Ready to Hire Help for Your Private Practice? Start Here. (Part 1) | IP204

Hiring your first team member (or heck, your 5th!) can feel both really exciting... and really scary.

(Am I right? 🤷🏼‍♀️)

Because most business owners hire when they're overwhelmed, and frankly, feeling a bit desperate…

So they hope against hope that the new hire works out. And they’re terrified that it won’t actually help at all.

Well - in my experience, that's all backwards.

The best hiring decisions don't begin with a job posting.

They begin with clarity.

In this first episode of a four-part series, I'll show you how to step back, evaluate the work that's actually happening inside your business, identify the role you actually need to fill…

…and avoid some of the expensive hiring mistakes I've seen over the years (including a few of my own!)

This is really going to help you.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why hiring from overwhelm can easily lead to disappointment - and what to do instead.
• How to conduct a simple – but oh-so-useful! – Systems Audit that reveals where you really need help.
• How to identify the tasks only you should be doing — and the ones someone else could own.
• How to define the role, hiring criteria, and budget before you ever post a job.

The biggest takeaway? Hiring isn't about relieving overwhelm—it's about getting clear on the business you're really trying to build.

Because the clearer you are before you hire, the easier every decision becomes afterward.

Not even kidding, y’all.

And hey - I've put together a free Systems Audit Worksheet to go along with today's episode. It'll help you identify where your time is really going and where hiring could make the biggest difference.

You can absolutely do today's exercise without it, but I think it'll make the process much easier!

WendyPittsReeves.com/audit

Next week? I’m going to show you how to take the next step (one you will now be better prepared for!) because once you know what you're hiring for, it's time to attract the right people.

And I’ll show you how to do that before the interview process even begins!!

Now - go listen to this episode. Do your homework. And I’ll see you next week.

~Wendy

P.S. Don't make the mistake of thinking this series is only about hiring someone like a virtual assistant! Whether you're looking for someone to mow the yard, answer your phones, help with marketing, or become your next right hand... this process works.

Stay with me over the next four weeks 😘

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FREE RESOURCE

Download your free copy of the Ideal Practice Systems Audit, a one page data collection sheet you can use for the exercise I’m recommending here in Part 1 of the hiring process.

Get your copy here: wendypittsreeves.com/audit.

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MENTIONED

Kolbe A Index > Learn more here. (Not an affiliate link.)

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• Quick Start Consult: If you’re ready to get out of your own way, this 1:1 coaching work session could make all the difference. Learn more here.  
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Transcript

