Build to Enough

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Keila Hill-Trawick: Hello. You're listening to Build to Enough, a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to scale at their own pace. I'm your host, Keyla Hill Traywick, and I'll be your chief storyteller and cheerleader in a world that glorifies endless expansion, we're tuning out the noise and discussing the beauty of enough. Each episode will dive into inspiring stories, practical insights, and strategies to cultivate sustainable success on your [00:00:30] own terms. So whether you're a solopreneur, small business owner, or aspiring entrepreneur, get ready for a refreshing take on the entrepreneurial journey. This is build to enough. Hello and welcome to Build to Enough. As you know, I'm your host, Keyla Hill Traywick. And as we embark on this new journey of what the podcast looked like, I figured I would start with what it looks like to keep your team small. Now, I know that everybody that determines what they're enough is, is not necessarily going [00:01:00] to decide that they don't need that many people in their company. It's not for everybody. But if you are a business owner and entrepreneur that is looking to keep a lean team, to really be intentional about who you hire and only hiring so many people, stay tuned, because that's what we'll be talking about today. Now, it's really important when you're building a team and you're going to stay small, that you make strategic decisions about how you go about doing so. And that means that you have to be intentional.

Keila Hill-Trawick: It means you have to be clear. Everything from the [00:01:30] job description to what you actually need on the team is going to need to be laid out in a way that supports you, the growth of your business, and really just how the work gets done. So let's talk about a couple of different ways that having a really small team can impact your business. The first thing is that there is magnified importance for everybody on the team. There really are no small roles. Everyone has to be excellent. You generally don't have the luxury of being able to hire interns or more junior [00:02:00] people to just support you along the way, when you need the work to be done at a level of excellence that requires experience and expertise. On the flip side of that, when there are gaps in the team, those are amplified as well. It gets really obvious when somebody isn't pulling their weight or doing their full job, because there are only so many of you to make up for what they're not completing. And so having a small team again requires a lot of intention. And the reasons are because the impact of every person that's working for you is so big, [00:02:30] that means that your best performers are going to be really, really good, but the bottom performers are going to weigh down your team. It starts becoming really clear for the team morale and the company culture. When there's somebody on the team who isn't working as hard or as well as your business needs to really to be able to support it.

Keila Hill-Trawick: And so again, when you're being strategic about how you're hiring for this team, it may take a bit of a mind shift that requires a higher level of expectation than [00:03:00] you might be able to get away with if your business was a little bit bigger. All right. So next let's talk about the money side. I'm an accountant. You knew that we were going to talk about financials. Your financial statements are really the baseline for showing you what you can afford, when you can hire, and what roles you might want to prioritize in doing so. That means you need to have accurate books to give you those details, so that you can use that as a springboard to determine what your next steps are. You'll want to look at your P and L, see how much you're already spending [00:03:30] on expenses overall, and then specifically how much you're spending on the team. You also want to make a dream org chart. You want to have a sense of all of the people that you need on your team in order to be successful, so that you can start choosing what are the most important roles for you to hire for immediately. And then finally, keep in mind that you have some choices to make on how you hire. Do you want contractors? Do you want part time or full time employees? Do you need people on [00:04:00] a project basis or are you hiring them to be ongoing support for you till the end of time? All of this is going to be important, especially as you're building a small team, because generally your margins are a little bit different and you want to be really clear about the money that you're spending for help, that you're spending it effectively and efficiently, and that you're ultimately getting what you really need for the business to survive.

Keila Hill-Trawick: All right. So now let's talk about getting somebody in. So you've done your budget. You know who you want to hire for. And now you're trying to hire [00:04:30] for the right fit. It is so important to take into account company culture, client interaction, um, the ways that you will interact with each other as a team. And this is going to make a difference no matter how large your team is. But when you've got just a few people, it starts to feel a little bit like a clique. You want to make sure that everybody is meshing, that the conversations and communication is working really well, that everybody knows what their role is and that they're doing it well. And [00:05:00] that starts from the very first day. Everything from the hiring post that you put up to the information that you put into the world about how your business work affects who is attracted to work for you.

Keila Hill-Trawick: And when you don't get the right fit, it can kind of be detrimental to your business. You will not always get it right the first time. I can think of several examples where little fish hired the wrong fit, and it was kind of messy behind the scenes to make that work. It meant that I had to have some very difficult conversations [00:05:30] with people that I liked as individuals, but didn't work for the business. We've had a couple of occasions, and I can think of one in particular where somebody just wasn't experienced enough to do the work, the things that I was expecting to be a success at Little Fish that were really going to help me to do my job easier, just weren't being completed by them. And everybody felt it. They felt their energy on the calls. Clients could feel the energy from what was happening when we were in meetings [00:06:00] with them. And ultimately I had to make the really difficult decision to let them go. It never feels good when you have to get people out of your company. And again, I think when you're small, it just takes on a different feeling because everybody's so close, you're working so closely together. It's usually really tight knit. It makes for that much harder of a decision because you know this person personally, it's not just somebody that's working in this conglomerate for you.

