From Overwhelmed to Thriving CEO of a Dream Team
Remember the exciting moment when your business really started to take off? You started gaining so many clients that you actually had to start turning some away. Not there yet? Don’t worry, you will be! And when you are you’re going to want to start outsourcing and building out your dream team to help you. But, just having the people there to help is only half the battle. Knowing how to lead them is the part most people don’t realize when they start posting job offerings in every Facebook group they’re a part of. Tatiana O’Hara, a teams operations coach, is digging into how you can go from overwhelmed to thriving CEO of a dream team.
Tatiana O’Hara’s Story
Being a true entrepreneur at heart Tatiana has owned several businesses, each one leading her to the next. From owning a health food vending machine company in college to flipping cars to real estate, Tatiana has found a way to fill the gap in the market no matter what season of life she was in.
After graduating college she took a job as the district manager for a major grocery retailer managing 5 stores, 5 managers, and 5 million dollar monthly budgets on a regular basis. Her main mission was to develop the managers into the leaders they needed to be in order for the stores to perform the way they needed to.
Simultaneously, Tatiana found an interest in learning more about how online businesses worked and found that most of them were struggling with the same issues that she was finding in the grocery retailers. The key factor in both scenarios – lack of leadership and management experience.
As an entrepreneurs you started a business because you found something you were passionate about and wanted to be the one to fill the gap in market with your own twist. It hits, you get successful, you start building out your team, but then what. You weren’t given a guide to how you’re supposed to successfully run a team.
Once Tatiana realized this was the thing that was holding everyone back, she decided to take her own natural gifts and abilities and lean into a space where they could best be used. Now she helps booked out, high achieving online business owners structure and manage a dream team to help them grow in a smart and sustainable way.
Where to Start When You’re Getting Ready to Hire
I asked Tatiana for those who are in their first few stages of business and they’re getting to the point of wanting to start hiring some help or building out their team where would she would advise them to start.
“Before you start writing up job descriptions, you have to identify who that person is.” Tatiana continued to clarify, “I don’t mean the characteristics of who your dream candidate would be, but what the actual role is.”
Tatiana advises to make a list of every thing you do in your business. Identify which ones are strengths, weaknesses, things you love, things you wish you didn’t have to do. By looking at that from an objective standpoint we’re able to determine which positions we need to look at hiring out first.
Creating a CEO Vision
While some entrepreneurs are natural born leaders and visionaries, others who maybe don’t resonate with those attributes decided to just take their skills and create a business around that.
Those skills may be incredible but I think to reach the goals that we have in business we have to be a good mixture of both – being the skilled craftsman and the leading visionary.
Tatiana explains that “a CEO vision is a glimpse into the future of what your ideal work week, day, and life looks like. No dream is too big here. We can really allow ourselves to dream as big as we want to.”
When setting this vision, Tatiana advises to answer these questions: How many hours a week am I working? Where am I working from? How many people are on your team? What kind of impact are you making with your clients? Who are your dream clients?
Tatiana goes on to explain, “When you begin to craft out your CEO vision it can be a really powerful tool to give you a point B. Point A is where you are now, point B is where you want to end up.”
The thing I loved most was that Tatiana explained that your team is the bridge that helps you get from point A to point B because we can’t get there by ourselves.
Mindshifts That Need to Happen to Have a Well Oiled Machine of a Dream Team
Even when we have all of the right tools in front of us – the team, the game plan, the skills, there’s still one thing that can leave us stuck and that’s our mindset. I asked Tatiana, what shifts do we need to make as a CEO in order to execute the vision and how do we actually make these shifts and her answer blew me away.
The biggest shift she see’s CEO’s needing to move from acting as if they’re in their current state to acting as if they’re already in their dream vision state. She said “I can no longer operate as Tatiana in this moment. I have to operate as CEO Vision version of Tatiana.”
We were all created to do something incredible, but we weren’t created to do it alone.
Connect with Tatiana
Want to learn more about how to become the leader you were created to be? Check these out!
How to Go from Solopreneur to Leading a Thriving Team
The Challenges Women Face in Leadership
Building a Business that Supports Your Dream Lifestyle
