031: Tactic Tuesdays: Hiring Freelancers & VA's (Part 1)

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Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast.

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Today we have another, tactics Tuesday, where we're going to be talking about hiring freelancers and executive assistants and other members on your team.

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Kind of our experiences with that and some best practices, and I'm sure that we'll also share some of the mistakes along the way.

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So as we kick this off, I'll actually turn it over to you.

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Mike, I know you started talking about this.

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Before we hit record, talk to me about you.

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Know what your current process is and maybe some of the pain points that you were talking about.

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Sure, yeah, I mean to be honest.

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I would say that our current process is a work in progress, because previous to now there wasn't a process.

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It was essentially, you know, I determined that I needed another person on the team, so I would go on to Upwork and start looking for individuals, or maybe I would check, you know, some other sites, depending on.

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You know how significant the the position was and I was just the guy like I.

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You know, I don't have anybody who's in charge of that process.

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I didn't have any, you know, sops written up.

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I didn't have any role profiles written up.

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I didn't.

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You know, there was nothing.

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You know it was essentially, I've got a basic idea of what I think I want this person to do and I go look for them on Upwork and then I interview people.

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To be honest, you know, up until now, that process has worked relatively well.

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Fortunately, we've got a good team.

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I like the people who are on our team.

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I have not yet hired an individual that I feel has not been a value add to our company.

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That being said, I think that one of the problems with not having that process really outlined right and having it, you know, on paper and or, you know, in a document form, whatever, and having SOPs set up and whatnot, is that the hiring process becomes slow, it's haphazard and it doesn't happen when it needs to, because, essentially, it ends up being a situation where, instead of recognizing proactively that we are going to need, or kind of need, this new position because there's something else that we need to do or we've got more work within this one department than we can handle, you know, whatever it was more so, it had to reach a level of critical importance before I would take the time to actually do it, because I'm the guy and I've got all of these other things that I'm doing within the business, and so it would always wait, you know, until it ended up being that situation where you know if we don't do it now, like then we really have a problem, and I don't think that's good.

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I think, if you have that process in place ahead of time and you know what that looks like and you've run through it and you have other people on your team that can actually do it, so you don't have to be a part of the entire process and maybe you're more just the final interview stage or you know maybe a couple of points along the way.

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You know you provide some input on the candidates, but somebody else is running that process forward.

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Because you have the processes and the SOPs, I think it's more likely that you fill those positions sooner and I think your company moves faster in that situation.

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At least that's the theory, that's the way it seems to me moving forward of the things that I'm fairly good at, so that I think about the first that you kind of mentioned, which is, you know, looking at getting that person before it's, like you know, critical level.

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So one of the things that I try to do again, not always successful, but try to do is look at my current schedule and say, okay, what of what I'm doing you know this week, in this month.

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Okay, what of what I'm doing you know this week and this month, do I not need to be doing anymore, either because I can find somebody else that I can hire in order to do that.

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That, quite frankly, be you know, anywhere from.

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Sometimes it's okay if they're only 80% as good as I am to.

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In other cases, quite frankly, they're better than I am because you know they really enjoy it, especially if it's something where you know it's not my superpower, where, yes, I can do it, but I'm never going to be the best in the world.

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Sometimes, once you get to a level where you know there's a decent amount of work for that particular position to do, it just makes a lot more sense especially if it's not something that you're world-class at of finding somebody else to do it.

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But then the other thing.

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So, once you've done that, I think the other thing is, you know, really putting that into.

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I'm curious what is you know like the job description look like for you when you're putting these positions up?

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So in the new process, it's fairly well outlined actually, and the caveat that I would issue is we haven't yet utilized this process.

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We're walking into it, so we're at the beginning stages of utilizing this process.

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I believe that it's going to work out well, but essentially, one of the strongest things, I think is so going back to one of the things that you just said, which is evaluating, and I think the larger your team gets, the more you need to have other people on your team thinking in that same way.

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So you were mentioning, like, what are the things that are currently on my plate?

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You know, over the next week or month, that I really shouldn't be doing that somebody else should be doing who probably will be better than me at it if I hire the right person, or at a minimum, they'll be better than me because it will be all they're doing, like it will be all they're doing, like it will be their job.

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You know, like one of the things is is that I think a lot of times we look at it.

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We we kind of look at how well we do certain things with somewhat rose colored glasses, because we look at it as I know what my skill level is in that area and how effectively I could do that process.

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What we don't do is look at it oftentimes I think with more realistic classes which is, yeah, I could do it that well if that was my only job.

