Ep. 94 The Secret Scaling Hack - Hiring A+ Talent to Multiply your Growth

Speaker A: Welcome to the Sprint to Profit podcast with Kirsty and Isaac. Um, if you are an Amazon seller looking to grow your business with some of the latest tactics and strategies along with some great guidance for your overall business, then you are in the right place. So pay attention and if needed, take notes. Let's get started.

Speaker B: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Sprint's Profit podcast for Amazon sellers. It's Kirsty Nysick here. And in today's episode we wanted to talk about one of the key areas that you'll need to focus on. To take your business from a one person show where you do everything and scale only at your own pace, into a full business where you have a team helping you to grow your business in ways that you didn't know were possible. To get time freedom in your life, you'll need to hire strategically in your business and that means you need to hire the best talent you can at, uh, key points in the business's life cycle.

Speaker C: Yeah, right. So like we mentioned in our uh, previous episode, what many people focus on when growing their business or ah, use as that barometer for success, right, is money. Which is fair enough, right? That's the thing that we can measure. It's the thing that we want or we think that we want. It's really the thing that buys the money buys, right? That's what we really want. Now the problem is, is that you can do many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many different things, right, to achieve that money go. And usually if we're not careful, we can end up running out of ideas, running out of steam and worst of all actually burning out. Because, I mean there's an infinite number of strategies or tactics or whatever you want to call it, hacks that you can do, right? And this is why we end up in sometimes in a hamster wheel like we would do in a normal job. So we not only like to focus on the money, of course money is very important, is the goal, but we also want to make sure that we focus on what our time and also the energy that we have for the business as well. So unlike money, time is a finite resource, right? There's only 24 hours, 24 hours in a day, there's only 365 days in a year. And I think I don't even know what the average lifespan is anymore, but hopefully it's gone up a bit recently. But not in the U.S. right? So yeah, you know, I'm not saying we're running out of time, but essentially as humans we are, right? And so we want to make sure that we enjoy ourselves as much as possible. And that's the whole reason why we kind of started this in the first place. Now also our uh, energy is important because again, it's not a finite resource, but essentially we want to be able to recharge our energy. Right. That's the thing that's going to keep us moving and keep us growing. And we want to make sure that that's focused in the right areas. So think of yourself like a rechargeable battery. If you actually do something every day that gives you energy, that means you're going to get more energy back, like a rechargeable battery versus focusing on things that drain your energy. And that basically means that you're going to have one of those old crappy little batteries that just start to leak out everywhere. Right. And make a mess.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean if you think about it even just as, ah, like a mechanism in your brain, you're going to, you'll like less to do things that burn you out than to do things that energize you.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you're going to stop doing them faster than the things that you enjoy.

Speaker C: Yeah. And we see this a lot. Right. Because that's really what ends up people failing. Uh, of course, you know, you can run out of money and that's, that's the fact. But really, people run out of energy before they run out of money. Usually. Right. And usually they run out of energy, which is why they then start to run out of money because they're not focused on actually putting it in the right spot. So no matter where you are in your business, I really want you to understand that really, you know, we started this business, or any business for some kind of freedom. Um, whenever we ask that why did you start your business in the first place? That's the key thing that most people say. Right. So really the freedom equation is money plus time plus energy equals freedom, not just the money. So we really want you to take that away because I think sometimes we all forget about that piece and then we end up in a situation where we're losing all those core things and we feel like crap. Right. So running low or out of any of these things is going to keep you stuck and at worst is going to essentially make you give up. Right now one of the most leveraged ways to do this is to move from thinking about how you're going to do something to actually who are the best people to hire to help you get there. Right. Again, only with so much time in A day only. So much energy you're going to have. And so you can create energy, you can create time by hiring the right people. There's actually a great book by Dan Sullivan and it's actually called who, not how and it's really easy read. And so if you really want to understand a little bit more about this and the kind of, um, thinking behind it, then definitely get that. You know, go to Amazon.com and you can, you can find it on there.

