Ranking Revolution

Doug: Welcome to the ranking revolution
podcast, your go to source for strategies

and ideas for SEO, organic growth,
content creation, and online business.

I'm Doug Cunnington, your host.

In this episode, we'll explore the pros
and cons of flying solo, working with

a small team and scaling up to a larger
Team I've personally navigated all three

of these scenarios and I'll share some of
my thoughts and experience, really just

the pros and cons for each one of those.

We're going to start with solo and
work our way up to larger teams.

And most of us start our
entrepreneurial journey alone.

So there are some significant
advantages for working solo.

And I'll preface and say, I have a strong
bias to smaller teams, really solo,

plus a couple of virtual assistants.

There's a little bit of a blend and
I'll get into some of those details.

But number one, if you are
solo, you have Freedom.

You have complete freedom
to make the decisions.

You could pivot really quickly without
needing to consult anyone else.

Me personally, I love that.

I am not necessarily a control freak
in air quotes, but I, I like to

operate alone and I don't like to
answer to anyone, so, It kind of makes

me well suited for entrepreneurship.

Number two is really fast to
implement projects because

you can just think of an idea.

Maybe you get an idea from
a podcast or a YouTube video

and then you can get into it.

You could plan it really fast and you
don't have to get approvals or lengthy

discussions or negotiations otherwise.

Number three, as far as pros, it
is generally cheaper to work alone.

You don't have to worry about
payroll, other admin expenses,

benefits, office space for employees.

If you happen to have a brick
and mortar type situation.

The thing is, you can't ignore the time.

Time is a very valuable resource,
but on a nuts and bolts, like actual

money situation and cash flow, you
can work for, in air quotes, free.

It does take your time, but if you're
looking to earn some money on the

side, or you're just trying to like
test some things, it is generally

cheaper than hiring even freelancers.

Next is just being agile.

So this is sort of related to fast
implement projects, but if you're

solo, you can adjust your strategies
and operations and change your mind

about how you are going to implement
something or do some piece of work.

And last one that I'll mention here is
even if you're operating solo, it doesn't

mean you can't hire people, right?

You could hire freelancers on many
different platforms out there.

The flexibility that you have for
growing a team with a specialist is huge.

You Could kind of always do this,
but it's much easier to find the

right people with all the different
marketplaces for freelancers out there.

Of course, it's not all perfect.

It's not sunshine and roses out there.

So there are cons to working solo.

If you're truly solo, then
you're doing all the work you.

can get overwhelmed,
you can get burnt out.

And that is obviously a problem.

Again, you can hire some people as
freelancers to do one off things.

But generally, if you're solo, you
are doing a great deal of the work.

Second con is it's going
to be harder to sell.

So if you are thinking, Hey, I
want to start a business and I

want to eventually sell it, or I
want to have the option to sell it.

If you are operating solo, it's a
little bit harder to sell because if.

Someone wants to buy your business.

They have to like transition it all over.

If you have a team, they are
doing the work, there's roles and

responsibilities, and there can be
some continuity to the situation.

You could sell the company.

You could sell the operations,
including working with that team.

And maybe all the roles
and responsibilities.

So that's much easier to sell.

Number three is you have lower leverage.

So when you are negotiating deals,
perhaps you don't have as much scale

if you're just one person further.

You, you don't have the
leverage on your time.

So if you have a larger team, you're
able to outsource some of the activities.

Maybe you're the visionary, you
are directing the work, and you

can get a lot more done with
a smaller amount of your time.

So I think probably the most, there's
a few ways you are leveraged, um, in

the lack of leverage for your time
is a big con for a solo operator.

Next is the freelancers might be a little
flaky, so you can scale easily with.

freelancers, but if they don't have
enough work from you, if they have

too much work from you, if a situation
changes on their end, they may go

and find some other work or just
stop working with you all together.

This isn't necessarily common.

It's.

Might be something that you run into
more often, but it just depends on how

you work and the way you hire people.

And that's a whole other story,
but freelancers are free to

come and go as they please.

Just like you can hire them for one
project and then not hire them again.

Another couple of cons with a solo
operation with a couple of freelancers,

you don't really have team culture.

So if you're hiring a couple
of freelancers, again, they may

come and go, and you don't really
get that team culture next.

And the last one we'll mention here,
generally you just can't get as much done.

So this is back to the leverage, but
if you are operating by yourself, you

can't get as much done as a bigger team.

There's no way around that.

Even if you're ultra.

productive, there's some limit of
what you can actually get done.

Again, You can't pick up some
freelancers, but then you're

getting into small teams, which is
the next thing we're getting into.

So small teams, there's
a bit of an overlap.

