How to Build the Right Team Around You
Every successful organization succeeds because of its team. Follow these steps to ensure the people around you elevate together.
There is no ‘I’ in ‘team’, it is true. This age-old saying has been mentioned in every sports event, movie, or tv show but as cliche, as it may be, this applies to every single group of entities in the universe. This series will be more of a journal as I journey through my passion project turned pseudo-startup. Each week, I will write about the highs, lows, and reflection points from the previous week, using quick journal write-ups to reference my memory. Although the title is specific to one aspect of my week, I hope to provide context and background to each take away from my weekly writings.
Although I’ve been working on this idea for a little over a month now, this past week was the first real week of working in a team-oriented space with a driven mission we had to accomplish.
Problem Identification: After the murder of George Floyd on May 25, I, as well as the rest of America, was shaken. I saw protests change the media landscape as everyone’s interest shifted to what was current at the time, which was the protests. There were media attention, trending topics, Instagram trends that we’re making real change across the board. From our family to national policy, there was progress being made to eradicate systemic racism. Although there was a lot of change going on and seemingly everyone was talking about Black Lives Matter, I saw a challenge in my own experience interacting with the news and social media that I sought to fix.
Every day and even every hour, there was a different topic that took the national spotlight, leaving the previous headline in the dust.
Having so many murders and instances of racism happen in a short time frame made it extremely difficult to stay up to date with all of the petitions, the fundraisers, the cases, and updates happening daily. Along with this, there were so many international causes that were happening simultaneously that need attention and support but were not in the limelight because of how society normalizes atrocities in certain regions of the world.
Developed a Potential Solution: Upon assessing this problem that I have with the frequency of changing news cycles, I looked for ways to change this for the better. I arrived at the idea of creating an accessible page that had resources and information for causes and movements happening domestically and internationally. I wanted to create a one-stop-shop for any information on the causes that you care about as well as the ones you may not know too much about. After the launch of my Instagram page, I received nominal success with each of the posts. I aimed to create posts that were concise and informative, increasing the potential of virality. One of the posts was able to acquire 1200 likes and 1200 shares, something that proved to be the impact that a page like that can provide. After weeks into the BLM movement, I saw a shift in news media and social media feeds shifting back to COVID-19 and the election. Although these topics are extremely important and relevant to every American, there are still a plethora of causes that need attention.
Idea Pivot: One thing about Instagram that’s limiting is the content, ironically. In each of my posts, I put links of petitions, fundraisers, and other resources users would be interested in accessing but Instagram did not allow for users to directly click on them and redirect their attention to the website that was linked. Instead, the link shows up as text, oftentimes ignored by readers. To allow for greater usability of the research and content I wanted to share along with staying true to the mission of being a resource for all movements in one area, I felt that a newsletter would be the best way to pivot.
User Research: After reaching this idea, I wanted to ensure it was an idea that would lead to success and help users. I conducted extensive user research with people in my network as well as outside my network. I assessed how users reach the news, issues with their processes as well as how they would improve any of these processes and all my interviews led to a newsletter that would accumulate information on movements into one place.
Team Building
One of the biggest, if not the biggest, aspects of building a successful startup is the team around you. More than the idea, more than the funding, the team that runs the startup is what drives success to organizations. I recently spoke with a friend who works for a VC and he stated that the one factor that investors almost always hold heaviest is the team they are investing in. Not the idea but the team. I wanted to ensure that the people I brought on to help me with Unified Awareness were people who would drive this mission forward. Although I added a team member around when I started, I have spent the last week doing outreach for team members and then spending time doing the research and developing the newsletter.
While doing outreach from day 1, I wanted to follow a list of consistent criteria to expand my team.
- Work ethic is extremely important with startups because the teams are so small but the organization has extensive development overhead that each member undertakes.
- Time availability, especially during the summer, is more open but this goes to the third aspect.
- If someone does not have a true interest in both the mission of the team and the success of the organization, even having a completely open schedule can seem busy.
First Week
This past week was spent with doing outreach across my network and social media channels to find members to join the Unified Awareness team as well as launch our newsletter and I am proud to say, everything went better than expected. After onboarding 2 team members this week, I assigned them the international stories to cover that would be included in the newsletter. I then had myself and my co-founder cover the domestic content and the development of the product. On Thursday, we went through the finalized newsletter and did last-minute touches, and then Friday morning I launched the newsletter in the morning. I then re-sent it the same day but I have now realized that I will resend newsletters a few days after, just to ensure that there is a gap between emails.
Looking Ahead
My expansion period is not over just yet. Now that Unified Awareness has its first week in its rear-view mirror, I want to continue the momentum and grow our reach. This means bringing on team members who can work on varying aspects of the mission while still developing weekly newsletters and content that applies to each user.
