Moving from solo operator to running a team

dave
how many staff members do you have? just curious

 

5 in Sydney, 3 in Adelaide, plus a bunch of subcontractors.

 

After 25 year's in retail and employing many junior team members this is the number 1 thing that we look for in our recruitment process.

 

When are you free for a coffee? my shout

 

Cool. Are you in Sydney?

 

Maybe at the end if the year. Ill suss out your organisation to see if it's a fit for me over a coffee

 

Do you like cake with your coffee ?

 

Even if it's not, good to have free coffee.

 

D is correct, just trying to be succinct with my advice.
I have also never started growing a business as a solo operater, but have started many new businesses and centres albeit with the help of many other staff and supporting structures.
Would rather keep a level of anonymity here due to my role, but very happy to answer any general questions.

 

We hit the GO button on our new business on Monday. There's 3 of us at the moment and a 4th starting today, (2 of us are the owner/directors but also on the tools). The other 2 staff are guys we know that we've worked with before.

We're a structural drawing office, we prepare plans for commercial buildings. Our revenue is pretty much directly related to invoicable hours, which is directly related to number of staff. We have so much work to tender it's just not funny, I reckon we could take on another 3 or 4 guys straight away.

The two main problems for us, (and I've seen it over and over in this game) - cash flow when you start, we're skint for 2 months now until invoices start coming in so paying wages is tough at the moment. secondly, it's easy to grow too big too fast when the work is there and it all seems too easy, then one job goes south or the work dries up, or you over invoice and underquote a job and suddenly you've got a huge wages animal to cover with no income and a lot of work to finish. That's the scenario I have seen many drawing offices go bust due to.

The office we set up has space for 5, we want to keep it at 4. That's enough to pay the two guys and for my partner and I to make "wages plus cream", without things getting too stressful.

Part of our reason for starting up wasn't just to make a squillion dollars but to take on the jobs we want, in the time frame we want and work how we want. As someone earlier put it, money isn't always the main motivator. Our guys like us, like working for us and the office is fantastic compared to all the places we've all worked before.

I'd also add that now I'm running an actual business and not just managing my projects and workload my productivity has reduced by about 30% and reduces slightly with each new staff I guess as it's just more none-billable managing to cover. The upshot is there's more invoicing off that staff member though.

Good luck with it.

Tone.

 

Only just last week my mate was let go due to this type of circumstance, civil engineer drafty. Big job finished up way over budget company went from 10+ people to just a couple trying to gather up the pieces almost over night.

 

Congrats on starting off. Stressful but rewarding.

Your own productivity goes way down and eventually stops the bigger you get. Although I do know a couple of people who have brought in managers so they can remain on the tools.

I think this is a real decision a business owner has to make, stay on the tools and stay small (often more profitable in the short - medium) or get off the tools and get big. Taking a whole person off the tools usually means that you have to employ a swag of people to make it back to where your income would be if it was just you and an admin support.

 

Sim Not sure this book will help as you may have already read the book as it is old but ,but it may be something to read and give you some idea's..
http://www.marshallcf.com/assets/book summaries/e myth revisited-w.pdf

 

LOL!

That's my goal - no productivity at all; other than leisure time productivity.

 

Great post.

I think outsourcing is great and had full time positions for several years. The driving reason that I brought those positions in house was to help with answering phones, I now have 5 people answering calls and still use a phone answering service to pick up the missed ones.

Trainees
I was involved with traineeships back in the 90's when working for someone else and have used trainees in every business I have had since. They are a great way to develop people in a growing business. I think @chindonly uses a lot of trainees in his organisation also and would have some great examples. They are cheap to start with ($400 a week for a year 12 school leaver) and the combination of you spending time training them and the training they get from their RTO can turn them into a really valuable asset when you need to pay them a decent amount from 2nd year onwards. You do get a large number of applicants and need to cull but picking up the green 18 year old with the right attitude can really pay dividends.

 

Mike O'Hagan who started Mini Movers is big on outsourcing and there are some decent you tube videos on his philosophy. He also run's Mike's Manilla tours, where you go with other business owners to the Philippines and tour outsource facilities.