Wendy Pitts Reeves 0:00

You're listening to Ideal Practice, episode number 204. Today, guys, we are going to dig into a topic or start digging into a topic that I have wanted to talk to you about, honestly, for a very long time. I'm going to teach you how to hire. I'm going to teach you how to get the help you need to run your business, or for that matter, your life, more effectively. This is the first of a four-part series that is going to give you exactly the tools you need to make that work. You guys, I have hired a lot of people over the years, and except for a rare exception, here or there, I have almost never regretted a hire. And honestly, the few exceptions that there have been, that happened when I did not follow my own process, when I did not follow the method I'm about to teach you. And personally, I kind of think that says something. So, starting today and over the next few weeks, I am going to share that method with you. I call it the cast method for hiring help that works. And whether you have thought about hiring a virtual assistant to help you with clients, or thought about hiring a social media manager to help you with marketing, or heck, just thought about hiring somebody to help you mow your grass. Whatever it is you are thinking about hiring help for at all, this is going to help. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Wendy Pitts Reeves, and with over two decades of experience in the private practice world, I've built my six-figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way. This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy, alignment, and strategy to build a practice that is profit-centered, but people forward. This is the Ideal Practice Podcast. Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of the Ideal Practice Podcast. This is Wendy, Wendy Pitts Reeves, your host. And yes, as always, I am super excited about hanging out with you today. In fact, I may be a little bit more excited than usual because today I am finally taking action on something I have wanted to do forever. Why I haven't done this before, I don't know. Life is full. What can I say? But many times over the past few years since I've been running this podcast, I have thought about doing a series on teaching you how to hire help. Now, part of this comes from like one of the most popular episodes or a couple of the most popular episodes we have ever had here on the podcast, were the two where I went into detail with my right hand, Queenie Verhoeven, who many of you know now. We did one episode on how to hire a VA, like well, well, what a virtual assistant even is and how they can work with you and how to think about them. We also did a whole episode on how to hire them. And even after four years and 200 plus episodes, those remain some of the most popular episodes we've ever done. And when I was thinking about doing this for you, honestly, originally I just thought of it as a single episode because I can actually boil this process down so simply that I can fit it all onto one page. I can say, do this, then this, then this, then this, then this. Poof, you got it. But as I started planning this episode or started sort of thinking this through a little bit deep more deeply, there's actually a lot here you need to know to do it well, to do it properly, to do it where in a way that you really do hire the right person for the right job in the right way and bring them on board in a way that's gonna work for you. Okay. So I can't do it in one episode. That's just not it's not gonna be fair to you, and it's not, it's just not gonna help you. So I am going to create four of these. Today is the first one, and we are going to dig into what I call the cast method. That's C-A-S-T. What that means is today we're gonna talk about clarity. We're gonna talk about how to know exactly who you need to hire and why. Clarity answers that question. Oh my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed, I don't know what to do. And this is a step that many, many, many people skip when they start thinking about hiring for help. I'm going to challenge you, y'all, right here at the very beginning. Don't skip anything that I'm gonna be teaching you in these next four weeks, okay? If you're ready to hire somebody, you need every bit of this. And getting clear about what you need, why you need it, and who you need to help you take care of it is one of the very first things you got to do. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. Next week, we'll talk about attraction, how to attract, how to invite the right people to apply. So, attraction answers that question: like, how do I find good people? Like, I don't even know where they are, and how do I reach out to them and how do I recognize them, and how do I avoid making a mistake here? So, I'm gonna teach you all that, guys. I'm gonna help you with every bit of that. I'm gonna I have such a cool process for this in terms of the kind of ad that you create, the way you talk about what you're gonna do, the way you describe the position. Like there's a lot to it. And I'm going to give you exactly what you need. That's next week, okay? We're gonna be talking about attraction next week, how to attract the right people. After that, in the third part of this series, we're gonna talk about selection. I want you to choose wisely when you do get ready to make that step, okay? You will, if you do what I am teaching you how to do, you will have plenty of applicants. And then the challenge is on you to choose wisely. So selection answers the question how do I know that I'm getting the right person? How am I how do I know that I'm choosing well? Trust me, by the time we're done, you will know. And then the fourth part we'll talk about is trust. And I love this because when you hire well, that's the beginning, yes. But then you gotta bring them on board. You gotta introduce them to the team, you gotta bring them into the company, into the service, into the practice, and you gotta make that work