← The Abigail Peugh Podcast
The Abigail Peugh Podcast
51. When (and What) to Outsource: Hiring Your First Virtual Assistant as a Solopreneur
00:33:47
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- [00:00]
Abigail Pugh
Foreign. You're listening to an episode of the Abigail Pugh podcast with, you guessed it, Abigail Pugh. I'm an introverted mama who took my online business from zero to seven figures in 15 months, selling my own digital products on social media. And guess what? I did it all with my 3 year old daughter no less than 3ft away from me at all times. Now I'm bringing you everything I've learned about building a wildly profitable online business that supports your life while allowing you to truly live it. Get ready for raw, honest conversations with entrepreneurs making thousands per month selling their own digital products and people just like you who ditch self doubt to create the life they've always wanted. If you're ready to make more money, have more impact, and still have time for the things that matter most, you're in the right place. Grab your sneakers, head out on your hot girl walk, and let's dive in. Y'all know I am a solopreneur to my core. My goal has never been to grow a huge team, but I do have a VA now and I hire stuff out to contractors when I need to take some of the work off my plate. But honestly, this took me probably over a year into this business to do because I felt really nervous and scared to trust somebody else in my business and essentially to release some control over my business. So today's guest is actually a past student of mine who has become a friend and she is a consultant who literally helps people essentially hire out or systemize the day to day work so that you and me as the founders or CEO, whatever you want to call yourself, can step back and enjoy the business you have worked so hard to build. She has worked with digital product sellers, influencers, online entrepreneurs, and even tech startups so she knows what she's talking about. And before I welcome Maddie onto the podcast, I just want to say that whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur or you are already out there selling digital products and looking to scale, you will get so much from this episode. I honestly wish I had known Maddie earlier in my business so that I could have delegated and systemized things way better from the very beginning. Okay, that was a long intro. Maddie, welcome to the show. I'm so excited you're here.
- [02:09]
Maddie
Thanks, Abigail. I am so stoked to be here. I have, as others might not know, been a huge fan of yours since the early days when you were starting to build your business and I'm so excited to be here.
- [02:19]
Abigail Pugh
You're so sweet. So I'd love to kind of start this podcast off with you telling us a little bit about your journey. I. We were talking a little bit before the show how entrepreneurship is so glamorized sometimes, and I feel like there's a lot of content and messaging out there that's like, leave your nine to five, leave your nine to five. Come be an entrepreneur. It's the best thing ever. And like, I do think, like, I love being an entrepreneur and I think my brain, I have to be an entrepreneur. Like, I. It couldn't work for anybody else, but it's, it's not as glamorous as it's often made out to be. So Maddie, she recently had to kind of step away from being an entrepreneur and go back to a nine to five. And now she's back. She's back running her business, building it up again, which we'll talk about a little bit later. I'd love to hear just a little bit about your journey and the realities of being an entrepreneur.
- [03:04]
Maddie
Yeah, sure. So my business started out as a side hustle on top of a full time job at a tech startup a few years ago. And what happened was as I was starting to build it up, I had the intention to go full time with it. And then I got laid off. So that was kind of cool. I already had some income, but the thing that I messed up on, as you talk about all the time, is I didn't have good sales and marketing in place. And so I was actually preparing as I was running my business full time, preparing to go on maternity leave, I was about to have my third baby and I thought everything was taken care of, so I took the time off. Three weeks after I had my baby, though, I got a message from my operations manager and she said, all of the clients have paused indefinitely. We have no income.
- [03:43]
Abigail Pugh
Oh, my God. Literally, like gut punch.
- [03:45]
Maddie
Yes.
- [03:46]
Abigail Pugh
It was awful.
- [03:47]
Maddie
And not only did I have to go back to work to figure out how to bring in income, it also hit my confidence so hard. Yeah. And I tried a few different things. I actually launched my first course that summer a few months after I had my baby. It did all right. But my confidence was so shot. It's like I just couldn't get over that. And it led to me going back to a full time job because I just couldn't get over that hump and couldn't figure out what I needed to fix.
- [04:14]
Abigail Pugh
Oh, my God. Like, I can't imagine getting that call, especially after, you know, having your baby and you're like, excited, like, I set everything up. This is so exciting. And I Think that's. I think that's a huge reason why I've never been drawn to, like, only having, you know, client work where it's like one on one or group programs, because there's just so much more that is out of your control, like, with your situation. These clients all just paused their. I don't even know what you call them. Paused their contract.
