318: One Year Hiring Retrospective
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Summary
It’s been one year since we started hiring in our business! A lot has changed in our company since then so we discuss what we’ve learned. We share the importance of trying new things, leaning on your strengths, and what it looks like to grow company culture. Then, Natasha O’Banion answers, “How do I scale as a solo sitter?”
Main topics
Our hiring series
Learning to move faster
Have scripts!
Frequently communicate
Ask a Biz Coach
Main takeaway: Whenever you start something new, never stop refining and honing in on exactly what you need/want.
Links
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/260
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/247
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/249
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/251
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/253
https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/257
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
hire, work, sitter, staff, people, person, clients, written, company, position, check, staff member, learn, onboarding, job, watched, questions, pet sitter, keys, expectations
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And this is Pet Sitter professional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Meghan 00:19
Hello, welcome to episode 318. Hello, thank you to pet sitters associates and our newest patron supporter, Lucy, thank you very much for financially helping to support the show with a few dollars every month, we are very thankful for you,
Collin 00:34
we're so thankful that you find value in the show that the show is helping you and you'd like to support it so we can help other people. If you'd like to learn about what that looks like, please go to pet sitter confessional.com/support.
Meghan 00:46
Amazingly, we started our hiring process almost exactly a year ago. That's all. It's been quite a year. So we wanted to take some time to reflect on how it's been going for us. And if we have changed anything or learned anything. And just kind of chit chat about that.
Collin 01:04
Yeah, if you have not, we really recommend that you go back and listen to our series on hiring start with episode 260. And because we touched on everything there, and also all of the other episodes that we have, that's Episode 247 249-250-1253, and 257, there was a lot that we covered there. But we recorded those pretty much in real time as we went through the hiring stages, and worked out how we wanted everything to look. And I think we still stand by everything that we have in there. So definitely get those checked out. But we have tweaked some things. And we've come to a better understanding of really what it means to hire, what it means to manage people and what we want that process to look like for us. So we do want to take a moment and do a retrospective on our hiring over the last year, and talk about what we've been doing since those episodes have been released.
Meghan 01:58
Yeah, since it's been a year, I actually don't really remember exactly what all we talked about in those episodes. But it's all good stuff. Yes, yes, it is. So we initially hired for two positions, and then that quickly expanded to three, then that became six. And we've just very recently taken that to eight. So that's basically Lesson number one for us is that it's, it can go very, very quickly, once you get that first hire under your belt, if you've got enough to give a second and a third person. Or if you need coverage for the times when the first person is going to call off and you don't want to be in the field as much, it can very quickly scale to you need more than just one person?
Collin 02:34
Well, because as soon as you have that first person, you need to backup for that person. And if you don't want to be the backup for that person, you'd have to start adding staff. And it's not just how quickly you add people to get coverage. It's also just how you have to be ready to move through the process.
Meghan 02:50
Yeah, so that was one thing that I learned over the past year is that we really, you know, the first hire, I think, from job application that she submitted to hire, I think it was about six weeks. Yeah, probably was incredibly long. She was very patient with us through that. Because that is an exceptionally long time that I would be very surprised if anybody actually waited that long nowadays,
Collin 03:13
right? So we've actually been able to get all of our ducks in a row. And so we can go from initial application to hired basically in under a week if we can get everything scheduled and everything working on time.
Meghan 03:27
And that's not to say that you should be doing that. So yeah, I mean, you definitely want to go with your gut. And especially if you're hiring just you know, for the first time are the second time, you really need to take the process, slow and smooth, so you don't mess anything up. So you know exactly who you're looking for what you're looking for, and that you clearly communicate exactly what you do to the potential staff members. So they know what to expect,
Collin 03:50
well answer that you are not rushing through the process. If you feel like okay did the interview in the morning, I have to respond to them by tonight so that they can know what I'm doing and that they can move on or that I can start bringing them through this process. You don't have to do that at all. If you have questions, if you have follow up, we really recommend sleeping on it. And considering it and talking with other people about it and really meditating on that decision before you move forward. But you can still do that in a relatively brisk manner.
Meghan 04:15
Because it is very easy to hire somebody, but it's very hard to fire somebody. So always keep that in mind.
