What position should I hire first for my growing business?

Kris Plachy: Hey, welcome to this episode of Leadership is Feminine. We have another awesome podcast listener conversation to share with you. So, let’s get started. So, I know there are so many of you that are listening, who have the beautiful beginnings of a business. Maybe you’re making $50,000 a year, maybe you’re making a hundred, and you know that team is in your future, but you’re not quite there yet.

So, this is such an awesome interview and coaching session with one of our podcast listeners, because she’s just at a 100K, she’s just ready to make those initial hires. And she’s a little confused about where do I begin? Who do I hire?

So, I love this conversation with our listener. She has a beautiful music teaching business, and she does group lessons for children. And she was trying to decide, like, do I hire an assistant? Do I hire another teacher? I don’t have a tremendous amount of revenue yet to hire both. I think you’ll be happy to hear how we got to the end of this conversation, and what she decided she could do.

So, super fun, I just love talking to all of you as my listenershis will probably be something I continue to do. So, if you would like to be a listener that receives some coaching, please go to [email protected] and let us know, and we’ll send you an application to fill out, and we’ll take it from there. But for now, let’s turn it over, and you guys can tune into our conversation.

Kris Plachy: So your question is—so, you have a music studio, music school—I want to hire the right people in the right order for my specific business. I own a music school and studio for children, I’m trying to figure out if I should hire an admin assistant or a teacher first. My wait list for student to start music classes is long, and I need to hire a teacher to teach the students on the wait list.

The benefits of hiring a teacher first would be that I could use the profits from the extra classes to eventually pay for an admin assistant. However, I’m at capacity, managing my business, and teaching in my business, that I don’t think I’m set up to hire someone and train them. Ideally, I’d like to hire both at the same time, but I don’t make enough money yet to pay both.

My husband has mentioned taking over the operation side of the business, but he doesn’t have all the qualities I’m looking for in an admin person. I could delegate finances and some tech stuff to him, but not sure about customer service. Okay.

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Well, first of all, yay! Your business is thriving.

Guest: It is. It’s a good problem to have.

Kris Plachy: It’s a really good problem to have, this is all good news. And I am so happy that you’re thinking about this conversation, because so many people don’t, they just flap it together, right? “Yeah, okay honey, can you do this part?” And it gets real squirrely real fast. So, I’m just, I just want you to pat yourself on the back that you’ve taken a minute to think about it. Because you’re right, it makes a little sense here to be strategic and thoughtful, so that you don’t end up building something that you end up not wanting, ultimately.

Guest: Yes, I think one of my biggest fears is getting something set up and then realizing pretty soon after that, that it wasn’t going to work out the way that I hoped.

Kris Plachy: Well, and I do want to give you this heads up, right? Is this your first business that you’ve owned?

Guest: Yes, this is my first actual real thriving business that I’ve owned. I’ve dabbled in some things before, but most of my life I’ve been a career corporate person.

Kris Plachy: Good.

Guest: And yeah, so I have a lot of experience. At one time, I was an executive assistant, I was a manager, however, I don’t feel super comfortable being a manager. I think that I have a lot training to do in that area and work on myself, which is why I appreciate your podcast and your program, because I feel like it gives me more confidence to…

Kris Plachy: It’s what we do, yeah.

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, they’re very important, and you have obviously a wonderful skill when it comes to music, which is great news, right? But running a company’s totally different jam.

Guest: Yes.

Kris Plachy: So, where are you with your revenue right now?

Guest: So, I generate between seven and 8,000 a month, depending…

Kris Plachy: Oh, awesome.

Guest: Yeah, and that’s with the fluctuation of students that come in and out, so that’s about where I’m at right now.

Kris Plachy: So, you’re just about at a 100K, just under.

Guest: Right.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, that’s good.

Guest: That’s my goal.

Kris Plachy: That’s good. Well, it’s time to stretch the goal.

Guest: Right.

