Preparing your business to scale & build a team
In this episode of "Process to Profitability," I had the pleasure of speaking with the incredible Liz Strong. Liz shared her journey from being a website designer to becoming an Online Business Manager (OBM). We delved into the importance of figuring out what you truly want to do in your business and how it can help you delegate tasks and prioritize your responsibilities. Liz emphasized the significance of documenting processes and avoiding the pitfalls of linking accounts when setting up new accounts or logging in via third-party platforms like Gmail or Facebook. We also discussed the benefits of hiring a team and the importance of providing an exceptional client experience. If you're looking to prepare your business for future hiring and maximize your return on investment in team members, this episode is for you.
Timestamps:
[00:01:52] Meet Liz Strong
[00:03:42] How niching can make your business more successful
[00:07:50] Laying the groundwork in your business before you're ready to hire
[00:11:27] Figure out what tasks you want to do in your business
[00:16:23] Look at your life and business to decide how to move forward with hiring
[00:19:45] Innovating what tasks you outsource
[00:23:02] Hiring people who are better at than you at tasks
[00:24:16] How to figure out who to hire first in your business
[00:31:24] Connect with Liz
Key Topics:
Clearly define your business goals to effectively delegate and prioritize responsibilities
Documenting processes is essential for efficient delegation and eliminating bottlenecks
Avoid linking accounts to maintain security and control over access
Start with delegating the most challenging task to someone else
Hire a virtual assistant, then specialists like copywriters and designers as your business grows
Consider hiring an online business manager for team and project management
Reflect on your business direction and goals before making hiring decisions
Provide a great client experience to drive repeat business and referrals.
Resources:
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: If you've been thinking about hiring in your business, today's episode is a really good one because we're not talking about how to go about hiring or the hiring process, but how to prepare your business to hire in the future.
[00:00:17] I am talking with Liz Strong today about preparing your business for growth and for hiring. We talk about some of the tips that she has in order to start where you're at right now and looking towards the future of potentially building a team. We also talk about what kinds of questions you should be asking yourself so that you and your business are ready to bring on team members. And these are more high level questions about what you want to be doing in your business, what you want to be spending time on, and what you want your business to look like than the nitty gritty details of how much you can afford and how do you find the right person.
[00:00:59] And then we talk about the order of hiring that might make sense for your business and where should you should start so that you can get the most return on your investment in these team members and make sure that your business growth is going to sustain having people on your team.
[00:01:19] Liz of Lux and Vita is a website designer turned OBM, where she manages the people, processes, and projects for your business. There's nothing she loves more than helping creative entrepreneurs build a business that works for them, not the other way around. She creates simple, sustainable systems that give you the freedom to grow your business while bringing consistency, organization, and fun to the things that weigh you down, even if you're not a systems person.
[00:01:45] Hi, Liz. Thanks for joining me today.
[00:01:49] Liz Strong: Hey, thanks for having me. Super excited to be here.
Meet Liz Strong
[00:01:52] Samantha Mabe: I read your official bio at the beginning of the show, but can you tell us more about your business journey and how you got to what you're doing today?
[00:02:00] Liz Strong: Absolutely. So I started probably like seven-ish years ago as a brand and web designer, just like super new starting out. I came from a graphic design, kind of corporate background. And so I just shifted into the online space as a brand and web designer.
[00:02:18] After a while realized that every single client I had when I was doing their website, I'd ask them like, 'Hey, we gotta connect your contact form. Where are we gonna connect it?' And they're like' I just used like the default one from Squarespace, WordPress, whatever it was we were using. And it just emails me.' And I'm just like having these horrible flashbacks of what their inbox must look like.
[00:02:38] So I would always like suggest ' Hey, we need to move you into something like Dubsado, HoneyBook, 17 hats.' And they're like, 'okay, I don't really know what that is.' and I'm like, 'okay, I can set it up for you.' And that's how I started to get into systems. Because people didn't know how to uplevel from a basic contact form.
[00:02:56] And now as they started to have all these systems, they're like 'I don't really wanna run them. Can you do it?' and I was like, 'yeah, sure. You know what? I really liked working with you. I like your business. Why not?' So I started to be their VA and kind of step away from doing brand web design and really jumped into the VA world and had clients there.
[00:03:17] And then long story short, I did a bunch of courses for someone. We had a giant operations group retreat and she looked at me and she was like, 'so you are doing the work of an OBM at this point and you're calling yourself the VA and you're charging VA prices. You need to stop it right now and go be a an OBM.' So I fired 15 clients that day and I haven't looked back since.