Like I said, I prefer a smaller team and
technically I have, you know, one to two

virtual assistants that work with me.

I've had more in the past.

I've actually had quite large teams.

I think probably close to 20 or so virtual
assistants all working a few hours a week.

And I, I believe.

I heard Tim Ferriss on one of his
podcasts, many of his podcasts

referencing how he likes small teams
for a lot of the reasons we went over.

And that made sense to me.

One personal note is I actually
worked on larger teams and helped grow

larger teams in my corporate career.

So I learned on the job, which was great.

I had good mentors and a.

framework to grow the
teams and I had autonomy.

So I kind of had the best
scenario to learn how to grow

teams, the pros and cons.

I made mistakes with a safety
net and I was paid well to do it.

So I've had big teams and
I just don't prefer them.

And we'll get into some of those details.

The The piece that I want to highlight
here is a small team with one to two

virtual assistants, kind of solo versus a
small team with like full time employees.

There's of course a distinction,
but there's a lot of commonality

between the two of them.

So let's get into the
pros of a small team.

It's still pretty lean.

It's still pretty agile.

I'm not going to belabor those.

So you still have a lot of the pros of
operating solo, especially with a team,

say under five people or so, especially
when you are the president, the CEO,

the, the overall decision maker, you
still have a lot of those advantages.

Moving on.

You can have permanent team members.

In this sort of situation and that
means you can have a bit of a team

culture which helps with collaboration
and loyalty and being able to work

with a team on a long term basis.

Term basis.

It's very helpful and you'll get
additional efficiency and effectiveness

with the team when you are working
together and have a common goal.

And you're more of a team next is
having an actual team, especially

full time employees might be
more reliable, especially when

you compare it to freelancers.

So freelancers might have some change.

external to you or the
working relationship and the

freelancer might just move on.

Last thing to note here, it's easier
to sell a team with your business

because there's structure in place and
it's not reliant on just one person.

Now I said it was the last thing.

The obvious one is with more people,
You can get more shit done so you

can get more work done because you
have more people working on it.

There are challenges of course and
number one You have the additional

responsibility Of giving the team work.

You have to give them the tasks And that
can be a little bit more time consuming.

It can be a little bit more stressful And
another directly related To con is the

communication channels are more complex.

So depending on the size of the
team, it might not be a big deal.

If you have, you know, three or four
other people working with you, you can

have a sort of direct communications,
but when you get over around six

people or so reporting to you directly.

It can be very complicated to have
efficient communication channels.

And if you don't have it locked
down, you can be overwhelmed with

all the back and forth communication.

Plus there's communication going
on that doesn't go through you.

So the team members are communicating
with each other and that potentially

can lead to misunderstandings, more
complexity, and some, you know, Maybe

small office politics, really having
a small team is quite adaptable.

It's kind of a great spot depending on
the kind of work that you're trying to do.

But what you might find is if you're
scaling up, maybe you have your sights set

on building a larger agency, for example,
and you just need to have a bigger

team that can execute the work for you.

So let's talk about the large
teams and scaling up and how.

Really can unlock new opportunities,
especially when you're sort of at the

maximum amount of work that your team can
do, but it brings a lot of complexity.

And for me, a lot of stress personally.

So.

Big teams will define it as say like
15 or more people, something like that,

but it can be individual to you, right?

For some people, if you've been
operating solo for a while, if

you have a team of like 10 or 11,
that might actually feel large.

So this is kind of a fluid number
here and you could take it.

You know, however it
is to you specifically.

So number one, big pro with a
larger team, you can do more work.

You could tackle bigger projects.

You could take on more clients.

You could scale in a way that is
just not possible with a small team.

Number two, you can be
the CEO or the president.

You can get out of the delivery.

You can get out of the day
to day business and you could

focus on high level strategy.

You could.

Look at the, the sort of vision of where
you want to be and where you come, where

your company needs to be in a few years.

And you can just work on the business, not
in the business as one of those cliches

goes, number three, it's easier to sell.

So again, if you have a well
structured team, roles and

responsibilities, and the CEO can be
interchanged with someone else, i.

e.

the new owner, it's easier to sell.

The company can run
without you, basically.

And you hear these anecdotes occasionally
where the company runs better when you

go on vacation and get out of the way.

And that's a very interesting
concept, which is beyond the scope

of what we're talking about today.

Next, with a big team,
it's easier to delegate.

So there will be specific
roles and responsibilities.

If you have a larger team, there
should be a management team in place.

With that management team, you don't
have to work with the 20 or 30 people

that are doing the work directly.

You can work with your five managers
that each own a certain piece.

You could divide the org
chart however you want.

But it's much easier to delegate
because you could turn it over.

