Join Melissa Swink in the latest episode of “Make Space for More” as she delves into the challenges and triumphs of scaling a business. Melissa discusses her initial hesitation to build a team and empathizes with other entrepreneurs who face the same fear. She then covers the importance of making investments so you can scale, putting effort into areas like team building, technology upgrades, and business coaching. Going deeper into her team-building process, Melissa shares how to delegate tasks, starting small with as little as an hour per day, so business owners can focus on strategic business responsibilities. Tune in to get practical insights on outsourcing and creating team efficiencies, so you can expand your business while achieving time freedom!

Key Highlights:

• Overcoming resistance to hiring and prioritizing client needs are central to scaling a business.
• Essential growth steps include investing in a team, advanced software, and expert coaching.
• Starting small with outsourcing disliked tasks can lead to significant business autonomy.
• Building a reliable team is vital for distributing workload and enhancing client response times.
• Focusing on 'golden eggs'—key profit-generating aspects of the business—ensures sustained growth.

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 back 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 talk about the inner game, the thoughts and ideas that hold us back from growing and scaling our businesses, and ultimately, blocking ourselves from creating the life and the business that we want. As I shared in episode one of the podcast, my business, which is a virtual assistant services company, dramatically as changed over the years I've been in business since 2012. And in the first six years of owning this business, I completely resisted the idea of hiring help in my business, I was stuck in a job that I created for myself, but I also thought that was the best and really the purest way to continue serving my clients. I thought that by, you know, sacrificing my time and other opportunities to grow and scale in other areas that I was putting them first and I was just doing what needed to be done to make sure that they were well served and that their work was getting done to the very best of my ability. And this is something that is very common, when I'm working with clients as well is especially when you're due to building a team or certainly making other investments in the business, maybe it's also investing in new software, where things are a little bit more automated than they were in the past. Or maybe it's looking at doing a coaching program, you know, some of these things that are scaling up and ultimately are going to give you a return on that investment. Sometimes it can be really, really scary to take those steps.

Today, we're going to focus on some of the hardest steps of growing and scaling a business, which is building a team growing the business beyond you if you're working solo, or maybe you have a little bit of help in your business, like maybe you have an accountant, maybe you have a web designer, and you're looking to get some more help in your business as you continue to grow and scale and expand. No matter where you're at. I want to share a couple of common thoughts that I certainly had, and other clients had, particularly in the toughest area, which is building a team.

So thought number one is if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. This is a very common one that we think many of us have a deeply ingrained DIY mindset. And I think underneath that mindset is really the fear of hiring the wrong person, which that can happen, I can tell you that I have made plenty of hiring mistakes. In my years in business, I've learned from them, I continue to get better about not making those same mistakes. But the reality is, is that there is a risk when you start bringing on more people into your business. But the payoff of finding the right people, and being able to incorporate them into your business is huge. So I wanted to share a story of one of our clients. We've been working with him for probably about two years now. And when we first started working with him, he was the owner of a marketing firm. And he had built an incredibly impressive multi six figure business with multiple revenue streams, all by himself. So he was doing all the business development, all the delivering of products and services to his customers. He was running the business behind the scenes, he was doing all of it himself. And he was working over 100 hours a week. So as you can think somebody who's working over 100 hours a week in their business, there's not a lot of time for a personal life. And there, the business really controls the way that you spend your time. Which is interesting, because many of us start a business because we want more time freedom. But again, ultimately, we often create a job for ourselves, which requires a lot of our time. So it's kind of interesting how this plays out. But he recognized that this was not sustainable through the help of a business coach. And he decided to take the risk and hire our team for one hour per day, which boils down to five hours a week, 20 hours a month, just to start helping with some of the miscellaneous things that were on his plate as he developed a relationship of trust with his virtual assistant and was able to hand off more From his plate on to hers, and she started helping and getting more integrated with not only the inner workings of his business, but also helping to serve his clients as well. He increased the amount of work that they did together. And he also hired several other people in other areas of business to support him. So what happened was, is a couple of months ago, the true test happened where he was able to take a vacation, fully unplug and enjoy his time off, and have his team that he had built, running the business while he was gone. So I felt I feel like that's a huge victory and a great indication of have you created a job for yourself, can you take even a few days off, fully unplug and have the business run without you for a little while. Now, sure, you may be able to turn on your out of office and unplug and not have any major meltdowns happen in the business while you're gone. But you're coming back to a backlog of work that's going to take you you know, a week or two or more to get caught up. What I'm talking about here is having your business continue to run without your presence is really what we want to get to to, to get to that point of having that time freedom that we desired in our businesses. So one tip that I have, if you're just starting to explore this area of outsourcing or building a team, is to start small, maybe pick that one thing that you really hate doing, or that you struggle to do yourself. So for me, even before I consistently started building a team, I was out, I decided to outsource social media, I felt that I wanted my social media presence to be very authentic, I knew that I had a message to share. But the problem was is because nobody was specifically asking me for social media posts, and it was all just, you know, me and my availability, and frankly, my motivation, my prioritization, it just didn't happen consistently. I might take a morning and create some great social media posts, and schedule those out for a few weeks. And then just busyness of life would happen, client projects would come up, or I had a meeting intensive week, or maybe there was spring break at school or something. And then there'd be no more social media posts for a month. And so it was very inconsistent. So what I decided to do was to hire somebody to help with social media. And I've worked with a variety of social media people over the years. But when I have outsourced that aspect of my business, and certainly helped shape and collaborate with that person, the messaging that I wanted to put out there, so there still had that authenticity to it, it was much, much more consistent. And honestly, everything that I have outsourced to date, I'm regularly impressed by how much better and more efficient they are at these things than me. So another example is graphic design. I love Canva Canva came on the scene early in the ownership of my business. And I loved it it was it made it so much easier for me to create graphics. But was I a professional at it? No, definitely not. So when we started working with a graphic designer consistently on the team, I was blown away, she still designs often in Canva for us, because we like to have that flexibility to make updates. And she certainly uses Photoshop and Illustrator and all that kind of stuff too. But her stuff looked so much better than mine might look very amateur hers looked very polished and professional and she understands some of the back story of things or the intentionality behind things in terms of fonts and sizing and placement and all of that, that I don't I just know like, Oh, that looks okay. And you know, we run with it, but the graphic designer that we have is so much more efficient, and it creates a much better product than I could ever create. So, you know, if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself applies to very, very few things in reality in your business. And we will talk more about how to define what is truly the thing that only you can do versus what is somebody what is something that somebody else can do in future episodes. We're going to be walking through this with you what we want to talk about the things right now in this episode of the ideas that you might want to reconsider or you know, think about am I telling myself these stories and is that not serving me? Is it holding me back?

