welcome to the craft to Career podcast with Elizabeth Chappell or every week we
dive into how you can turn your craft into a successful career get ready to have the career you’ve always dreamed of
[Music] welcome to episode 91 of the crafty career podcast this is Elizabeth Chapel
of Quilter’s candy and this week we have the rest of my team who I’m going to
introduce to you so last week I had part one of introducing you to my employees
the people on my team and this week I have the rest of my team so you’ll hear
from Anna of wax and Wayne’s Studio she well you’ll hear what she does I’ll keep you in suspense we have Charisse of so
hooked on Treasures Serena Shupe of of course bookkeeping and Misty Ming so you
can hear what they do for me how I found them and you’ll even hear me picking Serena’s brain on
hiring more people for my team so you’ll get to hear firsthand some of my questions and answers about the very
thing that we’re talking about so before we jump in let me read the review from this week it’s from Apple
podcasts and it’s from Stevens underscore 14. Stephen says speaks to my soul
thank you for being open and honest about the highs and lows of breaking into the quilting business world I
recently started my t-shirt memory quilt business and I was surprised how many people were saying I’m charging too much
I’m not I’ve checked I loved your podcast about knowing your worth and holding strong it’s tough out there but
I’m grateful for your advice because at the end of the day I’d like to be paid as much or more than a McDonald’s worker
well isn’t that the truth we can really value the work that we do and there’s
actually a couple of episodes where I talk about this episode 89 the mindset of I talk about a few different mindset
things that get in the way of people having success and this one I talk about the fear of raising our prices
and then if you go back a few a little bit longer and I don’t know because I can’t see it right here but there is an
entire episode on knowing your worth and charging for for your worth what your
you know time and energy is worth so if you have not listened to those episodes I suggest you go back and listen to
those and feel empowered and it’s very interesting I mean applying that to your
own business because I’ve put out these episodes and then I have my Mastermind and one of the Mastermind members came
and said I got this email and it was someone saying it feels like what you’re doing is very exclusive in an economy
where we’re trying to be open and letting everybody in you’re doing the exact opposite and it’s just interesting
when it happens to you it feels like very isolating and like you’re I don’t
know being you know singled out but you’re not you’re not alone and it’s
not being exclusive charging what you’re worth which may be more than what people think you should
be charging but you are running a business so anyhow listen to those past episodes I won’t go back into it right
now um I’ve said enough on the topic there but this week I’m really excited for those of you who are curious about
hiring somebody how how do you hire someone and this week actually on this
episode you’ll hear the very very first employee that I ever hired way back in
2016. she is still with me you’ll hear how that’s morphed over time and how
that happened that I hired her so what that looked like way back in the day and what she does now
plus many others and this week if you are looking for advice on how to hire
someone what what to do what to look for how to onboard them I have a PDF with
some tips for you some tips on how to find someone that would be a good fit some tips for having a trial period
where you can just make sure you’re the right fit some wording for if it’s not the right fit and things to look for how
to make sure this person’s going to be a good fit there’s even a personality test that I’ll put a link to on the PDF where
you can have people take a personality test and see are they more analytical would they be better doing this position
are they more creative would they be better doing this position as well as just some ideas of tasks
things that you could have people do for you and um so if you’re interested in that
click the show notes it’s going to be quilterscandy.com forward slash 91 and you can get the link to that download
for some help and guidance in hiring somebody and with that let’s jump in and let me
introduce you to the rest of my team
Anna thanks so much for being here for our listeners who may or may not know you can you introduce yourself and who
you are in the quilting universe yeah thank you thank you for having me
um my name’s Anna um that’s my child in the background
um I go by Wax and wings Studio I design and sell quilt patterns
um I also design fabric for Hawthorne Supply Co and I edit your podcast yes
that’s right so yeah I’m having all the people on who work for me on my team as
we say and I’d love for the listeners to hear how you and I kind of crossed paths so
do you want to share from your perspective sure yeah I if I’m remembering correctly I think we met on
the quilt Buzz call right when we interviewed you yeah so I used to edit and was a host for quilt Buzz the a
podcast that came out in March of 2020 and I started that podcast with Amanda
of broadcast studio and Wendy of the weekend quilter and I think you met them through other projects right was like a
group project or something you knew one or both of them I think I met Wendy first yeah and we went to quilt con and
they’re like let’s meet up so we went out um and then kind of stayed in touch yeah
yeah and if that was that cool gun you probably met my cardboard cutout that they oh my gosh I did that’s right
you embarrassing but so it’s so funny yeah so I guess we met back then you
just didn’t know it yeah oh that’s funny yeah I think we
interviewed him the spring of 21. is that right
okay no it was kind of after the pandemic because I remember Amanda saying the word pandemic she’s like I
edit that out I don’t want to talk about the pandemic and I was like so I know it was after so there we are I brought it up again
even though she wanted it edited out but the thing I remember was it on my
end of that call I felt like the technology was I was having problems and I was like this is going to sound terrible and then the podcast came out
and I was like whoa that sounded amazing they have some kind of magic with their editing and I don’t know if they told me
you did or if I asked but anyway when I knew that you did that and I was starting a podcast I’m like I want her
to do my editing because that was amazing so how did you get chosen or
offered to do that you know have that position on the podcast well we just
kind of fell into place like we had been talking about the podcast for a while like probably almost a year it was
Amanda’s idea initially and Wendy and I were just like bad influences like yeah