Collin 04:23
So our process is still they apply. Then we review that we send them a first round of written questions. They answer that and then what we have now added to this process is we send them another written summary of the job duties, expectations and scheduling and ask if they are still interested in the position. Yeah, and
Meghan 04:42
this is mostly because we were getting to the phone interview and people were either not asking questions about the job, you know, we would we explain what the job is and how we do it during the phone interview. But we don't want to waste anybody's time, particularly our time. So If I can go ahead and send them a script, before we get to the next stage of the phone interview, then they already know, hey, this may work for me, this may not work for me, this is a lot of driving. Is that something that I want? You know, we don't guarantee hours, you know, the things that we put into the script, they can see if that will work for them.
Collin 05:20
Yeah, that was how we started that phone interview was, hey, we want to tell you a little bit more about this position. And we had this big long blurb and Megan basically took that typed it up, and has that as a saved message now that we send after they've written, they've answered the written questions, and we can again, just confirm, this is what we're doing. Do you agree that this is something that interests you? Yeah, well,
Meghan 05:39
and we still do reiterate that on the phone interview, mostly because this is just such a weird job that we do. And we really need people to understand this. Yeah. So again, our process is they apply, we send them the dozen or so written questions that they have to answer. And then if we like what they've answered, then we send them the script of, we don't guarantee hours, we need holidays, you know, whatever it is. And then if they say, Yes, I'm still interested, then we say if they move on, and we say, Okay, now the phone interview,
Collin 06:10
yeah, then once we go through the phone interview, if we like that, we move them, and we send them some additional written questions more long form, then we if we like that, we send them to an in person interview and offer the position contingent, a background check, assuming everything has gone well, and typically giving one to two days between each of these steps for people to respond, for us to consider and compare and make sure that we have everything that we need so that we feel comfortable making a decision in the end.
Meghan 06:38
But I think the two biggest things here are one, the written out question. So I have them all saved in a note. And this has been a huge time saver. So basically, the same thing you do with a client, when they contact you, you send them a saved message, or you know, whatever your little script is of, you know, here are my prices, go to this link on my website, or you know, whatever it is that you send them. But we do the same thing for the potential hire. And it's all written out already. I just copy and paste, then click Send, and I don't have to type it out and reinvent the wheel every single time.
Collin 07:12
Well, yeah, this was the other thing that caught us off guard that we were kind of working through this process is just the sheer volume of applicants that we had to try and process and keep track of
Meghan 07:23
that usually they're all at different stages, they apply different days, I have them at different stages of the hiring process, I have to go in and delete the ones or you know, reject the ones that are not a good fit. And it's just, it's all these sorts of moving pieces. And so if I just have these scripts ready to go, I can automatically know, okay, this person is at this stage, and I'm waiting on this response for them. And it just makes it so much easier.
Collin 07:46
Yeah, I can't I don't know the exact number of total applications that we've gotten across all of our positions. But it's been an N A lot, way more than I ever expected for this,
Meghan 07:56
I would actually say reaching 1000, almost 1000. Okay, so a lot. And we only have really used indeed.com, that has been awesome, we have not paid for it. So there's a free version. And we basically only use that I have made some social media posts that said, you know, we're hiring, you can send us your resume to our email address if you're interested. But overall, indeed has been really successful. For us.
Collin 08:22
It has again, that's another lesson for me was just how do we manage the sheer volume of all of this and keep track of where everybody is, in this process, make sure we have good spreadsheets, make sure we're comparing all the same things. That's where getting the same boilerplate words and messages that you're using to send and reply to people is so important so that you are consistent across that. Because if you had to type exactly the same message to almost 1000 people, you wouldn't write, there would be errors, there would be mistakes, you'd forget to include something. So it's really important to have that in there. Because it helps you move faster. It helps make sure everything stays consistent.
Meghan 08:58
But I will say if you are not interested in any of that, and you want somebody to do it for you, I have heard that jazz HR is great. And they not only post to indeed, but a bunch of other platforms as well. And they basically do it all for you and they just send you the good applicants
Collin 09:13
in the same vein of having messages pre written out to kind of help automate this workflow, we do still use gussto for payroll. One thing that we have done is we've dived really deep into all of the additional services that they offer. And one of those is their onboarding features, which is really cool because it develops your own customized checklist of everything that you want to include for every single person. And it can automatically send documents that you have written up to staff to every new employee that comes on, they automatically get sent the employee manual that can they can they will digitally acknowledge and sign as well as other forms that we have for them and all of our written out. SOPs are sent to them immediately for them to read read You and sign a document that they have agreed to those so that we can move forward in the process.
