- So you've heard about how awesome virtual teams can be
for growing your small business.
Virtual teams gives you flexibility,
they give you a broad skill set.
They free up your time to make more money
so you can do more of the things
that you actually like doing.
- And they are a cost effective way
as your business grows to scale up
without hustling your face off and thinking
that you have to just do it all yourself.
How do we know this?
Because we've done ourselves,
we've grown our team from just,
us truly, to having over 14 team members working with us
to make sure that our business
and our membership, ATOMIC runs like a well oiled machine.
- Now, it has taken us four years
to build this virtual team
and we did do it one person at a time.
But over those four years,
we have learned a lot about the best ways
to build a virtual team
and the worst ways to build a virtual team.
So keep watching
to find out how to not make the same mistakes we did,
and how to get started right now in building your team too.
- Let's do this.
- Now the first thing we wanted to talk about was
how you create processes for all the different things
in your bus...
No, no, don't snore, don't snore.
Don't click away. This might seem a little dull.
However, it's gonna make your life so much easier.
Whether it's your bookkeeper or replying to emails,
or updating your blog or onboarding a new client,
come up with a step-by-step process
that you need to do to complete those task.
- For example, in ATOMIC, we run what we call,
our Accountability Sprints, and these are a great way
to get people to have that accountability to get stuff done.
Now, as part of that, we've created a whole process
around setting up a sprint.
As you can see here,
we've broken down all the absolute necessary tasks
needed to set up a sprint
including the registration form,
the emails that needs to be sent,
the followup, et cetera, et cetera.
And this whole process is created in a Asana,
more on that later.
The benefits of these processes is twofold:
One, It makes actually outsourcing these processes
to a virtual team member all the more easier
and straightforward because they actually have a process
to follow now.
And two, even before you have your virtual team members,
it just makes everything much more organised
and streamlined for yourself.
- Like for example, before we outsource the process
of setting up the ATOMIC sprint,
we heard of this process written out
and it took a fraction of the time,
us following the process and do it ourselves
because we didn't have to remember
about all the moving parts
and everything that just needed to be done.
It was like, tick, tick, tick, tick done.
So the more you can process and systemize your business,
not only do you have more headspace
but you also are setting yourself up
for being able to outsource certain parts
of the operations of running your business.
- But even with the right processes in place,
how do we know what to outsource first?
Here's something that we've learned,
take on team members who add value and aren't just a cost.
A big mistake that we see many small business owners make,
is they will go and outsource stuff
that doesn't even need to be done, anyway.
- For example, if you outsource your Twitter account
because you hate Twitter,
but your Twitter account doesn't even bring you customers
in the first place.
And in fact, you get all your customers from Instagram,
then that team member who's gonna be doing your Twitter
is literally just going to be a cost, not an investment.
- A better use of your money would be to ditch Twitter
altogether and hire the outsourcer to come on
and help you make your Instagram even better
and generate even more leads for you
because you've already proven that Instagram works
in this example.
- Or outsource some things like your bookkeeping,
so you can spend more time doing the Instagram even better.
- If you want your new team members
to add value to your business and be an investment,
not just a cost, then you need to make sure
that they are doing either,
A- Activities that are already proven to bring you growth
or B- Activities that are absolutely necessary
to your business running that will save you time
so you can spend more time making more money.
- Makes sense? If not, or you've got any questions
about this, then drop a comment on this video,
we see and reply to them all.
Now saying all of that, we know sometimes it's difficult
to know for sure whether somebody is going to add value
to the business and that uncertainty
can stop you from pulling the trigger and trying them out.
We've been there too,
so here's what we started to do, which works a treat.
Every time a new team member joins our team,
they go through an onboarding process and a trial period.
- Now onboarding is a lot easier
if you've got those processes in place, like we said before
but as a general rule of thumb,
we think it often takes about one solid month
to onboard our team members and teach them the ropes.
And in that month we don't necessarily expect it
to go a hundred percent smoothly
and we probably expect it to not see that much time
but actually take us some time in teaching them
how to do the thing that they're supposed to be doing.
But obviously, once onboarded and that sort
of smooth and all the kinks have been ironed out
it will save you a tonne of time going forward,
and they've been onboarded properly, so you can trust them.
You can let go of that control.
- We'll also then, have a trial period of two months
for every new team member.
This gives us enough time to make sure
that they are a good fit for us
and that we are a good fit for them.
After the trial, we either then take them on indefinitely
or tell them that it's not working out.
And having that trial period,
it's just a nice way of giving yourself an out
if for whatever reason, it's not working out.
- Before we talk about one of the most important parts
of building a virtual team, let's just recap
to make this really work for you,
you need to create those processes.
You need to bring on a team member
in an area of the business that is going to add value
and you need to create the onboarding and trial period.
- And what ties this all together
is good communication channels.
- I agree.
- Now we did not have those when we started,
we had some team members that spoke to us via text,
some via emails, some via direct messages,
some via carrier pigeon
and it was all a bit of a mess, especially
as the team grew and the weather just killed
so many pigeons.
(chuckles)
- So one of the best things we ever did
was to create a central hub for our team, in Slack
which is a communications platform
and Asana, which is our project management software.
Both of these, we started on the free plan by the way,
which you can access to.
And whether you have a team of two or three, or 23,
this is gonna be really, really useful.
- Because having that centralised place, like in Slack
where your team can not only talk to you,
but can talk to each other,
it's gonna save you a tonne of time.
- And having all your projects and processes
in a tool like Asana can help you manage,
who's doing what, what deadlines, who's done what,
who's not done what yet,
and it just makes everything run smoothly.
- We do use a tonne of other tools with our team,
things like, Dropbox and Google Drive, and Zoom,
and there's lots more that we can say
about running a well oiled teams.
So if you want more information about this,
if you want us to create more content
about running and managing a team,
then please do let us know in the comments
and we'll create more content just like this.
- We really hope you have enjoyed this video
and if you're a small business owner,
and please do making sure that you subscribe
because we make videos about how to grow your business,
every single week.
- He's been Andrew, he's been not working hard enough.
He's given all of our tasks to our team,
he's just not doing anything,
is sleeping until 10:00 AM, lazy sod.
- I love it.
(upbeat music)