Unlocking Business Growth Through Effective Delegation with Nicole Rivera

But before we dive in , a quick word of caution While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date financial and tax information , nothing you hear on this podcast should be considered as financial advice specifically for you or your business .

We're here to share general knowledge and experiences , not to replace the tailored advice you get from a professional financial advisor or tax consultant .

Her creativity has allowed her to approach traditional human resources with a different perspective , with a fierce passion for putting people first and creating fun and growth-oriented cultures that employees are obsessed with .

As director of people and culture at Jill's office , she has helped her grow her team to over 100 employees , winning a Utah Top Employer Award in 2022 and 2023 . She and her husband , joey , launched Lavender Lush Cleaning in 2021 with the goal of hiring amazing people from day one to run daily operations .

Today , lavender Lush Cleaning in 2021 , with the goal of hiring amazing people from day one to run daily operations . Today , lavender Lush is run by amazing staff put in place so that Nicole and Joey can focus solely on growth . And today we're going to dive into the dangers of not delegating , which is a huge topic .

I love this topic and it's something that I've fell into the trap of not delegating effectively , so I'm super excited to get into things today . Welcome to the podcast , nicole .

You thought you were the one that could do everything or you were the best person to do all the jobs . You didn't trust anybody else and you just tried to do everything yourself . So I actually owned a retail shop back in 2010 . And I was very excited , very passionate , and I ran that for six years pretty much by myself , six days a week .

I did hire a couple people to help out . Nobody managed anything . They ran the register and that was it , because I really just believed that I was the face of the company . I had to do everything . No one could do anything as good as me , and I'm sure you've fallen in this trap before , if you're listening , or you're currently in this trap .

So that was my first taste of how bad it can get when you don't delegate really anything .

Moving on to Jill's office , when I first started here , I was sold on the idea of a company that provided a service that just supported business owners when they were overwhelmed or stressed out , and I was just closing down that retail location , and so I was in that pain point at the moment , and so that feeling of providing a service to other business owners

that might've went through that same extreme pain really struck a chord for me , and so I was so excited to join Jill's office While I was transitioning out of my business . I could only work here part-time , but I have a degree in HR , my background is in HR , and then you know I just want to .

I'm an entrepreneur at heart , honestly , and so I felt like it was just the perfect fit . I moved into business development and sales shortly after that , and I worked directly with clients for a couple of years and then eventually moved into human resources here at Jill's , because I knew there was a need for it to have a really good process for hiring .

And it is a call center by nature , and so call centers have a reputation of not having good culture , having really high turnover , and so it was a goal of mine over maybe the last four years to have a really great culture where people just felt like they belonged , they had a path for growth , hiring amazing people to take care of our clients and just creating

this kind of environment . That's kind of uncommon in call center environments , and so I did that for a while and now I'm moving back into sales and marketing and I'm really excited because there's already a strong team in place and so I'm really just I have to delegate .

I can't do all of the things that at the size that Jill's office is now , but when I when I got into Jill's office is when I started to realize our clients were coming to us and there was a recurring pattern of them not delegating things and really just convincing them that they needed to start to let go of things .

They needed to focus on the things that they were the best at and the things they loved , because they were doing a lot of little things like receptionist work for one as a business owner bookkeeping . If you're not in love with bookkeeping , why are you doing your own bookkeeping ? That's kind of my first hire anytime I started a business .

I need a good company that I can trust to do my bookkeeping and then kind of move from there to just start building out a really strong staff , people that are better than you at all of these different things , yeah .

On certain things I'm like I I catch myself thinking like I have to do this thing because I'm like , and then I'm like you know that's , I shouldn't go with that and someone else can definitely do this better than me , right ? So I ?

Even now , I still get stuck on this , uh , but I , I was just talking to a painting business owner yesterday and I was going through his pricing . I was like , how , like ? How do you do pricing ? Because that's usually a big issue with profitability is that they're not pricing appropriately Enough , right ?

And he , so I was like , okay , so let's take a typical job that you're doing , how much ? You're doing a lot of it on the job site . Now , because he was doing he was a small business owner still working on the job site and I was like like , okay , how much ?

If you were gonna pay someone else to do the work on the job site , how much would you pay them ? Uh , per hour ? So we can kind of calculate what the the cost of the project would be . And he was like , uh , I can't really hire anybody , no one can do this , uh , this job , like I can , so I can't really assign an hourly rate to it .

