Growing Your Start-Up Business - Business Mentor Meeting

I was quite ultra focused on just growing the business myself personally when I first started my business, my second business Ronald James. But very quickly I got my brother involved Dan. So he was with us pretty much from the start because it is a very lonely road when you start off as an entrepreneur in business. It's very exciting at first because you plan everything so you're thinking if the office space, your brand, your website, how cool it'll be to win some clients. Getting the first invoice into the bank account that you've been charged like all those days were great fun and good little milestones but then you know, you realize you can only get to a certain level by yourself and I'm very guilty of that as well because I'm very sometimes maybe over controlling because I wanted. I feel I can do everything quicker and that's not really the case. You have to in order to scale as Grant Cardone always preaches as well when I watch his videos. In terms of growing you can only go to a certain level by yourself. You need people regardless if you want to run a 1 million pound agency to 10 million to 100 million it takes people. There's only so much you can physically do as a one off either consultant or trainer or freelancer or what have you. So partnerships is good but like I say you've probably you need to have a breakdown closing there. I think so maybe not just setting up your business on Companies House but you want to have an agreement to know well what if this happens? So if something goes wrong this is how we are going to part ways. There's a couple of terms that you can use in the documents of memorandum that'll help you with that as well because I think one's called like I might be wrong with this but I'm sure it's called like the Russian roulette or something where if you both are unsure on where you want to go the direction of the business and you really at loggerheads then you can choose to buy that other person out of the business or vice versa and whoever offers the most money pretty much wins that. So it gives you a cleaner cut rather than you let be at loggerheads and you're stuck. So sort of gives you a route out so that.

Do you know if that's when it's a direct 50, 50 or 50.

That's 5050 yes, you're 5149 but there is some. You probably need to take more legal advice on that but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have full Control. Bear in mind you've got 51, 49. But I wouldn't really, I wouldn't get boiled down into that as a startup because you consume so much time. Just go out and make money, go out and give value to your clients and service and worry about that probably further down the line because you could be worrying about things that might not ever, ever happen. But yeah, I think a partnership is good because you need more people to leverage what you want to do for sure.

I think at the point where I know now is the time, the actual delegation I think is the main thing. No one would talked about it before where you said you always want to keep the balance of the stuff that you enjoy and the stuff that you're good at, but then also the stuff that takes up your time. You might still be good at it, but if it's stopping you from any of the more important things, it's working. It just some, I don't know, some things that you notice to actually find those, recognize those patterns and know where to put the time.

I think the most important thing that I've learned over time on one of these business programs that I went on was around my sweet spot of what I'm, what I'm really good at, but what I love doing as well. So I love meeting clients, winning new business still and coming up with new creative ideas around marketing. So I try and surround myself in that little circle and a bubble and anything outside of that I try my best to outsource. So Melissa takes a lot of that as office manager. So I will delegate that as much as possible. And I get in the habit of delegating. What else can I get off my place on plate so I can free myself up more on my biggest income generating tasks. And I focus on that as much as possible and there's things that I know the team might not do as effectively in my eyes, as much as what I can do. But you have to really sacrifice that in order to grow because you have to be zoned in and focused on what you can leverage the quickest and most effective results on your day. Because you only get so many hours in the day as well and it can be quite overwhelming. So delegation is really key and it's all about perfecting it. So when I'm delegating something, I'll record a video of how it's, how I expect it to be done, how it's done and what challenges you could get with that and then I'll pass it on to the team and then they'll create a step by step method for that as a process and then I will review it over two or three, four weeks and then once I'm happy with their process and how they do it. Yeah then I forget about it and until it breaks again and comes back, that's a perfect scenario. But in terms of having stuff, I mean it is quite daunting because I remember when we first started the business I started we hired maybe a couple of remote recruiters and they were down as like a freelancer. So they were self employed, they had their own company, etc. But they worked for us. And the ideal model, that would have been great but in reality it never really works out that way. So when you're trying to build an asset and build an actual solid business, you need physical heads and physical stuff. But then once you're hiring them it's like well, the culture, what's your vision? Why would they join you? What's your mission? What's the principles in your business? Which is something that we've went through. We've got like 10 core principles on model gems and what, what the culture and where we are actually going. Yeah. In the business over the next few years and we're very focused on that. But that all comes over time. So this point is planning and doing it all beforehand. Just my, my recommendation is as you go. So when you hire, then figure it out. Then we hire more heads. Figure it out. Then you know you need to have a culture. Then you know you need to have your mission and values. And do you want to grow as. As a business to. To sell it one day or to pass it on to the management team or just couldn't always have that business. Like there's loads of different ways or a lot of people get into business for the, the most common ways people get into business is for freedom and money. So they're sick of working for another boss.