To a manager.

And then the manager can work directly
with the team members with a team.

That's that large.

You can have a company culture.

I'm not big on the old mission statements,
but bigger companies love that shit.

And.

It can actually boost morale.

It could unify the team.

And again, similar to the small teams,
you're all actually like working

together for a common goal and you
have a common vision and everyone can

work together a little bit better.

And I'm going to emphasize,
you could just get so much more

work done with a larger team.

And it's great from a leverage
perspective, again, because you're

able to talk to your handful of
managers or your management team, and

then you're not directly working with
every single person in your team.

Let's get to the cons here.

So because it's larger, because you have
to work through the management team, it's

a little bit slower to implement projects.

You have to slow down the decision making.

You have to slow down the
project implementation.

You have to.

Work through the layers of communication.

You don't necessarily have to get
approvals if you're the sole president

or CEO of the team, but you have
to work with your management team.

So you can't just.

Execute something and
get started right away.

It goes a little bit slower, even
if there's not a bureaucracy in

place, which hopefully there's
not too much bureaucracy.

I mean, you're building your own team,
so you're really in control of that.

Next with the additional.

Team members in the additional org chart
complexity and layers, you have more

complicated communication channels.

And I mentioned this all the time
because I think people underestimate

how the communication channels
can really impact the delivery.

It can impact the morale of the team
and it can lead to misunderstandings.

It can lead to delays.

And if you don't.

If you don't give the communication
complexity enough attention, it can

lead to mistakes and frustration.

So most of the time you will make these
mistakes and then you will figure out

that you need to approach it a little
bit differently and maybe include the

management team when you're making
decisions, make sure you get their input.

Maybe they go to the team members to
get the team member input as well.

It can get very complicated fast.

And when you have the team communicating
with each other, again, there's

opportunity for misunderstandings, which.

Can be really detrimental
to the project delivery.

So last one, maybe the biggest
one for me, as far as the cons

go, there's more responsibility.

So instead of one or two people,
maybe relying on you for their

paycheck and supporting their family.

Now you have like 20 people or 30 people.

So that means you have
more responsibility for me.

That means more stress.

And you also have to consider like.

Dealing with HR issues and
other misunderstandings.

And you just end up with a whole, you
know, in air quotes, culture for good or

for bad, you have to think about morale
and keeping people around and making

sure the career path lines up for what.

They want to do what your team
members want to do and how your

business will be growing in the
future or staying the same size, but

you have to think about all of that.

And for me, that's a lot of stress.

So.

Some people love it.

Some people like to have that
responsibility, but for me, I'm not

super into it, at least at this point
in time, I haven't been for a while.

So there's pros and cons for each
one of these, uh, solo, small teams,

large teams, very large teams.

And here's, here's a
couple of main takeaways.

You will probably start working
solo, probably on the side.

And you can decide at each stage
if you want to grow the team.

And this could be a large team,
a small team, of course, a

large team and a small team.

There's a little bit of overlap.

It really depends on how
you personally define it.

And I think if you went deeper,
you read some management books,

you'll, you'll run across like
actual definitions of the size.

But the thing is like with a larger
team, you have more leverage.

It's.

Easier to get a lot of work done.

The other thing is when you go through
and you grow, say six people versus 18

or 24 or 30, you have, uh, different
relative scales of complexity.

And I've heard each time you triple
the team size, you have new challenges.

And I'm going to make some rounding
here, but, uh, basically like when

you have one person to three and then
three to ten and then ten to thirty,

thirty to a hundred and three hundred,
you're going to hit other issues.

You're going to hit some Breaking
point for the way you're doing

communication or breaking point for
the way you're organizing projects.

And you're going to have to figure
out how to solve those problems.

You're going to have other challenges
along the way that don't adhere to the

rule of three X as a team sizes grow,
but it's something to keep in mind.

So.

If you hit some point and you
think, well, we, you know, we grew

from 10 up to 30 and everything
was fine when we were 25 people.

But when we hit 30,
something kind of broke.

Don't be surprised.

This is something that does happen.

And I suspect if you, you know, study
some, Management texts out there, you

would find, Hey, a lot of times when you
hit 30 people, X happens when you hit

a hundred people, you need to do this
thing because it's highly likely that

you're going to run into this problem.

So with that said, that's
my view on team sizes.

And at this point in time, in
my career, in my ambition level,

a solo, a very small team.

Uh, so solo with one or two
assistants here and there.

That's what I like.

That's what I like.

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And if you have any suggestions for these
solo episodes, for example, or if you want

to hear me interview someone, let me know.

You can shoot me an email,
feedback at rankingrevolution.

com and we'll catch you
on the next episode.