#011 - MASTERCLASS: Hiring like a boss

Samantha Noelle shares hard-earned lessons from her own hiring mistakes and her time as a recruiter to help business owners hire with less stress and more strategy. She breaks down why hiring from emotion, waiting until you’re slammed, and treating payroll like a money suck (instead of an investment) leads to bad fits, turnover, and burnout. 

She covers when to hire (before you’re too busy), common myths like “I’ll hire when I make more money,” and signs you’re ready, like becoming the bottleneck or letting admin work delay sales and marketing. 

Samantha explains how to define the gap, hire for capability over personality, set non-negotiables, and standardize systems, onboarding, and SOPs so the business can scale beyond you. She also recommends proactive recruiting through LinkedIn Recruiter Lite and using behavioral interview questions to spot real skill.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you have thought about hiring or you already have half a dozen people working for you, hiring the right person can seem daunting. Over the years, I've consistently heard clients tell me that hiring is their biggest stress. There's no good people, they'll tell me. And maybe you feel like this sometimes. What just happened to the work ethic in people? Now everyone wants a badge just for showing up to work. They call in sick all the time. No one cares about my business like I do. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Hey everyone, I'm Samantha Noel, your host of the Overcome Her podcast, and you are listening to episode number 11, How to Hire Like a Boss. And I am really excited to dive into this topic with you today because I know that the last few episodes have been more about helping you get into the right mindset and overcome certain struggles. This episode is focused more on that tactical, external, the things that can make or break a business. And while it would not be the overcome her podcast, and I would not be me if I didn't still tie this to mindset, beliefs, values, and actions driven from those things, I will be giving you some of the lessons that I have learned over the years in my own business, as well as what I learned in my brief time as a recruiter and working with other clients. Yes, your girl had a role as a recruiter for a little bit. And while ultimately it wasn't for me because of the way that recruiting agencies are now run, insert metrics and people doing the screening of candidates who have literally never worked in the industry or profession that they even hire for. She was going on to pursue her designation, and she just wanted to come in and do the work and be helpful and learn a little bit while she was on the job. And I think that's what made her so awesome to me. And she truly set the bar high. The mistakes that I made after were honestly mistakes that I knew better than to make, even though I didn't even have recruiting experience at that time. I just knew better than to make the decisions that I had made. One person that I ended up hiring lied about her references. She lied about her experience. She had said that she could prepare corporate tax returns, but she couldn't even find the date on a simple credit card receipt. Well, needless to say, I fired her on her first day. Then came the third hire who had made so many mistakes that I was still finding them six months after she had been let go. And I had originally hired her because I had felt bad for her being new to the area and immigrating to the country that I wanted to give her a job. However, it was so disastrous that I had a surgery scheduled and I had to be off for a few days. And I had trusted her to take care of the few things that absolutely needed to be done and filed on time for clients. And unfortunately, she made the mistake of leaving her key to the filing cabinet in my own personal office drawer, which I lock every night before I leave the office. I get out of my surgery and wake up from anesthesia to these text messages telling me that she couldn't get into the filing cabinet to be able to do the thing that she was supposed to do while I was away for a couple of days recovering from this invasive surgery. Needless to say, I actually had to drive to the office later that day once some of the anesthesia wore off just to go be able to do the things that need to be done because they were supposed to be filed by the very next day. Then the next person that I had hired quit without any notice during my busiest season simply because she couldn't see the growth. And she had only been there for a month and she couldn't see the growth. And I was in the early stages of my business, so I had made it very clear I am essentially a startup. It is me, and you will be my right hand. And I have plans to grow and I see management potential in you. So that's my goal for you is to grow you to the point of being able to be the manager, and then I'll hire people that will essentially be under you and report to you. And she was working with me full time, and so when she quit without notice, that was kind of my straw where I just said, I can't do this anymore because I'm trying to hire people in my busiest time, and it's causing me more stress and it's not helpful to me. And I ultimately gave up and decided I'm just gonna do this on my own because I don't trust to hire somebody else right now. But that taught me something. And what that taught me, I'm going to give to you in this episode. Needless to say, I have lived, I have learned, and I have the scars to prove it. And I get that hiring is no picnic and it's unpredictable because you are dealing with people, and people come with all kinds of variable factors that we can't control. So I get it, and I'm going to be sharing what I have learned with you in this episode so that you don't make the same mistakes that I did or that other clients that I've worked with have made. And it's gonna save you time and save you energies so that you move forward in your hiring practices, whether you've done it a dozen times before or whether you're doing it for the first time, so that you can go in with a really clear vision and picture and do's and don't do's so that you can have the most success possible when you go to make your next hire. One of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners make is hiring from an emotional place. They will wait until it feels like the right time. They hire someone they like personally while forgetting the practical pieces of fit, coachability, and qualifications. I hear things like I'll hire when I'm making more money, or I'll hire when things calm down. I hear that one all of the time. And let's be honest, guys, business rarely calms down and you don't know when it's going to calm down. There's never a right time to hire in the truest sense. It's almost like there's never a right time to have children, there's never a right time to get married. Because if you wait for conditions to be perfect, you will be waiting forever. Conditions are never perfect. Life happens, life is messy, business is messy, and things get in the way, things come up that you can't predict. All you can really do is make an informed decision and move forward. That's literally all that you can do. I hear people say that they'll hire when they have more clients because they want more income in their company before they hire. But the thing is, I have seen businesses hire too early, too late, emotionally, reactively, and hire people that they should have never hired in the first place. Like the person that I hired who lied about her references and lied about her capabilities. And had I been more diligent and less laissez-faire, then I would have caught those things before wasting my time hiring her. And what I have learned about hiring is that it's not just about adding a person to your company, it's about making a decision for your business that is an asset to your business. And assets are supposed to have a return on them. And hiring is really about investing back into the growth of your business. And so often what I think people do is they view hiring as a money suck as opposed to an investment. And we will get into the belief side of things later in this episode. But to start, I'm