Are you able to run the business all by yourself?
As I have talked with a number of tentmakers over the past years, a common struggle has appeared. Most of them struggle with trying to run the business on their own.
Here are a few ideas that could help you grow your business by developing a business team.
Core Values – The First Step
Before you begin to develop your business team, you need to make sure that you have developed your core values for your business. You want to make sure you have clearly decided and documented what is most important to you and your business. By clearly defining your core values, you can make sure that any future teammates are on board with the way you will run your business. As part of your core values, you will want to think about:
If you do not already have your core values, I would encourage you to take a few hours and develop 5 – 8 statements that clearly define what you and your business stand for.
Self Evaluation – The Second Step
The next step in building a business team is to understand your strengths and weaknesses.
I would recommend that you make a list of what skills and strengths you bring to the business. You should also include your areas of potential weakness.
You may want to discuss your strengths and weaknesses with your spouse or some other person that will be honest with you. I have found the Strength Finders test to be very helpful in identifying my top 5 strengths.
Once you have identified the areas where you need help, you can now begin to look for others to fill in the gaps.
Finding Your Team – The Third Step
Ideally, you will want to build a business team with people who are willing to join you overseas. There are a number of ways that you can locate people to join you. The easiest way is to talk to your church or organization to see if they have any potential business people. Another option is for you to talk with friends and family members to see if any of them are interested.
It is very important that you find people who feel the Lord’s calling to doing business overseas.
It might be simple to fill in the business gaps, but if your purpose is Kingdom Impact, you will want to find people who are ready to share Jesus with the nations. We have found that people without a true calling end up leaving the field very quickly.
What if you can’t find the perfect person?
Sometimes you may not be able to fill in all of the gaps! I would recommend that you find business experts that live in your home country who can help you with certain portions of your business. You may want to find an accountant or marketing person who can help your business in those areas of needs. These people could work from anywhere in the world!
Developing a business team is critical for a successful long-term Kingdom business.
Jumping in too quickly without the necessary support can easily cause your business to fail.