The Complete Entrepreneur – EP31: The Before, During, And After Process of Hiring

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Hello. Hello. Welcome to The Complete Entrepreneur. I’m excited about this week’s topic. We’re talking about building the right team, and this is like part two. We decided to continue this topic from last week because it was so engaging and there was so much feedback, great feedback from people we thought we continue the topic of how do you build the right team? And what does that actually mean? 

Nowadays it’s incredible where through the auspices of the internet, we have access to global markets very quickly. But a part of that is how do you build the right team so that you can effectively reach those global markets?

It’s all very well to say in your business plan, I’m going to reach the global market. I got my widget, I got my service as just going to be awesome. And everyone’s going to love me, but how do you [00:01:00] execute on. You can’t do everything yourself. You’ve got to build a team and how do you build the right team so that you can execute on that?

And that’s what we were looked at a little bit last week. And this week as well, we’re going to be unpacking what it means to actually build the right team for the right stage of business. Quite often teams can go or members of a team can go a certain way along the journey with the business, and then some members of the team that can’t go any further.

And so you’ve got to get new people in and that can actually be quite daunting task for an entrepreneur, particularly where as most entrepreneurs do, they end up hiring their friends right at the beginning. What do you do if your friend can’t make the journey with you to that next. And how do you select the right people for the right team, for your team?

And these are some of the really interesting things that we’re going to be exploring. So if you in your audience right now, and you’re saying my goodness, boy, if I’ve got [00:02:00] some stories to share with you, some good ones, some bad ones or great team members like horrendous team members, all that sort of stuff, the stick, your hand up, we’d love to go along and bought you the state so you can share.

And if you were here last week and you’re on on the stage and you want to continue to go along that discussion there, please stick your hand up as well. And we’d love to have you up here with us, but Michelle it’s great to have you here moderating with us, Michelle, you were in the session last week and when you really reflect on last week, what are some of the things that really began to really provoke your thinking about what occurred in the session and the complete entrepreneurial.

Yeah, it was a really good conversation last week. One thing that really stood out for me was when we were really discussing how important it is to do the pre-work. And what do I mean by that? What we talked about is really [00:03:00] defining the roles in what the company needs. That’s oftentimes very hard to do for folks because you find someone or you see someone, or like you said, someone who’s very talented and that’s all fine and good, but it can be very hurtful to the company and to other people, it can become toxic if it’s not the right fit.

If it’s not the right skills. For what the company actually needs. So really, it’s, I guess a philosophical question in terms on how you’re going to hire. But what I really, believe is you have to be careful and hire for what the company needs. And also it’s the same for giving promotions or raises.

You have to be careful, otherwise you actually damage the folks that are being productive and that are seated well, thank you. Yeah. How true. Absolutely. It’s they have been very careful [00:04:00] with hiring what they say is be slow to hire, be quick to fire. And it’s like, how do you select the right person?

And I must in, in my business right now, and one of my businesses, we’re going through that process at the moment. And I can just reflect on some of the things we did. We really looked at the business. Okay. So what are the, what sort of people do we need to take the business to the next level?

And after we, I really liked my business partner. I, we sat down and we really thought about it and we said, okay, these sort of people we need, we then began to write a detailed job description not for the position, like trying to try to get like a marketing person. Like you can just go online, you can download a standard back and in person position description, but it’s, what do we want that person to really do?

Like where does the rubber hit the road? It’s not this theoretical, Hey, do marketing, but it’s, they need to do this at this point in time. Do they have experienced in [00:05:00] that area and so forth? So we wrote a very detailed description and we, then what we then ended up doing was rather than actually putting it into like on a job board somewhere or anything like that, we then said, okay, So our own personal networks, do we know people who could possibly fill that role?

We wrote down and we began began a process of finding finding people and and going through them and taking a look at them and so forth. And it’s been quite a journey in that process. And when I say quite a journey, it’s being like numbers of months, like slow to hire, fast to fire, but the key thing we’re looking at is how do we build a team to take it to the next level, the business, to the next level.

And quite often in that situation, you need to have a different mindset and also be prepared to have your own as the entrepreneur have your own mindset challenged. Because that’s really what. If you don’t have your [00:06:00] own thinking challenged by the, these new people, or even in the interview processes, have your thinking challenged of why do we do what we do then?

Then you’ve got to ask yourself, are you ready to take that next step or not? So Jeff, when you, when your own experience in hiring people and there are side laying off people, that sort of stuff have you what is the process that you’ve gone through in your different organizations, who’ve been a part of in your career to be able to put some.

Yeah, gosh, Michael, it’s such a rich topic that there’s so many different stories I can share if I have a great story about one of my first experiences trying to hire, but I’ll save that for a little later. Maybe I think one of the things to think about is there’s really a before, during and after, right?

So before, as you started to allude to, you really need to understand what roles you really need to fill. And sometimes it’s not what you think you really have to look at your business and your business model. You have to [00:07:00] really be self-aware. What are your skills as a founder? What are the things that you should continue to be responsible for versus what are the things you should be delegating to someone who’s more qualified than you are for those tasks?