of course let’s add one more thing to our plate like of course and
um I had played around with GarageBand the editing software before just like you know just pretending to play
keyboard and just playing around and so I offered because I wanted to learn more about the program itself and so I kind
of just taught myself and yeah ended up there so do you play the piano now I’m very
intrigued no no not at all no it was more like in college we had a group of
friends who would just like to mess around they could all play instruments but I couldn’t and so I would just
pretend and my suspicions that you do play but I
could be wrong I bet you’re better than you think you are so okay where do you live and you’ve
switched you don’t do the editing for the quilt Buzz uh tell me how your career has kind of shifted I mean we can
hear you have a child like what’s life looking like for you yeah so I live in
Pennsylvania about an hour outside Philadelphia yeah the addition of baby number three left me with a lot less
time and so I unfortunately had to take a step back from quote buzz but Amanda and Wendy are still going strong and
they’re doing amazing work but I wanted more time to work on my own things and so I like I said I sell quilt patterns
on my website and I also design fabric for Hawthorne Supply Co and I have some big um projects that I really want to
work on and I needed that time for myself so um right now I’m focusing on making
collections of mini quilts that can then be like mixed and matched together to
create bigger quotes I like the idea of putting a little more of like the creative
um decision making process in the hands of the maker rather than just following the pattern straight if you know what I
mean yep yeah that’s cool so that’s yet to come out you haven’t released those yet
well it’s it’s in the process I have eight no nine are released four of them
were just released in the bright Collective magazine through making I want to have 20 total so at least four
are gonna come out this year awesome Anna thanks so much for being here I’m
so glad that we are paths crossed and I could find you as a an editor for my
podcast you’ve been amazing so thank you thank you so much for having me Elizabeth yeah we’ll see ya bye foreign
thanks so much for being here I we’ve had you on the podcast before by William and I I’ve had you on the podcast but
you know this episode I’m having my team on the people who work for me and one of
the biggest pieces of the puzzle for a listener who’s maybe thinking of hiring someone or want you down the road is how
do I know who to hire so from your perspective how did you find me and then
I’ll share how I you know Found You Yes uh well initially
um a friend of mine Mary of Merry-Go-Round quilts she had taken your pattern writing course the year before I
did and when it came up the following year I hemmed in hod and Mary was
awesome she was like Charice just do it and I was like you’re right and so I did
and so grateful for that push that I really needed but yes that’s how I found
you and is is from a pattern writing course I was relatively new and my
design path and pattern writing path and so it was like let’s just go ahead and
and do this now so that way you’re off on the right foot and and get going so I
haven’t regretted the decision since then and that’s where it initially came about and I’m trying to remember in my
mind so from my perspective what I remember is I saw your first pattern there were
oh yeah we had a Facebook group and you were like hey can we organize it this
way so it’s clean and organized and there were things where I was like I like how she is on top of it like you
have some skills that I don’t and I I I consider that like a talent of mine as I
can recognize things in other people you know so I saw that in you and I was like she’s good at this now what I do not
remember is how you started to do my Pinterest account how did we jump from me recognizing you’ve got some special
set of skills to Pinterest actually it was in our post graduation
call where we did like our one-on-one coaching call and we talked about my
organization and you know it’s funny when you mentioned that first conversation I was really nervous and
asking that just because
my brain works and it’s like trying to be organized I was like either this is going to go great or she’s like uh yeah
we might need to find a special place for her but thankfully it went okay
um but uh yeah and open that post graduation one-on-one chat that we were
talking about it and we were talking about where I was personally and where I wanted
business-wise and how I wanted to get to where I wanted to go and because of my organization and
things like that that’s where that kind of came about it was a need that you had it was a need that I could possibly fill
but the question was was it something that I was truly interested in and you know at first it was like I
don’t know um to be quite honest but when it came down to it over the course
of goodness we’re coming on a year now or maybe past a year I don’t know so I don’t know
I can’t actually remember but um along the line of however long it’s been
I have actually realized the need that is out there and these synergies that I
can bring to the table for those that have quilty businesses and and
taking their Pinterest accounts and their presence in Pinterest to the next level so it’s helped all the way around
and not just me from a business personal and just other
businesses such as yours to do just that and to help increase that presence and
and even actually I can’t even say increase it in some cases some cases it started from from scratch so it’s been
extremely helpful in that way so I’ve I’m surprised I just did not expect to
be here about a year ago but here I am yeah well and
I mean I was thinking as I was logging out of this call I love that I don’t
have to think at all about Pinterest it’s growing it’s doing its magic and
I’m not having to even think about it like you just take the stuff that I’m putting out you repurpose it and
it’s wonderful because as a business owner there’s all these things that we should be doing we cannot do it all it’s
impossible so you either absolutely if you’re on your own you have to pick and choose or if you have the luxury of
hiring somebody you can hire someone to have them do it for you which is exactly what I did here and you do you run
Pinterest for a few other quilter preneurs is that correct I I do there
are including yourself uh seven at the moment nice and right now I’m I’m
actually looking to bring someone on to assist me with it because of the need
that is out there in order to meet those needs and those that are interested
is that’s what I’m looking to do is bring someone on board to assist me with that so no way look at that that’s I
know bunny are you talking about bringing people on board and praying people it’s
