How to Build a Remote Team That Works for You 24/7

Business will never be the same.

Entrepreneurs now have the ability to start a business, attract customers, generate revenue, and even build a team all from the comfort of their own home.

However, I’ve found that most new solopreneurs are most troubled by that last one – building a team. I get it, your business is your baby and you want to be in control of every aspect of it. But in order for your business to grow to its full potential, you have to be willing to delegate tasks to others. If you’re not, you’ll only go so far.

The problem is, building a digital team that helps you grow your business effectively -- in a way that works for you -- can be difficult to figure out.

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

– Charles Darwin

It’s incredible to think that one person can actually build an entire team of people who serve their mission from all around the world, digitally, without them ever having to meet in person.

This is an amazing advantage available to new entrepreneurs that they should take full advantage of because it helps them build their businesses in a faster and more effective way.

But where do you start? If you’re a solopreneur who believes it’s time to start building your digital team, what’s the first step? There’s no manual for this kind of thing, but there are a few important steps I believe shouldn’t be skipped (and an optimal order in which things should be done).

Here it is:

1. Create a list of all basic administrative tasks

The first step is to start listing out all important activities that are involved in running your business. If you’re hiring personnel you need to know what it is you need done. The better organized you are, the more effective your remote team will be for your business.

However, in addition to this, take a minute to rank each activity on a level of importance and difficulty. Some of these are impossible to rank against one another because they’re different types of tasks. Others, only you can ever do.

The purpose isn’t to find the most important tasks but more to find out how important each individual task is. Depending on the importance and difficulty of the task this will completely change the type of person you’re going to hire.

2. Search online to hire a VA

Now that you’ve created an organized list of tasks based on importance and difficulty, you’re ready to start hiring. And the first step is always to hire a VA or virtual assistant.

Why? One of the primary reasons a team is useful to you as a solopreneur is because, by hiring people to handle various other jobs, you’re able to place your focus on what you’re best at (and what are often the most important tasks).

A VA is critical because they handle the most low-level administrative tasks for you:

• Checking email as well as filtering and responding to promotion offers
• Responding to support requests
• Basic data such as spreadsheets, analytics reports, etc.

They’re the kinds of tasks that suck the soul right out of you and leave you with little to no creative juices left. This one simple hire can be monumental for your business because of this one reason.

3. Identify your strengths (and weaknesses)

Now that the basic administrative tasks are out of the way, it’s time to move on to the next level of your remote team-building process: hiring to cover your weaknesses (so that you can focus on your strengths).

And to do that, you first need to take the time to identify what your strengths and weaknesses are. Your strengths are the things you’re going to be placing the lion’s share of your time on. If you’re a creatively-focused solopreneur, this is your creative task.

If you’re an agency, maybe you’re best at reading and communicating with people so your time is best spent communicating with your highest level clients and watching the space for trends to jump on. Whatever those strengths are for you, you need to take the time necessary to identify them so you know where you should be focusing your time as you begin to hire out.

On the flip side, identifying your weaknesses lets you know who you should be hiring. If you’re weak in sales, hiring an expert sales manager will help cover your weakness with someone who has that skill as a strength. This makes a huge difference.

Once your strengths and weaknesses are nailed down, your job is simply to continue doing what you’re doing until revenue justifies new hires. Try to focus at first on the hires that will most clearly give you a return on your investment as the smaller your recurring revenue is, the more careful you need to be.

The digital era has brought entrepreneurs many new incredible opportunities and unbelievable advantages. One of those is the ability to build a remote team that helps build your business all from the comfort of your own home.

If you’re a solopreneur with a digital business, chances are you can profit quite a bit from building a remote team. So, take it one step at a time and start creating that list of administrative tasks. Before you know it you’ll have a functioning digital team, all with different very specific duties, covering your weaknesses, and helping build a business you’re passionate about that allows you to focus on what you’re great at.