📈 Business Structures & Systems For Impact Driven Entrepreneurs 💥
It is important to systematize everything that you're doing in your business. Because when everything is systematized, you start doing things on a daily routine. This allows you to have a bigger impact on your business and on the people around you. Learn all the skills, structures, and systems that you need from your host Adrienne Hill in today's episode. Listen in as Adrienne dives deep into the pathway to great impact. Learn about personal leadership, business scaling, skill-building, and more. Discover how you can lead yourself and others so that you can earn a six-figure income.
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✅ Connect with Adrienne::
https://www.buildalifebydesign.com/about
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https://www.socialsalesmachine.com/
✅ Book a 6-Figure Strategy Session - Adrienne’s free gift for you:
https://www.adriennehill.com
✅ Adrienne’s Entrepreneur Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitablepassiveincomestrategies
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📈 Business Structures & Systems For Impact Driven Entrepreneurs 💥
Have you ever felt like you are created to make a bigger impact in the market and you have real value to share? It's not just about money. The money is part of it but it's more than that. Time management is a struggle. Keeping all the balls juggling in the air is a challenge for you. Seeing that organized is a challenge. If the idea of having to project manage your business seems overwhelming, then don't worry. You're not alone. This is common.
In this episode, there is something special for you. I'm going to share with you some project management principles that can help you to master yourself, master building up a team, and master scaling all the way from ground zero to $1 million business if that's what your heart desires, even if you're not a successful organized person yet.
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In this episode, I'm going to be covering the online business project management secrets that can help you to get more success in your business and focus on building out a business that truly has the ability to have a real impact on the market. First things first, if you're truly craving impact, the path to impact is a journey just like anything else in the business and there are multiple phases. The first phase is simply learning to lead yourself. You can't have an impact on those around you until you can get your own ducks in a row. When we're talking about building a business, this means building up the basic skills, structures and systems that you need to succeed.
Learn how to lead yourself. You can't have an impact on those around you until you can get your own ducks in a row.
Systematize Business: Spend 100% of your time and energy on your zone of genius and let everyone else handle their own zone of genius. This will let you move beyond money and truly impact those around you.
What I found is if you're building up the right skills, structures and systems, that's everything you need to get to six figures. Six figures is an important milestone in business because usually, once you've hit this threshold, you're self-sufficient. You can now sustain yourself. You can work your business full-time if you would like to. The path towards having a larger impact on more people is first, being self-sufficient on your own.
Leading Others
From there, once you've learned to do that, then the next step is to step now into leading other people. This phase of the pathway is where you are going to step into that CEO role without feeling bossy or weird about it and build a loyal, raving team that wants to stick with you and loves working with you. Having a true team behind you is what's going to get you to your first $1 million because if you think about it, does it even make sense to think that you could earn $1 million all by yourself with zero help? It doesn't. It does take a team at this point. That's why stepping into leading others and stepping into that CEO role is important.
Once you've done that, then the final part of this pathway is to shift them into thinking about all of the strategic elements of your business, the vision casting, and stepping into your zone of genius. At this point, if 100% of your energy is spent on your zone of genius, the thing you're absolutely best at, the one thing that you could do all day and feel energized for yourself, but also give the most value to others, that's what I call your zone of genius.
If you then evolve into spending 100% of your time and energy on your zone of genius, and you let everyone else handle everything else, that's when you can have a true impact. Every person on your team that you’ve included is operating in their zone of genius with what they do best. No one is trying to do something that's not a good fit for them. This is when you can truly move beyond thinking about money and move into making a true impact on those around you. This is the general pathway.
Leading Yourself
Let's dive deeper into each phase of this because some of you might be thinking, “What does this have to do with project management?” Project management and building a thriving business is simply the art of leading yourself and others, staying organized, and keeping all those balls moving. We're going to cover all those things and this is the path to get there. The first step in the path to impact is learning to master leading yourself. It's learning the skills, structures and systems that it takes to get there. This is what's going to get you to your first six figures in business.
Project management and building a business is simply the art of leading yourself and others.
First things first, I tell people it's all about understanding your branding and offers. This is where the majority of people get stuck. Now that you know that, you don't have to get stuck there. This part of the process isn't necessarily the fun, exciting or sexy part, but it's important. You have to know who you are as a person and as an entrepreneur, and who you serve. It's not about what you sell. It's about who you serve. It's about the person you want to impact. You have to know where to find them. You have to be able to build out a full-value ladder of offers that you can sell and serve this audience with.
