Kristen 0:00
Ever worry if the time and money that you put into hiring will really pay off? You are not alone. Even when you know it’s time to grow your team, hiring can feel like a big leap of faith. But the good news is that there are ways to make sure your investment actually moves the needle. Today, we’re talking about how to track the return on your hires. From knowing when to bring someone on board to measuring their performance to make sure you’re actually getting the results that you need.
Kristen 0:34
My guest today is Hallie Sherman, a speech language pathologist turned CEO, who has nailed the art of building and managing a team that supports her business goals and helps her grow. With over 15 years in public schools, Hallie now runs Speech Time Fun, where she helps other SLPs plan lessons and work more effectively with their students. I can’t wait for you to hear our conversation about everything from measuring your hiring ROI, that’s return on investment, to managing your team like a pro.
Kristen 1:08
Are you a digital product or course creator selling on platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers, Etsy, or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you’re in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I’m Kristen Doyle, and I’m here to give you no fluff tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process. Things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list, building automations and so much more. Let’s get started, y’all.
Kristen 1:51
Hey, Hallie, thank you so much for being here.
Hallie 1:55
Thank you so much for having me.
Kristen 1:57
I am really excited to dive into kind of some of the deeper topics when it comes to hiring with you today. So we’re gonna talk a lot about figuring out how to get a good return on that investment you’re making. But before we dive into all that, can we kind of kick things off with sharing just a little bit about the first time you decided to hire help for your business?
Hallie 2:19
Sure. So I would say, probably earlier on in my TPG journey, I’ve been on TPT since 2012, I realized that I couldn’t do everything, and in order to grow and scale, I couldn’t be a one person show when working full time. I, you know, researched a lot about people hiring out. And I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know. And I was like, let me do something that, like I need, but like I can’t do. So my first hire was an editor. My grammatical skills are not the best, and here I am writing passages for middle school and high school speech pathologists. I could use an editor here. It’s like, the easiest thing to like delegate out.
Kristen 2:59
Yeah, for sure, and a lot of times too, even if we have great grammar, when you wrote it and made the mistake, it’s really easy to just kind of be blind to it. I have not noticed my own even spelling mistakes, and I’m a good speller, but I’ve looked through some of my own products and not noticed my own spelling mistakes. And I know it’s because you just kind of get blind to it because you’ve been looking at it too long.
Hallie 3:21
And after a couple of those TPT Q and A’s of like, there’s this error in here, I was like, you know, the amount of time I’m taking to fix things, I can just pay someone 100 bucks to, you know, review a few pieces of content over like, a week span and be done with it. It really wasn’t that costly. Where I was like, okay, this is worth my time. So that was my first like, diving into hiring. My next hire, I would say, would probably be, was a product photographer. I was like, for me to buy all the equipment, find a space in my house with natural lighting printed out. I’m like, I don’t have time for this. I’m working full time. I have two young kids. I don’t have a space to take pictures like my kids were gonna destroy it. And I don’t have photography skills, so for me to, like, buy a camera and this and that I’m like, I’d rather pay someone a couple 100 bucks to take the pictures so that I can get that up on TPT faster and have better quality photos to show for it that will make more sales. So those were like the two, probably first diving into hiring experiences.
Hallie 3:21
And then I realized, I don’t know, speaking at TPT conferences, I heard people talking about ghost writers, and I was like, wait a minute, I don’t have to write the passages myself. What do you what do you mean? So I started with, like, using Upwork. I was like trying to find people just like, help me finish, you know, some of these task cards, or write some of these passages, I’ll write the others. And I was like realizing they can get it done better and faster, as long as I give them examples and really clear instructions. And I was like, I can get products out faster. It’s still my idea. It’s still my quality of work. It’s still my, hey, I need it at this reading level. I was still, you know, fine tuning and taking what they have. I was still writing the questions for it, but I was like, hmm. And that’s when I started getting that itch, like, it doesn’t always have to be me, because here I was working late hours, and I wanted to be able to provide more resources for my audience, but I didn’t have the time. I was working a full time job, running to dancing, school, gymnastics, all the things after school. So it was really when my kids went to bed that I was working on my business, and I realized then I was like, I don’t it doesn’t always have to be me.