too, right? So the challenge here is to build a relationship that allows both of you to do your best work. When you do this right, you will be able to trust that new hire to do what you hired them to do and to do it well, but they will also be able to trust that they have joined the right team. And both of you together will trust that the work you do will take your business to where it needs to go next. So that is also really important. See how all this works? Like there's a lot to this. And today we're talking about clarity, which is the hardest part of almost any aspect of running your practice. If you've been with me for a while, you have heard me talk about this in multiple contexts. Today is no exception. So, without further ado, let's begin by talking about how to get clear on exactly who and what you are hiring for first. Okay? Okay, let's go. All right, so let's talk about how important it is that you take the time to figure out a few key details before you ever even mention to the outside world that you are thinking about hiring. And I I want to highlight this by giving telling you a story. I'm gonna share one little story here. I once knew a coach who had a an eight-figure business. This coach was making in somewhere in the two to four million range per year. And this this event happened early in that person's growth, in her growth, as her practice was beginning to take off, as her business was beginning to rock. One of the things that she did was she hired someone that she had met who had a lot of drive, a lot of ambition, who was like a real firecracker, a go-getter, who seemed like somebody who could make things happen. And when you're at the head of a growing business that is taking off, bringing someone on board who has that kind of fire can be really exciting, very enticing. It can be a little overwhelming sometime in our little entrepreneurial brain because we can see so many things that are possible all at once, and we tend to move fast. So when you find somebody who can keep up with you who has the same kind of drive that you do, that's really kind of cool. And it can feel like, oh my gosh, this is perfect. So this coach brought this person on board to basically be her right hand, okay? Someone who can help her implement the many ideas that this person had. The problem was the kind of tasks, the kind of personality, the kind of energy that went into that role was very different from the kind that went into the coach's role. So the coach, the visionary, the head of the company, she was the one with the big ideas. She was the one with the strategies. She was the one who could see down the road where they were going. The person she hired, who today I would call an integrator or an implementer. That's not the language that she used, but that's what I would call it. That person needed to have a very different kind of skill set, a different kind of personality, and a different kind of drive. For that, you need someone who is very happy to be in that position, kind of behind the scenes, behind the stage, ready to make all of these cool ideas happen in real life. Well, as it happened, the person that she hired wanted the same things that she wanted. This person wanted to be the coach. This person wanted to be out in front. This person had her own, like I said, drive and ambition. That's very exciting, except that it was a terrible fit for the job. And so I do not know all the ins and outs of this, nor do I need to. It's none of my business. But watching it from the outside, what I know happened was that over time, bitterness and resentment and discontent grew in that relationship. And at some point it broke. At some point it broke, and the person that this coach hired left the business, left the company, and took a lot of clients with her. That was painful, personally painful to the one who had done the hiring and devastating to the company in all kinds of ways, as you can imagine. That is an example of what can go wrong, why it is important to figure out some of this stuff on the front end. And what I am going to teach you today is how to avoid making that kind of mistake because that coach learned from that, I learned from hearing that story, and I know how to avoid that. And after that, so did she. So, one of the most common mistakes that business owners make when they, especially when they are first learning to hire, is they tend to hire from a place of overwhelm. I just want somebody to fix it, and I want them to fix it fast. And when that's where you are coming from, it's very easy to make a lot of mistakes. It is so much better if you take the time up front to get clear about a couple of things before you ever start to begin your search, okay? And y'all, it takes a while to do this. Like when you really do this properly, it can take days, if not weeks. Okay. When I, the last time around that I was working on hiring a few new members from my team, it took me a couple of months to work through the process that I'm going to lay out for you in this series. So this is not something you do quickly or lightly, but when you do it well, it will help you avoid the kind of mistake I was just sharing with you. If you hire before you take the time to get clear, you could very well create for yourself some very expensive problems. For example, you may hire someone whose natural ways of working are not a good fit for the position. That's what this was about. So that they struggle to keep up in some cases, or they struggle to be happy in some cases. Like there's lots of things that can go wrong when it is just not a good fit. Or you may hire someone who is so much like you that let's say they're not like the story I just told you. They're perfectly aligned and they're all on board and they've got your back. But because they are so much like you, that's why you like them, right? You you two click. They have the same blind spots you do, which means they're going to compound the problems that you already have. That's not gonna help