Team of Me vs. Team of We: When Is It Time to Make the Leap?
When you start out as an entrepreneur, you’re used to wearing a million different hats. You’re the CEO, COO, CFO, and CMO. It can be fatiguing, overwhelming, and even depressing. There's a better way.
When you start out as an entrepreneur, you’re used to wearing a million different hats. You’re the CEO, COO, CFO, and CMO. You’re managing tax and accounting, marketing, technology, legal, operations, and finance issues - and tasked with delivering excellent service at the same time.
As you see your business begin to grow and expand, you may wonder: When is the right time for me to hire? Should I have someone assist with some of this?
This article is intended as a rule of thumb or starting point for entrepreneurs who are currently generating revenue and considering whether it is time to welcome additional team members to their already profitable businesses.
Signs Your Business Should Become a “Team of WE”
As a business grows, there comes a point where one person cannot and should not do it alone. It makes more sense to move from a “Team of Me” to a “Team of WE” by welcoming one or more team members to assist you in building your venture.
Here are 5 indicators that may help you identify when your business is ready to become a Team of WE:
You Leave Something on the Table Every Day: In the solopreneur stage of business, even the best of us eventually begin to experience feelings of overwhelm and even distress because we notice ourselves “leaving something on the table” each day. It could be running out of time for the administrative updates to your website, not marketing your new product as robustly as you’d like to, or something else. This is a good problem to have because it most likely means you’re no longer beta-testing your services or products, but rather taking on clients at a rapidly growing pace. But it is also a sign that your business may be ready to expand beyond you.
Business Operations are Competing with Revenue-Generating Activities: In any business, there are revenue-generating activities (RGAs) that must occur daily for your business to be profitable. Examples of RGAs are conducting coaching calls for a coaching business or cleaning homes for a residential cleaning service. The most common RGAs:
Exposures: How many times are you inviting prospects or how many prospects are learning about your business daily?
Presentations: How many times are prospects being presented with enough information to make an educated buying decision?
Closing Ratio: How many clients are being onboarded or how many people are making a buying decision per presentation?
Repeat Customers/Clients: How many times are your customers returning to patronize you, or how many referrals are you acquiring per client?
When other necessary or important business activities - such as accounting, managing your supply chain, or designing your website - start forcing you to turn down opportunities to generate revenue, it is time to have another team member perform those other activities so you can keep driving revenue generation.
When Demand or Your Volume of RGAs Are More Than One Person Can FulFill: Even if you spent 100% of your working time on revenue-generating activities (RGAs), there may be simply more demand for your product or service than 1 person could fill alone. (Example: A residential cleaner who can clean 50 homes per week has 80 clients requesting weekly cleaning services.) In this case, you may wish to welcome a partner or junior associate who has experience in delivering your product or service. This way, they can perform some of the revenue-generating activities on your behalf while you pay them to do so, and your business can win more total sales in the marketplace.
Your Work Quality on RGAs Are Decreasing: If the quality of your revenue-generating activities or client-facing products and services begins to suffer due to being stretched too thin, it may be time to hire someone to assist.
You Can Identify Repetitive & Time-Consuming Tasks Someone Else Could Do: Can you think of any time-consuming business tasks that you perform regularly, that someone else could easily perform for you? Would getting these tasks off your plate lead to you generating more revenue? If so, it may be time to write instructions for how to do those repetitive tasks and employ someone to perform them for you.
Sometimes it’s a question of where can you gain a greater ROI (return on investment) in terms of your time. Someone else may not be as proficient as you, but their presence allows you to spend more of your time performing tasks that better align with your strengths.
Your Attention is Your Greatest Asset.
When you don’t have time for the most meaningful and impactful work in your business, it may be time to expand. Looking ahead to the future, the role of a CEO is to make executive-level decisions and perform executive-level tasks that will allow you to work in your business rather than being trapped in it.
The world around us wasn’t built by the exceptional. It was built by everyday people who were willing to do exceptional things. Go build something.
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