The Good, The Bad And The Ugly On Hiring A Team To Expand Your Growing Business

The Momentum Marketing Podcast

The good, the bad and the ugly on hiring a team to expand your growing business.

Hey, there, I'm Jillian Kendrick and welcome to the Momentum Marketing Podcast. I'm a mama, a wife, an entrepreneur and a three time best selling co-author. In each episode you'll get real world, practical advice and strategies and maybe a parenting tip or two along the way. If you're ready to create a business that supports your family and your lifestyle, then you're in the right place.

Hey, if you haven't checked out my master class on how I get over 600 leads every single month, I want you to go to jilliankendrick.com/masterclass and you can opt in absolutely free. It's an amazing master class. It's, I think it's like 38 minutes long. So it's not gonna take up your entire day. It is so good, jam packed with a couple of big industry secrets that you're gonna wanna know. And I'm really proud of it. I made this specifically for business owners who want to get leads who are either currently getting leads and want to do it better or have never gotten a lead before in their life. Other than maybe through referrals and word of mouth. If you're thinking about doing more promotion, using seo, going into paid advertisement, this is the master class for you. Check it out at jilliankendrick.com/masterclass.

Now, on the topic at hand, we are talking the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to hiring. And I can honestly say after running my business for over 10 years after starting as a virtual assistant to now being the CEO and an expert in my field, I've hired a lot of people. I've hired everybody from virtual assistants, graphic designers, programmers, project managers, technical consultants, coaches, website builders. One off little projects for myself, one off little projects for my clients. I've taken other people's services and package them as my own and utilize them as contractors. Like I've done a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of hiring. And one of the first things that you should think about if you're considering hiring to start growing and scaling your business is whether or not you're ready and by ready I don't mean like, oh, I've never run payroll and oh, I don't have an EIN and oh, I don't know how to do this. That's not being ready, folks. I love you, but that's not being ready because guess what? You're never going to be ready to do something that you've never done. When I say ready. I'm talking about you. I'm talking about, are you spending time doing things that you know that you shouldn't be doing, doing things that you feel like? Man, I could give this to somebody else. I could delegate this. I could pass this off to a team member. Are you spending time doing things that are repeatable and duplicatable? And either could be automated or could be passed off to a team member. Are you spending time doing things in your business that don't make you any money? That's a big one. I pause right there for a second.

So if you feel like there's not enough hours in the day, if you feel like, man, I need some more help, man, I need 10 hands and three brains. And I wish we lived on Mars because I need more hours in the day. Trust me, you're not alone. But these are some really good indications that you are ready to hire a team to scale and grow your business. And as far as like getting the EIN, you can go to irs.gov and apply for a free EIN as far as making sure that you have the right type of business, whether you are gonna be an S Corp, AC Corp, an LLC personally and take this with a grain of salt, talk to a lawyer and an accountant.

But I started my business as an LLC and then eventually switched to being an LLC that files as an S Corp and I do that for tax purposes because it actually helps save a lot of money on taxes. But if you have questions on that, talk to a professional who can guide you as to exactly the right sort of choice for your situation and for your business. And once you get all of that stuff squared away, I promise the rest of it is relatively easy. It's not that any of this is hard. It's that it's new. Right. It's not frightening. It's not impossible. It's not scary. It's just new. You've never done it before. And that's ok.

As far as running payroll, whether you run payroll or just yourself or your contractors for domestic or international contractors or for employees. I'm going to give you a link to a program that I love to use called Gusto. You can find my affiliate link to Gusto down in the show notes or in the transcript of this episode. But Gusto is great because you can run all sorts of things and they take care of some of like the tax stuff for you as well and they have different packages and whatever that you can do. So if you've been hesitant to hire a team because taxes and liability and withholdings and all that other stuff scares you, which it did for me for a really long time. Use Gusto and they'll help you through everything.

Another thing you need to think about is what type of person you're gonna be hiring. Are you ready to hire employees? Are you going to hire contractors? And there's a couple of really distinct differences. Again, talk to a lawyer or an accountant about this. But for the most part, if you go to the IRS website, they will explain that an employee is someone who goes to a specified location in order to conduct their work. So whether it's your home or an office building or somewhere else, employees, not always, but very typically will have a location or a place in which that work is conducted. Whereas contractors typically can work from anywhere or they don't get told, hey, you have to come to this specific building in order to do your job.

