Episode 429: How to Build a Scalable Team
In this episode, Adam Stott talks about how to effectively build and scale a team, drawing from his vast experience in growing multi-million-pound enterprises.
Drawing from his experience in coaching business owners and scaling his own ventures, Adam breaks down the process into three phases: starting as a solo entrepreneur, expanding with key hires, and establishing a management layer. Learn how to leverage your strengths, complement them with the right hires, and avoid common pitfalls that hinder business growth.
Show Highlights:
- Identify your strengths and hire to complement skills that are lacking, focusing on roles that will free up your time to focus on high-value activities.
- Building a scalable business requires dedicated roles in marketing, sales, operations, and finance to ensure seamless business operations.
- Move from being a one-person operation to establishing a core team, and then develop a management layer as the business scales.
- Once the core team is in place, add management layers strategically to oversee growing operations and maintain control over the business operations.
- Understand the importance of investing in team-building, seeing it as a means to amplify business capabilities and revenues rather than just an expense.
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adam’s website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Coaches, consultants, and business owners – lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://3daybrandbuilderworkshop.com/start-here?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
429-build a scalable team
Adam Stott: [00:00:00] This is exactly how I would build a scalable team if I had to start over. And for context, I built multiple businesses to multi million pounds for myself, as well as training thousands of business owners just like you. And this building a team is where so many get stuck. And I’ve seen this over and over again when I’ve helped clients break through from 50, 000 pounds.
All the way to seven figure businesses. This is the one thing that tends to keep them stuck. And I’m going to walk through how you can get unstuck fast, build an amazing team, which means you can earn more money, work less hours, and just enjoy the business journey more. Let’s jump on in to how to build a scalable team for your business so it can run without you.
Sothis is how you build a scalable team. And I, for one, I’m [00:01:00] very, very excited for you because we’re going to cover in this video, the three stages. We’re going to look at that first stage of when you are a one man or one woman army, and you’re trying to do everything yourself and it’s driving you crazy.
What should your first hire be? What should your first move be? We’re then going to cover. Phase two, where you start to build out your team in a way where you get the core four sorted out. So what are the core four? The core four are the essential critical elements you need to get covered in your business to make it scalable.
So we’re going to reveal those core four to you and show you the steps. We’re then going to move to phase three. Now you’ve got your first hires, you’ve got your actual team in the core four. How do we then start scaling that and making this scalable by adding in the right layers? So those are the three phases we’re going to cover.
It will suit any business owner from someone at the beginning that’s doing revenue that wants to start building that team. All the way through to somebody that has a seven figure business and that [00:02:00] wants to get that business sorted out, get it structured in a better way. So I’m sure it’s going to be super useful for you.
So we’re now in the phase one, that first phase of being that army of one. And this is really cool because if you are a business owner. It’s already done this first bit. What you’re going to see is some of the considerations because maybe you did it already, but you didn’t do it the right way. And if so, you’re going to get a lot of value out of this first phase.
And by the way, some people like, but Adam, I run a beauty business. I run a recruitment business. I’m in construction. Does it work like this? How does it work? It absolutely does. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. It doesn’t matter what size your business is. You will seamlessly. Go through business with less stress, more fun, less frustration, start to earn more and work less.
First of all, what does being an army of one look like? Well, you as the army of one, the person running the business has some skills. And this part becomes really critical ’cause your skills you [00:03:00] bring to the table when you first start that business, you are bringing those skills in.
And as the CEO, the owner of the business, the managing director, those skills come into the business for free. And those skills that you bring to the business give the business a, a unique advantage of being able to get started. So what we have to do is we have to look very, very carefully at what you are good at.
And also what you’re not so good at, because we’re going to have to counterbalance the beginning with our first hire. So let’s imagine for a moment that you are very good at sales. You love selling, you love selling your products and services, you get excited when you’re selling your products and services, you love going out there, you love closing deals, you love getting stuff done and that’s incredible.