Kristen 5:40
Yeah, that’s a hard phase, too. I remember when I was teaching full time and TPT selling, and my husband, bless his heart, he’s like, you do nothing but work. And definitely, I think it’s so smart to hire out in that phase, when you are stretched thin and don’t have time. A lot of people wait until they get bigger, so to speak, to hire out. But really, that phase where you are, you’re working full time and working on your business, trying to grow a side hustle into something bigger, that’s a really great time to be hiring out. I think especially like you started out and like I started out, hiring for the things I’m not good at doing myself.
Hallie 6:23
Or the things that were just taking me too much time. The writing piece, and I was like, for so long, like no one else could do it just like me. Guess what? They can do it better.
Kristen 6:31
Yeah, doesn’t always have to be us.
Hallie 6:33
As long as you’re giving them clear instructions, they can do it just as well or better.
Kristen 6:37
Yeah, absolutely. And a good writer is gonna ask you for your input and your ideas and things too. They’re not just gonna run and write some random thing that you didn’t want in the first place. So as long as you hire someone good.
Hallie 6:51
Exactly, as long as you know what the resource is and like, what do you want it to look like and what pieces is needed, anyone could do it for you.
Kristen 6:57
Yeah, for sure. So let’s talk about kind of as you grew in hiring, how you figured out what roles to fill on your team, especially when it comes to tying in hiring to the return on investment, or ROI, that you’re making. How do you make that decision?
Hallie 7:16
For me, I had to do a time audit. I worked with a business coach, and he was like, You’re doing too many things that you don’t have to do. You’re hiring for these little, small tasks, which are great, but it’s not giving you the big bang for your buck. So I did a time audit, and I realized all the things I was doing and the time I was spending on these different tasks, and I realized, and working with my business coach, he was like, these are $5 tasks, these are $10 tasks. These are $20 tasks, and you can find people for that rate to do it, yeah, but look at your revenue and how many hours you are working and what money you are giving away. Knowing your own rate, by being the CEO, the owner of a business, you should only be doing the tasks that are like $1,000 tasks, $2,000 tasks, $10,000 tasks, big tasks, recording a podcast, doing a webinar, being the face of my business. Those are things that only I can do. Everything else can be delegated. And there can be someone who is excited and willing and wanting to do it for you.
Hallie 8:16
And that’s really when I started realizing, like, okay, I don’t like making images on Canva. I can find someone else to do it. I don’t want to create a landing page on Kajabi. I can find someone else to do that. I don’t want to do some techie stuff with Zapier. I can find someone else to do that. All the things that were taking me too much time to learn and figure out, there’s someone else skilled and ready and excited to help me out.
Kristen 8:42
Yeah, and a lot of times those other people will do a better job than what we did, because, like you said, they’re excited about it. They love this stuff. They love building landing pages or making Canva graphics, where you maybe don’t.
Hallie 8:54
And they don’t want to have their own business. They don’t want to be the face of the business. They want to be behind the scenes, just doing what they love and getting paid to do. So we get to be that person that provides them with their vision.
Kristen 9:06
Yeah, I think it’s so smart to look at your your business income and how much you’re working and figure out what is your hourly rate. So for people who haven’t ever done that, what you would do, essentially, is just look at your annual income and track your time. Track how much you’re working for a few weeks, maybe a month or so, and then divide your annual income by how many hours you are working. You can, you know, multiply out after a couple of weeks, and just estimate your annual hours worked, but divide your income by those hours and see what your they call it your effective hourly rate. What is my effective hourly rate? And then that really helps to put in perspective, at least it did for me, which tasks are just not worth me doing, and which ones I really should have someone else doing for me. Answering emails. I should not be the first person to look at the emails in my inbox, because a lot of them, especially emails from people who’ve bought products, or even some of my website maintenance client emails, a lot of them have simple answers that I can train someone on my team to answer, and they’re probably going to be faster at answering them, because they’re not doing all the CEO level stuff. They’re going to be faster at answering them. And I am a straight to the point kind of girl. Probably anyone who has listened to the podcast knows that, but that means when I answer emails a lot of times, I forget to be nice. To say, Hi, how you doing? Hope you’re having a great week, because we’re so quick, I just answer the message
Hallie 10:36
Like, how do you not know this answer?
