Okay team, today I'm talking about something that has been one of best business decisions I've made thus far: hiring.
I remember over a year ago, I was so busy and it was literally keeping me up at night. There was too much work, new leads coming in and not enough time in the day. Especially if you are a working mom, with a social life and a human who wants to sleep more than 4 hours a night.
In theory this is a great problem to have as an entrepreneur but it is also, scary and hard and stressful. Do you hire an intern? Part-time? Which areas make the most sense to hire for and when? Can you afford it? Will you yield the right ROIs? What if the person doesn't work out? Will you have time to lead the person/people? What if you've never led a team before?
Trust me, I GET IT. I asked myself a lot of these questions but for me, it was mostly around finances. Could I really afford to hire someone?
After dragging my feet and coming up with 10 reasons why I couldn't afford to hire someone, one of my best friends basically smacked me in the face and told me to do it. As did Tony Robbins. So, between Barbara and Tony, I had no choice. And here are two quotes that inspired me to take action:
Do what you do best and get other people to do the rest.
Hire for your weakness. And then get out of the way.
And so, I did both of these things. I hired two people that collectively took about 50-60% of my daily tasks off of my plate so that I could focus on what I love and the big initiatives I have in place to grow my business.
And it is of no surprise that in the first three months of doing this, my business had it's highest revenue months AND it's highest net profits. We were able to take on more projects, yielding more revenue. We were able to focus more on passive digital income. We were able to create processes and efficiencies that are helping us scale and work smarter, not harder.
Growing pains in a business are inevitable and my advice, as you start off, when you hit the point where the joy is turned to stress because there is too much work (which, praise God for too much work!), hire help. Or, here's a thought - hire the help BEFORE it becomes too stressful.
I am lucky enough to have two incredible women alongside of me that are truly my right and left hands.
I do not enjoy (to put it lightly) the administrative side of design projects and guess what? Pam - she loves it and she's amazing at it. DONE.
It wasn't wise for me to be spending time managing my Liketoknow.it program (which is a revenue generator for AUID) so I outsourced that to Sarah. DONE.
I LOVE focusing my time on large-scale renovations and new construction projects but it was hard to do those and say yes to the smaller projects. And now, with Pam, we can divide and conquer, grow our client list and generate incremental revenue. DONE.
And these are just a few examples of many!
Without question, hiring at AUID has absolutely leveled up my business and my brand. Given I was able to see the financial benefits, as well as the emotional benefits (I'm way happier and sleep 8+ hours a night), pretty quickly, it was such a blessing and I knew it was the right move.
And I know in the future, I will continue to hire and build this team. We have incredible plans and initiatives we are working on and I wouldn't be able to do this without having the help I do.
If you ever want to talk about this or need advice, I offer 1:1 coaching so please, don't hesitate to reach out! Just shoot me an email - owner@annueno.com.
Here's to doing what you do best and hiring for your weakness,
Ann