And that’s a hard thing to do, especially early on. If you’re a founder to get. Things that you had to do from day one to just get the company off the ground. But now that you’re ready to scale, you need to let go of things and hand them off to other people. So you really need to, before you hire, before you build the team, have a sense of what that team needs to be and what roles you really need to fill.

And in what priority order, sometimes companies make the mistake of hiring the wrong people at the wrong time, before you actually need them. And that could even include hiring a sales team. If you hire a sales team before you understand who your customers are and what your sales process is that sales team may not have anything to do, or they may not know what to do, or they may not be successful doing it.

So there’s a lot of preparation before during the hiring [00:08:00] process, it’s really. To understand the company culture. So you need to understand what are the values this company has because you want to hire people who fit that culture. So as you’re in the hiring process, not only do you have to take into consideration, what are their skills and capabilities and are they going to be able to fulfill the role, but are they also going to fit in on a cultural level, right?

Are they going to be someone that you and your team are going to want to work with and vice versa? During that process, there’s a lot of things to consider. And then of course, afterwards, once people are hired, it’s critically important that, What is expected of them and that they know what is expected of them.

So what are going to be their responsibilities? What are their goals and targets? What are your expectations? And they should know right up front, what your expectations are, so that you have something to measure performance against going forward. And then of course you want to keep the company culture strong and you want to keep those employees happy to retain them.

So after they’re hired, you have to think about [00:09:00] retaining them and keeping everyone motivated and happy and performing at a high level. So really it’s a big process and there’s definitely a before, during and after in my.

Yeah, what a great lot of advice you just gave just in Jeff, like it just breaking down the whole process of getting that, that ideal team member on board yet. So you’re listening to the complete entrepreneur and we’re discussing. A really important topic is building the right team and I’m packing what that actually means.

And how do you go about building the right team if you’re in the audience there, and you’re saying, look, I’ve got some great stories to tell about this, or I have some questions, please raise your hand. We’d love to hear from you and brought you up to the stage so you can share it because realistically, many of the reasons why we as moderators and me as the host run, this show is to hear from you is not just a one-way conversation, but a two-way conversation just on that.

We’re going to [00:10:00] come to Brian in a second to hear from him, but just looking at how to build a team, to take your, that your business to the next level can be a real challenge. Because sometimes when you look at your team, you think does this team member, are they able to take that next.

But what happens if you’re not able to take that next step, but just before we tap into that thought I was wanting to hear from Brian, welcome to the stage of the complete entrepreneur. We’d love to hear from you and your thoughts on this topic. Brian,

Brian, if you they’re on mute yourself, tap them microphone, and also happy birthday. It looks like it’s your clubhouse anniversary with your red balloon. Oh, there we go. Thank you guys for having me. And I wasn’t aware of what that red balloon meant, and I was trying to figure that out. Anyways, I’m actually driving home from an interview process right now.

So good timing for [00:11:00] me at least to be able to speak about what’s on my mind. I’m in a position where it’s weird. I’m hiring a CEO who is effectively my boss, even though we’ll be majority owners. It’s not my first company. So I’ve made plenty of mistakes in the past. Some things that I can put out there, when you’re thinking strategically about how to best grow the value of the business and align with the priorities of yourself and the other founders board and investors is, hiring somebody who’s going to be on board for the vision, the long, the big picture, as well as be able to grab the bull by the horn by the horns.

I think for me, what I’ve learned, at least in, in my experiences, some of the people are maybe they’ve had a major exit or they’re farther along in their careers. They’re not as hungry and they’re not growing into the role. Just because they sit on a lot of boards and have a lot of accolades that might not be what your young, hungry company needs.

So I would suggest that I, to me, I like to hire people [00:12:00] who are growing into roles, as opposed to somebody who has done it before and knows, is not open to new format. I also think that it’s extraordinarily important to make sure whoever you bring into the entity, whether it’s your best friend, your brother-in-law whatever, not only that they’re qualified but that they they vest over time.

I, I would not suggest dishing out equity, especially to people the end of the day. It always seems that your employee wants to be your partner. Your partner wants to be your partner until he’s not getting the exact paycheck that he needs to be. So I would always err on the end of caution try to find ways to clean up situation.

And I would definitely think big picture long-term and not only who’s the right person for today and the future, but what happens if they turn out not to be the right person in the future as you go through this process? Yeah. Some great thoughts there, Brian that’s for sure. So do you mind me asking you a couple of [00:13:00] questions that you’re just coming back from an interview from interviewing a potential CEO?

Is that CEO going to be replacing you as the entrepreneur? I would say yes, probably move to an executive chairman role and the thought process there. Yeah. So what’s that? What was that like for you to come. So the, that, that appear funny that, what, maybe your not the right person to take your company to the next level and you needed to get someone else in there.

And maybe you become more of a, on the board and then you’ve got someone who could be the CEO. It was that like, what sort of processes did you go through to to realize that? Okay it comes from a few fold, one doing more than one thing. And just when it comes to the devotion of sticking with one thing, not in a bad way, but selfishly it’s easier to it’s easier to grow my personal value by.

