Business Education

I Want to Create a New Position for My Small Business – So How Do I Go about It?

Entrepreneurs wear many, many hats. It is not at all unusual for a small business owner to perform several different roles. But, this Jack of all trades, master of none can’t go on in perpetuity. The longer it lasts, the less chance there is that the business can scale up. In order to grow a company, it’s necessary to have help and many business owners reach a point where it is unavoidable. So, they make a few hires but still continue to perform various functions until they realize that a new position will free them up to pursue their main goals.

Hiring should Equal Growth

It’s very common for small business owners to be nervous about their first hires. However, they eventually get past this and the team settles into a comfortable routine. This can easily result in a false sense of security and it’s not at all unusual for the owner to slip right back into or continue bad habits.

If a heavy workload causes your employees to feel overwhelmed and frustrated, it may be time to add new positions to your department. Hiring an additional staff member or two can help you split tasks between employees more equitably and give employees the time they need to devote to their work. —Houston Chronicle

Sure, someone has to perform those functions and the owner typically feels it is his or her responsibility. But, there comes a time when it’s clear that handing off at least some of those tasks to someone else would be very beneficial. What generally holds a business owner back is not having a clearly defined position, as they did with previous hires. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to create a new employee position.

How to Create a New Employee Position for a Small Business

When it becomes obvious that you’re taking on too much, be it administrative tasks or something else, it’s time to seriously consider hiring someone to do that work for you. Here are some steps you can take in order to create a new employee position:

Estimate its ROI. Before you start posting job openings, take some time to work out the most likely return on investment. Ask yourself if one or more of your current employees can assume these responsibilities. If not, then it is more likely you need to create a brand new position. Just work out a realistic scenario on how much this will add to expenses and what size return of investment you’ll get for this potential hire.
Determine if it’s part or full time. Next, you’ll need to determine whether this is a part-time or full-time position. Go over your schedule and create a ballpark figure of how much time you spend on these tasks. This will give you a pretty good idea of the number of hours you’ll give over to a new employee. Plus, it will tell you how much time you gain back doing more important things.
Compile a list of applicable skills. Now, you’ll need to create a list of applicable skills that a new employee would need to possess. This will also tell you if these responsibilities are truly interrelated or if they are a mixed bag. What’s more, it will point you in a more specific direction and help you to hone in on the right personality.
Advertise the new position and interview potential candidates. Last but certainly not least, it’s time to fill the new position you’ve created. Write a job description that defines the role and your company’s expectations, then advertise it in trade publications, and on social media.

What other suggestions do you have for an entrepreneur who is considering creating a new team member role? Please share your experiences and thoughts so others can benefit from your input! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

Like this article?

Here’s the Real Reason MoviePass is Failing So Spectacularly (Hint_ It’s Not what You Think)

September 13, 2018 No Comments

MoviePass is failing in-part because it didn’t fully understand the business on which it tried to build its own empire. A slew of news interviews with theater operators points this fact out. They say the service just doesn’t understand how the cinema business works. But, perhaps more importantly, what’s caused things to go so badly in such a short time is it was always too good to be true. In other words, the company overpromised. That’s really why the startup is quickly sputtering out-of-control. And, it’s what gets far too many fledgling companies in big time trouble. Eager to please and deliver jaw-dropping results, they promise the moon and hardly leave earth’s atmosphere. Biggest Overpromising Pitfalls Undoubtedly, critics say it’s time to face reality and close up shop. Irate subscribers and suing shareholders might disagree. (The former wants out, while the latter wants its investment money back.) But, it’s now apparent the movie-selling service just can’t operate as it has. And, for good reason. When you overpromise, you put undue pressure on yourself. Not to mention, you artificially raise expectations to unreachable heights. How many times has a salesperson promised to increase your company’s exposure by 50%, double your client list, and quadruple your profit margin? In this age of instantaneous satisfaction (thanks, technology!), many entrepreneurs and corporate leaders are so eager to appease stakeholders and worried about the bottom line that they seize amorphous opportunities and are disappointed with the results. —Forbes.com There’s more downsides to overpromising. You’re not only letting down one customer, you’re also sending a message that you just aren’t competent or capable of delivering. Then, there’s also the fact that you create resentment among your employees — toward you and each other. 3 Effective Ways to Avoid Overpromising So, how do you avoid the trap of overpromising. After all, you want to sell your business as the solution. Here are a few helpful suggestions for how to avoid overpromising: Learn your customer’s expectations first. Before you begin making promises about what you can do for someone, be sure to ask about their expectations. There’s no good reason to offer lofty solutions or goals when you don’t know what’s really needed. Be completely open, honest, and transparent. As you’re talking with your customer (and with your own team), it’s very important to always be honest. One of the fastest ways to invite disaster is to keep secrets. It’s just counterproductive to hold back because it will eventually come back to bite you. Keep all communications flowing between everyone involved. Communication either solves or prevents a whole lot of misunderstandings. It’s not enough to just be honest but also, to make yourself accessible. When everyone communicates, everyone is on the same page. And, that’s an invaluable element since it paves the way to success when all parties are on-board and totally in-the-know. What other ways do you avoid overpromising? Or, what other advice would you give? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

