The 3 simple rules for sustainable business growth

The 3 simple rules for sustainable business growth

There are lots of ways of how to take your business to the next level, but having been working as a business coach for more than 15 years, there’s no doubt that the general theme to most business growth strategies and tactics is ‘how to have more’.

This is why I changed tact in my own business about six years ago. So much of my focus was around marketing and product development; teaching how to build email lists, create one to many programmes and plan out marketing campaigns. Over time, I began to realise that, although what I was teaching was good and was getting results for my clients, there was a lot of effort and energy in having to ‘feed the machine’.

As soon as one marketing campaign was over, it was time to start the next one. Then the next one. And then the next one.

When you are young (and yes, I mean in your 20s and 30s!), you have the energy for this. Your body forgives a week of back-to-back late nights with extra cups of strong coffee. You thrive off the busy weeks and love the thrill of creating the next new thing that you want to sell.

But in your 40s and 50s … well, I don’t know about you but the midlife shifts and extra family responsibilities (children and/or eldercare) mean that your mind, body and soul wants to slow down. No matter how exciting or fun your work is, it’s harder to keep up and too much adrenaline and cortisol starts to show up as fatigue, brain fog or one of the many other peri-menopausal symptoms many women can experience, especially when living a full and busy life.

This was me. And I realised that many of my clients were experiencing this too.

What I was teaching and coaching my clients wasn’t sustainable.

Flip to today, and I now run a business coaching and training company that focuses on sustainable growth strategies. Yes, we still work with our clients on marketing strategies and how to get clients, but the emphasis is on playing the long game and planning, and then deciding on which growth strategies apply to get them the best results.

And no matter what those strategies are, there are three simple rules that I now always apply; are they trackable, repeatable, delegatable.

Let me go through each one in turn.

Is it trackable?

When you first start out, you have no idea really what is going to work. But over the months and the years, you get data on what does work. A huge problem though is very few business owners track this data; they keep it all in their heads (or worse, they only focus on social numbers such as social reach and engagement) which means the decisions they make are based on emotion (or in the case of social numbers, ego).

Some examples of basic data you want to track are:

  • Number of leads you get each week/month
  • Number of conversations you have each month
  • Number of sales you make each week/month
  • Number of new customers each week/month
  • Average spend in first 90 days
  • Average lifetime spend

Knowing this kind of data means that you can begin to make decisions commercially, as well as emotively (we need both … data only gives one part of the picture, yes?). So in everything you do, in particular with regards to your marketing, ask yourself ‘Is this trackable?’

Is it repeatable?

Once a business is up and running, the things that you do each week are often on repeat. The way you reply to emails, write and send proposals, market and run events, deliver your programmes or work on client projects. Again, the problem is that the business owner is often too busy to take the time out to see this, and then be able to do something about it.

How many times have you searched your outbox for an email you sent to a prospect that you wanted to use to send to someone else?

How many hours have you spent formatting a proposal or client acceptance letter from scratch, and found yourself typing the same words over and over?

It’s the same with marketing campaigns; why create something new when you can use what you did last time and adapt it to your new offer?

The energy used to start everything from scratch is exhausting (or worse, searching folders for a document you know you’ve saved somewhere!) so there has to be a time in your business when you start to switch your thinking. If you ask yourself ‘is this repeatable?’, you’ve got the beginnings of a process that needs writing out and seeing what templates, checklists or repeat actions can be created.

When you follow a process, you can then use that precious brain power for working on the bigger vision for what you want.

Is it delegatable?

Which takes me nicely into the third rule; delegatable. If you are busy delivering work for your clients, there’s often not much time left in your week to be thinking and creating these repeatable processes. Which is why setting the delegate rule is instrumental to your success long term.

To begin with, you may not have anyone you can delegate these repeatable tasks and processes to. If this is the case, start by making a list of what comes up over the course of a week, and you will have written the first draft of your job brief. You can’t grow a business without help, so it’s critical that this rule comes into play if you don’t want to burn out in the process.

These three rules are simple questions to start asking yourself from today. Why not write them on a post-it note and stick it on your computer screen; this can help remind yourself to ask these questions as you go about your day.

Of course, this isn’t a quick-fix, especially if you are working flat out, but these three simple rules and questions will begin to change your thinking as a business owner, and ultimately engage your CEO Mindset, and start to steer you along a path of sustainable growth.

If you want to discuss how you can put these rules into your business and begin growing sustainably, then let’s talk. Book a call with one of our Grow Strong business coaches. There’s never any charge for our first call together. Click here to check out times available. 

Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.

How and when to hire an Operations Manager for your small business

How and when to hire an Operations Manager for your small business

Having a good Virtual Assistant (VA) to support you in your business is an essential first step to building your support team and releasing yourself from the trap of being a busy freelancer. Not only does a good VA free you up from day-to-day admin tasks, they also give you the opportunity to position yourself better; just as a lawyer, dentist or private doctor would have a receptionist or personal assistant to take care of enquiry forms, appointment booking and follow up documentation.

However, there is a stage in every business journey where you have to review whether you have the right team members to support your forward growth; not what you need right now, but what you need to go to the next level.

Your VA, no matter how good they are right now, may not be meeting what your business needs to level up. No fault of their own, but you, the business owner, haven’t got the time or energy to delegate effectively and important projects aren’t getting done.

You have reached capacity and you’ve taken on a freelancer mindset again, trying to do too much yourself. You have become the bottleneck in your business.

Has it become time to review who is in your support team and think about hiring an Operations Manager?

Over the years, we have helped many of our Momentum members shift their thinking and take the right action to up-skill their support teams. But last year, I could see that I needed to walk my own talk.

Although we had a great couple of years, especially as Melina Abbot joined me as a Senior Coach in my Momentum programme in 2018, in the second half of last year I saw that I had become a busy freelancer again. I had become that bottleneck in my business!

It was time for me to invest in my team, and one of the big lessons of now having gone through this process myself, is that I really should have done this six months earlier.

Alexia had already been working with me for 13+ years as my Virtual Assistant. Over the years, Alexia has grown in confidence on what projects she could take on and has been instrumental in creating robust and elegant onboarding processes and client management, which has hugely contributed to the success and retention of our Momentum membership. At the end of last year, I offered her the promotion of both upping her hours, and upping her level of responsibility and contribution to the business, and I am delighted she is now our Client & Operations Manager as of the start of February.

But when is the right time to hire an Operations Manager?

Should you be worried about the additional costs of hiring someone more than a VA? And do you really need an Ops Manager if all you want is a small, easy to run business?

Let’s dive in and answer these questions.

What is the difference between a VA and an Operations Manager?

The core difference is how strategic their role is. A VA typically takes instruction from you and is task driven; you decide on what tasks need doing and they do them for you. Of course there are plenty of VAs who take on project management and higher levels of responsibility, but not all VAs make for good Ops Managers.

An Ops Manager will typically manage the systemisation and scaling up of your business, as well making sure your business runs efficiently and effectively. They become accountable for outcomes and take a longer term approach to success, rather than just ‘getting stuff done’.

There are also Online Business Managers (OBM) who specialise in working on your digital strategy, marketing funnel systems and e-commerce processes. It really depends on what kind of business you are running so for the purposes of this article, I am including OBMs in this Ops Manager discussion.

When is the right time to hire an Operations Manager?

My answer to this question is always ‘three months from when you need them’.

The mistake I see so many business owners make is to leave hiring someone at this level too late. That was almost me. I had already laid down the intention to Alexia that I would love to hire her for more hours and increase her responsibility, but I spent the next six months with the mindset of ‘when XYZ happens, then I will be able to promote Alexia’.

It wasn’t until I saw how certain projects weren’t happening that I knew I had to flip this over to ‘when I promote Alexia, then XYZ will be able to happen’.

To see the real results from hiring someone at this level, you have to give yourself and them at least three months. Yes, someone can come in to fire-fight their way through certain projects, but these aren’t the best conditions for someone working strategically on your business. There is every chance they will burn themselves out focusing on task management and getting stuff done, and not have the space or energy for strategic thinking to make your business more efficient and effective and/or to up level.

Reviewing your business every quarter (or trimesterly planning as we do in Momentum) is critical to helping you see the opportune time. Here are a few red flags that you may recognise in your business right now:

  • Your business development has stalled; you are too busy dealing with your current clients and the number of leads coming in are dropping.
  • A number of ‘love to do’ projects have piled up because you haven’t had the time to plan out and execute them; projects such as that new podcast, or write that book or market yourself as a speaker.
  • Your VA has started to irritate you; they were wonderful to begin with but now you’ve grown and the business is busier, you wish they would be able to use their initiative and come to you with solutions, rather than more questions for you to find the time to answer.
  • Your VA can’t cope with the marketing funnels or digital course platforms you’ve created over the past year; they are doing their best to do what you ask, but it’s becoming clear that although they’ve been good at building what you need from the ground up, the systems and processes aren’t integrated and your business is feeling over-complicated and messy.
  • You are spending too much of your time looking for documents, passwords or emails from key clients; you’ve even realised that several of your clients haven’t paid you but you’ve been too busy to chase them.

