing the small tasks in your business? Hey, soulful CEOs, welcome back to the Intuitive Marketing Podcast. I'm Chelsea and I'm Meg, and in today's episode we're diving into a topic that's pretty near and dear to our hearts and, honestly, probably yours too. It's all about knowing when it's time to just hire help in your business.
Speaker 1:Yes, because, let's be real, being a solopreneur can feel like a glorious, yet really exhausting one-woman show can feel like a glorious yet really exhausting one-woman show.
Speaker 2:Hey there, friends. Welcome to the Intuitive Marketing Podcast, where we ditch the bro marketing BS and bring you big sister vibes instead. I'm Meg and this is Chelsea.
Speaker 1:Your new biz besties.
Speaker 2:We met on TikTok in 2023. Fast forward to now and we have teamed up here to guide you through the wild world of marketing your business with heart and soul.
Speaker 1:Are you feeling lost or overwhelmed, maybe unsure of your next steps, but you have a big vision of where your coaching, healing, speaking or writing career could be in the next five years, 10 years. Don't worry, we've got your back. We'll help you tap into your intuition, build a brand that lights you up and leverage proven marketing strategies to grow towards a six or even seven-figure business in a way that won't make you cringe.
Speaker 2:We're actually here to help you bring the magic back into your marketing. Because marketing should feel good, not gross Grab your favorite drink, get comfy and let's get started your favorite drink, get comfy and let's get started.
Speaker 1:And this episode is especially relevant for all of our amazing listeners because, as intuitive entrepreneurs, we often have this deep desire to do it all ourselves. We pour our hearts and souls into every detail of our business, but sometimes that can lead to burnout and overwhelm, and we just don't want that for you.
Speaker 2:So we've broken today down that we're going to talk about signs that it's time to bring on some support how to choose the right kind of support, who do you need to hire, what title, what job description? Plus, we're going to really normalize and share some of our stories about unique and challenging approaches to figuring out like when do you hire, who do you hire and how do you make that decision.
Speaker 1:Before we jump in Chelsea, let's just talk about a little bit about how we are bringing intuition into the boardroom of our business. What's one way that you've been bringing personal healing or intuition into your business this week?
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is a fun one. I've been refocusing on human design charts lately. I have them, like ready to pack. We're in the process of moving to our new house and so I have all of our three charts for myself, my husband and myself printed. So it like came back into my field and I'm really leaning into using a pendulum to help with yes or no or this or that questions. That's really in alignment with my sacral decision-making style. Also, really paying attention to what I get excited about, what lights me up as a generator that's where I'm supposed to be spending my time. That kind of ties into today's conversation and it's honestly been a game changer for how I think about what I should be delegating, because the things I'm not excited about I shouldn't be doing. It's not my highest and best, and so I'm learning to lean more into that. What about you?
Speaker 1:You've been helping me with that and I'm keeping a little note and noticing when I do something in my work and if it lights me up or if it doesn't too, so I can remember that. And this week I've been incorporating more mindfulness practices into my workday. I'm really pushing myself to meditate before I start a task. Even if I'm feeling like really rushed, like I have to start this task, I'm making sure I carve out 10 minutes to clear my energy and I always feel so much better on the other side. But getting myself to do it is always can be hard, so I start with a short meditation and setting the intention for the day. It really helps me feel grounded once I'm moving into the work and not as like frantic and hectic.
Speaker 1:So the other part is like making sure that I'm using my intuition in creating the content that we use and in our client calls, especially with where we're in the middle right now of launching our community, and I think it's really important to have a grounded base of content that you're using but then tuning into my intuition in the stories or what I want to share about it. And last but not least, last week I picked up a new pendulum, because the one that I had broke and I didn't use it as much. But you always talk about it and I'm like I really want to use it and I asked it what the yes and no was going to be. And I've been using it for a few different things and it always feels like spot on, so that has been really exciting too.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that. So let's talk about some of the signs you need to hire. It often feels like friction, right, it's when something you know you should be getting some things off your plate, but how do you decide? You know you should be getting some things off your plate, but how do you decide? So here's some signs that we've heard and felt when is it time to bring someone in to help you versus when do you just need to get better? I do feel like that.