Another big difference between a contractor and employee obviously is tax withholdings. You as the employer or the business would be responsible for withholding social security, medicare, state and federal tax withholdings for employees. Whereas contractors, you have signed an agreement to do business with that person for a specified period of time and you've agreed to either a certain rate or a certain amount of money to pay them. Typically, contractors would be people that also own their own businesses or subcontract their work to other businesses.

The nature of the work is also really important and there is some gray area in my opinion on this, but an employee would be given a handbook or would be told a very specific set of rules and instructions on how to get something done and they would be required by the agreement with that employer to follow those rules to achieve their goals. Whereas a contractor, I, as someone who works with contractors, I am not allowed to tell that contractor how to do their job.

So let me give you an example. And again, I really do believe that there's gray area here, whether or not the government or the IRS believes in that gray area as well. I can't speak to that. But this is just my personal opinion. Again, talk to a lawyer. I think this is a really good example. If I wanna remodel my kitchen, which I've been looking into, I go to hire a kitchen remodel contractor. I hire like a homebuilder contractor. If I contract with that person, I obviously have to tell them what kind of tile to use, the color of the grout, what cabinets I wanna buy, what color those cabinets need to be? What sink I wanna buy. What faucet I want the countertops, et cetera, right? Like I have to tell them the specific things related to the nature of the work or the outcome or the result that I want. But I'm not allowed because of the nature of the work and being that it's a contracted job, I'm not allowed to tell them, ok? Oh, you have to put two ounces of spackle for every, you know, square inch of space. I'm not allowed to tell them that they have to screw down or glue down the countertops in such a way or such a configuration. Like I can tell them the result that I want and I can tell them the material to use, but I'm not allowed to tell them like how to do their job or to like, tell them the tools. I can't tell them that they have to have to use Ryobi tools and that they can't use Black and Decker tools, right? Just for an example. Whereas with an employee typically, and there are some exceptions to this as well. But employees would typically be given the tools, training, technology, et cetera that they would need in order to perform their work. Whereas contractors very typically show up with their preferred tools, their preferred software, their preferred methods, et cetera. And I, as someone who contracts with those other companies, I can't tell them to a certain degree. Again, I believe this is a gray area. I can't tell them how to do their work. And so there's some specificity and there's some stuff in there based on what your individual state country or government might believe or have rules and regulations around employment types. So just be really aware of that because you don't want to be liable for not doing withholdings and then someone believes that you could have committed tax fraud, right? You don't want that.

Next, let's talk about why to hire a team. So we've already talked about the reasons regarding whether or not you're ready. Like you feel like you need extra brains, you feel like you need extra hands, you feel like you need more time in the day or maybe there's like a set of skills or expertise that you need that you don't have. Those are great reasons as to why you wanna start hiring a team. The big one is skills that you don't have. I know I've used this example if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time. But I always say it and I will continue to say it because it's so true for me. So I consider myself to be a very functional kind of person. I'm not good at making things look beautiful, but as far as making them happen and making them work and not even like the technical like, yes kind of the technical side, but even just the flow of things like my brain thinks very linearly. And so I'm really, really good at that sort of stuff, but the creativity and what colors are complementary and where to put this wiggle and where do like all of that sort of stuff is just not me, it's just not, you can ask my graphic designer that I've worked with for years. Every time I want a new piece of art or a new image from her, she usually has to make like two or three and then we kind of piece them apart. I'm not great at explaining exactly what I want. I kind of have to see it in order to know and graphic design is not my strong suit. So the theory and the idea behind hiring is this and I, I heard this years ago, I can't remember where I heard it from, but I think it's absolutely brilliant and credit to whoever came up with this because I think they're a genius. Let's say you only have, I don't know, an hour a day or maybe 100 hours in six months or 100 hours in a year to improve the quality of one of your skills. Right? Let's say you have 100 hours to improve the quality of one of your skills. Would you rather take a skill that you have that's like a seven out of 10 and get it to be an eight or a nine in that 100 hours? Or would you rather take a skill that you're like a zero or a one at and get it to be like a four or a five or maybe even a two or a three?

The idea behind this theory is that rather than taking a skill that you are bad at and spending that same amount of time, it is more beneficial, and you could argue financially beneficial, for you to take the thing that you are great at and become masterful rather than taking the thing that you're bad at and trying to make it good. You see what I mean? And if you've ever read The Big Leap by Gay Hendrix, which I've talked about multiple times on this podcast. He talks about living and working inside of your zone of genius and your zone of genius includes those things that you're really good at. That you're great at that. You are masterful at that. You know, and do better than anybody else. So, rather than taking your time trying to be ok, or mediocre or acceptable at something that you'll never be amazing at. Why not spend your time in your zone of genius and do the things that you are great and masterful at and improve those skills. That's one of the great benefits of hiring a team because as human beings, we're not built to be perfect and great at everything, maybe one or two things if we're really, really lucky, right? But great, masterful at everything. No. So take that same amount of time and go be masterful at the things that you're really, really good at already and hire to fill in those gaps.