- [04:40]
Maddie
Retainer.
- [04:41]
Abigail Pugh
Retainer. There we go. And it's so terrifying. I think that's what I love about digital products. Like, yes, you actively have to be selling them, but I feel like there's more ways to do that than there are to, like, keep those one on one clients. So that is terrifying and not a situation anybody ever wants to be in. But you're back. You are back and you are working with clients, which I am. I love hearing that. I know entrepreneurship can feel so scary, but it's like a mental game. Honestly. I feel like the more you take care of your mental health and you're able to work through situations that knock you down, but then you have to get back up, the better entrepreneur you are. I saw somebody saying that being an entrepreneur is like going to therapy every single day, basically, because you're like, every day you're, like, thrown these trials and you're like, okay, how am I gonna work through this? And you're talking to your, like, okay, like, this one bad experience with the customer doesn't mean I'm a bad entrepreneur, doesn't mean I'm a bad business owner. It literally just means that, okay, like, let's make this better. So I love that. Now I'd love to talk about some of the biggest mistakes that you see online solopreneurs or entrepreneurs make when they are just setting up their digital product business or kind of just getting started online. Because I do feel like the foundational stuff is missed. And I'd love some, like, tangible things that people can foundationally set up before they start their business. I feel like I didn't do this super. I would say I did some things well, but I also didn't know what I was doing really. And I was just like, okay, I'm gonna throw spaghetti at the wall and start messy and just get going. And I do think you still need to do that. But what are some things that people kind of need to have in place before they want to start growing and scaling?
- [06:22]
Maddie
Essentially, I could talk about this topic for hours. So I'll just pick a few things to focus on. You're right about the mindset. What you mentioned a few Minutes ago. You have to be pre prepared that this might not be for you. You should still try it. But just keep in mind that so many entrepreneurs have multiple businesses because we're not often taught this. It's something you have to gradually figure out and figure out what works for you with what you're doing. So that's the first thing is go into it. Kind of like it's an experiment. If you put too much pressure on yourself, like I have in the past, it doesn't end up as well as it could. So just give yourself a little bit of space related to that. Have a community. I know you have a fantastic community. So where people can get the support and the guidance ongoing from other people who have done it or are doing it, having that support is so core and key to being successful. Because if you're doing this by yourself, it's lonely. And there's this phrase, it's lonely at the top. And if you don't take care of yourself in that way, that also can be a big struggle. I have some other things, but I would love for you to chime in on what you're seeing in your community right now.
- [07:28]
Abigail Pugh
No, I, I, I think you should keep going. I want to hear like the tangible things because I do feel like there's a lot of like tangible things. Like one for me that I can even think of is, was literally the beginning was setting up the email that I was going to use for the rest of the business, like hellobigailph.com and I get a lot of questions about this from beginners where they're like, I don't wanna set up like a G suite or whatever, wherever you set it up. Like, I don't, I don't need, I don't wanna buy a domain. And I'm like having this in the beginning has saved me so much trouble. And just a lot of back and forth and a lot of like clerical stuff because everything is run through that one email. And I learned that the hard way. In my first business I didn't have that set up and I tried to change it and it was a literal nightmare, like just changing an email from one to another. Because in the beginning I didn't have a professional one and then I wanted to switch it and I had like all these things going to the old one and it was so stressful. So when I started this business I was like, I'm getting all of like the legal stuff, my name, everything. Like, like I started working on my trademark pretty early on for my actual Business name. Like, those things that don't feel important when you're like, oh, just start messy. They are so important, and they'll just save you so much stress down the line. And also, honestly, I feel like it gives you, like, a little bit of, like, vote of confidence in yourself when you're like, okay, here's my business. Here's. Here's what I'm going to do. I put all this work into naming it and getting the email and getting the domain, like, I believe in myself. And it's kind of like telling your brain, okay, I am going to give this a hundred percent. And I will say for me, too, I chose my name. So I'm like, I'm never going to change my name. Like, this is. This is my name for life. So it was a little bit easier for me to be like, okay, I'm going to get everything. Because even if I, you know, pivot my business, which I have done since the beginning, I've pivoted a few times. I still have the same name. Like, it's a personal brand, it's my actual name. So I think that type of thing doesn't feel important. It will save you so much stress down the line.
