114: How to Ease Growing Pains as You Build Your Team with Karen Sergeant

When your business takes off and you start growing a team of people to support you it’s exciting - and challenging. You’ve always been the CEO of your business, but now you have more management responsibility than before, and you have to learn how to work with more people in your business. It used to be that you only needed to communicate with one or two people, now you need to share your vision with several people. And you have to field questions from them. It’s a stage of business where you can be unused to the amount of chaos that suddenly gets generated. You’re figuring out who is doing what and what needs doing next, onboarding clients, keeping on top of customer service. You can feel like you’re suddenly spending a lot of time firefighting when your days didn’t used to be like that.  My guest on the podcast this week is Karen Sergeant, a Team Growth Strategist and advisory Chief Operating Officer (COO). She helps small business owners survive their growth-spurts, grow their teams — and build a strong culture based on consent and accountability. She offers short intensives and ongoing consulting engagements that empower owners and leaders to build strong equity-centred business practices and teams. She’s based in Tucson and works with clients around the world. We talk about: What a COO does and how they can help your business How what made your business successful could become an issue as you grow Developing a company culture Enabling team members to meet your expectations What’s really happening if you feel your team isn’t performing at the level you want   Useful links Get Karen Sergeant’s Hiring Guide Find out more about Karen Sergeant on her website Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business Jessica’s LinkedIn profile