Speaker1: [00:00:04] You are listening to the Empowered Business podcast, I’m your host, Monica Froese, a mom of two and your secret weapon to creating a six figure digital product business. I’m on a mission to help 1000 women make 100000 dollars a year. That’s right. One hundred million dollars towards financial independence for women. As an online business expert, I am teaching you everything I know right here week after week so you can join us on the journey to 100 million dollars. Sound good. Then let’s jump in. One of the number one questions I have been getting from my

Speaker2: [00:00:50] Community and my students recently is

Speaker1: [00:00:53] How do you find someone to

Speaker2: [00:00:55] Work inside of your business? How do I get help?

Speaker1: [00:00:58] How do I hire? And these questions are things that when people start their business, they think, I’m never going to get

Speaker2: [00:01:06] To the point where I’m going to need to hire people. And then before you know it, you turn around, you’re making money and

Speaker1: [00:01:12] You’re totally overwhelmed because there’s just not enough hours in the day. And here’s the thing I have been hiring for, I would say the last four years, maybe four or

Speaker2: [00:01:21] Five years in my own business,

Speaker1: [00:01:23] Whether it was hiring employees on

Speaker2: [00:01:25] Payroll or

Speaker1: [00:01:26] Numerous amounts of contractors. And it’s still not a strong suit of mine. This is something that I need help with as well. So I thought we should go to the expert. We should find someone who excels at

Speaker2: [00:01:37] Hiring and building

Speaker1: [00:01:38] Leaders in their companies.

Speaker2: [00:01:40] And I found someone

Speaker1: [00:01:42] Who I think you’re really going to enjoy. Her name is Tina

Speaker2: [00:01:45] Forsight and she works

Speaker1: [00:01:46] With visionaries and business

Speaker2: [00:01:48] Leaders to

Speaker1: [00:01:49] Align their business with their

Speaker2: [00:01:50] Calling and to help

Speaker1: [00:01:51] Them hire and lead top

Speaker2: [00:01:53] Performers to take their business to the next

Speaker1: [00:01:55] Level for over 20 years. She has worked with six and seven figure business owners to shift them out of burnout so they can shine. Tina is a pioneer in the world of online business, having found it and built the organization

Speaker2: [00:02:07] That is home for the certified

Speaker1: [00:02:09] Obm training in the last 12 plus years. Since its inception, the online business manager industry has become established as a key role on the team, a fast growing online businesses through the International Association of Online Business Managers. She is an industry champion, connecting business owners with

Speaker2: [00:02:29] Arms who can help

Speaker1: [00:02:30] Them thrive. And Tina has a wealth of knowledge to

Speaker2: [00:02:33] Share with us not only

Speaker1: [00:02:35] On the practical side of hiring, but we

Speaker2: [00:02:37] Also dove into the

Speaker1: [00:02:38] Mindset behind hiring

Speaker2: [00:02:39] Because delegating

Speaker1: [00:02:41] In hiring it takes a lot

Speaker2: [00:02:44] Of willingness

Speaker1: [00:02:46] To be uncomfortable to succeed at it. And that is something we talk about today’s

Speaker2: [00:02:50] Episode as well.

Speaker1: [00:02:51] So let’s dove right in. Hi, Tina. Welcome to the show.

Speaker3: [00:02:55] Hey, glad to be here.

Speaker1: [00:02:57] Yeah, I’m really excited about today’s topic, all about hiring. I was mentioning to you before we started recording that this is a topic lots of my audience is interested in because they have just started developing their digital products and making money.

Speaker2: [00:03:12] And now they’re overwhelmed because one of the main

Speaker1: [00:03:14] Things that people don’t realize is every time you sell something, even though you have created the thing to sell, you are now marketing the thing to sell. Then there’s customer service that happens and that’s usually very

Speaker2: [00:03:24] Draining takes away from you

Speaker1: [00:03:26] Selling. And that’s when people realize that they need help and they weren’t

Speaker2: [00:03:29] Anticipating needing help. So it’s a topic I

Speaker1: [00:03:32] Get asked about all the time, but it’s not something I’m an expert in. So I am very excited for you to be here and tell us all of your secrets on how to not make bad hiring choices and perhaps make better choices. OK, so before

Speaker2: [00:03:46] We dove in,

Speaker1: [00:03:47] I would love to know about your entrepreneurial journey, how you got started and what your business is today.

Speaker3: [00:03:52] Yeah, I’m very much an accidental entrepreneur. Looking back, I’m not surprised that I ended

Speaker2: [00:04:00] Up

Speaker3: [00:04:01] Owning my own business and doing what I’m doing. But in the early days, I actually started my business back in nineteen ninety nine, which makes me feel like

Speaker2: [00:04:09] An old timer, especially in the online world. And I just had an

Speaker3: [00:04:12] Opportunity come up to do some

Speaker2: [00:04:14] Consulting with a

Speaker3: [00:04:15] Dotcom startup at that time. And it was also around them that I discovered the coaching industry. So the life business etc coaching world I discovered around that time and just really fell in love with this concept of like, oh wow,

Speaker2: [00:04:30] People can get paid to do

Speaker3: [00:04:31] This. Like what? I initially hung up my shingle, I took training, I hung up my shingle as a coach.

Speaker2: [00:04:37] Truthfully, I had

Speaker3: [00:04:38] No clue what I was doing. So I had no clients and I very much was in a space a number of years back where we were buying our first house, my husband and I at

Speaker2: [00:04:47] The time,

Speaker3: [00:04:48] And I wasn’t making any money and we needed more money for a down payment and kind of in one of those crunch spaces. And I had an opportunity come up to work on

Speaker2: [00:04:58] The back end of a

Speaker3: [00:04:59] Really large coach training a

Speaker2: [00:05:01] Membership

Speaker3: [00:05:02] Organization.