And that’s something that excites you. Well, if that sounds like you. then perhaps you’re not as organized as you should be, or you could be. Usually that’s the case with people who are really great at sales, because they’ve got really good communication, really good verbal characteristics, are able to communicate [00:04:00] ideas, but often they’re not your dot the i’s, cross the t’s, detail driven people.
And in that case, we need to supplement that weakness by adding in the right characteristics. Now, we’ll come to that in a minute. But maybe you’re not good at sales. Maybe your strength is actually you love marketing. Maybe you train in marketing. You’re good at marketing. You like getting the message out there.
You’re good. You’re creative. You’re really good at creating things, putting things together. And that’s where your skill lies. Again. If you’re really good at marketing, what I’ve seen from training thousands and thousands and thousands of business owners is that when people are really, really good at marketing, often they don’t like sales so much.
So that could be a weakness there for you, that you love the creative stuff, but you don’t love the selling. And then we need to complement that, so we’ll come to that in a moment. Perhaps you’re the person that’s in finance. Maybe you have worked in accounting. Perhaps you’ve worked in finance, or management finance, or numbers.
Some way, shape or form. [00:05:00] If that’s the case, you probably don’t like sales that much. So we need to complement that. Or maybe you’ve worked in admin, operations, client service, delivery, and that again has its own skill set. So we need to complement the skills. Let’s take a look at that. So what should your first hire be?
Well, if you are that typical person that likes selling, we are going to need to complement what you do. And we’re going to need to buy your time back. And this is really important. This is where we’re going to get quite detailed and really open your eyes to different opportunity is if you’re great at sales, you should be investing your time in sales.
You should be going. Having meetings with clients. You should be speaking to clients. You should be having those conversations where you can close deals That’s what we call your high income generating tasks. That’s where you as an individual going to make the money So what is low income generating tasks for [00:06:00] you?
Well low income generating tasks are you doing the paperwork? booking the meetings Doing these different follow up bits, confirming appointments, all of this kind of stuff. So the first thing that you want to do if you’re really great at sales, is you want to get your time back so you can go out and make more sales and make more money by hiring somebody in admin or a VA or a PA.
This is a great first step for you because it will give you more time to go out and sell, which means that you’re going to create more money, which means that we can move to phase two, we can build your team out. in a more effective way. And by the way, as I’m doing this, you know, maybe you are number one, you’re great at sales.
Put it in the comments. Maybe you’re number two, uh, you’re great at marketing. Put it in the comments, number three or number four. You’ve got the characteristics of these different areas. The reason that’s important. Is it’s proven that when you engage the information stays in, so go and put it in the comments which one is you, so [00:07:00] we can look at very quickly giving you the right complementary skill sets.
So, we talked about marketing, we said well often people that are great at marketing and not so good at the sale. Why? Because they’re very creative, they’re very visual, and they do their communications through art rather than actually doing their communication through verbal. So the perfect pairing for somebody that’s great at marketing is actually bringing someone in to close those deals and close those leads.
Now you can do this part time. Fractional or full time where you can get somebody initially in on the phone to start calling your leads. And that’s a great start. So you market into sale. You can get somebody in. You market book appointments, get somebody to sell for you. So you’re actually bringing people in.
And there’s two different types of sales function that we can look at. We can look at somebody that’s a setter, and that is somebody that does follow ups for us and goes and communicates and talks to people for us, which really helps us to make sure that the appointments are set [00:08:00] and put in play. Or you could go for somebody that’s a closer, somebody that knows how to close deals and actually bring the money into your business.
Well, marketing plus sales. Equals income, right? So this is really cool. This is you. This is what you want to be looking at as your first hire. Now, if you are more finance based, you’re going to be someone that’s great at the detail, detail orientated. We need to get you that creativity. All that verbal communication to close the business.
So your first hire, if you’re finance orientated, would be marketing or would be sales. And if you’re more operationally driven, you’re somebody that’s done a lot of customer service, you’ve done operations in a business, detail focus, well what’s great with operations is sales. Because you need something to operate.
You’ve got no sales coming in, right? You’ve got nothing to deliver. Now what’s really important If you consider what I’m going through, because this is a completely different take to the way that many people do it, but bear in [00:09:00] mind, this is not theory. I’m not reading this out of a book. You know, I built multiple seven figure and eight figure businesses.
