253: Becoming an Employer
Summary:
What happens after you post your job ad? Should you be doing anything else? 🤔Turns out, there are a LOT of things you need to have in place and think through. From insurance to team communication, we break down what you need to do before bringing on staff. Having a manager mindset will allow you to anticipate problems and remember that you are the authority. Then, Natasha answers, “What else can I have my staff do?”
Main topics:
More than “just” hire
Payroll and Workers Comp
Procedures
Employer Mindset
Ask a Pet Biz Coach
Main takeaway: When you “just” hire, you enter into a whole new world of running your business, but should always stay focused on the people that make it happen.
Links:
Episode 251: From Application to Job Offer
Episode 249: How to Write a Job Ad
ProTrainings: For 10% off any of their courses, use CPR-petsitterconfessional
Check out Start. Scale. Sail. and use PSC20 for 15% off
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, & TuneIn
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
employer, business, staff, payroll, employee, hiring, pay, documents, people, process, policies, company, questions, important, job, agent, Meghan, communication, notify, team
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan I'm Collin and this is Pet Sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Testing, testing, there we go. Hi, you are listening to Episode 253. Hello. Today we're gonna be talking about becoming an employer. Yeah. We have talked many episodes previously about the process of hiring. Those are episodes 247 249, and 251.
Collin 00:53
All linked in the show notes on our website for this. Before we move on, we do really want to give a very special shout out to our newest patron. Paul, thank you so much for your support. And for your encouragement through these episodes,
Meghan 01:07
we are so thankful to all of our Patreon members who give us great ideas for topics, and financially support us every month and allow us to keep doing the podcast. Thank you guys so much. So today we're going to talk about what you actually need to do to become an employer. Because as it turns out, just putting an ad out there doesn't make you an employer. It's also going back to whenever people say, quote, just hire well, that we're just is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Yes. Before we had hired, we didn't know what we didn't know. And so we thought just hiring was pretty simple. You put the job ad out there, you go through the interview process, and then you hire somebody. But there's a lot more to it than that.
Collin 01:52
Yeah, exactly. We placed the ad and then figured everything else out on the back end. And so hopefully, we can encourage you to not do that. Because it really crunched our timeline quite a bit.
Meghan 02:03
A lot of the stuff that we're going to talk about in this episode is actually quite boring. But becoming an employer is not all glamorous, it is kind of boring, drudgery, stuff, legal stuff that you do have to do in order to become an employer.
Collin 02:20
That is an unfortunate part about that. But it is extremely important that we have all of our ducks in a row. And then we got all of our eyes dotted and T's crossed when we go through this process so that we are in a secure position and that we know that we are doing everything correctly. And this all really started when I went to go get our payroll setup, I was entering our business information. And then it asked for this employer tax ID, which we didn't have didn't even know what that was. Yeah, because it turns out, you do have to register with your state when you hire someone. So for Missouri, we had to go and fill out some paperwork that told them we are now employing somebody. And this ID is needed for reporting taxes that are related to payroll. And it's different than your EIN, which you get when you become a business from the federal government, which tracks you paying taxes on your income for your business, you basically have to report to them all the same business information that you already have with you your location, your EIN number, actually, you do need that. And then they will give you this tax ID number which you can start using when you file your payroll to keep track of the taxes that are due,
Meghan 03:27
it did almost take six weeks for the state to approve everything. So keep that in mind as well, it was a lot longer process than we had anticipated.
Collin Funkhouser 03:36
We also had to file for unemployment tax information, because remember, when you pay someone their salary, there is more taken out from your bank account than just their salary, you have to make quarterly contributions of this to the state. And this is in addition to your quarterly taxes on the income for your business that it earns.
Meghan 03:55
After we got that employer tax ID number, we then had to set up our payroll. And we use gussto for our payroll, and it's a super popular company. A lot of other petsitting businesses use it. And we found it to be really simple. There's a link in the show notes. If you want to check it out and use it as your payroll company. You can get $100 back when you run your first payroll, which is a pretty good deal. But why do we like it?
