Morning all,
I’m excited and nervous at the same time for the week after next as I’ll be officially taking my first ‘week’ off of work.
What I mean by this is that I’m preparing to see what happens when I’m away from the team for an entire week.
In a bid to have the team stand on its own two feet – I want to see if the team functions or falls apart in my absence.
I was having a discussion with my business coach Valentina about it and we agreed that my stepping away from the day-to-day runnings of the business was normal and that if anything – it was strange that I was still involved.
‘It’s not normal that a client will meet the founder of the company – and that the founder will still be involved in the actual delivery of the work.
This is absolutely the case and with this in mind – I’m doing all I can to pull myself back as much as possible.
The whole idea is a little nerve-wracking as I’m very much a ‘rip-the-band-aid-off’ type of person – but progress will come quickly as result.
However – this is the most effective way to truly have a business that runs itself – as at the moment I’m still heavily involved.
Although – saying that – over the last 3 months there has been a significant change on this front.
With Gary coming in to manage clients alongside Lydia. The heads of departments are being given hiring capabilities and being asked what do you need from me.
The only people that haven’t been prepped are the clients.
This will be something that I will likely do last.
Thinking out loud there are a couple of relationships that will need careful management –
Astteria – although Ofir is a friend so in my mind I’m not sure if that’s a relationship I want to just give up.
Chicago – we need someone on the team who can consistently book appointments – which isn’t happening yet – otherwise this campaign will go nowhere
In general – we need someone with the ability to book appointments on a consistent basis for any client – which we’re moving CLOSER towards – but we’re certainly not there yet.
On the SEO front – Gary coming in and tag-teaming with Lydia I think can absolutely work.
Gary could also tag-team with Pearl when it comes to Public Reputation management clients as well.
As you can see – not much of this will necessarily make sense to you – but I want to underline a solid point here…
That this is pretty much a human problem I’m trying to solve and that it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
What will follow after the week off is – in the immediate term –
Fixing the problems that the week away brings to light.
Seeing which clients if any canceled, which team members quit (if any for both)…
And dealing with the aftermath of it all.
It may be the case that absolutely everything goes swimmingly – but we’ll see how it goes.
The ultimate goal during that week ‘away’ is this:
- Not look at my work messages from the team between 7am – 7 pm
- Only ask team members to contact me if someone is really upset and their messages haven’t worked (and do so on my personal cell)
These are the plans from a ‘Pearl Lemon Leads/PR/SEO’ perspective.
This I feel is the fastest way to make the team stronger as there’ll be a couple of scenarios in which the team will be tested:
- Clients will need attention
- When they typically ask me for support – I will not be available
- My proactiveness will be absent because I will be absent
- It’ll ultimately make the team we have that much stronger
All of these are exciting opportunities and when we (as we all do) get worried by the consequences of stepping away…
It’s ultimately important to recognise that all of these issues are short-term.
That is a worst-case scenario there’ll be clients that will go and team members that will go.
In an absolutely worst-case scenario – 100% of things are recoverable anyway.
This reminds me – I’ve asked everyone what they need of me – yet I’ve not gone through what exactly it is that I need of them.
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I need to write this up so it’s clear – and I think broadly, these are my biggest desires:
- FAQ updates, keyword insertion, CRO + Google Analytics audits continue and lots and lots of implementation happens
- Lots of pages get built by Mel across our sites
- We aggressively build links to grow the PR website
- PR pitching internally continues at a high pace
- The cold-calling team start booking appointments for ALL clients
- Gary reaches out to all clients to let them know he’ll be coming onboarding as an account manager for them
- I walk Gary through the rolling recruitment process with Akhila
- Gary steps down from calling completely by the end of the week
- The SDR team book 10 appointments per day for internal projects across web-dev, reputation management/SEO & Accounting
Let’s continue breaking it down per-individual department:
Human Resources:
- We get a full-time video editor for the company
- We get a full-time social media manager for the company
- We get someone to regularly record review videos
- We get a full-time accounts & finance person for the company
- We get a native English sales guy who can work US hours and wants to grow long-term with Pearl Lemon
- We get a chief of innovation or rather this becomes an integral part of people’s roles – ‘HOW CAN WE IMPROVE WHAT WE ALREADY DO?’
Content:
- A minimum of 3 service pages per site get written every week
- Celeste leans more into her role
Public Relations:
- Pearl records videos about Why Pearl Lemon for PR and more
Lead Generation:
- Lydia continually asks herself ‘how can we get a minimum of 1 lead per day per client – anything less is unacceptable
- For our internal leads – someone works on this FULL-TIME and we get 3 leads per day and from 150 emails a day going out daily
Cold Calling:
- David gets comfortable managing the sales team
- David steps up and is able to book several appointments for each of the new clients
SEO:
- Semil, Atit, and Mayur get more comfortable with talking to clients, managing questions, and being closer to client dialogue so we can scale
Sales Team:
- Ion maintains a bi-weekly mandatory call with the team and plans throughout the days prior to this EXACTLY what he will cover
- Ion is able to review calls Jude/Vasco make to give them feedback either ON this call or outside of it
Design & Development
- Kaushal takes more lead with getting our Loom competitor built, getting Lemforms built, and supporting Send Koala as much as possible without any of my involvement
Overall:
- Lydia is able to make sure everyone is doing what they’re meant to do, monitors client happiness, and delivery of targets, and gets support from those around her when needed
Well….I’m going to be sharing this with the leaders of the company so it’s clear what I’m hoping for in the week whilst I’m away!
Let’s see how the week goes!