you. That's not gonna help you. You may hire someone who just doesn't have the skill set you need them to have. And let's say you like them and they seem pretty smart and you think you can teach them, but if if certain things are not in place, you may spend a lot more time than you expect to teaching, correcting, teaching again, correcting again. See where I'm going with this? Like it can really, it can cost you a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of frustration, and honestly, a lot of hurt feelings if you skip the process I'm about to walk you through. So here's where we begin. This is going to be a six-part, six-step process, this getting clear before you begin the hiring process. And in this episode, I'm gonna go over the first five of them, okay? In the next episode, we'll get down to the meat of where all this is gonna lead you. But today I want to go through the first five of six steps. And the first step is I want you to conduct what I call a systems audit. I want you to track what you do in your business and honestly in your life for at least a week and preferably for two weeks. For two weeks, I want you to keep a notepad out on your desk or a digital file open on your phone. I want you to make a simple list of every kind of activity that you do during the day. I want you to capture what you do by the type, not the details, the type. For example, your list may include returned calls from client inquiries, sorted out an issue with a client's credit card, met somebody for lunch, spent time looking for a book for a specific client's needs, ran to the store to pick up extra copy, paper, and some chocolate for the office, straightened up the waiting room. It can be that kind of stuff. But it might also include picked up the kids from school, met with a teacher, went grocery shopping, chopped vegetables for a meal prep, made a dentist appointment for my spouse, paid some bills. What you are doing here is you are becoming an observer. But all you are doing is gathering data, okay? And in a moment I'll tell you what to do with that. But all you are doing right now is collecting data points. Look at the sheer variety of tasks that make up your day, okay? This one step has been one that my clients are most tempted to skip, but it is the one that makes the most difference for them when they don't, because sometimes it will reveal areas that you weren't paying attention to where you could use some help. Okay. So that's step one. Just literally capture all that. And guys, to make that easier for you, I'm going to mention to you I've got a little handout you can use, a little worksheet. You can get it at wendypitsreeves.com forward slash audit. I basically have created a one pager that you could literally lay on your desk and it will guide, it will sort of prompt you to notice these things through the day, and you can just jot them down in the in the of the sections on this paper. So that might be helpful to you. WendypitsReves.com forward slash audit. It's free, easy, but that can also that can make this process a little simpler for you. Because what I want you to do next, once you have this list of data points from a couple of weeks, is I want you to study that list and I want you to group everything into its cat into a category, various kinds of categories. And you'll see that certain things fall together in a natural way. On the work-related side, it may be marketing activities, networking activities, billing activities, taking care of the office, like physical, physically taking care of the office. It may be tech, certain aspects of the tech that you have to deal with. On the personal side, it may be household chores, it may be child care, it may be meal prep, it may be personal finances, it may be relationship, relationship nurturing and support. You will find that your activities sort of naturally fall into certain broad categories, okay? That's that's going to be natural. And if you if you download that worksheet I just mentioned, that will also kind of help you see where some of those categories might be. Now, as you look at those categories and the tasks that are inside each of them, I want you to ask yourself a couple of questions. I want you to evaluate them. Which of those activities drain your energy? Which ones do you absolutely hate doing and you will put it off as long as you can? Where are there, where are there a breakdown? Where is there friction? Even if you don't put it off, but it's always tricky, it's always challenging. One of my favorite coaches and mentors used to be fond of saying, wherever there is stress, wherever there is stress, there is a lack of habits, systems, or boundaries. Wherever there is stress, there is a lack of habits, systems or boundaries. And man, she was right. I lean on that all the time because that does pretty much nail it. So you're looking at that. Which ones do you have to do? And which ones could you possibly delegate or automate? And I want you to be brutally honest with yourself here, guys, because just because it's easy for you or you're the one who's always done it, does not mean it is the best use of your time or that you are doing it in the most effective way. Which ones do you love, you enjoy, and you want to keep them? Which ones do you enjoy? But really, somebody else should probably be doing those things. What would free you up so that you can focus on the things that matter most, the things that your talents are most suited for? In other words, I don't want you to necessarily start with what you don't know how to do. I want you to start with what you may know how to do just fine, but it is not what you be you should be spending your time on. Think of what's a $10 an hour job versus a $200 an hour job? What's a $25, a $50 an hour job versus a $200 an hour job? Okay. Now, as you do this, are you noticing a pattern? Are there certain things that are kind of rising to the top? Is it already naturally showing up where the category is, where the group of tasks are, where