BIRD WILLIAMS: You’re listening to Bird Means Business Episode 4.

Hi there! This week we’re closing out our 3-part mini-series on the top 3 lessons I've learned from owning my first business. After 6 years of owning a gym business in Houston, Texas, it’s called The League and it’s a lot of fun. I’m looking back on the top lessons I’ve learned so far and I'm sharing them with you so that as you launch, or grow your business, you're better equipped. 

So the first lesson was “Secure Your Money Team”, particularly your attorney and your accountant. Lesson number two was that “Every Client is Not a Good Client”. And our final lesson is related to your internal team. The people who interface directly with your clients are crucial in setting the tone of your business culture. Terry and I were recently speaking at a business event, and we were asked, “How have you built such a strong culture at The League.” I mean, that just floored me right then because it was a person I'd never met in this crowd who apparently knew that we have a strong culture at The League. They don't even go to The League. And so it just really, it meant a lot to me. And you know what? This has a lot to do with the way we hire, train, and inspire our team. So as a gift to you, I created a free guide on “Building a Winning Culture in Your Business”. It gives some practical tips on how we engage with our team and how it kind of flows from them down to our clients. I'll definitely include a link to this free guide in the show notes. We even interviewed some of our team and our clients and got their take on The League's culture, so it's fun. Click on the link in the show notes to get your copy. 

Okay, let's get into our final lesson. Lesson number three “Hire Slow, Fire Quick”. Have you ever heard of this phrase? Hire slow, fire quick. I won't say I fully agree with it at face value. Let me give you some context. Let's talk first about “hire slow”. So, I agree with the idea that you should take time to hire your team - your staff, your employees. You don't want to hastily decide, out of desperation, kind of like what I mentioned in the episode on your money team. You want to make sure that when you bring people on, you take time for that process. Another thing that's hard for new entrepreneurs because again, you're managing so many things it's like, “I just want the perfect person. God can you just bring them, bring the perfect person along so I don't have to worry about this?” But it doesn't work that way. It takes time. So I definitely agree with the hire slow concept in that way. 

But this is where I have a little different spin on it. I don't think you should wait too long to start hiring people onto your team. You don't want to wait when you're burnt out to then start hiring and building your team. This is my take. As soon as your business model allows, you want to start building a team. Don't be a control freak, like me, then try to do it all yourself. You want to outsource and delegate so that in five years you'll still have a business. So do you see how that can kind of seem a little bit contradictory? Once you are ready, once your business is ready to take on that commitment, you need to make it a priority to hire people onto your team. You don't want to rush the process. And you don't want to wait too long to start hiring onto your team. Does that make sense? 

So for example with The League, it was a year before I stopped working the front desk. Yeah. When we launched, you know, Terry taught all the classes, and I worked the front desk for every single shift. And that was okay for starting off. Sometimes that's what you need to do to start and that's okay. But a year in, I didn't have the capacity to think of profitable growth strategies for The League because I'm sitting there at the front desk. It was kind of a hot mess y'all. I would be sitting there, sometimes with two different laptops, one to sign people in, to let the scanner “beep” sign people in. And another one for me doing whatever side work I was trying to do for the business so that I didn't waste time while I'm at the front desk. So what was that doing? That's not allowing me to be the perfect customer service rep front desk for the gym. And I’m also not able to fully focus on what I'm trying to do on the other end, the behind-the-scenes stuff on that second computer. 

So with Bird Williams, I changed it up. From the very beginning, actually the first week of my launch, I brought on an incredible project manager. I wasn't playing games y'all. I was not about to make that same mistake again. One of the things I wish I'd done earlier was growing our team, hiring people to work at the front desk, hiring on more instructors earlier. Not waiting about a year to do that. If you want your business to grow, you will have to hire. And the sooner the better. I've known people who had incredible businesses and their business is no longer here today because they did not make the decision to hire people soon enough. You can only do so much yourself. If you want your business to be here in five years you have to hire people on. And this doesn't have to be extravagant. That project manager I mentioned, is only working five hours a week in the beginning. So it's manageable for me, and it will grow over time as the business grows. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. You don't have to put someone full-time with benefits from day one. I’m just saying, you need to be aware enough of where your business is so that you are able to make those adjustments so that your business can continue to thrive. 

Okay, so the next part of that is fire fast. I know it sounds harsh, but I actually agree with this one more fully right at face value. Yeah, fire fast.

I'll tell you a story to explain this one. So, a couple of years I think it was into our business we hired on someone who we thought was great. Everything checked out. And even through the onboarding process in the first few months, this person was doing a great job. However, several months in we started to notice something was kind of just strange all of a sudden. This person was just doing weird things like bringing friends to their shift, who were just kind of sitting around while they were working and not processing payments correctly and not really giving any reason why. It was just like, “I didn't do it like I don't know.” And it was just these strange behaviors occurring over months. And, we would send this person notices and have conversations. But the person just wasn't really changing. We wanted to keep believing that the person would change. It's like you spend all this time, onboarding this person, investing in this person. You just don't want to let the person go, but we should have. Because this is what happened. Ultimately, the night before we were actually leaving the country. My husband and I were taking a vacation, which we rarely did. And this person just didn't show up to their shift, which is a big no-no for us in our business because culture is so big for us and we don't want the client experience to be affected. And it was just a complete mess. I mean, it had everyone kind of scrambling and we were at home in the middle of packing for our trip. And we had to stop what we were doing to basically go fire this person. It was awful. And had we made the hard decision earlier on, we could have avoided that entire catastrophe. 

So fire quick. Use grace. But when you start to have that gut feeling like something isn't working, don't hold on to hope. Just let go and move on before it's a disaster.       

So there you have it. As you build your dream team, think about the tone you want to set and how that will affect your business culture. It all flows from the top down or should I say from the team down. I think you're really gonna like this culture-building freebie I created. It'll be linked in the show notes. 

Your team is everything. Have you noticed I call them my team? I don't call them staff or employees. They're our team because they're in this with us. And culture-building starts with even those little minute details. So wherever you are in your business, I guarantee you will find something helpful in this guide. Again, you can click on the link in our show notes, and you can download “How to Build a Winning Culture in Your Business”. 

So I really hope this mini-series has helped you. And I would absolutely love to learn some of the lessons that you’ve learned in your business. So share them with me on Instagram @heybirdwilliams, or on Facebook, Bird Williams. 

Y'all next week it's my birthday. And as a Christmas baby, I'm not really one to celebrate my birthday because it's always like people are out of town or can't make it and that's, that's okay I've kind of learned to be okay with that. But this year is a memorable one, so stay tuned to see why.