The Business Behind the Beautiful Landscapes

July 1, 2026 No Comments

Why great operations create great profits A beautifully maintained commercial property is easy to spot. Clean lines, healthy turf, well-kept plant material, crisp edges, seasonal color. The kind of outdoor space that leaves a strong first impression on tenants, customers, employees, and anyone else who walks through it. What’s much harder to see is the business behind that landscape. Behind every well-maintained property sits a whole operating system of people, equipment, schedules, production standards, estimating, purchasing, customer communication, quality control, and financial discipline, all working together (or not) out of view. When those pieces work together, you get more than a beautiful landscape. You get a profitable business. At Waters Business Consulting Group, we’ve seen this pattern over and over: a landscape company doing genuinely exceptional field work, with satisfied customers and growing revenue, and margins that stay stubbornly thin anyway. The problem usually isn’t the quality of the landscape. It’s the quality of the business behind it. Great landscapes are built on great operations Commercial landscaping is an operational business through and through. Every single day involves hundreds of small decisions about labor, equipment, routing, materials, weather, and changing conditions in the field, and one missed detail can ripple further than you’d expect. A bad estimate can put a contract behind before the first crew even shows up. A poorly planned route quietly burns labor and fuel. A piece of equipment going down can throw off an entire day’s schedule. Inconsistent production standards mean rework, and weak communication turns a minor customer concern into a retention problem. These all look like operational issues on the surface. Underneath, they’re financial ones. The companies that consistently perform well understand that operational excellence isn’t separate from profitability. It’s one of the main things driving it. The cost that hides in plain sight Most operational inefficiency doesn’t show up as one big expense you can point to. It builds up quietly. Ten minutes of unproductive time on one crew doesn’t sound like much, but multiply that across dozens of employees, several crews, hundreds of service days, and a full year, and it adds up to real money. The same goes for excessive travel time, poorly sequenced work, labor assumptions that were wrong from the start, unplanned overtime, equipment downtime, wasted material, rework, unclear expectations, and inconsistent quality control. The tricky part is that most companies don’t have the visibility to actually measure any of this. They know a division missed its margin target, but not why. They watch labor costs rise without being able to say which crews or properties or habits are actually driving it. The best operators make the invisible visible. They build systems that show leadership exactly where time, labor, equipment, and money are going, and whether that spending is actually producing results. Profitability starts at the estimate A lot of a job’s profitability gets locked in before a single crew shows up. You can have great people and strong field leadership, but if a contract was priced wrong, operations is stuck trying to make an unprofitable job work anyway. Good estimating takes more than labor hours plus a margin. It means really understanding production rates, labor and equipment costs, material costs, how complex the property actually is, travel and mobilization, seasonal swings, overhead, risk, and what the customer expects. The best companies don’t stop once the estimate is submitted. They go back and check it against what actually happened: did the job take the expected hours, were the production assumptions right, did materials or equipment cost more than planned, did scope creep eat into margin, and which types of estimates keep performing well versus which ones keep losing money. That feedback loop is what sharpens pricing over time and stops the same mistake from repeating itself job after job. Estimating isn’t really a sales function. It’s the first step of operational planning. Labor productivity is a real competitive edge Labor is one of the biggest, messiest costs in commercial landscaping. The companies that consistently win don’t just watch payroll totals. They understand how labor actually converts into finished work, tracking things like labor hours per property, production rates by service, revenue per labor hour, crew productivity, overtime trends, rework, and schedule adherence. The point was never to push people to work faster without regard for quality or safety. It’s to give crews clear expectations, the right resources, and as few unnecessary obstacles as possible. When employees know what success looks like and managers actually have reliable data, productivity tends to take care of itself. Scheduling is a profit lever, not an admin task It’s easy to treat scheduling as busywork, but it’s actually one of the biggest financial levers a landscape company has. How crews, equipment, and properties get scheduled affects labor utilization, travel time, fuel costs, overtime, equipment availability, and how the customer experiences the work. Bad scheduling hides costs everywhere. A crew burns too much time driving between stops. A piece of equipment sits idle. Work gets pushed until it needs overtime to finish. One customer request throws off an already tight route. Good scheduling weighs property locations, service frequency, crew skill, equipment needs, seasonal workload, and weather, not just to fill the calendar, but to actually deploy people and machines in the most productive way possible. Equipment has to earn its keep Equipment is essential to this business, and it’s also expensive. Buying, financing, maintaining, hauling, repairing, and eventually replacing it eats up serious capital. The strongest companies treat their fleet like a strategic asset, watching utilization, operating costs, maintenance needs, downtime, replacement timing, and return on investment, not just fuel and repair bills. They also understand what a broken-down mower or truck really costs. It’s rarely just the repair. It’s the whole crew’s productivity for the day, plus whatever it takes to catch back up: rescheduling, overtime, a rental, extra labor. Preventive maintenance and real equipment planning protect both productivity and the bottom line. Quality control is a financial issue, not just a service

