Navigating Your Career After Motherhood

Additional resources

• HireMyMom
• Stay-at-home mom resume tips
• How to write a cover letter when returning to the workforce
• Tips for restarting your career after a break
• How to develop a career plan

Transcript

Pete Newsome  00:15
You’re listening to the finding career zen podcast. I’m Pete Newsome. And my guest today is someone who I’ve wanted to interview since I first discovered her site. Lesley Pyle, founder of hiremymom.com. Welcome, and thanks for joining today.

Lesley Pyle  00:28
Thank you, Pete, it’s a pleasure to be with you.

Pete Newsome  00:31
Well, I said I, as soon as I saw your site, given the nature of what zengig is all about in the finding career zen podcast. It just, it just spoke to me right away where you are, you’ve created something with a specific audience in mind, a very large audience, and one that I think probably has a lot of benefits right now for employers to really connect with. 

Pete Newsome  00:57
So if you wouldn’t mind less, if you could just, I could read your bio, but you’re going to do much better describing yourself and in Hire My Mom that I can’t so if you wouldn’t mind just giving that introduction to be great.

Lesley Pyle  01:07
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, Hire My Mom, as you probably guessed, is primarily for moms who are looking for remote work. But we also have women that are not moms, we even have a few men that join. 

Lesley Pyle  01:20
So we don’t, we don’t restrict anyone from signing up. But obviously, our target market, because I was a mom wanting to find remote work many, many years ago. That’s how it all began. And then first of all businesses who are looking for talented professionals, but don’t necessarily want full-time or on-site employees. 

Lesley Pyle  01:39
So that’s kind of become our niche. For, you know, these businesses, they may only need somebody for, you know, five or 10 hours a week in the early stages, but they may build up to her, you know, needing someone for 20, 30, or 40 hours a week. 

Lesley Pyle  01:54
So it’s a great way to the on-ramp for a small business to you know, put their feet in the water to get that first tire. And then we’ve had, you know, some businesses that have been with us for many years, they’ve come back to hire their temp employees. So it’s really satisfying to not only help these new moms find work from home but also to help these businesses grow.

Pete Newsome  02:17
It’s I love it, but I read your bio, and the first thing that jumped out at me was so Hire My Mom you founded in 2007. But this isn’t your first sight of this nature. Use the fact you started a website in 1996, which is crazy. 

Pete Newsome  02:33
I mean, when you know someone who was in the workforce in 1996, most of our audience may not necessarily be. But I mean, talk about a trailblazer you really, really, how did that come to be?

Lesley Pyle  02:46
Yes. So my journey began when I was finishing my master’s degree. As you can probably imagine, I had no aspirations to be a stay-at-home mom, I had visions of carrying that briefcase all the way up the corporate ladder, my background and my degrees were in journalism, and PR marketing. 

Lesley Pyle  03:03
So I wanted to work for a big corporation and their PR department and got my first job after that. It was a small company, which was great to start it. It was actually a golf school in Austin, Texas, and I did their PR and marketing for their golf clinics around the country. And it was there that I got pregnant with my first child. 

Lesley Pyle  03:24
And so I went to my employer was husband and wife team and said, you know, pregnant, but I’m 100% coming back to work. Because, you know, again, I have these big career aspirations. So fast forward nine months, had my baby. When she was born, it was like something shifted in me. 

Lesley Pyle  03:41
And I was all of a sudden, like, What in the world am I doing? And I thought, Well, I’m gonna go back to work. I don’t know what’s going on in my body in my heart right now. But I’m going back to work. So the six weeks ended, I went back to work, and I cried every single day at my desk like it was awful. And I never anticipated that that would be me. 

Lesley Pyle  04:02
So I went to my employer, this was 1995, and said, Is there any opportunity that I could possibly work from home a couple of days a week and do some of that stuff, and then come in the office, maybe Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and they were not open to that at all, you know, working from home was not a thing at all. 

Lesley Pyle  04:20
And I kind of expected that answer, but I still wanted to give it a try. So when I got that, no, I went back to my husband and I said okay, well, obviously working 40 hours a week is not working for me as much as I want it to it’s not. So what if I start trying to get freelance clients and this again, was pretty rare back then you really didn’t know people that worked from home or who did freelance?

Pete Newsome  04:45
No, I mean, everything you’re saying I mean is even a few years ago would have wouldn’t been foreign to some significant degree. Right? So when we’re talking to mid-90s unheard of, right? 

Lesley Pyle  04:59
And you know, the Internet was I had heard of it, but I didn’t, I didn’t even really know what the internet was. And I don’t even think we had had the home computer very long. So it was all very new. But he was willing to take a chance with me. So we cut every bill we could we got rid of cable TV, and we sold one of our cars. 