Speaker 2:This is something that in the past five-ish years of online business ownership, there's been just this big shift towards. There's an online course for everything. There's a YouTube channel. You could teach yourself every piece of what you need to do, but is that the best use of your time? Is that like? How does it feel? Do you have enough time? I don't have enough time, we don't have enough time. So here's some signs that we brainstorm.
Speaker 2:One Instagram you know what I actually? I think I only started showing up on Instagram consistently, like three years ago. I didn't even have an Instagram account before. Really, I only I did. I marketed all of my previous businesses only through Facebook and LinkedIn. Wow, stepping into Instagram, I have hired out and had content creation support in varying phases of my business and it often was when I needed to see what it felt like, when it was actually running with some strategy, and then could glean from that and do some seasons of doing it myself. And so if Instagram is feeling frantic, if you open up the app and you just feel your skin crawl, if you are in comparisonitis, if you know that you want to be marketing on Instagram but it just does not feel feel right, that's a great time to be hiring someone like meg and her beautiful team.
Speaker 2:this is a big one that I hear a lot when someone signs up and you have no idea what's happening next for them. Yeah, I was on a strategy call with a client this week and she was like somebody just bought something from me and I don't even think they got the delivery email. Like I don't know how they found it, I don't know if they got it. So then I was like up in the middle of the night being like wait, did this person get the login? And that's such a shitty feeling, like we've all been there. But if you've grown really quickly and need to circle back to the details, or if you don't have systems in place, that feeling shaky can absolutely prevent you from growing because your nervous system doesn't want to feel that.
Speaker 1:No, I've wanted to close it down.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just shut the doors because you don't want to be like not showing up or selling what you said you were going to do. And this one oh, I need to hire this out. I'm saying this one out loud because I need accountability for this. Constantly losing emails that's not so much me, but backed up email inbox Every single week. I have clean out my email inbox on my to-do list and I have identified the VA in our team who wants to start doing it for me. And it's a struggle to think through if I've never successfully run my email inbox well.
Speaker 1:I can't even imagine.
Speaker 2:So that's my next like growth edge. I swear, josephine, if you're listening to this, by 2025, you'll be running my inbox, but I think those are some signs, and Meg's got a couple more for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 90,000 emails in my that's really a sign that I need.
Speaker 1:So another one is you feel embarrassed to share your website, or you just haven't had a website like me for a long time. I have it. It's built on the back end. I just haven't finished it, so that's one sign of maybe now is the time. The next year is the time you want to invest that money, so you feel really solid. Having our agency website has felt so good to me because I can just send people there. It feels like really good in my nervous system.
Speaker 1:If you're spending like 12 hours a week creating Instagram content or marketing, writing your emails, anything like that, that's a lot of time, and that's a lot of time that you're out of your zone of genius, unless you love doing it. That might be a place where you can say I could buy my time back. So that's where I look at I really want to buy my time back. Anything that's like making you feel dumb or making you feel like you need to buy another $2,000 course. That's often where I find myself like, okay, I'm just going to buy from this person and oftentimes I leave feeling like, oh, I could have-.
Speaker 1:Better than I thought it would be Exactly I knew more and I could have spent that $2,000 just having somebody set up my honey book or whatever it is you know. So I think that's the important part too of if you don't feel solid about it and it's not something you want to learn and then monetize, pay for somebody to do it for you, so it's just done and you can move forward, and I think in that transaction.
Speaker 2:the other person probably loves doing it Like that's something that I get excited about, like when we first launched the agency, we were using HoneyBook and the woman who I hired.
Speaker 2:She brought so much joy and thoughtfulness and ideas that I would have never thought of. Even if I had watched every YouTube about HoneyBook, I would not have brought joy to it. I would have been like, great, I just got it done. And so that's also something to think about. Some people love managing inboxes. I do not. No, yeah, it's also about bringing people into your little team that really enjoy what they're doing and are in their zone of genius Right and then you can learn from them too.
Speaker 1:Like one of our clients, we created content for them, and now they created this process that saves them so much time too, so it's like you can use these services for a little while and then make it yours too. It's not a forever investment all the time.
