Intro (00:01):
Pixie Dust & Profits is a podcast for small business owners who love Disney and want to sprinkle some of that magic onto their own businesses. Join your host, Nicole Boucher and Yasmine Spencer. As they explore the mouse’s $12.6 billion operation and break down exactly how you can apply these big scale concepts to your own business.

Nicole (00:26):
Welcome to this week’s episode of Pixie Dust & Profits. Now this week is going to be a little bit different than other weeks that we’ve had in that it’s only going to be me, Nicole and Yasmine will not be joining us for this episode. Some of you may know that Yasmine is expecting her first child this winter. And so she’s been feeling a bit under the weather, but we still wanted to make sure that you had something from us this week. And so today I’m going to talk all about something that we mentioned very briefly in a previous episode of the Pixie Dust & Profits podcast. So we mentioned in passing about bus drivers at Disney World and how they are the first smiling face that guests see when they arrive at the resort and they’re on their way to the parks. They are working early hours, late hours, but yet they’re always joyful and pleasant to the customer.

Nicole (01:17):
And there’s a good reason for that. So at the time, a few figures, and would you be surprised to know that Disney World actually employs 73,000 cast members in the central Florida area? Their payroll is over $2 billion. They have 3000 different jobs and job titles across the entire property, bus drivers and water taxis. Those are just one of the roles that keep this operation moving. So bus drivers currently make $16 an hour and starting pay. And the minimum wage in Florida is actually $8 and 46 cents. Now we could get into the talk about living wages and everything along those lines, but I just want to say that bus drivers starting at $16 an hour is almost double the state minimum wage. And there’s a reason for that. Disney’s committed to providing a good show for their guests. You are always expected to be able to answer a customer’s questions or direct them to where they can get their question answered.

Nicole (02:19):
You are providing a show experience for those customers. And so that’s why Disney does not take any liberties with those front line associates that they’re running their businesses with because they know that a happy person in that role is a happy guest on their way home. If you put someone in a role that has a lot of customer interaction that just does not enjoy talking to people or who is upset about how little pay they make, because it’s really tough to make ends meet at home. That’s going to come across in their interactions with their guests and they don’t want that. They want a great magical experience for everyone coming. So how does this relate your small business? Well, usually it comes in with hiring and I see this happen a lot on the teams that I’ve worked on throughout the years, that we need someone to fulfill a certain role.

Nicole (03:10):
We are thinking about outsourcing. I have some clients who have never hired a contractor before they started working with me as a consultant. And one of the things that I help them with is hiring that team, identifying the things that they can outsource and helping them find the person, interview the person and ultimately onboard them and get them on the team to success. And what typically ends up happening is that goes well when you have a process and a plan, but when you’re trying to do it on your own, and you’re first thinking about scaling up or hiring someone for your team, or just offloading a couple of little things, it can be really difficult because one of the things that you’ll hear is that you have to spend money to make money. And they don’t always believe in that methodology. You can put in some hard work and make money too, but it is true that when you hire, you’re probably going to have to take a cut out of your own pocket in order to bring on those resources that you need in order to scale your business.

Nicole (04:05):
So it is a little bit of a chicken and the egg situation. And so one way that people try to make it work is that they look for something that is within their budget, or they don’t even have a budget. They just know they want it cheap. And they look for someone who, you know, can fit into a certain price range. Like whether that be a hundred dollars a month or a hundred dollars a week, whatever that may be, they make the mistake of not figuring out what they can truly pay someone or making room in the budget to be able to pay someone. And so they end up hiring someone for $10 an hour or $15 an hour and not being happy or satisfied with the work that is put out. And then they have to start from scratch all over again. Start the interview process again, find someone else, maybe be jaded about hiring help and decided just to do it themselves after this bad relationship goes sour.

Nicole (04:59):
Yes, there are definitely exceptions to finding people who do great work at a low rate, but in my experience, you’re better off moving up to those people who charge a little bit more for their work. So I’m going to go through like three separate areas have to do with this. So the first thing I want to mention is that you kind of get what you pay for. If you’re looking at sites like Fiverr or Upwork, or these places where you can outsource small little tasks, you might find someone super cheap that has okay, reviews and get your stuff done, but spend a significant amount of time editing it or fixing it or sending it back for revisions. And all of that time lost and time spent getting someone up to speed is something that you probably could have done it yourself. And even though it was cheap, it still cost a lot of time.

Nicole (05:50):
So there’s actually three things at play here. And if you think about a triangle, it’s like your time, your money and your quality level. And so if you are going to go easy and cheap, your quality level is probably going to suffer. If you want something high quality that takes less time. The cost is probably going to skyrocket. So keep that in mind with every decision you make is this role, a key role in my business that the quality cannot suffer. There are some things that you can outsource cheaply. That doesn’t matter if the quality isn’t so great, such as transcriptions from a computer, you might have time to be able to fix those up yourself. And you might not care if things are spelled a little bit wrong, but something where you are doing a customer facing activity like a virtual assistant, answering your inbox or responding to requests for refunds.

Nicole (06:47):
That’s a role that is pretty important because you want people to have a good experience there. So you want at least medium level of quality, if not high quality. And so the cost is going to go up for that. So keep in mind when you are hiring, yes, there are definitely roles that you can do. Cheaply. There are also roles that you need to understand what is the impact to my business. If the person in this role is not doing a good job and is not polite and does not embody the messaging that I want them to embody and decide is this worth extra budget basically is the customer experience worth the extra budget. Now I want to go into a little bit of a, how to find someone for these tasks in your business, how to find someone who can have a good client experience, who cares about the show on the stage.

