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It's Not Rocket Science! Five Questions Over CoffeeHelping business owners explode their business growth Author: The Complete Approach
The mission of It's Not Rocket Science! is to bring a new idea for building business to growth-hungry business leaders and owners who want to do more with less time and so increase their business and influence. We deliver actionable ideas using our five questions over coffee. thecompleteapproach.substack.com Language: en Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Five Questions Over Coffee with Lesley Pyle (ep. 139)
Episode 135
Thursday, 29 January, 2026
Who is Lesley?Lesley Pyle is the founder of HireMyMom, a company dedicated to helping small business owners—especially those running hybrid or remote teams—grow and succeed. After seeing countless business owners struggle to find skilled, trustworthy candidates and juggle the demands of recruiting, Lesley made it her mission to simplify hiring. Through HireMyMom, she connects digital marketing agencies, coaches, consultants, and e-commerce businesses with talented remote professionals, eliminating the hassle of massive job boards. Lesley also offers a unique concierge service, allowing an experienced HR professional to handle the entire hiring process, so business owners can focus on what they do best—growing their businesses.Key TakeawaysHere’s what’s brewing in this episode:🎯 Hiring Help for Small Businesses Lesley breaks down the biggest hiring challenges for small and micro-business owners. If you’ve ever rushed a hire just to fill a gap, you’ll relate! She reveals how a bad hire can impact team morale, productivity, and even customer satisfaction. But don’t worry—Lesley also shares how her platforms connect entrepreneurs to the right remote candidates (and even offer a concierge hiring service to take the pressure off).🙅♀️ Common Mistakes and Smart Fixes From skipping steps to hiring out of desperation, Lesley outlines what NOT to do—and how a step-by-step system can save time, money, and headaches. She highlights the importance of hiring for culture and soft skills, not just resumes!📚 Free Resource: Smart Hiring Guide Don’t miss Lesley’s offer: a free Smart Hiring Guide packed with checklists, job post templates, freelancer pricing guides, and a comparison of platforms. Grab yours at www.systemise.me/free-stuff🌟 An Entrepreneurial Origin Story Lesley opens up about her unexpected path from PR professional to entrepreneurial trailblazer, inspired by her own struggle to balance motherhood and career. Her journey from a single-parent household to earning a master’s degree in Scotland and founding two impactful businesses is both relatable and uplifting.💡 What’s New: Hire Thy Neighbor Get an exclusive peek at her latest venture, helping people connect with local service providers—and even search by faith connection or church affiliation. (It’s in early launch—look for updates soon!)✨ Most Inspiring Takeaway Finally, Lesley leaves us with a reminder: no matter your background or obstacles, with determination, faith, and resilience, you can reach dreams you never imagined.Don’t forget: If you want to connect, ask questions, or get notified about upcoming guests like Lesley, subscribe to the Systemise.Me newsletter here. You only need your first name and email—easy as (coffee) pie!Thanks for sharing a cup with us this week. Here’s to strong coffee, smart hiring, and believing in the dreams you’re just starting to imagine.And don’t forget: keep an eye out for next guest. To submit your own questions, subscribe to our newsletter and join the conversation!P.S. Loved this episode? Hit reply and let us know what resonated most_________________________________________________________________________________________________Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at www.systemise.me/subscribeFind out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguestSubscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcastHelp us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!Do You Need a P.A.T.H. to Scale?We help established business owners with small but growing teams:go from feeling stuck, sceptical, and tired of wasting time and money on false promises,to running a confident, purpose-driven business where their team delivers results, customers are happy, and they can finally enjoy more time with their family -with a results-based refund guarantee: if you follow the process and it doesn’t work, we refund what you paid.This is THE P.A.T.H. to scale your business.