like yeah I’m doing just that too how are you finding your person oh goodness so uh for right now as I am trying to
tap into those that and will say usually younger yeah or older so those that are
getting started in their career looking for extra income are those that are
reaching that retirement sort of age group where the I just I want to do
something I want to earn extra income but I don’t want the stress of wherever
it was they came from in their previous life so I’m honestly starting kind of similarly
with people that I know and it’s like do you know somebody that is in that group
that will be interested so you know you start with the people that you know go
for recommendations you know versus kind of starting from scratch and you never know what you’re gonna get right exactly
well it’s good to have a trial period of for both of you to make sure uh are we a good fit for each other and oh yes
definitely that’s exciting so it’s come to this point in a year or however long it’s
been so the conference lies right or it does the conversation that we had when was it
me saying hey you have a good set of skills in this area and I have a need would you be interested in doing this is
that how that played out yeah basically basically and and I had the need too
because I was you know at that point I was about to become a single parent single mom and you know so having a
business that would be able to support the three of us yeah was well necessary
and so the timing worked out great and it just so happens that initially it was
a well this is what I have to do to support my family and turned into it’s
not about do I have to I guess maybe but it’s more of like I actually want to it
took that whole have to out of it and wanting to makes it a huge huge
difference when it comes to how you approach it you know because if you don’t want to do it and you’re doing it just because you need to
you’re going to lose something you know you’re not going to feel it and it’s it’s not going to go well yeah and and
that will translate into your outcomes and everybody else that I do their
Pinterest for it will translate into their outcomes so uh the good news is that have to has completely left is like
I actually want to do this so thankfully that happened good yay well and it’s
kind of cool that you have these other quilting Pinterest accounts because you can pin each re-pin each others like
you know exactly who’s posting and you can repin so it actually serves other quilterprepreneurs to have you do their
Pinterest because you automatically know that you are going to be promoting these people’s you know Pinterest pins and all
that exactly and that’s what that’s what comes with the package basically is that
you can put your pins out there into the Pinterest Universe even into the
Tailwind app which is a secondary app used to schedule out your pins but you
can put them out there and fingers crossed that somebody else will reshare it or re-pin it but what I bring to the
table is that it will happen and I you can utilize those that have very similar either Styles or you know things along
those lines and I can make sure that happens yep uh so you otherwise you
can’t I mean absolutely you can take the chance and it probably will happen and but is it probably versus absolutely
those are the two things you have to weigh well and just for me the time like yeah I’ve taken a couple courses on
Pinterest I know how to do it it’s not a matter of that I just I’d rather put my
energy elsewhere but I don’t want to give up the results from Pinterest so voila here you are
so yeah absolutely because it can make such a huge difference when it comes to
traffic to your website Revenue uh those things that are most important to your
business and that’s one thing reason why I concentrate on just quote related businesses because you can leverage each
other and and have that to work and and to benefit each business on its own
um otherwise could I diversify and things like that yes but why spread so thin where you’re not really serving
anybody to the best of your ability so you know because I’ve been asked by whether it’s uh you know crocheters or
Knitters or things like that it’s like I’m sorry as much as I would like to help you this is my concentration this is my
Niche Niche down yes right that makes me very proud and happy good job because it
can be easy and short-sighted like oh that’s more money I’ll do it but then you shoot yourself in the foot and
long-term game oh absolutely absolutely there’s so many more benefits to being
that specific uh whether it’s and it doesn’t have to be necessarily just cool pattern designers even if you’re a
fabric shop um if you’re a fabric like a textile designer like a fabric designer things
like that uh absolutely anything kind of related into that sphere goes into it
and can be a beneficial to each other which is awesome so and I’m glad that I
can freely share your information and know that I’m not compromising the quality of your work for me so
no yeah for people listeners want to find you how do they find you
oh very simply but there’s my website so sew hooked on treasures.com there’s also
Instagram which is at so hooked on Treasures all it’s about the same and also email
um and that’s so hooked on Treasures gmail.com I try to keep it pretty simple consistent consistent across the board
yes absolutely awesome well I am so glad that we had that call a year and however
long ago and that it’s worked I mean selfishly I’m very glad but also for you like I’m really glad that it’s worked
and been discussed selfishly I’m glad too yeah it’s a win-win a win-win it is
totally well thank you so much for being here we’ll talk to you later absolutely thank you bye bye
well Serena thank you for being here and yeah for our listeners do you just want
to describe I’m you know having everyone for my team on the podcast do you want to describe what you do for Quilter’s
candy yeah so I am I guess the bookkeeper slash CFO Finance person at Quilter’s
candy uh me and my team so I have a team of bookkeepers and accountants
um and we with all of our clients we each um kind of service as a group each
client so there’s always someone available to take care of our clients so we have a bookkeeper and an accounting
manager and then myself the CFO and so everything goes through
um layers of review and all that good stuff so what we do uh with you specifically is we do
weekly sometimes bi-weekly bookkeeping um to keep everything up to date and
then at the end of the month we reconcile all the accounts put together your financial statements and send a
nice little loom video explaining what happened with your numbers that month and comparing to the previous month so
that you can make better decisions in your business and understand where your money’s going where it all came from and