So common thought number two Is my clients only want to work with me? This is another one. So a lot of us especially as solopreneurs, who are in service industries, we have the false idea that we are the magic in our business, my clients want to work with me, they know that I am the best at, you know, XYZ, and they only want to work with me. And if I bring in somebody else, it'll be like, not the same. It'll be like my backup or my replacement, it's not going to be the same experience. The truth is, is that the magic in your business is the result that your clients experience because of working with you. So, again, going back to that social media example that I provided a few minutes ago, is ultimately is it the person? Is it that one person who's creating the social media content? Are they the magic? Or is the fact that you have a finished product of a series of social media posts that convey the message you want to convey? They look polished, they professional and they are consistent? Is that ultimately the magic? Or is that the only there's one person who can deliver those results? The truth is, is that it is the magic itself is the actual product, unless you are a genius in a very, very niche area of business. There are many people that have similar skills, and expertise that can help you create that same result for your clients. You know, one story that I like to refer back to, to help kind of illustrate this point of, you know, what is the magic in your business, if you remember from childhood that I was gonna say that fairy tale or that nursery rhyme of the the goose that laid the golden eggs, where there was a man who discovered that a goose that he had, could lay golden eggs. And every day, he was delighted, because there were more golden eggs being produced. And ultimately, he became greedy, and cut open the goose to harvest the rest of the golden eggs and found there weren't any golden eggs inside of the goose. So not only did he lose that access to that supply, that daily supply of the golden eggs, they were gone, there was no more goose. So when we think about the golden goose, you are the golden goose that lays those eggs in your business. So there's a couple of ways that we can think about this. Not everything that we do in our business is a golden egg. So again, we need to really define, and we're going to do this together and the podcast is define what are those golden eggs. And those are definitely not all of the things that are happening in your business. These are some very specific things that you are the best at. And the other thing is, is that if you put too much stress on that golden goose to keep producing all those golden eggs, eventually that goose is going to burn out. So when we look at all the aspects of running a business, we want to get very specific and just focus on those golden eggs, and treat you the golden goose the way you ought to be treated in order to keep producing those because if you burn out, you get tired, you get stressed out, trying to create too much output, things are going to start to break down. So one tip that I have here is to when you begin working with a team, and you begin to incorporate them into your business, and have them helping you support your clients or, or have them working with clients on their own. And there's there's various stages of incorporating people into your business. What you want to do is you want to really edify that team and get clients excited about the benefits of not having all their eggs in one basket. So as I had mentioned, when I first started building a team in my business, I hire people to work behind the scenes. So I was still very client facing. And I would ultimately hand off work that needed to be done to my team members, they would do that behind the scenes. They would send it back to me I'd review it, check it and pass it along to the client. So well that was a great it's a great starting point for me and certainly was an important part of the journey to where I've gotten today. It got to be really, really exhausting of being that go between and ultimately the work that they were turning out was very, very good. So I decided to remove myself from being that bottleneck of communication, and introduce clients to the people who were doing the work on their account. What I ended up doing in the way that our team is structured today is I have an assigned account lead for each of our clients, who serves as their right hand, their main point of contact, and the person who's overseeing the work doing that is being done on their account. I share this because when I establish these lead virtual assistants to work directly with my clients, I ultimately lost very few clients because they were now able to work with somebody who had a lesser client load than I personally had. So, again, I was the one who was maintaining communications with all of our clients, which got to be a lot, which got to be a point where there was a delay in communication, or maybe I was starting to get the details a little fuzzy. In my head, when I started assigning a small group of clients to each person on my team, they were able to receive a much quicker response time. First of all, they were able to communicate directly with the people who are doing this work. And they were working directly with the people who were doing a phenomenal job often better than I could personally do myself. So we want to make sure that we're edifying the team members and the talent that you're bringing into your business, helping your clients to get excited to work with those people. And also letting them know, here's all the benefits, you don't have to wait for a response from me, they're gonna get back to you faster. Like in my example. Another example is, they're not putting all their eggs in one basket where, you know, if if something happens to you, or you need to take some time off from work, their work doesn't stop. There's other people who can continue moving that forward, there's so many benefits to working with a team versus an individual person. And you can highlight those for your clients. And again, we're going to talk about a lot of this in detail, but it just wanted to share. Sometimes we think my clients only want to work with me, which ultimately, yes, your clients do love working with you. But you don't need to be the only one doing all the things there are lots of talented people who can enhance the working relationship and increase the results that your clients are getting as well. Another example of this, we have a client who is a bookkeeper. And when she started working with me on the make space for more framework. Within that program, she was feeling really overwhelmed by all the client communications in addition to, of course, the day to day bookkeeping job of keeping clients books up to date, and asking questions about transactions and reconciling their bank and credit card statements, the reporting, the payroll, all that sort of stuff. And addition to running her own company, right, it was just where the client communication got to be so overwhelming for her that when she got some help in the business, she was able to get back to people much more quickly, because she wasn't trying to do all the things. And that, of course, just increased her client satisfaction and ultimately opened up the capacity for her to work with more people. And she's continued to build her team since then as well.

