Hello and welcome to today's episode of The OBM Educator. I am very excited to dive in today because I feel like the topic that we're going to be talking about, which is hiring a team member. It's almost like a rite of passage in our business. We start our business, obviously, working by ourselves, supporting other people, and we build our business all of that stuff and we get to a point where, in order to keep growing, we need to do something. We need to make more money, we need to get more time and getting a team member hiring a team member is one of those things that can help you in that scaling process. And so you're like my business has made it to this level. I get to hire someone, but the lead up to it can kind of be filled with a lot of questions. Like my business has made it to this level, I get to hire someone, but the lead up to it can kind of be filled with a lot of questions like is this the right time? How do I do this? What does this look like? So today I wanted to dive into what it might look like when it is time to hire someone. What are kind of the best practices around bringing on a team member as an OBM and how you can plan for it in your business so that when you are ready at that time, you can just go for it. So grab some pen and paper, grab your favorite beverage and let's dive into it.
01:17
Welcome to The OBM Educator. I'm your host, Amanda McVicker, a veteran OBM who serves six and seven-figure entrepreneurs as well as educates new OBMs with the skills and confidence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights behind the scenes, sneak peeks and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business. Help you build a better OBM business. So a little backstory for me. I hired my first team member about seven months into being an OBM. I had started the preparation process a few months prior, so it was really about months four to five, which is when I was booked out as an OBM, that I was really thinking like I should probably be bringing on a team member to support me.
02:09
Now, when I was first thinking of bringing on a team member, I was thinking more for my own business, and so when you're thinking about it, there are probably two things that you can be thinking. You're thinking I have no time to focus on anything in my own business. I would like to bring on a team member to help me with that. Or you could be thinking there are a lot of things in my clients' businesses that I would love to be able to outsource. So first think about which of those it might overlap. I think my first VA did do stuff for both my business and my clients' businesses.
02:43
But when I was initially thinking it was like I would love someone to help me with my social media posting. I would love someone to help me with managing my inbox. So when you're thinking about, like, how to know that it is the right time to bring someone on, is think like what is going on in your business that is kind of struggling, that is not doing as well as you would like, is that on your business side of social media email marketing, something that, like you, would be able to do? The thinking behind it? You can write the post, you can write the email, but having someone else execute it is like is that going to be the most helpful for you? Or are you thinking like on your client work side, there are, you know, so many repetitive tasks that are really taking away from me being able to focus, like brain space, strategic thinking, towards that. I would really love to like have someone else do so, like start thinking what is it that you would want to outsource? And this is going to help you determine what type of support are you looking for.
03:54
If a lot of the things that are on your plate that you want to get rid of are related to social media, for example, like when I was first hiring for a VA, there were a lot of client tasks that were social media creation, posting, things like that because I did have that included in my OBM services. But it was also like on my side I wanted someone. So I was looking for someone who was kind of like a social media assistant. You might be looking at repetitive tasks, but maybe they all occur in Dubsado and ClickUp, so you might want to be looking for someone who has a little bit more systems experience. Or you might just want a general VA that you could train on all of the different things, train on all of the different things.
04:43
So another way to kind of determine how do you know it's time is looking at the financials. So when you are hiring someone to outsource or subcontract, whichever way that you say it. You want to make sure that they are being paid for their work, but that you are still being paid for your work, and so what I mean by that is you are still going to have labor in the process of hiring someone. So the kind of general rule of thumb is that you don't want to go over 50% of your rate, whatever that would be. So, example you make $60 an hour with a client within a retainer, all of that, but it comes to $60 an hour.
05:29
You wouldn't want to get a VA or assistant or whatever you want to call them, for more than $30 an hour, and so, while some people might be like, yeah, you know, cash that money, whatever, there is actually a reason to it. That isn't just making money. It's because, even though you have a team member who is going to be doing all of those things so that you don't have to do them, your time is still involved. You have to train the team member. Your time is still involved. You have to train the team member. You have to make sure they know what's going on and give them the tasks. You are responsible for their work, so you should be checking their work and if you need to redo their work, you need to be doing that kind of off the clock so that your client isn't like double charged for the work. So you are still investing a certain amount of time in making sure that your VA or assistant is able to do the work well to your standards, and so you want to make sure that your time is compensated for that.
06:36
So when you're looking at, is it time to bring on a virtual assistant, you want to make sure that financially you were able to do that. Are you able to pay? You know, say, $30 an hour. Have that taken out of what you bring in? Are you able to sustain that? Does it mean like you bring on another client who this now VA can help you with? So those are things to think about Now before getting into like more of the best practices and how to prepare to bring on an assistant or VA.