of course we’re always here along the way to answer questions that pop up like about sales tax or should I invest in
this thing or should I buy or purchase this other thing so we are
um we love to be included in our clients decisions and help them make better decisions so we try to keep those
communication lines open yeah well and it’s been really interesting so I started I hired you in
what is it 2023 so I hired you in 20 end of 2021 is that right I think so yeah
because we’ve definitely been at it a full year yes it has to be because so I have this
crafted career course and I was putting together I’m showing them like Year from year one
till now how much I what my revenue and profit has been which is very interesting to look at but one of the
years I was like wow I doubled my Revenue but my profit dipped from the year before and so I reached out to you
because that was the first year that I hired you and I’m so glad it was because I was like what happened yeah why yeah
and you had and then you were like well it’s education I was like what exactly did I spend that on and you sent me I’m
like aha that’s right now I remember that’s what that was so it’s very very what you measure grows like I’ve seen it
and I have friends in the quilting industry who I’ll be honest until I hired you I kind
of put my head in the sand like what’s your Revenue with your profit I was like I don’t totally know but I’m doing fine
so we’ll just say I’m good you know but I mean it’s typical speak to is it
yeah it is right okay it’s very typical especially if like if you’re able to
cover all your bills you’re not like and even even people that kind of stress out about the money situation those Pro
those people probably have even more difficulty looking at the numbers because it’s like this
um endless loop of stress and so they’re like if I look it’s gonna stress me out more but if I don’t look I’ll just be a
little bit stressed I’m just gonna like wish and hope and manifest but it all works out I’ll just sell more
and a lot of times that’ll get somebody to a certain point but then you get to the point where you’re like okay now I
actually need to know what is working and what am I just wasting time and
money on and sometimes it’s a Time situation not necessarily a money like one of the things that I love doing is
breaking down your Revenue by your different programs or types of of income
so one-on-one coaching versus a program versus your pattern writing Consulting
things like that whatever different revenue streams you have it’s really important to break those down so that
you can go back and look to see well where is most of my money come from coming from and where am I spending all
my time because a lot of times like you know the Pareto Principle um 80 of your Revenue comes from 20 of
your customers eighty percent of your Revenue comes from twenty percent of your time so looking at it of like what
do I enjoy doing and what have I been spending my time on versus where where is the money coming from it helps make
more objective decisions instead of thinking that all your money is coming from
fabric sales or whatever but most of it’s coming from like highly leveraged activity that you’re not very spending
very much time on so you don’t realize that that’s your money maker so it’s really good to be paying attention to
those things yeah well and a year ago or so I was
toying with the idea of getting rid of my quilt pattern writing course and I was like I’m gonna go all in on this other thing and then I look at the
numbers I’m like that would be the dumbest thing like that’s my big generator for my income like what you
know so now I’m like well let’s let’s put all the eggs in that basket and it’s been very lucrative and successful and fun and rewarding and had I not looked
at the numbers I would have just gone with my whim of Life yeah let’s do this you know so absolutely
so um what’s your when do people normally hire a CPA like I said I didn’t for
years yeah well there’s a couple different um stages of business that you’ll need
different help with so and not all bookkeepers are CPAs and can
do taxes so it’s important to kind of decide like okay probably a good idea to hire a
bookkeeper as soon as you can afford it but a lot of times people will do their own bookkeeping and just hire a CPA or a
tax Pro to do this stuff at year end and that is okay for certain budgets like if
you don’t have the budget to work with a bookkeeper each month that’s fine but you’re only going to basically be
looking at your numbers at your end when it’s too late to make decisions so you have to kind of weigh that benefit cost
um whereas if you work with a bookkeeper throughout the year even it on a quarterly basis uh you’ll you’ll stay on
top of things a lot quicker and be able to make shifts and changes but I what I
see is typically people two two times people come to us
um for bookkeeping and one is if they are they just know from the very beginning they are not quote unquote
numbers people they’re not analytical and they don’t really want to be sitting in front of the computer doing their own
bookkeeping they’ll come to us early on um under a hundred thousand in Revenue
because they’re like I just know from the beginning I’m gonna Outsource this because I have no business doing it and
then there’s other people that want to learn how to kind of stay on top of those things and what to look for and
what and know that if they’re not involved in the day-to-day of it they won’t look at it so they learn towards
the beginning and then when they get to a certain point it doesn’t make sense for them to be spending the time on it anymore like if they’re spending more
than an hour or two a month they’re like I could be spending these hours selling
or doing something different marketing and growing my business and so at that point they usually hand it over to us
um so yeah most of our clients are between I would say between a hundred thousand in revenue and five
hundred thousand in revenue for the most part we have some outliers but um the majority of our clients are in that
range and um it seems to be a sweet spot because in that range people are still
interested in knowing what’s happening and like learning uh and we like to be
able to to teach our clients like what to look for uh so that’s that’s our
sweet spot as a as a firm so I’m curious do you have clients that are in the million and at that point are they more
checked out are they more involved I would say like clients that are it
depends on the business so I have some clients that are are different Industries and
um and sometimes it’s like it’s it’s one of their multiple businesses that they’re
investors in and so they’re not as like they know what’s kind of happening and they’ve got their their hands in lots of
different businesses so they’re like just give me the financial statement send me a summer email we’re good okay