honestly you could use some help that make the most sense. Over time, you may hire a variety of people for different positions. We're looking at what do you need now? What do you need next? What makes the most sense for you today? And that leads us to step three. So you've collected your data points, you have organized them into categories, you have now assessed and evaluated those tasks and those categories, and you have recognized where you need some help. So step three is to make a decision, your first important decision. There will be many. I want you to decide what are the primary tasks that you want to hand off to somebody else because it makes sense to do so, and what is the type of role that would be appropriate for those tasks? Social media manager, an administrative assistant, a client intake and referral, person who can answer the phone for you, someone to clean the office. What makes the most sense? And then I want you to begin thinking about what are the tasks you would assign to that role and exactly what duties would that role and the person in that role need to be able to handle. For example, if it's a public-facing role where they're going to be actually talking to potential clients, that's gonna bring its own set of skills and energy, okay? If it's tracking data, keeping up with bookkeeping, keep preparing for your taxes, that's gonna have something completely different. If it's running errands, they need to have a driver's license and a decent car, okay? Whatever it is, what are the tasks you want to assign, and what are the duties that this person in this role are gonna be need to be able to handle? And then I want you, this is all part of step three about deciding about the role. I want you to map out the process, what are the steps they would follow in the execution of that task. And there's a there's a couple of reasons why I want you to do that. First of all, because just for your own, for your own clarity, for you to get clear about what all the steps are, that's going to help you understand what skill sets they need to be able to have, what tools they need to be able to use, what kind of access to resources they need to be able to have. That's going to help you, and that's going to help you when they need to try something. You're going to hand them a task, and you're going to be able to you want to give them the detailed instructions about how to execute that task when you are ready to give them a test project, which you're going to do. So as you are writing out the task, I want you to capture the details. I want you to notice what are the specific skills they need to do this task. What are the assets they're going to need to have online? For example, one of the folks that I had hired at one point was in the Philippines, and we ran into an issue with the version of Dropbox they had access to versus what I had access to. Hadn't expected that. Learn something from that. What kind of personality traits do they need to have to thrive in this position? What will they need? And what does this job look like when it is done and done well? You are getting specific about the role, the tasks that this role will be responsible for, the absolute, the exact steps that are involved in those tasks, and the skill set and personality that it's going to take to do well at those things. This is all about describing success in very clear ways. And if you can't describe it, you can't hire for it. Okay? That's step three. We are getting into the nitty-gritty here, y'all, but it this will serve you well. I'm telling you, this is why it took me a couple of months to hire last time. Step four is to begin using that, what you just came up with there, to determine your hiring criteria, what a successful candidate is going to need. Based on the tasks and the duties and what's what it takes to do those, what desired skills and expertise does your ideal hire need to have or be able to learn? I am a big believer in hiring someone who may not know how to do something, but they can learn as long as they're the right person for the job. So do they need to have the ability to use a certain software program? Do they need to have a high level of attention to detail? Do they need to have a lot of organizational skills, a valid driver's license? Do they just need to be really warm and friendly and good with the public? Do they need to be relatively intuitive and astute in understanding people? Or does it not matter at all how they are with people as long as they know their way around a spreadsheet? Okay. So what are the skills and expertise they need to have or be able to learn? Secondly, what kind of personality traits do you want them to have? What's negotiable and what isn't? I'll tell you for me, for example, some of the things that are really important to me is I want someone who has a really good sense of humor because you're going to need that on some days. I want someone who can handle a lot because I'm going to throw a lot at them. They need to be patient and tolerant and not get over and know how to manage overwhelm, I'll put it that way. And I want someone with a very high attention to detail and a very high level of professionalism. That's important to me. Okay? What's important to you? And remember, you are not looking for your new best friend, guys. You are looking for someone who balances out what you bring to the table, someone who can get the job done, someone that you can sort of hand it over once once everything's properly set up and trust that they can do it, and it will make your life easier, make your job easier, free you up to do what you do best. And you're gonna be glad that you've got all this when we get to the next part of the series, so the next episode, because that's where I'm going to teach you how to write a job description, a hiring announcement that is going to bring in the right kind of applicants. This work you're doing right now, that's where we're going. That's why this clarity is so important. And then step