Speaker2: [00:05:03] And so I jumped

Speaker3: [00:05:05] In to working with them. I was doing some event management. I was doing just kind of I was a right hand person to the general manager there. I jumped into that opportunity thinking, OK, I’ll just do this on the

Speaker2: [00:05:16] Side while I continue to build my own coaching

Speaker3: [00:05:20] Business and things really quickly kind of flipped around. I found that I loved being a part of the behind the scenes of a really successful, fast growing business. And at that point in time, like there’s lots of seven, multi seven, et cetera, coaching business and training businesses these days. Back then, we didn’t even have shopping cart software yet,

Speaker2: [00:05:43] You know, like everybody was on

Speaker3: [00:05:44] Ridgelines. You couldn’t even mute the line, so if somebody was fighting with their spokes, you would hear it like this was a number of years ago. But being a part of this team behind the scenes of like,

Speaker2: [00:05:56] Ok, we’re

Speaker3: [00:05:57] Working together to make things happen, I really fell in love with that. And so the founder of that company, unfortunately passed away. This was in two thousand and three, Thomas Leonard, who was in many ways the founder of and one of the early drivers of the coaching industry. When he passed away, it was kind of in the space

Speaker2: [00:06:15] Of like, oh, what do I do now?

Speaker3: [00:06:17] And it was this option of do I kind of continue? Do I go back to going down this coaching path or do I keep doing what I’m doing and work behind the scenes with other coaches? And so I started working as an online business manager. I started calling

Speaker2: [00:06:33] Myself an online business

Speaker3: [00:06:35] Manager at that time,

Speaker2: [00:06:37] Mainly because I didn’t want to call

Speaker3: [00:06:39] Myself a VA. To be quite honest, I knew I was working at a higher level with my clients. Now, can I ask

Speaker1: [00:06:45] What year was this? For reference?

Speaker3: [00:06:47] That was two thousand three.

Speaker1: [00:06:48] Ok, so you started calling yourself an online business manager in two thousand three. Wow. I didn’t even know that term existed back then.

Speaker3: [00:06:55] Yeah, it was my friend Andrew and I, we kind of joke about like,

Speaker2: [00:06:59] Oh, if we could go back to the moment

Speaker3: [00:07:01] Where we came up with that phrase in a conversation. Right.

Speaker2: [00:07:04] Like it was literally just

Speaker3: [00:07:06] Let me call myself

Speaker2: [00:07:07] This, because I don’t want

Speaker3: [00:07:08] To call myself that. But I started working as a note for other six and seven figure coaches and did that for a number of years where I was working with them behind the scenes, helping to run the business and manage the day to day and get teams and whatever in place. And over that time around twenty six, twenty seven ish, after a few years

Speaker2: [00:07:31] Of doing this, I had

Speaker3: [00:07:32] People coming up to me and saying, Hey, Tina, I want to hire people who do. I want to hire somebody who does what you do right. Like I need somebody to work at this level in my business. Likewise, I have more and more people who are coming and saying, hey, I want to do what you do. I want to work at this level with clients.

Speaker2: [00:07:48] And so in twenty

Speaker3: [00:07:50] Eight, I wrote my book Becoming an online

Speaker2: [00:07:52] Business manager, which very

Speaker3: [00:07:54] Obviously is becoming an online business manager. I honestly thought I would write the book and that would be it was like, OK, I’ve written a book. If you want to be an IBM, go now. I thought that was all it would be. But very shortly after that it became obvious that people wanted more. They wanted more training, they wanted more support. And so in two thousand and

Speaker2: [00:08:15] Nine, I created

Speaker3: [00:08:17] The International Association of Online Business Managers and the

Speaker2: [00:08:21] Obm Training and

Speaker3: [00:08:22] Certification

Speaker2: [00:08:23] Program, which I continue

Speaker3: [00:08:25] To run to this day. My role in it now is very different than what it was in the earlier days.

Speaker2: [00:08:31] We have people

Speaker3: [00:08:32] That do the training and I have people that run the association and such. That was the time where I really shifted my business model from being that solo producer

Speaker2: [00:08:42] One on one service provider

Speaker3: [00:08:45] That I was working. As for the first 10 years or so of my business

Speaker2: [00:08:48] Through to as I kind of

Speaker3: [00:08:50] Lovingly like to say, like, oh wow, I have like a real business now. And when we’re talking about hiring, it’s kind of funny because

Speaker2: [00:08:58] I was the person

Speaker3: [00:09:00] Behind the scenes working with my clients.

Speaker2: [00:09:02] I was the one

Speaker3: [00:09:04] That was helping build the team and bring other people on board. And I was the team member for the clients I worked with for so many years.

Speaker2: [00:09:12] And when I

Speaker3: [00:09:12] Shifted my business model from being a nobody to a training model to a training and coaching

Speaker2: [00:09:17] Model, it was very

Speaker3: [00:09:19] Surprising to me to be like, oh, I have to hire my own people now. And it was even my own coach at the time that I was working with where he’s like, you need to hire your own OBM now.

Speaker2: [00:09:30] I was like, Oh, I do.

Speaker3: [00:09:33] Like, I wasn’t even thinking about that.

Speaker2: [00:09:35] So I really

Speaker3: [00:09:36] Get this space in the early days, like you mentioned, a lot of your listeners and a lot of folks in your community. I mean, we’re used to being the one doing it all right. Like we’re the solo producer where the main person we’re the only person in the business doing whatever it is that we do and getting to a point where it’s like,

Speaker2: [00:09:56] Wait a minute,

Speaker3: [00:09:57] I think I might need some help here. I never would have expected

Speaker2: [00:10:01] That in the early days

Speaker3: [00:10:02] Of my business. Right. Like, I never would have expected that, hey, I would be where I am today. So we have our certified OBM training, our association. I also do a fair amount of leadership coaching and training as well under my own brand, under my own name and various other things in that regard.

