If you are looking to hire *this* episode is for you!  Mr. Johnny Flash (Johnny Falke) has returned to discuss when to hire, how to hire and some very awesome truth bombs surrounding OUR mindset as we build out our team.

Hiring your first team member with Johnny Falke (a.k.a. Johnny Flash)

Jennifer Sakowski
Welcome to brand new episode of Raney Day Talks Podcast. And today we have repeat guest, Mr. Johnny Falke, AKA Johnny Flash. Johnny, I thank you so much for coming back to the podcast.

Johnny Falke
Jen, I always love getting to hang out with you. Thanks for having me.

Jennifer Sakowski
Oh, we were just talking for the last 30 minutes and like you had mentioned, if we could just hit record on our, our preliminary talk, I would probably have another podcast just in those chats.

Johnny Falke
Yeah, totally.

Jennifer Sakowski
So for those that might be, just chime in, please tell us who you are in the business that you run and what you do.

Johnny Falke
I’m John Falke, also known as Johnny Flash. My business is Johnny Flash Productions. We do a web and digital, you know, web design, digital marketing and that kind of stuff. We have a lot of church. I was on snap at a church. So we have a lot of church clients and Christian nonprofit ministries and we have a lot of small and medium business. And before you know, before I was running my business full little time for the last four years I, I worked on staff at a church and I was trying to add up how many interns and staff people and contractors that I’ve hired, but a lot I think in terms of low and I probably had like a dozen or so in terms that I had over, you know, one per year over a lot of the different years. So have done a decent amount of hiring beyond even just like my own business. But I’m sure there’s people listening that have a much more hiring experience than I do.

Jennifer Sakowski
Well and that, that kind of leads us into our talk for today. Cause the last episode, I believe it was episode 10 and that’ll be linked in the show notes, but we are talking about reoccurring revenue and how recurring revenue has impacted both of our businesses. And we went down that conversation on what it is and how to set it up for your business and any business can really come up with a reoccurring revenue income stream for their business. Afterwards we started talking about some of our own issues within our business and hiring came up. So for those, I don’t think I have shared this, Johnny, when I was looking to expand my team, I was really struggling with just finding the right people and Johnny came out of the woodwork and was like, I have the process for you. And he pretty much saved the day when it came to building out my team. Cause I now have since talking with my hired, three different employees or contractors and it has been phenomenal. So I wanted to bring you back on the talk about, okay, let’s take a step back. When someone who has built their business and they’re just starting out and they’re getting busy, right? Like they’re stuck doing the client work, doing the work and they need a hire, when would you identify when that point is that it’s time to hire?

Johnny Falke
Hmm. You know, I don’t know if there’s like a one size fits all kind of like when it’s time to hire, but I think it’s, you’re probably need to hire someone before you’re ready to like, before you think you’re at the point that you need to hire someone. And by that I mean it’s kind of like when you have a child, right, or you’re going to get married, you kind of think like you have to get to, you’re going to get to this point where like you’re ready to like as a couple of having a child or you’re going to be get to this point where you like feel comfortable and you’re ready to get married. And like the reality is like, you don’t know what you don’t know. Like you just, you’re going to learn some along the way. And so if you wait til that like perfect moment and you have every duck in a row and all the revenue that you need, all this stuff, like it’s going to be, you’re going to be hiring late, you know, as opposed to like probably when you should. And so I think hiring like a little bit before you’re ready. Now obviously we can talk about like what it takes to get ready to hire and to do that well and the onboarding. But I mean, you know what I mean, just in the sense of like hiring before, maybe before, a little bit before you think you need to or you’re ready to.

Jennifer Sakowski
I concur cause I know my own situation here lately, it’s, I’ve waited too long. Just for example, like we brought in an admin and I was drowning with administrative tasks and I should have hired way before because if you think about it, if you’re so busy doing the work and then you have to onboard someone to shift that work, but you still are inundated with that client work, it, it’s very hard to just stop and train someone. Because I know for me it was internally, I kept thinking I should be working on this or this isn’t helping me right now or this is in a fire. And I would constantly go back to those priorities. So I, I definitely agree from my own business. I’ve always hired last like are after the fact that I needed. So that’s good. So you had mentioned about onboarding. Talk to me about what does, what does it mean to onboard a new hire or how do you get ready for that?