going to really get into just the practical things about hiring, and then we'll get into the belief side of things. So in this first section, we're gonna get into when do you hire, identifying the best time to hire. Now, I've already said that there is no real good time to do anything in reality. Like you can wait for perfect conditions to hire, but those perfect conditions will never come. There could always be something wrong about it. All of a sudden you have a slow week in your business, and you think, oh no, I shouldn't hire because things are slowing down. So now I don't need to hire. I think a piece of it is just making a decision that you're going to hire because you're moving forward with the growth of your business. I think there's two ways of looking at hiring there's need, and I think need comes from a place of you're missing something, and then you're going to spend money on something because there is like a need, versus looking forward at expansion and growth. And you could say that need is tied to growth because you need that in order to grow. But I still think that the energy of need is kind of, it feels almost like an energy is being sucked in as opposed to growth, feels like expansion energy. So it's almost thinking about it from the sense of do I want my business to grow? Is there a demand within my business that allows me to capitalize on the demand that I do see that is there? And if I have more time to spend on the marketing, on the sales side of my business, on connecting with people and getting the visibility of me and my business out there, then whatever gap there is between hiring somebody and not having full capacity for them, that that gap will be filled because I'll be out there attracting the business. Often businesses will wait too late because they think that they need more money, more sales, they need to be busier. But the problem is that by the time that you are busy, you're too late. You're too late. And now what ends up happening is they hire somebody, they have the expectation, an unrealistic expectation, that that person is just going to be able to come into their business and save the day. They're essentially looking for somebody to come into the business and save the day. And then that person falls short because, well, they have to learn your systems, they have to learn your processes, they have to learn you, they have to learn your customers, they have to learn your business, they have to learn what the expectations are and what the role is. And 10 times out of 10, when someone is hiring late, they don't have most or all of those things in place. So they don't have the systems, they don't have the processes, they don't have the training guides, they don't have the time themselves to train the person. They have the unrealistic expectation that this person can just come in, dive into the deep end, and figure it out themselves. And I'm gonna tell you right now that it is a very small percentage of the population that has the ability to dive into the deep end and figure it out. And even when they dive into the deep end and figure it out, they're not going to do it flawlessly and you're still going to be frustrated because you have unrealistic expectations. So now you've put way more stress on yourself and your business. It's going to show to your customers and to your end users, you've now created strain on this new working relationship, and you've probably given this new employee reasons to want to leave and go find another company to work for. None of those are favorable things. So waiting until you are too busy is by far the worst time that you could hire. Now, I've already said there's no really great time to hire, but if I were to say one really bad time to hire, it would be when you're too busy and you don't have the right things in place. Every business does have seasons. Sometimes those seasons are predictable, sometimes they are not predictable. But when you have a slower season, if you have a slower season, that is definitely the time to get on planning to hire. And if you don't have a slow season, then you need to hire somebody immediately who can help you with the hiring piece because you're not going to have the capacity to do it yourself. Okay, let's just get into some of the myths around when is the right time to hire? Because there are definitely myths in the hiring realm. Myth number one, I'll hire when I make more money. And the truth is often that you need help to get you to that next revenue level. So if your business is at 80k a year and you want to get into six figures, you probably need to hire somebody in order to get into that six figures. Because by the time you get into the six figures, you're probably going to be too busy to then hire somebody. So waiting until you make more money to hire is the exact opposite. More money comes once you hire. Hiring one great person at a higher salary or wage is far better than hiring two mediocre people at lower wages. Meaning, if you hire somebody really good who fits everything that you need, that's going to help scale your business. Remember, I already said that people are assets to your company. They should be viewed as assets, not something that's taking from your company. You are not running a charity business. You are running something that is meant to outgrow you that you can later on one day sell. That is what a business is. So, in that sense, a business is supposed to be an asset. It should be treated like an asset. Assets are supposed to have return on investment. Everything that you put into your business should have a return on investment. And your people that you hire should also. So if you think you need to make more money before you hire, your thinking is backwards. I need to hire before I make more money. Myth number two, I can't afford to hire. Well, my question to you is can you afford not? Oftentimes people think, I can't afford to hire, yet they're not thinking about the cost of not hiring. So, what is the cost if you're not hiring? Are you losing opportunities because you're not out there networking because you're too busy and you have to turn down projects that could then lead into other referrals, or you don't have the capacity to produce more output in your business, whether it's a product or it's a service, because you don't have that extra assistance? Are you wasting your very expensive time on administrative tasks, on bookkeeping, on driving around just to meet and drop off things that somebody who's an admin could potentially do for you? What is the cost of you not hiring somebody? That's what you need to look at. Because when you start to look at that, you might realize that remember, you're the owner. Your rate is higher than anybody else's rate in the business. And it should be because you're supposed to be the expert of your business. So what is your rate multiplied by the number of hours in a month that you're doing things that somebody could do at a lesser rate, and they could probably honestly do it better than you can. Because if you hire somebody who likes to do the things that you don't like to do as much, then they're going to be more effective and more efficient than you are. And you're going to be paying them less of a rate than you're paying yourself to do those same tasks. And if you were to add all of that up in a year, I bet you could justify paying somebody at the very bare minimum a part-time salary. Myth number three, which kind of plays off of what I just said, is I need a full-time employee. No, you don't. The first employee that I ever hired, I only hired her for 10 hours a week. There are a lot of people out there who just want 10 to 20 hours a week or 25 hours a week. Maybe it's a mom whose child has just started kindergarten and she wants to get back into the workforce and she's happy to just work 20 hours a week. Maybe it's a university student who's on their summer break and they need a part-time job and they want to do something that's somewhat related to what they've been going to school for. Maybe it's somebody who's trying to build their own business and they just want 20 hours a week for some kind of stability while they build their business on the side. And I wouldn't discount those people. One thing I