The land of entrepreneurship can be an exciting, but lonely one. Long hours, constant exploration of unknown territory and stressful decision making. Oy vey.

But, as many business owners have discovered, having a great group of business pals / colleagues / buddies / supporters can make a great difference in your effectiveness and overall mental health.

Entrepreneur magazine calls them your Success Squad, we call them plain wonderful. Let’s take a look at some ways you can find these supporters and help each other make things happen in your respective businesses.

Your business plan needs some cheerleaders

It’s nice to feel understood. As an entrepreneur, you probably have a great support network of family and friends – but lets face it, not all of them want to go into deep and intricate detail of your latest business decision over Sunday dinner. And if they do, they may not have the expertise or experience to give you sound advice and feedback.

Connecting with other entrepreneurs on a regular basis to discuss the good, the bad and the ugly can be hugely to your benefit. Be sure to select business owners that have varied backgrounds and personalities – creative conflict is fantastic to helping you discover new solutions and ideas.

Make sure that your business circle is one of transparency, you can’t get help making decisions or tweaking proposals if you are only sharing half the story and data. Which leads us into the issue of trust, this is truly a baring of business soul so be sure you are all in agreement what information is to stay only within your group.

Business buddies with benefits

The benefit of a business support group can go beyond just regular meetings to discuss your progress and pitfalls. Consider other forms of collaboration – splitting travel costs to that great conference you’ve been talking about, going in together on a newspaper (or radio!) ad or getting a discount to an industry organization’s luncheon by registering multiple people.

You may not be at the point in your business where you are hiring employees left and right, so use the business associates that you’ve got! It may not be a good fit 100% of the time, but having a circle of business pals you can depend on can go a long way.

Tap into your local business makers community

Many cities are ripe with business growth connection opportunities. Look into your nearest chamber of commerce, small business development center, local university entrepreneur / business program and start up groups.

There is also a growing network of co-working spaces – it looks a bit different in every city, but at its core co-working venues provide affordable office and meeting space to entrepreneurs seeking a work environment to get them out of their living room and lots of ‘co-workers’ working on various projects to bounce ideas off of and collaborate with.

Say hi to your digital support team

One of the easiest ways to connect with like-minded potential business buddies is by discovering or re-connecting with them on your online networks. Thanks to search engines, special interest groups in online communities and a wealth of free and accessible content, the world truly is flat.

From there you can communicate online (think email and Facebook messages), share ideas and breaking news (Twitter and blog posts work great for this) and schedule, take notes and collaborate on your discussion topics (think Google calendars and Google Wave).

Check out this presentation that I have given many times to business rock stars just like you on honing your networking skills with online technologies:

Take it to video!

Geography should play no part in selecting your business advocates. Perhaps the miles are too great for your team to meet regularly – the Web make it easy for you to stay in touch and even enjoy visual contact.

The Business Makers team frequently uses an online multi-person video conferencing system called PDQ Meetings (also a sponsor of our show, in fact) that offers high quality video conferencing with recording capabilities. We love it, maybe you will too.

Today’s Activity:

Here are a few activities for you to complete for your

• Listen to Russ Capper’s Women 2.0 interview – a Silicon Valley women-owned businesses network that is helping connect business owners to new opportunities for development and personal growth

• Set up Google Alerts and Technorati blog watches (www.technorati.com) for terms and phrases that describe your business. This will not only keep you up-to-date on the latest news, but will also help you identify like-minded writers and online participants.

• Perhaps less traditional for identifying a business planning group, you might be surprised at how many niche in-person meet ups there are on www.meetup.com. Looking for a unique skill set or a person that’s been involved in an industry you are eager to learn about? Search for it on www.meetup.com or start your own and enjoy good old fashioned face-to-face discussion over a pint of beer.

Comments and Opinions

blog comments powered by Disqus