Kris Plachy: So, I’m going to ask you just to think about potential options, right? Like one of the things about this process is, there’s no right answer, there’s just, what’s the best one for you right now. And I can see several potentials, right? So, the first thing though, is what I would do before you even decide, husband, assistant, teacher, is you very basic job descriptions for all three kinds of positions. So, you mentioned that you would probably have your husband do some tech stuff, right? Okay, so then what would a role look like? That includes finance and tech, I think is what you said, right?

Guest: Yes, yeah.

Kris Plachy: So, what would that role look like? What would be the key result that that role would be responsible for? So, those are two kinds of tangential—or not really, they’re different. Then what would be the things that somebody in that role would need to produce? So, the objective, in order to achieve that result. And then what would be the responsibilities that they would have every day, right? And if you’re doing a lot of that now, then that’s just you making a list and parsing it off, right?

Guest: Yes.

Kris Plachy: And then there’s a teacher role, and what would a teacher do? What’s the key result? What are the key objectives? What are the key responsibilities? And then there’s the assistant role? Because I actually think you might want to consider a little hybrid here. So, not an all or nothing, all right? When you’re at a 100K, we recommend you have an assistant. It’s when we start to hit that first, “the wheels are coming off a little bit” time in our business. And then we hit it again around a million, and then we hit it again between 3 and 5 million, depending on how big you get, right? It’s just this evolution of growth. So, having someone, even for 5 hours a week…Because how many hours a week are you teaching?

Guest: I teach about 20 hours a week.

Kris Plachy: Okay, and how much money do you earn per hour?

Guest: Depending on the class, between 160 to $200 per class, and classes are generally an hour long.

Kris Plachy: Okay. And so you’re doing 20 hours a week at about $120 an hour, is that right?

Guest: Is that right? Yes. I think that…

Kris Plachy: Is that roughly right?

Guest: Yes.

Kris Plachy: At the end of your class, take 7,000 and divide it by however many hours you’re doing teaching, which is 40, 60, 80, right? 7,000 by 80. The reason I’m asking you to do that is, you’re doing as many hours as you can, because then you have this other part of the business, you have to run it. So, what would happen if you paid someone $25 an hour? To do the other things, while you’re over here making 120.

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Okay, there’s a cost when we don’t hire, because it’s limiting your earning, just you, whether we take a teacher on or not, right? We already can see that you actually have more earning potential than you are doing right now. If you told me “I’m working 60 hours a week teaching music,” then I would for sure say you need to hire assistant.

Guest: Sometimes it feels like that much.

Kris Plachy: Yes, but there’s a lot that goes into one class, right? So, that’s the piece, it’s like, these are the hours I teach, but then you’re prepping, and you’re doing all the other things that you do, right? But while you’re doing that, you are also not doing social media, or you’re not writing a newsletter, or you’re not updating customer data, or responding to customer service requests. So, we have to think about this VA assistant role as an investment, not an expense.

Guest: Yes. I’m looking for somebody that can help give me more time and space, because when I’m teaching, I’m on.

Kris Plachy: Absolutely.

Guest: And that can be a drain on my energy. And so, it’s not even necessarily sometimes a time issue, it’s an energy issue. Where I feel like I don’t have enough left to give to the administration of my business.

Kris Plachy: Yeah. Those are the truth. I think you have to tell yourself the truth, like I don’t work past 1 O’clock with clients, I can’t function. And if I have a morning, that’s 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 1, I’m done, that’s it. And my team knows that. So, here I am with you, recording a podcast, right? And there’s five other people working in my company. So, I’m generating media, this is what I’m doing, which will hopefully generate leads, right? But in the meantime, people are working in my business.

So, that’s the way you have to start to think, it’s like, yes, I am a solopreneur, but I can bolster both my energy and my earning potential by getting some support. And I don’t even think you have to start with a lot, I think if you hired someone to do 5 hours a week, you’d be blown away at what you could get out of that. And what is that? If 25 bucks, that’s 100 bucks a week, 100 bucks a week.

