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build a team

How to Build A Team From Scratch 2023 (When to Hire, Choosing The Right People, Delegating Tasks Effectively)

build a team
Written by: Sophie Kessner
The Sophie Kessner Podcast
The Sophie Kessner Podcast
How to Build A Team From Scratch 2023 (When to Hire, Choosing The Right People, Delegating Tasks Effectively)
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Tired of doing everything on your own and trying to figure out who to hire and how to hire? Be sure to read this blog. We’re going to walk you through the exact process that we use on how to find amazing team members and how to hire.

My name is Soph. I am the founder and CEO of The Sacred CEO Agency. We have built multiple six figure companies and supported hundreds of clients over the last seven years, and also building successful six figure brands, as well as working in some of the top performing business coaching programs over the last few years. In this blog, we’re going to be diving in how to actually find and hire the right team members so that you can build an A star team from scratch.

Step One: Knowing What You Need Based Off Data

So, you’re tired of doing all the things on your own, let’s dive in to the four step process that we’ve broken down on how we go ahead and find our star team members. Step one. This is the biggest mistake that I see bar none when it comes to hiring in the coaching industry and why most people honestly struggle and suffer when it comes to finding the right team members. That step is actually knowing what you need based off of real data and real information, not just off of what other people think you should be doing. Because the reality is, you are the person in your business. You are the one that is spending all of the time, all of the hours, doing everything that you do. So, you’re the only person that can actually know what it is that you need.

Therefore, I don’t recommend asking friends, colleagues, peers, coaches, who you should hire, because they won’t know. They only assume based on their experience in their business and what they’re seeing from the outside, looking in, which is oftentimes not a very great image. So, how do you assess what it is you actually need? I’m so glad you asked. We have created, and I’ll link it here for you, our time analysis exercise. And I talk about this a lot. You’ll hear me talk about it again and again and again, because it is the most important thing that we have every single client do and what we cover inside of our core programs when we’re talking to clients about actually building a team and scaling.

What is this exercise? This exercise is similar to a food diary, but it’s a time diary for a business owner. Why? Because business owners, oftentimes when they’re first starting out and before they get to actual six figures or multi six figures, they’re usually doing everything on their own. And they have no real concept or idea of how much time they’re spending in each component of their business. How much time they’re spending in sales, how much time they’re spending in marketing, client delivery, operations, financial pieces, and then the actual development of the company when we’re talking about CEO work.

Spend 4-5 Days Tracking What You’re Doing

So, what this exercise is about is spending four to five days of time, tracking what it is you’re doing every single day, every single minute in your business. This is not when you shower and when you eat, this is when you are online, when you’re checking your emails, when you’re checking your Instagram, when you’re creating stories, when you’re responding to clients. You’re logging all of that data so that we can actually collect and know and see verbatim what’s happening. And it’s also helpful for us to see how much time you’re really spending on everything. Once you actually see what your time is, the next thing that we want to do is actually categorize. 

Categorize

So, what categories are each of these tasks in? You’ll have about four to five days worth of data and you’ll look and see Instagram stories, that’s a marketing task. Responding to DMs, potentially marketing. Closing sales calls, sales. Responding to client emails, client delivery. So, you’re going to categorize each of these tasks so that we can actually see where they go and what the distribution is of how much time you’re spending on each component of your business. If this is already feeling overwhelming, please don’t hesitate. Comment below and we will gladly send you a copy of this template. It is going to save you so much time and energy. All you have to do is just click and it will allow you to automatically be able to say which category each thing goes into and give you an actual calculation of the percentage of time that you’re spending in each category. I know, it’s amazing. Once you’ve assessed the categories for each part of what you’re doing, the next piece is to actually decide, is this something you want to do? Is this something you want to delegate? Is this something you can automate? Or is this something that you can just stop doing altogether?

What Do You Want To Do?

Obviously, the answer here is, anything that you can delegate and, or automate is what we’re going to actually be hiring for. So, you’re going to look at all of the things that you’ve put on there, and that you’ve categorized as either automating or delegating, because these are not things that you want to be doing or that you, nor should you be doing. There should ideally also be things that you’re going to be deleting and getting rid of, because you don’t need to be spending time doing them because they’re not contributing to the profit of the company. That being said, when you have the categories of what it is that you need most support with, and you have the time assessed for each of those categories, that’s where we get into step two. Now we know exactly what it is we need support with so that we can free up our time and how much time we’re currently spending in it, so we know what we’re hiring for.

Step Two: Have A Clear Budget

Then what we want to look at is what our actual budget is. Now, you can do this in a few different ways. My encouragement to create a much more equitable practice when we’re talking about hiring a team, is to actually have a clear budget of what you are willing to pay for this role to be fulfilled. So, if you know that you need a social media manager, because you are spending way too much time creating content and writing stories, then you need to look at how much time you are actively spending on there and how much that time is worth for you and how much you can actually budget for that role. And you want to have a range because there might be a varied range in the industry of what you can actually find. And then when you know what your budget is, you want to be really upfront about that.

You want to let people know from the get-go that this is what your budget is, that these are the specific roles and responsibilities for this position, and this is the time commitment that you’re looking for somebody to invest with you. 

