Episode 26: Hiring Help Without Breaking the Bank

  📍 Welcome to CreativeMind Smart Money, the podcast where creativity and business smarts collide. I’m your host, Samantha Eck, bookkeeper, business coach, and your go to guide for building the creative business of your dreams. Whether it’s mastering your money, streamlining your systems, or growing your business, I’m here to share insights that empower you to thrive.

Plus, I’ll be bringing in industry experts to dive into all aspects of entrepreneurship, so you can turn your passion into profit without losing your creative spark. Let’s get started.

  Good morning and welcome back to the Creative Minds A Smart Money Podcast. Now you might know that something is a little bit different. Usually I try to stick to the script and just talk about what I came here to talk about, but I promised myself that in the new year I would try and switch it up and make this podcast a little bit more conversational, a little bit more friendly, a little less Just straight to the facts.

Now, obviously, I don’t want to take up all your time and just talk about randomly stuff. But instead of having just this set script, I’m more going to go off talking points so that I can just talk based on my expertise and less on just You know, reading what I wrote down. So today we’re going to talk about how we can hire help for our business.

Because a lot of times as a business owner, we can feel really overwhelmed. And sometimes we’re just ready to hire, whether that’s an employee or a contractor, or even a subcontractor, like hiring out with a bookkeeper or something else. But most of the time, what I’m talking about in this episode is when we’re ready to hire someone to help us out with our business.

So I want to break down how you can financially prepare for that without stressing. Now, I am not someone who is an HR consultant or knows a lot about how to hire someone, but I want you to walk away from this episode feeling like you’re fully prepared to hire someone by having followed the steps that I am going to give you.

Now, Doing everything yourself obviously costs you money. When you are a business owner and you just start out, you’re absolutely going to have to do everything yourself. It’s what we call wearing many hats. There comes a point in your business where it will just get too much. Now there are a lot of business owners out there who don’t want it to get past that point.

So they won’t take on new projects. They won’t do things. But if you’re someone who’s like, I want to grow just beyond me, Even if it’s just through contractors and not necessarily employees or if it’s through, you know subcontractors I do want to just note really quick that there is a huge difference between employees and contractors and If that is something you would love me to go over and kind of go through in fact I think I will make that an episode topic because that is such an important thing to talk about the difference between a subcontracted employee Because not knowing the difference could get you in a lot of trouble with the government as a whole, so we’ll definitely talk about that in the future.

So, again, we want to talk about why hiring help is such a game changer. I know that it costs money, but doing everything yourself also costs money. Like I said, if you’re someone who wants to grow beyond the government, Just you and your business. You have to think of what tasks are draining your time and what tasks are draining you and what you don’t want to do.

So for myself, as an example, I love social media. I love connecting with people on social media. I love meeting new people. My biggest issue with social media is that I For the life of me, I’m not good at creating content. What I think looks pretty is not what you might think looks pretty, or what the world thinks looks pretty.

Because my mind can be a little bit chaotic. So I just slap things on a page and I’m like, that looks good enough. And then I put it out there and I look at it and I’m like, compared to someone else and I’m like, this doesn’t really look good. So that feels draining to me because I’m like, I don’t really want to have to think about Does this look good?

Does this not look good? So I’m willing and ready to pass that off to someone else. So those are the type of things you want to think about because when you’re getting burnt out, it doesn’t help with your creativity. And as a creative entrepreneur, you’re always wanting to design or create or do something else.

You don’t want to be stuck doing the small things. Now if you love doing those things, that’s fantastic. But I want you to think of the things that drain you. So whether that’s emailing clients, Maybe you need an assistant or if the day to day tasks strain you, but you love doing the CEO stuff, that’s also something you can think about.

So you want to think about the low value tasks that you can hand off to someone else. Like what can I delegate to someone else? Because obviously it allows you to focus and generate revenue that will help to improve efficiency. So obviously when you have other people, it’s going to bring in more revenue, but it’s also going to improve that efficiency and just make your overall service or product just better.

So again, you want to think of what tasks are low value that you can pass off to someone else. So like I said, whether that’s social media, whether that’s sending emails, whether that’s the day to day of the business, because you want to focus on the high level CEO stuff, whatever it is, you want to think about what those low level tasks are, because that’s going to change your entire outlook on your business.

Now, of course, you want to know your numbers before you hire anybody. I know I’ve said this a million times on this podcast is knowing your numbers. You want to how much you’re bringing in revenue. And then what your expenses are like, what your fixed expenses are like, and when I’m talking about fixed expenses, I also want you to think of your software.

So let’s say that you are, let’s just say a social media manager. And when you hire someone new, for example, maybe you’re using Rella. I don’t know the pricing structure of Rella, so don’t take my word for this, but maybe Rella has a cost per seat of software. So you, you’re a seat, and then whoever you hire is going to be a new seat.

So you want to think of how that’s going to impact things. You want to think of if you’re going to have to buy them supplies, if you’re going to have to buy them equipment, and then You want to factor those costs and then you want to know what your profit is after that. So obviously again, you want to try and maintain a minimal profit margin, whatever your goal was.

So if your goal is 10%, you don’t want to fall below that. So when you’re thinking about what they’re doing, you kind of want to analyze that. So once you know your numbers, then you want to build the role. So you want to identify the role. What do you want to hire for and why do you want to hire for that position?