I know this is going to be scary to a lot of people. You sell it before you create it. I know that sounds crazy, but you have to understand what people want first. You have to have all the right marketing language around it first. If people show interest, then you know it's worth taking the time to create it. I know that feels backward but honestly, know what people want first and then go make it for them. Sell it first, then create and deliver it to them.
Sell before you create.
Systematize Business: You have to know who you are as a person. It's not about what you sell. It's about who you serve.
Marketing And Copy
Once you are crystal clear on your branding and offers, then you start moving into marketing and the copy. This is the one critical skill that most people miss because maybe you're a genius at coaching. Maybe you're very knowledgeable about helping kids with ADHD, building a network marketing downline, or you're an author and that's your zone of genius, but you know nothing about how to market or sell that zone of genius. At a minimum, you have to know some of the basic principles here.
You have to learn how to speak directly into the hearts and minds of your audience because you're not selling them your product, whatever your product is. You're not selling them that weight-loss shake or that coaching program or that solution for their child with ADHD. You're selling them their hopes and dreams. You have to know how to speak to those hopes and dreams. You have to know how to speak directly and turn up their hearts and minds.
Of all the skills to build, this is one of the most important. This is where you learn to know what to say, how to say it, when and where to sell, and when and where not to. This is what's going to allow you to shift from selling to truly serving an audience, helping them feel real value and get real results. As you're working through this process, it's important to systematize everything you're learning. As you systematize work, it makes it easy and repeatable. As you're mastering leading yourself, the easier and more repeatable you can make every step of the process, the quicker and easier you'll be able to repeat it as you go through day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month in your business.
Once you've worked through learning that phase, then you need to find traffic. You need to have people to talk to. You have to learn exactly where to sell. Where are your people? You have to learn how to drive leads by the dozens, hundreds or thousands to your offers. Whether you desire to scale to six figures and stop or whether you do want to scale, all the way to being a $1 million earner or more, either way, it's going to take hundreds or thousands of people looking at what your offer is to find the right ones. That learning where to find all these people is called traffic. You have to learn how to generate traffic.
You have to know how to close large groups of customers or clients at a time because one here, one there is never going to get you to six figures. It’s certainly not going to get you to $1 million. You have to know how to build an instant audience because if you take many months or years to do this, you're never going to get there. It's best to do this without a massive amount of momentum to create it as quickly as possible and then systematize that process.
You’re probably seeing a trend. For every skill you learn, you're systematizing it to make it easier to do over and over, whether that's marketing, writing copy or generating traffic and systematizing that. You build the skills and structures and then you systematize them. That's what mastering leading yourself is all about. It’s being willing to invest in some skills and a structure to deliver them and then systematize them. I know this seems simplistic. This is what will get you to your first six figures in business.
For every skill, you learn, systematize it to make it easier to do over and over.
Mastering Your Mindset
I can't skip this piece because this is also critical. When we talk about building skillsets, the most important skill you'll ever build is the skill of learning how to master your mind. You are in charge of your thoughts. Your thoughts drive your emotions. Your emotions drive your actions and behavior, but it all starts with your thoughts. Change your thought patterns and you're going to change your results. You can't control your emotions, but you can control your thoughts. I do consider mastering your mindset to be a skillset. That is part of the skills that you need to build.
There are a few mindset elements that we need to touch on briefly here. The first is that you're not going to accidentally stumble into building the right skills, structures and systems that you need for success. It's not an accidental thing. It's a purposeful and intentional process. You have to seek it out to find it. It's not going to find you. The intention is important. You have to move into this with intention.
If you're reading this and up until this moment, you viewed yourself as an accidental entrepreneur, there's nothing wrong with that. A lot of people start there. I started there. That's okay but just know that as you try to move towards six figures and beyond, you have to shift from accidental to intentional. I'm going to share some tips with you on how to do that.
Another key mindset element that we have to make sure we talk about. If you're trying to get there to that place of success by watching free videos, it's going to take you ten times longer and you're going to make ten times less while you get there. It's a hard road if you think you're going to get there just watching free content. I don't want you to get stuck in that trap again. Remember, we're shifting from accidental to intentional. You have to intentionally invest in learning how to build up those skills, structures and systems if you want to get there in any inefficient way. This is important.
