12: Are You Ready to Hire? 3 Signs Your Business Is Not Ready (Yet)

If you've been asking yourself "Am I ready to hire?" or "What should I look for in my first hire?" — this episode is for you. As a Latina CEO, knowing how to delegate in a small business starts long before you post a job listing. In this episode, we're breaking down the three non-negotiables every Latina entrepreneur must have in place before bringing someone onto the team — backed by real experience and the science of human performance.

This is Part 1 of a mini-series on hiring and delegation. Next up: onboarding and what makes or breaks a new hire in their first 30-60-90 days.

What You'll Learn

• Why hiring too early without the right structure creates more confusion — not more freedom
• The #1 reason small businesses experience high turnover after their first hire
• How to build simple systems for scaling a small business without a corporate operations manual
• The identity shift from doer to leader — and how to make it intentionally
• The single most powerful mindset reframe for new leaders who want to delegate in a small business

Up Next in the Mini Series

Episode 13: Onboarding — What happens in the first 30-60-90 days, what research says about psychological safety, and how to set your new hire up to win from day one.

how to delegate in small business · Latina CEO · Latina business owner · podcast for Latinas · scaling a small business · hiring first employee · small business systems · role clarity · Latina entrepreneur · leadership mindset · how to hire · small business delegation · work-life boundaries · Latina leadership

