SMME EP 417: Can You Afford to Hire for More Support?

Daniela Woerner20min

Speaker 1

00:00

Welcome to Spa Marketing Made Easy, a podcast for spa owners who want to step up their leadership and business skills and step into the role as Spa CEO. I'm your host. Daniela Woerner, CEO of Addo Aesthetics and Founder of the Growth Factor Framework Program, where we teach, coach and guide spa owners in scaling their spas to the next level of growth and unlocking freedom in their life and their business. I'm so glad you're here now. Let's dive into the show. Hello, my dears. Daniela here and welcome back to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Today we're going to dive into a topic that can bring up some emotion, and that is hiring help for your spa now, right now, you might be feeling completely overwhelmed with the day to day responsibilities of running your business, but you're still hesitant to hire. I mean, last year was a funky year. You still might be feeling uncertain about the economy, and adding to your payroll feels really heavy, not just for the added expense, but for the time investment it takes to hire and onboard a new team member properly. So in this episode, we are going to break down some of the common concerns that you might be feeling, and I'm going to give you an exercise to do to help you evaluate if the risk is worth the reward. Now keep in mind, hiring a team does not mean that you have to go straight to hiring a full time employee. My first hire was a virtual assistant, which is a contractor position, and I brought them on for only 10 hours a week. This also is true if you do already have a team but are just needing extra support, you don't need to hire a full time employee every single time. Now a little side note here on january 28 which is coming up, our attorney Keren, is hosting a free educational webinar that is covering the differences between employees and contractors. Now she is covering this very important topic from a legal point of view, and it's catered specifically to spa owners. So you don't want to miss that if you have a team and really want to understand the right way to hire, whether that's an employee or contractor, because getting in trouble with the IRS is the last thing that I want.

Speaker 2

02:17

I don't know about you, but for me, 100% I do not want to get

Speaker 1

02:22

in trouble with IRS. So we're actually hosting educational webinars every single month. They're free for anyone in the out of sticks community to attend live. That's really important to attend live. The recording, however, is going to live inside of the APA members area. So we are working to build up this incredible library of resources for our members. If you're not a member yet, but you still want the information around our educational webinar, you have the opportunity to attend live. If you are an APA member, you can access the entire educational webinar vault to watch the replays anytime. All right, so let's get back into it and kick it off by talking about the reality that so many spa owners face. And you're not just the CEO. You are wearing all the hats. You're the provider, you're the front desk, you're the marketing team, the ads manager, you're running social media, you're making sure supplies in inventory are stocked, and probably about 100 other things that I didn't list, and that doesn't even include your personal life, your household responsibilities, your children, your families, all of the things. So it's no wonder that you feel overwhelmed at some point. Every business owner realizes that they just can't do it all themselves. And the problem is, while you know you need help, that idea of hiring can feel just as overwhelming as staying stuck in the chaos. You're stretched so thin that you barely have time to think, let alone plan for hiring. But if you don't delegate, you risk burning out, and if you're not already there already, which not only affects you, but also your clients and ultimately your business growth. Now, if this sounds familiar, you are not alone, and there is a way to overcome this. So let me break down the main reasons that spa owners hesitate to hire even when they know they need help. So first things first is financial worries. Can you afford? It, plain and simple, so you might not even be paying yourself consistently. So the thought of being responsible for someone else's livelihood is scary. Second quality control. So can someone else do it as good as you? Let me guess You like control. I do too. You know that

Speaker 2

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Taylor Swift song where she says, Hi, I'm the problem. It's me. That is what I think of here,

