Transcripts
1. Introduction: When your business becomes
successful online, you may find that
you're not doing the work you originally
set out to do. There's a lot of freedom in hiring and
training someone to help you so that you can get back to the creative
work that you love. I'm Holly Rutt, founder and creative director of the
Little Flower Soap Company, a handmade E commerce
business that has done $7,000,000
in sales on Etsy, Amazon Handmade and Hopi Fi. This class is for
ecomerce sellers who have an established
shop but want to reduce risk and smooth the path ahead for
their growing business. We are going to cover developing your systems and processes, hiring and training your team, diversifying where
and what you sell, and growing your customer list. If you have a more
established business, but you're working long hours doing it all yourself and you feel you might burn out
or you started hiring. But there are some
pain points or if you're having great
success now, but worry, it's not sustainable and
you want to smooth the road ahead to ensure the
longevity of your business. This class is for you.
You've already come so far building your
business from nothing to whatever marvelous
business you have. Now, by the end of this class, you should be getting a
better night's sleep, knowing you're prepared for any surprises
tomorrow may bring. I'm so glad you decided
to take this class. Now, let's get started.
2. Future-Proof Your Business: Once your business
is up and running, and maybe you've
got a few pretty successful products
that are selling well, you may find that you're
receiving more orders than you feel like you can
fill in 40 hours a week. Now you're working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, hustling, trying to get it
done by yourself. If you've had a lot
of success already, you may lay awake at night worrying that your
business has grown, but it may decline again. You may be worrying that
sales are strong now, but that tomorrow they might go away on a long
enough timeline. Things are going to change
in the business environment. So you may be doing
really well now, but it could be necessary
to pivot in the future. I want you to think forward to what things might cause your
business to need to pivot, whether it's big successes, like a runaway
successful product or something not so good, like Essie closing your shop. Don't worry if you feel like
that sounds overwhelming. We're going to go
through it step by step, breaking it down into the
smallest actionable pieces and taking them one at a time. We are going to complete
a Swat analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats for your business. The point of this
exercise is to identify things that are opportunities
that are going great, but you can build upon further. Or things that are a
risk to your business that could threaten its well
being that you can address. Now, I've included
a worksheet for the Swat analysis in
the class resources, so you can download it and
follow along with me now. Okay. As you can see on
the provided worksheet, we are going to list
out our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats. Let's start with our strengths. For a handmade business, selling online common strengths or things your company
does well would include stuff like having
a unique handmade item, a trademark, if you have one. The fact that your business
is small enough to pivot on a dime or change quickly with
the changing environment. But think through what
other strengths are unique to your business
and fill those in here. Weaknesses or things that
put your business at a disadvantage might include a limited production capacity, limited workshop space, or
limited access to funding. Opportunities are available ways to improve outcomes
for your business. These might be attracting
a larger audience, sending an E newsletter, growing your audience by
making a new product line. For example, if you already sell successfully to children, you might make a version of your product that's
for grown ups. Or if you sell
successfully to women, you might make a version of your product that's
geared towards men. That these are things that could endanger your business
or its profitability. These are things like your shop being closed on
Etsy unexpectedly, possibility of diminishing
sales as trends change or another threat
could be the growth of sales, but you're unable to ramp
up production to meet demand or the possibility of burnout from overwork. Now that you've identified some opportunities for your
business and some weaknesses, you can use this
information to inform what you will do to help yourself get a better
night's sleep. Maybe for your opportunities, you might start collecting E mail addresses and
sending E newsletters. Or maybe the weaknesses or threats section of your
Swat analysis help you realize that you better not
just sell on Etsy because that shop closure could
end you and you should diversify where and what you
sell to reduce that risk. When I was very successful
selling on Etsy, I was so busy, I
didn't have time to diversify where and
what I was selling. I was just so happy to be
making tons of sales that I just called in my
family to help me pack the orders and tried
not to worry about it. But then after a
while, I started realizing that sales
on Etsy were going to decline as other people
noticed my success and started replicating the items
and the successes that I had had diluting
my market share. I did see in 2016 going
into the holiday season, the possibility of having
a down sales year. I worked really hard
to get my shop up on Amazon handmade and ended up
having a bigger sales year, a growth year over
the year before. This is an example of how doing a Swat analysis to
identify weaknesses or threats in your
environment before they happen is so important
when you're scaling up. Now that I have walked you
through the Swat analysis, you're ready to do it yourself. Download the worksheet
in the class resources and determine your
own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats, then share it. I would love to see what
you have come up with. Now that we've walked
through a Swat analysis, let's talk about diversifying what you sell and
where you sell it.
