Episode Summary

How are you going to grow your business to its first $100,000 or $1,000,000? The answer is by building a team. In this episode, Melissa Swink breaks the news that a one-person operation is not scalable and limits your ability to make more money. 

Learn the steps to calculate what your time is worth and the return on investment you can expect by hiring help. Melissa provides examples of tasks that can be delegated, such as social media management, invoicing, bookkeeping, and website updates. For business owners who just don’t know where to start, Melissa shares three task categories you can outsource immediately. Tune in to learn what those are and how you can take your next step forward to being a true CEO!

Key Highlights:

• A one-person operation is not scalable and limits the ability to make more money.
• Consider what your time is worth and the return on investment you can expect by hiring help.
• Delegate tasks that you struggle with, dislike, or have been on the back burner.
• Hire based on skill sets and the needs of your business.

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, we're going to dive into step number four of the Make Space for More framework, which is building a team. Now we're gonna break this down into a couple of parts, a couple of episodes. So in this episode, we're gonna be focusing on...

figuring out what your time is worth and what kind of a return on investment might you expect to receive as you build a team, and then also what to focus on before you start the hiring process. And then in future episodes, we'll talk more about how to hire and ultimately onboard team members, how to work with them efficiently, and so on. But before we dive into all of that, I just wanna take a pause for a second and imagine you opened a McDonald's.

and for some reason you chose not to hire. And so you decided that you would be the one taking the orders and making the burgers, making the french fries, filling the drinks, and doing all these things yourself. Can you imagine you run up to the counter, you take an order, you run in the back, flip some burgers, maybe put another batch of french fries in the deep fryer, run up and fill the drinks and the cups? It would be mayhem. You'd be running around,

like a crazy person trying to run this McDonald's all by yourself. And as funny as that sounds, I want you to stop and think about it for a second. Are you trying to do that very same thing in your own business? Because the reality is a one person operation is not scalable. And so if you are the one who is responsible for all of the things in your business, maybe you're the one doing all of the sales.

You're doing all of the fulfillment, whether it be products or services that you're selling, you are doing all the marketing, you're writing all your own social media posts, you are doing all of the accounting. It's exhausting. It's a lot of work to be running a business completely by yourself. And the reality is, is that when you operate that way, your ability to grow and ultimately make more money is significantly limited.

you have created a job for yourself, which maybe that was the first natural step for you. But knowing that when you find yourself in a job that you can't take a vacation from, it is much more likely that you're going to experience burnout at some point in the future. And it's time to change that. Or maybe you're listening to this depending on where you're at in business. You have a small but mighty team.

And you need to look at maybe some ways of restructuring and adding roles in order to create more capacity to continue growing your business even farther than you already have. So I just wanted to share that with you before we dive in and make sure you that you know that your role and your current team, whether you're a team of one or maybe you have a small but mighty team, this is going to continue to grow and evolve as the business does. So the make space for more framework as a whole.

is not something that's set it and forget it. This is something that we're going to look at on a cycle, I can't say it. It's a cycle that we're gonna go through on a regular basis as we continue to get our business to the next level. And this is something that I know that I do on an occasional basis, probably at least once a year where I'm reevaluating where I'm spending my time. What are ...

all the things that we're doing, do they all make sense moving forward? Who else do we need on the team? What other systems do we need to implement and all of that? It's something that I am looking at on a regular basis. But before we dive into part one of building a team, I just want to take a moment to recap the previous steps that we walked through. So in episode five, we talked about redesigning your role as the CEO of your company. In episode six,

We talked about decluttering the things in your business that are just no longer aligned. Maybe there are clients or team members that are just not the right fit moving forward. Maybe there are product services or things that you're doing that just don't necessarily make sense as you continue to grow. Episode seven, we talked about simplifying and automating the repeatable processes in your business. So highly recommend listening to those if you have not already.

