How Your Team Impacts Your Business' Ecosystem with Emily Thompson

08/25/20 • 53 min

Engineering Calmer Agencies & Consulting Firms: Calm is the New KPI

Hiring the RIGHT people in the RIGHT positions with the RIGHT mix of skills makes your business more efficient, more effective, and more profitable. And having just one wrong team member can tank the whole thing.

Getting this right is all about your strategic—and every day—decisions.

Your decisions on who you hire touches everything in your business. Decisions about what your process looks like affect your software choices. Decisions about your business model affect your marketing strategy. Decisions about your software affect your cash flow.

And this all ties back into how your business is an ecosystem. Each and every decision you make matters and can affect all the other areas of your business.

Your decisions around who you choose to fill those roles and how you onboard those new team members all impact how effectively and profitably your business can operate.

No stranger to making hard decisions and priming herself for growth is Emily Thompson. Emily is the co-founder and host of Being Boss, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs and coauthor of Being Boss: Take Control of Your Work and Live Life on Your Own Terms. Emily is also the founder of Almanac Supply Co, a retail concept that makes and curates products that help people connect with the seasons and live closely with nature.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

How Emily uses key members of her team to run both Being Boss and Almanac Supply Co.
What her hiring (and firing) process looks like—and how she preps herself for those hard conversations
How she hired the right person in the perfect role for their skillset and it resulted in tripling their revenue

Learn more about Emily Thompson:

Learn more about Susan:

Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
Twitter @ScaleSpark
LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Getting this right is all about your strategic—and every day—decisions.

And this all ties back into how your business is an ecosystem. Each and every decision you make matters and can affect all the other areas of your business.

Your decisions around who you choose to fill those roles and how you onboard those new team members all impact how effectively and profitably your business can operate.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

How Emily uses key members of her team to run both Being Boss and Almanac Supply Co.
What her hiring (and firing) process looks like—and how she preps herself for those hard conversations
How she hired the right person in the perfect role for their skillset and it resulted in tripling their revenue

Learn more about Emily Thompson:

Learn more about Susan:

Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
Twitter @ScaleSpark
LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Previous Episode

How Your Software Impacts Your Business' Ecosystem with Melanie Richards

Software is the lifeblood of any modern business.

Software keeps projects on track and helps clients pay you.

Software is how we communicate with each other.

Software allows you to operate leaner and smaller than ever before.

And every piece of software involved in your business has a role to play—an integral part of your business’ ecosystem. It has a job description and it's a core member of your team, just like any human. That’s why it’s even more important that you have the right tool, doing the right job, at the right price.

Choosing the right software tool, particularly when it comes to your choice of project or task management, can impact how well your team communicates, how well-informed your clients are, and how they feel about your service as a whole. Your financial software choices can also affect how quickly you can send an invoice, how quickly clients pay you, and ultimately, how healthy your cash flow is.

And that's what we're talking about today with Melanie Richards, owner of Modern Traction, a boutique web design agency. Mel is an award-winning web designer and brand strategist with over two decades of experience. Her turnkey approach is designed to save you time, ensures your brand and messaging is on point, and that your website is built to drive growth. Mel’s on a mission to create efficient marketing solutions that support busy entrepreneurs to gain faster traction and multiply their impact.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

How the right choice of software has helped Mel scale her company, increase profits, and deliver better results for her clients
How the right software tools make your team more effective and how ClickUp helps Mel’s team know what to do next
All the tools that have been essential for Mel’s business
Lower costs, less complication, more opportunities for automation

Learn more about Melanie Richards:

moderntraction.com

Learn more about Susan:

Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
Twitter @ScaleSpark
LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Next Episode

How to Approach Investments in Your Business with Michelle Mazur

Deciding whether or not to make an investment in your business — whether it's hiring a consultant, enrolling in a course, getting a new piece of software — is always a bit of a gamble.

You're trying to manage your risk, manage your cash flow, predict the future, evaluate the opportunity cost, and a million other parts and pieces.

All to answer the question, "Will it be worth it"? Because when it comes to return on investment, that's the question we're really trying to answer.

Many entrepreneurs ask whether the investment will make enough money to cover the expenses. But that's just scratching the surface. The return on investment question goes much deeper than that and involves many factors.

For the next month, we'll be talking about return on investment, how to think about it, how to evaluate it when it's murky, and, ultimately, how to use that to make better decisions about investment in your business.

To kick us off, today I'm talking to Michelle Mazur, the founder of Communication Rebel. Michelle helps business owners shake things up (but having trouble talking about it) through their messaging. In this episode, Michelle shares some of the significant investments she's made in her business that had a long payoff, her approach for evaluating investments in her business, and her view on the intangible, long-term benefits of those investments.

Listen to the full episode to hear: