5 Ways to Know It’s Time to Hire for Your Business

You're listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast with Debbie Sassen, Episode 166. 

Welcome to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Sassen. I went from being a financial adviser, author and chronic under-earner to building my business to six figures as a financial planner and money mindset coach. And then, on to multiple six figures as a full-time money and business coach. 

I help entrepreneurs create money-making businesses and build wealth using sales and money mindset strategies in alignment with authentic Jewish values. Now, let's dive into today's show.

Hello my friends and welcome back to the podcast. It has been a minute since I last recorded a solo episode. I have to say I missed you. I enjoyed doing the interviews and if you haven't yet watched all of the interviews or listened to all of the interviews, I really do recommend that you go back and listen to the episode 163, 164, 165. There is gold in each and every episode for all of my listeners and for you in particular.

There's something about your relationship with money that I discussed ad infinitum with Barbara Huson, managing the money in your business that I discussed last week with Ahuva and three weeks ago when we were discussing growing your heart-centered business with Sarah Chana. There's such golden nuggets in each one.

And today we're going to continue on the theme a little bit about what we were discussing, especially growing, scaling your business, because I noticed, by the way, I was in Miami and I was at a business conference and I was really, I had some time away to focus on my business and when I was able to disconnect from my business and look at that sort of 30,000 foot view, it really became apparent to me that so many of my clients are dealing with similar issues, which we're gonna speak about today, which is knowing when it's time to hire in your business, scaling, growing, because my clients are feeling maxed out.

They're at capacity, which I'm just gonna pat myself on the back. It means they've done really, really good work with me. They've done the work. I show up for the mindset, the identity work, the capacity work, the strategy, scaling, everything. And you business owners, and me too, right? We're doing amazing work in the world.

But here's the thing, you have 24 hours in a day, you've gotta sleep, you've gotta eat. I imagine you wanna have some like personal connections with some people in your life, husbands, wives, children, aunts, uncles, parents, right? We don't wanna be 24/7 behind our computers, behind these podcast mics doing all the things. Humans are wired for human connection.

So you need to get out, probably do some exercise, move your body, especially in the winter. It's so crucial because we can just sit huddled inside with like blankets on, that's me. But I make myself go out, have a walk, go to exercise because our bodies are designed to move. So if you're spending 24 hours a day or even 18 hours a day, 12 hours a day in your business, you're going to get burned out.

And this is also a theme that I have noticed with some of my clients because in the beginning stages of your business, you really do all the things. You do the marketing, you do the selling, you do the bookkeeping, you are the cook, the cleaner, the bottle washer, you do it all. But there comes a time in your business when you need to bring people onto your team because you are the CEO, you're the visionary, you started your business because you have this amazing idea to share with the world. You have gifts and talents and creativity and that's where you need to be.

You need to keep visioning for your business. You need to keep serving clients and sometimes if you're like a creative agency, which some of my clients are, you might also be bringing people onto your team to do some of the creative work so you can keep growing and doing the visionary parts that you need to do as the CEO of your business.

So if you're finding yourself like really stretched, there is just not enough time in the day, not enough hours in the week for you to do everything, then you really want to listen in to this podcast episode because you're gonna want to start bringing people on your team. For many people, that happens about the $50,000 income level. Sometimes it'll go to $75,000, $100,000 level.

I mean, I know women who have been single and they've managed to scale their businesses into the multi-six figures without bringing anybody onto their team and they kept the tech really low and they were amazing at what they did. That is, I think, a unicorn. Most people are not like that. Most of us do need to bring people onto our team a lot, lot sooner. So in this podcast episode, we're going to talk about five signals, right?

Five things that you're just going to want to look for, pay attention to, so that you know when it's time to hire. Of course, we're also gonna talk about the mindset blocks, the fears, the reasons that you don't, thinking that you can do it all, fear of hiring and managing someone, we're gonna talk about that. And we're gonna talk about which hires are going to make the most impact for your business.

When I got to the stage where I was feeling really stretched, I brought a virtual assistant onto my business. At that time, she did a lot of the tech because I'm not naturally wired to do tech. So she was helping with tech, with systems. I could write an email. At that time, I didn't really understand how to use my email service provider. So she was able to take my words and get them out into an email until I could figure that out myself. Even putting up social media posts. Like, so that is something that I wasn't uniquely wired to do if you're a creative person and you love it.