3. Diversify Your Offerings: Diversification is
expanding what you sell, like adding more products to your line and where you sell. Diversifying what and where you sell is important because there may be dips or seasonality
on one product sales. Perhaps it's very
popular at Christmas and very slow in the summer
or one channel sales. Maybe one channel runs a promotion midsummer and the other one doesn't
diversifying where and what you sell will
smooth these bumps in the road and smooth the
seasonality of your sales so that you have a more predictable
income stream year round and year after year. Selling just one item in one place is risky
because you may wake up tomorrow and find
that that listing has been taken down for
a policy violation. Or you may find that
the platform that you're selling on has changed
their search algorithm. And something that was
selling steadily yesterday has suddenly been
plunged into obscurity. If you sell handmade on Ts, you may know that their
stats page will tell you your year over
year sales comparison. I could see that
my year over year in 2016 was going to be down. And I was really
worried. Laying awake at night and trying
everything I could think of. When Amazon Handmaid opened up their bath and body category, I signed up and built my
shop within 24 hours. Immediately, within
the first few weeks, I received dozens of sales and I ended up having a
banner sales here. That was the best
move for my business. And that is the moment that
I realized that diversifying where you sell can be
a huge game changer. You can diversify where you're selling by offering
your products on Etsy, Amazon, handmade Shopify,
or Square Space. Your own website
that you build on one of these e
commerce platforms. Or Fair.com a wholesale
e commerce platform for selling to gift shops, spas, salons, and other brick
and mortar retail stores. There's a lot of
chatter out there about whether Etsy is
over or whether you should be selling
your products on Amazon handmade or if it's better to just have
your own website. I believe that it's important to have all three if possible. If you're selling on Etsy, you're reaching
however many active sellers that they
have. Almost like you've set up shop
in a busy mall, and people are just
stumbling into your store, discovering you because
they were already on Etsy. Amazon Handmade has 300
million active users. That is a lot of
people who now have the possibility to stumble
over your unique listing. Then you have your website
where you don't have to pay referral fees and you
can sell anything you want. You have a lot more control
on your own website, but in order to find
your target customer and then convert them to
buy on your website, you may need to start on one of these high traffic platforms that do charge a referral fee. Platforms like at a charge 6.5% referral fee on every sale. And again on Amazon, you're going to pay
a 15% referral fee. This may still be
worth it if you have big enough margins to cover
these fees because you can attract a huge audience and you can be found by people who are searching
for a generic gift and don't really know
what they want yet. You can sell on Amazon handmade in multiple different ways. You can do what is called
fulfillment by seller, where the item ships directly from you once it's been ordered, or you can use fulfillment
by Amazon or FBA. These are items
that you send into the warehouse and when
the customer orders it, it's fulfilled by
that warehouse. In order to do FBA, your product will probably need to have pretty big margins. When you're selling
on your own website, you have to drive all
the traffic yourself. This is definitely doable. And it's important to diversify
by growing your list. If you find a customer by
selling on Etsy or Amazon, you can work to
convert that customer to buying on your
website by using some marketing materials when
you ship your products that tell about what's
uniquely available on your website that you
don't sell anywhere else. Offering a discount
code or including a QR code to make it
quick and easy for the customer to come directly to your site the next time
they want your product. One great option for
diversifying where you sell is to sell Onfare.com This is a marketplace for
selling directly to gift shops that are going to resell your item
to their customer. So if you have enough margin
built into your pricing, that you can sell
at a 50% discount. And then that Main
Street gift shop can market up and resell it to
the people in their town, then this is an awesome
option for you. Keep in mind that
fair.com charges a 15% commission fee plus $10 for any new customers
that they bring your way and a 15% re
order commission rate if selling wholesale is something you want
to explore further, I have included a referral
link down below that you can use as you work to diversify all of the places
that you sell your products. You may find one or two new sales channels
that seem exciting at first and then kind of fizzle out and become
a disappointment. That's okay. These were
