The Importance of Meetings

I can hear you all now saying: "Meetings, aren't they something you do to waste time". Generally I would agree with you, but I believe if you have more than one person involved in the business, you need to make sure the business has direction.

The First Meeting

In the first meeting of the members of the business you should set the following:

1. Key Responsibilities
2. Key Beliefs
3. Key Steps
4. Proposed Structure
5. Layout the work you have
6. Exit strategy

Key Responsibilities

These are the responsibilities of each of the members of the business. This helps define who will do what. This stops people from doing each others work. It also stops one person doing all the work.

Key Beliefs

This defines what each person expects to get from the business. This can be anything, list everything as this allows everybody to lay out what they are trying to achieve from the business.

Key Steps

Map out what you are planning to do over the next week, fortnight, month, year etc.

Proposed Structure

Map out the structure so that you have allowed your enterprise to grow with time. There is nothing worse than being trapped in the wrong structure and not being able to change it easily.

Layout the work you have

Map out all the work your business has or will have, this is a chance to see how much work is required to keep yourselves in business. This also allows you to map out how to get more work in the future.

Exit Strategy

You must have plan for how the business should fold if it doesn't work out. This means working out who has put money in and how they will be reimbursed etc.

Subsequent Meetings

Each subsequent meeting will require everybody that is involved in the venture to go through the above and refine it. This will allow you to manage issues before they arise.

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