And so he's basically saying that he , you know he was the , the best one , that he kind of almost saying that he was the best painter in the world , not quite saying that , but you can't hire anybody to replace him . But you know , it's just one of those things you got to realize .

The painting industry is like a multi-billion dollar industry , with , you know , hundreds of thousands of , you know there's a hundred thousand painting businesses and there's gotta be , with you know , hundreds of thousands of employees . So there's definitely folks that can do painting just as good and probably better than you .

So almost a little bit egotistical to think that you are the best and no one else can do it like you .

And what really helps me now is every time I'm assigned a task , I try to remember how much is my time worth and what am I really good at . And in your business , you should be the best person at vision . You have to have good vision for your company , but you can't be painting all day .

If you're working on how to scale , how to grow your business , how to make connections with big partners , it takes a lot to think of the next level of your business . It takes a lot of work and a lot of mental power , even if you're sitting still brainstorming ways to expand your business 10x your business . How can you do that if you're painting all day ?

Painting all day and to think that nobody paints better than you , to think that in my house cleaning business , no one cleans better than me ? That would be 100% ego . And I went into my business knowing I'm not the best house cleaner , so we hired people from day one .

So I've never been the house cleaner and it was kind of an experiment to see like , can I actually do this with people from day one ? And obviously I had to do more than I wanted in the beginning because I couldn't hire a manager right off the bat , but somebody that's actually cleaning .

Their hours are directly being paid by the clean , so I didn't have to worry about admin hours in the beginning . So we're almost three years in and we have a GM now and a trainer and , yeah , it's just coming together really good and the focus has just always been on I can't do it all .

I can only have vision , and I have , and I try to make sure I'm always brushing up on good leadership so I can be a good leader . Everybody else is making all the wheels turn . They're better at everything than meaging , scheduling , cleaning , customer service .

They're always better and I make sure to tell them that all the time and it makes your life so much easier once you can unlock that delegation skill .

He liked to sail , and competitively , but he also ran this business , which he took from only doing a couple million to multiple billions . And he said that he kind of saw himself as the captain of the ship in his business .

He would put all the people in place to do all the different tasks and he would just need to focus on the strategy , the navigation of leading the ship where it needs to go . And so he took the same mentality of being a sailor , the captain of a ship and his business in the same way .

It's like you're setting the direction , you're getting the people in place and you're taking the you know your ship or your business to the next level .

things . And when we sell ourselves on the idea of being a business owner , I love the e-myth . Have you read the e-myth before ?

Yes , the e-myth really struck a chord with me because there's a lady in there , then she's a baker right and she's sitting on the ground crying and it just reminded me so much of my retail shop , everything that had gone wrong , and I was in such denial for six long years that I could have gotten out of it a lot faster .

But I learned so many lessons and so I don't regret any of it . But in order to see how your business is doing , you need people in the right spots so that you can kind of stand up and let go of everything and see from a bird's eye view what's happening .

When you're in the thick of it , when you're cleaning , when you're painting , doing all of the things , it's so hard to step back and review all your processes and you know you just got to get over that first hump of like I can't hire a painter . No one's better at painting than me , and once you get past that , it's just a little bit each time .

It's like learning a new skill you practice it and you just start to get better at delegating over time .

A lot of times it's leads and if you miss that call you've just flushed money down the toilet , essentially so that that's always like the biggest delegation right off the bat , Cause you know , especially if you're just starting out , you're doing estimates , you're producing the work or or managing the work , and so you're not always available to pick up the phone as

soon as possible and , uh , so you're basically losing money as soon as you don't answer that phone because the person isn't going to call you back . They're just going to go down the list on Google and call the next painting business that , and then they'll answer the phone and they'll book a estimate with them instead . So , are there .

I mean , is that like what are some ? What's your kind of take on delegation in the beginning ?

Like , like you said , if you're paying for especially if you're paying any ads , if you're doing local service ads or Google ads or Facebook ads , I mean you're already paying money for leads and if you let them drop through the cracks you are just wasting this money . And if you're a startup or you're trying to scale , you cannot waste any of that money .

So , making sure that you have a solid process set up for all of your phones being answered , all of your messages coming in , that's a major requirement for me . I needed to make sure every single lead was answered first , and I mean in home services . Home services are notorious for having horrible customer service and not answering their phones .

