10 Steps to Starting a Business: Step 2

Find Your Team

Step 2 in starting a business is to find your team members. What I mean by “team members” is anyone who is going to support you, assist you, or provide guidance to you while starting a business. You need to find those people and start rounding them up.  Your team can include an accountant, a lawyer, maybe a business coach, or even a mentor; if you have someone that you look up to that would be willing to help and guide you along while you are starting your business, that is definitely someone you want to include in your team.  Any of those people who are going to advise you, and most importantly give you support, because starting a business certainly isn’t easy and the more people you have on your team and in your camp, the better it’s going to feel. You will be supported and will have all of these other people looking out for you and helping you out along the process.

Your team can also include someone like a budgeting coach.  If you have a hard time handling finances, or if you simply do not want to deal with the numbers aspect, getting a budgeting or financial coach in there to help you with the financial aspect of your business is going to be a huge support.

It’s also really important to make sure your team members aren’t just going to be there to give you what you are asking for (for example, legal advice, tax advice, insurance advice, etc.), but also that they are going to be there to support you mentally. That means that you have to actually like your team members! If you don’t get along or don’t like one of your team members, that will just drag you down and won’t help you out too much. So make sure that your team is made up of people that you like and that you enjoy talking to, because that’s going to be important.

There are a lot of free resources out there for mentors and business coaches through the Small Business Association (the SBA) and SCORE, which is a great program that provides business mentoring to startups and small businesses.  If you are looking for free support and free assistance, I encourage you to seek out some of those resources because they are all over the place and they are really great.

Did you miss a step?

Step 1: The Business Plan