- [09:24]
Maddie
It really does. And I'm not an attorney, so I can't give legal advice, so I'll just give that disclaimer. But definitely look into something like an LLC to help protect you legally. And a lot of people do get concerned about having their name down before they file. You don't necessarily have to keep using that name. You can. And again, I'm not an attorney, so ask one if you have more questions on this. But, you know, you can do dba, so doing business as. So I. And I've seen this with a lot of my clients where they picked a name for their llc, and that's not actually their company name. It's the umbrella company for the. The other company they actually operate under. So definitely do that. And to your point about getting these things set up so it's not a headache later, get a bank account. Keep separate every business thing. All of those transactions go through that do not, do not mix it. Especially because it's an llc, you need to have it as a completely separate entity. Just do that. It makes things easier.
- [10:18]
Abigail Pugh
And on the bank account note, something that I did very early on, too, was I applied for a credit card connected to my business so that everything. And it wasn't like, okay, I'm gonna get a credit card, I'm gonna buy all this stuff. But all My business expenses go on that credit card and then I just pay them off obviously right away with the money coming in. But I get really good points. So do your research. Find like a really good card that gets points based on what you want. So if you want cash back, look for one that does that. But we use ours for travel so very early. I got a credit card attached to my business and now I use that for all my business travel. And I rarely like. We use points for so much of the traveling. So really, again, starting that up first, even if you don't have a lot of expenses in the beginning, they start to add up. And it's really nice to have that credit card to use and then just pay things off as stuff comes in. Sorry, keep going.
- [11:07]
Maddie
No, that's, that's a great point because as you start to build up your business, you start to get new subscriptions and even some memberships are really expensive if you get into them. I've been in some that are quite expensive and if you can get the points off of that, absolutely do that. But if you do not have the income coming in, don't recommend you do that. Because I made the mistake in the past of trying to take on too much thinking I would be able to earn it back. This is in the early days for me, so just, just be cautious with that. But it is a really great tip.
- [11:34]
Abigail Pugh
Yeah, definitely. And I, I mean, like I said, I didn't like do all these crazy things, but even just like certain subscriptions that I was in, if they had like a big discount for paying yearly, I would put that on the card and then obviously make sure I have.
- [11:46]
Maddie
It there to pay off.
- [11:47]
Abigail Pugh
So is there anything else that' super tangible for people starting in the beginning, like systems, things like that? Like, I'm not a huge systems girly until I'm like suffering and I need it. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, I need a system for this. But any other things, email, like you.
- [12:03]
Maddie
Mentioned, is a huge one. Another one that I see so many people having problems with is password managers. So I recommend 1Password. And it is a phenomenal tool, not only because it keeps things secure, but everyone has to do two factor authentication these days. It's a really good way to make sure that your accounts are secure. But one password allows you to put it directly into the item. So when you start to hire and when you start to delegate, it's so much easier for them to get access without them having to say, hey, I'm trying to log into this account, can you send me the code that was just texted to you? It's so annoying to have to work around that. So if you. If it's just built into the tool. So definitely do that from the early days as you're starting to create accounts related to that. When you're signing up for accounts, a lot of tools will allow you to sign in with Google. I recommend that you sign up with an email address and a password, again, for the delegation purpose, because if you only log in with Gmail, then it's going to be more complicated for your team to log in. It's like, hey, there's actually no user and password here. Can you go and set that up? And the whole point of when you're hiring is to delegate so that you don't have more work on your plate. So all these little things that you can do, like think about what can you do to pass off work in the future?
- [13:13]
Abigail Pugh
Yep.
- [13:13]
Maddie
Again, another Google suite tool that you can add onto the email is Google Voice. So having a phone number in the case, depending on what you're doing. In the case of my work, I do a lot more communication with people, so they want to have my phone number. I use Google Voice for my business number. It goes straight to my phone in a separate app though. So no one actually that I work with has my personal cell number. I can keep those separate. Whatever you can do to create boundaries, I will always be an advocate for early on, and especially if it helps with delegation down the road. That's another thing to look for. So anything that you can think about, how do you pass off to someone else in the future? Those are things that you should do in the early days, including documentation. This is how I do things.
