Welcome to Rich Girl Radio, Where I Give You The Business! It is your girl Danielle Murrell, Brand and Business Coach for women entrepreneurs and on today’s show I want to talk about Why I Prefer My Biz To Run Lean Than To Have A Big Team.
I see a lot of conversation going on in the business community with a lot of my peers sharing with their audience the power of being able to outsource and hire team members to help you grow and scale your business, and I think it’s for a very good reason that a lot of my peers are sharing this with their audience, because as a business owner matures in her business and as she is able to attract more clients and generate more income, one of the things that becomes a top priority for her it’s figuring out how she can continue to increase her revenue while also increasing her time, so that she can show up powerfully for herself in her business and for her community.
It is natural that when you move up in your business maturity your content and what you share with your audience changes to kind of keep up with where you’re going in your business and what you are also learning and implementing.
So, I understand where a lot of this dialogue is starting to come from because a lot of my peers are introducing new team members figuring out how to manage team how to manage their business when they are scaling and they want to pass that information on to their audience.
But it is something that again, I want to address because me, myself, have been in business for over five years now and I’ve seen a lot of things happen in the marketplace.
I’ve seen a lot of women grow their businesses and take on team, such as myself, and I really want to share my opinion about growing a team investing in team members so that women really have the information to make an educated decision so that they don’t overextend themselves or put themselves in situations that they’re truly not prepared for, which is one of the things you have to be really careful with when you decide to start hiring people in your business, managing and growing a team because it is a very significant responsibility. Not only in how you run your business but also in expenses, investments and in time to really make sure that you’re organized as a business owner to be able to maximize having that resource in that overhead in your business.
I see a lot of conversation advocating growing a team getting a team as soon as you can in your business and it’s important that I do my due diligence and share with my audience when to know when is the right time to start hiring a team and why I personally think it is a good idea to try to run a business that is profitable as possible with the least amount of team members and outside expenses as possible. I will be sharing why I believe that throughout this episode.
I’ve been in business now for five plus years I’ve been a multi six-figure business owner I desire to be in the seven-figure range in the next year or so I’ve come to realize on my entrepreneurial journey that there are certain milestones that you really can’t rush because every journey is different. Every person is different. Every business owner is different. Every woman’s life is different in every path that every woman is taken is slightly different because there’s so many individual and personal factors that play into what type of business you’re creating and how fast you’re getting to certain milestones.
I think it’s very very important in business that you reach success faster than later and definitely making it to a point where you’re able to operate in your business full time sooner than later. Now I didn’t put a price or an income level to that success, so I didn’t say you need to be hitting six figures and record speed. But I do think you need to be hitting making your business profitable enough that you can do it full-time as fast as can because when you’re able to operate in your business full-time or have the income from your business be able to support you versus an outside job because I do find that momentum and that free bandwidth of energy in in mind space to be able to focus on your business really does help sustain you and gives you the confidence and the consistent wins you need to feel confident to do it so I do think that that is important. I do think as dangerous taking a long time to get to that because the longer it takes the less confident you are that you’re actually going to make it the less confident you are their message the more doubtful you become and the more you start to feel security and just doing a job. But when it comes to goals outside of that, like getting a million dollars in a year, I do think it’s kind of naive to believe that there isn’t more there isn’t more to it than just getting clients and making money.
There is maturity and responsibility growth that goes in that because you are running a million dollar business and a lot of times you’re doing it based on yourself and your own knowledge and your own brand and that takes a level of responsibility and maturity to do, which really does play into you growing a team and starting to scale your business because if you are not organized if you’re not clear on what you’re trying to do your vision if you’re not sure exactly what steps you want to take to make that happen you’re gonna end up making a lot of mistakes along the way.
It’s okay to make those days be mistakes because those mistakes will give you the action that you’ll need to get to gain clarity as you go along but what can be dangerous it and financially costly mainly is when you start to bring on team members and scale too fast and you aren’t a hundred percent sure on how you exactly want to structure your business or how you actually want to handle your clients or as you’re actually increasing your value and really adapting to the new capacities you’re discovering. Sometimes, when you have team members it can kind of stifle your ability to make quick decisions because what a team you have to really plan you have to prepare more than on a whim for what your next move is in business because your team needs to be in place and in position and prepared for what you’re trying to do or they can’t do their job effectively and you’re really essentially just wasting money trying to figure out those pieces.