do see is a lot of business owners get very territorial over their employees and they think I don't want an employee whose energy is divested into building a business of their own. And I'm gonna call that for what it is. That is insecurity and that is jealousy. You could argue with me on that until you're blue in the face. But if you have a problem with somebody building a side business that is not in direct competition with yours, if you have a problem hiring them, that is an insecurity and a jealousy thing. Because here's the thing: you don't own anyone, you pay them a salary or a wage for the results that they give you. You do not own their time. You are simply exchanging money for output, money for results. You don't own anybody's time, and you especially don't own their time for what they do outside of the hours that you have agreed in contract together that they will work. So don't discount somebody who is trying to build a business. Don't discount that mom who wants to still be a mom, but also get back into the workforce. Don't discount that summer intern. And that truly is a big mistake that I see a lot of businesses do is that they want to essentially own people. I think that people should change their thinking. That if you have an employee who is ambitious enough to want to build a side business, they're probably ambitious in general because how you do one thing is how you do all things. So if they are ambitious enough to start their own business or raise children and do work or go to school and work a part-time job, then they're going to carry that ambition into helping you build your business and grow your business if you allow them. And I say if you allow them, meaning if you trust them, if you give them the tools and the resources and the support. So don't be afraid to hire somebody part-time. You might think nobody would want to apply for this job for part-time because maybe it's more of a professional role, but you don't know that. And I can guarantee that somebody does want a part-time job and they are out there looking for a part-time job, but everybody's posting for a full-time job and they have the qualifications that you want and that you need, and they are looking for you just like you are looking for them. If you are seeking it, it is seeking you. Okay, so now let's talk about signs that you are ready to hire. Okay. One, your revenue generating activities are being delayed, meaning you're not getting out and doing the sales and the marketing and the advertising for your business the way that you know you need to in order to garner more business. And that's because you're getting bogged down in some of the administrative tasks or some of those tasks that you could pay somebody a lower wage to do than what your rate is. You're doing a lot of administrative work. If you're doing a lot of administrative work, maybe you need a VA, a virtual assistant. Customers are starting to notice the decline in the quality of the service that they're receiving from your business. Maybe you're taking too long to reply. And I have heard this one so many times. I can't tell you how many people over the years have come to me and they've said, my accountant, my bookkeeper, they just don't respond. Like they never get back to me. I asked them for an update and they never get back to me. They never email me. And I'm mind blown at this because it's such a simple thing to do, to respond to people within 24 hours and to have that as a general rule in your business. But that's a really big sign that maybe you need to hire somebody. Maybe you need to hire somebody to be your executive admin, somebody who goes through your email, somebody who schedules your appointments, somebody Who tells you what you have on the docket for the day? Somebody who can help you do the basic administrative tasks like invoicing customers or calling customers to remind them that they have something outstanding. If you are consistently working public holidays, weekends, and evenings, you probably need to hire somebody. And this is probably 99% of small to mid-sized business owners working evenings and weekends and stat holidays. Now, here's the thing: you, for the life of your business, will probably always work harder than anybody else in your business. But if your time is being taken up by just trying to meet client demands and deadlines and product launches and administrative tasks like bookkeeping or email responses that don't actually generate more sales, then that's a really big sign that hey, you need to start thinking about who you could put in that place to do those things. And finally, if you are the bottleneck to your business, and I've talked about this in other episodes, is if you are the bottleneck to your business, it's definitely time to hire. Meaning, if the reason that your business is not growing is because of you delaying and holding things back because there's just you, then you absolutely need to hire somebody. And your business can only grow to the extent that you're willing to grow. And if you are the bottleneck, you're not growing. You're literally acting as a plug to the growth of your business. Rarely do I see businesses actually hiring when is the ideal time. And the ideal time is before you're too busy. The ideal time is when you can take the time to hire the right person, to know what you want, to know what you're looking for, to take the time to find it, to make the offer, to onboard them. And onboarding takes 90 days, sometimes more, depending on how complex the role itself is. People don't even really get comfortable or good in their role until about 12 months in. So you have a life cycle of at least 12 months once the person is hired, and you have three to four months leading up to when they're hired that you actually have to start the process, meaning it takes about three to four months just to hire somebody, just to get to the point of offering and them accepting, and then their start date. Second section here. What do you look for and what do you hire for? Now, a lot of business owners have said to me, no one cares about my business as much as I care about my business. Now, there's a couple fallacies going on here. One, people will care about your business, but you are right. No one will care about your business to the extent that you do. It's like expecting somebody to love your child as much as you love them. It's not the same. That's your child, not their child. Just like you're not going to love somebody else's child as much as they love their child. Your business is your child, and you need to think of it as your child, meaning, and I've said this before, and I will always say this: you have so many years to get that business to a point where it doesn't need you anymore, and you can let it go. And that's what we do with children. Our whole goal is to get them to a point where they don't need us anymore, and then we can let them go out into the world, knowing that they can survive without us. And that is the purpose of building a business. So nobody will ever be as emotionally invested in your business as you are. The other thing I think that a lot of business owners do is I think that they confuse emotional investment with taking action that is for the greater good of the business. Your business cannot be run on emotions because you will make decisions in your business. That's the opposite of what your business actually needs to thrive. Just because you are emotionally invested in your business doesn't mean you're doing what is the best for your business. And the thing is, you're not here to find another you. End of story. You are filling a gap. It is not an emotional thing, it is a completely logical thing, but too many people make it emotional. Ask yourself some basic questions before hiring. What problems am I trying to solve? What is constantly being done by me that doesn't need to be done by me that can be outsourced to somebody else? What is the result that I'm expecting by hiring somebody? These are the questions you want to think about. You're trying to think about what is the gap and what skill set goes into that gap. What is required? And there's a lot of things that people will oftentimes throw into their list of requirements that aren't even