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But because it isn't my only job, it's not the only thing I end up doing, I put it off.

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It doesn't happen as soon as it should.

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I maybe cut some corners or something here and there because I don't have the time to do it right, and so it's like, yes, I could do it at this level, but the reality is I probably most of the time do it at this level.

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Is there somebody that I could hire that maybe could split that difference?

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You know, maybe they could do it better than I am doing it, maybe not as well as I could do it, but if it's better than I am, then that's probably sufficient, you know.

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So that's the first thing.

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You know.

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Figure out, you know, where are those bottlenecks that you know, if I wasn't doing that and I had somebody else on my team who could do it, how effectively does that open our business up, you know, to being more productive, to being more efficient, to bringing in more revenue, you know whatever.

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And then I would say that then it comes down to setting up.

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Okay, now I figured out what I think it is that I need you know, like, and you can go to the chat GPT, like, if you don't know.

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One of the things I think that's really useful about chat GPT is if you figure out the things within your day that you shouldn't be doing anymore or you know, or you think you shouldn't be doing right and you should have somebody else Maybe you don't know what the name of that you know that position is.

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Well, you go to chat GPT and you say, hey, if I was going to hire somebody for my team to do X, y and Z, what would I call that person?

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What is that position, typically called?

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Chatgpt is going to tell you what that is.

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Then you can ask ChatGPT if I hired somebody for X, y, z position, what would be likely all of the duties that they would normally do under that position?

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Because that does help you to flesh that out a little bit, because you might think, okay, I'm going to, I only have these two or three things that I need them to do right, when it turns out that Chad GPT might give you five or six things that that particular position might normally do within other companies.

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And you might say, well, yeah, we're not already doing that, but it'd be really cool if we did.

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And if I'm going to hire that person to do these other things, well, that actually would be a terrific thing for us to hire, because now that same person can do these other things that we're not even doing right now, but we should be.

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And so then you set out your role profile.

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You know, based on those things, you know, what does Chad TPT say that position should look like?

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I think a lot of that is then going to come down to, you know, like what are the metrics?

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You know, how are you going to actually assess whether that person is successful?

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You know, how would you describe success for that person?

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Like, if you brought them onto your team, what would you want to see within the business?

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You know what would the business look like with that person on the team if they were successful?

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What are the primary objectives, the things that are the most important things that that person's going to need to do?

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What are their regular activities?

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Who are they going to be meeting with?

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Who would be subordinate to them If you're bringing on somebody that might be taking on more of a managerial role.

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Who's going to report to them?

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Who are they going to report to?

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You know all of those things you kind of have to build out in that process.

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I think as you build that out and you start building the role, I think it becomes more obvious you know what skill sets that person needs to have.

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But again, use chat, gpt, man.

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I mean, we've been using it pretty extensively in this process to build out that role profile.

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What sort of skills should they have?

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What sort of educational background and experiential background should they have?

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Chatgpt has been a wealth of information for that.

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So if you don't know, utilize ChatGPT, it's going to help.

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One of the things I want to touch on that you just mentioned is deciding if that person's going to manage someone.

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I listened to a podcast last week and it was super interesting what he was talking about, and he said that the podcast host asked what things to keep in mind when you're making your first hire and the guest said I would actually apply this rule to the first couple of hires that you make and, regardless of if you have an immediate plan to make this person a manager of someone, when you're choosing that person, pick them based on can that person manage someone, regardless of if you're planning to right away or not.

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But he said that's how you'll scale your business a whole lot faster is if you hire someone that at some point you can add someone underneath that they would be an effective manager.

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So not just looking at the soft skills, but also can this person manage someone else, and that way you can scale your business a whole lot faster, knowing that all I have to do is add someone that can be managed by this person, as opposed to just the one pulling the buttons and pushing the levers.

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I thought that was super interesting.

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I completely agree with that perspective.

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Honestly, I mean, I don't know what you think, John, but I actually very much agree with that position where they're an individual contributor and they might be, you know, good as an individual contributor with you know very set guidelines that person is.

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You know some people can up-level to then managing people either can or are willing to, because that's kind of the two sides of the equation.

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Not everybody wants to, you know, manage other people.

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I mean I think about my, my brother, who's a programmer and you know, was a manager for a very short amount of time and absolutely hated it and would just, I mean, he's good as a programmer, he just has no interest in managing people.

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So I think that it makes it a little bit more complicated.

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It can work.

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Frankly, I found more success with hiring for specific positions, so basically hiring for what I need right now and then when that person, you know, when you're ready to have somebody who needs to manage people, then I mean I always like to look internally to say, hey, who's doing a really good job and to see if they would be a good fit.