opportunities you needed to try in order to figure out
which one would work for you. So how do you know
when it's time for you to start
diversifying what you offer? I would say it's always time for you to
start diversifying. If you have time to create a new product or put
a new idea out there related to your original successful idea,
definitely do it. If you don't have time, it may be time for you to
hire someone and train them to help you to free you up to be at the front
of your business, leading the way with
your creativity, doing research and development, and coming up with what's
that next thing that your loyal customers
or followers are going to love just as much as they loved your
first product. When I first started
selling at craft shows, people would come
up to my table. I just had soap to
offer and it was fine. They would buy 13, maybe 5 bars of
soap. It was great. But when I diversified
what I was offering and added lip bombs, bath salts, massage bombs, suddenly people were coming over and spending
more time at the table. They would start buying three to five different items and calling their friend over. Smell this, look at that. Wouldn't this be
great as a gift? It was a total game changer Diversifying offers
you more opportunities for search engine optimization. So if you are already
creating a great lip balm or widget that's geared towards
men as a stocking stuffer, consider diversifying
and offering a version of that that's
geared towards women. If you make a candle that's
geared towards grandmothers, consider a version of that. That's for bridesmaids
for example. Now you have all of those commonly search terms,
gift for grandmother, gift for bridesmaid in your shop as doorways or
entryways into your shop. Diversifying the products that
you are offering gives you so many opportunities to attract more attention and more eyes
to your shop and products. For example, when you
list a new item on Ts, the search algorithm
doesn't know how to classify that yet,
Will people love it? And the only way to find out is to put it on the first page of search for a little while and see how many people click on it. Another great part about diversifying what you're
offering is you've got a new product to
photograph and to share in an E newsletter or post
on your social media. If you're not sure
what to make next, think about the product
you're already making and which ones are most
successful. And then make iterations that are related to that first
successful item. So for example, I have a viral lip baum that
is a cocktail flavor. And so to diversify
on that line, I began offering more different cocktail
flavored lip bums to see what people
would be interested in, expand on your
existing products. Can you make this
in another color? Can you make it in another size? Can you make it for a
different target customer? Sometimes figuring out
which products are going to go totally viral is like throwing
spaghetti at the wall. You really might need to make ten things before
one is a viral hit. It can be really disappointing
to pour your heart and soul into creating a new product you think everyone's gonna love. Take what you think is
an amazing photo of it, post it online to crickets, But don't worry, the next
product might be your big hit. It's hard to predict what other
people are going to like. The point is that learning
by doing is a good idea. You are strengthening your
muscles Every time you put yourself through the
process of dreaming up, creating and photographing,
and listing a new product, you're improving and
honing your skills. You are going to
get incrementally better every time you do this. For example, I've made over
15 flavors of lip bum. At the time that I made them, I never knew which ones were
going to be most popular. I make a dill pickle Lipa that I thought
would be a runaway hit. And another Moscow
Mule Lipa that I thought maybe wouldn't
be that popular, but it was the other way around. The Moscow Mule Lip Bam went pretty viral
at the holidays, while the Dill
Pickle Lip Baum only sold two units or so per month. The point is that I
needed to make all 15 of those flavors to learn what the customer was going to like. Now consider the ways you can diversify your product offering. Maybe list a new product in
your existing marketplace, or list your existing product in a new marketplace, go try it. Now that we've talked about how you can diversify your business, let's talk about how you can
grow your customer list.
4. Reach More Customers: In the last lesson we talked
about diversification. And yes, you should
diversify where you sell, but you should also
think about getting your customers off of
Etsy and off of Amazon. Handmade and shopping on your website where you
don't pay a referral fee, You have a lot more control and you're free to sell
anything you want. You do not need social media in order to grow your
business necessarily. I, myself, am not a
social media person. I find it too intimidating
and time consuming. I don't enjoy the time
it takes to produce the content or the
time that gets sucked out of my life.
