7. Hiring Scared Me for Years

You can only scale a business for so long before "I'll just do it myself" becomes the problem.

For years, I convinced myself that hiring wasn't necessary. That I could figure it out myself. That asking for help would be more work than it was worth. But after nearly eight years of running my business solo, I finally reached a point where I realized something had to change: I had become the bottleneck.

In this episode, I'm sharing the fears, mindset blocks, and scarcity thinking that kept me from hiring for so long, what finally pushed me to take the leap, and what I've learned on the other side of building support into my business.

In this episode, we talk about:
• Why it took me almost eight years to make my first hire
• The scarcity mindset that kept me stuck and overwhelmed
• What finally convinced me that hiring was the right move
• Lessons I learned from the hiring and interview process
• How to avoid micromanaging and how to build trust with your team
• My advice for making your first hire with confidence
• A simple exercise to help you identify what you can start delegating today

Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsallmost/
Visit my website: https://www.itsallmost.com
Join The Conversion Club: https://itsallmost.com/the-conversion-club

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello, my little yappers. Welcome back to the Conversation Club. We are currently on episode seven. Seven. And today we're talking about something that scared me for a really, really long time, frankly. We're talking hiring and growing a team and scaling your business. So what scared me so long about hiring? When I first started business, I wanted to do everything myself, but I did this alone for eight years before I actually decided to hire. And that is a very long time. I know a lot of people when I tell them that I've been doing this alone, not technically alone, obviously, but like I am running my business, I'm serving my clients every day by myself. And I did that for a good almost eight years. So again, we don't build anything alone, and all my success I really do attribute to all the amazing people that helped me get here. But yeah, I didn't have a team member at all, really, until January of 2026, of this year. What actually finally pushed me through my fear to hire? I'll talk about this a little bit later, but We Should All Be Millionaires, the book by Rachel Rogers, really helped me open my eyes to my own mindset and my own fears, and why there are so many benefits to bringing on an assistant and to bringing on someone to help you lighten your load and help you delegate a little bit. Because I really realized that I was my own bottleneck. And in business, I don't ever want to be the bottleneck, even though for literally over eight years I have been. But I want to talk to you today about what kind of went into my fear around hiring, what went into the actual process of hiring for me, and how I came out the other side. So far, again, it's only been a few months. I've been doing this for the last three, I want to say, and three, maybe almost four months. And so I have a lot I still need to learn, I'm sure. But yeah, for a long time, I just wasn't ready mentally. I wasn't ready business-wise. I also really just comfortable doing it myself, right? Again, you've heard me say before, you will hear me say it again. As an immigrant eldest daughter from a family that has really high expectations of her, everything I wanted to potentially delegate, I was like, I could just do it myself, right? I can just figure it out because my own time is easier than trying to figure out how to teach someone else to do it and how to figure out coordinating with someone else and onboarding someone else and doing all that. And so, as your firstborn Chinese daughter in typical firstborn Chinese daughter fashion, I was afraid to ask for help and just really unwilling to ask for help. Also, I haven't really talked about this much on the pod yet, but your girl has OCPD as well, which for those of you who know is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, which part of that involves a lot of perfectionism and involves a lot of like the way I do it is correct, and the way I do it is the best. And if you do it differently, it's gonna bother me. And so I was just afraid that I would have to bring someone in and they would do the work in a way that I didn't think was the right way, or work that wasn't satisfactory to my expectations and to my high standard of quality and everything that I thought I could just do myself. I didn't want to have to redo someone else's work. And so that was a huge reason why I, for many, many years did not hire. I also had a little trauma from colleagues, other business owners that I know who had built agencies really fast and went into a lot of debt, or friends who built out these teams for years and years and managed them for years and years, just to really go back to solo entrepreneurship and just being a one-woman team again. And I was just kind of scared again. That fear allowed me to make those decisions and say, Hey, I am not gonna do this. I'm just gonna figure it out myself. I'm gonna figure it out myself. That was kind of my mantra for a really long time. And you're gonna hear me say this a lot in this episode is scarcity. My scarcity mindset was so strong, so strong. I mean, it still is in many respects. But I think I've said this word before, but I don't think I've ever really explained it to those who may not have heard it or may not have heard of the scarcity mindset before. But essentially, scarcity mindset and abundance mindset are kind of on a spectrum, right? I don't really know a lot of