In this interview episode, I chat with CEO & Founder of HireMyMom.com and hear about her story working from home for the past 20+ years. We dive into lots of good stuff around hiring for your bookkeeping business, you don’t want to miss this episode!
In this episode you’ll hear:
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Finding the best candidate for a job requires that you do your homework in advance. Part of that is asking the right questions and making sure you get thorough answers. https://mailchi.mp/hiremymom/top-10-interview-questions-to-ask
Meet Lesley:
Lesley Pyle is the Founder and CEO of HireMyMom.com, a service connecting Small Businesses with Virtual Professionals across the country since 2007. Pyle began her work from home journey in 1995 after having her first child and started her first online business in 1996 - HBWM.com. She serves on the Board of Directors for Mighty Oaks Foundation and is a contributing writer to Entrepreneur.com. She and her family reside in Texas.
Connect with Lesley:
📱 IG: http://instagram.com/hiremymom
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lspencerpyle/
Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper
For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:
Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.
Podcast Publishing Tools we use:
Click here to get the free First 100 Leads Training with James Wedmore >>
Join the next free training at ambitiousbookkeeper.com/training
In this interview episode, I chat with CEO & Founder of HireMyMom.com and hear about her story working from home for the past 20+ years. We dive into lots of good stuff around hiring for your bookkeeping business, you don’t want to miss this episode!
In this episode you’ll hear:
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Finding the best candidate for a job requires that you do your homework in advance. Part of that is asking the right questions and making sure you get thorough answers. https://mailchi.mp/hiremymom/top-10-interview-questions-to-ask
Meet Lesley:
Lesley Pyle is the Founder and CEO of HireMyMom.com, a service connecting Small Businesses with Virtual Professionals across the country since 2007. Pyle began her work from home journey in 1995 after having her first child and started her first online business in 1996 - HBWM.com. She serves on the Board of Directors for Mighty Oaks Foundation and is a contributing writer to Entrepreneur.com. She and her family reside in Texas.
Connect with Lesley:
📱 IG: http://instagram.com/hiremymom
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lspencerpyle/
Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper
For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:
Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.
Podcast Publishing Tools we use:
Click here to get the free First 100 Leads Training with James Wedmore >>
Join the next free training at ambitiousbookkeeper.com/training
I like to tell people, you know, there are at least five signs when, you know, it's time to hire. The first one is your customer service is slipping and everybody knows that in order to have a successful business, you have to have good customer service, whether that's you. Or somebody on your team. And so if that's slipping, that's one. Another one is you're wearing too many hats. And I know early on when we first start out, we wear all the hats because we don't have a budget to hire anyone else. So if, as you grow, if you learn that you see that you still are wearing all the hats and you don't have time to do what you love and what you're good at anymore, then that's another sign that it's time to hire. Next is you're working too many hours. As your business grows, you take on more clients, you have more work, but if your goal was to work, you know, 15 to 20 hours a week because you have young kids and you're working 30 to 40, then it's time to hire that next person to, to help you out. And then another one is you don't have the capacity to take on new business. If you're looking to grow and you can't take on any more, then. Look and look to hire. And then the last one is if you have other team members and they're at capacity or they're overwhelmed, then it's probably time to hire. Welcome back to the Ambitious Bookkeeper podcast. This week, we have another special guest. This is Leslie Pyle, the CEO and founder at HireMyMom. com. And I'm super excited to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for accepting my invitation. So yeah, why don't you give us a little bit of background of who you are and how you came about starting HireMyMom. com and everything in between? All right. Well, thank you so much, Shreena. It's my pleasure to be a guest on your podcast. So, yeah, I started hiring my mom in 2007, so going on 17 years, which blows me away. But where my journey began was when I finished my master's program, I had all these intentions of being corporate PR person. My background was PR and marketing, and I began my first job. Loved it and got pregnant with my first child. So while I was pregnant, you know told my employer, yes, I'm coming back. I enjoy my work. I want, you know, really anticipate growing in my career. Fast forward, had my baby and just something in me shifted that I wasn't expecting motherhood. Just beckoned me, I guess, and it was like so much harder to leave her than I expected. So when my employer was not open to any kind of flexibility you know, and this was 28 years ago before working from home was widely accepted. I took some time and really prayed through it and just felt strongly after talking to my husband that I was going to have to leave and began freelancing. And 28 years ago, that was hard. Because there was no social