One of the things I love to do is helping business owners prepare their business to hire a team. They’ve gotten to the point that doing all of the tasks in their business by themselves is no longer feasible. If they want their business to continue to grow, they need to begin to outsource.
Some business owners will dive right in and hire someone within a few days. Others will take the time to prepare.
Those who dive in are setting themselves up for failure. It takes time and effort to make sure your business is in a position to hire and that once you do, your new team member will feel successful and want to stay.
This process doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s important that you don’t treat it as such.
Think Forward
If you are ready to hire a team, think forward by putting yourself in a new team member’s shoes.
Which tasks will they be responsible for?
Where will they find the information they need?
How will they know which tasks to do?
Will they know how to complete those tasks?
These are all questions you need to ask yourself before hiring.
If your business feels messy internally, it will feel the same to your new team member as well, but probably even more so. Remember, they will be stepping into your business for the first time.
It’s important to clean up your business before hiring a new team member. They want to be successful. They can only be successful, though, if you set your business up for success by creating an operational foundation.
Begin this process by identifying the systems and processes in your business that feel messy or clunky. If it feels hard to complete a process, that’s an indicator that something could be done to improve the process.
Begin by identifying the specific steps that seem hard. Brainstorm ways to make this step easier. I like to create a flowchart so I can see the steps of a process. Next to the current process visual, I make notes regarding improvements that could be made. Finally, make a commitment to working on making each step of the process better.
While you work on figuring out a better process, be sure to also document the new process in an SOP. If you need an SOP template and directions for how to complete one, be sure to visit my home page to sign up to receive one.
Setting Up Systems And Processes
Having systems and processes in place is key to having a successful and happy team. Without them, you and your team will feel like you are floundering around without any clear direction. Having these in place from day one will ensure that your team members will be successful and happy. When you take the steps to prepare your business to hire a team, you set everyone up for success.
Virtual Office
Your virtual office is where you house all the information you need to run your business. It can be set up in Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, or whatever you choose.
When you set up your virtual office, think about containers. What kind of information do you store here?
- Important legal/financial documents
- Client information
- SOPs
- Templates
- Marketing Assets
- Course Assets
- Product Assets
Once you decide on your containers, continue to think about how you can further compartmentalize the documents that go in each. For example, don’t just have a marketing folder and dump everything in there. Break it down further into folders for Facebook, Instagram, Clubhouse, or wherever you post.
Don’t stop there either. Think about having a folder by year within each of those containers.
Don’t stop! In each yearly folder, create one folder for graphics and another one for copy. If you have a single document for a yearly marketing plan, you can simply leave that as a standalone document in the yearly folder.
Yes, with this method you’ll have more clicks. The positive side is that you and your team will know exactly where to find documents easily. You’ll be happier because they won’t have to ask you where a document is, and they’ll be happier because they won’t have to guess where it is.
Project Management Tool
There are a lot of project management tools out there. It really doesn’t matter which one you use. The important thing is to find one that works for you and to actually use it. Personally, I love and use ClickUp (affiliate link) to help me organize my business and stay on top of the tasks I need to complete.
As you set up your PM tool, be sure to keep your team in mind. In fact, you may find that creating a similar structure as you did in your virtual office will be helpful here too.
One of the reasons I love ClickUp is because of the many layers of hierarchy. I have been known to put an entire process in a task card that I also save as a template. I assign a team member and a due date once. The team loves that every step of the process is in one place. No more clicking here and there to see all the pieces to a process!
Within your PM tool, be sure to use features such as attachments, checklists, subtasks, recurring due dates, and templates. All of these features will make your life and the lives of your team members so much easier.
As you begin to work out a new process and you are setting it up as a template, keep one list or task card available so you can tweak it as you discover things that are or are not working. Having this card available will allow you to make those changes quickly and easily. Just be sure to save your changes to the existing template!
Having a project management tool is key to a successful business. Being able to use it to its full capacity is a life saver!
One More Step
Once you have these things in place, you can begin to identify the tasks you want to outsource. As you identify these, make sure you have an SOP in place as a guide for your team members. SOPs will help your team members know when and how to complete a task. Do you still need an SOP template to get started? You can find one on my website in exchange for your email address.
Be sure to prepare your business to hire a team. By getting organized, it will make it easier for your team to find the things they need to do the job you hired them for.