By sitting on sitting in a chief operating [00:14:00] officer position or executive board position, still being able to do everything that I possibly can. But having somebody else really steer the ship I think at the end of the day you need total and absolute devotion to whatever you’re working on.

And as when it’s working, when it’s scaling and to me what led me down the path was some capital coming into the equation and major format and making sure that we had somebody who wasn’t gonna use it. It, wasn’t going to say the raw I wanted to, I wanted the face to the company that wasn’t it in a good way.

And then I think the second piece is just being able to juggle a few startups at one. It’s not feasible. You know what, once you’re, once you’ve reached scale and more than one thing, I don’t know if that was a fair answer, but yeah, that was it. There was, it was an interesting one and I think it’s an issue.

I missed what you said. I had a call come in, so yeah, I think it was it was great. Replied really do appreciate your openness and your honesty with that. [00:15:00] I think it’s an interesting issue that a lot of entrepreneurs that they wrestled with where when, and if they should replace themselves and or what is it that they really enjoy about the business and what is they don’t enjoy about the business.

And quite often there is a pressure on an entrepreneur that they have to be the CEO for. Until there’s an exit or something like that. And they’ve done, they’ve got to be the one right at the front, but is this really the case? And is this the best decision for the business for you to be doing that?

And it’s are you the blockage in the team you’re building? Is it time for you to step aside and become a director or to be doing something else? And it’s an interesting question. I’ve been asking myself and one of my own businesses where there was a lot of pressure to become the CEO. Yes. I could be the CEO and all that sort of stuff.

And that would be great, but is it really what I want to do? [00:16:00] Is it really what I want to do? Like a CEO as a role, a lot of people put it on their business cards. I’m the CEO and electro stuff, and it’s such a pride in that and everything. And, but as the founding entrepreneur is what really launched before.

And for me in this particular business, I can, the conclusion that it wasn’t, it really wasn’t what really lit my fire was being innovative. And to be coming up with new, fresh ideas and strategy and all that sort of stuff, and that could be a completely separate role from the CEO. So then you begin to define the team in a very different way of you as the entrepreneur taking a different type of role, and it allows you to blossom and then you’d have someone else in there and not look at it.

As an example of this, you look at Sergei and Brin from Google. This is the big example. And [00:17:00] you had Sergei in Britain, the founders of Google, incredibly innovative at creative, what they did, but they brought Eric Schmidt in to be the CEO. So it allowed Eric Schmidt to do what he did best, but also allowed them to do what they did best and to accelerate the growth of Google move, moving forward.

And it’s actually a really interesting story. And to me, it’s reading between the lines of what Sergei Brin actually, how did they come to the conclusion that they needed to get someone else in or where they help along that way and everything like that by various some of the private equity may have invested in everything, but it’s an interesting question about building a team of whether you, the entrepreneur as someone that should actually step to step in a sideways direction.

Or even, or step in a upper direction, I just have a board and have an independent chairman, what sort of stuff or something. And to make those decisions [00:18:00] can be quite daunting and quite difficult to actually do Michelle. And I’d love to get your thoughts on this. Like Brian, just related to that, he’s a poor hissy, one of his businesses.

That’s a challenging thing to do and to come to that conclusion and the humility of that as well in that process. Do you have any thoughts to share on this? Yeah, I think, like you said, it’s very, smart actually that you realize when you don’t have the time or you don’t have dare I say the skillset or you just think somebody else could move it further.

Sometimes you do those things too, so that you can get invested. And move the company to another level or sell it or whatever it is. And I’m always impressed with people that I’ll say have that emotional intelligence that they, that’s a real strategic skill, Brian to be able to look and be brutally honest with [00:19:00] who needs to be setting where, and, before you even said it in my head, I’m thinking, oh, Brian has lots of things that he wants to do and be an entrepreneur.

And that’s, can be extremely valuable for your investors and your family. I’m sure. So kudos to you. Thank you. And they, the other thing that I would just stress at the end of the day, your job title as CEO is a title. The structure of the company. If you still own the majority of the company, you’re still the boss.

Cause they worked for the board and they worked for the majority of the shareholders. And then. It is humbling in in some aspects and there is this like managing up, managing down process. Don’t let your ego get in the way of moving forward as quick as you can.

Yeah. You can listened to the complete entrepreneur and we’re discussing the great topic of building the right team. And sometimes that team may not involve. [00:20:00] So if you’re in the audience right now, and you’re saying yourself, boy, if I got some questions about this, or this is really resonating with me should I continue on with my business or not?

Am I the right person for my team or not or really wrestling with those types of issues, then please stick your hand up. We’d love to hear from you. And I really interact with you and understand some of the thinking that each one of us goes through as entrepreneurs. It’s really quite exciting, quite dynamic.

So please stick your hand up and where do we go? But in the meantime, swimming, it’s so many, it’s wonderful to have you on the stage of the complete entrepreneur and love to hear your thoughts on this topic of building the right thing. So welcome to the stage. Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you.

Misha, Jeffrey good contributions and great topic. And thank you, Brian, for your contribution as well. And I just want to command the room and that’s about the topic. Yes it’s I find this topic very important because it, good team will actually [00:21:00] actualize your vision and a good team would help you see that it’s not just your vision, it’s our vision.