The fundamental principle I want you to walk away with is that you must learn to lead yourself before you can lead others. Instinctually, this should make sense to you, but until you break it down this way and say, “What does it take to lead myself? Let's go through a list. Now, let's go through the list of what it takes to lead others." To actually break it down, it's one of those ideas that seem simple in your mind, but then it's hard to execute in real life. We're going to go into this deeper and I'm going to show you what that looks like.
The other principle I want you to understand, you must learn to organize yourself before you can organize others. That's part of self-leadership, but that's also part of team leadership. You can't possibly be effective at organizing a support team if you can't even organize yourself. Stepping into this is part of stepping into your personal leadership as an entrepreneur. Also, you must be willing to pay for offers yourself before you will ever attract customers or clients who are willing to pay for your course.
I want you to let this sink in. I know there are a lot of entrepreneurs and I've talked to dozens, if not hundreds who say, “As soon as I learn how to make some money with this thing, then I'll invest in some training and coaching. I have to make a little bit of money first and then I'll invest.” If you are not willing to invest in yourself and pay for any offers from anyone else that will teach you the skills, structures or systems to get success, your customers, clients and prospects you're talking to are going to feel that. It's this intangible thing that's hard to describe. Something is going to feel off.
Systematize Business: You're not going to accidentally stumble into the right skills, structures, and systems for success. It's a purposeful and intentional process. You have to seek it out to find it.
They're not going to feel comfortable paying for any of your offers because something is going to feel off. They might not be able to explain it but they're going to know that something is off. You have to walk the walk and talk the talk. You have to build the skillset before you can monetize the skills from that skillset. You have to invest in yourself before anyone else will invest in what you're trying to sell. I know a lot of people struggle with this but I can tell you, hands down, this is 100% the way it works. I encourage you to wrap your mind around this one.
Some of you might be feeling like, “She just went there.” I did because I want you to be successful. That's one of the biggest hurdles I see most consistently with people. I don't want you to get trapped up in that. I wanted to throw a little truth bomb here because the minute you can work past this one, your breakthrough is on the other side. Every minute you spend struggling with this one, your breakthrough is going to be withheld from you. It's worth it to get that out of the way in the beginning so that we can move on into some of the good stuff.
Business Scaling 101
Let's talk about some of that good stuff. I want to introduce to you the idea of Business Scaling 101. This is simple but it will help you to visualize what scaling means. We all hear that term, scaling. What does that even mean? I want to paint you a picture of as you start to scale your business from playing small where your income is limited, all the way to playing big where your income is maximized, there's no limit to how much you can make in the online space.
There's a path to that as well. For most people, it starts with trying to do everything yourself. That's natural and normal. Everyone starts here at the bottom. Your income is limited and you're doing it yourself. As you start to scale up this ladder, you start doing simple things. Maybe you find some templates. Templates are great. That's a version of systematizing your work. It's a simple way to systematize. Have a template or something you follow every time so that you're not having to create something from scratch every time you're doing it. We can all relate to that.
As you continue to scale, you'll maybe evolve from using templates to using some automation tools. You're even plugging some of these templates into those automation tools. You'll notice here that you’re less and less manually doing everything. More and more of it is either becoming systematized or automated. You can't systematize and automate everything, but there are a lot of things that you can and should. You then maybe move into hiring some free interns. Maybe you're not paying the support team that you have. Maybe they're working for free in exchange for a product or service that you offer. This is a great way to get some of your first support team members.
As you continue to scale, maybe then you're hiring paid assistants or affiliates. You're hiring some of your first support team members that you're paying money for. As you're maximizing your income and scaling bigger, you evolve all the way to the point where you're hiring paid experts to do something. You're hiring people who are in their zone of genius. They're doing what they do best. They can probably do it ten times faster and better than you because it's their zone of genius.
Evaluate yourself quickly. Where do you fall on the scale? How far have you started to evolve in terms of scaling your business? Systematizing, automating, hiring and building out support, recognizing that you can't possibly do it all yourself, nor should you. I hope this simple concept helps to paint a picture for you. As you go through this process, you're learning to lead yourself and then you're learning to lead others as you move more towards bringing in those paid experts.
