Hiring my first team member had my shaking in my boots. As a one woman show, I was used to (and took pride in) juggling all the needs of my business on my own, but I knew I couldn’t grow my business as long as I was the only one holding the tool belt. From my first employee to my team of 11 (where we are now!), I’ve developed my own perspective (and unique hiring strategy – you can read more about that here) of what it takes to build a collaborative work culture and strong team relationships. While we are small, I can say without a doubt: we are powerful. We smash our own goals and break records. Every. Single. Time.
Are you curious about what it’s like to build a successful team? Or maybe you know it’s time to let your business grow beyond what you can do as one person and need some hiring process tips? Perhaps you’ve got your own small team and you want guidance on building a team culture? Let’s take a closer look at who I’ve got on my team, what they do in their individual team roles, and how their talent weaves together into a powerful team dynamic.
Building a Successful Team
Successful team dynamics aren’t something you can simply wish for or copy + paste someone else’s structure and hope it works for you! The team I have now has come together over many years of my business changing, growing, and transitioning into what it needs to be based on a shifting industry landscape, a changing audience, and an evolving world.
Determining my hiring mindset is what has allowed me to acquire a team that feels powerful and confident in the work we do together and individually. Our team productivity soars because it’s not imbalanced, and each team member can shine in their respective role and also know how to collaborate easily because we can see clearly what roles each person is owning!
Building this kind of team culture means we’ve kicked any room for internal competition to the curb. Everyone is motivated to show up, own their work, and connect it to the greater whole of the work we do together, because we’re proud of our piece! My personal responsibility (and sheer delight) is to intentionally, consistently acknowledge each person’s work. My vision for the team is always humans first, work second.
Related: How I’ve Built an Unmatched Team Culture
My Team Members & Their Roles
Throughout our team of eleven, fully-remote people, we’ve got quite a mix between full-time and part-time, salaried and contract workers. I keep my employee ecosystem flexible, because my primary focus is to hire the right people for the right job, and not have a rigid vision for what a team is “supposed” to look like.
We work within a 4-day work week, in the hours we need to (rather than strict on or off hours) and keep communication pings as light as possible. We don’t want to drown in Slack messages while we’re trying to get into a workflow! With a bi-monthly team call, we align on our projects and then work through them as we need to.
Everyone on my team has a distinct role, and owns it in her own way! Let me introduce you to these powerhouse women I get to work with.
01) Marisa – Chief Affiliate Partnerships Officer: Marisa lives in my brain and is one of those people who is gifted at monitoring and managing a million moving parts. She leads all of our affiliate partnerships and affiliate launches! There’s a lot of behind the scenes work when it comes to making sure our affiliate projects function well and communication happens seamlessly, so Marisa makes sure that nothing falls through the cracks.
02) Kristi – The Goal Digger Podcast Manager and Producer: While you might hear my voice come through your headphones, Kristi is the brains behind our podcast operation. From booking guests to writing show notes to coordinating sponsors, she makes sure every little detail of our podcast is taken care of!
03) Hannah – Brand Content Manager: Content is a buzzword that Hannah actually loves. She helps transform our quick ‘content ideas’ into real tasks and works with the powerhouse creatives on our team as they do their creative magic. She oversees the blog and helps make sure our social media presence and strategy is highly effective!
04) Stephanie – Customer Support Manager: We have a lot of inbound (and outbound) communication, and Stephanie is the supportive connecting point for all of it. When students have questions, sponsors want to collaborate, and problems pop up needing a troubleshoot, Stephanie is the first person to handle it! She makes sure every message gets to the right person.
05) Michelle – Digital Course Manager: From gathering student testimonials to managing multi-layered course launches, Michelle handles everything our courses need to function and shine! We’re always updating our course content, prepping for our next course launch, and examining course launch data. Michelle is the one keeping that course machine running smoothly.
06) Kerry – Facebook and Instagram Ad Manager: Here’s a peek behind the scenes: we all call Kerry a wizard. She manages ads in ways that feel superhuman, and she does it with ease. Making sure an ad does what we want it to do is no small feat, but Kerry makes it happen! She’s driven to make sure our ads are successful, and they always are thanks to her skills.
07) Brooklyn – Senior Copywriter: Running a business online means one thing is certain: there is going to be a lot of words. Ads, social media captions, emails, blog posts, and everything in between means Brooklyn’s copywriting needs her to go from one end of the business to the other seamlessly. She lives to speak ‘Jenna’ to our audience!
08) Madie – Graphic Designer: Without Madie’s keen eye for generating our graphics, our little corner of the internet sure would be dull. And way less successful. Madie strategically designs graphics for ads, emails, web, and socials so that we can show off the work we love doing in visually stunning ways and make sure our audience can’t help but notice us!
09) Shannon – Tech Genius: Beneath the shiny top layer of a digital business are about a million layers of tech, plug-ins, code, integrations, and connections that most of us don’t even know exist. For Shannon, it’s like her second language. Our email funnels and list segments have a powerful impact on our business thanks to her tech stack mastery!
10) Kaeli – Pinterest Manager: I am a self-proclaimed Pinterest fanatic, but Kaeli has me beat! In a massive sea of content that we’re always creating, Kaeli does the powerful work of giving all of our content a much longer life-span by getting new, excited eyes on our website and offers throughout the year — and we’re talking millions of eyes, too.
11) Natasha – Chat Funnels Expert: Welcome to the Automation zone. Natasha co-founded School of Bots and her work of genius is helping businesses and people like me take back so much of our time by implementing chatbots to nurture our social media audience, ramp up our engagement, and make sure we’re always connecting the right offers to the right people (without having to lift a finger). Her team works with us daily and has changed the game for us!
Related: How to Cultivate Community on a Remote Team
How to Hire a Powerful Team
My first hire was based off of the simple need to not merely multiply myself, but to find someone that could do the work far better than me. I wanted to find skills I didn’t have. And from there, piece by piece, I was able to take pieces of the work I was doing on my business and look for people who could not only masterfully handle that work, but add their own spin and slew of talents into the mix. I wanted my impact to grow beyond what I could have done on my own and through my own skill set.
In that process, I didn’t want to find a ‘jack of all trades’. I wanted anyone I would hire to feel like they could see their role clearly, rather than juggle 10 different roles, since that’s what I was tired of doing, and why I was hiring in the first place! Owning their part in the team has helped create unbreakable team cohesion, even on a fully remote team.
If you’re not sure where to start with hiring your first team member, begin by looking at how you spend the most time in your business. What takes most of your energy? And what do you wish you had more energy to do?
Here’s the secret: there probably isn’t a “perfect” first place to start when it comes to building your team. Only you can know what would work best for you. But if you’re feeling like your business growth is halted because your capacity is fully extended, then it’s time to consider who that first team member might be.
I wanted to be the vision, lead, and find people who could help me carry the work. Turns out, freeing myself up to lead the vision helped me find people who wanted to help carry the vision, too! When you actually have time to see and own the vision of your business, then you have time and energy to share it. That’s when your employees aren’t just ‘working on the business’; they’re building it with you.