yeah um and they’re they don’t need as much like education and hand-holding so
um I would say at that point that’s kind of that level of client um but we all started somewhere too so
even those people started at some point in their career learning all the things that help them get to the point to be
able to invest in multiple businesses right true well and then now I’m going to put
you on the spot here this is a personal question for me in my business
um if I’m wanting to bring someone on full time my husband’s like don’t do it because then you have to pay for
medical is this all true and how much does that end up costing a person yeah so you don’t have to provide benefits
for employees um until you get to like a certain level
of like number of employees and I think in Most states that’s usually around 50 employees so it would be a long time
before you were actually required to offer benefits now you can choose to record to offer benefits as soon as you
want to um to to full-time employees uh but one
of the things that I’ve come across because I have one full-time employee and the rest of my employees are part-time
in order for me to put health insurance through our business I have to have one
employee guaran like have raised their hands that I promise I will enroll
right okay have someone that’s going to opt in into the health insurance plan
for me to even be able to run it through my business for me and my family so
um that’s one thing that you might come up against too if you have just one full-time employee and that employee is
actually on their spouse’s plan then they wouldn’t have they wouldn’t even be interested in enrolling sometimes
you don’t have to offer it there’s other benefits you could always offer to make it more enticing for employees
especially the Millennium generation yeah you’re more especially mothers who
are millennials right we are more interested in having time flexibility so
that we can be there to pick our kids up from school or go on field trips or volunteer with a PTA or whatever it is
church whatever and so that’s one thing that even throughout my career I had
tried to negotiate when I was in corporate I was like I’ll how about you don’t give me health insurance and I’ll
work 30 hours a week instead and they were they would not go for it but I’m like I would totally go for that if I
was if an employee came to me and was like I don’t want health insurance but I just want to have a flexible schedule heck yeah and so that’s kind of the way
that we’re trying to build the environment at our firm is creating what we couldn’t have in corporate and making
it more flexible so that people are at the top of their game when they’re at work it’s way more valuable for
everybody well and what’s the difference so all of my employees right now are contract employees what is it called when they’re
not contract it’s just employees so like a W-2 they’ll be getting wages and a W-2
at your end instead of being responsible for their own taxes so that’s the main difference between a contractor and an
employee and this is a very common question we get I actually have a Blog on our website about it because so many
people are confused about it um there there are certain instances where you probably should have them as
an actual employee um but when they’re when they’re a contractor it’s more flexible because
you typically don’t dictate the hours they work they they use their own tools
and and computers and things like that um they’re free to freelance and work
with other um businesses as well um and you don’t have to worry about
paying their payroll taxes and so that’s very enticing for a lot of business owners it falls on the the contractor
but as an employee you are then responsible for withholding their payroll taxes and contributing into
Social Security and Medicare for them right the employer match yeah so in some
instances it’s more expensive to have an employee and sometimes it’s not it’s actually cheaper because
um for some reason a lot of people they they don’t prefer to have to manage their own taxes so they’re willing to
get paid maybe twenty dollars an hour instead of 30 if you handle all their
taxes for them you know what I mean like so they don’t have to worry about it so sometimes contractors are more expensive
and sometimes they’re not it just kind of depends but yeah there is definitely more compliance
to deal with when you when you have an employee like you need a payroll provider
um shout out to Gusto that’s what we use okay I was like is that Gusto yeah yeah other other companies use ADP when you
start to have a lot more employees that’s a popular one um but Gusto is our our preference and
that’s how I run payroll in my firm as well so so yeah I can see now and again but this
whole podcast episode is about hiring people but I can see now I’m getting to a point in my business where
I’m starting to desire a little bit more having an employee where they are focused 100 on my business where it’s
like and yeah I can see I’m getting there so we’ll have to chat sometime about what that would look like
financially and yeah and then absolutely they want to yeah and Gusto actually has payroll
calculators on their website that you can go and kind of plan for this and be like okay I know I want to hire this
certain position let me go onto their website and see how much it’s actually going to cost me because if I if I offer
to pay somebody forty thousand dollars a year salary well I’m also going to be paying payroll taxes on top of that so
what’s the true cost right and so you can calculate that on Gusto and you can break it down by like how many if you’re
gonna pay them weekly what it would look like weekly versus monthly um and all those things and
um yeah typically what we what we plan for is when we’re like gonna hire
somebody we plan for the salary plus 20 because that’ll cover payroll taxes and
any like equipment or computers that you need to purchase for them so that’s a good rule of thumb if you’re going to
offer health insurance and benefits on top of that 30 is what you want to add
to their salary to budget for it and we call that the Burden rate yes it
is it is a little bit of a burden so I’ll probably push it off a little further but
um and it from what you’ve seen with companies I mean I have a business coach I’ll go and chat with her about this but
um what position do people generally hire for their first employee and is it
generally do they see that that pays off or do you see people like I shot myself in the foot and I should have done that
both so okay I think it honestly it comes down to being very attuned to
what you want that person doing so before you even decide to go out and start looking you have to sit down and
evaluate what are the tasks I absolutely need off my plate what are the tasks I absolutely hate doing and can I make a