How niching can make your business more successful
[00:03:42] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. So what kinds of businesses do you work with now and how do you work with them?
[00:03:47] Liz Strong: Yeah, so primarily I work with brand web designers, copywriters, and email strategists because that's my background and that's where I personally came from. I understood their business.
[00:03:58] I primarily work with clients on an ongoing basis, but then I also have a little kinda a one-time, little two hour intensive called the Implementensive. So it's intensive and implementation merged together in a fun way. So it's just the short little work one-offs for when people just really need to like, just get stuff off their plate, get it done, and then in a more ongoing capacity when they really need someone to actually come in and be there long term.
[00:04:30] Samantha Mabe: I love that you found your niche in the things that you were already doing, and I think that speaks to the power of having a specific niche, is that you understand really well what kind of systems they're gonna need, what kind of emails they're gonna have , how all of that's gonna work. Because you've done it and because that's the type of clients you work with, you can give them some of that strategy even without diving deep into their business.
[00:04:59] Liz Strong: Absolutely. Yeah that's one of the things I love. I've seen the different sizes where it's either it's just you, yourself, and I rocking it. But also when there's people who have a team of eight to 10 or more, they all have very similar workflows, no matter how big or small, because the same process. All that really honestly changes is how many people are involved in the process. Doesn't matter if it's just you or if it's a big team. There's small deviations along the way, but for the most part it's like pretty much the same and in a nice way, at least for my systems brain, it's predictable.
[00:05:34] Samantha Mabe: When we're in our own business, sometimes it can feel like, oh my goodness, I'm sending these people so many emails, or there's so many forms and it's all over the place. But because we have not seen how other people's businesses work, we don't realize that everybody has to send a lot of reminders and everybody has to gather a lot of information.
[00:05:55] Because it was so helpful for me when I got my brand redone to go through my brand designer's process and be like, oh, I really like how she did this. And like I can add some touch points to my business seeing how somebody else has done that system. And I'm sure you help your clients with that too, saying, okay, there's some missing pieces here that could be really helpful because you have seen it work for other people.
[00:06:20] Liz Strong: Yeah, absolutely. And that's where I think having niched down so intensely, for the type of people I work with, I know that there's like probably gaps in my system based on who you've worked with.
[00:06:32] Typically you're sending this. Whereas everyone else that I've worked with also sends all of these and they actually see a better retention rate. They see smoother onboarding, they see better client experience because they've moved these different like steps up forward, added in a couple additional reminders, they've streamlined over here.
[00:06:54] It's so hard when we are thinking about our own business and we're like in our heads, and when we finally go and look at hiring someone else and you're like, ' oh, I could have sent that email. Oh, that is brilliant. I could totally do this in my own business.'
[00:07:07] And when you start to hire other people, it opens your eyes to what you could personally be doing differently and upping your own client experience. Or maybe there was something they worded and you're like, 'ah. I have been dying to figure out how to word this one darn thing, and they just said it so well, and you're like, okay, I'm not gonna take the whole thing, but like the concept.'
[00:07:29] I like have been on a hiring spree and been hiring copywriters and different people from my own business. I love to be able to see how their processes work, how like I can adjust my own process 'cause I get in my own head too for my own business. So hiring other people is like the best way to get out of your own head.
Laying the groundwork in your business before you're ready to hire
[00:07:50] Samantha Mabe: So today we're talking about preparing our businesses to scale and build a team in the future. So we're not quite there yet, but we know that eventually the type of business we want to run is going to require a team. So let's start by talking about if you have any tips that will help us to do the groundwork now so that we are ready when it comes time to hire.
1. Don't link accounts to your email or Facebook login
[00:08:18] Liz Strong: Yeah, so I would say I have probably like three of 'em. One of 'em is a little bit newer after, especially even for me, that I never really realized until I started getting to getting into other people's businesses and even hiring for my own team.
[00:08:33] Basically when it comes to linking or like setting up new accounts, so like email accounts or setting up a Canva account or whatever, when you go to login or you create an account, it's ' oh, do you want to just sign in via Gmail? Do you wanna just sign in via Facebook or whatever, third party?' No. Don't do it. Don't do it. Oh my goodness. Please don't do it. Because basically when you do that, it means that anyone who's ever gonna need to log in there is gonna have to log in to your own, whatever you just linked.
[00:09:06] So if you created a Canva account and you linked it to your Google account, your VA, your whoever is going to have to log into your actual Gmail account, see everything you've got just to get into Canva. And then if you've actually linked it to any other platform, they're gonna be able to access that too.