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And quite frankly, I put them through a very similar process that I put, you know, somebody outside of the organization that I would hire.

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So we talked a little bit about what the job requirements are, but I also put them.

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You know, my process looks a little bit different as far as everybody at that stage.

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Now I don't interview everybody from the outside and I can talk about that a little bit separately here in a minute.

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But if I'm hiring internally, of having a, you know, a zoom interview with them where I'm very clear on what the expectations are for the position and what's involved, what the opportunities and then also what the challenges are for that position, because I want to give them as clear of indication as possible of what's going to be expected of them.

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So that way generally in my, in that interview, my goal is for them to say, hey, this is not for me, because if I give them that very, you know, kind of unvarnished assessment of what's involved with the job and they're still like heck, yeah, I want to do this, then the vast majority of the time they work out well and they do a fantastic job.

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If I give them that you know very gritty version of here's what the opportunities are, but here's what the challenges are, and they say not quite for you know, this might not be for me then that's perfect, because now I haven't spent a whole bunch of time training up that person that, quite frankly, probably isn't going to be a great fit to begin with.

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So, when Mike oh, sorry about that, mike.

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One of the things that I find interesting in this conversation is Mike, you said that you didn't really have a process before, you didn't have any SOPs.

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You you just you had need, and a lot of times it was an immediate critical need and you would go to a platform and find that person.

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I was very similar in that I did the exact same thing no SOPs, no hiring processes and it was when I reached the point of critical mass and needed to hire someone, but I, up until very recently, wasn't successful.

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The people that I added to my team I did not have a good experience with, and the one thing that's different between my situation and your situation is the platform that I went to find people on.

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I used onlinejobsph in the beginning because I was trying to save a couple of bucks and, to be honest, as I, as I went through that process and as I went through a couple of failed VAs, I actually started looking internal besides, because at first it was like, oh my gosh, this person didn't do that, this person didn't do that.

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But then, when I really started to look internal, what I realized is I wasn't ready for a virtual assistant.

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I wasn't ready for that person, even though I had a need for that person.

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I wasn't ready to hand things off to a person like that, so it was much more my fault than it was their fault, and it took me three tries to finally look at the mirror and say, hey, like, maybe it's you, like you've gone through three of them Now.

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They all looked great during the interview, they all sounded great, but then something the wheels fell off in some kind of a way.

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So that was the biggest difference for me is again, first of all, the platform, but second of all, I just I wasn't ready yet.

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Like I didn't have it's.

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It's super important.

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I think.

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What that?

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What that taught me is that you have to have some sort of not only do you have to have a process for hiring and finding, but you also have to have a process for onboarding, and this is what it looks like to hand off these critical tasks to this person and then measure how effective they are at it.

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And I had none of that.

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So I think it's a combination of the platform that I was going to, but more so, I wasn't ready to do that yet, as I wasn't ready as a business owner to hand that stuff off yet, because I didn't have any processes on the other side of it.

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Well, and I think, too, like I would absolutely agree, and I've well, I ran into that situation, more so when I was looking for an executive assistant.

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So, like I've hired, you know, we hired a customer service person.

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She's amazing, you know.

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Like I mean, I hired somebody who's taking care of our inventory and logistics.

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She's amazing, you know.

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So I mean we've done really well.

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I hired for the executive assistant position and, to your point, it wasn't just that I didn't have the onboarding process in place Although I do, I would say that that's part of it.

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Well, it wasn't successful, and I say that not like we still have that person on our team, he's just not doing that job.

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Like I shifted him into something else because he's actually a great guy, he's tremendous.

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And but not only was I not ready with an onboarding process of knowing exactly what I wanted them to do and how I was going to transition those things over to that person, I wasn't personally ready going to transition those things over to that person, I wasn't personally ready to hand over those things.

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You know, I just I couldn't let go, and I think that's also a part of that.

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You know is like you might know that you need to bring somebody on to take over some of those things.

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But until you actually have that kind of come to Jesus moment where you're actually willing to let go of the reins on those things, recognize that some of them might not be done quite as well as you do them, at least in the beginning, as this person is getting up to speed and learning your brand and how you operate and all of those sort of things Like, if you're not ready to let go of the reins, then you're not ready to hire that person, because it's going to be a failed hire in that situation, because not only do you not have the processes to transition, but you're not actually ready to even implement them, even if you had them.

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So that would be, you know, I would agree with that, and I think that a lot of you know brand owners need to take stock of that and decide whether you're ready and willing to do that.

