MBA1766 3 Low Cost Ways to Improve Your Team

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Hey O. Welcome to the 100 RMBA Show. Because when you're building a business, you need to take all the help you can get. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014.

And in today's episode you will learn.

Three low cost ways to improve your team. No matter how big or small your team, whether it's just you, a handful.

Of people or 50 people, we're always looking for ways to improve. The better your team is, the better your product, the better your service.

The more you can grow, the more.

You can offer your customers. But if you're on a budget, how do you do this? How do you bring in fresh blood or new talent? How do you improve the existing team.

You have without spending a fortune?

That's what we get into in today's episode, full transparency. I had to do this a whole bunch of times in my entrepreneurial journey.

Money's tight. I gotta get innovative. How am I gonna improve?

So I wanna share with you some.

Of the things that I've done that.

Actually moves the needle, that actually helps you get results. Scale your business through improving your team.

Without breaking the bank.

So let's get into it.

Let's get down to business.

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In business, you get to a point.

Where you're just now growing as fast as you used to. You can't really innovate.

You can't really improve your product or.

Service or improve your marketing or your.

Sales or your copy without the right expertise. You need to start hiring.

But where are you going to get that money if things are tight? You have a limited budget if your profits are small.

So I want to share with you some of the things that have worked in my business or businesses in the past. And there's two types of strategies.

There's improving your business externally and improving it internally, meaning that I'm going to improve by getting some help from outside. That's external or internal, meaning I'm going to work with what I have with the team I have with the teammates that I right now have in my company.

So let's just get the external one.

Out of the way because a lot of people think, man, hiring is expensive. I don't want to have that on my P and L sheet. And you're not wrong, okay? One of the biggest reasons why people don't make a profit is because their payroll is too high because they have too many people on staff. Often salaries are the most expensive cost on your P and L. So what.

You want to do is is mitigate that cost. There are so many other options than.

Just hiring somebody full time or even.

On an hourly basis. There are certain positions that you can hire without even paying them for Example, sales and commission based positions. You can get somebody to sell your product and only when they make a.

Sale, they get a commission.

So they're basically like a hyper affiliate. They can do your webinars for you.

They can do your sales calls, they.

Can even work on optimizing your sales pages and your funnels. All you really need to do is just have some sort of identifier when they make a sale. So when they actually close a sale with a customer, that's pretty easy.

They know the customer they spoke to, they closed that sale, they get a commission. If they're working on something like a sales funnel, you can create a UTM link or an affiliate link so you can track if they came via them. Same thing for webinar sales.

So the point here is that you.

Can hire salespeople on a commission. The best salesmen out there know they can sell if you have a decent product and they're confident enough to say yes to an opportunity like that. And you can look on Freelancer and Upwork and all these sites for these.

Types of positions and you can go.

On a project say, hey, we're going to try this for a month. If this works out, we'll make it long term.

You can also do the same thing.

Not in a sales position, but maybe.

In a marketing position, but with a limited budget. You could say, hey, I have $2,000.

I need x amount of customers extra every month. Can you run my marketing for 2000 to get me this result? They're going to ask you a bunch of questions, they're going to analyze your.

Site and it's going to take some.

Conversations, a few people to find your perfect fit.

But there's many people that are willing to take that jump to say, hey.

You know what, I think I can sell this, I can market this. There's a lot of untapped opportunity.

I'll take the two grand, set things.

Up for them, and if it works out, they can be on retainer for two grand every month.

And for you, it makes sense if.

You'Re making more than $2,000 minus the cost of doing all this marketing.

So the point here is that I.

Really like the idea of short term projects with freelancers because it gives them a chance to prove that they can actually get you the results you're looking for. And it's worth your money. You get an ROI and then from.

There you can move on.

You can then go a little bit.

More, maybe two months, three months, six months.

Projects.

You set the budget based on what.

You have in surplus and profit that you want to invest in this new project or new hire and you go from there. You don't need to commit to an hourly rate or a full time rate.

This is when people start being dependent.

On you for a salary, for a paycheck. You're not a client anymore, you're their boss. And that's why it's so hard to let go of somebody like that or to cut them from your, you know, your payroll, because they depend on your salary. So keep it light, right? Just stay in the freelance world, in the project world in the beginning, get.

Your results and you can greatly improve.

Your team that way.

Now, there's a lot of side benefits.

To this, by the way, because sometimes when you get an expert to come in and help you with marketing or sales, or maybe an engineer that can give you some technical advisory, whatever role they're coming in, they're coming with their expertise, with their experience, and that kind.