07:11
Some people don't think about this that you know. You get to the point in clients' businesses that you're like, oh my gosh, I need help, I can't be doing this. All point in clients' businesses that you're like, oh my gosh, I need help, I can't be doing this. All A VA needs to be here at some point, and so a lot of people's their first idea goes to well, I'll just hire a VA. But some people don't want to have an additional person on their own team. So another thing that you can do is recommend to your client that they hire a VA, and so in that case you would still be the one to hire them and go through the whole process with them. The business owner would make the final decision. The business owner would pay them, but you would train them, you would make sure that they're doing their stuff and you would review their work to make sure that it is all good, and then you are not responsible for them as in like in your own business. So that is also an option.
08:01
If having a team member is not something that you're wanting, but going into the idea that having a team member is something that you do want, some best practices around that. So you might know, being brought on as a team member, how it might feel when someone doesn't really have all their ducks in a row, that they don't have a clear idea of what type of support that they need, and so best practice, you don't want to do that, you want to make sure that you have the list of things that you want to outsource, how to do them, processes, all of that stuff. Before you start hiring, before you bring someone on, you want to have it laid out so that someone can jump in and you're not spending so much time trying to think, oh, what can I give them today? You want to have, like, these are all of the weekly repeating tasks, these are all of the daily repeating tasks, here are all the monthly repeating tasks. Like start with those. I find those to be the easiest thing to outsource because you know that they're happening every day, every week, every month, and it's easy to just pass those along. You want to think about how are we going to communicate, where are tasks going to be held? How am I going to check in with them? How are they going to track their time? Things like that.
09:17
Since you are bringing on an extension of yourself as a team member, you want to make sure that they are incorporated into your business and so that your clients don't feel a strain on it. So what I mean by that is like I have a VA who is in Slack with me. She is also in my client's Slack channel because she communicates with my client on certain things. If I were to be like, okay, well, client, you can come into my Slack channel and then, like, we can converse there, that doesn't make sense. She communicates with another one of my clients through email because that's how I communicate with that client. So you want to make sure that your VA is being brought into the process of how you work with your clients. I use LastPass with my clients and so I've always had my VAs use LastPass to make sure that things can be shared easily. I use Toggle to track my time and see a monthly report. So I have my VA in my Toggle so that she can track her time in there and I can see it all at once.
10:30
So you want to think about what are the different ways that you currently do business that you are going to be bringing your VA into. You want to make sure that it is clear that there is not confusion so that in that onboarding period you can focus on the training, on the learning about the clients, instead of, well, where do I track my time? I could probably do a whole other episode on like the actual hiring of a VA or person to come onto your business, but kind of a general overview, like have an application for people to fill out. You want to ask questions that are related to your business. You want to know what systems they've been in, what is their experience, how do they work best, how do they learn, how do they handle criticism, how do they like to be praised, right, things like that really helps you to see, like who is going to work best with you. From then, I would then have interviews with the top five or so, depending on how many applicants that you've had and then from there do like a test project with two or three people.
11:42
I always do paid test projects. I think that if someone is giving their time to complete a project for me, you should pay them for it. So I always do paid test projects and I see it doesn't have to be perfect. But how did they approach it? Did they follow all of the instructions? You kind of throw like a curve ball in there just to see what they do and then from there make your decision and then that's when you would bring them on. Make sure to have a good onboarding system, platform, whatever that they can go through. I usually use ClickUp and just have a board that they go through, to learn all of these things, learn about my clients so that after they go through that, they can then jump right in.
12:22
Having a team member on your team is a great way to continue growing your business right. You're able to take on more clients, you're able to take on more responsibilities. You can add admin in there or you can you know, if you already had admin take it off your plate to focus more on the strategy and systems. It really allows great growth and so that's why you know it's like, like I said, kind of like a rite of passage to be able to bring on a team member. So I hope that this episode kind of gave you like a little bit of insight, if you have been thinking about bringing someone on, hiring someone, what that might look like in your business. Again, I can go further into pretty much all of these sections. So if this is something that you're interested in learning more about, let me know, send me a message, say hey, you know I would love to learn more about hiring a team member, and if you are at that point where you are thinking about this, congratulations. I know how exciting it is and it really is an exciting milestone, so you should be very proud of your business and if you're thinking of how to get to that point, start taking track of all of the tasks that you're doing. Start looking at the financials to see if it'll make sense. Far planning, like starting six plus months out, is not a bad idea, so that you can be fully prepared when it is time for you to hire a team member.
13:50
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I would love if you would leave a review and make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. I'll talk with you guys next week. Bye, thanks for joining me for this episode of The OBM Educator. I hope what you heard today is helpful for you on your OBM journey. If you loved today's episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Want to be a guest on The OBM Educator? Fill out the form in the show notes and I'll be in touch. Join us next time on The OBM Educator. Thank you.