What are you looking for in terms of a person that you’re looking to hire? All that type of stuff starts to build that, that job description. There are people out there that can help you with that. Like HR consultants that can help you build job descriptions that can help you build what you need in order to really just get the job up there.

You want to research costs based on the role. So if you’re looking to hire. You’re a social media manager and you want to hire someone that does graphics. You want to look at how much they’re being paid to see if you can afford that person. And then you want to set a budget based on what you can afford.

So now that you know, you know, your revenue, you know, your expenses, you know, your profit now you want to analyze. Okay. So if this graphic designer is going to cost me 75 an hour and I want them to work 10 hours a week, that’s 750. Can I afford 750 a month? Plus taxes. If you are hiring them as an employee, if you’re hiring them as a contractor, then yes, you, you will only pay them 750 a month.

But you want to understand, okay, is this going to cut into my profit margins or is it going to Not and if it is gonna cut into your profit margins The the realistic thing to do is then look at that and say how do I cut back on other expenses? So I can afford this person, especially if the need to hire something that is absolutely necessary So that’s something you definitely want to think about you don’t just want to go ahead and hire someone I have had people do that before where they’ll go out and hire a an employee or something like that and then they end up having to fire or let go of that employee because they simply cannot afford to keep them.

So having that set up so that you’re sure that you can pay them is something that is so important, especially when you’re starting to bring more members onto your team. The next thing we want to do is, you know, have at least two to three months worth of. money saved up in your business before committing to hiring someone.

And again, the reasoning behind this is because, like I said, a lot of people that I have talked to before have hired someone and then they have had to let them go because they couldn’t afford to keep them. So if you have that extra cash buffer and that extra boost in there, you’re going to have Enough of an assurance that you can at least, pay for them at least for another two months and hopefully whatever Income you lost you can make that up in extra projects or something else like that.

So you have a bigger reserve Now the key to hiring someone is to start small So you want to test them out whether you start them off as a contractor and then move them into an employee Just to understand that they fit And I will tell you one thing, it’s really hard to see if they fit if you’re just basing it off of an interview.

For me especially, when I’m hiring someone to join my bookkeeping team, I have to see their work. I have to see how they’re thinking. I have to understand if they can follow the instructions. I have all of my SOPs and everything like that within the same program that they do their tasks. I want to make sure that they can follow those instructions without having to reach out.

And then if there’s anything more complex that they need to reach out, of course, they’re Totally available to them, but I want to make sure that they can follow those to a T. And if something’s missing, I want them to tell me. I don’t want them to just wing in. I want them to say, Hey Samantha, I was following your SOP and this entire process is missing.

So you want to test them out and see if they fit. You if they fit your team and it’s not just for you. I want to make that clear. It’s also for them because They are making a commitment to you and your business and as a small business owner You want to make sure that they are committed to your business?

So if they get in there and they’re like, you know what this really isn’t for me. It’s better that you just tested them Now, after hiring them and you’ve been working with them for a while, you’re going to want to evaluate not necessarily the ROI, but seeing how they’re doing and seeing if the hire is meeting expectations.

Are you getting more done? Are you handing off enough stuff to the stuff to them? Are you booking more clients? Are you completing more work? Are you working on higher value tasks? Did hiring them. So, did you, were you able to take that step back? Were you able to focus on other areas? You just want to understand if that actually paid off.

Now of course, with the right preparation and financial preparation, with hiring the right person, Bye! You’re going to feel a really strong impact. You’re going to feel, stop feeling overwhelmed. You get to focus more on what you love and obviously your revenue and profit are going to grow because you’re working smarter, not harder.

I am not saying you have to step entirely out of your business because as small business, business owners, a lot of us want to stay within our business. I am one of them. And I will be 100 percent honest that I am someone who loves working in the day to day and working on my business. But I also love the help because a lot of times during month end I will get so overwhelmed because there’s so much to do and there’s just not enough hands to do it.

I am managing for sure right now but it’s definitely helpful when you have someone else who is there to assist you. 📍 So what did we learn today and what can we walk away with with key points? Know your numbers, analyze your revenue, your expenses, your profit, set a budget, analyze how much money you need to pay that employee, if there’s any additional costs that come with them like software, anything like that, and understand that before you go and hire them.

Create a financial cushion. You want to have at least two to three months saved up for so that you can pay them even if you have a slow month. That way you’re not just letting them go entirely. You want to start small by helping them test the waters so that both of you can see if you’re good fits for your business.

And then you want to see if what you’ve handed off to them has really paid off. Has it allowed you to step back from your business or has it allowed you to focus on other things? Remember that hiring help is an investment and it helps with your mental well being, especially as business owners. We can often feel so overwhelmed and so crazy.

Now, if you’re like Smith, I have no idea how to calculate how to hire someone. I just really need some assistance. I’m here for you. Please feel free to reach out to me and we can chat through email or if you’re ready to get a bookkeeper so that you can know your numbers better and be able to hire someone.

I’m your gal. Otherwise, I appreciate you dropping in to listen and spending time with me. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and send this episode to a friend who might need it. Otherwise, I wish you all the best and we’ll see you next time. Farewell fellow travelers.