Every time I land on Instagram or Facebook, it
seems like I blink in, 2 hours has gone by, so I try to avoid it. Instead of focusing
on social media, focus on building or improving your own website and diversifying
what you offer there. Having your own website really
legitimizes your business. If someone searches for your
business name on Google, Google is going to offer them your business and a
link to your website. This is an opportunity for you to show your full
range of products, plus other things that
are complimentary, that you can offer for sale. Some handmade
marketplaces really limit what you're
allowed to sell. For example, if I had a spa box and I wanted
to include a soap, a Lipa, a bath, saw
all made by me. But I also was including maybe a nail brush
that I did not make. I would be putting
my entire shop at risk of being closed. On the other hand, if
you have a website, you can sell anything you want. There is no one going to tell you that you
cannot sell that. I even make and
sell CBD which is not allowed for sale
on Etsy or Amazon, and hand sanitizer to when your website
is up and running, you never have to worry
about a platform going dark. If you wake up
tomorrow to find that Etsy has randomly
closed your shop or Amazon Handmade has changed
their algorithm and plunged your product into
obscurity, It's okay. Your customer can
still find you. I prefer building my own website because I understand how to make quick changes If I run out of a product or to list a
new product on the fly, I don't have to wait and
contact my web developer, Hope that they get back to me, communicate effectively
what I need them to do. And wait two or three weeks for that product to get listed. I can do it in 5 minutes. For some people who
are less tech savvy, the idea of building
your own website can be very intimidating. But I want to tell you that
you can do this yourself. There are e commerce platforms like shop Epi, Square space, Wicks and more that have built some templates
that you can use. You can search through
their available templates and find one for $300 $100 that might be a
good fit with your aesthetic. And then use that, just fill in the blanks
they've provided. Insert your own photos, product titles, tags,
and descriptions. I chose to sell on
Chop Epi because I liked all of the integrations
that they offered with shipping softwares like ship station marketing
opportunities, like integrations with
Pinterest and Google ads. I like the checkout
experience that Hopi Fi has built and the site loading speed which is relevant to your rank
in Google search. One of the most effective
ways I have found to convert customers
from buying from my Etsy shop to buying from my website is to include marketing materials
in my shipments. When I ship an Etsy order, I to postcards explaining
what we have to offer on our website that we just don't sell
anywhere else. I offer a discount code to the customer and
a QR code so that it's quick and easy for them to come see what's
available on our site. You can use this as
an opportunity to collect their e mail address
and add them to your list. Now you can contact them in your slower months of sales to remind them
that you're there, Show them what's
new and convince them that now would be a
good time to buy some more. In the past few years
of my business, I have been surprised by
the power of newsletters. Our business is highly seasonal. We will be extremely
busy in December, and then kind of dead
sometimes in June and July, which can keep me up at night worrying about how I'm
going to pay the bills, but not anymore since I started growing my
subscriber list. My subscriber list is people who have entered their E mail
address on my website in exchange for a discount code
or told me that they want to be a subscriber to keep
up to date with new things. I'm offering updates about
my flower farm, you name it. I have a list now of 20,000 subscribers that
I can reach out to. Anytime I have a new
product offering, I have a sale or I want to remind them of
a seasonal item. This is a powerful
way for me to go from a dead week with
30 orders a day, to a huge sales week where we
may do an additional six or $7,000 in sales above and beyond what we would have
done without the newsletter. To get started with
your E newsletter, you should sign up for a service like mail,
chimp or clavio. These platforms
allow you to collect e mail addresses and easily
send to your whole list. You can even segment your
list into people who have purchased product
A versus product B, or people who live locally or people who live
internationally. There's a lot of
debate about how often you should contact
your subscriber list. My rule of thumb is two weeks. For me, this is the minimum
that I should be sending. I could send more, but I also am most comfortable
with two weeks. I know that in two weeks time, I can come up with
something interesting and relevant to tell them that I can authentically get behind. Like here is something
you may want for Valentine's Day or here is a new product I've been working hard on behind the scenes. Don't let insecurity or imposture syndrome make you feel like you're being spammy. If these people have given
you their E mail address, you absolutely have
permission to contact them. But I think you are also
expected to contact them. Don't take their e mail address
and then ghost to them. They want to know what's
