When and How to Hire Help So You Can Stop Doing It All

In today’s episode, you’re going to discover that you probably have some mindsets about hiring help that are holding you back. Plus, I’m going to walk you through the exact steps it takes to hire not just a winning team, but a team that makes profit and revenue. So get ready to have your toes stepped on, because quite honestly, I’m not going to be holding anything back today. I’m going to speak some blunt truths into your ears that I hope you’ll take to heart, because if you do, your future will be dramatically better very soon.

Welcome to the Eric Dingler Leadership Podcast, a show designed to help you lead better, to live better. Because, my friend, you’ll never have success greater than your leadership abilities. So I have got a lot I want to get through today, and we are going to move kind of quick. And like I said, I’m not going to hold things back from you.

Well, I hope you are having a good day. For me, I’m recording this at about noon. It was eight a.m. this morning, and I was at my chiropractor. I’ve started going to the chiropractor for the first time, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a chiropractor before. But the results have been astounding. Absolutely fascinating. My back has never felt so good. I’m walking better. I’m not having hip pain. It had gotten so bad. My back had been so bad and so out of whack that my pelvis was kind of getting tilted, and my left leg was positioned so it was almost like it was longer than my right leg. If I stood straight with both knees locked, I was leaning to the right. So I knew that was no good and something had to be done.

And so I finally decided to go to a chiropractor. And I’m telling you what, this guy, he is great, but he likes to just basically run me over with his car. He’s doing this thing, cupping. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, but he puts these suction cups on my back, and now I’ve got these six bruises, perfectly round bruises on my back. He likes to have me lay on a table, and he twists me and turns me and cracks and snaps and pops my spine. And at the moment, as soon as it pops, sometimes it feels nice, but then he gets in with his elbow and does some soft tissue work. Has me in traction. Then we do a little bit of traction, and I’m telling you something, I’m a little sore right now, to be honest. Not gonna lie. In fact, each day I go twice a day, Tuesdays and Fridays, and I’m a little tender the rest of the day. But honestly, this morning I got out of bed easier than I’ve gotten out of bed in probably two years. I walked down the steps with no problem. I mean, it was absolutely phenomenal how well it is working. I’m so thrilled and excited.

Now, why do I bring this up? Why do I share this with you? Because today, I want to do a bit of the same thing. I want to do some adjustments, maybe in your thinking, and it might hurt a little bit. You’re going to have to be open to me calling you wrong. You just got to be open to the idea that I’m going to say some things today that’s like, hey, if you think this, you’re wrong. Okay, now, if you’re all like, oh, that hurts so bad, I don’t know if I can stand having my feelings hurt, then stop listening to the podcast, all right? Like, I’m not forcing you. Nobody’s making you. But if you’re like, no, I’m willing to go through maybe a little bit of discomfort, I’m willing to go, that is me, maybe I am wrong. If you’re open to a slight adjustment, I’m telling you something, your future will be better because of it.

And this is what happens really in coaching. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve believed in having a coach. In fact, I believe everybody should have a Batman and a Robin in their life. You should have somebody that’s ahead of you, that has got tricks and things that you don’t know, that’s speaking into your life, helping you step into that next place. And then you should have people that you’re already investing in, already giving back to, because there are people that are behind you that want to know what you already know, that can benefit from your experiences. You can’t pretend to know everything. I don’t know everything. I’m not about to give you advice on raising capital, or advice for taking a company public. None of that’s in my wheelhouse. But what I do know is I know how to hire and lead an absolutely stellar team. I’ve had a lot of practice, a lot of experience, and this is something I just know. This is one of those things that I can do almost honestly on autopilot. And so I want to help you. I use this podcast to be a Batman to many, if you allow me in, in this area. So I want you to keep listening.

Now, I’m also going to share this in case you get distracted. Well, you know, things happen, things pop up. You might get a little distracted as we go along here. A lot of what I’m talking about today, I’ve created a resource that can help you with this, and you just go to ericdingler.com/hire. And you’re going to be able to download really a toolkit, a bundle of templates that’s going to walk you through these steps that I’m about to share with you here in just a few minutes. I’ve got eight steps I’m going to walk you through. The toolkit is really designed to help guide you through this conversation we’re about to have. Again, ericdingler.com/hire.