Collin 04:20
Yeah, and this is not an ad for gussto. By the way, this is just our experiences using it, but we love it for a lot of things. And I think first and foremost for us. They have a partner app called gussto wallet that is just for the employees, where they download that they can sign in. They can track their time they can see documents, they can send up money for reimbursements, and all sorts of things that is all in that app for them and it's very easy for them to use. This also gives them direct access to all of our business documents and employee documents. So first and foremost is the handbook so they can review that at any time. There's also a photo release form that we have them sign and there's a non solicit In a lot of other documents that we need them to sign when they come on board that are all right there. gussto can also run human resources for you, which we've actually had to use a few times for questions about legal issues and for managing, and actually about that employee manual and handbook thing, but they have a dedicated person that reviews your business, and can give you insight into what you can and cannot have from an HR perspective. And when it comes to the payroll side of things, you know, it's well known for the payroll. But when it comes to doing that, it's literally just a few clicks to have payroll run. And it's especially easy if you have your staff track their time, within gussto using that wallet app. And it really makes it very seamless
Meghan 05:42
well, and they send you reminders as well email reminders, and Google Calendar notification reminders of time to run payroll, there's, you know, two days left to run payroll, this periods. Yeah,
Collin 05:52
it's really great. And I will say it's also nice, because the staff can enter notes for the hours that they log. So they can say, between nine and 930. This is what I was doing. And then between 10 and 12, this is what I was doing, which is really helpful for me when I sit down to review and approve this. Not just bringing in staff and onboarding them, but they also make the process of dismissal, very easy, and making sure that you follow all proper legal and HR procedures for that to make sure that you are covered as a business. And all they do all of the reporting and paying of those quarterly unemployment taxes and stuff that they take care of all of that, very thankfully, so that you don't have to worry about going in and paying those.
Meghan 06:33
The other thing that we knew we wanted to set up was worker's comp, it's not required in our state, it might be in yours. But until we hire five people or something like that, we do not have to require it. But it is something that we wanted as a benefit, because this is a very stressful, hard working job that you may get injured in. So we knew that we wanted workers comp, but you need to check with your state requirements, if it's required, we figured the least we could do was make sure they were taken care of while on the job. Basically, you shop around for workers compensation through business insurance brokers, they'll ask what industry you are in. And you must be crystal clear about this because they have no idea what we do. If you are a pet sitter and dog walker, they have no idea, they probably have never heard of it. And they do not know how to properly classify it most likely. So we were first classified as dog trainers. And all the classifications you get are the risk rates associated with those kind of jobs. So dog trainers pay a much lower rate, because they have less risk in their job. But if you ever have to file a claim, and you are classified as a dog trainer, the company could cancel your policy and potentially even deny you coverage as well. We were specifically classified as 0917. So that was the what was it dog sitter,
Collin 07:56
and pet sitter or dog walker. But it was also in some things classified as a house cleaner, with icees, which was not not not us. But you know, that's why double and triple checking with whoever you're with the agent that you're working with to make sure that it's appropriate is so necessary,
Meghan 08:14
the workers comp, people are going to look at your years in business and your expected annual payroll as well. Some insurance companies will not provide workers comp, if you don't expect enough payroll, and you can be denied if they think you're too risky. So have your agent pull lots of quotes from different companies side
Collin 08:32
note on this actually, that I'm not sure if this is true in every state, but at least in Missouri, once you have one agent start pulling quotes. If you try and go to a different agent, they will be unable to pull quotes from those same companies. They are actually locked out until you tell that first agent that you do not want to work with them. Why did they lock people out? I have no idea. And I could never get a good answer from any of the agents that we spoke with and worked with. But it is apparently what happens there. So we ran into this actually, because the very first agent that we got quotes from was actually really unhelpful and wasn't interested in answering our questions. I tried to go to someone else, but they couldn't give me those quotes until I called the first agent and said, No thank you. To us customer service is super important, especially since we've never done any of this before. I had a lot of questions that needed answers. I worked with four agents over the course of about about that many months working on this. And I was never fully impressed with their ability to answer or address my concerns, mostly because they all seem to be in the habit of sending out quotes, getting a signature and payment and then moving on to the next customer. So when I actually when I actually read the policy and wanted them to explain things, they couldn't. So anyway, just keep in mind that know that you want to have somebody who can answer your questions that are really effective and that are interested in that and not just selling you a policy and to shop the customer service just as much as your shopping rates.