[00:09:29] So creating just like a simple old school username and password, as annoying as that may be, is gonna save you in the long run a lot of potential frustration like issues of also like double authentications and all those shenanigans that come with it. Just go ahead upfront. Just create a super simple password. Store it in LastPass, share it with them when the time comes.
[00:09:56] Setting that up, you're not gonna have to then go and try and figure out how to unlink them all. Because the worst thing is there are several companies out there you cannot unlink them from, you literally will have to create a brand new account.
[00:10:12] Samantha Mabe: And I think a lot of times we're, when we start out, we're not thinking of those softwares as okay, I want to add team members. Some of them you can, some of them you can't, but usually you have to pay more. And so it makes a ton of sense to just set up a username and password, take the few extra like seconds on the front end instead of hitting that Facebook button and it's gonna make your life a whole lot easier down the road.
[00:10:37] Liz Strong: Absolutely. Yeah. It's so much easier and it's honestly the step between connecting them. 'cause you still have to verify and just creating a one time login like, the time difference really isn't helpful. And potentially if your Gmail gets hacked, that platform gets hacked.
[00:10:53] It's one of those things that you definitely don't think about until you start to realize, oh, I need to go give them access to this. And you're like oh, I don't wanna give them access to this.
[00:11:03] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. And you're right with the two factor authentication, it, that's such a pain that like you have to be available when they're trying to log in. It's hard enough for your social media manager or something who actually needs to use those logins. But when you need to use it for Canva and they're stuck waiting on you and you're having to answer phone calls when you don't want to it can be a real mess that can be avoided.
2. Figure out what tasks you want to do in your business
[00:11:27] Liz Strong: Yeah, absolutely. So then the other one I would say is just honestly figuring out what it is you actually wanna do in your business. I feel like that's like the hardest thing. Like when you think about hiring, you're like, 'oh, I just need someone to do this.'
[00:11:42] Okay. But if they're gonna do that, what do you wanna do? Because then that makes it a little bit easier sometimes to figure out if you're still trying to hold on to certain pieces of it, do you actually wanna do that? Or can you actually go hand that to someone? Because there's probably 10 other things that you honestly should be doing, that only you can do. But is there other things you could actually be doing, and is it something that actually has to have your touch on? Is it only something that you can do?
[00:12:08] And like thinking through what do you actually wanna be doing? Why do you wanna be doing it? Thinking through kind of that whole process and envisioning what is your dream business, essentially, how do you actually want it to look?
[00:12:19] And if you're not quite there yet, just really starting with, what's the hardest thing on your plate right now that you keep getting stuck at and that you keeping the bottleneck on? Are you constantly forgetting to set up these folders and then it takes you like two hours to set up folders and to export files and to package them up and rename them and do all these things? Then that is a big bottleneck and that probably is something that you could hand to someone else because it's not necessarily something that you have to do as long as you write out here's the process I need. These folders typically look like this. Here's what this typically looks like. Here's how I set this up, and get those written down. You can hand that to someone and they can do it, and then you are no longer the bottleneck because you have someone who is an expert at setting up those folders.
[00:13:10] Samantha Mabe: It makes so much sense to take some time to just figure out what your dream business is.
[00:13:16] I had to think through this for my business when I was like, 'oh, I could build this package that would include a copywriter and a photographer, and we could bundle it all together.' And somebody pointed out, they were like, that would be great, and you would probably have people buy it, but that means you have to then be in charge of managing all of those people.
[00:13:35] And I was like, 'oh, no. I don't wanna do that part.' I want to sit and design. I have no desire to have an agency where somebody else might be like, 'oh yeah. I would much rather have an agency where I just do finishing touches, final checkpoint and have other people do the work underneath me.'
[00:13:53] And the way that we would hire and the way that we would structure our business is vastly different because what we are actually looking to hand off to somebody else is very different.
[00:14:05] Liz Strong: I feel like that's one of the biggest, that's the main question I tend to ask people is what do you actually wanna be doing? What do you actually wanna do with your business? Do you wanna have a big team? Do you wanna have a small team? Do you want a small but mighty team where there's three maximum, like five people where it's like everyone is super specialized in what they do and it means that your clients get a better experience overall and it's more of a holistic thing? It's really like really specific small things where everyone is really good at what they do and you're freed up to actually go do what you wanna do.
[00:14:41] Because we all started our business wanting to do design or writing or whatever, and then we got thrown into actually running a business and managing teams and managing clients and managing projects and marketing and all the other things. And then we get here and we're like, 'oh gosh. What did I just put myself into?'