Kristen 10:38
I just answer. I just tell them what to click, or, you know how to open the PDF file, or whatever, and other people who really love doing customer service type things, they’re going to be nice and friendly, and they’re going to make this person feel good at the end of that email, in a way that maybe I wouldn’t because I would just answer the question.
Hallie 10:58
So, so true, but knowing your rate and what you like doing, what lights you up. That’s really how you can determine what to start delegating first.
Kristen 11:07
Yeah, so that’s return on investment, and I do think it’s important. You know, we haven’t talked at all about making back the money that you pay them, which is what a lot of people think of in terms of return on investment.
Hallie 11:20
So sometimes return investment is the money, like, okay, they’re gonna help me make more resources. I can put it on TPT faster, and I can make more money. But it’s also time. How much time I’m saving? Energy I’m saving that I can think of new ideas.
Kristen 11:35
Yeah, and I’m glad you said time and energy, because I think the energy piece of it is so big. There are, I’m sure, for all of us, tasks in our business that have to get done that just wear us out on days, that I have to do certain things I am just exhausted at the end of the day, and it needs to be done. But does it always have to be done by me? Probably not. Some of those things, I’m thinking of a couple things now that I probably really should look to hire out, because they zapped my energy, and I could be doing something different that would light me up and make me excited about my work. So I think it is. It’s just so important not to discount that time and energy return on investment when we’re thinking about, you know, what we’re doing and what we’re investing time in.
Kristen 12:18
There’s so many pieces of our business that you don’t see a direct dollar for dollar return on things like, you know, product photography. Can you really prove that hiring someone else to do the product photography made you back more dollars than you paid them? Maybe, if you really, I mean, you would have to get really specific about your updates and watching your data to do that.
Hallie 12:40
And that’s a lot of time that who has time that who has time for it, right? Someone else to look at that data.
Kristen 12:45
But what I can tell is I didn’t have to pull out a bunch of equipment, clean up a spot in my house, find lighting that works, take the pictures, edit the pictures, upload the pictures, because I could just hire someone else, and it probably looks better than what I would have done anyway. Probably saved me a whole lot of time and frustration.
Hallie 13:02
And you might be more excited to sell that resource and to post about it on Instagram, so you being more lit up about it and more excited about it normally, like more sales.
Speaker 1 13:12
Yeah, yep. Because we don’t promote the resources we don’t like the way they look. So true. So so true. I don’t have a good picture of a product. I’m not putting it on Instagram.
Hallie 13:21
It’s so true. So again, so it’s not just time, it’s it’s all the things, and ROI can be all those other things, and some things are just hard to measure. But in the end, if it’s growing your business, and if you’re moving the needle, it’s working.
Kristen 13:35
Yeah, exactly. So once we start hiring people, we have to start managing people. And part of that comes down to knowing if they’re doing a good job or not. And typically we hear, at least in business circles, we hear the term key performance indicators, or KPIs. That sounds like a big, fancy word, but it really isn’t that. It’s not that big, not that difficult. Can you talk about some of the KPIs that you have prioritized with the people that you’ve hired, and maybe how, how that has changed?
Hallie 14:11
Sure, so I look at it. I like to look at my annual goals for myself, and then I like to look at quarterly goals. And then each quarter, my team, we meet quarterly one on one with the people on my team to determine, how are you going to help me meet these quarterly goals for my business? And then what tasks responsibilities are they going to be held responsible for to help move those needles? And that’s what we determine. So we come up with quarterly KPIs that we put on a scorecard, and it’s for different things, such as marketing, fulfillment, customer service, all the different areas that are going to help my business grow. And each individual has something they are held responsible for that they can truly measure.