Lesley Pyle  05:19
So we became a one car family because that car did not have a car payment. We went back to eating ramen noodles because we put ourselves through college. So we were used to being poor. And so we just went back to as far as we could live, and still function. 

Lesley Pyle  05:35
And I went out and started soliciting business. So you know, I can write your newsletter, I can do press releases, I can do this. And that, and I’m not very good, I don’t consider myself a good salesperson. But when I’m determined and motivated, like I was to be able to stay at home, I turned on a side of me that I didn’t know I had. 

Lesley Pyle  05:54
So I was able to slowly build up a business and making an extra four or 500 a month was the minimum, that was just to pay our bills, living poor. And so I was driven to make that four or 500. I mean, we couldn’t even go out for ice cream at that point that was just to pay the bills. So it was a challenge. It was hard, it was stressful, all the while being a brand new mom.

Pete Newsome  06:16
There’s that little thing.

Lesley Pyle  06:19
And if I had a meet with a client, I never offered that I worked from home, I would just say I can come to you and be in your office. And it worked every time because it was convenient for them. So sometimes my husband would have to go with me. And we’d go like during his lunch break, he’d stay in the car with the baby while I went to meet with the client I love. 

Lesley Pyle  06:38
That’s how it all began. And it was about maybe six months to a year of doing that, that I was like, Okay, I cannot be the only mom doing this. We’re the rest of them. And so that’s when I created my first website, which was called home-based working moms are HB wm.com. 

Lesley Pyle  06:53
And it became a kind of like an online Chamber of Commerce to connect moms around the country for networking support ideas. And I charged a monthly fee to be a part of that. So that’s how I was able to monetize it. Yeah, it was a free version. But there was a paid version.

Pete Newsome  07:11
Incredible I mean, I mean that there’s so I could talk to you for hours about that story. And I know that’s not really why we’re here. So maybe a later time, but because of just since we just met today, I heard you mention the struggle that you had to go through to get started it. 

Pete Newsome  07:32
I said to you before we started recording, without exception, in every interview I’ve done so far that struggle comes up, and you have to overcome and I just want to highlight that for a second. Because it’s really part of, I think the path of finding what we call career zen on this podcast, and to me, it means satisfaction and happiness and accomplishment. 

Pete Newsome  07:55
It’s very personal and individual doesn’t mean success that necessarily resonates with anyone else or is meat, anyone else’s definition. It’s what it means to the individual. So with all these very diverse stories, that is such a common theme. And I’ve become almost just fascinated by it. 

Pete Newsome  08:13
Because it’s almost as if, unless you have to overcome that you really don’t, you really don’t appreciate what’s on the other side of it, right? Or you have to have a goal. And if the goal is simple, it’s probably not very rewarding. So I’m really glad you shared that. And so when you started the site in 1996, how did how’d you do it? Where did you begin? I mean that because that were dial-up days. That was AOL days. 

Lesley Pyle  08:40
And within the first few months, I got in Baby Magazine, which was a magazine, I don’t know if it’s around anymore, but when you went to the OB Gen. That was a free magazine in their office. Okay, so that was golden for me at the time. That was, you know, instant national media attention. 

Lesley Pyle  08:41
I was curious because it was such a unique thing. I was very good at getting some great publicity. I had some TV interviews, radio interviews, and then you know, exposure through France. So that PR background came in well and came in handy now getting PR like that. It’s much harder because obviously there are a bazillion websites out there similar not necessarily geared directly towards moms but no longer am I you know, super unique.

Lesley Pyle  08:41
That was really you can my early or my early language. Yes. And you know, that was what was so nice about having a PR background. So I put my PR background to work. And I sent out press releases to all the local, regional and national parenting-type publications that I could find. 

Pete Newsome  09:46
And it’s expensive to go hire for that. By the way. I mean that as someone who’s explored that a little bit I can tell you it’s it does not come cheap.

Lesley Pyle  09:57
And even when you hire a PR firm, you’re not guaranteed You don’t need results. I’ve been down that road too because now not really FDR person, my skills are way too rusty to go into that area 25 years later.

Pete Newsome  10:08
I have also gone down that road of hiring and not necessarily getting what I hoped for out of it. But how do you do the development aside? I mean, did you solicit help for that? Did you do it on your own? Because that’s, that’s its own animal.

Lesley Pyle  10:23
Yes. So this was, you know, when internet was new, and websites weren’t nearly as complicated as they are now. So I did do my very first website, on my own, it was with Microsoft front page. So I bought a program and had the disc that you used to put on your computer, and I learned how to create a website. 