Speaker 2:So that's something else to remember. Yeah, so we wanted to normalize that. This is a really challenging topic and I feel like there's not a lot of people talking about hiring because it's so unique, like everybody's process, everybody's strengths, everybody's needs, everybody's ADHD, like everybody needs a different hire to take things off their plate. And so tuning into the inner wisdom is so powerful. Obviously that's what we try to bring to. Tuning into the inner wisdom is so powerful. Obviously that's what we try to bring to all of the conversations here on the podcast. So let's start talking about just our experiences with hiring. Meg, when did have you hired? Does it feel good to hire? When did you start first exploring being more than a one-woman show?
Speaker 1:I have hired. I've hired VAs, I've hired podcasts. When I was doing my podcast, I hired a company to manage my podcast. What my biggest holdup and problem is that I am such a my trauma response in life has been like I'll just do it myself, right, I'll just do it myself, I'll just do it myself. And it's so much easier to do it myself than to explain to somebody. And it's so much easier to do it myself than to explain to somebody how to do it. And that has been. It's something that I know needs to be healed within me. So I keep, I try to always challenge myself there. Okay, I, instead of just saying I'm going to do it myself, I look at what is the stress that it's causing me or what. So I, I am not I. At the time when I hired a VA, she was the so lovely, so helpful, but I didn't give her any direction, like I wanted to hire somebody that was going to give me direction, and I think we see that.
Speaker 2:I think that's really common. Yes, exactly, Am I hiring? Are you trying to hire a doer to just do something that you already know how to do, but you just want it off your plate?
Speaker 1:Yeah, or are you?
Speaker 2:trying to hire someone who's going to bring strategy to it. And that is not typically the same person.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and I think that I think I logically knew that, but I was hoping for some kind of miracle.
Speaker 2:A little unicorn to dance into your business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just tell me this is going to make your life easier, but the way that I make these decisions is like now. Looking at it is like what's gonna buy my time back and what do I love to do versus what's drains me. So I'm much more clear on that now and I know that there's a lot of things that I can learn, but I don't wanna spend hours and hours doing it. So I think that's where I try to focus and make my decisions from. How about you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what you just said reminded me of a conversation I had, I don't know, maybe a year ago, where I told someone I either need to pay someone to have more childcare so I can work more to do these things, or I need to pay someone to do the things I don't want to do and spend time with my child, and that's really, I think there's. As a parent, I think I make decisions a little bit differently than I used to, because there is that you've just got to be hyper productive in the pockets of time you have while you, if you're a mom, and so I think a rule of thumb that has served me really well. I worked with a mentor by the name of Melissa Farr. She doesn't really do business coaching or anything anymore, but she was really great. I worked with her back in 2015, 2016, and she shared this rule of thumb that when you're doing a launch or when you're looking at your ongoing overhead in a business because let's be real, like if you sign on to have a three-month commitment with a online business manager, like that person is now part of your overhead of your business and I was told to look at having 20% of what you want to be earning, not what you're earning now, and that was a really big shift for me. If you want to have a $20,000 launch of a mastermind that you're launching, this is what I was going.
Speaker 2:I was preparing for a mastermind launch while I was working with her and I wanted a $20,000 launch, and she was like are you comfortable spending $4,000? That would be 20% to take some of the launch activities off your plate so that you can still be in your zone of genius. And so what that looked like for me was hiring someone to help set up the sales page, hiring a copywriter, hiring someone to help me make some of the PDF fillable worksheets that were going to be part of the mastermind. Could I have figured some of that out? Yes, I had never had a $20,000 launch, so it was a huge stretch for me to think about.
Speaker 2:Putting $4,000 on a credit card is what I did to pay for these people in advance, and I had a $23,000 launch. I'm not saying you should always put people's fees on a credit card, but for me, that's since then served as a really good barometer that when I sit down and look at my monthly bookkeeping, I'm looking at okay, what's my software overhead and what's my people overhead? And is the people overhead under 20% of what's coming in the door and is it helping me increase what I'm earning? And if I'm not currently earning what I want to be earning, okay, if I want to be making $10,000 extra more a month, is there someone in my team I could be delegating to that could be doing $1,000 worth of activities for me?
Speaker 2:that would help me get that extra 10,000?. So I'm maybe a little bit more like logical on. I want to see the income like the return on investment calculation. But it's really because that was such a big energetic stretch for me the first time I used that and it worked. If it hadn't worked I probably wouldn't be using it to this day.
Speaker 1:You saw the proof.