So I’ve been through this journey before, and let me tell you, when I did it for the first time, I did it all wrong. In fact, I was great at sales right in the beginning. All the way back in 2008 when I started my business. So because I was great at sales, I had this kind of mindset. It’s like, ah, we need more sales because sales is the most important thing.
Of course, that’s the way I was thinking, because that’s who I was. So what did I do? Who do you think my first ever hire was? Somebody in sales. So then we had two people with no leads. We had two people creating chaos, rather than one, right? So we’ve got to understand, and we’ve got to look to add these complementary strengths in, in order to, you know, just look at like baking a cake.
We’ve got to put the right ingredients in for it to really taste nice. And that’s what we’re going to look at doing. So, your mission here, on phase one, of this video is to establish [00:10:00] where does your skill set lie? And if you’re like, I don’t know. Oh, I don’t think I’m good at finance, marketing, sales, or ops.
And perhaps you’re being a bit harder on yourself there. But this is what sometimes people might say, well, we have to look at it. You have to go back in time and you have to say, well, what roles have you worked at? What roles have you succeeded at? Where do you love being? What are you passionate about?
Because if you can establish that, then we can look to a counterbalance. See, the reason business is tough for so many, and the reason people have a torrid time running a business, is they do loads of stuff they hate. So every day they’re going to work and they hate what they’re doing. Now if you were to just do your native talent, so write that down, what is your native talent?
What is the thing that you can do standing on your head? What is it that you can do that you just find easy? Doesn’t even feel like work. Because imagine that, imagine you went into your business every single day of your life and it just felt easy. And you just say to yourself, I love my business. I love doing this.
And all of a sudden, you know, you could see yourself making [00:11:00] progress because you’re doing the thing you love. So in that case. Figure out that native talent, watch yours, and look at a complementary skill that you can bring in to your army of one to make you an army of two. So you’ve got you, and you’re starting to build your team there, right?
That is phase one. When you’ve done that And you’ve done it right. So this is what happens, to give you context. What happens is most people do what I did in 2008. They bring in the wrong person. Because finance people believe that finance is really important, and they’re really great at finance, they’ll bring a bookkeeper in.
And all of a sudden, they’ve got no books to keep. Because they’ve got no marketing, they’ve got no sales, nothing coming in. And it happens again and again and again. Someone in marketing goes, Ah, I need to bring another person in marketing. I’m really good at the overall market, I need someone in social media now.
And then you’ve got two people doing marketing, no leads coming in. So really try and catch yourself in that moment. And this is why people get stuck. I’ve been coaching and training businesses to take their [00:12:00] businesses from small businesses to established seven figure businesses for many, many years now.
I’ve done it hundreds and hundreds of times, right? And this is one of the things that we need to break. This is one of the habits that we break this habit. We get your first hire going. You start to get momentum. And an important part of this is you buying your time back in your life. Because if we get your time back, you can do what you’re great at.
Other people can do what you’re not so great at. Which then brings us to Phase 2. So this is our Phase 2. Our Phase 2 is where we’ve started to build the business. Now, let’s just have a look at typically what happens. Typically what happens in a business rather than you’re watching this video. So you’ve got distinct advantage, but this is what happens a lot.
Cause I’ve seen it loads and loads of times owner goes out, makes the wrong first hire, beats himself up, says, I don’t know. I don’t get it. I’m a terrible manager. You know, and they start beating themselves up saying things like that. Because they feel like they’ve made the wrong moves and they’re [00:13:00] really frustrated and they’re like, oh, I don’t know I just can’t get anyone.
I can’t get the right people to build my business and they get and they get in this little spin And this and eventually they go for the stress of that and then they find the point that I just gave you in phase one Then they make progress So now they’ve got two people in the business and they’re making a bit of progress and they’ve got the right different skills Then what they do is they start layering people in randomly, right?
I tell you what I’ve got to do is I’ve got a big hole here So I’m going to put a square in that hole. So what they do is they, they try and fill round holes with squares. Square pegs, right? You’ve heard the phrase. And that happens over and over again. Because people are not strategic. They don’t look at what are the functions of a business, what functions need to be filled.
in order for the business to be successful. And there are four functions of any business. Like I said, doesn’t matter if you’re a salon, a clinic, doesn’t matter if you are in service based businesses, product based businesses, e commerce, recruitment, doesn’t matter, right? All that matters is, is that you understand the [00:14:00] fundamentals of business.
And there is a four elements that make up a really great business that can help us. So what are those four elements? Well, first and foremost, you have marketing, which is the function. of generating leads and inquiries into a business. If we have leads and inquiries coming into a business, and we have a marketing function, that allows new people to discover your business and brings leads in.
Many businesses do this far too late. Instead, they live in a place where they go out, they get referrals, they get repeat business, it’s very slow growth, and there’s nothing wrong with referrals and repeat business, that’s awesome. But the problem is, you don’t know when you’re going to get one. That’s the problem.
So, you know, you’re waiting on a phone call, you’re waiting on something to happen, and all of a sudden it’s like, hallelujah, I’ve got a call, someone wants me, where every single day, You know that week. Other than that, you haven’t had that inquiry and it is driving you crazy. So we’ve got to bring leads in.
So the marketing function needs [00:15:00] to be looked after. Now, let’s imagine that you you get that and you’re getting this. So you get the marketing function looked after. Then we’ve got our skills as CEO, whatever our skill set is, and we can plug. One of these four in an interim fashion, but eventually we’re going to need to get you in the place where you can get off the tools of your business.
You can actually get off the day to day running of the business. You can get out of doing all the work and you can get other people delivering that because you didn’t start a business to get a job that pays you less with a boss that you don’t even like. Right? You started a, you started your business So you didn’t have to report to anyone, so you could get freedom, so you could live your best life.
So, let’s really keep that in mind when we look at these core four. So we’re going to need someone in marketing to generate leads. We’re going to need someone in sales to close those leads and those deals. We’re going to need [00:16:00] someone in ops in order to Deliver the product or service that we have sold and we’re going to need someone in finance To make sure that we’re making the right strategic moves We’re doing business by the numbers and we’re not making mistakes This by the way is very very simple in phase two problem is most businesses massively overcomplicate it But if you follow the process i’m talking about it’s gonna make your life a hell of a lot easier, right?
So how does this look in phase one? Scaling your business out. Well, initially, you don’t go and hire in a CFO for 120 grand a year into your business. Because you’re going to hire a CFO for 120 grand into your business, you are not going to have enough cash, right? You’re going to run out of money, you’re going to have some problems.
You don’t go and hire a COO into your business at six figure salaries. You don’t go and hire these people that earn loads of money into your business to pull all the profits out. You do that. Later on when you’ve got a lot of cash flow coming in and you [00:17:00] need an elite team So this is phase one. This is not phase three or four.
We’re covering three phases in the video We’ve looked at army of one face We’re now looking at phase two at phase two you bring in exec level, right? so executive level is a marketing executive okay, or a marketing person into your marketing team If, you know, depending on where you’re watching this from, the language might vary, but what you’re looking for at this stage is you’re just looking to hire people that are specialists at marketing, specialists at sales, specialists at operations, specialists at finance.
They don’t have to be that top high level, so you bring in the exec level. Then, you bring in a sales executive. Then, in your operations, your delivery, you bring in ops, or you bring in an admin. You know, somebody that’s going to do the admin of the business, and make sure all the paperwork’s done, you know, the trains are running on time, and this is all good.
In [00:18:00] finance, you might initially just bring in a bookkeeper. That’s going to keep your books and do these different things. And that’s how you get your phase one done with I’ve got my marketing that is getting me the leads. I’ve got my sales that is closing the leads. I’ve got my operations that’s making sure we deliver.
The products are serviced really well. I’ve got my admin that deliver the products and service really well. And I’ve got my bookkeeper to keep an eye on the numbers. It’s pretty simple, yeah? It’s not super hard, but a lot of people do it wrong and it takes them a lot of time. You watching this video could save you years if you follow this process, right?
