Building My Dream Team: Who I Hired & How They Support My Growth

INTRO: After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host, Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you're in the right place. Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter, one size fits all approach to marketing and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life. Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast. And here's your host, Kathryn Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, super stoked that you're tuning in to this episode where I'm going to share with you how I built my dream team, who I hired, why I hired them, and how they support me in my growth. And I also want to share how this wasn't always on my radar or something I thought would be a reality for me, because I always sort of struggled to find or attract what I would call my dream team in a lot of ways.

And a lot of that had to do obviously with my leadership style, who I am and what I'm here to do, but also me getting really in tune with what are my strengths and what are my weaknesses, so to speak, where am I really good at things and where, where do I need to sort of maybe pick up my socks a bit. And also.

Really me getting clear on the type of support that I wanted. I think whenever I had issues and had to let people go, it was because I wasn't clear for myself what type of support I needed. I was always [00:01:00] hiring from a place of desperation. Like it was, I was doing it too late. I was burnt out. I was tired and I was like, just fricking help me, you know?

And so I didn't even have a plan or anything. For what I wanted them to do or support me with and so I was scattered and then therefore they obviously were scattered because I wasn't giving them clear direction and therefore they weren't meeting my expectations. It was that vicious cycle again, nothing wrong with them.

Nothing wrong with me. It wasn't in alignment and it wasn't. A good time because I had let it go too long where I wasn't asking for support and then in desperation asking for support, which created a lot of friction and havoc and chaos within my team members who eventually I ended up letting go because it wasn't working out.

And so, I think I lost hope in the idea that I would have a dream team. And there was something I often always said, and that was, I don't feel like I'm here to sort of [00:02:00] manage people. I can't manage people because I feel like I'm somebody who lives in the vision and lives sort of in the clouds, which is a line six in human design.

And in my genius report, I'm actually somebody who's a visionary, but not somebody who's managing the day to day operations, if that makes sense, like being in the weeds of the business. And so whenever I had hired team, I was like, I don't want to have to tell you what to do. I want you to figure it out for yourself, which is not the greatest way to lead, but it's a part of who I am, right?

I was like, I need to hire team members that are self sufficient, self led, Know what they're here to do and how they're here to support me, but then can operate in autonomy so that I'm not having to like manage the day to day, right? What I ended up doing in the past was I was hiring people that needed that day to day support and needed to ask day to day questions and all those sorts of things.

That had to do with mismanagement with the role, right? Like the role that I [00:03:00] was hiring for, I was hiring a role that I knew I wasn't going to thrive in supporting, so to speak. So, um, yeah, Again, a lot of sort of havoc and chaos there, but what ended up happening was, is I had a human design reading with this amazing human design reader, Sam Zegar, she is a Canadian human design expert, absolutely adore her, but I had a reading with her, and one of the things that she pointed out was the type of people that I needed sort of in place.

in order for me to actually thrive. And it was in relation to my genius report, where it was like, you're that visionary person, but you need some people that are self starter, self sufficient, who can take the initiative and take action without a lot of hand holding. At the time, I had my podcast editor, John, who's been working with me for four years now, almost, maybe three.

I lose track. [00:04:00] But I absolutely adore working with him because we have this process in place. I literally tag him in a Google document. And he does what he needs to do with it. There's not a lot of back and forth communication. There's not a lot of questions. It just happens. And that's what I was, like, craving.

But I'm like, is it possible to hire a dream team of people that have really well defined roles? but also know exactly what they're here to support me with. And then also can have the autonomy to do and make decisions without having to come to me for everything. And I just couldn't see how that would work because like I said, everybody I had attracted up until that date needed that day to day support, needed to know exactly what they were doing, needed me to map it all out for them.

And there are rules like that. There absolutely are rules like that. But I don't thrive there unless I was to hire like an OBM that could help facilitate that, which is absolutely possible. But I also wanted to keep the business simple and I wanted to [00:05:00] hire in sort of very definitive roles. So anyways, I had this beautiful reading with her.

