There comes a time in any developing business where no matter how much you’ve worked on making your work flows more efficient, how many great, automated systems you’ve put in place, that you will still hit the wall. There is no hack that will get you past this.
What will get you past this is hiring just enough help.
Don’t get me wrong, you can hire too much and get in over your head in terms of expenses and team size. But, not hiring in the right timing will mean you drown, and your business falters.
There are three particular kinds of help that I recommend strongly, in a particular order.
Take a look:
What’s your experience of hiring? Do you agree? Questions?
With love,
Mark Silver, M.Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every act of business can be an act of love.
P.S. Learn how to hire in the Learning Community
The Learning Community is currently open for new members, but only through this week.
From time to time I teach a new module to add to our library, and the next one, that I’ll be teaching live within the Learning Community, only for members, is how to hire your first admin support person. There will be live classes Tuesday, September 29, October 6 and October 13, 2:30pm eastern. And the only way to be there, is to be a Learning Community member.
And that’s just one reason to join us. There are dozens of other modules already in the library, weekly Compassionate Accountability and Coaching calls, an entire library 150+ guided Remembrance meditations to support your spiritual practice in business, and everything else you need to guide you in moving your business into Momentum.
All at pay-from-the-heart pricing. Why not join us?
Click to take a look: The Heart of Business Learning Community
If you have any questions please ask!
4 Responses
Hi Mark, a great topic and a tricky issue. I have had an assistant and it has really been a big help. Honestly the main boon has been that 1) it gets me going on things that I would otherwise find another excuse to put off (making videos!) and 2) that just having another person in the room increases my energy so much. So it makes things possible even beyond just what that person does.
The place where I keep getting stuck is finding help with my website. I have started work with one person and looked into another, and there’s just no connection between their design style and mine. It gets expensive and time-consuming to bring on and get rid of these people who can’t connect to what I am aiming for. Trying a 3rd person this week.
I do know that feeling of tremendous relief that you describe – my handyman is like that. I call him, I pay him, and all my problems go away. It is magic. I just haven’t figured out how to do that in the website department yet.
The place where I keep getting stuck is finding help with my website. I have started work with one person and looked into another, and there’s just no connection between their design style and mine. It gets expensive and time-consuming to bring on and get rid of these people who can’t connect to what I am aiming for. Trying a 3rd person this week.
I do know that feeling of tremendous relief that you describe – my handyman is like that. I call him, I pay him, and all my problems go away. It is magic. I just haven’t figured out how to do that in the website department yet.
Great post, Mark — I am glad to just have joined the Learning Community!!
I’ve gotten stuck trying to manage my inbox. It’s been hard to unsubscribe from things that don’t nourish me, sometimes because I do care about the topic, but I just can’t handle the tone and urgency of certain activist emails. Other times, I needed to keep certain emails in a certain folder, or label them. It was all very personal.
This was especially hard because I didn’t see myself able to delegate anything until these personal choices were made. I couldn’t have told someone what to do and let them do the chore for me, because I hadn’t faced my inbox, really.
To be compassionate towards myself and meet my need for support anyways, I hired a teenage neighbor. He’s very calm and patient. I just paid him a basic amount to sit in the room and do his homework while I do mine 🙂
What he did was track my *intention* and then he’d do his homework at a table across the room from me. As I found myself getting upset that I had once again lost focus, he would notice, look up, and ask me: “Are you still ____ing ____?” (e.g. “unsubscribing from email lists”)
If I was, I was obviously stuck, and I had this opportunity to ask him to come look over my shoulder (and pay him a higher rate!)
If I wasn’t, I would tell him what I’d switched to, and he’d write it down as my new focus, asking me if I want a timer so I have support in getting back to the other intention soon.
It was great!
I paid him a certain bonus if I disturbed him in any given period,
and twice that if I actually got his attention the whole time.
He had plenty of time to finish his homework on time even if I needed him the whole period, so it was really a favor to him AND to me if I lost my temperance and just had him hold my hand ♥
Great video, thanks! I hired an assistant in the past but without structure I found that I spent a lot of time managing them. It’s great when it works though, so I’ll start looking again.