Nicole (07:37):
And so my two things right here, I always recommend to everyone. The first is referrals from other business owners that you have networked with that, you know, well, maybe let you know, not so well, it could be within your industry. It could be in another industry, but anytime you have networked with someone else, they’re probably looking for help too. Or they know someone who works with them or someone else, and you don’t necessarily need to hire that exact person, but you can reach out to them and say, look, these are the activities that I am looking for someone to fulfill. And I know that you do these for somebody else. If you are booked or not booked, or if this isn’t the industry for you, do you have anyone that you can recommend? And so I actually found one of my assistants that way. She’s the marketing assistant who helps with this podcast was I reached out to someone who had applied for a role.

Nicole (08:27):
I had a while back. And I said, you know, I was really impressed with you and I’m sorry that it didn’t work out six months ago, but I would love to talk now. And so she came back and said, she wasn’t doing that type of work anymore, but she could refer me to Kayla. And Kayla has been on my team for a year and a half. I’ve referred her to other people. She keeps this podcast moving, and I am thankful for her every day. And she was a referral of a referral. So keep those connections handy, whether it be to work with the person directly to ask them for their referrals. Now, the second place that I recommend finding someone and not everyone has this. So if you don’t, maybe it’s something you can look toward building, but if you have your own community or network, it can be a small email list.

Nicole (09:09):
It could be a giant, you know, list, a Facebook group just Instagram people who DM you often you have some sort of community. I am sure. And often it’s easiest to onboard someone who is within your own community because they already know your language. They already know your brand. They already love your products. They’ve bought everything from you. And that can be a good place where you can have that happy medium of maybe not buying the cheapest contractor for the job, but also not having to spend more, to get the most high quality expert at the role, because you have someone who is passionate about what you do is passionate about your offers and wants to be a part of your organization. And so they can be that middle of the road cost. And you’re actually going to have less time onboarding them because they already know you and they already know how to talk to fans of your work because they are one.

Nicole (10:02):
And so that’s another great place to find someone with one of my clients. We actually have mentors in her program that help everyone through the Facebook group prompts and just commenting on things and helping people out. And, you know, we decided that we needed a bigger role on the team than just a couple of mentors. And so we went to that, one of our stellar mentors and said, Hey, would you be interested in doing this on a bigger basis, helping us with customer service inquiries in the inbox, things like that. And you know, she already loved what we were doing. And so it was so easy to onboard her and bring her to the team. And it’s really improved the experience for all of our customers to make sure each of them feel heard and supported in our programs. And so looking for those people that are already in your audience are a great way to find help without it necessarily being time consuming for you or expensive for you.

Nicole (10:52):
Now, the last thing I want to go over when it comes to finding helpers for these little tasks you have in your business, is how to set yourself up for success. Now, when you’re looking for these contractors, sometimes we may feel inclined to ask a buddy who doesn’t have their own business to do this role for us. And I would caution you strongly to make sure that if you are asking someone who does not have their own business, or who wants to try this out to see if they want to do this, full-time I would suggest that you make sure that they’re bought in that they, you know, are the person who is buying your products are really into it. Because I have seen time and time again, people who are just interested in trying this out, don’t stay for the long-term and then you have lost all that time, setting them up and onboarding them to what you need them to do.

Nicole (11:40):
And it gets really clunky because you have someone who’s not as engaged or passionate about your business as you are. And it’s just difficult in order to keep them on the team. Someone who has their own business, who manages multiple clients, they’re going to be more reliable. They’re going to know how to get things done. This is their full-time job. They don’t have competing priorities. They don’t have a day job in boss to answer to. And so those are my tips about how to set yourself up for success, with who you hire and my tip for how to set yourself up for success, to make sure that that person can get things done is to do them yourself. First, do those things first that you are going to hand off, record yourself, doing them. You can use the tool called use loom.com. You can use a desktop recorder, whatever it may be, record yourself doing them.

Nicole (12:30):
Then you can share that video with them. And it’s like a mini procedure for them. If you love to write, you can write procedures like step one, step two, do this. But even just video recording what you want them to do, downloading your brain in a way is going to set you up for so much success, because they’re going to come in and they’re going to say, Oh, now I know how to do this task that you’re asking me to do. And that’s the other thing. Make sure you have a list of what you expect that person to do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. It doesn’t have to be a very long list, but if you have someone who’s coming in on a bigger like retainer basis with you then, okay, these are the things I expect you to do daily. I expect you to answer Facebook inbox.

Nicole (13:12):
I expect you to go to the Gmail inbox. I expect you to add some social media posts to here, here and here every week. If you have an outline of two to three things in each of those categories for the person to do, they already know what they’re going to be expected to do. And it’s going to be so much easier when they come on board, instead of them starting on their first day and looking around the water cooler, the virtual water cooler and saying, I don’t know why I’m here, what I’m doing. And I’ll just wait for, I’ll just wait for my boss to tell me what to do. Cause we all know we run our own businesses and it’s hard to run your own business, especially if you work with clients because you’re probably more in their businesses than your own. And so the last thing on your mind is to show someone how to do something.

Nicole (13:56):
You already know how to do, because it’s just seems like a waste of time to you. You’ve got 10 things to do that. Aren’t on that list. So set yourself up for success, setting them up for success. You would hate to start your first day walking in, not knowing what you’re even supposed to do with your time. First days are usually awkward, but you can make it less. So by having a plan coming in, I hope that this was helpful for you. And we will be back with our regular scheduled program in two weeks. Thank you so much for being a Pixie Dust & Profits subscriber. And we can’t wait to share more magic with you in the future.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
[Inaudible].