How do I grow a one-man operation?
I would love to hear some stories about how others went from a one-man/woman show, into running a crew and turning yourself more into a managing role rather than doing everything yourself.
Forum Discussion
I started as a one-man operation and one of the best things I did was document everything.
I spent about a month writing down every step in the business—sales, marketing, service delivery, quality checks, customer communication, etc. Then I turned it into a playbook with simple operating procedures.
When I hired our virtual assistant, they weren't figuring things out from scratch. They were following a documented process.
For example, we have clear steps for what happens when a lead calls, how information gets entered into the CRM, when follow-ups happen, and what needs to be completed before a quote goes out. A lot of it is automated now, but documenting it first made it much easier to hand off.
Once everything was documented, bringing someone else into the business became a lot less intimidating.