Meghan 09:58
Workers comp is paid based on On every $100 in payroll you send. So this is likely to vary by state and exactly what your payroll is. But for us, we pay $3.33 for every $100 in payroll. So let's say you have one part time employee, and you expect them to make $20,000. This year, well, that would be $666 due in workers compensation. And you can pay for workers comp in three ways. The first one is a lump sum, you give them how much payroll you expect to pay in a year and pay all the workers comp in one bill. The second way is monthly, obviously, they divide it by 12. And you pay each month. And then the third one is payroll based. So at the end of each month, you run a report that says how much you actually paid out in payroll, calculate the amount due and pay that not every company allows for this, but it is growing in popularity. No matter what method you choose to pay for the workers comp, you are audited. At the end of the year, they asked for how much payroll you actually paid out. And then you are either given a refund or you are required to pay the difference.
Collin 11:03
Most policies are 500 500 500, which means 500,000 for each accident 500,000 for each disease limit, and 500,000. For each employee, you can add all sorts of other liability and stuff to your policy, you can increase these amounts. So sit down with your agent and discuss how much risk you can or want to take on. The next thing we needed to consider was software and team communication. And we knew this was critical because we are separated by two hours, but still wanted all of our staff to be in touch and collaborating together. And there are so many ways to talk to each other these days. There's texting, phone calls, email, your scheduling software can even have internal team communication. So how do you know which one to use and for what purpose? Megan and I sat down together and actually set up a hierarchy of communication, meaning where we wanted 90% of it to take place, and then when to use the other channels that go something like this for at least for our business. And what we want, the primary channel of communication is slack, we set up a free team account, because we knew we'd also be sharing documents and resources that can't really be sent easily in the other ways that we've talked about. There's this is where the vast majority of communication needs to take place for us in our employees, so that we can keep a log of where everything's going and we can stay up to date with how people are doing. Are there any limitations to Slack, it will only save about 10,000 of your history of communication. So if you want more than that you do have to upgrade. The second channel of communication is booking software. So when there is a question about an active sit or walk that the sitter is on, it needs to go through our booking software, because staff are already in it and sending updates. Plus it ties that particular situation in question that they're dealing with to that set. The third level we're getting a little bit more serious here is texting this is if something is more urgent or particularly more private, and they want to take this outside of the other two. And then phone calls for us are only in emergencies. Or if somebody is unable to get in contact with someone else after repeated tries through the other channels. And that may look different for you, you may decide you want all of your team in a group text message or all of your team in some other messaging app or just in your booking software. We wanted our team to be able to communicate and collaborate together without us having to initiate it. So we kind of give them these platforms to work on and allow them to share documents within them.
Meghan 13:27
We also use Google Drive for a lot of things, which I am still learning on exactly what goes where if you have
Collin 13:35
multiple Google accounts, make sure you know which one you're signed into when you're sharing particular documents.