So they there’s just this collective efforts towards the same goal, which is very encouraging. For every interpreter has our depth, but before I go into my contribution, there was something you said about appointing a new CEO, appointing a new let’s just do a CEO for your company. I think I find that very humble as well.

I find out very positive, but I also need to also one that it depends on what kind of company that you building depends on what kind of vision you’re building, because it can be very tricky at times. For me I’m the president of the largest entrepreneurship network in Africa and from day one, my succession plan was my first assignment.

I tell all my team members, the most vacant seats in my organization is my seat is the seat of the president, because I’ve got to make sure that I’ve got to get a different president who is going to see the same vision and run the vision the way it’s supposed to be. So I think for my kind of vision, it takes.[00:22:00] 

I need someone that’s going to walk through the journey with me for a couple of years, make sure that it shares the same vision. Someone that’s very close to decision-making and is aware of the kind of decisions we make and why then it’s very easy to, to trans to transfer that authority to such a person.

It would be very difficult for someone like me to just put up a recruitment portal and decide to employ a new president. It has to be someone in the system for awhile now, going to the topic, for me, when I I don’t even look at credentials anymore, I don’t look at qualifications anymore. I sometimes even ignore experiences.

I strictly go for performance and I give everyone a fair level playing chance. I just want to go out for the performance. So even if you’re a burst guy, you PayPal, your portfolio, your profile says everything about you. I give all applicants the rights to prove who they have, because I must tell you my experiences over the years, I’ve got bonds with so many expatriates, so many.

So many brilliant minds on paper. And when it gets to action, [00:23:00] you find something totally different. And these guys have wasted your entrepreneurial time wasted your entrepreneurial sources, or you might not get our time and resources again. So from, for now, what I do is practical is king. For me, you get in, you apply, I give you a chance and then I give you a not from, to perform.

So I’m very slow in Irene. I’m also very slow in the firing by the way, because I believe that once I’ve brought you in, I’m going to spend a lot of my time to make sure that I can invest in you to be what I expect you to become. Now, there’s one other thing that I do, which is very important. I tend to ask these guys what they see.

I told him about the visual, when I’m recruiting and the hacks, then what do you see? Because for me, for what I’m doing, it’s a collective effort. It’s a joint vision. It’s not just a personal vision for me, it’s a continent or vision. So I asked them, what do they see? So from the definitely. Of what they see about the organization.

It gives me a very clear understanding about what I’m trying to hire and when they are on board, I’m very transparent about the vision. I’m very transparent about [00:24:00] a future. I share vision regularly. I share with them the plans of the future. Then I’ll make a common destination then becomes our motivation.

So it’s very easy for the team to stay motivated at whole time, because we’ve got a common goal and that destination keeps us going every day. Thank you so much, Marco. And don’t speak it. Yeah. What a great series of thoughts you have there swimming. I really do appreciate that. And I think that the interesting thing that I really got from what you were saying was looking at not just what’s on paper, but the actual performance.

And quite often, obviously a candidate will have a trial period of successful candidate and it’s really the organization and the existing team getting to know the candidate and then seeing if the candidate actually delivers on what they say they can deliver within a period of a timeframe. And I remember [00:25:00] many years ago I was in a team and this guy kept on saying we need to go along and raise a whole lot of money.

He kept on saying that and I was like, oh, sick to death of it. I really was that you go along and do that. I’m going to go build a company. And of course he never did it. So he disappeared off into the sunset, but it’s looking at the performance. It’s all very well for someone to say something it’s seen that they perform is so important.

Just Jeff, just coming to you just on that is when you look at con candidates that you’ve put on and they’re on a trial period as becoming part of the team, what sort of things did you look for? Obviously, there’s the performance aspect that somebody is talking about, but. The fit part like feet in the team, are they abrasive to the team or are they fitting into the team?

Are they really good and challenging or they’re abrasive and challenging some of these things that may not come at an India views. And that obviously aren’t on papers [00:26:00] as so many were saying, but but you’ve you, when you see the color of their eyes as such and they’re sitting across a desk or in Mike’s a team meeting, some of these things begin to come at, so what should the things you have done on their circumstances?

I think Michael, I think a lot of it two things like on the performance side of things, obviously it’s going to be difficult or easier depending on the type of position. There are certain roles that are extremely measurable. If you’re hiring a sales person and you give them a certain.

To meet in their first two weeks on the job, which may simply be getting an appointment or getting a several appointments, not necessarily closing a deal depends on the business, but with a sales role, you can give someone very specific goals. And they’re either going to meet those goals, or they’re not going to meet those goals.

And it’s going to be quite easy. There are other roles where it’s not. Definable, but you still want to set some expectations and it’s always good to give a new employee kind of a two week objective, something that you want them to [00:27:00] accomplish in two weeks, whether that’s writing up a plan of how they want to move forward with their department, or whether it’s in the sales situation, getting a certain number of leads on board or whatever, but give some sort of a two week target that is reasonable, but also means they have to perform to deliver.