people who are like fully abundant and fully like not a single drop of scarcity in them. I'm sure there are some of those people out there. But the abundant mindset is like there's more than enough for everyone. I know that if I lose something, it's just making way for other things. There will always be more than enough for me. I will always be taken care of. Whatever is mine will be mine, right? It's out there, it's just making its way to me in the most timely fashion and just trusting in the universe to deliver. And scarcity mindset is basically the opposite of that, right? If I lose this client, I'm gonna lose everything. I'm gonna be poor and alone, and I'm not gonna have any money, and I'm not gonna be able to do anything, and da-da-da-da-da. All of that is scarcity. It is thinking that there aren't enough opportunities for everyone, that there aren't enough dollar bills to go around to serve everyone, there aren't enough opportunities, there aren't enough clients, there aren't enough, aren't enough, aren't enough. And that's kind of what scarcity really was driving me to avoid. Avoid hiring, avoid thinking about it, avoid addressing the problem, which ultimately was that I needed help and I needed someone to come in and help me get a lot more organized. I think probably one of the biggest reasons that people don't hire, I mean, decent people don't hire, of course, shitty people who don't intend to pay people on time don't give a fuck about this. But decent people are like, what if I can't afford someone in the long term, right? What if I can't pay them on time? What if I have to get rid of them earlier than I wanted to, like a month in or two months in or whatever it is, because more money might not be coming in? Again, remember that scarcity mindset of what if I lose a client? What if more people don't want my services? What if this? What if that? And just treating it in scarcity mindset mode, like again, doing it myself is free, right? But technically, as I've said before, time, time isn't free in this world because we have such a limited amount of it. And so I really want to emphasize that scarcity mindset, uh, it's a bitch, and it will come up. And I don't think it ever fully goes away. Like you kind of just lower the volume on it. But yeah, that was a big reason. Big reason why I wasn't hiring. I also had trauma from old bosses. I mentioned some toxic workplaces that I worked in, and bosses who would micromanage me and would tell me how to do things instead of just trusting me to have the skills that I had and do the work that I was hired to do, right? And so doing that and being scared of being that terrible boss to someone else was a big factor for sure for me. Also being a good leader, I was afraid that I wasn't gonna be the best person to lead and manage a team, even though I've had a lot of empirical evidence to the contrary. But you know, again, scarcity mindset, fear, all that doubt. It was all happening, all happening up here. And I also was just clients and old bosses who did pay on time. I just never wanted to be the people that I was frustrated by. I never wanted to be that frustrating boss or that frustrating leader. I also was really scared of training, of onboarding someone. I thought that it would take a lot of time to have to train them in how I did things and the things that needed to get done, and I'd end up having to do the work anyway. And I was just like, huh, I'm just essentially having to do the work and then also train someone, but then also have to do the work and then also have to like, I was just like, oh, what is the point? What is the point of hiring? And that was also a real huge reason why I was afraid to hire. And then last but not least, for this in terms of hiring and so many other things in business, I'm still unlearning this of the notion that once I start, once I make a decision, I can't go back. I have to keep going. I can't stop, right? So once I hire, I can't go back to just being me, just being a one-woman team. I mean, I can, but obviously I didn't realize that when I was so scared of hiring. And it felt very like end-all be-all. It felt like I had to make this decision. And once I made it, there was no going back, there was no changing course. For a long time, and I mentioned this before on a previous episode, just go listen to all of them and you'll hear it. But once I made this decision to grow and to scale, I thought I couldn't fail. I can't fail, right? Like I coasted for so long because I was like, if I make this decision to start growing and to start scaling, and I start telling people about it, like I cannot fail. I cannot go back to being just me and myself and the team that got me here the last eight years. So that fear of failure and failing publicly really prevented me from making one of the best decisions I've ever made, which is to hire. In the process of making the decision to hire, because, and I'll get into it in just a second, of like why I actually was like, oh, I need help and I can't do this alone. And even with all the fears that I just mentioned, I need to be doing this. This needs to happen. And in that process, I did realize that I have hired people before, right? Like, maybe not in the full-time employee sense, but I've had house cleaners, I've had lawyers, I've had CPAs, I've had realtors that I've worked with, contractors that have done housework, I've worked with plumbers, pest control, gardeners, so many different people that technically I have managed. And in managing those people, I realized that I know how to communicate. I know how to tell someone what my needs are, what I'm looking for, and to manage without micromanaging how they execute it, because I trust that they have