And as we dive in today, I want you to consider who do you need on your team in order to get to your first six figures, your first $100 ,000 in sales? What about your first multi six figure $250 ,000 in sales? Maybe you need to get your first million or beyond. Who do you need on your team in order to reach those milestones? What kinds of skill sets or quote unquote departments do you need like sales, marketing?

finance and accounting, operations, things like that. And these might vary a little bit based on the type of business that you have. There probably are more quote unquote departments that you could add based on the type of business that you have. But what we wanna do is we wanna take a look at your role and your to -do list and take a look at what kind of additional support do we need to get in the business. So consider things like,

How much time each week do you spend on non -revenue generating activities? In episode seven, I shared that the average office worker spends about three hours a day on manual, repeatable work that could be resolved or reduced by either implementing a system or streamlining to make them more efficient. So if you think about approximately what...

percentage of your time is actually spent on impactful revenue generating activities or things that truly only you can do. My guess is that it is 50 % or more in my own experience and experience in working with my clients. So some of these examples might be how much time do you spend doing email, like checking your email, responding to emails, organizing, or maybe even searching your email if you've got...

thousands of emails that are not filed, filed in a good system that's easy to find. Coordinating meetings, offering out times, can we meet next Thursday at one o 'clock? I can't meet next Thursday at one o 'clock, how about Wednesday at two? Just the back and forth, or losing track of the conversation altogether, and then ultimately you lose out on maybe a potential client or a potential referral partner or other opportunities because things are just.

falling through the cracks. How much time are you spending on creating your own marketing content? Maybe you're trying to keep up on social media, you're trying to post once or twice a week or more than that, and it's just getting to be too much. Or when's the last time you posted a new blog article on your website or your LinkedIn? Maybe looking at how often are you emailing your list? If you're responsible for all of these things, how often are they happening? Or if they are happening,

How much time are you personally spending on it? And here's another thing, are you actually enjoying it? Or is this something that you would much rather have some help on from somebody who truly loves these types of things and who can do them much more quickly than you can? Other examples of busy work in your business might be new client onboarding. Getting new clients is great, but do we need to be doing all of the steps that are involved in getting a new client properly set up to work with us?

Invoicing, are you manually sending invoices? Following up on payments, that can be an awkward conversation if you're working directly with a client and you also need to follow up when they don't pay you. Paying bills, paying vendors, are these things that you're doing on your own? Responding to inquiries that come in through your website, again, these are all great things, but are you spending your precious time on doing these types of things? Maybe answering questions.

I know answering frequently asked questions from your customers is one example here. Or do you have a small but mighty team, but you're the one who is serving as air traffic controller, trying to manage all of the tasks and projects that they're doing, and ultimately you're the go -to for all of the questions that come through. That's all time that is being taken away from revenue generating activities that you could be doing.

What about generating leads? That's something that we don't talk about a lot. Are you regularly connecting with people on LinkedIn? Are you sending cold emails? Are you following up on leads that have come in? Are these things that you're doing that ultimately maybe it would be more beneficial to have somebody help you track and do these things on your own? And then when you have a potential customer who is interested in what you have to offer, then you take over the conversation.

These are all just general examples of things that I know I personally can spend time on that are frequently delegated items from our clients to our virtual assistant team, just to give you some ideas of maybe things that you're spending a lot of time on that you don't necessarily need to. And so before we start talking about getting help in our businesses with these types of things, I want to take a pause for a moment and have you really consider...

what your time is worth. And I'll give you a hint, your time is not worth the average salary or hourly rate that you are paying yourself right now. So consider this, I'm gonna keep this simple math just to kind of break this down for you and give you an idea of what this time is worth. Let's say you work full time in your business 40 hours a week.

and you figure that you're probably spending about 50 % of your time on busy work that you don't necessarily need to do yourself. And so you say, okay, I am going to hire somebody for 20 hours a week, and I'm going to hire them for $25 an hour. And then ultimately, let me do that math here. Let's say $500 a week, times 52 weeks in a year. Let's say you hire a part -time assistant for $26 ,000 a year. Now,

Again, this is simple math and you're thinking, I don't have $26 ,000 a year to pay somebody, but let's say you are a photographer. I'm just gonna throw this out there. And you decide, you know what, if I save 20 hours a week, I would be able to do, let's say, three more photo shoots a month. And let's say, that means increased sales, you're having more sales conversations, maybe you're...

spending more time with referral partners to generate more business. And let's say that results in three additional photo shoots a month. And let's say each photo shoot is $2 ,000. So let's say that's an additional $6 ,000 of revenue every month times 12 months, of course. That's $72 ,000 a year in new revenue that you would not have been able to accomplish.

