Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of the Business Journey podcast, I'm Rebecca, your host, and today we're talking all about building a team and bringing on full time employees. Now, before you completely check out, just hear me out because I know while I'm making this that the majority of the people that are going to be listening are probably not in the place where you're ready just yet to bring on full time employees. And that is OK. My whole purpose behind making this episode is to give you something that whenever you do get to that point where you're ready, you have to be able to fall back on. So I encourage you to listen and take notes and just put it away for another day, you know, store it in the back corner of your brain. You know, put it in that notebook of things that you'll refer back to at a later date because you will want to use this information. Maybe not today, but someday. And so I am just going to kind of peel back the curtain because I do get a lot of questions. People are just curious at how I brought on full time employees and how, you know, we work through all that. So I'm going to be answering a lot of those like common questions that I get. So maybe you're the kind of person that you're not ready to bring on a full time employees, but you're just curious like you want to see the behind the scenes of my business and this episode is for you. So before we get too far, I did want to let you know about a brand new blueprint, a free guide that I have just for you guys. It's something that I've wanted to create for quite a while and just haven't had the time to sit down and actually do it. And so I did it. You guys, we have a brand new blueprint. It's called the three K Mini Sessions Blueprint. It's your guide, your step by step checklist for what to do to make your first $3000 on one single date of mini sessions. Maybe you've done that before, and you want to make sure you're hitting all the steps. Maybe you've never done many sessions before or you have, and you haven't made anywhere close to $3000 in one date of Minis, wherever you may be. Grab this blueprint. It's completely free, and I'm just so excited about how packed it is with valuable information, so you can grab that at Rebeccaricephoto.com/3K-minis. Rebeccaricephoto.com/3K-minis. I hope that you will find that helpful. So let's go ahead and dive in here to hiring a team. One of the biggest questions I get from people is how do you know when you're ready to hire on a full time team members? So a good like rule of thumb is you probably already have some subcontractors working for you, whether that's an editor, a virtual assistant, maybe a social media manager and you're ready to continue scaling. OK, so the goal would be for your business. You know, I've talked about how we tend to be the lid of our own business, and we can't continue to grow it past our own capacity. So that's when we have to bring more people on to be able to grow into their capacity. So typically, you know, you're ready to bring on a full time team member. If no one, you've got those contractors and you can afford someone working full time hours, we're talking 40 hours a week with you every single week, just a piece of wisdom. It's a good idea to have at least three to six months of that person's salary, plus your regular expenses already in the bank. So for us, we keep a good amount of money in the bank just as a safety net because you never know if something like, I don't know, COVID hits and you're not able to work for, you know, several months at a time, that was like a really crazy season for us. And thank goodness we were in the process of building up that three to six month savings. I like to call it a cash reserves, so we are in the process of building up this cash reserves. When, you know, COVID hit in 2020 and with the help of, you know, the Paycheck Protection Program and a few other things we were able to make it through. But if you're going to be bringing on full time employees, you want to not only have three to six months of your regular business expenses and you know your salary in the bank. But you also want to have three to six months of whoever you're bringing on their salary as well. Because when I brought my team members on, I look them in the eye and I said, Listen, I am hiring you responsibly, and I would not be hiring you if I wasn't ready to cover your salary for, you know, six months if the business was to bring in zero money because I wanted them to feel security, understanding that, yes, they are going to be working for a small business, but that I'm hiring responsibly and I do have, you know, three to six months of their salary saved up where if the business brought in no money for six full months, then they would be able to receive their paycheck and be able to count on that. So that's just, you know, a piece of like wisdom you really want to hire responsibly. And so building up that cash reserves is. Step number one, to make sure that you are ready for that once you decide that you are ready to hire. There's really two camps that I see people, you know, sit in. People either hire somebody from inside the industry, which is, you know, the expert or, you know, somebody that that is in the photography industry that knows what they're doing whatnot, or they hire somebody from outside the industry and train them from the ground up with this. That could be, let's say you're hiring a full time assistant. We'll just use this as our example. You know, moving forward, if we're going to be hiring a full time assistant, we can either find somebody that has a virtual assistant business and is ready to take on somebody full time or, you know, jump over to your business full time instead of taking on other clients. Either way, that person is likely already trained. They know how to deliver galleries. They know how to workflow, desk your email system or whatever it is that you're needing them to do. You don't have to train them because they're within the industry. They know how to use dubsado and all the things. When you hire somebody from outside the industry and train them from the ground up, they don't know any of those systems. And I feel like that could come to sort of an advantage for them not knowing systems because they don't have bad habits or habits of things that are not the way that you run things in your