Dave Braun
00:00:03
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the HireMyVA Team and Business Building Podcast brought to you by Yoogozi.com. In this podcast and at HireMyVA, we help you to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with Virtual Assistants without breaking the bank. And as we always say, without breaking your bank. I’m Dave Braun and normally I’m here with my partner and my friend, great business coach, Larry Broughton, but today it’s just me flying solo to get something out to you guys. So everything that I say here, as he says, may be wrong, but I don’t think so. All right. So here is our question, and this is episode 139. Here it is. What are the top five things to do before making your first hire? Well, there’s really more than five things, but you know, we’re fans of the Pareto principle. If you guys don’t know that, the 80/20 rule, it really says for many outcomes, roughly 80% of the consequences of those outcomes comes from 20% of the causes.
Dave Braun
00:01:09
Okay. So another way to put this, in other words, regarding both positive and maybe not so positive results in your life in business and in all areas of society, the principal basically says that 80% of the results that we’re gonna get comes from 20% of the actions. And it really is pretty true. Now, it says 80/20, but sometimes it might be 90/10, sometimes it might be 70/30, 75/25. So don’t take the exact number literal, but use it as a principle, just to basically say you get a bunch of results from a smaller number of actions than you would normally think about. But it’s easier to think of 80/20 principle. Now, one of the things that we’ve got at HireMyVA is our course was designed with this in mind because we’ve got rapid quick start action areas at the beginning of each of our modules, which is the Prepare module, the Hire module and the Thrive module.
Dave Braun
00:02:10
So you can get 80% of your results from 20% of the actions there or watching only 20% of the videos. But really what we’re talking about here is given what might be dozens of things to do. I’m just gonna give you my top five. My top five are the things that you’re supposed to do or that you should do before making your first hire. Now these are my top five. The good thing is most of them, they’re really not done that often. They might be done once, but chances are, they’re really not gonna be done over and over and over every time you wanna make a hire. So this is basically the Prepare stuff. Now, a lot of folks skip these items and you know, you can get, skip everything, anything you want and get lucky. But I don’t wanna do that for you guys.
Dave Braun
00:03:00
I want you guys to thrive. I want you guys to have the best person on your team, to have your businesses grow great. So let’s get into what are the critical things to help you find great team members and then the course getting them at the beginning. Now you can get more of this information. We’ve got a comprehensive checklist on our site and at Hiremyva.com. So go over there and grab it. So, here they are. Oh, wait a second. But before we do this, if you’ve already done, ’em, you know, you may wanna revisit them and adjust, because it may have been a while since you’ve done some of this. So bear with me here. I’m gonna go to my iPad. And here we go. So the first thing is gonna be, in my opinion of course, is our three column exercise.
Dave Braun
00:04:00
All right. So our three column exercise. So what is that? So I’m gonna tell you what that is, right now. So you can see here the three column exercise. So what you wanna do is, we’ve talked about this in detail in episode 124, Larry has— it’s really his invention. It’s brilliant. It’s awesome. But let me just describe it to you real quick. You want the details go to episode 124, but basically what you do is write down everything that you are doing. Everything that you are doing, like every single thing that you are doing. Then once you’re done writing that down, it may take you a few days. It may take you a week. That’s what we recommend, is taking some of that time doing it. Then what you wanna do is you wanna circle and draw an arrow over to, of any of these things.
Dave Braun
00:04:48
What is it that you’re great at? And so you draw ’em and you actually put them in this column. And then, any of these things that you are doing or great at, you want to then put it in the third column, if you actually love it. Now, what will happen then after that is you’ll have a list of things that you’re doing, that you’re not great at, or you don’t love. You’ll have a list of things that you’re great at, but you don’t love. And then you’ll have a list of things that you love here and you may not be the greatest at, but at least you love it. So then what you’re gonna want to do is take all of these different things here that’s left over in this column that you’re doing, you’re either not great at, or you don’t love. And you want to use those as potential things that you can outsource to a Virtual Assistant. So this is how you wanna help come up with a particular job description or a position profile for somebody. Now, as a bonus, one of the things that you should consider doing also is(let me go back). One of the things that you might wanna also consider doing is adding items that you should be doing …
Dave Braun
00:06:01
in your position as a, like a business owner or whatever position that you’re at. So like, if you’re a business owner, you should be making content. Maybe you’re not great at it. Maybe you don’t love it, but that’s something that you probably should be doing. It’s some things that we’re doing. So you want to add that in here as well. Now, you won’t be able to outsource that, but you can outsource. When I say outsource, you can get people to help. So basically what’s happening here is I am on this thing as I’m recording it right now. But guess what? Daph on our team is gonna be editing the video and Jules and Reg on our team are gonna be posting it on our site and for a podcast and also into social media. So really of all of this stuff, which is editing, also editing social media, posting, breaking up into different chucks. You don’t have to do that. I don’t have to do that. So all I am doing is this part and they are doing that part. So while you can’t maybe outsource everything you don’t like, you can outsource a whole bunch of it. So let’s go then to the second one. The second one is, define your culture.