Johnny Falke
So quick story going back to your last thing real quick and then I’ll, we can jump to this and that is when I was working at the church, when I, before I started working at the church, they were building a new building and they hired me kind of in preparation for this new building with all this new technology open. They could have waited until they were in the new building and they had all these projection screens and all this other stuff that they needed content and plan for and everything. What they ended up hiring me about, Oh it was probably like six or eight months beforehand and like the amount that we were able to do because it wasn’t like at the like we’ve to have it right this second and like, Oh great, we’ve got all these screens and content. Like, you know, our church has doubled just from going into the new building and sustain that.

Johnny Falke
And I think a lot of that was that the church, not, this isn’t to my credit, this is just to the churches credit that they had kind of like been planning for those hires before they needed them, you know, so that there’d be enough runway to like let them get off the ground and fly. Right. And so kind of going back to what you were saying is like if you wait until you’re drowning in the tasks, then it’s like you’re, your plane is barely gonna get off the ground versus if you do it like seeing down the road, Hey, we’re, you know, admin stuff keeps increasing. We’re picking up more clients. Like we just need to do this now to set us up for, you know, the tape off. So just the, just to kind of throw that out there. But yeah, I mean I think that that, you know, onboarding the more that, the more that you are able to, like once you get to the point where you’re saying, okay, we need to hire the admin person, we need to hire the sales guy. We need to hire the designer, the marketer, whenever it is that you need in your business. You know, and then I think it’s figuring out, okay, what do I really need that person to do? Like what’s the job description? What are their responsibilities? What are the outcomes? You know, I think a lot of times we think in tasks, but it’s really what are the outcomes that I want them to take to achieve for us.

Jennifer Sakowski
We went over when to hire and ideally we want to hire before we really need to hire that person. Before we talk about onboarding, let’s talk about the actual hiring process itself. The selection. Where do we post a job? I know that’s a big question for me is how did you decide to outsource? Because that was a great ah, solution for my hiring needs. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Johnny Falke
Sure. I mean, I think, I think anyone who’s thinking about, you know, they get to the point where I’m drowning in this admin work or whatever, and they, they’re like, okay, we need to hire someone. Sometimes you’re not sure exactly what type of person you’re trying to hire or other people make the mistake of like, I’m gonna hire the unicorn that can, you know, they can do the admin and they’re a designer and they can also like build web pages and they’re an SEO specialist. And like before, you know, and it’s like you’re gonna get someone who’s really not that good at most of that, but maybe they can do one or two of those things. So I think whether, you know, some people would recommend book that I just read recently was saying log your time for a week and see like where you’re spending your time that you don’t want to be spending your time or what is it that you’re trying to accomplish that is not, you’re not able to get done because you don’t have that video editor or that social media person on your team or whatever the position is.

Johnny Falke
Right. So you’ve got to kind of quantify what do I really need help with and can I write it down. Can I make it clear? How much time am I spending per week doing that? How much time do I wish somebody else was spending in addition to the time that I’m spending, cause I’m not able to get it all done in that eight hours that I’m doing the social media stuff or whatever, you know. So I think figuring out like what you really need and so that might be, you know, listing that out and logging your own time. It’s, it’s funny, I log my own time even though I’ve for the most part don’t have to. So I’m using the toggle app on my phone and I have all the clients in there. I have all the different types of work that I do. And so every week I get emailed a report that says, this is how many hours you worked and this is how you spent your time.

Johnny Falke
And it’s not because I have to answer to anyone or send it to anything. It’s more because I want to know where my time’s going, how much did I, did I actually work, I only work 30 hours, I sleep and we’ve got all that done. That’s great. Or whatever, you know? Or man, I worked 45, 50 hours and I spent a lot of it doing this. And then it’s like, I don’t really want to be doing that, so I need to hire someone for that. So I think there’s a lot of ways you can figure out, you know, what, what you need to hire for. But then it’s like you said, you hire someone local. Do you hire someone overseas in another country? And that really depends on a lot of things, right? What kind of work do you need done? What kind of budget do you have for it? Is it something that needs to be done at the, you know, in real time, like during the day, can it be done at nighttime? Do they need to interact with your clients and they have phone calls? Is it something you can just kind of like task them with and they can just like go do it on their own time. So you have to kind of like figure out like what’s the best

Jennifer Sakowski
What makes the most sense to your industry, your business, your market. So before you continue, I have a quick question because now that I got smart and I’m writing down notes as you’re talking so I don’t forget the questions that I need to ask is did you find it hard when as you, cause I did the same thing and I am going to as a free download, I’ll add that spreadsheet. I want us to dividing up your time and looking for it, the positions that you need to fill. Because I think that’s important. I like to touch on the concept that we have to realize that we can be duplicated. Like our tasks can be duplicated because sometimes we get in this mindset that like, Oh, nobody can do the job that I’m doing and nobody, let’s be honest, like if you can record or loom and make a training video on it, you can train somebody. So how have you, did you have that kind of mindset or did you have to overcome that?

