3 Simple Steps to Take Your Solopreneurship to the Next Level With Your Dream Team
By Shona Hamilton, Ceo of Lilac HRMost of us start out in business as solopreneurs. We build our businesses out from scratch, rocking every single role from finance to marketing as well as the day job. But let’s be real, sometimes we become victims of our own success. Your to-do list becomes a monster and the dream starts to feel further and further out of reach.
You know that you need more work (or at least more money) in order to be able to build a team, but you haven’t got capacity to do any more work than you already are. So where do you start?
This is the biggest dilemma any solopreneur experiences at this stage in business and it’s the chicken vs the egg problem. Do you hire a team so that you can take on more work or, do you take on more work so that you can hire a team?
The reality is that you can’t do one without the other, so it needs to happen simultaneously and to achieve that, you need to get really clear on three things.
Define Your Vision and Gaps
First things first, get super clear on what role you want to play in your business and whether this is your strength. Personally, I really enjoy doing my own social media, but it doesn’t come as naturally to me as being the CEO of the business. It takes me twice as long to do as it takes my social media team - so it’s not a great use of my time, even though I enjoy it.
Take this as your permission to completely redefine your role within the business. If you love the day job and that’s where your expertise lies, then your gaps are around the operations of your business. However if, like me, you love running your business and you’re skilled at it, then perhaps you need support in the day job. There is no right or wrong here, it’s just about plugging skill gaps to get you closer to your vision.
This exercise requires a lot of looking inward and facing your weaknesses. Your weaker areas or areas of your business that you feel resistance to are where you should focus your attention. It will feel uncomfortable for a bit, but the realisation that you can hand off those tasks you hate to someone else is a wonderful feeling!
Strategic Team Building
Once you have your list of tasks or areas of the business that you want to delegate, the next phase is to decide what roles these fall into. Be really careful here not to lump a bunch of different skills into one role. For example, a general administrator is very unlikely to have the required skills and experience to successfully manage your social media or deal with HR matters. I like to think of my business in pillars, much like you would a big corporation. We have HR, Finance, Sales & Marketing, Business Operations and HR Operations, despite being a team of 3. My HR Operations pro has nothing to do with any other department activity, whereas me and my administrator cover the rest between us.
When you have your clearly defined roles, you can then think about the type of person you want to work on your team. Think about where, when and how you want them to work as well as what qualities they need to have.
Then comes the big question. To outsource or to employ?
Here’s the thing… there’s no right or wrong answer. It depends on what it is you want someone to do and what your budget is like. Outsourcing is typically more expensive than employment, but it is lower risk in terms of having HR responsibilities.
I started off building out my team by having 4 self-employed HR associates doing client work for me. It was a great test run for introducing people into my business and seeing how the systems would work.
They were all fantastic professionals and the right people for my business, but they weren’t committed, because they didn’t have to be. They all had other clients or other jobs to focus on as well as my work so it just wasn’t a big deal for them. I also found that they weren’t as responsive as I would have liked because they didn’t have any set working hours because they were self-employed. So I decided to move to an employed model and immediately saw the benefits. I now have a team that I can rely on. I have a team that I don’t need to chase or micromanage. I have a team that are committed to the business and our clients because they are fully integrated in it.
BUT, I still utilise outsourced support. There are certain projects and tasks within my business that aren’t super time sensitive, aren’t client facing and don’t need me to do them - things like updating my website, social media posts or my accounts. These things are outsourced to professionals who can do those jobs better than I can so that I can be free to manage my team, bring in sales and manage the operations of the business.
Empowering Your Team & Scaling Growth
The thing is, it doesn’t matter when or how you decide to grow your team, you need to ensure you have strong systems in place to help you communicate what you need to happen, when and how. You need to develop clear communication routes for your team so that there is just one place to share information between you all. Lack of communication is one of the biggest frustrations I see in business owners growing their teams.
You will also need to develop standard operating procedures (SOPs) to help train your team in how to do the work the way you want it to be done. It’s not until you hire a team that you realise that not everyone writes emails the same way you do. Not everyone approaches tasks in the same way you do. Not everyone cares about formatting the same way you do. So the only way your team can be successful is if you tell them how you want things to be done.
When you have clear communication channels in place, clearly defined job roles and easy to follow SOPs for your work, not only does growing and scaling your team become easy, you also create an environment where individuals can thrive whether you’re in the office or not. You create a space where your team feels important, trusted and can truly perform at their best for you.
