On building a supreme team…
I used to love playing fantasy sports. Yes, building a team for a business is real life, but there are aspects of the process that allows you to be a fantasy GM of sorts. You have to find the talent and monitor how the players perform together. You have to make sure the talent mix allows yields results for your core competency (content creation/writing in our case). You also have to establish leaders on the team. I’ve been challenged with this task of taking our 5-person team and turning it into a 90-person organization with offices in Atlanta, Nashville, and New York by 2025. I’m ready.
Setting the pace
As the leader at Nao Media, I set the pace for our productivity (for now). My involvement is absolutely key to our success. As we grow, I will undoubtedly have to delegate duties to other team members. This process has already started actually. We recently promoted one our writers, Jasmin Martin, to GM. I’m on a steady search for savvy hustlers — folks with uncanny energy and a penchant for productivity. Once we have several of these high energy players on the team, we’ll see a nice uptick in the growth of our team. I believe highly productive individuals run in packs and I’m expecting these types to be attracted to our organization.
What we look for in team members
We’re still in the early stages of forming our core team at Nao Media. With that being the case, we’re definitely looking for versatile individuals. If you can write, manage social media activities, and calmly interact with prospects and clients, you’d fit in well here. But even if you don’t presently posses these specific skills, we do a good job at noticing raw talent and a passion for learning. The one struggle we’ve had is finding and hiring salespeople. Sales folks are a different animal and I’m personally new in navigating those talent waters… working on it though. We also love working with people with an entrepreneurial spirit. This is not my company. It’s our company. I want to be surrounded with people who will take risks and speak up if they see us going in the wrong direction. These qualities require confidence and strength. No yes-men or yes-women allowed. Above all, we want team members with a good moral compass.
Interns
Nao Media opened its doors by employing my talented friends. I’ve been spoiled. Interns have never been a huge part of our team but that’s about to change as we’re now HQed in the Atlanta area (a city ripe with talented college students) and on the verge of getting office space in ATL. With half of our team being remote, there will be a need for intern and employed talent in our office. The main thing we’ll look for in interns are writing skills and dedication. The first sign of wishywashyness will be met with an instant “c ya.” Summer, fall, winter, spring, we’ll be calling on interns year ‘round from here on. Contact us if you’re interested in rolling with our crew.
So those are my thoughts on team building along with some notes on how we do it at Nao Media. It’s going to be interesting to look back at this post 2, 5, 10 years from now.
