← The Spiritual Hustler
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:02]
Jessica Zweig
Welcome to the Spiritual Hustler podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Zweig, multi seven figure serial entrepreneur, best selling author and branding and business coach. And this is a show where we are redefining the word hustle. Reclaiming our true feminine nature of magnetism and putting down the self judgments and shame around loving to work and making a lot of money at it. On this show, you're going to learn how to stop hustling and start spiritually hustling. By pressing play, you are now part of a new movement of women who don't hustle for money. We hustle for meaning. We don't hustle from lack. We hustle for love. We don't hustle from survival. We hustle for humanity's thriving. We hustle toward healing the ancestral programming of fear and step into a new understanding of safety in the body to receive. This shift isn't going to only heal your life. It's going to make you a whole lot richer too. This is the Spiritual Hustler podcast. Well, hello my beautiful spiritual hustlers and welcome back to the podcast. I am your host, Jessica Zweig. In case you didn't know that, if you're new to the show, welcome. I'm so happy to have you. If you are not new, welcome back. You know, here on the Spiritual Hustler podcast, we talk about all the things. We talk about business, we talk about leadership, we talk about branding and revenue growth and strategy. And we also of course, talk about all things. You know, I don't even like to use the word woo woo. Like, because I think the word woo diminishes the gravity of being an awake, conscious, remembered woman. Like, to me, that's what it means to be quote unquote, woo. Like, I'm not just into crystals and the Pleiadians and flower essences and follow astrology. It's like I am deeply committed to a more beautiful, loving earth because I'm so connected to spirit. And in order for me to contribute to the evolution of humanity, I have to be doing my own healing work so that we can heal the world. And we do that through our businesses as much as we do our relationships, as much as we do it with our own internal bodies and psyches and systems. So like, just sorry, not sorry just went off on my, my little diatribe on why I have a very complicated relationship with the word woo. But it's sometimes just a simple way of saying all of those things to people who maybe don't totally get it and aren't on the Same wavelength. But I digress. Welcome to the podcast. Today we're going to talk about business. We're going to talk about one of the most important aspects of building a business that I feel so, so many women struggle with, myself included, or at least I did for a very, very long time, and that's building a team. Now, before we get into all of the things I want to break down today on team building, not just attracting a team and scaling a team, but ensuring that your team stays along the ride with you, because that is a key to scale. I just want to thank you again for being here. You could listen to any podcast out in the world, and you come every week and you listen to mine. And that is something I do not take for granted. And it is such an honor to have your listener ship every week. It's an honor that you're a subscriber to the podcast. And if you haven't yet subscribed, now is an amazing time to go do that. Your reviews really, truly help this show grow. And I read them all and they're all so beautiful. And I just want to thank you. First of all, if you've left a review for doing so, and if you have not yet left a review, to encourage you to go ahead and do so, leave five stars, a couple sentences. It literally takes just a couple seconds. And if you leave a review, I am giving away, I have it all right here on my. My podcast side table. All of the flower essences from Lotus Way that you can imagine. I have essences, I have oils, I have sprays, and it's my gift to you. I'm giving away 10 bottles of Lotus Way every single month here on the podcast. I'm just basically, like, showering you with flowers. For anyone that leaves a review, all you have to do is screenshot that review, send it to me over on DM on Instagram. I will write you back, collect your address, and send you some free flower essences. Lotus Way is my highest vibe frequency tool in my spiritual toolkit. I use it every single day, literally. I have Lotus Way everywhere and I want you to experience them. This is my small little gift, the least that I could do for you to take just a few seconds and to help the spiritual hustler message grow in the world. It really goes so, so far. So let's talk about team Ah, the Achilles heel of every entrepreneur, the love hate dynamic that so many of us have when it comes to building a team. I actually shouldn't say love hate. I love. There is actually nothing Better in life maybe, aside from my, my marriage and my incredible friendships and my dogs and my family of course. But truly like having an amazing team around you in your business is one of the most incredible life experiences one can have. There is nothing like it in fact. And at the same time I find because we are emotional, deeply empathic, deeply passionate, deeply feeling creatures as women, having a team can be incredibly challenging because we care so much not just about our businesses, but about people. And I have probably in my career at this point hired and have had at least 50 to 60, maybe more at this point. Employees come through my world and at the peak of Simply Be, my agency that I ran for seven years and sold, ultimately started it from nothing, had a one woman consultancy, it was just me and my clients and me and me. I ended