EPISODE 107 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: KNOW WHEN TO GROW… YOUR TEAM

Sonya:

For many small business owners, a big goal is to be able to build up a team to the point where you can step out of the day-to-day and have things run smoothly without you having to be there 24/7. But when you're starting out, resources can be pretty tight. You may not even be paying yourself a proper wage. I know I wasn't for the first few years of my business. There comes a tipping point though, where you have to make the decision to either grow your team or stay small.

In this episode, I'm sharing the top three signs that it might be time to grow your team.

Welcome to the Boom Your Biz Podcast, a podcast for the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host, Sonya McIntyre-Reid, and each week I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive. I'm on a mission to educate, empower, and inspire business owners and myself along the way.

Small business. It is a wild ride. Many of us go from being a one man or woman show, getting new clients through word of mouth referrals, doing one project at a time, to eventually having a full roster of clients or projects. Pulling some pretty late nights to get everything done with many of us feeling like we couldn't possibly afford to hire help, but feeling like we're at the point where we can't afford not to.

That was my story, anyway. I built my business slowly while I was still working my day job at a not-for-profit, foregoing sleep and weekends in the hopes that one day I'd be able to do this digital marketing thing full-time. They say be careful what you wish for, but in my case, the reality of my business today is above and beyond anything I could have ever hoped for. I thought I'd be a sales trader who worked with other contractors to provide digital marketing services.

Now, I have an agency and a business partner. It's been quite the journey though, and as many business owners will tell you, I wish I'd hired sooner. If you're at the point where you are thinking about hiring, listen on. If you see yourself in any or all of these statements, it might be time.

Sign number one. You need someone with a specific skill set. I am not too proud to say that there are people out there who are better than me at certain aspects of digital marketing. In fact, there are members on my team who are better than me at some things, and that's just how it should be. If you are offering social media management and someone needs you to run ads, are you going to jump on the opportunity to solidify that client relationship, or are you going to say that you don't do ads and potentially lose that account altogether?

If it were me, I'd be learning ads or finding someone to outsource those ads to QuickSmart. You might know that two things that seem to be related are usually done by two different teams, but your clients and customers don't. When I take my car to the mechanic, I intellectually know that an auto electrician does something different to the person who's going going to replace my muffler. But wouldn't it just be so much easier if I could take my car to one place and get both sorted out?

In digital marketing, for example, social media management and ads go hand in hand. So do brand design and web development, PR and copywriting, and the list goes on. Pro tip, listen to what your clients, and more importantly, your potential clients are asking you, in terms of products and services. And if you hear people asking for the same thing over and over, it might be worth investigating whether or not you need to hire or team up with someone who has that skill set that you need.

Sign number two, you are making too many mistakes. For me as a business owner and as a manager of a team, this is when I know someone on my team might have too much on their plate. Mistakes happen, but what's important is how people deal with those mistakes. I have infinitely more respect for someone who puts up their hand and says, "That's my bad. I made a mistake and I've gone through the rest of my work for that client to make sure everything else is okay," than someone who makes excuses, blames others, or worst of all, is completely apathetic about the fact that they've messed up.

There have been times when a team member hasn't picked up small errors when they usually would, and when I've looked at their workload, I've realized I've piled way too many due dates on in one week. Or their client load has been creeping up gradually and I just haven't realized that they're at capacity. Thankfully, my team have gotten very good at telling me when they're nearing capacity or burnout, and we have systems in place to make sure they can help each other out. But if your team are making lots of small errors and they usually happen in quick succession, I'd be investigating to see if they have too much on their plate.

Number three, you haven't gone on a holiday in over a year. This one hits home for me because for a long time, my business was just me. Now that I've actually grown my team, I can and do take weeks off at a time knowing that the ship will still stay on course without me there. But I do get it. The thought of being responsible for another person's livelihood can be really daunting. You don't have to go all-in though. Your first hire doesn't have to be a full-time salaried position.

If you're a sole trader, you could hire someone for five hours a week to look after your inbox, answer any inquiries, and keep up with posting and engaging on your social media accounts. If you have a brick and mortar business, you might want to bring on someone to work on a Monday or a Friday, so you can, at the very least, have the occasional long weekend. And if you're a service-based business owner who wears all of the hats, it might be time to look at the tasks that you could outsource in your business. There are plenty of incentives to bring on an apprentice or trainee, and those tasks that are repetitive or able to be distilled down into an easy to follow system can potentially be taken off your plate.

In the end though, it's important to remember why you started your business in the first place. If it was to have more freedom, but you're currently working 80 hour weeks, how free are you really? If your motivation was to help people but you spent hours sorting out invoices and doing your best, could that time be better spent? If you've hired staff for your small business, I'd love to hear what your first hire was and which hires you made that ended up being not quite what you needed. Your experience could help other small business owners avoid making the same mistakes. Head over to Facebook and search Boom Your Biz to join our free Facebook group of like-minded business owners. And if you liked this episode, don't forget to leave us a review.