Building your dream team

Something that clients ask me about A LOT, is building and managing a team. Your team will make or break you in business. FACT.

In this episode I share how you can build, manage and lead your dream team.

In this Episode:
01:20: How my podcast launched at Position 2 in Apple Podcasts Top business charts
2.48: How I marketed the Podcast organically- the exact strategy I used
3:23: Why you need to have a team at some stage
04:16: How to know when to build a team to serve clients and set yourself up for success
05:48: Ensuring that your business can afford a new team structure
07:06: Finding the right people for your team
08:12: Firing the wrong person to make sure your team is set up for success
10:25: What to do if you can’t find the right staff
09:48: Using hashtags to get more eyes on your feed
11:53: How to manage your team through your behaviour
13:04: Communicating with your team and team meetings

Links:

BLOG: HOW MY PODCAST REACHED POSITION 2 ON THE BUSINESS PODCAST CHART >

CLARE WOOD SERVICES >
CLARE WOOD INSTAGRAM >

Transcript

Something that clients ask me about A LOT, is building and managing a team.  How do I know when its time to invest in growing my team?  How do I know who to hire?  How can I manage my team to get the best out off them?

Your team will make or break you in business.  FACT.  And I would love you to go into growing a team with a great plan about HOW you can create and lead your dream team.

Before I get into the detail, I just wanted to share that my little podcast launched at number 2 in the Australian business Apple podcast charts and was even number 62 overall in ALL podcasts which means it was in the top 100!  I am SO grateful to all of you that listened, subscribed and reviewed.  I am so appreciative because it means that more listeners can find this podcast 

I just wanted to share a review received from CocoRose Interiors:

“Best new podcast around.  Clare is full of so much knowledge, I will definitely be listening to all of her podcasts”

I will be reading out reviews on my podcast each week, so if you have a business, please pop your business name in the review and I just might read it out!

One last thing, quite a few people have asked me exactly HOW I went about marketing the podcast… well I have revealed the exact strategy I used in a blog and there’s even a downloadable that shows you exactly what I posted and where.  If you want to check it out so you can use these strategies to launch something in your business, I’ll pop a blog in the shownotes for today www.clarewood.com/podcast/episode4/

Perhaps you are even thinking “I won’t ever have a team”  Well I know, if you continue to succeed in business, you will definitely have a team.  Or maybe you already do!  In my current structure, I have no full time/ permanent staff members, but I still absolutely have a team.  You might have an accountant, a bookkeeper etc.  They could be remotely based, or only casual… but they are all still part of your team and so you need to treat them accordingly.

There are a few big mistakes I see business owners make when it comes to building a team and today I want to talk about how you can avoid them and

Mistake 1) Not building a team soon enough.

Signs:

  • Taking on way too much
  • Burning themselves out
  • Limiting their growth
  • Limiting their sales potential

So how do you know when you are ready?

  • When your lack of resources are limiting your ability to grow. You might be turning away work?
  • You are making plenty of money or when you can definitely afford it
  • Listen to your gut, but look at your numbers

Mistake 2) Building a team too quickly

  • Not being able to afford them
  • Too admin heavy
  • Are you staff sales drivers?
  • Look at what they can deliver in terms of helping grow the business
  • Not being set up to properly manage a team (people bring in people to take away the load, but training people takes time and managing staff takes a lot of time!)

Mistake 4) Hiring the wrong people.

How do you know who is the right person?  Be super clear about what it is that you are looking for.  Look for ATTITUDE over experience.  And then just start them up.  Have a probation period and make sure you look for any warning signs

Mistake 5) Firing too slowly.

You’re not a big corporate, you cannot afford to keep staff who are not incredible.  So many times I work with clients and they start telling me about someone and I say “get rid of them” and they are shocked and I say “I don’t know the person at all, I’m just going off what you are telling me. And it doesn’t sound at all good!”  Most of the time they then agree and  99% of the time, my clients end up getting rid of them (either straight away, or months later) and they say to me “I feel like a massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders”  It’s like a toxic relationship!  Now I am not saying you should fire at whim.  In fact, I definitely believe in coaching (obviously) and I think people deserve a chance.  Give specific feedback about how they need to improve, give them a plan and support them, but from my experience, if a staff member has the wrong attitude?  It won’t change.  So my thoughts, only keep those that are supporting you and your business to success

Mistake 6) Giving up on the idea.  

Someone might think- staff aren’t for me.  I’ve had 3 and they didn’t work out.  Whenever someone says this to me I always laugh and say “was your partner the first person that you ever kissed?”  USUALLY they burst into fits of giggles and say no… and I say so why would the first one staff member, or 3, or even 10 be the perfect fit?  Would you give up on finding your perfect life partner?  You have to keep on trying, but make sure you don’t keep making the same mistakes again or else you’re just that girl that keeps dating cheating douchebags over and over again.  After each “breakup” work out what went wrong and make sure you don’t make the same mistake again

WARNING: I use lots of dating analogies in my coaching and in this podcast it seems. Prior to my hubby, I spent many many years dating so I can’t help but find to many parallels in business 😉  OK enough about my love life, back to the reason why teams don’t work out.

Mistake 7) Not managing staff properly.

Sometimes you have the right person, but they are just not performing?  Well rather than blame them… look at yourself.  I know this has been a massive lesson for me in my marriage… he’s not buying me flowers etc.  But funnily enough, so many times, when I realise I am being sulky/ demanding etc I realise that actually I am a massive part of the problem.  And when I change the way I am working with him, most of the time, he responds in a positive way.  Whoops back to staff, ok so You can’t change someone else, you can only change how YOU react to them.  SO, provided it is the right person, think about how you can better manage them

  • Do they need clearer instructions
  • More training
  • More support
  • More encouragement
  • If you’re not sure, communicate with them!  In my corporate life, I worked for an organisation and I had two meetings with each of my staff members every month. One to talk about where they at on projects, what support they need and the second meeting was about how they are doing… what are their dreams, are they happy in the work environment, what could I do to support them>
  • Not I’m not saying you need to have 2 x 1 hour meetings with your staff every month, but you DEFINITELY need to meet with them at least monthly (I’d suggest fortnightly) one on one and also have a team meeting.

Relationships (I mean, staff ;-)) take work and so you have to invest the time in them to achieve amazing results.

So, in a nutshell, here is how to build your dream team:

Build it quickly, but not too quickly

Find the right people, and if they are not right get rid of them QUICK

If you haven’t found the right fit yet, keep on trying and lastly if you have found the right person

Manage them well, treat them well and make them never want to leave you 😊

Thank you again so much for joining me today.  Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode.

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