That’s going to be really helpful into your other question about the cultural fit. That’s going to make itself apparent very quickly because other employees will tell you right away, if someone is rubbing them the wrong way or causing havoc or being difficult to work with, you’ll hear about it.

And then you’re going to have to make some quick decisions. Can you sit down and talk with that person and get them on board in terms of fitting in with the company culture or, is it really not going to be a good fit and you have to move on. And sometimes even someone who might be capable of performing well is just not the right fit.

And then you’re better for you and better for them to part ways. And that’s a difficult decision. It’s particularly difficult to part ways with someone that actually could get the [00:28:00] job done. It’s just that no one wants to work with them, including yourself. So that happened. Yeah, it definitely does happen in business where everything’s great and the interviews and things like that.

And, but when you actually are working alongside the person, either the not delivering or they’re they’re just difficult to work with. And there’s some people like that. And I think swimming raised a really interesting question. And I’d like to come back to you so on this question, and it was looking at performance versus versus what’s on paper or in the interview.

The question is what are some of the things you look for in performance swimming? Is it performance just on how they relate within the organizations performance as they’ve done these tasks and well done for doing these tasks or they’ve met his sales target? What are some of the things that you look for in a person you’re bringing into your team?

Thank you so much, Moto. And thank you, Jeff, for that contribution as well. [00:29:00] Firstly, one of the major thing I try to test is the test of. As simply believe that skews can be taught, I can teach anybody anything I want to, but I can never teach them character. So that’s one of the major things I look out for.

If you’ve got a good character, are you going to come into the team, links everybody for good or for bad? Now, one thing I did personally for my companies was to design specific practical test for specific roles. So if you cannot come in into sales, I’ve designed something. I took a lot of time, took me years to beauties, years of frustration like resources and time wasted.

Getting people on board will end up believing they can do a better job. Like the guy you spoke about, we said, you need more money. If you had followed that guy, you will have wasted a lot of your entrepreneurial time and you wouldn’t have gotten that time back and look at what happened.

He left. He’s still going to leave at the end of the day. We’ve got to be very careful of guys like that. They caught business distractions. They [00:30:00] come into your business. They make you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. They’re going to do a better job. They’ve got the looks, they’ve got the profile, but I bet you, these guys are going to voice a year, two, three years of your time.

If you calculate those years, you can imagine the amount of figures in dollars. You’re going to be wasting on resources that you’ve been trying to manage. So why not create a template to test everyone for what they have? So on sales, I’ve got some practical way. I will test your character and I will test direct actions in terms of sales.

So I could give you a, let me just give you an example. Now I could give you okay, let me just get practical with one. There was, we were looking for country lips at some point. So to represent all that part of the organization in in other countries in Africa, I, one of the practical tests during the recruitment process was doing our list weekly assembly via virtual meeting invite.

To come to that meeting. Now that this, just to check on your flu shot, you had a test of influence. If you want to be a brand ambassador and you cannot influence one or two or three people in your country, [00:31:00] then you cannot be a country representative. Now he didn’t know what we were trying to check, or we really trying to check that influence.

Now, secondly, in my attitude test, which they take first before the practical test, there’s a question to ask them, how do you think a policy should be paid, should be regulated value experience or performance. Now a lot of people will choose value. Oh, I’ve got so much. I’m going to bring in so much value.

A lot of people will choose experience. I’ve got so much experience. I’ve been doing this for years and everything, but the very few that choose performance are the ones that go through. Because now I see that this one’s, at least I’ve seen things my own way. They are here and they want to prove it. Now value is good.

It’s important to bring onboard experience is kink, but what measures value and experience is performance for me, my company, if you cannot perform, please don’t waste our time. We’re not even bringing you on board. So this depends on every person, individually, what you’re trying to build, what you’re trying to achieve.

You can create a template, but number one, look hard for good [00:32:00] characters for as, as the first thing I checked, because you can never teach character. If you go direct character, then I try to check you out through these measures are designed to get out the performance among them. So please, my encouragement would be take your time to build your own recruitment templates.

I’ve got a VHR manager and what is good is just the normal templates. Guys. Let me tell y’all something. There’s nothing as practical as a practical.

no book, no habit, no age, our developer, we come with so much expertise. Of course, there are things that, that did, they’ve got the skills, but the practical knowledge of your product is you and the screens you’ve built over the years will guide you in forming the right templates. Nobody taught me what I did.

I just thought you know what? I’ve wasted so much time on this thing. I’m going to sit down for months and I’m going to Butte a template. And I give the template to my HR. I’m an HR. He’s wow, this thing works like magic. We just see even out the time we start and we [00:33:00] getting in performance.

So it working for me. And I can bet you, if you go into your wealth of experience, the days you’ve been born, the things that went wrong, use those experience to beauty. It’s going to walk. Thank you so much. It’s wonderful here for music games. So me and just some of your experience and being so willing to share that in the forum here on the complete entrepreneur, I really do appreciate that input.

Yeah. And taking a look at, as the entrepreneur, taking a look at those templates and things like that for the team members, the types of team members you need. And I love that story of the country representatives. Let me share an interesting story. I heard one time was there, there was an airline and it was recruiting a whole lot of flight attendants.

