The single most important investment you will ever make. Do it once and do it right. You can have the absolute best business idea, but it will never be actualised without the right people working cohesively together.
will take about 12 minutes to read…..
We will break this down, though, because your team will consist of 4 areas of expertise.
(Finance Team, Employees, Suppliers & Service Providers)
1. Your FINANCE Team
You should know at ANY given time the financials of your business. It is not possible to make informed decisions about your business without financial control and simple bookkeeping. You will need the following:
a) A Good Bookkeeper.
Your bookkeeper will do exactly as their title suggests. They will keep your books up to date and should give you a monthly profit/loss statement and balance sheet. (Your profit & loss statement will show you your revenue, operating expenses, and costs.
It will seperate things like overheads and general administrative expenses to give you a clear picture of how you are travelling. Your profit and loss statement will let you know if you are making money or losing money & your balance sheet will show you what you own and what you owe (assets & liabilities and your equity)
You should schedule at the very least a monthly meeting to go over these numbers and to see how you are travelling.
b) An Even Better Accountant.
Your accountant should meet with you every quarter initially and annually when things are stable and going well.
💡 TIP! Get the Chemistry between the three of you right because you all need to work together! I first found my bookkeeper, who introduced me to an accountant he worked with. The combination of the two was pivotal to the success of the business.
💡 TIP! Ensure your business is not too small for them and that they can give you more than just numbers. They should give you their attention and good advice. This is a long term relationship – make it work.
c) Yourself! An Hour or Two of Your Time, Daily.
You should do simple things to be on par with both experts (such as simple excel sheets to track your progress and compare notes.) Together with my hidden bank accounts, this helped me stay on top of my finances.
Don’t attempt to do the work of a bookkeeper or accountant on your own, as they are critical to your financial success. Remember, it’s not what you know that is important; it’s what you don’t know! They have an enormous amount of knowledge.
Knowing the financials of your business will allow you to make educated decisions for your business. I came across companies who thought they had to lay off staff, assuming they were losing money, only to find out they were not. This is YOUR business. Get to know it well.
2. Your EMPLOYEES
“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” RICHARD BRANSON
Your employees/staff are the people you directly employ to work on a full-time/part-time/casual basis. They form one of the most important parts of your team, which is how you should view them. With the great resignation unfolding you need to get this part right. Treat them with respect and pay them for what they are worth…and then some more. The return is enormous.
Selecting Your Staff
When selecting your employees you should ensure that they have a good set of both hard skills and soft skills. Whilst its important that they have the technical skills that a job description requires, its equally important for them to have an acceptable level of people skills. Emotional Intelligence can sometimes be far more valuable.
When selecting staff choose the best out there. Steer clear from stereotyping as you can miss some exceptional candidates in doing so. Cognitive errors such as confirmation bias can have negative impacts on a business.
Seek people from diverse backgrounds. Be inclusive and create a fair and equal workplace for all.
Be a Leader not a Boss
One of the biggest challenges you will encounter is learning to deal effectively with people. You are a leader, and you need to lead your team. There are key differences between a boss and a leader. Every business will experience a few rotten apples at some point and its journey. There’s always going to be that one person who creates problems. Don’t let this dampen your efforts or allow it to change your management style. If they are engaging in office politics, teach them to navigate their way out as this can quickly become toxic and spread like wildfire.
When becoming a boss or a business leader, your instinct should not be, “Oh great! now I can tell others what to do”. It’s one of the most common responses I hear and it’s borderline coercive leadership. On the contrary, you should be looking at the opportunity to lead your team and be an effective leader. Lead by example. Its the number one tip for a productive workplace.
Sayings like everyone is replaceable and no one is indispensable are outdated and careless. You don’t need to be the most intelligent person in the room; you need to be an effective leader who can manage and get the most from people. This is what leadership is about. You should consider upskilling your staff as a greater part of your business plan.
Some Simple Guidelines – A Common Sense Approach
Be Kind & Nurturing
Always be kind and polite.
Say good morning! You will be surprised as to how many employers don’t.
Are you happy with their work? Then tell them and ensure there are not backhanded compliments!
Allow them to work independently and steer clear of micromanaging
Show them gratitude – say thank you if they go out of their way to do something not in their job description!
