Hey, hey, welcome back. Today I'm going to talk about how to leverage a team to scale both your business and your freedom. So much of scaling a business comes down to building a team and growing as a leader. Often entrepreneurs come to me and they want the results that are possible once they've stepped into the role of a CEO and have a high-performing team, because that's when the real freedom comes. That's when scaling is not all dependent on you. But the thing is, these entrepreneurs, they're not there yet. They feel stuck, and they don't know how to get from where they are now to where they want to be. They keep trying things, but it's not working.

Maybe they're inexperienced managers of people. That's often the case. And even though they know how to get results themselves, they're impatient and frustrated when it comes to developing a team. What I can tell you is the way to get to your goals won't be by doing more of what you've already done. You can't keep doing things yourself or trying to delegate and then taking it all back. What got you to where you are now isn't going to get you to that next phase, the next level of growth, the next level of freedom. And so today I want to outline this for you and walk you through the different phases of scaling with a team so that you can see that growth isn't just a quick shift from one phase to the next. You don't jump from solopreneur to CEO overnight.

Sure, you become a CEO as soon as you start a business, technically speaking, but until you're really serving in the true role of CEO, living out the responsibilities day to day of a CEO and have a team around you to support you, until then you're not going to feel all of the benefits, right? You're not gonna be able to focus on that role. So let's look at each phase. Let's look at what the team looks like and what your role needs to look like, and then how you know when you're ready to go to the next phase. Sound good? Let's get into it. The first phase is when you are a solopreneur. So at first, most business owners are going to start out in the solopreneur role. You're going to be the only one in the business, and everything is on your shoulders.

You wear all the hats, you do all the work, you have no team, no support, and if anything needs to be done, you're the one who has to do it. That means you're the graphic designer, you're the social media manager, you're the one delivering and working with clients, you're the one selling, you're the one handling the books. Everything in the business is done by you. As soon as your business has validated that you can bring in some sales, as soon as you have any sort of consistent revenue, even if it's just a few thousand dollars per month, you could be ready to take the next step to bring in some support and go on to phase 2. So as soon as you can financially afford it, I recommend that you take that next step and bring on your first hire. Now, if you're listening to this and you're still in phase 1, but you have consistent revenue, I want you to know it's going to feel scary to invest in that first team member. You're going to really question whether that's the right step to take.

I'm sure you're going to be afraid that revenue isn't something that's repeatable yet. You're going to be afraid that it's not going to last, but the way to make that revenue repeatable is to begin to document systems for how you are creating it and delegate that work to someone else so that they can keep doing what's working and you can continue to do other things that are either higher level or testing new strategies, whatever it might be. Okay. So you have to free up your time so that you can step into a higher-level role and work your way towards becoming that CEO. And in order to do that, you've got to start getting things off of your plate and you've got to start learning how to lead. And that's not going to happen until that first hire, which brings us to phase 2. In the next phase, this is where you're going to start looking for a team member who will likely be an assistant who you can delegate a myriad of tasks to. It's going to be a wide variety of things that you can get off of your plate so you can begin to free up time that you're spending on often repetitive tasks.

Okay. This hire is often going to be a generalist who can tackle all kinds of entry-level implementation work. In other words, they can do exactly what you tell them to do. Very systemized, very repetitive tasks. And they can do that variety of things because they can follow steps easily. You want someone who has a high attention to detail, who follows directions well, and who is positive and open to doing a wide variety of things. Over time, you might realize that you are ready for other areas of expertise in the business. You might begin to want to hire contractors like a bookkeeper, a copywriter, a social media manager, but let's be clear, they have their own business if they are a contractor.

And at this phase, you go from being a solopreneur to a manager, but this is a manager of work, not people. You are the client. They are external partners providing services. They're not part of your internal team. So this phase is a critical phase as you're transitioning to build a team, as you're learning to lead, as you're learning to manage the work, and you're going to go through this phase, but I don't want you to get stuck in this phase because, as you might imagine, hiring people who are experts in every single area of your business will be expensive. And hiring people who are really managing their own business and spending the majority of their time looking out for their own business is not what's going to work the best for you long-term in your business. Now, that's not to say you won't always have some contractors working for you, but eventually you want to shift and have more of an internal team.

Okay. Not having the ability to manage the people and have them all in on your business will limit what's possible for you. Working with contractors can be so incredibly helpful in your business, but if you're really looking to scale, then eventually you're going to want to shift to the next phase where you begin to bring in internal team members. Okay. Phase 3, that's when you step into the operator role. As you have more consistent work for team members, you're going to begin to bring people in-house, a.k.a. employees. This is when you shift from solely being a manager of work to also a manager of people, because this is when you'll shift from hiring all contractors to hiring those employees and building that internal team. This is what I consider an operator because now you're in an operations role overseeing multiple departments and integrating all of the major functions and people to create results.

You're not just outsourcing specific tasks, you're delegating results to an internal team who's all in, who's behind your mission and vision. This phase is a big step, even though you're not fully relieved of all of the day-to-day responsibilities in the business. It just starts to feel incredible because you begin to see that this business is really bigger than you. It's so much more than you. There's a culture that starts to build that just isn't there when you have external contractors with their own businesses. And now you're creating that internal culture. It feels amazing. You have dedicated support from an aligned team.