Guest: Yeah, I guess I never thought about just having somebody only work 5 hours a week, because as an executive assistant, I was between 20 and 40 hours a week.

Kris Plachy: Yes, yeah. But I don’t think your business is there yet, you don’t have probably 40 hours a week of work for a VA. But if you could start with someone and grow with them, I think you could find that be tremendously resourceful. So, if there was one thing you could just not have to do anymore, what would it be?

Guest: I think it would be answering client questions. So, I have a million—not a million, it feels like a million—messages coming to me every day, throughout the day, asking me random questions about policies, tuition, rescheduling, things like that. So, it would just be nice to have somebody on the back end that can handle all of that.

Kris Plachy: Yes, and—I’m going to add an and—build you an FAQ page.

Guest: Yes, that would be amazing.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, because that’s what you need to start doing, is you need to start collecting, okay, these 20 questions are getting asked pretty regularly. So, we’re going to make an FAQ page, where we’re going to direct people to there first. But you need someone to build that for you, you don’t build that. So, I would honestly hire a VA to do that.

Guest: Yeah, that’s great. Something that I’ve been wanting to create is a member site, that would also automate things and save me a little bit of time every week. And give further instruction, besides what was taught in the lesson, so that way they have other resources that they can go to through the week to help them practice, to help them learn and discover, maybe some concepts that they didn’t really understand in class. Instead of having that all on me.

Kris Plachy: So, my brain of course explodes when I hear people’s ideas. This is part of the benefit of working in the How a CEO program, is you get someone else’s brain on your company. And here’s what I would tell you to do about that, I would find a teacher that you could pay 5 hours a week, and I would pay them based on production. So, however many classes they do, they get $40, or I’m making this up, I have no idea, right? You don’t want to say I’ll pay you half, don’t ever do that. You make a decision of what you pay them per class, and that’s what they get paid. They don’t make money based on how much money you make, do you follow me?

Guest: Yes, and you’re answering one of my other questions that I’ve had about this, so this is fantastic.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, we make people offers. One of the biggest mistakes I watch people in service do, like, it’s a coach, right? I have coaches that do one-on-one coaching in our business, right? And we charge $7,000 for that. What a lot of people do is say, “Oh well, it’s $7,000, so I’ll get half.” But then if raise the rate to $10,000 they’re like, “I’ll get half.” No, I get paid $7,000, I’m going to pay you $500 an hour, that’s how that works, right? And so, that’s always how you want to make things work. So, you have to not ever make their earning contingent on your earning. Do you follow me?

Guest: Yes. Is there a general percentage that you would recommend, or is it just based on… I know you’ve talked about the results that they’re creating.

Kris Plachy: Yes.

Guest: Okay.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, so, I would look at, and you want to look at value, right? Are the classes’ just one person?

Guest: No. So, the classes…

Kris Plachy: So, groups.

Guest: Yeah, they’re groups.

Kris Plachy: Okay.

Guest: So, they’re generally about eight students.

Kris Plachy: Okay. And so one group with all the people who’ve paid for it, that’s what that hundred $160 is per class? Okay. So, then I think…. and I think you have levels, like, “Come on in, be my protégé, be my apprentice, be my whatever, and I’ll pay you $40 a class. And then as you build your acumen, and as you build my confidence in you, then there’s an opportunity to earn more,” because it’ll just make you more money. The better they get, the more students you’re going to attract, right?

Guest: Yes.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, so it’s worth it for your top performers for you to actually make less profit on those classes, because you’re building retention and. more students, right? Just keep that in mind. Yes. But I would bring someone in, and say, “Hey teacher, I’m going to apprentice you, and I’m going to pay you, and also by the way, I want you to start to watch me teach, and let’s start building resources that will go into a membership site right away.”

I would not, I’m sorry, not right away. I wouldn’t get too invested in building a platform immediately. A lot of people think building membership sites makes everything’s easier, and I will tell you eventually, it does. But it’s a whole other literal business to run a portal. So, before you go there, I would just put in that, all of your resources, video clips, things that you might want to have in there, content, lessons, start putting that together before you build the site. But I would leverage a teacher and their skill to help you.