Speaker2: [00:10:20] But having this like, oh, I have

Speaker3: [00:10:22] This kind of real business, if you will, stage in the game. You know, it’s not what I necessarily thought would happen, but I’m very

Speaker2: [00:10:31] Happy to be in this space.

Speaker1: [00:10:33] So can we define I know people are wondering this, and I feel like there are a lot of different ways that people over the years because I mean, I’ve been in the online world since, I guess technically I was in tech before that. So it was. Very like an adjacent to the online world, but I’ve had my first website since 2013, so even I feel like it’s been a while compared to I mean, the Internet has changed vastly

Speaker2: [00:10:54] Even since then. And along

Speaker1: [00:10:56] The way, I think that I’ve heard a lot of different definitions

Speaker2: [00:11:00] Between what an

Speaker1: [00:11:02] Obm online business manager

Speaker2: [00:11:04] Is and

Speaker1: [00:11:04] Does compared to what a VA, a virtual assistant is and does. How do you define the difference?

Speaker3: [00:11:10] Yeah, the main difference is a virtual assistant is very much a doer. So when you’re bringing a VA onto the team and I’m a big believer too, that everybody should have a VA in some ways I hate to use the word

Speaker2: [00:11:24] Should because it feels

Speaker3: [00:11:25] A little like shaking a finger at somebody. Right. But truthfully, as soon as we’re able to in our business journey to start to get support, even with the simple day to day doing stuff like you mentioned, customer service or scheduling or whatever

Speaker2: [00:11:39] That is, it’s a good thing

Speaker3: [00:11:41] To build that habit even for ourselves and to free ourselves up from the day to day

Speaker2: [00:11:46] Doing tasks.

Speaker3: [00:11:47] And OBM is very much there coming in at the management level in the company. And so not every business is ready to hire at the management level.

Speaker2: [00:11:57] Yet in the online world, we’re generally

Speaker3: [00:12:00] In the earlier six figure range. You might have heard of this concept, Monaca, two of like the quarter million dollar speed bump where it’s like it’s pretty easy for us independently, kind of on our own to be like, all right, I can go,

Speaker2: [00:12:13] Go, go. But there comes a

Speaker3: [00:12:15] Point where when we’re just doing everything on our own and still carrying everything on our own

Speaker2: [00:12:19] Shoulders, even if we have

Speaker3: [00:12:21] A bit of VA support or doing support

Speaker2: [00:12:23] Around us, we just

Speaker3: [00:12:25] Hit this point where we can’t grow past it. There’s only so much that any of us individually can do can only, can move forward, can drive.

Speaker2: [00:12:34] And so when Obama

Speaker3: [00:12:35] Comes into the business where

Speaker2: [00:12:37] It’s a

Speaker3: [00:12:37] Little tongue in cheek, maybe to say it this way, but when there is a business to be managed,

Speaker2: [00:12:42] Right. So there’s consistent

Speaker3: [00:12:43] Revenue. There’s solid goals for where we’re headed and where we want to go next. And when a business is in that stage, part of what they really need is they need to start building their foundation. They need to start getting the right people in place. And the team,

Speaker2: [00:12:58] They need to start getting the right

Speaker3: [00:13:00] Structure and systems and such in place on the team. They need to be working on their planning and be really purposeful and clear with, OK, here’s where we’re headed next, how do we want to get there, et cetera. And so the role of a manager is very much coming into the business to work with the CEO, to work with the business owner very much in that right hand kind of capacity of like, OK, where are we going? How do we want to get there? Great. Let me work with the team. Let me lay everything out. Let me drive the process and the projects to make sure that we’re hitting those goals.

Speaker1: [00:13:33] So in the book traction, are you familiar with that book? I’m only to the finish. I’m not interested. I remember reading traction. I’d heard about it a lot. I was always

Speaker2: [00:13:43] Listening and watching

Speaker1: [00:13:45] The people that were ahead of me and traction with something that got a lot

Speaker2: [00:13:48] Of buzz. And so I remember reading it.

Speaker1: [00:13:50] I went to Paris with my husband. I read it on that trip because, you know, our flight over eight

Speaker2: [00:13:55] Hour flight back and I had

Speaker1: [00:13:56] Just hired my first full time employee at that point. And interaction, they talk about the concept of the CEO really being the visionary and your right hand person being an integrator. And then the integrator leads basically for some people, it can be like a level of managers in different departments. Sometimes they call them

Speaker2: [00:14:13] Directors, but essentially the

Speaker1: [00:14:14] Ceo is not the one managing the people doing its integrator. Is integrator synonymous to you with an online business manager?

Speaker3: [00:14:23] Yeah, and OBM is an online integrator, essentially. Right. Because I know is also there specializing in working with online based

Speaker2: [00:14:30] Businesses as well to Gogia.

Speaker1: [00:14:32] So basically an OBM, you might hear it referred to as an integrator or like I call Hailie an operations manager. But essentially at this point, because of how small

Speaker2: [00:14:42] We are, one of the biggest things

Speaker1: [00:14:44] I did recently is I

Speaker2: [00:14:46] Control. Right.

Speaker1: [00:14:47] It’s really hard. I’m a control freak. And I think a lot of people who built a business from scratch are also control freaks, hard to delegate. It’s not an actual skill for a lot of us. And so we started growing the team where I was like, well, I can’t have other people manage that. There’s not enough people here. And that was a colossal mistake because I am not strong in management. And I don’t think when I was in corporate, that was one of the things

Speaker2: [00:15:08] I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want

Speaker1: [00:15:10] To manage people. I wanted to be an individual contributor. We’ve talked about that a lot and it didn’t work out very well when I started to take on a lot of management responsibilities. And now we just hired someone new and he’s managing them. Yeah, and the amount of stuff she already knows without me involved, I have taken myself out of being the bottleneck. I cannot believe how much easier things are now that I’ve let go of this need to control everything.