Johnny Falke
Oh, no, I think you have to overcome it. I mean, I think we all feel like we can do our job the best. You know, one thing that helped me overcome it though is when I was at the church and I had people working under me. I had an amazing staff. I mean I had a music director who was super uber talented, had a video guy that was amazing and graphic design. They were all super talented. And the thing that I have to constantly encourage them was like, Hey, we’re trying to get volunteers involved. And so if someone can do it like 60% as good as you percent as good as you like, that’s good enough because like they’re all pro. A lot of them would be creatives are, a lot of them were perfectionist, you know, they want it done really well and other positions, other industries and stuff too.

Johnny Falke
But they would just, they would feel like no one’s going to do it as good as me, so I have to do it. And I was really the one that had to keep pushing them and say, Hey, if they can do it, 80% as good as you. That’s a, win they’re using their gifts and volunteering and all that, let’s get them on to help regularly with it. And it’s okay that it’s not quite as good as new doing it. And like really it’s a mindset thing that you have to, so that from my early days of the church, that was just something I had to be the one instilling in my team in order for us to grow our volunteer base.

Jennifer Sakowski
It’s like get yourself out of the way.

Johnny Falke
Yeah.

Jennifer Sakowski
And yeah, that’s amazing too. The more that I hire people who are skilled in that area, because you had mentioned earlier about hiring that unicorn that can do five different jobs. Let’s be honest, if you had that person, you’re going to throw so much work at them that they’re going to be so busy, it’s going to be hard to turn those projects. Right? It’s better to divide and conquer. And what I’m finding is the more invest in high quality gifted, talented people who are smarter, especially let’s talk about development. If I hire a developer who is much smarter and knows much more about the WordPress than I do, our team as a whole is only going to be better. So I do want to think about as we’re talking mindset is to get yourself out of the way and know that you can be duplicated, maybe not as a person, but your skillsets are, you know, the jobs that you do.

Johnny Falke
Yeah. And I think figuring out what your ‘Queen B Role’. One of the books I’m reading calls it the Queen Be Role, the QBR. I think it’s Clockwork is I’m reading by, Mike Michalowicz, but you talked about the queen Queen B Role and he’s basically like what’s the one thing that’s like most important for the business to do? Well and as, and as you, as a, as a person, what’s the one thing that, and it may be the Queen Bee Role. It may not be, but for him in his, in his company, he realizes like he’s the one that needs to write them books. Like when it comes to the small business books, like that’s something that’s hard to outsource the stuff that you could like come up with an outline and give it to a ghost writer and stuff like that. But for the his personality and stuff, like he just needs to be the one writing it, but everything else like you can have somebody else do.

Johnny Falke
And so, you know, in our, in our business it might be like maybe I’m the sales well even the sales you could probably outsource…

Jennifer Sakowski
What’s your Queen Bee Role, Johnny?

Johnny Falke
What’s my Queen Be Role? I don’t know. I’m not sure that there’s, I mean, I think, you know, the thing that my clients appreciate about me, and it’s not that someone else couldn’t do it because I’m sure you’re the one doing it and your business, but you know, the consulting time that I’d give them, where I can pull all of my expertise and skills and knowledge together to have like a informed conversation about marketing or about the way a website should be or something. I think that’s probably where it would be hard for me because there’s no real scripts, right? It’s like every situation’s a little different. And so I think that’s probably one of those things for me. But most of the other stuff I can probably outsource, you know, and have somebody else do.

Jennifer Sakowski
Right, right. So now that we’ve identified what we need, what’s the process of hiring? Like is it just, cause you’ve already walked through this with me and you help me significantly on, on giving me this process, how do you set yourself up for success when hiring a candidate?