Speaker B: Dan will love that plug, I'm sure.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, but really we call this like our a talent team members. Right. We want these people that can ideally take on key roles within the business that they can do better than you. And yeah, I know you're probably like, no one could do it better than me, but unfortunately all fortunately they can. Right? You're the CEO, uh, you want to take your ego out of your talent pool. Right? You don't want to be the one that's good at everything because you're not going to grow. So one of the ultimate things that we want you to be striving for is that ideally you could walk away from your business in a year or more, for a year or more, and it's actually going to grow without you and be even better than it was before. That's kind of the ultimate freedom right now. Of course, that is a long term thing. That's a long term goal. It doesn't mean that you can't start to move towards it. Um, you want to kind of set that vision, take some core steps now to actually make it happen. So some of the key things you'll want to do when looking to hire the best talent is number one, just understand what holds you back from growing right now. Then you want to be able to set up processes that attract great talent every time. You also want to know what role you're actually hiring for and how to communicate that properly. Also, hiring employees have got better potential and also they have initiative as well. Right. So you're hiring for more than the job that they currently have and also look in the right places and get the right talent and have an onboarding and training process that sets employees up for success. Because the last thing you want, you know, they're interviewing you in the same way that you're interviewing them. Right. Uh, if they don't feel comfortable about the position that they're in in, they're going to leg it out there. And also what you can do if you actually can't afford a big hire yet, you know, you sat there thinking, I know I need some help, but I can't afford a massive salary or anything right now, so how do I actually get that talent in my business without committing to the full. The full Monty, Right, yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: And that's kind of where we're going to start, obviously, with the things that holding you back from growing the business. But I did want to mention that, you know that book Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz? I haven't read it yet. I really do want to read it. But that when we talked to him, he was talking about how that was the book that he set this thing up where, like, if you can take a month off from your work, like, just take a sabbatical one time a year for a whole month, you'll be able to tell if that business is running well or not. Because if you don't touch it and it's doing as good or better than when you left, you know, you've set up the right processes in place. So there's a plug for Mike as well.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think when we chatted to, um, Cindy Thomason, right, she was. She's a bit of a, um. What would you call it? I was gonna say disciple. Probably not a protege of Mike's. Right. Um, but she literally just set up her, ah, her business to, to do that. And she was off on her. Off on her sabbatical. We should, we should catch up with her and see how she went.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Hopefully it didn't all crash, but I'm

Speaker C: sure I think she's still going.

Speaker B: Yeah. So let's first talk about what things are holding you back from growing your business. Because this is a key, you know, it's, it's. It's like the first step in everything. You have to identify what's wrong and to be able to fix it. Right. So, you know, a lot of people when they first do in their business, they're like, well, I've got urgent hiring needs, so I'm just going to go out there and hire quickly, which is definitely not what you should be doing. Because then what happens there is you accept mediocrity or even not good talent, um, just because it's what's available. Right. And when we, when we do that, we're just hiring for the sake of, like, let's get a task off my plate. And yeah, sure, that's fine. But even those people that, you know that you hire in your business as employees and that you might hire for a single task, if you just understand the process of by, by, uh, hiring them if, you know, if they can actually do more, you can actually start to build out a bigger role for them as you grow the business. And that's kind of a good thing to do because even your first hires, usually your first hires are some of the most loyal ones. And if you can grow their role, you could actually make this a really good opportunity for them. You just have to make sure that's the right person fitting in that role and not just accept whoever's coming around. Right. The other thing is that what we do when we first hire the people and get them on board and have them start working for us is we start accepting, um, things like, you know, not meeting deadlines or, hey, I called in because, uh, I had to take my kid to daycare. Well, that's fine. Like there's certain things that, um, you have to accept as an employer, but also things that you shouldn't accept ongoing. Right. Because a lot of the times when these things start to happen, you'll see that, you know, as the phrase goes, give an inch, they take a mile. Right. So you don't want to be a hard ass necessarily, but you also want to make sure that you're not just accepting every single excuse or whatever is coming out. And then there's also what we call erosion, creep, which basically, if they're not doing your job, then you have to kind of come over and help do their job for them, which is absolutely what they're not hired for. Right. Their job is to take that role, own that role, and do whatever that that role is, uh, supposed to be now. Yes. So there are certain instances where people will call out, so maybe at certain times you might have to find somebody else to do that role or whatever, but you don't want to be doing this on an ongoing basis because if you're the, if you're the line of, like the backup line of defense here for whatever that role is, you will find you'll be doing that role way too often and you'll be very upset that that person is not taking control of that role. We know because we've done it in our business and we've had to actually do this multiple times with, you know, our Amazon businesses, but also with our coaching business where, yeah, we've had to go back in and take control over certain things because it wasn't getting done the right way. Um, and it's just, it's a nature of the business, but you have to identify that. Right. So as soon as you know that's happening. You have to make a change. And that also comes to the next point of hiring for the wrong role, which, you know, if you say, okay, I'm going to bring somebody on for customer service, and then you're like, hey, by the way, can you also run social media or do, you know, uploading videos and managing the back end of my, my website? For me, that's not the same role. Like, some of that stuff doesn't really work. Right. It's not the same skill set. So if you've now decided to pile other stuff on that they can't perform, they're going to absolutely feel like this is too much. They don't understand what's happening. They might not even know how to go about it if you don't have the right stuff in there and it might not be something that they want to do. So now you're piling stuff on them that they don't like. Right. So you're actually, you could take a good talent and, and turn them into a bad talent or a bad talent and turn them into a no talent where they just like walk away. Right. So you don't want to be doing that and you definitely want to make sure that the roles and responsibilities are very clear right from the start. Um, um, I know we've, we've, we've tried to do this both in our Amazon business and our coaching business before. We make the same mistakes. We know that's why we learn from them. That's why we can tell you guys about them. Um, but yeah, you just can't pile on whatever you think is apt for certain people because it will burn them out. Just like it'll burn you out trying to explain it and then redo it and try to react, train them on that or whatever.