Speaker3: [00:15:37] You know, I’ve joked over the years about starting like the Recovering Control Freaks Club because, I mean, to varying degrees, that’s a huge. Part of what it is, because I agree with you, it’s part of what makes us successful, especially in the early days, like being in control, driving things, doing everything, kind of being in that space, like that’s part of what allows us to get through those early days of what am I doing, what am I selling, how do I sell this? How do I make this whole thing work? Like it takes a certain something to get through those earlier stages. And I had a similar experience. I talk about it as my identity crisis years ago. So when I mentioned my coach at the time back and this was 2010, early 2010, when my coach was like, hey, you need to hire OBM. And I was like, whoa, imagine that. But I did. I hired by First OBM Tiffany. She worked with me for seven and a half years when Tiffany came into the business. She came in and jumped right into all the management.

Speaker2: [00:16:38] Right.

Speaker3: [00:16:39] Like she took over the team. She and we were a small team. Now I’m still a small team in the way that I work. Right. Like there was a couple of days, Tiffany managing projects and driving everything became that layer between me and the rest of the team. And so she jumped in and was doing amazing work. Right, like doing exactly what I hired her for and what we wanted to be doing together. And I hit a point in the business where I was like, oh, wait a minute. Like, if I’m no longer the one doing everything, if I’m no longer the one jumping into everything, because part of what happened was the team would go to her with questions. Right. And of course, that makes sense logically, like, yeah, I want that. Like, I want the team to go with her. But then I was like,

Speaker2: [00:17:21] Wait a minute. I’m used to being

Speaker3: [00:17:23] The one that has all the answers. I’m used to being the one that’s going to jump in and save the day or whatever that might be. Even clients in our program started going to Tiffany for things and for questions. Right. And so that control freak part of me, like I was so used to and even up to that point didn’t realize how much I valued being that person that was I’m in the middle of everything. I knew everything.

Speaker2: [00:17:49] I can swoop in

Speaker3: [00:17:50] And save the day. I’m always the one who has the answers. Like, all that kind of stuff was essentially thrown in my face. Right. Like, wait a minute. You know, that moment was very much a decision of that that idea of like we’re on a road and there’s two forks in front of us, like, I can go this

Speaker2: [00:18:08] Way or I can

Speaker3: [00:18:09] Go that way. And I remember I had a conversation with my coach, same coach that was like, hey, you got to hire this OBM to begin with. He and I had a conversation about this and he helped me work through it

Speaker2: [00:18:21] Where it was very

Speaker3: [00:18:23] Real that I could have so easily just taken everything back at that point. Right. Like, I could have so easily

Speaker2: [00:18:29] Just stuck my nose

Speaker3: [00:18:30] Back into things. Hey, what’s going on here? Let me jump into this. So you’re not doing that exactly the way I would do it. So now it’s being done wrong or whatever it is. Like, I could feel myself getting pulled back into that

Speaker2: [00:18:44] Because being that

Speaker3: [00:18:46] Control freak, if you will, being that, hey, I’m the one with all the answers or I’m the one that’s going to save the day or whatever it is, because that had been my identity for so long, it was really tough to be like, oh, wait a minute,

Speaker2: [00:19:00] I had to shift that. And that definitely

Speaker3: [00:19:02] Took some deeper work around it. Right. Because I think to your point to

Speaker2: [00:19:06] Monica, there’s a tactical

Speaker3: [00:19:07] Element to things like how do we hire or how do we delegate, how do we lead, how do we whatever? Like there’s a tactical, practical strategies, steps, etc. that come into play around all of that stuff. And that’s

Speaker2: [00:19:21] Important. But I can tell

Speaker3: [00:19:22] You, having worked now, not just through my own experience, but having worked now with who knows how many hundreds of business owners helping them through coaching and training, where they’re in this own journey of delegating and leading and letting go and becoming the

Speaker2: [00:19:38] Ceo, where it’s

Speaker3: [00:19:40] Often the fact that we just don’t know how to let go. It’s like, who am I going to be if I’m no longer the one?

Speaker2: [00:19:48] I’ve said running a business

Speaker1: [00:19:49] Has stretched me personally further. The only thing that comes close is probably motherhood to me, both things. And of course, I started my business at the same time I had my first child. So it was like, you know, at the same time they’re like, oh, now we’re going to change you as a person and just stretch you in ways you are not familiar with in your life. Before we start recording, you made a mention

Speaker2: [00:20:11] How you’re you’re not like

Speaker1: [00:20:13] Your you have a little bit of blue, but you’re not like a woo woo person. I am the same way. I’m very practical. I always say I work best on a project plan. If I set a goal, I’m going to hit it. I’m typing like all the things right. Yet I’ve had

Speaker2: [00:20:27] To work on

Speaker1: [00:20:28] My mindset to grow because the whole thing of what got you here won’t get you there is completely true. And when you said the cap around two hundred fifty thousand. Absolutely. When I hit two hundred

Speaker2: [00:20:39] Thousand and actually was having my

Speaker1: [00:20:41] Second kid then because I just complicate everything because I. My second kid, and I’m like, oh, the business is really taking off right now and I had no help and that was when I needed tactical help. So like you

Speaker2: [00:20:51] Said, admen, virtual assistants, people who are doing I need customer service

Speaker1: [00:20:55] Emails out how to do right now. I need help and I need help now and then. It was like another two hundred and fifty thousand. Something like half a million was like, oh, I need someone else who can help make decisions and leave a little bit

Speaker2: [00:21:09] Here, because the decision

Speaker1: [00:21:10] Fatigue, which I realized I had a really busy corporate

Speaker2: [00:21:13] Career and so I

Speaker1: [00:21:14] Thought I understood busy until I was making so many decisions for a business all day long that when my husband would say, Oh, what’s

Speaker2: [00:21:23] For dinner? I take his hat off, I’d be

Speaker1: [00:21:24] Like, I can’t believe you want me to make another decision in my life right now.