- [13:55]
Abigail Pugh
Yes, Having systems. I feel like ChatGPT has helped me with this so much. And loom, which is like a recording thing, like, if I need something for my VA to do now, instead of just walking her through it, I record everything. I mean, my VA is my sister. So, like, I don't foresee her leaving anytime soon. Right. Like, it is a little bit of a different business relationship for us. And she loves working for me, but I still want to be prepared. So anytime I have anything that like a task that I want to teach her how to do, I just go into Loom. And now Loom has like AI too. So it'll like summarize it for her too, which is so nice. Instead of me just kind of like sending a voice memo or explaining it, and then I have her organize everything just in case we need that down the line. But again, in the beginning I wasn't thinking about any of that and I feel like my systems were very frantic and all over the place for that type of stuff. But now chatgpt, honestly, and any whatever AI Claude that you use, I feel like that makes it so much easier. Okay, I want to get into hiring and all of that. I feel like a lot of my listeners and people in my community are solopreneurs, but eventually they will need some help and or entrepreneurs and they're like, okay, I want one or two people on my team. Can you tell us kind of, number one, when is the right time to hire? And then number two, kind of how to go about hiring someone. Right. Like I, again, my sister is my va, so it was very, very different for me. I know her, I trust her, I know her capabilities and she's very easy to train. Like if I tell her something once, she doesn't make the mistake or not even mistake, she doesn't make an error again around that thing when I tell her. But I know that's not the case for a lot of people. And I get this question all the time, like, when do I hire and how do I go about hiring someone? Oh, and also, who's the first person you should hire? Like what role in your team? I forgot that one.
- [15:46]
Maddie
Yeah, great question. So I'll start with the things that you should keep an eye out for for when you need to start hiring. So one most key that your revenue can support it, especially if you're looking to bring on someone ongoing. I do see a lot of people though think that, oh, I have to have thousands upon thousands of dollars to be able to pay this person. Actually what you need to do is just stop and think about what you can start with. And a lot of times I recommend that people just say, well, can you afford $500 a month? Something like that? Maybe it's $20 an hour and it gives you a few hours a week for them to be able to do some work for you and take that off your plate, if that feels reasonable to you, you can start there. But you have to first evaluate what can you actually afford on an ongoing basis. And when I say afford, I mean are you also putting aside money for taxes? Are you able to pay yourself? Are you able to pay for your expenses and are you set aside some profit? I wouldn't say I'm big into profit first, but I like the concept because so many people that I've talked to don't follow Any structure for setting aside taxes or profit. So do a little looking into that if you're curious. But it's a good structure to make sure you have that from the get go. Because the financial piece is so core. You don't want to end up hiring someone and be like, oh no, I don't have the money to pay you or my taxes or myself.
- [17:02]
Abigail Pugh
Oh my gosh, no. And honestly, when you have the stressor of that on your business, I feel like you're so focused on the stress that you're not able to like do the creative stuff that you're supposed to actually market your business. And that's something I hear from people who are trying to scale, is that they are so stressed with the day to day things that they didn't kind of make sure first that now they're like, oh, I can't even be creative. I don't, I can't sell when I'm feeling like this. So one thing that I did in the beginning too when I first hired is, and like this, I would say do this for contractors or someone that you're hiring on your team is I set aside money each month for a few months before I brought my VA on so that my, I just had this like peace of mind. Like my business was doing really well and I like, I had no problem with paying her each month what we agreed upon. But I wanted the peace of mind knowing that if something happened, like if for some reason my business burned to the ground, I would still have six months of income set aside for her on what we first agreed to. And when I tell you like the stress that that kind of took off my plate going into hiring my first like contractor that's going to be working with me for a while, not just like a one off thing that helped with the stress so much. So if you can do that, I would definitely recommend to kind of take that stress off. You save maybe six months, four or five months of what you need to pay this person and then kind of see how it goes from there.
- [18:31]
Maddie
It's really a great point because oftentimes when I come across people, they hire quickly and they hire whoever is right in front of them.
- [18:38]
Abigail Pugh
Yeah.
- [18:38]
Maddie
Whether they're good or not, you know, I have opinions on that. But like you clearly knew that your sister would be good. And so if you have worked with someone before, you know how they operate, that's an okay way to go about it. But the point about setting aside the funds first requires a sense of patience that I don't often See, so that's something else that I would say is if you're considering hiring, try to be patient. If you're feeling frantic, you won't make good decisions. And to your point around putting the money aside, it creates this peace that you won't understand that how helpful that is until you know that someone is relying on you for their income.
