There are only so many hours in a day and working on your own as a solopreneur means that if you want to really grow your business you either have to find a way of going without sleep, or expand your team!
Personally, I prefer the latter! And this is what I’ve been doing recently too. My web host takes care of anything technical for me related to my website, and over the summer I partnered with a bookkeeper so that she could take over this area of my business for me! It’s made such a difference being able to hand over a large area of my workload to someone else.
So how can you ensure that your new-found team all work together and provide the best possible support for you and your business? Here are my top three tips:
1. Create a Team Directory. List your virtual team members with their name, role, email, telephone number, website, and job description and circulate it amongst everyone on your team. That way everyone will know who is doing what and can go directly to the appropriate team member with questions rather than have to go through you.
2. Schedule in a Weekly Call. This would be the equivalent of an office staff meeting, but you can do this virtually using a teleconference service. There are many services available and a lot of them are free, you just pay for the call at your end. This is a great way to stay in touch with your team.
3. Encourage communication between team members outside of the weekly call. Set everyone up on a Yahoo group or instant messaging service so that they can communicate with one another and get your projects done.
With my clients as well as having a weekly call we utilize a wonderful virtual office service that lets us upload and share documents, centralize our contacts, allocate tasks, and maintain our calendars. Members of our ‘team’ can also communicate with one another via a forum, and we can also hold team votes!
So if you’re finding that you’ve reached a plateau in your business, and you enjoy getting your nightly sleep! follow my advice above and expand your team.