Team
--noun
1. a number of persons forming one of the sides in a game or contest: a football team.
2. a number of persons associated in some joint action: a team of advisers.
3. two or more horses, oxen, or other animals harnessed together to draw a vehicle, plow, or the like.
4. one or more draft animals together with the harness and vehicle drawn.
5. a family of young animals, esp. ducks or pigs.
6. Obsolete. offspring or progeny; race or lineage.
-verb (used with object)
7. to join together in a team.
8. Chiefly Northern U.S. Older Use. to convey or transport by means of a team; haul.
-verb (used without object)
9. to drive a team.
10. to gather or join in a team, a band, or a cooperative effort (usually fol. by up, together, etc.).
-adjective
11. of, pertaining to, or performed by a team: a team sport; team effort.
Origin: bef. 900; ME teme (n.), OE t'am child-bearing, brood, offspring, set of draft beasts; c. D toom bridle, reins, G Zaum, ON taumr
Great entrepreneurs are great leaders. Great leaders know how to surround themselves with the right people at the right time. There is just not enough time in the day to do everything yourself. Business owners that try to do everything themselves get so caught up in the details that they lose sight of the big picture. They don't see the changes they need to make to stay on course. Good business people maintain a birds-eye view of their business and what is going on in the world around them.
By putting together a team at the start of your business, you will be learning leadership skills that you will need as your business grows larger and larger. You will learn how to find self-motivated and resourceful people that know how to get things done and are action-oriented. As a leader, you will learn to motivate them through your energy, vision, clear sequence of steps and achievable goals, and fair incentives.
In your business, you will often be a leader and a team player at the same time. In you bring in a professional to help manage or build part of the business, then it may be best to let that person lead and you will just be a member of the team. You'll find that many good leaders also know how to be good followers. As your business grows, you may need to change members of your team. The people that you needed during the early phases of your business will no longer be needed and others skills will need to be need to be added.
As we learn to be leaders, it would be nice to think that we always will make good personnel choices. That is rarely the case. You can't afford a member of your team to inflict an attitude that spreads bad feelings. If you've hired a bad apple, get rid of them sooner rather than later. Your energy and efforts are too important to waste on working with people you don't enjoy being around. And it is not fair to the rest of your team to force them to work in a non-productive atmosphere.
One of the hardest things new managers - and many experienced - have to deal with is firing employees. Get over it. Nobody likes to be the bad guy, but it's your business they are ruining. I still remember the first management job I had where I was responsible for several crew members. The first time I had to fire someone, I didn't sleep the night before because I was so nervous. When the time to call him into the office and let him go, he just said OK and got up and left. While I've had to fire a lot of people in the thirty years since then (and it still is not enjoyable), I don't lose sleep over it anymore. I've learned the business always works better afterward.
So, who do you need on your team? I have no idea. It depends on your personal skill sets and the type of business you are building. The best place to start is by looking at similar businesses or organizations. They do not have to be in the same business you are in. For instance, a small retail store runs much the same no matter what is sold. The painter and plumber are both service businesses. They just use different supplies. For our discussion here, let's look at some positions that almost all businesses use in one capacity or another.