Now, yesterday, what kind of got me started with this idea and made me decide to record a podcast episode about it is I was having a conversation with a guy on LinkedIn. We were having a DM back and forth. Can you call that a conversation through direct message? Sure. Why not? So we were having a DM conversation, and he said this to me. He said, the thing I’m most skeptical about when it comes to hiring help is, one, it takes time to vet them and choose one among a million. And then two, they initially may need to be micromanaged in order to get the results that I need, and this in the end cost me more than hiring them. I threw up a little bit right there, I did, when I saw that.

I have a question. Have you ever thought these things? Have you ever thought, you know, hiring help, it’s just going to take more, it’s just faster to do it myself, it takes too much time? There’s so many potential people, and if I post something, I’m going to get flooded with people, and I’ve got to sort through it and interview, and I don’t know. Or maybe you’re like, ah, that just sounds so expensive. Or maybe you’re like, well, I don’t know if I have enough consistent help. Or you may be thinking, well, to hire somebody, all I can afford right now is, you know, one hundred dollars a week. Who could take a job for one hundred dollars? I couldn’t take a job for one hundred dollars a week. I couldn’t live with a job at one hundred dollars a week. So nobody that’s any good is going to be able to take this job at one hundred dollars a week. There’s nobody out there.

Have you ever thought any of these things? Because I’m telling you right now, if you have, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. Now, I’m not saying you’re stupid. I’m not saying you’re an idiot. I’m saying today, in this moment, hearing this, you’re wrong. Now, if you still believe these things tomorrow, if you still believe these things next week, well, then you’re stupid, okay? Because I’m telling you right now, they’re wrong, and I’m willing to spend the time to help you see why this is wrong. Don’t be stupid. Because, honestly, running a business is hard. And it’s harder when you’re stupid.

So we got to get to the point where we’re like, wait a second, what does hiring really look like? What does hiring really look like? There are people out there that are so much better than you are that can only work five hours a week. There are people out there that are so much more talented than you are, that are desperate, desperate for one hundred more dollars a week, because in their economy, that’s the equivalent of one thousand dollars. That’s the equivalent of five hundred dollars. It’s a side hustle that moves them, because there are people out there. Their kids need braces. Their kid is sick. They have an adult parent that they’re taking care of. Their car is broken down. They’re wanting to save up to move into a house. And they’ve got a full-time job in their country, and they’ve got benefits. But man, they just need a little bit more. And your one hundred dollars is like five hundred dollars to them. You’ve given them a two thousand dollar, a two thousand pound per month side hustle, and they’re going to work for you so hard. And if you don’t believe that, you’re just wrong. I’ve seen it over and over and over and over again.

This is why I’ve really decided, and not just me alone, but me and my wife, one of the reasons we’re so focused going into twenty twenty-six. We are so focused on taking what we used to call Team Engine. We’re now rebranding it, renaming it the Profitable Team Accelerator. It’s a group program where we’re taking cohorts of business owners through a ninety-day, well, what has been a ninety-day experience. It’s now going to be a one-year experience. But the work of it all happens in ninety days. It starts with a ninety-day accelerator, and then you get nine more months in the community with ongoing support. We can talk about it some other time. But we’re doing this because it does a couple of things.

One, as you, the self-employed solo person, maybe you’ve got some team members, but it’s not necessarily equaling profits yet. They’re just a cost, and that’s all it is. But for most of you listening right now, if you will just listen, if you just trust me, be open to these steps that I’m about to share with you, I want to tell you right now, your life will get remarkably different. But you are going to be in a position to change the lives of others. And that is why I’m passionate about doing this. I’ve always been a fan of multiplication. Why add to something when I can multiply it?

It’s like when I was a camp director. I had no intention. I never wanted to be the camp counselor. Not that being a camp counselor is bad. I think camp counselors are heroes amongst men. Camp counselors are phenomenal people, when they’re trained, right, and working at the right camp, and they do an effective thing. But I didn’t want to have a cabin of ten kids that I was influencing their life. I wanted to have ten counselors that I was influencing, that were influencing a hundred people. When I was pastoring, I didn’t want to be the pastor of care. I wanted to equip the congregation. I wanted to equip the saints, if you’ll allow me to use a biblical term there. I wanted to equip people to be providers of care, pastors of care, ministers of care.

