You're listening to Cubicle to CEO, Episode 255. We're rounding up our eight best tips and guests insights on all things hiring. From pre hiring essentials to successful delegation to finding the right people to bring on your team. I'll introduce each soundbite with the name of the guest and the original episode number in case you want to go back and listen to the full interview. All referenced episodes will also be linked for you in the show notes below for easy access.
And welcome to Cubicle to CEO the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. Every Monday go behind the business and a case study style interview with the leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it, and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
Tip number one is from Say Gabriel, Episode 93. Drowning in work but not sure which tasks should come off your plate first, or who to hire for support. Here's how to determine which tasks you should delegate when making your first hire.
I do want to ask, when you are making, let's say, your first hire. How did you know which items to delegate first? What was it the things that you really just didn't enjoy doing? And, and what advice would you give to people who are delegating for the first time to make sure that they can actually delegate with confidence knowing that the task will get done as well as they want it to be done?
Oh my gosh, okay. So that's an amazing question. And actually kind of like three or four questions. So feel free to reel me in if I go too, too far down rabbit holes there. But I'll be the first to say that this has been an ongoing process, like my first hire, you know, I can speak to how I made that decision, then. But the moral of the story is, that was not a good approach. Don't do that.
Because I made the mistake that so many people do, which is I kind of assumed on some level that like everyone was like me, I guess and that I really just had to like, figure out what I needed done, hire someone, and then they would kind of just be able to pick it up and go if they have the right qualifications. And the fact is, is that even speaking from an I don't want to scare anybody, but speaking from a perspective of multiple, six figures, and many years later, and having a really strong system, you know, we brought in possibly the best account manager I could ever have hoped to get about a year ago.
And it still took three to six months for her to kind of get up to speed because even though she was really good at what she did, what she did, and how to do it in my business, are not the same thing. And so I guess there's kind of two key things to be aware of at first that I think are really strongly mindset things. But since mindset is such a tough one, and it kind of flows throughout, I just really like to kind of start with these. The first is control, which is that you know, as a solopreneur, who's wearing all the hats, especially in that first initial grind, slash climb, can be a little bit scary to let go of control of any aspect of your baby to someone that you barely know.
Or worse yet, if you're like me, and you try hiring people you do know, including perhaps your mom, then there can be separate challenges there. But not that, you know, I know people who work with your mom quite wonderfully. But you know, I didn't hire her because she had any good fit. I hired her because it seemed convenient. And I loved her and trusted her. And that's great. But again, not the right basis for whether she's a fit for what I need, at this moment in this role, right? But starting off with that control thing.
So just being aware that it's going to be scary, it's going to be uncomfortable, and you need to get over that in yourself first, this idea that you can do it better than anyone, so therefore you should just do it. And yeah, you may be doing something better than anyone else in your company, especially when you're first bringing people on. But if you're burnt out, you're not good at anything, because you are incapable of fully functional.
Oh, that's so good.
Well forget that again and forget. Oh my gosh. So the first piece is control. The second piece is not hiring someone to be God or to do everything. Where you know, as someone who's used to wearing all the hats who's super multifaceted. It was very weird for me at first to think of my business even when it was just me as a series of like silos or systems that I had different kinds of purposes. And I also fell into the mistake. And to give you some idea that first part time crap contractor that I hired a virtual assistant, I went through something like eight of them in the first year or two.
And the person that I finally found was really amazing, I actually ended up becoming a fellow leader, and we had to go through the process again, for someone else. Why? Because that person who can wear all the hats and do everything is so rare that if like me, you find that person, then they're probably not going to be that part time contractor that often has a person's first hire.
So those are the two mindset pieces, just be prepared to have realistic expectations, you're gonna have to fight your need for control. And you cannot hire a single person that will just do all of the things that you can't do. Don't want to do, don't need to do. All right. So God goes out of the way. Now, how do you approach it? So it really starts with understanding your business as a big system. And no matter what your business is, no matter what your model is, there's always three main buckets in a business I found. And those are sales and marketing, operations and projects, and admin and finance, right?
One is the forward facing, how do we find people who have a problem that we can solve and get them to spend money in a way that's mutually profitable and valuable? Then we have actually, how do we deliver that thing, and then we have okay, behind the scenes, what stuff including processing the money and tech and stuff needs to happen behind the scenes.
