As a Mompreneur, you have your hands full. It is hard to focus on scaling your business when your three-year-old just stuck his entire hand in the peanut butter! I remember feeling this way before I scaled and built my digital marketing agency. Today, we will discuss how to scale your Mompreneur business in easy ways.
When To Scale
Every Mompreneur must decide for themselves when to grow and scale their business. There are, however, some tell-tale signs that you should scale.
- Your client capacity is full
- You cannot accept new clients (or are turning them away)
- You are frustrated nearly every day (whether at work or home)
- You are not keeping deadlines
- You feel you cannot keep up with everything
- Your revenue has flatlined
- Your clients need additional services that you do not provide
The biggest job you have right now is being a Mom and raising those children. Keep your priorities right and you’ll find everything falling into place. You can scale up later if you need to keep priorities right.
Why To Scale
If you find that you are hitting many of the symptoms of the tell-tale signs of needing to scale, then you must consider why to scale. There should be a ‘why’ to your scaling objective.
There are several reasons you should scale, but why do you want to scale? Is it because…
- You want to earn more and work less
- You need help
- You want to add another type of service
- You are ready to add a virtual team
- You want more free time
- You want more time with family, friends, and others
These are some of the reasons, but I could go on and on, but I will not. I trust you can figure out your why.
Admitting You Need Help
I think admitting to yourself that you need help is one of the biggest steps you will take to begin scaling your business. It is not easy to admit this. You have probably been doing it alone for some time, but you realize now that you must get help.
There are many factors that go into admitting you need help.
It involves:
- Trusting the person/people you bring on
- Letting go of some of your work
- Delegating the right tasks
All of this helps you move toward scaling your business. If you are at that point, don’t let anyone stand in your way. As a Mompreneur, you have grit, tenacity, and have put in a lot of hard work, especially as you raise your children alongside running a business.
Where To Find Help
Next, you need to know where to find the help you need. This can be in a variety of places. You can find other Mompreneurs in online groups, including on Facebook.
I would, however, suggest that you look at some professional virtual educational websites that show potential virtual team members.
Why Educational Directories
I would like to suggest three in particular. These not only have directories that house specialty virtual professionals but are also educational sites. This means those listed are continuing their education and pushing forward to learn new skills and keep up to date on their skills.
I suggest educational sites because it means the people you look at are trying to stay up to date in the industry. The other reason this is a great place to start is that they would be teachable. This is a good character to have in your virtual specialist.
Directories to Consider:
The directories I suggest are:
- Ask a Virtual Assistant or Freelancer Facebook group
- Freelance University
- VA Network
- VirtualAssistantAssistant
Vetting Your Virtual Team
It is important to vet your virtual team. You can do this by conducting an interview and asking questions that are important to you.
I always suggest, however, to choose character over skill. I know this seems contrary to the normal thinking, but hang in there a minute with me.
Character Over Skill
I choose character over skill for two reasons:
- You can always teach or train a skill, but it is difficult to teach character to someone after adulthood. Yes, if you subcontract someone under the age of 26, you may still have some impact on their character, but most of it is already developed by adulthood. This is why character over skill is important to me.
- The character traits you choose to work with your business and team will define your business. Characteristics like honesty, integrity, responsiveness, kindness, and trustworthiness are key factors that can make a great team member. Having the highest level of skills is great, but if someone does not have good character, they will not make the best team members. Just as the characteristics above are of value, what if you hired someone based on skill, only to find that they are not trustworthy and that they lie? Perhaps they make promises but do not keep them. Wouldn’t it be better to have a team member working with your clients whom you can trust rather than one with the best skills?
As I stated, you can always train someone with the skills you need. It can be better to train them in the way you like to do things for your clients, rather than having someone who has their own processes and ways of doing tasks.
“How character forms. Character development is complex. It’s an evolutionary journey of becoming that begins in our youngest years and evolves as we cultivate our values and beliefs through relationships, lived experiences, and our engagement in various systems.”
Greater Good Magazine
Types of Questions
Once you are ready to interview a prospective team member, you should ask questions related to your business needs and related to their character.
Prior to meeting with a candidate, I ask a few important questions:
- What is one task you really like doing and could do all day long if you were able?
- What is one task you really dislike doing and would like to never do again if possible?