Meghan 13:39
Very important. We store all of our documents in a shared Google Drive through slack. And everyone has access to those. So any flyers or templates, any message language, so like updates that we send that we specifically want this wording in there, or any training documents, we put those in Google Drive for our team, we are also having our staff work on blogs, and articles and other admin kind of stuff that we need done for our business. And so we share them in Google Drive as well. We keep our staff meeting notes there for review for by anyone and reminders as well. Through this
Collin 14:17
entire process. It was very important for us to have complete transparency, not just between Megan and I, but also between our staff themselves so they could see everything else being worked on and help collaborate and contribute to those. And because of this, we upload things like podcasts or articles that we want our team to review and we put them in Slack under a channel called resources. That way it's searchable and always there for them and it doesn't get lost amongst all the other stuff that we're working on. But as
Meghan 14:46
we mentioned earlier, gussto does store documents as well, but we keep this to you know employee specific documents like the manual the waivers, any trading certifications, we really use gussto when we need them to sign or get acknowledgement that they have seen something. And plus, when we onboard new hires, gussto automatically sends them all of the necessary documents to sign, which is really nice. So we don't have to attach them in an email. And all we have to do is just enter their name and email and gussto does the rest.
Collin 15:17
Don't forget, you have to submit an i nine, which is employment eligibility, and a W four for tax withholding, you can download these forms right from the IRS website. Or if you use a platform, again, like us token, this episode is not an ad for them, we just use it for everything right now. They can send these documents for you as well.
Meghan 15:34
Another important thing to think about when you are hiring is that technically, you are not supposed to store any employee sensitive information on your personal devices, which means your phone, your laptop, your tablet, and you are also required to keep documents for several years, it's kind of like that tax that you have to keep them for five years or whatever. It's the same here because there is sensitive information on there. So everything you collect during the hiring, and the onboarding process should not be on your personal system, even your personal Google Drive or Dropbox account. So you can either use a company specific account, create a new one, or buy a company hard drive, or use something other than your personal stuff. As an employer, you also may consider adding other benefits like gym memberships, or dental and vision, those typically don't cost a whole lot. So they wouldn't be that expensive for your company. And they look great on a job add. Or you may also consider adding health insurance, it's a little more expensive, but employees would love to see that on a job as
Collin 16:38
well. And you don't have to cover 100% of it you as the business for any additional benefits that you decided to add can cover 5% of the total cost 50% 75% of it and have the employee cover the rest. Another benefit that you could offer is certain investment or savings accounts for retirement even just to be aware that it's certain business classification levels, like S corp, whatever you offer yourself, whatever you personally have you do have to offer to your employees, it just depends on all this really just depends on how much you want to or are able to spend. So as an employer, you get to look at your hourly rate that you're paying your employees, or maybe you pay based on commission, whatever that is, look at your total monetary benefits, that's the monetary benefit package. Then you look at the non monetary benefits and look at the total complete package that each employee gets. So you can say, Look, I'm giving you $13 An hour or I'm paying you 50% of the visits that you go on. But then I'm also paying and contributing for half of your gym membership. And I'm paying for your vision. And those dollar amounts can get added into that total package whenever you start trying to attract and hire actual applicants.
Meghan 17:48
Because remember, you are not taxed on the benefits you offer. But you are taxed on any raises you give. So for example, if you put $1 to insurance, that's just $1. But if you put $1 to a raise, it's more than $1, because of the taxes that you have to pay on top of it.
Collin 18:07
As Megan and I were going through this process, a big topic of discussion for us was about tracking mileage for our staff. Now, we decided that we are currently not going to be able to do that. And mostly that's because we've set our service area to be very small, we've tried our best to keep it as tight as possible in our new area. Now, it you may decide that your service area is larger, or maybe it's another benefit again, that you want to add to this total package that you're giving to your employees so that you can entice them and help compensate them more. Some states may even require you to do this depending on your job classification or the fact that you have employees that are driving around. When it comes to actually physically tracking this MileIQ is a fantastic option. They have a team's option, which can allow for each staff member to download it onto their phone and can automatically start tracking and submitting those reports to you for reimbursement.
Meghan 19:00
We did not forget to talk about staff policies and procedures. But we're going to cover that next week on our onboarding and culture episode. But suffice it to say that you do need an employee handbook to cover everything that you will and will not tolerate, and kind of lay out the expectations for them so they know what they're getting into before they sign on.