So immediately by thinking in terms of those boxes, I think makes things a lot simpler and clearer, because it's tempting to want to hire another one of you. But other than the God thing that I already talked about, the key thing to kind of be aware of is that usually, you can really just now this is an arbitrary number, but I don't think that it's too far out there. Even like 10x your results are very least double your results by hiring not someone who's exactly good at the same stuff that you are, but someone who has complementary skills.
Tip number two is from Emily Reagan, Episode 252, Emily walks us through the pre hiring checklist every business owner should use to prepare for a successful hire. We also discussed the differences and merits between hiring a full time employee versus a contractor and how to decide which is right for you.
Talk to us about even before we get to like who the right first hire is, let's talk about how a business owner can prepare themselves to even be ready to take on a team member and to hire What is your hire preparation process?
I love this question because it will solve all the problems that come later that I'm sure we'll talk about of when we're not happy with our current hire and how to get back on the happy path. But the first thing you can do, because we don't always have the budget to just hire the whole content team and all that makeup artists, right, we need to be smart. And so that time audit, being aware of what you're spending your time on, is really important. And it's not just all of the things that need to be done.
It's also the things that you don't enjoy the things that are waiting till Friday at 4pm If you'd like you wait to the last minute and your drudgery zone to complete, but it's also creating awareness about the task and the things that will actually move the needle like at the beginning here. So we need to be aware of what will save us time and what will make us money.
And in some cases, it makes sense to go all in with a specialist who will help us hit our main goal and make money. And Ads Manager is a really good one on here. You know, you had Nikki on the show talking about like the performance of her ads. And that is something that you you do want to trust somebody to do, because you know it will make money. But not we're not all of us are in that spot. It's not the goal for everybody.
So that time audit will help and a lot of business owners don't really have that awareness. But it will tell you what are the chunks of things that I'm spending time on that I could offload? Because we have to think about our dream business. Where do we want to be and when we're at capacity, what are the first things we need off our plate and start moving toward that now, even if it's very slow, because you need to be prepared and hiring delegation, and getting that clarity and those clear roles on your team. It does take time. So I would start with the time audit.
And then another thing we have to talk about, we can't skip this part. This is a very sexy SOPs, right the standard operating procedures, being able to bring someone on your team you might not have the most perfect onboarding process but being able to say like here, this is how I'm doing things now so that they have direction and they know where to really start and plug themselves in so they are not a burden to you when they can actually take things off your plate.
That is the one thing that if I could go back in time I think and change anything about my business. It would have been starting to document Those SOPs from day one, it would have made everything else so much easier for you, Emily, having worked with so many different business owners, and now also running a very successful business yourself, What's your general take on contractors versus employees? Do you lean one way or the other and why?
Oh, I love it. I love it. I think most of us are in that place that starting place to bring on the contractors and start small, you know, because it takes time to grow that part of your business. And then as you're making more money, you will see people shifted to the employees zone. And I feel like we have to talk about that, because a contractor has to show up with skills in your business, you do not train them, you give them a tour of your business, and you expect them to get to work contractor has a contract, you don't want to get in trouble with the IRS.
And you can't require them to be at weekly meetings, you can require the when they have to work, there's all these little nuances to the contractor space. So if you do probably have, you know, that general knee that you were talking about, it might make more sense to get an employee. But if you're seeing more specific carved out little buckets that you can pass on, I like to start smaller with contractors and test them out. But here's the thing, not everybody wants to become an employee either.
But you know, there's so many little nuances here is there's no right or wrong. But what I don't want people to do is run out and feel like they immediately have to get an employee and overextend themselves and not have the budget. All the things you talked about benefits 401 K's like figuring that out. Like we might not be at that level yet, and it's okay.
Tip number three is from Rachel Harris episode 223. Imagine having a giant waitlist of qualified prospective employees who are eager to fill any new job openings at your company. Rachel shares how she's avoided over 100,000 pounds in recruitment agency fees and the stress of last minute hiring by creating a weightless process that attracts top talent to her firm on an ongoing basis.
I would love to know. So you you already referenced that you saved 100,000 pounds give or take in recruitment fees by basically being an attractive company to work for and not having to go through a recruitment agency in order to recruit and attract talent to your firm.
But I'm wondering, you said you did this to get ahead of a scaling issue. What was the scaling issue? In your business? Was it that you had too many clients and not enough staff essentially, to serve and deliver these counting needs to your clients? Was it something different? How did you anticipate going in that you would need to hire and how early like how would you know that you need to hire? How much further ahead? Are you hiring in anticipation of your needs?
