247: Why We Hired
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates
Summary:
Have you thought about hiring? We have. A LOT. We recently hired for the first time and will be doing a series of episodes on what the process was like for us. Hiring isn’t always the answer to our struggles in business, so we break down some of our reasons for deciding it was time to hire. We also give you some questions to think through if you’re on the fence. Then, Natasha O’Banion answers, “How do I get over my fear and make big changes?”
Main topics:
What do you want your business to be?
The costs of hiring
Make the position whatever you want it to be
Why you shouldn’t hire
Ask A Pet Biz Coach
Main takeaway: Hiring doesn’t mean you’re more successful or doing something better than someone else. It means you have different views of what you want your business to look like.
Links:
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
hire, business, people, pet, clients, person, confessional, pet sitters, job, big, hiring process, goals, busy, insurance, walks, employee, staff, desperation, episode, knowing
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan I'm Collin and this is Pet Sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hi, welcome to episode 247. Hello, thank you to our newest Patreon member, Janie and also to pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode. We want to thank all of our Patreon members and are so appreciative of your financial contributions every month. And if you would like to learn more about what that looks like and support us with the price of a cup of coffee, you can do so at petsitter confessional comm slash support. So we've talked about this before on the episode. But last year was a big year for us because we hired we hired several people. And so the next several episodes are going to be kind of about our hiring journey. And this is the first episode of that, and we wanted to share it with you, we don't have this all figured out. That is for sure we are still in the learning process. But we are a few months removed from the initial stages. And so really wanted to share our experience and our journey and the lessons that we've learned over the last four months. Now, this is just our experience. So yours is going to be different, everybody's is different, everybody's business is different. And so our experience may not be yours. And it may not work for you. But we just wanted to share it anyway. And just to preface this episode, we are going to be talking about employees through this, I know that there is sometimes confusion on if you can hire an IC or not. And technically, the word hire cannot be used for an IC. So just to lay it out there, we're going to be talking about employees today.
Collin 01:44
So today we're going to talk about the first step about knowing when it's time to hire and whether hiring is even something that you would like to do, because hiring is so much more than just wanting to be less busy. Because you have to want to manage someone else. You can be less busy right now, if you raise your rates 50% blocked off weekends and holidays and only did walk 10 to four Monday through Friday. That's less busy. That's the less busy time schedule in the less busy things that we have to be doing. So hiring isn't always the answer. We need to be asking ourselves, what goals do you have? And what do you want your business to look like?
Meghan 02:26
Yeah, we always talk about having five year 10 year goals. So look at that and say, does what I want, is it scalable? Is that something that I want for my business? If you want to expand into new areas, that's going to require you to hire Do you want to 3x your client base? Hiring is going to be good for that because you're only one person and can only do so much in a day? Do you want your company to offer seven days a week services of midday dog walks and pet setting and maybe house hunting as well, you're going to need higher so that you don't burn yourself out. It's also important to ask if you want to offload some of the tasks that you do every day, do you not enjoy the dog walks as much as you used to? Or do you not enjoy all of the admin stuff and calling people back and emailing them, then higher? Do you want to get out of the long days, the early mornings and the long nights of petsitting and hire people that can take over those shifts for you so that you can just do middays? Or whatever you want to do. And so the burning question is always how do I know if I'm ready to hire.