up scaling that business to at its peak, about 30 full time employees, 30 W2s actually in about four or five contractors. So we had between 35 and 40 people that I was overseeing during those seven years. At our peak today I only have about seven people on my team and slowly, slowly growing. And I will say that the biggest flex stretch of my growth of being an entrepreneur was leading a team and to really, truly know how to do it with my own sovereignty and authority and confidence and sacred lines, otherwise known as boundaries and clarity in my vision as a leader and knowing how to communicate and give feedback and grow talent while also creating a culture where everyone could thrive. I mean it was a multi dimensional personal growth on speed, becoming a leader of people. And a lot of the women in my community are at very different stages in their business. We're all across the spectrum here. Some of you might not have any team at all, it's just you and you're a solopreneur and you are growing it from the ground up. Others are at that place where they can have a little bit of support because of the way their business is growing and they don't know where to necessarily start or look and some of us are fully running the damn thing and, and can't get the team right sized or rightly aligned to the business as it grows. And the more we grow, by the way in our businesses, the more people you're going to need and therefore the more people you might go through because not everybody can ride with you for 10 years, right? Your business is going to change, your needs are going to change, the pace is going to change. And so going into this conversation, first and foremost understanding that it's going to evolve, your team is going to not look the same every year, every few years, maybe every other quarter. And to really hold grace with that truth and to know that it's all beautiful, it's all part of the way your business is meant to grow. But it's really all here to serve you growing as an entrepreneur and as a CEO, as a queen, as a leader, as a visionary and yes, as a manager of people, which is not always our core strength. We I think love to lead, be visionary leaders, lead communities, lead our culture, lead the mission. But the day to day tactical operational need to manage people is a completely different skill set. It's a completely different ballgame. Before we get into all of those pieces, I want to back way, way up because the topic at hand is how do we attract and keep a soul aligned team? So I want to break this down today in sort of two parts because they're very, very unique. They're connected, but they're unique. And when it comes to attracting talent, like really aligned people into your business, two things really need to be in place. One, you have to have a very clear brand in the market for the company that you are, the values that you possess, the consistency in the way you show up, the audience that you're reaching, what makes you different in the market, the brand strategy that I help my clients always do with all of my coaching work and in the thousand plus clients we served at the agency. The brand journey. And I'm talking now just about your company brand, which might be the same thing as your personal brand, which I'm going to get to in a second. But your brand tells the story of who your business is for. And our audience, our target market isn't only our buyers, but it's our talent base, it's our employees, our eventual employees. Every single person that ever goes to apply for a company is gonna Google that company. They're gonna look up their, not just their glassdoor reviews, which is a thing, but they're going to look at your LinkedIn, they're gonna look at your Instagram, they're gonna look at your website, they're going to go potentially deep on your LinkedIn and look at other employees that work for you. They're going to Google your media, your press, what kind of press? Hits you've gotten, positive or negative. And everything starts with brand. It is so important to remember that as we're designing our messages in the world, we are telling the story of what kind of company we're like to work for. And this is why. Back to the personal brand. I believe, obviously I'M like the biggest advocate for personal branding in the game. I wave my personal branding flag every single day because people aren't just coming to look at a company, they're looking at who they're going to work for, top down. So not just their manager, their hiring manager, the HR recruiter, but the CEO, it really always does start at the top. It's a true trickle down experience in any company. I don't care how big or small you are, that the tone of the business, the brand, the culture, the vision, the positioning, the feeling is always birthed from the CEO. And so if you haven't worked on your personal brand yet, or maybe your personal brand is your business, and if that's the case, I'm not even talking to you. But it's important to really think about both your company brand and your personal brand. Especially when we're at the point where we're happening to recruit and open up the doors to grow our team. That is really where the attraction starts. Now, the brand experience of your business, your personal brand doesn't just exist on the Internet. It exists in the very first touch points and communication between you and prospective talent. So this looks like the email messaging and communication that you're going back and forth with with that said candidate to apply and schedule the meeting. If it's not you who is interviewing that person first as the CEO, maybe you have a coo, maybe you have a, an HR partner, maybe it's a senior manager on your team that's going