Hiring for the wrong roles is one of the first mistakes any small business owner will make.
Hopefully this video will help you from making some of the same mistakes that I did.
In my first business, the first person I hired was someone to help me with all my social media posting. I would create the blog post, and then this person would take that blog post and share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
The second person I hired was someone to do all the graphics for my blog posts so that we could post the blogs on Instagram, make the videos look pretty with thumbnails on YouTube, and pin the blogs on Pinterest.
The next few people I hired all did very specific things in my organization and everything was running smoothly…
… until it wasn’t.
Long story short, I went from being the entrepreneur who was busy building the business up – to the manager who spent all his time managing employees and putting out fires.
It wasn’t long until the momentum of my business died, we stopped growing, and I had to start firing because we couldn’t make payroll.
So there’s a couple lessons I learned from this.
- The first person that I SHOULD have hired was a personal / executive assistant.
This is the person that will do all the small ‘tasky’ things that eat up your time as an entrepreneur. They’ll take your appointments for you, run out to get you a bite to eat, help you stay on top of billing – and even help you with small things on the home front such as picking up your dry cleaning or getting groceries for you.
This is the absolute first hire any entrepreneur should make because your expertise is needed to fulfill more critical functions in the company.
- The second person that I SHOULD have hired was my opposite.
I’ve yet to meet an entrepreneur that didn’t fall into one of two categories:
- The Sales / Marketing Entrepreneur
- The Operations / Managing Entrepreneur
While most entrepreneurs can fill both of these roles, they typically lean one way or the other.
I’m the sales and marketing entrepreneur. I like to network, I really enjoy the sales process, and I love coming up with and executing on new marketing ideas.
I’m NOT the operations and managing entrepreneur. I’m really good with small teams of a few people, and struggle like crazy when I have more than a few people reporting to me.
That’s why the 2nd hire I made in my business was the best thing that I could have ever done. She helps projects stay on schedule, refines internal company processes, and works with employees to make sure they’re happy, fulfilled and on task.
In summary, these are the first two hires every entrepreneur should make. Because if you have these people in place:
- You stay focused and in your genius zone where you thrive.
- Your opposite will help build out the teams and make additional hires that are easily managed and held accountable within this new balanced framework for which you can grow.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you have a different opinion?
If you liked this video, you’ll love Episode 5: Pick Up the Dang Phone! (not what you think it is)