Guest: I love that idea. I didn’t even consider that. I started dabbling in a membership site last year, and I thought it was going to be wonderful and easy, and I quit three quarters of the way through, realizing it wasn’t going to work out the way that I thought I wanted it to, so…

Kris Plachy: It’s not that membership... I think they’re a amazing. I mean, I have a membership site, even though we don’t really treat our program as a membership, but it’s an incredible way to organize and structure content and sort of a step process for your student, it’s brilliant. I just think where you are right now, let’s get some of the administration part of your business dialed before you take on something that will need managing. All that’s going to do is require more time from you to build it, manage it, oversee it, fix it, edit it, upload to it, like all the things that end up needing to happen. And it seems like you could create a Dropbox, or SweetProcess, or Google Docs and start amassing your content, and not starting it, until it’s finished, just building it until it’s done.

Guest: I love that idea.

Kris Plachy: Yeah. So, I would look at your budget, because if you add a teacher, right? You add a teacher, maybe for their training, you do 2 or 3 weeks, they have to shadow you. So, you’ll take a hit a little bit on your revenue in that window, but then eventually they become a teacher, and you’re not working in the class, and you can add classes. And like you said, you have this great waiting list. So, I don’t know, we go through years of our business where, or seasons, right? Where we do take a little less profit, because we’re going to reinvest, but it all just amasses and pays off in the long run. And I did that last year, we were way high on wages, and we had our best year revenue wise, and now we’re still generating revenue, and I don’t have the same level of wages.

So, it does pay off, it’s just, you got to think about this as an investment, and put numbers to things that you don’t normally put numbers to. Like, you’re just working, you’re not thinking about, “Okay, I’m doing all this. When I answer a customer service email, I’m paying myself this much money, when really, I could pay someone $22 an hour.”

Guest: Yeah, reframing all of that, definitely.

Kris Plachy: Yeah. And if you think in big numbers, like, “Well, I don’t have $35,000 a year to pay someone,” don’t think like that, you’re paying them per hour. And if you follow accountability strategies that I teach, if they don’t deliver, they don’t stay. So, you’re paying per hour for the result that they achieve. And if they’re not achieving the result, we’re not going to spend 30 grand on them, we’re going to spend 2 weeks’ worth of a few hours, and then we won’t keep them.

Guest: Right.

Kris Plachy: Yeah.

Guest: Yeah, I appreciate you breaking it down into smaller numbers, so that way it doesn’t seem so daunting. Because I do feel like I need both, I feel like I need help in both areas, because I do need to hire a teacher right away, because I have this wait list, and they all keep contacting me and the community needs it. My mission and my goal is to bring as much music education to my community as possible, because I didn’t have that growing up.

When I went to college, this whole world unloaded, and I was like, “Why didn’t I get this when I was younger?” And so, now I have all of the tools to provide that to the community. So, I know that they’re waiting for that. But then I feel like I haven’t been… I’m going through a lot of growing pains, and so, my administrative side isn’t set up to hire people yet, to hire teachers yet. So, I need to get that under wraps and kind of…

Kris Plachy: Well, just start with a really basic job description, and then one next step after the other, right? Start talking to people, bringing someone in to shadow. You can treat all of these hires as project, instead of like an employee. I would say you bring in a VA, and that’s their project, is the whole customer service response, you know, setting up templated replies, you’ll have to do that with them. And then ultimately, let’s build out a whole FAQ. That’s a process that you could get into place. And once that’s built, right? That’s a game changer.

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Because then anybody who comes in the business will have all of that institutional knowledge of your company. And then the teacher, I think you know how to observe and know if the teacher’s good. You just have to identify what those principles are that you’re going to be evaluating to know if they’re the right fit. And you might have to kiss a few bums, right? That’s part of the deal too. Just keep going.

