It’s an exciting time when your business requires new team members but it can be equally daunting especially if you don’t know where to start or you’ve had negative experiences with hiring in the past.
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
Whether you’ve already started hiring or even sub-contracting, or you’re anticipating your first hire, this episode will help you.
Enjoy!
Resources:
If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
It’s an exciting time when your business requires new team members but it can be equally daunting especially if you don’t know where to start or you’ve had negative experiences with hiring in the past.
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
Whether you’ve already started hiring or even sub-contracting, or you’re anticipating your first hire, this episode will help you.
Enjoy!
Resources:
If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
H ey guys. Welcome to the podcast. Really excited to dive into this episode today.
Shannon Stone:So today we are talking about team and how you can grow and strengthen your team. Whether you have a team now or you are planning on growing a team, or even just hiring a virtual assistant or a secondhand or someone to take on some of the work that you do in your business, whatever way team looks like for you, it applies all the same. So these three phases I'm going to share are the same phases I went through when I built my team, when I had an agency, and I grew a team up to about five people at one time. I've also had clients of mine just hire a virtual assistant or just hire a second hand to take on some of the work so they could take on more clients. I've also had a client who went from zero to 12 team members within a year, which was a big team expansion, and these three phases apply no matter how many people you are looking to hire, no matter where you are at with it as well. So let's jump straight in just to take you back a little bit. So when I did hire my first team member, which was very quickly in 2015, I started hiring and all I knew was I was just very, very busy in my business and I needed help. I needed more people. I needed another set of hands to help me to keep up with clients.
Shannon Stone:As I've shared, I took on clients really quickly in my business, which was amazing, but that presented the next problem, which is I need help in my business. I need to grow a team. So when I started that, I did recognize for myself. You know what the most important thing right now is to just get organized and how can I just give this person some things to do? I'm not going to worry about all the rest of it. I've just got to get some of this work off my plate because it's spilling off my plate. So I said to myself you know what. I will just go through these different phases. And I didn't know what the following phases were. I just knew what the first phase was, which was to get organized. I'll share them all with you and then we can dive into them deeper. The second phase was to get productive and efficient, and the third phase was expansion. So we'll start with the first one, which is to get organized.
Shannon Stone:So, whether you are working with a team now or you're looking to hire someone at some point in time, getting organized is really your first point to call. So what are you going to be giving? So if this person starts tomorrow, for example, or this person starting on Monday, what are you giving them to do? So this is where we need to organize. What are the tasks for that person to do? And again, it depends on what the purpose is that you're hiring this person for, whether it's to take things off your plate or you're creating a whole new role for them. If you are, you know, aware of all hats, or even aware of many hats in the business, then looking at your tasks versus their task is going to be really helpful and a really simple way to do this.
Shannon Stone:And when I hired not my first team member, maybe my second or third team member I went through a recruiter who helped me to do some of this and implement some of these systems, and one of the great things and tools that I learned from her was to document the daily, weekly and monthly tasks that get done in your business and from there you can start to separate it. So what are the daily tasks that are happening in your business? Or another way to look at it is, especially if you're getting someone to help you with client work per client or per project what are the daily things that happen? What are the weekly tasks that happen? What are the monthly tasks that happen? And I would do this in a spreadsheet just listing all the different tasks and then I would say their daily, weekly or monthly, and then the second step would be to then choose who is going to do it. Is it you or is it them? So you just want to start to get organized with the tasks in your business, and another element that would help you with this is a good old fashioned job description, not just for the person you want to hire, even if you've already hired them. To refresh and update someone's job description is always really helpful. So getting one for that team member, but also having a job description for yourself as well, and once you organize these daily, weekly and monthly tasks that get done, you can start to see what you are left with and maybe you can start to envision who are the other people you want to be hiring in your business. So doing a job description is great because it really shows what are the things you're working on and it also starts to create space for the systems and the structures that you may want to create down the line. So first is to get all your tasks down on daily, weekly, monthly manner, and then the second part is to get your job description down as well as that team members as well.
Shannon Stone:And then the last bit on getting organized with you know, giving your team member things to do is how are you giving your team the tasks? So, do you have something like a sauna set up? Are you just doing it in a document? Are you emailing their tasks? Like what is going to make sense as far as giving the person something to do Because, say, they are starting on Monday. How do they know where to even begin? So you need to list out what are the tasks they need to be doing. We won't be talking about the training side in today's podcast although that is also really helpful and something to consider as well but just overall.