Let's break down step by step this path to impact and what that looks like. The first step is you need to learn to master leading yourself. That means building up the skills, structures and systems that you need in your business to scale to six figures. If you recall, you have to learn to lead yourself before you can lead others. The first part of that is learning to plan your work so you can work your plan. It's not that it has to be a rigid plan, that every minute has to be planned out, and there's zero room for flexibility. It means you need to have some basic things in place.
The Steps Personal Leadership
The first part of personal leadership of planning out your business is treating it like a business, not a hobby. This is part of evolving from being an accidental entrepreneur to being an intentional one. You have to learn to treat your business like a business. If you don't take it seriously, no one else around you will either. Your family, support teams, potential customers and clients won't. Nobody will take it seriously until you do. This is paramount. If you think about it, most hobbies cost money and don't earn money. If you're treating your business like a hobby, it's going to cost you money and you're going to lose money month after month.
What are things that successful businesses do? If you went to a Starbucks, your doctor's office or to someone to get massage therapy, think of any business that you want. What do they have in common? They have business hours. Do you have business hours? They generally have some method where potential customers or clients can contact them or schedule time with them. Do you have a standardized process for people to contact you or book a meeting with you?
Think about some of the fundamental principles of what it means to treat your business like a business and not a hobby. The two most important ones I want to encourage you to do are to pick business hours and have a method for people to contact you and book time with you. To me, those are the two fundamentals but you could always think of any other commonalities that you see between successful businesses. What are they doing that you could adopt that you would want to incorporate into your business?
Treat your business like a business, not as a hobby.
The second part is to get your family onboard, whoever it is you live with or a key stakeholder in your life. It's going to matter to them that you're building a business, whether it's because they're supporting you in that or because maybe they're pushing back on you for that. Not everyone has a supportive family or network around them, but it's critical to get your family onboard with your vision. Explain to them that you're building a business, why you're building a business, the vision that you're trying to create, the goals that you're trying to hit, and why it's important that they're onboard with you.
Systematize Business: If you want to make money from the skills you just built, you have to invest in building out the right structures, systems, and skills in your business first. Invest first, earn second.
This is where you can also demonstrate to your family or whatever your support network is that you are treating your business like a business. Even if you used to treat it like a hobby, you're no longer doing that. You're drawing a line in the sand and saying, “From this point forward, here's how this looks. Here's how this works. Here's my vision. Here are my goals.” Ask them for their support. This can be uncomfortable.
It can be a nerve-racking moment, but it's important to ask for support in this because this is the first step for a lot of people, for their family to take their business seriously. It's no longer a little accidental thing that happened. It's a legitimate business. You're going to treat it that way and they're going to treat it that way. How are you ever going to lead a full support team if you can't even get your own family onboard? This is Stakeholder Management 101. This is where you're going to learn some of those skills.
The third step is critical. This is also the one where I get lots of pushback from lots of people. If it's not in your calendar, it doesn't exist. Do you think you're going to remember to send that email? You're not. Do you think you're going to remember to make that post or that website you need to go to if you're relying on memory? It doesn't exist. You need to start using a calendar not just to track your work activities but also to block off family times.
If something is not in your calendar, it doesn't exist.
Block off the times that you're not working so that no one can book a meeting or an appointment with you because you're treating your business like a business. You're now going to have structured hours that you work where people could book meetings with you. The only way to protect that family time is to block family time on your calendar or block personal time. Block the times you're not working. Any important work you do need to get done within the work hours, schedule meetings with yourself. Set aside an hour to work on a particular activity. Use your calendar just like you would in a legitimate business.
I know a lot of people say, “The whole reason I'm building a business is to create freedom in my life. Using a calendar feels like the opposite of freedom.” I hear you and I get you. However, if you're building it to the point that you would like your business to be your full-time income source, you're never going to get there if you don't learn this principle of, “If it's not in your calendar, it doesn't exist.” You're not going to be able to successfully scale to the point where you could quit your job if you're not treating your business like a business and using your calendar like a CEO would. I encourage you to wrap your mind around this one.
Every minute doesn't need to be planned out, but you need to have buckets of time that are set aside for work time and family time. The most critical work needs to be set aside on your calendar, an hour for this and that so that you can plan your work and work your plan. You can shift things around as needed but at least once they're on the calendar, you can see the shifts that need to happen. You can start to have strategic conversations with yourself, your family or the support team where to shift those things. Until you have a visual tool that helps you to plan your work, you have zero chance of success in doing that. These are all critical elements.