I mean , if you ask anybody and I've done this multiple times , I've done research and just asking people you know if you needed HVAC , you needed plumbing , you needed house cleaning , how many companies did you have to call till you actually got someone to answer and how many of those conversations were pleasant with a really good customer service .

If you can solve the answering the phone and good customer service , you're already so far ahead of the competition . So many times at Jill's office we book jobs and the caller will say on the phone you're the first person that even answered For my cleaning company .

I have someone in office that answers the phones and then it rolls into Jill's office if she can't get to it , because she will be talking to clients sometimes and then we're closed nights and weekends and so calls always roll into Jill's office .

So literally our phones are answered 24 seven and I would highly recommend , if you have time to do research or you have admin that can do research , just to call like 50 to a hundred of your competitors just to see and document what happens on those phone calls , because we did this for our cleaning company I think we had three or four actually answer and none

of them were friendly , none of them were nice . Some of them took a message and answered and said I have to call you back . Never called us back and so we've already got that part figured out Capture every single lead , provide excellent customer service and you're already so far ahead of your competitors .

Really easy to do with Jill's office because we've been doing it for so long and even just at the super basic , just answering as your company , providing great customer service and capturing all of their information will take a huge chunk off of your plate .

The house cleaning industry is very unique because there are a lot of solo cleaners that clean on the side , so we don't even really mess around with Facebook , facebook ads or anything .

People are looking for someone just to come in for like 20 bucks an hour , and we're close to 60 an hour , 65 sometimes , because we have a lot of expenses that we have to cover .

Hvac technicians or plumbers . They're not the best at customer service and receptionist work . So that's just . If you know you're not , that's not your job and you're not the best at it , give it away to somebody else , yeah .

What guidance should we provide so that they know what we're trying to accomplish , so that they can do their job and be effective ?

And then you need to go find people that have the same values and then also have the willingness to do hard work . Values and then also have the willingness to do hard work , because from there then you can build on skill and so for some really high level positions that require , like , certifications or a different skill level , that's a little bit different .

But in home services , a lot of times you can find people that are very passionate , that have those same values as your company and , because all those things align , they're so willing to learn whatever they need to learn to do a really good job . But I do think that there's a couple of different things or lies that we tell ourselves as business owners .

The first one that we talked about , where you can't find anybody better than you . That's a complete lie . Like you said , all I need to do when I need to rise above that in my business is I need to think okay , what are the companies that are doing so much better than me that I want to be like Doing millions of dollars and I'm not there yet .

They obviously have something figured out and they have people that are really good . So that's false . There are people that are better than me . The second one is that good people don't want to work . That is false .

Most humans by nature want to do a good job and what I always try to tell business owners and to myself be accountable for everything that happens in your business . If your employees are doing a bad job , if they are not showing up for work or anything like that . Look internally first at yourself and your processes .

Do you even have policies to tell them where to go ? Did you have a really good interview process and find people that actually aligned with your core values , or were you desperate and you just got the first person that you could hire ? Look at yourself first before you point blame to others .

And then the third thing is to think about your employees , experience their journey , just like you think about your customers when you are advertising or when people go to your website .

They see your business and they have a very specific interaction and experience with you and you want to carry a really good experience through your conversation , through the actual service and then through the follow-up . Well , your employees need the same thing . When you're hosting jobs , applicants will go to your website . What does that look like ?

What does your communication look like when you scheduled the interview ? What was the interview like ? What was onboarding , training , any coaching or corrective actions , anything like that ?

All of that has to be really built intentionally in a way that's going to give people a really good experience , because what I've learned over the years is you can have a great employee . I believe most people are great people . They want to do a good job and if I didn't unlock that , maybe I put a barrier up somewhere .

I've seen people that have just like done so well because you kind of unlocked everything for them and you gave them this great experience , so you helped them level up .

On the other hand , I've seen people do horrible because maybe my communication wasn't there , maybe I wasn't very clear , maybe I didn't think about them enough and I just kind of you know , brush them off or something .

So I do try to just be very accountable for every single thing in my business and it has helped me tremendously from pointing fingers at , you know , just people suck . No one wants to work , everybody's late , you know , and it's a lot more growth minded than than the scarcity mindset too .