I mean, my team. This last month, with two of our team members, we got to celebrate with them as they celebrated a one-year birthday and a two-year birthday. And these have been team members that came on board before they were married. We’ve celebrated their marriages, and we’ve celebrated the birth of their children. And now we’re celebrating the birthdays of their children. And I know when I see pictures from these birthday parties, and we see the smiles, and we see the cake, and we see the presents, and we see the home that they’re in, and we see the clothes that they’re wearing, we know that we are playing a part in that, because we’re providing great, solid employment. I love this stuff. I love this stuff, because, man, it just changes people’s lives.

And that’s why I’ve got this podcast. That’s why we’re working to help people build healthy teams, not just to get things done. If you’re just wanting to get things done, again, I’m probably going to annoy you, because I’m going to talk about being a life-changer, not a taskmaster. That’s why this is the Eric Dingler Leadership Podcast and not the Eric Dingler Management Podcast. And I’m not saying managers are bad. Don’t hear anything I’m not saying. But leaders do just look at it a little bit different. And that’s good. That’s what they’re supposed to do, and that’s okay. And again, if you’re like, hey, I’m a manager and you hurt my feelings, well, then that’s on you, because that’s not what I meant to do. I meant nothing behind it.

But moving on. When this guy shared this with me on LinkedIn, “it takes too much time to vet people, to choose one among a million.” Well, what a crazy mindset. What a crazy mindset. It’s not that hard. It’s not that hard. And I’m sorry, a million people don’t want to work for you. To be honest, this guy’s business hasn’t even made six figures yet in a year. Like, no offense, you ain’t gonna have a lot of people knocking down your door. Okay, but there are people out there, people that can make a difference. But this guy, he’s thinking so small. He’s like, I think I want to hire somebody, or maybe instead of hiring a VA, because I gotta find one in a million, or I gotta micromanage him, maybe I’ll just hire an AI agent. I’m telling you right now, that’s just dumb thinking. That is ridiculously off the mark. You’re never going to have a successful business thinking you’re it. It is just wrong. You can’t build a business that way. You don’t start hiring people with that kind of a mindset.

And he just wants to hire the people to do these tasks because he wants to have more time so he can build the websites that he’s selling. And that’s where the thinking is faulty. Because you know what? Real estate agents don’t build the houses they sell. So what do we do? Well, you got to hire the right kind of help to help you with the right kinds of things.

So let’s talk this through. Let’s talk this through. Eight steps. How do we hire help without regret? How do we hire help without regret? Well, I’ve got the steps, and this is the exact order I want to encourage you to do these in. Even if you’ve already got a couple people on your team, even if you’ve got a couple people on your team helping with fulfillment, that’s great. But I want you to consider this for your next couple hires, because this only works in your first one to four hires when you do it this way. This framework is just for those first one to four. It doesn’t mean headcount one to four employees. It means your first one to four employees that you’re hiring intentionally, with the idea that this is going to be a team that is the fuel to increasing revenue and profits.

So what do we do?

Number one. First thing I want you to do, I want you to write down what you’re going to take off of your plate. That’s the first thing I want you to do. I want you to sit down and make a list of the things that you need to just take off your plate. And it can be, it probably should lean a little bit more into fulfillment. It definitely can be some admin. Maybe it’s a mix of both. Maybe it’s just all admin to start. Maybe it’s all fulfillment to start. I don’t know, it depends on your business. But you get to decide. It’s your business. You decide what you feel is holding you back. What’s draining you? What is a chore? Because I’m telling you right now, something that’s a chore for you is exhilarating for somebody else. It’s life-giving to somebody else. So I want you to sit down, I want you to write down a list of what you’re going to take off of your plate.

Number two. I want you to figure out how many hours a week is this going to free up? How many hours a week are you taking off of your plate with this? All right, so how many hours a week are you going to take off of your plate?

Number three. Then I want you to ten, ten, eighty this time. What do I mean by that? So you’re going to have a list of things, you’re going to add it up. Now, in this first one to four hires, I recommend starting out, especially if you’ve never hired before, especially if this is your first hire, I recommend shooting for about ten hours here. Okay, taking ten hours off of your plate, you can hire somebody to help you at ten hours for, you know, reasonably, comfortably, sixty to one hundred and fifty dollars a week. And so that’s very reasonable. Great place to start. These are going to be very qualified people that can really do the things. And again, these are those recurring things that are always just constantly taking over.

