EP393: We're hiring! Plus, Tips For Training a Marketing Assistant

10:35PM Mar 6, 2023

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

marketing

thrive

train

business

sales

hiring

supercharge

team

grow

hire

company

flourish

talk

brand

tips

tracy matthews

happening

online

part

working

The thing is, is that marketing is the gasoline that fuels the sales engine in a company. And without sales. Let's face it, you don't have a business. Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more, install more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you could spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this. Welcome to this Tuesdays Tips episode for thrive by design. It's Tracy Matthews, your host today, and I am gonna get right into it. So today I want to talk about tips for hiring, in particular, a marketing assistant or someone that you want to maybe take over your social media, or do your emails for you, or something along those lines. Because I know when businesses are really bootstrapped, and they're not doing enough volume every single month to really invest in hiring, like a full time team member, or they, you know, don't really know themselves, like how to really do the marketing, they can't really train, like, do you hire an agency? Or do you try to get someone on your team who can do the work for you. And so my advice is, when you're small, that a lot of times what the best thing to do is to actually bring someone onto your team, it doesn't have to necessarily be a full time role. It can be very part time. But there is some strategy in doing this really well. So we're going to talk about that today. But before I dive in, I want to talk about two things that are happening over here at flourish and thrive will maybe three. So the first is that we are having a free challenge for anyone who's trying to grow their online sales and lean in and create better marketing for their business and their brand. It is called the supercharge your online sales challenge. It is happening starting on March 20. And I'm really excited about this challenge for a very specific reason, because we're going to really help you harness the power of online sales. With our proven system to 3x, your high converting website, hit your online sales goal and create an unforgettable brand experience. I'm going to be breaking down some simple strategies and really easy to implement things that you can do to start getting more traffic to your website and converting that traffic into customers over that week. Plus, I'm going to be hosting a brand new free live masterclass called the five mistakes that jewelry business owners make that are crushing their online sales and how to fix them. So you definitely want to sign up for that. I'll have a link in the show notes. But you can also head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash supercharge and get on the list today. And let's party it's going to be fun. Also, another fun little tidbit over here is that I'm hiring an operations manager. So if you know someone who would like to work for flourish and thrive, they are super, super organized. They love managing a team. They love leading people, they love helping people become better humans, and they love managing projects and helping a business grow. Well, this might be the right opportunity for them or you if that's you listening here. So if you're interested in learning more about our operations manager position, you can head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com, forward slash jobs, and see all available positions right there. So let's dive in to this episode. Today we're going to talk a little bit more about how you can hire some marketing support. So we work with a lot of people who are just kind of crossing six figures. And they're trying to scale to multiple six figures, or people who have a very bootstrap business, maybe they have a little bit of support on their team. And they're doing multiple six figures. Or maybe they're even just starting out there not sure where to start. And marketing's not their thing. But the thing is, is that marketing is the gasoline that fuels the sales engine in a company. And without sales. Let's face it, you don't have a business. And so you need to keep those sales coming in, if you want to actually have a profitable business. So whether or not you like it, you still have to get good at marketing or get someone on your team who's good at marketing. And a big mistake that I see people make all the time is that they hire a marketing VA and they give them zero instructions. And so the person they hire, they just feel like oh, well they're not really doing a good job and they don't know what they're doing. And the truth of the matter is is that could it be the case? But here's the thing when you're hiring someone in like a fractional role like that like maybe a part time role, who's an intern, you can't expect them to know what exactly you need or want them to do, if they don't have direct experience with that. And in most cases, small business owners are going to have to find someone that they can train to do what they want them to do, because what I will tell you is that the marketing that people learn in college is not the same as what it really takes to do ecommerce marketing, or market your business. That's why there are companies like flourish and thrive out here, up and about who train people on how to market their business and to grow their company. Because this is not the stuff that's taught in school. And the reason being is that it changes so quickly, that there's no way that universities can keep up. And this is why there was such a rush towards alternative education for college and stuff like that, which is a whole nother thing that I'm passionate about, that we will talk about at a later date. So how do you get the right marketing VA, and how do you get them to do what you need them to do? So the real key to this is to give them training. It's super basic. That's why we have programs over here at flourish and thrive as a train you and your people. And we always allow a team member to go through our programs as well. So if they're working for you, we allow that to happen. And so one of the ways that I like to train people who come in to my team, and I teach our students to train as well as number one, you need a really solid onboarding process for your company. That means that there you walk them through step by step of everything that they need to know. And you get them on boarded to all the tools and train them on those tools.

The second thing that you need to do in your training process is to document and train them on your way of doing things thus far. So if you have a certain philosophy, if you have a cadence in which you post on social media, or there's specific things that you're doing, to actually grow your business at this point, and it's working, or even not working, what you want to do is train this marketing VA on how to do that. So that they can replicate your way of doing things or improve on what's not working, this is really important, you cannot expect them to just show up and not know what to do, and expect them to create magic for you and to grow your business. And so that's why I always recommend for people who are trying to train their marketing virtual assistant or someone on their team who's doing marketing, and even other parts of the business is to buy a program, or invest in something where you and your marketer can learn a strategy. And why I say both is for a very specific reason, if you as the owner of your company don't understand how to market your business. And you don't actually have like a frame of reference for what someone's doing when they come into your business. When that person leaves, you're gonna be basically at Ground Zero with, like, no grounding to stand down. So it's really important that you understand this, even if you're not doing it. That's why we call people at the head of a company with a team, sometimes often Chief Visionary officers, because because a visionary is typically highly involved in a strategy of what is happening inside the business, in the marketing and everything else. And typically, they're the best marketers, even if they don't think they are, because they know the most about those brands. So I really encourage you, as you're bringing on a team, especially when it comes to marketing, that you do some co learning together and you document your processes and ways of doing things. Now Case in point, I just hired a sales trainer to come in and help with our sales process. And part of that program that I bought into is a bunch of video content and training that I am going through with my team so that we can co create the systems together. And so this is another example of where I'm learning how to do something, while I'm also managing and guiding my sales team so that they can do the same thing as well. And so I want to tell you that I really do practice what I preach, we're always over here optimizing what we do. And what I'd love to do is to get people trained up and ongoing training to help them grow in their business as well. So I hope this tip was helpful for you today. And if you're thinking about hiring a marketing assistant, we would love to help you train them in our train your customers to buy from you online program. We're going to be talking about it a little bit later in the month. Head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash TYT to get on the waitlist. And if you want to see what it's all about join our supercharge your online sales Free challenge which is happening at the end of the month. You can head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash supercharge and join us for free and learn some things We're going to help you grow your business and improve your marketing let's do this Ciao for now