So maybe the next person on your team is going to be the one who does bookkeeping for you. But think about where you are gifted and where you are less gifted because you want to be the CEO. And this is really problem number one is that if you know that you're getting stuck or you're spending a lot of time in the admin work. I mean, there are people who, they run admin agencies, virtual assistant companies. So if that's the kind of thing you do, that's fabulous.

But if it's not, if you're a coach or a creative, if you're a healer, if you're running a different type of product business, some of my clients are also, you know, they have product businesses, and you need someone to help you with the tech, customer service, administration, bookkeeping, lot of repetitive tasks that are coming up all the time that you are not uniquely wired to do, that's a sign. And you might just feel frustrated all the time, like, ugh, right?

Sometimes when I have a tech glitch, it can be really agonizing. I do try to keep my cool. Now we can Google a lot, get lots of answers. ChatGPT also gives me answers sometimes so I don't have to get stuck. But I'm also willing to reach out and speak to the people who really know this stuff and they love it. It's like the ocean that they swim in. People who love that kind of work, they're like little fishies in the ocean. 

So please, for the love of God, don't keep doing those activities because if you can get back five hours of your time a week, or maybe even it's only five or 10 hours a month, that will free you up maybe just to sleep. And when you sleep, you can be more of that visionary. You can be more creative.

But that is really, I think, the first person that you wanna think about bringing on your time is someone who can do the tech admin bookkeeping tasks. And even yesterday, I'm doing some systemization and building a content database for my company, and the person that I was working with yesterday who's helping me, we were both talking about those people who love the financial management, Profit First, we've spoken about that on the podcast, and we were both so grateful that there are people in the world who just eat this stuff up. They are in their zone when they were doing money management on that kind of level.

So make sure that you're not continuing to do things that you're not uniquely gifted to do. I want you to like think about, and there's that rule, that 20% of your work is going to bring you 80% of your profits. Figure out, or 80% of your revenue, figure out what that 20-80 rule is for you. If you're really spending 80% of your time doing the admin work and it's not the thing that's bringing in more clients and more revenue, then start noticing what's going on so that you can find someone who is wired for that.

And there are even tests, by the way, there are like Kolbe tests that you can do to find out where people's, you know, where their genius lies, where their talents are, so that you can make sure that rather than replicating yourself, you're actually bringing someone on your team who loves to do that kind of stuff. 

Okay, so that's number one. You're getting frustrated, you have like no extra time in your life or in your week, you know, for your family, for your kids, for yourself, that is a big wake-up call.

Number two is if you're finding that your revenue is capped, if you are not able to grow your income, you're getting stuck, It could be at $50,000, $100,000, $200,000. One of my clients has a multi-six-figure earner and her business is stuck. She has a product business and she has an inventory system, but she did not have the time in her weekly schedule to manage that inventory system, even learning it. 

She brought someone into her business to help her, but she’s, again, not uniquely wired to be managing those kind of systems, so she's working on bringing somebody into her business who can manage the inventory more closely. All the products coming in, all the products going out, and understanding which parts of her market, which parts of her audience need which of her different products that she offers.

So that is a very special skill set that maybe you don't have because of what you're doing with your business and you can bring someone on. But you'll again notice that your income isn't growing because you're busy doing work that you are not uniquely designed to do and you can bring an admin person onto your team to help you really double your revenue because you're handing off stuff to people and you can stay in your zone of genius.

So your revenue, which is your top line money income, it doesn't include your expenses, your revenue could double, but let's say you're bringing someone onto your team and you're only paying her half of what you're earning. So let's just make it really simple. Let's say that you make $100,000 in your business and we're gonna pretend for this very simple black-and-white exercise, we're gonna pretend that you have no costs. Even no Zoom, no podcast, you just, every dollar that comes in, you get to hold. Wouldn't that be a fun business? Even the tax authorities don't wanna know about you.

But you notice that your income is capping out at $100,000 because you don't have enough time. So you bring somebody on your team, let's say that you pay her $50,000, but now your revenue grows to $200,000. So what happens? Because there are no other costs, just you and your admin, right? There's 200 coming in and 50 for your admin person.

