Welcome to Part 3 of 5 of our series Scaling Your Web Design Divi where we explore proven tactics and concrete strategies to help you expand your website design activity based on Divi.
Once you have the mind set up to grow your business and have solidified your systems and processes (the best you can), you're ready to grow your team. At this point, business owners often rush into hiring, growing a team and building a large agency, but without the state of the art. appropriate mindset to manage this growth, this will often lead to a series of difficulties that could have been avoided.
The next 2 articles will intentionally focus on the proven strategies and tactics of experienced Divi business owners I interviewed to help you find and hire employees. Adequate talents for your business / situation. Let's go!
Contents
Finding and Hiring Your Dream Team Divi Web Design
This could easily be a series in itself, so we will keep this concise and directed to the scale. With all that is stated in the previous posts, it is probably very obvious why you would like to build a team. One of the main reasons is that you can not grow your business by doing everything for yourself. I myself have tried doing too much things by myself and have had trouble delegating work. Having a "do it yourself" mentality is great in many ways, when you start as a single man, but it has costly negative impacts when you are trying to grow a business.
And when we talk about forming a team, that does not mean that you have to hire employees, build an agency with 20-30 people and have an office. We are talking about delegating what work you need to delegate to free yourself to do what you do best. Subcontractors, independent online sites and colleagues with whom you can partner are great ways to add to your team. Maybe you hire them periodically or maybe you refer them directly to work, everything that works and helps you stay more profitable is the goal here.
1) Identify the roles you need to fulfill
As mentioned in part 1 of the series, it is recommended to consolidate all the major positions in your company and create an organization chart with the titles of the roles. Once you know where your strengths are and what positions you want or need to fill in your business, it's time to start taking steps to build your team.
A practical way to prepare financially (as a monarchist) is to keep track of your hours in all of these roles and then establish a budget for them as you go along.
Here is a simple example. If you charge $ 3,000 for a website totaling 40 hours of your time, your total hourly rate will be reduced to $ 75 / hr (3,000 / 40). The hours divided into 5 main roles could be the following:
Web design / development = 20h ($ 1,500)
SEO on site and work of content = 7h or ($ 525)
Project management (communication with the client, revisions, etc.) = 5 hours ($ 375)
Administrative / internal work = 5 hours ($ 375)
Sales / Marketing = 3 hours ($ 225)
So, if you plan to rent a design / dev and SEO website for a similar project, you can add them:
Web Design / Development ($ 1,500) + On-site SEO / Content ($ 525)
Then you can safely estimate to pay about $ 2,025 leaving you $ 975 for your time in the other roles.
Now we have not taken into account taxes, expenses or non-billable hours on the business, so you often plan to increase your costs in order to offset those costs for you ensure you create a profitable project. And you will probably want to consider more time if you work with less experienced team members or if they are training in these roles, but I hope it is a good representation of how you could prepare to fill these roles. and do not waste money doing it!
2) Find your dream team
If you have been in the Divi community for a while, you probably already know it, but if you are new, I have good news for you – the Divi community is perhaps the most powerful, committed, helpful, enthusiastic community online. This makes it a great place to get in touch with potential candidates to collaborate with your team from a subcontract, part time or full time.
Many people I interviewed said that they began their search for talent by first checking with peers and trusted colleagues in the Divi community, and then in. Engaging in Divi Facebook groups. Now, if you post an opportunity in a Divi group, you will probably get a ton of answers, so I'd be careful to do that unless you have time to sift through the resumes and portfolios. But a common way for these established business owners was to keep an eye on the people who were commenting, proposing solutions, helping and supporting them, and then soliciting them when they had the opportunity to get involved. feel in their place.
I would like to submit this approach to you if you are in Divi Facebook groups and you are looking to hire. And vice versa, if you're a designer or developer looking for an opportunity, just be aware that the way you interact with other Divi web designers is noticed and will go a long way in regards to potential opportunities!
A word for the wise: offering support, help and encouragement in groups will go much further than posting "Hire Me".
It's one of the most complicated parts of any business's growth, so do not take it lightly. Once your systems and processes are in place, hiring will be the next step in developing your team. Of all the people I interviewed, there were 3 main ways to find talent for your team:
Locally – One of the most convenient places to start is WordPress or business meetings, networking events, local colleges or other organizations like churches, Not-for-profit organizations and even social circles are places to watch. someone who could potentially fill one of these places.
Local hiring comes with a series of benefits that you might not find with remote hiring. On the one hand, face-to-face relationships often lead to trust, loyalty and understanding much faster than communication through technology. By working with a local team, you are also in the same time zone and you will probably share common interests. There will not be the challenges of cultural communication barriers or time zones with local collaboration.