five, which is the last one I'm going to cover today, is to set your budget. I want you to figure out in advance how much can you pay for how many hours a week or a month on the front end. And what could you conceivably raise them to over time? Let's say over the next year, maybe the next two or three years. And guys, sometimes it may be worth it to hire someone with a higher skill level for less time at a higher pay rate, depending on what you need them to handle. It really, really, really does depend on what you are hiring for. It really does. Among other things, what the per that when I was the story I told you at the beginning about the person that that coach hired who was so awesome in so many ways and yet was such a terrible fit, and then ended up where that whole relationship went south. Well, what came out of that is that that coach learned how to use a particular assessment tool that she ran her final applicants through to make sure that their work styles and their interests were a good match for the position. The one she used is called the Colby, K-O-L-B-E, Colby A index. I also use that. And it is extremely helpful. And in my coaching work, I always encourage people to use that for their final applicants because that shows the kind of personality type that somebody has and how they like to work, what they what they enjoy best. And there are very clear ways that that assessment aligns with certain types of skills, certain types of roles. Okay. So that's what I that's what we're doing today. Next week, I'm going to teach you exactly how to write the copy for an ad for posting a job online that will bring you the kind of applicants you want and will help you weed out the ones you don't. So if you are thinking about hiring in any capacity, whether it's hiring someone to clean the house or the office, whether it's hiring someone to pick up the kids after school and get them started on their homework, so maybe you could see a couple of afternoon clients, whether it's hiring your first administrative virtual assistant or a high-end web designer, this is going to serve you well. You can use this for all of those. Okay? So don't miss next week, but do the homework that I've laid out for you today. Let me do let me do a real quick recap. Okay, so these first five steps. Step one was to conduct a systems audit where you collect a data point, a data list of all the types of activities you do each day for at least a week, preferably two. Step two was to group all of those activities into categories, natural categories, and evaluate each group in terms of the friction that it brings to your job and which ones it makes the most sense to hand off. Step three was to decide which task you are indeed going to hire for and what is the role that is best suited for those tasks. And to map out the details of those tasks, what's involved in all of them, so that you can literally write an operating procedure that you could hand over to somebody to follow, because you're going to want that later. Step four was to determine your hiring criteria. What are the skills, expertise they have to have on hand or be able to learn? What are the personality traits that they have to have? And all of that, what's negotiable, what isn't? What would be nice to have? What is an absolute requirement? And remember, you're not looking for a best friend, you're looking for someone to compliment you. And then step five was to set your budget so you know that part's going to come up too in your conversations with people. So you want to get clear about that as well. Okay? That's where we are beginning today. This is the clarity aspect of the hiring process. This is doing your homework up front, and this is going to make all the rest of it so much easier. So much easier. All right. And just one more time to mention that little worksheet I've got. If that will help you in terms of thinking through the different areas in which you might want some help, you can get that again by going to wendypitzreeves.com forward slash audit. Download that little free worksheet and that can help you as well. Although you do not have to have it, but that will help. All right. That is part one of this series on how to hire. I hope it's helpful. I hope you will not skip it. And I look forward to seeing what comes out of this for you. I bet you're going to learn a few things. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sticking with me. Have a great week. And I will see you next time, right here on the Ideal Practice Podcast. Bye now. Hey y'all. If this program has become important to you, if ideal practice matters, it would mean so much to me if you'd be willing to take just a minute to do one or two of the following things. First of all, would you follow or subscribe to the show here at Ideal Practice? Following me helps you because you'll never miss an episode, but it helps me as well for all kinds of reasons. To do that, all you have to do is go to the show page for Ideal Practice on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. There, just click on the plus sign that you'll usually find in the top right hand corner, or click on the word follow that you're going to find somewhere there on that page. Of all the things, this really is the most important thing you can do for the podcast itself. While you're there, it would be extra special if you would be willing to give me a five-star rating. And even better than that, a review with your own words. Your words matter. And when you write what you feel, what you think, you uplift and encourage others. And I love that. If you want to go a step further than that, take your favorite episode or two, one of the ones that has meant a lot to you, and share it with a friend. Could you do one or two of those things for me? I promise I will love you forever. You guys matter to me, and I value your support more than I can possibly say. Thank you, sweet friend, for anything you can do to help me out and support the show. I'll see you again soon.