- [19:12]
Abigail Pugh
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so you have the revenue to hire the person, you're not frantic. Anything else that they should be considering before they hire someone?
- [19:21]
Maddie
Yeah. So if you're buried in low leverage tasks, so if you're doing a bunch of administrative work or something that someone else could easily come in and take over for you, that's definitely a key indicator to pay attention to because you don't want to be spending all of your time on that you need to be spending your time on. To your point earlier, marketing, sales, creating new products and doing the things that only you can do. And related to that, I often see that growth will be tied and limited by your capacity. So if you're doing too much of this other administrative work, it means that you just flat out don't have the time, which then also can lead to burnout. So any of those factors, if you're starting to see those and you do have the revenue, definitely time to start hiring. And if you're starting to pay attention to these things early on and you have some indication that you're going to need to hire in a few months, that's a really good time to be starting to put aside the funds and starting to pay attention to what do I need to hire? For which you asked earlier. And I often recommend hiring a virtual assistant first because they're not overly expensive. It's a good way to start working with someone and start learning how to trust and delegate some of these tasks that aren't quite as impactful to your business. Not to say that they don't provide value, but in the case that they make a mistake, it's not going to cause huge issues for your business. So it's generally the role I start with. Sometimes though, I will encourage a client to hire an operations manager first because it just depends on where their level of business is. But in some cases you need someone who's more senior, who is able to do more higher level work and be able to take that off your plate in project management. And then they can also help to hire other people, like virtual assistance, so you don't have to do this multiple times.
- [21:03]
Abigail Pugh
Is that something that you help with? Like if someone was like I need a VA and I have no idea how to find a good va. Like, is that. That's something you consult on, right?
- [21:11]
Maddie
Yeah. Yeah, I do. I have a hiring process. So the way that I do it a little bit different than how I used to do it when I ran my business before actually, is I create a system for my clients, and I can either give them the system and some instruction for how to do it themselves, or I can help them hire this first role. Oftentimes, I will make that an operations manager hire just because that seems to be a better fit for these types of clients. And then I will teach that operations manager how to use that system so that they can keep hiring in the future. Because I have seen so many entrepreneurs, founders, who try to hire, and they just struggle so much with it. I had one person tell me they tried hiring five different virtual assistants, and none of them worked out. And it causes me pain to hear this because I know that that means that this person is burnt out. They are not able to thrive in the energy that they want to in their business. They're probably not as present for their loved one. Yeah. And I'm a mama 3. I've been married for 12 years, and I hate it when I'm not able to be present with my family because I made a poor decision in my business or just with my schedule or something. And so I want to enable other entrepreneurs to do it. So that's why I have that system set up. Cause I don't want them to rely on me for the hiring. I want to enable them so they can take it and go forward.
- [22:25]
Abigail Pugh
I love that. Well, if you guys need a va, Maddie's definitely your girl to help you find one. It is. Is. It is a very interesting process, in my opinion, the first hire, at least, because it. You have to kind of let go of this, like, control. And I don't know about you, but, like, this business is my baby. Like, I am so intertwined in it. I want to be part of everything. And sometimes still to this day, I'm like, send me the response you're going to send before you send it. And my sister will be like, I can, but I don't think I should. And I'm like, okay, okay, I'll let this go. Like, I'm going to let it go. Because everything is just so. Like, I take everything so personally, and I really need to kind of disconnect from that. But it's. It's scary to let go of. But it helps so much to have someone Doing things that take brain power from you but don't need you. So I thought I would share just a few things that my VA does for me, because I get asked quite often, like, what do you delegate? And it's a lot of things that don't require me. And I honestly, like, the more we work together, the more I kind of. Not that I didn't trust her before, but the more I trust that she knows exactly what I want. And there's still some things that are, like, not her area of expertise. She's my sister, so I can say this, but. And she'll be the first to admit she's, like, terrible at writing podcast names. And she is my podcast manager, too, so that's something that, like, she'll still give me, like, five options before she just gave me one, and I was like, I don't like this, and I don't want to have to rename it. And I was feeling a little frustrated. And then I was like, okay, this is my. It's my responsibility to train her and to tell her what I want. So I just said, hey, like, can you give me, like, an option of five names? And it's been perfect. It's been so nice for us. So much easier. And again, that frustration came from me, like, a. Not, like, taking responsibility for saying, this is not how I want it done. I don't like this. But also me then coming up with the system for us that worked for both of us. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. But here are some of the things that I have kind of delegated to my va. So she does customer support emails for me because I, again, that's something that I take. Take so personally. And it's very easy to, like, let that drain you, especially if you're selling digital products. Like, if you have a surge in sales and surge in new customers, like, there's just always little things going on. She does still keep some emails for me. When, like, someone is, like, talking to me, I will still answer those because I do. It's a personal brand. Like, I. I want to be responding to the people that are, like, talking directly to me, but she helps with that. She also wanted to be involved with the podcasting, so I paid to have her train to learn how to podcast, edit, and do all of that. So now she's also my podcast, I don't know, manager, editor. She does all that for me. So that's something I really love, too, is being able to, like, train her on things that she wanted to take on. And, like, wanted to do, and it's just nice. Like, I already know her and trust her, and so we added that on. She'll also do just, like, random things for me. So inside my community, every single week, they submit questions and there's a Q and A, and I have it on canvas slides. I don't want to be doing that on Monday morning. So that's something that she does every single week. And she puts the new form up for them. When I do, like, a podcast where I'm like, hey, I'm going to do a Q and A this week. Here's all the screenshots of the questions everyone asked in the question box. Can you put that in a Google Doc for me so I can just read off of that? Just, like, little tedious things that are important in my business, but they're not moving the needle further with revenue. That's kind of how I like to think of it. Like, there's a lot of revenue moving things that have to do with sales and marketing that, like, I don't want to let go of, but I need more energy and, like, more creativity in my brain to be able to do them. So every other, like, little tedious task I'm able to pass off to her to do, and it's just. It's been so nice to take that off my plate.
- [26:14]
Maddie
You really nailed a number of things that I would recommend those tedious things and also training them up to understand how you think. And I sometimes will work with client teams, and I actually am working on some digital products myself of, you know, trying to educate different team members, if they're virtual assistants or whatever they are, to help them understand what it's like to be an entrepreneur. Because for you, you are so overwhelmed by every decision you have to make and everything you're trying to do to move the needle forward. Or maybe you're not the best example for that. Cause I don't know that I don't get the overwhelmed vibe from you in that. In that sense. But a lot of entrepreneurs are. And so if you have a virtual assistant who is. Or whoever it is, team members who understand how you think and can learn from you, and if you can invest in them, learning more and going through programs, they're going to be even better at their job and better able to support you. So you definitely have some good things going there.
- [27:09]
Abigail Pugh
And I feel like for me, in the beginning, I was, like, nervous to ever hurt her feelings because, again, it's like a more complicated thing because she is my sister and we are really close. But there were some things where I felt bad saying it, but then it was like when I told her it never happened again, and she just didn't know. And I had to kind of go back to the days where I worked, you know, for someone. Like, I used to do customer support for somebody who sold online presets, right? And so much of the time, like, my brain would jump, like, okay, I'm gonna do this, this, and this. And she would be like, no, all I asked for was this. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. So whatever you ask for, like, just stick with that. Like, don't try and, like, make it better all the time. But then I had to think back, like, okay, you need to just say what you need. And, like, you're, you know, working with someone will go so much smoother if you're able to just verbalize your needs. And I'm an enneagram, too, so I'm, like, afraid to hurt people's feelings. Like, I'm just always a people pleaser and always, like, ugh, I don't want to hurt her feelings, but I don't like this. And even when we talked about, like, the podcast episode, she was like, oh, yeah, I am terrible at naming. I. When I write them, I'm, like, cringing as I type it, and I'm like, okay, I really didn't want to hurt your feelings. Like, but each week I just started taking it on myself. And my husband was like, you need to tell her. Like, tell her how you want it differently, and let's figure out a different way. And now we did, and it's been perfect. So this goes back to, like, development and just, like, constantly bettering yourself and constantly pushing yourself to just, I don't know, really dive deeper. There's so much self development that happens when you're an entrepreneur. It's like, every single day, I'm like, oh, cool. Another lesson for me to learn today. Awesome. Could we just have one day where I'm not learning another freaking lesson? But it's amazing. But it is. It is a lot. And just going back to not glamorizing entrepreneurship, like, there are really hard seasons, and then there are really, you know, wonderful seasons, but they both happen. It's not just one or the other. When you're an entrepreneur, so they do.