Hallie 14:55
Now, certain things are like, okay, growing the Instagram 1000 more followers. Or open rates going from my emails from 20% to 30%, I’m just coming up with these numbers, but certain things are like, are they just our customer happiness? So, like, my customer service person has a metric, and every email she sends out, she has a button on the bottom that says, are they satisfied or unsatisfied, and she needs to get a certain amount of satisfied responses. So just different things that will help my overall customer experience and business grow. And every single person has something they are held responsible for. Even if it is just like my executive assistant, who her responsibility is to free me up. There’s not a metric. She’s not in charge of, like some sort of growth or something. It’s literally, did you help Hallie stay out up, you know, on track? Yes or No, and that’s her metric.
Kristen 15:49
Yeah, I love that, because I that’s one that I have not really figured out the KPI for. Did you help Kristen stay focused and get things done?
Hallie 15:59
Every day, she send me a Slack message of my tasks for the day, like, what is on my calendar, and she knows like, and she’s supposed to dodge the rest of the team from bothering me, like, while I’m recording this podcast, because she knows I’m they know I’m busy. If people are bothering me, she didn’t do a good job of of dodging things, because these are the times I’m not available. So it’s just different things that, like are responsible, that are important to me, but also important to the business in order for the business to grow. What is important? What should only I be doing? I should be doing podcast interviewing, doing, you know, sales calls, webinars, things like that. I can’t be distracted during those times. My coaching, and I get coached by my coaches and taking courses and my learning that’s like, don’t bother me time I need to learn so that I can grow. And my team knows, like, that’s our KPI is making sure that I’m left alone and and my schedule is intact.
Kristen 16:55
Yeah, that’s a really good one.
Hallie 16:57
So every week, every Friday, I have a like, a Slack message to my team, “Don’t forget, your KPIs are due by the end of the day.” And it’s important. Like, because I went in the beginning, I used to say, “oh, at some point today,” no, by 3pm. I need to know by 3pm you know, everything was done. Yhis way when we meet on Monday, I have time now, throughout the weekend to look at the my KPIs. And I meet with my team every Monday to and we go over, you know, how are you doing towards your KPIs? And it’s not just like, you know, if you didn’t do it, great. Let’s not like, let’s just move on. What roadblocks got in your way? Why couldn’t you meet these goals? Sometimes it’s something that I did. Sometimes, sometimes there’s overlap of like, responsibility. Someone might be writing the emails that are, you know, responsible for the sales or this, or whatever. So I need to know if someone else is holding someone else back, I need to know about that to just, you know, fix that something. If I’m the bottleneck that is holding someone back, they need me to be doing more things or giving more instruction. Sometimes that’s like they couldn’t do their tasks because I didn’t give them enough information or enough training, or enough whatever, or enough time, so that’s something we discuss every single Monday so that they can meet their goal, so that we can grow the business, and it’s all based on my vision and my mission that we discuss every single week as a team.
Kristen 18:18
I love that you are setting those boundaries, because that is one of the things I struggle with and need to get better with. And I think it’s because I kind of think to myself, well, I don’t really need it by 3pm on Friday, right? I mean, any just so it’s just needed on Friday. But when we set those clear boundaries of what time something is due on a specific date, people are much more likely to follow those because that doesn’t sound as loosey goosey flexible anymore. It sounds like she needs it at this time.
Hallie 18:48
And I found that giving them the context of, why, not just because I want to be difficult and annoying. I know everyone’s busy. Some people have things that come up on a Friday, but I need it by this time so that I can review it over the weekend, so we can discuss it on Monday. Versus when I just said, I just need it, and then if they didn’t do it, and I’ve been there and I’ve learned from my mistakes, of, like, all right, on Monday guys like, Can you do it now? Like, we’re meeting, like, right now, can you do it? And I was like, there wasn’t enough time for me to feel prepared. So giving them the context of, like, why it’s important is really constantly telling them.
