Posted on April 19th, 2021

Get A Team: How Mine Grew From 0 to 10 Employees

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Business Growth
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Leadership
  • Mindset
  • Strategy

So many entrepreneurs are solopreneurs. They don’t have a team. With this blog post, I hope to encourage you to consider getting a team. 

I’ll share my story. 

I recently hired a personal assistant to help me with the day-to-day things: my email, scheduling, and some of my social media. 

I already had a team of 10 people who took care of a lot of my business’ operations, but this personal assistant was more for the personal things that I needed help with items such as inbox management, scheduling and travel arrangements. 

Hiring my new personal assistant made me recall my experience in building the team I have now. 

I’ve had my business for seven years. Two years in, I started thinking I needed someone to help me. 

If you want to scale, you need to hire

Back when I made my first hire, I went to local colleges where I live in Denver and hired a couple of interns. One of them actually stayed with me for several years. 

In order to scale, move forward, gain more clients, free myself from having to do the day-to-day operations in my business, and most importantly, to be happy with what I do, I realized that I needed people who can help me with all of these projects. 

With all the background tasks taken care of, I can focus on the big picture: finding new clients, being the face of the company, business development, speaking engagements, strategy, new projects, and new businesses. 

For a proficient team, use a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)

But to scale your team, you first need to train your team. And training requires a process.

I use a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in my business so all tasks are documented and all new staff go through the SOP before working on any projects.

Our Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) posted in Trello. That’s also been a critical point in growing my team, because before I had standard operating procedures, I couldn’t really train people or do it very effectively.

A lot of entrepreneurs don’t have standard operating procedures, which makes it very difficult to train new hires. 

Without an SOP, you have to take time out of your schedule to individually train each and every new hire. With an SOP, it’s so easy to onboard someone. Everything’s spelled out in one cohesive source. They can get started immediately and just consult the SOP when they run into a question they need answered.  

Your SOP can be a document or a collection of videos and demos that serve as instructions for the new person to reference with regarding their new role or tasks.

SOPs are very useful when your team is growing, people leave or you have to hire a new person.

Be intentional about delegating

Delegating is not, “Oh, let’s delegate because I don’t really feel like doing stuff.” 

It’s more about what you want to do and how you want your day to look. This gives you insight on what to delegate. 

Ask yourself these questions:

  • What do you want to do?
  • Where do you want to take your business?
  • How can you make it all happen? 
  • And on which parts of that process do you want to personally focus?
  • What drains your energy?
  • Where do you see yourself, and also what are the things you wish you had more time for? 

That’s what it was for me. I decided that I don’t want to be doing the day-to-day operations of my business. I wanted to be doing more podcasts, strategic projects, and bringing in new clients. I wanted to focus on sales and business development. I wanted to do speaking engagements and creating content and courses. 

These are the tasks that I decided I wanted to do. This is how I wanted my day to look.

So if you want to scale, start with hiring a team!

Posted on April 14th, 2021

Are you Using A Project Management Tool in Your Business?

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Growth
  • Strategy

Are you using a project management tool in your business? If not, you should. 

Of all the tools, this one makes or breaks a business. It gives you the opportunity to assign projects, set deadlines, and get status updates on the progress of your project. It keeps you focused on your tasks so you can stay in sync with your team without drowning them and yourself in endless emails.

If you are already using a project management tool, see how my recommendations stack up against your experience.

Here are three project management tools I recommend you try. 

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Slack

Slack, my number one choice, has a cool name and a cool interface. It’s similar to an instant messenger, but it’s super organized. You can have channels for every project, every task, and every team. You have complete control over privacy and the assignment of members to each channel. 

For example, if you hire freelancers to work on a specific assignment, you can add them to only those pertinent channels, restricting their access to your other projects, team members and information. 

Likewise, you and your executive team (your project manager, your executive assistant, etc.) can have access to all channels without being bombarded with irrelevant messages. You can visit each channel as needed when you need to review something or talk to specific people within that channel. 

I love the visibility and accountability the platform offers. As team members communicate with each other within each channel, you can see how well they interact and collaborate with each other. 

You can add any attachment to every message: docs, sheets, images, video, gifs, etc. 

Slack offers a free version. If you need more functionality, such as more storage or access to older messages, you can upgrade to the paid tiers. 

 

trello-app-banner

Trello

Trello is a free project management tool that I also like. It uses boards to help you organize your projects. Every project has a board; every board has cards; and every card has lists. For example, you can drag and drop a card from an In Progress list to a Done list when it’s, well, done. 

You can assign each card to a particular person. To further organize your project, you can add to it due dates, checklists, and files. You can also add other people who might be responsible for other tasks in the project. It’s a wonderful visual and tactile tool. You can see the project as a whole as well as every task, every person, and every due date. 

 

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Basecamp

Basecamp is like a SaaS product and similar to the other two I described above. 

Once you create a project, you can then assign people to it, add due dates, and have a discussion about the project with your team members. 

Basecamp is offered as a free, lighter version and a paid, business-oriented version. 

Between Basecamp and Trello, I prefer Trello because it’s very easy to use. The visual organization is straightforward, and the drag-and-drop functionality of the cards is very user-friendly.  

 

Move on from emails

To manage your projects via email is to waste valuable time and compromise efficiency. Employ a project management tool instead. It’ll improve the quality of communication with your team, add clarity to the project structure and flow, and declutter your inbox, freeing you to do the tasks that actually move the needle for your business. 

 

What project management tool do you use?