Welcome to the Freedom Therapist Podcast, your safe space to learn and unlear all the things about scaling your business without losing yourself in the process. I'm your host, Mia Poklopovich, a previously burnt-out mental health occupational therapist and business owner who found her way to fall back in love with business and life all over again. Because success doesn't have to come at the cost of your freedom. You're going to get so much chat, a lot of energy, and of course, a little bit of chaos because it comes with the territory. I can't wait. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Freedom Therapist Podcast. I'm your host, Mia. I'm an occupational therapist and I run my private practice and my business, the Freedom Therapist Club, in a way that gives me freedom, that gives me my life back, but also provides meaningful and impactful work for our clients that I feel really good about as well. And one of the wonderful parts about growing a business is that you eventually may decide to grow a team. And that is what we're going to be talking about today, because I have a lot of clients, I get a lot of questions in my DMs around when do I know if I'm ready to hire? Where do I even begin? I'd love to bring someone in. And sometimes what I see is this hiring process can be rushed. And I'm sure you've seen it too. It gets really rushed and then it can backfire a little bit. So we might have a bit of a sour taste in our mouth about hiring, or it can be really hard and we feel like it's really labor-heavy as well. I have found that considering three things when you are looking at your first hire in your business, or whether you're looking at your next hire in your business, is going to make such a big difference. And I really wanted to talk through these today because I have spoken to these things with clients on calls this week. And I just know that talking about this and having this discussion can really help us to feel really ready, can help us to know what we're going into and feel really prepared and supported, not only for us, but for the person that we may be considering hiring as well. Now, some of the things that I really stop. Now, the three things that I really consider stop. Now, number one, which I always recommend considering before your first hire, is know your numbers. I cannot stress this one enough. I don't just mean how many billable hours you're bringing in, how much you're paying yourself, but know your numbers for everything. We want to think about what's coming in every week, what's coming in through billable work, through other work, what's going out, what's going out on wages, on super, on resources, on insurance, on rent, on all of those things. And we want to start to get really clear on those numbers for the week, for the fortnight, for the month, and for the year. Sometimes when we are looking at calculating these numbers, we might forget things like, oh, we take a few weeks of leave during the year, or we might not work those afternoons at certain times of the year during school drop-off, all of those things. The clearer that we can be on these numbers, the more prepared we're going to be because we're going to know essentially what we have to play with to be able to hire someone as well. And also, I really recommend doing this number audit really regularly in your business, like every quarter, because you would be surprised at how many subscriptions are sitting in there that maybe we've forgotten about, maybe we haven't remembered, or maybe we've purchased and forgotten about as well, which is what happens when people get busy too. We want to really know our numbers. We want to know them really accurately so we can say, yep, at current, if we kept running the business as is, this is how much money we would bring in next quarter. This is what December would look like. This is what January usually looks like. And it might mean we go back through, we look at previous months, but really getting to know your numbers, starting to see some patterns, starting to see some trends, but essentially knowing what's coming in, what's going out, and how that might fluctuate between the months in the year is going to be super, super important. The next thing that we want to consider when we're looking at a role is what this role is going to be. And one of the things that we skip by so often when we are hiring, and I have seen this time and time again, I've been guilty of doing this too, is we really kind of gloss over our position description. Our position description is so important when we are hiring someone, not just so they know what the role is, not just something that's run through Chat GPT, but so we can go through and go, what tasks do I actually want this person to help with? What tasks are they going to be able to support me with? Because the more information, the more considered we've been about this, the more intentional we've been about this, the more that we are going to be able to have not only a really clear role for them to step into, but we're also going to know if those tasks are billable or not. The reality is in the therapy space, a lot of work is either billable or it's not billable. And sometimes you're going to be hiring for roles that are billable. You may be hiring for a therapist, a therapy assistant, somebody who's doing clinical work. And you also may hire for roles that are non-billable. So someone who's working admin, who's doing practice management, who's doing VA or OBM support or anything like that. Now, all of these roles all require a position description because we don't know what we don't know. And sometimes when we bring people on, we think, oh, just get them to help with those ad hoc tasks. Write them all down, get them all on a piece of paper, and then prioritize them. Be like, all right, that's what I really want done. That's what I really want done, that's what I really want done. Prioritize them on a personal level and then prioritize them on a level that is going to bring in income in the business. And I can hear you already, you're going, but Mia, if I'm hiring a VA or if I'm hiring a practice manager, they're not bringing in income to the business. Where we then need to consider is what of your time, of your clinician's time, are they then freeing up where they can bring in that billable work to then cover that role? Because usually what is happening is sometimes when we are trying to stretch too far into some of those admin tasks. For example, you may be a therapist running your business and you may be trying to do the invoicing or the bookkeeping at the end of each week. Now, this might take you 10 hours, it might take you five hours, you might be wizard it, whatever. Good for you. I was not. But it may be something that you not only take a really long time to