The Key To Growing An 8-Figure Ecom Brand? A Self-Managing Organization
The road to building a successful eCom brand looks different for all of us.
But the challenges we all face along the way are essentially the same for everyone.
In the beginning, those challenges are pretty straightforward:
- Find great products to sell
- Test ads to find your winners
- Balance acquisition cost and LTV
- Hire a few people to help when it makes sense
Until you reach 5M/year or so - the only goal is eCom growth. All you have to do is keep your head down, make as much money as possible, and don’t look up until you get there.
Long hours, sleepless nights, high-volume, unadulterated hard work, whatever it takes.
Of course there are skills you need to pick up, but nothing that can’t be overcome with the right amount of hustle.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s exactly what you should be doing during that initial growth stage.
The problem is, it becomes all you know.
It creates a culture, a set of habits, and a level of expectation that simply doesn’t scale.
And it roots you as the driver of performance in your business - not your team - forcing you to be involved in every area of your business to make sure things get done.
So when you finally do validate your products in the market and start trying to build your team out, a new set of challenges starts to present itself.
Instead of increasing the output of your team, every new hire you make slows things down. Things become more chaotic, your time is stretched thinner than ever, and maintaining all that momentum you built up seems impossible.
Most Founders will start to either blame their team - calling them unmotivated - or think they’ve made the wrong hires.
But the simple truth is, they’ve entered a new growth stage with a new set of challenges.
And the skills and strategies that got them to 7 figures are not the same skills and strategies needed to reach 8 figures or beyond.
Micromanagement Doesn’t Scale
What do you call a leader who is involved in every single aspect of the business at all time?
That’s right, a micromanager.
And as I said, there’s nothing wrong with that approach when you’re starting out, it’s what got you this far.
But it’s time to let it go.
Because here’s the reality:
Managing a small team of 5 or so people doesn’t require you to be a great leader.
- You don’t need a company mission.
- You don’t need a set of brand values.
- You don’t even need to outline a vision.
You’ll get by just fine by telling people what to do, making sure they do it, and signing off on their work when it’s done.
But when you’re trying to lead 10, 20, 50+ people - there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to keep track of what everyone is doing and keep them on task.
Trying to micromanage a team of that size will become your full-time job.
And you’ll have no time left over to focus on scaling your eCom brand.
Stop Trying To Solve The Wrong Problem
The most dangerous thing about this is that most Founders don’t realise what the problem truly is.
They can waste months blaming their staff and convincing themselves they made bad hires. Only to replace those people and find that the problem is still there.
It’s not an issue with your team. It’s an issue with you.
You haven’t caught up to the fact that you’re in a new role. One that has nothing to do with ad creatives, acquisition, retention, or even revenue.
It’s all about people.
People are the key to all business success.
Again, your role is no longer to drive performance. Your role is to create the environment where performance happens.
If you want your team to be motivated, take the time to work out what motivates them. If you want your team to have autonomy, let them do things their way. If you expect people to perform at a high level, create the environment where high performance happens.
When you create that environment, you no longer need to spend your time micromanaging. Your team mostly takes care of itself:
- Everyone knows their responsibilities
- People are motivated to do their best work
- People feel autonomous enough to make things happen
Which means you have the ability to focus on growing the company instead of being stuck in the day-to-day running of it.
That’s what we mean when we talk about a “self-managing” organization.
What Does A Self-Managing Organization Look Like?
It can be hard for most Founders to imagine what this actually looks like in practice.
So, I’ve broken down the main principles of a self-managing organization to help you implement them and build a leadership structure that will allow you to scale to the level you’ve set your sights on.
Vision
Keeping a team of people aligned to a common set of goals and objectives becomes increasingly difficult in a growing organization.
So it’s essential that you, as the Founder, are clear on exactly where you’re going.
That usually means outlining a clear:
- Mission
- Vision
- Values
That sums up your brand, where you want to take it, and the values you want to embody along the way.
Then, it’s your job to communicate those things to the entire team.
Not only should they understand the vision you have for the company - they should also be very clear on the role they play in getting there.
As a bonus, this can also work as a filter for applicants in your hiring process and help ensure you only hire “A-Players” who are completely aligned with what you’re trying to achieve.
Alignment
Having clarity on where you want to go is crucial.