Speaker 2:I saw the proof and then I think also, just as a mom, there is that element of do I pay someone to be with my kid or do I pay someone to do things I don't want to do, and I think that's been a shift for me for sure. And here's no one can tell you the exact steps to follow, who to?
Speaker 1:hire first.
Speaker 2:If you see courses out there of like how to hire your first VA or whatever like maybe you need a VA. So what we're going to talk about is some of the things. What are some of the roles that you could be hiring? I actually just mentioned online business manager. We didn't put that down here, but some of the terms operations manager, some of the roles or job descriptions that you might hear out and about or be thinking about. So these are some pretty common things that people might hire out. Social media content creation or social media management. Copywriter that could be someone rewriting the copy on your website, writing copy for a new sales page, writing copy for your content, a website or funnel designer. Most people do not want to all of a sudden magically become a website designer.
Speaker 1:And there's so much that goes into it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The best investment if you decide that you need a website. Right Lead generation. That would be search engine optimization or paid ads management. I have now twice in my lifetime as a business owner taken courses. One was by Emily Hirsch, one was by my friend, carla, and both times I was like I am going to teach myself how to run ads. And then it's just not fun to me and it's not exciting, and so I like learn it, enough to know, and then fizzle out and I'm like why did I think I was going to do it this time? Backend and tech, va stuff.
Speaker 1:This is typically like.
Speaker 2:If you are someone who is saying I don't know what's happening to people when they sign up, I don't know if they're getting the welcome sequence, I don't know, like backend linking up, setting up Zapier's apps, automations, integrations if that's not your jam, a tech VA would definitely be something to consider. An admin VA is someone who's gonna help maybe with your scheduling, managing your calendar, your inbox, sending out welcome gifts, like more of that executive assistant style and, like Meg said, podcast editing, podcast managing.
Speaker 2:I have had a YouTube manager in the past when I was getting really serious about YouTube, and so these are not coaches, these are not consultants.
Speaker 2:These are people who are doing things in your business so that you can be focusing on doing something else, either in your business or just out in life, or being with your family or whatever Like it's just. These are typical roles, a lot of these. We actually have these team members in our agency. So if you're like, where on earth would I go find these people, yes, you can go to Upwork or Fiverr or Facebook groups for VAs and put together a job description and interview them. Or if you work with us or have considered working with us at the Intuitive Marketing Collective, you can trust Meg and I. All of our hires are amazing and we pair people with the right doers that you need in your business for right now.
Speaker 1:I think you did a great job like explaining that too, because often I've heard people like in our, in my networking group like talk about I wanted a VA to do all my social media and it's okay.
Speaker 1:You got to understand what you're hiring these people for too, and like how they're all very different and, like when you were describing a tech VA, is very different than an admin VA. Potentially Sometimes you can find people who are. But being really clear on what are the things that you want to get off of your plate and, I think, getting to the core of what is it that's stressful about it or that you don't want to spend the time learning Because, if it is like you don't understand what to post on social media or you just don't like creating it, those are different places. Like getting clear I think I hadn't been clear in the past, so hopefully that helps somebody to tune into their clarity. But some other things that you that could be really helpful that you might not be necessarily thinking about as a direct day-to-day.
Speaker 1:Like hire, something that I've hired out hired out, yeah is bookkeeping because that is so valuable and even at the times in my business where I am making hardly any profit, I still keep my bookkeeper because it has just been so helpful to my nervous system because sitting in December one year with a million sticky notes of what receipts I needed, I was like I can never do this again. Also, I love paying my accountant, so once a year I hire her. I already I was like I can never do this again. Also, I love paying my accountant, so once a year I hire her. I already sent her a message that I want to be first on her list for my taxes, because that's another thing that like, I want to know that the, an expert, is doing it and that I will never learn tax law or whatever.
Speaker 1:You can also hire out, just like, really specifically for graphics for your content. And so, say, you are launching a Facebook group or you're launching a program and you just want Instagram story slides and some graphics for your feed. Like, you can hire out just a package of those kind of graphics so that you don't feel like that's what's holding you up from sharing. You can hire somebody that does a sales process review, who looks at how you're taking your calls and then really giving you and implementing a system for you and telling you this is how you're going to optimize it better. This is how you're going to get more people to say yes. Also, hiring somebody who will do a client journey assessment looking at where they're finding you, what needs to happen next, and maybe helping you optimize that with either just telling you how to do it or, like in our agency, how we have somebody who would be able to help implement. They could have somebody that can implement all the steps along the journey that you need. Something like our 90-day marketing plan is something that you might not think of right away, of, oh, I need to find somebody to do a 90 day marketing plan for me. No, but you could hear us talking about it and then say have this road back for 90 days written for you, with checklists and all the things, so that then you're not spending 25 hours doing that yourself or however many hours and you're also getting the expert advice, versus having to try to figure that out on your own.