Cool. Okay, so from the point of recording today, I am recruited as in I have got accountants who have accepted job offers and are waiting to hand that notice in as far ahead as six months. And so I've got two or three people at any given time that have been interviewed, have come into the office have met the team and have accepted job offers, but maybe just have four weeks notice. And so we just stay in open contact, we wait until because now we're three years in now that we've got such a strong pipeline, it's literally like a tap that I can turn on and off.
So we quote on average, 110,000 pounds of new work into the business every single month at the moment. And so I can literally forecast right, I'm going to need a new accountant there a new accountant there. For every two accountants, I need a new administrator. For every five accountants, I need a new manager, I can literally police the roles as far ahead. And then through sort of building great relationships with people having open conversations with people I can we've actually just pulled one forward because we've made an internal promotion. And so we have that flexibility. It's like playing chess at all times.
But yeah, from the very beginning, once social media took off, and we had this huge volume of inquiries, we very quickly identified that we were either going to have to open the doors to new clients, close them, hire, train, onboard, and then do the whole thing again, which is very clunky. It's quite stopped start from an admin perspective. And I was actually on my honeymoon with James and I was really like reflecting about my job and my role. And I thought, what if the business stresses me out the most, and it was recruitment, you only ever recruit when you're either over capacity, or in a very stressful situation because maybe someone's left that you didn't want them to or there's been a bit of HR drama and someone's left, you're generally only ever recruiting under stress and time pressure.
And actually fundamentally, that can make you make decisions that you wouldn't normally make it can make you overlook things in candidates that you wouldn't normally do. And also in 2023 I still believe candidates Those who are looking for a new job. Nobody talks about how much of a huge life decision changing jobs is. And so to be able to remove time, and be very transparent about the role, get them to come in and meet the team, we buddy, everybody up with somebody who is either doing their role or in a similar sort of life situation to them.
So if it's a parent, actually, I would want to have the founders leave the room, which me and James, do, we buddy them up, and they get to have a real conversation? Like, okay, I know, they say it's flexible working. But what if my child said, can I go? So we put him up, we leave the room, we let them have like a real open, you know, spill the tea sort of conversation with another member of staff, especially to avoid any, like Instagram versus reality, we have a following.
We share a lot of content behind the scenes, but actually, is that real? Am I going to turn up and Rachel has a resting bitchface? I don't know, I just want to check that. And so by encouraging all of those open conversations by getting people lined up, actually, we've been able to avoid any sort of like, we've been able to keep that consistency, but also say to members of staff who are thinking about accepting a job offer, when you take time out of it, people just make better decisions.
And an unexpected benefit of the waiting list is FOMO. Right? 149 people waiting to join my firm, what are you missing out on, but also for the team. The team know that there are 149 people waiting to take that see. And so the sort of like culture, camaraderie, the like, this is us, this is where we're going. You don't let get on a bus if you don't know where it's going. So we have like hugely strong culture, core values, we know the direction that we're taking the business and that really bonds, the team. And again, like as we've grown, nobody teaches you how to recruit, I certainly was not taught how to recruit, we get better with every single hire, we get better.
So the day I'm recording this, we actually just had a member of staff who is joining in two weeks time, just come in for lunch, like she's quit her job, she's got a two week break, she just came in to play some board games. We're currently filming a Great British Bake Off Tiktok series. So she baked some cake.
So awesome. I love the creativity of your brain. It's so fun for me to sit here and listen to how you think about I don't even want to call them problems, just just the the things that you have to go through as you grow your business. And I really love what you said about removing time from the equation. I think that's a really unique perspective of if time were not a factor, how would that change your decisions that you make as a business owner and on the employee side to like you said, I just kind of want to better understand the timing of things. And so the 149 person waitlist, it seems like recruitment is almost an ongoing practice in your business, right?
Because you're removing time from the equation. And it's not like if someone is determined a good fit for your business or has accepted a job offer that they need to immediately transition into your business. So understanding that built in flexibility. I have two questions first, for the waitlist of 149 people, how do you determine the order of the waitlist? Is it based on like the time that they first like I guess like early bird, right, like first come first serve were their earliest to the table and you've had a conversation that they are first in line to get the next available job or is ordered determined differently? That's my first piece of the question.
