One of the most important lessons I
learned in Internet Marketing was that it’s
tough to go it alone. We were made for
community. Not only is the community
important for your own morale and
positive encouragement as you go through
the tough times in setting up your
business, but the community will allow you to be
disciplined about how you spend both
your time and your money. It also helps to
spread the load – if you’re in a team,
each of you can focus on a different area of
the big picture and share your insights
with others. Running a home business is a
vast subject, full of many areas of
specialization – especially if you want to tap into
the almost unlimited resources of the
Internet. If you hope to master it in any
semblance of reasonable time, you’ll
need the help, encouragement, and
giftedness of a team to master the finer
points.
As you look for your team, think about
several different things:
1. The most obvious place to begin
looking, if you’re already in a business, is
your own down-line or upline. Assemble a
group of 5 people (in addition to
yourself) who are focused, determined,
and able to discipline themselves
for success.
2. If you have no business, or you have
a business with no down-line, the best
idea is to find a couple of friends who
are interested in pursuing a business
with you, or who are in a business
already and are happy to work at
something on the side with you. Make
sure they can focus their efforts and
are willing to do the work. You can even
recruit your kids if they're over 18!
This could help them pay for school, and
they could work a regular job while
they're waiting for this one to be financially viable
(it takes about 6 months).
3. These team members should
have different strengths than you if at all
possible. If you’re great
with numbers, find someone who’s really artistic
and while you crunch
numbers, they could design promotional materials,
etc.
4. You will each need a
great sense of humour.
5. You need to be able to be
completely honest with one another.
Once you have a team
together of no fewer than 3 but no more than 5 (at least
to begin with!) you are
ready to start. Decide how often you’ll meet together
(minimum once a week at the
beginning, moving to once a month once you’re
established), and get those
dates in your calendar, making them unbreakable
except in real emergencies.
You want to make your meetings enjoyable, fun,
inspiring, motivating. Go to
the library and get some good home business books
out to get the juices
flowing. Check online for great resources like these to inspire
you:
http://www.SuccessfulHomeBusinessForMoms.com/recommends/bobproctor.html
http://www.SuccessfulHomeBusinessForMoms.com/
r ecommends/yeartosuccess.html
h
ttp://www.SuccessfulHomeBusinessForMoms.com/ r ecommends/simpleology.html
It's absolutely best if you
can find 5 people in your neighborhood or local area –
that way you can meet
together in person, hang out doing other fun things
together, and be more available to inspire
and encourage each other.
You may find that you
absolutely cannot find anyone in your area to work with.
You can work long distance
by phone, or in a pinch, you could even find your
partners online through a
forum or newsgroup. If you're a member of some of
these already and have a
reputation for being a helpful sort of person, so much
the better. If you aren't a
member, take time to join a few groups who's topic
interests you (home reno,
mountain biking, scrapbooking, etc.) and then gain a
good reputation first. To
find groups go to:
http://SuccessfulHomeBusinessForMoms.com/recommends/yahoogroups.html
http://SuccessfulHomeBusinessForMoms.com/recommends/googlegroups.html
http://SuccessfulHomeBusinessForMoms.com/recommends/msngroups.html
Once you've become an active
useful member, simply write up a little post (no
links or anything) that says
you’re looking for 3-5 people that are willing to run a
business experiment for $10.
Have them “PM” you, or send you a private
message. Don't make this a
big deal on the forum or newsgroup or you could be
banned. Check the rules
before you post anything like this. You want to keep
your reputation, not ruin
it.
What you are creating here
is a “MasterMind Group”. This is a key to your success,
and I would seriously
encourage you to go no further until this is in place. It may
take a week, it may take a
month, it may take an hour. Get your team together (6
of you in total, including
yourself). As you find people, encourage them right
away to do the same thing –
create their own “MasterMind” group.
For some good articles on
how these groups work you can check out these links:
http://www.SuccessfulHomeBusinessForMoms.com
/ recommends/mastermindarticle1.html