business. So the way that we've done it, I have hired three full time employees along with myself and my husband. So there's five of us working in my business full time right now, and we have always trained people from the ground up for our full time people instead of hiring within the industry. The reason is, number one, that we have specific processes that we teach. And so even if they don't know how to use Dubsado, I can teach them the way we used dubsado, not the way you know all the other people use dubsado I can teach them how we used dubsado and the people that we hire are so smart. They're super smart, super sharp, so they learn most things very quickly. So that has just been to our advantage that it works better for us to be able to train them from the ground up. Also, I believe that it's cheaper to hire from outside the industry than inside, because if you hire one of those experts, their knowledge and the fact that you don't have to train them on various systems, it's going to cost you. And so for us, we weighed, you know, the pros and cons of that, and we decided that we would rather go the more cost efficient route of hiring outside the industry and then just taking the time to train our people. So that has worked super, super well. Once you've decided if you're going to hire from outside the industry or inside the industry, people always ask, Where do you even find people to hire a couple of really great places that you can hire from? And I literally just did a whole masterclass in behind the lens about outsourcing one to one and like where to find contractors and where to find employees and all the things. So if you're not a member of buying the lens, definitely go check that out because that masterclass is like golden. But for us, we have found all of our people through referrals. So I have not hired anybody that I wasn't already familiar with or that wasn't like a friend of a friend. Actually, I knew all the people on our team and they were stay at home moms, or we're looking for some flexibility to be able to, you know, work from home and be home with their kids. And so that has worked the best and for the foreseeable future, that's how we're going to continue. Hiring is just through referrals, either people that I know personally or like friends of friends, and that seems to work the best just because there's a little bit more of a trust factor. I think I am such a control freak that it's scary for me to say I'm going to put out an application and hire a complete stranger. But, you know, one day we may have to do that. But when I'm hiring, I always hire for personality and train for skill, so I hire for personality and train for skill. I'm looking for team members that are going to fit our culture, our team culture. I need people that have great attitudes that love to serve people and are teachable, right? I need team members, employees that are willing to learn, willing to serve and have great attitudes. So I'm always hiring for personality because I know I can teach them the skills that they need. It's hard to teach culture, right? It's hard to teach love to serve. People, like I would say, is virtually impossible to teach that. And so that's why I hire for. There's a book by Jim Collins called Good to Great, and one of the things that he talks about is getting the right people on the bus and then finding their right seats. So that's how I see the hiring process is. I want to get the right people on my team, get them on the bus, and then as we're working together, we'll find the seat that is the best fit for them and we have definitely done that in our business. My three full time girls, I would say only one of them started in a position and has stayed there. But even then, her position is constantly kind of shifting and changing as we. Discover more strengths and things like that, but my other two girls that came on their roles have shifted as the needs of our business have, shifted. As you know, we've discovered strengths and weaknesses and things like that. So I know that there are a great fit for the team and then we work to get them in the right seat on the bus. So I am a huge fan of strength finders. If you you're not familiar with strength finders, it's kind of like a personality test. Like any eeneagram or, you know, Myers-Briggs or whatever. And what I like about strength finders is it's so unique. Basically, you take this quiz and it tells you your top five strengths. I can't remember the exact probability, but because there are, I think there's like 32 strengths or something like that. And so the odds of somebody having the exact same combination of your like top five strengths in that order is very, very low. So it's super specific. Like my number one two three four five is different from every single person on my team. Nobody has the same strengths in the same orders. Now I do have some overlapping strengths with some of my team members, but we don't have the exact same strengths in the exact same orders, and that's great. So I know I'm also a big fan of the eeneagram, So I am a three wing too, and I feel like 3s come across on the eeneagram as like they're full of themselves and they just want the attention and they want to be seen and all that stuff. And I never like really resonated with that because I don't feel like that's my motivation. But whenever I took strength finders, I was able to pinpoint my top five strengths and feel really, really seen by the test. And I know that sounds funny, but I felt very seen of like, This is me. It was very intricate going into the details of my, you know, top five strengths. And so if you've never taken strength finders, I suggest ordering the book and all link the book for you guys. If you want to check it out with the book comes good code to take the test because the test costs money and it's more expensive just to take the test outright. Whereas if you get the book, it's cheaper and then the test is free with it. So you can take the test and see what your top five strengths are. But I have had all of my team members take the string finders test, and it has been incredible just to see on paper what their strengths are. Whereas I know all my team members, I've known them for a while, several years and there were still things they didn't know about them based on their strength finders test. And we're actually in our team retreat. We