How to Train New Members
Today we’re going to be talking about onboarding team members today. We’re hitting everything: hiring and finding the right candidates, interviewing them, training and then onboarding them. Yup, all of that and more. We’re really digging into it today, but if you’re interested in learning about it even more, we dig even deeper in my course, Scale Your Service System. If you’re a service-based business owner who is trying to scale your business to your first six figure year and beyond, this is definitely for you.
If you want to learn more about that course, there’s a link in my bio on Instagram at Sam DiNicola. And there's also a page on my website, SamDiNicolaDigital.com. So if that's you, if you're needing to grow a team and get some support for your service based business as you try to continue to scale towards your for a six figure year, definitely go check that out.
I really wanted to talk a little bit more in detail today about onboarding because a lot of times when you're a solopreneur when you're a service-based business owner, you get to a point where you need help. You can't serve all of your current clients. You don't have enough time to go and get new clients to continue growing your business. But you also don't have time to find candidates and interview them and then let alone train them and onboard them like I don't have time to do that or I can't go get help. But I also don't have enough time in the day to continue working as I am and a lot of times that is going to lead to a period of intense stress and burnout and a lot of the time people can end up making the wrong hire for the wrong position. Or rushing that hire and going with someone who's not a great fit, not getting super clear on what their needs are. And then kind of half assing the onboarding process it ends up taking a ton of more time for you. And you're not really arming your new hire with all the tools that they need to be as effective for you as possible. And then you're like, well, I need help and you're not good enough. You're not really getting the job done.
I'm not feeling like I'm getting any help, right? A lot. That whole experience has happened to so many business owners, but a lot of the time the failing is not on the new hire. It's not their fault. It's your fault. As the business owner as a manager, as the hiring manager. You did not think through that process or setup that process well enough and maybe it was kind of a shit show. Right? And that happens, right? It happens to so many business owners, it's okay. But I really want to help you to try to avoid that as much as possible. So today we're going to talk a little bit more specifically about the onboarding, the training process. So if you think you might want to get help in the future in your business, could be a month from now, six months from now, a year from now, you may not know if you ever want to hire anybody in your business doesn't matter. You are going to want to document your SOPs, your standard operating procedures. I don't care if you're like well, I would never outsource this thing. I it's always going to be me handling it. I don't care. you document your SOP. Okay. So how do we do that? Because creating an SOP takes friggin forever. All the different you have to write down all the different steps and it takes so long, right? Well, there's some amazing tools that are starting to come out. That will both allow you to record a screenshare of you doing that whatever the thing is that you need to do, or a video of you walking them through it, and then they will also transcribe each of the steps to that process so that you also have a text based document right? And that's really the ideal that you want for an SOP. You want a video if it makes sense at all, so that you can give them a little bit more context, explain it, show them how to do it. And then you also want a text based document so that they can skim it if they just need a quick like, oh, I need to double check where do I find that thing? They can go right into the document. Now like I said, there are some tools that are starting to do this. I haven't found one that I really love yet that works great. That is affordable. So I'm not going to make any recommendations on that just yet, although I'm sure they will continue to get better. And better and I will be I will find one that I like soon and I'll make a recommendation on one. But you can still accomplish this really really easily right so the way we document SOPs right now in my agency is that we record a loom L O M is an amazing tool. I talked about it before. You can do screen recordings, you can record yourself, you can record both yourself and the screen at the same time. They're amazing, right? And so I will walk them through the whole process. And just I'll do the thing and I'll just talk out loud as I do it. So doing it in that way. It doesn't slow me down because I'm not having to stop and type out the thing that I'm doing every step of the way. That's what really can slow you down. So by just recording myself doing it and explaining out loud what I'm doing it really doesn't take any additional time. Now the trick is what I also do is I use some sort of transcription service while I'm doing that, so that my voice is getting transcribed as I speak out loud. So I use otter.ai It works great. I just turned it on. It listens to what I'm doing it transcribes. You know what I'm saying? I use it for this podcast. I have it running while I record, and it transcribes everything for our show notes.
It's great. I use the free version of Otter, I really recommend it. Then, I have a text document that we go into, and all the text is there. We just might have to clean up the text a little bit set up some line, but you know, step one, step two, step three, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you're done. Right and I just had my VA do that if you're a team one you can do that. And it will take you way less time. But now we have this amazing SOP, right that we can link to in our tabbing click up in our task management system. We can save it into our Google Drive, we can send it to them right. And the reason that you want to do this is you've just trained someone it doesn't matter if you're just having someone help you while you are going on vacation, or you go on maternity leave, right? Or if you're hiring someone and outsourcing into that position to get support right. Now, you can say okay, I need you to do this task. Here's the SOP here's exactly how to do it. I want you to watch that. I want you to try and do it. And then you asked me if you have any questions and now we've cut down on so much of your time because you already have it. So any tasks that you are doing more than once you want to create an SOP for because then what's going to happen and just do it slowly as you go. Right? You don't have to sit down I never recommend don'ts. If you ever are saying oh guy just to sit down like bust it all out. I know I'm not because you're never going to do it that.
Time is never going to come, oh, I just need an hour and I'll sit down and busted out that hour is magically never going to come for you. So just do it as you go. And then once you are and even if you're like I need to hire someone right now, just start doing that make it a point to do that. And you'll be able to hand over so much to them, that it's going to cut down on the amount of time that they need you while they're onboarding because anyone you want these SOPs to be so straightforward, so detailed, so simple, that you can hand them to anyone and anyone could do them. You can hand them to your mom and she could do them right your grandma, right? That's how detailed you want them to be. If they have questions, of course they can come to you and ask questions. But if they're having the SOP, and they're having issues, they're struggling. Then we have one of two situations, right? We situation one is they're not using the SOP, they're not following those steps, which is a red flag for me because you can't follow simple directions right? Or they're just not getting it and that's also a red flag for me because I hire independent thinkers, right. That's an important thing for when, whenever we're hiring a team member, so that's going to be a great indicator for you there but now you're not relying on showing them once and then then having to remember this new thing that they've never done before after you showed them once. It's going to cut down on so many questions. It's going to make the whole process so much more simplified. Even if it's something that you don't know if you're ever going to outsource the offices set up that SOP as you're doing it the next time you're doing it and it's just your you'll just have it for the future. SOPs are so key they're so important and any business that really is diligent about keeping their SOPs, you know, created and up to date runs so much more efficiently. And effectively. I cannot stress that enough.
I hope this has been helpful if you have more questions about setting up SOPs for your business, how to make your onboarding process even smoother than this, your hiring process smoother than how to find the right candidates. We cover all of that in detail in my scale your service system course. So again, if you have any questions about that you think it might be the right fit for me. This might be the right fit for you, DM me on Instagram, @SamDiNicola, or check out the page with more information on my website, SamDiNicolaDigital.com I would love to answer any questions you have or have you into the course as you work to scale your service-based business to six figures and beyond. And don't forget, you can always leave a review for this podcast. If you've been enjoying it every single month, we choose one reviewer to give away a free coaching call to it is the fastest, easiest, cheapest way to get my eyes on your business specifically answering all your questions one on one. If you haven't already, make sure you go and leave a review. You're basically like leaving money on the table if you don't write because you can get that call with me for free. So make sure you go and leave a review and I will see you next time on no fluff Small Business simplified.
