The Breaching Phase

In this phase your biggest struggle to move onto the next level is typically the fact that you’re still being pulled into the day to day operations of the business. You have a great team and they all seem to be doing a fantastic job. You have regular meetings with all of them individually and then group meetings as well. The trouble is that you are managing so many people you no longer have time to work on the growth OR you are spending so much time on the growth that you aren’t managing your people and things are falling through the cracks.

Things are usually not feeling great when you’re in this phase. You want to let go more but you just don’t know how. You feel as though you still need to be the one to connect the dots and get everyone on the same page. You’re often tired and feeling burned out because you are wearing so many hats.

In order to move onto the next level there is one key thing to do for you and the growth of your company. It is time to hire a manager or operations person. You need someone to help you steer the ship so that you can focus on the growth and the more impactful tasks. You should no longer be having one to one calls with every individual team members each week. You should be having one to one calls with your new operations person regularly and often but not each customer service rep, web designer, social media coordinator etc…

At this point your goal should be to find someone that you can let know what you want to happen. Together, you figure out a plan and then your Operations person can turn around and implement or send to others to implement in the most affordable, efficient way possible. You need an operations person dealing with onboarding new staff and team when someone leaves or needs to be let go or you create a new position. You need an operations person to handle any customer or client issues and you need them to understand how you would want a situation handled. You need your operations person to be looking at the numbers on a regular basis and presenting them to you through a series of meaningful reports.

Now, all of this does take time. In my experience I have seen the most successful operations people come from within the same company and they often started as a customer service person early on. That’s where I started in the multimillion dollar company I eventually became the COO and owner of and I see many others do the same. The reason why so many customer service people successfully move into this higher role  is because spending time in customer service gives you the best view and workings of the company as a whole. As a customer service person, you are in charge of handling every question or request that flows through the company OR dispatching emails to the correct person. You learn what the answers are and who to get the answers from so you understand the org chart better than almost anyone in the company. You are also in a position to learn the company culture by how you are taught to respond to customer service inquiries.

If you are in the sprouting phase – remember this! This is something very important when looking for admin help in the beginning. When you are in the early stages of growing your team you ideally have one or two admin people that you can see growing with you and eventually moving into this role.