Before a long time ago , or maybe even that long ago , I felt like core values were just like something that people gave lip service to and didn't quite know what that even meant and how that would help me , you know , in my business . Could you just unpack that a little bit for folks ?

Core values helps you to find the perfect person that's the right fit as an employee for your company , and so it doesn't have to be extravagant , doesn't have to be something crazy , but for our cleaning company like we need people who actually genuinely care to go into someone's private home and provide this level of service .

That affects our clients very emotionally . House cleaning is a very emotional service . We deal with a lot of people going through mental health issues . We go through a lot of families dealing with deaths in the family .

Cleaning the house sounds like such a small thing , but when you think about how much you have to do on top of your real life , stress that cleaning can be can fester into something so much larger . So we tell our employees we don't sell cleaning . It's the experience that comes from the house being done and being cleaned .

So lots of crying clients cry a lot when we clean homes , and so we have to keep our client , our employees remembering that . And so one of our core values is service with heart . If you read that job posting and you're like , oh , I'm a commercial cleaner , I just go in in the middle of the night and I just you know , I mop

things , I clean bathrooms when you see service with heart , that's probably going to turn you off because you don't want to work for a company that talks about those kinds of things . You want someone who just wants good quality and make it fast right . So your core value is what they should do For one .

It has to be really who you are as a company and it should really push away people who don't hold those same values and it should really attract the people that have the same core values or something that is very complementary to that . We went through EOS planning a couple months ago .

We went through EOS planning a couple months ago and kind of we didn't change too much with our core values , but we did kind of build a new one in . That is to always be prepared and on time , because that was something we realized was so important for our clients and some of our technicians .

They didn't always have that in the forefront of their mind and so it does sound , I think in the previous years , like you said , something kind of cheesy that didn't hold a lot of weight . But once you really know what your core values are , you know exactly why someone's not a good fit for your company .

You can actually have a conversation with one of your technicians who's not upholding a core value , because you've already talked about it . Everybody understands this is who we are as a company and you're not upholding our core values . In fact , you're completely opposite .

Those people will tend to weed themselves out really quickly also and that's kind of what you want . You don't want someone that's on your staff that isn't a good fit just sticking around for so long . You want them to really understand that they're not a good fit so they can take themselves out quicker .

And once you get better at it , then you end up avoiding that situation because now you're hiring proactively for your core values .

So it does make things a lot easier , and I'm a big fan of Traction , which is the EOS Entrepreneurial Operating System by Gino Wickman , so I definitely recommend everyone listening to read that book if you are struggling on getting a grip on your business . As an excellent book , so I love it .

So I kind of hopped around , had to go back and then I came across Get a Grip , which is also , you know , traction based , but it's more of a story that resonated in my brain a ton better and so , but yeah , eos is amazing , like highly recommend it . Um , and here at Jill's , our core values are we have three .

Two , they're super easy , it's growth , goals and gratitude , and so every , every time the the hard part is you can sit down and come up with core values , but how do you implement that into your business ? Right , every single day ?

And so some of the ideas are we talk about it in our job postings , we talk about it in our interviews , and an easy way to do that is just to let people know . You know , in our job posting we have our three core values growth , goals and gratitude . Which one of those speaks to you the most and why ?

And it just opens up another different type of conversation . We have employee of the month , that our employees all get to nominate a coworker , but they have to list why that person has shown growth goals or gratitude in the last month in order to nominate them , and then we have a committee that also helps with that .

And so a little bit different than you know maybe a painting business would be , but there's a lot of ideas on how you can , even as simple as putting them up on your wall . Employees do like to know what a business is all about . They like to know what the values are and what you stand by .

Otherwise , you might attract people who , just who , don't care and they're just there just to get the job done , which will carry you only so far . If you're really looking to scale , you need people that feel ownership in your business too and really believe in your vision .

That might change a little bit in the future just because we're bringing out all these new tools , but we always want to make sure people are signed up and we try to make it as simplified as possible to get you up and running to send your phones to us and we start answering your as your actual business in no time . And so sign up for the demo .

One of our salespeople will be in touch with you and we'll do a discovery call just to make sure we understand your business and what your needs are first , before we proceed .

The simpler that our clients can make it , the better , because then we have smoother conversations and phone calls with their customers .

I mean , it will just unlock so many doors for you . So you have to do it today .