If you’ve known me for a bit, you know I post about revealing your ideal client. That’s one part of the success equation. As your business grows, and demand for your services increase, you’ll want to save your strength and your sanity and add to your team. When you add the right people, you build growth and experience joy.
Learning The Hard Way
When I ran my software training business, I realized I couldn’t learn all the software there was in the world, so I sought quality trainers with a diverse range of technical knowledge.
That’s a nice way of saying, “if you know something I don’t, I’ll bring you on board.“
Most of the time, those folks were really awesome to work with, but every once in a while, I’d regret adding someone to the team. Their skill sets weren’t as robust as they claimed, or their personalities were – um – weird, or sometimes both!
In my 2nd business, I searched for administrative help, and experienced all kinds of personalities. Some admins were so awesome, they unfortunately
got snatched up by a bigger company. So I looked for the next person…. One admin talked a good game but never lived up to the hype. She missed assignments and I would spend more time training her and checking in on her. The extra time I spent “helping” her improve her performance was time I should have been working on my own projects. I started resenting her and the time I wasted and the work that either didn’t get done or was done poorly.
During the last few weeks of struggling with this admin, I learned to tap into what was behind the scenes, particularly her work attitude and motivation. Once I focused on the apparent mindset behind the slip-ups, I knew what to look for in a replacement.
And then, I had a meeting with a prospect who attended with her admin. It became clear that the business owner’s admin took a deep interest in the health of the business and all the details behind it. I immediately thought, “that’s who I want!”
Later, I learned she was available, and I happily replaced the poor performing admin with a professional who cared about supporting me and helping me grow my business.
How Does Your Team Stack Up?
What is their motivation? Do they care about doing what it takes to help your business thrive or are they just clocking in? You may have 4 wonderful team members and 1 (or 2) who can’t quite hit the groove you need.
You know all those Ideal Client exercises? Performing this kind of check with your current and future team members will help you realize what personalities and innate talents you truly need, want, and deserve to help you grow your business.
Make a list of personality traits. Ask them about their natural talents. Even if they had zero professional work experience, you could be interviewing your next superstar.
This is something I’ve worked on with my clients, and together we’ve made some interesting discoveries as to who would be a fabulous addition to their team.
And once you start adding star quality folks, you can gently let your under-performers go. Just one under-achiever can drag down a whole team dynamic, so be kind but be firm and let them know they would probably be happier elsewhere.
If you need help with this or other growing pains, let’s schedule some time to chat.