If I can give advice for this method, it's always have an eye on the potential. In interview # 6 John Wooten points out that his prodijee came to jam with him in a band and see how his craft with sound would translate seemlesley into web design. Geno Quiroz in interview # 7 points out that his right arm came in the form of a pastor looking for a side job that turned into an excellent part-time work relationship. Keeping an eye on talent in unsuspecting areas will be the key to this method!
National – There are several reasons why you would like to keep your team in your riding. From the point of view of prices, taxes, language, time zones, etc. There are of course sites like Monster Indeed etc. the most notable are the Divi Facebook groups. Many of the same methods mentioned above can be applied here when it comes to recruiting talent.
What's great with our industry, is that, unless someone has to deal with a customer, most of our work can be done from anywhere. Remote work is common for most web teams and the new technology for screen sharing and video calling makes this lifestyle at work the new standard. Just be aware that remote work also has the obvious drawbacks and limitations associated with time zones and technology. As Andrew Tuzson points out in interview # 3 it was necessary to move workers from their area across the United States, which is another consideration to take into account when they work at the company. National scale
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Overall – Hiring globally is a remarkable thing for human civilization and is only possible recently with our informational and technological era. The barriers of language, information and cultural understanding are now broken. The Divi community and the WordPress community as a whole being global, hiring talented people in other countries is a reality.
If you are interested in hiring abroad, there are several reasons why you might want to do it. David Blackmon in interview # 5 shares the experience of their company in hiring abroad with lessons learned that I really recommend to look at if you plan to d & # 39; hire on a global scale.
Hiring talented people from other countries can really help a startup company with its financial results by allowing it to offer work at a much lower rate than hiring locally. But, as David wisely points out in this interview, it's important to know the global exchange rates to make sure you do not go down or that you're not paying too much what's waited in another county. Sites like UpWork and others have gained a lot of popularity in the world of web design recently but again, I strongly recommend starting with the Divi community.
If you are new to the Divi community, here is a list of great Facebook groups to start:
3) Hire your dream team
Once you have determined the roles you need to fulfill and you have found potential team members as needed, part-time or full-time, the arduous task of hiring begins .
A very interesting idea to note from all the interviews I've done is that when most were hired in a store, they did not set hourly rates and found the least expensive people to accomplish the tasks. The majority let their talent tell what they thought their value then went from there. This state of mind differs greatly from the majority of companies that are trying to hire the cheapest help.
Typically, companies divide the amount of work they need and plan the budget accordingly for renting (see above). And that makes sense financially, but what Divi web designers have learned in these interviews, is that in web design, if you want to build a successful team you want to keep an eye on people. T only interested in collecting a quick paycheck. Looking for someone to take ownership of your brand, your business and, more importantly, looking to empower them to grow in their web design journey. We will delve more into these next steps in the next article, but let's look at some practical examples of this.
In the interview with John Wooten he pointed out that when he initially found someone (who is now his right hand man), he offered a provision ($ xxx / months) and gave a number of tasks to accomplish on a certain date, when and where they wanted. Instead of offering these tasks at an hourly rate and simply collecting a check, his product was inspired and prompted to learn quickly and increase his production so he could do more per hour. This method then is translated into a very fruitful business relationship that is now the team behind Artillery Media .
In Geno's interview he reports a similar story when he finds and brings his protege; giving him a large amount of time and room to grow, this would allow him to take on more roles and eventually free Geno to do much of the work that he wants to do. That would not have been the case if he had just hired someone to do some chores for a cheap hourly rate.
And finally, Sarah Oates, who just started her climbing trip, in her interview points out that she used a virtually identical method to hire her graphic designer. Instead of nickel and eating it for a cheap hourly rate, she got her potential collaborator name what she felt was worth it and made a percentage commission on incoming projects. Again, encourage his new team member to work more efficiently and quickly to get a better hourly wage.
Note some similarities between these stories? Empowerment, growth and opportunities are at the heart of these hiring methods that have up to now led to a win for the business owner, a win for the new employee and a victory for the customer who has a project completed on time, with a happy team.
Closing Thoughts
I will leave these messages with a powerful thought drawn from Sarah's interview and that is "To find people who match and represent your brand."
It's easy to fit people to your style, but if you find someone who shares the same values, the same mission, and the same virtues, you'll save a lot of time. people hope to make them friendly, hire friendly people. "
Well, I hope this post has inspired you to think about your tactics to find and hire your dream team in Divi web design! Again, these ideas and concepts are drawn directly from the proven methods of business owners who are at the heart of the case.
Do you have any ideas, ideas or experience on research and hiring that you would like to share? Comment below!
Part 4 – Effectively Increase and Manage Your Web Divi Design Team
Join us for Part 4 as we delve into how to effectively develop and manage your web design team. Once you have found and hired new talent, cultivating these relationships and keeping them inspired is the key!
Until then!
