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Foundations of a Successful Start-up

Rachel Stone writes for £Shadow Foundr.

Starting a business is a very exciting time. After months of ideas swimming around your head, you’ve finally pinned one down, and can now focus on putting a plan into action. Having a team around you – be it friends or family – who are helping the business to grow can be amazing, but it also requires a lot of hard work. Here’s a few tips to ensure your teamwork makes the dream work.

Think about the dynamic

You need to ensure the dynamic of your team will work – if it doesn’t, your whole business will crumble. It doesn’t matter if you have a team of four great people, if they don’t get on with each other, it will cause chaos and create a toxic environment to work in.

As well as making sure everyone gets on, it can be beneficial in the long-run to have a team that compliments each other’s skills. For example, having tech geniuses is great, but if they haven’t a clue about finance or PR, you may become unstuck later.

At the initial stage of start-up, this isn’t such a pressing issue, as you can always employ people to fit the gaps in the group at a later stage. But for starters, it’s essential that all the founding members get on – or at the very least, can maintain a professional relationship.

Talk about money

Talking about money can be awkward, especially when it’s your friends. But it’s vital to ensure that you have the conversation sooner than later.

How will the profits be split? Who is going to fund the business – or are you looking for an external investor? How much is everyone willing to put in to the business?

These are all very important questions which need to be discussed in order to prevent any problems later. Write down all the conversations you have and file them safely – you may need them as a reference point later.

Sharing is caring

Aside from sharing thoughts with each other, make sure you set up a shared drive/folder database that all your team has access to.

Add everything work-related to the file: to-do lists, legal documents, images, and so on. This ensures that if someone leaves the business – for an afternoon or forever – another staff member can carry on with their work.

Ask everyone to add notes to the file, and update it regularly. Of course, you only want to share this folder with your team – so make sure it has the relevant safety measures to ensure it can’t be accessed by anyone else.

After establishing your start-up, there are several measures to take to ensure that everyone in the business is working effectively.

While every business is unique and there is no identical set of rules that will work for everyone, we’ve compiled a few tips that should help to guide you in the right direction.

Get the balance right

It can be tricky to get the balance right when it comes to running your own business. At the very beginning, there’s loads to do, and you will be working extremely long hours with little rest.

At this point, you need to make sure two things.

Firstly, you need to make sure you have a break! There’s no point overworking yourself, getting stressed, and being unable to work as you’re ill.

Secondly, you need to make sure everyone in your business is pulling their weight. If you’re working 16 hours a day, and your partner is only working 8 but expecting the same share, have a chat with them and see if you can come to an agreement.

Writing group to-do lists is also a good idea, as well as having daily meeting to delegate tasks. You could also try having timesheets, where each person notes their hours – and what they did during them!

Work in sprints

In the same vein as taking breaks, you can be more productive if you work in sprints.

This means working – really working and focusing, not looking at your phone or answering emails – for a period of time, then taking a break. Repeating this process several times a day can enable you to be more productive, and get more out of your time.

Aim to set tasks for these sprints that you will achieve – make them realistic so that you feel a sense of success when you complete them. Not only does this help you to feel good about the work you’ve achieved, but you have a definitive list of everything you’ve done during the day, to refer back to.

Get yourself out there

You could be following the best business plan in the world, have the most innovative product, and be surrounded by the most intelligent team – but if you’re not putting your business out there and exposing it to the market, it will flop.

Interact with other businesses. Contact investors. Speak to the general public.

If you want to become successful, you need to get your business out there in the open. With that in mind, however, you need to ensure you don’t put your business out there prematurely.

Before you show it off the world, have an established plan, and be prepared for any questions you’ll be asked about it.

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This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rachel Stone .