The One Tweak We Made With Our Team That Helped Us Scale Our Business
We were recently asked what was one of the biggest mistakes we had made in our business and one of our answers was how we structured our business. In the past our business was running on accomplishing task-based activities, rather than bringing in a team of permanent employees with outcome-based deliverables.
What do we mean by this? When Boss Project first started we had focused on hiring all contractors and less employees. The problem is that contractors are hired on to fulfill tasks. They do not hold the responsibility to fulfill actual outcomes in your business. For example, a social media contractor has the responsibility to create “x” amount of posts for you a month but at the end of the day you’re responsible for the follow-through and the outcomes. It’s still your job to convert social media leads into sales, make sure your sales page is up-to-date, have an opt-in, set up automations and systems etc.
It can be frustrating to hire a whole team of contractors (not to mention pay a whole team of contractors) and still feel like you’re bearing the brunt of everything that keeps your business moving forward. You may not feel like your business is growing, progressing or changing. Our advice? These feelings are a sign that you might need to look at how your team is structured. Because ultimately, it’s not a contractor's job to accomplish your business’ outcomes.
Ultimately, it’s not a contractor's job to accomplish your business’ outcomes.
That Moment You Realize YOU Are Your Contractors Client
*Gasp* You might need to read that again! When we had this mindset shift things really started clicking for us. We had built a team of contractors who were getting us their deliverables but we weren't getting the outcomes we wanted. Someone (that someone being Emylee’s partner) gave us a piece of advice that was along the lines of, “you’re talking about your contractors like you are their boss and you are not. In fact, you are their client.”
This explained some of the clashing that was happening between our contractors and us. At the end of the day, they couldn’t fulfill all the things needed to get the job done (because that’s not their literal job). They have their own entire business to run and cannot dedicate all the time needed to make the results we were hoping for happen.
Fast forward a few years, we now understand the role of contractors and have since hired a team of part-time and full-time employees where they can own projects from start to finish and be responsible for the outcomes and goals set in place. It’s been exciting for Team Boss Project to see our employees take ownership over their projects and with that how we’ve grown as a business since changing up this structure.
From contractors to creating a team of employees who take ownership of outcome-based deliverables
Now that we have employees, what does it look like to create a team of ownership? Our first shift was to train staff on how we make decisions. Every time we would make a decision, we would have to pause, think about who would be making that decision in the future, and check that we were cluing them in on every step it took to arrive at that conclusion.
Initially, education will be constant! But eventually, other team members will be so clued in, that they’ll take the reins to pass on that information. When you transfer autonomy, you transfer ownership. Along the way, we needed to ask ourselves if we were clear in our communication on a regular basis but, after having delegated for much longer, our confidence has grown and with that so has our business.
If you’re searching for business “a ha” moments just like this (times 1,000) then we think you should apply for The Incubator. The Incubator is a 12 month program designed to help our clients grow ethically and prioritize the culture of their teams (that’s not all, check out what else we cover in The Incubator). Once you apply, send us a DM over on Instagram. Also, if you’ve ever considered transitioning from contractors to employees we’d love to chat with you about it. A real person named Katie, will absolutely continue this conversation with you in the DMs.