Guest: Yeah, it is. Yeah, I had a couple of people in mind, and the more I listen to your podcast, the more I question, “Oh, maybe I don’t know if they would actually be as good of a fit as maybe I originally thought.” Going back to the results part of it, and not just working to work, but to actually produce quality results that are going to give my business a good reputation, and contribute to the growth in a significant way.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, I mean, it’s a queendom, right? That you’re building, you probably heard me say that, right? And so, we don’t want to just let anybody in. But we also have to recognize, and I love that you’re doing it now, that you have to let people in to grow it. You can’t get it bigger on your back, it’s not going to happen.

So, the worst thing that happens is you bring someone in, and you work with them for a couple weeks, and they don’t work out, and you move along, and you do it again, and you do it again. I mean, I have clients I’ve worked with for 4 years, right? And that’s why they stay in the lab, because everything’s great, and then they pop up, and they’re like, “Okay. three people quit.”

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Welcome to running a company. It doesn’t ever stop, we just get better at responding. But I think that if you can think about this as feeding the company, you’re feeding its success, you’re detracting from your personal revenue, like there’s a…|You have to start separating the business money from your money.

Guest: Yes. And that’s a difficult thing to do, as solopreneur going to…

Kris Plachy: Yeah.

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, but it is where, ultimately, you make the best decisions. If you’re just making decisions about well, what can I afford? That’s a different way of thinking than what does the business mean?

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Yeah. So, but I’m excited for you, it should be fun.

Guest: Yeah, I’m really excited, it’s scary, exciting, yeah…

Kris Plachy: And like you said, really well needed in the world, I love that. I was a music student myself. I took music all through elementary school, middle school, and then even in college. One of my favorite classes was music appreciation class for freshman in college, and we did all the—listen to classical, and we did all the things, and I loved it. So, I think it’s very important, I took voice forever. So, I love music, and so, I think the more we can get into it. My son is actually a music engineer in LA.

Guest: That’s awesome.

Kris Plachy: We have a lot of musicians in my family, so I’m a big believer, so grow. The world needs you, don’t get caught up in your own drama.

Guest: Right? I know.

Kris Plachy: It’s not about you.

Guest: It’s for the kids.

Kris Plachy: It’s for the kids. First for the children.

Guest: It really is.

Kris Plachy: It really is. I mean, it really is, right. Like I have a coach, and she’ll say to me, “Can you get over yourself so other people could get help, please?” I’m like, “Oh, okay, I forgot there’s other people out there, I thought it was just all about me.”

Guest: No.

Kris Plachy: But you know that’s what…

Guest: That’s why we do what we do.

Kris Plachy: We get kissed with a vision, because we were kissed with it for a reason. And that vision really doesn’t belong to you.

Guest: Right.

Kris Plachy: And the more you can hold it there and say, okay, what do you need to get? What you want to achieve? That’s a very different way of thinking, versus like how much money do I want so I can buy groceries next week. It’s just a different mindset.

Guest: I do feel like my vision is bigger than myself.

Kris Plachy: It should be.

Guest: Yeah, and it’s a beautiful thing, it’s what keeps me motivated to do this, what helps me wake up every day on the days that I don’t want to wake up and…

Kris Plachy: And answer emails.

Guest: And answer emails, and even sometimes monster up the energy to get up in front of eight little energetic bodies and teach them all of the things and…

Kris Plachy: Yeah, I understand.

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: I will tell you that the best, one of the best days in my business recently was when, this is probably about a year and half ago, we have a hello@krisplachy email, which is where all of our question go, even external, right? And I’m not in it. I don’t see it. I don’t read them. the only time is when my team is like, hey, they don’t know how to reply, so they’ll send it to me and say, what do you think? And then they’ll still reply, I don’t reply. And I was terrified when I did that, because I run my own company for 8 and a half years at that point. Because you know you read those emails at 9 o’clock at night.

Guest: Or 11 PM.

