How to Build a Successful Team

Hey, welcome to episode number 309, and I'm with my main gal pal today, Sarah Burks, and we are digging into all the things you need to know about building a team. If you've heard me talk about productivity and being a CEO versus an entrepreneur and getting more done, in your business, the only way to grow is to actually ask for help. So today, Sarah and I discuss all the details of what you need to know about hiring a team and how do you know it's right to hire a team? What do you look for? How do you interview? How do you onboard? And most importantly, when you have a team, how do you train them for success? Because you've probably heard the saying, and it's a little bit frightening, but a goal is that 95% of the reasons people leave your team or get fired is because they didn't understand or meet your expectations. That comes back to us and how we train our team. Sarah does such a great job in this episode and every single day inside of the Hub, talking about the similarities between coaching your team and coaching a basketball team. Do they know the plays? Do they know what hoop we're shooting at? Do they know what quarter we're in? Do they know what play you're gonna call when we are just about to go into overtime and they have to close the deal? Guys, get a notebook, get a pen, get a paper. What you need? Because Sarah is laying it all down inside of this episode, and she's got even more inside of the boutique of this month. As our theme, this month is all about hiring and managing your team. So check out the training library for even more after this podcast. Get ready to meet Sarah. You're going to love this one, you guys. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works. From mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. You guys are in for such a treat this week. We call her the Retail professor, among many other names, but you may know her as Sarah Burks, our director of partnerships. Sarah, I'm so pumped to have you back on the show. Welcome back.

Well, it is great to be back. It's been a little while, so. Yeah, thanks for having me back this morning.

I'm pumped so one of my favorite things to talk to you about is coaching, because you are such a coach by. Not just by nature, but by trade. You and your husband are into coaching. You've got girls in sports. You've been down this road. Not only do you have retail knowledge, but you're so excited about helping people truly implement it as a coach. And one of the analogies that you always make is the similarity in being a coach and being an entrepreneur that's growing a team. So today, I'm pumped to walk down this road with you.

Oh, awesome. Well, you know, I'm going to. As you were saying that I got to thinking about this the other day and where my passion for coaching comes from, and honestly, my dad was a guidance counselor in our school system for over 30 years, so I feel like some of that, like, want to help and, like, dive in and understand what makes people tick and makes people motivated. I think it comes from just probably growing up with him, honestly. And so between that and, of course, my love of sports and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I don't know. I guess that's why I am the way I am. But, yeah, I'm very passionate about it.

I love that you and your husband both were college athletes. Your husband was a professional rodeo cowboy. You've coached at the college level. You've been a professor at. Talk to me about that stage of your life, and now you're still coaching, even today.

Yeah, actually, in my prior life, yeah, I played college volleyball. I've coached high school volleyball, But I also coach rodeo at Southeastern Oklahoma State University down in Durant, Oklahoma. And I hope everybody that's listening that heard me say that, I did say it correctly, because some people say Durant, but it is Durant, Oklahoma, and love that. But I mean, to just take a person and you know that especially in college, that comes out of high school. You know how high school kids feel like they think they know what they got going on. Right. All of a sudden, they enter into the college level, and it's a whole new ball game. And to, you know, help them mentally more than anything, go to that next level. And I feel like that's the entrepreneurial deal, too, is we have this idea about a business, and we jump in, and then all of a sudden, we start facing some of the bigger wolves in the. In the pack, right? And, like, adversity and things just don't go the way we thought they were going to. We start the day off with a plan, and all of a sudden, something happens, and you Know, I, I feel like that coaching mindset that, you know, going back to the basics, building that solid foundation, understanding your strengths, but more importantly, understanding your weaknesses to see where you can delegate and, you know, give, take some things off your plate. I, you know, I think those are one of those things. It's just so important for growth. And a lot of times that entrepreneur, just like that kid out of high school, tends to feel like, no, I know what I'm doing. I got it to the point where they, they realize one day when they look at their bank account or whoever it is calling them, constantly asking for the money, you know, what they owe or whatever it is that they just don't, they don't, they don't have it all handled and they need some help. So, yeah, I absolutely love the coaching. I love the deep dive into that and, you know, figuring out what it is that you do that you were put here to do, that you're blessed with gifts and then what you're not and how to take that to the next level.

So I'm thinking, as you're saying that about the entrepreneur who's probably starting as a solopreneur, I want to kind of walk through this, like, from a linear perspective. Let's just put ourselves in the shoes of a solo entrepreneur. Feeling overwhelmed, like, I know I should probably hire. I just don't know where to start. Is it time for me to hire? How does someone first make that decision that they need to bring someone onto their team?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things that I have been working with in my private coaching with retailers too lately is let's really identify what you absolutely love and what you're passionate about. And so, you know, whether this is in your daily life or in your business life, you know, write down 20 things that, you know, that you just love, absolutely love. And then what we're going to do is we're going to, we're going to look at some of those things and we're going to write down the things that are. That, you know, you have to have done in your business and you feel okay about. But they're not your. They're not your passion, they're not your love. They're those things that drag you down or you look at and you think, oh, okay, I'm going to get to that later. What are those? I'm going to get to that later. Things in your business constantly that you face and write those down and we have to just own them.