When you’re starting out as a brand new business, it can seem indulgent at first to have one person focus on just onboarding.
Likewise, you might think it’s excessive for a team member to only focus on accounts, or marketing, or admin.
You’re a small business after all: everyone has to wear many hats in order to grow.
But lack of structure might be exactly what is holding you back from growing.
In fact, just like discipline in your personal life gives you more freedom, structure in your business raises your ceiling of growth!
Consider Giving Everyone Clearly Defined Roles
So, you want to grow and have more structure in your business – but what’s the first step?
Well, the best thing you can do for your team is to clearly define each person’s role and responsibilities.
These should be narrow and aligned with their strengths.
It’s all too easy to ask a competent team member to do a dozen things: marketing, emails, onboarding, accounts, sales, grabbing the coffee…you name it!
But the more spread out their responsibilities, the harder it is for them to focus and build their skills in one specialization.
Now multiply this by how many team members you have and you’ve got a communications nightmare spread across far too many channels.
But, if everybody has just one role, then everybody else knows exactly who to go to when something specific needs doing.
Plus, if your team members are focusing on just a few things, then their skills can grow deeper, rather than being too spread out and losing focus.
Doing A Few Things Well Is Far Better Than Doing A Lot Mediocre
Imagine you’re a dentist and you need a website built for your business.
You find two great website design companies to choose from:
The first has made a hundred websites. The owner claims to have built websites for mechanics, accountants, architects, dentists, government officials, doctors, schools, and so on.
Now, the second has also built a hundred websites. But he’s built websites only for dentists.
Excuse us for putting in a cheeky rhetorical question, but who do you think you’ll pick?
The second one of course!
Now, you don’t have to limit yourself to doing just one thing in your business.
But the rule of thumb is: the more services you offer, the less specialized you become – and the harder it will be to grow.
Think about it: if you’re only building websites, it’s easy for an existing team member to train a new team member on web design.
But if you branch out into email marketing, suddenly you need to hire someone with existing experience.
Plus, now you have to find clients who want email marketing… which may not necessarily be in tandem with web design.
You’ll quickly split your focus and grow wide, but not tall.
Our advice?
Stick to doing two to three things well.
This way you’ll quickly become an expert in your field and word of mouth will spread that if someone needs a service in your industry, you’re the one to call!
Need Financial Structure? Or Just More Finances? Let Us Help!
We definitely won’t say that instilling a company structure in your business is easy.
In fact, maintaining structure is one of the hardest things to do for many business owners.
The temptation to have your team wear many hats is strong and the rewards can be tempting.
But now you know that for most businesses there is only one way forward for growth: keeping that structure intact!
But you’ll need an expert on your side to grow your assets and profits while you focus on structure.
So, call The A Firm today to see how we can help!