Lesley Pyle  10:42
So that’s where it began, wow, I wouldn’t have a clue because there are too many databases and interactions on the back end that it’s way above my pay grade now to try to do a website. But early on, it was, you know, something that it was more of, I guess, a brochure site where you could add in the forums for you know, back then it was forums that you interacted through and things like that. 

Pete Newsome  11:04
How many out? If you could figure it out, then I think it would be a breeze today. You’re not? You’re being too modest with that. Well, how did know? So where did the work at home? And how did that turn into your jobs and career-oriented?

Lesley Pyle  11:19
Right. So, you know, I had home based working moms and I had this great network. I think at one time, we like I said, had a free membership, and we had a paid one. So combined, because everybody will do three things, I want to say it was close to 100,000 people on my email list and in my community. 

Lesley Pyle  11:37
So I knew that I had a huge base of women, you know, fast forward 1012 years later. And as you know, our culture was starting to shift towards working from home, I was seeing little glimmers of maybe somebody would hire somebody to work from home, it was becoming a little bit more common. 

Lesley Pyle  11:54
This was back in 2006. And I thought, what if I could help these women who I’m still passionate about working from home myself because I had so benefited from the freedom and flexibility of being able to work when it was convenient for me and my children? When I wanted to go to you know, a school play or a school lunch or whatever, I loved that freedom. 

Lesley Pyle  12:16
And I knew that would be a lot more difficult if I was working a traditional job, which meant and it was also going to be difficult for all these women who are now a part of my community who really a lot of them just wanted a job, they didn’t want to start a business, right, which is really what you had to do back then you had to start a business, you couldn’t find a job. 

Lesley Pyle  12:16
So that idea started brewing in my head, what if I could create match.com, but for moms to find businesses to work for sure. So I think that’s about when match.com and those types of websites were coming out. And so I thought it would be really great, I got these women, but now just need to find the businesses. So that’s where the idea began brewing. 

Lesley Pyle  12:16
And at first launched, and did not charge businesses to post a job. So use my PR background again, got the word out and said can post your job for free and see how great these women are smarter, hire them and all of that. So that’s how I got that site off the ground, because again, it was free for them. 

Lesley Pyle  12:16
And then I had to charge some to this the mom job seekers because I had to be able to pay for the expense of launching a new business. So it’s very inexpensive, and I knew it wasn’t going to be making it, you know, something that would make me millions, but it was a passion in my heart. And so I thought, you know, eventually, maybe I’ll be able to monetize better than I’m doing now, which now you do pay the postage job now that I have an established audience. 

Pete Newsome  13:37
I already said you’re a trailblazer. But really, I mean, in terms of going after a work-at-home market that effectively didn’t exist back then. But you saw a need for it and a value in it. Did you ever imagine then that fast forward to where we are now? 

Pete Newsome  13:55
I mean, of course, the fast forward really happened over the last couple of years. Did you did you? Did you foresee that? Or are you surprised? Or did you look back and go I knew I knew this was gonna be where we ended up.

Lesley Pyle  14:08
I knew the benefits of it and you know, used to tell you to know how much businesses could save by not having to pay for, you know, the office space, the equipment, you wouldn’t have to pay for the commuting, the gas savings, the wardrobe. And I used to, you know, promote that as one of the reasons they should hire just the savings aspect for the business. 

Lesley Pyle  14:27
And then of course, if they can hire, if the role is one that works as a contractor versus an employee, we’ve got the additional savings there. So I knew it was a great opportunity for both sides. But it was just a matter of people I guess, trusting or believing that and then obviously when COVID hit, it was like they had to try it. 

Lesley Pyle  14:48
Most companies were forced to do some type of remote work opportunities. So I think it opened a lot of eyes and you know doesn’t work for every role or every company Um, there are some that work better on site. But for the most part, there’s a lot of things that can be done remotely. 

Lesley Pyle  14:48
And I think it increases the work-life balance and the satisfaction, I feel like, you know, you’re more, I think, at least at least what the people want to talk to, you feel more committed to a role where you have some flexibility versus one that’s very rigid, and requires you to be, you know, eight to five every day, at least I can speak for moms that, you know, appreciate that flexibility.

Pete Newsome  15:30
You mentioned earlier that you could go to, you know, an event at school without having to, we could just do it right in an office setting, which I was in for a long time in the corporate world. And then up until COVID, our staff and my staffing business were all on-site. 

Pete Newsome  15:48
And even as the owner of the business, I would feel guilty and odd leaving in the middle of the day to go do something or feel like I had to justify it, which is, which is crazy. I mean, it’s illogical, but it was a real feeling. And I don’t know if you remember, or if seen the movie father of the bride was Steve Martin does that. 