Now, of course, these red flags could mean all sorts of things; not just that you need an Operations Manager. But what you need to realise is how important it is for you to be thinking ahead and plan, hire and on board someone at this level BEFORE you get so busy fire-fighting that it makes it very difficult for you to have the time to go through this process.

Longer term thinking is needed and by deciding what you feel you need in your business one year from now, you will allow yourself to proactively plan ahead and avoid any of the red flags listed above.

How do you deal with the additional cost?

This one is a real doozy! Yes, it is a risk hiring someone that may double or even triple your current team costs, but here’s another way of asking this question …

How can you afford to not up-skill your support team?

If you need to motivate yourself, work out how much all those red flags above could cost you each month. And not just in lost revenue. There’s also the cost to your health and family if you are working more hours and stress than you can cope with right now.

To avoid getting stuck with this question, work out the cost of the first three months of hiring, and only look at this figure.

If you work out annual costs, and then look at your current revenue, it could be super scary. You have to remember that one of the key reasons for hiring someone at this level is that you are looking to grow and scale. If you are not freeing up your time to create opportunities to increase your revenue, then it may not be the right move for you (see below my answer to ‘Do I really need an Ops Manager?’).

Know the cost of those first three months – their initial probation period – as this is your core financial risk. If the person you’ve hired does not meet your expectations or deliver on what it is you want from them, then let them go. Don’t keep them on and pay any more in the hope that they ‘make good’ eventually. This way, you’ve only spent three months of fees, you’ve reduced your long term spending risk, and still probably gained a whole load of leadership lessons (which we could argue could be worth the money spent!).

Do you hire them on payroll or as a contractor?

First off, this is a legal question and needs to be addressed according to which country you are based. Here in the UK, we do have strict IR35 rules (I’d recommend you read them all through here on the gov.uk website).

As a basic rule of thumb, if you stipulate certain hours and days that need to be worked (ie Tuesday to Thursday 9 to 5) and you are their majority source of income, you are legally obliged to have them on payroll. And there is nothing scary about putting someone on payroll. I hired a part time Marketing Assistant many years ago on payroll and it was super simple as my accountant ran the payroll and I used all the legal contracts needed from Suzanne Dibble’s amazing Small Business Legal Academy.

If you are one of several clients they work with and you don’t stipulate hours, hiring them as a contractor/freelancer may give you a more flexible or easier option to get going with. Discuss this with the person you want to hire as they will be able to help with this if they are already working in this capacity with other clients.

Can I just give my current VA more responsibility?

Absolutely, but ensure you take the time to plan out exactly who you need and what responsibility you want them to take on. Although you may not need to do a formal interview process, you do need to talk through the new role and ensure they have the skills and qualities to fulfil your expectations.

Don’t just take the easy route and assume they can level up. Maybe you need to invest in their training and development if you feel they are the right fit for your business, but they currently lack the necessary skills. It’s often cheaper to invest in the people you have because of their knowledge of how your business runs and what your clients expect from you, then it is to try to buy in the new skills. So do consider this as an option.

Do you really need an Ops Manager when all you ever wanted was a small, easy to run business?

If your business is still under the VAT threshold or your revenue is running less than an average £5K/month, then a VA with a focus on systems and processes may be all that you will ever need. You don’t want to be ego-driven in this process, thinking that having an Ops Manager is what a successful business “should” have.

You don’t want to be over-resourcing your business and have unnecessary team costs eating into your profits, so understanding what your longer term growth strategy is important here. Scaling for the sake of scaling can unnecessarily over-complicate your business and end up being exhausting and expensive!

If your business is heading towards or already well into 6-figures, then investing in someone at the Ops Manager level can pay dividends, especially if you want a small, easy to run business.

So the real answer to this question is ‘it depends’; it depends on your ambitions, your life goals and how much time, freedom and energy you want in your life.

I believe your business is there to serve your life and leadership goals (rather than for us to be chasing business goals and getting trapped in a business that keeps us busy for the sake of being busy!). These are the kinds of decisions we help our Momentum members with regularly, so if this longer term strategic thinking is the kind of support you know you want for your business, then get in touch and we can talk through your options.

