Expanding a team and growing your business are closely linked. If you want your business to grow, you’ll need to take on extra people to help with the workload. If you expand your team, your business output, capacity and infrastructure increases, which should lead to business growth. Together, these two complementary processes are critical goals for business owners, particularly in the early years.
In a new two-part blog series, I’ll be sharing my experiences of expanding a team and growing a business. In this first part, we’ll focus on the team, with the business being the subject of the next post.
For me, expanding my team and outsourcing work was the critical step that enabled my business to grow to the next level. Taking on additional staff enabled me to take on more clients, whilst also freeing up my own time to market and grow the business.
If you want to expand your own team, here are some of the key challenges you might encounter, along with my tips for building a team and advice for things to consider along the way.
The challenges of growing a team
Whilst growing your team is probably the most direct path to scaling your business, it doesn’t come without challenges, here are three of the main ones…
- Learning to let go. Most of us start our businesses in areas of work we’re passionate about. But filing your day with work, however much you enjoy it, will limit your business’ growth. To expand your business, you will have to free up your time by delegating your current work to make time for business development, marketing, networking, and winning new work. This can be tough when you love working directly with clients, but it’s a necessary step to take.
- Finding the right people. Every member of your team represents your brand and business. You need them to make a good impression on your clients and you need to be able to trust them to do the job well, understand your vision and support your business growth. Where possible, I find recommendations are the best ways to recruit new team members. I’ve developed a network of trusted virtual assistant (VA) connections. So, if someone I know has a positive experience with a potential team member, that gives me the confidence to work with them. I’m also a member of VA groups on social media and in person, and being able to access this wider resource of known professionals is very helpful.
- Restructuring and letting clients go. Another challenge is learning that not every one of your clients will be able to stay with you as your business grows. When I first started my business, I was doing a lot of diary management. This work is time-consuming, and ultimately, I had to let it go to make time for work more aligned with the new direction of my business.
Top tips for growing a team
Building an effective team for your business takes work and recruitment is the first, not final step, in the process. When you find good people, you want to put everything in place for them to be able to do their job well. Here are my top tips for keeping team members happy, engaged and working well:
- Look after your team! This is the number one piece of advice: do everything you can to help team members feel supported and happy. I make sure all new team members have a good induction to be sure they understand the job and how we work. We have regular catch-ups and 1-2-1s and have lots of ways of keeping in touch, including fortnightly team emails and a whole team Slack channel.
- Make collaboration easy. Our team works remotely and so collaboration tools are essential to keep us connected. We use Asana to assign tasks and track progress and also work together on industry-specific tools like Clio for law firms.
- Create SOPs for key processes. It’s critical that as your team grows that they can cover one another (and yourself) during leave or absences. I create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) setting out how critical processes work. For more on this, check out How to create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for your business or law firm.
- Make time for training and learning. Helping team members feel confident in their work is important. Alongside our SOPs, I use tools like Loom to create video walkthroughs of more complicated processes and share these via Asana. I’ve also run team walkthroughs on Zoom covering new tools and technologies we use with clients.
- Two-way communication is critical. I mentioned the tools I use for keeping in touch with team members, but communication is more than this. It’s important your team feel able to come to you with concerns, challenges and difficulties. I recently reached out to the team to remind them that if they’re facing problems with a client to let me know as soon as possible. Most things in business can be fixed, but you have to know something is an issue to address it.
Growing a team – final thoughts
There can be challenges in growing a team, however, finding a group of people to share in your business goals and vision is one of the most rewarding parts of being a business owner. I’ve worked with some fantastic people since starting my business, many of whom are still working in the team today. Together, we’ve helped clients to take control of their workloads and thrive.
What might surprise you, is that my team is made up of associates – they’re all business owners in their own right and I outsource work to them. This leads me to my final tip – you don’t have to recruit to grow your team…you can outsource.
How to grow your team through outsourcing
When business owners think about growing a team, they usually turn to recruitment. However, recruitment is an often costly and lengthy process, with no guarantee you’ll find the right people. Once you’ve employed someone, you’re responsible for paying their salary all year-round, regardless of whether you have work for them to do every day.
A major alternative to recruitment is outsourcing. When you outsource work to a virtual business support firm like ours, you pay only for the support you need. You can start working with us quickly, without lengthy recruitment delays.
Our virtual assistants will work with you just like any other team member – attending meetings, using your company email accounts and working within your business systems and guidelines. The key difference is that you save money on recruitment as well as monthly oncosts (pension, NI, sick pay, holiday pay etc) whilst still getting access to the skills you need.
By taking on your admin burden, we can free up your time to focus on growing your business. We can also help with some of those difficult tasks like organisation, business development and marketing that can help your business expand.
To find out more, arrange a call with us today.
Don’t miss part two of this blog series, Growing a business – coming soon!
