Dear Rana,
I started my own company recently and I am having a difficult time gaining access to a talented team of creative entrepreneurs. Some of my team members live in neighboring states, while others are scattered in three different countries. I am in a remote rural town 2 hours outside of Chicago. Email and conference calls don’t seem like enough to get a new business off its feet fast enough.
Brad, Nowhereville
If you move just a few miles away to Chicago you will gain access to a huge pool of talent. It’s very difficult to manage and inspire a team remotely. I often thought that I might be more effective with the team in the same city. Building a team of talent and keeping it is your most challenging task. Think hard about moving.
Rana
Send your questions on work, life, and play to rana@creativeclass.com
August 4th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Why move? First find the people, then see if you have to get together and for how long. That may require some time together at a convenient location for the initial period. The cost of a few on-site meetings may be less than paying full time rent on a downtown location. It depends what business you’re in of course. I know several successful companies that have a distributed workforce – e.g. Mozilla and SocialText.
August 4th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
In the Chicago metro, you’ll have access to more than 1.1 creative workers (30% of the regional workforce) who account for approximately 46% of regional wages. Also, of the 1.1 Chicago creative types, almost half of those are super creatives — innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, as well as designers, writers, artists, etc.
Note: Chicago-Naperville Metro Division was used for calculations. Source: BLS, 2007. Creative Class Group, 2008.
August 4th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Harold, good point. According to Richard’s data, the Chi-Pitts mega region is the third largest in the world with a population of 46 million – how could you not find your talent pool here?
August 5th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Brad, you write “… don’t seem like enough …”. Sounds like your entrepreneurs aren’t excited about your project. Will the Chicago entrepreneurs be more excited, merely because they see you more often (you hope)? What have you got to offer the Chicago folk, that you can’t offer your current team?