to be the hiring manager before that person ever reports to you. All of that, all of those touch points, all of those faces, all of those relationships are telling a story about what it's like to work for you. So if you have people on your team that are screening, for example, you want to make sure that those people are representing you in the highest light. Because you're not just shopping talent, talent is shopping you. And we all know that when we're interviewing for a job, you've got to make sure you are punctual, that you are well dressed, that you are well lit. If you're on zoom, if you don't have any food in your teeth, that you're professional, right? The same goes for you as the hiring team. It's all brand, it's all telling a story. Now let's click into the interview process. Because how to attract and keep a SOL aligned team really, of course, comes down to ensuring that you hire the right people. And this was a very touch and go experience for me in my entrepreneurial journey, because I am a deeply feeling person and I love to work with people I love. Right? And so for a very long time, I hired for people I liked and could see myself working amongst on a daily basis. And that came first. What sadly, subconsciously came second was could they effectively do the job? And I learned the hard way, this was earlier on in my career, that not only liking my employees, let let alone being liked by my employees, was somewhat irrelevant. And I know that sounds harsh, but they are there to do a job at the end of the day and you are there to lead them in the most clarified, empowered capacity you can as their boss. Not their friend, their boss. And so during the interview process, this is at least what we do at Jessica's Wag Inc. This is what I did at Simply Be Agency. So I'm going to take you through at this point in my business, the airtight hiring process that we have in every single new hire. We launch a job listing, we put it on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is great. LinkedIn is my favorite place to be. Once in a while I'll do something on Instagram Stories. I'm personally very careful to hire out of my community because, and this is a word to the wise for all of you, we definitely want people who are bought into our vision. But if they're followers and fans and they admire your work because you've inspired them and all of that is beautiful, it can create a slightly tricky dynamic because what ends up happening is that person comes into the job and they realize that you're not the personality they see on social media, but a real person and ultimately their boss. And so I've had a lot of non negotiables around hiring out of my community that I've somewhat bended at times, depending on the situation. But I really, really look to LinkedIn. It's just a different frequency over there. People there are really looking for jobs and I, I feel like they care maybe less about the sparkle and flash they might see on Instagram and are really just looking for their next best opportunity, which to me is a good thing. And so we launched the job description on LinkedIn and my CEO, my team members go through all of the applications and sift through the ones that have the most qualified backgrounds. Because at the end of the day, yes, a resume matters. You can say it doesn't. It depends on the situation. But this is how we hire and this is how a lot of companies are obviously approaching the recruiting process. Resumes do matter. So we look at all of the applications and we sift through the ones that have the right aligned background, core competencies that we're looking for and have the experience level that we're looking for. It's, it's pretty much brass tacks. We're just looking if they check the boxes. And believe it or not, on LinkedIn, maybe some of you already are familiar with this process. You get a lot of fluff to be polite and you just really come down typically to just a few candidates from a search like this. Now this is what we're doing as a small business. We don't have a recruiting firm. I actually did in my agency when I was building my big team and had 50, 60 employees come through my, my business during those years. And she did this, this was what she, we hired her to do for us and ended up following this process. But currently my team takes all of these top resumes and we do screening calls with those candidates that stood out. 15, 30 minute screening calls. Usually it's 15 minutes if we know it's not a right fit, 30 minutes if we believe that it is. And then they come back in to either talk to me or someone else on my team for an in depth interview, about 60, 60 minutes an hour long. If they make it past that round, they then talk to everyone else on my team to create a consensus to ensure that there's a culture fit that my team can see themselves working alongside these people, not just me. Then we typically have them do homework. I want to share a real humble moment that I have had as, as a leader of people. Because I used to have a philosophy that if you could read and write, you went to a good college, you came into my company, I could teach you anything, but I couldn't teach you ambition. You either were born with that or not. Like, that was what I looked for. I looked for people that could check the boxes, crush the job, do the job well, but had a fire in their belly. Like that was really what I was looking for, ambitious talent. Because I was so ambitious. And what ended up happening over the course of my business is my career, is that I hired a lot of really talented, ambitious people who weren't good people, who were pretty toxic to my culture throughout the years of growing and scaling my businesses. And so I