Team Building to Support Your Entrepreneurial Spirit
The decision to start a business is usually not one made lightly. It’s not as if you wake up one morning and say, “I think I’ll become an entrepreneur today!” Instead, building a business and accepting the challenges of self-employment typically involves a blend of creativity, passion, talent, inspiration, and drive. It’s a life-changing move that starts in the heart, not the head.
The first several months of a startup are often filled with energy, as you consider the endless possibilities before you and start planning around your goals.
But all of that steam tends to fizzle out as a business grows. Life as a solopreneur isn’t as glamorous as it seemed from the outside. Suddenly, everybody is looking to you for answers and setting expectations for your business. You may have the skills to keep customers happy, but at the end of the day, you are only one person with a finite number of hours. You spend hours working in your business, depleting your energy to the point that you cannot find the will to work on your business.
Sadly, this is the story of many entrepreneurs who have lost their passion to burnout.
We are human beings. We are not built to work 12+ hour days — not consistently, at least. Yet even the best automation tools and time management techniques aren’t enough to pull you out of the never-ending grind.
That’s why you need a team.
If a toxic hustle mentality has you feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and resentful, it’s time to build a team that frees up your schedule and allows you to reclaim your headspace. Hiring support doesn’t have to mean stepping away from your craft; instead, it can clear your plate of the tasks you hate so you can invest more into the work you love.
You deserve to feel that inner fire every single day, so commit yourself to getting back to the basics that inspired you to launch your business in the first place. If you’re ready to rediscover your entrepreneurial spirit, use these team-building strategies to invite more space, abundance, and freedom into your business.
Get clear on where you spend your time.
It’s hard to know where you need the most help when all the hours of all the days blend together. Start by creating a list of everything you do in your business, from operations and marketing to client service and networking. Then, break that list down into categories: tasks you love, tasks you hate, and tasks you struggle to do well. Maybe you don’t hate bookkeeping, but you’re not very good at it. That’s fine!
While this list can provide you with enough insight to know what you should delegate, it helps to know the biggest priority. For instance, if you can only budget for one hire, should it be an accountant or a social media manager? A great way to determine this is by identifying the areas that take up the most time in your schedule.
Try a time-tracking app for a week, tallying time spent on each task on your list. Toggl and Harvest both offer free trials that can help you quantify your workload. At the end of the week, cross-check your hours report with your list to see where you spend the most time in the “I hate this” or “I’m not good at this” categories. Set that task as your hiring goal, as it will make the most significant impact on your schedule, your business’s performance, and your mental wellbeing.
Start searching in the right places.
The hiring process takes a considerable amount of time and energy on your part. That’s inevitable. However, a smart approach can cut down on the search time, ultimately helping you fill the position and enjoy the benefits sooner.
If you want to find the best candidates in the wedding industry, you’ll need to think a bit differently. Job listing platforms like Monster, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter don’t play as much of a role in our industry as they do in others, so a bit of creativity can go a long way. Social media sites tend to be an effective way to connect with potential applicants, so get involved in relevant groups on Facebook or LinkedIn and start searching.
Your existing network also serves as a powerful referral source, so don’t be afraid to ask around for recommendations from your industry peers. Send the job description with them so they can share it with their network, and let the power of social crowdsourcing do most of the legwork for you.
Prioritize personality over skills.
You can teach someone how to balance accounts, research hashtags, send emails, bustle a wedding dress, set up centerpieces, and any other tasks in your business. What you cannot teach is personality. An office manager may be great at creating employee schedules, ordering inventory, and paying invoices, but if they’re miserable to be around, they will end up costing more than they contribute.
On a similar note, learning a candidate’s personality helps you better understand how they can fit into your team. For example, if you’re hiring a salesperson, a quiet introvert may not be the best match. However, you may realize that their inclination to reflect and improve makes them a fantastic choice for a project manager.
As you interview applicants for your company, make sure you are asking personality-based questions in addition to the usual questions about experience, skill sets, and pay scales. For example, how would they describe their ideal weekend? What are their favorite hobbies? What adjectives would their friends use to describe them? By looking past someone’s resume, you’ll get a far better idea of how they will fit into your team, not just as an employee but as a person.
Hustle + Gather is a training and consulting firm that is on a mission to inspire others to take big leaps, dream big dreams, and create amazing teams that grow profits and an enjoyable (but productive) culture within business. They specialize in the hospitality industry and have coached and trained businesses to increase their profitability while creating a kick ass team along the way.
