Build a Small Team With Big Results (5 Steps)

In today’s episode, you’re going to discover how to set up a small team for big team output and success. Bigger isn’t better, it’s just bigger. In fact, the bigger a team gets, the more complex and slow the whole operation becomes. So let’s move away from the idea of a bigger team and more people, and focus on the results that we can accomplish with a small team.

Welcome to the Eric Dingler Leadership Podcast, a show designed to help you lead better, to live better.

Now, most people I work with in group coaching don’t have huge teams. In fact, most of the people I work with are just getting ready to hire their first person, or may have two or three people on their team already. This is just a group of people that I love working with and helping out. And one of the things that inevitably all of these folks have to come to terms with is to stop thinking about the size of their team, and focus on the output of their team.

A small team can be very effective and profitable. A lot of founders have big vision and big plans, and they want big things for their business. That’s why they started it. And they often think that means they’re going to need a big team of a bunch of full-time people, and that’s just not the case.

So what are some things that we should do, that we can do, that we should be focused on when it comes to building a small team that has big team output? Well, I’ve got five ideas for you I want to unpack today.

Number one:

Stop thinking that a small team means small impact. This just isn’t the truth. I’m telling you right now, it comes down to a lot of other factors, mainly your mindset. The biggest challenge is comparison robs you of your joy. And when you look out and you see what others are accomplishing, you get caught up in the idea that the grass is greener on the other side.

Well, here’s the truth: the grass may be greener on the other side. In fact, most of the other yards you’re looking into longingly, with aspiration, are going to be greener. Why else would you be looking at them for inspiration? What else would you be looking at them for? Motivation. But the truth is this: if the grass is greener on the other side, someone’s paying a higher water bill. And for a lot of us, we’re not willing or we’re not able yet to carry the water bill that it requires to get the greener grass that we’re longing for.

So you need to step back and stop comparing your beginning to somebody else’s middle. Focus on what you’re doing. Yes, have a big dream. Have a big goal. But celebrate what you accomplished yesterday and today. You’re already further along than you were six months ago, a year ago, even five years ago. I mean, my goodness, you are accomplishing things. You are building something. You are creating something out of hardly anything. And that’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to build and create. But you’ve been doing it and you’ve got the bruises to show for it, and you’re tired and you’re just ready for it to get a little bit easier. You’re ready to have another person or a few people helping, and you’re going to get there. Now’s not the time to give up. But you have to stay focused and break the broken mindset that’s not serving you well, that you need a bigger team to have a bigger impact.

Number two:

Clarity is the great equalizer. Whew! That was so good. I’m going to say it again. Clarity is the great equalizer. You need to have clarity for yourself. And if you already have a team, they need to have clarity. In fact, clarity is even more important when you have a team. They need to know exactly where you’re headed. They need to know exactly the next two or three steps they need to take to move the organization, to move the company forward. They need to have clarity.

You can’t have people wandering around trying to figure out what’s next, or you’re going to end up with a slowing down of momentum. You’re going to have people that want to prove they’re accomplishing something to you, so they’ll start doing things and working on things that don’t matter. Or they’ll just sit and wait because they think what they’re doing is enough.

You, as the leader, you own the responsibility of clarity. In fact, I think clarity is probably the number one thing that leaders have to own and wrestle with. We have to have clarity in vision. We have to have clarity in mission. Our core values have to be clear. Our next steps, our processes, our systems. We have to fight for clarity. Now, all organizations drift toward complexity over time. But you and I, we have to fight for clarity. Because clarity is the great equalizer.

Imagine what’s possible if you knew exactly what you needed to do every single day for the next six months. Imagine if your team had that kind of clarity. That you knew exactly what you were going to say yes to, you knew exactly what you were going to say no to, and you knew that the things you say yes to are the exact things that move the needle forward. How refreshing would that feel? How exciting would that feel? How much momentum would begin to build day after day? Do you see the impact that clarity has? Clarity is the great equalizer.

So if you want a small team having the seeming effect of a big team, clarity is the key to it.

Number three:

Systematize like you’re big. Communicate like you’re small. Let me say that again. Systematize like you’re big. Communicate like you’re small.

When you are big, it’s really too late to build great systems for that size. You need to always be building your systems two to three steps ahead of where you want to be. And when you get bigger, you won’t be able to communicate as effectively or efficiently with every single individual person. Eventually, your communication won’t be one to one. It’ll have to be one to many. So right now, you want to systematize like you’re big and communicate like you’re small.