actually required to fill that gap. Because again, it's making emotional decisions. You're not here to find your best friend, you're not here to find U.20. You're not here to find your confidant. You're not here to find somebody that's going to stay in your company for a decade, two decades, three decades, because none of that is ever guaranteed. You're here to find somebody that can fill the gap to help propel your business forward. It is about investing in your business. And I need everyone that's listening to this episode to reframe the way you look at hiring. Hiring is about investment into your business. Your business is an asset. You are simply adding another asset to that asset. There should be a return on your business, which is growth of your business. And you will know that there's growth of your business when your profits increase. And I say profits because if your sales increase and your profits don't, then that's not considered an investment. In the interviewing process, what I found a lot of business owners would do is they would hire for personality instead of capability. So they would hire the person that they liked. They would hire the person that they felt was like the most like them or was a mini them. This is why you need to understand what you're hiring for. If you're hiring an administrative assistant, you don't want to hire the rogue cowboy. Maybe you hire somebody for a junior role that's ambitious, but you need somebody that's going to be able to slot in that position and not want to change everything, not want to overtake your business, not want to change everything about your processes and your systems. The role that you would have for somebody that wants to improve the processes and improve the systems and be a little more rogue, that's going to be somebody who's like your coup or your CFO or your CEO. It's not going to be the person that's more at the junior level. The junior level, you kind of just need those steady Eddies, the steady Sally's, the people that can kind of come in and do the job well so that you can continue going out with peace of mind, building and growing your business. Because that's what you're good at as the owner. You are good at growing and building your business as the owner because people have already established likability, trust, familiarity. And remember, it's better to hire one great person who costs more than two mediocre people who cost less. Because two mediocre people who cost less, if they're just doing the bare minimum, you're not getting as much return on them as you are on hiring one great person. Okay, this third section I just want to talk about laying the foundation for hiring. Now, this is where most businesses completely miss the boat here. And if you've ever heard the saying, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That is very succinct for this next section here. You've got to know where you are and where you want to go in your business in order to be able to make effective hiring decisions. Otherwise, you will have a very high turnover rate. Meaning you will hire people, you will fire them, you will hire them, they will quit. You will hire them, they'll get bored and it will show. Because if you don't know where you are and where you're going in your business and what your goals are and what the gaps are, and what's the most important thing for your business without the emotion, then you're likely to miss the boat on what you actually need to hire, and you will hire the wrong person every single time. In my time recruiting, I often saw many businesses that ran from a place of ego. They were looking for things that were not the most important thing. They would ask for people that had specific software experience and they wouldn't look at any candidates who didn't have that software experience. And that's absolutely illogical because the truth of the matter is that if you're hiring for a certain role and somebody has been in a role similar to that role or just like that role, they already have experience using software that's similar to the one that you're using. And software use is something that can be taught and learned on the job. And 99% of the time, most employees come into a new job and they have to learn new systems. It's just part of the game because there's so many different software out there that you can't expect people to know how to use all of it. So you're hiring for skill set, and software use is not a skill set, not specific software use. You're looking for somebody who has the skill set, somebody who's coachable, somebody who can learn, who has worked with software that might be similar. And if you need somebody who is a fast learner and who understands software and technology, then it doesn't matter if they have ever used your software or not. You just need somebody who's a fast learner and you can learn softwares. So what you want to ask yourself is what does this role actually require? What is this person going to be doing day to day? What is required in that role? And then what skills are required to meet those needs? And what things can somebody learn on the job? Because you will always have on the job learning. It's inevitable. If you are looking for the unicorn, then you need to adjust your expectations that the hiring process will take far longer. And when I say far longer, I'm talking six to seven months instead of three to four months. And sometimes hiring takes as little as two to three weeks. But if you are looking for the unicorn, the person you can slot in perfectly, you're looking at six to seven months for the hiring process, and you better be willing to pay more because you're asking for a unicorn. So you're looking for the person that has all the checklist of things. And when that happens, they can demand more money from you, but you should also be expecting to pay more money for them because you have asked for a very specific thing. So ask yourself, what does this person need to know? What skills do they need to know, right? When they come in the door. Obviously, you're not going to hire an admin person for a junior accountant role. You're not going to hire a programmer to get into an engineering role. So you're going to make sure that you hire the right expertise for the job. The other thing I noticed that some employers put a lot of importance on the pedigree. And the truth of the matter is that what you learn in university, there's maybe 15% of that that you will actually retain and apply in the real world. It's on-the-job experience that matters the most. So if you're looking for somebody that has a master's in something, you might actually have better success finding somebody that has a degree or even a community college degree, but has on-the-job training and experience because that on-the-job training and experience is far more valuable. You have to figure out what is the plan for that role, what is the gap. Do you want that person to eventually grow into a more senior role? Or do you just want somebody that you can hire that's going to be happy doing the basic junior role administrative type of things? So you need to understand what you're hiring for. And don't try to hire somebody for growth. If really you just need somebody who can kind of come in, steady Eddie, steady Sally. And don't hire somebody who you want to grow and take her initiative that's more shy. Again, it's a mismatch. So it's really understanding what gaps are you trying to fill, what skills can be learned on the job, and what do they need to have when they start day one on the job in terms of skill set? I don't know if you guys have ever watched The Millionaire Matchmaker with Patty. I can't remember her last name. She always asks people, what are your five non-negotiables? And I think you need to do the same for yourself when you're hiring. What are your five non-negotiables in somebody? And what are your three nice to have? Now, if you're making your very first hire and you're trying to figure out what do you actually need, what's a really good exercise for you to do is for two weeks, track every single thing that you do in your day. Write it down, journal it. You can use an app like Clockify. There's other timestamp apps that you can use to track your time and track