There comes a time in every coach’s journey when they’re ready to grow their business and expand.

With so many different components that make up your business, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin.

But when you really think about the nature of coaching itself, it all comes down to relationships. Those you have with your athletes, their support system, and your peers.

Obviously, you want people to respect your technical skills and knowledge, but none of that matters if you don’t cultivate strong relationships with the people that you’re working alongside of.

For these reasons, I believe that hiring new talent to join your team is one of if not the most important step in growing your business.

You want to ensure that you’re making the right decision when hiring, so I’ve compiled a list of my top 3 tips to help you navigate the process.

You want to hire someone who sees the vision as you see it but doesn’t have the exact same skill sets that you have.

When you’re looking to expand, think hard about your goals for the business, but seek out a diverse array of people - everybody brings different strengths to the table.

Think about it in terms of trust. Once someone is on board, you need to be able to trust them to do the work that you hired them for.

And, importantly, don’t micromanage an expert. They’re obviously a specialist in their field for a reason, so give them the opportunity to shine. That means putting your ego to the side at times and admitting you know less than them (this can be hard, I know!).

When I was previously hired at academies, I’d gone through the whole hiring process and proven that I was a great coach but was still ultimately micromanaged to death.

I’ve found that micromanagement is the quickest way to zap somebody’s passion and confidence - steer clear of it at all costs.

When you hire someone new, do everything that you can to maintain the momentum and excitement that accompanies a new person joining your team, don’t kill it.

Along the same lines of hiring a specialist, find people who can run your business, your marketing, sales, or other operations - not just more and more coaches.

It can be tempting to bring on multitudes of coaches since that’s what you’re passionate about, and likely, that’s who you relate to most.

However, hiring coaches to lead your marketing efforts, sales team, and all other facets of your business isn’t usually the best route to take.

When you hire people trained specifically for their role, you remove the administrative layer of the business from your to-do list and hand it off to someone better equipped for that role.

In turn, you have more time to do what you love most - coach.

As I’ve said before, you can’t be all things to all people, otherwise, you’ll burn out.

Trust that those you hire are the best people for the job.

Just because somebody is super experienced it doesn’t necessarily make them the right choice for the job. I always look for the potential in someone, not just what they’ve already accomplished.

Tons of people have unlimited potential but just haven’t been given the chance to prove themselves.

Here’s an example:

I’ve heard of coaches being hired to coach softball (as well as other sports) who don’t actually have experience in that particular sport.

But here’s the thing - they’re great coaches who can learn the specifics of a new sport because coaching is a relationship business as much as it is a skill and technical business.

For example, I feel very confident that I could run a really great soccer practice, even though I don’t know all of the ins and outs of soccer.

And I think I could do the same for generally any sport, given a little bit of heads up on the content.

How to structure a practice, how to provide feedback, and other aspects of coaching are interchangeable between sports.

All of this to say, look for the inherent skills and traits in people that can’t be taught. They can learn everything else, like the ins and outs of your specific business, with the proper training and encouragement.

Throughout many years of coaching and running a business, I’ve definitely learned many lessons along the way when it comes to hiring.

The hiring process can be stressful - bringing people onto your team (who will naturally become the face of your business) is a very important and valuable task.

Ultimately, you’ll find the greatest success hiring when you trust yourself to make the right decision, and you trust the prospective candidates to do their job.

You don’t have to follow all of these suggestions, but they’re a solid place to start when growing your business.