Kristen 19:22
Yeah, you do have to remind people a lot, a lot. And I also was reminded when you were talking about, you know, sometimes you’re the bottleneck. I know a lot of us probably have that happen where we let something fall through the cracks a little bit. Maybe it’s a task we didn’t like doing, or don’t want to do, or, you know, maybe we just got busy with something else. It can be so easy to get wrapped up in putting out the fires in our business that we don’t do some of the important things we need to do for the rest of our team. And I think it’s so important to build that relationship that you can call me out. In fact, I just I hired someone new not too long ago, and on our first call, I said, please call me out if I don’t do these things, if it’s been too long, if you’ve been waiting, tell me. Call me out, because I know myself. And this thing I hired you to help me with is something I tend to put off.
Hallie 19:26
And then it builds the culture, because then they’re gonna learn I can put things off too, because she does it.
Kristen 20:16
Right. Yeah, it contributes to a culture of all of us putting things off, and that’s not good, and that’s not why I hire help. I hire help because I put things off and I need people to keep me accountable.
Hallie 20:35
And that’s why, like, the more we can model with our behaviors, even if it makes us uncomfortable or doing things that we don’t want to do. It’ll give our team more structure, and they will perform better.
Kristen 20:47
Yeah, yeah, being the boss can be hard sometimes.
Hallie 20:50
Oh, totally. We didn’t. We didn’t go to school to be like CEOs and leaders in Marketing School and leaders. We were teachers. Come on.
Kristen 20:59
I am good at bossing around children. I’m not always great at bossing around adults.
Hallie 21:04
But even kids, we need to give them, like, clear rules and expectations. I need to say it over and I don’t want to say that that our team are like children, but like use our practice and our backgrounds.
Kristen 21:14
We have as teachers, especially, we have a lot of really good background knowledge in managing people, small people, but people, a big group of them, all at one time, yeah.
Hallie 21:25
But just like the students, some of them are visual learners, some of them are auditory learners. We need to know our style of our team also, so we know how to like present information. Some of them, if I say it in a team meeting, they’re gonna forget. I have to then remind them afterwards, like here, this is what we discussed. This is what the project is. This is how it’s going to look like done. You want to attack all the different learning styles as much as possible.
Kristen 21:26
Yeah, some of us are so good, or we’re so good anyway, as teachers at clear expectations and boundaries and rules and sticking to them. And for some reason, that doesn’t always translate into our life outside of teaching.
Hallie 21:56
And I think a lot of it is our we have good hearts. We are people pleasers, and you don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, but it’s business. It’s not personal, and we’re paying them, and we need to make remind ourselves that if we don’t take it seriously, they’re not gonna take us seriously.
Kristen 22:18
Yeah, exactly. So speaking of taking things seriously, if we’re going to take things seriously, we have to track performance and productivity. Do you have some favorite tools or systems in place that you use for that?
Hallie 22:32
This is always a work in progress, and I’m still work in progress myself. I’ve tried every single project management tool under the sun. Clickup Asana, I’m in the process of moving everything over to Monday, and as my team has shifted, and as my knowledge and learning has shifted, I now realize that I need better and stronger in tech systems. So I’m Marie Kundoing everything and just starting fresh.
Kristen 22:55
I feel like I have tried all the things too. I’m a Clickup girl right now. I think any project management tool you’re going to use, you need to have time tracking built in and a good chat communication, like an internal within the tasks communication is so helpful. I would love to know how you are tracking whether people are satisfied or unsatisfied on customer service emails.
Hallie 23:23
We have some sort of like button, like a clickable link, satisfied, unsatisfied, and they just, I don’t know, it goes to, like, some sort of Airtable form, I don’t know. Someone set it up for me.
Kristen 23:37
Another thing you can outsource.
Hallie 23:38
I don’t know. I just get the email notifications. That’s someone filled someone click the button.
Kristen 23:45
I know some people who are really good at Airtable, and I know who I need to talk to after this episode’s done, right?
Hallie 23:51
I know some people use Help Scout, and that has it built in, but I just didn’t want to pay for another service.
Kristen 23:56
Yeah. Well, and people email, they just do, yeah, and if you have to then send it to Help Scout and log into different places. It’s just, it’s just a lot. I feel like, the longer I am in business, the more I’m trying to streamline and get rid of tools instead of adding on new ones. Having things in too many places has cost me lots of problems.