Meghan 10:05
Well, and that is something as well that we have honed over the past year is our training and our SOPs and putting those at the forefront of the hiring process, you know, right after they sign the employee handbook, they get sent the training. So this is basically the onboarding that you were doing in person, we have now converted that to a video. And so it's just standard, and you don't have to go in and physically meet with the person, they can just watch it at home. And we have some action steps that we have them do. So we know that you know, after this 20 minute video, they are completing this action step. And so we have kind of a checks and balances system here where Yes, I know that you have watched it because you have done this thing. Yeah,
Collin 10:51
and there's simple stuff too, that could be done, it could be done in an email or a direct message to them. But I do nest them within the videos because I was sitting down with people and reviewing the manual and SOPs and would take an hour to an hour and a half, to go through everything, take questions and really tell stories of the why and what we do and how we operate and the importance of every single one of these. I'm able to do that now in shorter videos to chunk them up. And at each of them say okay, you've watched this video, the next thing you need to do is send me your T shirt size and an email with the heading that says this, and then go and watch the second video in this series. So that I know, okay, you've watched the video because I have your T shirt size. And it keeps these little things in there. Like you said, these checkpoints these things that keep them engaged. So that I know you've watched this all the way to the end.
Meghan 11:38
Something we've also adjusted over the past year is we the way we structure our company is we want to have morning people, afternoon and evening people and then weekend people. So I when I do a job ad I specifically say in the title, you know, weekend, dog walker pet sitter, or morning dog walker pet sitter, and so I have multiple job ads out at once so that I know when this person applies. They're looking specifically for this time of day or these particular days,
Collin 12:07
which is different than we used to do where we just said dog walker pet sitter and then in the job ad try and give some information about what we were looking for. It really cuts out a lot of the mismatch of people's expectations versus what we are looking for when it's literally in the title of the job ad.
Meghan 12:23
Well, and it also helps me weed out people when they're like, Yeah, you know, they applied for the morning position. And they go, Yeah, I can work three to 10. Three, you know, 3pm to 10pm? I mean, no, you're not, you did not read.
Collin 12:35
That's not what we're hiring for. That wasn't in the ad for the morning. dogwalker.
Meghan 12:39
Yeah, right. So also, if you are hiring for a specific area, if you cover a wide area, but you only want to serve as you only want this person to serve as a particular zip code or a particular neighborhood, or, you know, whatever it may be, you can put that in the job title as well. And make it even more specific. You know, we talked about honing in on your target client, your target avatar, we're kind of doing the same thing with this, like you're writing this job ad for one specific person, and you're just you're trying to weed through everything to get to that one person,
Collin 13:10
which is really daunting when you feel like oh my gosh, how am I ever going to find somebody for this position. But the last thing that you want is to have hired somebody with some unspoken expectations, or they don't really understand what's going on. And then you go actually, no, I really need you over here. And they go, I don't want a service over there. So putting it all out there and making it as specific as possible. I think that's what we've done. And Megan's did a really good job of going, I am writing this position for one person, there should only be one, maybe two people who this this job ad fits. And we're going to find them it because they are looking for something very specific. And we hope to be the specific thing that they're looking for.
Meghan 13:48
Well, and I think out of all, you know, really everything that we've learned over the past year really stemmed from our first very first hire. And that was because we got to the onboarding, we, you know, drove our kids down. We had our, our office in our very expensive at the time office. We had our onboarding that day. And we went over the employee handbook in person with our kids in the room because we didn't have a babysitter. And the very next day, she called us and was basically like, I can't do this. This is not what I expected. I gotta quit. Yep. And that was a huge I mean, first of all terrifying moment because we had never done this before. And the very first person that we ever hired quit the very next day. Yeah, but it really was a huge lesson and like, oh my gosh, like, we have so much to learn about this. Yeah. And we have so much to explain. We did we did a terrible job at explaining what actually this job is. And during the exit interview you had specifically asked her you know what Could we have done better to prepare you for this? Or what could we have done better in general? And she said, something like, I didn't really understand what this job was. Yeah, she
Collin 15:11
was like all that stuff that you talked about in the employee handbook, when we were doing the onboarding process. A lot of that would have been really nice to know, before I was sitting there at the table. And it was like, okay, you know, okay, that's actually really helpful, which is another thing that we've learned just the sidebar here of do exit interviews, obviously, only do them if you are leaving on amicable terms, and somebody is leaving for some other position, or they taking an advancement, or they're going back to school or things like that. And you can actually sit down and have that conversation. But ask them, how was your experience here? How could I have made it better? What would you like the next person I hired to know that you didn't know or to go, I can make their experience better? Absolutely do that every single time you will be, your eyes will be open and ours were for this one. I'm so glad I did do that exit interview I was, I was angry. I was scared. I was really frustrated. But we sat down. I wasn't angry at her because I realized this was all on us. We had done a terrible job. This was all on us. This is what we own this 100%. And when she said all that stuff that you talked about in the in the handbook, that actually needs to be made more apparent, because I understand now, what the what, what's going on.