Johnny Falke
Yeah, I mean I think, you know, people tend to make the mistake of hiring too quickly. And so I think anytime you can just slow down a little bit, not, not put it off, not say like, Oh I’m going to get to that in five months. But I mean just slow down enough to do with the job hiring. And so writing out the job description, talking about what outcomes you want, you know, all those types of things, not just the tasks that they’re going to check off each week or each month. But like really, what are you, well they supposed to increase the social following or are they supposed to handle all the support tickets? Are they supposed to, you know, what, what is the outcome that you’re looking for? Because if they’re good at what they do, hopefully maybe even better at that. And then you do it, then they’re going to bring some ideas to the table if they know where you’re headed versus just the things you’re trying to get checked off.

Johnny Falke
So I think anytime you can focus on like the outcome that you want more than the tasks tends to be better. But once you write all that and then you’ve got to figure out, like we were talking earlier, is that a local person? Is it a, you know, overseas person? What’s your budget? And then, and then just kind of start put the net out there. And I think, you know, if you’re going to hire overseas, what I always do, and I think is what I was, you and I have talked about was you want to have a few more hoops for them to jump through. Then maybe if you were hiring someone locally or, or in the States because you want to make sure that they’re going to be consistently quick responding. You want to make sure that they’re gonna follow through you want to make sure that they really want this.

Johnny Falke
And so I think by having a few extra hoops, like when we, when we were hiring someone overseas, we would, we, they would, we’d put a job posting out there, they would a reply to it and send their resume or whatever, and then we would kind of just quickly filter through those and then send them to an actual like official job application on our website. And so even though we sent that to maybe 50 to 70% of the people, because we were only looking at what they gave us for like 10 or 15 seconds, like Oh, they mentioned WordPress, they mentioned this and that they might possibly be a good fit, here’s the next step, go fill out this job application where we ask a lot more detailed questions. And then from there I was kind of flagging them like which ones seem like they could be in the top 10% or 20% and then I would go spend some more time looking at those top 10, 20%, like more of what they submitted.

Johnny Falke
And then kind of eventually, you know, getting them on a video call for an interview. I dunno. No, no, we, yeah. And what did we do? No, we did a test project test project. First. And so we said, Hey, we’ll pay you for this. You have this much time, they’ll pay you this rate, I’ll give you the instructions, are you up for that? And then we had five or six candidates do like all the same tests, project well of the types of things we are wanting them to be able to do. And then from there looking at how well they did those, then we video interviewed the top two or three candidates and then offer one of them job. But by the time they had gotten through that, like, you know, there was a lot of hoops there. Right? Like respond initially, job application, paid project, video interview you know, lots of steps. And so I think the more that you can kind of qualify them along the way, then it makes it easier to know that you’re getting the right person.

Jennifer Sakowski
Definitely. I know that was a game changer and some of the questions that you had cause like in general, cause I had hired in other positions before but this was different and it’s, I feel like it’s always different when it’s your baby. Right. Cause I like we had mentioned, I am so emotionally invested in this business. It’s ridiculous. So I’m constantly working to pull my emotions out of it and having a script, having the plan written out and the different stages of that hiring process. For me it was, it was clockwork and it really helped me identify the right candidate for my position. And by the time I got to the interview and having the interview items listed out and a couple of the key questions that I was, it was so awesome though. The question about you had it was if if I had contacted your previous employer something about what would they tell me? Why wouldn’t hire you?

Johnny Falke
Yeah. Yeah, but when were the horror story that they would tell you or something?

Jennifer Sakowski
Yeah. And what did you have to learn or what you’ve overcome since then? That that was awesome because my current admin, she, I, her answer to that I was just ready to hire an instant cause of you could see like the personal development behind it. It wasn’t just, Oh I didn’t do this right. But it allowed her to think about and have how, Oh yeah, I did overcome this and it just the like how proud she was to say that and how that she was able to speak openly and it wasn’t, cause yeah, when we start getting interviews it’s very formal. Like you don’t really see their personality in it.

Johnny Falke
They kind of tell you what you want to hear.