Collin 03:34
And this can be answered in many different aspects. One of them maybe you're turning down work that you would rather not say no to, again, we talk about all the time, you should say no as much as you want to probably more than makes you comfortable with. But if you start thinking that you'd actually not want to turn those people away that you'd like to be able to service them, then maybe it is time to hire and so that you don't have to say no as often because you have staff that can support you. You may also think it's time to hire when your actual work is suffering. When those tasks that you don't want to be doing or when the tasks that you do want to be doing. Start to not be as high quality as you expect if your client updates or feeling rushed or you're not answering potential clients in a timely manner. Or if you aren't taking a good quality photos as you want really seriously consider about hiring to take more off of your plate. In addition to addressing some of those base problems of making sure that you have time off that you have proper boundaries and you're taking care of yourself, then you
Meghan 04:33
may also consider hiring when you have the money hiring isn't cheap. So make sure that you are making enough obviously for yourself to pay your own bills, and then your extra business expenses on top of that for when you hire your workers comp, your insurance, all that stuff. And then obviously you have to pay your staff as well. So making sure that your prices are high enough where you can pay all of that and still take home some money for yourself
Collin 05:00
There's also the personal side of this, again of you have to decide if you want to manage somebody, how do you know if you're ready to hire? Are you ready to manage people? Are you ready to take on that responsibility? Are you ready to go through and train because we have to recognize that hiring comes with a lot of downsides. Megan already mentioned, one, the increased costs of things like workers compensation and the increased insurance, you have to cover them. You also have increased training that you have to do for your staff, you have increased oversight and monitoring their work and making sure that they're meeting your standards and meeting your protocols. Also, fielding questions from clients about how the staff are going to be managed and getting ready to gear up and mentally prepare yourself for when something goes wrong now that you and you have to come in, correct that something that maybe a staff member did. There's also just time doing management stuff. There's the paperwork, there's maybe discipline, if things go wrong, there's the onboarding process, a lot of your day gets sucked up into that kind of work when you first start hiring. So it's, it doesn't come cheaply to your business and to you personally, then that's where all that management side comes in. So if you're thinking about hiring, because you're stressed, you're overworked and you're not getting enough downtime, take a look at some of these downsides of hiring as well and think, Hmm, maybe I don't want those on my plate. So I'll set up better boundaries in my business, I'll raise my rates, and I'll take weekends off. Again, that would make you less busy as well. So figuring out whether hiring matches your company goals, your goals for your business, is really key at this stage.
Meghan 06:38
Well, especially since you will be managing people, if you're hiring, you are in charge. And some people just don't want to deal with that. And that's totally okay. So it's better to recognize that right now, when you haven't brought somebody on board, then to bring somebody on board and realize, oh, I actually don't want to be managing anybody. Recognizing also that hiring doesn't mean that you're more successful than somebody else who has solo. We have seen this a lot in the Facebook groups of like, is it do I need to hire I mean, I don't really want to, but I feel like I should everybody else is doing it. But if you're solo, and you see people hiring, that doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It doesn't mean you should just go out and hire just because somebody else did it. If you are comfortable being solo, and you enjoy it, great. Keep doing it. If you see your goals in the next five to 10 years, and you think that hiring people is what is necessary for you to reach those goals, then you have to do that as well. Hiring doesn't mean you're more successful, or doing something better than someone else. It just means you have different views, you have different goals for your company, and what you want your business to look like
Collin 07:49
that absolutely has to match your goals and desires for your business. So once you've decided that hiring is right for you next is knowing what you want it to look like something that we never thought of before was hiring someone that was very part time we're talking like, five hours a week, and so much, no, not very much at all. Because when we have this idea in this concept of I've got to make sure that I have 3040 hours a week for this person before I can even give them work. That's not true. That's not true. You can make this whatever you want. That's why we say, you know, what do you want this position to look like? You can make it whatever you want. So why did we hire we hired because we wanted to expand our business into a new area and take advantage of some new opportunities in a different market. That was the entire reason that we hired, we weren't going to be able to move there ourselves. And so in order to expand our business and take our pet setting business, into this new area, we needed people, we needed to hire people that we could center our business around there. So when we finally got around to posting our ad, we said we didn't guarantee hours right now. But because we were building in a new area, we knew that it would grow. And the time would fill in eventually, for the three positions that we've posted. Since then we've had over 300 applications. So obviously, the low hours really didn't deter people. And that looked like something that they were interested in doing. So don't be afraid that you only have one or two clients for a new hire right now. Put it out there and see and make them be part of that growth of your company.
Meghan 09:27
We knew we wanted something very different. Something different than most other businesses out there. We were expanding into a brand new area that was two hours away with zero business. So no, we couldn't guarantee any hours because we didn't have any. However, we could hire someone for more than just pet care. That's the cross training aspect. So their job duties were not only the pet care of the dog walking in the pet setting, but they also had blogging. They also had boots on the ground marketing and advertising and, and getting our name out there. We needed to hire people to Do the administration work and the marketing in the new area? Because we weren't physically there, we physically couldn't do it. So does that mean that they are costing us more than they're bringing in right now? Yes, that is true. That's a fact. But we are using our existing area to build and fund the new area.
Collin 10:18
And we really feel like this aspect of cross training and bringing other aspects into the position is really powerful for your business. And it's also beneficial for your employee to this way for for two big reasons. The first one is that you start giving them a varied amount and type of work, where you allow them to use lots of their skills, and passions and backgrounds and knowledge that they have, and use that and invest that into your company.