Now, the other way to go around about this, which is totally okay, this is a little bit different than what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people that are going to become a team that are going to continue to grow with you for a season. Okay, now, let’s say you’re a web designer, though, like this guy I was talking to on LinkedIn. What he needs to do is he needs to partner with somebody like my friend Stephanie over at Focus. Okay, if you’re building WordPress websites, managing WordPress websites, doing anything with WordPress at all, or just in creative copywriting, they got a whole bunch of things you need to be aware of. FocusWP. All right, you need to look up FocusWP. Talk to Stephanie over there. They have highly skilled, very qualified technicians that can step in and help with projects on a fixed hourly rate. Now, this is absolutely a fantastic solution to help with spikes, to help with doing a project that you don’t have the technical expertise to do, filling a gap between having somebody or not having somebody to help with fulfillment. And so this is a great way to use a freelancer on a task-by-task, project-by-project basis. That’s great, but that’s not what I’m talking about doing with this list.

What I’m talking about is writing down the things that you’re going to take off of your plate that are these recurring kind of things. Okay, again, how many hours a week can you free up with that? I’m going to suggest starting with ten. Maybe six, maybe eight, maybe ten, maybe twelve. But I wouldn’t go too much more than that, because this is new to you. All right, we didn’t let you get in a car the first day and get on the interstate and get going sixty-five miles an hour, weaving in and out of traffic. You didn’t start out the first day driving that way. You had to learn, you had to grow, you had to get more comfortable, more confident. Hiring staff is the same way.

If you think you’re naturally wired to know how to hire people, well, that’s dumb, okay? You need to give yourself permission to not know how to hire. You need to give yourself permission to not know how to lead. Because here’s the thing. If you think, well, I own a business, I’m Eric, look at me, I’m a business owner, so I’m going to hire me some help, and you don’t even try to get help, you don’t even try to ask questions, you just think you automatically, naturally know, because when you were sixteen, you got a job at McDonald’s. Like, that’s just ridiculous. Let’s say you decide to learn how to fly an airplane. You’re not going to go over to the airport tomorrow and they’re going to go, oh, you want to be a pilot? Well, get on in here, take the plane up all by yourself, just take off. That’s not going to happen. You have to learn everything.

At one point in your life, somebody wiped your butt every day. Okay? Like, seriously. My kids, they were so incapable of life when they were born, they couldn’t even walk. Okay, we had to teach them how to walk, talk, use the bathroom by themselves, use forks. You have to learn everything. So why do you have this idea that you should just know how to hire? That you should just know how to train, that you should just know how to onboard, that you should just know how to be a business owner? Please give yourself permission not to know. All day long, I’m constantly looking at things and going, I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know why I didn’t used to. My pride and arrogance used to believe that I just knew some of these things, or that I should know.

And here’s how I know that some of you struggle with this. Because you would tell me, oh, I tried hiring in the past, and it didn’t work. If that’s you, that’s because you did it wrong. You just did it wrong. It wasn’t the person. It wasn’t the person. It was your system. It was your leadership abilities. And that’s okay. That’s okay. You don’t know some of this stuff. It’s not okay to keep moving forward not knowing, okay? That’s stupid. All right? You need to go, all right, I’m going to learn this, and so learn it.

So your first hire, let’s not hire full-time. Oh my goodness. In fact, you can even tell somebody when you’re first hiring, hey, I’m looking to hire somebody for ten hours a week, for three months, for two months, for six weeks. You don’t have to commit to anything longer than that. And there are going to be people that go, oh, actually, that is all I’m looking for, because there are people that settle down and they work for six months and stockpile some money, and then they hit the open road and travel around Vietnam and Bali and the Philippines. There are these digital nomads out there that just want to sit and work for three months, six months, and just work, work, work, work, pile up cash, pile up cash, and then they hit the open road. Some travel and work all the time. There are so many different types of people out there.

Don’t think that everybody’s life looks like yours. Okay, not everybody’s life looks like yours. The majority of the people on the planet, their life doesn’t look like yours. Now, I know when you look around, it looks like it, because everybody in your town, their life, so many of them, their life looks like yours. Well, I’m telling you something, from somebody who has, in the last four years, lived on four continents and twenty countries, in fifty-five Airbnbs, and all these different communities and cities and towns, most of the people out there, their life does not look like yours. So don’t put people in a box starting out.

So what do we do? Let’s get back to my, I’m sorry, I got a little excited. I got a little excited. All right, I’ll calm down. Back to the list. Number one, write down what you’re going to take off your plate. Number two, how many hours a week did this just free up? Number three, ten, ten, eighty this time. What does that mean?

