Naturally, like undertaking any project, it is almost impossible for any entrepreneur to realise their dream without the support of others. Dreams are fulfilled through people, but convincing those with the requisite skillsets, and attitude to join you at the initial stages, is not easy.

Start-ups, especially those in Africa, are characterised by high mortality rates, low finances, and very high employee turnover, among others. Thus, attracting employees with the right skillsets is usually hard for the start-up entrepreneur and yet for you to see your idea become a global brand, you need these skills. After all, the quality of the employees in any given business usually determines its financial bottom line and its sustainability.

For you to be able to attract the quality staff to your start-up, the following may help.

Share the vision with the core team with the critical skills

It is true that Africa has a large pool of human resource to pick potential employees from, getting those with the right skillsets, attitudes, team spirit, good ethical standing, innovation, and long-term thinking are hard to come by. And yet, these are the calibre of employees that every start-up entrepreneur needs to realise their dreams.

To be able to attract people with such qualities, you must be able to share your vision clearly and in a manner that motivates whoever cares to listen to you.

In other words, being clear, specific, and inspiring about the vision is more effective to attract and engage others than being evasive.

Recommended article: 5 Essentials for Start-ups’ success in the Digital Economy.

Peter Stark, in his book, Engaged! How Leaders Build Organisations Where Employees Love to Come to Work defines engagement as a state in which “employees are connected both at the head, and the heart level and are willing to give what is referred to as discretionary effort, meaning willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.” This level of commitment is very critical for start-ups and that can mostly be achieved when you are unambiguous with the strategic intent of the vision for the enterprise, at least to the initial core team. Ensure you achieve this, and you will glad you did.

Put systems in place. 

After talking and convincing people to join you, take steps to put in place visible operational systems, independent of you, to ensure the smooth running of the enterprise. If people must always revert to you to get things done, chances are that, sooner than later, you will lose some of those staff with the essential skills because they feel their potential being stifled.

For any start-up whose vision is to transition into a sustainable business, there must be structures or an elaborate processes and systems in place to manage the business’ income and expenditures and motivate or reward staff. The idea here is that when staff see system in place, they are encouraged to go an extra mile in executing their duties, knowing that the systems in place will reward their efforts.

Like this article rightly says, structures create clear responsibilities and roles now and in the future. Most employees want to have clear roles and responsibilities that assures them of the certainty to grow into their careers.

Focus on Solving the problem. The money will follow soon

For any business idea to succeed, it must have a problem to solve. To inspire people to join you in the enterprise, your business must provide solutions to customers’ problems. The team must be convinced that, indeed, your vision solves a problem. No one wants to be part of a vision whose failure is predictable. Therefore, your vision must be well thought through on how it solves problems, and its scalability potential.

Recommended article: Creating a Great Start-up Team: What to Look out for?

It is important to note that as a start-up entrepreneur, you have no business if customers are unwilling to pay for your kind of solutions. Hence, you are responsible for identifying the problems that your idea is intended to solve, then working with your team, you innovate to come up with creative ways of solving the problems of your customers. Do not focus on the money first; it will flow in as a reward if you solve problems for your customers.

Being a start-up entrepreneur is not easy. But you will enjoy being one if you enjoy your work and feel passionate about the problems your idea is intended to fix for your customers.

The enterprise must have something that will drive you and your team through in the initial stages of developing the idea to become a brand. And that is the solution you sell to your customers.

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