Kris Plachy: 2 in the morning. And then you’re like, “Oh God, I better reply, I better figure out, I better uhhhh…” And like, “No, stop it,” so, yes, let’s get the VA right away.

Guest: Okay.

Kris Plachy: That’s easy.

Guest: I love that you make it easy.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, it’s how we roll, it’s what we do around here. Because it isn’t that hard, it’s just all our mind drama that makes it hard.

Guest: It is, yep.

Kris Plachy: Yeah. And you’re going to fail, and you’re going to be fine, and then you’re going to do great, and then you’re going to fail, and then you’re going to do great. And that’s just how we do things when we run a company.

Guest: And I think that’s the other part of it too, is because I started this company in 2017, and it’s just been growing, growing, growing, and I don’t feel like I’ve hit any sort of a major fail yet.

Kris Plachy: Oh, good.

Guest: I mean, there’s been minor ones, but like nothing…

Kris Plachy: But you grew during COVID, I mean, come on.

Guest: COVID was the best thing that happened in my business, because I was the only thing that was open.

Kris Plachy: There you go. Yeah, so people needed a place to take their kids who were at home all day.

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, so good. So good, keep going.

Guest: Okay.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, but make a decision, make a decision, don’t waffle, just choose, decide, go forward, make a decision, be willing for it to be a little messy and not work out the way you thought, and that’s okay, because that’s the only way you’re going to go forward.

Guest: Yeah, I think in my mind I’ve been thinking, oh, there might be a wrong decision here, but…

Kris Plachy: No, the only wrong decision would be to hire or bring your husband into your business, and he doesn’t have an actual role.

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Do not do that, do not do that. I did the conversation with a bunch of women not very long ago, and we were talking about spouses being in the business. And I was just sharing my perspective, because I coached so many women who bring their husband into their business, or their partner. And I wish I could say differently, but a lot of the time, it doesn’t work out so well, and the reason it doesn’t work out is, there’s already some issues in the marriage, right? Or there’s just not a clarity, the expectations are unclear.

And so, we were having this whole conversation, and we were talking about how a lot of women involve their husbands, because they want their husbands to feel involved. And I’m like, “It’s not your job to take care of that for your husband, that’s your husband’s job,” right? So, there was a woman on that call who came up to me months later, and I didn’t even realize, and she’s like, “I just need you to know I got off that call and I fired my husband, and it was the best decision that we ever made for our marriage. And I just want to thank you,” and I’m like, “Well, good to know.”

So, it’s not a decision, it feels like it could such an easy, like, “Yeah, could you just…?” But it can get squirrely. So, that would be the one thing I would say, don’t do that, unless you have very clear expectations and job description.

Guest: Yeah, we have such a good relationship right now, and the thought of me being his boss so to speak is, I just don’t think it would bode well for either of us.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, that’s good wisdom. You have to know that, right? Like, the women that I know who do work well this way, they have a one-on-one with their husband. Like when they’re at work, they are the CEO, they are in charge, but it works, right? And that just adds a whole dynamic to the relationship, that some are totally ready and able to do, and others like, “Oh wait, this is weird. We don’t want to do this.”

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: There’s no right or wrong, it’s just, I like people to be really clear before they make that decision, because the marriage is important.

Guest: Yes.

Kris Plachy: An employee, you can just fire.

Guest: Yeah, I’m in it for the long run with my husband, so…

Kris Plachy: There we go, yeah.

Guest: This is just like a sign.

Kris Plachy: Yeah, and it could be the best decision you guys ever made, it’s just how, right? Let’s just go. It’s the same thing with like if you, I did one a couple a while ago hiring a friend, especially hiring a best friend, hiring your mother, hiring your sister. Like, all those relationships are the ones I love to help people treat very uniquely, because those have other—there’s other implications involved in that, so.

Guest: Yeah.

Kris Plachy: Okay.

Guest: Thank you for your wisdom.

Kris Plachy: It’s my pleasure, I’m so glad I got to meet you, thank you for being on my podcast.

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