Shannon Stone:The first phase is just getting organized so that the person you are hiring actually has things to do. That's really all it comes down to. We want to make sure, when this person is working, they've got things to work on and you're giving them the right things to work on, because you've gone through this process of documenting the tasks and getting clear on the job description. And then the final bit is how are you giving the person the tasks? And it's perfectly fine to keep it really simple. I think when I first hired people, it was just on email. It's like this is what I need you to do, whereas now we've got so many Incredible tools like ClickUp and Asana and Notion and Trello and all these different things, but they can sometimes slow down, you know getting organized. So, however you want to go about it, if you want to set those things up, you definitely can, but I'll let you decide what is the best way to get organized with giving someone tasks and working out what that looks like.
Shannon Stone:One final thing I will say when you are giving the person the task is working out, what are the repetitive tasks versus the ad hoc tasks? So in my business, or in my agency, which I ran for five years up until 2020, there was many repetitive tasks, which is a systems sweet spot and really easy for team as well. So if the tasks are repetitive, that is just so easy to do. So if you've got a team member who is, say, working Monday to Friday, it's like here's just the same tasks you need to be doing for the same clients every single week. This is why retainer services and packages are incredible from so many different angles, but particularly this one around the team side of things. So what are the repetitive tasks they need to be doing? Because that is stuff you don't need to re-delegate every single week. It's like you'll just know that they'll need to be doing this every single week and you'll communicate that to your team. It's like do this one, two, three things every single week for this client unless I say so. So you've got your repetitive task and then also you've got possibly your ad hoc tasks. So are there different things that may arise that you would have to delegate in the moment, or week to week or day by day, to the team, depending on what's going on for your business? Maybe they're responding to people reaching out, maybe they are, you know, something's happened with a client and so that influences their work. So you will often have those two sides the repetitive task and then the ad hoc task.
Shannon Stone:But overall, in this phase, I remember when I hired I just said, okay, I'm just going to get organized and that's all I'm going to worry about. I'm not going to worry about how long things are taking or, you know, getting onto something like Trello or Asana. Ultimately, I ended up using Asana, but I just focused on just making sure that my team member and my team members have things to do and those things are getting done without making it any extra flashy or complicated or highly systemized, because my business wasn't there at that point in time, especially not in the early days. So that is phase number one just to get organized, which brings us then to phase number two, which I don't know if I have a favorite phase, honestly, I'll probably end up saying that all my favorite phases, but it's a milestone, I think.
Shannon Stone:When you get to the second phase, which is now that we're organized, let's be more productive and efficient. So once your team member knows their role and I'm assuming they're taking things off your plate Then this second phase is to think about well, how can we get more of these same things done in less time? So there are a lot of ways you can do that. So this is when you can start to build systems, or better systems. You can start to train them even better. Now that they know how to do things, they can navigate their way around the business. They can navigate their way around the role. They know what they need to be doing. How can we just make things happen quicker? How can we make things happen faster and more efficient? Maybe they've been asking questions back and forward about certain things. Can you turn those questions into an SOP? Or every time they ask a question, great question. I will answer that question and let's also add that question to the SOP, the standard operating procedure. So this second phase is how can we just get the same things done but get it done in less time? And often that is through building systems, that is, through training them as well, because the training on day one versus training in three months time can look really different.
Shannon Stone:And the last bit around productivity and being more efficient that I wanted to share is letting your team help you to find better ways to do things. So everyone has their own way of doing things, and, I think, being a little bit fluid around you giving the full instructions versus that team member, especially if you want this team member to be with you for the long term, and that is the plan having them to co-collaborate with you on what are the best ways to do things, now that they've kind of gotten into the thick of doing that role. Coming back to, though, if you have been, if what they're doing is getting things off your plate that you've been doing for a really, really long time, you're probably the expert at doing these tasks, so we don't want to discredit any of that, but is there a way that they have found, just with their fresh eyes, there is maybe a better way to do things? Or when they say, look, I think if we do it this way, it would actually be better to do, but because you've got your higher level of expertise, I'm assuming you could say actually we don't do it this way because there's a flow on effect if we were to do it that way. So being productive, being efficient and being open with how the better way to do things is a really great tool to use at this phase. And so, again, if we kind of recap, we've got an organised. The person knows what they need to be doing.
Shannon Stone:Your team member, then now we're stepping into being more productive and efficient, co-collaborate together and work out what are the best ways to do things, what are the best ways to give them tasks, what are the best ways to stay on track of what they're doing and where they're at or the questions they're asking. Do you need to bring any tools into place, like a project management tool such as Asana or Trello or ClickUp or Notion? There's so many good ones Monday, there's heaps of them. Slack is a great communication one that I loved and used a whole lot as well. So, in this productivity and efficiency phase, how can we just get faster at doing the same things, so it's not adding more to their plate? It's like how can we? Because, when it comes to team, time is money and so how can we get the same things done in less time, because that'll take us to the third phase, which is expansion.
