Issues to Expect as You Grow

Transcript

Transcript of the recorded lesson. Recorded 2023, reviewed 2026.

In this video I'm going to talk about common issues you can expect as you grow your business. Now the majority of issues that you're going to run into are people issues and that's why we spend a lot of time making sure that our new hires are the right fit for our company and not just anybody with a pulse and or photography experience. We look for very specific things and take our time. Even after offering a position we want to make sure that the person we interviewed is the one that shows up for work. On one occasion we had a new hire during their second day of training mention to the trainer

that they just wanted to learn how we operated so he could start his own business. Needless to say this person only lasted two days. This shows you that sometimes what people say during the interview isn't always their intention. When considering bringing on additional people you probably are really busy and don't want to spend a whole lot of time sifting through applicants but trust me it's worth it. Years back we had several employees that were not good fits for our company. These individuals would constantly complain that it was too hot, too cold, too busy, not busy enough and it drove us crazy. Ultimately we put a stake in the ground and decided that we weren't going to tolerate

their behavior anymore and within six months we had five or six of them leave. These individuals left on their own once they realized that we weren't going to tolerate their behavior. It's not only important to have standards but also to enforce them and hold people accountable. If you decide to hire Upwork freelancers you'll want to make sure to hold them accountable as well. You can see your team members productivity, as screenshots are taken every ten minutes, you can also see how productive they are including how many mouse clicks and key strokes. After I saw how Upwork held workers accountable we implemented a software called ActiveTrack on our employee devices which helped us weed out some bad eggs in the

organization. Another issue you'll run into is training. Training takes a lot of time, effort, and energy. When we started we trained our media specialists to do everything from start to finish including shooting, editing, and delivering. We now segment our business. We realized that we had multiple people leave and start their own real estate media businesses because they did everything. There are going to be certain individuals that don't care about non-compete. You may be able to pursue them legally. I never have because it wasn't worth my time. It was just more of an annoyance. So that's why we recommend segmenting your business and having different people do

different tasks instead of training everybody to do everything. Segmenting has helped us deliver a better customer experience and a more consistent product as well. When you segment the likelihood of people leaving and starting their own companies is less likely. I don't mind if people do their own thing but it does bother me when they try to take our customers because we spend a lot of time and effort acquiring them. We have also found that training videos help to bring new hires up to speed quickly. It helps them know how we operate even before meeting their trainer. It does take some time to put these videos together but this will save you a lot of time

in the long run. Another issue you will run into as you grow is outgrowing your systems. As we've grown we've had to update our phone systems, accounting systems, website systems, and customer communication systems. It is simple when you are by yourself and only service a handful of customers. As you grow having efficient systems will save you a lot of time and energy especially from doing repetitive tasks. You'll have to figure out new ways to operate efficiently with more people. We've spent a lot of money designing our website to help reduce customer outreach by building in many self-service options. Having self-service options makes for a better customer and team member experience.

Another thing you want to keep top of mind is your profitability. If you are not careful this can be something that you lose sight of as you grow and become busy. As you bring on more people your expenses will grow exponentially. It's important to make sure that your product pricing and revenues are sustainable. The last thing you want to do is grow a big organization that doesn't make any money so it's important to have appropriate pricing, wages, and expenses to ensure that your company is sustainable. There have been years where we did very well revenue wise but our bottom line profit wasn't as much as we had expected.

In this particular case we were heavy on the support staff. We had a four person sales team, four admins, and a higher salaried leadership team. You want to make sure that you have more revenue producing team members than support staff. Profitability is now something that I monitor each and every week. Anyways these are some of the issues that we've experienced as we've grown. Expect the unexpected as you grow. There are plenty of issues that will surface. We've shared a lot of the problems that we've experienced here at List of Pros but there are a lot more beyond the ones that we've shared. Alright guys that's going to do it for this video. Reach out if you have any questions. We'll see you guys on the next one.