Dave Braun
00:07:26
Now, again, this is something that you’re pretty much doing once and revisiting here and there, but your culture really is made up of two things, your vision and mission and your core values. Now what you wanna make sure that you do is you wanna define this because it will get defined for you and you don’t want somebody else like a client. You don’t want your VAs. You don’t want anybody else defining it, but you. All right. So let’s take a look over here at—
Dave Braun
00:08:05
So we’ve got a guide here in HireMyVA, a vision, mission, creation action guide, where you talk about the vision statement being the desired end state. The mission statement is why you exist. They’re both one sentence statements. And we’ve got a really nice guide here, but basically what you want to do is a one sentence statement, clear and simple, etc. A one sentence statement. You wanna make it clear, inspirational, etcetera, both of these. So this is the desired end state, vision statement, like clean water for everyone, why you exist, we dig Wells to help provide water for everybody in this particular area. It’s a specific mission.
Dave Braun
00:08:50
So that’s one of the things. Now, the other thing that we’ve got in our program is our core values creation action guide about how to do it. We’ve got a pretty extensive process. If you want to go through this, but you can really just think about the core values. What do you, what do you, what embodies, what you want to create? You know, some things, some popular things might be discipline or excellence. Some other words might be integrity. And we’ve got a whole list of them here. At the end, you know, is it challenge, is that one of the things, is charity one of the things. So you can see here that we’ve got a really nice guide, but you wanna make sure that you’re defining your vision, mission and your core values, which is creating your particular culture. So you define it and you have to work to create that. All right. Now let’s go to the third thing. The third thing is, understand your personality.
Dave Braun
01:10:02
Okay. Now we’ve talked about this extensively in episodes, 53, 86 and 87 about Kolbe A and Strengthsfinder. I don’t want to go into more detail on that and why they’re there and what their importance is. We talk about that in length. So go there. You can always try other ones as well, Myers Briggs, to get an idea of who you are, how you work best so that you can appropriately pair yourself with the right team member or understand who is in your organization, that you are gonna be pairing people up with. Let me give you an example of somebody I’m just gonna call his first name A and then the other person is B. So one of the things that I’ve always enjoyed is I love collaborating with people. You know, sometimes we will just do zoom work together, calls for an hour, two hours where we’re all working together, just kind of we’re working virtually, but it feels like we’re in a little bit of an office.
Dave Braun
01:11:13
So we do that together. Well, this person here, I discovered about myself that he really enjoys it. So we do this now and he’s on the team now, but this person, I didn’t realize when I hired him, that he didn’t like it at all. It’s like, gimme the tasks, let me execute and I’m gonna do it. And he did. He did great. But one of the things that I found is I was finding that the joy in my business, I was losing out some of the joy in my business because I was not working together with the person A. So part of the definition of your personality is going through those assessments. But part of it is discovering how you work best, how you enjoy your work and what you really love and how much fun that you’re having when you do it. So really here is, we’re talking about understanding your personality. So let’s go to the fourth one here. We’re gonna go to the fourth, which is, understand your business finances. So now why do you want to know that? Well, you’re gonna want to know that you can actually afford somebody.
