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The Ops Experts Club Podcast
114. Are You Hiring Full Time When Fractional Would Work Better?
00:17:14
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there. Or if you just want to know more about us, click the links below. Now on to the episode
- [00:15]
B
Epic Club. Experts Club. It's kind of like the Pink, kind of like the Pink Pony Club, but it's like Ops Experts Club. You know what I'm saying? I'm down with that, dude. As a drummer, you understand beat and so, you know, it works actually really well. Op Ops Experts, thanks for jumping in. Taran Turner and I back at you in action today. Another one of those ones where I was catching the beat. Taren, like, as long as you're on the downstroke on the beat, they can do a lot of stuff. It's pretty cool.
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C
You're nailing it.
- [00:42]
B
Hey, Taren, I thought today we could talk to our Ops Experts about recruiting and about hiring because it's something that we're in the middle of a lot for clients, right? Either they brought on new team or helping onboard, or we're doing the actual recruiting form because do a ton of recruiting projects for people or we're offboarding people that are just are not working out. You know, Like, I think that we live in that world a lot and if we offboard a lot of times it's us picking up the duties at a fractional level to hold space while we find somebody else. And so I thought there's probably very few people that are as accustomed to us at it because we're doing it for so many different kinds of businesses every day, all different kinds of roles and responsibilities. We're helping people build out org charts and primary roles and responsibilities and KPIs associated with different job descriptions. So I thought we could just talk today about recruiting in general. When should you hire? Like, when do I unhire, when do I hire an internal employee, and when should I just source fractional work? What are your thoughts on that?
- [01:34]
C
That's great. I mean, recruiting is huge conversations with the people we work with. Either you've got too many people or not enough people. Hardly seems like you have just the right amount.
- [01:45]
B
That is a very astute. That is a very astute observation. It's very rare for us to come into teams. They're like, dude, we're doing fine. We actually are good. We don't need anything el else. Like, I think obviously we're coming in because there's typically a problem a lot of times co Lab team comes on the field because a visionary is either feeling super frustrated with team or super overwhelmed because they don't have enough team somewhere in the middle. And we're coming in there trying to help clean up the mess. So we do have a great resource. If you're trying to recruit and you just need like good interview questions, good job description template, some great things around KPIs and how we like factor that in, you can check it out@recruiting opsexpertsacademy.com so if you haven't checked that out before recruiting opsexpertsacademy dot com we give you all of our resources of things that we're using in the day to day as we're recruiting for all different kinds of positions. We usually have something like three or four or five positions that we're always recruiting. We always have recruiters going. So anyway, jump on there. So Taryn, I thought we could just do like a quick flash quiz on who should you hire internal and when should you still be fractionally sourcing people until you hire internal? Cause that's what I would really advocate for is why pay somebody full time if you could get a better person at less time until you need a full time person, right? Like pilot it with somebody that knows what they're doing. Unless you just really like training people that don't understand what they're doing yet. Would you agree with that mindset?
- [03:06]
C
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean it's also the best way to like taste and see too, you know, if you even need the full time position.
- [03:14]
B
Yeah, that's a great point. And I think too helps you understand what are the KPIs if I'm paying somebody a little bit higher rate, like let's say I'm, I'm playing. I would say typically if you're going to fractionally source somebody, you're probably going to pay them a little higher rate because they're probably having to work for somebody else besides just you. But if you don't need this position full time, what do you care as long as they're showing up consistently to do the things you want them to do. So I think that's a big one, right? Show up. If they're a proven resource, then that pretty much answers it. Are they showing up? Ask them for other referrals, Ask them for people they're working with. Talk to your friends that are using them, make sure they're a good solution and then plug them in until you start hitting parameters where you're not getting turn time fast enough. Or they're not able to hit as many of the projects or things that you want them to be working on, then maybe consider hiring internal. But at that point the hope would be this person's already created SOPs for you. This person has already done the lift because you're paying them a little bit extra to be a little bit better and show up stronger. In my mind I would always start with somebody fractional and then work your way up into full time. But I'm sure there, there are rules. I'm going to start peppering you with some Taryn and you can tell me what your opinion is on should this be an internal hire, should it be somebody fractional and we can just bounce around some ideas. Sound cool?