But it’s only effective if you align everyone in your team to that same set of goals or objectives and get them all pulling in the same direction.
Having a team of hyper-productive people sounds great, but if they’re all running in different directions, it’s counterproductive.
They can be working against each other to pull your company in multiple directions.
So it’s extremely important to keep everyone aligned (including yourself).
In practice, that will mean having regular short meetings with each member of the team to ensure they know:
- What they should be working on
- Why it’s important to the company
- What your expectations are for the work
Even a slight deviation in alignment can lead to a huge difference over a longer time frame.
So make sure everyone knows what they should be working on and is aligned with the company vision.
Alignment is important in any organization, but is especially important for those of us with remote teams where we don’t necessarily see each other every day.
Delegation
Most founders look at delegation wrong.
They think it’s about offloading tasks and assigning work to the other people in your team.
But when you treat delegation this way, you still:
- Get people asking you for approval
- Need to sign off on the final decision
- Get pulled into the details of their work
So you’ll always be the bottleneck in your business.
Real delegation is about transferring ownership and delegating responsibility so that things can run without your input.
Viewing things this way will also help you pick up on weaknesses in your business.
You might find that you’re the only person who can do a task, which might mean you need to train others on how to do it.
Or you might find that you don’t trust your team to get it done, in which case you need to work on that and look for ways to regain each other’s trust.
But the important thing to remember is this:
If you still have to track, approve, or get involved in a task, you haven’t truly delegated it.
Autonomy
Autonomy is one of the biggest motivators you can use to keep your team engaged.
It’s no fun playing a game when someone is looking over your shoulder telling you how to play every turn.
But when you get to play a game the way you want?
Well, that’s a lot of fun!
So rather than sharing how you expect something to be done, focus on making it clear what needs to be done and why it’s important to the company:
- Here is the outcome we need
- Here’s why it’s important to the company
- What resources or support do you need to make it happen?
Firstly, this involves them in the process of coming up with a solution which will help keep them motivated.
But you’re also assigning an outcome (not a task) and giving them a chance to decide how they’re going to achieve it.
Remember, you’re no longer trying to be the person who gets it all done.
You’re trying to make sure everyone has what they need so they can get it done.
That’s how you create more autonomy in your team and free up more of your time to focus on the other responsibilities you have in the business.
Autonomy will always drive creativity, innovation, and collaboration.
And any lack of autonomy you have within your team - you, as the Founder, will have to make up for.
Leadership
You need to step up and become the leader your brand needs.
That much should be clear by now.
But, building a self-managing organization doesn’t happen if the role of leadership falls solely on the shoulders of the Founder.
It means creating a team of people who all become leaders in their own right.
Sure, that might mean:
- Getting them trained individually
- Sharing your knowledge where possible
- Increasing the level of responsibility they have
But the single best thing you can do for your team is to model what good leadership looks like.
Every action you take sets the standard for how your team will behave.
The more you can model:
- Building trust and delegating
- Encouraging autonomy and taking action
- Aligning with your vision for the company
The more it empowers your team to follow your example.
And when you have a high-trust, high-performance team that isn’t afraid to take things on - more revenue is a natural byproduct.
Self-Managing Organizations Are Built To Scale
Every time you scale one part of your business - whether it’s by adding new people, processes, or products - the chaos that exists in your current structure also scales.
And chaotic eCom brands don’t scale to 8 figures.
The brands that do are the ones that take the responsibility upon themselves to build an organizational structure that can actually handle that level of scaling.
By embracing your role as a leader (not just a Founder), and applying the principles above, you can build a streamlined company resilient enough to scale to any size you want.
And you stop being the bottleneck that everything has to come through.
Freeing yourself from the day-to-day running of your business gives you the time you need to focus on where you want to take the company.
All of that “hustle” energy you still have can be focused on one simple goal:
Growing the company.
So if you’re tired of chasing your team around to get things done and want to build an eCom powerhouse that manages itself,
Click here to apply for a Free Leadership Audit.
We’ll review what is and isn’t working for you, and I’ll help you implement systems to get you closer to your growth goals - without spending any more of your time in the business.
Thanks,
Leon.
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Guest post by Leon van der Laan, Founder of REMODE.
My goal is to apply my 26 years of corporate leadership experience to help hungry eCom Founders transform into the market leaders they know they can be.