Collin Funkhouser 19:21
The last part about becoming an employer here, we've talked about a lot of the practical aspects of getting payroll about looking at workers comp about addressing benefits and team communication. All of those are big buckets that your company now has to fill with something. But really the last one here is is you is seeing yourself as an employer and Megan has said this phrase before about having a manager mindset. I mean, it's still really weird for us to say that we're having team meetings or that we're sending out trainings for people to take, because I personally am a big people pleaser. I look for Look for people to approve of things that I am doing and look for this external validation of me as a person. And I am have to be aware of that I cannot put that on my staff, I don't need for them to like me as a person or for them to validate that I am doing good things. It's nice to hear when they appreciate the work that Megan and I are doing. But I have to separate myself from that I am I am managing, I'm working with them, I am partnering with them on these things. We're a team and we're doing things together. And that becomes separating myself out just a little bit as their employer because I have things we have things now that we are dealing with, like HR concerns and oversight of all these policies and procedures and holding people accountable, we have to become aware that there are things that we can and cannot do or say as an employer, that might be very easy for you to do if it's just a friend, or if it's a less formal setting things like asking about a health status, or or health particular questions, those kinds of things can get you in serious trouble. And so we do have to kind of set ourselves apart just a little bit to know that in my role. Now as employer, as your manager, I am held to certain standards, both legal and personally. And there are things that I can and cannot do, because of my position. I mean, mentally, it's really unreal for us still, but we are loving it. We're loving the fact that we get to do these things.
Meghan 21:28
So while obviously we do need our staff to like us and get along with us, we are still the authority figure in the room, they are going to look to us for guidance. And we need to have that. So that is an important mindset that you need to have have, I am now over them spend time considering the gravity of that situation. Even if you're not paying these people full time salaries, you are still contributing to their income to their grocery bill every month. And so it is kind of a weighty thing. But it's great if you want to grow and scale your business. But don't
Collin 22:05
be afraid to tell your hires that you've never done this before. Let them know that you don't know everything. But always come back with an answer. After you've done your research. In my time doing tutoring, and teaching, one of the best things that I learned was to openly admit to a class that you don't know something, you earn a lot of respect and a lot of cred when you do that. But what really impacts them is whenever you leave that room and do additional research and you come back to them and you say, look, yesterday, you asked me about this. And I didn't know so I had to go talk to these people, or this is the research that I did. And here's your answer. And here's how it's going to impact our company. So think about how you can support and encourage your staff in their work, and what tools and resources they need. Find new trainings, new courses for them to expand their skills and invest in them, by allowing them to invest in the business. Becoming employer means a lot more than just hiring. There's so many steps that we have to take both from a legal and from this personal perspective, where we are growing, we're expanding our mindset, we are looking beyond our limits mentally. And we are considering as Megan said, I love that word, the gravity of the situation of the seriousness of this position that we are putting ourselves in of putting people late people looking to us for part of their livelihood, and paying gas and groceries and all of this stuff that should weigh on us. Not keep us up at night. But it should help us to take this position seriously enough to do this work, and to do some of this mindset work so that we can start setting ourselves and our staffs up for success.
Meghan 23:42
Yeah, you are really taking the solopreneur out of this. And you're not focusing on yourself as much anymore, because it's not just about you. It's kind of like how when we got married, we used to say to each other, it's not just you anymore, so when he would leave a socks on the floor, or I would not do the dishes one day, yeah. Every day, we would turn to each other and say, hey, it's not just you anymore, please think about me. And it's kind of the same thing of not that we're being selfish in our business. But we do now have others to look out for.
Collin Funkhouser 24:15
Yeah, and part of that can be to have allowing your new staff to have input into policies and procedures of how they think the business can be shaped and molded. Let them help you in this process and time of growth because you'll be better for it. We say all the time. Nobody has all the answers. We are better when we are working together and we are collaborating. So collaborate with your staff, allow them to give your feedback be open and vulnerable enough to get feedback from them. That is also a part of becoming an employer is allowing people to give you better feedback and allowing your staff to do that because you know that you'll be better for it at the end of the day.