Keila Hill-Trawick: And so I'll say take that out, [00:06:30] um, or try to make that easier for yourself by handling this at the beginning. Ask the right questions. What do you need to know to make sure that they're not just technically proficient, but they can actually be a good addition to your team? What types of things do you need to make them aware of so that they know how you work? When you work, setting clear expectations and boundaries for how they perform their task for you, and how are you empowering them to really add to the company. You don't want somebody who's [00:07:00] just checking boxes. You really want to hire people who can make the company better. And that is going to start from the very beginning. In addition, make sure that after they're on the team, you're checking in regularly to see how they're doing. I know when your team is really small, it's hard to catch everything. And I also get how you can get so overwhelmed that you miss some things that you would have caught otherwise. What is your review process need to look like to make sure that they don't work with you for so long, that you realize when it feels like it's too [00:07:30] late to let them go. Remember, a cultural fit is going to make the difference internally and externally for how your business works. So you want to get that right the first time as often as you can.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Now alongside identifying the right fit. So now you know who the right type of person is. Now it's time for you to go look for them. You want to make sure that you're presenting your company with as much transparency for what people are walking into as you can. For us, that meant that the hiring post goes beyond just what you're going to be doing at this job [00:08:00] and really gets into how we treat our clients, how we treat each other, what kinds of services that we offer, and what your role is in performing those services. We want to make sure that we are showing our personality both by the ways that we show up on social media, to the ways that we talk about the job that you're walking into when we have our interview process. You talked to a couple of people on the team so that different people can assess what you'll bring to the table and be able to ask questions [00:08:30] that one person alone might not be able to be responsible for. Remember, you want the best candidate for your business. And so we want to make sure we're not just hiring the best in this pool. Sometimes you got to throw them all back and throw out your net to get new people in your sphere, so that you can figure out who's the best for your position. It is much better to wait and hire the right fit than it is to hire the best for right now, and then feel like you need somebody better in a couple of months.

Keila Hill-Trawick: We also want to make sure [00:09:00] that welcome and onboarding give a true sense of what the business and what the work is going to look like. Make sure that they're meeting their team members. You're small. There are only so many of you. Everybody should treat this like it's important because it is. They're not just working in a silo. They're working with all of you. And so we want to make sure that they're getting hands on, um, touch points with everybody on the team to know exactly how they'll work together, who they can go to as resources, and really what they should be looking for once they're in that position. [00:09:30] At Little Fish, we take that incredibly seriously. While I would never say that a business is a family, I heard the analogy once that, uh, business and especially a small business is more like a sports team. Everybody's got to bring their A game and everybody has a part to play to make sure that the whole is being done with excellence. And so it is really important every time somebody gets hired, not just for me as the firm owner, but for everybody who's working on the team to make sure that the person that is getting added is making their job easier [00:10:00] and not harder.

Keila Hill-Trawick: All right. So what did we learn today? I hope that we learned that even if a very small team is not your route, you have some ideas of how to make sure that it can be successful should you choose that way. Remember, everybody that gets added to the team has an amplified role. They need to be excellent, they need to be empowered, and they need to bring new ideas, fresh ideas to the company so that they can really improve it. They're not just being hired for their expertise. They're being hired for their brains, for their ability to problem solve. [00:10:30] And you want to make sure that they know that that's available to them. Next, make sure that your books are in order. If your financials are set, your decisions about who you hire next, when you bring people on to the team and what would really make the most impact in terms of growing the team, that decision is that much easier because you know where the dollars lie for it. So make sure that you're always up to date on your financials, a running theme on this podcast, but especially because it will help you budget and to be really intentional about how you make [00:11:00] those next steps about hires. Next, make sure that you are creating a culture that people want to be a part of, that you're looking for people that fit that culture, and that you're intentional about making sure that the people that you bring on to the team are going to be an addition and not a subtraction.

Keila Hill-Trawick: It can be really hard to hire when you're small. And we'll talk about how it can be helpful to add outsourcing or people that can support you along this journey. But don't think that just because you're a small [00:11:30] business, you don't deserve the best of the best. Everybody that works for you needs to make sure that your business is going to strive, that you are going to rocket. Launch all of your services and everything that you're doing into the atmosphere, and that you have strong support at every level of the business. In order for you to be able to carry out your promise. We love talking to you on this podcast, and we'd love to work with you. If we're a good fit, feel free to head to Little Fish Accounting Comm to learn more about what we do and potentially partner with [00:12:00] us if we're a good fit for you. We'll see you next week. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Build to Enough. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate and share the love with your fellow entrepreneur friends, and make sure to sign up for the Build to Enough newsletter. The link is in the show notes. Stay tuned for more episodes as we continue to redefine success one intentional step at a time.