Dave Braun
01:12:27
Now we’ve talked about this before there, and I’ve talked about it to where you might be thinking, oh, they’re gonna be, have to earn X amount of money per year. Well, this person is gonna earn that per year, but really it’s that much over 12. I mean, that’s kind of the money that you have to have in the bank at any one-time is a 12th of that or a 24th, depending upon how often that you’re paying them or 26th. So you don’t have to have all of the money upfront to actually find somebody. But this is gonna be critical, knowing your finances, because you’ll need to know this and know about like how much. How much you can afford? Does that mean you can hire somebody offshore versus onshore wherever you’re at. So it’ll dictate the “Where”. This will also dictate how many hours because you maybe only afford somebody that’s part-time. Ideally you want to get full-time, which is totally what we recommend, but you do what you need to do. And then the other thing to remember is they will help generate. If you hire the right person, they will help you generate more money and time, if I can draw a little clock there. So they’ll help you generate more of both. So you wanna make sure you understand your business finances. Now the next one that we’re gonna talk about here is the last one, is you’re gonna need to write down your search and interview process and how you’ll decide on somebody. So your search/interview process.
Dave Braun
01:14:06
And how you’re gonna decide in your decision making. So before you even go and wanna hire somebody, you need to make sure you decide this stuff or obviously get some help in figuring that out. So you’re gonna need to talk about, think about where to search, right? That’s why you want to talk about, understand your business finances, how are you gonna communicate through email to start most likely. What about your interview questions?
Dave Braun
01:14:37
And then you’re gonna be interviewing and maybe talking to three or four folks, how are you gonna compare them? Are you gonna give them tests? What kind of tests? A little bit of a project. Are you gonna do that? So we’ve got a couple of things here at HireMyVA that I want you to consider to make sure you have. If you’re part of our program, you get them. But if not, then you wanna make sure you, search for it online or whatever. So we’ve got some interview guidelines that are pretty detailed, develop a plan, the setting, etcetera. But we’ve also got a really comprehensive guide on interviewing questions where we talk about the soft questions, hard and specific, where the soft questions or attitudes, behavioral things, where you’re getting to know them. Technical is the hard and specific skillset.
Dave Braun
01:15:30
And then specific question is you ask them about specific things on their resume. And we’ve got in here just all kinds of questions throughout the whole thing and our top five questions. Like one of ’em, what do you think you’re perfect for this position? I use this all the time. I use this next one. What would we do if I set up a process, tell you at the beginning, we need to follow it. And a month later, I’d tell you let’s skip it for this one project. What would you say to me? So these are some very important things that you have to make sure that you’ve got. So let’s review these really quick. Number one here. Let me go back. Share my iPad.
Dave Braun
01:16:19
Number one is a three column exercise. You want to make sure you do that before you hire somebody. You wanna define your culture. Number three, understand your personality. Number four, your business finances have a handle on that, about who you can afford. That’ll dictate a lot. And then of course, make sure you’ve got some kind of a thought out search/interview process and a way you’re gonna make a decision on somebody. So now, I hope that helps you guys. I hope that makes sense here. And you know, if you have any questions, let us know, put it in the comments down below, send us an email— [email protected]. Just communicate with us and we’ll help you through some of these. So I really thank you for joining me today. And remember, building a team is the way, number one way to reclaim your freedom.
Dave Braun
01:17:12
And we’re gonna help you with our course and community and our White Glove Service, where we find a rockstar VA for you. Our White Glove Service, as all these different things we talked about, we’ve got them set up for you. We walk you through those and help you really hone in on who you need and whom you need. I dunno if it’s who or whom anyway. But three things we’d love for you to do and we’d really appreciate it. Number one, subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already done so. Either on your iPhone or your Android phone and on YouTube by hitting the subscribe button and clicking on the little bell next to it, to get reminders. And then number two is give us a rating, preferably five star, or leave a comment below the video. Any comment, it helps us to get the word out.
Dave Braun
01:17:53
And then number three, go to Hiremyva.com for more information on our course and community and our White Glove Service. Remember, even without experience, you’ll learn how to prepare for Hire and Thrive with Virtual Assistants. Larry and I have helped a lot of folks. And of course, we’d love to help you too. Go to Hiremyva.com for more information and to see other podcasts—all that kind of stuff. And really a final word here, is if you guys are watching this, you’ll get the most out of it. But if you’re listening to it, I hope I described it well enough. So I think you’ll get it. If you guys have something else that would contribute to one of the things you wanna do before you hire somebody, let us know. I’m open to your thoughts and it would actually help our program to be better. So anyway, go to Hiremyva.com from information and ask us some questions. Thanks, guys. Bye.
