Episode Summary

When you’re ready to make the leap from solopreneurship to hiring your first team members, it’s crucial to have solid systems in place. Organization and communication are absolutely essential for remote effective team management. Tune in to hear Melissa Swink’s top three must-have team management tools! 

Key Highlights:

• Transitioning from working solo to leading a team requires a mental shift and intentional leadership, communication, and delegation.
• Google Workspace is a must-have tool for managing teams, providing a professional email platform, shared drives, and collaboration tools.
• Asana is a project management tool that keeps everyone on the same page, assigns tasks, and ensures projects are completed in a timely manner.
• LastPass is a secure login credential storage system that allows for easy sharing of login information with team members.
• Using these tools can enhance efficiency, organization, and collaboration within a team.

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, I am so excited to share with you my top three must -have tools for managing teams. But before we dive in, I just wanted to take a moment to welcome you. Thank you so much for tuning in and joining me today. Today's episode.

came from an inspiration from a conversation that I recently had with a client. Now this client is someone who has been steadily working her business for the last couple of years. She had been in the corporate world and went out on her own in a consulting industry and has been consistently doing the work and building up to the point where she had reached her capacity in her business and has started working with our team.

And the interesting thing is as much as she has enjoyed that experience of working with our team, she had a phone call with me, kind of peer to peer, CEO to CEO, and said, how are you doing all of this? And what she meant was, she had been working solo for several years. Now suddenly she has a team in place to support her and collaborate with her and help her get

all of her client deliverables done, but she's so used to functioning in kind of that one woman operation, that one woman show that she's like, I am needing to take a step back and see how I am leading, how I'm communicating, how I'm delegating because it's not just me where I can kind of do whatever I want, however I want to do it, when I want to do it. Now it takes a little bit more...

forethought and more intention to keep everybody on the same page. And so we were talking about different ways that we manage the team, how she can leverage those in her own business. And so my point here is before we dive into the tools that I wanted to share with all of you today, is that whether you're going from being a solopreneur to hiring your first team member or team members, the logistics can be overwhelming. And it's definitely a mental shift from going

Again, from operating solo and being very agile and it just being you to involving a team and communicating with the team and getting everybody on the same page and leading. There is leadership involved with this. The other interesting thing is when I talk with clients or I talk with colleagues of mine who are leading teams, one of their number one frustrations tends to be along the lines of disorganization like

We have great team members, they're very talented, and yet I feel like we're not all on the same page or this feels cumbersome. I'm not sure where all of our files are being saved. I don't know, are people saving these on their local computers because I can't seem to find some of these projects and these notes within our shared files or maybe they just feel like each person attends a meeting and comes away with their list of to -dos.

And then those to -dos don't live in any shared system or shared drive. It's just kind of everybody working hard in doing their part of the project, but not really the right hand knowing what the left hand is doing. And there can be a lot of inefficiencies with that. So the point is, is that no matter where you're at in terms of building your team or what size team you have, I'm hoping that some of these tools will be able to

help you work together a little bit more efficiently, or maybe you are using these tools and today you might pick up on some ways that you could use them even further to enhance the quality of your working relationship with your team members. So all of this to say, there is no shortage out there of tools and systems and it can be really overwhelming to decide what exactly do I need? So I would say if I could only choose three,

I was on a limited budget or for some reason I could not leverage all the tools that are available to me. If I could only choose three, here would be my must haves. Number one is Google Workspace. I'll also give you a quote for about how much I'm currently paying for these tools. Now granted, this may change at any given point in time, but Google Workspace is approximately $7 per user per month.

So again, we're talking about fairly low cost tools that we're using here. But Google Workspace has allowed us to do a couple of things. First of all, we are able to use a custom domain that is branded to our company that just gives a very polished and professional and cohesive feel so that no matter who receives an email from one of our team members, they can recognize that it's somebody from Melissa Swink and Co. And this is something that I have worked with

clients on in the past of getting their team on one system within Google Workspace rather than using individual Gmail accounts or other personal email accounts, even if they're independent contractors. I have found that it is most cohesive to have everybody using the same system. But on top of that, there's a lot of benefits to using this as well. First of all, email, the email platform that comes with it definitely is one of the

most user -friendly, most popular email platforms out there. I know there's also Outlook and there's some Microsoft programs as well, but Gmail, Google Mail, many people are familiar with that. It's an easy learning curve for new team members coming in. Also the function of calendar usage and sharing calendars and things like that. Share drives, that's huge. Again, going back to...