Speaker2: [00:21:26] I’m so fatigued.

Speaker1: [00:21:28] You can’t run like that for years on end because I was constantly in a cycle of burnout, I realized. And that’s kind of what encouraged me to start relinquishing the control and needing to be the one to make every single decision. OK, so let’s back up. And when someone recognizes the need to hire, what do they do? Because a lot of people don’t know they started the business, like you said, you even mentioned accidental. Mine was also accidental. When I put up the blog, I never thought I was going to be a business. I thought I was going to be corporate till I died.

Speaker2: [00:22:01] It was very

Speaker1: [00:22:02] Accidental and it wasn’t it’s not a strong suit that a lot of entrepreneurs have. So where do you even start with hiring?

Speaker3: [00:22:07] Yeah, so when we’re looking at hiring, the very first hires that we want to

Speaker2: [00:22:12] Make in our business

Speaker3: [00:22:14] Are around. I like to call it the lather, rinse,

Speaker2: [00:22:17] Repeat activities

Speaker3: [00:22:18] In our business, the day to day stuff that needs to be taken care of. Right. So there’s admin stuff, there’s customer service, there’s tech, especially those of us in the online world. There’s a fair amount

Speaker2: [00:22:30] Of just tech things.

Speaker3: [00:22:31] Click here, submit that, push that, whatever. Like that’s the type of stuff we want to look to get help with first. And the beauty of getting help in those areas

Speaker2: [00:22:41] Is that those are things

Speaker3: [00:22:42] That are generally really easy to lay out a clear process, train people on, et cetera. Because another thing, when we’re talking control freak, here’s

Speaker2: [00:22:52] Another biggie that comes

Speaker3: [00:22:53] Up for us. Control freak folks is, well, nobody can do it as well as

Speaker1: [00:23:00] They’re ever going to get this all out of my brain and have someone understand all the little things that go into this. It just feels insurmountable.

Speaker3: [00:23:07] And if we look at it through that, I always hate the saying,

Speaker2: [00:23:10] But I don’t know of a better

Speaker3: [00:23:12] One yet. But we know that concept of like, how do you eat

Speaker2: [00:23:15] An elephant one bite

Speaker3: [00:23:16] At a time

Speaker2: [00:23:17] Like you? I don’t know who’s eating

Speaker3: [00:23:19] The elephant, because if we look at the elephant and it’s like, oh my gosh, how am I going to get all of this out of my head?

Speaker2: [00:23:24] Like, yeah, that is like

Speaker3: [00:23:25] Nobody wants that, right? Like, that’s an insurmountable task.

Speaker2: [00:23:29] But if we’re

Speaker3: [00:23:30] Look, if we start looking at things like I was one of the things I recommend clients do, if what I’m working with clients or just in general on this topic is, OK, make a list of everything that’s

Speaker2: [00:23:40] On your plate. Right. Like spend the next week, write down

Speaker3: [00:23:42] Everything that you are

Speaker2: [00:23:44] Doing and write down all

Speaker3: [00:23:46] The things that you’re not

Speaker2: [00:23:47] Doing because you don’t have the

Speaker3: [00:23:48] Time to get to them yet. And then we want to take a look at that list and just run it through that filter of like, OK, which of these things fit into the lather, rinse, repeat category, which are these things that I have to look at daily or weekly or monthly or whatever

Speaker2: [00:24:01] It is with that.

Speaker3: [00:24:02] And then that becomes essentially a job description for the first person that you want to hire. Now, does that mean you’re going to get every single thing off your

Speaker2: [00:24:12] Plate with that very first hire?

Speaker3: [00:24:14] No, but, you know, hey, this is your business, so pick the things that you like the least, right? Like if you’re somebody who’s like, oh, gosh, I can’t stand

Speaker2: [00:24:22] The tech, it sucks the life

Speaker3: [00:24:23] Out of me. Great. Look to get somebody in to help the tech, right. Or if you’re somebody that’s like, I can’t stand the customer service or admin or booking things or whatever it is. OK, great. Like hire somebody who can

Speaker2: [00:24:36] Get that off your

Speaker3: [00:24:37] Plate. You get to determine what that person’s going to be and that the very first hire I made when I hired my first virtual

Speaker2: [00:24:44] Assistant, the first thing

Speaker3: [00:24:45] I had her start doing for me was to send out my newsletter. So I sat

Speaker2: [00:24:49] Down. I did what you

Speaker3: [00:24:50] Just said in order to write like a download out of my brain, because here’s the thing. I am picky. We are allowed to be picky. We can have high standards, et cetera. That’s totally fine.

Speaker2: [00:25:00] And we also need

Speaker3: [00:25:01] To recognize that if we want people to do things a certain way. Right. Like when I’m saying, oh, I want it done right, I want somebody to do it my way, then it’s also my responsibility to show them how to do that. To get that process out of my brain. We created a template. I laid out the steps, we laid out a really clear process. And I had this woman on my team the first time she did it, I walked her through it. The second time she did it on her own. And I kind of kept an eye on it. Whatever. We went through a training process together and then, lo and behold, she could send out these things or the newsletter as well as I could in that sense. And so we can start with the small things

Speaker2: [00:25:43] Like if we.

Speaker3: [00:25:44] You look at it through this lens of, oh, my gosh, I got to delegate everything or I got to delegate

Speaker2: [00:25:49] This or I got to download

Speaker3: [00:25:51] Everything out of my brain, then that actually becomes a convenient excuse to just never hire anyone.