————————————————————————————————————————————-TranscriptNote, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)SUMMARY KEYWORDSsmall business hiring, remote work, hybrid companies, digital marketing agencies, coaches and consultants, e-commerce businesses, hiring process, HR departments, bad hire costs, hiring mistakes, onboarding, job candidate selection, concierge hiring service, affordable recruiting, job post templates, freelancer pricing guides, virtual assistants, customer service hiring, company culture fit, soft skills, work from home, moms working remotely, freelancing, home-based businesses, job boards, local business networking, HireMyMom platform, Hire Thy Neighbor, faith-based business, church directory, entrepreneurial journeySPEAKERLesley Pyle, Stuart WebbStuart Webb [00:00:00]:SA hi, and welcome back to It’s Not Rocket Science. Five questions over coffee. I have my cup of a mug of coffee with me here, and I’m here with Leslie Pyle. Leslie is the founder of Hire My mom and Hire Thy Neighbor. So we’re gonna have some interesting, exciting discussions, I think, about how she is helping business owners to, as I say, move from the path of least assistance to something better where they can actually free up their time for more strategic decisions. So, Lesley, welcome to It’s Not Rocket Science. Thanks very much for being here.Lesley Pyle [00:01:05]:Yeah, thank you, Stuart. It’s my pleasure and my honor to be with you.Stuart Webb [00:01:09]:Terrific. So let’s start with the who is the business owner, the business person or person you’re trying to serve? What is, what are the sort of characteristics of that person?Lesley Pyle [00:01:19]:Yeah. So our ideal client is a small business owner, typically running a hybrid or remote company. Anything from digital marketing agencies to coaches, consultants, and e commerce businesses. The biggest challenge they face is finding and hiring the right candidates to help their business grow and thrive. Many times these business owners try to quickly hire to alleviate the growth pains or issues their businesses are facing. They either don’t have the skills to hire well or they don’t have the time. So at HireMyMom, we solve that problem by connecting them with skilled, talented, remote talent without the headaches and stress of the mega job boards. In addition, we offer a concierge service where our HR professional can take the burden off the business owner and perform the entire hiring process for them.Lesley Pyle [00:02:09]:And at the end of the project, we present them with the top two or three candidates for the business owner to then review hire their top choice. And we do this at an affordable price, unlike many of the traditional recruiters.Stuart Webb [00:02:22]:So.Lesley Pyle [00:02:22]:So it makes it very attractive for the small and micro business owner.Stuart Webb [00:02:26]:Terrific. I mean, you’ve just described an ideal situation there, but what have you come across as sort of routes and things that some of the business owners you’ve worked with have tried to do to alleviate these problems? Because as you say, getting the right person in the right job to really help your business grow can be a really critical thing. And as you said, a lot of people don’t really understand the steps, don’t understand how to best choose, and often make mistakes.Lesley Pyle [00:02:52]:That’s right. And most small businesses, they don’t have HR departments, so they are typically the hiring manager. So the most common mistake we see is hiring too quickly, not taking the time. So hiring the wrong person, it doesn’t just waste money, but it can disrupt Your entire business. On average, people don’t realize this, but on average, a bad hire cost up to 30% of what you’re paying that person. And in addition, there’s these four negative impacts. Number one, you lose time training someone who doesn’t work out. Number two, your productivity is lost as you have to restart the entire process.Lesley Pyle [00:03:31]:Number three, your team morale and your personal morale is shot. Your customer experience is probably affected. And then number four, your burnout because you’re having to juggle your job and theirs for that time. So most small businesses spend 45 hours trying to hire onboard train a new member, and 82% of them report negative impacts from hiring the wrong person. So that’s really where we try to come in and help. And if someone doesn’t want to use us as a concierge service, they can do the hiring themselves, obviously, with our platform, but we just try to educate them as best we can on the proper steps, you know, writing a good job post, what types of interview questions, and all of those things to really help them be successful.Stuart Webb [00:04:20]:Yeah, you’re right. I’ve often seen it in businesses I’ve been working with where the wrong person coming in can do more harm than good. You