Let’s say you’d like to bring on help, buuut you also want to figure out WHO you need to bring on and WHAT you need them to do. Feels like a pretty daunting task, eh?
Especially when you have to make sense of all these titles:
Executive Assistant
Virtual Assistant
Online Business Manager
Our recent guest and friend, Erika Macauley, is here and sharing a very special somethin’ somethin’ with us.
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Brittany Herzberg:
Well hello and welcome to SEO shirts a private podcast by the very same co host of the simple and smart SEO show, Brittany and
Crystal Waddell:
Krystal. Here you can experience way more actionable episodes, give them as many SEO masterminds. Each week, we'll be walking you through a different tasks that support your SEO strategy.
Brittany Herzberg:
You will learn exactly how to take simple and smart action with step by step walkthroughs. And quick explanations of how your effort will impact your business's search ability.
Crystal Waddell:
And now it's time for this week's SEO short. Well, hey, hey, we're back with another episode of the SEO shorts, private podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. B and I are here with Erica McCauley. She was recently on the simple and smart SEO Show Main podcast. But when she was talking, I was like, Oh my gosh, we have to drop a little bit more for our private podcast listeners so that we can make their life that much easier. But before we get into that, ladies, can you say hello? Hello, hello, hello. Okay, so Erica, in the main podcast episode where we were talking about actually giving virtual assistants titles versus just blanket statement virtual assistants, you started talking about like the hiring process, and you know how to hire and those types of things. And what really stuck out to me was, you are mentioning their different roles, and you had like a worksheet where different roles can be filled. And why it stood out to me so much is because I have tried to create something like that, where it's like, if I actually had roles to fill, what would the roles actually be? You know? And so, not only do we need to know, like what a VA is supposed to do, or a particular VA supposed to do? It's like, who should we even be hiring for our businesses? What are the options? You know, what's even out there? So I was like, Oh, my gosh, could you talk to us a little bit about that? Sure. Yeah. So
Erika Macauley:
what I find in running hiring projects, as a done for you service, is that a lot of business owners, especially if it's their first hire, you don't know what you don't know, right? You don't know that? Maybe you don't know what an executive assistant is? Or maybe you've never heard the term online business manager before. And maybe you're like, Does my online business manager answer my emails and clean out my inbox, or they help with marketing. And, you know, it's sometimes it's not really clear, because there's a lot of really niche industry terms these days. So what I developed to help my clients work through this, and what I'm going to share here is a worksheet that first of all starts walking you through right from the very beginning, starting to work through tasks in your business, it's all of them, it's all the tasks, finding out which ones you should be doing, because there are still some things you need to do as an entrepreneur, business owner, CEO can't outsource everything I know, we'd love to, but we can't, and then figuring out who those go to. So I've got collections of like kind of, we could call them departments and what kind of job titles would be in each of those as examples to get you thinking about who you're really looking for. I go into some detail about the difference between action or execution level team members versus management level team members and what you can expect from them, somebody might have told you to get an OBM. But if you're looking for somebody to go check off your to do list all day, that's not an OPM, that's not what they do. And then I've included some information about independent contractors versus employees. Because this is a very important legal distinction when you're bringing on team members. And we don't want you to get in any hot water. And we want to do ethical hires and make sure that we're hiring people properly and asking them to do what's within the scope. So it's just kind of a start to finish worksheet to get you going on, who are you looking for? And what are they going to do for you?
Brittany Herzberg:
And I have a quick question, too, because I know you're in Canada, we're in the US. And I know that you work with us based business owners probably as well as Canadian ones. Does it also cover that, like a little bit of those nuances.
Erika Macauley:
There's not a lot of difference between the two countries as far as the independent contractor and the employee thing goes, it is very risky for a business to hire an independent contractor and treat them like an employee no matter what country they're in. So I've put a lot of detail in the worksheet. I'm not a lawyer, it's not legal advice, not to say that cover my back, cover your back cover everybody's by the wires, but I've done the googling for you will say that. And it is especially if you're bringing somebody on for the first time and you're new to hiring, it's really important that you understand the distinction between the two, so you don't get yourself in any hot water.
Crystal Waddell:
Oh my gosh, I think that's so helpful. And I just wrote a blog recently about this, like, it's because my stick is trying to find apps or AI that fill roles, you know, and so that's kind of what I wrote about in my latest blog, but I'll definitely link to the link that you give us so people can go there and like get more information about those actual roles. I think that is so so interesting. Yeah,
Erika Macauley:
when you're new to it, it's hard to know like there's 200 different job titles out there for support team members and really being able to kind of hone in and figure out which one you're looking for is gonna get you a lot better applicants when you go and post that job. When you're super clear about who you're looking for.
Brittany Herzberg:
Yeah, is there anything specifically like a quick action oriented thing like on the sheet or that someone needs to do before they go and grab this download, which of course Krystal and I are gonna go do like this?
Erika Macauley:
No, I don't think there's any pre work really required. The worksheet will walk you through about like things in your business that you're currently doing. But you don't like them things in your business you're currently doing and you love them. Things that are not happening at all, but they probably should be like, that worksheet will walk you through that and tell you what to do with each of them. And then give you that big list of like departments and job titles so that you can find kind of what fits with that collection of tasks that you've then created.
Brittany Herzberg:
Okay, cool. And I know that we'll have a link below this show like in the description situation where if you're listening and you have a question for us or for Erica, probably Erica, with this one, just drop the question in there, and we'll make sure that it gets to her also, where can the listeners find you?
Erika Macauley:
So you can find me really two places online on Instagram. I'm at Erica underscore McCauley. It's Eri Ka, underscore M A C. Au ley. And then my website is just Erica mccauley.com. That's where you can find me. Feeds.
Crystal Waddell:
Awesome. Oh, yeah. And we need to thank Marcy and Leah from the podcast effect because they do an awesome job editing this podcast for us every week. So we just want to give them a shout out if you're interested in you know, having your own private podcast, make sure you try to find them over on Instagram, the podcast effect girls say
Brittany Herzberg:
hi. And tell them that we sent you because yeah, like sending them people.
Crystal Waddell:
Awesome. Well, that's it for now. We'll see you next time. Same place for the next episode SEO shorts.
Brittany Herzberg:
Bye. you're well on your way to being the answer to even more Googled questions. Thanks so much for joining us
Crystal Waddell:
this week. Have you noticed them SEO wins since listening to SEO short? We want to know email us at Hello at simple and smart seo.com Or share an episode conversation thread