Now there's $150,000 for you. So your income actually increases. Wouldn't it be lovely if that's the way it really worked in the real world? I know the tax authorities, they want some of your money and there are other expenses going on in your business. But I hope you were able to see from my example how useful it could be to have somebody in your business so that you can increase your profit margin.

Number three, this is another sign is that you are starting to like drop the balls in your business. And I will say I did have this once I had a client reached out to me, it was the time that I was doing the transition from financial planning and money coaching to money coaching and business, but I was still taking financial planning clients. Someone came to me and I literally dropped the ball, not the real ball, but I didn't get back to them about the financial planning.

First of all, I wasn't excited about doing more financial planning. I really felt that I had finished that chapter in my business and someone reached out. I guess it was because of money scarcity, it was somebody that I actually knew from our neighborhood, so I said yes. And because I was busy doing other things in my business, doing the coaching side of my business, I did not get back to them. 

And they were like, after a while, "Hey, Debbie, what's going on?" And I wrote back, "I'm really sorry, I dropped the ball." Literally wrote those words. Because I'd hit a ceiling. I did not have the capacity in my day and week to do all of the things.

So if you notice there are things that are not getting done or you're pushing them off for a week, two weeks, three weeks, your clients are getting back to you saying, "Hey, what happened to that project we were working on? I thought we were going to hear from you." That is a clear sign that you're overextended and it is time to be bringing someone onto your team.

It can also happen that you are doing all the things, you keep stretching your capacity. And by the way, capacity is something that you do grow and stretch over time. It's kind of like being a parent. You think when you have one, you only have time for one child. All of a sudden you have two, three, five, eight. I'm a mama of eight. And you figure out how to have capacities to support all of those children and your husband, parents, et cetera. 

But if you notice that you're making a lot of mistakes because you're stretching your capacity, you're really holding on to all the balls, you're not dropping anything, the fact that you're maxed out can also be showing up in the fact that you're making mistakes. If you're sending bills, like invoices to your clients, and you have the wrong numbers on your bills. 

One of my clients, this isn't because of her making mistakes, she actually brought someone onto her team who sent out a project to one of her clients, and there was a very big, very blatant mistake in the finished product that they sent out and it was something that, you know, my client didn't do but her team member, so, but I'm just using that as right now as an example, but we need to have time to double check our work to make sure that we're not just like writing something up, sending, writing something up, send it. 

I know it has also become very common in our generation to let typos go. We give less attention to typos, we overlook them. I do think, especially now we have so many tools that will help you spell check what you're writing, that it is important for you to read over your work and notice if your sentence makes sense. Notice if the words that you have written are correctly spelled. 

I will say that I have a process for sales that I call Sacred Sales Conversations, and I sent many emails out, actually, that said Scared Sales Conversations. So there you go. That is also something that is not caught by a program that will spell check because sacred and scared are spelled with the same letters. And one of my clients who does proofreading, copywriting, editing, writing, she sent it back and I fixed it. 

And then guess what? The next time I used that email, it was there again. So the joke was on me. I'm telling you this because I know it from, you know, my own skin that mistakes happen. Even when you read your emails a hundred times, something happens. But if you notice that these typos are coming up over and over again, or you're sending your clients, you're supposed to bill them for $1000 and you send a bill for $100 or $10,000, like something is wrong. It's a wake up call for you that you need someone on your team who is focusing on the invoicing or on other details and is a detail-oriented person.

The fourth sign that it's time to hire somebody on your team is that you're starting to resent your business or you're starting to resent your clients. This is also, by the way, if you're starting to resent your clients, and all people are beautiful, but sometimes we outgrow our clients and it's time to let clients go, which means that you might need to shift your target market, which means you might need to shift your target audience and start marketing and selling to a different caliber client.

But if you're exhausted all the time and resenting your business or resenting your clients from like sucking time away from you, by the way, you're the one who has the boundary issue, we'll talk about that another time. But what that can also be a sign of is that you need to get back into your creative spirit. You need to go and, as we talked about, move your body, do some exercise, go for a walk, and if you don't have time to do it, it's going to significantly and severely impact your business.

