4 Ways to Build The Perfect Team

What is the number one thing that separates bad companies from great companies? That’s a no-brainer. It’s the team. What you are missing is a great team that is as passionate about the business idea as you are. If you’ve already found that, stop reading and go relax at the nearest beach as your success begins to pour in.

If you haven’t found it, let’s talk. We’ve organized meetups and events to help young people find potential co-founders and team members. So, I’d love to share four ways our GenJuice team and the several other young entrepreneurs have gone about building the perfect team:

1. Be open to working with anyone

We found most entrepreneurs recruited their friends because that’s who they felt most comfortable working with. However, comfort never leads you to success! Your goal should be to find individuals with strengths that fill your weaknesses. The GenJuice team consulted with Ingrid Stabb of The Career Within You to help us discover our individual strengths and how to best work together. You can use any resource you’d like, but you should be open to discovering the talent in anyone.

2. Get out there and attend events

You may stumble upon a great person’s blog or find a hyper motivated person on Twitter, but you can gain a lot more when you meet and interact with them offline. Most of our team met through events and they are super easy to stumble upon. Subscribe to Startup Digest, search for cool meetups on Meetup.com and of course make sure to check out a GenJuice event in your city.

3. Talk to potential co-founders’ or teammates’ friends

You know the saying: “You’re only as good as the people you surround yourself with”. Meet the best friends and classmates of potential co-founders. Hang out with all of them. This is great for establishing your future company culture, as well.

4. Have a practice run

The single best way to build the perfect team is to practice first. Spend an entire weekend building a product, meet up for a day to launch a new blog or do community service together for two hours. Come up with a mini-project that best fits what your team will ultimately do and try it out. If you enjoy the experience working with them, recruit them immediately!

Finding the perfect team is difficult. You have to be open to different kinds of people, open to meeting new people, and just spend a great deal of time with potential team members. As many have said before me: ideas are easy to come by, it’s the team that’s the tough part.

If you’d like to attend an event where you get to have practice runs with several individuals who could potentially be your co-founders or teammates, feel free to check out a GenJuice Tour event in your city.

Have any other tips or ideas that you’d like to share?