going on with you. They want to see what
you're creating. They think you're
awesome for me, the key to keeping
newsletters feeling fresh is having
something new to share. For me, this is
often new photos of existing products or new
photos of new products. The story you may be telling yourself is
that you need to hire a professional photographer
to take pro photos for you. But I would disagree with that. Consider this your opportunity
to grow your skills, take some skill share classes
on photography like I have, and incrementally improve
the photos you take so that you can stay in control of this piece of your business. And you're never waiting on
someone else to come take a photo or edit a photo or e
mail you a link to a photo. You can take a photo now, post it in the next hour and have your newsletter
ready to go by 05:00 I will link you to some of my favorite photography
classes in the resources, I think a stuck spot for
a lot of people is like, it feels like so much pressure to contact let's
say 20,000 people. What if I don't have
something important enough to say I don't want
to waste their time, right? Well, you have to get
over this stuck spot. And the way that I do it
is just a brain dump. Let's just say hypothetically, we're going to
send a newsletter. What might we talk about? Take the pressure off write
draft at the top of the page. And then we're going to talk about what you
might put in there. Let's just stay
really high level. You might put one new product. You might put one old
product that is seasonal. You might put a new coupon code. One coupon code. Now you can repeat this process for every two
weeks. Put a date here. May, May 15 coupon code. June 1, season coupon code, June 15, seasonal coupon code. Next to these, write
what that's going to be. My new product is going to
be a lavender lip baum. My seasonal product for May 1 is going to be
a Mother's Day box. My coupon code for May 1
is going to be Gift 15. Once you've filled
out this brain dump of ideas for your newsletter, you can start getting a
little more into the details. This will inform what photos you're going
to need to take, what products you need to finish and photograph
in time for this. Maybe if you're designing
this newsletter in Canva or wherever you're choosing to design
your newsletter, what graphics you're
going to need to build. Before we end this lesson, let's go back to building
your customer list. If you don't have
a customer list started now, but
you have a website, go to your website and
create a pop up to collect people's E mail
address in exchange for some kind of a
discount code or freebie. If you have an Etc, but not a website yet, make some changes to your
order confirmation page, the e mail that
customers receive automatically after
they place an order. This is an opportunity
to put a link where they will sign up
for your newsletter. Now that we've talked through
the importance of having your own website and
an e newsletter, let's move on to
systems and processes.
5. Optimize Your Systems and Processes: In this lesson,
we're going to learn about optimizing
your systems and processes to make every part of running your
business simpler. Having systems and processes in place will make your work
days more efficient. And it will also
help you to train new hires to help support you
in getting the work done. I'm a huge believer in having the right tool
for the right job. When I first started
making soap, I was stirring every
batch for 1 hour by hand. I would stir for 5 minutes with my right hand, with
a timer going, and then switch to my left
hand While I drank a beer and watched a Youtube
video or a Netflix stream. Pretty soon, we needed
to ramp up production. And my husband
pointed out that I probably didn't need to
be stirring by hand. He found me a better tool for the job called
a pot whipper. This was a whisk that
went on a drill and it could stir the soap
faster in under 10 minutes. I could make that same batch of soap that used to
take me an hour. Since then we've added a stand. You can put the mixer on
the stand, walk away, and go do the dishes while the soap is mixing,
and then come back. It used to take me 1 hour
to make 125 bars of soap, and now I can make 125 bars
of soap in 15 minutes. That's a 75% reduction
in labor costs. You can optimize any process you do regularly
in your business. If you find something that
you're doing a lot like photography or packing and
shipping your product, there's a way to optimize
that process for efficiency. You could set up a packing
and shipping station in your home to make it quick
and easy to pack your orders each day or possibly purchase a better
camera so that you're taking a new product
Photo process becomes as easy as click
and you're done. Because I'm an e
commerce business, having amazing photos is
a huge part of success. At first, I had a
simple Sony point and shoot digital camera. As soon as I could afford to, I upgraded to a cannon rubble
and a 50 millimeter lens. This was a $500 investment which felt like a fortune
to me at the time, but it was a huge leap
from my business. It eliminated a lot of the hours I was spending
taking 50 pictures, finding one, editing
the heck out of it. Because now I could just take one great photo
and move forward. I've recently upgraded to a Sony 73 and an even nicer lens. This was a $3,000 investment, but I knew this time that