And what they did was they put all the flight attendants into a room and say, okay, your interviews will be at a particular time and all that sort of stuff. And these prospective candidates and what the flight attendants do. But prospective flight attendants didn’t know was there’s cameras. And the [00:34:00] people or the executive team we’re watching the flight attendants and how they interacted with one another.

And then of course there was the interview process and all that sort of stuff. But what they’re interested in was those flight attendants with go LA go up and get someone, a cup of coffee that they’d never met before. Oh, here, let me get you a cup of coffee. And they were the ones that got hired and it was really and ha they looked at how they interacted versus those who just kept to themselves and everything.

Cause they want to have. Flood Halen’s who could go and interact with the public on the planes. So there’s different things. You can do, different strategies you can do, and sit in those tests as such can actually be a way of really weeding out as you put so many Gabriel there’s those time-wasters from your organization versus the gold and the diamonds, which are really going to shine with the one organization.

Take it to the next level. Yeah. So [00:35:00] exciting stuff. You’re listening to the complete entrepreneur. We’re talking about building the right team and different strategies for building the right team and hearing from experience. Where’s it going to come to Yvonne right now? Yvonne, you shared last week, I believe on this topic and we’d love to hear your thoughts again, Yvonne.

Welcome to the complete entrepreneur. Yeah. Hi everyone. Hi Jeffrey. Hi Michael Michelle, Brian, Sue me I’m Rita and everyone else in the room. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for this for this topic. Thank you for this room. It’s always giving so much value. My question I’ve actually got a question cause Starting out.

I’m the founder of a startup. I w actually looking at taking all fast tire very soon within the month. And my question is what’s the role of emotional resilience. [00:36:00] Do you look out for emotional resilience? When you hiring is the, is it important, especially when the fact that they stay so much hybrid working and, a lot of personal responsibility when it comes to to taking on people.

Thank you. Yeah, that’s a really good question. Michelle, do you want to tackle that one? What’s the, how do you determine emotional resilience of perspective? High as you’re bringing it to the. That’s a really great question. I think it depends on the position and, I hadn’t thought of it that way, Yvonne, but I’m just you’re making me think for example, in anything that support base, I’m thinking a good profile emotionally would be a very empathetic person and somebody who’s in sales, the position, I think maybe you’re looking for a characteristic.

That’s, they’re very social. [00:37:00] They’re a networker they’re outgoing. So I would say, I think you need to think about what the actual position is. Of course we want people that are emotionally mature. But given that I’m a person that really thinks that you have to, hire a very diverse team of course, ethically, but also, their styles, their personal styles.

I think that’s what balances, a lot of people might not like the people that just react and call us, call things out, but it is good to have people on that team as long as they can manage themselves in a productive way. So for me, it would come down to, a couple of rules I have, are they being productive when they speak and with their actions?

Because one of my major roles is anyone who’s mean person or, cruel to other people there. They should be immediately there. [00:38:00] Absolutely be immediately out. It should not be tolerated. People should be supporting each other. But I think not to get our emotions in the way, if somebody is being direct, not to let emotions get in the way of somebody particularly social, those are not bad things.

So I would try to pair it up, given what the role is and have some complete, whatever your list is of non-negotiables like, they’re not nice to other people or they, might say something cruel, that’s your out. That’s my thoughts. Just, having thought of this thing. Yeah, I think you bring up, you brought up a couple of really interesting points there for Yvonne Michelle one was diversity but that’s not just diversity in ethnicity or anything like that, but it’s diversity of opinion and diversity of approach.

So I think that’s why you’re hiring people is they bring a level of diversity, but then the other point you brought up was, which is something so many related to, which was if someone’s [00:39:00] cruel or something like that in the team. And that comes down to character which so many talked about. And like for instance, one of the rules I have is I will, I always want that.

I always want the truth, no matter what you do not tell me the truth or you emit something from a discussion, which is essentially a sin of omission emitting the truth. Then you’re, it’s almost like with me. The reason why is because the organization is, and particularly a team can only be built and get, take the whole company to the next level.

If there is a truth and good or bad, by the way, because if there’s a bad year is going to be said, you don’t go on fire to give the purpose of bringing the bad news, but you go along and Nick now got a problem to work on to solve together. And so somebody talked about character before. One of the most important things for me in our organization or any of the [00:40:00] organizations I’m revolving is the truth to be a seeker of the truth and to open up the truth.

And you described it as being cruel. Christine, just, I just want to jump back to diversity and then we’ll come down to a Muta diversity, interesting one. There’s there’s the famous hedge fund manager from Bridgewater capital Ray Dahlia. He believed not only in diversity, but transparency with teams.

And what do I mean by this is that every single person in his organization has the equivalent of a baseball card on them. So you’ve got a deck of cards on every single person in the company. And. Th the baseball card is statistics on the person in terms of things like what they bring to team meetings.

And you can use a variety of different methods for doing this. So you can use the Belbin mall model. So you can say this person’s a coordinator. [00:41:00] That person is a, an evaluator, or this person is a shaper or a completer finisher, or they’re a resource investigator. There’s all that sort of stuff. So it begins to write the person there’s different models.