your activities. And then look at that entire list and go, what is revenue generating and what isn't? And of the non-revenue generating things, what can I hire somebody to do? Also, don't get attached to this idea that nobody else can do what you do, that your business is so special and so complicated that nobody else can do it or figure it out. You're undercutting other people by doing that. And you're putting yourself on a pedestal. And again, let go of your emotions. If you're making a statement in your head or a belief in your head that nobody can do what I do, or that my business is just too complicated. I couldn't teach somebody that somebody couldn't understand it. It's just too complicated. Well, uncomplicated, simple, uncomplicated. And the business owners who come in with that mindset, with that belief system of this is just too complicated. I couldn't hire somebody. It's because you have your own personal identity wrapped up in the things that you do in your business. And you're not running a business at that point, you're just running a hobby that pays you money. Because when you're running a business, you never see yourself as the central focus of your business. That's your ego. And if you want your business to truly be financially successful, to something that you can afford to step away from completely one day, whether you sell it or whether you end up hiring a CEO that does the running of the business for you, and you step away as a shareholder where you just get to get paid just because you own shares in the company. You have got to separate yourself emotionally from the business and stop thinking that you are the center of your business. Your business is the center of your business, not you. There's nothing so complicated in your business that nobody else can do it. Period. End of story. Hopefully we have got that point through. Okay. In this next section, section number four, make everything replicable. Meaning everything that you hire for should be able to be repeated, duplicated, done again. Repeated, duplicated, done again. Repeated, duplicated, done again. Every single thing in your business that you hire for. If it cannot be done that way, you have overcomplicated everything. And business owners who say to me, it's too complicated. It's just this. We need to do that for our customers. Here's the thing you want people to be happy that you serve, but they do not run your business. They are not going to keep your business afloat. So you have to make sure that every decision that you make within your business can operate over and over and over again without things needing to constantly be overseen and managed to the point where you're losing time and energy and resources managing things that if you had just uncomplicated it, systemized it, built a process, made something that was replicable, then you would actually be able to just slot somebody in and have them come in and do the job that you think that nobody else can do. The easier it is for someone to learn your business, the easier it will be to hire. If your business's operations and processes live in your head, then your business is incredibly difficult to scale. Everything should be standardized and systematized. At one point, I had the opportunity to partner with somebody to create a bookkeeping firm. Ultimately, I ended up walking away from it because they would have had 51% ownership and I would have had 49% ownership. And there was no way I was about to give up everything that I had built on my own. And this person had a fraction of that. And the reason that they did have even a fraction of what I had was because they had their own franchises that they had basically created a bookkeeping firm for. Ultimately, I ended up walking away because our values and our morals truly did not align. This was a person who seemed to value quantity over quality. And I value quality, but in that opportunity, I did learn that everything has to be standardized. Everything has to be systematized. If you don't do that, then you haven't created a business that then you can later on go to sell. And maybe you're really attached to your business because you really love it and you don't want to sell it. But you need to at least create the option for yourself because even if you never sell it, you still want to be able to walk away, take a month off, take two months off. What if you get sick? What if your partner gets sick? What if your children get sick? What if life happens and you need to be able to step away from that business for three months, four months? If you don't have things in place, you just created a job for yourself that now you've lost the job. So you need certain things and contingencies in place. And the way that you do that with a business, it's an asset, is to standardize things, create standard operating procedures, have training guides. Nowadays, with all of the technology that we have, it's so easy to build training guides that not only include a PDF that explain things in written language, but that also record certain things so that if you have software that you use, you can record somebody doing something in that software and you can upload that. And that's part of your training manual for employees. You can create entire onboarding systems now that walk employees through everything that they need to know about your business, the types of clients you work with, your mission, your vision, your values, what the growth expansions are for the coming year. And these are all things that as you start to think about hiring and growing your business, they are really great to implement because this is becoming part of your company's brand and culture. And if that's clearly documented and clearly conveyed and understood, it's easier to grow that. But if you don't have it because you don't know where you're going, then you end up five years down the road with people that are mismatched, not aligned. Your ship is not moving in any kind of direction that you actually want it to because you didn't take the time to go. Where am I? Where do I want my business to be? Don't wait until it's too late to try and do these things. Don't wait until, oh, I have five employees and then I do it. Think of your first five employees as the founding members of your business. The founding members should all have the same language and understanding of the business's growth. Because then again, it makes it easier for you to separate yourself from the business because you've injected yourself and your brand personally into that business so that the foundation is already laid that as you add more, your belief system, your culture that you want to create, it's there. It's intrinsic. And now it will just get replicated every single time that you make a high. Because you've injected you into the business, and you don't inject you into your business by you micromanaging, being super involved, and doing everything. You do it by training people. What are your values? What do you believe? What's important to this company? What's the vision of the company? Why are people even showing up every day to help you grow your business? Here's the thing: people are never going to love your business as much as you do. They're never going to be as emotionally invested in your business as you are. Now, you might find people who are very passionate about helping your business be successful and grow. I am very passionate about helping people be successful in their business. I love it. It is what gets me excited, is what wakes me up in the morning. It's what I feel I'm passionate about, is helping other people be incredibly successful doing what they love. It was how I built my own personal success in my business, it was because I truly have a love for that. But if you can clearly convey to people what's so important to you about your business, then people begin to understand why they're even showing up there. And when you make your hiring decisions based on your values and the morals alignment with the people that you're hiring, then they're naturally going to be impassioned about what they do because you cannot make them love your business like you do. But if you give them the right tools, the resources, and the information, then they will love showing up to help your business be successful because your business's success will translate to their success. One company that I was working for, there was no onboarding system whatsoever. And everyone in my department had very important roles. We were responsible for overseeing the costs on very large multimillion dollar construction projects. And there was no formal onboarding process. In fact, I handed in my resignation in the first three months because I was left completely alone. I had already figured out a lot of things on my own very quickly because I'm a very fast learner. But then there was nothing more. I was just left by myself. They almost lost me because they failed to have a solid onboarding process. And other people in their department, it was one of the biggest grievances that they had was that there was no formal onboarding process. And yet we had these very important jobs. All right. So now you have done the things I've talked about. You've looked at where you are, where you want to go, what gaps you need to fill, what things that you're doing that you don't need to be doing. You have created the processes, you have figured out the systems that you're going to use. You now even have your manuals and your training and your onboarding. You have all of this. You are ready. You have done all the things. You've dotted your I's, you've crossed your T's. You're like, I'm ready. I know I have something in place that I can do it again and again and again. And I make tweaks as I go, but I at least have a very strong foundation. I am ready to hire. Now, what the heck do I do? Now, this is where I'm so excited because we're gonna get into some of the things that I learned. First thing I'm gonna tell you stop posting on Indeed and expecting to find your unicorn or your perfect next hire on Indeed or any of the job posting boards. First of all, Indeed is incredibly expensive. If I was you, I would probably hire a private recruiter, meaning not a large agency. I would hire somebody who's more boutique and maybe has a slightly lower fee because the the larger agencies they typically charge 20 to 25%. Unless you're hiring for your CEO or your CFO, you don't need to be paying a fee that large. You could find somebody who is boutique that has a rate of about 15% finder fee. And when you understand everything that goes into recruiting, that 15% fee is worth its weight in gold if you have a good recruiter. But if you don't want to spend the 15% fee on hiring a recruiter, then I would do it yourself. And the tips that I would say to do it yourself is pay for LinkedIn Light recruiter. So when you are a recruiting agency and you actually are in that profession, you actually get access to the recruiter system within LinkedIn. But as a regular business owner, you can actually just pay for the LinkedIn Recruiter Lite. And I don't remember what the price on that is, but I think it's maybe $150 or so dollars a month, which when you look at the cost of Indeed, Indeed easily ends up being more expensive than LinkedIn Recruiter Lite. And the reason I would say go to LinkedIn Recruiter Lite is because I am all for poaching people. Like that sounds bad, but we are in the world of business. And if you just need an administrative system, you can definitely ask around for that and you might find a really great referral based on that. But if you are looking to hire somebody that's a junior or an intermediate, and you want somebody that's quality, and again, if you go back to my principle of it's better to hire somebody at a higher salary that's great, than two mediocre people at lower salaries, that's where I would recommend doing LinkedIn recruiter light. Because then what you can do is start searching keywords and it will bring up a list of people who match your keyword search who might be aligned with companies that are similar to yours. And you can reach out to those people directly and you can send them an email or you could reach out to them on LinkedIn and say, hey, I noticed your profile. This really stood out to me. It looks like you've been at this company for this long. How do you like your role? And what are some of your career goals? Just have that first initial email where you're just kind of asking them some basic questions where you're asking them questions about themselves because you're trying to determine maybe this person is ready for a change. Maybe this person is waiting for a growth opportunity and their company hasn't given it to them. And that's where you have the opportunity to say, I've currently got a position in my company right now. I think you could be a great fit. Do you want to meet me for a coffee? And maybe we could have a conversation about it. Nine times out of 10, people will say yes to that because there's no threat, there's no harm, there's no foul, they're not committing to marrying you, they're not committing to taking over your company, but they're agreeing to sit and meet with you and learn a little bit more. And you never know. Maybe they are your next hire, or maybe they know somebody who would be great for your company and they can refer them to you. And the reason I recommend that over Indeed or some of the other job boards is because here's the thing: good people are rarely looking. Usually the good people only look when they're in a really bad job and they're miserable, or if they've been laid off. So that's why I personally am all for the approach of going and looking for exactly what you want or need, and then just reaching out to people and asking them questions about their current position and what they like and what are they looking for in their career, and have they considered other opportunities? And then see where they're at, and then approach them with the opportunity of, hey, well, I've got this position in my company. I think you might be a great fit. I just wanted to see if you'd be interested in having coffee with me and make it not seem like an interview. Because then if you make it seem not like an interview, you're gonna have the opportunity to get to know them better on a deeper, more personal level. You'll probably get more honest and genuine answers out of them. And then you can kind of decide, oh, okay, like, you know what? I think you could be a great fit for my company. You know, would you want to come in for a more formal interview on X date? And then at that point, you both can decide if you actually want to move forward. The last company that I had worked for in the US, I actually did this as part of my process to hire somebody to replace somebody that we had to let go of. The top two people out of the half a dozen that we actually interviewed in person, one of those people was a direct reach out that I made through LinkedIn Recruiter Lite. And she was a perfect fit. Just ultimately, she had wanted more of a hybrid schedule, and I couldn't sway the owners to go into more of a hybrid schedule for this person, but she would have been a great fit. She had all the skill set, she was close to where the office was, but she would have been my number one choice. It was just that the hybrid thing wasn't a good fit for her. So my point is usually the really good ones, the good hires, are not out there necessarily actively looking on the job boards. So that's why I would recommend going direct and finding what you're looking for and making an offer. And in all honesty, that is exactly what companies do when they are going to hire their really big hires. They usually headhunt people. Headhunting is different than recruiting because headhunting is doing exactly what I did, but you're paying an outside agency to do it. Okay, now you're at the interview stage. What do you even ask in an interview? Like what are the questions that you should be asking in an interview? And I've heard people say, oh, people lie in interviews, and then you hire them, and and then all of a sudden you find out that they are not as experienced or qualified as they said that they were. And honestly, it's because you, as the interviewer, didn't ask the right questions. Notice how earlier when I was telling the story about the woman who completely fabricated her experience, and I said it was my own fault because I knew there were questions that I