Building your Team

Lately we have been investing a lot of time and energy into sproutwire.com instead of sales. Meanwhile, our team has often been idle, developing their side projects, as we hunt for work. One great benefit and risk of working with independent contractors is that they are required to have other sources of income. This is great because it means we are not responsible for keeping our team working full time, but it is dangerous because it can easily lead to attrition. Eventually we all need to get paid. So how do we manage to keep together?
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One of the great challenges of working with a team of remote independent contractors is that there is no central office. People often say that by working with a remote team that is spread halfway across the globe, we are essentially missing hallway chatter. In other words, we’re missing a bond because we don’t run into each other and chat about things on a daily basis.

Since we don’t have a central office, we’ve decided to try a strategy of meeting with some of our most active team for a week in a Casa de Mar, a tropical resort in El Salvador (more photos to be uploaded when we get home and have a better connection). So far, I must say, the results have been spectacular (why don’t we have all our meetings in tropical resorts?)!

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Today I learned a lesson. It surprised me quite a bit as it counters a lot of my basic understanding of business contracts and relationships. It happened twice in one day and a little search on Google confirmed that this wasn’t some odd exception.

Two successful entrepreneurs I respect and trust enormously refused to sign our NDA. At first I was confused and worried. You see I was raised on the belief that in business, loose lips sink ships. I was under the impression that the proper procedure with any business idea was to get an NDA before sharing. I have a close relationship with both of them and asked why not. It appears that the business culture and realities of their trade make signing such a document unrealistic.
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I’m going to get a bit naked here. Maybe I’ve been reading Naomi’s blog too much (don’t worry, my mom washed my mouth out with soap as a kid, so I’ll never talk like her). A few days ago Julie and I took a series of walks, whose dialog revolved around perception, motivation and sex. I asked Naomi for advice because I wanted a woman’s view and found out that she and her lad had a similar dialog. So for the woman’s perspective, check out her post (should be up tomorrow).

Our dialog over the last weeks have made me think a lot about setting the stage for success and giving someone what they need to perform. What food feeds their soul? What projects do they excel at? What feedback do they need? What turns them on and gets them going?
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You know why you need a mentor. You took the time and energy to find one. If you haven’t yet: take your list of dreams, goals and aspirations for your personal life, find someone who has achieved the bulk of them in your industry (or if there are none, consider changing industry) and grab their coat tails and never let go. A bit of elbow grease and a whole lot of patience and interviewing will do the trick. So, now that you have a mentor, what the heck do you do?
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You need to tell any woman who you interview like me the following: This is not going to be like any interview you have ever gone to. We are not a large corporation … we are two guys running a small company and we really do care about your dreams and what you want out of your life.-J

We are not running a reality show. This is our life, and for all of you who understand how emotional and difficult interviewing can be, it should be private. That why I let this article sit in the fringe for a month before posting it.

I had no intention whatsoever of blogging about the interviews themselves. Until tonight. J asked me to tell the next people we interview the quote above. I asked her if I could write it on our site and she agreed.
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Nothing is more frustrating than to work hard and make a pile of money, only to lose it in a law suit or to the IRS. There are core people to each and every business team. Few are more important than your accountant and your lawyer. Having been through the selection process a few times, I figured it would be worth sharing some of the wisdom we have gained.
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There is only one way you cross a mine field. Find someone with bigger feet than you who has successfully crossed it in the past and carefully follow in their footsteps. In the minefield that is small business, not enough people take the time to find a mentor. Many of those who do, often pick the wrong one. Your long term odds go way up if you can find someone with the success you are seeking to take a vested interest in your business. So why should you have a mentor, and once you find the right one, what do you do?
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I was given some very precious advice from a billionaire the final time we spoke. “Building a business is incredibly simple with the right people. Building a business with the wrong people is the hardest thing in the world.” In “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t”, Jim Collins explains that the companies he studied spent very little time motivating their people once they had the right people on the bus. So how do we determine the right people? How do you keep them once you’ve got them? Can you develop someone into the right person?

Peter & I are firmly committed to the idea that you create long term satisfaction by providing people the opportunity to win. You provide them challenge and all the support they need for a series of consistent successes. The key here is setting your team up for success.
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The stronger our ability to communicate effectively, the happier we tend to be. Understanding how people react to situations and how to respond appropriately is a key to success in business, in marriage, in friendship, and in life.
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