Let’s say you decide you’re going to take ten hours. You’re going to hire somebody for ten hours of help. You’re going to take ten percent of that time, and that’s now you time. Okay, that’s you time. Watch a Netflix show, go to a coffee shop, sleep in. I don’t care what you do. It is your time. What’s your hobby? Go fishing. Paint a painting. Draw, sketch. Sit down and talk to your wife. Play catch with your kid. Throw a ball with the dog. Knit something. I don’t care. It’s your time. This is why you wanted, why did you start a business? I’m tired of working for other people. I want to work on my own terms. Okay? Are you finally ready for that to be reality? This is how you do it, from the first hire.

And again, maybe you’ve hired people before and you’ve not done this. You’re like, man, I hired help and I didn’t work any less. Okay, fine. The next four people, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to hire them, and you’re going to take ten percent of the time that you’ve hired them to take things off of your plate, and that’s now your time. Then you’re going to take ten percent of that time, and you’re going to start to study with that time every week, leadership. Why? Because you’re never going to outgrow your leadership. So you’re going to take that time and invest in leadership development, and developing those people around you. You’re going to start meeting with these people and developing them and helping them grow.

Now, the eighty percent. You’re going to take eighty percent of the time. So let’s again stick with ten hours. You’ve got an hour to yourself, an hour for leadership. Now you’re going to take eight hours every week, and you’re going to do revenue-generating work. You’re not going to clean out the downloads file on your computer. You’re not going to rearrange your office. You’re not going to finally get serious about writing blog content. I mean, come on, writing a blog post today isn’t revenue-generating. Okay, you’re not going to put out a blog post today that’s magically going to solve your finances. There is no money hiding behind your desk. You’re going to do actual revenue-generating activity. You’re going to be on the phone with people. You’re going to be having coffee meetings. You’re going to be at networking events. You’re going to be inviting people to conversations. If cold outreach is your thing, fine. I loathe cold outreach. Please don’t cold outreach to me. But if that’s how you’re going to grow your business, fine, then do that. But you are going to take eight hours a week, and you are going to start doing actual revenue-generating activity.

Now, if there are some things you’ve been doing concurrently, content producing that has been creating most of your revenue already, well, then for you, you’re going to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. You know, I’ve been producing a YouTube video, one a week, and that’s been going great. Then you’re going to do two a week. Okay, you don’t need to learn something new. Now, if you’ve been producing YouTube videos for six months and it hasn’t made you any money, I’m not saying you stop doing it. I’m just going to say you’re not going to spend this time creating a second one. You got to do more of what works, less of what doesn’t.

And most of you listening right now, you don’t have a lead generation system that is perfectly working for you. Some of you do, and that’s great. That’s what you’re going to put your time on, right? And that’s fantastic. Most of you, though, are going to have to really do something different. Imagine what would happen if this month you closed two more sales than you’ve ever closed in any other month before. Imagine, two months from now, if you’re closing one new project a week. That’s what begins to happen when you really spend this time, eight hours a week, on focused lead gen.

Now, the person you’ve hired isn’t an expense. This guy on LinkedIn, what did he say? Let me roll back up here. “And in the end, cost me more money than hiring them.” Okay, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, if you do two things. If you one, delegate well, which we’ll get to in a minute, and two, if you reinvest your time into revenue-generating activities.

All right, so where are we on our list? Number one, write down what you’re going to take off your plate. Number two, how many hours a week is this going to free up? Number three, ten, ten, eighty this time. This is crucial. This is the part that most people get wrong. They don’t come up with an actual strategy for the time that they’re taking off their plate.

Now, before I get to number four, which is a good one, before I get to number four, I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. Unless you’re driving a car, I’m going to ask you to pause and do me a favor. Leave a review, leave a comment on Spotify. I’m talking to you. I’m talking to you there in the gym. Sam, that’s right. Daniel, Sam, you know who you are. I’m also talking to Daniel and Ali. Those of you that are in the gym, you’re washing dishes, you’re doing whatever the activity is you’re doing, just do me a favor right now, because you’ve thought about it in the past. I’m saying this because I’ve been talking to somebody, and a couple people recently mentioned, I’ve been meaning to leave a review of the podcast. I need to do that. Okay, this is the time. This is it right now, and it would mean so much to me. I really appreciate it. It helps me in a great way. It’s motivational for me. It’s fuel for me. I love seeing it. It helps the podcast grow. It helps me multiply the reach, which, you know, I’m all about multiplying. And so it helps me keep showing up and recording these. So I would love a review. Wherever you listen to your podcast, leave a review, make sure you’re subscribed. And if you’re on Spotify, leave a comment on the episode.