changed that philosophy from, if you can read and write, I can teach you any skill, but I cannot teach you ambition and I cannot give you character and integrity. The topic today is how to attract and keep an aligned team. And when we reverse engineer our hiring process to really look for the soul of a person to understand that person's character. Asking key questions about their background, their passions, their soul's desires, what drew them to the role beyond just a cool company and a nice salary to really dig in in. That interview process is something that we now do in every conversation. It has to be an energetic match, not just based on the way they show up, but the things they say and the things that they provide. So in every homework and sometimes you're going to get people, you guys in their hiring process who are like I'm above that, I don't have time for that. That's a red flag. Homework matters. You have to see their work at play. And if someone really wants that job, no matter what level of experience they're at, they will do it because that's how committed they are to the opportunity and therefore ultimately will be to you. And that's what you're looking for. And so we give homework that is technical and tactical towards what it is they're going to be doing in the job that they're being hired for. But a personal project, a question, an open ended essay, not essays sound really long you guys, but like a longer form answer that probes them to go deeper and share their perspective beyond what is in black and white. While I was running my Simply Be agency days, when we were up in like a super fast hiring spree cuz the business was freaking popping off and scaling and it was amazing but chaotic and we had to hire people so, so fast. I would have them do a mood board on Pinterest of their soul. Like what their deepest desires, dreams, the story of their childhood, like whatever they wanted it to be. But it was a mood board to communicate their soul's expression. And I always loved when I did that exercise because it really got me clear on the essence of a person. So that's how we attract. The question at hand is how do we attract and keep an aligned team? So we know we've got to have a really beautiful brand in the world. We know every moment of the hiring process is our brand. We walked through the hiring nuts and bolts process and how to make that an even more nuanced experience for you to really feel if they are aligned. And now the good news is you've hired them, they were it, they blew you away, they scored all the points with flying colors and now they're in your business and you love them and they're adding all this value and you're building relationships because at certain point, yes, you want your team to respect you. First, like you. Second, but if they're the right fit. This goes back to what I said at the very beginning of this episode. There is nothing, nothing thing like building a team and running a team and being in a team that will light your soul on fire the way that sweet spot can. And like my favorite people to be with are my team truly next to my husband, my best friend, my family, like my team is my life. And how do we maintain that? How do we create that in a long game that our team stays with us not just for a year or two years or, or three, but four, five, six, seven, eight. Many of the employees that I had at simply be, of course I had attrition. Who doesn't? It makes you stronger and it makes you wiser and it makes you a better leader. But what really, truly accelerates your business and your soul and your heart as a leader is building a team to stay. And it's really simple in my view. It's creating a beautiful place to work where people have work, life balance, where you really see your team as human beings. I have one particular person on my team that needs to step away from work at a consistent time of day, every single day between nine and five to pick up her kids. And that was like a note, like, duh, no brainer there. To create a fluid place for your team to thrive, to make your business not their whole life, will actually fuel them to care even more because they feel seen and honored and respected. Having a clear vision, a clear mission, clear core values, I call them today, core codes that aren't just something you put on a PowerPoint and present at an off site once a year, but are the living, breathing, true frequencies of your business based on how you show up, how you treat people. Those frequencies, those codes, as I call them, come to life and are frankly, on stage with you, being watched as the leader, whether you realize it or not, in every single moment of your business. From the way you communicate on Slack to the way that you create a candid conversation and giving feedback to one of your team members, to the way that you talk about your clients, quote, unquote, behind their backs. Not that we do that here, but everything is a reflection of your values. And if you are really living them, and if we can really show up in our authenticity, in our integrity, all of that creates respect. But when we show up with our love and our kindness and our respect for our team, that creates so much safety, it creates so much loyalty, it creates so much gratitude from your team that this is the place they work. I will say this pretty boldly. I am not a perfect entrepreneur. I have many strengths and many weaknesses. One of my greatest strengths and passions is creating culture. When you work for me, I am an amazing boss. I stand behind that because I do my own work and I really treat my people as human beings. And there is not a day that goes by in my business that they do not feel valued. Ask them yourself. I pour