And I know Collin one of the other moderators is not there this week. He used the disc model for doing soccer psychological profile, active members. So when a person is speaking in the meeting, you then know their position they’re coming from and you sit there and you’re like, okay, the reason why this person is being critical or being.

Play devil’s advocate because their real strength is the monitor evaluator. They have a real strength in that area. So everyone’s looking at the person’s baseball cards because you’ve got them in front of you and the team. And you take a look at it all, and that’s why they’re behaving this way, but it does some other things.

He videotapes every team meeting videos and puts on the corporate networks. [00:42:00] Anyone can look at any team meeting, but more than that is everyone then has a dashboard in front of them on their computers, where you can then rate what the person does contribution was in that team meeting. And how they prefer.

According to the role. It’s a really interesting thing that there’s a chapter in his book. I think it’s called principles on this and he unpacks this and I would encourage every entrepreneur here to get the whole that book. And if you want your thinking really challenged around teams and the dynamics and teams and transparency and the lecture stuff, just take a look at that.

It is very confronting and it’s not for everyone. And some teen people go, some people just cannot deal with it, but there’s a good reason why he run runs the biggest hedge fund in the world and and strives for performance as [00:43:00] somebody mentioned before. Yeah. So it’s an interesting thing to take a look at.

Jeff or Michelle, have you ever thought of doing something like that, having a baseball cadre to your team members and stuff?

Not a literal baseball card, but certainly, there’s lots of different ways of tracking and ranking performance. There’s Def definitely different levels of transparency, but I think it’s really a good practice and it’s important. And one way to get transparency across the team and Michelle and I both have a lot of experience doing this and we’ve done it a lot together is having a daily huddle and having weekly meetings where the team gets together.

And really just, everyone makes a very quick contribution talking about, something they accomplished yesterday the previous day what they’re focused on today. And if they’re stuck with anything, if there’s something that they could use help with and just having the group together to answer those three questions on a regular basis is extremely valuable because number one, everyone sees.[00:44:00] 

How everyone else is being accountable for their responsibilities. Cause we’re talking about actual accomplishments. What did you get done? And everyone has the opportunity to be vulnerable and say, you know what, I need help with this. Or I’m stuck with this. And then other people can chime in and help.

So it creates cooperation across departments, et cetera. So that’s a very simple practice. It’s not as a formal, as having a baseball card, as you said, Michael, for every employee, but it does put everyone out in the open and make them accountable to each other because everyone has to report in front of the team of something they’ve accomplished something they’re focusing on and it’s done on a regular basis.

So that’s a practice that the Michelle and I and Colin working together, we’ve had a lot of success with. Yeah. Th that’s a great one. We have a a company-wide team meeting on zoom at 3:00 PM every Thursday and we call it the. Which is exactly what you’re talking about, Jeff, which everyone shares, what they’d be working on and what they’ve been [00:45:00] doing and what they plan on doing next and everything.

And just to highlight, it’s only like for one minute each person and it’s it’s actually, it’s almost like a time of celebration. And it’s actually really good even just doing it each day, each and every week is fabulous, but it’s, it can be challenging. A lot of these things of bringing a level of transparency and a level of scrutiny to not only just performance, but interactions quite often, I find in team meetings I’ve been a part of in different organizations.

Everything from boards to, to even operational meetings is the, a person believes they look wise by not saying anything. I think that why are you there? If you’re not talking, if you’re not talking, like you’re not contributing you, if you’re not contributing, why you’re in this meeting going through something else.

And how do you actually get the most from every single person in your team in a team ministration can be quite challenging as well. And then to appreciate where they’re coming from and how they’re [00:46:00] bringing their unique set of skills to the team and how it’s going to contribute to their overall effort in moving the company.

It’s all challenging stuff, but anyway, I am, I just want to jump to a mucosa immune to its right. Having you on the complete entrepreneur. Welcome to the stage. Yeah, everyone. Yeah. I just have a opinion and I just want your business Jane’s to just let me know how the opinion is. Okay.

So while recruiting a team or recruiting a member, you shouldn’t be recruiting a person whom you know, very well. So related, for example, because I feel if you’re gonna recruit somebody like that, he will know all your positives and negatives, which might affect the company in later stage that’s I feel personally.

So I just wanted your opinion on that. Yeah. Yeah. What a great question. That is a, to, should you hire [00:47:00] relatives and friends? That’s the question. So I think it’s okay if they are the most qualified person, I would never, I know some very talented people, I’m looking at Jeff and Michael and I would never want to exclude them from my hiring pole, but what I not consider other people, of course I would consider other people and try to be as objective as I can.

Thank you. Yeah. I think you’re riding that Michelle is that you hired the best person. Who’s going to get the job. Whether that’s a relative, whether that’s a friend or whatever’s only to get the job done, and then you set up the expectations with that person and you make them very clear.

I have working for me in my current team. I have a person I’ve known since grade four. And he’s my best friend. Yeah. And he’s worked with me for 15 years now. And I trust him, [00:48:00] I can turn my back and I don’t discover I’ve got a knife in it. There’s some great positives on that. At the same time is if we have any disagreements or something like that, we have the history of be able to sort them out in a positive way.