All right. Number four. What are you going to do? You’re going to write a job description. Sounds pretty easy, right? But you’re going to write a job description. Now, there are right ways and wrong ways to write a job description. I like to write a job description in a very specific way that basically helps me immediately weed out people that don’t follow instructions. Okay, so I plant through the job description a few things that AI still isn’t able to pick up on yet, that people have to do when they apply for the job. And anybody that doesn’t do it exactly as these Easter eggs, I’ll call them, in the job description, if people don’t do that, I don’t hire them. I don’t even interview them. I just thumbs down, move on. Nope, not going to do it. Because either one, you didn’t follow the instructions, or you couldn’t follow the instructions. I ain’t got time for that. Every single time I do this, I still get amazing people that apply for the job. And this, I mean, I cut out seventy-five percent of applicants this way.

Let’s go back to the number one thing this guy and I were talking about on LinkedIn the other day. He said, the thing I’m most skeptical about when it comes to hiring help, it takes time to vet them and choose one among a million. Not if you write a good job description, it doesn’t. It just eliminates people.

And this is where people go. I get this question all the time from students in Profitable Team Accelerator. They’ll ask, you know, Eric, can I put in the job description that they have to work certain hours? Can I put in there that they have to do that? And the answer is always, yeah. As long as you’re not asking people to do something unethical or immoral, put it in the job description. In fact, you’re doing a disservice if you don’t put it in the job description. I can’t tell you how many times, well, if I put in the job description, what if they don’t apply? Well, what’s worse? Okay, what if you have an expectation, you don’t put it in the job description, somebody applies, you invest time into setting up a meeting, and you have an interview, and you really like them. It’s like holding the puppy at the pet store. You know, you really like them. And now you want to hire them. And then you bring up this thing, and now they’re like, oh, I can’t do that. And now you’re probably going to make a bad choice because you’ve held the puppy.

All right, so put all of your expectations in your job description. Hey, this is going to be four hours a week. It’s this job I’m hiring four hours a week for, eight weeks, six weeks. And people go, oh, nobody will apply. No, only the right people will apply. Only the right people will apply. And I’m telling you right now, it’s just worth doing. It’s just worth doing. And so this is one of those areas where people have broken mindsets. They have a scarcity mindset. Well, what if I don’t get anybody to apply? Well, good. Okay, that means you didn’t get any of the wrong people to apply. All right, so you post it again, you post it in a different place.

I was just talking in a coaching call yesterday with a group of people, and we had this really great conversation about the fact that failure, okay, failure isn’t a courtroom. Don’t let failure condemn you. Failure is a classroom. You’ve already paid the price. Pick up the lesson. Does it hurt? Make it hurt less? No, failures hurt. But it’s really stupid if you don’t learn the lesson from it. I know I should probably stop using the word stupid so much, because some people do get offended, but it’s stupid if you get offended. Anyway, I’ll stop. I’ll try to stop using it so much. But don’t let a failure, failure is not a setback, failure is a lesson, okay? Failure isn’t a courtroom, it’s a classroom.

So you write a great job description. Put the specifics in there. Don’t make it too long. Keep it, you know, I like to keep ours a page. Sometimes I’ll go to a page and a half, but put in all the expectations. Put in the limits. Let people know.

Now, number four here is really part of number five, because number five, six, seven, and eight make up what’s known as our signature framework, which is RODD.

Number five is this: recruit. Okay, so after you write the job description, which is really kind of part of number five, you’re going to go into number five, which is you’re going to recruit the right people. You’re going to do it by having a great job description, but you’re going to post it in the right place. And I approach this as sales, like anytime I take a new product to market. I start with our network. We call it FAR, our friends, family, acquaintances, and relatives. So we start with FAR, and just who do we know? And so anytime we go to hire, the first thing I do, after I have the position description ready, I send it out to everybody on our team, and I’m like, I’m looking for this person. Do you know anybody like this? Do you know anybody you want to work beside? And boom, I’ll post it to my personal network. Anybody got somebody on their team already that may be interested in picking up a few more hours? I start there.