- [04:22]
C
Mm, sounds awesome dude.
- [04:23]
B
Groovy. A groovy kind of love. I love that. Okay, so number one, Taren ea. Like would you source internal for an ea, an executive assistant or would you do fractional?
- [04:35]
C
I think start fractional.
- [04:36]
B
Tell me why. So executive assistant we're probably talking about. Would you say probably visionary is where we should get that nailed down first?
- [04:43]
C
Yeah. Unless the visionary is more hands off than whoever's directly under them. If they're a very hands on visionary, then.
- [04:49]
B
Oh yeah, yeah. Because a lot of times I would say what I've seen is visionaries that are in the mix, like they can really make things scrambly fast. Right. And so them some help on things that do not require their brilliance. Things you can just hand straight down, you know, inbox management, scheduling, access. That's a huge one. Right. Like I just need to get access. And if they were a solopreneur and they're building their position or their company rather their business, they're probably going to have all those things attached to their personal email address. The last thing they want it to be or their personal text messaging or whatever, like get that access into different platforms, get that off of them. How can we just give them somebody that's going to float along beside them on a number of hours every day and just relieve the burden? Because the whole purpose, remember we talked about this a couple weeks ago with delegate Elevate. The whole purpose is how do we delegate down that don't require your brilliance. We don't need tasks that don't require me anymore. Let me delegate those things down so I can elevate up. Because we're all working with a limited amount of times eas. I would agree with you, Taran. And the cool thing about fractional sourcing of EAs is you can probably Fractionally source somebody that's pretty fricking badass at what you would pay somebody for full time. So start with them at a fractional amount and let them start setting the framework. And then when you decide to hire somebody full time, make them shadow the person that you've been fractionally hiring so that they really understand it. They can pipe right into it and the fractional person steps out and the full time person steps in. We do that kind of work all the time, so I think that's a great one. Good job, Taran.
- [06:10]
C
Yeah. I think if it's a role you never hired or experienced before, fractional is going to set the stage for what this role should look like when done. Well, if you go straight into a hire, it's hard to tell, like, are they actually that experienced? Do they have bad habits? A fractional person working with multiple clients is probably a lot more qualified and eager to do a good job. And then they're going to show you how the job should be done.
- [06:35]
B
And I would say it's probably a specialized tool. Right. By the way, I love your tail today. Your tail is legit. Tell Prairie I appreciate her showing up on the show today. I would say probably too, as you're thinking about it, fractionally is you're paying them a certain amount to show up a certain way. Just like you said. It's also very easy to cut people loose, right? When, rather than if you, if you bring them internal and you start working them as an employee, sometimes that can be a little bit stickier, a little bit harder, a little bit like to just cut them loose and let them go. I feel like if it's a contractor relationship, it's not working. Cut them loose, you know, like, go on to your next one contractor. Cut them loose. I will say that what you're probably paying for and something to keep in mind is if you source somebody fractionally, the hope would be is they're coming with a little bit higher expertise. You're not going to have to handhold them as much if you're not sourcing somebody fractionally. If you're hiring somebody internally, you're probably going to pay them less. And that probably feels good at the front, but realize probably have to spend some time with them to get them to really understand what you're doing. And usually visionaries, they do not like that. They do not like how that feels at all, you know. So I think you're absolutely right. Taryn, can you maybe walk us through EA versus VA and kind of what you think those Two different roles is maybe the dividing line. Cause I think sometimes when I talk to visionaries, there's a lot of confusion on let's just source somebody from the Philippines. Like, let's just get a va. And I think that they can, I would say people from the Philippines are amazing and they can do some things really well. But I would say an EA and a VA are pretty different.
- [07:55]
C
Oh yeah, an EA is a specific role. It's an assistant to the manager, you know, an assistant to the executive. A VA is just a description. You're just describing somebody virtually that assists tasks. These days it can mean Philippines, but there's, there's us VAs. I mean, I've seen people promote themselves as a VA just because they're a virtual whatever. They're virtual marketing tech, they're a virtual customer support person, they're virtual anything. And so a VA is just anybody that can assist, just not in person.