the skills that I hired them to have, right? And again, in that process, I realized that I actually have managed other team members, not my own, but client teams, external teams, designers that my clients had, or designers that I've worked with contract-wise, social media managers that my client teams have, or copywriters. I have worked with these creative service-based people before, and I could do it again, right? I mean, we will always say this on this podcast is mindset, mindset, mindset. Mindset was such a big, important piece of getting past that hurdle of fear, right? I mentioned Rachel Rogers a little earlier and We Should All Me Millionaires, the book. Highly recommend. Such a great book, especially if you're thinking about making bigger decisions in your business and taking risks that you want to throw up just thinking about them. We Should All Be Millionaires is a really great book for you. And in that book, Rachel teaches how to think like a millionaire, how to take that risk. Because if you're not gonna take it, you're not gonna align yourself to this vibration and tell the universe that you are ready to receive as a millionaire, right? If we are going to actually make a decision as a millionaire, we aren't going to do things that someone in the five figures or six figures are gonna make, a decision like that. We're gonna make a decision as someone in the seven figures and the eight figures and the nine figures, right? And that includes hiring. It includes delegating, it includes taking the things off of your plate that you don't need to be handling as much as a control freak like me would love to be able to just clone myself and to handle, right? But in that book, one of the really salient points for me was when Rachel she pointed out that spending about $400 a month for a little help, which is the stage that I'm at, is actually gonna free up time. It's gonna free up a lot of things that I was preventing my business from taking steps towards. So, for example, getting organized in certain ways, putting SOPs together, closing certain subscription plans that I wasn't doing before, and just all these little tasks that I think to me didn't feel like a big deal, but over time it compounded. It compounded into a lot of time, a lot of energy that I didn't need to be spending doing, that I could just delegate to someone else to do. Again, I'm not totally out of that mindset of like, oh, I'll just figure it out myself, I'll do it myself, it's fine, whatever. But I have moved towards um, I'm ready to take this risk. I'm ready to take this next big step because at the end of the day, you will realize that your assistant is gonna save you so much time. It's worth the investment, right? As I always say, time is money. And if we're gonna track our time the way we track our money because it's just as valuable, then why are we not making a decision that our future wealthy self would make? Why are we not spending money to make money, right? I mentioned this in episode four. I mentioned this when I talk about the things I wish I knew when I started my business. And this is something that is such a huge monumental decision and is so difficult. And so many people don't get to the point that they actually push through the fear and they actually make the steps to hire. So if you are like I was, someone who is like, oh, I really, really want to hire, I would love to take some of this stuff off my plate. I just I'm scared that I won't be able to afford someone. Just think about what you can afford if you continue doing this on your own. And six months down the line, you're at the same exact place. 12 months down the line, you're at the same exact place that you are right now. This fear, this again eating into your schedule, eating into your to-do list, eating into all the things that you could be spending time doing, but you aren't because you are continuing to allow yourself to be in this non-millionaire energy, to be in this energy of scarcity and fear and doubt, right? Again, I know, I know, girl, I know it is so much easier said than done. This took me eight years, eight years to make this decision. So I do not blame you if you are like, uh, I hear you, I hear you, I really do, but I'm just scared and I don't want to do it. And I'd rather just do it myself for a little while longer. Girl, I get it. I completely get it. And I am just trying to be a little nudge, be a little encouragement for you to take the reins and to invest in yourself because truly it is worth the investment. For me personally, I just knew I had to do it and I knew I had to get over all the shit that was holding me back when I had this undeniable urge that I needed help. So this was around September of last year when I launched the Conversion Club. I was like, oh my God, there's so much going on. I have so much to manage. And honestly, it actually would really help if I hired someone to help me pitch podcasts. I hired someone to help me start getting a lot more organized. And if I'm trying to grow a team, I need the back end to be solid, right? The foundation to be there. And so I just innately had this feeling that I just had to hire, that my business was growing in a way that I really can't be handling some of these day-to-day tasks. And I needed someone to come in, streamline my operations, help with the organization. And I just frankly, with the help of my coaches, had just this list already, this running list in my head of like, if I could get rid of this stuff to someone else, here's where I would start. Here are the things that I wish was not on my plate, that I wish was on someone else's plate, that they could handle for me day in and day out. I'll give you a little homework at the end, but