Speaker1: [00:25:58] That is the exact cycle I had got myself stuck in. It’s one hundred percent what you just said hit the nail on the head of what happened to me and what kept me stuck it with my growth, what ended up happening? Because one of the more complicated processes in my business is building a sales funnel and we have a lot of them. And the amount of steps and documentation that goes into it felt just impossible. I thought even when I hired my first full time

Speaker2: [00:26:22] Employee, even in my head, it was

Speaker1: [00:26:24] Like I’m never going to be able to give up funnels, like I’m never going to be able to handle the thought if it’s too much. And I remember the process and we have different types of funnel, so some are easier. So before you knew it, like little by little, it was like she took the smaller one and it was like, oh, she knows how to do this one. And when I look back, what ended up happening

Speaker2: [00:26:39] Was we had

Speaker1: [00:26:40] Some really, really long looms where I would walk her through as I was doing it. And it would be like six parts, like a

Speaker2: [00:26:48] Forty five minute different six part.

Speaker1: [00:26:50] So like really long hours long. But she would take each part, she’d be watching my processing because I’d be speaking it out loud. And then the first one she did took a long time

Speaker2: [00:26:59] And then before you know it, she’s doing my more

Speaker1: [00:27:01] Complicated ones. But it didn’t happen overnight. And I think that’s the other thing that can be unrealistic expectations.

Speaker2: [00:27:08] One of the things

Speaker1: [00:27:08] That you for a talking point that we talked about with this was trying to hire a unicorn. And I find this very interesting because I assume when you said we can talk about trying to hire a unicorn, you were thinking, don’t expect to hire a unicorn. And it’s funny because I call Haley, our operations manager, my unicorn. But to be fair, if I’m really lucky, because hindsight’s 20

Speaker2: [00:27:30] 20, she wasn’t my

Speaker1: [00:27:31] Unicorn out of the

Speaker2: [00:27:32] Gate. She became a

Speaker1: [00:27:33] Unicorn. She’s been working with me for two years as a full time

Speaker2: [00:27:37] Employee, me and

Speaker1: [00:27:38] Her side by side. So, yeah, like now she can do almost everything I can do and sometimes better. It didn’t start with her being my unicorn. And I think it’s a misconception that people think they’re going to hire in a month in the person who’s going to be a unicorn.

Speaker3: [00:27:54] Well, there’s a couple of things to the unicorn concept I like to say. The second part to that is like you’re not going to stop looking for a unicorn, but you certainly can develop a dream team. Right, because I think

Speaker2: [00:28:05] To your point, there’s this

Speaker3: [00:28:07] Idea of I’m going to find the one magical person who can do everything I need them to do in my business. And that’s it. Right. Like, if only I could find that one magical person.

Speaker2: [00:28:17] And I think to your point, because I

Speaker3: [00:28:19] Train and I work with like I’m on both sides of the coin. Right. I’m on the side of I see what happens on the back end of businesses with team and hiring and so on through our certified OBM community. And I see what happens on the front end with the CEOs and the coaches and the trainers and the folks that are hiring and building teams. I can see where the breakdowns are and that is one of the biggest breakdowns is I’m going to hire this person. They’re going to magically jump in and be able to do every single thing that needs to be done in this business.

Speaker2: [00:28:49] And they’re going

Speaker3: [00:28:49] To know what I like in a week or two kind of thing. Right. And it’s like, you know, it doesn’t work that way. And the secondary piece to that is exactly to your point. Right. It’s like you get to develop together over time, like funnel by funnel, bit by bit, like you were passing that baton, you were downloading out of your own brain of everything that’s going on. And then you get to this beautiful space where at a certain point she’s doing things better than you are anyways, which is amazing. The other aspect to the unicorn comment is just don’t expect one person to do everything and or to be good at everything either. Right. Because definitely there’s some amazing people out there who are good at lots of things for sure. That definitely is true.

Speaker2: [00:29:32] And people are always

Speaker3: [00:29:34] Going to be better at certain things than others. So it’s a little bit of a math scenario as well. Like as a business grows, you’re just flat out going to need more support.

Speaker2: [00:29:44] Now, you may decide

Speaker3: [00:29:46] To get to a certain point and say, hey, I’m good

Speaker2: [00:29:48] Here.

Speaker3: [00:29:49] I don’t want to grow past this. I just

Speaker2: [00:29:51] Want to keep this team or

Speaker3: [00:29:52] Keep it lean or whatever it is. That’s totally fine. I also don’t believe that people have to keep on growing, growing, growing,

Speaker2: [00:29:58] Because that’s another pet peeve

Speaker3: [00:30:00] Of mine in

Speaker2: [00:30:00] Some ways, too. But if

Speaker3: [00:30:02] You know that as you want to continue to grow and expand a business like every layer of growth requires

Speaker2: [00:30:08] Letting go of

Speaker3: [00:30:09] Something new. It requires bringing new people on the team. It requires more like it just takes more behind the scenes, team, system, structure, planning, marketing, et cetera, for this to happen. So to expect a person to magically be all those things and or to expect a person to be good at everything that needs to be done, even when we’re talking about, let’s say somebody wants to

Speaker2: [00:30:32] Hire a

Speaker3: [00:30:33] Va to help them out for twenty hours a month, write your first hire does not need to be a full time person. It can be like a depending where you’re at income wise and such, because there’s many good things about that.

Speaker2: [00:30:43] But let’s say you’re like.

Speaker3: [00:30:44] I want to hire somebody who’s going to be just helping me out five hours a week, starting to take some of this day to day stuff off my plate, you know, people who are good at tech are not going to be as

Speaker2: [00:30:56] Good at customer

Speaker3: [00:30:57] Service if they’re tech people, they’re generally not going to be as people. If there are people and people, they’re generally not going to be as good at tech now. Does that mean they can’t do both or they can’t help with both? They probably can, but there’s always going to

Speaker2: [00:31:11] Be something that they’re

Speaker3: [00:31:12] Better at and they’re stronger in. And then there’s always going to be things

Speaker2: [00:31:16] That they aren’t as strong.

