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Building a great team is a strategic decision that can reshape your business, allow you to embrace newfound personal freedom, and ultimately lead to a flourishing enterprise.
But how exactly do you get started?
To answer that question, we are joined by Ryan and Anna Leonard, a husband and wife photographer team and founders of Refuge & Co.—a 13-member, multi-state wedding photography company that believes in creating an unbelievable client experience that is a refuge for the clients they are blessed to serve.
In this week’s episode of Priority Pursuit, Ryan and Anna guide us through the ins and outs of how to build a team that helps your small business thrive.
How the Right Team Can Transform Your Business and Life.
It’s relatively easy to point to certain moments in time and say they changed your life, but how often can you say that something completely changed the trajectory of your future?
For Ryan and Anna, building an associate team did just that.
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When the couple was working independently, they could theoretically photograph 50-70 weddings a year, and that’s if they did one or two every weekend—which isn’t always the best option. Because of these limitations, they found that they were having to turn away potential clients just as often as they were able to book them.
This led them to wonder what they could do to allow people to still have the Refuge & Co. experience they wanted to share while staying true to their schedule. And, that’s where their associate team began.
In the realm of photography, an associate team is made up of photographers who choose to work under a specific brand like Refuge & Co. These photographers understand the mission that Refuge is serving and work under the brand to create a consistent experience and product for the clients.
And, according to Ryan and Anna, this associate team has completely changed their lives—in both their business and personal worlds.
Freedom to Work on Other Aspects of Your Business & Life
Before hiring great team members, Ryan and Anna were shooting around 40 weddings a year—which was both a time and mental strain. But, with their associate team, Refuge & Co. can now schedule 75 weddings or more. And of those 75, Ryan and Anna only need to shoot 10 themselves.
While their lives used to completely revolve around booking and working as many weddings as possible, their associate team allows them to take a step back and focus on different aspects of running their business, including diving into the educational field.
It also means they have more time to dedicate to life at home. With their budding team, they were able to grow their family without stressing about being at work or maintaining the top-tier experience they are dedicated to providing their clients. Their daily life looks completely different now thanks to the support they receive from their team.
How to Build a Team that Helps Your Small Business
When it comes to hiring your team, it all stems from what you choose to focus on. For Ryan and Anna, it was important to find the right people who aligned with their mission. This way, they could continue to provide the experience they promised their clients. As Ryan said, you can teach skills, but you can’t teach heart.
Even so, skills obviously play an important role regardless of what industry you work in. Oftentimes, small business owners are hesitant to add associates to their teams because they believe no one can do their job the same way they can. Ryan and Anna had similar thoughts at the beginning, but as they worked through the process, they realized they were lying to themselves.
Consider yourself and how you started. You weren’t always the expert in whatever field you work in now; you had to build yourself up and learn from experiences and procedures. Your team members can do the same—if you have the proper systems in place.
Before you consider adding members to your team, it’s important that you systemize everything that you do. From beginning to end, you need to have your processes laid out and written down so someone else can come in and continue to do the job in the same way you have been.
Likewise, it’s also essential to share the “why” behind what you do and how you do it. Without having this clear path of what people are working towards, you will likely create a dysfunctional and unhappy team that produces inconsistent experiences and products. Even a solo entrepreneur can crush a team of 100 people if there is no clear system or reasoning behind it.
What Building a Successful Team Means for You & Your Business
Success here can look different for different people. While yes, creating systems and building a team can help you book more clients and grow as a business, it can also help you achieve more freedom in life. It allows you to go from thinking, “I need to be doing this, this is my only source of income,” to focusing on life at home—whatever that means for you.
That being said, building a team does not automatically give you a perfect work-life balance. Balance isn’t always possible. It may happen for a split second, but by the time the next second comes along things can be thrown off again.
Rather than trying to accomplish that perfect balance, Ryan recommends finding a comfortable rhythm of ups and downs. You may not be able to control everything, but with a team, you are able to turn those high peaks and low valleys into a maintainable and steady rhythm. Perfect balance may be a fantasy, but you can find some peace and freedom in life with a rhythm.
How You Can Get Started
When Ryan and Anna first started on this journey, they had more questions than answers. That, combined with their experience as educators, led them to want to share their experiences with other small business owners like you who might be in the same place they were.
They have created templates and programs—like their Business Accelerators Program—to help you create the systems you need before you bring in team members. From coaching to email templates, they can give you the tools you need to continue developing your business to unimaginable levels. Check out their website for more information!
Be sure to listen to this whole episode (at the top of the page or wherever you listen to podcasts) to hear more insight and advice from Ryan and Anna about how to build a team that helps your small business thrive. If you’d like to connect with Ryan and Anna, you can visit their website or find them on Instagram (@refugeand_co) or Facebook.
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Learn More About Refuge & Co. Resources
- Receive 50% Off Your First Year of HoneyBook
- Receive 50% Off Your First Order from Photographer’s Edit
- Learn More About Treefrog’s Small Business Marketing Resources & Services
- Join the Priority Pursuit Facebook Community
- Follow or DM Treefrog Marketing on Instagram
- Follow or DM Kelly Rice on Instagram
- Follow or DM Victoria Rayburn on Instagram
The Priority Pursuit Podcast is a podcast dedicated to helping small business owners define, maintain, and pursue both their personal and business priorities so they can build lives and businesses they love.
You can find The Priority Pursuit Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Stitcher, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
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