Speaker 1:And finally, like something that's my favorite is hiring intuitive support, energetic, somatic work, because our businesses are so much energetic. They're so tied to our subconscious. They're also so tied to, like, our physical bodies. Like I see the massage that I get every month from my masseuse as a work expense. I don't think taxes would see it the same, but I see it as outsourcing so that I then have the energy to show up for my clients. Intuitive sport, the same thing like getting clarity. It's not that I'm outsourcing my power and saying to them give me all the answers. It gives me this place to come and really go through the energy and then get clarity on where I need to go. Yeah, so sometimes we just need to invest in support to reach that next level. So it's an act of self-belief and expansion. So, for those who are listening, you might feel that pull to hire, but you might be a little hesitant. So, like Chelsea, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 2:I think the first thing is to get crystal clear on what tasks are draining your energy and taking you away from your zone of genius. Because just saying I need a VA like I'm just imagining someone going into there's Facebook groups where you can hire VAs right, and I need a VA Like I'm just imagining someone going into there's Facebook groups where you can hire VAs right, I need a VA to help in my business. The first question one of the VAs is going to answer is great, what type of VA and what tasks are you trying to have done? And so you want to consider what kind of support would be most helpful. Is it a VA to handle admin tasks? A copywriter to create compelling content? A social media manager to boost your online presence to create compelling content? A social media manager to boost your online presence?
Speaker 2:Are you in fight, flight, freeze and need some nervous system regulation to get into the activities that you're avoiding? Once you can get clear on what you need, then you can start researching or interviewing or finding the people that are going to fill a role, and then you can trust yourself, like trusting your gut feeling throughout the process. If you are clear I need an online business manager, I need a bookkeeper, then it's much more targeted, like what you're trying to do, and then when you make the decision, it's so much easier to be like, okay, I'm going to trust this process instead of I think I need someone. And then you hire someone and you don't know. You still don't know, you still don't know if they're really doing an activity that's going to be beneficial for your business Makes sense Totally.
Speaker 1:So we want to give you a little piece of homework For the next week. I want you to keep a running note on the tasks that you do. It could be a Google Doc, it could be in your phone. What would first tune into? What are those tasks that you're doing every day, maybe even rating them energetically of, like how much you like them, how much you don't. And then what would the successful version of you you are successful. What would like the future version of you be outsourcing? So look at it. What doesn't light you up? What are the things that drain so much of your energy? And then just start dreaming and seeing what tasks you actually want to get off your plate, and then you'll get clear on who that is that can fill that role and really take those tasks off.
Speaker 2:I love that homework.
Speaker 2:It's something that pretty much every mastermind I've ever joined has had us do this like a time audit and a task audit.
Speaker 2:And I just want to throw this out there that if you're inside of our intuitive business community or a monthly membership already or want to join, come share those tasks because you might realize you might look at a list of tasks and not realize like, oh, those four would go to this type of VA and that would go to here, and so if you create this list and you're in the community, come in over into the school, put like your list I will help you create a job description.
Speaker 2:This is something I find great joy in is figuring out like which tasks would go under what role and help you create a job description so you can go hire it. And if it's something that we do in the agency, we can certainly talk to you and see if we can help get you a good deal on what you need done. I guess that's a wrap on another episode of the intuitive marketing podcast. I hope this episode inspired you to think about expanding your team and support in the future to allow for that sustainable expansion that so many listening to this podcast are looking for, and it will help you embrace, maybe, a more intuitive and intentional approach to juggling all of the hats of being a business owner.
Speaker 1:Remember, your marketing should feel as good as it looks. So we want you to ditch the hustle, trust your intuition and create a business that truly aligns with your soul. So I hope you tune into the next episode, where Chelsea is going to be diving into systems you will want to have in place to actually run your business. So today we talked about some of the who, and next week you will hear specific examples of systems and ways to set yourself up for success.