And so that internal role, that in-house team, means you're stepping up to the operator level. So you're not necessarily doing all of the things, but you're still likely doing quite a bit. You're not maybe doing all of the work, but you're managing all of the work and all of the people. Everyone reports to you still, and you're probably touching all different aspects of the business. Even if you're not the one doing the actual work, you're approving, you're giving direction, you're coordinating, you're managing projects. Again, you're managing people. You're really getting into the weeds in some cases, especially where there are problems, but you're not doing it all. Maybe you're not even managing every aspect anymore because you have other team members that you're delegating bigger-picture results to.

Maybe you bring in someone to be a project manager, and so you're able to relieve yourself of managing some of the work. Maybe you bring in a director over one of the departments and you trust them to create results. You're still managing them, but you don't have to approve everything, right? So there are some micro phases within this phase. But big picture, it is so likely that you're going to be a bottleneck in the business, and your time needs to be freed up because you are ultimately so responsible for managing everything in the business. Okay? That's the operator level. Phase 4, CEO. This is when you bring in a second-in-command. You step out of the operator role after you hire someone to step into the operator role.

This is the stage where you actually step into your CEO role. You let go of the operator-level tasks. You begin to hire other leaders in the business. This is the role, that integrator CEO role, second-in-command role that you hear about. If you're really wanting to scale to your full potential, sure, you can make it to six figures as maybe a solopreneur or a manager. Maybe you can make it to multiple six figures in that operator role, but if you want to scale to seven figures, you're gonna need to step into the role of CEO, and that means not only do you have to have a team that's supporting you, but now you're bringing on another leader in that operations space to provide oversight of the team and day-to-day operations. So you're not the one responsible for direction and accountability of every team member at the ground level. Yes, at a high level, of course, as the CEO, you're always responsible, but you need to have someone to take that management work off of your plate.

And now you're holding them accountable for results and you're focusing on leading versus all of the day-to-day management of the work. Okay. This begins to give you bandwidth as a CEO to make all of those big visionary decisions and to brainstorm opportunities to scale the business. The second-in-command or the integrator role is not just managing any single function of the business. The reason they call it an integrator is because they're integrating the teams and the core functions or departments of your business. Okay. They're making sure everything in the business and everyone in the business is working together in order to get results. So they're making sure the entire business is running well.

And this allows you to step into being the CEO. You get to focus on the bigger picture. You get to feel excited about creating ideas, thinking about the future, building relationships, focusing on team culture and team building, and you get to make key decisions. You get to focus on those strategic decisions in the business, but then you get to communicate those to your second in command who will make those a reality by translating your ideas, your vision, into actionable plans. Okay. You're going to know that you're ready for this phase when your capacity is maxed out, even after you've let go of implementation tasks. When your capacity is limited for management responsibilities and you have multiple people serving in various departments within the company who need to work together to get a result, then you know that you've got different functions, different departments that all need to be integrated and managed.

And this is when you're going to really start to treat your business like a company and you need someone to integrate all of those roles. Okay. At the beginning, I mentioned how many of you are excited about the results of being in the CEO role. You're excited about what's possible for your business and you're excited about what's possible in your life when you finally have the freedom that you want. You can't rush there. There are a few steps in between that we've gone over. Okay. For some of you, phase 4, being the CEO, is your ultimate goal.

But many of you don't even realize that there's a step beyond that is possible, a step beyond the CEO role that will give you even more time and freedom. Some of you aren't interested in this, and that is okay. But some of you, I want you to hear that there is another option. If you don't want to be part of the day-to-day business forever, then listen up to learn about phase 5. Phase 5 is all about stepping into the founder role. Now, you were the founder from the beginning if you're the one who started the business, but at phase 5, you're stepping into that role of founder only. You're no longer in this CEO role.

So the fifth phase that I really want to touch on here is when you move out of the CEO role and you start thinking about your ultimate vision of hiring someone else to manage the business, to be in that CEO role. So you might actually want to step out of the CEO role after scaling the business to a certain point and serve exclusively in the founder role, which means you're a thought leader in the industry. Maybe you're still providing strategic direction at a very high level, more of an investor or a strategic partner. There are different ways that this can work. You can still be involved if you would like, but you're not at all in the day-to-day. You bring in another CEO, and that means maybe you sell the business, maybe you hire a CEO to manage, but you stay involved in the business. In other words, you keep the business but bring in someone else to serve in that role. There's a lot of ways that this can look, but I want you to open your mind to the possibility that there may come a day where you need to be prepared to step out of the CEO role where your business needs something from a CEO that's different than what you're capable of providing.

Maybe the business outgrows you and your capability, which isn't a bad thing. That means you've done your job. You've done a great job. And now it's time to step out, either sell the business, become the founder only, and bring someone else in. Okay. So that's phase 5. So as a recap, there are five different levels here to scaling with a team. There are five phases that you'll go through.

You'll go from solopreneur to a manager to an operator to a true CEO, which is what so many of you talk about and are aiming for. And then ultimately there's also that fifth level of founder only, but you're going to need to go through these phases. You can't just skip steps, right? And at every phase, you need to be willing to let go of what worked before in order to embrace what's going to get you to the next phase. You're going to have to learn to grow and stretch through every single phase. And that's exactly what I work with my clients on. Whether you're a solopreneur or you're in a manager level right now, whether you are stuck in that operator role and can't quite get to the CEO role, wherever you are, I'm here to help you. So stay tuned because yes, we're going to talk about operations. Yes, we're going to talk about marketing and sales.

We're going to talk about how to hire a team. We're going to talk about all of those things, but we're also going to talk about leadership because if you can lead someone well, then you are able to continue to promote yourself to the next phase. And eventually you'll be able to do anything you set your mind to in your business because you're going to bring on team members and lead them to get your desired results.