Don’t interfere with their dynamic; in general, they learn to work well with each other. Take their complaints seriously, and show that you care. However, try to let them solve issues on their own, with the assurance that you are always there to intervene and assist if necessary.
Encourage them to speak up. Some great ideas can come from employees who work on your production line. In fact by promoting lateral thinking or “thinking outside the box” my team come up with one of the most innovative ideas my company had seen. You want to have successful people working for you. Don’t be afraid of their growth and their success. Don’t fall victim to tall poppy syndrome.
Command their respect. It is so important that they respect you, not fear you.
Take time out of your daily schedule and bond with them. Get to know things about their family. Show your staff that you care. If one of them had a headache one day – follow up the next and ask them how they feel. Perhaps it’s a stress related headache or a fragrance allergy. If you don’t ask, you won’t know. Try and get to know as much as you can. They are your team!
Chat to them about non-related work topics. Using a paternalistic leadership approach at times has it’s advantages.
Understand & Accept Diversity.
Different people value different things. Don’t assume that what works for one works for the other. Show interest to each one individually and ensure they are in a happy place in your business. You must be able to spot the signs if one of your employees is about to quit. Ask them what they value the most; even if you can’t offer them what they need, the fact that you have asked may be enough. Show them that you are on this journey together with them.
Respect their space.
If they want their coffee mugs upside down – let them! Enter their work area like a team leader, not a boss. If you have pets with you, don’t allow them to roam around freely in their area.
Accept their mistakes.
We all make mistakes. Rather than blame, look at how they happened and work with them to ensure the errors are not repeated.
Letting go of Staff
Letting go of staff can be extremely distressing for both parties involved. It can also be extremely distressing for the ones who remain. If you must let go of any of your staff, do it with compassion and empathy. Use the best practices for letting go of staff.
Always remember that if your staff are happy, so is your business. It will show in their work – and their work is YOUR Business.
I had a customer once tell me: “Your staff look happy, and it shows in your product, and that is a mirror of your leadership”.
Simple gestures we did with our staff
We took our team out to lunch once a month, allowing them to bond with each other. They would come back smiling and relaxed. It was money well spent.
Birthday Cakes were a must – and I was touched that they would all enter my office with a cake on my birthday.
We took the time to find out what their favourite biscuits were and left them on their workstation every so often.
Encouraging them to go home early on a random Friday and giving them an extra day off once or twice a year was an absolute winner. We Advocated a life-work balance and encouraged them to have other interests and hobbies. We wanted to ensure they looked after their health and well-being.
An open office door policy was essential. Communication was absolute key both in a verbal and non verbal sense. Checking your adaptors in nonverbal communication is important. A smile goes a long way.
We guided them to try new things, engaged them in things like the 6 thinking hats technique methodology and encouraged them to take risks and experiment – and they always knew that even if they failed, we would still reward them for trying!
In recent times, we also implemented a 4 day work week in low seasons as part of a life-work balance, which increased their productivity, and their overall happiness.
We gave them an end-of-year bonus for the hard work they had put in. Cash is King, and there was nothing more rewarding. The business worked because of them, and they worked because of the leadership.
We had a diverse team which we felt worked wonders. All ages, different nationalities, mixed genders and worlds apart in backgrounds. The cross culture communication worked well.
This is what our Team gave back to us
We created a team we could trust. They became multi-talented and had each other’s back. We had experts, generalists and jack of all trades!
Under our guidance, they taught each other their skills to mitigate the risks of absences. Our team shared accountability and ownership and supported each other.
Interested in constantly learning and improving their skills, they also maintained consistency in manufacturing a high-level product. They would all step up in their duties and go outside their job descriptions without us even asking them, which saved us on salaries we would otherwise have had to pay to employ more staff.
No quiet quitters and no loud quitters 😊
Have no doubt that this is the best ROI your business you will ever have!
💡 TIP: Depending on the level of skill you are after, there are several agencies/organisations out there that can provide skilled or unskilled workers that, if hired, are accompanied by government grants or salary assist. Don’t overlook these. Some of our best team members came through them. If you are in Australia, Agencies such as AMES, Skills & Jobs Australia are a couple of places you can start with.