Pete Newsome  16:09
Yeah, there’s a scene at the beginning of the movie, where he’s in his factory, he makes shoes and it his daughter was coming home she had been away for I think she’d been in Europe or something like that is it he leaves the office in the middle of the day. And and that movie came out when I was working in the corporate world, I think probably in the mid 90s. 

Pete Newsome  16:09
And I remember I have always had, I always had the thought that how that’s the life I want like that. That’s one of my aspirations to be able to just be in a professional situation, where if my kid comes home from college, whatever it is, I can just leave. 

Pete Newsome  16:09
And at the time when I was in my 20s, that seems so foreign to me. And I remember thinking, how am I going to get that kind of role where I could just do that without having to take time off, put in a request, you know, ask for permission. All of those things seem crazy. And now that we’re virtual, I absolutely love it. And there’s no way we’re going back. 

Pete Newsome  16:09
I’m so happy for my younger employees on the staffing in the staffing business, who never have to feel that way. If they can do what they need to do, they can live their life now you still got to get your work done. You have to be responsible and accountable. But just that mentality of not feeling like you’re chained to a desk. It just it’s just an entirely different feeling. I mean, do you agree with that?

Lesley Pyle  17:29
Yes. 100%. So when I first started working from home, that freelance timeline, I thought, Okay, well, my kids are in school, I’ll go back to the corporate world, because again, I had aspirations I enjoyed working. But no, once I got a taste of that freedom and flexibility, I was like, I can never get that up. 

Lesley Pyle  17:46
It’s just, you know when I didn’t mind, if I had went to watch my kid’s school play if I had to work that evening when they went to bed, that was great with me, I was like, happy to get it done. Or on the weekend, occasionally, or whatever it took, just knowing that I can move things around to adjust to, you know, some priorities in my life at the moment, and didn’t have to be like you said, chained to a desk from eight to five. I think there’s a lot of value in that.

Pete Newsome  18:11
It’s huge. Do you know, how COVID changed? Did you change your business? How has it changed for hire my mom, I think it has to, you know, it’s probably your audience had to have grown? I would guess, right, you would

Lesley Pyle  18:29
I think it would have grown. But honestly, there was a little uptick. But I think because so many of my audience were already working remotely, it didn’t, there wasn’t a huge change. 

Lesley Pyle  18:42
Now the larger companies that started working remotely, I don’t think they know about hiring my mom don’t have that big PR budget to go after the big companies that are remote employees in search. I’m guessing a lot of those around indeed instead. So I haven’t figured out if that’s even something I want to tackle or if I just stay in my lane and keep it with the entrepreneurs, small business owners, you know, and that sort of thing.

Pete Newsome  19:06
Well, the big businesses beat you. So with our staffing clients, we have about an equal split of SMBs. And then enterprise clients, and the bigger the company, the harder it is to turn their ship so to speak. And they have giant real estate commitments. That those are that’s hard. 

Pete Newsome  19:25
I know, Elon Musk made a comment when it is in terms of buying Twitter about this giant building that no one’s in. And you look at that on paper, and that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But if you look at what it does for the employees, and you think, gosh, you know, you have to conform, it’s bigger. 

Pete Newsome  19:25
The bigger the company, and my experiences, the harder they are to change and to conform and this is new. This is weird for companies who’ve done something the same way for a long, long time where the smaller the organization, it’s easier to pivot. But I think they’re going to have to come around. 

Pete Newsome  19:25
Specifically, because you’re gonna, they’re gonna have a difficult time competing for new employees, or new hires, where it is in staffing, I can tell you, they’re a very, very large percentage of our candidate pool won’t consider going on-site anymore because they know the option exists and not have to wear pre COVID. 

Pete Newsome  19:25
I would say it was very out of the ordinary where we’d have a remote job, a virtual job that was by far the exception to the rule. Now, I would say it’s kind of the norm, which is great.

Lesley Pyle  20:35
Yes, I agree. And we’re exclusive, you know, remote jobs every now and then we’ll get a hybrid position. But if it’s 100%, on-site, we don’t even bother, we’d say, we’re not the right platform, you won’t find candidates. So here,

Pete Newsome  20:52
So talk a little bit about I want to understand a little better the platform itself. So when when employers go on you have you have two sides, and I’m familiar with job boards, of course, but not everyone listening, you know, will be so from that perspective, if you wouldn’t mind just to highlighting how the individual is used as a site, what they can expect from the job seeker, as well as from the employer, because those are really separate perspectives on the benefit they get from the site.

Lesley Pyle  21:19
They are and I get asked that, you know, what makes us different even from like Upwork, or Fiverr, some of those that are more freelancing jobs. And what I understand about those, those are, again, big, huge mega job sites, were more a smaller niche sites. 