I don’t go to job boards right away. After that, after I exhaust those, then I generally, well, not generally, I then immediately go to Upwork. I just think Upwork is great. I’ve never had any problems with it. Sure, there are horror stories out there, but you know what? There are horror stories about flying on an airplane. So I mean, there’s a horror story to every good thing out there. So build a bridge and get over it. Upwork, I’ve never had any problems, and a lot of people I know have never had any problems with it. And so I really like that. So you’ve got to recruit the right people. There’s a right way to do that.

Number six. Then you onboard them. Now you onboard the right people. And here’s how we do it. We have a self-guided onboarding. Nobody has to, when we make a new hire, nobody has to stop doing their work to train the new person. We have a system in place where new hires onboard and train themselves. I’ve talked about it in past podcast episodes. I’m more than happy to give you access to our dashboard. Just reach out and ask me about it. It’s one of my favorite tools we’ve ever developed.

Okay, so then we go into number seven. Delegate. All right, so where are we at? Number one, you’re going to write down what you’re going to take off your plate. Number two, how many hours is this going to free up? Number three, you’re going to ten, ten, eighty this time. Number four, you’re going to write a specific job description full of all of the expectations you have. Number five, you’re going to recruit them in the right places to find the right person. Then you’re going to have them go through a self-guided onboarding. And like I said, I’ve talked in the past about that. I’m sure I’ll talk about it more. It’s not the point of this episode.

And then number seven is delegate. And this is where the second point that this guy said comes in, “they initially may need to be micromanaged.” Wow. If you’re micromanaging people, then you’re a manager, and doing management, and you’re not very good at delegating. All right, so if you’re micromanaging people, it’s not them, it’s you. You have a bad system. You aren’t giving people the, you’re not painting a clear picture of what the win looks like. Okay, you’re not describing why this is important. You’re not connecting the dots to your vision, mission, core values. And in fact, you’ve probably hired somebody and gave them a task to do, and you’ve never once talked about core values, because maybe you don’t have core values. Shame on you. That’s business owner malpractice. Fix it. Write your vision. Write your mission. Write your core values. I have other podcast episodes about that. You got to have this in place.

If you don’t give people a clear picture of what it looks like, you’re not communicating well. And what happens is, you have a picture in your head, and you don’t communicate that to them. And so since what they give you back doesn’t look like what you thought it should look like in your head, you think the problem is the journey they took. So you start micromanaging every step. The problem wasn’t the journey, it was the map you gave them.

So you got to learn how to delegate. And you know what? Give yourself permission to say right now, I don’t know how to delegate, never learned, never tried, I’m not good at it. Like, give yourself permission. It’s okay. Why do you think you have to be excellent at delegating? There’s no reason you should know how to delegate. It’s not natural. It’s not like breathing, okay? Delegation isn’t an involuntary thing that your body has known how to do. It’s like everything else in your life, you got to learn how to do it. And a clear sign that you don’t know how to do it is you believe that you have to micromanage. That is a very clear sign that you’re not delegating well.

And then the eighth step, the fourth part of RODD. RODD, again, Recruit, Onboard, Delegate, Develop. Number eight, develop. I realized just this last week, Marissa and I were in a training course. We were sitting through this four-hour phenomenal training course from somebody I really respect and admire, a guy named Dustin. If you have, if you’re looking to learn how to grow your business through being a guest on podcasts, you need to know Dustin. Seven Figure Leap is his company. Great, great guy. I’ve done his program. I love getting coaching from him. Fantastic guy. Well, in his training Tuesday, I realized that some people were like, well, what does develop mean? Like, what is that? Recruiting people, okay. Onboarding them, yeah. Delegating. What does develop mean?

And so this is what I mean by develop. You’re now going to develop your team so they can run your business without you day to day. Oh boy, doesn’t that feel good? Didn’t that just feel a little exciting? Didn’t you just kind of get a little shiver, like, wait a second, you mean I can take time off? Sure. I tell people all the time, we spent ten days in the Amazon jungle once, unplugged from the grid. And you know what happened? We had a great time. You know what happened with the company? Nothing. Nothing bad. All the good things kept happening. Business moved forward. The team did their role. They didn’t need me for ten days.

If your team needs you regularly, you’re the problem, not them. Ouch. Ouch. If you disappeared for ten days and your business crumbled, it’s not your team, it’s you. You’re the problem, because you haven’t learned to, you haven’t upskilled your leadership in a way that you’ve begun to develop your team, to help them see the vision and get clarity in your mission and embrace your core values, so they make decisions the way you would make the decisions when you’re not there. You’re never going to hire somebody on day one that can do that. That takes time. You’ve got to develop them.