Step Three: Writing & Creating The Job Description

When you have those details, the third step is going to be actually writing and creating the job description. So, the job description is pretty straightforward. It’s you talking about what the role is, what the responsibilities are on a daily or weekly basis, how much time you project for this role, and then what the budget is and the start date. Ideally, inside of this job description, you also have a little bit of a bio about your company and your company’s core values and what the mission is behind the company, so that people can get a feel if this is actually a space they want to work in and if your values align.

Step Four: Creating The Application

When you have that job description, the fourth step is to create an application. That application needs to be something that has questions that are actually relevant to the role that you’re hiring for, things that would help you better understand if this person is actually qualified for the position. And qualifications may look very different depending on the role. So, if it’s a very tech heavy role, you might ask questions about their experience with certain softwares or about how they handle things when they find that there’s an error or an issue or things stop working, so that you can get a feel for, if this is actually somebody who would be the best fit for this role. Additionally, you might ask some questions that relate to personality and values. This is helpful to ask because you want to get a feel to see if this person is actually a cultural fit.

This might be something like, our team often uses swear words to communicate and to talk, is that type of language something that would bother you, or are you okay with profanity in our conversations? Other times it might be things like, we are a very culturally inclusive environment and we prioritize making sure we create a safe space. What have been your best practices or how have you been incorporating or what is your relationship to equity centered work? So, you’re asking questions to help you better understand and suss out from the application process if this is actually somebody that you feel really excited and aligned with. One of the things that I love to encourage on my applications is asking people to really just let their full personality shine, because we really want to connect with a person. And then also obviously the skill set.

Step Five: Use Your Existing Audience For Hiring 

The fifth step. Once your application is ready, and you can build this out on Typeform, on Google Forms, on whatever form builder you want to use. Google Forms is free, that’s why I suggest it. Otherwise, there’s a million other options. So, once you have your application ready and your job description ready, you are going to go ahead and link those in a few different spaces. One, make a post and share on your stories on Instagram and on Facebook, and whatever other platforms that you use for your social media. One of the best places you can find potential team members is through your already existing audience. So, share it on your email list, ask your colleagues and peers and friends to share it on their email list. Ask them to share it on their social so that you can have people that you already know, like, and trust, applying to work with you.

The next step, if you’re not able to find your person through social media or through your current network, is to post on things like Upwork and Fiverr. I personally recommend Upwork over Fiverr. I think the quality of candidates is just a little bit higher. But similarly, you’ll share the actual job description, a link to the application, and invite people to apply, as well as making sure you’re setting a deadline for when the applications need to be submitted by. 

Paid Test Project

After the applications have come in, you’re going to suss through to find your two to three top candidates. And when you find them, if you are finding yourself questioning, especially if it’s a heavier tech related role, you can offer potential interviewees the opportunity to do a paid test project that’s under four hours worth of work, to help you get a better feel for the quality and the readiness of this person for this role.

So, if you are going to do that, make sure you pay them, make sure you set a time limit, and make sure you have clear dates. That’s actually enough window for somebody who does need support with childcare or other things, that they can get that support they need to complete that project. Finally, once you’ve done all of the interviewing, you’ve reviewed the applications, you’ve looked at your two, three top fave clients, the last step is going to be onboarding and actually training. 

My biggest question for you today is, where do you really think that you are spending the most time? Where do you think you actually need to be hiring support for? Go ahead and comment below. What I would love to challenge you or invite you to do is guess what you think it is right now, and then use our time analysis exercise to get real data and information and see if you were right or wrong. And if you were right, great job, congratulations, let’s go higher. But if you were wrong, go ahead and share what you learned and what your insight was in the comments. And if you are wanting that spreadsheet to support you in this, again, go ahead and comment below, we’ll get you a link so that you can get that downloaded. And most importantly, make sure that you click the link here to take the business bottleneck quiz. And that will be the first step in assessing if hiring a team is actually the right step for where you are in your business right now.

Key Takeaways:

#1: You’re the only person that can actually know what it is that you need, track what you’re doing to identify any pain points in your business.

#2: Actually have a clear budget of what you are willing to pay for this role to be fulfilled, taking a deeper look into what you are able to take on will set you and your team up for success.

#3: Use your social network to your advantage, advertising an opening to your audience  ensures you can have people that you already know, like, and trust, applying to work with you.

Did you enjoy this episode? Leave us a 5 star review on your favorite podcast players to show your appreciation for this podcast! It helps us rank higher on different platforms and have more listeners tuning in every week.

Have questions or want to be featured on the show? Reach out to our team at hey@thesacred.ceo and we’ll get in touch.

Be sure you’re following Soph on all social platforms:

Meet The Host

Hey I’m Soph! I’m a mama and online digital marketer who’s been in the game since 2015. I LOVE building businesses that support creating real time freedom which is why I choose to specialize in email marketing, blogging and podcasting and teach others to do the same.

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I'm Sophie Kessner
build a team

First generation Mexican American mama that’s gone from hood to strategic hustle. I’ve spent the last 10+ years inside the personal development space supporting 100’s of coaches in scaling 6 figure businesses online & supported 4 different companies in surpassing the 7 figure mark. Today, I focus on making scaling more sustainable by integrating the lenses of business, systems, automation and CEO Development through an Equity centered and Trauma informed lens.

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Sophie is the founder of The Sacred CEO™ Agency and has been in the service based coaching industry since 2015. She’s created and scaled 4 different multi 6 figure coaching programs including their latest course, The Online Business Automator.

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