Is it better to build a team from scratch or to outsource and hire an agency to help you scale your coaching business? We’ll walk through how to know exactly when it is time to build a team and when it is time to actually hire and delegate.
ld a team and when it is time to actually hire and delegate.
Which Approach Is Better?
In today’s blog, we’re going to be talking about how to assess when it is the right time to actually start building your team from scratch versus when is actually the best time for you to just hire an agency to do the work for you. There are four main pieces that we want to look at.
Do You Want To Be Managed Or Be The Manager?
The first one is getting clear on exactly what kind of business you are actually building, and whether you want to be managed or you want to be a manager. What does that mean? So most coaches and creatives are exactly that, they are natural born creatives. They love to be in the nitty gritty with their clients, to be showing up and working with them and creating amazing content, but they don’t love the idea of having to manage and run their company, which is a really, really important question to us. Because if you are planning on growing and scaling the company, it is going to require there be some managerial components to the role.
And if it’s not you doing it, there needs to be somebody else who’s doing it otherwise it starts to create chaos in the company and prevent you from actually being able to sustainably scale. So the question becomes, where do you actually want to be in your company? Do you want to be the coach? Do you want to be the creative? Where do you see yourself spending the most time? Do you want to be the one doing sales calls? Do you want to be the one creating marketing content? Do you want to be the one actually in the group sessions with your team members? Do you want to just be creating new courses? What is the goal for you and where you long term want to be spending your time in the company so that you know who you need to hire and how to build it.
Where Do You Want To Be In Your Company?
Now here’s the key distinguisher for this piece. If you do not want to manage, you need to hire a manager. And if you do not want to hire a manager, it is best to actually delegate and outsource to a company that does all of the managing for you like an agency. Now it’s important that you do find an agency that’s actually values aligned and is supportive for where you are, but we’ll cover that in the next section. For this piece, if you are somebody who actually enjoys the prospect of having a team and managing other people, then it might be a really great thing to consider what kind of team members you want to bring on board. The biggest mistake that we see is when coaches go and just hire a VA and expect them to just do everything and know what to do and how to do it. We’ll cover all of this in future blogs.
What Responsibilities Come With Building A Team?
For the purpose of today’s blog, what we really want to hit on is making sure that you are aware of the responsibilities that come if you do decide to actually build a team from scratch. You’re going to be responsible for not only finding them, but training them, making sure that they’re doing their jobs, making sure that they’re following the rules and making sure that everyone is working together in a really great way, which is where the management piece comes in. And if you’re not a natural born manager, this can feel really exhausting and daunting. So though it might seem like it’s more affordable and more effective on the short end, it might not actually be if managing the team is not where you want to operate inside of your business, but let’s go ahead and hold that thought for now and let’s go to the next piece.
Is It The Right Time To Hire?
Is it the right time to actually hire? Even if it’s an agency or even if it’s a team member, how do you know? That’s a fantastic question and the answer’s actually not super simple because we need to know what’s going on with you, how much revenue that you’re generating, what type of projects and work you have that you want to delegate and where you’re looking to scale to? You do not have to hire a team and or hire an agency to be able to build a business and create six figures or more, but you do need to be intentional about what your plan is for how you want to scale and where you currently are in your business. My encouragement is to look for a few key indicators that it might be time to either hire a team or to delegate elsewhere.
If You’re Always Busy = Hire
Key one, are you at capacity? Do you have room for more clients? And are you able to continue to support people with the way that you’re currently doing things? Your time is the most valuable thing you have. So if you’re noticing that you have less and less time and you’re finding yourself always busy, then that might be a really great indicator that it’s time for you to consider hiring support or help or someone in some way to get some of the things off of your plate. The second key indicator that we’re going to be looking for is whether or not the business is actually growing and if it has continuous room to grow. And what that means is how much more clients and growth can you currently have at the rate of which you’re operating. Meaning how much time are you currently putting into your business on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis? How much revenue are you generating from that?
How To Double Income Without Doubling Time
And depending on where you want to go, if you want to go from 50K and you’re spending 30 hours a week in your business right now to 100K, but you don’t want to be spending more than 30 hours a week in your business. We need to look at how you can double your income without doubling the time that you’re spending in it, which is also a really great key indicator of us looking at how and who we can hire to support you. How do you know what things you actually need to hire and what you need support with? So here’s my question for you. What kind of coaching business are you actually building and where do you actually want to be spending your time? Go ahead and comment down below and let us know so that we can really get a poll here. Do you want to be the coach in the company?
Do you want to be the CEO who is running the company? Do you want to be the creative director? Do you want to be the manager? Do you want to be the operations person? Do you want to be the marketer? Obviously when you first start a business, you’re doing all of the things all of the time, but that is not how you scale a business. To scale, you need to start to delegate and outsource, whether that’s in-house or outhouse. So comment below, let us know where do you want to be, managed or manager?
Coaching Is A Skill
The third thing is understanding that coaching is a skill and it is oftentimes a very different skill than that of a manager or an operational person. Why? Because managing requires you to be able to be incredibly organized and incredibly disciplined in how you show up and how you take care of things. And oftentimes these are skills that are very counter to coaches and creatives who love to be in all of the different things, starting new things, going from place to place, having all the new ideas, which is fantastic when we’re creating, but is not great for sustaining.
So if you are a natural creative who loves to be in the process of creation, that might be a really great indicator to have somebody and or to hire an agency that can actually support and managing you so that you can be in the creative seat 24/7, and they take care of all of the operational components of your business.
What Do You Actually Need Support With?
So the fourth and final piece of this is getting really clear on what you actually need support with and depending on what you need, you’ll know who, and when, and what to hire for. So if you haven’t yet, go ahead and take the business bottleneck quiz with a link right here and inside of that quiz, it’ll let you know exactly what is your biggest challenge or the biggest thing that we’re assessing is keeping you from sustainably scaling. Inside of that, if your time is the biggest factor, we’ll go ahead and send you a template for a time analysis exercise that looks something like this.
And that is an exercise that we give to every single one of our agency clients to help assess what are the things that they’re spending all of their time on, what are the things that they are currently doing that they don’t need to be doing? If you’re curious about this, check out one of our last blogs,, we went into depth and detail on how to do this. If you don’t want to use our template, you can do it on your own, but I’d highly encourage getting really, really clear on what are the things that you actually need support with, where are you spending your time? And in our future blog, we’re going to be talking about how to actually find the team members that you love and adore if you do want to go from scratch. So I cannot wait to see you in the next blog.
Key Takeaways:
#1: It Is Important To Know If You Want To Be Managed Or Be The Manager When Considering Building A Team From Scratch.
#2: Making Sure That You Are Aware Of The Responsibilities That Come If You Do Decide To Actually Build A Team From Scratch Is Essential To Your Businesses Success.
#3: You Do Need To Be Intentional About What Your Plan Is For How You Want To Scale And Where You Currently Are In Your Business If You Are Thinking About Hiring A Team From Scratch.