Of gets shared with the team. People start seeing other people, they're starting to work with other professionals.

It's going to have sort of a domino effect.

And other people will also improve in.

Your team that you already have just.

By bringing in new blood, bringing in.

New ideas, bringing in new experts, even.

If it's just a freelancer next, this costs you nothing.

And you can really improve your team members internally with this idea. And that's giving them a brand new project. Say, for example, you want to revamp.

All your knowledge articles or your tutorials.

On your website and you want to put it in a new kind of format or a new website or new page. Say, for example, you want to integrate it with Intercom or something like that. This is a project that's going to take some time.

Who's been ambitious on your team? Who's been somebody who's been wanting to.

Move up in the company or has been always raising their hand.

Give them this project. Say, hey, I want to trust you with this project. It's really important. Here's what we need. This is the outcome, this is the.

Deadline, and let them run with it. Give them the autonomy to be able to do that and then give them.

A chance to show off their work. So maybe when you do your next all hands or your next team meeting, they can present, hey, look what I.

Built in the last month.

And it shows, hey, you are capable.

You can do more than what you're doing right now in your position.

This expands the skills of current team members. This improves their skill set.

So the next time you have a.

New project or a new thing you want to do, instead of saying, hey.

How much is it going to cost me to hire Alpha or get a freelancer?

Think about it. Is there somebody on my team that.

Can take on this project with the.

Right guidance, I can just give them.

Some autonomy and it will be a really good experience for them and it's.

Going to save you money. You're not going to have to pay.

Externally, you can just continue to pay this person. But you're giving them a new role. You might even want to give them a bump or a bonus or something like that. But the point here is that it's minimal compared to outsourcing it to somebody else.

But the real benefit here is that somebody gets to learn, somebody gets to.

Grow, somebody gets to have a new experience. And those vibes are contagious around the team.

Next, what I've done before in the.

Past that actually works really well is online courses. When I do my evaluations with my team members or one on ones, I often ask, how would you like to improve? Is there anything out there that you want to learn or get better at?

Recently I did that with our content.

Marketing writer Connor, and he mentioned to me that he wants to get into SEO.

So he got into some SEO courses.

That we were able to get him and it really allowed him to understand.

A little bit more about how to.

Do better at his job.

He's a writer, but SEO has a lot to do with writing and expanding his skillset.

He feels like he's growing as a.

Professional and there's a lot of ways.

You can get online courses for pretty inexpensive prices. If you're really on a budget, I highly recommend you check out Udemy. Udemy has some really, really good courses for low prices. There are often courses like on copy and affiliate marketing, SEO in smaller kind of niche communities. One of them that I can think of is Money Lab moneylab co. We signed up for that and it's a great little membership that you get a whole bunch of courses in. Lynda.com also a great resource if you want a plethora of courses for a low monthly price.

We also do this for our engineers.

We sign up for laracasts. Our software is built on laravel.

PHP and laracasts are tutorials and trainings that our developers can take to skill up on the latest version of Laravel.

It costs us like $400 a year, but it's well worth it because they can always go back and watch these videos and brushing up and feel like they are professionals like they're getting better every day. This is going to help your business big time because you're going to have a team that's constantly learning, that's constantly growing with your company so you can continue to expand and grow with Venmo.

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To wrap up today's lesson, there's a.

Lot of ways you can improve your team internally, externally, with very little funding.

The least expensive one of them is this one.

Books Books have incredible value. Okay, I cannot tell you how much value. I'd probably say the average book I read has at least a 10x value.

Even if it's a bad book.

I learn a couple things from there. And If I paid 10 bucks for the book, it was well worth more than $100 even though I just paid 10. So giving books to your team are.

A great way and make it an event. Do a Book club A monthly book club is not too much to ask for. Once a month you can meet together for 30 minutes and talk about the book.

Maybe you can start by suggesting the first book and then the next month.

Somebody else from the group suggests just to get the ball rolling.

But it's a very, very low cost thing that you can give a team member or team members to really grow and improve at a great scale.

That wraps up today's lesson.

Thanks so much for listening to the Hunter MBA show. If you love what you hear, smash that subscribe button and get all our episodes automatically on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts.

Before I go, I want to leave you with this.

What I've learned In my over 15 years of entrepreneurship is the more you invest in your teammates, that includes you, the more potential your company has to grow, to improve, to get more customers, to be well known in your space. By instilling a growth mentality in your team all the time, you give your company a competitive advantage. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Tomorrow's episode Free Ride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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