[00:15:00] And then it's that stepping back and thinking, 'oh, what do I actually wanna do now that I've seen all the things I that need to happen in order for this to run? Do I still like the business I have? Do I still like the services? Do I still like the direction everything is heading? Is there anything that needs to change? Who do I actually want?' There's a lot of that kind of like business soul searching that you do before you just start hiring people.
[00:15:25] You may get six, nine months in and you're like, 'I don't actually like any of this.' And then you have to let them go. And that is, oh, it's the worst. The absolute worst.
[00:15:37] So it's better to think about it on the front end, get all those kind of thoughts out, and then move forward and then be like, 'I love this team. This is amazing. Or I love the direction of my business and everything is good' rather than, 'oh shoot, what did I just do?' And then you gotta undo and take step back.
[00:15:54] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, it's a lot more work and there's a lot of more emotions involved, especially if you are having to let team members go and tell people that you no longer have a spot for them.
[00:16:05] So what other questions should we be asking ourselves as we're thinking, 'okay. I think I wanna grow a team. 'What should I be thinking about for my business to make sure that it gets set up the right way, that I've got all of the stuff that I need?
3. Look at your life and business to decide how to move forward with hiring
[00:16:23] Liz Strong: So in line with what we were talking about earlier, you really wanna start at the front of what are your personal and business goals? Like, where do those actually overlap? What's the timeframe for all of it? What is the dream business look like? What does your actual personal life look like, your daily life like? What does all of that look like? Because that's gonna be what dictates where the direction of your business.
[00:16:49] So like I have a toddler and I'm the one who's at home with him all day. So I had to look at, 'okay, what do I want our life to look like on a daily basis?' Okay, now where in all of that does my business fit? Who do I actually need on my team to get me to be able to have that? How many clients? What kind of services?
[00:17:08] And you start to think through all of those questions and does this actually make sense? Is this actually feasible? How much does it cost? How much time does it take upfront? Do I, what kind of processes do I need to write out? And so you start to think through that initial set of things.
[00:17:24] Once you have that around, you start looking at who do I want on my team? Who's gonna actually be able to take stuff off my plate? Like I have a project manager. She handles the daily management of projects for my clients so that I can be in a more strategic high level role.
[00:17:41] Eventually there'll be a VA who will be able to take off even more from my project manager's plate. That's actually for VA work, like setting up folders for projects, sending out certain reminders and like those things.
[00:17:55] And just thinking through how can I alleviate stuff that's on my plate that doesn't necessarily need to be on my plate? Then looking at my team member and saying, okay, what's on her plate that doesn't necessarily need to be on her plate? So that frees her up to do more things.
4. Planning out your hiring order
[00:18:08] Liz Strong: I stepped down a little bit rather than stepping from a VA to a PM and up, I went high to low on that just 'cause also it was the team member who made sense that way. But there's different ways you can think through that.
[00:18:21] And then, like the first question of thinking through what do you actually wanna be doing in your business? I really love this high level stuff. Before I loved like getting into the nitty gritty and like implementing stuff, and now I'm like, I love the strategy.
[00:18:37] And so thinking through as a person, where have you changed? Did you really start out loving creating the strategy for a website and then actually designing it, maybe coding it, maybe doing all of the nitty gritty details on it? And now you're like, you know what, I really just wanna design the homepage and maybe like the sales page or something, and then have a team member take the rest of the pages based on those ones and design the rest.
[00:19:05] There's a lot of ways you can like break up how that is, but what lights you up? What makes you really excited about a project, and then what are the parts that like, you're kinda like, yeah, they're necessary. Doesn't mean I necessarily wanna be the one to do them. Is that something that someone else could do? That would still give your clients value, give them a great experience with you, get them the end result that they're hiring you for?
[00:19:30] And does it take the work off your plate and make you more excited and not stressed out now that someone else is handling it? Because if it's something that stresses you out that someone else is handling it, it's probably not something to be able to hand off to somebody else.
Innovating what tasks you outsource
[00:19:45] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I think that's where you have to innovate. And I loved your example there that if I wanted to take my VIP Day and have somebody help, I could design the mockup of the homepage like I already do, and then hand it off to somebody who understands Squarespace and just say, 'okay, I want you to implement this. I will check it at the end.'
[00:20:04] Or if I want to build it all out, but I really hate the part where I have to check all the links and test all the screen sizes. I could hand that to somebody else. Because our friend Colie has Dubsado workflows and she actually has her VA now do the basic setup and she just goes in and makes it pretty.