The second question is, for those who have already been given job offers and have accepted job offers, but have not yet quit their current job. How long do you allow for that transition period? Is there a maximum where it's like within, you know, 90 days, you need to have left your current job to come work here? Or is it kind of unlimited? Like they could take nine months from the time they accept their job offer for you to actually bring them in?
Okay, that's such good questions. So we basically triage people as they join the waiting list. So I get an email notification. Also, just for context, if you're a CEO listening to this, it is completely free. It's a Google form that I made. I am thrifty. And if there is a way to do it for free, I do it for free. So it's literally just a Google Form. With some questions. People can tick a box to tell me if they are passively or actively looking for a job. Just for context, I'm a bit of a data nerd.
Obviously, I'm an accountant. But 85% of people that join the waiting list are passively looking for a job. So they're not time sensitive. And I've interviewed multiple people who when I say why are you looking to leave your current employer say I'm not, but I'll leave to come and work for you. And so again, like branding, culture, all of that feeds into it so the majority of people aren't time sensitive. If they are we will chat to them as fast as possible. So as soon as people join the waiting list, assuming that it's somebody passive looking for a job, we do blind recruitment so that we're removing any bias.
So all names, locations, they do have to be within a commutable distance to us, they come into the office one day a week. But we do blind recruitment to just remove any bias. And so we do a quick sort of skills check, we look at exactly where they would sit from a technical perspective, and then we'll reach out to them to let them know, the next role that we've got coming up is in x months time, does that work for you? Would you be open to sort of start a conversation with us on that basis?
Or would you rather us reach out closer to the time, and when it's sort of a bit more relevant? Nine times out of 10, people come back and just want to want to chat to you straight away. So we interview them, we do skills tests, we get them to come in meet the team. And so we actually have like three different stages of interview, then we make the offer, once they've accepted the offer, again, we just tell them that we prioritize open communication, we have a pretty consistent pipeline of new work. But sometimes we can win huge jobs.
Sometimes we have to disengage with clients, and that can drop the pipeline. So we prioritize open communication. And it's very much led by us. And then, so the person who came in for lunch today, that was somebody that we actually pulled forward, because she could start sooner. But we made a job offer, just with the start date has to be confirmed. And she was going to start in February. So she was pre dated for February, we made an internal promotion. And so we actually reached out and said, Would you be happy to start sooner? And she said, Yes. And so we drafted up a contract, and then she resigned. So for both of us, a job offer is very much just our intention to provide an offer.
And then by the time it gets to, we're sort of saying, Oh, we would actually like for you to start in the next sort of six, seven weeks. What does your notice period look like? Can you resign, that's when we'll send them a contract. But again, like James and I very like hot lead people like I would never make someone a job offer if I had no intention of sort of like honoring it. And so before people are resigning, they get a full contract. But up until that point, we just make them a job offer to just let them know the salary, the benefits package, their job title, what the role is going to look like. But again, we're scaling so rapidly that we can normally look at, by the time I interview someone I can say the next opening in your department is going to be in probably six months time. Does that work for you? And again, I do think there is something recruitment and jobs are so disruptive to our lives.
But nobody says like, take your time. Right, like, genuinely think about if this is something that you can do, think about what your priorities are, we are scaling, but we're still quite small. And so that could mean that there is an opportunity for you to develop into a manager in 12 months time. But it could also mean that something changes, and it's a little bit longer.
And so I'd say me and James sort of swing to the being brutally pessimistic with people to manage their expectations and say like, this is incredibly exciting, but it's also really hard. And you will get out what you put in. And like this is the standard that we work at. And so I hope that answered your questions.
Tip number four is from Tyler J. McCall, Episode 123. Tyler gives heed to the dangers of hiring too quickly.
In the industry, there's often this pressure to especially in the online marketing industry, I would say there's a lot of pressure that hey, if you reach a certain revenue point, you need an integrator you need this, you need that. And it's like, I think sometimes people prematurely hire those roles. And they don't know why they're even hiring them. It's just because it's what they've been told to do so to speak.
Yeah, and I think there's a dangerous trend of lifestyle, lifestyle, elevation, lifestyle, outpacing income, I see that very often. And I, I would be curious about, you know, using that in your own business, right, the person that has their first 10k month, which is incredibly exciting and incredible achievement, and then unfortunately, elevates their lifestyle to match that income within that same month.