media. There was no, the internet was brand new, at least to me. So it was, you know, knocking on doors and calling people. And so I was just so determined to make it work. And once I started my freelance career, then I started a website back in 96, that was kind of like a chamber of commerce, if you will, for moms who either worked at home or wanted to work at home. And I really started that somewhat selfishly because I was so just wanted to learn from other moms. Like, how are you doing this? Well, how do you invoice and how do you market yourself and how do you do this with a baby? You know? So I, I was looking for other moms and that. Began my journey of connecting with this incredible community of women. And then fast forward from there, I'm giving you the fast version. When I saw the business environment shift where working from home was becoming somewhat more acceptable, it wasn't frowned upon like it was early on. People just thought, Oh, if you work from home, you must not be for professional way back then. And so I thought, okay, now I've got this big community of women. And I would love to help them find legitimate jobs for those that didn't want to start their own business from scratch. And I was like, what if I could just. Find a way to reach those businesses. So that's where the idea of, I joke that it's kind of like match. com, but for people who want to work from home and small businesses that want to find great talent that they can, you know, hire for, you know, a short amount of time, like maybe five or 10 hours a week or on up to full time, but just having somebody with that professional background and someone reliable, dependable, that can help. Our businesses grow with small business owners. So that's how it all began for me. Yeah, it's super exciting to, I didn't realize it went that far back. And I don't even remember exactly how I came across you initially. It could have been. in my market research of getting to a point where I was mentoring other bookkeepers because I had kind of the same thing happen. Although I, kind of knew I was gonna not go back to corporate, but but yeah, that same thing, I have a baby. I had this corporate career that You know, I worked really hard to get to that point, but I just knew after having my, it was my second baby, my first baby, I worked all through her childhood. And so I, I already knew what to expect there. And I was like, don't want to do that again. And there's quite a big age difference, but. I think I might have come across your website while I was doing market research, or maybe even when I started my bookkeeping business online, because I kind of did the same thing. It was like although I had the advantage of working from home and working virtually being accepted, because I started my business around 2017. So, It was already kind of taking hold. Luckily, I commend you for building a freelance business without the internet, really. Like, that's pretty amazing. and yeah, so I think I came across you way back then. And then I just kind of kept kept track of the jobs that you were posting. And then when I got to the point where I was ready to hire more team members, I went to your website and one of our rockstar team members, she's pretty much full time at this point too. I think she came from HireMyMom. com, which is really funny because she's not even a mom, but. And you don't have to be better, right? We even have some men who sign up and we don't check IDs or ask for proof that you're a parent. It was just where I was at the time and, you know, really pulled by being a mom and wanting to work from home. So that's our target market and small business is our other target market. But we serve, you know, anyone that's in this industry that's looking for their perfect match. Yeah, so I wanted to have you on the podcast because, as mentioned, and if you're listening to the podcast, you're already probably in this boat, but I mentor other bookkeepers and accountants as they're starting and growing their businesses and eventually A lot of the students that I mentor end up in a point where they've got too much work to do all themselves, they've grown their business, or maybe they're trying to keep their hours minimal, like, I built my business very intentionally, I didn't want to work more than 10 to 15 hours initially because I had a baby, right? Right. So, when you set your business up that way, you are inevitably going to need to get support either at home or in your business. So I wanted to have you on the podcast to talk about those turning points of when should you hire and help us, you know, learn. Good questions to ask, how to find the right employee. And I know you're the expert at this. So, yeah. So I like to tell people, you know, there are at least five signs when, you know, it's time to hire. The first one is your customer service is slipping and everybody knows that in order to have a successful business, you have to have good customer service, whether that's you. Or somebody on your team. And so if that's slipping, that's one. Another one is you're wearing too many hats. And I know early on when we first start out, we wear all the hats because we don't have a budget to hire anyone else. So if, as you grow, if you learn that you see that you still are wearing all the hats and you don't have time to do what you love and what you're good at anymore, then that's another sign that it's time to hire. Next is you're working too many hours. As your business grows, you take on more clients, you have more work, but if your goal was to work, you know, 15 to 20 hours a week because you have young kids and you're working 30 to 40, then it's time to hire that next person to, to help you out. And then another one is you don't have the capacity to take on new business. If you're looking to grow and you can't take on any more, then. Look and look to hire. And then the last one is if you have other team members and they're at capacity or they're overwhelmed, then it's probably time to hire. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a simple way to look at it, but it's just not easy, right? Yes. When it comes to that point, a lot of times people know that they need to hire, but then they're then then the roadblock is. Okay, well, where do I go? How do I find the right team player? How do I, you know, a lot of people don't even necessarily realize that you can hire for someone just five to 10 hours a week. There are plenty of people out there willing to do that. So what's your recommendation do you recommend people go look for a new employee or write the job description first, or what's your course of action in that case? If they know they need to hire, but then they're stuck. Yeah, one of the things I like to recommend is, you know, make a list of everything that you do in a week. And then, okay, what are the things that you are really good at and you want to do? And that, you know, how, about how many hours is that going to take you? And then what are the tasks that you don't like to do or you don't have time for? That's where you might want to look to outsource. And that might be a virtual assistant. It might be, you know, a part time bookkeeper. Might be a social media person. It could be a lot of different things depending on where you're at in your business. But that's one way to figure out who to hire first. And then from there, you know, about how many hours and if your budget says, okay, I can only afford to hire someone for five hours a week. There are people, like you said, that that's going to work just fine for them because they might be, you know running their own virtual assistant business or social media, and they don't have time to take on a client that needs 20 hours a week. But what that does is you get someone who's specialized in that area and they learn from the other clients they're working with. So I think it's an advantage to have someone who, you know, does social media for three or four other people, because they're learning different things and trying different things that they can bring back as a benefit to you. So once you figure that out. The next thing I think is to be able to write a successful job post. It's we see everything on Hire My Mom. Everything from one sentence, like, I need an administrative person. That's it. That's like all they write, okay? They give no indication what type of work they're going to be doing, what skills or anything. And then on the far Other side extreme, we get job posts that are like three pages long and a lot of people don't want to read that much information. That's like an overkill. I mean, you might want to explain some of those things further down, but you know, initially one page, you know, generally it's plenty. So you want to make sure in that job description, you share a little bit about the company, either your mission, your values, what's important to you, because you want people to apply that align with what's important to you. And things, you know, if you absolutely do not like certain things, just so that you're waiting people out that aren't going to be a good fit for you. And that might be a little process of thinking through, okay, I like to work with people who are X, Y, and Z. So I want to put that in the job description. You want to share the benefits of the job and working for your company. Are there any perks, you know, sometimes. Companies will say, we work Monday through Thursday only, or we only work eight to five. We don't want, you to work in evenings, whatever those are just to share, you know, again, to let people see, am I going to align with this company, this job? Because you don't want people to apply that aren't going to be a good fit because they're going to waste your time and you're going to waste their time. And then, like I said, Provide adequate information, but don't overwhelm the reader. If you want them to take tests, I think that's really better done in round two, not in the first round. Because again, people, if you ask them to do too much up front, some people won't apply. And it may be a great candidate, but they just don't have an hour to apply for your job. Plus they might be applying for two or three other jobs. So make it easy enough to apply. But not so easy that you're going to get, you know, all these people applying that have no business you know, that will not fit what you are looking for. Yeah. That's such a good, that's such a good point. I'm like, Oh, that's why we've gotten such great people on our team because we've done these things. Yes. so once they have, you mentioned. Round two and tests and things. So what would you suggest is the next step once you've gotten a handful of candidates and then how do you suggest structuring that? Do you wait until you have a certain number of candidates? Do you suggest people just go through, like, put people through the process as they come in? What's your suggestion there? Yeah, so there are a few different ways to do that. You know, when I post a job, I typically, and on Hire My Mom, one of the benefits is you don't get a thousand applicants like you do on some of the big job boards, so it's much more manageable for a small business owner. So, you know, depending on the type of job, like a bookkeeper accountant, you might get 20, 30 applicants. If it's a virtual assistant, you might get 50 because there's more people with that type of background. But what I like to do is, so let's say you've