When to hire a team and what I have learned as a boss
Over the past few months, I’ve been asked several questions about hiring a team and how to keep a dynamic team culture.
In episode 116 of BRANDED! I dive into some of the lessons I’ve learned about being a boss because this has so much to do with our brand and company culture as a whole.
First, I want you to understand when to hire team members; just like anything else, you never really feel ready.
This might mean you have to cut out expenses from elsewhere because you know that you can’t do it all on your own anymore to grow.
There is a specific mindset shift that I want you to make when it comes to hiring a team.
Rather it’s a VA, an independent contractor, part-time, or full-time team member…
Instead of “how much is this going to cost me”, start thinking, “what is the return on investment I could get on this? How is it freeing up my time so I can stand in my authority zone as a CEO”.
From my past learning experiences, I tried to hire VAs and independent contractors, but having full-time team members has been an absolute privilege, joy, and honor, and I think my team members would say the same thing about working with The Weber Co.
I 10/10 recommend that when you’re able to make that leap in hiring a full-time team over an independent contract, you will see the most significant shift in finances, culture, and everything in between.
When is it time to hire a team?
If you catch yourself dropping balls, not getting everything done in a work day, or showing up on social media as much as you want to - it’s likely team you need to hire someone to help you move the business forward.
Now, when you go to hire someone, I highly recommend that you give yourself plenty of time and interview multiple people. We made an exception for that when one of our clients, after two years, applied for the marketing and content coordinator position.
But - almost always, give yourself a month, maybe six weeks, to find the best fit.
Of course, you want to ensure you’re checking your budget and have the finances in place. When taking a paycheck from your business and taking on a new team member, you need to take that very seriously. We are contributing to someone’s livelihood, a responsibility we can’t take lightly.
I’m going to recap on that so far:
Hire before you’re ready
Check your budget and finances
Give yourself time to find the perfect fit and speak with plenty of candidates
Take this responsibility super seriously
The second piece of this is:
What are the tasks that:
You hate doing
You like to do but don’t necessarily need to be doing
You love doing and want to keep doing
Once you figure these pieces out, you can define the role of your company.
The order for me was, first, a sales role - someone to help bring in leads and close sales.
The second person we hired was someone to come in and help serve the clients brought in from those sales.
The third position we hired was to off-load content & marketing.
This journey made sense for me because I could do the content & marketing, which may look different for some.
You have to find what makes sense for you. Maybe you hire a team member who frees up your time so that you can focus on activities that contribute to the bottom line. You have to find what works for you here.
We also must remember that we need to give them the resources and tools they need to succeed.
Bringing on team members and expecting them not to make mistakes and to know all the answers that will not be the case.
Of course, here at The Weber Co, we set clear expectations for our team members during the interview process. I encourage you to do the same here.
When you allow someone to take ownership over their role and bring in new fresh ideas, they will soar and flourish, but along with this, there will be mistakes.
The first thing I’ve learned as a boss.
You don’t want to become a leader that you do not feel good about.
There have been instances as a past employee where I learned what I wanted to be as a boss and what I didn’t want to be.
Now, I will be the first to own my mistakes, and I will also be the first to say, ok, what’s a solution?
Another lesson, put time limits on new systems and strategies to see what is working and what isn’t
Narvis is one of our amazing team members. She is more internally facing and supports our clients to ensure they get the results they are looking for.
She was also hired to support the sales process, we gave that six months and we should have shortened that length of time. It wasn’t working and wasn’t a good fit for her.
Now, we shifted that role to referrals and retention, and she’s been an instrumental part in working on a stellar project that’s going to be massive (stay tuned for that), she is soaring. She’s bubbly, light, excited, happy, and diving into her authority zone.
You have to be willing to course-correct and shift when needed.
Some of you reading this might have a VA that just isn’t working out, and you’re too worried about hurting that person’s feelings and it’s directly affecting your bottom line.
We have to take feelings off the table to be able to grow.
The last thing I have for you today, that I’ve learned as a CEO is that the decisions you make and the way you lead might look different than others.
It is your company and setting in the tone and staying rooted in that vision is your responsibility.
We hope this episode and blog were so helpful to you.
We have something super stellar coming your way very soon. In the meantime, you can start doing this deep brand work by applying for our Authority Brands Training! You will learn Our proprietary 3-part framework for building an authority brand and so much more.