Hallie 24:19
And that’s why I’m liking Monday right now, because we have so many different Google Google Docs, and Monday has Monday Docs. So everything will be housed in one spot. And it’s not like, where is this? Where is that? I have things in Dropbox. I have things in Drive. It’s everywhere.
Kristen 24:34
I am really leaning into the docs that are in Clickup too, because it’s just so helpful. In fact, I have our questions for this interview pulled up in Clickup right now, because it just is a great place to put things right with the task that it goes with, instead of sticking it in a whole different place and then having to remember which folder did I put this in, in Google Drive, or is it just in the dumpster fire?
Hallie 24:56
Which happens. But I think it is important that every single person on your team has SOPs and are doing it regularly. So standard operating procedures, because sometimes I’ll hire someone to do something I don’t know how to do it, and then they leave, or I let them go, and I need to know how to do it. So having those things updated on a regular basis is essential.
Kristen 24:56
Yeah, absolutely. One thing I’ve started doing is having the team member make the SOP. So a lot of times, if it is something I know how to do, I’ll record myself doing it and then have them create the SOP from that. And I think that’s good. That’s that’s the teacher in me, knowing that if they watch it and also type it, then they’re gonna get more out of it than just watching it anyway. And it’s faster for me to make a video than try to type it all out.
Hallie 25:41
It’s so easy. Now with loom, you can just record yourself doing anything and teach someone else how to do it, and they can do the same thing back.
Kristen 25:48
And I also love a tool called Tango. I don’t know if you’ve ever used it. It is really good for those SOPs that are really going to be click here, click there. There’s not a ton of variables. It’s a Chrome extension, and you start it, and you do the task, and it screenshots and types out what you’re doing. So it will say, like, click here and enter this email address that whatever one you typed, type Kristen in the Name field, whatever you type, wherever you click, toggle this on, toggle that off, all of those kinds of things. It’s really cool. I use just the free version because I don’t need a ton of them saved. But it’s a really cool app. I like it a lot.
Hallie 26:31
That’s cool. I’ll have to check that out. There’s another Chrome extension I heard about recently was very similar, that, like, screen recorded everything and turns it into, like, screen grabs and pictures of text. I don’t know. I forgot the name of it.
Kristen 26:42
It sounds a lot like Tango, yeah, something similar. So let’s talk about my least favorite part of hiring,
Hallie 26:48
Firing?
Kristen 26:49
Right? How did you know I was gonna say that? I did not even feed you that question ahead of time.
Hallie 26:56
Least favorite conversation.
Kristen 26:59
So what about those situations where a team member’s not meeting their KPIs? How do you handle it when?
Hallie 27:07
So I will put the disclaimer, I only have contractors. I don’t have any full time employees. Big difference. If you have an employee, that’s a big disclaimer that there’s different rules, regulations, laws you have to follow, state by state, the state that you’re in the state, that they’re all the stuff.
Kristen 27:21
It is much easier when they’re a contractor.
Hallie 27:24
Yes, that said, from experience, hire slow, fire fast. So often, I don’t want to, I’m afraid one, afraid of, like, hurting their feelings. It’s the person. It’s, it’s, I’m paying them, I’m not getting the ROI. One, two, sometimes, like, they’re unhappy too and are excited to be let go. Also if you’re not getting what you’re paying for, there could be someone else that can do it better, faster and easier. A lot of times, I’m like, I don’t want to let them go because I don’t want to do it myself anymore. After, like, when you start delegating, you’re like, I don’t want to do this. But sometimes you have to get uncomfortable to get the better return. So, like, I’ve had to step in and do things that I didn’t want to do for a little bit, learned what that person was not doing, and then I knew better and more what to look for in that next hire.
Kristen 28:13
Yeah, yeah, that part’s really important.
Hallie 28:16
Sometimes stepping in helps you and learning from what qualities like, why didn’t it work? What about this higher? Were they not trained? And sometimes a lot of I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Sometimes people that had to let go is because I didn’t train them well. I didn’t set them up for success.
