How do you hire your first assistant for your financial coaching business?

Hiring your first support person or assistant, I believe, is a much harder step to take in your business than launching it. It’s hard for a lot of reasons. Often times, the business owner is busy doing all the things.

And there’s value in doing things when you first start. You learn what you like and don’t like. You learn how to put together a system or a workflow or a client journey if you’ve yet to do that previously. You learn the ins and outs of things so you can train another person how to do it. 

It’s really good that you do all the things at first. But then at some point, it becomes ever more important for you to focus on revenue-generating activities in order to grow your business. So you need to hire a person to free up your time, but you need to work harder to make money to be able to pay the person you want to hire. It’s tough!

Watch my video below where I dive into the hiring process.

How do you do determine what tasks an assistant can do and how to train them?

Here are some of the steps I want you to take, and then I’ll dive into the mental and emotional aspects of hiring your first person.

1. Start writing down everything you do- it doesn’t matter how small or how minimal, write it down.
2. Once you do that for 2-4 weeks, move every job or task that someone else could easily do onto a separate sheet. There are likely things that only YOU the business owner can do – like coach clients. Or going live in your group sharing money tips & strategies.  Everything else that someone else could do, goes on the other sheet.
3. Next, I want you to pick 10 things that you could delegate to someone else quickly or easily and I want you to record Loom or Zoom videos of you doing it the next time you do it. Put these all in a folder in google drive or dropbox and title it “Training videos”
   1. You can build a complete on-boarding checklist out in Asana
4. Fourth, you can begin the hiring process and look for the right person which is a whole separate training video. 
5. At around the same time as you’re interviewing, ask yourself what does this person NEEDS to do the job.
   1. What computer program do they need access to?
   2. Do they need a phone line?
   3. Access to your inbox?
   4. A computer?
   5. Is there anything you need to set up ahead of time so the first few days go smoothly?
   6. Are they in your same time zone?
   7. Are they in your country?
6. I want you to look at your list of 10 things that you have training videos for, and I want you to rank them in order of how you will train this person on those tasks. Some are more important than others, so that’s where you start but getting really organized on how training will go. Your time is going to be taken away from revenue-generating activities so you want this to be as streamlined and efficient as possible. You want to have it scheduled as soon as you know their start date so you are available to them. 
7. Also, a little tip – find a project they can do if they’re stuck and can’t reach you. Let’s say you’re in with a client and they aren’t sure about something, you don’t want them just sitting and doing nothing, so it’s great to have some sort of project that they can work on to pass the time until they can ask you their question. Some ideas are:
   1. CRM organization
   2. Data entry
   3. Updating contacts
   4. Cleaning out your inbox
   5. Organizing a space in the office
   6. Watching some of those training videos you recorded
8. Begin to train & delegate to that person consistently.

How to Delegate:

Plan to use this process for delegating:

1) Show individual something new

2) Do the task together

3) Have the individual show you HOW he/she WOULD do it if they did it on their own

4) Have individual do the task on their own

5) You review the task/result for accuracy

6) You provide feedback

7) Repeat 4-5-6 a few times until oversight is no longer needed.

 

Emotional

Hiring your first support person is super bizarre and I know it was for me so I want to walk you through what to possibly expect.

The first thing I want you to identify is your “zone of genius”. 

Your Zone of Genius is the thing you could do all day, every day and never tire of it. It’s the thing you do and you lose track of time because you just get lost in it. Get really clear on that!

Now what you might be thinking is that all of these other things – all the things that aren’t in your zone of genius, are easy and they don’t take a lot of time really. It’s really not that big of a deal if you just keep doing them.

You might ask yourself, “Is it lazy of me to not do these?”

I know for me, I often think these tasks are boring and so routine, and while I can do them and actually I do them pretty well, I don’t love it. It doesn’t fill my cup, and I feel bad giving these types of tasks to someone else.

But here’s the shift I’ve made over the years and it’s helped immensely.

These tasks may not be in my zone of genius which is why I think they’re a little boring or tedious, but they are ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY in someone’s Zone of Genius – and your goal is to hire a person who LOVES doing these tasks! It gets them fired up in a way it can’t for you.

They LOVE seeing the systems completed and checking things off the tasks list and they don’t consider them boring at all. You are actually giving someone an opportunity to thrive doing something they enjoy. What a beautiful gift.

And at the same time, you’re giving yourself the gift of more time in your own zone of genius – your days will feel more fun, you will create so much more and your business will likely soar as a result.

Get out of your Zone of Incompetence

So you’ve heard me talk about your zone of genius which is the thing you could do all day, every day and never tire of it.

You’ve likely heard me say many, many times before that writing is my Zone of Incompetence – that’s the thing I feel sucky at, it takes me 10 times longer than everyone else and even after that, I still don’t think the result is very good and I’m absolutely miserable doing it.

Those are the two ends of the spectrum: Zone of Genius <——-> Zone of Incompetence

Get the stuff you hate doing, aren’t good at and tend to ignore or avoid off your plate by hiring an assistant.

Avoid the Zone of Excellence Trap

Another zone I want to talk with you about is actually your biggest trap, which is why I think it’s important. It is your Zone of Excellence. This is the biggest trap of them all because you’re probably actually pretty good at this category. You don’t even really hate it that much. You are more than capable of doing it and doing it well and yet…

It doesn’t fill your cup like your Zone of Genius does. 

And that’s why it’s a trap – because we tell ourselves, “I can do this just fine. I can do this well enough, and I already know how to do it and I’m fast at it.” In other words, “It’s easier if I just do it myself.”

Listen, people don’t spend too much time in their Zone of Incompetence for too long typically because they’re MISERABLE in it. But if you’re not careful, you can easily find yourself stuck in your Zone of Excellence for too long. It’s not that bad, but every moment you’re in your Zone of Excellence, you are not in your Zone of Genius, and that’s the tragedy of it.

So instead of thinking that perhaps you’re too lazy or just don’t feel like doing this stuff, focus on the fact that YOUR BRAIN, as the owner of your business, is the most important part, and you are going to give someone an amazing opportunity to do what they do best so you can do the same.

Related links and resources

Blog post: Turn everyday conversations into marketing masterpieces

Blog post: How to break up with a financial coaching client

Want to launch or grow your financial coaching business? Pre-order Kelsa’s new book, The Financial Coaching Playbook, by March 30, 2020 to get a $5 discount! Order or check out an excerpt here.