A lot of people get this backwards. They have small systems, but they try to act like a big company. And they let their team wander in the dark a little bit. This goes back to what we were talking about with clarity. And founders are so busy doing work alongside their team, or all by themselves, that they feel like they don’t have time to work on systems and communication. But you’ve got to build the capacity in your systems for you to grow into. Your systems should always be developing for the stage you’re headed into, not for the stage you’re in.

For example, in our agency, my wife and I own and run a digital marketing agency. We average about twenty-five to thirty support tickets per day from our clients. And our system is working really well for that. But we built the system when we were managing an average of five or six support tickets a day. So right now, in the first of December of this year, we’re rolling out a brand-new support ticket system. We’ve already started teasing it to our clients and letting them know it’s coming. And we’ve built this system so that it can handle three hundred support tickets per day. We’re currently averaging around thirty. So we’re building a system for three hundred. It’s going to take us a long time to get there. But we’re systematizing like we’re big. And we continue to communicate as a team, to each other, to our clients, as if we were small.

Number four:

Do less with more. So many times we’re drawn to the idea of doing more with less resources. Well, for the success of your business, I want to encourage you to do less with more. Don’t add complexity until everything else is at its simplest form. Have a board somewhere where you’re writing down ideas of things you want to add, but don’t launch a new product. Don’t launch a new service. Don’t try to create opportunity when you haven’t maximized the opportunity already in front of you. Do less with more. Have your team focus on fewer things, but do it with more energy, more focus, more excellence.

Truett Cathy, who was the founder of Chick-fil-A, is famous for one boardroom moment where he was sitting there at around eighty years old. All of these executives and young leaders, with all of their education and experience and training, had been having conversation after conversation about ways to grow. How do we get bigger? How do we get bigger? And they were bouncing around all kinds of ideas and having what witnesses say was a really amazing conversation.

And Truett Cathy, without saying a word, began to smack the table with this repeated thud, thud, thud, thud. Slowly the room got quiet and everyone turned and looked at their founder. And he told them: these have been a lot of really good ideas. But when we focus on being better, our customers will insist that we become bigger.

And Chick-fil-A has been able to grow with unbelievable success in their drive-through and with their teams. They have a very small menu. They don’t leverage debt. They have some of the highest-paid and developed franchisees. And they do it all only selling six days a week, not seven, like all of their competitors. And they’re slowly expanding around the world. That’s some pretty major growth. And they do it all by focusing on doing less with more. They do fewer things with more focus and emphasis on excellence. You can do the same exact thing with your business.

Number five:

Lead like you’re building leaders, not followers. From the very first day when you begin to hire, you want to look at your team, even if it’s freelancers, as people you’re developing, not people you want as followers. Leaders are developers of those around them. Focus on building your team as leaders themselves.

And don’t have a scarcity mindset. “What if I help them get so good they leave?” Well, congratulations. Good for you. You just sent somebody out into the world who’s going to make a major impact. And you’ve already done it once, so you know how to do it. You can do it again, this time faster and with two people. And then, yeah, they might leave. Well, then you can do it faster with five people. So you’re doing something good. This is what sets people apart. This abundance mindset. This realization that I’m doing good for my community. I’m doing good for the world. I’m not about building my little corner of the world. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to be part of something bigger than myself.

Now, if you’re like, man, I really want to hire, but I just don’t have time. Or maybe you’ve been listening and you’re not sure if you’re ready to hire yet. How do I know when I’m ready? I’ve put together a resource that I think is humbly the most comprehensive resource I’ve ever put together, full of several amazing templates and tools inside of it, and I call it the First Hire Readiness Guide. You can get it by going to EricDingler.com/hire.

It’s going to walk you through how to know if you’re ready to hire. You’re going to know exactly if you’re ready, and if you’re not, when you’re going to be. It’s going to help you figure out what you should delegate to your first one, two, or three hires. And it’s going to help you figure out what to do with the time you’re now going to have.

The mistake I see people make with their first hires is they hire people to add capacity for the company, not to take things off of their plate as a leader. Your first one to three hires should be all about clearing unnecessary tasks off of your plate so that you can focus on revenue-generating activities.

Now, if you’re self-employed and you want to stay self-employed, that’s fine. To be honest, you’re probably not listening to this podcast. This podcast is for people who are self-employed and want to become business owners, where they’re employing others and running a business. If you are ready to take that step, or maybe you’ve tried and it hasn’t worked, or maybe you’ve got a few people now and you’re just not sure, I want to encourage you to check out what I’ve got for you.

That’s it. That’s all I got for you today. Can you believe it? I think this is one of my shortest episodes yet. But that’s okay, because we’ve covered absolutely everything we need to cover for this topic. So until next time, pick one thing and take action on it right now, to help you lead better, to live better.