My latest expensive gut feeling

A bit of a break from talking about Angels this week, while we’re waiting for heads of terms production partners we’re speaking with so we can actually start locking down contracts!!!

But this week, Oz and I announced that we’re hiring for a Personal Brand Manager, which is a brand new hire for us, and it got me thinking about how I actually decide when we need a new person in the business.

Because I’d be lying if I said a lot of it didn’t come down to gut feel.

Obviously, gut feel comes from lots of small indicators, and I think as a business owner you’re constantly navigating and tightroping this question of whether you actually need to hire someone, whether you just need to get more organised, whether you could use a freelancer, or whether the problem is even big enough yet to justify spending the money on it.

And with this role specifically, I’ve been thinking about it for a VERY long time.

At the end of last year, I had conversations with a few potential freelancers who could be my part time personal brand manager, but I decided it wasn’t right for the business in terms of what I’d be spending versus what I thought we’d be getting back.

Looking back now, though, I also think the freelance model itself wasn’t quite right for what I needed.

The whole point of this role is proactivity.

We want someone who knows better than we do, who can advise us on the content we should be creating, how we should be creating it and how we should be presenting digitally. I want someone who spots something before I spot it, fixes it and then tells me why we should have been doing it differently in the first place.

Because I find it SO frustrating when I click on something like my link in bio and there’s still an ad link sitting there from MONTHS ago 😭

It bothers the perfectionist side of my brain, but it’s also indicative of a bigger problem. There isn’t currently one person whose job it is to look at everything and think, is this still right? Does this still represent Verity now? Is there something better we could be doing here?

And I think that’s where I started to realise we needed somebody full-time.

With freelancers often (obviously not always) the incentive is to get the job done to the best possible standard, but also as efficiently as possible. Whereas we’re looking for someone who is KPI’d and driven specifically against our personal brands, spending their time being proactive, embedding themselves into the business and deeply understanding us.

I need them to understand my thoughts, my point of view and what I actually care about, because one of the things I’ve struggled with when outsourcing content before is that the person creating it isn’t with me physically.

They don’t necessarily know what I’ve changed my mind on in the last six months, or what I’m talking about constantly in the office, or the story I told at dinner last night that could actually make a really interesting piece of content.

Personal brands move so quickly now, and we change so quickly as people, that I don’t think you can build one well if you’re constantly working from an outdated version of the person.

My old bio, my old photo, an old way of describing me, an opinion I had a year ago… none of those things necessarily represent who I am now.

And my photo genuinely doesn’t even look like me anymore lol.

So, what does ‘good’ actually look like?

Six months into this hire, I want this person to be giving us really clear direction.

I want them to be assertive enough to tell Oz and I what we do and don’t need to be doing, to notice things we haven’t noticed, to bring fresh ideas and experience into the business and then actually create the systems that make all of it happen.

We already work with some amazing freelancers, so this person isn’t necessarily coming in to personally make every single piece of content. I want them to finesse the machine.

I want the systems and processes to be good enough that when content gets to me, I don’t need to check the spelling or notice the tiny details that should have already been thought about.

I want to be able to go to an event and know someone is there who understands exactly what content we should be getting, who can work with our freelancers to get it edited, or just get something up there and then if that’s what makes sense.

Basically, I want the thinking around my personal brand to stop living entirely inside my brain.

There is obviously a risk to hiring proactively

I do worry about hiring too early, particularly with a role like this because it’s a very proactive role rather than a reactive one.

There isn’t a pile of 40 hours of work sitting there every week that I can neatly hand over to someone on day one.

But my experience with content creation so far has taught me that, because I have basically no time or space for it, I have had to spend money to get my personal brand out there. And I think if we hire someone really good, we won’t be hiring too early because they’ll be creating the opportunities as much as they’re managing the ones that already exist.

That’s also why I’m really conscious of not hiring too junior for this role.

I’ve made hires in the past where, looking back, I hired someone too junior for what I actually needed, and I don’t want to make that mistake here.

This is a role paying up to £40k because we want someone with experience or a whoooooole load of ambition, drive and understanding of the space. If we can’t find that person, I don’t think it’s worth hiring for the sake of hiring.

And then there’s getting my business baby ready…

I’ve spoken before about wanting to get my business baby ready for when I eventually want to take mat leave, and that has 100% changed the way I’m looking at my role within the business.

I’m looking at everything I currently do and asking: what still falls onto me that is an important part of this business running?

One of those things is marketing.

Myself and Oz’s businesses have been built almost entirely off the back of our personal brands, referrals and the communities around us, and yet the marketing of my business still broadly falls onto me because my personal brand is such a huge part of it.

That feels like quite an obvious risk.

I want it to become much more of a content machine, where the direction and content comes from me, but the rest of the thinking is done for me and I can come in and authentically be myself within it.

I’m not talking about somebody handing me a script and telling me what my opinion is lol. I mean somebody who knows what’s happening in my world, understands what I’m interested in and can say, “You should talk about this today,” or, “We need to capture this while you’re there,” and then actually makes sure it happens.

Because there are SO many opportunities we’re currently leaving on the table.

I constantly miss my Instagram DMs. I constantly miss my LinkedIn DMs. I know there are speaking opportunities, press opportunities, partnerships and new business opportunities we’re missing because the flywheel isn’t working as effectively as it could be.

And we’re also just not documenting everything properly.

There is so much happening at the moment, and I know there will be a point where I look back and wish we had captured more of it while we were actually in it.

How do I know it’s a people problem rather than an organisation problem?

I think this is probably one of the hardest questions when you’re building a team.

When I’m deciding whether to hire someone now, I’m asking myself whether this is something somebody else could do better than me, whether it’s important enough to the business that somebody should properly own it, and whether that person can add something we don’t currently have.

I know how to monetise a personal brand. I’ve monetised mine fairly significantly already, so I have enough evidence to know I’m good at that bit. But I’ve never been a full-time content creator. I don’t think creating content is where I’m best, and I know there are people who understand that world far better than I do.

So I want one of them sitting next to me.

And I think there’s something quite freeing in admitting that as a founder. You don’t have to become amazing at every single thing your business needs. Sometimes the better decision is finding someone who already is.

Anyway… if reading all of this has made you think this job sounds like me, we are hiring 👀

We’re looking for a Personal Brand Manager to work across both mine and Oz’s personal brands, and you can read the full JD and apply here.

I’ll see you next week! 👀
Verity xx