know, they often leave not just cost and wasted productivity, but poor, poor attitude. With people dissatisfied that somebody else has been hired, that has left a bad taste. And that can be quite damaging for the, you know, the small business that’s got maybe a small team that’s just started to gel and the wrong person comes in can cause a lot of disruption, can’t it?Lesley Pyle [00:04:51]:Yes, it really can. So that’s why we tell people not to rush the process, to really take their time, make sure they’re hiring the right person, the right fit, who has the right skills and, you know, not. Skills aren’t always the number one thing to look for, because a lot of times those can be trained. No, but do they have the soft skills? Do they have the culture? Do they fit your culture, your values, your mission, and things like that? So there’s a lot more to kind of think through versus just how does the resume look?Stuart Webb [00:05:21]:Yeah, absolutely right. It, it is a. It is a case of hiring the behavior, not for the, for the skill. I often say to people when they’re hiring, and I don’t know if you find this yourself, you should not hire as if it’s 100 meters race, but higher as if it’s the high jump. You set a quality standard. You say, this is the bar, and if nobody clears it or you Just start the process again. You don’t just lower the bar and say, we’ll take whoever we can get.Lesley Pyle [00:05:45]:That’s right. You’re right.Stuart Webb [00:05:47]:So Leslie, I think you’ve got a great, valuable piece of advice that you can leave with the, with the, with the people that are listening to us at the moment.Lesley Pyle [00:05:55]:Yeah, we absolutely do. So because of all these things we’ve talked about, we have our free smart hiring guide and it’s available for free. So if you go to hiremymom.com podcast, you can get our free guide. And it comes with a step by step smart hiring checklist number one. It comes with common mistakes to avoid. It comes with a sample job post template so you know things to include and not include. It also comes with pricing guides so you know how much typically a freelancer or a contractor is desiring for various roles from social media, virtual assistant, customer service, and all the different roles. So we’ll give you an idea on the going rates and then we’ll also do a side by side comparison so you can see how hiring my mom compares with some of the other job sites.Stuart Webb [00:06:46]:And we’re going to have all of that in the vault that we give you access to, which is systemized me free stuff. So if you didn’t catch that link, it will all be in the show notes for us. So thank you for that. Leslie Lesley, what is it that got you to the stage where you’re now trying to sort of help other people understand the hiring process? What was the, is it a book, a course, a life experience that really sort of brought you to this place?Lesley Pyle [00:07:15]:Yeah, I would say it would definitely be a life experience because when I graduated with my master’s degree there in Scotland, I had no intentions of not pursuing my public relations and marketing career. However, I had a baby shortly after that and that baby pretty much changed my world. So I went from being certain that I wanted to be a full time corporate career woman to oh my goodness, what am I going to do? This is not suited to me anymore. But I want to work, but I also want to be a mom. And this was back in 1995, so 30 years ago. And I began soul searching and decided after, you know, talking to my husband and praying through it all that I would take the leap into freelancing. And freelancing back in 1995 was not a hot commodity. There weren’t many people doing it.Lesley Pyle [00:08:07]:It was tough. I had to try to learn so many things on my own. And that led me to start a website back in 1996 called Home Based Working Moms. And it was basically like an online chamber of commerce where moms either worked at home or wanted to work at home. And then fast forward 14 years, and I was noticing that the business culture was becoming more accepting towards working from home. I no longer had to hide the fact that I worked from home. I openly shared it. And people were so, like, envious.Lesley Pyle [00:08:41]:How can I do that? So the idea came to me as I had this great audience of moms. I did not have an audience of small businesses, but I thought it’d be wonderful if I could create a platform similar to match.com because it was popular back then and connect moms with legitimate jobs. So that’s when hiremymom.com was born, in 2007. So 18 years ago now.Stuart Webb [00:09:06]:Brilliant. And it’s grown ever since. Now you’re hiring, and now you’re into hiring Thy neighbor as well. So what’s the