Creating a Team Culture and an Engaged Brand

When starting your own business you’re more than likely doing it all on your own. You’re now the creative, the copywriter, the graphic designer, the content manager, the strategist, etc., and as you grow there will be a point where you simply can’t do it all anymore. At this point, you hire a team! It’s such a huge step in your business as you feel like you’re handing off parts of your baby to someone else. But yet it’s SO necessary for continued growth.

So far in 2020, I’ve spent $10,000 on my team support alone, and that’s not including what I’ve spent on business coaching. But yet I’ve grown to a revenue number I haven’t hit in the past two years. Working with multiple 6 and 7-figure business owners, I’ve also had the opportunity to manage their teams, upwards of 30 people. There’s one important element I’ve seen across the board in terms of helping your team and your business thrive, and that’s the culture you create among your team to support an engaged team and a growing brand.

How do you create an engaged team culture? There are a few things you can put into place in your business to help your team feel like they’re a part of your bigger vision. Here are my top tips!

1. Share your larger vision with your team

Each team member likely has a very specific role they play on your team. They may create beautiful graphics, or schedule your content, or provide support to your client questions, or engage on social media, so they’re likely solely focused on those tasks you assign. One way to get them even more excited about the work they do for you is to share your larger vision. What is the bigger project their work is a part of? What is the goal of what they’re helping you create. I’m speaking to not only the specific project but your vision of your company as a whole. This will create more “buy-in” as they can see the role they play in the much bigger picture.

2. Have team values

Establish values for your business that also reflect the values you want your team to have as well. This will help you in the hiring process, as well as something to default back to within your work. For example, a value I have on my team is to double-check your work. This helps reduce mistakes and the back-and-forth of re-doing things, as well as requires my team to take ownership for their work. Another value I have is: Communication is key. Please OVER communicate. I cannot say enough about how important communication is in business and I think the more you communicate as a team, the less mistakes are made, and the more clarity your team has about a specific task or project. You get to determine what values are important to you, your business, and your team. 

3. Provide a way to communicate as a team

Speaking of communication, provide an easy way to communicate with your team, whether it be individually or as a group. I love both Slack and RingCentral. Both are essentially instant messaging platforms where you can easily chat back and forth and therefore reduces the email clutter in your inbox and makes for quick replies to #getshitdone. Also, it may be helpful depending on the size of your team to have once a month, or once a quarter team calls to chat about upcoming projects and again share the vision you have for your brand.

4. Allow room for Creativity

Give your team ownership of their tasks and let them run with it! This is especially important as your team grows and you’re hiring more “specialized” team members who are really good at their niche. Share the overall vision and idea and let them use their own creativity to run with it and bring back something to you! The more your team gets to know what you like and don’t like, the more efficient they’ll be too!

These are just a few ideas for ways to cultivate a team culture for your brand. The more you make your team feel a part of an actual team, you’ll likely keep these team members around longer, build long-lasting relationships, and a way you can grow together to the next level. Do you have a team yet in your business? 

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Katelyn Hamilton is an Online Business Manager and Get Your Sh!t Together Strategist. She helps busy entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front.

After spending 6 years in the corporate world working with multimillion dollar companies, top-rated chefs and celebrities, she launched her own business to find more flexibility and freedom. She matched her corporate salary in just one year of starting her business.

Katelyn is also a wife, stepmom, dog mama of three furry friends, fitness lover, sports fanatic (Go Dawgs) and dreams of living at the beach.

Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.

5 Actionable Steps to Approach Planning for 2020

It’s crazy to think the new year is upon is less than 30 days. Where did 2019 go!? It’s crazy to think how fast this year went and to look back at everything that was accomplished. I plan to do a “year in review” type post here soon, but right now I want to chat about PLANNING.

Planning is a cornerstone to my business - I LOVE TO PLAN (as if you didn’t know that already about me). I know planning stresses a lot of people out though, so I want to provide some actionable steps to approach planning for 2020. This way you can break it down, and not get so consumed in figuring it all out at once.

