Do you need to build a team? Are you struggling to get everything done in your online business? Think you might want to hire a virtual assistant but have no idea how to get started? I'm going to tackle that topic today.
This is something that I've struggled with myself. It's hard to give up control of your baby, right? But you have to dig into whether you're spending time on lower level tasks that are holding you back from higher level outputs.
I’m beyond excited to interview my online mentor, Marie. Here's one important question that I asked her: When do you start to build a team?
Marie Forleo is a multi-passionate entrepreneur and author. Born-and-raised in New Jersey, Marie has built a socially conscious digital empire that touches millions. Through her award-winning show MarieTV, world-class online training programs, a book in 16 languages and an audience in 195 countries, Marie helps people like you dream big and backs it up with meaningful action to create results.
Marie has worked with some amazing people like Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, and Oprah on Super Soul Sunday. And she's built a thriving team of 25!
Observing people, you start to see who is hungry, who is driven, and who is on their game. Click To Tweet
Where you can find talent:
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- Look in your online community
- Post your job on Linkedin
- Put out a request on your social media channels. This is one of the posts that Marie shared when she was looking for some talent.
I don't have a full-time team but I've hired out the following different things:
- video editing
- transcriptions from Rev.com [see below]
- creating video trailers [Jeff Sieh is amazing]
- logo design from Main Street Web Studio [found her on Instagram]
If you find someone's work you love, scope out their website, references, and portfolio. Hire them for a project or two to see how they work. As Marie advised, go on a few dates with people before you put a ring on it.
Send a direct message on Instagram or an email to their contact form on their website. It's not impossible to find the right people if you spend some time vetting your options.
Rebekah Radice has been working with a team for a few years now as she's grown her business and online brand. I asked her what she considered when working with a team and she said, “The most important aspect to building out your team is aligning personality with the culture of the company.
For me, as I started to build my team, I knew that I move quickly and needed my team to do that as well. I looked for people that were take-charge, own your position, action-oriented doers. I also ensured that they’d proven themselves by doing – not just teaching – exactly what they were hired to do.
And here's the added bonus… when you have a team of doers, they also become multipliers. They multiply your ability to produce results through unique talents and innovative ideas.”
Are you struggling to get everything done? Scared to bring on a team? I hope this helped you with some ideas on how you can create more space on your schedule and remove stress by having help to grow your business.
Here's the full transcript for this video.
Peg: Hi. I'm Peg Fitzpatrick and today I'm going to ask the question: how do you grow in your business if you're an entrepreneur and you wear lots of hats and you're trying to take it up to the next level? I had the opportunity to interview Marie Forleo of MarieTV and B-School and she had some really great insights, so watch along and see what we talk about.
As entrepreneurs, and you kind of mentioned your team a little bit, but as entrepreneurs we have to wear tons and tons of different hats. At some point, to grow and expand, we have to bring on a team. When do you know when it's a good time to start a team and how do you find the right people to work with?
Marie Forleo: Big, huge, important question. From my experience, most of us wait too long, and I will say I see that mostly with women. For whatever reason, the men in my life and the men that I've coached have a much easier time. They're like, “Yeah, I need a team. I'm going to bring them on.” They are so much more comfortable. So many of the women that I've experienced try and do it all themselves and want to hang on to everything as long as possible. So I would say, sooner than you probably think.
In terms of finding the right people, there are many different methods to do that. One of the things that we do in our company now is we try and keep what's called a virtual bench. Any time we come across anyone, like if I meet them at a networking event or anyone on my team meets someone who just has that kick ass, driven, focused, detail oriented, positive attitude vibe, we're like, “Who are you? What's going on?” I will keep in touch with people. I found some of my most key team members, they were clients. They were customers in my program and I watched how they behaved and I went and plucked them and then I did my best sales job to say, “Come on over here and work with me.”
I think that there are so many places you can find it. You can find it on social media, you can find it through friends of friends, you can go on sites and put out … One of the things we did recently was we actually put out basically a help-wanted ad on our Instagram stories.
Peg: I saw it in your Facebook page too, a while ago. You were like, “We're hiring a designer.” It was quite a while ago.
Marie Forleo: Yeah. We've done lots of things. I feel like you have to use every vehicle that's at your disposal: your personal network, if you have people you know on Linkedin, whatever, cold call. But you've got to know what you're looking for, know the exact skill set, know what you can pay. I would say this is a really big lesson that cost us a lot to learn: do whatever you can to have a test period. Pay people for project work, pay them for part-time work, but find a way to experiment and test.
It's kind of like dating. You're not just going to go, “Oh, wow, this person looks great. Let's just get married.” You would never do that. You would date before you're going to put a ring on it. You've got to do the same thing in this world, I believe, when it comes to hiring, especially when you don't have many resources, when you can't afford to make a big mess up that could cost you a lot financially, legally, emotionally. It's a big mess, but if you can find a small, target project to test each other out on and see if you like working together, it's the best and fastest way to find great talent.
Peg: Yeah, that's a great … I save things, collections on Instagram when I really love someone's work. There was somebody, she posted a logo that she designed and I was like, “That's definitely who is making my next logo,” because it was just amazing. So I do that, too. I keep my eyes open for good skill sets.
Marie Forleo: Talent.
Peg: Yeah, talent. It's easy to spot, right?
Marie Forleo: Absolutely. You can feel it. Just observing people, you start to see who is hungry, who is driven, and who is on their game.
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