And there's so much risk associated with that, because you have to continue to repeat that income, you know, if you're elevating the lifestyle. And on the same side, I think a lot of people are doing that in terms of business structure and team and then everyone has to do it at their own pace. And I think hiring and building a team is something that is incredibly serious business. And I think a lot of energy and effort and time and resources should go into that. It should not be done flippantly and I can speak.
I recently said on Facebook whenever I'm talking about this stuff, I'm not saying this because I think I'm better than you it's because like I messed up and I want to share the lessons so you don't make the same mistake. I grew a team to quickly I elevated my team structure in such a way where I cannot maintain profitability in my online business because I had built this team And because of that, it created immense stress on my business to continue, and the way it was structured.
And then I had to make the difficult decision to downsize my team. That is a incredibly huge decision. And I've never taken like, having someone on my team lightly because I always think like, we're paying someone's light bill, you know, like, this is very serious, like, and I just don't want other people to make that same mistake to grow a team too quickly to grow too large of a team. To quickly and I would, I would imagine that most people listening to your podcast, Ellen are like, good, kind, thoughtful people. And the last thing we would want to do is like, sorry, there's lots of honking going on. So apologies for the city noise.
This is real life, guys. It is totally fine.
Of course, I'm on my soapbox when there's a honking car and there's an ambulance going by. Anyway, just, I don't know, take it seriously. And it's just like, Yeah, I think it's a big deal. It's I think it's a really big deal.
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Tip number five is from Heather Brown episode 195 needs support but not ready to invest a large sum towards growing your team. Heather makes the case for why interns are valuable Team Edition, her own company saw a revenue increase of 45% in the first five months of hiring help.
I want to go back real quick to this point that you made earlier about your interns because I feel like that's the part of your team building that's most interesting to me in this case study because I don't think any of our past guests who have come on to talk about team building or how they've grown their business through their team necessarily leverage internships to the level that you do. So you mentioned that when you bring on interns, typically they're staying with you for a term of three to six months.
And then some of them obviously you have hired on as paid staff, once they've kind of I guess graduated their internship these days. Are you still bringing on a new intern like every term or every you know, school year? And is it always with the intention that if they're a great culture fit and a great role fit that they have the opportunity to receive a paid job offer after or is it kind of not necessarily stated as an intention at the front end but you're you know, maybe making those offers when it makes sense to like how does your thought process assists around the internship role playing your business today and 2023.
Yeah, so that's a really great point that you brought up. Because I do think that back in, I would say, you know, 2019 2020 2021, even, that was my intention, like, I want to bring on an intern every three to six months. And if they're great, I want to hire them on. And I would even say that upfront a lot of times, and I ended up actually having so many great interns that I was like, I don't have the, I don't want to get out over my skis and hire too many people. So then I did have to scale back and be like, Okay, I now have, well, it's kind of crazy. I'm thinking about it. 1 2 3 4,4 of the ladies on my team that worked for me, they're part time or full time now started out as interns, and they're still here years later. So it's super cool.
And so I quote this in my course about team building. But as they having a team who fully believes in support, your mission is life changing, and where you see true growth and success. And I still fully believe in that. Now, I will say in 2022, and 2023, I feel like we have slowed down a little bit just because we want to be mindful of where the economy's going. And we know that there are things that have been said by, you know, people at JP Morgan and really, you know, high UPS about potentially what the economy could look like. So we have slowed our hiring for sure.
And I would say that I'm not actively looking for interns right now, because I'm having to almost like boxton, a little bit more and just be precautious overall, with just how we're spending our time and resources, because even though the interns start out for free, I'm still having to pay my other employees to train them and bring them under their wing. So I'm hoping that next year, we can get back to bringing back on interns and, and be a little less cautious, I guess, or conservative in the market.
But yeah, that's kind of where we're at right now. But I'm super thankful for the for the women that started as interns and I still go back to Stanford, sometimes when I'm looking for an intern, or what I've been doing more recently is posting in Facebook groups, either in my neighborhood, or even on my Instagram stories, like saying, if you're interested, please don't DM me, you don't have to be local, or you do whatever the case is, at that time, please fill out this Google Form to apply. And then that way, it allows me to get to know a little bit more of a snapshot of who they are if they can fill the hole I have.
And then also, you know, I'll start out by saying it's unpaid. But if I see someone that I'm like, Oh, actually, like, we need a graphic designer, and this girl has that skill, then I'll have her spot on from that form.