I also have working for me, my brother. He happened to be the best person to get a master’s in computer science and all that sort of stuff. And he’s an outstanding developer very careful with his development. He was the best person for the job, both those people also know that on the boss.

Yeah. And despite that, so it doesn’t make times like Christmases difficult or standing around the barbecue difficult. No, we’re very clear in the lines also of our relationships that I don’t go along and stop talking about business-related things. When we’re at a social occasion, I don’t do that or a family occasion, why I respect the boundaries and that’s something that’s really important.

I thought [00:49:00] I’d raise this as well with your team. One of the fastest ways of burning out a team is not respecting. And what I mean by that is the weekend. Is there so a person can refresh. Don’t go long. I think I’ll just give them a quick call. No, hold off to Monday. Or if someone’s on holidays, don’t call them unless it’s an emergency.

I know that even with my own business, if I’m on vacation and my phone rings, then it’s an emergency. But 99% of the times, my phone never rings. Why? Because it’s two ways they respect my boundaries. I respect theirs. Why it’s, because you’ve got to look after the company. Team. And what I mean by that, it’s not just their performance at work, but it’s all got lives outside of your business.

Let them recharge in this time, letting spend time [00:50:00] uninterrupted with their family and their kids. Let them have vacation time. Look after them as a part of that, paying your team. Don’t go alone. Be nitpicky. Look after the and where the result for me. I had a team, a core team has been together for 15 years.

We look after them, we pay them well, we give bonuses out and everything like that. And we give them flexibility in what they in their time and things like that. We treat them, I hate to say, but we treat them as adults. And I find that some entrepreneurs treat their team members as their children.

They’re not your children. They’re adults treat them as adults expect things of them as adults, but also go along and expect things of yourself to treat them in a positive and uplifting way. I want to come back to you on what I just said there. Michelle, how do you feel that what I just said, [00:51:00] I agreed completely.

It’s really hard sometimes that you’re right. When you’re the boss, like you want to, you have to hold yourself back from micromanaging because you actually hold back the whole company when you do that. And if you can’t respect that person, then you should really honestly evaluate why you feel that way.

Is it a problem that you need to work on personally? Or is there some deficiency there because when someone’s suffering on the team, it makes everyone suffer. And I don’t think anyone wants to be in that position. I agree with you on that. Look, you’ve been listening to the complete entrepreneur and has been a whole lot of people that come up at this stage.

I’ve really shared some of their experiences and asked they ask questions. If you’re in the audience, they’re saying, yeah that’s an interesting person. Just click on their profile photo. ’cause, you know what, you’ll find out. Some of the other things they may be involved with them, which may really help you address your business as well.

So [00:52:00] welcome that. That’s for sure. But we’re we’ve had a great time discussing building building the right team or different strategies for building right team. It’s a topic I think we can go on and on about it because it’s so critical. The life of an entrepreneur’s business. But what I’d like to talk about right now is what’s going on with startup.club.

So Jeff what’s happening there. Oh, Michelle, I’m sorry. Sure. We have an amazing session tomorrow on the serial entrepreneur club at 5:00 PM Eastern time, we’re going to talk to two experts on incubators. So what are the advantages? How do you get into an incubator if you’re a startup? So we’re going to have a gentleman who is a TEDx speaker.

He runs the. The ELA vine center here out of an issue that’s Nova Southwest university. And then we have a lady who runs, adapt [00:53:00] tech out of Toronto, Canada, both amazing speakers. And I’m looking forward myself because I’ve never experienced an incubator. And they’re going to tell us like the ins and out when’s a good time and how to actually go about getting an incubator for your startup.

Wow. That’s a, what a great a couple of people to be honest, I’ve taught club is looking at incubators. It’s not to be missed time. Next week on the complete entrepreneur, we’re going to be taking a look at really interesting question, which is how do you work with your CEO? Most entrepreneurs are out there and like visionary and everything.

And that’s why you found the business, but how do you work with a COO then your chief operating officer, which says to you things like it’s not on the process, or we need to run a manual on that, or you’re outside of a, the way things should be done and you’re to along [00:54:00] accelerated business forward and you feel like you could have boat.

But are they really about anchor or they, the key to your businesses, et cetera? Yeah. So how do you actually work with people like that? And particularly if they’re part of your management team as the COO and how do you actually leverage their experience? They way they do businesses business and move forward and accelerate the company forward.

It’s going to be a great time. Can I just say thank you very much to my two wonderful co moderators, Jeff and Michelle, you are such an inspiration with what you share. Thank you for that. And for those people that came up on stage and he really shared from the heart. I just want to thank you very much for your bravery.

For your Udacity and also for your wonderful input into their session. And for those of you who are in the audience right now, thank you for being being there. It’s the re you’re the reason why we do what we do and I’ll [00:55:00] look forward to seeing each and every one of you next week at 5:00 PM Eastern time on The Complete Entrepreneur.

Thank you very much and have a wonderful week. God bless. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Thank you everyone.