could have asked to be able to even figure out that she was lying, that I missed, that I dropped the ball on, and I was just being lazy because I wanted to hire somebody quickly. So, yes, people can get away with lying, but if you ask the right questions, it makes it a lot harder. You'll see through the BS and you'll see through the lies in the interview process before you even ever make an offer. Sometimes they still get through and slip through the cracks. It does happen, but you can mitigate that risk substantially by asking the right questions. And the right questions are kind of behavioral questions. Tell me about a time that this happened. What did you do? How did you respond? And the thing is, is if somebody's never been in that position before, if they've never had that experience before, they'll usually say, I haven't been in that experience before. But here's what I would do if I was. You'll also be able to tell there's certain experiences that people should have likely had within their career after a certain period of time, that if they haven't had those experiences and you constantly find them saying, Well, I haven't had that experience yet, or I haven't had that experience yet, they might still be too green if you're trying to hire for more of an intermediate or a senior role, or if you're looking for somebody who has more experience, you will be able to suss these things out based on those types of questions. So those behavioral questions. Tell me about a time when you experienced X. What did you do? And why did you do that? And you never want to ask yes or no questions. Everybody should know that by now. Don't ask yes or no questions. Ask open-ended questions where somebody is forced to give you a result because the more that you allow somebody else to talk, the more you're going to be able to discern whether they are nervous or whether they're lying. And a lot of times people are nervous in an interview process, but you'll be able to discern whether they're nervous or whether they're just lying and making things up. And part of the reason that you want to figure out what skill set you actually need for your position that you're hiring for is because that's going to help you decide what questions are the best questions for you to ask. Now, one question that everybody kind of gets asked in interviews is what's your weakness? And by today's day and age, most people are smart enough to know that you always answer that question with a weakness that can be flipped to be more of a positive. Oh, I'm a perfectionist. Most people want somebody who likes attention to detail and strives to have perfection. So that's kind of seen as something that's positive, even though it could be framed as a weakness, because, well, how is it a weakness? Well, I spend too much time on things sometimes. But what you're looking for is have they learned? Okay. So if they say nothing beyond, well, I'm a perfectionist, I end up spending too much time on things, and they leave it there, you know that this person hasn't grown and that it probably won't be a good fit for you because they haven't already figured out. I'm a perfectionist, I take too long doing things that's probably frustrated previous employers. I need to learn when is good enough and to let good enough go. You want to look at what answers are people giving you? Are they being honest? And then how does that fit into the role that you're trying to place them for? And if you say, tell me about yourself, what's your strength? And they say, Well, I'm great at solving problems. Okay, tell me about a time that you solved a problem. Because are they just giving you regurgitated, rehearsed answers, or are they actually speaking from experience? You want the evidence of what they're saying. Anyone can flap their lips and tell you anything that you want to hear, but do they have the legitimate experience and the anecdotal evidence of what they're saying? And I think that's why when employers have said to me, people lie in interviews and then I hire them. They say they can do all these things in the interview, and then I hire them and they can't do these things. And I can guarantee you that if I was able to sit in that interview, that the owner didn't ask the questions that helped reveal the actual person's capabilities, the actual strengths, the things that they were claiming. It's learning to understand what you are looking to fill, what skill set is required for that, and then asking the right questions to determine how do I uncover the skill sets I'm looking for in the questions that I'm asking? What questions will help me determine if they meet the skill set that I'm looking for? Because that's what you're trying to do. You're matchmaking, you're matchmaking a person to a job. It's kind of like if you're married or if you're in a partnership, hopefully when you guys started dating, you guys ask each other all the right questions to figure out what are your morals and your values. Are you guys even aligned? Right. And you're doing the same thing in a job interview. All right. In this next section, I'm gonna talk about is the hiring problem you. Now, sometimes the hiring problem isn't the employee, it's actually the owner. And I've said this so many times, but people who run businesses can become extremely emotionally attached to their business. And because of that, they can become very difficult to work for. What I end up seeing is that there's such a high turnover rate because they're hiring from that emotional place. They don't like somebody. The person didn't live up to their expectations because maybe they had unchecked, unreal, unrealistic expectations. If you do find yourself going through a lot of employees, then you need to ask yourself some basic questions. Are my expectations clear? Were they clear before I hired? Is the training that people are receiving adequate for this role? And not just based on what you think, being the owner who's been in this for so long, like you know this business like the back of your hand. And again, it's also learning to check our ego at the door because sometimes we can get insecure. If we hire somebody that we see doing a job better than we were doing it, sometimes we get insecure and jealous about that and we feel threatened. But remember, you're the business owner, you're the visionary. You are the person who created this business and is building this business. So somebody comes in and is really great at what they do, don't let that threaten you. Just look at it like you've been blessed with somebody who's really good at what they do and let them do their thing so you can go do your thing. But I do think that sometimes we can get tripped up over some of this stuff. Are your goals for people realistic? Are you constantly changing direction on people? And how are you measuring performance? These are the other things you need to think about when you're creating your whole onboarding process and you're creating your training manuals and your processes and your systems. You need to be able to have a way to measure how do I know if this person is meeting the requirements of the job. Now, there's things that are intrinsic and you can't really measure it, like fit, personality, the energy that they bring to the office. Those things you can't really quantify, but you can quantify things like how productive are they? What is the output? What actually gets done when they're working? And you might have somebody that can do in five hours what somebody can do in eight hours. So you need to look at the whole picture and have a way to measure that. The other thing that I would recommend is having somebody who is an outside and impartial HR professional, because that can also be really helpful because they'll be able to identify blind spots that the owner can't see. And when I say that they're impartial, I mean that this isn't somebody who's your friend. It's not somebody who's your therapist and that you go to and you complain to about your employees because now they're no longer impartial. What I mean when I say impartial, I mean somebody who is emotionally distanced from the business owner and the business, but that you pay to do a job and help oversee your employee process. Okay, in this last section