gotten 30 applicants and you've narrowed it down to five or 10 that you think might be a good fit. You can start out depending on what your schedule is like, how much time you have. You could have them take some kind of test if that's important to you, or you could email them a couple of. Initial questions or even ask them to record themselves answering a question or two so that you can kind of get a feel for the person. They know they've made it through round one and they're in the top five or ten people. So people are more willing now to invest time because they're like, I'm not just one of a hundred people that they're considering. And that can help you further narrow it down. And if you want to say interview five people, then. You can select those five people, but I think there's nothing better than face to face interviews, to really kind of get to know the person. And to understand them a little bit better and for them to kind of interview you too, because you don't want to pick a candidate that you think is fantastic, but in the back of their mind, they're going, Oh, this does not sound like a job I want, but I need the money. So I'm going to take it, you know, because they're probably not going to stick with you. So you really want to be able to make it an open ended conversation so that you can make sure you're both a good fit for each other. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that and it's funny the way that you change the way you operate. Like, I always refer back to my days in corporate because I used to hire, I built the accounting team at my, at my last job and so I was the hiring manager and the things I've learned running my own business, I wish I had those tools in corporate because I probably would have weeded out some people. You know what I mean? Because it would have been like more straightforward and like, I just would have understood more about that process. But I was so new to like managing and hiring and stuff that yeah, it would have been great to have the resources we learn as entrepreneurs, right? Right. So we do have one of the things we'll probably get to this later in the interview, but while it's on the top of my head, we do have like a freebie if your guests are interested and I can tell you some of the questions that are good to ask in an interview, but I know people don't necessarily want to try to write them down or remember them. So I can give you that link if I haven't already for them to link it to show notes. Okay, but here are some questions I think that are good to ask, and obviously you're going to have some that are geared specifically for you, your company, your, the job, but just general questions here are you know, six or eight that are good. One is what interests you about this job? This helps you see what they're truly interested about or, and whether they really are interested. So it gives them a chance. This is where you're learning more about, is this really a great fit for them or they just need the job. What did you like and dislike about your previous jobs? And you can listen for anything that aligns with what they would do for you, or not align with what they would be doing for you. What's your top tip for having a successful virtual working relationship? Because you want to make sure that they have worked virtually, or that they're prepared to work virtually. Because not everybody is suited for working independently away from a team. What do you like and dislike about working virtually? And this will again help you know if it's a good fit for you. How do your skills and experience fit this job? What other virtual jobs have you held? What were your responsibilities? How do you handle disruptions? Because especially if you're hiring someone with little kids, that can be tough. I know I did it all the way through. My kids are now my oldest, now 28, but I've worked from home since she was an infant. So I know what it was like to work when they were little and it was tough. And then I quickly learned I had to hire someone to come in and help me. And then, you know, we did different things, but there was no way for me to work more than like, Five or 10 hours a week when I had toddlers. I mean, it was just not possible for me. Then I like to ask what makes you think you're the best candidate for the job? So you can really let them shine on what their strengths are that might not be on paper and then having them describe themselves in five words. And you're looking for what, you know, you might have five words that are important to you in this job, like dependable, reliable, self sufficient, resourceful. So you'll be listening to, for things that match what's important to you. Yeah, that's so crucial. I mean, one of the biggest things for us in bookkeeping and accounting is attention to detail. Yeah, and just being able to be self sufficient and resourceful because there's some times where there isn't an SOP and there's not guidance. You have to, you know, dig into like, what happened last month? How did the last person handle it? Like all those things and, and doing your research so we're not bugging the clients all the time with questions. Cause we have a lot of the information at our fingertips, but it's a puzzle. