Most new business owners start out with a goal of growing their business. Often, things go well for a while, but then they hit a wall after the first couple of years.
When you hit that wall – you’re running yourself ragged and you feel like your company can’t handle any more work – you’ll know you’ve been growing instead of scaling.
There is a difference between growing and scaling. Growing is something that happens to your company. Scaling is what you do intentionally to handle growth – as you get more customers, your company gets bigger to handle your increased workload.
There are about a million little things you could pay attention to as a business owner, so let’s focus on workload and delegation. As a business owner, you have a lot of responsibilities, and you should not be doing day-to-day tasks that you could teach to members on your team.
Pay attention to how you’re spending your time. Pay attention to everything you do, think about it honestly and critically, and then identify the things that you could hand off to someone else.
1. Recruiting and Hiring the Right Employees
Delegating needs to start long before you show up at the job site. The first step is taking the recruiting and hiring process seriously.
Finding good employees is even more important than finding good clients. Your employees need to be willing to work, but they also need to be able to present a professional image and represent your company well. Even though you're hiring people for manual labor, you should keep an eye out for traits like intelligence, leadership and strong character.
If you've made bad hires in the past, you've probably paid for it. It's OK to be a little more choosy with recruiting and hiring.
TIP: Don’t just hire the strongest guys with the most landscaping experience. People can be taught landscaping much more easily than they can be taught leadership and responsibility.
2. Recognize What You’ve Got
Every employee is different. Some will be especially hard workers, some will have unique talents, and some might be natural leaders. You need to learn to recognize those employees early.
TIP: Not all employees are the same, so don’t treat them as if they are. Your best employees are your most valuable asset. You should bend over backward to keep them (AND keep them happy). Weaker employees? Even if you like them personally, don’t be afraid to let them go.
3. Coaching
Once you’ve identified them, you’ll want to groom your strongest people for increased responsibility. When you're on a job, don't just give orders – explain each decision, along with how and why you reached that decision. The only way you can expect your employees to understand what you want is if you take the time to explain your thought process.
TIP: Invest time in coaching your best people every week, if not every single day. Yes, this is hard. It’s easier and faster to just plow ahead, directing people on what to do and never explain yourself. But that’s how you drive your business straight into that wall we talked about. Invest the time in your team and it will pay you back a thousand times over.
4. Delegation
Start delegating tasks early and often. Start with small things that won't hurt too much when they go wrong.
Communicate with team members and be available to answer questions, but don't try to micromanage them. Let them get the job done in their own ways and make their own mistakes.
Yes, they'll make mistakes. But, if you did your job in steps 1-3, they will learn from their mistakes, they will get better, and your company will be stronger for it.
TIP: Let it go! Your employees will sometimes do things differently than you would, and sometimes they will make mistakes. But having employees who feel confident and empowered is far more valuable to your business than having everything done exactly the way you would do it yourself.
Effectively delegating is only one aspect of scaling your business, but it’s an important one. If you pay serious attention to your personal workload, your systems, and your numbers you’ll find that you can break through that wall and scale your business to whatever level you want.
Jon Orcutt is president of Driven Landscapes, a Massachusetts-based landscaping company.