Kristen 28:32
And sometimes, once you head down that road, it’s hard to fix.
Hallie 28:37
And it was just easier. I’ve looked for different qualities in people now than I did when I was working full time. When I was working full time, I was looking for people just take this task away from me. Take this task away. Fix this band aid. I need someone just to fix the band aid because I don’t have the bandwidth to do it. Now I’m looking for people that are eager to learn, a go getter, quick learner, like just different qualities, and you can get that on a really good application and interview process. So higher, slow.
Hallie 29:08
I see a lot of people just like posting in Facebook groups. I’m looking for this, this and this and this, but they’re not giving an application. They’re not vetting the people they want. They’re just looking for the someone. And when you’re looking for just someone. You’re gonna just get someone, and you need to really know what type of person you want to work that we weren’t working for you, that you’re gonna be spending a lot of your time with, that you weren’t gonna meet with on a regular basis, if it is going to be effective. So knowing what qualities, and there’s certain skills and things that like you can learn, and there’s certain things that are in me, and I’ve realized that I can teach someone how to build a landing page, I can teach someone how to write a better email, but I can teach someone to be a go getter. I can’t teach someone to take initiative.
Kristen 29:08
To google it yourself instead of always asking me.
Hallie 29:14
Yeah, and that’s why, like, I do test projects as part. Part of my application process. And a part of the project is, like, figure it out. I don’t give them all the information. How good are they to like, do some research. Figure it out.
Kristen 30:09
Yeah, that has helped me a lot, too. My earlier applications were maybe not even an application, more like, just tell me a little about yourself. How do I get in touch with you? And I’ve started doing my hiring quite a bit differently now, now that I’ve learned a little bit more. Although I will say, if the last person I hired is listening to this podcast, he will die laughing, because I just hired him, but that was a whole different story. I knew him personally. That’s a different story altogether.
Hallie 30:36
But gathering KPIs and mean and like looking at quarterly goals like that. It makes it not so challenging to have those conversations, because it shouldn’t be out of the blue. You already should have had those. Like, hey, you’re not meeting my expectations. You’ve already had those conversations. So it shouldn’t be like, Hey, I gotta tell you haven’t been performing like they should know. They should already know. And if it is shocking to them, then you’re not doing a good job on a regular basis discussing performance. And again, performance doesn’t have to be just for full time employees. I do it for contractors.
Kristen 31:07
Do you meet with all your contractors, the whole team at once, or do you do individual meetings?
Hallie 31:12
So I do depending on the role and responsibilities, certain roles I meet weekly, and then I meet with my executive assistant, who’s my right hand person, and I meet with my membership manager, who’s my fulfillment person, every week, and we meet individually and together, and then I meet monthly with my customer service person and my curriculum director, who we, you know, make out the projects for the month I don’t need to meet with on a weekly basis. So it depends, but I used to meet with everyone a lot more. And just the problem with meetings is they’re expensive. Because I’m paying them to meet with me. I’d rather them work.
Kristen 31:47
And it’s, it’s a lot of your time, too, I mean, can’t be on Zoom all day.
Hallie 31:51
All day Mondays, or especially when I was working full time, I was doing Monday evenings, was just exhausting. I mapped out, planned, you’re giving your KPIs. We’re discussing the KPIs. This is the plan of the week. I found having team meetings helps this way everyone’s not in a silo. This way they know who to go to for help and what someone else is working on, versus I know what I’m working on, but I don’t know who’s working on this and who to go to, so they would always come to me. So it helps with deflecting how many questions that I got. So it depends, but as much as possible, I try to meet an hour a week and done quickly.
Kristen 32:25
Yeah, those meetings don’t need to be very long.
Hallie 32:27
No, if you’re meeting too long, then you’re not planned and organized, and it’s more just chit chat, and you’re paying them to chitchat.
Kristen 32:33
To chit chat, yeah, which I have definitely done.
Hallie 32:38
Guilty. I’ve done the too.
Kristen 32:39
All right, so what advice, as we kind of wrap up this episode, what advice would you give people that are just getting started building their teams, thinking about what those KPIs are?
