I’m super excited to have Tess Blankenship on the show this week to share about building virtual teams and growing your small business. Tess is a powerhouse that helps small businesses grow, by providing the virtual (remote) resources that help fill in the gaps. She has an amazing background of paralegal, marketing, and hiring. She and I really hit it off talking about creating efficient processes and workflows (I’m still a project manager at heart, friends).
There’s so much to digest in what Tess and I talk about that I’ve created an awesome cheat sheet just for you, so you can refer back to all of the thoughts and suggestions we discuss about building virtual teams and growing your small business, and when to start looking at bringing in additional resources. Remember, that with anyone you are hiring, you will need to give structure, letting them know the 2021 Holidays and annual leave months they can have off, etc. will help them be on the same page as you. The teams you’ll need to bring in are things like Tax accountants, digital marketers, and tech consultants, which will all work with your business to allow it to hopefully grow into a success. This episode should be useful for smaller businesses to try and work out whether to bring in more resources or not. Growing a business can be difficult, but there are ways of doing this and professionals like Accountants Melbourne that are ready and waiting to help you along this process. One of the best ways to get growing is by digitalizing more processes of the business. When hiring virtual teams or adding new software to your business, you may realize that you need some Managed Services Australia to help you with the new IT that your business is using. That should reduce the number of problems that your business experiences as the outsourced IT professionals should be able to fix these issues and check that they are working. Whilst IT can seem scary for small businesses, it is one of the best ways to grow the business, whether that’s by using new software or hiring a virtual team.
Here’s what Tess and I talk about:
3:30 Tess’ early sparks of joy (entering her cat in a competition, horses, fort building with her brother), and how my best friend entered her guinea pig in a costume contest.
6:00 Who Tess works with now – small business owners, and helping them hire virtual teams, and set up efficient workflows
9:20 Where Tess sees process inefficiencies pop up – in both larger businesses and with entrepreneurs
10:00 Ideas for businesses on how to improve the process and why they should hire a consultant
13:00 Tess’ background (paralegal, marketing, hiring consultants) and her shift in going into business for herself
16:00 Advice on what to do if you’re feeling like you want to “go solo,” or become an entrepreneur
19:00 The problem with getting hung up on making “6 figures”
21:30 Tess’ shares her 3rd piece of advice on going solo
23:00 When is a good time to bring on additional team members? Should you wait until you’re “big enough?”
27:00 Areas to consider hiring out, to start with, as an entrepreneur
34:00 what to look for if you’re considering becoming a freelancer (how to pitch and put yourself out there)
37:30 what might surprise you about Tess’ role as a consultant and remote team builder
39:40 Where to find Tess if you’re looking to hire a virtual team or contractor, or, if you have skills that might translate well to being a virtual team member
40: Tess shares her thoughts on finding balance, and how to jump start your joy
Resources
Tess Blankenship’s website