You need to bring somebody onto your team who will take some of the load off of you so that you can go back to being that visionary CEO, that creative person, that heart-centered business owner who really and truly wanted to build this business. And we just have to reframe that, that this is what gives you fuel. This is what lights you up so that you can keep going. You don't need to do all the things.

The last sign that it is time to hire someone onto your team is that you really want to scale, right? You have big goals, you have big ideas, you want to expand, and right now you actually don't have the bandwidth to execute.

This is kind of like the umbrella problem of all of the problem, because everything that we've talked about now is like you've hit that bottleneck, which is you, by the way, and you don't wanna spend the time really figuring out who do I need on my team? What's the skill set? What are my standards? How do I even go and look for somebody? 

One of my clients brought a project manager onto her team a couple of months ago, and this was an issue for her. She knew for months, we'd been talking about it for months, that she needed to bring somebody onto her team, and it was really when that bottleneck became so, so, so, so tight, and that was the sign that it was time to slow down. 

We put together a proposal for what she was looking for for a project manager, and she went out, and then she got people back, and then there was also the question, do I choose A or B or C? We finally found someone for her team, brought a project manager on, she has a virtual assistant working with her, sometimes virtual, sometimes in person, and it changed her business. It changed who she is because now she can be the CEO of her business and she can rely on other people. 

I like to use this metaphor. As your business is growing, I want you to think of like the roads and the highways. And think about in the beginning, right, you have a new highway and it's brand new and there isn't a lot of traffic and you go and you go and you go and maybe then some new neighborhoods or communities get built around this highway. Maybe people buy more cars, whatever it is, but all of a sudden there's a lot of congestion on the road. You know what I mean? Ever live anywhere where the roads are just too busy? Yeah, I know that. 

And what happens is that the government decides that they are going to expand the road. So what happens is they break up the road. And this is what happens in your business. A lot of congestion, a lot of work not getting done in your business or it's getting done really, really slow. There's that bottleneck, there's that traffic jam. You know what we need to do? We need to break up the road. And that is so painful. 

If you've ever been driving on roads and needing to regularly drive on roads so that you can get from A to B, and I used to have this going from my house to my work in Jerusalem exactly when they were expanding the roads, and sometimes it would take me an extra hour to get home because of the roadworks. Something in your business is going to have to give so that you can expand.

And that's what happened to me, is that I would just either have to leave work earlier, which meant that I would potentially lose money if I was not putting in all the hours, or I would have to put the work in at another time. There wasn't the option back in the day to work from home, so that wasn't an option for me. And sometimes I would come home late, which means my kids would see me less, I would be paying my babysitter more. It was an uncomfortable period of time. It felt like a lose-lose for me from every direction. I was either gonna lose money at work or I was gonna lose money paying my babysitter and lose time with my kids.

But you know what? Once the road work was done, and I really had no control over that, and I had to keep going to work at that time, but once it was completed, it was so much faster, so much smoother, the capacity for the road to hold more cars was huge.

So if you need to hire people into your business, right, you have to slow down. Something is going to have to give. It's either going to be your time, meaning you're going to spend more time in the business. It's going to be your money because think about it, that investment in the road, but let's just think about hiring someone onto your team and she/he has not yet become an efficient member of your team.

You're going to have to slow down to train your new hire until your business is big enough that you have someone who will be hiring them, maybe an HR department, maybe somebody else in your business, depending on how big your business is. But yeah, you're going to have to maybe take less clients for a while because you're spending time working and training up your new hire. 

So that might mean money is going out to your new hire and less money is coming in. So one way to solve for this in advance is to always make sure you're noticing the signs that your business is growing and it's feeling very stretchy and you need to bring somebody on your team. So having a cash fund, having a reserve fund for that is something that you can prepare in advance.

It's like if you have a refrigerator. Your refrigerator is going to die at some point, right? Maybe it's going to be 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. Once upon a time, refrigerators were literally designed to last for a lifetime. Today, they're not designed to last for a lifetime anymore. But if you put money away in a savings account, I'm not even talking about an emergency savings account, but an account for costs that you know you're going to have in your house, in your home, but you don't know when you're going to need them.