job description out of all of these things and get them off my plate or whoever else is and start there
um I would say the first employee that a lot of
solopreneurs end up hiring is like an executive assistant slash
Administrative Assistant because it kind of is like a catch-all of like they can
handle your email and your calendar and schedule podcast interviews and
um coordinate different things right and they can also be in the student support
inbox answering student questions and and things like that you’ll get more of a well-rounded person and then when you
call them an executive assistant you can always and you this is always something you can just put it in the job description that this is a requirement
but I may ask you to schedule my you know my laundry pickup or my dry
cleaning or whatever you can like personal stuff too um because a lot of times especially as
mothers there’s a lot of help we need actually with household stuff too because we’re stretched so thin with
working in the business and managing the household that that’s why like I like
that position as a first hire and as an executive assistant because they’re kind of there to support you personally and
professionally um the first hire I actually did in my business was a part-time bookkeeper
because when I first started my business it was just me I was doing all the bookkeeping and the financial statements
and everything for my clients and it just got kind of difficult to be in the
weeds and have this higher level strategic overview and so I hired a
part-time bookkeeper to help take off the day-to-day tasks of bookkeeping for me because I wasn’t quite big enough to
really need like an administrative assistant at that point I was very part-time so that was that decision and
why I made that decision early on um but then the second hire was more of
a like executive assistant type person scheduled all your things for you yeah
and she monitors our help inbox and our student inbox because we have a course as well so
um she helps on both sides of the business and helps me run the team meetings and she’s amazing so yeah and
she’s full-time okay see yeah
yeah I’ve taken way more time than I said I would but that’s okay and so um how did I find her I actually found
her in um I was in a program for course creators um learning a certain launch
strategy I use I do a paid boot camp method for my launches and she was in that group as well
because she um was trying to kind of figure out like does she want to try this online
business thing she was a teacher and she was trying to find something more flexible so she could be with her kids
and whatnot and um was ready to just be out of teaching and she was in that group kind of like
learning trying to learn like what you know what all this online business thing is like in courses and stuff like that
and trying to figure out what she wanted to do and like how she could help people and so she was learning how to do
Facebook ads and um I had posted in the group like I’ve you know I’ve done this one launch I did
my own Facebook ads I know how it’s supposed to be I just need somebody to take it over and I can hand you the process basically and she raised her
hand was like I’m still learning but I would love to help you and I was like great so I hired her as a contractor
initially just to help with Facebook ads and um then I started being like hey can
you schedule this email in kajabi can you like learn this other thing and help with this for this launch coming up and
she was just so willing to it to learn new things and just help wherever she could
um that like six months later I ended up just retiring her from her teacher job and hiring her full-time
oh I’m so jealous so it just worked out that it just worked out I think
you know like finding the right team is sort of like finding the right clients it’s like you’re you’re not just
marketing for clients or customers you’re also marketing for attracting a good team so if people see that like
you’re going places and you have a good heart and whatnot and your mission of
your business is like very well known um the way you present yourself I think
you’ll attract the right people and how often do you have a team meeting with everyone on your team weekly every
Tuesday every Tuesday I block off basically my whole work day for team
meetings and one-on-ones so I’ll do I’ll alternate one-on-ones with people but
everybody gets on the team meeting together we had talked about my team doing a monthly
call starting in January and I was out of town and I came back I’m like all right when do we have our weekly calls or like weekly it’s monthly and I was
like is it shoot you could you could start a bi-weekly but yeah I know this
will be the first time if they’re listening like she’s thinking of weekly surprise yes that’s what my team my team
learns all the things that I’m planning by listening to my podcast or listening to my Facebook lives or like okay note
that Serena said this date oh that’s awesome well this was really
great I love chatting with you and I’m sure I’ll be in touch sooner than later about you know hiring and all the things
but we can talk about it on our year-end meeting so yes yes well and we have a call this week actually so anyhow
surprise but um so if our listeners want to find you where’s the best place to find you
um pretty much Instagram or LinkedIn um on Instagram I’m at of course
bookkeeping and on LinkedIn I’m just Serena Shupe so you can find me those
two places and you have a podcast too it’s got some great stuff I do it’s the ambitious bookkeeper podcast it’s more
geared toward other bookkeepers and accountants as I help mentor on that side as well
um but yeah that’s my podcast and then my website of course bookkeeping.com
yeah and you have courses what what are those and yeah so my courses are
um currently all of the courses that I have out there are for other bookkeepers and accountants and starting their own
businesses um and like elevating their services for their clients uh but I am I do have some
things in the works for uh for like client facing for those of you who are
not quite ready to hire a bookkeeper but you’re like lost on how to do your bookkeeping that is in the works
um so stay tuned for that you can find information on my website about that smart that’s good I’m glad you’re
offering that because I know a lot of people want to do that before they you know hire someone so yeah very cool well
thank you so much for being here awesome thank you for having me it’s all right we’ll talk to you later all right bye
all right Misty thank you so much for being here on the podcast yeah sure I’m happy to be here yeah so for our
listeners this is rather interesting because most everyone else minus my
financial person I found through the quilting Community but do you remember when I reached out
to you and how like what did I ask or say oh actually