She pointed out to me, like, exactly like the type of people I needed to sort of look for and hire. And then I got really clear on the type of support that I wanted in my business. And I started with lead generation in a lot of ways. I started with hiring somebody to support me in creating conversation with people that had opted into my free training, Selling the Invisible.

So I hired my beautiful DM assistant that helps me to navigate some of that lead generation component of it. And the reason I did that number one is because that particular role is really well defined and she knows exactly what she needs to do. And I don't need to like manage the day to day of that.

The other really key thing about that is, is that there is a clear return on investment with that particular role. So if you're hiring a first time team member, one of the things to consider is hiring somebody that's [00:06:00] going to help you generate sales in your business because then it makes it easier to sort of see Sit in that investment.

I'm, I'm over that now, but because I don't necessarily look at my team members going, you've got to produce value for me every single day, AKA sales. Otherwise, I'm not going to see the value in your support. But I do know that that is a block for people when they are investing. They look at it more as an expense.

I'm spending an expense on somebody. Therefore they must provide value. And I look at people that I'm hiring and I'm investing in as, They're providing value because they're likely doing something, one, that I don't want to spend the time to do. Therefore, that's huge value. And, or they're producing something in my business that will drive new clients or sales, which is That's uber valuable as well.

So that for me was the first place I wanted to be and the first person I necessarily wanted to hire after John was because [00:07:00] I wanted to have connection and intimacy and touch points like that. Be The Forefront, right? Remember I talked to you about the alignment piece there in terms of what it is and my values and all of that and connection was huge.

And so I wanted to create more connection touch points throughout my experience with people. And that was something that I knew would be difficult for me to sustain 24 7 because I was in client delivery and all those sorts of things. And so that's why that particular person and that role was hired in my business.

And then the second role beyond my podcast editor and my DM assistant was I wanted to hire somebody to support me in taking sales roles. When I got to a place where the capacity for me to take sales calls was impacting my ability to scale and grow because it was consuming too much of my time in the week.

And The option I had [00:08:00] was I could outsource my copy clinic reviews inside of Spellbound, and then I would have more time freed up to take sales calls, or I could hire someone to support me in the sales call role and building that connection there, and I could continue in client delivery. And I chose client delivery because copy clinic and copy reviews and my eyes on their business is a huge part of what Spellbound is, and I just didn't feel an integrity Hiring somebody else to do that at that moment in time, because that's what they were paying for.

They were paying for me to have my eyes on their business. And that's how Spellbound was positioned. And so then to hire another coach to do that just didn't feel in integrity. Whereas the sales call rule felt very much in integrity. And so all I did, people were like, well, how did you find the person?

who is absolutely epic and amazing, is I actually just sent an email out to my email list and I said, this is what I'm looking for. I wasn't very specific. I just said, I'm looking for a unicorn who can support me in [00:09:00] this. But again, the role was not defined at all. And 11 people responded and I had beautiful conversations with everybody.

And I will be really honest with you. This particular person, there was this gut, visceral love. This is her when I met with her and it was just like unexplainable. I was like, this is her. And I knew that my gut was telling me this is the person. So I trusted that, but I was very, very clear that I didn't want to hire a salesperson because I do sales very counterintuitively and I didn't want to have to help somebody unlearn traditional sales, high pressured, you must say yes, take a credit card, all those sorts of things.

So. I hired someone very specifically who didn't have sales experience because I knew that I could train up in the sales role the way that I wanted to based on my process versus having to try to coach somebody to unlearn some of the tactics that are, I [00:10:00] think can be difficult to unlearn if you've been taught in traditional sales.

My focus was, is that I wanted somebody who had an innate ability to connect on a very intuitive and genuine level, which is something I don't think is easily taught. And so this particular person, that's what they had was this innate ability to form deep connection with somebody almost instantaneously, which is a gift that I have.