But I’m telling you something. In twelve to eighteen months, typically eighteen months, it takes a little bit of time to do this, but eighteen months from now, in fact, this is exactly what I did. When we were thinking long term, we picked a date on the calendar, and I said, eighteen months from now, this date, I’m going to be able to take ten days off. And at that time, we had no idea we were going to the Amazon jungle. We had no idea we were going to be in Peru. But I just said, this is it, this is the date. And we started working towards that, and I started developing my team. And then as we went along, we got into month, I don’t know, it was probably like fourteen or so, and that’s when we started looking at the Amazon jungle, and I thought, oh my gosh. And I looked at my wife and I said, if we wait till this date, we’ll have actually been working for over a year to get to this point. And this is what was so amazing about it, we didn’t, we took it off.

Let me ask you this. If your computer died, if your laptop died tomorrow, and you couldn’t get online for three days, does that make your heart skip a beat? Not because you miss social media, but because you realize, oh my gosh, my business would come to a screeching stop. That’s a problem, my friend. And you don’t have to live like that. You don’t have to be that way. You can move from being self-employed to being a business owner.

And honestly, you can do that within thirty days inside the Profitable Team Accelerator. We kick the accelerator off with the ninety-day accelerator. That’s what the Profitable Team Accelerator is. It’s a ninety-day experience. In the first thirty days, you know what we’re doing? I’m helping you identify what to take off of your plate, how many hours, ten, ten, eighty it. And then we write and we post your job description. Within thirty days, you are starting to recruit. And then over the next sixty days, I help you onboard, delegate to your team, and set you up with the foundation to develop your team. And then for the next nine months, you get to come to a weekly open office hours, where I set you up with tools that help you develop, and that you can then turn around and do, exercises and activities that you can turn around and do with your own team to help them develop, to be able to run the business without you. Give me a year, and I’ll change your life. Give me a year, and I’ll totally change your life.

Now, how do we do that? We do that inside what we call the Profitable Team Accelerator. We’re so excited, in January twenty twenty-six, to be launching the next cohort of this. It’s going to be really cool. If you would like to be a part of it, then just send me an email. Find me on LinkedIn. Send me a DM on LinkedIn. Go to ericdingler.com/firsthire. Download the First Hire Guide and email me. Whatever you want to do, but just email me and say, hey, I’m really interested in your Profitable Team Accelerator. I want to know more about it. We’ll get on a call. We’ll figure out if you’re a good fit for it. I’ll give you all the details of what it looks like. And I’m not going to hide anything. I don’t want to do a bait and switch. It’s one thousand dollars a month, okay? It’s a one thousand dollar a month program.

But here’s the thing. You know why we do this? You know why we charge this amount? Because according to the US government, the Department of Labor, hiring somebody, I just did this recently in a podcast, if you hire somebody full-time and they turn out to be a bad hire, it costs you about forty thousand dollars. Isn’t that crazy? Just hiring somebody at four hours a week is a six thousand dollar mistake. If you hire somebody at ten hours a week, you’re going to spend about fifteen thousand dollars if it’s a bad hire. And I’m telling you something, nobody knows how to do this stuff naturally. So you are going to have some misfires, some missteps. You’re going to have to fire some people. And it’s very expensive.

So we’ve just decided, like, hey, you know what? We’re going to eliminate that risk. We’re going to make sure that we have a premier program that we are able to invest in, bringing in experts and authorities. We can do things in it because it’s for serious people. It’s for serious people that want to grow their business, that don’t want to pay the mistake tax by hiring the wrong people. Okay, and so that’s what it is. And if that’s you, reach out and just say, hey, I’d like to know more about this, and we’ll talk through it. Okay.

All right, my friend. Well, that’s it. We’re just under an hour. This was a long one, but I had a lot I wanted to get through today, because I want to multiply the results of this. I think of you as somebody that has the potential to create revenue in the marketplace, to generate profit that you’re able to use for good, to generate revenue that you’re able to use to hire other people, to lift other people up around the world, even in your own community. My gosh, it’s so exciting for me. I just get all kinds of worked up and jazzed up about it. So thanks for listening to this episode of the Eric Dingler Leadership Podcast. I look forward to reading your reviews. I look forward to reading your comments. I look forward to your emails. Until next time, pick one thing from today’s show, take action on it, to help you lead better, to live better.