Speaker 1

04:59

and we. All do this, but with proper training and leadership, you can find people who can not only do it as good as you, they're actually better than you, and that is what we want. Third the time it takes to train somebody. So most problems are gonna come down to time or money, and when we're hiring someone, we're dealing with both. That's why it feels so heavy. It's really this double whammy. We're adding money to our payroll, and we need some serious time blocked out of our schedule to train them appropriately. So it becomes a concern. And finally, your own belief in yourself. You might be a people pleaser who doesn't like conflict, and that means having tough conversations with people, or offering critical feedback, or, even worse, receiving critical feedback that just seems far scarier than the known chaos and overwhelm that you're currently in. So your concerns are valid. They're valid. I want you to feel that, but you don't have to go from first to fifth when you're driving a manual, right? Why not just dip your toe into the hiring pool with a virtual assistant, rather than going full on with an employee right off the bat, or if you already have a team of providers and front desk, but you're needing some more administrative support, virtual assistants can be a phenomenal solution to bridge the gap in that time where you need just a little extra growth before you can bring on a spa manager, right? Okay, so what exactly is a virtual assistant, or a VA, as I refer to them. So a VA is someone who works remotely. They specialize in handling tasks that take up time but don't necessarily require hands on presence. So think of them as a behind the scenes partner who helps your spa run smoothly. So what can a VA do for you, administrative tasks like responding to emails, scheduling appointments, managing client communication. They can be in your inbox, responding they can be on your website, chat, if you have like a live chat. They can take charge of your social media accounts. They can create posts. They can engage with followers. They can run ads. They can help with inventory management, management or coordinating with vendors. They can help with event planning. They can provide customer support. They can do follow up email messages. And the great thing is, they are cost effective. So VAs typically charge by the hour or by kind of a block of hours. So like a flat rate and virtual assistance in the Philippines, which I'll talk about a little bit more, because there is such a great conversion rate between the US dollar and the Canadian dollar to the Filipino currency, you can get a really phenomenal rate for these hours, for very talented, very qualified individuals. And because they're contractors, you don't have payroll taxes, you don't have benefits, there's not overhead cost, it's really a win, win. And I'm talking about five to $6 an hour, flat rates like from $250 a month for a block of hours. Okay, so this can really free up some incredible time for you to get more and more done. Okay, VA is also, I'm going to talk about this a little bit more, but VAs, specifically in the Philippines, if you're in the US or Canada, our days and nights are switched. We have about a 12 hour time difference, and so you can assign a task at the end of your day and wake up and have it done. Okay? So that is incredible. And one of our, you know, I talked about our VAs being incredibly talented. One of our VAs is actually a civil engineer. So he has a systems mind. He is well educated, incredibly talented, and he helps us with all of our systems, trackers, all of those things. So it just really turns out, and he makes more money with us than he would doing an engineering job in his own country. And so it really becomes a win win, where the virtual assistant is being paid well, is having the the time flexibility, you know, of entrepreneurship, because essentially, they're contractors. They do have their own businesses, and we over here on this end, as business owners, are winning, because we're getting great talent at a great rate. Now we love VAs from the Philippines. We've got three virtual assistants on our team. We have our podcast editor, we have our graphic designer and our biz ops assistant. All of these roles could be beneficial for a spa as well. So you may not have a podcast, but think about the videos that could be edited. So reels for social media, loop videos for your waiting area, different videos for your website. These are all things that a videographer or podcast editor could be doing for you. And what's really nice as well is that when you hire a videographer locally, it's actually the editing that brings the cost up. So if you have the videographer give you the raw footage and then have your VA edit it, you can save a ton. We also have a graphic designer, and so think about having a graphic designer on hand for spa menus, minor website updates, social media, graphics and any other marketing materials. It's just so helpful to have someone on your team that can get those turned around very, very quickly. And then our biz ops assistant helps with all of our trackers. So those of you that are working with our KPI tracker, you know that that can be a beast, but the data that it gives you is well worth it. So imagine wrapping up work for the day, and by the time you come in the next morning, all of your trackers are up to date. That time change is a real benefit. Now we do have a $97 course that walks you through how to find a top notch VA in the Philippines. If you're wanting additional help with the process, I'll be sure to link that up in the show notes. For those of you that want to just figure it out on your own, check out the website, online jobs.ph that is the website that we use to find our talent. That's where you can go ahead and get started. Now the course that I was talking about just goes over the hiring process, so it's going to help you with the job posting, how to do the interview, how to pay the test project, all of that kind of stuff. But if you already have a virtual assistant on board and you're looking for ways to maximize efficiency with them, we're going to be hosting a live master class on February 10, we're gonna be focusing on our step up process. This is what we use in our company to ensure that every single person in the company is doing the appropriate tasks for their skill set. So we've got a very clear process that we go through every single year, sometimes twice a year, to look at the tasks that everyone's doing and make sure that they are the right tasks, we're also going to be touching on how we combine AI, how we're using AI in our business today, how we're incorporating that with our virtual assistants, with our team. So if you're interested in AI at all, want to know how we're doing it. This will be a great workshop for you, and you know for us, we're going to continue to put that primary focus on profit over revenue, and this step up process is really what we do to analyze areas of opportunity, with our team, with our operations, to make sure that we are maximizing profit. Okay, now remember, in the beginning, I shared that I'm just going to have a little exercise for you. So I want you for one week. I know this is going to be hard, but I promise it is worth it. But for one week, I want you to do a time tracker. So for every 15 minutes and just do this just when you're actually working, I want you to document every single thing that you're doing. And there's apps that can help you with this. You can just have a notebook all different types of ways. It can when you're writing something down. It can be meeting it can be scrolling through Instagram. It can be ordering inventory. It can be following up with clients. I want you to document every single thing that you're doing for one week in 15 minute intervals. Okay, then I want you to group, I want you to take a good hour and really categorize those different things over the course of the week. How much time did I spend on administrative tasks like email or customer support or creating social media graphics? How much time did I spend on generating revenue in the business, meaning that you were either doing consultations or performing services. Really, look at all the things, put them into different categories, and understand what type of work is this. Is this a $10 an hour task, $100 an hour task, or $1,000 an hour task? The ultimate goal