Speaker1: [00:31:18] It’s just like with us as like the CEO to like just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And I can totally see that, because when

Speaker2: [00:31:26] We hired

Speaker1: [00:31:27] After making some flubs, after hiring Haley, we finally just hired again. And that’s when I made the

Speaker2: [00:31:33] Decision

Speaker1: [00:31:34] That I was not going to be the manager of the next person that came and Haley would be the manager. And so now Haley gets

Speaker2: [00:31:40] To use

Speaker1: [00:31:41] Discernment on what she’s

Speaker2: [00:31:42] Good at versus what

Speaker1: [00:31:43] They’re good at. And she gets to pass off the stuff that she can do that either she doesn’t find joy in it

Speaker2: [00:31:49] Or it’s just that it’s not

Speaker1: [00:31:51] A good use of her time. And so it’s like a trickle down effect. It’s very, very fun. I find it very rewarding to watch the trickle down effect happen because it felt insurmountable in the beginning. When I started from my first admin, I get a lot of contractors come and go and stuff.

Speaker2: [00:32:07] It just felt like I’d

Speaker1: [00:32:07] Never even get to the point

Speaker2: [00:32:09] Where, like, there was another

Speaker1: [00:32:10] Layer there like that almost is just as rewarding to me as an

Speaker2: [00:32:14] Accomplishment as making more

Speaker1: [00:32:16] Money, to be honest with you.

Speaker3: [00:32:17] Oh, yeah. My favorite thing in my business is the fact that I get to build a team of people I get to work with and I don’t have a big team. Right. Like I have a pretty lean. But that’s the other thing in the online world. I mean, we don’t need huge teams either. You know, I have someone who’s very much in an OBM ish type role in particular that runs our association. And I have a VA like a day to day person that helps with a lot of stuff and some project

Speaker2: [00:32:45] People here and there. But our team

Speaker3: [00:32:46] Runs pretty lean in that regard. And it’s definitely one of my favorite things in my business

Speaker2: [00:32:51] Is the ability to

Speaker3: [00:32:53] Work with. I would say those are my favorite bills to pay every month is when I get to pay my

Speaker2: [00:32:58] Team, because

Speaker3: [00:32:59] It’s also the fact of I think it’s also really important, Monica, to touch on this idea, like you’ve said this a few times for yourself, when you’re becoming the CEO of the company,

Speaker2: [00:33:09] Like we want to have

Speaker3: [00:33:10] The time and energy to do the things that we actually love doing. So, yes, we need to be driving the growth of the company and marketing and selling. We may or may not like that piece, but hey, that’s a necessity of business, right? To some degree, we need to we need to be involved in that depending on the level of growth of the business.

Speaker2: [00:33:29] But then we

Speaker3: [00:33:29] Also want to have the space to be able to do the things that we love to do. If I’m so caught up, my favorite clients that I’ve ever worked with over the years are the ones that come to me and say, I’m about ready to quit, to shut the business down, throw the whole thing out the window, because I’m so sick and tired of trying to do everything right. I’m like, then I’m like, yes, let’s roll up our sleeves and get this in here.

Speaker2: [00:33:53] I mean, in a funny

Speaker3: [00:33:54] Way to one of the first things we want to look at when we’re hiring is what do I want my own role to be?

Speaker1: [00:34:00] And that’s a hard thing to define. In the beginning, I remember just thinking, what will what do I want it to be? I want to not be stressed all the time. How do you make that happen? Like that was like how I defined it. It was hard to even know what I want it to be because I was so stressed all the time.

Speaker2: [00:34:14] What do you define it as now? Now, I would say that I’m

Speaker1: [00:34:17] Very much more moved into more of the visionary role where, like I always

Speaker2: [00:34:23] Said, we were always on a

Speaker1: [00:34:24] Hamster wheel. It was always like how to stay above water, how to stay afloat. And now I’m able to look into the future because that’s actually is actually

Speaker2: [00:34:32] One of my strong suits.

Speaker1: [00:34:33] Like I’ve called many things that have happened in the online world that I have not publicly spoke about. But I have said I’m like, oh, I can see that coming like a freight train.

Speaker2: [00:34:40] That’s a lot

Speaker1: [00:34:40] Of like my background in tech. And just like a strong suit of mine, I found I’m very interesting because actually I I love history. And so another one of my strengths is contact. And what I realize is my super powers, the CEO is I have this really weird ability to use historical context to see the future. And I also when I look to the future, what happens is I can see the different roadway’s and I quickly can process, which is the best Rodway and make a decision and move towards it. And I don’t get hung up. I’m like, well, maybe I make decisions that can be frustrating because people around me

Speaker2: [00:35:14] Don’t realize I processed all

Speaker1: [00:35:16] This in my head. I don’t verbalize it. I process it all. And then I’m like, OK, this is what’s happening. And they’re like,

Speaker2: [00:35:21] Whoa,

Speaker1: [00:35:22] My marriage. He’s like, I’ll fix something. I will come up with, like life altering things and I’ll come to him and be like, We’re doing X and

Speaker2: [00:35:30] He’ll be like, What?

Speaker1: [00:35:32] Yeah. Don’t you know, didn’t you hear what was going on in my brain husband? I just processed this off like last six months and he’s just thrown for a loop like and I’ve done that quite a few times in our marriage. And then I took the strength of.

Speaker2: [00:35:44] Actually, recently, and that’s

Speaker1: [00:35:46] When I found

Speaker2: [00:35:46] Out that the strategic

Speaker1: [00:35:48] Part of my brain, that’s how I work. So now that I’m getting out of the day

Speaker2: [00:35:52] To day, it’s like we’re

Speaker1: [00:35:53] Flourishing because I’m able to finally act on all the things I can see happening and where we should go,

Speaker2: [00:35:59] But

Speaker1: [00:36:00] A single moment in my day to focus on it.