Hallie 32:51
Do that time on it, look at how you’re spending your time, and look at what lights you up and what, what doesn’t. What are you dreading that you literally put off every single day or every single week that, like, maybe someone else could do? Yes, there’s TPT VA Facebook groups, and that’s just one place to look. Let me just put that disclaimer out. That’s one place to look. But sometimes it’s a good just research place of like, what are people hiring for and what are things that people are willing to do for you? This is just, just for research basis. So do in that time, audit, get an idea of what some tasks that other people can do for you. But then also look at, you know, what is your long term vision? What do you want to do in a year? Where do you want your business to be in five years? 10 years? Where do you see yourself? You know, think big, hairy, scary goals and like, you know, if everything came true, what would you need to have in place so that that is possible?
Hallie 33:44
So I have my TPT store. I also have a membership and my loan division is like, if I want this many members, what team and systems do I need in place now so that I don’t break my business when that many members come in? How much help would you need if you got 100 questions on TPT a day? You know, you might only get one a week now, but what if you start getting 100 a day? What kind of help would you need then? What kind of what kind of helping you need if you started getting 100 emails a day? 100 DMS on your like, think about what best case scenario and what help you might need then, so that you don’t break your business and so you can continue to grow. And so that’s that would be my best advice is looking at what things you can build in place now. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Look at your budget. You can find online jobs, hiring someone for 5, 6, 7, dollars for very, very cheap. It is possible. I have someone $7 an hour doing my customer service. I wanted someone seven days a week.My customers did not get a response on the weekends, she’s checking my emails on the like there’s things, there’s someone willing to do, things that you are looking for. And knowing also that whoever you hire, it doesn’t have to be forever. You can, you can learn and grow and adapt. My team a year ago. Is not the same as my team now, and it might not be the same in a year from now, I don’t know, and that’s okay.
Kristen 35:06
Oh, my team has changed a lot over the years, for sure. And one thing that I kind of at least for me also, like you, only hiring contractors right now, one thing that I try to keep in mind is that word fire bothers me because it feels bad, it feels mean, and it feels I don’t know, whatever, but if you’re hiring contractors, you’re really not firing.
Hallie 35:27
I’m letting them go. I’m letting them go and explore other opportunities.
Kristen 35:31
You’re ending a contract. You signed a contract with them. It probably says 14 days, 30 days, whatever, on both sides, because you’re both allowed to terminate a contract. And it’s business. We’re just sending a contract and giving them the opportunity to go do something where they’re going to shine and be better and be happier, and we can find someone to come in and fill that spot in our business that’s going to shine there.
Hallie 35:55
And that’s also like another thing, like, just because someone you know, people are saying, Hey, this is my hourly rate. If your rate is less than that. You post an application that is less than that, there’s gonna be someone that is excited to work for you.
Kristen 36:06
All right. Well, thank you so much for being here and talking to us about hiring. There’s just so much to consider, and you’ve definitely given me some good ideas. And thanks too. So thank you so much for being here. Do you want to tell everyone where they can find you?
Hallie 36:23
Sure I’m on everything. I’m on Instagram, Speech Time Fun. My blog is Speech Time Fun. I’m on Facebook. All the places feel free to send me a DM. I’m happy to answer any any questions.
Kristen 36:33
All right. Thank you so much, Hallie.
Hallie 36:35
Thank you so much for having me.
Kristen 36:36
I know hiring can feel like a huge gamble, but with the right strategies in place, it really doesn’t have to be. It’s all about finding the right people for the right tasks and then setting clear expectations to make sure they’re adding value to your business. If you’re on the fence about hiring, or if you’ve already hired, but you’re struggling to measure the results you’re getting, then I hope today’s conversation has given you some clarity and some action steps to take.
Kristen 37:03
Thank you so much for listening and a huge thanks to Hallie for sharing what she’s learned from growing her own team. Don’t forget to check Hallie out @speechtime fun at the links in the show notes, she is an absolute pro at everything she does. See you next week for another episode in our hiring series.