[00:20:24] And she said, I'd never thought I would hand that out off, but I found that she can do that part because she has the system set up because she knows the information and then she gets to do what she loves and what her clients really hire her for, which is beautiful proposals that look really awesome.
[00:20:41] Liz Strong: Yep. And that right there is a phenomenal example, and that's exactly what I've seen a lot of people doing is figuring out what parts are the things that only they can do. What are the things that they're like, you know what? I could actually hand this whole chunk off to someone else, and there's no decrease in quality.
[00:21:04] My time is freed up and I can now go do other things or nothing or because I trained the person. I've had all the workflows and the processes written out. I had all the directions, instructions, everything that this team member would need to know.
[00:21:19] And then also, you can be the one to quality control check it to make sure, is it actually at my standard? Does it actually work? And so there's always that ability for you to step in and like tie the bow on stuff before it, like heads out the door, but you're not the one actually in the weeds doing all of that.
[00:21:37] Samantha Mabe: And for people who are listening who might have, they're in the wellness space and they're in an office, I think obviously we think of, okay, I'm gonna outsource to a receptionist to take my phone calls and schedule clients.
[00:21:49] But there are also ways that like if you have to write up a diet plan for your clients, you could probably find somebody to do that part.
[00:21:56] Will you still see them for their appointment? But that not the front facing stuff can be handled by somebody else, and you are just that gatekeeper for is this up to the quality that I want? Does this fit all of the criteria? And then hand it off to whoever your client is. So they get the best experience because you're all coming into it fresh and excited and you're in your best part of the work.
[00:22:23] Liz Strong: Yeah, absolutely. I love that example. There's so many different facets of that where the biggest question is do you have to be the one to do it?
[00:22:31] Everyone's first thing is yeah, of course it has to be me because they hired me. Not necessarily. Yes, they may have hired you for you, but depending on how you want your business, if you're trying to shift it so you are maybe the face of it, but you do have a team behind you, like you can always adjust things so it's a little bit more team oriented. They just know like you are still gonna gate keep and make sure it is to the quality and the standard of things, but it doesn't have to be you.
Hiring people who are better at than you at tasks
[00:23:02] Liz Strong: Because the other thing is: what if the team that you hire is better than you at what you did? It just makes your experience and the value that you bring to your clients that much better if you can find someone to write something better than you, design something better, design something different. Whatever you do, they do it one level better and that's amazing. That's even better because then you're hiring people who are true experts in what they do, and that just makes your own business better because they're bringing in something fresh, something new to your business, which just keeps elevating it.
The importance of client experience when you have a team
[00:23:36] Liz Strong: I always go back to what's the client experience? Is it really good? Because then they're gonna come back. Then they're also gonna refer people to you because they had such a great experience. They're gonna wanna come back and they're gonna just talk about it all the time. They're like, 'okay, I did this. You have to go hire them because they did this amazing thing and it just blew my expectations out of the water. They delivered exactly what it was. They did it on time. It was X, Y, and Z.' And that's what we all want no matter what it is you do.
How to figure out who to hire first in your business
[00:24:16] Samantha Mabe: Let's shift a little bit and talk about how we figure out who the right person is to hire first and maybe the order that we're building. You mentioned you started top down. Is there a way that people can figure out what is the best path forward for their business?
[00:24:31] Liz Strong: Yeah, the first person I actually hired was a bookkeeper because I wanted to know how much I could actually afford to hire 'cause I wouldn't have known how much per hour I could actually afford.
[00:24:47] If I hadn't known any of those numbers, I could have just been like having a very small profit margin and really just be basically like exchanging money from the client, what the client gives me, to the person I hired to help me with it.
[00:25:01] And that's not what you want. You actually wanna have some healthy profit margin because then it actually makes sense for your business.
[00:25:08] So I went and actually talked with a CPA who looked at my books and was like, 'oh, okay, so based on all these different factors, here's how much you need to be putting aside for taxes.' I got my taxes number down, then how much do I actually wanna make for profit? Because then, it's a business. I would like to be profitable. I wanna have just a little like fun bonus, like at the end of the year to do stuff with for fun because it was a good year or whatever. How much do I wanna save? And then there's a new one that someone told me about adding in an additional kind of like percentage for investing. So then I could be putting aside even like one, maybe 2% of what I make goes towards investing to keep building on what I have and treating it as something bigger than my own business and starting to build like a little bit of a legacy for that.
