the bossbabe podcast - 87. From Solopreneur to Multi-Million Dollar Entrepreneur: Here's What The Journey Looks Like Behind The Scenes

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

Behind every thriving business is an aligned and talented team. There’s only so much that you can accomplish as a solopreneur. In order to scale your business to the next level, you will need to build a team, but also learn the art of "letting go". If you're transitioning from a solopreneur to CEO, then this episode is for you.  Tune in as Natalie Ellis, CEO of BossBabe, shares her personal journey from solopreneur to co-founder of one of the largest and most impactful communities of unapologetically ambitious women. We discuss the importance of hiring on attitude and why it’s vital to cultivating a team that truly understands the impact of the company.  Join us as we lift the lid on the early days of Team BossBabe and how Natalie learned the art of "letting go" as she stepped into her new role as CEO.  Get two free months of Skillshare premium membership and receive unlimited access to over 1000+ classes: www.skillshare.com/bossbabe  

hiring on attitudes really important and we want to hire people that truly care about the impact that the business is having because at the end of the day this is your business no one is going to care about it as much as you do and to expect anyone to do that is absolutely crazy. You can't run a business and not cry about it. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance, and learning how to balance it all. I'm Kaye Snells, head of marketing at Boss Babe, and your host for this week's mini episode. These mini episodes are designed with you in mind. Each episode, a member of Team Boss Babe and your host for this week's mini episode. These mini episodes are designed with you in mind. Each episode, a member of Team Boss Babe will dive into one topic, whether that's

product, sales, marketing, community, or leadership. So consider this your weekly mini training that's super actionable so you can implement it right away. A Boss Babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. All right, so let's dive in. I'm so excited to have Natalie back on the podcast today. We always have the best time. And so today we're going to talk about the journey from being a solopreneur to becoming a CEO of one of the most impactful companies for women right now, if I do say so

myself. So welcome back, Natalie. Thank you for having me. I'm really, really excited about this one. This one is a question I feel like we get asked a ton. So I want you to just get as specific as possible. Just ask me anything. All right. Or an open book. That sounds good. So today we're going to talk about learning to let go, growing a team, but also sometimes having to let go some of those team members.

So I wanted to hear from you first. When did you first start building a team? When did you go from being a solopreneur to knowing that you have to really scale to a team to achieve your big goals? So I built my first team with a company previous to Boss Babe, which was around four and a half years ago now, is when I started building a team and then I kind of start from scratch with Boss Babe a whole new different business and we started building a team for Boss Babe about 18 months ago so I've kind of done this journey twice now. How does that feel? It's always a transition and with Boss Babe you know we're building in a way

that I never did with my previous business. It's just a completely different ballgame. Building a team is really scary. And I feel like people don't admit that often enough with contractors and our full time team. We have around 34 employees now. That's a lot of people to be responsible for on top of a business that impacts millions of women around the world and transitioning from solopreneur to CEO you know having a team and I even had this conversation with Stephen last night you often think as a solopreneur if I just had a person to help me do this my life would be so much easier if I could just get help with this my life would be so much easier and it's that's not the case and I really wish entrepreneurs talked about that more because when you're a CEO you have a whole new set of challenges you're not just managing yourself anymore but you're managing people you're managing their emotions their motivation their ability to be successful it's just a whole different thing so I always say to anyone that is thinking about transitioning from

a solopreneur to a CEO get intentional about that decision is it truly what you want to do and I love it I'm so glad I did and I want to continue building our team but I always knew I wanted to be a CEO whereas I have a lot of friends that actually they love being solopreneurs they love doing it on their own and they maybe have a VA or one or two contractors that support them on things that maybe aren't their zone of genius and they're happy to stay there so I think the first step to all of it is just get intentional that's's so true. And I feel like entrepreneurship is so popular right now. And so everyone wants to get in on that and everyone wants to become a CEO because it looks really cool, but it's not

for everyone. And so I think a lot of people sometimes strive towards that, but they might not be ready for it. And so I think it is taking on a whole new skill set. And so I would love you to talk a little bit about the biggest things that you have learned and some blockers that you're currently still facing. I agree. Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone. And definitely, if you're only doing this thing to get rich, that's not the right path to go down. You can get paid just as well in a corporate job you've really got to have like that long-term vision so I'll kind of start at the beginning which I think trips people up when they're hiring their first team member to be spending money on team versus taking it home