That's amazing. So essentially, the people who kind of start in this unpaid internship roles are typically, I guess, not specialize to a specific skill set like graphic design, they're kind of coming on as a blank slate, and you are investing the time and the resources to train them in a, I'm assuming a wide variety of skill sets. And then the ones who are good fit culturally may stay on as as paid. Pay team members, I love that half of your team started out as an intern, I really do think that's so unique.
And I hope this serves as inspiration for others listening, who maybe have not ever tried that route of, you know, bringing on an intern that then grows into a paid team member. But I mean, it's worked really well, for our business as well. And so I can definitely see the merit in that. I do want to ask you a hot take on this, because you brought up a great point that even if in those first few months, the intern may not necessarily be adding to your budget expenses, you are still having to pay for your current teams labor, and time to train them.
And if the average intern, let's say stays three to six months and doesn't transition into being a paid team member, all the essentially the time the money that you've invested in them kind of goes away once they leave your business, right. So if you're playing devil's advocate here, someone on the outside listening in might think well, that kind of is not that different from if you actually did hire a paid team member, train them, and then they left your company, it kind of models that high turnover rate. So my hot take question for you is knowing that there is going to be that high turnover built into this model. Why choose to still go with interns, versus just hiring paid staff members? outright? upfront?
Yeah, that's a great question. So I think for me, there's a lot of women and moms and my community that I know, either are doing MLMs, or they are wanting to become a blogger, or those type of things. And I will say that I think probably at least five of my interns that have come through have gone on to become bloggers themselves, or they were baby bloggers now they're able to monetize.
And so to me, it feels like a little bit of a way that I can give back to my community and to pour into an invest in women who want to be entrepreneurs, and or just want to invest in learning more for their family bettering their side hustle income. And so to me, it's something that I love coaching women in social media and in blogging. And so it provides a way for me to get to scratch that itch.
But also in the past, I have not had the bandwidth to offer, like professional like, I took away my consulting option for a while I brought it back in the past year. But that was my outlet to get to still, like hear what questions people were having. And still to stay up on like, what are the trends are wondering about how can I still serve that audience? So that's my hot take. But I would love to hear your thoughts on that. What do you think, Ellen?
Oh, well, I love that your hot take is it's a vehicle for mentorship. That's such a beautiful perspective. For me, I think, intern, I think it's a personal thing for me, because I got my start in my career as an intern I, I think there's just so much value in getting real practice in a business in and getting to do things that you can't learn in a textbook. So I realized for you, as your business has evolved, some of your internship roles have gone to, like you said, mothers in your community, who may not necessarily be in that college stage of business, or sorry, college stage of life is what I meant.
But for us, the interns that we've hired on our staff, and granted, there's only been two so far, but they've have both been college students at the time that they were, you know, hired. And even with our current internationally, we, you know, offer us a paid stipend, now, in addition to the credit hours that they earned through their college. So it looks a little bit different these days for us, but I just I feel the same as you had there. It's it's such an amazing way to mentor and pour into someone who's at this stage in their life where their careers just starting potentially, and I think it's such a beautiful thing to see the transformation and personal growth that someone goes into over their time working with you beyond just professional growth.
Tip number six is from Daina Trout, Episode 163. If you're a scrappy product, space, business or direct to consumer brand, Daina's success with scaling her wholesale team on a budget proves why Craigslist is the winning recruitment strategy no one's talking about. Dana walks us through the exact process of finding training and paying her independent sales reps.
I think it's cool that you went into this business already having a really strong background in people building and team building. And so how cool that you recognize the limitations of what the three of you could really do in terms of making movement and opening accounts. And even though you didn't have the funds to hire team members on full time, or even part time, quite frankly, you came up with a solution to get more hands on deck. So yes, dive into your independent sales rep. Scrappy Craigslist strategy.
This was the time that like Craigslist was very popular. And we posted ads, essentially, our strategy was we want to pay people but we have to wait till we get paid to pay them. And so essentially, we were going to pay them commission, and we couldn't pay them until we actually received the check from the store.
So the way we started out was we posted on Craigslist, we said Who loves kombucha, we'll give you a zip code, you can work your own hours as many hours as you want. And you basically get paid for every account you open. And for the number of cases you sell. And we would hold every Saturday, a training session for whoever wanted to join our team. And the typical type of people that would join were people that were looking for extra work, you know, like yoga instructors that still had some extra time or actresses or actors that like had big hiatuses of time between gigs, and generally young, generally healthy, loved kombucha, and wanted to like help out and see if they could make some extra cash this way.
