194: Growth vs Scale: The 5 Essential Roles in Your Business

Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. In the last couple of episodes, we've really been talking about growing and scaling and where to spend your time, money, and energy, what it means to grow and scale, if you're ready for it, what you need to do.

Today, I want to go a little deeper into one of the things that I mentioned in the last episode about scaling, making sure you've got the right people. This was something that I have been working on myself. I told you in that last episode that I hired someone to help me with an audit of all of my operations systems.

Through that, it became apparent maybe I didn't have the right people in place. So, Nikki, who did that audit for me, shared with me this framework of thinking about the people in my business, and I want to share that with you today because I think it's so, so, so valuable.

In a business context, the roles of doer, implementer, manager, leader, and visionary, really each represent different aspects of work, different aspects of strategic input, and different aspects or levels of judgment. They all are needed in an organization, but they are not one in the same person.

As a solopreneur, when you start out, you are all of them, but if you're growing, you start to realize you can't be all of them and you probably hired a couple of contractors. Then as you're scaling, you might recognize that again, you need to have more of these levels accounted for.

Okay, so often I see clients realizing that they can't do it all. So, they hire like a doer, someone to handle tasks. A lot of times it's a VA type of person. They're doing things. They may be implementing some processes that you've created, but they're probably not managing things. An online business manager should be managing things. Sometimes you've got to check, are they really doing more VA tasks and not really managing things.

As you grow, you need to have other leaders, you need to have people who take responsibility. I hear so many times clients say, "I wish just someone would take responsibility for something." Well, what level of responsibility?

What they're really griping about is a level of responsibility where they themselves don't have to do all the thinking. When you just have doers and implementers, you're still honestly doing all the thinking. Once you get to having managers and leaders, those levels, then you're not doing all the thinking.

As you scale, you need other thinkers. You need other big thinkers on your team. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go through each of these five types of work, these five roles and I want you to listen closely as to how I describe the role, the characteristics of it, and its focus.

All right, number one, the doer. The role of the doer is someone who focuses on executing tasks and getting work done. They are typically super hands-on, they love checking boxes, they're involved in day-to-day operations, and they're pretty practical activities in businesses like paying invoices, collecting payment, or maintaining files.

Sometimes even posting on social media could be a doer. The characteristics of those people, they're efficient, they have a strong work ethic, they are skillful in certain things, specific things.

Their focus is not to think big, actually. Their focus is to complete the tasks, adhere to the deadlines, and maintain quality standards. What do I mean by quality standards?

Well, one of my biggest pet peeves is when one of my doers might send me something and there are typos or graphical errors. Drives me bananas. They're not maintaining the quality standards. That's a doer.

An implementer is really responsible for turning plans into action. They take strategies and concepts and develop steps around them. One of the people I just hired, she's more of an implementer. The characteristics are she's practical, she's organized, she's got a systematic approach. She really understands how to make things happen in the real world. I'm inviting some people to my podcast, that's like you're talking to the real world there, she gets that.

Her focus is really creating these organizational plans, making sure we've got what we need available resources-wise, and carrying out initiatives. That's an implementer.

Next up you get the manager. The role of the manager is to oversee the implementation of the business activities. They manage teams, they can allocate resources, and they can ensure that business operations are running smoothly.

What are their characteristics? Strong administration and coordination, problem-solving. Notice this is the first time I've brought in problem-solving. They're adept at managing people and resources.

They can supervise things. They can ensure that everything is efficient and effective. That's like when I hired Nikki to look at all of these operational procedures, was everything efficient and effective? No. She's really good at problem-solving and figuring out how to make things efficient and effective.

But next up on the block here—or as I like to call it on the wedding cake—the next tier is the leaders. Leaders are really there to inspire, motivate, and guide others. They really play a huge role in shaping the direction and culture of the business.

When I talk about talking to future you, a leader is talking to future you. They're shaping the direction. They're helping create a rudder on a ship. They're usually a great communicator, and they really motivate others to perform at their best.

A lot of businesses as they start to scale don't have many leaders. They may have a doer, an implementer, and even a manager, but they skip this leader part, that's what they're really craving, or at first they're craving a manager, and then they're craving a leader.