- [29:11]
Maddie
And when you hire, not only is hiring itself a skill, but being able to manage is a skill. And regardless of if it's a family member, somebody, you know, a friend of yours, or someone who's completely New and you're just meeting them and you pirate them out of an application process. You have to learn how to manage them well and how to communicate. And there's a book that I highly recommend called Crucial Conversations that can be used for conversations in the workplace and also in personal life. I've used the tactics in both places. And essentially what it does is it gives you tools to be able to approach conflict and know how to allow the other person space and invite them to speak and to share their thoughts and be able to share yours and help you to be able to come to a single, like, they call it the pool of shared meaning. Which is kind of funny. But the concept of it is we both essentially want the same thing.
- [30:05]
Abigail Pugh
Yeah.
- [30:05]
Maddie
So let's tell about what we're feeling, what our stories are that we've told ourselves about what happened and how do we go forward. And it's helped me so much with giving feedback in the work that I do. And just in general, I'm a fairly direct person when it comes to feedback, but I want to make sure that I'm being empathetic to the other person's feelings. So those kinds of tools can be really helpful if you're fearful of hiring because you're not sure how to do that, because you will start to see that you will end up babysitting your team and you will not get the kind of results you want if you don't learn how to lead as well and learn how to communicate those things.
- [30:39]
Abigail Pugh
Absolutely. Okay, so before we go, if somebody's listening to this and they're like, okay, I need to hire a va. What are some of the first steps that they need to do? Can you walk us through just a little bit of your process for that and what they need to do? Like, I literally would have no idea where to even start with that.
- [30:56]
Maddie
Yeah. So I actually have an exercise called the Founders Focus Assessment, and I'll give you the link so we can put it in the show notes for them. But essentially what it is, is it's walking through. You can use ChatGPT for this, or you can just open a Google Doc and essentially write down everything that you do and separate it, then organize it into what do you really enjoy doing? What moves your business forward? What are you really good at? Those are the things that you should hang on to. And then the things that are challenging for you, that are weaknesses that you procrastinate on, those are likely things that you should hand off to someone else. And that's the first step in Getting awareness of what you need help with. And then I, like I said, I have a service that I can help people with if they're looking to hire. I want to be able to enable entrepreneurs to be able to do this well so that they don't have, like, five VAs that didn't work out.
- [31:43]
Abigail Pugh
So.
- [31:43]
Maddie
Yeah.
- [31:44]
Abigail Pugh
Awesome. So if they worked with you and did, like, you helped them hire someone, would they then kind of learn the process that you do so that moving forward, if they needed to hire someone else, they would kind of know how to do it? Because I agree. I never want with my products and with everything that I do. Like, my goal is not to have people, like, rely on me forever.
- [32:01]
Maddie
Right.
- [32:01]
Abigail Pugh
Like, I want you to feel like at some point, I don't need her anymore. She helped me so much, my journey, and I loved everything from her. Hopefully, fingers crossed. But now I'm ready to, like, do this on my own. Is that kind of how they'll walk away if they do it with you once, that they'll be able to hire other people down the line?
- [32:18]
Maddie
Yeah, that's the goal. I've actually taken a old digital product of mine and combined it with some of these services because the way that we set it up is it's a tool thing, so it's still a bit of a service. Unfortunately, I can't just say, here, buy this, and then you'll be good to go. We have to do a little bit of setup. But yeah, that's the goal is I want them to learn and understand how to do this on their own so they're not reliant on me or anyone else to do it, really. Right.
- [32:39]
Abigail Pugh
I love that. That's literally what I love and do. Well, Maddie, thank you so much, you guys. I will tag Maddie down below the resource we mentioned where to find her on social media. I just want you to know that if you are feeling overwhelmed at business, if you are stressed that you don't.
- [32:56]
Maddie
Have to feel like that.
- [32:57]
Abigail Pugh
Yes, there's. There's always going to be seasons of that, but it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to have someone help you in your business. I know like I said before, it can feel a little bit terrifying to let go of things, but the peace that has come from knowing that things are being handled, even on the days when I'm like, okay, I'm just going to take the whole day off knowing my customers will still get responded to, knowing that certain, you know, tasks that need to get done that day, somebody else is doing them has just taken such a load off for me, so I hope this episode was helpful. I love you, mean it and we will see you next week. Thank you so much for hanging out with me and my guests today. If you learned anything from our episode, I would love it if you could share it over on your Instagram stories and tag me at Abigail Pugh until next time. Love you, mean it.