Build Your Best Team

Building a team is often a complicated and challenging task for business owners as they transition from solopreneur to leading a team. Many solopreneurs started a business because they wanted to go their own way and fulfill their passions -- not necessarily to build an empire that requires a team.

However, as your business grows, you’ll find it more and more necessary to vary the skill set required to run things. Plus, you’ll start to find there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done on your own. (And, very often, the reality is you shouldn’t be doing everything on your own!).

You shouldn't be doing ALL the things in your business. Not all tasks are created equal.

So, as you start to explore adding to your team, a common decision you’ll need to make is whether to hire someone on a project basis or a role basis.

It is very common to start by hiring project-based support because it’s often needed sooner. You may consider project based support for things like building your website, drafting a sales page, or building an email funnel.

Here are key factors to consider when thinking about bringing on project-based support:

Generally speaking, project based support is best suited for short-term needs and especially ones that have a single, cohesive objective. This is why many small businesses only offer project-based services. If you’re looking to build a website, you are likely to hire a designer and developer for that specific project only.

This doesn’t mean that you can never work with a project-based person more than once. After the initial project, if you find your work style meshes well, you may want to work with them further. Project-based work can still be recurring but it still needs to fit into a relatively structured container with very clear parameters.

So what happens when you need ongoing support that doesn’t have specific parameters?

Well, this is where a role-based team member can come into play.

Role-based support is best suited for areas that need attention every day, week, or month on an ongoing basis. If you’re looking for someone to help manage your business emails for instance, you’ll likely want someone who can be in there every day to respond for you. Once you have someone trained, you’re not likely to want to switch to someone else after a set amount of time.

Now, this doesn’t mean you’re stuck with the same person forever, but it does mean you’re not likely to want to go into it knowing they’re only going to work in your business for 90 days for instance.

This is a very different type of support that you are looking for so it’s important to realize the working relationship will also be different. This is why role-based support is better suited for instances where you need long-term, ongoing support.

Project based or role based... which do you need on your team? Both.

Establishing what type of support you need is only the first step. It is also important to understand how best to work with either a project-based or role-based team member. Once you master the working relationship, suddenly all the magic happens.