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, so valuable when someone is resourceful and willing to look for the answers before coming to you, the boss or the client, because obviously if you're having to handhold someone long term, then that's taking away from the productivity of the person you hired and you. that's one of the questions that comes to mind when I'm Working with students and other bookkeepers who are at that kind of breaking point where they have way too much work on their plate and they know they need to hire, but they don't have enough time to like really onboard sufficiently. So do you have suggestions on what you tell people to do in situations like that? Yeah, I like to, you know, tell people always, always have, you know, a kickoff call, a welcome, you know, and if you have a team, have everyone on board with that so that, that they feel welcome and you can present, you know, everything that they need to know in this welcome meeting and let each person kind of get to know them because it's always, I think, easier to work with someone once you've met them face to face or Zoom to Zoom, if you will, so that you can kind of feel like you're, you're connected. You'll want to, you know, discuss what training will look like, who will be training them, you know, where your SOPs are if you use Google Docs or someplace that you have these types of information stored, how to access them. I also like to establish early on what are your preferred methods of communication as a team and individually if they have to come to you because, you know, different people like different things. Some people like email, some people like Asana or Slack or Trello or Voxer, texting, whatever it might be. But I think it's just good to have communication streamlined in one place so that if you're trying to remember, wait, they told me X, Y, or Z, was that in an email? Was that in Voxer? Was that in Asana? You know, it just, it's easier if you have one channel that you use primarily for things. And then of course your paperwork and your next steps. And as accountants, you probably have a lot of that already in your back pocket. You know what's important there. And you may or may not need independent contractor agreements. But yeah, just being organized. And if this isn't something you do, you might have a virtual assistant that handles a lot of that for you, or even an online business manager, but just spending that time up front to get organized so that everybody's on the same page and your team can work efficiently. yeah, that's one of those things that, like, there's always going to be that voice in your head that's like, I don't even have time to do that. But the truth of it is, is like, you're going to have to carve out time or make time for some of these things in order to hire an effective team member and set them up for success. Right, right. And if you don't have time, I know. One of the roles I hired for a few years ago was an online business manager, and it was to help me get better organized. She's the one that set our team up on Asana. She's the one that helped me create some SOPs and things like that because I could kind of give her tidbits of information. She could run with it, then I could review it instead of me doing everything from scratch, and that was. Super valuable for me because it made everything run so much more efficiently. It gave us our, you know, channels and our boards where things are put. So it's so much easier now to go find and say, what did we do last time on this? Because it's already documented. Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. Sometimes people think that the position they need first is another bookkeeper, but maybe they just need someone to get everything organized. Yes. And it's money well spent. And you may not need that person long term. You may only need them for three to six months, whatever it is, till you get everything rocking and rolling and can, you know, work efficiently. Yeah. So in an instance like that, that, that's when you would suggest just doing like a short term contract or independent contractor agreement with an online business manager or even a virtual assistant or something like that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Some people call it operations. Yeah. And it may be somebody that you do need long term that does things ongoing for you. But, you know, I think people need to be aware that sometimes you don't, and it is okay to say, I need a. Temporary position and this is what it looks like. This is what I need. Yeah, absolutely. One other thing I was going to add on the onboarding, something else that I've found to be super helpful when you have someone early on, depending on what their skill level and their job is is to schedule either weekly or monthly check in calls. And this for me worked well with my virtual assistant. I don't necessarily do it with other roles, but you know, I asked her about what job or tasks still feel unclear. What parts of your job would you need more help with? You know, where can we beef up the SOPs to make it so that it's easier for you? What are your thoughts about your role? Do you have any suggestions and feedback? So just establishing that open communication so that you can help them succeed in their job. yeah, I am a huge fan of having a regular cadence of meeting with team members, whether it's, you know, we have a whole weekly team meeting where the whole team gets on and we, we spend about half of the meeting kind of just You know, chit chatting and team building, right? And then the other half is kind of just going through, okay, like, what does everybody need from me as the owner? Where am I the bottleneck? Let's knock it out right now together. And then kind of just like status updates. Even though we have our project management system, sometimes it's nice to just hear an overall status update on where things stand, especially when you have a whole list of clients, right? and then I meet one on one with my direct reports every other week, or maybe once a month, depending on what their role is. And that's the other thing too, is when they're new though, we're meeting weekly. And then once everyone gets