How do I go about hiring an Ops Manager?

There are several steps you have to follow to ensure a successful hiring process and long term relationship.

1. Write a job specification; what do you need them to do, what qualities does the person need to have, what are the opportunities you are can offer them

2. Go through a proper hiring process; don’t just hire friends or relatives, but nor do you have to use a recruitment agency. Use your current network, LinkedIn and even your current VA to help you spread the word. Set up interviews, including practical assessments if that is needed to give you the evidence that they are as good as they say they are. And remember references or ask to speak to some of their current clients.

3. Have contracts & service level agreements in place; again, I use Suzanne Dibble’s SBLA for all these. Don’t hire someone – payroll or contract – without the necessary paperwork and have it all confirmed BEFORE you begin working together.

4. Set them up for success; have a growth plan for them to work from, set out clear success metrics that they know they need to work towards to get the results you expect, and establish a plan for how you are going to communicate each week. These need to be done in partnership because this is how you start to wean yourself off the ‘I have to be in control of everything’ and allow them to do the job that you’ve hired them to do.

5. Review meetings; to ensure you are delegating (and not abdicating!) have a weekly Monday project meeting, a higher level monthly review meeting and an end of probation review to decide on your ongoing relationship.

6. Document, document, document; this should be second nature to a good Ops Manager, but make sure everything you both decide and take action on is documented. This is not only good practice for your whole business, but if you ever have to go through the hiring process again, you are not starting from scratch.

What other questions do you have?

Is there anything else you feel you need to do before you begin the process of hiring an Ops Manager?

It is easy to get caught up with all the ‘how do I?’ questions and then not take any action. The truth is that hiring an Ops Manager is just like anything we do successfully in business; it’s 80% mindset and 20% practicalities. In our Momentum programme, we go through in detail the steps and give you the confidence and support you need to ensure you hire right first time, so if this is something you know you want, check out our programme here.

I know I couldn’t have done what I have done in my business without my small, but very beautiful team. And I have always felt it to be important that they are invested in my business and in the success of my clients, as much as I am. So if you are sitting on the fence of whether you are ready to up-skill your support team, I encourage you to take the first step; write that job spec and then start having a few conversations.

Let me know in the comments below how this article has helped you.

Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.

 

 

Your Dream Team: who do you need to hire to help you grow?

Your Dream Team: who do you need to hire to help you grow?

Do you believe that you are the one to do anything and everything in your business?

In the first few months of start-up, there is no doubt that you do almost everything yourself. From answering your emails and sending out proposals and brochures, through to writing your blog posts and maybe even creating your own website, you will have started your business journey being a one-person show.

As you grow your business and start to take on more clients and sell to more customers, delegating often isn’t a natural instinct for many people. Some are self-confessed control freaks and like to do everything yourself because you want it done ‘right’.

Others get trapped by being too busy to recruit; they simply don’t have the headspace to think about when and how to hire someone.

And others worry that their business isn’t making enough to hire someone.

The questions I am asked again and again is ‘When is the right time to hire someone?’ and ‘Who do I need to hire to help me grow?’

My answer is to the first one is always the same ….

‘Three months before you need them.’

There’s a common misconception about hiring people that the day someone starts is the day you suddenly get back more time. But the truth is that if you hire someone for ten hours a week, no matter what you hire them to do, you don’t suddenly get those ten hours back in to your week.

What actually happens is that your workload can often double for a week or two (and sometimes longer depending on who it is you are hiring and what it is you are asking them to do for your business) whilst you spend time explaining what needs doing, and training them to understand your business systems.

Even with technical contractors or marketing assistants who should, in theory, be bringing a level of expertise into the role, time is still needed to get them up to speed and understand your business and the customers you serve.

For longer-term hires, expect three months before you fully see the return on investment from their contribution to your business. And this is why I always answer with the three months before you need someone.

But don’t let this put you off.

As the ‘two best times to plant a tree‘ proverb advises us; you either should have hired many months ago, or you can start to think about hiring TODAY.

So no matter where you are in your journey, let’s start this thinking process from a TODAY mentality. No matter what’s going on, or how busy you may feel you are and that you don’t have the time, if you genuinely want to grow your business and have a business that not only gives you more income, but is easier and simpler to run, hiring the right people is instrumental to your success.

And this starts with working out who your Dream Team needs to be.

Who do you need to hire to help you grow?

Your Dream Team are the people you need to help you achieve the vision you have for your business. They are the people you hire to ‘do stuff’, as well as your strategic partnerships, your suppliers, business buddies and supporters.