And there's a pro to that. They're all really passionate, they have energy, they're cool. They know the cool accounts. The downside is they're generally pretty unreliable, because they move to you know, once they get a gig, they move on. And so we had to have these weekly training sessions because so much turnover happened. So I wouldn't say it's the easiest or simplest way.
And for sure, if I had the capital, I would probably recommend hiring somebody because that's really when it starts to become dependable. But whatever, we didn't have those options, right? So we did training sessions, we gave people zip codes, and we said for every account, you open, as soon as we get a check for it, and we add a minimum of two cases for an order, you get 100 bucks to open that account. And then you get 10% of each case sold for as long as you manage the account.
And then if you quit on us, we'll give you that 10% for three more months, assuming that they would continue to order based on their work, right. So that was sort of the generalized structure we came up with, and it worked. As you mentioned, within a month we were from 10 stores to 300 stores in LA and we were in all the cool Hart's Vanessa's full time job, that's my co founder her full time job became managing these folks.
So we had about 20 people at any given time walking the streets of LA. And they each had their own zip code. So that's how they didn't sort of step on each other's toes. And as soon as one would leave, we would call another Craigslist sort of meeting to bring in another. And yeah, I mean, I think overall, we probably had a good 100 People working not only one time, it was like 20. And then there'd be turnover. But in total, we probably trained 100.
Right? That's such a smart strategy. I'm just curious. Was there any specific intention behind using Craigslist to recruit these people versus let's say, I mean, I'm not sure what year this was, but versus social or even using a traditional job site like Monster? Indeed. Was there a strategy behind the Craigslist? Or was it truly just lowest barrier to entry, you get an ad up? And you know, two minutes and there we go.
Yeah, I mean, we understood this wasn't like a permanent job. So monster felt like to, like we weren't offering salary and benefits like many do on Monster. So it felt like we were not going to be hitting who's looking for, like people who are just looking for like, extra hours probably don't go to a monster. And at that time, there really weren't other forums. Besides Craigslist, like Craigslist was the place you went at that time, it was 2013.
To answer your question. And like that was when when you needed a couch for cheap, like you went to Craigslist, and gotta catch when you needed some extra hours or you needed, you know, babysitting job, you would go to Craigslist. So it did feel like the right Forum. I'm sure today, there are other options. But yeah, it was strategic. And that that's where people went for extra hours stuff.
That's really smart to think about user behavior on different platforms, and where you are most likely to reach your target audience, which is something we talk a lot about on the show, usually not in the sense of hiring rather, but in your case, it works.
Tip number seven is from Danielle Hayden, Episode 254 Danielle, CEO of a seven figure, bookkeeping and accounting agency observes that many of our clients, mostly women are actually guilty of underspending in their businesses. Despite often believing the opposite about their money habits, Danielle shares her own ROI from spending $113,223 In outsourced services for her business, to encourage others to reevaluate how their own expenditure may be stunting growth.
So in 2022, you invested about $21,600 on PR agency costs, and you got a 10x return on that investment in 2023, you spent similar amount 22,000, you got a 7x return. And then this year, so far, you've invested $10,000 in those PR pitching services, and you've gotten a 5x return so far. My question to you is, when you're looking at a strategy that does have a direct, measurable revenue ROI, like okay, you booked me on five shows?
And you know, each one brought me one lead, and then you know, maybe to turn into clients. When it comes to things like that, how big of an ROI Are you looking forward to even give the green light to spending on that strategy in the first place? So not talking about internal versus external, but just for you to greenlight the initiative, what ROI Are you looking for on these types of strategies?
So my answer has changed through the years when we started the strategy back in 2019, the ROI was much lower. Right, I was finding my voice, I didn't know what I was saying yet I needed to learn. We were on smaller shows. And over the years, I've gotten a level of comfort in speaking in knowing that regardless of the ROI that I am here to serve, right, like part of my bigger mission is to help business owners. And so if one person listening to the show, receives value, like I feel good about that personally, right? So this was a good personal use of my time.
When I'm looking at will we continue to renew our contract with them? For us, it needs to be profitable. And what I mean, this is crazy to hear from an accountant, but like, what are the software things that it's bringing? Right. So from podcasting, I have met the most incredible people. Yeah, we I was on a show a little over a year ago who her and I just we totally clicked and I now speak monthly into her mastermind group. I'm part of her group, right. And we work with so many clients together.