can be a really hard pill to swallow as an entrepreneur say you're making let's say 50k a month right and you're used to at the end of the month you've got 30k profit you take that home versus you bring on your first team member maybe 5k goes towards them and what they're doing and here's another thing a lot of entrepreneurs will relate to when you start your business you wear lots of different hats and you get so much shit done that when you look back you can't even remember how you were doing it all when you bring a team member on they are never going to do it the way you do it and they're never going to be able to do as much as you do because at the end of the day this is your business. No one is going to care about it as much as you do and to

expect anyone to do that is absolutely crazy even if you give them stock, even if you do those things because it's not their business and at the end of, you know, it's like asking a friend of yours to care as much about your hobby as you do. It just isn't that thing. So I think that's the first thing. And that can be really hard for people. And so it's really about finding those people who are really passionate about not only being part of the business, but you know, where the business is going. And our team, I think one thing that makes them so amazing is they really care about the impact that we're having and that's what makes them care yeah they might not care as much about the day-to-day running of the business like you do but they care about where the business is going they care about the impact that's really important and you can hire and train on lots of

different things you can't train on that another thing that really comes into play is that attitude you cannot train a bad attitude and we really care about that when we're hiring we want people that are passionate about the industry who care as much about it as much about the impact as we do which we've been able to find and then also people who just have a really good attitude who are willing to learn willing to be patient with you because it's a startup and you can speak to this too like I think in a startup you have to be so patient with an entrepreneur who's running it because they might not have a ton of experience in corporate or the way things are often done they might not fully know where they're going and to be able to work with that that's really important so those are some blockers that I do

see people facing and I think it comes back to that get intentional part if you really want to scale your business you cannot do it alone the things that we're able to do at boss babe I could never do I just it's not my skill set I don't understand it I wouldn't have had those ideas I know what my zone of genius is and I know what it isn't and me trying to be everything to everyone is going to end up in us doing a shitty job and when it was just Danielle and I in the business we dropped so many balls and couldn't focus on so many different things whereas now we can and so that's another great reason that you should hire people so there's kind of a lot in there and then in terms of what maybe I might be facing now so 2020 is going to be a really big year for Boss Babe and one thing that definitely I struggle with is knowing where to go because there are always five different paths at

least at any given time and I come home and Stephen will say to me oh this is such a good idea have you thought about doing that if every entrepreneur had ten thousand dollars for every time someone said have you thought about doing that they wouldn't need to have a business yes we've thought about doing it we just haven't got time and I talk a lot about this but having focus is your superpower as an entrepreneur because you've got to keep your team focused too because they also are excited and have lots of different ideas and if you aren't clear on where you're taking them and where you're going there'll be a lot of different people working on a lot of different projects and moving the needle in tiny ways in lots of different things and so that's

always a big thing for me is like, how do we focus? And then whenever anything happens in the market or with competitors, really seeing that and deciding what that means for you and being able to have space to be reactive. Because it can be great to be completely planned out till December 2020. But where's the space for reactivity? Where's the space for opportunityivity where's the space for opportunity where's the space to say yes to things that are exciting I think that's a big thing so we're

always struggling with that Danielle and I and we definitely don't have it figured out yeah I mean there's so many nuggets in there and I think that resonates with a lot of people like finding focus is really really hard and then being able to pass that focus on to your team is a skill on its own so I think there's a lot of truth in there and I want to dive a little deeper on that too so how do you pass that focus on to your team? So it starts with you first get really clear on what you're doing and how you're going to get there so I love to start with a google doc and I just type and I create almost like a mini essay on what our strategy is going to look like.