Lesley Pyle  21:35
So number one, well, as you come in, you would, you would choose from three packages, we have a monthly, two months or three month packages that you can select, and you can apply for as many jobs as you’d like, with those packages, that how we differentiate ourselves is once you join, you don’t pay a commission to us. 

Lesley Pyle  21:53
So if you get a job and you make $5,000 a month, I understand a lot of job sites will take 10% or whatever their percentages every month, yes, you’re paying ongoing. Yep, so the karma mom, you just pay your $30 upfront, and you’re done paying, so we’re more just, you know, upfront fee. And that works well, for both of our audiences, we’ve learned because you only get serious job seekers who are willing to spend 20 or $30. And the businesses aren’t getting inundated with 1000s of residents. 

Lesley Pyle  22:24
So small business owners, they’re probably not, they probably don’t have an HR department. So they’re hiring, you know, their social media manager or their data analyst or whatever it is. So for them to go through 40 resumes, it’s much easier than, you know, getting 1000 resumes. 

Lesley Pyle  22:24
So that’s one of the reasons that some of these businesses really like Carlmont. And then on the flip side, for businesses coming in, they also have more than three packages, but primarily three packages, they can post their job for a month, they can use our concierge service. 

Lesley Pyle  22:24
So that’s for business that wants to hire but either doesn’t like the process or doesn’t have the time. So they can hire an arm along or an HR specialist to basically go through the process for them, post their job, review resumes, interview candidates, and then present the top two or three candidates to the client. And then they can decide who they want to hire.

Pete Newsome  23:21
So you, sorry, but you have a staffing company or a staffing component built-in which is also very unique. I mean, you’re doing two things. And I want to ask about the other one in a minute that sets you apart from any other staffing or I’m sorry, a job board that I’m familiar with. So you are offering the recruiting service as an extra value to the buyer to the client. 

Lesley Pyle  23:46
We call it you know, our white glove service or done-for-you service. And that came about only a couple of years ago, because I had business owners once I had like my third business owner say I need to hire but I don’t have time. Can you pick someone for me? 

Lesley Pyle  24:00
And as the business owner, I was like, Are you kidding? Do you think I have time to find someone for you? And when I like I said about the third person who asked I thought hmm, I don’t have time. But what if I had an HR person that could do that? So I have two HR specialists. 

Lesley Pyle  24:16
And that’s what they do exclusively when we get one of these projects, they take it from start to finish or the client. So it’s a huge time saver for the business owner. And it’s, you know, one more service that differentiates us and helps us to establish that relationship that you’re not going to get on a mega job site. 

Lesley Pyle  24:33
No, because they can actually call it Yeah, you can call and actually talk to someone with us, and our phone numbers are not hidden not you know, 50 pages deep and to the website.

Pete Newsome  24:42
You’re really doing something that’s beneficial and I have never thought it’s crazy. 

Pete Newsome  24:49
I’ve owned a staffing business for almost 18 years and I’ve never thought of what you just said and the way you’re doing it which is to have a job seeker pay and in a lot of sites will say, Well, of course, we’re not going to make the job seeker pay, but you just mentioned something that is so relevant, that it, it separates fake resumes and bad resumes from genuine, quality job seekers. 

Pete Newsome  25:20
And that is the problem I would say with job boards is when you post an ad, is it again, I’m a business that indeed gets a lot of our money each year, Monster CareerBuilder, LinkedIn all of these over the years has been our biggest expenditures as a staffing company. 

Pete Newsome  25:39
And we hate posting job ads because it is there’s a lot of garbage I should come up with, I should use a better word, but that is the one that is in my head. And it’s also why staffing companies exist in large part because it’s really, really hard to do that. But you’re solving two problems and one you’re basically eliminating any bad candidate or fake candidates, I should say, right? 

Pete Newsome  25:39
You’re just starting with quality, because that’s a, you’re doing it for a very reasonable price, right? I mean, you’re not breaking anyone’s bank by doing that. But you’re putting yourself in a separate category than most job seekers. And then on the employer side, you’re taking it a whole nother step further than any job board that I’m familiar with does by saying, hey, well, we’ll do that screening. 

Pete Newsome  25:39
And you know, how time intensive and I certainly know how at time and tech, because I’ll tell you that is that is effectively what our staffing company does. We start with a very large candidate pool and end up screening out all the candidates who aren’t qualified in order to get to those one or two who are. And so the value of that segment. So I mean, you’re, you’re doing something that’s, that’s really putting together two sides of it. 

