Getting Past Small Biz Fear: Hiring a Team
Whew.
I’m not going to lie, the last year has been a total whirlwind.
Between buying a new home here in France, family visiting over the summer and lots of fun client projects, my plate has been full! However, September's arrival hath brought renewed aspirations for business development and…gumption!
Gumption (Informal noun, initiative, resourcefulness, spark) isn’t necessarily an innate trait. I believe it grows with experience and confidence. But every small business owner must have it in some quantity in order to get started!
But if I’m being fully transparent, there are a lot of things that scare me. Crowds. Fear of being rejected or disliked. Meatloaf (not the person, the food - what even is it?)
But here’s the thing about fear, at least in business: It’s part of the growth process! Fear means that we aren’t complacent. That we have aspirations and goals. And that there is work to be done.
Over the past two years, it has become very clear to me that if I wanted to maintain my client load, I would need to get some help. For me personally, this required some gumption. I had a lot of fears around hiring a team. As is often the case with fear, they were not based on any true reality, but rather on hypothetical and largely unfounded thoughts.
Here were some fear-based thoughts that were preventing me from moving forward with hiring:
I don't have any employee training set up
What if I am a poor leader?
How will I keep everything organized? What if things fall through the cracks and clients are unhappy?
What if I can't find the right people?
As it turns out, these fears were legitimate, but by no means prohibitive to the end goal - getting support for my small, service-based business.
Here's what worked (for me!) to get past fear:
Setting up a secure password system (1Password)
Purchasing a shared Google Drive for teams so that all documents can be organized identically with clear naming conventions and pathways
Getting everyone set up on the same time-tracking software with color-coded categories (Clockify)
Learning to DELEGATE via a shared task list
Being open with my team about the fact that this is a learning process for me too!
If you are a fellow service-based business and feeling burned out, fear not! Finding the right people to support you is 100% attainable. Small steps will help you reach that goal.
So without further ado, I want to introduce everyone OFFICIALLY to my amazing team! You can also read more about them on my our About Page.
Happy hiring!
Lindsey Baumsteiger
GRAPHIC ARTIST, MAGICAL UNICORN PERSON
Many of you have met my graphic designer, Lindsey. She is incredibly talented, hard-working and professional. I cannot say enough good things about this amazing woman. She creates and delivers all graphic elements for Bishop Content Studio including social media posts, brochures, flyers and PDFs. I am honestly not sure what I would do without her at this point!
Lara Lafferty
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT MANAGER
Lara has recently started as our Social Media Manager. I am blown away by how quickly and efficiently she has jumped in and adjusted to managing all of our accounts with ease and grace.
Lara has worked as a creative professional for years, and has extensive experience in social media marketing, digital content creation, sound/music production, arts education and more.
Amanda Wolf
WEB DEVELOPER, WORDPRESS WIZARD
Amanda is our resident Wordpress wizard and SEO maven. She is super talented at what she does, and I am so grateful to have her on the team! Amanda is based in Canada and has extensive experience working with coaches and small businesses to help them get off the ground.