And the ROI of that probably isn't even captured in that number because she became a referral partner and so the Met track now is being tagged like that revenue is being tagged to referral partner rather than podcast. Right. But I found her from podcasting. We have another one who I met back in 2020. During the pandemic, I met her and I was on her show, she was on my show, she's become a longtime friend. She's a referral partner.
Now, we frequently do event she asked me to speak every year at her conference. So it is bringing new people into my world who I have the benefit of learning from you, right? Like, I'm gonna learn something today from you. And we might possibly continue to collaborate. And there's so much value in that. So I know that that's not a specific answer of like, how do you apply that to all areas, but it's specifically for this one, if it is taking something off of your plate significantly? If it is, letting you have peace of mind, and aiding you in in achieving your goals? To me, that's ROI.
Yeah. And, you know, I really appreciate how you explain that the softer side of things, the the less tangible or immediate effects of a strategy implementation because it actually sparked this new aha for me, so I wanted to share it with our listeners, I realized as you were talking about the connections that you've made, and and how they've played out over long term windows of time, that you are absolutely correct, in the sense that for you, too, have made those same connections like with that woman, who is a rockstar referral partner now or, you know, the other one that you just mentioned, where else would you have had to invest to meet those same people like to be in the rooms with them?
Like, would you have had to go to a specific conference, or maybe buy a seat in a mastermind or whatever it may be at all the costs associated with travel and your admission into that and things like that. So it's kind of like taking, you know, that same concept, still would have been a cost somewhere, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, even if it's not the primary reason that you decided to invest in a set strategy, but the ancillary effects still has cost efficiency there. And so I think that's a really, really interesting point that I had never thought about it that way until I heard you talking.
So I just wanted to, I wanted to pull that out for listeners in case that was like an aha moment for anyone else to know.
Tip number eight is from Pauleanna Reid episode 201. Pauleanna details, the essential mindset switch she had to make when hiring for her six figure business versus hiring for her seven figure business.
Let's start with that team management piece. What do you feel like really changed and how you hired and develop your team members, that was different in your six figure agency world versus your now seven figure agency?
The first thing I did was that I removed myself from the process from the hiring process. I think when you are within the six figure arena, you want to have want to be besties, with every employee, and you know, you think of it like a family. And when I made the transition, I actually got my teammates, my team members to start interviewing, because if y'all don't like this new person, it's not going to work anyways.
So I removed myself from the process, because sometimes CEOs can hire off fives. And that's not the right way to do things. Right. And so, for me, it was more so not even the resume was truly important. It was could they fit into our company culture, technical skills, I can always train you on. But I want to know, if you got that fight in you, if you align with our company mission. If you're married to the mission, I want to know if you're a people person, and can you work in teams like what's your personality traits, soft skills, right? Those are really important to me.
So I was last of three interviews in that process. In terms of team I look for diversity, right? So when I say diversity, I mean diversity in thoughts, diversity in geography, diversity in background and experience diversity. And let me give you an example of how this helped. So Ramadan, for instance, right, I had a CEO clients, white male individual leads a $500 million company, he wanted to send a company wide email, so spanning multiple countries, acknowledging Ramadan, and there are many other holidays and notes that he wanted to send.
Now, he obviously doesn't have the cultural competency, but on my team, I have someone who is Muslim, someone who practices someone who knows the language to use and so for me, when I look for someone new on my team, I look for like, what blind spot can you remove from our vision, and that's really important to me. So you can have all the skills and be a phenomenal writer, but I have to like I have to cover a lot of ground so that if anyone comes to us, we're able to tackle the topic confidently.
So there are people who may come to us Like their books, and they may have a specific request, I want to write with a one of your writers who's a mother who understands single motherhood. We have you do I mean, so like I think about all of that we sometimes we write about abuse we talk about, we talk about miscarriage, we talk, there's so many sensitive topics that we cover, because we're storytelling.
And it's important that I have women who have been through some shit who have battle scars, and who have risen above it. And so it helps us because in writing, whenever you take the audience down, you want to bring them back up. And so I look for those qualities and my team members.
It's really, I think, so intentional how your team is a reflection of your clients. That's so I mean, that may be true for other CEOs that I've interviewed, but I think you're the first to really place such an emphasis on it. And that makes sense because of the topics like you said that you're writing about. Having first hand experience having that competency, like you mentioned, is going to always feel and come across differently than someone who simply did research on a subject.
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