Skill Building
Let's revisit that topic about the mindset piece of having to be willing to pay for offers yourself before you ever attract customers or clients who are willing to pay for your offers. There are some fundamental principles here as well. You have to invest in skill-building before you can make money from those new skills. The first principle that I want you to wrap your head around is a part of personal leadership because until you can wrap your mindset around this, you're not going to have the success you're looking for. The principle is that you have to invest first, earn second because this universally applies to everything.
Let's say you want to be a fifth-grade teacher. You invest first in going to college to become that teacher and then you earn second after you get that job as a teacher. If you want to open a Starbucks franchise, you invest first in purchasing the franchise. Earn second when you have your grand opening and you start operating that business. It's no different when you're running an online business but for some reason, a lot of people get in their heads that they have to earn first, invest second, and it's backwards. You have to invest in building out the right structures, systems and skills in your business first for you to make money from those skills you built. It's no different than a career, brick and mortar business or physical building that you might own somewhere. You invest first, earn second.
A critical part of doing that is to choose a business coach. You need to choose someone who can teach you how to put those skills, structures and systems in place to then have success. If you're trying to get there through watching free videos, you'll earn ten times less for ten times longer. Why not earn ten times more, ten times faster? A coach is someone who knows how to get you there. It's important to vet your coaches. That's another discussion for another day, but I do encourage you to choose a coach to help get you there.
The best gift any entrepreneur can give themselves in terms of skill-building is to learn to focus. As entrepreneurs, we all want to do 1,000 things. How big is your to-do list now with all the hopes, dreams and projects you want to start? I know mine is a mile long, but the gift of focusing on one thing long enough to implement it, that's where the true results come from. I want you to think of the word FOCUS as an acronym and it stands for Follow One Course Until Successful.
If you're distracted and you're like a squirrel jumping from thing to thing, you're never going to get the results. You have to focus on one path until successful. Once you do that, then you pick up the next project. If you're struggling with understanding what to focus on, that's what that business coach is for. These are all intertwined. That's why I wanted to bring them to you. These are going to be critical in your business.
Organizing Yourself
You also must learn to organize yourself before you can organize others. You're never going to be ready to hire a support team if you're living in a hot mess city and every day you ride the struggle bus to work. Here are some principles that can help you with that. Part of being organized is systematizing your work. You can streamline and onboard yourself into learning some tasks. Also, ultimately down the line, you can streamline and onboard a support team to taking those tasks over from you. You have to understand the task well in and out first, that's what's going to allow you to teach it to someone else. That's part of being organized.
First of all, I encourage you to choose a project management software. This term alone might feel intimidating to some people. It's an organizational system. Don't let that intimidate you. My personal favorite is called ClickUp. That's because ClickUp is a great platform that has lots of different views of how to view your work. You can look at it in a list format. You can look at it in a board format, similar to a Trello board. You can look at it in a calendar format so that you can drag your work around on your calendar. It has everything you need to effectively lead yourself. It also has features that allow you to build out systematized and streamlined work into these folders that you can then pass along to a support team member and delegate to them. Everything they need is included.
I know a lot of people maybe already using Trello. A lot of people love Trello. I get the appeal. Trello is great for organizing yourself. It starts to fall apart when you're trying to use it to organize others. That's why I recommend ClickUp. Regardless of what platform you choose, it is important to have some software that allows you to track your work, delegate it to either yourself or other people, and have different views of that work so that you can track it efficiently. Learn to start using the calendar. This is part of treating your business like a business.
The next part then is to create those systematized workflows. Let's take social media, for example. If you've created a social media content calendar, and you know that on certain days of the week, you post certain types of things. You prepare for that post. There's choosing the images, writing the copy and scheduling it to go out. You could create an easy systematized workflow around choosing the photo, writing the copy, and scheduling it to go out.
You could then repeat that workflow over and over for yourself. Also, later, when you bring in a support team, you can simply delegate that workflow to another person. It's already systematized and written up in a way where they can easily follow it. That's one example of what I mean when I say create systematized workflows.