Lesley Pyle  26:57
And like I said, originally, the reason I charge job seekers is that that’s the only way I can monetize what I was doing. And I have that established audience. So I don’t know if my business model is the right business model for everyone. But it worked for what I was doing and where I was starting from,

Pete Newsome  27:12
Well, it’s so smart. And I’ll just tell you for our audience, who may be skeptical of that, as a job seeker, what you’re doing what you’re offering by that it really does me. When you put a job posting out on a big job board, again, as we’ve done and still continue to do today if you get 200 resumes, those are, it’s a lot of time to look through those. 

Pete Newsome  27:39
And given that all it takes is a single click to apply, it’s easy to understand why candidates would there’s really no barrier, there’s really no cost of entry, quite literally to put your resume on there. 

Pete Newsome  27:56
And then to apply to gazillion jobs and not think twice about it. But you’re forcing everyone to be a lot more discerning and not forcing in a bad way, you’re creating an environment where everyone’s more discerning. And so the quality level inherently is going to be significantly higher. 

Pete Newsome  28:11
And that’s really, really innovative. Have you I mean, I know, you’re saying you didn’t start, it didn’t start off for that reason. But you’re here. And that’s how you’re doing it. And lastly, I have to say that’s, that’s brilliant, really.

Lesley Pyle  28:23
And I will say, you know, that’s why I think are our number one source of new businesses word of mouth, because these moms are thrilled that they’re not competing with hundreds and 1000s of people and are getting hired, for the most part, you know, the ones that have a quality resume. 

Lesley Pyle  28:38
And then the businesses are so relieved that they’re not going through hundreds and 1000s of resumes, but they’re getting quality real people that are applying, and you have to you can’t just push a button and apply you have to there are probably four or five things you have to fill out. So it’s a few more steps. 

Lesley Pyle  28:57
But it’s not tedious by any means. But it’s not as easy as simply one button click and sin. And a lot of times I think that people don’t even read the job description or just out very quickly like, Okay, I applied for 50 jobs today.

Pete Newsome  29:11
Yes, no. I know that to be definitively true. And it really degrades the quality just by its nature of it.

Lesley Pyle  29:20
It is frustrating for the job seeker who thinks they applied for 50 jobs, frustrating for the person having to read through a resume that has zero relation to the job they applied for

Pete Newsome  29:33
100%. What tells me about the freelance mark is a little bit so that I’m a fan. I’m a huge fan. Again, as a staffer, I just did a podcast about this last week as a staffing company owner. It’s a little strange for me to talk about how much I liked the freelance market because in many respects that cuts us out of the loop. 

Pete Newsome  29:52
There’s always going to be a need for the type of service that we provide. I’m not worried about that. But as you know I have to also be transparent. I’m A big consumer of freelance talent. I think it makes employee-employer relationships so much healthier. It just I’m, I could go on for days. 

Pete Newsome  30:12
This isn’t my it’s about you, not me. But I’m a huge fan. So what? What do you like about freelance SEO versus traditional employment?

Lesley Pyle  30:21
Yeah. So on her my mom we get, I would say, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d say they’re freelance jobs but definitely contract work. 1099 contract work, I would say is our biggest pool of jobs, we do get some employees who do remote jobs as well. And occasionally, what I call freelance, I would say is more project-based, like I need a freelancer to create a logo for me or create a website. 

Lesley Pyle  30:45
But it might not be an ongoing job. Okay, I’d say the bulk of the jobs that are posted on her, my mom would be like a virtual assistant that is going to work for you for 20 hours a week from now till it didn’t work out. Okay, that’s, that’s the most common type of job that we get on karma.

Pete Newsome  31:02
Got it. And so I guess by virtue of those roles, not being w two, I would consider them to be mean to 99. Freelance, I use those generally interchangeably. I guess you could, you could argue that a freelance job is more temporary in nature, but the relationships that I have with folks that I consider to be freelancers, I intend for those to be indefinite, where as long as they like me, and the work is there, and the quality is there. 

Pete Newsome  31:30
And I like them, we’re going to continue the relationship. And I think what I find so appealing about it is, the government doesn’t get in the middle of it, right? I mean, for lack of a better way to put it. It is, it is truly the healthy part without all the bad of working together, where it’s a conscious decision every day. And as long as we both like it, we continue and you’re setting the stage for that with your site.

Lesley Pyle  31:56
Right? Yeah. And if it doesn’t work out, there’s not a lot of paperwork or anything that to go through. 

Pete Newsome  32:01
I know when I was talking about this on the podcast, last week, I was with my HR consultant, who I hired, he used to be a direct employee of my staffing company. And now he’s a consultant. He wanted to be on his own in that world. And it was a match made in heaven for both of us. 