You may even find that you need to include people who can support you in your home and personal life, particularly if you are a single parent. I’ve often seen my clients need to include a housekeeper to enable them to manage their home, as well as their business.

Your business will have specific needs, but there are three core areas where I believe you can focus on to help with your thinking. As I take you through each one below, use the image above to write down the names or profile of the person you feel you need in each of the hands. (Click this link to download a printable PDF worksheet version).

There are nine hands there; you may need more hands, but it’s rare that you will need less as it’s important to recognise the level of support you will need for your future growth, no matter how small a business you want to run. Remember, this isn’t about listing all the people you need today; right now. But the people you need to support you in the future as your business grows.

PA and administrative support

This is usually the first area you may wish to hire in your business because freeing up your admin time is usually the quickest way to speed your progress so you can focus your time on business growth areas, such as business development. There are three key areas where someone can add value to you and your business.

1) Diary and email management: not only does a personal assistant help save you time in doing your admin, their presence also helps with your positioning. For example, if you are a consultant working with larger organisations, having someone else confirm your meetings, agendas and send follow-up paperwork can help with your professional image. In addition, having someone act as your gatekeeper helps you avoid unnecessary sales calls.

2) Invoicing and financing: bookkeeping, VAT returns and invoicing are all administrative tasks that you, as the business owner, should not be doing as your business grows.

3) Client management: if you run group programmes or run events, having someone take control of the day-to- day communication can free up your time and mental energy hugely. There’s always going to be someone else who is far better at managing email follow ups and producing client reports than you will ever be.

Marketing and sales support

If the first person you hire is a personal assistant, don’t make the mistake of assuming that whoever you took on can simply take on more tasks in other areas of your business. The skill set needed to run marketing and sales support for you will be different to that of someone you’ve hired to proofread your proposals, organise your diary and hire meeting rooms.

Plus, you don’t really want to rely too heavily on one person to do everything for you. You run the risk of abdicating responsibility, rather than delegating, and if the relationship goes sour or they move on to another opportunity, you’re left with a huge gap to fill.

It may be that you need more than one person in this category, too. Again, you can’t assume because someone is great at researching and writing blogs that they will be good at managing your social media sites. Be very clear on what skills you need to bring into your business, as well as experience in the digital tools you use. Let’s break down the key areas where you may need help as you begin to grow.

1) Creating consistent content: researching and writing blogs, as well as writing and sending out email marketing broadcasts.

2) Social media management: scheduling posts, images and blog posts, as well as potentially managing a busy Facebook group. This role is different from hiring an ad specialist. If you plan to run advertising campaigns, hire at the right level because the skills and expertise needed to run high quality campaigns is often far more than a social media admin manager can offer you.

3) Pre-prospect phone calls: if you hate the thought of cold or warm calling, then hiring someone in this field can have a huge impact on your results. Several members of our Momentum business growth community have through this process and they are now regularly securing meetings with organisations interested in what it is they offer. If you work with individuals, then a sales administrator may be able to conduct the initial enquiry call and make sure they are a suitable prospect before you speak with them.

Strategic partnerships

These are the people in your Dream Team who have the potential of impacting your growth potential through partnership opportunities. There are three key areas to help your thinking.

1) Referral partners and affiliates: other people selling what you offer to their own lists can open up huge opportunities for you. Depending on your positioning, you may have to think carefully who you want to be associated with and what the quality of their database and reach is. It’s not necessarily about the numbers. I would recommend you focus on how engaged and connected they are to their own customer base because this usually gets you better results. You may set up a straightforward affiliate commission for each sale or there may be other ways of mutually benefiting from your relationship. It’s important to consider it’s not always about the money, and what you are able to contribute could actually be more highly valued.

2) Community leaders and event hosts: what events or conferences are you able to speak or exhibit at? Leaders of online communities or member forums are often looking for experts to contribute content. Perhaps there are professional associations or trade bodies who would love to partner with you?

3) Distribution channels: more relevant for those of you with physical products but it’s worth considering if this is a potential in your marketplace. Perhaps one of your offers could be bundled up and included in another business’s offer, which would allow you access to their marketing channels and database.

Delivery team

Whether you decide you need to hire people to help you with delivery will be depend on the business model you want. A well-oiled exclusive boutique business with a waiting list doesn’t necessarily need you to have anyone else deliver your services; you can remain being the one expert in the business. But a scalable digital or training model, may need you to create a team of mini-mes; associates, licensed practitioners, franchisers or employed consultants.