here is all about your beliefs. And I've kind of touched on beliefs a little bit throughout this episode, but I really need to use this last section to just drive home some of the beliefs that you have around hiring. And I am all about mindset. So much of the work that I do is just based on changing your mindset because you have to be able to see it, believe it, and then build it. You can see hiring somebody, then you need to believe that you can hire the person and then you can build it, right? If you kind of come in with nobody can do it as well as I can do it, it's just a money suck for me to hire people. It's faster if I do it myself. I can't afford help. What if they leave? What if they don't do it right? What if I make the wrong decision in hiring? Nobody's going to care about my business as much as I do. These are all beliefs. These are all you getting in your way of moving your business forward. So when I said earlier, are you the bottleneck to your business? This is you being the bottleneck to your business. When you have these kinds of beliefs that limit you from moving forward, you need to trust the process. You also need to trust yourself. And I think that's another really key piece that I don't talk about enough is that a lot of female business owners don't trust themselves. This is why I'm giving you the tools and the resources so that you can have that in your pocket so that you can make decisions for your business and for your hiring. Because if you know what questions that you should be asking, now you can start to trust yourself to be able to discern you've got this far in your life. So you can definitely make some good decisions, right? So learning to trust yourself in that sense and learning to utilize the tools that you have at your disposal to make those right decisions. Because here's the truth nobody can do it exactly as well as you will. But that shouldn't be the standard. The standard should be can somebody do 80% as well while freeing you up for higher value work for you to go out and get those sales and build those relationships and get the funding and get the investors and improve the products and the services of your company. Today, it might be faster for you to do it yourself, but six and 12 months from now, probably not. So every time that you hire somebody, there is a risk involved. But we mitigate that risk by doing all of the steps. Identify what you are doing in your business that could be offloaded to somebody else. What gaps do you have in your business? Where are you wasting time that is costing you revenue, that's costing you profitability? If you were to multiply your rate by the number of hours that you spend in a month doing the things that somebody junior to you could be doing, how much is that? And that's what you can afford to spend on a salary to somebody else because then you're going to be able to go out, get more business, and do more of the high value things, which means more money comes in the door, more sales come in the door, more profitability is coming in the door. Part of being a business leader is learning to make decisions without having all of the information. You don't become a great business owner by avoiding decisions or by making excuses or limiting yourself using beliefs that are blocking you. Here's the thing: you think your beliefs are true and you will have experiences in life that will validate your belief. And I've already talked about the reticular activating system several episodes ago. So go back to earlier episodes if you don't remember me talking about the reticular activating system and how that works. But your brain is essentially designed and wired to confirm your own beliefs, to confirm your own belief. Yes. So you get to pick what beliefs you want to believe. And you get to be as absolutely delusional in your beliefs as you want. And delusional in your beliefs can be nobody can do it as well as I can. Because guess what? I bet you I could find somebody who could do it better than you. Now, again, I think that's where being humble in our business is really important because the reality is there is somebody out there who is better than us at doing in our business what we do. That's the reality. There's always somebody better. What beliefs do you want to have? What beliefs are helpful to you? Is it helpful for you in hiring, thinking that, oh, it just has to be this complicated because this is just the process and it can't be done any other way? Is that helping you or is it hurting you? Is it helping you or hurting you to believe that nobody is going to be as invested in your business as you are? And that is the truth. Nobody will. But hanging on to that belief as a resistance to hiring your next great hire, is it helping or hurting you? You can change your beliefs at any time because a belief is just something that you have chosen to think about consistently and adopt as your own. I'll say that again. A belief is simply something that you have chosen to think about multiple times over and over and adopt as your own thought. Because there's somebody else out there who believes the complete opposite is you and has experiences in their life to prove that their beliefs are true. So who is right? You or them? Well, you're both right. It's because you choose to believe what you believe. So if you have negative thoughts about hiring, challenge yourself to think something new. There's nobody good out there. Everybody's lazy. Nobody wants to do the work. No one wants to work hard. Well, that's not true. There's tons of people. I am on many groups and forums, and there are tons of people who are like, I just want a good job. I've done everything. I've worked for a company for free for a week or two weeks. I just want a job. I want to work. I have a skill set and I can't find work. I'm being replaced by people cheaper than me. So there are good people out there. There is always the antidote to your belief. Whatever you have a belief in, there's always the opposite. All right. Now let's get into the closing. I've asked you guys a lot of questions throughout this episode. I would definitely recommend going and journaling them later when you have some time writing and reflecting on those questions and considering the answers to those questions. And I want you to ask yourself this what is it costing me not hiring somebody great? What is it costing me not hiring somebody great? What am I losing by not hiring someone great? Instead of thinking I'm losing money by hiring somebody or the process takes too long, or I need to wait until I'm busier. What am I losing? What opportunities am I missing out on by not hiring somebody great? And remember, I told you guys it takes three to four months to hire one person. From the time that you decide you're going to hire and you start taking the action steps to the time that they start, that's about three to four months. And then it's going to take about a year of them in that position before they are really good at that role. And if it happens before then, great, you got a unicorn, good job. Yay you. But that's not the reality. That's the exception to the rule. I'm going to leave you with these final thoughts. The goal is not to become the hardest working person in your company. Although you probably always will be, but it is not the goal. The goal is to become the person who builds a company capable of growing beyond them. Focus on growth and the rest will come. Okay, everybody, that is it. I am your host, Samantha Noel. You have just been listening to the Overcome Her podcast, episode number 11, hiring like a boss. And I would love to read your questions, your comments. Feel free to comment on this episode. If you found something useful, helpful, feel free to join me over in my Facebook group for Women Built for Profit. Also, you can follow me on Instagram, Sementhonoil Co. And stay tuned as I will be launching a course soon that I am really excited to get out to you guys. So stay tuned for that. I'll release updates as more starts happening and we get closer to that actual date. And feel free to email me your questions at the overcomeherpodcast at gmail.com. Again, it's the overcomeherpodcast at gmail.com. And I am your host, Samantha Noel. Have an amazing day.