Pete Newsome  32:18
So we still work together. But he’s not my employee anymore. And then nothing’s changed in how we work. But he’s able to have more freedom, and I’m only paying him for the work that he’s doing for me while he’s doing it for me. And it’s so clean, and it’s great. So for anyone who’s unfamiliar with that way of working, it’s just known that it’s not scary. It doesn’t need to be it can be very, very, very attractive.

Lesley Pyle  32:46
Yes, I agree. 100%. And it’s a great way to get your foot in the door because companies are more willing to hire someone freelance or contract to test them out, and then maybe it could turn into a remote employment opportunity.

Pete Newsome  32:59
Yes. What do you hear most as far as hesitancy with remote today? I mean, I’m sure that again, that’s probably subsided. But what are the hurdles that you see businesses have to overcome in order to feel comfortable with having a remote employee?

Lesley Pyle  33:16
I think it’s just actually giving it a try. And like we talked about the whole COVID thing, forced companies large and small to give, you know, freelance remote work and opportunity. And I think it’s just letting go of that control. And just saying, Let me test it out. Let me hire a virtual assistant or social media manager for a month. 

Lesley Pyle  33:35
And if it didn’t work out, all you’ve lost is the hours that you pay that person. So I really encourage anyone that’s like still hasn’t tried, it still isn’t sure whether it’s, you know, a contract gig or you know, something that would turn into an employment day to just give it a try, but also have, you know, defined what scope of work that you want the person to do. 

Lesley Pyle  33:57
And if it needs to, let’s say you need somebody available from nine to 12, and your timezone for whatever reason, just make that clear, because that’s sometimes is valid, you know, thing if you need to meet during a certain time and you have to then switch gears to do more focused computer work that you can do anytime. 

Lesley Pyle  34:16
But I think when someone’s firing for the first time, I think it’s just really good to be as clear as you can in the job description on what you’re looking for. 

Lesley Pyle  34:24
The qualities that are important to you, if you have pet peeves, you don’t necessarily have to call them pet peeves, but if you have them somehow work that in there too because you don’t want those people applying if you know you don’t like certain you know, personalities or whatever it is, I know there’s HR rules and laws that you have to follow as well. 

Lesley Pyle  34:41
But I think those are when I see someone submit a job description and it’s just I need a virtual assistant to help me I’m like, oh, goodness, that’s not what you want to put out there for your job description. You need to you know, but then on the flip side, you have someone who writes three pages of description, and then people are class The ad is too afraid to read all of it. 

Lesley Pyle  35:01
So I think there’s a fine balance in the middle. You can keep it to one page, but you can be thorough so people know exactly what you need and what your expectations are.

Pete Newsome  35:13
Your job descriptions are, are an art. And just like resumes that many people don’t do, many organizations don’t get them right. Many resumes are hard to write because we’re not used to doing those, right? We know what the job is, and what we need to do. 

Pete Newsome  35:33
And so we actually one of the things that right when we were connecting, we just happened to be posting on zengig resume template for moms who are returning to the workforce. And I thought, Oh, that was perfect timing for us to connect. 

Pete Newsome  35:50
So with that in mind, what advice would you give to moms to present themselves since you you get to see this firsthand, and you’re on the buyer side? I need a better way to phrase it. 

Pete Newsome  35:50
But that’s how I think of it right? The buyer side, the client side, who haven’t worked for a while. And are you how you what recommendation do you have to people as far as presenting that and sharing that on the resume?

Lesley Pyle  36:15
Right? First of all, it’s kind of a timely question, because we just had one of our concierge projects. The person who they hired, just happens to be my across-the-street neighbor who has stayed at home for 17 years. Wow. And she’s now an empty nester. Her youngest just went to college. 

Lesley Pyle  36:32
And I didn’t even know she had signed up. She didn’t tell me she signed up for a hormone loan. But I saw her name and the candidate pool for this project. And But long story short, I asked our HR specialist, and I go, That is terrific. She just signed up like a week ago, and she’s already got a job offer. 

Pete Newsome  37:50
I love it. It’s I think, especially now, people need to not be fearful of that gap or, you know, having to explain or justify. And I know, I get asked all the time, it’s not our core business to ever work on part time jobs as an example. But the demand for that is so high. 

Pete Newsome  38:14
Right now, how do you know how to how are you found for that other than knowing your site, and we’ll do what we can, of course, to share that and make sure that it’s in our show notes, and you know, front and center with the podcast itself. But how do you need to be found, right, in order for someone to use your service on either side? So how do you how does that happen today?