Okay, reason number three or common thought number three of why we resist growing and scaling our businesses, particularly in the area of building a team, which is definitely the can be the most challenging is my business is my baby. And I have a hard time trusting others with it. So this is similar to the item that I just shared. But this is the idea that you have to be doing all the things and nobody's going to take care of your business, like you do. So there's a little bit of a difference. It's the second point, my clients only want to work with me is a little bit more external. Point number three is again, really relating to trust of it's a little bit more internal. My business is my baby, I can't possibly hand it off to other people to to run it with me. So I wanted to share a story. One of our clients is a realtor. And when she started working with us, she said, You know, it's very important for me to find someone who cares about my business as much as I do, and who treats my clients as if they were their own. And we worked very hard Mostly with her, we've been working with her for a couple of years now. And she just is blown away by our approach and our level of customer service that we're providing to her clients, we really have shown her that with direction on how she wants her clients, the approach that she wants us to take with our clients, or the way that she wants to serve her clients, we can replicate that with her leadership, and again, ultimately, provide that trust in that credibility and strengthen those relationships alongside of her. So one thing that I want to share in terms of trusting others with your business, is that you can find people who aligned with your values and your goals and who want to collaborate with you. Finding the right fit is crucial here. And when you're looking at trust in incorporating other people into your business, you certainly there are hiring practices that can make things a little bit easier for you in terms of checking references, making sure that the people that you're hiring have a track record of working well with others in their businesses. Plus contracts are crucial, really spelling out the terms of the working relationship is going to be important. There's many different thoughts that I have, in terms of things that I have learned with contracts over the years, I am not an attorney, I can share more with what has worked with me over time, but having a contract is crucial for really spelling out, here are the boundaries, here are the expectations, and all of that when you're working with other people. So as I have grown my team, I have gradually built trust with new team members over time. So we start when we hire a team member, we have them go through just a general team orientation, which kind of gives them the basic basics of here's the story of our company, here's what we provide our clients, here is what we want the experience to look like and giving them that baseline. And then we're regularly checking in with these team members, especially in the beginning to make sure that they are doing the work that's being assigned to them, that they're communicating properly along the way. And we have those checks and balances in place to make sure that everyone is number one on the same page, also committed to providing the level of service that we have outlined, that we need, that we need provided for our clients. So there are a lot of ways that you can put in some checks and balances and build those relationships of trust. So that you're not just handing over your business, your baby to somebody that you barely know and has not have a time that they can prove their track record in their experience in working with you. So there is a phase of trusting others with your business. And those are baby steps that can be taken. So just wanted to share that where you don't necessarily have to hire a stranger on the internet to watch your baby while you go off for a night on the town. There are there are baby steps that we can put into place so that you're not handing everything over with no idea if this is going to work out if you can trust this person, and what have you. And we'll talk more about team structures and checks and balances in future episodes.

But as for today, I just wanted to share those top three areas of tension when we think about growing and scaling our companies and especially working with other people. So with that being said, I encourage you to tune into our next episode, where we are going to discuss the challenges of finding the time and the money and to invest in scaling our business and tips to overcome them. You're not going to want to miss that conversation. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope that these ideas were helpful for you in overcoming some of the barriers that you've set for yourself when it comes to incorporating other people into the growth of your business. Thanks so much everyone. Have a wonderful day and I'll see you in the next episode.