ENTERPRISE54 – It’s commonplace that a great team is essential to building a successful business. You need people to make your vision/dream a reality. You need a good team to be able to create a good product, ideate on the best business strategies and ensure an awesome product/service is ready for the market.

Building great teams requires the ability to compensate team members. Good hands require good pay. You don’t want to start-up with a mediocre team. But what if you don’t have enough money to pay for good hands? And what if you are trying to scrimp because this is your first-time as an entrepreneur and you are still in the water-testing phase? Not to worry, we have a few ideas you should explore:

Work with Young People who are Eager to Create Cool Stuff

This is one area worth exploring. There are lots of young creative minds looking for how and who to shape their abilities to develop cool services or products and add value to their society. You can work with some young people, mentor them and let them share in your work for a pay that is almost always manageable (This is one of the reasons Mara Mentor exists, to bridge the gap between you and the young creative minds). Give them responsibility but keep oversight. Also, keep a record of the people you have worked with and when you are ready to do an in-house full time, full house structure; you call on them to be part of the team. The point is that over time you’d have gathered a list of people with the competencies you require. This makes the hiring process easier.

Get into the Partnership Spirit

Partnerships cost less monetarily, especially if you have something good to offer or leverage on. Partner with other firms that are beneficial. Design firms, tech firms, media firms etc. Just make sure you have something good to leverage on, so that you can get positive response. For example, a tech-based firm that wants to partner with a design or media firm, could offer to handle their technology infrastructure in return. It saves you the cost of having to pay for their service and gives you something cool to add to your portfolio.

Collaborate

Another space you can explore is the collaboration. You can work with other people without having to see them or be with them in the same room. Arrange Skype meet ups, schedule Google chats/hangouts, make everything virtual and provide feedback regularly without wasting time, so you can get your work done early and on time.

Don’t Start Hiring

Don’t get too excited and go on a hiring spree. Yes, you need the experts. And yes, you need talents with optimally functioning brainpowers who can multitask and spin ideas on the go. But you must understand having a full time staff comes with the cost of a hiring-process and constant salaries to be paid though your sales have not picked up as a new business. It is cost-effective to operate on contract-basis with the people you need, as the job demands.

Editor’s Note: This post was contributed by Mara Mentor