Meghan 24:54
And that's why having those communication channels. Open Door Policy is so crucial so that you It's a two way street, you can go to them with things and they can come to you with things. And listen, take what they have in and do what is best for your business.
Collin 25:09
So consider what kind of employer you want to be, how open Do you want that door to be? What does that actually look like? How does that manifest itself in your day to day operations? I know that term gets thrown out there a lot of oh, we have an open door policy come to us any time? Do you really mean that? What can they come to you with? What kind of questions would you take it? seven in the morning or six at night? What do you want that communications channel to look like? So model that to your staff, or blind those out in policies that we'll talk about next week?
Meghan 25:39
Part of becoming an employer is also thinking about what kind of manager you want to be. So are you more introverted or extroverted? How is that going to play out? When you need to have a tough conversation with an employee? Or if you are more direct, or you like to use flowery language?
Collin 25:58
Why did you, you listener, you can't tell but she just looked right at me.
Meghan 26:04
It is going to affect when you need to have conversations, if they're even if they're easy conversations, it's going to affect it. So knowing yourself is important. And then obviously, learning more about your staff as well. Yeah,
Collin Funkhouser 26:19
you said earlier about, we need to be looking beyond ourselves. Now. It's not just us, it's not just you anymore, there is another person in the room to consider. So how you used to say things might not work with that person that you hired. That's why having a really nice and ironed out hiring process is so important. Because you're not just hiring skills, you're hiring a person with backgrounds with a personality with insights. And you may have to adjust how you address topics, you may have to adjust how you handle stressful situations, when you bring somebody on and lean into their strengths and help cover where they are lacking and where they need help. But realizing that how you used to operate might not be how you're going to operate in the future. And that's a good thing. That means we are being malleable, we are expanding things. And we're thinking beyond ourselves in these new situations. And aspect of this is really deciding how you are going to delegate, obviously, we recognize that when we're bringing people into our company, we are going to be delegating things. But how are you going to do that? How are you going to pass off tasks? And what task Do you want to pass off? That is part of this process of growing and expanding and understanding. It's not just me, it can be more people, and I get to pass things off. Now, it is a hard thing to do. You've been working by yourself day in and day out for years, or years, possibly, or just very dedicated for a short period of time. And now you have to let go of some of those things. Inform your staff be in this where communication comes into play, inform them, I've never done this before I'm doing my best. This is how I plan on handling things. If that's not working, please let me know. This is how I'm going to offload this, I'm going to tell you how you're going to do your job. And let's work on this. And don't be afraid to tell me if it's not working. Or if you want to try a different tactic,
Meghan 28:04
you're also going to need to go from solving problems to anticipating problems. So previously, if it was just you and a client, you were either putting out fires or just handling them by yourself, but now you're going to be anticipating problems have in terms of what could go wrong.
Collin 28:21
Yeah, well, like on a walk, sit down, you know, you know, you've done many walks, you can line out the 10 ways that walk can go wrong. Now, as an employer, it is your job to take those 10 things that could go wrong. Tell your staff about them and how to prevent them. That is how we prevent and we start thinking through about problems that could occur. You do this all the time. It's kind of like catastrophizing, what's the worst thing that could happen in this scenario? If I were by myself, okay. If this if I were by myself, this is what I would do. What happens if my staff is by themselves? What did they do? What is the proper procedure for them? Exactly. They've never done this before? Or maybe they have, but how would you the employer want them to solve this? This was highlighted very early on for us in the hiring process, when one of our screening questions was, how would you handle an emergency? And I thought I had the answer lined out, you'd call them this, you'd call the client, you'd let them know about it, and then you'd handle it. That's the wrong answer for staff. I didn't realize that until somebody who applied said, Well, I would notify management that there was a problem. And it hit me, I management. I'm an employer. That's right. They need to let me know about this. That's what we talked about when we're when we're discussing problem solving and anticipating problems. How do you want your staff your team members to solve and overcome these problems? And then you get to train them on those policies on those procedures.
Meghan 29:51
And that is not to say that we are telling our employees to not notify the client. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You just need to be notified as well.