Meghan 16:18
And that's why we put all these processes in place of, you know, we send the questions, and then we have the script that explains more about it. And then when we do the phone interview, we explain more about the job. And it's like at every stage, we just we basically try to talk people out of getting this job we really do. Because it's like, do you really understand that this is all about driving like you will be in your car a lot? Do you understand that? This is not just puppy cuddles and Kitty kisses. This is like cleaning up diarrhea and like checking windows and doors and like watering plants and just things that you trash in and out. Yeah, right things you don't normally think of the people just think, Oh, I love to walk dogs all day? Well, it's not just that. And so we do our best to try to explain exactly what we do.
Collin 17:03
Yeah, I don't need somebody who has five years of pet care experience. At this point, I need somebody who conceptually understands what we do, and agrees that that is something that they would like to at least try, we can train them, we can take somebody who has not ever done this before, and train them to be an excellent dog walker, a pet sitter with the shadowing with everything that we can provide. But if they have to at least be aware of what they're getting themselves into. And that is why we go through such excruciating detail in the very beginning, about what we do, how we do it, why we do it, so that by the time that we are doing the onboarding, it is now learning how my company operates internally, and the expectations for everything internally. But they don't have to wake up and go, Oh, you mean, I actually have to be there at 6am, I can't just decide that I don't want to do it that day. No, that's not how this works. None of this works. Something that we touched on in that series, but didn't really dive into a lot was whether you are going to hire for a general service area, or for around where your staff live. Exactly. And this is something that we are still working on. So we've stuck with a general service area from one central point in a city and said radius around that is where we service and we don't really mind where our staff live, they just need to be able to drive and get to and service within that area. Now, we're not quite to the point where we're ready to maybe refine that into smaller areas and hire people specifically in areas like okay, I'm gonna plant you here, because that's where you live. And the service area that you have over domain over
Meghan 18:44
is a mile or two around your house, basically.
Collin 18:46
Yeah, and the reason that is, is because everything we have is still pretty sporadic and pretty spotty, and there's no really cohesive unit or flow across geographic area. It's pretty widespread at this point. But I do think that's the point that we're going to get eventually, once we can get more consistency with our clients and their bookings is be able to tell our staff, okay, you live here, that's awesome. You have kind of more of these things. But that brings up another aspect of going that kind of impacts whether you are going to do a one for one service model, or whether you're going to have a team based approach to your to your clients and servicing them. So that's something else that you have to consider and how that links up with general service area versus around where clients live.
Meghan 19:28
Yeah, and one for one meaning one sitter for one client, right?
Collin 19:34
Yes, exactly. Versus a team based approach where you go, I have five sitters, any one of them may be on this client, given the schedule time of day or the coverage that other people are doing it that
Meghan 19:46
well, it all depends on the size of the city what exactly your service area is, and then how big you want to grow as a company because the the one from one model is going to require probably a lot more people big because you're gonna need to have backups for that one person, you're going to need to have different, you can't expect that one person to work like a solo sitter. So you're going to need to have, you know, obviously, like I said coverage, but also coverage and time off. And really, this is all about us taking a crash course in operational management and process improvement, you know, how we thought we wanted things to work just didn't quite scale with eight team members. And one of those was our key policy, which we are now changing and, and going to lockboxes. You know, we, we knew we didn't want each staff to have every key possible. That's just something for our company, I don't want my sitters having keys losing keys, it just seems like a really big headache. And so since we break up our days, differently than our weekends for different staff members, we don't do a one for one, like we just talked about one staff per one client, we keep all keys at our office and lockbox for staff to check in and check out when they need what they need for that day. So we are now moving to lockboxes.
