Building Your Dream Team!
January 06, 2021
By: Kelli Loo of Kelli Loo CPA
When I started my business, someone said to me: You can’t do this alone. It was discouraging and frustrating to hear it. I was ready to prove them wrong, but then I realized they were totally right. In fact, building my business alone will only make everything harder than it needs to be and a waste of time. Every entrepreneur needs their team (and I do not mean employees). I am referring to a trusted group of professionals who:
Are experts in their field
Growth-oriented and invested in your future
You can trust and collaborate with (the most important factor)
You Can’t Know Everything
Being an entrepreneur is filled with countless daily decisions. To avoid being paralyzed by all the questions and choices to make each day, it is best to leverage your decisions with experts around you. Lean on your team members and delegate all that you can. Your basic core team will consist of a:
Business Attorney
CPA
Insurance Provider
IT Specialist
Marketing/Branding Specialist
Virtual Assistant
When a question arises on choosing a CRM system or which type of printer to purchase, you will always have someone you trust to call and ask right away. The alternative is spent researching for hours on reviews and asking non-experts. This can lead to going the cheap route or wasting a lot of your precious time.
For example, I’m a CPA–it makes no sense for me to become an expert at adobe illustrator on top of everything else!
Don’t wait for an issue to arise to add someone to your team.
Like when a legal issue comes up with your client contract. You are likely desperate and limited on time–do you really think you’ll find the best professional under those circumstances? Not likely.
But if you already have a business attorney you trust, who already reviewed your contract and excited to be a resource for you–they can take care of you right away and ease your stress.
Leverage your experts
This piece can make or break your sanity. The best part of knowing you have a solid team of professionals who you trust, you can rely on them and use their systems. What does this mean? When you have a good team, you are not explaining the same exact thing 5 times. Which leads to wasting time or, even worse, being billed 5 times! For example, a CPA and attorney could work together for the best entity structure–can you imagine the game of telephone you’d have if you talked to them separately back and forth? They already have their own internal systems in place on how to work on this project most efficiently–why reinvent the wheel when you can trust it will be taken care of.
Bottom line: Don’t run your business alone. Keep your team and make sure they have your back.
So, Where to Begin?
Great people know great people. Period. Work on finding one of the professionals of your core team and ask for referrals from there. Interview at least 2-3 people in each industry until you find the best fit. And if you have ANY reservations then they are not the match for you. Keep searching until you have someone you are excited about.
Connect
Kelli Loo is a CPA and one of the founders of Accountants of Color. It was created to be a safe space for Black & Indigenous accountants where they can engage, grow, and build their firms.
Educating the community to provide guidance, answer questions, share resources, and encourage each other. A world where equitable access to education, mentorship, and support exists for all Accountants.
accountants of color
kelliloocpa.com
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