Hey gorgeous,                     

Today, I wanna talk about something that can have a huge impact on your business and your life. Read on to find out how to outsource and make that move towards financial freedom.

We’re talking about hiring your first assistant. For a lot of entrepreneurs there’s lots of old money blocks that come up around outsourcing work.

Dealing with Resistance to Hiring an Assistant

What blocks and resistances do you have around hiring an assistant? Before you hire an assistant, ask yourself why you’re feeling resistant to it.

These are some of the common reasons I hear.

• I don’t think I can afford it right now.
• I feel like I should do everything myself.
• I’m not ready.

   You probably have a lot of excuses. 

Money Mindset and The Cost of Hiring an Assistant

Maybe you’re worried about the money. Maybe you think it has to be all or nothing; you have to hire someone for 40 hours a week or not at all.

Personally, for a multi-million dollar business owner, my team is very small, and Amy Porterfield talks about building a small, yet mighty team, so stop making that your excuse!

Steps to Releasing Your Money Blocks

Grab a pen and paper and write down all the reasons why you shouldn’t or can’t have an assistant. It really helps for you to write this all down before you even start the process of hiring.

That is going to give you a lot of information about blocks that you have to push through and it will give you really valuable information about where you’re hitting some upper limits as Gay Hendricks talks about in The Big Leap.

Here’s more juice on money blocks and how to shift them, starting TODAY!

The second thing to do is, once you’ve got all that out, give yourself permission to have an assistant.

• Give yourself permission.
• Give yourself permission that you don’t have to do everything in your business yourself.
• Give yourself permission that it’s okay to have it be easy for you and it’s okay to outsource things that aren’t necessarily in your zone of genius. 
• Give yourself permission to start where you are right now. You don’t need full time staff to get started.

How to Take Your Business to the Next Level

Where you’ve gotten to in your business so far is amazing, but you may need help to take everything to the next level. As Natalie Sisson talks about in her podcast, growing a team is crucial to scaling your business (your assistant doesn’t have to be full-time! In fact, I recommend a few hours a week to start with).

It’s okay just to do the things in your business that you LIKE.

As a kid, I remember hearing things like, “You made your bed and you have to lie in it”. There’s this pervasive message that we have to take responsibility for everything. We HAVE to do things we don’t like. We HAVE to eat our vegetables!

It doesn't have to be like that.

If you know that you’re due an upgrade in your life, I recommend reading this article detailing the seven telltale signs you need to work on your money mindset. 

Work in Your Zone of Genius

It’s okay for you to work on the things that you really love and it’s okay for you to outsource things that, frankly, you’re really bad at.

What would your assistant actually do?

Chris Ducker suggests you start with a simple exercise, called Three Lists to Freedom – lists of things you hate doing, struggle doing or shouldn’t be doing.

When you create your Three Lists to Freedom you’ll have a blueprint or a roadmap to show you all the simple jobs that can be outsourced. These are the tasks that are bogging down your workload and stunting your productivity every day.

How Not to Screw Up Hiring an Assistant

I’ve screwed up in hiring support many times.

So, here’s my number one piece of advice: Don’t hire people like you. Hire for your skill gaps.

This really requires you to do some internal work. Look at what your strengths and weaknesses are and hire people who are good at those things you suck at.

The big mistake I made was hiring people just like me because I wrote a job description that sounded exciting for ME. I interviewed people who sounded really cool. Then, I had an interview with them and I’d be like, “They’re so cool! I’m going to hire them!”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t hiring people that complemented the things that I was good at. I was just hiring little mini-me’s.

Unfortunately, when I was working for other people, I would get bored in six months and I’d get an idea and quit my job. Because entrepreneurs make shitty employees.

Know Yourself & Be Honest About Your Weaknesses

I did a whole bunch of personality tests to understand my strengths and weaknesses in business. The good thing about personality tests is it tells you what you’re really good at and, usually, that’s what you focus on. But I went in and had a look at the things that I was getting the lowest scores on.

What was I really bad at? For me, that was things like finishing things, getting things done and general organization. Looking at your big weaknesses gives you really valuable information about what you really need in your business vs. what you’re already good at.

Use Personality Test Results to Write Your Job Description for the Perfect Assistant

I actually took those weaknesses and I wrote a job description that really described all of those things I was bad at.

I wanted it to be exciting to someone who had my opposing strengths. Take any personality test like Strengths Finder or Meyer Briggs, or just sit down and make a list of all your known weaknesses.

If the test results show that organization is one of your weak points then you put that in your job description. For example, “You really love organization. You really like doing repetitive tasks. You really like making systems.”

Hiring for particular strengths will be really handy when you’re managing them because you can clearly know what motivates them. Being clear on your weaknesses will pretty much write the job description for you.

You have to really resist writing it in a way that would excite you, because that’s not the point. You’re not looking for a little mini you — unless you are. Most of the time, in an assistant, you’re really, really not.

Finally, everyone asks me, “How do you find that person?”

First of all, even just finding out what you’re good at, giving yourself permission to hire someone, finding out what you’re bad at and writing that job description - that’s a great start, and you’re going to really start to energize that person towards you. Law of attraction, baby!

Once you have the job description, then you tell people about it. Post in networks that you’re a part of, send an email out in your newsletter and say, “I’m hiring.” No need to post it on a job site unless you want to.

Posting in your own communities serves two purposes, by the way. It gives your clients and colleagues the knowledge that you’re expanding and your business is doing really well. It’s really good PR to say, “We’re hiring! We’re growing! Everything is really exciting.”

But secondly, you can also find someone who already knows your business and who already is on board with your culture.

If you’ve screwed up in the past, don’t worry. This is a trial and error thing. Being in business for yourself is all about trial and error. You don’t have a whole HR department to help you with hires and you can learn to get better at delegation over time.

This is something that you don’t have to get right the first time, so don’t worry if you feel like you’ve screwed it up in the past and that’s your one and only shot. It really isn’t. You can do it better next time and refine your process. This is part of being in business and learning leadership skills. We screw up and we try it again next time.

So let’s recap:

4 Stages to Hiring an Assistant!

1. Give yourself permission to hire someone 
2. Learn what your strengths and weaknesses are 
3. Write a job description 
4. Tell people you’re hiring

Go on, gorgeous! Take those first steps towards hiring an assistant.

It’s your time and you’re ready for the next step,

Denise xx