Other people have these gifts, obviously, but it's a gift that I have and why I believe that my sales process is so powerful is because I have an ability to really connect on a level beyond just trying to sell somebody on something. And that's what I was looking for, someone that could, should create rapport very quickly and build trust very quickly and connect very quickly.

And then I knew I could train up on the sales process of it. So those are the two roles there that I hired. And then the third role beyond John, so there is for is that I wanted somebody to help me with the [00:11:00] tech integration on the backend. Now that's something I have done predominantly solo myself for pretty much my entire business and something that I'm very good at, but it doesn't mean it's something that I need to be spending my time on.

And that was sort of the other piece of it. So I hired for that particular role that somebody could build out my offers, my opt in pages, all of that in Kajabi without me having to do that. I write the emails, they can schedule the emails, I create and write content, they can create content for me. These are things that I started to go, I would rather have support here so I can create more space in my day and in my time to be creative and be in client delivery and all of that.

And so, How I hired for that, that came via referral. John came via referral, my podcast editor. My GM assistant came via referral. My tech wizard came via referral and my community connector and sales role came [00:12:00] via my email list. Now, there's something that I want to highlight here for you because this is very much in alignment with who I am as a human.

I'm a four in human design, which means that the majority of my opportunities and the majority of things come via my community. That is word of mouth, referrals, or the community that I cultivate, which is why the ecosystem is so important. Because a lot of my opportunity and whatnot comes from that because I'm a line four.

And so again, I can't stress enough how important it is to really understand you and who you are and, and what makes you tick and what is your like innate DNA and how you're wired, because it's not surprising that my team has come via that way. And who I hired and why I hired them and how they support me is very strategic based on.

what is in alignment with my values, [00:13:00] my integrity, my authority, right? So you go back to those invisible factors, everything's in congruency. Every decision I'm making and my sales call, amazing human said that to me. And I think I've shared that on this podcast or the other podcast. But I, she said, I, I can finally see under the hood and that what you're saying outwardly is what is actually happening behind the scenes.

And that just goes to show the congruency, right? And that goes with building the team. And I think that's why I struggled to build a dream team in the past because I wasn't in alignment and there was a lot of decisions I was making my business that weren't congruent with my integrity, my inner authority, my values, my whole.

Essence, right? Is that I was, I was, there was a lot of friction and resistance going on, which then created havoc and chaos in my business and, and in my team because I wasn't in alignment. And so that's how I [00:14:00] decided who and how and what I wanted to hire. And. I led with the type of support that I wanted and why I wanted that support, right?

My DM assistant, connection at being at the core, my sales call woman, nurturing and deep connection, again, being at the core, right? Being able to create rapport quickly and build trust quickly versus Walk people through an objection, like handle objections and sell, right? Is like, it's very personal and it's a very key part of my journey with people to build that relationship and not sacrificing the integrity that I promised people when they invested, which was my eyes will be on your business in the copy clinic and on the strategy and all those sorts of things.

If I outsourced any of that. That would go against what I promised, right? So you can see how I'm making my decisions, and that's not just to hire my team, but that's across the board. And then obviously, my [00:15:00] tech wizard who I've hired to support me is, I could spend a ton of time in Canva, I love creating stuff, and I love creating graphics and all of that.

But it was like assessing where do I actually want to put my time and what is of value to me? And this is tightening up those energetic boundaries that I talked about in the unseen factors, right? Is that there was leaks happening because all of a sudden three hours would go by and I'm creating, you know, an Instagram reel.

And it's like, Why am I spending three hours doing this, right? No wonder I'm depleted in other areas. So it's stuff like that, that again, when we know what's in integrity to us and what's authentic to us, and we know what we value, it's really easy to create this congruency in your business and attract a dream team, in my opinion.

So with that, I hope that you have received so much inspiration, insight, ahas. motivation, permission, whatever it is from this podcast, because it's been such a pleasure sharing behind the scenes in this raw, unfiltered [00:16:00] way for you. Cheers.