um we very first let’s see when you very first reached out I actually think I might have approached you oh did you I
think so I was looking at that time I was looking for kind of a part-time job specifically something I could do from
home and um I was kind of just putting feelers out there with some friends and some
people in the church community and just trying to see if anyone had any ideas of what you know if they had an experience
working from home um you know you just never know with at home jobs you know working from my own
job so I I was putting out some feelers out there and you came and approached me and I think it was about
was it 2015 or 16 when you when you were starting at 16. yeah so it was about
that time um about 2016 and you were I guess just
you had the Quilters candy box um starting up the cultures candy box
and you had said hey my neighbors are kind of helping me once in a while filling these boxes and I’m actually
looking for some more help to get these orders out and fulfilled and so would you be interested and I was like yes
that sounds amazing but I I don’t think I truly understood what what the wilting industry was all that I
was all about and you were like why don’t you come with me to Quilt Market come with me and see what it’s about so
I went to before I think I started working for you all right you took me to Quilt Market and
um I just had no idea that the quilting industry was just so big and that this
creative aspect had so much to offer and it was just a whole world that I never really knew existed and I loved seeing
all of the absolute absolutely gorgeous quilts and booths and fabrics and you people that you introduced me to and it
was just so intriguing and interesting and made me want to learn and to see what this was all about so so yeah so I
said yes and so we you had me uh start helping with fulfillment with those boxes
um and I don’t know let’s see I I helped you by storing all the Notions and the fabrics
and did some ordering and some customer service emails related to that subscription box and so
for a couple of days out of the month my living room was full with wall-to-wall with hundreds of boxes and tissue paper
and stickers and candy and fabric and all the fun you know Notions that go went into boxes and you know my kids
would come home from school and they go oh it’s box day you know and I they just knew to stay out of the living room in
my organized chaos you know so it was just really it was really fun and it was really cool to see
all of the um all of all of the Notions and all the
things that went into that and and it was exciting for me every month to just pack it up and
um I had the perfect kind of setup at that time I had a covered porch front
porch and so after I packaged up all those boxes I could put them out on the porch and contact
the mail carrier to pick them up and I don’t know if she I looked forward to that I know they’re
not but we tried to um you know make sure she knew she was
appreciated and gave her a little treat from that month’s box or whatever and a little you know thank you so but it was really fun and it was a really
um it was just perfect for me and so I hope that I hope it was helpful to you and helped you free up some time to
expand and grow and you know grow your business yes but yeah I mean you were so good at
packing too because even when I did that I tried to have Assist I would whatever this is TMI but I would have a system
like I would do 10 boxes at a time so I’d pull out 10 items and I’d have my little system and then I would do 10
more but get without fail there would be a box a month that was missing something
or you know whatever right you never had that like you literally never had that I
was like well when don’t worry it’ll happen and it didn’t it never happened oh that’s funny well that’s good I’m
glad to hear that I don’t remember yeah but yeah I did try I tried to be pretty organized with it tried not to try to be
exact so I wouldn’t miss anything so I’m glad it worked whatever I did but yeah it was it was good it was fun
so and you also did a very good job of just making it look very cute that was a big deal for me like I want the
experience to be very nice from the moment they open the box and you did a good job of that and yeah I mean my
husband was grateful he’s like oh all the stuff is gone so I was like I feel really bad for them but no it was it was
only a few days a month where it was all over but you know that it worked out really well it was it was really not bad so yeah and then I stopped doing the
boxes and I think there was a period where I was like I hope to hire you back I just don’t have anything right now is
that right yeah it was kind of yeah after you stopped uh doing the boxes and
you were kind of pivoting and trying to figure out a new Direction stepping away from that um I did a few things here and there for
you and then I just yeah I used I stepped we stepped away from each other for a little while just as you’re
figuring that out and then um I think once you got a little more established with the new business ideas and had that
all formulated you’d you approached me again again didn’t ask me with fulfillment but this time with your own
with your own patterns that you designed and as well as some fabric and things here and there so I
of course was like yes I’d be happy to help again and so um so yeah so that’s
I think that’s how that happened and you do oh it’s just so nice so now when I reorder patterns they just go
straight to your house whenever a wholesale order comes in or someone buys on the store you’re the one to ship them
out yeah so you and I both have like the printing labels at our house and now you have the capability if we ran out of
something you just go and order more like tissue paper stickers all that yeah packing supplies thanks yep and which
I’ll just tell you now this is too funny so we had a podcast episode a few weeks ago and I was like I’m gonna raise all
my prices my patterns are now 15 so can you can you email the wholesaler
Distributors and let them know that the price is now raised to 15. sure thank you
this is so official here that’s funny
so there we are in action so yeah that’s another thing is you send
the invoices out when a company emails and says we’d like to order wholesale yeah they go through you you send the
invoice you ship them out and it’s just a lovely thing the only thing that I’ve noticed is if I want to give someone a
pattern I’m like oh those are misties so a few years ago I’m like yeah I was like can I just come and grab a couple of
each one just to have so yes yeah it’s true uh but yeah and oh yeah and now I
am toying with I’m trying to figure out growing the business and what roles people will have so we’re trying the
affiliate to have you run the affiliate thing um yeah so yeah aside from the yeah the