it was well worth it. I'm also shooting tethered, which means I connect my laptop to my camera so that I can get the perfect photo the
first time I pull the trigger. Learning how to use a
DSLR camera and equipping yourself with good
equipment will save you all kinds
of time and money. Now you can photograph your
item yourself instead of waiting for a pro photographer
to find an appointment, show up, edit, and return
the photos to you. Now let's talk about
efficiency in your assembly. Instead of cutting, then
pinning, then sewing, then ironing, and ending the day with one
handmade zipper case. Instead, try cutting 20
pieces of fabric on Monday, sewing them on Tuesday, and ironing them on Wednesday. This way, instead of having three zipper cases
produced in three days, you'll have 20 zipper cases produced in the same
number of days. One example of both
assembly efficiency and having the right tool for the right job in my business was this amazing lip bomb tray I was able to purchase
that allows me to click 225 lip bomb tubes into one tray measure and pour a large batch of
lip baum all at once, scrape and cap, and I've
done in one hour's time, I now have 225 lip bum
tubes where before I was rubber banding together 25 tubes and filling them by
hand with a pipette, which would often take
30 to 45 minutes, whatever it is that you make, go research now what ways other people have used to scale up the production
of that item. Maybe they had to buy a
bigger sewing machine or an industrial mixer. Whatever this is for
you, go find it. Now, one way to increase
the efficiency and your ability to
produce might be to farm out some of this
work to somebody else. Is there an aspect of
what you're making that is really repetitive
and kind of straightforward? You could train
someone else to do, maybe your desired wage
is $20 or $25 an hour. But this work could be done by a high school student for a couple of hours at
the end of the day. Or a retired person in your
community working from home. As an example, in my business, we hire a lot of
retired women in our community to work from
home cleaning and stamping, draw string bags with
our logo on them. We calculated that
at a relaxed pace. It takes about 1.5
hours to do 100 bags. So we offer to pay
$15 per 100 bags, or $10 an hour. This is a mutually beneficial relationship for
someone who gets to do work comfortably from their home on the hours
that work for them, and has the warm fuzzies of helping a small business
in their community. Another example of increasing your efficiency by
bringing in more help might be setting up
an assembly line style order packing station. In our business,
we have one person who assembles a
custom gift box for the customer and
then hands it to the next person who puts it in the shipper and tapes
the shipping label on. There are so many ways to
increase the efficiency of your business and everyone's business is a little different. I would encourage you
to spend some time brainstorming ways that you can get your work done faster, more efficiently with new
equipment or with some help. One great way to overcome
your overwhelm and improve your efficiency is to have documented
systems and processes. This makes it really
easy for you on a day that maybe you're
not feeling your best, you're not at ten, but you still need to
get something done. Just whip out your
documented process and start on step one. Then do step two. This can help you reduce
overwhelm and just really get things done for
each process in your business. Make a one page word document that lists the steps
in order of operation. This document will make
hiring and training much easier to
print and laminate. These. They are a great tool. If you're not sure what system
or process to document, first start with
photography document your photography process. Make it quick and easy
to get a good photo. I leave my small photo
studio set up 2047 with my camera on the tripod pointed at a simple backdrop. So it's as easy as
plopping my item down and clicking to
get a good photo. Here's an example of
a one page word, doc, double spaced, laying out in chronological order every
single step of the process. One, place your item
on the backdrop, turn the camera on and push the trigger halfway
to adjust focus. Adjust the O up
or down as needed to let in enough light.
You get the idea. I've broken this down
into the micros steps. If I were training someone else who did not
know how to do this, these are the steps that
I would give to them to make it as straightforward
and simple as possible. But this is also helpful
for me so that if I wake up feeling a little less
than creative, it's okay. I just follow the recipe. Here's another example of a process document
that I created, how to create a
new Etsy listing. I also use this document to train others to make
Etsy listings for me. Once I've shot the photos, I can tell them to follow
these steps one through eight, to use the photos I've taken of the new product and
create a listing on Etsy. This takes all of the
guesswork out of training. Okay, now it's your turn
to document a process. It's all about listing the
small details to bring clarity to the process when you're training others or
to help yourself, you can make a
process for anything. Type this into a Word doc, print it and laminate it
so it's ready to hand off. Now that you've learned
how to document your systems and processes, let's talk about
growing your team.