I have a feeling that maybe I have team members who are saving things and they have files that they share with me or maybe they send as attachments, but I don't know where those files actually live within our system. Google Workspace is fantastic for shared drives. And again, I also have used Dropbox in the past. I currently use Dropbox personally with a couple of our clients in very specific industries. They use Dropbox as well, but

When I had to think about my top three tools and also the value that comes with Google Workspace, since they already have Google Drive and there's sharing and file storage available within that system, it just makes the most financial sense to leverage the tools that we have. And so our team's shared folders are all on Google Drive. We have internal folders, we have client folders.

And they're all there. And we're, of course, able to share those with the appropriate team members as needed. So we definitely have permissions and things like that set in terms of who has access to what. Also, along the lines with Google Workspace and all of the different apps and tools that are included in that monthly fee that we are paying for our team, we have access to Google Docs, Google Sheets.

Now, I also love Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel. I grew up using that. I have taken college courses on using those. As funny as that may sound, now I may be dating myself a little bit. And those I still use every day, but I recognize that for efficiency and for file sharing purposes, it is much easier for our team to collaborate using Sheets and Docs and things like that.

Canva is another one that we'll use for presentations and things like that, but that's kind of, that's going down a rabbit hole that we're not gonna go down. But my point is, is that it's been cohesive for us to share those documents and edit and work together and collaborate in those documents without converting things to an Excel spreadsheet versus you bringing things back into Google Drive for Sheets and things like that. So Google Workspace, hands down, number one tool that we use to manage our team.

And again, whether your team is virtual or in person or a combination of both, these tools will apply to your situation. So this is not just for a quote unquote virtual assistant team. Okay. Tool number two that I cannot live without in terms of managing my team is Asana. Many of you have heard me talk about this program. We also have worked with plenty of clients to implement Asana for their own company and their own unique situation.

But Asana, at this point in time, I want to say that I'm probably paying between $11 and $12 a month, $11 and $15 a month or so per user. So this one is a little bit higher in cost compared to Google Workspace. It certainly adds up as your team grows. I mean, if you're working solo, I still think that you need Asana and I'll explain why in a minute. But certainly as your team continues to grow, that Asana subscription, of course, is going to increase.

but I still feel that is very much worth it in terms of efficiency and time saved because as I've shared with all of you in the past, my take on systems and tools, when they are used well, there is a such thing as too much, but when tools are implemented and used with intention and the goal ultimately is to save on manual work, whether it be for you or somebody else, that is money saved because we'd rather pay for a system to do something

rather than pay somebody to do manual work. You will get a return on that investment. So all of that being said, at a very basic level, Asana is a project management tool that we use to house all of our client and internal tasks and projects. So our entire team is invited to our Asana workspace, and we have specific projects for each of our clients, and we also have them internal. So maybe there's...

some, there's an accounting project or there's a make space for more podcast project, just to give you some examples there and all tasks and projects live there. So when we have a meeting with one of our clients or if we have a meeting internally like tomorrow afternoon, I have a meeting with my marketing team, all of the takeaway and to do's and the action items are going into that system.

And the reason why is that it makes it very clear as to what is assigned to who, when the targeted due date is listed there. It's very, very clear. And we can see what everyone on the team is doing. This is beneficial for a couple of things. Number one, it keeps everybody on the same page in terms of what needs to happen and when, but it's also beneficial for having an extra set of eyes to make sure that

Tasks and projects are moving forward in a timely manner. It's also very helpful to see what needs to be done if a team member goes on vacation or God forbid needs to take a step back. Life happens, they need to get, they just need to take a break from their work for a period of time. We can see exactly what's assigned to them, where are things at. It is immensely helpful for managing a team. It is a game changer if you haven't used a tool like this.

So I encourage you, even if you're working solo right now and you're starting to think, I'm getting to the point where I need to start hiring a team, I need to get an assistant or something like that, moving your to -do list out of your brain or off of a written sheet of paper in front of you, maybe you're one of those people who has Post -It notes everywhere, getting that into a system that other people can see is going to be an immensely beneficial step.

to getting others on board and making collaboration that much easier. So I always tell my team, you should not be having lists and notes from your meetings living on your desk. They need to be put into a Asana. I understand if it's easier to write when you have a meeting, but we need to put those into a Asana so that everybody can see exactly what's going on. It's really, really important in terms of a project management and a get things done perspective, quite frankly.

The other thing that I wanted to share with you that we use Asana for is templates for our repeatable processes. You've heard me say that we need checklists and we need things, things that you're doing on a regular basis in your business. Like maybe you have a checklist for when you start working with new clients. You know, we need signed contract. We need to send an invoice and receive payment. We need to add them to this system. We need to add them to that list. We need to send them the intake form.

I'm making these up. This is not exactly what our client onboarding process is, but you get the idea. The things that are repeatable, there's no sense in reinventing the wheel every single time you bring on a new client. It's easy to build out a template in Asana and then duplicate that template and actually put it to use. So those are some of the ways that we use Asana, cannot live without that. Last,

but certainly not least of my top three must haves if I go to only choose three to manage a team, number three would be LastPass, which is a secure login credential storage system. Now, LastPass, there's other programs out there like I think there's OnePassword, I think there's Dashlane, there's a lot of different password managers and tools out there. We use LastPass.

Last pass, again, at the time of this recording, I am paying $48 per year per license. So was that about $4 a month? The other thing that I would share there for licenses. Now, I have a license and my team managers have a license so that we're able to create shared folders and grant permissions to individual team members based on what they need access to.

My individual team members are able to use a free LastPass account in order to accept those shares. So just wanted to help you understand that difference in terms of pricing and things like that. So again, I have a license for LastPass teams, so do each of my team managers and my individual team members are able to use LastPass as a free account if they are not sharing.

passwords amongst each other. It is just, it is kind of top down, if you will. I hope that makes sense. I just don't want you to think that you have to pay for a license, at least at the time of this recording. The way that we're able to do it is just purchase LastPass Teams for the people who are managing, sharing, and the people who are on the receiving end don't have to have a LastPass Teams account. All of that being said,

I just wanted to share that with you just to give you a little bit of insight there in case you're setting this up. But this is a system where we store all of our client and internal logins. So we have various shared folders for each client, certainly. We have shared folders for my company, for different things that need to be shared and stored in there based on people who are working on my behalf on different things.

and these are shared with the team as needed. So just to give you an example of how this works in case you are brand new, never heard of a system like this before, we can enter me, meaning my team managers and I can enter in login credentials, save them, share the access with others on the team.

without actually revealing what that login information is. And that just helps keep things really secure. It is far more efficient and secure than having everything listed out in a spreadsheet. I know I started that way. I have worked on teams that organize that way, and this is much more secure. So that way, not only are you preserving the actual login information and having a very fewer number set of eyes,

having access to this information, but you are also able to share specifically with who needs that login information. You're also able to revoke that share if that person no longer needs the information and without having to have you or your client set a new password because that person doesn't need it anymore and so on. It just makes the sharing so much easier. Again, easy updates. If a password changes, we can just go in and add

add the new password, save it, and that flows all the way to the end users who are using those login credentials. So that is LastPass. Again, these are my top three must -have tools if I could only pick three. Most of these are relatively low cost. So all of that being said, if you know an entrepreneur who is hiring their first team member or maybe struggling to get their team on the same page and is trying to figure out

How do I manage all these moving parts and pieces and talented people? Would you please share this episode with them? It may give them one low cost golden nugget to make managing their team easier. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I appreciate you and your support. I look forward to talking with you again on the next episode and sharing more helpful tips and tools to grow your business beyond you. Bye bye.