Happy Sunday! Hope you're having a great week. Almost two months into the year which is wild. Today I want to talk about something on my mind a ton these days, which is people and recruitment. I had coffee with a multi 9 figure founder this week and his advice to me was that every problem with your company can be fixed by recruitment. He challenged me to rethink how we do some things. I don't think I am an "expert" in the team building category yet so I sometimes feel like I shouldn't be writing about it. So please do me a favor; if you like this kind of topic and want me to do more please reply and let me know. Otherwise I'll stick to ads.
A big part of what goes into annual planning and budgeting is people planning and budgeting. As we grow, we obviously need to add people; some create growth and some sustain growth. We want to keep opex as low as possible; but we want to grow and need to invest enough for the future. So we try to be very methodological about it and do everything we can to not become bloated, but not too lean either. It's a fine line. Here are some random thoughts and bullets about team building and recruitment I've picked up over the years.
Fix Problems With People
Any time you have a department in your business that is not going super well; it's often a people problem. It sounds obvious, but entrepreneurs can overlook things and see the best in people. We've had departments that weren't keeping up with the rest of the businesses' growth and there were a lot of little problems. We hired a strong director of those departments, and almost instantly nearly all of those little problems went away. Now any time I spend more time putting out fires in one department, I ask myself if we have a director of it, and a strong one at that. It might feel like it can work to not have. director and keep things lean, but it will almost always backfire.
Don't Be Afraid To Re-Org
If you're growing fast, you should be undertaking some type of re-organization every year to 18 months. If your family is growing, you need a bigger house. Your org chart is the same. The way you have things set up originally is likely not the best for tomorrow. We've re-orged several times and it's been an amazing decision each time. Departments work better together, your strong leaders gain more responsibility and influence, and you can remove bottlenecks. I think working on your org structure is one of the most important things you can do in a fast-growing business. When you do it, some people will get more responsibility and some may get a boss who was previously the head of things. Each conversation requires craft, but your business will be better for it.
Ruthlessly Prioritize
You may have a lot of roles you want to hire. But you can't hire all of them now. Budget doesn't allow it, and even if it did you can't recruit and onboard all of them at once. So how do you determine which roles and in what order? First, I think about it in a few ways. You have roles that are directly incremental to revenue. Let's say you want to launch on Amazon and want to hire a Director of Amazon before you do. That hire is directly incremental and should be prioritized.
Secondly, you have hires that help support and fulfill on revenue. They might not create it, but they make things work smoother. These can be ops roles, project managers, or cx, Push these off for too long and you're going to have a mess on your hands.
Third you have hires that buy back time. This can be your time, or time of other leaders on your team. These roles are not necessarily setting up anything new; but they are taking over tried and true practices in your business so you or other leaders can spend more time on new things that will grow your business.
How do you know which roles you need to hire for first? It depends what stage of business you are in. If you've been growing fast, you probably haven't up-leveled your ops, supply chain, cx, or other team in a while and might be getting behind. Before you chase more growth, make sure you have the team to handle it.
Next, let's focus on who we say no to. You likely have a bunch of people on your team who are asking for help and could use a hand. But you need to prioritize. Who can work a little more efficiently? Help them better use automations, Chat GPT,and time management tips and see if their issues dissipate. In the past I would rush to hire these team members help, when now I realize there are intermediate steps to alleviate burdens .
Then, you need to pick 1-2 initiatives per year. Hire leaders to lead them at least a quarter before you want to tackle them. Choose these initiatives wisely, and make sure they have the ability to create a step change in growth for your business. I recommend doing a minimum viable product first if possible. For example, we've dabbled with Direct Mail ourselves and had great success. One of our upcoming hires is going to help us really grow this channel. Or we started the year with 3 stores and want to open a bunch more this year. You can bet we invested in a strong leader for this department.
This means that you are going to have to hold off on other roles. You are going to disappoint some team members who feel they should be getting more support. And often they can get it, but it's just not top priority.
Leave Some Room In The Budget
I'm all about prioritizing, as said above. But occasionally someone great comes along and you weren't planning to fill that role for another 3-4 months. It's always good to have the flexibility to make these hires earlier because you don't want to miss out on a great fit when you can. You can't do this very often, but for the right person it will be worth it.
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It's pretty late, so I'm going to call it here. Again, please reply if you like these so I know if it's helpful or not. Hope you have a great week ahead.
-Cody