- [08:27]
B
I would say too, like sometimes I, I see visionaries mistake the rules of instead of an ea, I'm going to go with a va. And I would say just be really careful what hemisphere you're hiring out of because sometimes the urgency that you need might be in the middle of the night for them, depending on where you're hiring out of. And if you need somebody to help you with your scheduling and your inbox management and things that are going to happen, I would say for a C level person, somebody that's visionary or a higher upper level of a company, you're going to want somebody that's working on the same hemisphere just because there's going to be so much frustration on if they can't show up. And even I know we've worked with some great VAs that are willing to work through the night. I personally though feel like you start watching like performance drop a little bit when it's the middle of the night. Because a lot of times they have kids or they have other responses, responsibilities. They have things that are demanding from them during the day and then they're just trying to push it into the night. And sometimes it can be really hard to know are they working right now, Are they not working right now? Are they sleeping in charge of me for working right now? Some things that can just make it really messy. So I would just say be really clear on the kind of rules you need. If it's not like quick turn time stuff, great. Outsource it. If you can wait a day, a lot of times that's great because while I'm sleeping, they're working And I can show up the next morning, all my stuff's done. But I would say be careful on mistaking EA for va because that just a lot of times it just does not play well. Aaron, let's talk about finance team. That's another one. I see people think about a lot of hiring internal. What would you say is the level a company should probably be at when they start thinking about hiring internal finance team? We deal with so much finance with the Colab team, like so many and some people have internal finance teams and sometimes we are the internal finance team at a fractional level. So maybe explain to us what from your experience you see when people should be thinking about maybe I should think about moving to a full time person on the finance team at a director level maybe.
- [10:04]
C
Yeah, it's definitely you're going to be looking at volume and like unique management individuals. So it's the number of different people you pay, the number of different people you employ. It's not a dollar amount because whether your QuickBooks is getting a thousand dollars or a million dollars in a month, it's that part's not going to make a difference. It's going to be the people and the contractors and the management and how complex your business is getting. Are we now setting up multiple LLCs? Are right now running different businesses out of different places? Do we now have multiple payroll processing systems? How complex are we making it?
- [10:39]
B
Yeah. Do we have affiliates?
- [10:40]
A
Right.
- [10:40]
B
Is there, how big is your sales team? Like how much vetting are we going to have to do of end of month reports before we pay out people? Right. There's some things where it starts to become more and more complex. So from your perspective, it's not so much a gross revenue number, it's more around how complex are your books? I think someplace where we really meet people a lot in this space is and really do a lot of help is in the online marketing world, in the online entrepreneur world. I really think you should find a bookkeeper that understands what you're doing, understands launches, understands in person events, understands affiliate payouts, understands how your sales team is selling. Because otherwise you're paying a bookkeeper down the street who's doing the construction company, they're doing the local market and then they're trying to do your, you know, your online operating, your online marketing business. And it's just we're talking about that's not an Apples for apples comparison. Those businesses are so different. And a lot of times I've seen bookkeepers and finance people really struggle on understanding the model if they're not used to dealing with online marketers, people who are online entrepreneurs doing a lot of their business in the online space. So I would just say be aware of that. I think we meet that space really well. I feel like we do really great at understanding the space and so we really market ourselves for that a lot. Taran, let's talk about what else is a good one. Taran. Customer support. What do you think about customer support? Internal or fractional?
- [12:00]
C
Great one. You know, customer support's one of the roles we take over when we're working with clients. It's a great fractional role because usually if anybody is doing it, they're doing it with 0% of the time they have available, which means they're putting it off to last minute. You've got upset customers you don't even know about. Easy to hire. Fractional. These online ticketing platforms make it so simple to just give somebody a user account, give them an FAQ bank and start responding.
- [12:32]
B
I say, especially if your customers aren't expecting you to reply like real time. Like if we're just talking about, if you push out, even if you put an autoresponder within your, your communication chain with people as they reach out and say, hey, thanks for reaching out, we'll get back to you within the next 24 hours. Great. You've given them an expectation which gives you opportunity to then pedal out to other people. And you want to bring an internal. Sometimes I found where it can start making sense to bring customer support. Internal is if you have a higher ticketing program. If you like want more of like a personal touch, you want to bring in maybe a concierge that can give that higher level, higher ticket touch from a customer service perspective. And then maybe you can roll up whoever you've been using fractionally underneath that person, you kind of make them a coach that maybe is servicing the higher ticket and then maybe also doing a little oversight on the lower ticket. I think could be a good internal hire. But until then, I would say it's probably not a full time role. Unless you're experiencing crazy volume, right? Maybe if you're getting like taren, what would you say inbox would be where we're like, hey, you might want to think about hiring internal because fractionally, given it a certain number of hours, you probably, that's probably too many tickets hitting the inbox to think that somebody's gonna be able to turn that in a 24 hour period. Do you have a number in your mind?