- Please list your software skills and your skill level (ex: Microsoft Word – intermediate) as beginner, intermediate, or expert.
I asked the top two questions because I ran a digital marketing agency that helped clients with email marketing, SEO blogging, social media management, and graphic design. If I needed someone in the blogging department and the person said they loved social media but disliked writing, I would not bring them on at that time. I did, however, keep a chart of names matched with skills and notes. If, on the other hand, they loved writing and dislike some other task, they may be a good fit for our team.
Once you get past the initial introduction and choose the person you want to meet via video, you should prepare questions to ask. I recommend first offering small talk and getting a feel of their personality.
The next thing would be to describe what your business does and who you help. You would then move on to your interview questions.
Possible interview questions may include:
- What are your general work hours if I need to reach you?
- How do you handle criticism from a client?
- How quickly after receiving an email do you answer it (whether from me or a client)?
- Would you keep all client information confidential?
- Would you keep all of our business processes confidential?
- Tell me 3 characteristics your friends and colleagues would say describe you?
After you choose the right subcontractor to bring on to your team, you will want to do a background check and call their references.
The final step is to onboard your new team member.
Onboarding
Onboarding includes several steps and items, including a welcome email, contract, tax forms, and more.
Onboarding a new team member includes the following:
- Welcome email
- Checklist of return items you need
- Signed contract
- Profile photo (if you are including them on your website)
- Professional certification (to include on your website)
- Contract
- Clearly defined scope of work
- Defined pay and when payment is made
- A Non-compete clause
- Confidentiality clause
- Intellectual Property clause
- Invitation to a company email address
- Invitation to the company PM System (Project Management)
- Tax Forms (in the U.S., you should send a W-9 for U.S. citizens and a W-8BEN form for non-citizens)
Once they return all items on your checklist, you can begin to train them in your processes. Eventually, you will introduce them to the client they will work with once trained.
Please check with your attorney and tax accountant to make sure you have the right paperwork and are hiring properly. Also, see the government website: irs.gov to be informed on who is considered a contractor versus an employee.
Note: Check in also with your insurance provider, especially in regard to your E & O Insurances (errors & omissions), to find out if your subcontractors are included in your policy or if they need to provide you proof of insurance on their end. Some subcontractors may not have their own policy. This is why it is especially important to note.
Problem Solving
The final item I want to help you with is problem-solving as you scale your mompreneur business. Problems are inevitable, but how you handle them will indicate the type of business leader you will become.
A Few Suggestions:
- Address any problems immediately. Do not let them simmer. Time will only add to them and possibly cause it to spread. Take care of it as soon as you are aware of the issue.
- Meet with the person(s) on your team who are involved. If it is more than one person, bring them together (team members only, do not include clients).
- Meet with clients separately first and discuss the problem. Always advocate for your team, but remember your revenue comes from your clients. As much as able, try to appease the client, even if it means changing team members.
Example of Situation I had: I had a fairly new client (only a couple of months in) who was going out of the country for a month. She wanted the grant paperwork completed and submitted. I do not know anything about grants (other than applying to some from time to time). I assigned a team member who said she was familiar with government grants and could help this client easily.
This was a state grant and had a very limited time frame to submit the papers. The client could not be reached once out of the country.
When I checked in with my team member working on this to see how it went and was the submission was as easy as she remembered it to be, I found out she had NOT submitted it at all and that she had gotten ill and had more questions.
WHAT?!!!
The deadline had passed, and she did not realize that the client wasn’t going to approve everything before submission. When the client returned and realized what had happened, she was very upset and rightly so.
She was kind enough, after I explained this was not our normal code of excellence, to continue working with us and gave us another opportunity to prove ourselves to her. The one request she had was that she never work with that team member again. I obliged this request as I had no way to defend my team member.
I usually try to defend my team when able, but could not in this case. We went on to work with her for years, up until the time I exited the agency.
Make it clear to your team that you are their advocate, but also expect great work from them.
Final Notes
Remember to treat your team, once you build it, with the respect you desire. If they feel your respect and know you trust them and their work, it goes a long way to building their confidence and the longevity of working together.
Tammy is an award-winning business coach who loves empowering women online service providers to grow a business that fits their lifestyle, rather than squeeze a life around their business. Tammy provides Mastermind Group Coaching and 1-on-1 Coaching Opportunities.
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