Shannon Stone:So now, assuming they're fully organised, they're really productive now or we're continually working on those things how do we expand this person or the business now that we've got a fully functioning team member that is thriving in their role? So there's a few different ways you can focus on expansion, and this can come back to what your business goals are as well. But one of the ways is to focus on increasing opportunities, focus on increasing sales, focusing on improving your marketing or expanding your marketing. So how can we reinvest some of this new time, whether it's with that team member or with yourself? Now that you've got all this time back, how can you focus on increasing more of those opportunities? Or working on some of those higher needle movers in business Could be opportunities, it could be sales, it could be marketing. And again, is it you doing it? Is it this team member? Is it the two of you together doing that?
Shannon Stone:The other place for expansion that I often find really really good is creating key projects in the business that create I the assets in the business or just increase the overall everything of the business. If I was to just say it like that. Maybe it is to build more systems, maybe it is to build a CRM in the business, and it would depend on the scope of that person. It would depend on the goals of your business. Is it to improve the website? So there might be different projects in your business you haven't been able to get to because you have been so busy, but now that you've got a team member organized and productive, now how can we expand? Because, assuming they've got more time up their sleeves now, so maybe it is creating a project that they can work on in the background or that you can now work on, now that you've got more of your time back.
Shannon Stone:So when you get to this third expansion phase, you can focus on more of these things. Now that you've got that fully functioning team member there, as efficient and productive as can be, and now we've all got more time up our sleeves, so we can focus on opportunities. We can focus on creating more positive assets in our business. We can focus on, maybe, improving the number of leads that are coming in, because we can focus on more marketing. Now we can create marketing projects. Maybe it's some lead magnets, maybe it is elements on the website. Maybe it's getting the business owner you on to on to podcast, or getting more visibility for the business, and so you can do a lot of these activities. But your team can also help you with this as well. So remember and this is often, I guess, a mindset shift that the business owner will always go on when they do start to expand their team is that you do have a team now, or you have a person now to help you in business and you don't have to do everything yourself. If you're part of your goal or part of your strategy was to get more visibility, do you need to be the person to go off and get that visibility? Maybe your team can create the database or your team can work out who it is you need to be reaching out to all. They can do some part of the process when you do the most important part, which is probably showing your face or showing your voice. So these are the three phases organized productive expansion.
Shannon Stone:Let's get into the action steps. There's only really two action steps and it really depends on which category that you fall into. The first is if you do have a team, I'd love for you to go through and work out which phase in the process are you in. So are you in the organization phase, the productivity phase, the expansion phase? And just work on if there were any gaps that you hadn't addressed as you went through this process, that's where I would start. So maybe you have jumped through to Trying to get your team member as productive as possible, but you never actually got yourself or the business or that team member organized, even get to the productivity. So just work out where you are in these three phases and just pick up where you possibly left off in those phases. So that is action step number one. Well, that is if you fall into the category of already having a team.
Shannon Stone:The second action step, or the second category, is obviously if you don't have a team. So if you don't have a team yet and you're planning on hiring someone soon or in the near future, start with getting organized. So look at the task, look at your daily, weekly, monthly tasks. Start to build out a job description for you and for them. You might even start to draft out your organizational chart. So who is the? If you dream up the most perfect business of? Here's what you do in the business. Here's maybe a marketing person. Here's a finance person, here's a tech person to do any of the updates. So what does your organizational chart look like? You could probably start to dream up some of these things now, because it can help you to start to get organized.
Shannon Stone:One of the geekiest things that I do myself is to just think about or dream up who is it that I'm going to hire next in my business, and I really just Think about oh my god, it would be so great when I get to hire this person to do these type of things, and I'll think about the task I'll start to give to them and then what that means for me. You know, will I reallocate that time to other things? Or I just really dream up what it would be like to hire the next person, and that's a really great way to start to get organized with it. So these are the three phases I go through when it comes to team. It's getting organized, getting productive and then expanding. If you have any questions about it, do reach out. Best of luck with it.
Shannon Stone:I think hiring people is one of the greatest things that you can do, not just for your business, not just for your clients, but you're also creating An incredible job for someone as well. So kudos to you. I'm excited and I'd love to hear all about it, but that's what I have for you today. Hopefully you have an amazing day and I'll talk to you soon.