affiliate marketing this new this year I’m really looking forward to starting to get more involved with that and so
let’s see what else do I do I know I’m like huh what else the guest blog post
so I I’m the contact for that and make sure that you know they have the information that they need and and
um you know well this is kind of a big this was a learning curve so
I taught you to the best of my knowledge about some SEO like how to get the green
happy smiley face so that your SEO is good and key words to use giving images
exactly internet text you know stuff like that so there’s a learning curve and just the WordPress isn’t initially I
feel like super user friendly but yeah it took a little bit to figure it out
for me anyway um but and I’m still I’m sure could improve there but uh but yeah you’ve been really
patient with me and trying to figure that all out and so but now that I’ve been doing it a while it’s just yeah
it’s it’s obviously coming a little easier for me and and WordPress is
uh it’s been really really good to to I think it’s a really
good platform to use so um for that but well and I mean for the listeners too so I have a guest blog
post every week and so that’s a lot for you it’s so awesome that I don’t have to
worry about paying the guest bloggers yes I don’t have to worry about anything they email you the blog you post it you
all the things it’s just it’s done and if you go to my Instagram page and you
click the link in my bio there’s a link that’s like latest blog post you update that same podcast so you listen to the
podcast every week double check the editing you write the show notes you publish it make sure that it’s published
every week um and also the link in my click the link in my bio and you post to the
Instagram feed for crafty career I don’t even touch that that’s all you yeah
yeah so just so yeah you do a lot to do with the the podcast just making sure it’s you know you know up there and
ready to go and Friday release day and you know summarizing helping with that
and you know making sure your your website is up to date so yeah it’s been it’s I’ve really enjoyed it I’ve really
enjoyed um listening to the podcast every week it’s been really fun to learn into girl even
though I don’t have uh yet my own creative business I feel like I’m just gleaning and learning so much from the
podcast each week in in and and I hope to be able to to actually utilize some of that
information I’m learning so I in the future so I just am really
enjoying working for you in that aspect because I feel it it’s just so helpful you have
um you said you have so much to offer and so many so much for those you know to
share to find success and to share who they are and to have you know what they have to offer to the world and so I think it’s just you’re in the right
place for you and your talents I love it oh wow that was very sweet of you thank you I feel like I’m so grateful to have
you here I mean as we’re talking and I’m going through all the things I’m like oh my gosh you do a lot for me and you do a
good job I mean I don’t think I don’t think about it because I don’t have to think about it that’s the lovely thing you take all of it off my plate you know
so that I can focus on other things pretty good so yeah well I guess I mean you you don’t really have like do you
have a public Instagram account it’s not like you’re a quilterpreneur or anything like that yeah I have my own personal
account and then I am starting out the an account for my art Misty Ming
underscore art but that’s yeah so I don’t unfortunately I think I am like you said one of the only ones that don’t
um actively uh have any quilting things out there so so yeah nope that’s
totally fine well okay so Misty main is m-e-n-g underscore art that’s correct
and I just actually just putting it out it’s brand new so there’s really not much on there yet so but yeah that’s
where you can find me on at my personal Instagram account on Facebook so yeah okay cool I’m gonna be checking out your
Instagram that’s really and I did not know that very cool well thank you for being here
and thank you for working on the Quilter’s candy team you are an awesome addition so so absolutely thank you
so how about that how was it for you to meet the rest of my team I hope that you
got some insight into what the process has been like for me bringing people onto the team and I hope that you
gleaned some ideas for your own business you may be at the point you may be past the point where you want to hire someone
so I hope that you got some help with that and also if you go to quilterscandy.com forward slash 91 you
can get a little cheat sheet on how to hire someone what to look for if it
doesn’t work out what kind of wording could you use just some general tips on getting started for hiring somebody so
again that’s quilterscandy.com forward slash 91 and if you have not left a review for
the podcast yet please do there are 118 of you who’ve left a review which is it
warms my heart it actually means so much to me that you would take the time and some of you I know you had to Google how
to leave a review in fact one person reached out and was like my husband and I have decided we need to leave more
reviews for companies everywhere which was very good for me to hear I’m like I I should be doing that too and not just
the negative ones right like if you had a really great experience there’s a hotel that went to in New York I love it
I tell everyone about it I’m gonna go to Yelp and leave a review for them because it really helps businesses to get
positive reviews so if you are enjoying the crafty career podcast I would love love for you to leave a review
and if this is something that you find helpful or if you have a friend that you think oh this episode is exactly what
they need go ahead and share the link or take a screenshot and send them a photo
the purpose of this podcast is to reach those who are out there who are wanting
to start a business who maybe don’t know how to do it or they’re not having the success that they want or they just want
a little bit of you know especially when we talk about when you’re feeling down or isolated or
someone’s saying you charge too much just have someone in your corner to cheer you on so if you know someone who
would benefit from this podcast go ahead and share it with them because I want to connect the creative and the
quiltrepreneurs and lift the standard in the industry to help us feel empowered
and to bring a better quality product so thank you so much for being here I
really enjoyed having my team come and talk with you and share what they do and even for some to remind me oh that’s
right that is how we met oh that’s funny it’s look like this over time so it’s been really fun for me as well so thank
you for being here have a wonderful week we’ll see you right here next Friday on the crafter career podcast
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