In our continuing series on creating a successful business out of any idea or product, we’re going to continue on from our discussion of branding and service, and move into creating a team and training them.
The first thing to remember is that you cannot do everything yourself. You will definitely need help! This does not always mean a full time employee, or even a traditional business relationship! You can outsource common tasks like bookkeeping, tech support, advertising, and more. Check out my previous post on having time for everything, and especially check out the required reading in that post of Ferriss’s wonderful book “The Four Hour Workweek” This book will tell you how to outsource all kinds of business AND personal functions, and will allow you to focus on those things that only you can accomplish, like vision and strategy.
Once you’ve got an idea of how you want to assemble your team, follow some rules that I’ve laid out for ensuring that everyone on your team is fully trained. This is an ongoing process, as every employee should be constantly learning and evolving with both your business changes, and the world!Â
The first thing you should be doing is creating a training manual that includes every aspect of your product, service, and image.Â
 If you’ve completed the first two articles in this series, you should have the bulk of your ideas ready for this documentation. You should now formalize all of that information and make sure that not only you understand it, but the people you’re working with do as well! Make sure that the training manual is the first thing you review with each employee, and be sure that you use this time to evaluate that employee or partner’s compatibility. If you’ve hired just because they have experience, you should be able to find out now and save both you and your employee a lot of time and heartache by letting them go now if they can’t keep up. As I said before, this process is an on-going one, so you should be reviewing both your training material AND your employee’s understanding of that material on a very regular basis.
One last tip, before we move on to the next topic : when training, be sure to
Tell, Show, Do Review
If you explain, do it with them, and then make sure they’ve got it, you know for sure that you’re doing training right!
Check out my next article for more information on marketing and how to track it, both off and online!