Collin 21:01
Yeah, because we're his way of operating really didn't work for two really important reasons. One, the drive time to and from the office is a killer on business profits.
Meghan 21:11
Because unfortunately, our office is not really predominantly where most of our clients are, yeah,
Collin 21:16
so our staff would have to drive from their home to the office, that's unpaid time, once they go to the office, and they pick up the keys, paid time from the office to that first visit, and so on and so forth. And then at the end, they would have to return and drive from wherever they ended up back to the office to drop off the keys, which is something that, again, we believe strongly in and nobody ever taking keys home at any point. So that's all controlled and kept safely and secure at a lockbox. However, this does cost a lot of money. And then the second other reason is that staff forget to return keys at the end of the day. And the sitter that comes into the office at 6am. To start their day doesn't find the keys because the sitter that was doing the 10pm visit forgot to return them. And so the 6am sitter is frantically trying to figure out where these keys are and everything. So to avoid that entirely, we are going to be moving to lock boxes and implementing those that'll be probably something that we'll cover and see how that goes. Moving forward.
Meghan 22:15
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Collin 22:59
We've also been learning a lot about company culture, communication and education. So we talked about it earlier, we have been moving into a lot of doing videos for our onboarding. We're now falling down the rabbit hole of creating our own in house training modules and videos for staff. It really helps us know that they are following exactly what our expectations are. And importantly here, I love to talk. So you're kidding.
Meghan 23:26
It's shocking.
Collin 23:28
Yeah, it's really amazing how a three page SOP turns into a 45 minute video. How'd that happen?
Meghan 23:33
I do not have that skill.
Collin 23:34
So we use the paid version of loom because video takes up way too much space in our Google Drive. And you cannot track who has watched the videos or not if it is in Google Drive. So loom will send you a notification when somebody watches it. And you can go into loom to your dashboard. Click on a video and see every person who has watched it. Yeah,
Meghan 23:56
there is a free version of loom but I think it limits to five minutes per video, right?
Collin 24:00
Yeah, which just isn't enough to cover what we want to do. Now if you thought I was doing the video probably no way. Fair enough. But if you want to do send quick updates, quick how tos, those kinds of informational videos that just keep really short to the point, you can definitely get by with using the free version of loom. So we train our staff by doing in person shadowing, we have them listen to some of our podcast episodes. Actually, we have them watch those videos covering SOPs, they take pet first aid and CPR, other animal behavior stuff as well, which is where we will be bringing a lot more in house training by the end of the year is those trainings on animal behavior and more how tos instructional videos for our staff, because we really feel like they get more out of it when they learn from us directly. It's a much better experience for everybody and it's more consistent care at the end of the day when we are the ones telling them and then we are also the ones critiquing them and giving them feedback and making sure everything is just alive. more cohesive,
Meghan 25:01
which is why we have a lot of touch points with our staff, we have tried to have as many as possible, we have implemented regular meetings with our staff, you know, at the one month and the two month in the three month mark and, and trying to gauge how they feel about the position and their work life balance.
Collin 25:19
And that stem from the fact that we are trying to in culture rate and educate them on expectations of level of communication in our involvement in concern for how they are doing. We don't want them to feel like that they are onboarding that we hold their hand through the entire shadowing and onboarding and training process. And then the next time they hear from us is three months from now, their three month review, we want to make sure that they know we have opportunities to come and talk with us. And for many people, the only way that they know that is if we literally have a calendar invite scheduled at the one month at the two month at the three month and we let them know what the one month two month. These are just check ins, how are you doing anything you need from us? Here's what here's, you know, here's some things. And then the three month is where we actually do the true review. But we need to have more touch points with that, again, we're not micromanaging them, we're not calling them and having them walk us through the things that they're doing that day or anything like that. But we are trying to show it, we have a genuine interest. And we want to encourage them as much as possible as they work through this.
Meghan 26:24
Well. And that's why I think it's a good idea that we also take a personality test for everybody on staff, including us, you know, how do you operate? How do you like to be talked to? What kind of things motivate you? And how can we help you in shaping this company?
