This week’s question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.
I’m a nutritionist and I see clients for several hours each day. There are certain things I need to do to grow my business, but if I’m still the practitioner, I have limited time. Plus, there’s self-care—eating lunch, working out, etc. If I’m working, sitting in the office all day, it feels less healthy. I know I need leverage.
Still, I’m having resistance around hiring someone. Twenty years ago, I managed employees, and had good and tough experiences. Maybe I’m scared to hire someone. What if I bring a ton of drama into my life by hiring someone, and it goes south? Do we all go through that fear of hiring people?
I don’t think that’s the right question. It doesn’t really matter if everyone goes through that.
What matters is that you make the most use of your time possible.
I’d recommend 3 things:
1) For 1 week, keep a notebook next to you, and write down every single thing you do each day. This will show you where your time is being spent.
Track all the $10/hour tasks that you do, like managing your calendar, sending clients reminders, setting things up on your computer. That’s all stuff you shouldn’t be doing, because it’s not the best use of your time. Those tasks don’t require your skill level or your brilliance.
You could easily pay someone to do $10/hr tasks for you.
If you take those off your plate, how much MORE you could do—both on your business and in servicing your clients?
2) Look at how many times a day do you say the same thing, or teach the same thing to people?
If you’re repeating yourself over and over again, start to record those things, so you can send clients the recordings. Begin to build a bank of trainings, so that you can inform them, rather than repeating yourself.
3) When you’re looking to hire someone, put them through a process that will give you key indicators of what they’ll do for you.
It’s actually easy to spot people who are high-drama early on in the hiring process.
If I ask, “Hey, are you willing to do a test project?” Instead of a simple yes or no response, they’ll send me, “Yes, I’d love to. But I have this going on Saturday, and I have this on Sunday. So I won’t be able to get it to you until Monday afternoon, but maybe then it might be Tuesday…”
You can get an idea that this person won’t be a good fit.
Get as much information as you can from someone before you even bring them in for an interview.
You HAVE to hire if you’re going to scale. It’s required.
Look at your role mathematically. It’s like a formula. There’s only so much time in the day. You want to spend most of your time doing high-dollar tasks. Offload the low-dollar tasks to someone else, because mathematically you’ll make more money.
The first hire should be an assistant, even if it’s only for a couple hours a day.