kind of settled into their roles, you can dial that back. And, but it's still really important to have those one on one connection points, have that virtual open door policy. Right. Absolutely. Because you want, you know, if there are issues or things that need to be worked through, You want to give them that opportunity to bring them to you, because obviously once you have someone trained and they're a great team member and everything's working well, you want to keep them happy, you know, so you want to know if something's not going well or where you can improve as a leader. Yeah. Yeah. That can be really intimidating for some of us. So, as far as the services that you provide and help small businesses with on Hire My Mom are there different levels that people can engage you for, you know, building job posts or whatever it is? I'll let you kind of talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. So we have, you know, our, our main services are job seekers sign up to find jobs, businesses sign up to post jobs. In addition to that, we do have some other services we offer because we really, because we are a smaller company, we can be hands on with our clients. And that's one of the things I love about what I do is, you know, we're not. Indeed. So you actually can call our phone and answer, talk to a real person. So one of the things we started a few years back was our concierge service, because we get some small business owners are too busy to hire, or they don't like the hiring process. So we have HR executives who can basically do the whole project for you. So they can, have a consultation, write your job post, review resumes, interview, and then present you with the top two or three candidates with their resume, their recorded interview, and their candidate summary. And then from there, we recommend that the business owner interview and say, okay, this is the one that I like, and I'd like to, you know, extend the job offer too. And then our HR person will send all the emails to everyone else saying that the job has been filled. So that's one service we now offer. And then we also offer a course called Hiring Made Easy. And it basically takes all of the fear and all of the questions out of hiring. For someone that's like, I don't know where to start. I need help in all the areas. I don't know how much to pay. I don't know how to write a job post. I don't know how to interview. I don't know, you know. All of it. And so we have a short, just four modules. So it's not super time intensive for those people that need help in that area. And then we also offer services for our job seekers. You know, we have a course for them to help them get fast track and finding remote work. We offer resume, cover letter, interview services. We offer job search advisor. So like a counselor to help and coaching. So really we've tried to figure out how can we serve our community in both of our audiences and what do they need? such a great, valuable service that you're providing. I mean, normally that concierge service is only available to like, if you're working with a recruiting firm. So you're basically Filling that gap for small businesses. And it's way more affordable. Right. Recruiters are 10 to 20, 000, I think, and ours are between 800 and a thousand. So we do, we do our best to make it affordable and not add on any fluff that you're paying for. yeah, that is so wonderful. Do you happen to know off the top of your head, because I know I've looked, occasionally I open the emails that showcase the job postings that you guys have available, but can you kind of give a little overview of the types of job seekers that are looking for jobs on your site in any given moment? Yeah, we have a wide variety. As you might guess, we have everything from moms who you know, are new moms and may only have three to four years of experience. So entry level on up to empty nest moms who, may have been working that whole time. Some of them have been stay at home moms and looking to reenter the workforce. And then we have people with. No college education all the way up to, you know, people with master's degrees. So really depends on what type of person you're looking for, but there is a wide variety. And we are also North America, Centered. So if you post jobs, you don't get applicants from all these other countries. And we do that for several reasons. One of them is we've learned that at least with our businesses, they're looking for people that are fluent in English you know, as their first language, and they are in or near their time zone so that you can actually, you know, do team meetings and things. And somebody is not getting up in the middle of the night. Also, they're familiar with U. S. business culture and environment. So there's a lot of roles where that's very important. And accounting may be one of them where you can't really, you might be able to outsource a research role to someone in, you know, another country, or maybe even some virtual assistant type tasks. But there are a lot of things where, especially if they're customer facing or it's. You know, imperative that you understand the U. S. business culture, then that's kind of why we've niched down. And the other reason is to protect our job seekers ability to earn an income. Because when they compete on some of these worldwide job sites, you know, they can, they're competing with people that make like three or 4 an hour. And so that was the other reason we had to find our niche and we're not the best answer for everybody, but we try to serve our niche the best we can. Yeah, that is one thing that comes up a lot in our industry because there are some accounting firms that, that swear by outsourcing offshore because it, you