But to go and give that to my team is probably really overwhelming. And your job as a CEO, Stephen joked that all my experience in writing Instagram captions comes in handy because your job as a CEO is to translate your big, well-thought-out strategy into as few characters and words as physically possible. So I love to create slide decks and doing that alone helps me really focus on where we're going and just sum things up really easily and concisely and then just constantly reminding your team where we're going and if they

have ideas or questions remind them of the focus and ask them is this serving where we're going to go is this going to help you reach your kpis and our business goals and then in terms of their KPIs and goals make sure they've got a place that they can go and see it and that they know what they're working on especially if you're building a team that you have managers and they have team underneath them because you've got to make sure that your vision and focus goes from you to maybe a team member that's being managed a few levels below it's explained to them in the right way in the same way that you would want it because a lot of things that can be like Chinese whispers I might say okay we're gonna go all in on red for 2020 and by the time

it gets to you know the sixth person they're thinking we're going all in on blue and it's no one's fault it just means you haven't really communicated and had that one place of truth that's so true and I also think that when you're trying to pass on that message, it's really, really important to ask for that feedback and make sure that the way that you're communicating is coming across in that way. So asking people like, okay, so how did you hear this message? Or what do you think your next steps are? I think that's really helpful, because then you can hear how they heard it through their perspective. So that really helps a lot as well. So I wanted to go back a little bit to specifically that first person that you hire. I think that that person is really someone who helps you translate it to that bigger organization over time, right? And so I want you to talk a

little bit about how much it took for you to hire that first person and then how that person then brought in more people like them and that that really built out your vision for Boss Babe. This is a great question so for anyone listening you should read The E-Myth it's a really really good book and they talk about an entrepreneur hiring their first person especially in a business that's being built organically with no funding. They find the first person that can take weight off of them. And that person might come in as, say, an operations manager or a marketing manager. And soon they end up being a jack of all trades.

They take on absolutely anything and everything because you just are so happy you have someone to delegate to. And they are normally the kind of person that feels good taking on lots of different things. They don't really need a lot of direction. They're really happy being your right hand. That is a really great first hire. Someone that doesn't need the most defined role, doesn't really need super specific KPIs but actually is willing to just get down on the ground with you and implement what needs to be implemented, take weight off you so you can be freed up to go where you're going and projects are still happening. That being said that person is not a long-term hire generally they might be

they might end up turning into the best COO ever or they might start to see the company building into a place with a lot more stability, processes, SOPs, all of those things and realize they don't like that part and they like to be in businesses where things are a little bit more frantic. That's often the kind of person that you might find and so know that going in that your first hire might not be your forever hire and that's also okay. It can be a worry for entrepreneurs that you spend so much time training them that actually if they leave you're gonna have wasted all that time and it's just not true. They've helped you get from A to B and at the end of the day like we said they've also got their career interests and you

have to be okay with them going after what feels good to them but make sure you're documenting what they're doing and learning from them. So my first ever employee I learned so so much from them I learned what I was like as a manager I learned what I wasn't so good at how I could be better I learned what it was just like to have that working dynamic as a boss and employee experience is really important in that situation so you'll learn a lot so there's that kind of first hire then there's your first hire that you're hiring for the long term someone that you might be investing a little bit more salary wise in and someone who is going to help you make a big step change in the business and they're coming in and their intention is not only to help you out where you are now but to build a team they're going to be sourcing people they're really going

to be helping put in infrastructure that kind of hire is really really important so the one I'm talking about in the first place if you're a solopreneur it might be a VA it might be an entrepreneur who's trying to get their business off the ground but needs money in the meantime so they're willing to do everything and anything your real long-term first hire is someone who's got experience someone who is willing to stay in the long term someone invested in your business who does care about your business and has experience with people. So when Danielle and I brought in that person that was a real game changer for us because we really got to step back and think intentionally about the culture we wanted to create,

about how we wanted to create processes within the business, all of those different things. So hopefully that helps that distinction. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favourite all-in-one platform Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know,

get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe yeah that helps a lot for sure and And so when you're then starting to build out that team, how do you make sure that you still have that high quality output, but also the high quality people? Do you invest a lot of energy in training? Like,

how do you make sure that the team is high performing? Yeah, so we're getting better at training, we're getting better at the onboarding process, but it's not something that we are perfect at. So a few different things. When you're hiring, like I said, hiring on attitude is really important. And we want to hire people that truly care about the impact that the business is having versus, oh, I follow the business forever and I love the business. In fact, do you care about where we're going? That's really, really important to us. And attitude. In a startup, you you know there's always going to be some late nights some weekends there's going to be times when you have to fully self-manage it can be crazy and so we want someone with attitude willing to just like

