Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose. I am a speaker and author. I am an expert in time and project management.
At the end of the day, I transform the way you run your business into a business you love to run.
Today’s comment came from a busy professional:
How do I know when I’m ready to make my first hire?
My business is growing and I know I will need to hire help soon. People have suggested interns, or office support – but my business relies a lot on my own skills. I have thought about partnering or hiring someone who does essentially what I do, so I can expand based on this expertise. What skills should an individual have to compliment / correct my own? I am not sure what is best. Thoughts? Thanks!
Without knowing exactly what your business is and why type of services you provide, my recommendation is to hire someone that can make your life easier.
Some ideas would be to automate, optimize and clone some of the things you are doing. If your business truly relies a lot of your own skills – then hiring someone who does essentially what you do is problematic. It’s not only an expensive way to “clone” you, but they may actually walk away with your client list and start their own expansion.
Instead – have a business solutions expert (such as I) to review how you are currently running your business. They will be able to identify areas to streamline, automate, and create effective systems that allow you to better delegate (such as hire interns and office support), releasing cycles of your time to allow you to expand. Sometimes it just a matter of documenting your FAQ’s to reduce support-level and enable you to hand-off those calls to someone else, add auto-responders to your email help-desk, provide some How-To videos for the lower-priced services, etc.
I suspect there are lots of areas that you create systems around that will both allow you to “hand-off” and even delete tasks. Having someone to take a look at how you are currently running your business will uncover some things that you may not be seeing.
Starting Steps
- First step is to write down everything that you are doing right now.
If you want to chat more about your particular situation to get a more individualized recommendation – just holler at me. - Write down everything that is currently falling in the cracks.
- For each item, rate each from 1-10 (1 not important, 10-critical) on the importance of this activity to your business growth. (ROI)
- Then list what needs to be put into place for someone else (new hire, an intern, a business partner) to do that task. Initially focus on the items that you rate 8 and above.
NOTE: Because you may not know some of the important tasks that you should be doing, having someone take a look at how you are currently running your business can help identify the critical tasks that are currently falling through the cracks.
Example Worksheet:
| Items currently falling through the cracks. | Item I am currently doing | From 1-10; how important is this activity to my business? | What it needs to be put into place for someone else to do this. |
| Attending networking events to see if there is any potential business there | 8 | Someone else can do this – if supplied with training and marketing scripts | |
| Making cold calls | 8 | Someone else can do this – if supplied with training and marketing scripts | |
| Updating facebook postings | 8 | Someone else can do this – if supplied with the blog or materials | |
| Writing blogs | 8 | Someone else can take the audios and webcam video and create blogs, update website, and facebook postings | |
| Creating a Certification and Training program | 8 | me | |
| Creating audios and videos | 8 | I can do the audios and webcam video | |
| Some Speaking Engagements | Assistant can search for additional speaking engagements for me | ||
| Follow-up calls from speaking engagements | 10 | An assistant can do the follow-up calls from the speaking engagements to setup one-on-one discovery calls for me. | |
| Looking for additional speaking engagements | 8 | ||
| Continuously marketing the business | 8 | Can get a marketing intern or part-time help to cover this. | |
| Chatting with leads that are not interested in my products and services | 5 | ||
| One-on-one Discovery session calls | 10 | me | |
| Sell my products and services through one-on-one discovery calls | 10 | me | |
| Continually look for additional client leads and referrals | 10 | Sales person on commission – can be combined with the marketing tasks. | |
| Create a FAQ and place on website | 8 | Make an audio of the questions that I am getting, and have assistant transcribe and update website |
If you take the time to outline the tasks in this way, it’s simple to see what type of person you should be looking for in a new-hire.
If you need more help, this is what I do. I help busy entrepreneurs create effective systems so that they can comfortably delegate to others, be more profitable and have more time to work on the things they really love to do.
I know your situation is different. Why don’t we schedule an appointment, where I get to know more about your unique situation? And then I will be happy to make recommendations on what your best steps are moving forward. To schedule an appointment, book it HERE.
With enough notice, it would be my honor to guest-speak at no cost to your group organization.
I have a presentation on “3 Keys to saying YES to everything but on your own terms”. To sign up for the complimentary course, go to www.lauraleerose.com/Say-Yes