Lesley Pyle  38:42
Hi, my mom. Yes, yes, yes, yeah, so our biggest, like I said, is word of mouth referrals, we still get a ton of referrals both on the job seeker side and the business side from happy customers. And then we also do Facebook ads and Google ads, but a much smaller bit budget than, you know, big boys out there. 

Lesley Pyle  39:02
And then, you know, I do as many outreach opportunities as I can with marketing and PR love doing podcasts like this. And I do write also for entrepreneurs, which is a great audience for us on the business side. So I’m always looking for how I can still use my PR background without really being a PR person these days.

Pete Newsome  39:22
Wonderful. And so we can know definitively your target if you had to describe your target client, how would you describe them? And I know you were thinking it’s not an enterprise, but who is it and what are its needs? And what type of positions, in particular, Do you consider, your specialty,

Lesley Pyle  39:41
We get, you know, the small businesses that have 10 employees or less typically entrepreneurs, startup businesses, coaches, and real estate agents. So all of those that are, you know, very kind of niche that sub-primary on the business side, and then obviously on the mom’s side with got, you know, you could go on and on just in the mom world. 

Lesley Pyle  40:03
But like I said, we do have dog moms and grandmas and empty nesters and dads and singles. But primarily I would if I had to say I would say probably 95% are actually moms. But again, anyone’s welcome to join.

Pete Newsome  40:18
Well, you just said some of that resonates with me, I have a friend who’s a real estate broker who just sent me a text two days ago that said, hey, I really need to hire someone, as an Assistant, what’s your recommendation, and I recommend that don’t try to do it yourself. That was my first. But I’m gonna send them your way today. For sure. Perfect.

Lesley Pyle  40:35
Yeah, that’s another good example of you know, they need help, whether it’s the admin side of it, or it’s the social media side, you know, those types of things work, they only may need 10 hours a week. So they’re not looking for lots of hours. But that mom that maybe she is looking for 30 hours a week, she can work for the real estate guy for 10 hours a week, and she can work for the coach for 15 hours a week, and build her hours that way. 

Pete Newsome  41:10
And that’s where it gets I think that sounds like freelancing to me, which I love, right? I mean, you don’t have to be restricted. And just like my HR consultant, who I mentioned, he works with different clients. But when he’s with me, he’s with me, and our time is very well spent, and there’s no fluff in between, it’s all time that’s very valuable. To me and quality.

Lesley Pyle  41:33
Yeah, and another benefit for the business owner I found is, let’s say you do have that Freelancer that works for two or three other people, they learn things from their other jobs, if you want to call it that, that they can bring to you and say, you know, like, this is what we do with this client, we use a sauna for that might want to try that, or, you know, we’d use this platform for this or that. So there’s, you know, they can learn things that actually enhance your business.

Pete Newsome  42:01
Sure, and no doubt, and what you’re filling is a void, that I considered a big void. Just as I mentioned a minute ago, I get asked over the years, so often about part-time, and we just turn it away with no real solution. I mean, we’re like, I don’t know, we don’t do part-time. It just doesn’t make sense in our model, and you’re filling that, and I know the demand is massive. 

Pete Newsome  42:23
So that, you know, for everyone listening, you have your solution now and I will be sure to shout that to anyone, anyone we can because I just know how common it is. And I don’t know what happens after we turn people away from our businesses. But but now we have a great referral to give them so that’s wonderful. Yeah, absolutely. Well, cool. Well, Leslie, this has been great. I have one more question I asked everyone. I have to know, have you found your career zen? 

Lesley Pyle  42:52
100%. I won’t say that I’ve loved every day of the past 25 years, we all have our hard days. And we have our peaks and valleys where you’re thinking, Man, these people are driving me crazy, or, but on the flip side, you have those heartfelt moments where you’ve really impacted someone’s life. 

Lesley Pyle  43:10
And those you know, you cherish. But I really do enjoy what I do. I love small business owners and helping small businesses. But as a mom, I’m still passionate about having that freedom and flexibility, even though three of our four children are now young adults living out on their own.

Pete Newsome  43:27
Awesome. Well, congratulations on your success. I really just love hearing about your innovation and everything that you’ve done. And as I’ve said a few times, and I’ll say one more, you are really filling a void that is necessary and important. And so congratulations on all of that. And thank you for joining me today.

Lesley Pyle  43:48
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Pete. It’s been a lot of fun. 

Pete Newsome  43:51
Go check out hiremymom.com. The link to Lesley’s site will certainly be in the show notes. Please find her and yeah, we’ll check back, and hopefully, I’ll have you come on a year from now. We’ll see how things have changed. 

Lesley Pyle  44:03
Yeah, that would be wonderful. 

Pete Newsome  44:04
Awesome. Well, thank you again. Yeah. Thank you, everyone listening. Have a great day.