New York, 23rd August 2008
As we celebrate the ending of another Olympics, I’d like to spend a moment on looking at how to build that winning team for your business.
You see it so often, a company gets started around a great idea. It enthusiastically starts developing its product (or service) and works with a few dead-cert customers-to-be, usually close friends that help along the way with development of the actual product which will thus suit their needs perfectly. Then when the company has done all the hard work, and possibly raised some funding on the back of it – it stops dead in its tracks and fails to close more deals. And somehow never achieves its potential. And everyone asks themselves why this happened, or why the customers just don’t come through the door bo buy it. Until perhaps an outsider that’s been around the block a few times points out that it needs someone in Sales or Marketing that focuses on bringing it to the customer, rather then expecting the customer to come to them having somehow heard of this great new product or service.
The company ofcourse could have thought of this themselves. But they lacked the expertise to do so, and it just needed an outsider with precisely the right experience to see what could be done, or even needed to be done.
It is crucial that as you build your business, you create the right team of people to help you do it. Many entrepreneurs are justly proud of their business, and consider it their "baby" – and so you should. But you also have to learn that you don’t have all the answers and you may not have the best insight in how to solve an issue as you have not necessarily come across it before… but don’t take the aforegoing to mean that you always have to bring on older people. The opposite can equally be true – for instance in our case, whilst we are very experienced, serial entrepreneurs – we have just gone and founded a "social business network" (E.Factor ofcourse) that will to a large extent be used by a much younger target audience then we are ourselves. We know what it takes to run a business – but we need to also know what it takes if that business is a "social network" and how those function. If you like you can equally say – we have the content, but we needed the software to make it work. So we have assembled a great team of younger people around us who can help us focus on those pieces of functionality and look & feel (ready on 6th September, watch this space) that will appeal to the young and old out there.
I got asked the question today – how do you know what or even who you need? It all comes down to your vision and a bit of self-analysis. The latter is important, you have to be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses, or that of the team you started with on a broader scale. And you really should not look for people that are clones with you – however comfortable that may feel. It is better to have complimentary skills that can get you further, rather then stay in that comfort zone. It also depends on your vision – if you are looking to conquer the world – you may want to have board members, or team players that can help you do just that. That have a network or local connections that allow you to penetrate areas you can’t possibly conquer yourself. So you give up a little piece of the flag that you plant there – that is not as important as having it stand their, proudly waving in the first place, is it?
Your team is crucially important and your board should exist of those people that enhance your capacity. Yes, you could ask your uncle – but generally speaking there are plenty of wise people, with critical experience and expertise or young people with enthusiasm and passion out there to help you get where you want to be. And most of them will enjoy sharing the ride with you and look for that happy ending which all entrepreneurs dream of.
For more Do’s & Don’ts for Entrepreneurs click here
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