Collin 26:41
We are going Hey, especially at the three month interview, a three month review, I love asking the question, okay, you've been with us for three months, you have seen how the company is operating? What do you think we need to be doing more of? And what role do you want to play on that? What interests do you have that you would like to see the company take a position in or start doing things in. And maybe it's just allowing them to celebrate and cheer them on and their life accomplishments. So you know, going back to school, doing cool vacations or other major life events?
Meghan 27:16
Yeah, we use gastos birthday feature as well. This is not an ad for gussto. But it's just something we use. And we like it, you know, gastos birthday feature reminds you of a staff birthday. So you can send a card or make a special social media post. So every staff member can, you know, feel special on their day. And you know, your clients can rave about how awesome they are on social media. But you can
Collin 27:37
also send them a digital birthday card. And what it does is it allows every other staff member the opportunity to sign and write something so kind of like that staff birthday card that used to go round in an office where somebody would go, Oh, it's you know, Jim's birthday today. And then they go around from cubicle cubicle or office to office and everyone would sign it and write something, Jim, you're the best. What we could capture a little bit of that, by them getting an email on their birthday that says Happy Birthday from everybody here at Funky Bunch. Here's all of your, what your everyone has written about you and everything like that. Again, this is not an ad for gussto. But there's a link in the show notes for you to check out and learn more about them. They also have a monthly questionnaire that you can set up. And this is again, a feature that we're still tweaking and trying to figure out how much we like it and everything. But gussto automatically sends a monthly questionnaire to all of your staff for them to anonymously fill out. And the questions cover all sorts of topics. And you can actually make up your own questions depending on what you want to know. And this has been really helpful for us to know and get feedback from them, especially about management, how we're doing there, whether expectations are being met, whether they feel like they are being fulfilled in the company, whether they have a good work life balance. So we can just give a general pulse check of how everybody's doing in the company, and in what we can do to maybe manage that a little bit better.
Meghan 29:00
And there's nothing to say you have to use gussto. I mean, you can of course do all of this yourself and send out you know, email reminders and put stuff in your calendar. It's just this is done for you. And you don't really have to think about it. So whatever works best for you.
Collin 29:12
Well, and because over the last year, we originally went to gusto and thought okay, maybe this is a way to run payroll and digging in and going okay, well, how many other features can we use of this and for this, and that's just anything in general, if any software you ever get any service that you sign up for, you may sign up for one thing, but go, Okay, what's the power of this thing that I can do? What more things can I learn and make my company better by using all of these different features?
Meghan 29:39
There are two more points that I want to touch on. The first one is to always have your hiring ad out there. Yeah, even if you are not hiring and right now, you never know when somebody is going to quit or you need to fire somebody and you need to hire right away. So always having your hiring out out there. So you can keep putting people through your cycle of questions and see if People are going to be a good fit. Or if you want to just bring somebody on very, very part time, but they seem like a great fit, you may want to do that. Well, it
Collin 30:08
also allows you to build kind of a Rolodex of people to contact so that maybe they weren't a good fit three months ago, but now your company is in a different position, or you have different needs, you can go back through and go, Okay, I didn't want this person to move on. And we didn't hire this person. But I remember that this person was maybe number three on my list, I can at least start there and reach back out to them to see if they still have availability and interest in this position. That way, you don't have to feel like you're always starting back over from zero as well as that. Remember, every time that you have these ads out there, you're going to get 10 people, you only hire one, well rank them one through five. And that way, the next time you hire, start with that original list of people go 2345, see if there's an interest, if not go down to the new people who are coming in and applying.
Meghan 30:56
And then the last thing I think that we've learned over the past year is that we really play to our own strengths. So a year ago, we had no idea kind of how we would balance this hiring thing, who would kind of do what, but for me, I've learned that I really enjoy the organizing and the scheduling. So I'm the one that does everything with indeed I spit out the job ads, I collect the information from the candidates, I then send it back out and I schedule phone interviews in person interviews, and then basically throw it to you.
Collin 31:28
Where I'm handling, the phone interviews, the in person interviews, that note taking of that the compiling of their information, of handling the in person trainings and kind of the day to day communication with staff and checking in with them. To the 14 months ago, we're kind of when we were just had this budding idea of hiring, none of these tasks were on our plate, we had no idea that we would be doing any of these and we did not sit down and go, Okay, here's all the things that we're going to have to do. You take these three, I'll take these two, and so on and so forth. And so that's a reminder to me is that a lot of times we go into we dive headfirst into these new initiatives, there's no way to ever possibly think through all of the various aspects and level of involvement and tasks and things that you are going to have to do. And that's okay,
Meghan 32:17
well, yeah, you don't know what you don't know until you know it.
