As your business grows, you will, at some point, naturally start to think of adding to your business team. As you know, I suggest that you first invest in bringing on people who can help you with sales and marketing, as these are often the areas which suffer as the business grows. It’s easy to get focused on serving the clients you have, and not doing enough to bring more clients on board.

In any case, whether you are thinking of hiring your first employee, or your tenth, there are some key strategies you should be aware of as you do so. These come from my own business experiences of growing my business team.

The first thing I learned is that it’s wise to bring people on who add strengths and cancel out your weaknesses. I, for example, am a very big picture thinker. I can get involved in details, but I’m absolutely best at the big picture. So I made sure to bring on someone in my office (Karen) who is very good at details and can keep all my projects simmering and going. What is wonderful about someone like Karen is that she can listen to my big picture idea, and almost immediately turn it into a step-by-step process that can be implemented easily. She knows better than to wait for me to generate the step-by-step- she listens to me, takes notes, and then gives me back my idea, broken down for implementation. She balances out my tendencies and is able to add strengths of her own.

The second thing I learned is that people who I work best with tend to have the same values as me. I am talking about values like client service, loyalty, and motivation. These are key components of my business, and my personal approach, and the team members who match me on these values are the ones who have been most successful working with me.

As a business owner, it’s vital that you select and hire the people who have the best combination of skills, and who best complement you. I’ll be writing more about expanding your business team, but these two lessons will give you a good start when you’re ready to add employees or assistants to your business.