into my team with appreciation when they deserve it. But guess what? They deserve it a lot because they're amazing and to not be withholding. I feel like there's a lot of leaders out there that are very selective with letting their team know where they stand with them. And I just think that's. I think that's old paradigm. I think that's internalized patriarchy that we've adopted as women. To be honest, I don't think it's our true nature. I think we're designed to care, to express, to treasure. I. I just think that we're designed that way. And obviously we don't dole it out if someone hasn't deserved it. But if you follow this playbook and you get the right people into your business, you're going to hopefully be amazed by them. And why wouldn't you let them know while also holding them accountable to their growth? Because people are going to make mistakes and people are going to fall off. And people might have a bad attitude from time to time. And of course we have to course correct and at times, depending on the situation, it's not correctable. And that's okay. While that's hard to let go of people and right size your team, whatever it might be, you actually create so much more trust as a leader when you are willing to remove toxicity because one person, one rotten apple, as they say, can spoil the bunch. And your fiduciary duty as a leader to your business is the entity of your business is not one person or a few people or a single department, but the entire organism of your business. And that includes all of your people. Yes, but it is amplified and anchored through your culture. And that culture is formed based on the people you bring in and the woman that you show up as every single day. And when those two things come together in alignment, it is magic. And you feel like you can do anything because in a way you can. You become unstoppable as a team. The last thing I will share with you because depending on where we are in our businesses, you might have ambitions of blowing up a team to 20, 30, 40, 100 people like I did, you might have an ambition to hire just one or two and keep it at that. I'm gonna highly recommend if you're looking to grow, that you don't keep yourself as a one woman shop forever. Because it's hard to grow when you are a solopreneur and it's only you. My final piece of advice on this topic because it is so, I think at times overwhelming for us when it comes to building teams. Where do we start? Hopefully this episode today really broke down the tactical, pragmatic steps to take once we've gotten ourselves ready to bring in talent or more talent, or ensure that the beautiful people we've brought into our businesses stay. Because there's alignment. The last thing I want to share, however, is in the question of who do I hire first. I really believe, and I talk about this in a lot of my coaching programs and the women that I work with. No matter where you are in your business, if you are running a six figure business, a seven figure, a multi seven, an eight figure business, a multi eight figure business, honestly, I believe the two key, most important hires that any entrepreneur really needs to start with is an assistant, an ea, an executive administrative support. This can come in the form of a more souped up title like a Director of operations or an operations manager or even ultimately a coo, but somebody that is there to help operationalize, implement, execute and support your vision. Okay? So that's why for many of us starting it's. It's an ea, it's what we can afford. And the second is a CFO or a fractional CFO or an accountant or a bookkeeper. Okay? Your financial partner. Your time and your money as an owner of a business are your most precious commodities. And if you can really anchor with the right team around you, that helps you with both, you really only have up from there to go. You can fly in more space and time in your schedule because you're not bogged down with the little things that are not of the highest and best use of your time. You can feel very confident in your finances because you know exactly what your profit and loss statements look like every single month or even every week. Having clear roadmaps to scale of what you're investing in your business because it takes money to make money and that you can do that with guidance and that you can do that with partnership and you can do that with somebody that's helping you manage it all. So if you have absolutely no one on your team right now, I wanted to leave that with you. As we think about how to attract and keep an aligned team, it also really does come down to knowing even where to start. And what are those non negotiable pieces of your business when it comes to your people that truly make you fly? All right, my beautiful friends, that is it for today on the Spiritual Hustler podcast. I am so grateful that you were here listening to this. I'm so excited to talk a lot more about business these days. I'm in the middle of my feminine frequency business school. I am so lit up by my mastermind. I've got a very intimate mastermind that I host. All of these women are here to make some freaking moves and I'm bringing you the gold on the podcast. So we're of course going to talk, as always, forever about the woo Woo, otherwise known as conscious, awake, remembered, connected to spirit and light, here for love and all of humanity. That's what I mean when I say woo. We're going to talk about that too. So join me on the next episode of the Spiritual Hustler podcast. No matter what, I know it's going to be exactly what you need to hear when you need to hear it. I love you all so much and I will see you on the next episode of the Spiritual Hustler Podcast. Bye, guys. It.