Collin 32:21
Exactly. And so you can kind of roll with it and figure out okay, are these the tasks that I like, maybe not paid? What do I do with these tasks, then, for the time being, and just kind of learn and grow into this over time?
Meghan 32:34
Yeah, can I delegate this do I not want to do do I need to do I want to hire, but I don't want to have to do it really any of the work, maybe you hire a hiring manager, maybe you give it all to jazz HR? You know, just because you want to hire doesn't necessarily mean that you need to be the one to do it. If you genuinely don't like it,
Collin 32:55
or maybe you know, that I'm going to have to hire and I'm going to have to train all these people that I bring on. If you don't want to have to be the one that does all the in depth portion by portion training. There are options out there to help with that. And, and just see what's going to play to your strengths.
Meghan 33:12
So those are some of the things that we've learned over the past year, while the year it has been insane. And I'm sure that the next 25 ish years of hiring will be even more insane. Check back next year. No. But if there's something that you've learned over your hiring, or if you don't even know where to start, you can reach out to us at feedback at petsitter confessional.com. Business Coach Natasha opionion is going to answer the question, how do I scale as a solo business?
Natasha 33:45
Yeah, that's the thing about being in Solo is when you are solo you only can do so much right? Like you can't win the Superbowl by yourself. When they say there's no I in team. It's really a real thing that we were taught since kindergarten because it's really hard to do everything by ourselves. It's almost impossible. And we do encourage us all as parents, as you know, people, this community society, stop trying to do things alone because you will burn yourself down. And when you burn yourself down, you're not good to anyone. So if I was a solo player again, and I did it all over again, I would have significantly raised my rates. I would be almost a celebrity, you know type of dog walker pet sitter, and I'm like, I only have one person, I don't want to get sick, I don't want to get pneumonia, I don't want to risk you know, not having lunch. I don't want to break a leg. So I am only going to take maybe you know 25 ish clients, I'm going to charge a premium price. So what maybe a bigger company is charging and they have to you know get, you know, 75 clients to make their quota. Well I get to charge a much more higher price and I have 25 clients to meet meet that same quota. The price is the price is the price. It doesn't matter how you split it, it just has to make sense for each individual person. So you want to look at how much of your walkers if you had a team, how much your walker who's making as a take home by themselves, but they're on your team, you put yourself as that person without a team, you want to make sure you're also giving yourself a livable wage,
Collin 35:14
then work backwards and go, What do I need to price? How busy do I need to be in order to make this or myself and that is setting that that scaffolding and setting that structure in place, make it work for you and sort of feel like you're working for the business.
Natasha 35:29
And then don't forget your eight months of emergency fund. So not only are you paying your bills every day, you're paying your software, but you also need more money to put away for emergency. Because if you're preparing for a recession, or if you're preparing for a pandemic, you have to have fun set aside that you're like, you know what, this is gonna get me through another eight months, without me stressing myself out. So I'm allowing myself cushion to either pivot, which a lot of us have decided to do, or I can stay the course and write it out. But I have the income to do so. So you're giving yourself those options, flexibility to decide which way works for you. And then you can really look at the numbers. One thing that I was able to learn at post COVID. I was like, I need to see where the market is shifting. I saw that all Gen Zers were like, I'm not going back to work. I refuse. I'm putting a picket out here and I'm not going back to work. So I knew the market was shifting all the way to petsitting I had to make a choice. Am I going to shift all the way to pet sitting? Or am I going to PAWS dog walking in and make money online and brand. So I decided to pivot with products. But I had a lot of income to be able to sit on to allow myself to be like, I'll just write it out and I'll pivot when I want to. But we have to make sure our pricing is allowing us to do that.
Meghan 36:53
If you would like to join Natasha's monthly membership group, you can do so at automated ceo.com and use the code P SC 20 for 15% off. We hope that this episode has been helpful to you in your hiring journey. And if you're not interested in hiring, that's okay too. It's all about what's best for you and your business.
Collin 37:10
Thank you so much to today's sponsors, Pitzer associates and our amazing Patreon supporters. We'll talk with you next time.
37:16
Bye