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I would like to go back, though, just briefly, to what you were talking about a little while ago and what John disagreed with, let's say, on the hiring a managerial quality individual on the front end versus waiting, and I would say that I still, I think, disagree with John's perspective.

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Now I would say two things.

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One, every brand owner is going to have to make those decisions for themselves, and sometimes it's just a personality thing.

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Maybe it's what you're good at, you know.

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Like I mean if as an if, as the brand owner, you know there's certain things that you're good at that make it easier to do.

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Maybe, say the way that John does from the bottom up versus from the top down perspective.

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I do like the idea of hiring on and I guess what I would say is, like John, the process that you outline for an internal hiring, you know, to look for somebody to manage.

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I feel like if you took essentially that roadmap, you know and you're outlining like this is what I'm looking for and but you applied that externally to that initial hire in that department let's say it's inventory and logistics, right, and you don't have anybody doing that right now, like you're the only one.

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But if you have any idea that as a brand you're going to expand and maybe you're going to go into retail or maybe you're going to do some other things, like chances are one person is not always going to be able to manage that properly and do it well.

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And so if you're looking at it long-term and saying I think I might need more than one person there and I'm going to need a manager.

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Let's take what John's outlining there and say, okay, even though the person coming in it won't be managing right now, I need to interview them like they were.

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So, in other words, first of all, I need to find the person that could do that, that has the skillset and the experience and the temperament of being a manager.

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You know of that position, but also had the skill set to just do the job.

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But then, during that interview process, I'm outlining for them and saying look, today I need you to just do the job.

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I need you to learn the brand, learn how we do things, flesh out our processes, you know, create efficiencies and get it so that we're really humming along in that department.

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However, as we grow as a brand, I'm going to need you to step up into a managerial position, train a new person to do what you do and, since you're the one who's been doing it for, however long it is before we bring that person on, you're going to intimately know that process because, essentially, you built it out and are you interested and willing to do that.

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Here's what that would look like.

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Here's the job description and how it would change once you become a manager.

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You know and run that interview process and that whole hiring process with that assumption from the beginning.

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I think you do bring in that person who not only could be a good manager but also can be the individual that does that job from the beginning and isn't managing anybody, and I do think the opportunity to scale is actually in the cards then in a much better way, because otherwise then I think you end up with a scenario where, like, let's say, we're hiring internally for a manager, like, if I'm looking at my team, I've got a customer service person, I've got a logistics person, I've got somebody who right now is working on the website but also working on a KPI dashboard for us, you know.

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And then I've got a marketing manager who, by the way, I originally brought in as a brand manager and recognized that's not what he's best at.

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He's not a brand manager, he's a marketing manager.

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And he's actually super stoked that he's no longer the brand manager because it turns out he realized I'm not actually ready to be a brand manager but a marketing manager.

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I can do that Right, so, but the point is I have all of those people right, they're terrific.

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But let's say, now I need a new department like a new skill set, essentially right and I bring somebody in for that.

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That's a completely new department.

00:22:26.805 --> 00:22:35.613
And then I decide we need to expand that department and I'm now looking at my current team for who could be the manager of that person.

00:22:35.613 --> 00:22:45.313
Well then, essentially I got to take them out of whatever position they're in to have them manage that, or I'm adding duties to their job in order to make that happen.

00:22:45.313 --> 00:22:48.299
If I move them, then now I got to replace them.

00:22:48.299 --> 00:22:53.098
So I feel like it ends up with more moving parts than necessary, you know when.

00:22:53.098 --> 00:22:56.699
If you planned that out from the beginning that way, I don't know.

00:22:56.699 --> 00:22:59.631
To me it seems like that's the better approach.

00:22:59.631 --> 00:23:03.200
Now, in all honesty, that's not what I've done, you know.

00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:05.972
So I can't say, oh, we've done that and that worked for us.

00:23:05.972 --> 00:23:12.740
But intuitively, to me that makes a lot of sense and I think, likely, going forward, we'll probably look at it much that way.

00:23:13.589 --> 00:23:16.112
Yeah, I think that the idea makes a lot of sense.

00:23:16.112 --> 00:23:41.153
I just you know in you and I should clarify where I'm coming from here so, especially, you know, content is a big side of our business, in addition to Amazon marketing, and, quite frankly, our content team is significantly larger, and so that's where a lot of that has experience has come from, in the sense of I don't think that it's, again, in air quotes, wrong to do it that way.