Another pro tip for you, as you're starting to figure out these workflows, you know how you would like to get things done. The next time you do it, take a moment to film what you're doing and narrate what you're doing. Create a little video tutorial explaining what you're doing, why you're doing it a certain way, how you like it to be done, and what you want it to look like in the end. Narrate what you're doing because maybe you're not even ready to hire a support team member yet, but later down the line, when you are, you already have a library of training videos ready to onboard them at a second's notice.
Systematize Business: Focus is an acronym. It stands for, follow one course until successful. You have to focus on one path until you're successful. Once you do that, then you pick up the next project.
Now, you can lead yourself because you're treating your business like a business. You've invested in yourself to build the right skills, structures and systems. You can organize yourself by using your project management software. Already, you've learned to lead yourself. You can continue to move up this business scale in the ladder much more quickly and easily.
Step two in the path to impact is stepping into leading others. You can step into that CEO role without feeling bossy or uncomfortable and you can build a loyal, raving team who loves to work with you. As you step into that CEO role, it's all about leading others to help get you to your first seven figures, your first $1 million. It starts with hiring a support team to allow you to scale.
A few things to keep in mind, every person doesn't need to work full-time. You don't have to hire a bunch of 40-hour-a-week employees. I encourage you to start with maybe two hours a week per person. Even consider some free, low-paying interns or overseas help, people who are willing to trade some work in exchange for some of your services, products or whatever. Start small and onboard them onto the tools that you're already using. The key is to make their success your number one goal.
The number one thing that makes someone unhappy in a work role they have, whether they're a W-2 employee or simply working on a contract basis, is when tasks and assignments aren't clear. When they feel like the person expects them to read their mind and they don't understand what you want, that's when people get frustrated and struggle. If you make all of their tasks, assignments and deliverables crystal clear, we're not talking micromanaging. We're talking clarity. Clear direction gives you a happy team.
That's why I recommended all of those video tutorials, walking through how you streamline and systematize your work. Even if it's only a 5-minute tutorial or 3-minute tutorial, simply hearing you narrate what you're doing, what you're looking for, the things you're thinking about as you're doing it, and what you hope it looks like in the end. Especially if it's in a storytelling format where you're sharing a screen, people get a good feel for what you're looking for. It leaves them feeling like, “I know what they want. I can do this. I can nail this. I got this.”
The minute your team feels empowered, they feel like they know what you want and know how to go and do it, they're going to be more efficient. They're going to spend less time doing their tasks because they know exactly what to do. They're going to feel appreciated and empowered. If you appreciate them along the way, that's going to keep them motivated. They're going to want to work with you.
One thing I recommend doing as you're narrating these different work processes is to explain the specific things you do want, but also make sure to let them know, “Anything outside of what I showed you, feel free to get creative. I'm not picky about the rest of it. I just want to make sure you do these three things specifically the way I showed you. Anything else, feel free to get creative. I love to see what you come up with.” Let them know where you have specific expectations and where they can get creative.
They never feel micromanaged. They just know, “As long as I hit these three critical things, they're going to love what I create and the way I do this.” Make it clear what you're looking for and they're going to love working with you. They're going to feel it too. They're going to feel that you're trying to make their success your number one goal. That's what leads to a happy team.
A Different Lens
Revisit the skills, structures and systems but now look at it through a different lens. Instead of looking at the skills, structures and systems that you needed to build in yourself when you were learning to lead yourself, now you look at the skills, structures and systems that your team needs to succeed. Use that project management software to stay organized but ask yourself, “What does my team need in a work task to know what I'm looking for, to feel empowered, to be creative and get it done on time? Do I need to do any skill-building for my team? Do I need to structure my work requests in a certain way? Do I need to systematize them in a certain way?”
If you're keeping those communication lines open and systematizing everything, and anytime something goes wrong you say, “Don't worry. We need to improve our system. Don't beat yourself up about that. We'll improve our system and then next time, this won't happen.” The errors become more about the system than they do about someone screwing up or someone did something wrong. No one ever feels targeted. They feel empowered to improve the system.
That's what we want your team thinking about because then they start to see problems. Instead of being afraid to share them with you, they’ll say, “I noticed this issue. If we add another step in our systematized process, if we add step six, we'll never miss this again.” “Let's add in step six and never miss it again. I love that suggestion. Great work.” Instead of feeling like, “I missed a step. I'm going to get fired,” they're proactively bringing solutions to you because you made it all about creating the system that helps everyone to succeed. Hopefully, you're starting to see how this comes together.
