Break Through the Ceiling: Solopreneur Insights, Vol. 10
Call it Human Resources, Human Capital, or Talent Management - it all means the same for Solopreneurs: Building teams of people whom we respect and who respect us so that we can scale our operations beyond our own individual ceiling.
Alright, hold up. Human Resources for Solopreneurs? I thought we worked alone?
Look, Solopreneurs can absolutely work alone. We often do. But, the definition of Solopreneur is not “someone who works alone.”
The definition is:
A self-employed person who operates a business that:
Employs only the owner (and sometimes a spouse)
Leverages the labor of subcontractors, vendors, and project partners
The second part is key. I’m begging you to stop and think about this. Ultimately, successful Solopreneurs make use of LEVERAGE.
It’s what separates us from other business models that cannot scale or that hire employees onto their payrolls.
The Math Is Simple
At the end of the day, you only have three options for increasing your income:
Charge more
Work more
Increase efficiency
The first two are easy to understand. What does it mean to “increase efficiency?”
It means leverage.
Solopreneurs leverage two things:
Systems
Outsourced Labor
I’ve already covered systems in the other articles from this series.
Now, we arrive at the final piece: Outsourced Labor.
Building Your Team
When you run the numbers, you’ll quickly find that you can only charge so much and work for so long before you hit your ceiling. I call this The Solopreneur Ceiling.
If you want to expand beyond that ceiling, or if you want to reduce the amount of time you work to earn the same income, then you’re going to need to outsource labor.
Guess who provides labor? Laborers?
No.
People. People provide labor.
Getting the most out of the working relationship between you and the people you bring into your team means understanding and managing that relationship.
Working With Humans
Enter what is traditionally known as Human Resources. There are lots of new terms for it, but they all boil down to this goal: Keep everyone satisfied with the current working arrangement.
Successful HR management specifically refers to getting the most out of the relationship between you and anyone who is helping you provide your service or build your product.
So, how do we manage these relationships? There are five key areas:
Recruiting quality team members
One of the reasons we Solopreneurs prefer to work alone is our idea that “no one can do it as well as I can do it.” This is a myth. Tell yourself the truth: “I need to uphold my brand standards, and it takes a lot of effort and time to find people who I can trust to provide the same level of quality as I can.” Doesn’t it feel better to get it out? Now that you’ve stopped lying to yourself, how do you find these quality project partners?
You find them the same way you find quality customers: You market to them and network with them. Everyone else tells you that marketing and sales are for attracting customers. Eventually, you’re going to land high-quality customers that refuse to let you go. Selling and marketing to new customers will be the last thing on your mind. Instead, you shift these tools to primarily help you recruit a high-quality team. Define your specific requirements for skill sets, experience, attitude, availability, style, and any other attributes you deem critical to your operations. You now have your target audience. Go find them and run campaigns that draw them in.
Be someone worth working for
You’re known to your customers by the quality of your product/service and by how much they enjoy working with you. Guess what? Partners are no different. Just like leveraging marketing/sales to land clients, your brand’s strength does the same thing when landing project partners.
When you’re known as someone who has access to high-quality audiences and clients, and you’re awesome to work with, you’ll have a long line of people who want to be part of your projects. Post content and speak directly to your working style. Communicate your standards. Celebrate your project partners. Create campaigns that talk about the larger mission that every project partner is working toward. All of these send signals to high-quality partners that you’re someone they should connect with.
Show them the money
You can’t pay amateur wages and expect expert results. One of the most common mistakes I see Solopreneurs making is that they start out cheap with their outsourcing. If it’s for tasks that aren’t directly related to profits, I can understand (a little). But, if you want to nosedive your brand’s value overnight and pick up a gigantic daily headache, then hire cheap people.
Listen: We’re not here to be slaves to our customers OR our partners.
When you first seek outside help, be willing to take a hit on the profits. Yes, it’s going to be hard to do. What you need to understand is that you’re freeing up your time with the high-quality partner. Instead of babysitting someone who can’t produce quality for 12 hours a week, you get quality handed back to you with zero friction. I can guarantee this: if you use those 12 hours wisely, you’ll make a lot more money than you’re paying for your “expensive” project partner.
Make it easy on them
Make sure that you’re describing the scope of your work and tasks accurately. There’s nothing worse that bringing on a project partner and not accurately describing the objectives and expectations for their tasks. Over time, you can systematize their roles to cut down on individual time with each vendor. Like all other systems, just log your steps and improve over time.
You should also clearly define and communicate any processes that you use for delivering your product/service. Everyone does things differently, and you’ll be reducing friction if you clearly define your working processes from start to finish when you’re scouting for project partners.
Develop and implement training
There’s a reason why every company has an employee onboarding process. Don’t overlook the importance of creating one for your team members. As you grow your business, your partners will increasingly collaborate with each other. Being clear about what it means to be part of your team saves you trouble and empowers each partner.
Your onboarding process should cover these key topics: professional standards, project management expectations, contracts, ownership rights, cultural alignment, payment structures, overall mission, client experience, and conflict resolution.
Cross The Hurdle
Expanding your operation to include team members might be the single-biggest mental hurdle for the Solopreneur. Yet, once you learn how to scale your Solopreneur business, there’s literally no ceiling. Focus on building high-quality systems and teams, and you can create a machine that prints money AND frees up your time to live as you wish.
Here’s my breakdown for working on building my team:
Yearly: 12 hours per year / Ongoing
I spend 1 hour in my monthly reviews assessing my current team members and identifying new team members.
I’m organically networking with other skilled partner prospects on a routine basis.
Reflecting On The Solopreneur Business Series
This article brings this short business series to a close. We started with the CEO , then covered the CFO , Sales , Marketing , Production , Operations , and Customer Experience . I sincerely hope this business series has provided value and given you a good place to start. Resist the urge to rush through them. It took me years to build some of them.
– Torrey
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