roll their sleeves up and dive in so that part's really important and then the second part about how to make sure they're high performing so we have a little hack that I'm going to share with everyone so we use Kajabi to host all of our online courses if you're an IGA member or a mastermind member you'll know it's in there and then what we've done is as we kind of have grown the business we've created playbooks so we have recorded our screen or we've written things up in word docs as processes and we've just continued to build that up and now what we've done is put that into Kajabi as if it's an online course so that when someone joins we send them a login and they can go through that course and get a real introduction to what Boss Babe is and it

kind of starts with a video from Danielle and just you know welcoming them into the business letting them know all about our culture our values that's something that we sat down and got really clear on what do we care about so things like balance it's a real value of ours. Like you can speak to this, like I don't work myself to the ground at all. I really care about balance. That's one of our value props. So we put that all together and we can see what people are going, like what kind of flow they're going through as they're onboarding. So that's the first part is just making sure they're trained, making sure they understand the business. And then the second part of that is making sure your job as a boss is making sure someone can be successful and so just thinking about when they come on what does

that look like do you plan out their weeks do you plan out their milestones do you get really clear on that or is it a role that they're going to help you create like that which is also fine you might not know what their four weeks looks like and they might know coming on they need to help you with that but just getting clear on what that looks like and having those conversations and then know what motivates your team so if it's hitting milestones and goals how are you sharing that with the team how are you making them feel seen and making them feel like the work that they're doing actually is contributing to the impact you're having as a business what is your favorite way to give a kudo just Just like a little DM. I love like a little DM. I love words of affirmation myself. Yeah so I just like a little DM saying hey you did a really good job with that. Oh yeah I love that. I love

that. So there's a saying that basically says hire slowly but fire fast and so I want to talk a little bit about that. Taking your time to hire the right person can feel like you really want to hire someone quickly, but actually it's a really good idea to take your time. And so then once someone has been hired and they might not be performing at the level that you would like, it is best to fire fast because otherwise it affects the whole team so I'd like you to talk through some examples of where you hired someone or had to let go of someone and how you handled that so that's a very timely question just based on the past month so I think it's really important I think hiring slow is really important and what that really means is getting so clear on the kind of person you want to attract you have to be so certain of who they are what their exact role is going to be what their day to day looks like what kind of personality traits they need to have it's like getting clear on your

ideal client right getting super clear on that that's the slow part and then it's not compromising when you're doing interviews like really make sure you're asking those questions that are going to help you understand that person that being said you can do all the research in the world you can get the best references and then someone might join the team who was just not a good fit. Now we did have this just a few weeks ago where we did have someone join the team and you just know whether they're going to be a great fit for your business or not and it's one of those questions you get to ask yourself is my job is to make this person a success but I know I need something from them in order to make it happen and they have it or they don't and like you'll have a good instinct whether they're right

or whether they're not and if you have that instinct that they are just not a good fit give them everything they need in a really short space of time to be really successful give them everything and ask them to do a project that you know knowing what you've given them you know what the output should have been do that so you can be super clear on whether they are underperforming across the board or whether they just haven't had the resources they need do something like that if it still comes back that they're underperforming or they're not the right fit then you need to let them go there's no two ways about it and employees can be costly and the time you're spending trying to train someone that's not a good fit or isn't in the right seat you could be spending on hiring the

right person and so we let someone go after about a week and a half which was a very fast time but why waste time why waste time just to be polite it It just doesn't make sense. If you know that they're not the right fit, then they're not right fit. But that being said, like firing someone is never going to be a nice experience. I've only had to fire two people so far in my life, like two full-time employees. And each time has been so hard. And the first time I remember I cried so much after doing it. I went out, I had lots of tequila and it's just something that I just don't think is nice but you've got to do it because you've got to keep your bigger vision in mind you've got to keep the rest of your team in mind and you've got to make

the decisions that feel good to you yeah 100% I think there's a lot of truth in there and I think I would love you to speak to that a little bit more because I think that you come across as so confident and able to make these decisions but then you hear that you did cry a lot right and so how does someone who is a very much a feeler very much in their feelings get over that and really make a rational decision for their business yeah that's a really good question and I mean I think whether you're a feeler or a thinker you know in your gut whether let's say it's a person right you know whether they're a good fit or not and so think about the reasons that you might not want to go let them go. Is it because you don't think you've done enough to help them be successful? Is it because you haven't got enough

time to help them? Is it because you feel like you did a bad job in hiring them? Or is it because you really don't want to deal with making them sad or the repercussions of firing them out? Or whether it's a feelings-based thing or a thinking-based thing, get really, really clear on that. But as humans, I think none of us like to feel like we are upsetting someone, letting someone down, or that we're letting ourselves down we just don't like that and although a lot of us might come off confident on social media like you can't run a business and not cry about it I am just gonna say that like I have so many entrepreneurs as friends who look so calm and collected on the outside whereas sometimes it's just the weight of the business can be so stressful and it can be really, really hard.

