As I mentioned in my previous blog post, the issue of how to grow the business and add to the team as well as obtaining new clients is a subject that has taken up a lot of my thought processes in recent times.

At our last networking event Sharon Williams, CEO of Taurus Marketing, took us through some of the issues that businesses face when they begin to grow, including ways to grow your team that won’t make having staff a drain on your finances.

I was very pleased to hear Sharon suggest that taking on Mums who needed flexible working hours from home on a contract basis was how she grew her team in the beginning. This has been the direction that I would like to move in and it’s always good to have your ideas and thoughts backed up by someone as experienced and successful as Sharon.

However, aside from being able to find the right people to join my team, there is another issue that has been holding me back from actively seeking people to work with me. It has occurred to me that over the last five years I have worked in a pretty ad hoc fashion which can work when the only person working in the business is you.

But, having everything that you do in your business safely stored in your head isn’t a particularly practical situation to be in when you need to hand work over to others.

Apart from being a very inefficient way of working, it doesn’t instil prospective team members, especially junior ones, with the confidence that they will get more than a pay check from working with you. I need to feel that I can pass on a valuable work and life experience to people who come and work with me and I realised that I have been reluctant to look for people because explaining what I do, how I do it and why I do it is made much harder because of a complete lack of documented systems, procedures, goals and philosophies.

Enter my wonderful VA to rescue me once again! As I mentioned last time, I cannot recommend enough that you get a VA. This time last year I was sceptical that a VA could be of any use to my own business. How wrong I was!

Bronwen and I have begun to work on systemising the business and creating documentation for what we do, when we do it and why. She has already created a procedure manual, which is obviously a work in progress, but already I feel much more confident that I can start to look for people to join my team and be able to give them a fulfilling experience.

My templates are now up to date and kept in a central location so that anyone I take on can access them in real time, and also establishes confidence that they are joining a professionally run organisation.

So, now all I have to do is find the right team members, perhaps something that I’ll learn from Jen Dalitz of sphinxx at the Network Awards Night on Tuesday, 1^st December. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Until next time.

Karen

Karen Morris is the Working Womens Network media officer. She runs Inscriptions Media, a copywriting and PR Consultancy, is a contributor to Flying Solo and is a wife and mother to three active boys. She loves life and work and has an insatiable appetite to learn all things new, especially all things 2.0.

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