to preface this homework, to give you a little hint of one of the steps, it's that you have to be clear on what you need, right? What is it that you need? What platforms do you need? Are the tasks that you don't want to be doing on that you need someone to have the skills with? For example, Squarespace or Clavio or Asana or ClickUp or whatever it is, what platforms are those tasks on? And just making a list, a very clear list of like, if I could not do all of these tasks, these are the tasks that I would not want to do first. And writing out that list. I will say again, I had a lot of support in hiring as I do. As much as I say I was a one-woman team, technically, I had a lot of people who helped me, right? I have a community of wonderful women who are also business owners who could help me in this process. My coaches, of course, helped me with the application. They helped me take that list that I just mentioned, put it into a job description. They helped me with the steps in the interview process. That was all super, super helpful. And I will say I have a lot of privilege in having access to that. I also had really amazing friends who, when I reached out to them, went against my core programming and actually asked for help. I had really wonderful friends who said, Oh my gosh, of course, let me send you a job description, let me send you interview questions, and let me send you things that I used for my process. And you may be able to take, zhuzh, and utilize for your process. And so my friend Moji loves you so much. She sent me her job description for her operations assistant, which I used to essentially zhuzh a little bit and fit my own list, right? That I mentioned earlier that I'd put together of things that I wish an operations assistant would do for me. She also sent me a really wonderful rubric, a scoring card, if you will, of the things that we would want to see in terms of like skills, personality, fit for culture, et cetera, et cetera. And so she sent me that. Karina Baldwin of True Adventure Collective, who is one of my former coaches, she also sent through some interview questions. So thank you so much to all of you who helped me in this process. And what I realized in the hiring process is that when you have the right systems in place, it's actually not that hard, right? If you have people who can help you teach you how to weed out less quality applicants. So for example, in my application, I put a little instruction for how to answer the last question. And if you didn't read that little piece of the description of the instructions, you missed out and you got that answer wrong. And I will say, I think 95 to 98 or 99% of people did not read that part of the description. And so they didn't answer the question correctly. And that was a really easy way for me who I needed an operations assistant. I needed someone who paid attention to that kind of detail. It helped me weed out those people that just weren't able to sit down and read the basic instructions. I also used Airtable to sort out the applicants to basically see what my desired answers were for some of these application questions, right? So hours available or location, response time, those kinds of things. I was able to filter some of those things out to help sort the candidates and help get to the interview stage of the process. Ultimately, what I learned is that having an assistant is amazing. I know that people have probably said that to me before, and I just for the longest time was like, I don't care, I don't care, I'm not ready, I'm not gonna do it. But like truly, I'm gonna tell you, and you might down the line be like, I know Kieran told me that having an assistant was amazing, but it took me a really long time to actually hiring. And that's okay. That is okay. But having an assistant is so wonderful because you just have a second set of eyes, right? You have a second brain. And I especially recommend I went with this as well for my operations assistant is to pick someone who thinks differently than you do. I remember two of my candidates for my operations. Assistant, one, the one that I went with, thought differently than me. And another one that was sort of one of the final candidates, she thought very similarly to me. And at first I was like, I want to go with the girl that thinks really similar to me, because then we don't really have to get confused or get our wires crossed. We could just go forward and almost like one brain cell move forward. But the thing is, and a wonderful point that my friend made when I was going through and deciding my final candidates is that having someone who thinks differently than you do means that they're going to catch things that you might not catch. They're going to think about how to execute a task differently than you will. And I love that, right? Because if I just had a clone of myself, they'll probably notice something either before I do or after I do, but we're both noticing the same things. Why not bring someone on that is going to notice different things that you're not going to catch, right? And so having that kind of a second brain is wonderful. And really at the end of the day, having the support, the tasks that I can take out of my to-do list and trust and know that someone is going to handle it and handle it well is such a relief in a way that I don't think I was ready to receive. And I don't think I was ready to experience, right? I'm still learning. I'm still learning how to manage a hire, manage a team. And just as much as my operations assistant is learning how I do my business, right? It takes time. Definitely do not expect a clone because that's not what we're trying to do. We are trying to bring someone on who's going to enhance