Meghan 10:45
Well, it's also important, so they don't get bored. If they're only doing two walks from 12 to two, Monday through Friday, and they want something more, you can give them something more,
Collin 10:57
yeah, have them write your blogs, have them create your social media posts, bring them on into a Canva team to allow them to start making things there if they want to, again, sitting down with them and going, Hey, what are some of your passions, here's all of the stuff that my business does. What sounds interesting to you, or maybe after you read somebody's resume, you go, Oh, man, this person would be great for writing my blogs, because they actually have an English background. That sounds fantastic, that would be really good. And then at the end of this, you actually get a more dedicated and amazing team member, because they see that they are investing in something that values them. It allows them to take their interests, their passions, their goals, and actually kind of embed that into your company culture and start making it something new and unique. And you benefit from that as well. So by allowing your team members to do a lot of different types of work throughout their day, you actually get a lot of benefit and they benefit and you benefit as well. One of the
Meghan 11:54
things about hiring is that you have to check your insurance and make sure that your employees are going to be covered or add them as a coverage. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. At pet sitters associates, they're here to help for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Since you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today. At pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership petsitter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com.
Collin 12:39
So again, ask yourself, what do you want for this position? What am I looking for? Because remember, you can make it whatever you want. design something, set up those skills, set up those objectives and those tasks that this person is going to be doing and throw it out into the job market and see who it attracts. We did have to weed out some people who wanted 20 hours or more a week because we just couldn't provide that. Yeah, we wanted someone who was looking for a zero to 15. So one of our needs is that the person who was applying needed to have some other job or to be retired or something like that, but but to have flexibility in their schedule, or they weren't relying on us right now. Now when we sat and talked with him, we talked about how it was we were working on to grow this and expand it and would become something but right now, it wasn't that. And a lot of people were totally fine with that they were just looking for something a little extra to do to have some variation in their week. Well, and
Meghan 13:37
again, this is just our experience of growing into a new area, or a lot of pet sitters. We are filled to the brim and really needing to offload some of the clients right now on to somebody else because we just can't handle everything.
Collin 13:49
Yeah, but it's again, just knowing that it's not a one size fits all. You don't have to be crazy busy right now to even consider hiring now. If you are busy, then yeah, hiring may work for you.
Meghan 13:59
Okay, so then the question is, who should my first hire be? Look at all the jobs that you don't like doing or you don't want to be doing or you can't do if you don't actually like doing the Pet Sets and would rather focus on marketing and content creation for your business. hire someone to do the headsets, if you love the headsets, but you don't like writing blogs or creating social media posts. If you think that's kind of just a drudgery. Hire someone that can help with that. The reason this is so critical is because it's going to shape how you move forward with your hiring process and job ad. So take a look at your business right now. And where you want it to be in five years, you'll obviously need to hire for what you have right now. But also keep in mind that hiring allows you to shift your business and mold it into something new. We are moving into a much bigger market. So that's why we hired two back to back. One it provides a backup for each other and two, I don't have to say no for a little while because I know that I have the capacity to grow quickly because I have two people that can do the job. It has been said that there are only two purposes of hiring an employee. One is to make money for the business. And two is to save money for the business. But we would like to add a third one in there to save you time and headache, which I guess will help you save money or gives you time more time to make money. So again, ask yourself how this hire can actually help you. Because there are some reasons you should not hire. If you are totally desperate, and you have to have somebody yesterday, that is not a reason to hire somebody, I know that we're coming off of a very busy holiday season and maybe you are still busy. Or maybe there's a low now. But you should never hire out of desperation. I think Gary Vee has a saying hire slow, fire fast. So you never want to hire somebody because you can't think straight, you're so busy. And the second one is, you don't know exactly what you want the new hire to do. So this gets into, you know what to talk about in a couple weeks creating the job ad and what that looks like but know what you want. Now do you have for dog walking clients that you need this person to take over? Or do you are you a morning person and you want to only take the morning Pet Sets and you need somebody else to take the night visits.
