Who is on your team?

You don’t build a successful business on your own. (Obviously, I’m referring specifically to trades and building businesses because I’m a business coach for tradies and builders).

You don’t build one on your own and it’s a mistake to try. You should get help and support and share the work and the responsibility around. If you try to do it on your own, you’re very limited – you’re limited by how much actual work you can do. 

If you’re only one person, after all – you’re limited by what you know (and what you don’t know) and you’re limited by your more concrete resources, like your capital.

The way to build a successful business is to build yourself a team – gather people around you who can help you.

When thinking about your team, it’s tempting to focus on the people you hire to work for your business – and reasonably.

But you should expand your thinking. Your team and your extended team can include your employees, of course, but it can include subcontractors, other businesses (think business coach :), accountants, bookkeeper, marketing agency), your professional organisation, your partner, your mum or dad – anyone or any business that’s involved in your success. 

So my first point is about your attitude – don’t try to do it yourself or even be good at everything yourself. You don’t need to and shouldn’t take this approach. 

You can hire people who are good at things you’re not (or engage their services). 

My second point is to try to think about who is going to help you make sure all the jobs that need doing get done. 

Who is going to be on your team? 

Of course, when you start out, it probably is just you, doing everything yourself. You might have had help from your accountant to set up your business structure, maybe a bookkeeper helped you with Xero, or maybe your partner or mum is helping you with that. 

But as you grow, you can’t do it all yourself and you need to have other people doing things rather than trying to do everything yourself and you need to grow your business by growing your team – you need to have other people doing things rather than trying to do it all yourself. 

I’ve made a tool and have called it the Company Functional Structure which I’ll admit is a shit name (it’s not really my strong suit). So instead of a guide, I’m giving away a tool. It has some instructions with it but I’ll explain them here as well. 

Think of an Org Chart, everyone knows what those are, right? A chart that shows who works in your business. 

(if it’s just you, it will look like this) 

(if there are a few of you, it might look more like this) 

This tool of mine is a bit like an Org Chart but in reverse. I’ve built it so it shows the functions a trade or building businesses should have, based on my framework.

So it shows all the jobs that need doing. The idea is, you write in the name of the person responsible for doing that job. So if your Org Chart just has your name in it (because you do that job) – write your name or if it has nobody’s name in it leave it blank or find someone that could do the job or figure out when you can get someone to start doing said job. 

Now, you might decide that some of the jobs are unnecessary in your business – you can write NO in there, maybe. 

Then you look at the chart and think about who could be doing each of the jobs or who could be doing them better.

If you’re talking about a growing business, your primary concern here is probably to look for jobs you’re responsible for and think of who else could do them.

And remember, they can be employees or virtual assistants or businesses or consultants. It all counts and it’s in the pursuit of increasing your business’s capacity to do stuff.

Comment or reply ‘BUSINESS TOOL’ and we’ll send it to you.