Jamie Van Cuyk, the owner of Growing Your Team, joins me in this passionate conversation about growing your team. Jamie helps small businesses gain the confidence to hire like a pro. Small businesses often struggle to hire employees that stay and retain their value. We are going to give you tips on how to be more efficient and profitable in your business by growing your team.

Hiring as a service provider can feel hard. We need to provide our clients what we promise, but we also need to keep the backend of our business running. As a business owner you need to recognize that you can get support for the things that are not client centered. You can still be the face of your business, but someone is behind the scenes helping you.

If the thought of hiring someone in your business is concerning, start small. Simply start by delegating or outsourcing five hours a month. This helps you build trust with someone so you can start feel comfortable with outsourcing. This will help you recognize that you can delegate without taking away from the client experience. 

Employee Vs. Contractor

Let’s talk about the difference between hiring a contractor vs an employee. Hiring an employee is hiring someone as a part of your own business. When you hire a contractor, you hire another business to do work for you as one of their clients. When hiring a contractor, you need to remember you are another business for them.

A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself – how much control do you need over things? With an employee you have more control like setting their work hours for example. Whereas with a contractor you do not. You give a contractor a deadline, task, and an end result for them to achieve, but they can complete the work whenever it works for them.

When Should You Grow Your Team? 

When is the right time to hire? This depends on your business, your timing, and your individual business goals. We suggest to look at your business each quarter, unless you are growing quickly, then look at your monthly growth. Is your business telling you it’s time to hire?

Four Signs To Look For Growing Your Team:

Sign 1 :

Are you finding yourself saying no to your ideal clients? Maybe you don’t have the capacity or time for them. Do you currently have a waitlist or booking months in advance? This is a sign that you are ready to expand your team either through your service or to free up your time by having someone complete backend tasks for you.

Sign 2 :

You are starting to lose customers from the lack of customer service. You may be slowing down your turnaround time or clients are consistently following up with you. It may even be that you are slacking in your trust with your clients. You may be losing customers from a slower response time. This is a sign that you are overworked and need someone to take tasks off of your plate.

Sign 3 :

You want to do something else in your business, but you can’t due to what you have going on. You need additional help.

Sign 4 :

You lack the skill or knowledge to do something in your business. Your time is valuable and you should recognize this! There comes a time when you should hire someone else to do the new things instead of learning it yourself. Example: Hiring a social media manager so they can implement a consistent marketing plan for you.

You all know SEO (search engine optimization) is a crucial piece of being found by your ideal clients. That’s why I’m so excited that this month’s podcast sponsor – CL Content Marketing – is inviting you to join her free challenge. Each day of the challenge, Claire will walk you through the 5 SEO tips for your photography business. She will share more about each tip, offer an action item, and provide you with accountability to complete each one. By the end of the week, you’ll have boosted your SEO. To join her free challenge, head to HERE to join. The Photographer’s SEO Challenge kicks off Monday July 15th.

What To Delegate When Growing Your Team

Create a list of things that you could delegate. This could be things you aren’t good at or don’t like doing. Even add the tasks that you could be doing better. These could be tasks you feel like you are always rushed to do. Rank them on ROI, if it’s on someone else’s plate it will get done. You want to see the return on your investment. At the end of the day, there isn’t a one size fits all approach. It has to be what’s best for your business. Be sure to read this blog about balancing your business.

Ask yourself if you are the best fit for the position? How will you continue to afford your new hire? The trick is to ensure the position pays for itself. You can directly tie this position to pay for itself. This means if you are paying for marketing help, you can directly see the tie to new customers, sales, ect. Your revenue should increase to pay for this role. The indirect roles such as admin take things off of your plate so they can focus on the revenue generating tasks. You are able to take on more clients from taking on this person in your team.

Make Yourself More Profitable

The goal of hiring is to help you be more profitable. Hire for the one thing that never gets done, maybe marketing! Or it helps you with something you are dropping the ball on, this could be customer service. It’s easier to have a repeat client than get new leads constantly. Examine your business and consider hiring someone!