James covers when to scale a small business: hire slowly and fire quickly, only add people when a department is clearly over-capacity, and prioritize self-motivated hires who fit your core values. He recommends Traction and Scaling Up for implementing a values framework.
Hi, guys. So in this video I want to discuss how and when is the best time to grow and scale your business and when is the best time to hire staff. Hi. So one of the biggest tips and advice on scaling a business was in my first few years in business. I used to hire too fast and fire too slow, but now I hire slow and I fire fast. And one of the biggest things I've learned is bits of advice I would give is don't over hire for the sake of it. Wait until you are pretty much bursting at the seams on that department, whether it's marketing, admin, sales, until you really, really need somebody and then hire rather than over hire. Especially as a small business when cash flow is tight, maybe for some of you is don't over hire too quick. Because as entrepreneurs and people that have big goals and vision would get a bit carried away in the early days of growing fast. We need to catch up with everyone else. Don't worry about what everyone else is doing. Just make sure everyone's rolling the sleeves up and everyone should be at 80, 90% capacity in terms of what they're doing every day before you start bringing on new members of staff. Because when you compare that to bigger companies that have stagnated, that's because they're overstaffed. So you, Philip Greens or previous people, they take over. People like Mike Ashley go in and take over underperforming businesses that used to be great performers. First thing they do is make redundancies and staff cuts. And not everyone likes that. But that's business because you trim the fat, as it were. And I have that mindset in my business is making sure I don't have any fat around the edges in my business and make sure that we're lean, but also we can adapt and we can deliver like the size of a big company, but with a boutique specialist team full of grade A player superstars. That's the ideal scenario. I know it doesn't always happen that way, but having that mindset of not hiring until you. You'll know when you need to hire because the same things keep coming round and you get overspill on certain areas and departments. Another aspect on scaling is obviously culture. Hot topic. As always, everyone has different opinions around culture. What is culture? How can you define it? How can you hire for it? My biggest thing that we did was I developed 10 core principles which you might be able to go to a screenshot on and show the audience, but we had 10 core principles that we hired on. So if that person didn't fit within those principles, then we, we didn't hire them, but we also used that as a measurement when we were getting people to pass probation or not did they match up to all of these principles? And you started to see after a number of weeks or a couple of months whether they fit it in with that. And you just need to stay true to yourself and true to your core values or principles, as you call them, and making sure those type of people in your business. Because as soon as you hire someone that's a high performer but doesn't fit the core values principles, it's like a cancer in your business. So my biggest advice, because I've made that mistake as well with a couple of previous hires, is make sure that those people fit within your core values and principles and define them. Some of the quickest ways you can do that would be by the book, traction. And they've got a great way of how to implement your core values. And like a little worksheet, there's also a great book called Scaling up by Vern Harnish. And he talks around building your core values, your vision, your mission statement. So having something like that within your business and sticking to that when you're hire is crucially important. Because we're like 15, 20 employees, every person makes an impact on the business. So if you've got negative energy there, you can feel that. I was saying interviews and people that we hire, we need people that come to work with batteries included, not batteries excluded. So I the person comes through the door, they're pumped, they're ready, they're motivated, they know what they're doing, they're autonomous and they can just crack on because people like that can work in this business. But people that need batteries included, so they need charged up every day, they need managers and members of the team to get them motivated to do work and remind them what to do every hour of the day. Businesses like ourselves, we can't carry those type of people. So I always had the mindset of do they come with batteries included? Is one of my biggest tips for culture fits. So those are my tips around hiring and scaling and a bit of culture. What do you do in your business? Drop a comment below. 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