We all know that we will need to replace our appliances from time to time. You will need to replace the tires on your car from time to time. So if you have a fund set aside for expenses that you know are coming up, but you just don't know when, that is very, very helpful. That way you don't have to go into credit card debt. You know the cash is right there, and it feels so amazing when you actually get there.

So back to your business, you can also have a savings fund for future investments in your business. And notice when that's happening. And as a business, there's always something, whether it's a new computer, a new phone, all of those involve money, cash, capital, and you need to prepare for that in advance.

So one of the things that keeps people stuck and not taking the next step is that money fear. Those money blocks. They're like, oh my gosh, I can't spend the money. I don't have the money. It feels so uncomfortable, right, to start bringing somebody onto my business when I don't have any proof that it's going to work. And that's true. You do not have any proof. 

But you know what? When you started your business, you didn't have any evidence that your business would work either, and here you are with your business and people are buying your products and your services, they're working with you. We have to keep going. Your belief, your belief in the fact that it's going to work with G-d’s help and your conviction in the value of what you're offering and the solutions that you're providing to your clients, that's what's going to fuel you and carry you in to the next stage of your business.

You have to keep going forward. You have to do the work, as I said, to identify exactly what your business needs, to make sure that you hire the right person. And guess what? We don't all hire the right person at the right time. Or you hire someone who could be the right fit for your company at a certain stage of your business, but as you grow, that person no longer becomes the person. 

That person is very good at that maybe small technical job that she does, but she doesn't have the ability to grow with you. And then you might have to fire, hire. And that's another reason people don't, they're like, oh, it's just easier to do it myself. That easier-to-do-it-myself mentality is going to keep you stuck.

All right, so I think I've given you a lot, a lot to think about, right? You need to make sure that you are noticing where your time is going, right? That's the number one is if you're getting stuck doing the admin tasks, the billing, bookkeeping, one of my clients who's a creative, or a couple of my clients who are creatives, they need people on their team to do some of the creative work, right? You're getting stuck. It doesn't always have to be like a low value admin task, but you just need someone who can take some of the load off of you.

If you don't have enough time, that is a sign that you need someone on your team. If you are seeing that your revenue is capped, That's another sign that it's time to bring someone onto your team. Number three, you're making mistakes or you're dropping balls, then you are ready to bring a hire onto your team. 

And of course, number four, you're exhausted, you're resenting your business, you're resenting your clients, time to bring someone on so you don't have to do all the work. And if you know that you can't do it alone, but just the feeling that you can do it better and you're resisting that feeling, right?

It's usually a very powerful sign. You have to learn to let go. You have to learn to delegate. That's you growing your ability to be a manager and it's a skillset that we learn. It's good for you. Does that sound nice or does that sound patronizing? You know, we just grow our ability to be leaders and to lead other people. And when we delegate, we let them lead themselves, which is also a beautiful thing.

So if that's an issue that is something that is really coming up for you, that you've like maxed out your time, your energy, your money, your capacity, then it's a very good idea for you to think about who the next hire is for your business and to go and hire someone.

All right, my friends, thank you so much for tuning in to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast this week. I want to let you know that if you are not on my email list yet, you really wanna be on my email list. I had so much fun at the end of January. I came back from Miami. I told you I was in Miami, went to a business conference, really opened up my mind and my energy, and I offered some such fun one-on-one coaching containers, like an intensive for February, which was such a beautiful gift to give to my clients.

And at the beginning of February, right now I'm also offering a special magnetic money bundle, which is something that I know that you would love, but you've gotta be on my email list to find out about these things. So if you're not yet there, go to my website, debbiesassen.com/newsletter and join my email list. I want you to be there to make sure that you are the first to know next time I come out with an amazing offer.

All right, my friends, thank you for being here and I will see you next week.

Thanks for listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. If you want to stop underselling and underearning and close more sales, you need to clear the limiting money beliefs that are sabotaging your business growth. 

Head on over to DebbieSassen.com/mindset and download my free Money Mindset Workbook. Uncover and dissolve money blocks, like hundreds of other entrepreneurs who are now building six-, multi-six-, and seven-figure businesses and creating true financial freedom.