Speaker 1

14:46

is to get you, as the CEO, only doing $1,000 an hour tasks. Okay? So once you see these different areas, I want you to group the. Asks that you don't necessarily have to do, and I want you to add up how much time that actually took you. So let's say that you were creating social media graphics, you were responding to customer support emails, you were doing your own email and spent a lot of time just deleting junk. I want you to look through all of those things and look at how many hours you spent doing tasks that doesn't necessarily have to be you the CEO. I want you to then add about 30% of time to that. So let's say that you were doing 10 hours of tasks that you didn't have to do. Then I want you to say, okay, in that week that 10 hours, I'm going to add 30% so I'm going to make that 13 hours that I could hire a virtual assistant for. Then I want you to calculate the hourly rate for this. Okay, so let's say that you have a virtual assistant, and we'll just say $6 an hour times 13, that is $78 so the question is, if you had 13 hours per week of time back, Would you be able to generate $78 in those 13 hours, my guess is yes, and if the answer is no, then

Speaker 3

16:28

please send me a message, because we need to have a different conversation. But

Speaker 1

16:32

$78 for 13 hours of tasks, is that going to happen overnight? No, right? You've got to take the time to train someone properly. So even if you say that I'm going to take two weeks and really dive into making sure that this person is set up for success, you are going to profit just the next week that you would be able so we say 78 times two. Once you generated $156 you would be profiting. So there's so much goodness there. When you look at the math and say, What could I have my virtual assistant do? And if I free up 13 hours a week, 13 hours a week, times 52 weeks. That is 676 hours that you are freeing up. Okay? I mean, that is absolutely incredible. That's almost 17 weeks of full time work that you are freeing up, you just got back time, and with that time, I'm sure you're going to generate more money. So I understand that so many people have this fear of hiring, or this negative reaction towards hiring, and I don't want to oversimplify it, because it is something that you can be burned and you it can be scary giving up control and learning leadership is a skill, and that might be something that you're not great at yet, okay, but if you don't Try, you're never going to get better. So dip your toe in the baby pool. Hire a virtual assistant. It's a contract position. It's a lower level of risk. Start to free up your time, start to use that time for additional ways to generate revenue in your business. For the higher level skills, build that leadership muscle, and when you're ready, then you can start hiring more of employees in your business that are the full time employees that can be revenue generators. Okay, so lots of goodness. I hope I was able to shift your perspective a little bit. I hope I was able to show you that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Okay, you can do this. Just go little by little and take a deep breath. All right, my dears, lots of help for you. We are here to support you in this hiring journey again. We've got that free webinar with Karen that talks about employees versus contractors. We've got the very low cost hiring class for virtual assistants. We've got the master class coming up. You can learn about that on our website, and we'll, of course, link it up below the show notes. If that's something that you're interested in, but you've got this. All right, I will catch you on the next episode. As always, if you want to keep the conversation going, I want you to head on over to the spa. Marketing Made Easy. Facebook group, the number one free resource out there for estheticians, focused on business building. We've got. Weekly marketing tips, a monthly goal setting and planning session, monthly esthetician business book club, plus a community of 1000s of estheticians committed to business building in the spa industry. I'll see you there.

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