do, but you spend ages thinking about. And so you think, oh, I'll bring someone on, I'll just get them to help with that as well. They're gonna have the same challenges, most likely that you're gonna have, unless they are a person who is an absolute weapon and actually knows stop, unless they are a person who actually knows how to do that role. Now, how do we find that? We have a really solid position description and we hire people who are incredible at the things we need them to do. Now, I'm a really big believer in making sure that we hire for the role. We want to have a level of energy, a level of interpersonal skills, but I would argue that they are a requirement of the role in the work that we do. Now, if I am gonna hire, say, for example, a therapist and they're like really, really amazing what they do, and I'm getting them to do their clinical work, and then I go, Oh, but I actually just need you to do some Canva stuff as well. Some therapists might be like, Yep, love that, love being on social media, but some may actually freak out and may be like, I don't want to do this. This feels really stretchy, I'm not into this. And then they're gonna take as long, if not longer, than us to do that. Whereas if we got, okay, let's hire the therapist to do the clinical work and let's hire someone specific to Canva, to admin, to content, and that could look different. It could look like a hybrid role, it could look like two separate roles. I'm obviously using two really abstract, really different examples, but you get the gist of what I'm trying to say. We want to hire roles where we want to have really solid position descriptions where people know what the role entails so they feel really supported, really excited by that. But so we can also match the skill set. So we can go, can you do this if you can't? Be really honest with me, and let's figure out either a workaround or I'll find someone else to do that too. And that is part of running a business that really plays into everyone's strengths. Does that mean that the role stays the same forever? No, people grow, they change, they get skills. Same with your clinical skills, but when you hire in that position description, you're going to get people who are efficient at what they're doing because they're working in their strengths. They already know how to do. And that is so, so important. Now, the final thing that I always recommend considering before you even start hiring anyone is starting to note down your systems. Because often I hear in this space, when you hire someone, it's going to be a huge tax on your time. You're going to spend way more time supporting them. You're going to have like three months of unpaid work, la, whatever it is. I truly believe that you can have a really efficient role if you set it up really intentionally from the beginning. Yes, you're going to have to put a little bit of extra time on in the beginning, but then if you have set this role up to be really independent, to be really supported, that's going to help them fast track that process as well. How do we do that? Systems and processes, baby. We are back on them again. Your systems and your processes are not something we do once we've hired the role. This is where it becomes murky because often we maybe do three or four for them and then we think, oh, we'll do them as we're as we're going through the induction or have them done like slowly as the role starts. Have these things ready to go for this role to go. Because you are then giving them all of the tools to be able to go, I can't find that answer. Instead of calling my supervisor straight away, I'm gonna have a look for it. I may actually find the answer for it, and then I'm gonna save on some communications there. They're gonna feel really independent, really supported, really regulated. You're going to feel like they're really innovative and using their initiative as well. The more systems, the more you can have, the more information you can have about how your business works, what happens when, what happens if this happens, what happens next, the more they're going to be able to access that information without you having to be there to go through it all the time. Also, we all learn in different ways. And I think this is really important because we often think I'll spend a week with that new starter and then they'll be ready to go. Sure, they'll probably be close to ready to go, but they're still going to have questions. They're not going to want to have to come to you for every single question. They are also going to love to have the answers to these questions accessible when they need them instead of waiting for us to be available, waiting for somebody else to be available, feeling like they're being a pest. I remember one of my very first new grad roles, and I remember that they went through the role with me and it just didn't stick. A lot of the processes, this practice management software was so new and I just felt really out of my depth. And I remember sitting in that office and I remember waiting for people to come back and being like, oh, I'm so sorry to ask you again, and realizing that I was kind of annoying my coworkers, feeling really shit myself, like I should have it together right now, and also not wanting to bug my boss. And so, yes, we want to have workplaces with amazing open communication, but I always come back to that thought process. Like, if you have the resources to be able to find those answers yourself, we want to hire independent, initiative-driven, motivated individuals. They're gonna feel really excited by having that support there as well. That support can be in documents, it can be in videos, it can be in audios, it can be however you want it to be, but also consider that it's a big ask to remember to get someone to remember something in one session, to hear it once, write some notes, and be able to absolutely just fly with it from there on in. These are the three things I always come back to when I'm thinking about hiring someone, when I'm planning for hiring. And I think that they just allow everyone to feel really supported, allow it to have a really great intentional best practice setup, and also allows for a really smooth transition into the role as well. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you enjoyed this episode, if you found it supportive, I would love to know. You can find me on Instagram at me a poco at M-I-A-P-O-K-O, and it would mean the world to me. If you got anything from today's episode, if you would share this on your Instagram stories, on your Facebook stories, tag a friend in the post, let us know in the comments. We love hearing from you guys. You guys are our community. I am so grateful for you, and you are what makes this podcast so special. I can't wait to see you next week!