without having that part -time assistant. So again, you paid that part -time assistant $26 ,000 a year, and you ultimately have made an additional 72 ,000. That's nearly a three times return on investment from hiring that assistant. So I want you to think about this from that perspective. It's not how much you're bringing in now. It's if I got these things off my plate, what could I realistically bring in in additional revenue or maybe,

it's creating additional lines of revenue. Maybe it's not necessarily creating, doing more of what you're doing right now, but maybe you can do more speaking engagements or whatever that looks like for you. What is the opportunity there? And that's what we need to consider when we look at hiring a team. So your current wage or your current salary is not ultimately what your time is worth. So when you take a look at the list that you made of

the busy work that you're doing in your business, and we walked through those examples a few minutes ago, what do you need help with? And what skill sets are going to be required? Let's just keep this really, really simple. Before we start hiring, take a look at realistically, who do I need on the team to help me with these things? And here's a few other things to ask yourself and to consider when you're looking at who do I need to bring in. So number one,

what are some things that you are struggling to do on your own? I can say for myself, one of the first things that I delegated before I ultimately built my team was outsourcing social media. I did see the value in drafting my own social media posts so that they were in my voice and they were on brand and everything, but I can tell you this, I might spend hours and hours and hours creating,

social media posts for say maybe two weeks and then I would get busy doing client work and running the business and doing all the other things and then my social media would be dormant for a month and a half. And so it was really, really inconsistent where ultimately I decided that I needed to outsource that to somebody and we worked together on developing BrandVoice and of course I reviewed everything before it went out and so I was able to make some minor tweaks and adjustments.

for the way that I say things or to make them more relevant to the way that I do business. But I can tell you that outsourcing social media is very, very common. And you can all, even if you enjoy social media, you can always, what I say, put the icing on the cake, or maybe you go live, or maybe you create some stories for yourself, but you have that baseline support of creating social media content. That's one common example that I know.

I outsource that many of our clients outsource as well. So things that you're just struggling to keep up with on your own, or maybe it requires a skill set or an area of expertise that you just don't have. And that's okay. You don't need to be the expert at all of the things in your business. We want to use your expertise for the much greater good of your clients, your customers, and the growth of your business. Okay, another thing to consider when we start looking at what do we hire first? What do we outsource first?

tasks that you don't enjoy. So one example of this might be invoicing clients. I know a lot of our clients hire our team to send invoices on their behalf and also to follow up when those invoices are not paid in a timely manner. It just helps to have a buffer in there when our clients are working directly and closely with their clients and so that they're able to focus on their work and have somebody else ultimately handing.

handling the money side of things. Sometimes clients really like to have that break in between. So tasks that you don't enjoy. Another thing kind of along the bookkeeping example or the accounting example, bookkeeping. Do you enjoy pulling all your numbers together in time for tax season when you meet with your accountant each year? If the answer is no and it's something you hate and it's something that you leave for the last minute, look at getting some help in that area. Just ...

Remove that energy and take those things off your plate. The third thing that you might want to consider when you're starting to take a look at who do I need to hire or who else do I need to add to my team? Projects that have been sitting on the back burner. Now a common one that we see on our team, website updates. Maybe it's creating a brand new website because yours was created seven years ago when you first started your company or

Maybe your website still looks nice, but there's a lot of things that have changed in the business. Maybe your offerings have changed, or maybe your ideal client has changed a little bit, and you need to get that updated. That is often a project that sits on the back burner that people are like, I know my website. It's kind of outdated. I need more information out there. That is something that you can take a look at hiring and outsourcing as well. So considering all of these things,

take a look at who do we need on the team, either initially, what are some of the initial low -hanging fruit that you'd like to get off your plate if you're operating solo, or if you have a small but mighty team, take a look at where are some of the gaps, or are there things that I have been having my existing team do that maybe they don't enjoy doing, or maybe there are some projects and things that your team just can't get to. That's very, very common.

No matter what size business you have, if your team is at capacity themselves, what else do we need to get some help with in order to keep these tasks and projects moving forward? So take a look at all of these things. And then in the next episode, we're going to start talking more about hiring support for your business.

what does some tips for successfully onboarding team members and also working with them. We're gonna be talking about all of these in next episodes. So if you don't wanna miss the next conversation and these tips and tricks have been really helpful for you in growing your business, highly recommend, would love to have you follow, subscribe so that you don't miss the next episode.

Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today and I hope this information was helpful for you in growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'll see you in the next episode.