[00:26:05] Also, I hate numbers. I hate doing my own books. I can't stand it. Since I started my business, I was like, Nope, this is not my skill. This is not my zone of genius. It takes me way too long to do this. I wanna go and hide in a dark corner and cry when I do them. So I'm gonna hire someone who actually enjoys doing this, and I just got that off my plate.
[00:26:28] I would say that's like the first one I tend to recommend because it's the one that people also don't think about. But if you know your, how much you can actually spend, then you know, like who you can actually afford and how many people you can afford.
[00:26:43] And so the next person I tend to suggest to most people is a VA just to get the basic admin work off your plate, setting up folders, onboarding, getting different things set up for your client projects. Depending on like the actual skills that you need for those things, I tend to just go, get a VA who can handle different admin things. Get that off your plate because it isn't stuff you need to be doing. Once you have written out, like the whole process, you can hand it to someone and they can do it for a lot less than what your hourly rate is.
[00:27:19] So then from there I do another step up into a specialist. So that could be a copywriter, could be a designer. I'm an OBM, so I would personally hire a project manager because they specialize in my kind of industry and I can take a lot of the projects and things that I would be doing and hand it to them.
[00:27:40] So some of my clients will start to hire copywriters or that hire a junior designer to actually take off, not like the big strategy work, but some of the smaller stuff.
[00:27:49] And then once you actually have that team rolling, you've got a couple people going and you're like, you know what? I don't wanna manage the people, I don't wanna manage the projects, I don't wanna manage the processes. I wanna actually go and do whatever it is you decided originally you wanted to be doing in your business. That's when I tend to say, okay. Now is probably the smartest time to bring in an OBM who can manage your business, who will then manage the people, the projects, and the processes so that you can go do whatever it is you decided way back when that you wanted to do, because now you're not managing all of those things. You're actually like hanging out in your zone of genius spending the amount of time per day that you actually wanna be spending. You're just rocking and rolling while they're taking care of all of the other things on the more admin operations side.
[00:28:42] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I think that order makes a lot of sense. I've heard a lot of people say a bookkeeper is one of the best first hire because yes, it's hard to let go of the finances of your business.
[00:28:53] Sometimes it is some information you have to be willing to share, but it does not generally impact anything that you're doing with your clients or how you're running your business. It's handing off a task you don't need to be doing that's going to then give you a lot of information back that allows you to make decisions.
[00:29:13] And then I think it makes sense to then start with a VA, start handing tasks off and then start building your team that can take things off your plate. And having an OBM come in once you've got a team established is probably a lot more helpful than having them come in first when there's okay, you can set up my systems, but then there's nothing for you to do. There's nobody here for you to actually manage, or any projects that are coming in that need the hands to make sure that things go to the right place.
[00:29:43] Liz Strong: I know there's some people who tend to start with an OBM because they do also maybe specialize more. There's several of my friends who are OBMs who specialize in launches. That is not my thing. But because they do specialize in launches, they have an additional skillset that if that client needs launch support and they maybe have one other person, then it's perfect timing. Like it makes sense.
[00:30:07] But for the things that I handle, like it doesn't make sense. I need to have more people on the team who can take work off of your plate. You need to have a lot of projects coming in.
[00:30:17] I have someone who we tend to only work with one to maximum three people at a time, and that's over four to six months. And so there's a healthy like gap between things and so it's a little bit calmer.
[00:30:32] And then there's others who have VIP Days or VIP Weeks, and so they have a lot more clients coming. So they're like, I don't wanna manage all of that. I don't wanna be keeping track of who needs to give me what I don't wanna keep track of, like making sure the team is on top of things. Like I just wanna design it. That's what we'll do. We'll manage all of that. We'll take care of all of that.
[00:30:53] And so there's a couple ways you can do it, but I tend to go, start small and start to scale up so that as you actually have momentum and you know that you actually need someone on a longer term basis, like an OBM, it makes sense. So making sure you actually have all those projects coming in is gonna then also help you understand how much you can afford for each person and for actually paying yourself consistently and not just like the scraps at the end of like the invoice.
Connect with Liz
[00:31:24] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. I think we covered a lot today and it gave people a lot of things to think about as they are preparing to grow their businesses. So where can they connect with you if they want to learn more, if they have questions, if they just want to continue this conversation?
[00:31:40] Liz Strong: Yeah, so I tend to be on Instagram. I'm more in the stories and the DMs, so I'm over at luxandvitadsn. And then I've got some fun stuff over on my site at luxandvita.com/everything.