Why Hosting Thanksgiving Dinner Teaches Us a Great Business Lesson

December 11, 2017 No Comments

Yes; you read the title correctly, hosting Thanksgiving dinner can teach us a very good business lesson. How; you might ask? Well, think about it this way. When Thanksgiving rolls around and you’re hosting dinner, what’s one of the first concerns which goes off in your head? Of course, being anxious about getting the meal cooked right is one. But, equal to that is how much of a mess your home is! You begin to panic. It’s a total mess. Things are everywhere. The floor is dirty. And, you notice just how cluttered it is. Time to do some serious cleaning and organizing. Why Hosting Thanksgiving Dinner Teaches Us a Great Business Lesson It’s a known fact that where you work affects just how you work. For example, if you worked in a chaotic environment, like an elementary classroom, you’d have little choice but to stay well-organized. However, too many business professionals let their workplace become disorganized. And, it causes needless wasting of time. So you’ve got a messy office you’d like to tame. We’ve all been there, and many of us still are there. You may think that the people behind your favorite productivity and organization blogs are immune to such things like clutter and disorganization, but more often than not we’re brimming with organization tips, tricks, and solutions because of our own struggles with disorganization. —Lifehacker.com Now, you might disagree. There are people who believe a messy workplace doesn’t really matter at all. But, it actually does. Organization is a key factor. It’s particularly integral to success. Without organization, there’s too many loose ends. Those can easily become distractions. Or worse, cause serious problems. How to Do Office Organization Right When you ignore disorganization, it inevitably comes back to bite you. It’s a quasi-blind spot. A well-organized workplace has big advantages. First and foremost, it gives you a genuine feeling of control and competence. That directly translates into improved and increased productivity. Second, because it’s organized, you’re more free of pointless or counterproductive distractions. Third, it allows you to put your focus where it bests serves your interests. So, let’s look at how to do office organization right: Purge with purpose. The first step is to get rid of as much junk and useless stuff as possible. Purge everything that’s unnecessary or unusable. Take this seriously and you’ll feel an instant sense of gratification. You’ll also be amazed how much space you free up. Designate catch-it spaces. There are all kinds of things that come into a workspace, be it an office, a workshop, or retail store. So, designate where that stuff goes. For instance, a place for things like an umbrella, bags or briefcases. As well as a place for incoming documents and other things. Basically, live the phrase, “A place for everything and everything in its place.” Keep your workspace clutter free. The single best way to stay organized is to keep clutter away. Don’t ignore junk, things, and stuff that come into your workspace or you’ll fall right back into the same cycle. Keep it free of clutter and you’ll develop a good habit. Prioritize and always act accordingly. Another good habit to develop is prioritizing. It’s a great way to know what’s next and what can wait. A shotgun approach is a sure-fire way to disorganization and confusion. Plus, you’re unlikely to get very much done. How do you deal with junk and get organized? Have you found you’re more productive when your office is neatly organized? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

I Want to Create a New Position for My Small Business – So How Do I Go about It?

Hiring should Equal Growth

How to Create a New Employee Position for a Small Business

Like this article?

Related Posts

Here’s the Real Reason MoviePass is Failing So Spectacularly (Hint_ It’s Not what You Think)

The Business Behind the Beautiful Landscapes

Why Hosting Thanksgiving Dinner Teaches Us a Great Business Lesson

Imagine Selling Your Business…

How Would Your Life Change?

Thank you for your interest in learning what your business is worth. We will be in touch shortly.