If you’re in business for yourself, there are essentially 3 options:
- Be a freelancer – Working as a contractor for other businesses under their brand.
- Be a solopreneur – Building your own brand and managing all aspects of the business on your own
- Build a team – Building your business with a team of people
Each of these paths have different pros and cons but if you’re starting to have success in your business, then you are probably contemplating on hiring and growing a team. For those considering that option, here are 5 reasons for why you may want to build a team:
1. Get work-life balance
As a freelancer or solopreneur, you are doing everything yourself and when your business grows, it will quickly consume your personal time. If you’re just starting up your business, you may not yet realized all of the additional work that comes with having a business. There are things like general administration, invoicing, sales and networking; these all take extra time on top of doing the production work. By growing a team, you can start to get some help for all the tasks in your business. If you train and onboard properly, your team will start to do things well on their own and this allows you to get some work-life balance back.
2. Manage your business risk
By growing a team, you are mitigating the risk of having the business solely depend on you. What happens if something serious happens to you and you’re forced out of commission for an extended period of time? Who can continue the sales and operations and keep the money coming in? This is a huge benefit of having a support team.
3. Manage your production & grow your revenue
If you are the only production person, then you will quickly run out of bandwidth and your revenue growth will stifle. Having a team will allow you to leverage other people’s time to produce more than you can within your 24 hour limit. If your goal is to grow your revenue, then having a team is the only way to sustain the growth.
4. Provide opportunities for others
This may not be the first thought for most business owners when they grow a team, but the fact that your business is hiring people from the community is a very noble gesture. You are providing income for people which in turn feeds their family and supports the local community. You are also giving opportunities for people in your industry to build their skills and advance in their career. So in that sense, you are supporting your own profession and industry.
5. Have options for your succession plan
In general, many business owners do not think about their exit when they first build their company, but if you are a solopreneur, then your exit options are limited. If you have a team, then there could be multiple things you can do for your transition plan when the time comes. For instance, your business could be transitioned to key managers and employees.
Watch my video below to get 5 tips on how to grow a team.
