In my last note, I talked about my challenges when I hit my first big growth marker in business: Delegating.
In case you forgot, here’s a list of people I hired during this phase:
- Business coach
- Virtual operations team
- Intern
- Full-time employee
- Website Developer (x3)
- Technology (Ok, this is not technically a person but I bought a ton of technology hoping to get the support I needed)
NONE of these hires turned out to be the support that I needed. Although each of these hires was a failure in a way, I like to say that I always find a way to fail upward. Here’s what I learned from each of them.
BUSINESS COACH
Cost: $1,100/month
Positive: I do think working with a coach helped me mentally and spiritually during this VERY low point in my journey, recovering from my injury. (Check out my last note if you haven’t heard about the broken pelvis.) I got out of my emotional slump and reignited my goals into something bigger than I had originally had imagined.
Challenge: While my coach was always available to me, she was too much of a cheer leader and yes person. All she did was bleed my bank account by enabling all of my CRAZIEST and MOST EXPENSIVE ideas. $6,000 on a brochure… $30,000 on bed frames (I also flew her to NC to meet the manufacturer with me)… $4,000 of fabric samples… $12,000 on a “launch event” in a dingy bar… Oh yeah, plus the $2,000 on invitations! Realistically these were terrible decisions for where I was in business at that time.
Lemonade from lemons: This is where I learned how important it is to hire someone industry-specific and ensure their operation is similar to what you would like to build. Work with someone who has been there, done that, and is walking the walk. Someone who looks out for your financial interests and helps you make smart decisions not just cheers you on! This informs everything about how I work with my coaching clients today.
VIRTUAL OPERATIONS TEAM
Cost: $1,300/month
Positive: At the end of this relationship, the only positive I can really remember is that at least I was getting social media content published consistently… Which I know I wouldn’t have been doing on my own.
Challenge: For what I was paying this “virtual operations team,” I realistically had NO idea what was going on. I should have asked questions like:
- What do they handle in-house and what do they outsource?
- How many hours of support am I paying for? If I don’t use it one month, can I use it the next?
- Do I control the deadlines?
- Where can I check in on what is being accomplished each week?
- Can I communicate directly with the person/people working on my projects?
I felt like my own business was outside my control, and I couldn’t pinpoint any results or ROI that came from this investment.
Lemonade from lemons: I built the 4Dbiz services and technology around what I hated about working with this team. Everything we offer is designed to keep the interior designer in control of projects and hyper-aware of what is being accomplished.
INTERN
Cost: $900/month
Positive: My memories from this experience weren’t terrible. I did feel I was getting more support than the virtual operations team I had fired – and I was saving $400 doing it! My intern could run around the city, make pick ups, hem drapery, and take photos on site. I had some consistent social media content going out. I ended up working with this individual for several years, even as I grew a more successful team around me.
Challenge: While I was getting some of the support I needed, I wasn’t able to delegate more profitable design work. The pace was cringingly slow and I didn’t feel like the quality of work matched. Even though my intern was eager (which is a quality I love), she was also disorganized, inexperienced, and unprofessional. In fairness, this is what should be expected from an intern. I spent more time on micro-managing her task list than I got back in support for the business.
Lemonade from lemons: Through this experience, I started to think about what specifically I needed help with – instead of just hiring someone without a real game plan.
FULL-TIME EMPLOYEE
Cost: $2,880/month
Positive: The only positive I felt from hiring a full-time employee was that it is nice to have a lot of man hours available to you… When you actually need them…
Challenge: …But what about the weeks that you don’t need full-time support? Or when you need support from someone with a different skillset? One, full-time employee was TOO MUCH support WITHOUT the well-rounded skills to help in every way I needed. I wanted someone who could do the occasional floor plan, shop drawing, or rendering. I also wanted someone to help keep me organized, place and track orders, and correspond with vendors. But I also needed to keep the social media going, design new brochures etc. Ultimately, it’s unfair to think that one person could be successful in all of those avenues.
As a result, there were times where I was just trying to fill her time with nonsense. I was financially STRESSED. I really did not need 40 hours of weekly support from one individual.
Lemonade from lemons: The 4Dbiz Fractional Team structure was developed from this experience.
WEB DEVELOPER (X3)
Cost: $$$ and Sanity
UGH!! What a Journey this was. Let me just say there are a lot of what I call “Crooks” In this industry. When I originally started looking for a web developer, my goal was to create a custom virtual custom workroom that streamlined yardage and labor calculations. Since I was stuck in bed, I needed a piece of technology that had all of my knowledge and experience! The first web developer I hired charged me $12K for a 5 page “wireframe” PDF document, then quoted me to $100K to actually create it… OH HELL NO.
The second web developer I hired came from my BNI group. I loved passing business to my group whenever possible, but Kevin (the supposed “web developer”) turned out to be TERRIBLE. He had no idea what he was doing or how to connect the logic of what I wanted to build.
It wasn’t until I ended my contract with Kevin that I started working with Joe, who remains the 4Dbiz Web Developer to this day! Though the Virtual Workroom I originally wanted to build failed (that’s a whole different story I’ll tell one day), it planted the seed for everything that 4Dbiz would become.
Lemonade from lemons: The wrong web developers brought me to the right one. Joe has worked with me to build everything from the 4Dbiz Virtual Workroom to the portal that our clients know and use today.
TECHNOLOGY
Cost: Annual fees galore
All I have to say here is that I bought a TON of technology during this stage. If they offered a sale for the annual membership, I purchased the year up front. Demo or no demo, I was sold into things very quickly thinking they were going to be my quick fix. WRONG. Technology frustrates me and it’s impossible to get human support these days, so I never ended up feeling relief or even support. Technology was never going to fully replace humans for me in my business.
Lemonade from lemons: As we were developing 4Dbiz, we always kept the mission that HUMANS would be our greatest value. The technology would always be merely a vessel to keep the business owner in control of their human team.
So there you have it. A lot of challenges and a lot of lessons learned! All of which brought me to the point of understanding what a growing business owner really needs in order to run and build a sustainable, profitable, thriving business in this industry… And that’s where 4Dbiz enters this story.
More to come!