And this has been built out of experience, um, every step of the way. So now we’ve got those four, we get through phase one. And this first phase is what can take your business, your SME business, from a small business, you know, even up to, and you might have a few other hires, up to sort of half a million pound a year, potentially, with these different people in the business.
And if you’ve got to pay 25k to your marketing exec, you’ve got to pay 25 [00:19:00] to to 50 to your sales exec, depending on how successful they are. You know, you’ve got to pay 30k to your ops and you’ve got to pay 15k to your bookkeeper part time. Your half a million pound business probably has a 100, 000 pounds going out on wages plus what you own.
Now, of course, we need to make sure we’ve got the margin in the business, um, and your product or service supports that margin. But if you haven’t got that, Then there’s a bigger problem with the business model itself, right? So you really need to make sure that your profit margins are big enough to be able to build a team.
Because if they’re not big enough to build a team, that’s when you end up in worlds of trouble. Um, so just if you want to understand more about that and you want me to actually flush out business models, put business models in the comments. And that’s something that we can potentially look at depending on what you need.
We make these videos. to help business owners to understand how to build their businesses better. That is the purpose, you know, and if this can save you a year, it can save you a 25, 000 pound, a 50, 000 pound mistake in your [00:20:00] business. Then I’m sure that as we build our relationship, you end up wanting to work with us further, which is awesome.
You can go to the description, you see all kinds of stuff where we can do stuff together. So let’s imagine. We go through this phase. You’ve got an operating business that gets you leads, that gets you sales, that delivers the product or service well, and keeps your eye on the numbers. You have now got a business that takes you from stress to happy, because you ain’t doing all the work.
What happens next? We go to our second phase. So this is where you go to phase three. We’ve looked at phase one, army of one. We’ve looked at phase two, which is getting the core four elements in place. Now we level up. Now we level up and we get to the third phase. So what happens here? What happens differently here?
Well, all that happens is we start to bring in a management layer to the business. So you understand the core four because we just looked at that. And if you imagine you hired exec level [00:21:00] in the core four and now we need to start building the team out further. So what happens is we need a management layer so we can start to build this team out in a more effective fashion.
So the core four will remain, but now we have a marketing manager. We put sales management in place. We put op management, ops management in place. And we put finance management in place. And you’re like, do I do that all at the same time? You do that one at a time. So again, how do you determine what you need?
Well, in your business, you’re going to see the department that is growing. You’re going to see the department that has the bottleneck. I. e., look, you’ve got lots of inquiries coming in, marketing doing well, but you’ve only got one salesperson at the minute. One sales exec doing the business by you adding in your second sales exec.
Now you start to make the layer of the bottle [00:22:00] bigger, which means we get more sales through. Then you add in the next sales exec. All of a sudden, we’ve got three times the amount of sales going through. But guess what? You’ve got a new problem. Your new problem is you’ve got three sales execs that you can’t keep an eye on.
They’re all doing different things. It’s driving you crazy. So what do you need? Sales management. Make sense? So hopefully you’re getting this. So now we’ve got the sales manager team of sales executives in there and now that function is being managed by someone else which allows you to grow your business.
And then you look at what the next bottleneck is. Well the next bottleneck is, oh my god! We’ve got three times the amount of sales coming in! You’ve got one person that’s getting absolutely battered with doing all the operations and they’re stressed out. So you’re like, okay, great. Well, what do we need?
Do we need more admin? In this team and then we might need more client service in this team. So we start to build a team out Now you’ve got all these three. They’re all over the place. It’s like oh my god So guess what now we need that operations manager to look after these [00:23:00] people to get this function Happening in the right way and then guess what the finance team that can’t come up because you’re selling and you’re delivering the product It’s going crazy And all of a sudden you’ve got more bookkeeping to do.
You’ve got more finance to do. You need to know the numbers more because you’re hiring all these people. So you bring people in, then eventually you need your finance management. And then the markings that are now dragging behind because the sales team, they’re like, Hey, I need more leads. And the ops team are like, Oh, things are slowing down.