It's also important to hire for things that you don't have time for. Again, this kind of goes back to skill as well, but like, let's say I needed to create a graphic, right? And I've had to do this on occasion when my graphic designer is like out of town or something's happening or maybe she, she's a few hours ahead of me, time zone wise. So, if she's not online and I need something ASAP, I have to make it myself and that's ok. But something that might take her 10/20 minutes could take me an hour or two or three. Right. And if I can pay her her hourly rate times 10 or 20 minutes, rather than paying myself my own hourly rate or an hour or two, I've already saved money. Right. It's already become a cost effective decision because I'm not wasting my own time doing something that I know I'm not good at anyway.

So if it's something that you don't have time for, if it's something that you're not good at, or if it's something that I really hate to say this, I hate the phrase like beneath you. But when it comes to running a business, when it comes to being an effective leader, you really do have to choose what you're going to spend your time on the things that are worthy of your time, the things that are most effective for you to spend your time on. And the reality is not that a project or a client or an activity or a thing is beneath you or that it would be degrading to do. Right? No, we're gonna live our humble lives. We're going to accept the grace and humility that it takes to be a leader and to know that no job as big or small, as expensive or economic as it might be. No job is beneath us. But there are jobs, there are tasks, there are things that are more important for us to focus on as the business owner than others. So as the leader, you need to decide that. You need to decide, hey, learning QuickBooks and keeping track of all of my receipts isn't a great use of my time. But what is a great use of my time is creating content, building products, serving clients, making phone calls, making sales calls, right? It's not that it's beneath you. We're not gonna even go there. It's that there are things, there are tasks and there are responsibilities that you have as the business owner where your time is better served, doing those things than others.

And you need to make that decision for yourself. So then once you get that list of all the things that only you can do, only you are capable of, then you have your game plan for what your working hours and what your day looks like. And then all the other tasks we make that list and we say, ok, I need to hire, I need to hire for me. It's I need to hire an implementer for automation stuff. I need to hire a podcast editor. I need to hire a graphic designer. I need to hire a programmer. I need to hire an accountant. I need to hire a virtual assistant.

I potentially need to hire a manager to manage all of those people. If I don't wanna do it myself and you'll begin to build your team as you create those lists, as you start to see those gaps. And as you start to fill in those different positions, you might even hit the jackpot and find somebody who can fill two roles. But there's a great way to get started hiring for you as a general rule. And this is just me personally, over years and years of experience. Number one, I don't typically hire family, like just a rule that I've decided long ago, there are some people I have family members who own a business and have employed several family members and it actually worked out for them really well. I've seen businesses where that's not the case and you would really have to have an amazing relationship with your family. I think you'd have to have such a unique, incredible relationship with family members in order to make business and family stuff work. If that's for you, then do it. If not, that's my general rule.

Another general rule I have is that I never rehire. I did it once and it backfired on me. I did it again when someone else who was managing the team at the time needed help and wanted to rehire a specific person. I knew it wasn't gonna work out, but I wanted them to learn that lesson. So we rehired that person and obviously it didn't work out again. So, no, family never rehire. Once you let go of someone, move on.

That's everything I've got for hiring again in full disclosure. Talk to a lawyer, talk to an accountant. Do your due diligence. Look at the IRS website and make sure that you are working within the parameters of the way in which you are going to either hire contractors or hire employees. That's entirely up to you. Please do your due diligence and as always, I'll see you in the next episode.

Thanks.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the Momentum Marketing podcast.

If listening to this has brought you value, improved your life or giving you insight on how to build your own momentum, then please share it with a friend. And if you're ready to grow your business on autopilot, then I want to help you get there easier and faster with a free copy of my entrepreneur survival kit. Just leave a review of this podcast wherever you're listening right now. Hopefully it's a five star and you love it. Then screenshot the review and email the screenshot to [e-mail].

Once we confirm the review, we'll send you a copy of the survival kit. Totally free. Thank you. So much for joining me and I'll see you on the next episode. All content is written and recorded by Jillian Kendrick. Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.

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