the work that we're doing, that is going to push our business forward, move things in a way that we're not going to be able to do ourselves. But at the same time, it's going to take a while. I still had to learn this when I first hired. I was like, okay, so she's going to be able to read my mind in like two weeks, and then she's going to know exactly what I need. Obviously, that's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take a little while for them to learn about your business, them to learn how you work, how you communicate, what your goals are. All of those things are going to be important and they're going to, like any relationship, take a little time to foster. So with everything that I experienced after I hired, I really wanted to go back and see what some of those objections were, what some of those fears were when I first was thinking about hiring and not doing it for almost a decade. It still hurts to say. It took me almost a decade to figure this out. But again, we all get in places, we all progress in our own timelines. That is okay. But going back to the scarcity mindset, I was just like, oh, what if I'm not going to be able to pay her on time? What if I am going to have to get rid of her and I lose a client? And da-da-da-da-da. I did end up losing a client and I didn't get rid of her because I made a plan and I was realistic about my budget and I was realistic about what I could afford. And being clear and communicative with people about that and not like trying to hide behind lack of information or hide behind vagueness or hide behind, oh, I just want to be able to adjust if I need to. Like just come out the bat and say, here's my budget. How can we work together within this budget, within this framework, so that I'm paying you fairly and on time? And we are still able to work together, right? You are still able to help me take some of this stuff off my plate, take some of the tasks, and move this business forward in a way that my 24 hours just won't be able to. And so being really realistic about your budget, you can always adjust. You can reduce your hours, you can pause a contract, you can communicate these things with the person that you do hire because at the end of the day, like everybody's time is precious, and we want to be respectful of that. But I haven't really ever actually in the last three months had any kind of an issue when it came to being able to pay on time, being realistic about what I was able to afford. I went in with a lot of clarity on that. And doing that is gonna really help you down the line, prevent you from coming across any of those things that you were scared of coming across. Now, when it comes to micromanaging, I mean, hopefully, Lizzie, if you listen to this episode and you're like, girl, you are not doing any of that shit, please let me know. But when it comes to micromanaging, what I realized was that if you hire the right person and you weed out the applicants that prevent you, right, from this communicative, non-micromanaging relationship, if you weed out those applicants and you find the person who is again has the skills that you need them to have, knows what your expectations are, you can just trust them. You can just trust them to do their jobs. I mean, when it came to lawyers and it came to CPAs, and it came to plumbers and it came to all these people who like for sure knew how to do all these things that I didn't know how to do, I trusted them innately. And so it's the same thing. Just because you can do it yourself doesn't mean you can't find someone who also can do those things and also maybe can do them in a more efficient way. And I had to unlearn this like, I mean, again, it's hard to unlearn because your girls lived with OCPD basically her whole life, but like other people can do things in their own way and it's still good. That was a lesson I had. I had to learn, but a lesson that I kind of happily learned because I was like, you know what? You do it that way, and it got done. And it got done in a timely manner, efficiently, effectively, well, high quality. Can't argue with those results. I just can't, right? And so finding the right person is actually gonna make all the difference. And in the hiring process, just making sure that you're super clear about what you're looking for, you're super clear about what you need, you communicate that, and then you find the person, like I mentioned a little earlier with the air table and filtering out people who might not be aligned completely on the time you need them to be committed to, the longevity of being on your team, any and everything of those things. Just making sure that you yourself know what you need and communicating that very, very clearly in no uncertain terms. That's gonna help. That's gonna help prevent you from micromanaging. Same thing with training. I hired the right person because they didn't take long to train, right? In fact, if anything, it took me a long time to get trained as a manager, as a team leader. And my assistant, she just does what needs to get done. I tell her and I clarify, I help her get into my brain a little bit. But yeah, when you hire the right person, you don't really need to train because the right skills, the right fit, it'll address what you need, right? It'll address the apps you need them to be able to be on, the critical thinking skills that you need them to have. When you find the right person and you tailor your application and interview questions correctly, you will be able to find that right fit. In terms of leading, again, I'll have to ask Lizzie. Y'all will have to ask Lizzie what she thinks about this, but it really boils down for me to three things: collaborating, right? Being able to work