Planning is supposed to help you, guide you and is a great way to know if you’re on track and making progress. Plans can shift or change, but it’s nice to have something to work towards to help wandering minds stay on the path a bit if you know what I mean.

So here are 5 actionable steps you can take to approach planning for 2020 today:

1. Change your mindset about planning

So many times I hear “I’m not a planner”. Or “I’m not good at planning”. This is a cop-out. An excuse. It’s not that you’re not good at it - it’s just that you are choosing not to take the time to do it, and to find a way that works for you. Any successful business has a plan, a roadmap, a guide - whatever you want to call it. A plan is required of you if you’re serious about where you want to go in your business. So instead of being frustrated by planning, dreading it, hating it and just not doing it - change your mindset. Figure out a way to make planning fun! Be creative - you can vision board, you can create beautiful graphics of your plan online, you can get a group of friends together for wine and plan together!

2. Start with a brain dump

You know I love a good brain dump! It’s so freeing to me! You aren’t required to do ANYTHING with the information, it could be the silliest idea you’ve ever had, but just write it down. Clear the space in your brain from what you “should” do or want to do and just write. Get everything on paper. This will help you ease into your planning process. I also find that getting started is the hardest part, so start with something fun and easy and you’ll get into the “planning mode” as I like to call it. This will get the wheels turning and you’ll have so many ideas on paper you can plug and play later on.

3. Reverse Engineer your goals

One of my favorite ways to plan is to actually start at the END of the year and work backward. This may seem counterintuitive, but think of it this way, you’re starting with the BIG picture. What do you want to accomplish by this time next year? What’s the end goal? Set your big goal and then work backward for how to get there.

For example, say you want to make six-figures in revenue next year. Great, that’s $100K for the year, $8,333/mo. Say you have one offer that’s $2k/mo, one that’s $1k/mo and one that’s $500/mo. You can then work through what that combination of offers looks like for how many clients you need at those price points. Maybe it’s 3- 2k clients, 1- 1k client and 3 $500/mo clients. You have to analyze your time available and the type of work you want to focus on, as well as the turnover rate for each of those offers. But it’s much easier once you break it down from the big goal into bite-sized pieces that help you focus on where to direct your time and attention.

4. Break it down

Break down your goals. You can do this in a few different ways, and you may find your mind comes up with new ideas depending on how you break them down. I like to break goals down by quarter (starting with Q4) and start BIG/BROAD across the board. Then, for each big idea, I then break it down to what service/offering in my business it applies to. From there, I like to break down what kind of investment will be needed to help me reach that goal - hiring a coach, expanding my team, purchasing a specific course or attending a conference, a physical hardware investment like a computer, etc. Breaking it down in different ways will help you put together a more comprehensive list of goals, actionable steps, tasks and investment throughout the year.

5. Get specific with what you want to accomplish

When it comes to planning, be specific!! Once you get your big goals on paper and break them down - make sure you’re adding in numbers, amounts and the details to know if you actually accomplished your goals. For example, don’t just write as a goal  “Attend more in-person networking events”. Instead, get specific with how many for the year or month “Attend 1 in-person networking event each month, as well as 3 large conferences for the year.” Attending “more” networking events is too vague. What’s “more” mean when you have nothing to compare it to?

I’m so excited to get my 2020 plan together. I want to dedicate a full day to planning! BONUS TIP - do the same. Make sure you give yourself adequate time to plan. Don’t try to plan when you’re not focused, or rushing through just to get it done. Spend some time really thinking, feeling, listening to what you want to achieve over the next 12 months. I’d love to hear how you approach planning and what actionable steps you take to effectively plan for the year ahead.

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Katelyn Hamilton is an Online Business Manager and Get Your Sh!t Together Strategist. She helps busy entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front.

After spending 6 years in the corporate world working with multimillion dollar companies, top-rated chefs and celebrities, she launched her own business to find more flexibility and freedom. She matched her corporate salary in just one year of starting her business.