1) Contractors: will there be key parts of your delivery that you can outsource to contractors? You may still want to be the one point of contact for your delivery, but this shouldn’t stop you from thinking about how you can outsource certain ‘behind the scene’ parts, such as research, design or statistical analysis, so your delivery time focuses on the strategic or client facing elements. Your clients don’t even need to know that you don’t ‘do’ everything; they just need to know you can deliver the results. Although don’t let your ‘I do everything’ personal service give the impression that you can’t deliver bigger projects if your client perception of you is that you are too small and ends up giving other pieces of work to other providers.

2) Associates: hiring key people to deliver either alongside you or instead of you, immediately gives you the opportunity to scale your capacity and market reach. To make this approach work, you will need to enjoy leading and managing teams, as well as think through how you are able to become an ’employer of choice’ so that you can attract and retain the best talents. The more you can treat your associates as partners, and not just as people you hire to do work you’re either too busy to do or don’t want to do, will ensure your associates will work WITH you, rather than just FOR you; they keep their diary free for your proposed work, turn down other associate work to make time for you, even when they may be being paid more and will be more loyal, especially when your clients may contact them directly.

3) Licensees or franchisees: Is there an opportunity to leverage your expertise by creating a ‘business in a box’ so that you not only train other professionals to do your work, but also offer renewable licences to access your materials and processes? This will mean a change in business model for you, and your revenue streams then come from selling not just the license or franchise, but also community and CPD membership opportunities.

Which ever path you take, it will be important to consider your legals – contracts will need to be signed to protect both you and your clients, as well as your team member – and employment status – whether you decide to hire them as ad hoc or retained contractors/associates or put them on payroll. Please note the statutory requirements in your country and know what you can and can’t do, but also don’t be afraid of potential red tape; get professional advice and you’ll find which ever path you take far simpler than you may think.

Supporters, mentors, cheerleaders & accountability partners

As well as people who you hire, you will need people around you who support you either as business buddies or paid mentors and advisors.

1) Business coach or mentor: Now you will probably guess that I will, of course, recommend you hire some kind business coach or mentor. Having someone who can show you the easier paths to growth, rather than you trying to figure it out on your own (or even worse, via Google!) will always help your journey forward. But you need to think about kind of coach or mentor you need.

At some points of your business, you may need specific marketing advice. At others, it’s a business coach with commerciality and an eye for your profitability (that’s me, by the way!), or even leadership mentoring or personal coaching.

2) Business buddies: Your friends and family may not always be able to give you the support that you need. If they don’t run their own business, they may not understand what it takes to do what you do. So finding like minded business buddies who you can confide in, talk to and support each other is important for your mental health and wellbeing, as well as creating the opportunities to bounce ideas around.

Do review who you have in this category of your Dream Team from year to year. Often, you will find you out grow your network and you end up supporting others more than they end up supporting you. So do go ‘up a league’ as your grow to ensure you are stretching yourself in to the vision you have, rather than staying comfortable.

Support for home, family & life

Finally, what support do you feel you need for your life? If you have a family, perhaps you need extra child care help after school or during the holidays. Perhaps you have a relative you are caring for that you need to ask for help, either from another family member or paid support. Maybe you’ve been putting off getting a cleaner, or housekeeper or someone to do your ironing.

Women especially are very good at doing ‘it all’ at home, as well as in business. And if you want to thrive within your business, you have to make sure you are putting in the support you need in your life, as well. So, who could be in your Dream Team to support you here.

Your Dream Team

Who have you written in each of the hands?

If you’ve still got spaces, keep asking yourself ‘who else?’ until you complete your full dream team. You may want to revisit your business vision and give yourself the space to help you see the potential gaps and ensure you have the right people to help you with your long-term vision.

These people don’t necessarily need to be known to you right now, so if you don’t have a specific name, use a job title or short phrase to help you focus on recruiting or finding them over the coming weeks and months. This is really important because it helps stop your brain telling you ‘don’t know anyone’. You want to open yourself up for the opportunities over the coming months and you don’t need to know exactly who everyone is in order to do this thinking.

Once you’ve completed this process of working out your Dream Team, this is when you take your ideas and thoughts into your next business planning to decide on what steps you need to take to recruit or find one or more of these people over the coming months.

If you need help with any part of this process, then reach out to me for help. I offer an initial call if you want to speak directly with me about this – click here to book a time.

Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.