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This podcast was produced by Your Girl Media 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hola amigas, this podcast is for Latina entrepreneurs building businesses while navigating faith, culture, and yes, motherhood. We unpack how your story shapes your leadership and build real life systems that help you grow without burning down. This is where Kutura meets strategy. So let's go. So today I want to talk about something that has been coming up a lot lately, and it's the hiring process. What should I look for? What should I do? Am I ready? So those are the things that I want to talk to you about today. And actually decided to make this into like a mini-series where I will talk about the hiring process a little bit in this episode, and then I'll go into onboarding and then delegation. And one of the things I want to talk about is very important is that sometimes hiring too early without the right structure can actually create more overwhelm and more confusion. And the more of the thing you didn't want to do happen or happens, it happens because of that basic stuff, the right structure that you sometimes overpass or like don't even think about because you think, well, you know, I already have it all in my head. I know what she's going to do, I know what he's going to do, I know what he was going to work on, but it hasn't been written down. And that taking that extra step will alleviate so much. So I want to share it with you three things that you must have in place before you hire, which is backed by both real-world experiences and the science of human performance. So grab your notebook, your cafecito, and let's go. All right. So I've seen this happen over and over again. And actually, I have experienced this myself early in the days because I was getting busy and I was thinking, okay, well, I need to hire somebody to help me do XYZ. And mostly it was like admin stuff, but um it didn't work out, it didn't plan out. And then I try to hire somebody to help me with my marketing really early in my in my business because that's the one thing I didn't have the energy for. And I know I needed it, but I just didn't have the the capacity to extend myself to do that because it just doesn't come to me easy. So I hired somebody, and within two weeks, I was like, okay, this is not gonna work out, and I have to let them go. And one one of the things I learned was that going back to this, I didn't listen to myself. It was making sure that we don't just go by, you know, the personality. It's it's a great thing to have, and it's a great thing that sometimes we cannot change. So it's important that you make sure that when you talk to somebody, you take that into consideration. But there's other things that we need to have in place before we do that, before we hire. Okay, so honestly, if you're answering like questions all day, you know, repeating yourself into doing something every single day, the same task and stuff like that, like write it down. Like it's as easy as that. Like write things down. And nowadays we have apps that you can just do voice recording. Do that if you are not in the mood of writing things down. But if you remember something, like put it in your in your voice recorder wherever you're gonna record, and then say, you know, like tasks that I'm doing that I do not want to do, and then you start just talking to it and just say, Hey, I'm doing this right now. I should not be doing, I'm printing labels. Why am I printing labels when I can have somebody else do this for me? Especially if you have to do that over and over and over again. All right, so first off is point A, which is the first point, is just having clarity before capacity comes in. So before you hire, you need to be crystal clear on what that person actually will own. So in industrial organizational psychology, we call this a role theory. So the research shows that employees that experience role ambiguity, meaning that they don't know what they're responsible for, what decisions they can make on their own, what success will look like for them, will actually deliver lower performance and higher stress, and you will have more turnover. Either you're gonna let them go or they're gonna quit on you. So you want to make sure that you have those early on. I cannot tell you how many times I've walked into a company and I'm doing assessments with the employees as part of my process, and employees will sometimes be a little bit afraid of like what can they actually share with me. But then I have employees that will start sharing a lot. And those employees that I can tell that are good employees, they seem to be high performing on paper, struggle with burnout. And the burnout comes from them saying, you know what, I was hired, I was told I was hired to do this role, but it has evolved so much that I don't even know what my role really is, and it is very exhausting. And I am getting burned out, you know, I'm getting uh complaints for certain people, but I feel that it's because I was I was coming in to do something, and it just is not what I'm doing right now. So that's that's very important, and that's something that we have to take in consideration for our employees, for the company, for our customers, because it will show. It will show that we have no consistency because one person, you know, the client will be expected to call, and all of a sudden it goes to another person. You start with doing one process and then the next client calls, and then the other person will do it in another, in a different way, you know, not to say it could be right or wrong, but it's not there's no consistency. And if anything, one of the things I always get back to is like when you build your company, try to think of it as a franchise. Why do we go to McDonald's all the time? Why do we go to In N Out all the time? Because it's a process. You know, there's a menu, you know, there's a couple of things you can choose from, you know there what to expect every single time. That's a process. And that's the franchise way. That's why they can continue to operate and with creating multiple franchises because they have where they're gonna get their food from, where are they gonna get, you know, from point A from to point B with the clients, you know, who's gonna do what? Like they have everything completely sorted out from beginning to end. And that's the same thing, that's the same mentality you would want in your business that you can create a repeatable process so that if you ever need to step away, if you ever want to create another business, you know what worked. And you just repeat it. You copy and paste, copy and paste. And so when you start looking for that one person, and before you even hit post, this is what I want you to think about. What specific outcomes in this role do you want to have? You know, what is this role responsible for? Not tasks, but what are the outcomes? Okay, how is it gonna help your business? How is it gonna help that department? What is that role gonna provide? Write it down. And then what decisions can they make without asking you? And then the third is what does success look like for their first 30, 60, and 90 days? If you answer a little bit of everything and you're like mixing maxing marketing with accounting with like all these crazy things, then you need to pause and that's gonna be your first sign that you need a little bit more clarity. Clarity on what is really missing. It might not be that you need more capacity, it's just more clarity. So get clear. Now, the next step is really thinking about simple systems, not the perfect ones, but just simple. You need basic, repeatable systems, as I explained before. Or, you know, if an organization has moving pieces that are not aligning, they're not connecting, then you're gonna have a de-socialization. So basically, you're not gonna be able to understand that this role does A, B, and C. Like you hire somebody for marketing, and all they do is all the advertising, social media, and stuff like that. That role is super clear because you know that they specifically do that. You hire a role for accounting or accounts payable, and you know, like all of those financial stuff, like that person takes ownership. That is role clarity. But when you have somebody that is an admin, that is a social media, that is customer service, that is operations, that is not, that is not our organized role. So systems will create autonomy and autonomy creates performance. So keep it simple. You don't have to create a corporate operations manual, but write down how you currently do things that you repeat the most. So create a checklist for those repeatable tasks, record a quick Loom video or record yourself on Zoom, whatever you have, walking through your step process out loud. Like, think about it it's like when you say it out loud and not keep it in your brain, and then you're actually expanding your brain to like see a lot more clearly because it'll start connecting the steps, you know, that you sometimes overlook. And so this is perfect as when you're starting to build that position or for that next person that you're gonna be hiring. It just doesn't have to be perfect, you just need to take it out of your brain, it has to exist outside of you. So think of it this way: you're not just documenting a process when you're doing, you're building the infrastructure that makes independent thinking possible for the person you're about to bring. All right. The last point is your role is about to change. And this is one of the things that sometimes when when you hire for the first time, you don't think about. And that is that you're now going to be stepping into a leadership role. And so that job that you had as being the operator or being, you know, doing the accounting, doing all those little things, you now have to shift into leadership. And that is a big step. That's a huge step. So transitioning to leadership is the shift from individual contributor to manager. You know, research really consistently shows that this is one of the hardest professional transitions people make, not because of the skills gaps, because we know you can do the job, but because of identity and behavioral gaps. So when you're used to doing something yourself, two things tend to happen after you hire micromanagement. You start hovering, you start constantly checking in, um, maybe redoing their work because it's not done your way. The people will start feeling frustrated, and then performance will start to drop. You'll start seeing them that they they'll feel like you don't trust them to do it, and their performance will drop. It's gonna be inevitable for it to happen. Or the opposite, avoidant leadership. This is the other side I've seen as well, where people think, hey, I hired this person. Well, now I'm gonna step entirely back because I don't need to be there. I don't need to be the bad guy, I need to be a good guy. You know, my employees need to take care of everything. And then that also is not good because you're still the owner of your business. Your business still needs you, and your people need you. So both patterns come from the same root. You haven't made that mental shift from doer to leader in organizational psychology. So start practicing the leadership mindset before you hire. So get comfortable communicating, expectations and writing, not just verbally, but in writing. Like if somebody messes up, like, how are you gonna tell them that they didn't do it right? Write it down. This is how I would approach it. Okay, practice giving feedback. This is another huge thing that we see leaders lack. Like, they don't provide good feedback. You don't want to be mean. You feel like if you tell them, hey, like this was you didn't do this wrong, or you're seeing something, certain patterns, like you don't give them feedback. Give them feedback, be it, you know, explain to them why. You know, how are you seeing this? But how can we improve? You know, how can it improve, you know, and get them involved in those early conversations. So it doesn't feel like to them, so it doesn't feel like you know, you're you're you don't care by not saying anything. And so they continue doing whatever they think they're doing it the right way because you're not giving them feedback. So make sure you do give feedback and then start asking yourself, how would I teach this? instead of I'll just handle it because it will happen. You'll probably get to a point where you're just like, I'm just gonna take care of it. Don't do that. Start thinking ahead, like, how would I teach this? If this problem comes, how would I react? Plan for it. So that single question, how would I teach this is one of the most powerful reframes for new leaders. It shifts you from executor to multiplier. So you do a lot more, but just thinking and changing that mind shift. So here's what I want you to hold on to. Leadership starts before you hire, not after. That mindset you walk in with will determine whether the person thrives or they quit. And if you're thinking about hiring your first employee, here's what I want you to walk away with today. Hiring should create capacity, not confusion. And so think about those. Think about those three things that I mentioned. You know, clarity before capacity. Define the role, the outcomes, and where your involvement ends. Simple systems. Get the knowledge out of your head and information into a format that somebody else can follow. And then step three, step into leadership. Your role is changing, and that shift has to be intentional. All right. Well, that's all I have for you today in this little mini-series. And the next episode, I will be talking about onboarding, what happens in the first 30 to 60, 90 days, what makes or breaks in your hire. And we'll go a little bit deeper into what research says about psychological safety, performance ramp up, and how to set someone up to win from fame. Don't miss it. Until next time.