In the first two years you have neither of that.

Exactly. You just at the start, underpaid employee, member of your own business because you're just operational in it all of the time but eventually gives you more freedom as you do well. And the rewards after probably year two and three are really good that you would never probably get in an employed job depending on what you're doing. So yeah, I would recommend just not over hiring at the start. Watch the cash, making sure you're going at the right pace. But when the right person comes along and you get a good feeling about them, then give them a go. But one thing I have Learned probably the hard way is hiring too fast and firing slow rather than hiring slow. Fire fast is probably one of the best tips I would give on staff.

And as an agency, obviously yours is recruitment and this is Marklin. But like when you say you started it by yourself, you were the one obviously that was on the meetings with clients. I assume that's still the case. But when you start delegating and the clients have different, you know, points of contact and then they're no longer talking to you.

100.

What was the. How did it start or set it out first? Like you still want to take everything home.

You can't.

And just that. That side. Because I'm starting to. Well, I say outsource, but it's obviously employing people where I'm no longer doing a lot of the marketing materials.

But it's.

I know it's providing more value with the clients, but trying to balance that where it's no longer, you know, it's no longer 100% me, you know. So, yeah, just how did you.

Good question. And we're still doing that now, to be honest. So we've got.

Finding the balance.

Yeah, finding a balance between me managing the client and winning the client and then passing that on to the team. It's very important, again, because the business can't just be reliant on myself. Important that we let others grow and evolve and get that client experience as well. But it is tough, particularly when you've had a client for two, three years and they're used to speaking to you or emailing you and picking up the phone. I physically can't do that anymore because as we're growing, we've got too many clients to manage. So you need to be quite clever with the time. So I value my every hour of my day very highly. So I will try and focus on probably our most important top 10 clients. So that's when I'll still go out and see them a lot of the time and I'll respond quicker and give them a lot of love and attention because they are very important to us. But that doesn't mean that the ones lower level aren't as important. It just means that that needs to be spread across the team and they'll deliver as their top 10 client and give them all the love and attention that they need as well. You have to have a cut off because, for instance, I don't manage my own email anymore. And that's been one of the biggest tasks that I got off my plate about a year ago now. So my PA office manager manage my email and then only forwards me the most important urgent response emails to a separate private email address that no one knows. So then I'm not in my inbox anymore and I'm not reactive to. Soon as an email pops up, you think, oh, I need to open it. Then you sort of type a reply, then you don't send it. And that wastes so much time. And for deep work focused, as Cal Newport talks about in his book Deep Work, the focus time, when you're in the state of flow, you need to be in that. You don't want a distraction of an email, a phone call jump in. Because then all of a sudden everyone's dictating what you do and all of a sudden you get loads of nothing done. Yeah, it's very important to try and outsource that as much as possible. Yeah. And I'll try and pass the clients on as much as we can, but in an ideal world, it's not always the case. I'll be honest with, I probably still got too many clients that are relying still on me. Yeah. Direct to me. But eventually, as the business grows and we hire more experienced consultants, then I can, I can pass those off. Cool. Well, thanks for that and I hope you guys enjoyed that catch up. So if you have any got any questions or comments, please comment below. What you would like to see more of what type of questions that you would like me to answer in this series and I'll catch you soon. Sam.