6. Build Your Team: I knew it was time
to grow my team. When I found myself working
70 or 80 hour weeks, my business is highly
seasonal and especially around the holidays like
Christmas or Mother's Day, I would be hustling so hard, burning the candle at both
ends, and totally exhausted. The first people I hired were
friends and family members, and I would just
train them to work alongside me and host
them in my house. I felt like I needed to feed
them and entertain them and, you know, talk to
them the entire time. That was really
helpful and I could not have grown my business
without those early days. But it wasn't the
professional relationship that I was looking to
have with my team. In this lesson, I want to talk about some common pitfalls, how to avoid them, and how to navigate hiring for your
business and your team. It can be tough to
figure out when to hire. I really love saving my money because I have big aspirations
of traveling the world. So early on I didn't hire. When maybe I should have.
Instead I just worked 70 or 80 hours a week so that I could keep more of
the money for myself. But eventually, this was going to cause some serious burnout. It was a revelation when I
learned that I could hire and train people to do the same high quality
work in my business, that I would do myself this way. I could go back to working
sustainable hours and I would have enough energy left over to stay at the
helm of my business, creating new product ideas. At one soak maker's workshop
I attended in Brooklyn. The teacher said that you should plan to hire before
you're ready. Expect this person's work
will be so high quality that it will essentially pay for yourself and spring
your business forward. And that is what
happened, she was right. When you do finally hire
and train the right person, you are going to
feel so relieved a lot of your time is
going to be freed back up. But remember, this
is not a time for you to go take a nap
or eat some bonbons. You have a payroll now. Make sure that you spend
the time that was freed up, innovating for your
business and thinking about the future and how
you can grow your sales. A common mistake is to
think that nobody else will be able to do this
work to your standards. Us perfectionists, we
just love to think we're the only one that could
get the job done right. But it's not true,
that's a bias. You need to think instead that there are
lots of people out there who are talented and
want to do good and do well. They can help you. They may even find a more efficient
way to do the task. You may hire a few people before you find the one
that's the perfect fit, but when you do, it's
going to be life changing. Try to remember, you are not hiring a friend for yourself. First, you need someone whose skill set is
complementary to yours. Not necessarily someone
who is just like you, but also you are not hosting
this person in your home. They are an employee. You want a professional
relationship with clear boundaries. You do not need to dress up really fancy when
they're coming over. You do not need to
provide them with food. You need a clean bathroom
and clear expectations. It's really important
that you do not think of this person as your
friend because there may come a time when you need to let them know they have
to come in and work on a Saturday or that that day that
they asked for off. Unfortunately, they can't have because it's during
your busy season. It will be a lot easier
to deliver this news if this person is your coworker
and not your friend. The most important thing
to do when hiring is set really crystal
clear expectations. These should be documented
whenever possible. This is anything that takes the guesswork out of what am I supposed to be doing or how
am I supposed to be doing it. Think about what the
schedule will be like, what the dress code will be. Maybe they need
close toed shoes. What the range of pay will be, what the daily tasks will be. All of these details
are something you can include in the
job description. This will eliminate unease
or discomfort Later, you are much more likely to
get a serious candidate for your job if they
see from the job posting that you are
a serious employer. I'm going to show
you an example of how I create my
job descriptions. For my job description, I like to give a
good job overview. This is a full time position, nine to five, Monday through
Friday that involves, and then I list
using bullet points, everything I can imagine
that this person might do. I try to do this in
chronological order. I imagine they come in. What's
the first thing they do? Do they get on the computer or do they start
making something? Do they start wrapping or packaging? What are
they going to be doing? And break that down
into the smallest part. What you're doing is clearly communicating to this person, this is what your
day will look like. Is this work that you
could find enjoyable? If you're going to reach
out and apply for this job, expect to maintain
a clean workspace, including sweeping,
cleaning, and restocking. Help with basic labeling
and maker tasks. You might mention here whether training will be provided
for these things to help alleviate anyone's concern that they don't already
know how to do it. Should they still
apply? Right in here? Yes. Training will
be provided for the below other
responsibilities and duties. What will they be
doing? They will be helping fulfill orders. They will prepare
items for shipment. They will get this done
by a certain time. I have 11:00 A.M. for
Amazon orders and Etsy orders put in every
thing you want them to know. Is there a customer service
aspect of their job? In this example, I've listed qualifications or
what we're looking for. I'm looking for attention to