Jennifer Sakowski
Yes! And I think that’s important. I, I don’t know where you came up with those questions, but whenever you sit down to hire for whoever’s listening think through, yes. You want to know about their previous employer, previous jobs, what they do, the skill sets, all of that, but throw in questions that makes them think and that would pull out their personality or to get to know them as just the person. Let’s be honest. It’s great to have a high quality, you know, people who are skilled. I also want to hire someone who fits within my culture and that’s something that I, we didn’t touch on is how would that, what type of person do you want in your business? Yeah. And that type of culture that you have. Like what does that look like?

Johnny Falke
So early on in my hiring days when I was on staff at the church we had we got to the point where he needed a video person and we’d actually already had a video person but they had kind of moved on. And so we were looking for a new video person and I got enamored with this one particular videographer who worked at a huge corporate company, had some like fantastic stuff in their video reel and you know, all this. And so like I was like really wanting to hire this person. And so I hired them and I was hiring them based off of their skill but not really the culture or personality fit. And it ended up being like the biggest disaster ever. I mean, out of all the people that I hired, it was probably the worst fit, you know, it was just the personality clash.

Johnny Falke
Like he wanted everything just perfect. I think a lot of the stuff that had been in his video real, had been stuff that he had worked on, but maybe it was like, you know, at this big corporate company there was like five or six, seven people producing that video. And at the church I needed him to be like the start to finish, whether it’s animation, shooting the camera editing, like whatever it is, audio color correction. Like I kind of needed a Jack of all video, not just someone who is really good at a few particular things. And so it was just, Oh, it was just an super talented,it really was more reflection of me not figuring out what I needed and hiring solely on skill and than anything with him. Like he was fine.

Johnny Falke
It was just that I didn’t, wasn’t clear about what I needed and I wasn’t focused enough on the personality and the culture fit of what we are trying to do in a church environment versus like a corporate one. And so I think, you know, now when I hire, I would rather have the person who is a great fit and is passionate about what we’re doing. And then I love to spend time with then the most skilled person because if they’re passionate about it, if I love spending time with them, then they’re going to be able to take their skill from 50, 60, 70% up to like, you know, top of the game. And so now, like my most recent hires, like they’re just, my team’s just fun. Like, they’re just, they’re like, we get on calls and there’s jokes and there’s laughter and there’s telling about like what they’re up to and it’s not so business, and then when we need to get down to business, like we can do it, but it’s so much more than that. And so I really appreciate, you know, my team, they’re fine. Like I, I hope I’m as fun as they are cause I feel like they’re really fun. And sometimes I’m a little too serious, but they’re just, they’re just fun, you know? And so I would hire more on someone that you’re going to love to spend time with and have conversations with. You know, if it’s, if it’s hard to have a conversation with them, like that’s probably not a good sign, you know?

Jennifer Sakowski
I completely agree. I know in my own space, everything’s virtual, so I look for the people who have a personality that can bring that level to Slack or you know, to kick because let’s be honest, like we’re all on the, our islands in the interwebs and I’m looking for people to show up and interact with me. So, yeah, that’s a great point. So now that we’ve got, we’re ready. We’ve done the interviewing process. You had touched on onboarding and this is something that I’m currently reworking my own process. Can you give us just a few points about what does a good successful onboarding process look like?

Johnny Falke
So some of the things that we do and, and you know, feel free to chime in cause I’m sure you’ve got some great insights too. But all right. Now what we’ve been doing is we’ve been having them sign up a nondisclosure agreement in better, we use Better Proposals  for our proposals. So it’s like it’s literally just a template in there that I had them sign. Same with the job description of the offer. Like even though they had seen the job posting and stuff, we send them that and say like here’s the offer, here’s the amount that we’re going to pay. This is when we’re going to review you. And one thing that I would recommend too is have like a 30 or 60 day like review to decide if they’re going to be like a permanent fit. You know, cause that takes the pressure off.

Johnny Falke
Like I told all of our recent hires this, I was like, Hey we’re going to hire you for 60 days or 30 days, you know, whichever. And we’re going to review after that and then decide if it’s a good fit for you to like stay in this role. So this is kind of consider this more like a trial, you know, and you get to try us on and see if we’re a good place that you want to work and that you enjoyed doing the work and we’re going to kind of try you out and throw stuff at you and see how you respond and handle it. And then we’ll kind of reevaluate and then at that point like we’ll make this a permanent thing or not. And then that way it just kind of, one, it gets the best out of them because if they know that it’s like they’ve got 60 days to like really wow you, they’re going to show up early, stay late, go the extra mile, you know, do it all.