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C
I mean, if you're getting upwards of 50 tickets a day. That's crazy.
- [13:44]
B
Yeah, yeah. I think like guys like Pedro Adeo or somebody that's got Thousands and thousands, Dr. Darius Daniels. Thousands and thousands and thousands of like clients, members, people that are purchasing their products. There's probably going to be a fair amount of volume there on people reaching, confused, that are tangled. They're going to have a bad customer journey if you don't have something that's on it. So pedal it slow like. But if you're not at that point where you're not hitting a big threshold of a lot of tickets that have really technical questions, there are great macros in those platforms where you can answer the same question. Like five different people just ask you a very similar question. Great. Same macro pushed out to all of them at the same time. Keep on moving until it rattles back and becomes a more complex questions. I like that. What about tech, Taryn? This is something that lives very close to your heart. People that are building out your, the back end of your website, people that are building out funnels for you, people that are managing just technology in general. Do you think that's an internal hire or a fractional hire?
- [14:35]
C
That's going to be a fractional hire, sir.
- [14:37]
B
Tell me why.
- [14:38]
C
You know you're going to get some great specialized results with a fractional hire and odds are you don't have a full time needs quite yet. And if you do, your budget's going to give you somebody a lot lower qualified.
- [14:51]
B
Yeah, I would say unless you're building all of the time. Like unless you're rolling out new offers every single week. Right. And you need somebody to be in there building, building, building. I would say that's probably not a full time gig. How are you going to keep them busy unless you're going to make their role a hodgepodge of things. And from my experience, if you make a role a hodgepodge, it's very, very hard for that person to dictate when should they be working on what. And so at least from you and frustration from them because we're not really clear on expectations, like how much of the percentage of the time should they be working on tech versus customer support versus doing your finance. And if you find one amazing person, even an amazing person is going to have time with, is going to have time allocation, pain points, you know, so determining when should I do this versus that is tough. I would say make your roles really clean. Start with really clear job descriptions, really clear expectations. Bring them in at a fractional level until you Start maxing and capping and then be like, hey, I think I need to now source that out and do some internal hiring, you know, that will replace this person. And once again, you've piloted it with somebody that's an expert. I would also say work with experts that are willing to give you their sops, right? If. If they're some kind of black box that you're just working with some tech company that is going to kind of hold you on the outside. I know, Taryn. We had, we came in and replaced a company like that a couple of years ago for a big outfit that came out of England that was working with a virtual team that was all black box. They didn't understand any of the systems and they weren't going to give them any visibility into any of the systems, you know. And so when we, when we supplanted that group, it was because the customer is feeling like I need to understand what's going on and you won't give me insights. So I would say whoever you're going to source to make sure you understand what they're doing, make sure they're going to hand off their SOPs and ask them when you hire them, hey, man, I'm going to probably find somebody full time after I'm done with you. Will you help me with the onboarding this person when I get them there? Great. You've set the expectation. Kind of sets you up for success. Taren, any final words as we close up today's episode on recruiting?
- [16:41]
C
I knew you were going to ask that. No.
- [16:43]
B
How about this? EOS says to fire, slow to hire, right? So be careful as you're thinking about what you're sourcing. Be careful when especially internal employees you're going to have to pay taxes on, you're going to have to pay benefits to be slow, fractionally hire some people out, get them in there doing the work, and then be slow to hire internal until it's not working. Then cut them loose quick, man. Don't let them pollute. Don't let them slow you down. So, experts, thanks for showing up today. We appreciate you joining us. Taran Turner, you're a scholar and a gentleman as always. We'll talk to you next week on Ops Experts Club.
- [17:13]
C
See ya.