On paper, hiring is pretty simple.
Put out a job listing, screen the candidates, see if you vibe together, bring them into the business, train them up, and set them loose on your accounts.
Simple.
They’ll take work off your hands, free you up to bring in even MORE business, so that you can then hire your next team member, (so that you can be less IN your business and work more ON the business.)
Rinse and repeat until you have a well-oiled million-dollar machine.
The first hiccup is more of an annoyance than anything else. When you realise exactly just how much you actually DO in your business….
Running the ads, creating the split tests, analysing results, creating copy and creative, integrating landing pages with emails, navigating website backends for pixel installs, replying to a GAZILLION client emails on why the ads aren’t doing sales yet, and spending hours creating beautiful reports that no one ever reads.
When you realise you’re trying to recruit a unicorn.
If you manage to overcome this hurdle, well done, you’ve now graduated to the second hiccup. This one is usually where things start to unravel.
You see, you had every intention on the planet to DO the training with your new recruit. You’d even blocked out a whole day from your calendar…but an emergency client email came in, and one of your campaigns has gone to the gutters and needs immediate help.
Priorities. The training will need to wait.
Three weeks later – you’re slightly annoyed that they haven’t figured things out on their own already…
It wasn’t their fault that they didn’t answer that email the way you would have liked, or that the campaign wasn’t structured using the naming conventions you’ve created.
Mind-reader wasn’t one of the skills they had listed on their resume, after all. You keep meaning to train them – but you’re too busy!!!
Then something even stranger happens…
You end up doing everything yourself (the ads, the campaigns, the emails – errrrything). Because it’s much, much faster… And because if you don’t then the ball just gets dropped.
Huh.
So now you’re doing more but earning less.
And you start to resent your staff member – it’s bringing your down.
So you let them go. It wasn’t making financial sense.
Maybe you’ll try again in a couple months. Not really the rinse and repeat you had in mind.
Sound familiar?
If so, STOP everything you’re doing – no literally! Put your lead gen, sales and campaigns on pause, offload it to contractors if you can. Focus 10000% on training your new team member and building out those processes. THEY are difference between success and burnout…
… between freelancer and business owner.
… between $10K/mths and $100K/mths.
Not gonna lie – it SUCKS, big time, and it costs money and time, but fail to do so and you’ll find yourself in a freelancer washing machine without an end cycle in sight.
Hiring a team is one of the coolest but most foundational steps in your business – treat it as the serious move it really is…
If you need help or want to tap into my processes and systems, book a call using eightloopsocial.com/apply to see if it’s a good fit.