know, creates really good margins for them and that all the work gets done while everyone in the U. S. is sleeping and then they just have to review. But then you have the other camp of us firm owners, I for example, I want to provide jobs to. Stay-at-home moms and other people in the US who need to earn a livable wage, right? And so I've made the personal choice to not outsource offshore. And my pricing to my clients reflects that so that my team can earn a good wage as well. So if that's a value for anyone listening, then I highly encourage you to, check out. hiremymom.com. So we did mention you do have a free resource that we're going to link in the show notes of interview questions. if someone is interested in, working with you on a concierge level or your course, the best place to go is hiremymom. com. Yes. That's correct. Yeah. And you'll see post a job is the link where we have everything for our businesses. And then of course, find a job for everything under our job seekers for our job seekers. Yeah. And just as a side note, when you're posting a job, it's not free, right? You don't have a free version for posting, but it's very affordable and highly worth it. Yes. It's not free because we all have to make a living and you know, we have expenses just like every other business. So, and we do that for a few different reasons. We weed out a lot of the scans that way on both sides, the job seekers and the businesses and every. job that's posted goes through our verification process. So if you were to post a job, you're going to get an email from my virtual assistant and she's going to make sure you're legit. And we do several steps because every now and then you'll have somebody that's trying to scan for one reason or another, trying to, you know, pull one over on our job seekers and vice versa. So we really do our best to weed those out. Yeah, I remember when we first signed up to post a job, I think we had to connect with you on LinkedIn and there was a whole process and I really appreciated that because especially virtual bookkeeping jobs, like there are lots of scammers out there that have duped virtual bookkeepers into. fraudulent things. Right. And so it's really, really great that you provide that level of peace of mind on both ends. One last thing, since I like to ask a lot of, I try to do this every time. I don't always remember, but I like to ask my interviewees If they're bookkeepers, I ask, you know, advice on like, when you first started your business or if they're business owners, do you have a piece of advice for the bookkeepers and accountants of our audience and how they can best serve their clients on whatever level, what would you like to see from a bookkeeper that you work with or Like if there's something missing when you, uh, talk to other people do you have any words of advice? Yeah, I think two things came to mind and I think one is communication. You know, I don't know, like with the accountant that I use there, you know, I go months without speaking with her, but when I do, I feel like she's very accessible, very available and the communication is easy. I've never felt like I am a number, like I've got to wait, you know, a week to hear back from her and sometimes it may be someone else in the practice and that's totally fine, but just knowing that I'm a priority. And the communication is always you know, pretty quick. And then, you know, just continuing on that customer service. Making your customers feel valuable and that you're accessible because you want people not to only appreciate what you do for them, but also to recommend you to other people So if you're providing a great service, doesn't mean that you are low cost You might be high cost but if you're providing a great service and your clients feel The love and the appreciation, they're well taken care of, then they're more likely to refer you to others. And so that's a great sign that you're doing something right. Cause I, I'm always so thankful when we get word of mouth referrals. And when I go back and look at our logs to see where did the most people come from, either on the job seeker side or the business side, word of mouth, it's one of our biggest referrals and that just. Blesses me because I'm like, okay, we're doing, we may not do everything right. And we may drop the ball and we may mess up here and there, but we really try to serve our audience well. Yeah, that's so important. And it's so nice to hear that that is a valued service. I think we like, us bookkeepers especially, we discount what we do. And it could be, you know, there's always these conversations around, well, how do I add more value? How do I add more value so I can charge premium or whatever the case may be? And nine times out of 10, the advice is Communication. Yeah. So it's like, don't discount the value of your level of service with your clients. If you're responding to an email within 24 hours, that's great communication and it's going to be highly valued and people will pay for that. So. Right. I agree. Well, thank you so much for taking the time and once again, accepting my invitation. I try to curate really good guests for this podcast so that the listeners come back, right? We want a value. We want to serve the audience. That's always the main goal. But thank you so much for sharing and we will link all of your information in the show notes. Uh, if someone wants to connect with you personally, where's the best way to do that? on LinkedIn. My last name is P Y L E. So Leslie Pyle, love to connect with you there. And then we're on Instagram@HireMyMom and really on all social media platforms @HireMyMom. Awesome. Thank you so much again, and we'll talk to you soon for our next hire. Thank you.