difference between. Between hi, my mom. And Hire Thy neighbor.Lesley Pyle [00:09:17]:Yeah. So Hire Thy Neighbor is brand new. It hasn’t officially launched. Although the website’s live, we’re still tinkering it and, and getting it up to speed before we start promoting it. But the premise behind Hire Thy Neighbor is to help small businesses connect to their local community. So when you need things for your. Your personal self, your. Your home, your children, such as doctors, plumbers, lawn care, you can go on to hire that neighbor and find people locally who provide those services.Lesley Pyle [00:09:48]:And you can read all about them in a Facebook profile type setup. But in addition to learning about them, it has a faith component, so you can learn about their faith, their testimony, and you can also use the church directory to find people who may go to your church.Stuart Webb [00:10:05]:So what’s the burning question you’ve got for me that you haven’t yet managed to get me to ask? Lesley, you must have one that you’re thinking the. He’s asked a lot of really interesting questions, but the one that he really isn’t getting to. And you’ve got that, I’m sure. So would you just tell us what is the question you want me to ask? And then obviously you need to answer it for us.Lesley Pyle [00:10:27]:Yeah, absolutely. So one question that I like to answer and have people ask because I think it’s inspiring, and that would be, how did someone who grew up with a struggling single mom without any family, having gone to college, find herself living out an entrepreneurial dream that she had no capacity to even dream as a young girl?Stuart Webb [00:10:48]:Well, that’s quite a long question. So I hope it’s a long answer.Lesley Pyle [00:10:52]:It won’t be super long. But, you know, growing up, we had no idea that college was an option for me and my two brothers. I’m the only one that ended up going to college, and someone just told me that I could. And that’s all it took for me to then take the steps and learn about grants and loans and work study and all of that. And because I was in charge of paying for all of that, you know, I worked really hard, graduated at the top of my class, and then it was time for me to graduate. I couldn’t get a job. So it was like obstacle number two. Number one, I never thought I could go to college.Lesley Pyle [00:11:27]:And then number two, I couldn’t get hired. I’m like, I had these interns, these great grades, but I cannot get hired. So I decided to look for scholarships to get my master’s degree. And that’s when I stumbled upon this full scholarship to study anywhere in the world from the Rotary foundation and ended up getting my master’s degree at the University of Sterling in Scotland and, and, you know, use that background in marketing and PR and able to launch my businesses. So I just say that as a way to inspire others that, you know, you may have these, these things that feel like they’re impossible for you, but I think with a lot of determination, a lot of prayer and a lot of fortitude, you can really reach your dreams that you didn’t even know to dream of.Stuart Webb [00:12:12]:Brilliant. I really find it inspiring you put that much work in and I think what you’ve built in Hire my mom is a brilliant platform. I look forward to seeing it grow now with the new concept that we’re bringing on, which is going to be even more interesting. And Leslie, I want to thank you very much for coming and spending a few minutes with us, telling us about it today. I one one thing from me, and this is the only plea you’ll get from me at this. If you would like to join and listen to people as interesting as Leslie and also ask questions if you want to. And you can easily post questions in the chat on LinkedIn. And Leslie, we can can easily get back to you and answer you.Stuart Webb [00:12:53]:But if you go to Systemize Me, that’s Systemize Me forward slash subscribe. That gets you onto newsletter. All I ask you to do is drop in your first name, just one name and an email address and then you’ll get an email from me once a day, once a week, coming up and saying who’s coming on this week just to give you notice of who’s coming up so that you can join and listen to people as inspiring, as interesting as Leslie. Leslie, thank you so much for spending some time with us. I really appreciate you spending a bit of time, and I know you’re very busy, and I know you know your children, right, might be a little bit older now, but they still take up time, don’t they?Lesley Pyle [00:13:29]:That’s right.Stuart Webb [00:13:30]:Okay. Thank you, Leslie.Lesley Pyle [00:13:32]:Thank you, Stuart. Get full access to It's Not Rocket Science! at thecompleteapproach.substack.com/subscribe