are that's coming up here soon. We're going to be like diving into strength finders as a team and looking at, you know, hiring an expert to come in and and show us how we work together and how our strengths overlap and really help each other and build each other up. So I'm really excited about that. But as you work with full time employees, you begin to see their strengths. So I'm going to talk about my three full time girls. So the first girl that I brought on full time was Bonnie. She originally came on as my assistant. She came on part time at first and then within a month, we hired her full time because we were just the business really took off way faster than we expected it to this year with, you know, my husband and I both full time and it was just a lot. So we brought her on full time very quickly. So Bonnie is her number one. Strength is adaptability. So she is very flexible and adapts very easily when new things are thrown at her, which is so valuable, especially because where we currently have her and I'll get into that in a little bit, she really thrives in being so adaptable and so flexible. One thing we noticed is she's not the best checklists, and so which is totally OK. It's been interesting to see where her strength fly, where her weaknesses lie, and kind of fill in the blanks from there. Another girl we have on the team, Tara, she came on as my assistant once we shifted Bonnie over to a different position. And Tara is very good with checklists and with workflows. She's not as strong with like techie things and learning super robust systems, which is OK, but her zone of genius is those workflows and those checklists. So since we knew that that was not a strength of Bonnie's pairing, the two together has been so awesome. So now the two of them work together and they actually work in my associate brand. So Bonnie kind of does everything internally with our associate team. She's communicating with our associates, with our calling team, with our editors, things like that. And then Tara is handling things externally in our associate brand, so she is handling workflows and all things clients and communicating with people and booking and stuff like that. So by pairing the two of them together, it's been super awesome where Bonnie has been very flexible. When we throw things at her and tell her we want another set of minis or we want to expand to Savannah, Georgia or whatever she's been able to, you know, take those punches and. Roll with them and then Tara comes in by pairing them together and makes sure that all the workflows get done and all the checklists get done. So that's been awesome just to kind of see those strengths, the two of them paired together and how they really thrive together. My third team member is Tya, so Tya works in our in my education side of things, so she is my community and operations manager. She is very involved in our Facebook communities and all things courses and, you know, inbox all the things. So it's here we have found is very good with those robust systems and, you know, the techie stuff. So when we threw her in kajabi, which is where we host all our courses, she called in really quickly with how to use kajabi, which has been great. My three team members, we have moved them around until they were operating in their zones of genius. And I would say with Tya, we're still discovering zones of genius for her because recently we found out she's great at writing email copy. So we're going to be having her, you know, do some more and copy things. And, you know, she's helping out on the blog and things like that. The more that you work with your team members, the more that you will recognize those zones of genius that you know. For Tara, those zones of genius is all things workflows. She is excellent at following a workflow and making sure that all the steps get done and that every client gets served the exact same way. Bonnie's her zone of genius is that adaptability in that flexibility to be able to, you know, manage the internal team with all our associates and all our, you know, culling team and editors and everything like that, and roll with the punches as things change so fast. And then, you know, with Tya, her zone of genius, again, we're still kind of discovering, but even knowing like she's so great with those robust systems and things like that. So it's definitely been an adventure bringing on full time employees. If you had asked me a year ago if I would hire full time employees, I would say no way. There's not a chance, but I'm so glad that we did because it has just been transformational in my business and being able to grow and to scale and to serve more of you guys. And it's just been awesome. And I've learned so much about myself, about leadership, about, you know, working with the team and teamwork that it's just been quite the ride. And so I would tell anybody, if you're in the place to hire full time, go for it. I know it's super scary, but it's one of those things like once you do it, you'll never look back. And I am just so excited because I know we're only going up from here and it's just going to be incredible and I'm so excited I get to do it alongside my incredible team. So there you have it. There's like a little snippet into bringing on full time employees kind of a behind the scenes look at what our business looks like, kind of peeling back the curtain to see what you know our team members do and what their roles are. So I hope this episode, like I said, I hope it's helpful, but it's probably one of those that is going to be like on the back burner for, you know, the future. And that's OK. I know that going in. So if you have any questions at all, I'm an open book, you know, hit me up on Instagram @Rebecca Rice Photography And I would love to chat with you just about building a team. I'm really excited to continue our building the team series. Next week. We're finishing out with a conversation with my integrator. So if you don't know, my integrator is Kat Schmoyer and she is just such a gem of a human, I love her so much. She's one of my all time favorite people. And so next week, we're doing an interview with her to talk about what is an integrator and how an integrator plays a role on our team. So it's going to be such a great episode. You won't want to miss it. That's all we have, you guys. We will see you again this time next week. Bye.