Collin 16:20
And this is very important, not really for you so much as it is important for the person that you are hiring. Yeah, it really sets up those expectations. Exactly. And this is why I feel like many people get extremely frustrated when they go and try and hire and it fails or it doesn't work out. Because they didn't have the proper expectation set up, they didn't actually know what this person was supposed to be doing. And when you don't know, your hire doesn't know. And so they get frustrated, they feel like they aren't getting good guidance, and they become confused and ineffective in the job. And then you become angry and frustrated that they're not doing the job that you thought that they would do. But they didn't know to do it because you didn't tell them. So. So at this stage, it really is trying to sit down pen and paper typing on keys and a Google Doc or something to get exactly what you want this person to do, there's a reason for them. And this is also powerful, because whenever you know that you hire them for a reason, you start to value that person a lot, you start to really lean into their experience, and you start to trust them more and more quickly. And the last reason that you should not hire is if you're just going to end up taking the first person that comes along. Obviously, we always want that that first applicant to be the Rockstar that solves all of our problems that we can just click hire. But that very rarely happens. Instead, do yourself a huge favor and actually interview at least five or 10 people before you make any decision. And remember that one possible decision is to hire none of them.
Meghan 17:47
Yeah, that's something that we really had to come to terms of like, Oh, if none of these people are good, we also have the option to hire no one
Collin 17:54
exactly. That's where making sure to tamper and, and pull down these feelings of desperation. And why if you're not busy right now, hiring right now would actually be a very good idea. So that you have time to train them and onboard them and not overwhelm them. And you're not doing out of desperation, fear and anxiety. So when you're going through the hiring process, don't just pull that trigger immediately when someone applies, because they feel like you're going to be the best fit. Really spend some time getting to know the job market, feel out what you actually want and talk to a lot of people, you'll get a much better outcome at the end. If you do that.
Meghan 18:29
At some point, though, through all of this discussion, knowing if you want to hire than deciding you want to hire, you have to commit. After you work your way through your once your needs, your goals for your business commit, it is a lot of work to hire, especially hiring an employee, which we'll break down in coming episodes. But just hiring just in quotes. Takes a lot to actually do. Yeah,
Collin 18:57
it does. So if you're not committed whenever you assess your needs and know okay, it is time for me to move forward with this, at that moment really mentally commit to the process, because then you'll be able to stick through and actually make it work instead of pulling back halfway through and then getting frustrated at the whole process. And wonder why even started to begin with.
Meghan 19:17
We would love to know your thoughts on hiring. Have you hired before? Do you have staff now or in the past, you can let us know on Facebook or Instagram at petsitter confessional or you can give us a call at 636-364-8260. As we are entering a new year, a lot of people are making big changes. And so today's question for Natasha Banyon is how do I make big changes and get over the fear?
Natasha 19:41
Yeah, you just have to be honest, you know, I say get in the habit of doing your quarterly reflections. And every quarter just sit down with yourself in a quiet space and just think about where you currently are and where you want to be. Where am I today and where is it that I want to be and when you keep that at the forefront. It's easier to make big changes For me with COVID, there was no way that I was going to go back to running my business the exact same way I was doing it before, then no absolute way at all. So online was a big change for us. All my staff knew that I was shifting gears. And we were moving the show online. And they were like, Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm like, I know. It's time. Do you want to sit around and have your tail between your legs one more time again? No, we got to be ahead of it. This was a big change for us. But we got through it. And now we're shifting and we're pivoting and it's great. And now I know that I'm setting them up for long term success. So you just have to be honest, for me again, COVID was my big change. I don't know if anyone else had to go through that. But I wasn't like, Oh, we're back to normal. We're busier than ever, I did not have that mindset. That was not me. And mine was oh, no, we got to make a change. That was a green light there for us to wake up and see some things that we're not doing is that's not going to happen again. So just be honest with what's happening in front of you. And always making a plan.
Meghan 21:06
Natasha is a great pet business coach. And if you would like her to coach you through your business, you can do so at start scale sale calm and use the code P SC 20 or 15% off her coaching,
Collin 21:18
we are really looking forward to this series on hiring again, as Megan mentioned the beginning because we're kind of fresh on the heels of this and kind of brand new to this. So we're really excited to kind of share our entry into this world and let you know kind of our processes and thought processes as we continue to grow and learn from it. And so we really looking forward to hearing your feedback on all this as well. So thank you
Meghan 21:40
and we thank you so much for listening to this episode. And if you have enjoyed any of the past episodes, feel free to share it with a pet business friend, and thank you to pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode.