Speaker3: [00:36:04] And yeah, I mean, it’s that’s what grows the company. That’s what becomes fun and enjoyable for you. That’s what frees everything up. And to have to have Hayley on your team, like in that office, that manager role. It’s also very much that idea of like, OK, I’ve made this decision.

Speaker2: [00:36:20] Here’s where we’re headed and OK, now

Speaker3: [00:36:22] Let’s make it happen. Like to get help with that. Part of it, too, is so, so important. We can’t be a visionary. And the executer at the same time, like those two things started to get in the way of each other. Right. It’s either like too much visionary, not enough execution or too much execution caught up in day to day to the point where we stall because we’re not able to be visionary and grow and continue to look forward. And it really is this

Speaker2: [00:36:50] Idea of like it’s our business.

Speaker3: [00:36:53] We get to decide what our own role is within all of it and build the team and build the support around that. And in a funny way, too, there’s something about permission that becomes important here. There’s a couple of other things I’d love to leave people to think about is giving yourself permission to not have to carry the weight of this whole freakin thing on our own. I mean, I’ve also got a little bit of that murder archetype in me where it’s like, oh, I have to do all this stuff like, oh, I have to carry the weight of all this. I have to do this stuff. This is just the way it is. Right. Or even that kind of maybe blue collar mentality I was raised with that idea of you got to really work hard, hard,

Speaker2: [00:37:36] Hard to create success.

Speaker3: [00:37:38] And so if I want more success, then I’m going have to work harder and harder. It’s actually not true. Right? Like you have more responsibility. You have more things to be aware of and to own,

Speaker2: [00:37:48] But you

Speaker3: [00:37:49] Actually get to do less as your business grows, if you choose to do that and also to just be able be open and willing to ask for and

Speaker2: [00:37:58] Receive support,

Speaker3: [00:38:00] Because that’s another biggie, especially I know for women, it’s a big one for myself and again for most of my clients and such to this idea of, you know, hey, I want to be willing to ask for support, but I also need to be willing to receive it and to really allow

Speaker2: [00:38:15] That to help.

Speaker1: [00:38:16] My gosh, it’s like, you know me so well. Oh, my gosh. That’s actually been a huge struggle in my life in general. I have a hard time accepting favors or I always tell my husband I don’t like to be indebted to people. It’s very who he came from a very like a church background, essentially, where the community was very important to everyone, like did stuff for each other. He just this is how he was raised. And then I’m like, oh, but if they do that for me, then I have to do something for them. And what am I going to find time to do that? And I just rather pay for what I need.

Speaker2: [00:38:50] I never wanted to accept favors.

Speaker1: [00:38:51] It was very

Speaker2: [00:38:52] Similar. And accepting

Speaker1: [00:38:53] Help, even when I was paying in the business was very

Speaker2: [00:38:56] Difficult for me.

Speaker3: [00:38:58] I mean, it could probably have a whole other conversation around that, right. Because it’s a very real thing for women. And I see where and how it’s a common journey. Right? That’s where you’re like,

Speaker2: [00:39:09] Oh my gosh, are you reading

Speaker3: [00:39:11] My mind or whatever. It’s like we all go through this to various degrees and if we’re not able to receive

Speaker2: [00:39:17] Help, then we’re going to

Speaker3: [00:39:18] Do some to

Speaker2: [00:39:18] Sabotage it.

Speaker3: [00:39:19] Yeah, I agree. We’ll hire somebody and we’ll do something to, like, blow it up so that it doesn’t work or we’ll just keep getting in the way, will become the micromanager or the control freak or the whatever. So this idea, too, of hiring is so, so much about what kind of business do I want to have and let me give myself permission to be supported and to be,

Speaker2: [00:39:42] To whatever

Speaker3: [00:39:43] Degree freed up, lift it up, whatever that is, in a way that I get to create this life that I want to create. Otherwise, we keep on growing a business and we’re the hub of everything in the middle of everything. It’s going to suck the life out of us. It sure will.

Speaker1: [00:39:58] So can you tell us if listeners want to work with you, how they can find you, what your programs are?

Speaker2: [00:40:04] Where where’s all this information?

Speaker3: [00:40:05] Yeah, Tina Forsyth

Speaker2: [00:40:07] Dotcom, my main

Speaker3: [00:40:09] Website, has a list of some of the programs and the ways I work with people. I have a training around hiring. So for anybody who’s in that, who do I need to hire and when and how? Because we do need that tactical piece of it. Right? Definitely a part of it. And then I do some leadership coaching and work with people usually in a more direct, intimate way as needed as well. For those that are like, I have this team, but there’s problems now. I mean, I always say it’s one thing to hire somebody, it’s another thing to lead them totally. Yes. They’re going to be the best person in the world. But if we’re not going, the leadership is like that’s where. Definitely fall apart,

Speaker2: [00:40:45] And so Tina Forsyth’s

Speaker3: [00:40:46] Dotcom, we can connect there, or if you email me Tina at Tina Sites Dot dotcom, that comes direct to me as well, too

Speaker1: [00:40:54] Awesome. We’ll be sure to link to both of those in the show notes for you. So thank you so much for

Speaker2: [00:41:00] Sharing all of your knowledge

Speaker1: [00:41:01] On hiring. And I was on your website before recording. And I will say you have some really interesting programs. So whether you’re looking to hire or you want to be an OBM yourself, you have a certification for that. And if you’re like me and on the other side of things and you’re like, oh, no, I got to lead this team, she can help you with that as well. So thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom with us today. Thanks, Monica. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Empowered Business podcast, Let’s Stay in Touch. I just opened a brand new Facebook group for digital product creators. Whether you are new to digital products or an existing digital product creator, our new Facebook group, Digital Product Insiders, is perfect for you. Head on over to Monica Fros dotcom forgood group to join for free. See you here again next week.