together and find a solution together, communicating, over-communicating, if anything, then under-communicating. And just providing clarity. When you do those things, when you collaborate, when you communicate, and when you clarify, you're able to move forward in a way that doesn't feel like people are confused, right? It doesn't feel like people are on the same page about what needs to get done and how it needs to happen and when it needs to happen. There are definitely certain things where still I'm like, ooh, I should have said, hey, I need this by X date. Because me saying it's urgent, get it to me when you can, as soon as you can, is still not clear enough, right? Like I need this by Thursday. I need this by Friday at noon, because da-da-da-da-da. And explaining yourself and giving them an opportunity to understand why something is so urgent to you, instead of just barking an order and being like, get this done, do it, right? And so those kinds of things in terms of clarity and communication, I'm again still learning, but it has really opened my eyes to developing those kinds of skills. Skills that I thought I had, and in certain contexts, I do have, but in the context of like hiring and managing a team, I didn't really have that experience yet. And it's been really eye-opening and wonderful as a process. I also, beyond my operations assistant, I do have other investments. I have other people who are supporting me, like my business coaches, like my PR team, like my podcast manager, all people who I trust to support me, to do what needs to be done that I can't do myself. And I have actually worked with the team before. I've actually done this before. It's not my first rodeo, even though sometimes it feels like it. And in many ways, I'm learning so many new things that I wouldn't have learned with just my team beyond my operations assistant, my podcast manager, my PR team, my coaches. I don't manage them similarly. I mean, it's similar, but it's not the same, right? So it's just a different part of my brain that I'm using and it's kind of exciting. I'm also now that I've hired someone, I'm like, okay, you know what? I think I am ready to build my team a little bit. So, some upcoming hires that I'm thinking about bringing on, and I will be sure to announce them to my yappers and my community if you ever want to join the homeless team. Is I think I'm gonna bring on a junior consultant within the next six to 12 months, somewhere around there. I also want to bring on a white label designer, someone who can help me because I'm not a designer, and I want my clients to have beautiful emails, my clients to have all these things. I really want them to be able to grow and expand through this email marketing sales channel. And so I yeah, would love to bring on a white label designer. I also want to bring on a social media manager because that is another bottleneck I have in my business, is that when I get paid to do social media for other people, I'm great at it. I am churning content out, I am writing captions, I am getting it done. And then when I do it for myself, I'm like, I don't want to do this, I don't want to spend any time, nobody's paying me my rate to do my own social media, so I'm not gonna do it. So I would really love to bring on a social media manager to help me get my posts up, get more reach, bring in that top of the funnel leads so that we can nurture them in the middle of the funnel with my newsletters and my podcast, right? I also really want to I said this in episode four, I believe. I want to bring on a bookkeeper because your girl still doesn't have a bookkeeper, and that's probably a bad thing because her stuff is not getting tracked correctly. And so, anyway, bookkeeper. That's a really big one. And then I think I want to bring on, I don't know when, but maybe in my like daily life of personal assistant, someone who can just like uh help me do that daily shit, not business-wise, that I need to get done, that I just like oh, would love to just hand off to someone else. You know, it's so funny. Like, once the dam broke, I was like, how can we grow? How can we hire? Who else can we bring on versus before for so long being like, I'm so scared, I don't know, I don't want to do any of this. And then once you break that seal, you're like, oh, okay, this is actually really great. I actually want to do this all the time, and I want everybody to help me, and I won't want to have to do anything myself. So I hope you all get there too, if that's what you're looking for in terms of freeing up your time and getting the support that you need. I mean, scaling is a very, very scary phase of business. There's a lot of growing pains involved. There is a lot of front-end work that feels just so frustrating and it feels like it takes up so much time. But the thing is, is like I said before, when you build those solid foundations, they lead to better, more stable, more sustainable growth. And you don't have to undo or correct mistakes that you made, right? And when we do it right, again, I'm not saying I'm gonna do every single thing right and I'm gonna get in front of it and I'm gonna build the solid foundation first. I'm gonna stumble and I'm gonna make mistakes and I'm gonna find a crack in the foundation and be like, fuck, I should have dealt with that earlier. And that's okay. But I just want you to know it doesn't have to be terrifying. You can ask for help, you can ask your community, you can hire, you can bring people on to help you with this phase, with these growing pains, with all of this unknown, all these unknown variables that you want to be able to control. At least I know I want to be able to control. But having this team, having people in your network, in your community who can help and support you is chef's kiss, world of difference, right? And at the end of the day, what I really realized is that success is whatever you define it. You get to define success for you, you get to define what success looks like. And I'm pausing because I'm like, I need to learn this myself still, and I need to actually ingrain it and believe it. Because I can say it on this podcast, and sometimes I'll be like, girl, why the fuck did you say that? Do you believe that for yourself? But I'm speaking this out to the mic, out to all of you, and into myself as well. You can define success however you want to define it, and you can also change that definition literally at any time. Okay. And this is me giving you permission as much as I'm giving myself permission to do this as well. But like make it make sense for you. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone else. Don't let other people's fear and other people's scarcity and other people's notions affect how you want to feel, affect how you want to define success, affect how you want things to make sense for you in this point in your life, in this point in your business. Because again, there are so many people that are gonna come and say, Well, what if this? What if you don't want it? What if you don't like it? What if you did-da-da? And I just want to say to those people, you can go and choke. You can go shut the fuck up. Good morning, good morning, good morning. You could choke. But for real, make it for you. You are not making this decision for anybody else. This is supposed to make your life easier. This is supposed to make your time a little bit more free. This is supposed to make your to-do list a little bit lighter. And in order to do that, I know there's so much fear that we have to work through as business owners, as women, as women of color, as femmes, as non-binary folks. We need to make these decisions and understand that it's for us, it's not for anybody else. Okay. And again, I'm saying this to you as much as I'm saying it to myself. So we have talked about hiring, we've talked about some of the fears, we've talked about some of the ways that we can work through those fears. And now, my little yappers, I do have a little homework for you. So if you're thinking about hiring and you're just like, I don't know what to do first, I don't know where to start. I teased this a little bit earlier, but the first thing I want you to do is I want you to create that list. Create that list of things that you wish you could hand off to someone else that you wish that you didn't have to do anymore that still needs to get done to run your business, right? Make that list. Make that list right now. Turn this episode off and go make that list. The second thing I want you to do is think about who can hire you to help with that list. So is it an operations assistant? Is it a social media manager? Is it a junior consultant? Is it a XYZ? Think about who, what kind of hire, what kind of person would help with that list of things that you don't want to do. And then I want you to put a budget together. Even if it's just $400 a month, that is still expansive for your time. Okay. Thinking about, okay, maybe I can bring someone on at $20 an hour for five to eight hours a week. Great. Start there and then grow and then see if you can bring a little bit more on or see if you can start to delegate more things. This is all fluid, it can change. It's okay. You don't have to live in this fear of like, uh, but what if this? What if that? I don't know. I'm so scared. Again, I'm not judging you. I have been there, I was there for almost a decade, and I'm telling you, as someone who is now on the other side of it, it's so much better over here. Come on over, come on over, bring someone on, hire someone on. I am happy to share any insights that I can about the process. If you have any questions, like this is the Conversation Club. So please, I will link in the show notes my Instagram, I will link in the show notes my email address so that you can contact me if you have any questions. I want to help you, I want to support you. That's what we're here to do. So if you are working on this homework, if you are thinking about hiring, definitely listen to this episode. You can go back, re-listen to anything. You can reach out to me if you have any questions. I really hope that all of you that are thinking about hiring, that maybe are still just worried about some of the things that I mentioned in this episode, that this episode helped with some of the steps that you can take and some of the revelations that you can have on the other side when you do decide to hire. I hope this episode was helpful for you. And go out there, hire, delegate, get that shit off of your to-do list. Okay? Can we do that? I think we can do that. Yappers, it has been another wonderful episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. I will see you very, very soon in episode eight next week. If this episode gave you something to think about, take it and do something with it. If you want more of this or you just want to see what my life actually looks like, come follow me on Instagram at it's almost with two L's. Be sure to link it in the show notes. You can also follow me at Almost Consulting for some juicier, spicier takes. And if you're serious about getting your emails to convert, you can check out the Conversion Club, our monthly email marketing membership for founders who are ready to turn email into their most profitable and sustainable sales channel with expert guidance, plug and play tools, and strategy you'll actually use. Check it out at the link in the show notes. I'll see you in the next episode, Yappers.