detail, ability to focus, customer service
skills, ability to work independently
or self motivated. Someone who takes pride in their work and
exhibits integrity. Someone who has a basic
knowledge of Mac computers, since that's what we
use in our studio. This is like your wish list. Your dream list of who
is this perfect person, this very godmother
of co working, who is going to come and
fulfill all of your needs. Then list any benefits or perks that you
were going to offer. We offer employee discounts, paid holidays, time off at
this point in our business. We also offer some
profit sharing. We offer some retirement funding and health spending account. Then I've done a paragraph
on why you should join us. This is a pitch that I'm making to them of why it's really fun, why they might enjoy this job, maybe they should
leave the job they're currently in and come try this. Instead, I'm saying
this position is more than a good
paying full time job. It's an opportunity
to be part of our work family and go on this
journey with us and so on. Why choose to work here? Because you're going to get to use every part of your brain and all of your
strengths and talents and they will be recognized. Explain how this contributes
to the company's growth. Focus on attention to detail in this position is
absolutely crucial. Down at the bottom, I have a
typical day might include. Now you don't have to have all of these things in
your job description. This is a lengthy example, but these are all headlines that will inspire you to write something that's really
thorough and descriptive. Once you're done filling in a little bit under each
one of these prompts, you will be ready to post
something on Craigslist or Facebook or wherever job
listings can be posted. A really important part
of any job description is how much this person
should expect to be paid. Should they expect
the wage to start at a certain dollar amount with
potential to make more? With time and experience, people are going to
want to know this before they apply to any job. You have to carefully consider what your business
can afford to pay. But keep in mind
that the higher wage you're able to
offer sustainably, the more talent you're
likely to attract. Going back to talking about
systems and processes, I've written a process
for hiring for myself. This process includes
exactly everything I'll do on the day
of the interview. I'm going to brew some coffee
and put out some water. I'm going to get myself
prepared with some printouts. Before they arrive, I'm going to take a few calming breaths
so I'm not nervous. Make sure to go slowly and
ask them all of my questions, which I've documented
in the list. This takes all of the
guest work and all of the nerves out of
hosting an interview. At the end of the interview, I give them a little bit of
our product to try at home, and I let them know that I have a few more people I'm interviewing and that
I'll be in touch soon. I do not necessarily have
more people I'm interviewing, but I always say that I do. This is just a place marker for me and leaves it
open ended for me to decide later after
thinking about it that maybe this person
wasn't the right fit. I like to have this placeholder so I don't accidentally
overcommit. Okay, so now you've hired someone, It's time
to train them. Have all of your
systems and processes documented and laminated so that you can share
this with them. During your training,
walk through the processes slowly together, demonstrating to
them step by step. Do this more slowly than
feels natural to you. Once you've walked them through the process that you
have documented, demonstrate it for them. Go slowly. Once you've demonstrated, give them an opportunity to try. Well, you observe one
mistake I made early on in my training was my fear
of being patronizing. I did not want to look over someone's shoulder too much and make them
uncomfortable. I was afraid to be critical of their work
and discourage them. But I had to learn better. It is much better to
make minor tweaks to how someone is doing the process the first or
second time they're doing it, than two weeks down the
road to tell them that this entire time they've been doing it differently
than how you wanted it. This first training day
is a great opportunity to really look at what they're doing and say almost perfect. But please do it slightly more this way or
slightly more that way. By giving slow,
deliberate instructions, you are setting your
trainee up for success. Come back and check
on this person after 5 minutes and really look to make sure
they're doing it right. Then check on them
again in 20 minutes, see if there's anything
at all you can tell them on how to
improve the process. If someone labels
120 lip balms upside down and you didn't come back to check on them,
that's your fault. Now that I've given
you my experience on how I hired and trained, brainstorm a list of
tasks that you do daily that in your dream world
somebody else would do instead. Now write systems and
processes for those tasks. Write a job description for a full or part time job you might want to hire
for in the future. Please share your new job description in the
project gallery. I hope you find the
employee of your dreams.
7. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you made
it to the end of the class. You're ready to take
your business to the next level we
covered so much and now you have
everything you need to move your business
forward into the future. If you haven't already, share your Swat analysis or your job descriptions and job postings in the
project gallery below, I cannot wait to see what
you've been working on. Thanks for watching.
Goodbye and good luck.
Holly Rutt, Founder The Little Flower Soap Co