3. Your SERVICE Providers
These are the people/companies who provide you with a service that is critical to the operation of your business. It can be as simple as the truck driver collecting your waste, a webmaster, a digital marketing expert, an NBN provider, a delivery company or a technician who comes periodically to check your phone system. They may also be companies whom you have outsourced business tasks too.
Finding The Right Experts
I learnt over the years, where possible, to try and work with people who are experts in their field and who were not part of big companies or organisations. It would help if you had experts who run their show. Freelancers. This means their work is consistently good, and you deal with the same person every time. There is nothing more frustrating than building up a business relationship with one person, only for them to be allocated to a different account some months later.
Of course, there are times when you have no choice, such as a courier or postal service. But this is where it’s essential to build your relationship with an account manager who can pull strings within that big corporation.
Be Respectful & Professional
Treat them with the same respect you treat everyone. Send your service providers a Christmas hamper when the time comes or a corporate gift. The same rule applies – you just never know what could go wrong and who you need to call upon to save you in a critical moment.
I will give you an example:
Our online store was subjected to nightly DDOS/hacker attacks in the early stages of our business. Our IT team assisted us greatly amid the night to bring our site back online.
It took them until 2:00 am to get this done. Night in, night out.
This was a direct result of selecting the right people for the job and the effort to build a good standing business relationship with them over the years. A bigger corporation would have had an answering machine running after hours, and we would have lost tens of thousands of dollars in revenue per night that we were offline. The same would have occurred if we had taken our IT offshore, where labour is cheap.
Beware of extremely cheap offers – it’s not always a favourable solution. It usually ends up costing you more in the long run.
4. Your SUPPLIERS
“Supply chains cannot tolerate even 24 hours of disruption. So if you lose your place in the supply chain because of wild behavior you could lose a lot. It would be like pouring cement down one of your oil wells.” – THOMAS FREIDMAN
Your suppliers provide you with the product you sell or materials you use to manufacture a product you sell. Without supply, you have nothing. Supplier-buyer relationships is of great importance to every business.
Some quick points and tips on your relationship with your suppliers:
Negotiating:
It’s fabulous to be able to negotiate and to be able to achieve prices that will, in turn, increase your profitability.
It is also valuable to be able to negotiate flexible terms of payment. But you must do it nicely. Be assertive, not aggressive. There is this notion that a paying customer has the right to behave as they wish. Don’t fall into this trap. Don’t aggravate your suppliers.
You can achieve the same result, even better, through friendly, polite, and intelligent negotiations. Learn to negotiate like a pro. Business negotiations are critical to the success of your business.
Supply Chain
Your supply chain must not be interrupted. I have seen suppliers cut off their services or product to business owners who have been disrespectful or poorly behaved. Supply chain disruptions to businesses has a detrimental effect.
Try and seek as many as 2-3 suppliers to mitigate your risk, provide you with greater bargaining power, and ensure your business does not rely on just one. This is especially important if you run on a JIT production strategy. Ensure your supplier is not your competitor. Get a feel of what sort of business model they have been running and intend to run in future. Be careful of the power that suppliers can have over you.
On Time Payment
Pay them on time or if you have a flexible credit term – stick to it. Your relationship with your suppliers needs to be top-notch. It will make them prioritise you over those who do not pay on time.
Reputation
Don’t tarnish your name in your industry – you don’t know when you need to call on someone (including your competition.)
As a general rule of thumb DON’T burn your bridges with anyone. Here’s an example why:
When Covid lockdown came into effect in March 2020 there was an unprecedented demand for our product. This meant that suppliers started to run short on raw materials and deliveries were caught up in shipment delays. I can assure you that we were able to secure enough raw material to see us through the whole season, while others could nt. This occurred purely because of networking and our relationship with our suppliers.
Your reputation and good relationships are KEY in your business world.
Team building is step one in my 5 basic step guide on how to run a successful business.
Let’s check out the other 4 steps below and see more information on each:
It’s essential to understand these 5 steps and their content as they are the foundation of running a successful business. Practical real-business life information that every business owner needs to know.
I also have a bonus step on how to sell your business. I have included this as this can form part of your exit strategy as it did mine.
