With the birth of my second baby, I fully expected business to slow down. After all, I would not be able to work very much and my time online would be limited, so promoting the content I produced before birth would be challenging.
However, during the first week of my maternity leave, Interview Connections signed up several new members resulting in a significant increase in revenue for the business! Even with all the additional business, I can still stay out of the office because I have spent the last nine months delegating, outsourcing, and building a kick-butt team!
If you also want the freedom to grow your business and work fewer hours, here are some of my tips:
1. Create clear and detailed descriptions of the different roles in your business. Right now, you may fill all those roles! But you want to have documents describing each role so you can hire the best people to fill each role.
2. Hire people based on their character, not just their skill level and experience.
3. Determine your business core values and interview new potential team members using behavioral questions so you can determine if they share your values.
4. Hire slow, fire fast. If you have given a team member substantial training, but the work is still not being done on time or done well enough, let them go. You should only hire someone because they help make the business more profitable. The minute they become an expense and hurt the profitability of your business, you need to let them go.
5. Empower your team! It is hard for a business owner to let go. Still, if you empower your team to handle all the different aspects of your business, you will feel great relief and joy when you witness your business being operated without you.
6. Be purposeful and intentional. Ask yourself with every decision you make: Will this decision get me closer to my goal or steer me in a different direction? If it’s not a ‘Hell Yes!’ it’s a no.
7. Show gratitude. I empower and train my team to show gratitude and appreciation to the clients they are serving on my behalf, and I make a big effort to show gratitude to my team. Not only verbally but with cards, small gifts, pay increases, bonuses, and large gifts. When your team feels valued and appreciated, they will work harder for your business and take more ownership of the work they do for you.
If you want to learn more about team building, I highly recommend listening to my interview with Bill Watkins and Robert Mallon!
