Support Hired, You’re Still Swamped - Episode 208

 You've got a team now, people on payroll, maybe even a few specialists or an outside firm helping with the hiring or the admin. But here's the reality, your calendar's still full. You're the fallback, the safety net, and even with all of the help in the world, you're still the one making sure things get done. 

It doesn't mean your team's broken, it just means the system hasn't caught up to the structure. In today's episode, we're going to fix that. Welcome to the Budding Entrepreneur podcast. 

I'm Randy Bridges, business advisor, consultant, coach, and trusted partner to service-based business owners who are serious about performance, profit, and progress. This podcast exists to do one thing, help you solve the real problems that stall your growth, kill momentum, and burn out the very people who built your business. So let's get started, shall we? 

All right, all right. We are on episode 208. This week, we're diving deeper into something we previewed in Monday's Confessions podcast. You hired help, but you're still doing everything. 

You've delegated, you brought in support, maybe even a full team. So why are you still buried? In this episode, we'll walk through why hiring doesn't automatically create relief, the three common breakdowns that keep you stuck in the weeds, a case study that shows how outsourcing HR can create more chaos before it creates leverage, and a filter to help you start clearing your plate without losing control. It's all about diagnosing why your team's still leaning on you, getting clarity on the roles, the context, and the accountability to create freedom, and a basic leadership shift from I need help to I need systems and standards.

Now, a quick note before we get started. If you're used to catching new episodes on Fridays, welcome to the midweek shift. Starting next week, the Budding Entrepreneur podcast will be dropping every Wednesday. 

Same great content, just a little earlier in the week, so you can put these strategies to work even sooner. Now it's time to get into our content. Let's be honest, hiring is expensive. 

But what's worse? Hiring and still doing the work. The truth is, bringing people on board doesn't guarantee anything. If there's no structure, no context, and no clear expectations, the help you gain just might create more to manage.

Some key signs to be looking for. You're still deciding priorities every day. Team members need constant check-ins. 

And you feel like you're directing traffic more than leading a business. See, hiring doesn't create capacity. Structure does. 

Because without clear roles, expectations, and systems, you need all three of those, every new hire just adds more questions instead of answers. So you might be asking yourself, Randy, if hiring alone doesn't fix the problem, what does? Well, let's look at where most of that breakdown actually happens. And it happens a lot with my clients that I work with. 

They get stuck in their business roles, and I see three patterns repeating over and over. Number one, role confusion. You've hired, but nobody's sure who owns what. 

You know, the tasks are floating around, there are overlaps everywhere, and you end up stepping in to keep things moving. But that's not the best choice to make because that puts you right in the middle of everything you're trying to avoid in hiring somebody. Number two, delegation without context.

In this case, you're assigning what to do, but not why it matters. People complete the tasks, but they miss the mark at the end that makes a difference. And now you're back to fixing, redoing, and explaining all over again, again, defeating the reason why you hired someone.

And this is the worst one, no feedback loop. Things break and you hear about it after the client does. You're out of the loop until it's too late. 

Because how can you be part of a loop you didn't build? When these three things break down, you don't just get busy. You become the backstop for every flaw in the system. Let's get into our mini case study. 

We do these every week, and this is one of my favorite parts because I get a chance to really talk about the types of challenges that other business owners have. So you can look at your own business and decide if they apply to you. So let's start with David. 

Okay. David ran a commercial service business and hired an outside HR firm to handle recruiting and onboarding. This was about a year back now.

Now the HR team did the basics well. They posted the jobs, they screened the candidates, and they sent over hires. But after three months of doing this and getting him supposedly the best people, David was still answering daily questions from new team members. 

He was cleaning up sloppy onboarding, and he was calling the HR firm to clarify expectations again and again. Not a good thing to have happen when you're paying somebody to be the expert. So after a while he came to me and we sat down and talked about his business and what was really happening here. 

Here's what we uncovered. David had outsourced the process, but he hadn't clarified the ownership of that process. Now at the same time, the HR team didn't know what good looked like, and that was partly David's fault. 

But the hires, well, most of them had job titles, but they had no real orientation to understand the outcomes, and that was strictly David's fault. So I sat down and I talked with him, and we did three things. We created simple scorecards tied to real responsibilities. 

That way people could understand where they were being measured and how. We built 30, 60, and 90-day onboarding checklists. So it wasn't just about the initial onboarding, it was about the onboarding and the follow-through to come with it. 

And we installed weekly team debriefs with simple dashboards. Everybody knew what, again, they were being measured by, and so these were a chance for everyone to see how they were all being measured across the board. In 60 days, David himself reclaimed over 10 hours per week, which if you know anything about a busy business owner, and I'm sure you do, 10 hours per week is a lot. 

Also, his new hires got up to speed faster, and they stayed up to speed over the long haul. And finally, the HR firm stopped sending close enough candidates, and they dialed in the things those candidates need to see and do in order to be successful in a job. So the key takeaway is this. 

Don't outsource accountability. Define it. When everyone shares the same picture of success, help can actually help you get through your day. 

Hey, it's Randy Bridges. If what you're hearing in today's episode sounds a little too familiar, here's what we do for service-based business owners. We help them add 100k to 250k in bottom line profits without hiring more staff, working more hours, or putting their business at risk. 

Most of our clients have built something solid. They're great at what they do, and their clients love them for it. But behind the scenes, they're juggling too many hats. 

Growth feels stuck, and the business starts draining more than it delivers. It's not that they're doing things wrong. It's that their systems haven't kept up.

And that's where the leaks begin. Time, money, energy. It all starts slipping through the cracks.

At Randy Bridges Consulting, we come in, stabilize profit, simplify operations, and build systems that create real leverage. Our clients have added over 500k in profit across law, manufacturing, tax, and real estate. Our clients have cut downtime to near zero. 

They've reduced internal costs by up to 38%, and secured 200k in new sales in under five months. We don't sell ideas. We deliver results, and we do it in weeks, not years. 

Now that's where we typically start, and if this resonates with you, I'm happy to walk you through what it could look like in your business.

Here's how to tell if you're still doing more than you should. Ask yourself, do you regularly step in to fix things you already delegated? Are you involved in hiring decisions that you thought you'd hand it off? And do you still feel like the only one with the full picture in your company? If you answered yes to any of these, it's an indication that your team should be ready for a shift to move from you managing tasks to them shaping systems that work without you.

Ultimately, hiring should create freedom, but freedom only shows up when structure takes the weight off of your shoulders. Imagine your team taking initiative, not just tasks. Vendors delivering results and not just confusion. 

You, you're guiding the direction, but not micromanaging the execution. You hired your help, now it's time to build the system that lets them thrive. Let's get you out of the middle for good. 

That's it for this episode. I hope you picked up some valuable insights and maybe even sparked a few new ideas. If you want to keep the conversation going, or maybe even explore partnerships, don't hesitate to reach out. 

And hey, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who needs to hear it. The steps you take today could be the start of something big tomorrow. For the budding entrepreneur, I wish you the best in your health, your wealth, your business, your family, everything about you.

Take care, and we'll see you back here next week.