Guest Post: Coach John Brubaker on Building Startup Teams

As part of our commitment to bringing you information and opinions about entrepreneurship, this guest post features Coach John Brubaker of The Sport of Business LLP and his insights on how to recruit the individuals needed to build a high-performing startup team.

John teaches audiences how to obtain better results in business with straightforward tools that turbo charge performance. John has been a college athlete, three time coach of the year, analyst and personality for ESPN Radio and Fox Sports, consultant, and author.  For more information visit: www.coachbru.com

Think Like A Coach In Building Your Startup Team

“You win in the locker room first then on the field”

I’m sure at some point you have heard this expression in sports, and as cliché as it may seem, I can tell you from experience, truer words were never spoken. The same holds true in the sport of business – you win in the office first, then in the marketplace.

There is nothing more important to the success of any organization or team than the relationship between recruitment and culture. Know that when building your startup team, getting the right culture fit is of paramount importance. It sets the tone for everything you do moving forward. How do you ensure the right fit?  It’s not an exact science, and there is an art to selecting the right team members. Here’s a blueprint to help you shape your recruitment to fit the culture of your new company.

Recruit for work ethic and passion first, experience second. Why? With a startup there is twice as much work to do as people to do it! You need teammates who can count on one another.  Experience in the field can be gained with time.  Passion and work ethic typically cannot, so recruit people who bring fresh perspectives and enthusiasm to the job.  New ideas can be the difference-maker that helps you compete with established competitors.

Recruit for the “Warrior Spirit” (like Southwest Airlines). Resilience first, winning second. You can’t afford to recruit people who expect to walk into a situation and simply win right away. You need to recruit trailblazers, people who want to make history and are mentally tough enough to venture into the unknown. Success will come over time.

Recruit for flexibility and agility first, “salesmanship” second. Customer development is a commonly misunderstood concept with startups. The traditional sales professional isn’t going to be the right fit 99% of the time. With a startup, employees tend to perform multiple roles until there is a track record of performance and the subsequent role clarity that can accompany it. Unknowns and change tend to dominate the day-to-day operations of many startups. Because of this, you need to recruit for flexibility and agility. Many people are not comfortable operating with unknowns and dealing with change.

Typical startup unknowns: What is your market? What does the ideal client look like? Who is the buyer?  Who is the decision maker?  How should we set pricing?

Typical Startup change areas: Client base, pricing, business model, contracting, and terms.

Script a recruit profile. What does the ideal teammate looks like? In a startup, lean toward recruiting teammates who are:

• 1 part Magellan (Explorer)
• 1 part Frank Lloyd Wright (Architect)
• & 1 part Steve Jobs (Innovator adept at creating niches)

This trailblazer is someone comfortable operating without a map, GPS, or a safety net. They can navigate on the fly and treat early failure not as a dead end, but as a detour on the road to the destination of success.

Ask the right questions. To get the right culture fit you need to ask the right questions. For a startup, the following questions will be very revealing and can serve as a good measuring stick for fit.

• How did the candidate attack new problems in a previous job?
• Can they provide examples of some creative solutions to problems they’ve developed to satisfy customers?
• Can they describe an ambiguous situation in their last job and how they arrived at a solution?
• How have they introduced new services to their past clients? What were the steps and why did they take the approach they did?
• What would their first step in this position be?

Additionally, every team needs a shade of grey – as in grey hair. A mentor with wisdom and historical perspective can provide insights others lacking that perspective cannot see. There is a reason the best of the best are exactly that; they possess a unique approach to performance. A key ingredient in the University of Florida football program’s unprecedented success involves that shade of grey. Coach Urban Meyer hired Hiram de Fries, a retired lawyer and oil executive, in 2003 to be the team’s “chemistry coach”. His formal job description is to make sure everyone is always on the same page, on and off the field. Two National Championships and four conference championships later, Coach Meyer says that he thinks de Fries is more important to the Gators success than anything else. Clearly, aligning vision with values and strong mentoring are mission critical. As you recruit and construct your team, be on the lookout for your chemistry coach.

Simply building a team, mixing in a chemistry coach and hitting the road running doesn’t guarantee overnight success. Nothing does!  I utilize the mantra “Overtime Victory” with the organizations and executives I coach. It is used as a trigger word reminding them there is no such thing as an overnight success. The best make it look easy, superstar athletes and musicians perform so seemingly effortlessly that the public tends to think they were simply born with a gift.  The reality is their success was born of years of resilience and hard work before anyone was watching.  You too can do the same. Management gurus Malcolm Gladwell and Jim Collins echo my “Overtime Victory” sentiment with their theory that it takes at least 10 years or 10,000 hours of practicing a skill to become an expert.

Patience is critical with a start up.  To provide some perspective, the Dallas Cowboys went 0-11 their first season and it wasn’t until eight years later that they won their first Super Bowl, now they enjoy the title “America’s team.” John Wooden, arguably the greatest coach of any sport, didn’t win a title his first 15 years at UCLA. Once his coaching philosophy, vision, and principles had crystallized, he was able to merge them into a long term game plan for success and win 10 of the next 12 National Championships from 1963-1975.

Building a business is a constant struggle, but a rewarding one. Learn to seek and celebrate small victories first while developing your team chemistry. As a leader you need to focus on the big picture vision while keeping your teammates engaged, motivated and positive about the immediate future.

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