And now you’ve got these people. So we need more leads coming in the business. So you start to build out your marketing team and then you’re going to need that marketing management to go in place. So what have we done? We’ve established a layer of management with this team below the layer of management.
Which allows you then to grow the business in a way where, by the way, who’s not stressed out at this point? I don’t know if you noticed, you’re still cool. You’re like, okay, great. Your job is MD, or CEO, [00:24:00] depending on where you’re watching from, right? Um, but the MD stands for managing director. It’s your job to manage and to direct the business, not to be down here getting stressed out of your mind.
Because while you’re down there getting stressed out of your mind, nothing grows. So your job is to look Manage the activities of the business, direct the activities of the business, and get the people in here to go and build the business out for you. That is how you get your team to have the management level.
Now there are many levels that come after this, and we can structure this out more. There’s a senior management level, which is the next step. Now we can save that for another video. If you’re like Adam, that’s what I need. I need to understand how to build the senior management in my team. And that’s the sort of thing you want to look at.
Go and tell me in the comments, uh, go and, you know, drop us an inbox. If you listen on the podcast, you know, you go and drop me an inbox on Instagram at Adams dot coach, drop us a [00:25:00] message and we can have a look at it or go to the description, you know, and see how my team can help you to go through these phases because I can tell you what, having done this many times, all of these phases, I understand.
the fear that it sometimes carries. I understand the stress. I understand people get very stressed out about the money like, I’m only earning, you know, 50, 000 pound a year profit in my business. How on earth can I afford all these managers? Well, this is the truth. You can’t afford not to have these managers because what happens is you bring in sales management.
Let’s say you got to pay 50k and that sales manager is their job to bring you in 200. Now they’re not successful, then you can’t pay them. So that’s the deal. You’re coming in to increase sales, and if you can’t increase sales, you can’t come because you can’t be afforded to stay with the business. So that’s exactly how it works, and that should be your mindset.
So if you are at a stopping point where you’re afraid of building the team because of money, you’ve got some money beliefs, some money mindset, then it’s important for you to understand you pay in one of two [00:26:00] ways. You either pay with your money. Or you pay with your time. And the problem is you’ve only got, you know, 8 hours a day that you can contribute.
And some of you are like, No Adam, I work 12 hours a day. And you’re puffing your chest, I work 12 hours a day. I work 14 hours a day. Well that’s no good. Because in three months time you’re going to be knackered, you’re going to be burnt out, you’re going to be stressed out, you’re going to be screaming at all your staff, you’re going to be stressed out at home, everything’s going to feel terrible.
So instead you want to work eight hours a day and then you want to buy the layers of time off other people, which is exactly what we’ve been talking about. Now that shows you the three phases of how to Start a business as a one man or one woman army. Build in your team, your team that are specialists in the area you’re called for, and shows you then how to build your first layer of management.
If you want more, and you want more of this subject, put more in the comments, because we’re always looking at your thoughts, your opinions. To see what it is that you [00:27:00] need in order to help you to get to the next level. So now all you’ve got to do is go and put that in place, work through those initial stages.
Or if you’re somebody that likes to get really fast results and you would like our help to start guiding you on building your team out, making your business more profitable, which we’ve done for hundreds of business owners like you, you can go over to the description of this video. Somewhere in there, there is a link and in there you can see about our gold circle mastermind coaching program where we take business owners.
We’ve done it hundreds of time. We show them the elements to build a business to success. We show them how to build teams, build processes to get more leads, and we show them the core four in deep dive detail. And if you’re somebody that appreciates fast results, you want to save yourself time. Go and do that right now.
Also, if you’ve watched all the way to this end of this video, you’re an a player. And on the screen, we’re going to bring up another one of my [00:28:00] videos, which will definitely compliment this one, which is the zero to 1 million. How do you go from zero to a million? How do you do it fast? I’ll go and check that video out because it’s really incredible.
I’m sure it will help you a ton. And remember, go and have a chat with my team. Let’s see if we’re a great fit to help you build your business out, scale your business out. You can do that in the description. I look forward to meeting you in person very, very soon.