Choosing Your Team
Lots of skilled help can be found on Upwork or Fiverr. Those are my two favorites. They're online job placement websites. What's great about them is you can hire people for a few hours a week. Remember, you don't have to hire full-time employees. You need a few hours here and there for a couple of tasks that fall outside of your zone of genius when you do get to the point that you're ready to hire. When you do get to that point, as long as you have a clear job description, you clearly identify a pay range.
Here's a big one. Before you even choose the final person, give them a little test project, a tiny piece of what you would want them to be doing. Make it a part of the interview process. A lot of people think they have to hire a person before they can give them any work. You can tell them, “As a part of the interview process, I would like you to demonstrate how you would handle this task.” The magic of this is you're looking not only for, “What are their communication skills like? How responsive are they? Did they leave you waiting? Do they respond promptly? Do they let you know if they have questions? What is their deliverable look like?” These are all clues of what they're going to be like to work with. Collect those clues ahead of time, make it easy on yourself, and make it a part of the interview process.
As you're onboarding that team, if you've already uploaded these systematized business processes into your project management software, and you have those tutorial videos, it's going to be easy to onboard someone. All you have to do is assign tasks to your team from those systematized lists of tasks. They have everything they need to succeed. Things can go quickly and smoothly. A key part of that is to give them access to all those tutorial videos of how you want the work done. They're going to feel immediately enabled, empowered to succeed and motivated. They're going to be like, “This person is so organized. It's awesome.”
Shifting Into Strategy, Vision, And Genius
The most common thing I hear is, “I'm frustrated. I'm working for this person. I never understand what they want. I feel like they expect me to read their mind.” That's never a good way to feel. You want your people feeling like, “I know what they want and I know how to succeed.” Everyone loves feeling like they know how to succeed. You're now leading yourself and others effectively. Now, you get that vital shift, strategies and the vision for your business, living in your zone of genius 100% of the time. Maybe you've been getting closer to that 100%. Now, you can step into that and move beyond money. It stops being about money at this point. It starts to become about having an impact.
As we shift into this place, here are some of the key principles of shifting into strategy, vision and genius. You get to focus on whatever it is you do best, whether that's writing copy, being on camera, educating others or creating mini-courses. Whatever your genius is, you're always going to feel motivated and fulfilled when you're doing the work you love the most. We all know that. As you get to this place in your business, you have to learn to delegate anything outside of your zone of genius to someone else. This can be scary in the beginning. It's like letting go of control. I realize it's scary.
However, if you've properly systematized your work and you've created the right tutorial videos, it doesn't have to be scary at all. Can you see how it becomes that much easier to give things away when you've already set that strong foundation? If you keep trying to hold on to everything and you're full of busy works, it is not going to feed your impact goals. Busy work is going to make you feel overworked, overwhelmed, too busy, and not enough breathing room. Even when I read that out loud, it's true.
You can then move into casting a bigger vision. Create a long-term vision and impact goals for your business. The great thing about this, visions are contagious. As you start to share this bigger vision with your team, it's going to be inspiring. They're going to love the fact that you're trying to do something bigger. You're not just trying to get rich for the sake of getting rich. You're going to use money as a resource to accomplish something bigger and more important. This will increase the loyalty of your team even faster. It will increase your personal motivation as well.
You then get to move into building the strategies that can get you to that vision. Break down that vision into different strategies, promotion plans and phases of work that you know can help get you there. You simply divide and conquer among your team. Everyone is in their zone of genius. Everyone gets to operate in their best space and then again, revisit what are the skills, structures and systems that you and your team need to get to that vision. Everyone's business is a little bit different. That mix of stuff is going to look different for each person, depending on what your vision is. Even in the presentation, I'm systematizing the steps. It makes it so much easier to take it all in and wrap your head around. The same holds true for building out your business.
I hope that was helpful for you. I hope that you can see now how this path of having a true impact all starts with you. It all starts with personal leadership, treating your business like a business, learning to use your calendar and some basic project management software, and learning to systematize your work. You won't have anything to systematize until you learn the basic skills of what it takes to build a business. Once you've started collecting all those skills, that's what you're going to turn into systematized work. Let me know in the comments below what questions or thoughts that you have. I can't wait to see what you do with this.