Build Your Own Workgroup Workshop

Last Thursday, Jessica Wright of  The Ace Department shared her thoughts on working together to work for yourself.  Here she dishes on the nitty gritty how-tos of making it happen. You can follow her on Twitter for heaps of great business insights on the regular.

So we’ve established that it’s super important to surround yourself with helpful, clever, inspiring professionals.  Here’s how!

1. Assemble a good group.  

• Look for a diverse set of talents -- people with management, design, programming, sales, or product experience. 
• Put out the ask -- see who's interested in participating, even if informally at first.
• Make it an attractive offer -- highlight the type of group you're interested in building and make it obvious why it should be beneficial to everyone you include.

2. Bring everyone together.

• Define the experience upfront -- whether you host it at your home, office, a coffee shop, or online, explain to everyone involved what they're getting into -- what type of information you expect to share, how long you expect to meet, and set up ground rules regarding mutual confidentiality.
• That said, let your first meeting unfold naturally -- if you planned to have each member share linearly and find that people are piping up organically, let it happen.  Don't let the meeting devolve into chaos, but there's no need to follow the playbook you planned.

3. Follow up.

• Disperse meeting notes
• Help members stay in contact with each other
• Follow up on potential synergies highlighted in the meetings -- networking opportunities, work exchanges, etc. 
• Set up the next meeting.

Running a workshop does take some work, but the benefits can be invaluable to your business.  And remember, if you don’t want to DIY, you can do it at Ace.

 Do you think you’d work well in a workshop atmosphere?  Who would you love to work with in your field?

Sarah Von is a Vianza contributing columnist and interview wrangler.  If you follow her on Twitter, you’ll be privy to all sort of tweets about small business, good ideas and, um, cheese.