Like there are so many times I go home, I pour myself a glass of wine and I have to remind myself why I'm doing something because it's exhausting. And when you're maybe firing someone and you're doing the kind of work or the tasks that are really, really awful, you've got to be OK with just being all in your feelings and not being hard on yourself for that. Like it's just not a nice thing to do. I think that was spot on and I think that resonates for a lot of people so thank you for sharing that so before we close it out I wanted to talk a little bit about not just letting go but learning to let go as I can see the smile on your face so ready for this question and so how are you learning to let go now that you have a team so I want to flip this because so you've been a really big part of teaching me how to let go because for everyone listening I mean you probably already know I'm a Capricorn control freak I love

to sign things off I love to make sure that what goes out is right you know I remember when I was just writing all the quotes every single thing come from me. And it's not that way anymore. And to let go of that control can be absolutely terrifying. So you've been a really big part of helping me get there. How have you been able to help me, like, not sign everything off or let go a little bit? I'm still working on it. I'm tough one to crack.

I think that you have to really get to know that person from the get-go. Actually, I'll do a quick side story. We just had someone start, Romina, and she's Natalie's new executive assistant. And so in her first week, it's day three for her on the job. She has asked myself, Natalie's husband, and then Natalie's co-founder, Danielle, about what it's like to work with her. And I think that is key because you're getting that quick download on who is this person, right? So that's what I do when I join. I immediately sit someone down and I understand what are their motivations, what are they like, what's their personality like,

what do they hate, what do they love, and then you can cater to that and you can really get to know them so I think for me when I'm working with an entrepreneur that is really having struggles with letting go I just figure out well what do they care most about and what do they care less about so with you I knew that you cared a lot about the podcast titles which is such a detail right so I wanted to make sure that that was taken care of and that you still felt like you were in control of that. With other things where you felt less strongly, I would make sure that like I can start taking that off your plate. And so I think now we've come to a point where you are feeling really good about everything,

including podcast titles. And I think it's taking those baby steps that God is there. What do you think? Yeah, I love that. And so the way Kay did this was really funny. So she said, okay, you have three titles to sign off. And after that, you are done. And I'm like freaking out.

I'm like, okay, that sounds good. It's not that I don't trust anyone on the team. I'm just a control freak. So you would send me titles each week and I would sign it off. If I said yes with no on the team I'm just a control freak so um you would send me titles each week and I would sign it off if I said yes with no revisions you're like one of three two more and you're off and I think that really helps as well like injecting humor into it and being really upfront with that person like okay I need you to like let me do my thing and for anyone listening who works with entrepreneurs which I know a lot of you do just letting them know that

you are aware of it and even you know say a post goes out on social media and the comments on it aren't great. You know, that happens when you have a big audience and we have, we maybe put something out that might be slightly controversial and we'll have 50% of the comments are amazing, 50% they really dislike the content. And for me, I want to know that my team thinks about that. So it's really helpful when they send it to me and say hey I see the comments on amazing on this we've made the decision to keep it up though and here's why I'm like oh I feel really good about that because I know it's being taken into account so that when I see that in future I don't have to worry that no one's seen

it I know they have and I know that they've made a decision to keep it up for a reason and I think it goes back to the beginning what we we were talking about, like the people that you hire, they have to care about the impact and the reason why the business exists, the business's mission. And I think when they do, like our team, I know that they are not going to put something out that is going to damage any part of the brand or go against our mission or go against our purpose. And I think that's so important.

I think that's so important as well. I think you perfectly just summed up this whole podcast episode so I'm gonna leave it at that thank you so much Natalie for speaking with me today this was awesome love it if you loved this episode please please subscribe, download a few more, and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. The Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. It covers everything from our favorite rituals, books, and hacks. If you want a copy, just leave us a review, screenshot it, and send to podcast at bossbib.com. We will then email you a copy ASAP. And since we love Instagram, you can

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