I find with the team and had a team before, I had an assistant and an in-house graphic and web designer when I was doing mostly web-based and branding based clients in the beginning of my business it.
Another thing it’s like you take it on team can be a significant investment, yes you can outsource to virtual assistants or to the Philippines or to lower ticket and you know assistants but to really get quality where it’s getting results where it matters the more technical and more quality is going to cost so you really do need to be getting a consistent revenue goal every month consistently before you even think of taking on a team.
That’s why I’m a huge advocate of running a lean business as long as you can because you really need to be prepared for the financial investment it takes. You can’t really have a month off where you’re not really performing at a level that you were before and the market is always changing and so no matter what you know you have to perform because you have a team you have to carry and that can be stressful, especially if you’re not prepared for that or you’re not having consistent income months.
I think sometimes women take on team once they have a several couple good months because they believe okay I’ve had a couple great months if I bring on a team I’m gonna have even more great much faster more consistent but if you haven’t really mastered your model and you’ve proven it that you can handle it long on your own you can get in a situation where you take on a team and you still don’t increase your revenue because you really haven’t developed the capacity or the value or than expertise to expand to gain more clients and now your it’s eating into your overhead.
I can’t tell you how many women I have seen who are making six figures a month you know seven figures a year but are spending you know three forces at on mentorship advertising and team members so it’s like you’re making a million dollars but you’re also spending nine hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year on you know $100,000 coaching program retreats and stuff like that you know full-time employees are people who are doing that software you’re spending all this money and advertising to get a million people so I never get impressed when I hear how much people are making per month especially when I know they have a lot going on and they have a lot of team and they have to spend a lot of money in ads because I because I know that they’re carrying a lot of cost.
My advice is if you can get in you can get to multi six-figure seven figures with just you and a couple people or one person, honestly if you know how to leverage yourself and you keep it simple, which is what I really think we’re getting back down into anyways. A lot of women are truly overwhelmed with how complex their businesses are with all the launches all the different courses are the different gigs they have going on out here and I think a lot of women do appreciate having a simple lean business.
I do believe if you’re going to sustain seven figures or get to eight figures you’re going to need a team yes absolutely I’m never saying you don’t need a team what I’m just making sure is that we don’t have women under estimating what it really what it really takes to make that work. So, I am an advocate but I want to shed light because I’ve seen a lot of women get caught up in getting employees to – or hiring out or delegating or hiring team to prematurely even seasoned business owners that I’ve worked with who hired me we’re not truly prepared planned wide organization and it kind of stifled their ability to do things faster in their business.
Another thing about it is, when you get team members you kind of stop learning and you don’t get as efficient with technology on your own and so you’re always in a situation where other people have to do things for you for it to get done and yes the purpose is wanting to create more time but you have to create a simpler way a more efficient way of doing business as well and don’t think hiring a team is going to be the solution unless you’re truly prepared for it so though
I think it’s amazing that my peers are sharing with their community when you should hire a team why you should hire team what kind of team I think it’s also important that you really are prepared if you are making consistent much were you can handle team with or without you and you’ve proven that and you know even if my team isn’t performing or I’m not on top of my stuff I still know how to generate the income to support me and then go for it!
If you truly feel like you were organized and you’ve been cranking out content and programs and information on your own without a team you’re probably ready!
If you know that you can’t document processes and you are really good at creating systems go for it.
But if you’re still trying to get your handle and where you’re going you’re still trying to test what your capabilities are you’re still you know mastering the way you’re delivering your you know your programs and offers no matter how much money you’re making I would say be weary of jumping into the team realm because you don’t underestimate what that really takes.
So that is my Rich Girl opinion. I’m an advocate for scaling and growing your business.
I’m an advocate for outsourcing and hiring team but I’m also an advocate for you being able to know all sides and all facets of the decision so that you’re able to make one that makes the best sense for where you are right now, and that you don’t jump business stage or follow a guru you know and and not really understand that you’re that they’re there’s levels to this. That you really do have to understand because it’s one thing to know how to run your business but it’s the next thing to step into a CEO world well you know how to manage other people and that in itself can become a job.