Katelyn is also a wife, stepmom, dog mama of two furry friends, fitness lover, sports fanatic (Go Dawgs) and dreams of living at the beach.

Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.

Systems for Success: How to Save Time and Grow Your Business

Setting up systems in your business is a step that so many entrepreneurs find overwhelming! Where to start, what to set up, how to work them, etc. It can be exhausting and lead you to just continue to push off setting them up.

Here’s the deal though, if you don’t have any systems in place in your business, you’re actually wasting valuable time and stunting your business growth. While you’re spending time creating, revising and sending contracts and invoices, what else could you be doing? Or maybe you’re bogged down in the back and forth of finding a time to set up a meeting with a potential client that you never actually get that meeting set up? Or maybe you’re missing a valuable opportunity to convert someone into a client with a killer freebie.

Systems don’t need to be overly complicated or overwhelming. In fact, every industry or profession has systems in place in order to create a successful business. Restaurants, stores, large corporations, etc. all have systems in place so that the business runs smoother, is more streamlined and productive, therefore more profitable.

Want to save time and grow your business? Of course you do! Implement these 4 steps to create systems in your business:

1. Write down your business activities

Do you even know what all you do in your business? Would you consider yourself proactive, or reactive? Sometimes we get into this cycle of just reacting to what needs to be done vs. truly realizing all of the things that are going on in our business month-to-month. Take inventory of your business activities such as writing content, scheduling email newsletters, creating proposals or invoices, scheduling calls, business planning, project management, meetings, website updates, creating funnels for launches, paying team members/tracking biz expenses, etc. There are so many backend activities that you need to get organized in even understanding what all you do to determine where to start putting systems in place.

2. Determine what you could automate

Start by writing out your process for each of the business activities that you listed. Note any tools or systems that you use already to help you do the task at hand. Then determine if there is a way to take yourself out of the equation. Could you set something up one time and then repurpose it each time you need to do the task? For example, do you offer the same service at the same price to where you could simply automate your onboarding experience for new clients? Or maybe instead of having potential clients email you to set up calls you put an automatic scheduler on your website with pre-call questions to help make it easier for people to access you and not miss out on any potential opportunities. So many times we think we need to be involved in every step of the process, but once we write it down we realize that if we just set it up, it can truly be duplicated without us. As humans we like to overcomplicate things, when really we can always simplify the process.

3. Research tools 

There is truly a tool or platform for EVERYTHING. I’m all about simplification though, so I am not recommending you try ALL THE TOOLS, but I am suggesting that you look into what would be the most helpful for you. There are a lot of platforms that can do multiple things for you, such as Kajabi (lead pages, email marketing, webinars, course hub). It really just depends where you’re at in your business, what you need right now and what you want to pay for. If you’re just starting out there are a ton of free or low cost options that you can set up that actually can talk to each other. For example, I link Acuity to zoom for meetings and to my email list. There’s definitely tools out there for everything. I list out some of my favorites in another blog post here.

4. Evaluate

Take some time to see if these new systems work, give them a month or two. Refine the processes to make them work better for you along the way. If you find a particular tool, system or process just doesn’t make sense, change it! There will be a learning curve to some degree, but if you find it’s causing you more frustration than help, find another way. And at the end of the day, you can always outsource!!

Once you implement these things and put those systems in place, your business will run much smoother and you’ll have created time and space in your business to continue to grow!

If you’re still overwhelmed thinking about implementing systems in your business, schedule a discovery call and we can chat about my 5-hour systems intensives where I help you identify what systems to put into place, set them up for you and teach you how to manage them. 

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Katelyn Hamilton is an Online Business Manager and Get Your Sh!t Together Strategist. She helps busy entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front.

After spending 6 years in the corporate world working with multimillion dollar companies, top-rated chefs and celebrities, she launched her own business to find more flexibility and freedom. She matched her corporate salary in just one year of starting her business.

Katelyn is also a soon-to-be wife, stepmom, dog mama of two furry friends, fitness lover, sports fanatic (Go Dawgs) and dreams of living at the beach.

Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.