Collin Funkhouser 29:58
Exactly. And that was the key part of that question that I had missed, I was looking for an answer that said they notify the clients, the correct answer is they would notify us and the clients so that we were notified, because I all of a sudden realized a situation where the staff notifies the client that there's blood everywhere. The client then calls the company hotline, which is my phone number. And they are asking me about what's going on. And I don't know, because the staff hasn't informed me of anything. So now it's trading staff. When these things happen, you let us know text message, and then you let the clients know, so that we can all be in the loop and solving this together. But it is a process of thinking through each every, every single one of those. And that's where that handbook comes into play, which we'll talk about next week. But when we talk about becoming an employer, that's what this means you are now anticipating problems and solving them ahead of time, through good procedures.
Meghan 30:50
But again, please don't stress out you cannot think of every single scenario of every single thing ever, right? Like that's not what we're saying as well. You can do the best you can like preparing for an emergency, as we've talked about before, you can only plan so much. And then you just have to kind of deal with what you can in the moment.
Collin 31:08
Exactly. Yep. Nobody has it all figured out. But ask questions and work with it as you go. If you have become an employer recently, or in the past, we want to know what some of your biggest struggles and hurdles were in that process. And if you haven't, and you have concerns, what are your biggest worries? And what are your biggest struggles in overcoming those? And what would help get you through and better along that process? You can send that to feedback at pester confessional.com Or anywhere on social media at petsitter. confessional
Meghan 31:35
business coach Natasha opionion is going to answer what are some things your staff can do other than the walks and drop ins,
Natasha 31:42
everything they do, and I mean, this is why I'm so heavily on you being the owner and the CEO, you don't have to do the business, everything and you guys have heard me say this 10 times over everything you guys are doing, your staff can do, like I just talked about grasshopper, you know, in our previous episodes, you know, you can have your phone systems they can do, they can take care of emails, they can do marketing outreach, they can do training, they can do research on products that you may roll out, they can do drop shipping or online or, you know, working on Amazon, there's so many things that they can do for your company that you would have put on your personal list. Like I challenge all of us to literally take 30 days with ourselves. And the moment you wake up in the morning, start writing down every single thing it is that you do, and I'll show you how to delegate it, because that's a job for somebody else
Collin 32:36
that really unlocks a lot of potential as well. And really, again, I think lessens the stress on each individual staff member, it helps your business a lot to operate a lot more efficiency and have a lot more redundancy in abilities, and allows your staff members to work in strengths that maybe you wouldn't have recognized in the beginning or you're utilizing them better.
Natasha 32:59
Yeah, I always love cross training. I'm just working in the automotive industry. What happens is you have like your heavy hitters, your top sales guys, and they're always in the forefront, and you don't train up the other guys. You're always relying on your heavy hitters to bring your team home every single month. And what happens is that when those players are gone, your business always has holes. And so I see some of us in the pet industry saying like, Oh yeah, I have a girl, it'd be great at that spot. She's super personable, bubbly, you know, that'd be great. I'm like, well, listen, that's cool. But we all know there's more introverts in this industry than extroverts. So let's create process that compliment introvert personality. And so that's why I love using my software because it doesn't require my staff that don't feel, you know, the most comfortable you know, you know, giving a maniac personality and you know, full bubbles in person. You know how I am, I'm like, candidates get you on. Okay, well, everybody may not give that type of energy. But now our process says Listen, we already have the paperwork, our team is just going to come over and you know, take a take a snapshot of where you keep everything anybody can do that. Always create a process that is designed around the majority of your staff not feeling sorry.
Meghan 34:19
If you would like to be part of Natasha's membership group, you can use the code P SC 20. For 15% off, we know that the process of becoming an employer and hiring is not the most glamorous thing in the world. But if it's something you want, and have goals for growing and scaling your business, it is necessary. So we appreciate you listening to this episode today. And thank you so much to our Patreon members for supporting the show. And please join us next time. Bye
