mobile business

Ch. 14 of the Comprehensive Checklist for Growing Your Business: Preparing the Army

Putting your business in the forefront of your network will give you the exposure your business needs to reach its potential. If you’re a mobile business ready to scale, Handlr will do that and more. However, some questions must be answered before you make the jump. Are you mentally ready for growth? Do you have enough team members to support all of these new customers? Here are some great starting points if you’re looking to bulk up the size of your company.

Hiring a Bigger Team

  • Ask for referrals. Sometimes, the best workers come from a friend of a friend that knows the person on a closer level. These referrals can vouch for a person’s character and give you more insight to what he/she is like versus sifting through a stack of applications.

  • Use your resources. If your referrals don’t seem promising, it’s okay to turn to Craigslist, Indeed, LinkedIn or ZipRecruiter to find new team members. Some best practices include asking specific questions relevant to the job responsibilities and requiring a cover letter to discover the perfect candidates.

  • Dig deeper. Once you weed out a majority of the candidates, ask for more detailed information in an email and then seal it in by scheduling a phone interview. Once they have passed the phone interview, meet in-person. Just remember, it’s good to have options so don’t be in a rush to hire the first good candidate you come across. Go through all the possible candidates, take your time in getting to know them and invest in a highly skilled team member who’s willing to stay long-term.

  • The nitty gritty. Run a background check on your new hire. It’s a necessity now these days with the job market. Too many candidates make false claims of themselves that could backfire against your business. Depending on your business type, if the team member is required to drive a car for their duties, it’s wise to get a driving record check to make sure that you are hiring someone with a clean record. We like using Checkr to perform all of these tasks.

Now, what?

Paperwork first! If they are an employee, make sure that they read and agree to your Employee Handbook and don’t forget to give them their W-4 form. If they are an independent contractor, be sure to give them their Independent Contractor Agreement and a W-9 Form to fill out.

Update your bookkeeper about your new hires and add them to payroll. You can also use platforms like Zenefits to keep hiring streamlined and easy.

The most important thing you can do to make your new team member feel welcome is to have them build authentic, personal relationships with other members of your team.
— Matt Stjernholm, ReWork Blog

When hiring a new person to join your team, invest a great amount of time to fully train them. Ride along with them for at least one week and then have them ride along with a few of your other team members. This ensures that they get a fully immersive training experience. Setting up a buddy system is setting up them up for success. New hires need resources to turn to when they don’t know what to do or if they have questions.

4 Office Hacks to Keep the Creativity Flowing

  1. Get a Whiteboard, Any Board

    Visualization is so important to help conceptualize ideas and sometimes, an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper just won’t cut it. Drawing out your thoughts on a greater scale that’s quickly presentable to your colleagues helps everyone understanding your thought process. It’s also more efficient in hashing out possible contingencies and with a good whiteboard eraser, anyone can jot down ideas as fast as the conversation is going.
     
  2. Find a New Playlist

    Music makes you think more creatively - plain and simple. According to an article on bufferapp.com, “moderate noise levels increase processing difficulty which promotes abstract processing, leading to higher creativity.” Simply stated, if we distract our brains just a bit more, it’ll push itself a bit harder and find new approaches to understanding the work at hand.
     
  3. Mobile Office Day

    The day-to-day environment of being inside the same four walls can get you stuck in the same mindset. Throwing yourself into a fresh setting or location will push your mind to reconceptualize ideas as new influences come into play. Go outside, catch some sun, feel the breeze on your face! At Handlr Headquarters, we like having our meetings on a hike or during a fencing lesson, no big deal.
     
  4. Wine

    Need we say more? Dealing with a task that you just can’t solve is frustrating as it is. And, acknowledging the frustration can push you deeper into the spiral of frenzy. It’s all going to be just fine. Now, although we don’t condone excessive amounts of alcohol consumption, letting loose over a glass of wine can increase your creativity. Don’t believe us? In a study titled, “Uncorking the muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving,” it stated, “Moderate intoxication … improves problem solving and leads to what participants in the Consciousness and Cognition study referred to as ‘sudden insights,’ which the sober participants reported significantly less often” (Vinepair) Boom.