00:23:41.153 --> 00:24:06.874
I do think that a couple of things I mean, at least in my experience and again, some people might be more talented than I am, some people might be less talented when it comes to the whole hiring and onboarding and managing people but what I found is that if you do that, just be prepared that you're going to have to pay well, not necessarily have to, but you probably will be paying some sort of premium in order to have somebody.

00:24:06.874 --> 00:24:09.259
That comes with that.

00:24:09.259 --> 00:24:11.804
Let's call it expanding capability.

00:24:14.075 --> 00:24:14.476
That's fair.

00:24:14.576 --> 00:24:19.411
I think that's likely true, so- you know, be prepared to pay accordingly.

00:24:19.411 --> 00:24:32.037
So that means that you may have to pay a little above, or you know significantly above, where you would if that, you know, if their only job was customer service, for example, because you want them to be able to expand into other areas.

00:24:32.037 --> 00:24:56.654
And you know, quite frankly, before we started this call, you know, talking about an executive assistant that I'm in the process of hiring and you know part of that, the individual I selected there, you know, kind of going a little bit against what I just said, which is he has, I think, a lot of capability beyond just kind of the day to day executive assistant roles and responsibilities, which is what interests me in him.

00:24:56.654 --> 00:25:01.906
Now, with that said, I'm okay paying, you know, a small premium for that.

00:25:02.007 --> 00:25:26.636
I'm not okay paying a large premium for that, because the other experience that I've had is that the reality of it is, especially when you're working with, if these aren't full-time, w-2, us-based positions is people rotate in and out in a lot of these positions every couple of years because either they upskill or something their life changes or whatever.

00:25:26.636 --> 00:25:34.265
And so the reality of you know somebody staying at your company for five to 10 years and being that kind of super expert.

00:25:34.265 --> 00:25:35.448
You know really deep.

00:25:35.448 --> 00:25:38.674
I don't know if that's realistic anymore.

00:25:38.674 --> 00:25:41.228
I think there's maybe a few people that'll stick around for that.

00:25:41.228 --> 00:25:45.259
But the reality of it is is that you know the shelf life for most.

00:25:45.259 --> 00:25:51.076
You know employees and freelancers in a in a company, even if you treat them well, is probably a couple of years.

00:25:52.164 --> 00:25:52.748
So what I learned?

00:25:52.807 --> 00:25:56.061
and what what is what has increased my success rate.

00:25:56.061 --> 00:26:03.878
Having talked, talked about, that is, you know, for me, I started hiring from an agency VAA is the name of the agency.

00:26:03.878 --> 00:26:07.138
I saw them at a couple of the conferences the Amazon conferences.

00:26:07.138 --> 00:26:11.692
What I love about the agency is that the VA is not an employee of mine.

00:26:11.692 --> 00:26:20.787
They work for the agency, but what VAA does specifically is that they have training before they're even put out into the marketplace, so they're trained.

00:26:20.787 --> 00:26:23.151
They've got like four or five different types of VAs.

00:26:23.151 --> 00:26:31.989
They have advertised PPC specialists, they have executive assistants, they have social media specialists, but all of them have experience and that for me and they have vetted.

00:26:31.989 --> 00:26:51.577
They're vetted and they have proven experience and they have training very specific to the Amazon platform, whereas when I was going through onlinejobsph, I was having to believe like I would do searches on keywords and things like that, but I would have to believe what their experience was and I didn't go out and do the due diligence that the agency was doing on my behalf.

00:26:51.577 --> 00:27:04.328
So what I loved about the agency is that they weren't employees of mine and if I had an issue with the VA, they came in and by you know they they would, would the next day I would have a short list of three to four more that would replace that person.

00:27:04.809 --> 00:27:18.154
I've had good experience because I think that I I've learned a lot, first of all by going through all those online jobsphvas, and now I think I'm better at kind of just judging, just by having a conversation with them.

00:27:18.154 --> 00:27:42.986
But I really like the fact that I don't have to replace that person, but then if that person, like you said, they level up or something happens to them, I don't have to be the one responsible then going out and finding it, and I know that there's a stable of other VAs that have the experience that can hit the ground running, as opposed to me having to go through all the same onboarding steps that I did before, so that I think that had a big part of why I'm more successful now.

00:27:42.986 --> 00:27:44.650
I mean I'm more successful now.

00:27:44.650 --> 00:27:53.269
Part of that is because I know this process and I've made my head up against so many different walls that I've learned how to kind of, you know, limit the effect of that.

00:27:53.269 --> 00:27:59.662
But having that agency that not only trains them but vets them, pre-interviewing them, has helped me a lot.