I don't really see that I even have a leader in my business right now. I am both the leader and the visionary—which brings me to visionary—visionaries are the idea generators. They're the big-picture thinkers.

My coach also plays a role in, she's part visionary in my business. She can see the future with me. She can see the possibilities that I don't see. You know when I talk about you're stuck in the peanut butter jar and you can't read the label, yeah, you don't have a visionary in your business yet.

A coach can be part visionary for you. They're forward-thinking. They have a knack for seeing opportunities. A lot of times when I see an opportunity come my way, I'll run it by her. She sees even more opportunity in it, 99% of the time.

Or, not an opportunity and say, "Hey, watch out." A visionary is really focusing on the future course of the business. They're imagining new offerings. She always is like, "You know, you're not writing any book. You're writing a real book." That was a new offering, a new product, so to speak.

She inspired me to pursue that idea. So, visionaries inspire organizations to pursue new ideas. Each of these roles is really crucial in a business and they offer a unique contribution.

You don't have to have all of them all at once. That would be five layers of people. I wouldn't think probably anyone listening to this podcast necessarily has nailed all five layers of this.

But if you're starting to scale—which again is really what we talk about in that Mastermind—you've definitely got a doer, hopefully, you have an implementer or manager and you are the visionary. Hopefully, we've got three layers.

This is where lots of this discussion happens. Because remember, your doer and your implementer are task and process-oriented, so they want to make sure that all these ideas materialize.

The manager is really overseeing and organizing the resources, figuring out how we remain efficient, while the leader and the visionary provide the inspiration in the strategic direction. Understanding and cultivating these roles can really enhance your business's capacity to thrive, adapt, and scale.

The next piece of the puzzle is these implementers. They have the capacity to be logistical and tactical. They can assess whether things are feasible, they can figure out the next steps, and they kind of bridge the gap a little bit between strategy and execution.

Their judgments there, really they see potential risks where execution might not happen or things might not be optimized. Whereas a manager, they are required to make judgments about people, processes, and performance. Are people doing what they need to be doing?

This again came out and when I hired Nikki as a manager to look at my operations, this came out that maybe performance management needed some help. The decision-making skills of a manager are really crucial for maintaining smooth operations.

A leader. Leaders make broader strategic decisions. They shape culture—we talked about that, how I need to work on that—they follow the path of the visionary. They might be more into corporate culture and morale.

Keeping things on the positive. That's a leader, that's their role in judgment. Whereas visionaries are the ones who make the judgments or decisions about future opportunities.

Where they need to consider things, they need to look long, long term. They have to evaluate future scenarios. They're really friends with future you. The visionary is really friends with the future you.

Each role's judgment capacity really is tailored to how they are contributing to the organization, from a very practical way to a strategic way to the future far reaching way.

Doers and implementers, they're more focused on the how and the now. Managers are really optimizing and organizing. Leaders and visionaries are more shaping the future direction, and they're motivating people to move forward.

Who do you have in your organization? Who do you need in your organization? It's important to recognize this. As you lay that foundation for scaling, you've got to assess who's your next hire. What role are they going to fill?

Which is going to lead me to what we're talking about in the next podcast, which is about hiring; when small businesses should hire. I have a little method to my madness, my friends, is how I organize these podcasts. I'm doing four in a row. They're all about growth and scaling.

These are all things that we talk about definitely in The Mastermind and definitely we’re starting to talk about them in I've Really Got This, in one of my other coaching programs. This all becomes clear. If you're not really sure where you are, it all becomes clear when we turn your vision into action steps. We can see where you're at in your action steps to see what level your business is at.

If you haven't done a Vision-to-Action Intensive, you need to do that. Go hop over to the website, and check out its new look, andrealiebross.com. Click on the coaching tab, you're going to see all the coaching offerings, so organized and well laid out. I am very proud of myself and the work that my team has done in creating this new website.

Give me some accolades, send me a message, and tell me what you think. But also send me a message or just book a call if you want to talk about any of the help, how I could help you in your business. Could I play the role of visionary? Could I help you get things organized? Could I help you see the future? That's what I love, love to do. That's what coaches are great at.

All right, my friends, until next time, keep thinking big. Take steps to support yourself in your big thinking. Remember, this is how you level up. Big thinking is key to leveling up. Get yourself going. See you soon.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

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