Johnny Falke
So, which is great. That’s what you want. And then it’s good because you don’t feel like as much pressure of like, Oh man, this person just says not a good fit, but I just hired them and you feel bad letting them go. And so I think it, it’s a, it’s a good way to have an out, you know. And then some of the other things that we do is we’ll, you know, a lot of the training set up. So what are the, what’s the, what’s the knowledge that everybody on the team needs? That’s like, would be the same for any position, wouldn’t want them to go through those different training videos or content or whatever it is. And then what are some specific things for their role? You know, and some of those might be videos that I record or someone on the team records or some of them might be like training that I’m previously purchased somewhere else that would be perfect for this role that I want them to go through.

Johnny Falke
Those types of things. You know, we have, we have weekly check ins or you have a video call to kind of check in on everyone, how they’re doing, what they’re doing, what the wins were, products that are coming up. And then something we’ve been doing lately. I don’t know if you’ve, I mean you’ve talked about this. So we’ve been setting like 90 day I’ve been setting 90 day company goals for the company like either targets we want to hit or things we want to do or improve or whatever. But then I let each team member come up with their own like mini monthly goal to help us toward the quarterly company goal. So it really gives them ownership when they’re coming up with a way to contribute to the larger thing without me just say, I think because we’re trying to get to here, you need to do this, this and this over the next three months.

Johnny Falke
Like there’s a lot more buy in. So some of the things that we have, I don’t know where my posted up here, but I cleaned my office for a video shoot the other day. But one of them was like, we want to document our processes so that everyone on the team can be out for two weeks and nothing gets dropped. So if it’s me out, someone can do the stuff that I usually do. If it’s someone on my team’s out for two weeks because they’re on vacation or sick or whatever, then someone can pick up the stuff that they do and it’s documented. So, so I let everybody else decide, okay, that’s the goal of where we’re trying to get to. How can you help us get there? And they’re like, Oh, well I need to document this because this is really important. I do this a lot, someone needs to be able to do that.

Johnny Falke
And like, so they’re kind of like, then self motivated to like figure out how to help with it versus me just saying, you need to document this, this, this, this, this and this. You know. Another one of our goals, our quarterly goals for this month is to reduce the time that it takes to solve a support ticket from when it comes in to when it’s resolved. And so I just said, Hey guys, what’s a reasonable like target for us to try to get to? And they, everybody on the team was like, well, what if we can get it done within 24 hours, assuming it’s a business day, not like on the weekends and stuff, 24 hours. So if it comes in on a Tuesday at two, it’s resolved by a Wednesday and two. And I was like, that sounds great. And then then so then, then really the goal for them is what do we need to do? What can we change in the process to get them resolved quicker and let them come up with the ideas for that. Rather than me just saying like, Oh, we’ve got to respond within this amount of time, we’ve got to do this, we know whatever, whenever like that’s just not going to be very motivating for anybody. And so it’s, it’s great to see like their creativity with the solutions of how to get to the outcomes, you know what I mean?

Jennifer Sakowski
Mm. That’s good that that I love that cause right now I feel like my own business that we’re just putting out fires right now. Like we haven’t quite got to the point like I have 90 day goals but they’re more like ‘have-tos’ like we have to do this or it’s, we’re going to be stepping backwards. Like we can’t do that. We have to figure out our social media. We have to figure out. But I love that the buy in for that of each of our, our team members. So how important is processes when it comes to hiring? This is kind of, because I feel like processes and systems set you free allows you to scale. And that’s something that we haven’t emphasized on how important it is to have. One thing is to have your documentation as you’re doing your onboarding. You had mentioned this is our company training. That’s a process, right?

Johnny Falke
Yeah. And it’s something you have to create a lot of times the first time you’re doing it. And you know it’s easy to hire for a role that you’ve already hired before because you have the job description, you have the sample project and you know, I think a lot of things besides even like the 30 or 60 day trial, what would just think about like what would a trial project be for a position where you could say like, Hey, I’m going to pay you at this rate for this many hours to complete this trial project that you could give the same a project, the five people, you know, what would that be and what would you need to test to see if they’re a good fit? So even for an admin person, what kind of tests could you give them, you know, to pay them to see if they’re a good fit?

Johnny Falke
Because when you start thinking about what the trial project is and the things you want to test, then you start to really understand what you’re looking for versus just kind of like a long list of tasks or things you went done. And so I think anytime you can think about that, but it gets hard with the processes when you’re hiring a new thing every time, right? It’s like I just got off a call for a client that wants to do a podcast launch and they want us to do like the consulting and the marketing plan for it. And they already have a radio program and they’re spending a lot of money for their radio program, but they don’t know how to launch a podcast successfully. And so they’re wanting us to do that. Well, we’ve launched a number of podcasts, but I don’t have like a proposal or this is what we’re going to deliver to help you launch your podcast.

Johnny Falke
So that’s like a lot of work for me now to write that proposal versus the website build for the church that we’ve done dozens and dozens and dozens of those. Like I have a church specific website build template that has their language and all that. And so I can create that very quickly, you know? And so I think hiring is a little bit the same, right? Like the first time it’s going to take a little bit more effort cause you gotta write that company training, all that documentation. But then your second person, you begin, I already have some of that recording, you’re just going to do job specific stuff. So it is an investment in time and you have to just remind yourself that look, okay, it’s gonna take me some time to hire them. It’s gonna take me some time to onboard and train them.

Johnny Falke
And so I’m going to actually over the next 90 days lose time. But if I hired the right person, then over the next year I’m going to gain back that extra time I’m putting in over these 90 days and then infinitely more, right? Like by team members that I hired in February of this year or whatever. Like they’re kicking butt, they’re there, they’re solving all this stuff right now while you and I are having this call so that the fires aren’t coming into my email box. You know, I, I get my email box downs like eight emails, like on Friday. It was like awesome. Right? But it was just because like I’m not the bottleneck for so much of the communication now and so

Johnny Falke
Yeah, but it does take an investment and you have to kind of say, okay, I’m going to put some things aside. I’m going to focused in getting this person up to speed so that they can succeed. And then, you know, I’ll kind of pick up my full workload that I are and then some that, you know, we all have.

Jennifer Sakowski
That’s so good. And it comes back to mindset. I feel like everything that we do as business owners, it comes back to mindset and I can’t emphasize enough knowing like you said, taking the time now because it’s going to help you in the long run and look at the greater impact it’ll have on your business if it’s not just you because let’s face it, it’s very hard to scale your business when it’s just you. Yeah. Johnny, I cannot thank you enough for joining me today because Oh and I said it before, but you have walked through this hiring process with me when I was outsourcing and since then I’ve hired three individuals that has helped grow my team significantly and just not just my team as a numbers, but what we can handle as a business. It’s amazing to me the more that our team grows and we get the right people in the right positions, how it takes the pressure off of me to stay in the area that I want to be in on working on the business and not so tied into the day to day project work. It’s just amazing. The dynamics has it changed. So thank you so much for opening up to us today about hiring and how to hire successfully.

Johnny Falke
Sure. Yeah. No, it’s always, it’s always a pleasure, Jen, and if there’s anything I can answer for anyone you know or otherwise, I’d be Be more than glad to.

Jennifer Sakowski
Yes and definitely check out JohnnyFlash.Com is how to get a hold of Johnny. We’ll have his contact information in our show notes and please, if you find this episode helpful in any way in your hiring journey. Yep. Please make sure to take a screenshot of our Raney Day Talks podcast on social media and tag us. We love to hear it and we know you’re watching. We’re now needing you to subscribe, so do not forget we’re on iTunes and Spotify. Make sure to subscribe once again, thank you so much for your time today and I look forward. I mean I feel like I’ve already got a note of what I’m going to have you back for, so just be on the lookout for that email to come through. So thank you again. Take care.

Johnny Falke
See ya.

 

**BONUS**

Head to our Facebook Group to download a spreadsheet to help delegate your current tasks and to track your time!

 

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Connect With Our Guest

Johnny Falke, Johnny Flash Productions

Website: https://www.johnnyflash.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnfalke
Instagram: https://twitter.com/johnfalke
Facebook: https://twitter.com/johnfalke

 

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Thank You To Our Sponsor

A huge thank you to Mark at Mark Levander Productions is for sponsoring season, one of Raney Day Talks Podcast. I’m very particular who we partner with and Mark was a no brainer. Mark does all of our video editing and puts all of the components and pieces together for our YouTube channel and podcast. If you are looking to publish your own YouTube series podcasts or need photography work, please contact Mark through MarkLevanderProductions.com