Speaker C: But yeah, I think that's the most common mistake actually that everyone makes. Some has made at some point. Right. Um, and it, because it's a natural thing. You find a great person that's really good at what they're doing and so you think, awesome, now I'm just going to give them everything.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And either they might not have ever had the experience in it, but they just say yes because they want to please you or they, uh, um, you know, they just don't really understand what that is and they get overwhelmed. And so, yeah, I do think that that is a big common mistake. So, um, that's a really good one to point out, I think, because just think about if you've hired someone regardless of what, what level of role that is you've probably done it at some point and then the kind of resentment comes in and then you end up thinking that they're no good at it and so you just end up firing them for the wrong reason. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it's not by any fault of theirs, it's just that they are not fit for what you're giving them anymore, but they were good at and that, that actually can turn into burnout for them. Right. So like they might stop doing their initial task well as well because they don't feel like they're being utilized properly or whatever.

Speaker C: Yeah, totally.

Speaker B: And uh, then another thing obviously is if you're keeping poor attitude or low performers around too long, that's going to actually kill the growth of your business because again, it's one of those things where those people aren't in the business, in your business to help the business anymore. They're in it to just get a paycheck. And that's not helping grow anything. That's just kind of at best maintaining at worst like decreasing the value of your business. Right. So you don't want to keep those people around too long. You'll know it when you start working with them obviously, um, whether or not they have the right attitude to keep moving forward. But we'll talk about obviously the hiring process and how to kind of take those people out of the equation ideally early on in the filtering process for your applications. So that way you don't have that often hiring that many that, that type of person too often. And now the other thing is that you have to be the person who leads this. Right. So as a leader you have to walk the walk instead of just talk. Right. So you actually have to say what you're uh, do what you're going to say and say what you're going to do. So you can't just say, hey, you know what, you guys go out there and do everything while I take a nap today or whatever. Like you have to actually be the creative leader of your business and be pushing the growth forward. So if you're not doing that, nobody else is going to be trying to do anything either. And what ends up happening is you just have ah, basically an office or you know, a team of people that don't want to do anything because they're not led by anybody to do anything. So you don't want to be that person who like kills the productivity of your team. You have to keep finding new ways, innovate and find a growth mechanism for your team to actually evolve. Um, and then that helps you evolve the business and yourself as well. And then obviously you definitely want to have your team behaviorally aligned to the vision and values of your company. If they're not, that's absolutely going to stop your growth in your business as well. Because, you know, you set these things in your brain and if you haven't clearly communicated your vision and your values, that's obviously going to be a hard way to align people. But if you clearly communicate your vision and values of the company and they're not aligning to that, well, then that's probably a time when you have to either, you know, set them aside and talk to them about it or, or actually find somebody to replace that person. Because in the end you can't, you can't accept that, right? You can't accept people avoiding the vision and the values of the company. That's the core and that's the heartbeat of your company. If they're not doing what, what you set out for them to do and behave that way, it's only going to get worse. Like it's, it's never going to get better. Um, um, so if, if like you talk to them one time and it doesn't change, it's probably a good time to start thinking about replacing that person. Because, you know, a lot of people's attitudes and behavioral problems are persistent and you know, they always say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I believe that in certain ways, like you can learn new things, but you might not be able to actually change yourself drastically. Right? So, um, and that's the other thing about that is ineffective communication. As a leader, you need to be communicating very effectively, very clearly. Don't give them vague, you know, theories about how things work. Make things very specific, State specific things. Um, so that kind of goes with the next thing, which is lack of clarity. If you have lack of clarity about what you're saying and what you're doing, nobody knows what they're supposed to do, right? So it's, it's all about communication and clarity. In that, in that from top down, leadership down to every team member, if everybody knows what they're doing, you'll be surprised at how well everything runs in your business. It's almost like clockwork. Another plug for Mike McAllen. Obviously you don't want to be hiring people who are oblivious or allowing self centered hidden agendas or you know, office politics, team politics, you know, trying to play people. You don't want that drama in your business. That's not why anybody wants to work for a company. So if you can avoid hiring those people or, you know, firing quick, as we always say, you know, fire quick, hire, hire, hire. Well, fire quick. Uh, and if you don't see them working out, just move on and let them know that there's. There's issues there.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And, um, there is a way, right, to actually make sure that you avoid this as much as possible and fix it. And it's really to have a great hiring process that make sure that you get some really good talent, but also, um, great talent that you actually need. Right. So that's another key thing is that, uh, as you kind of said before, um, if you don't know the real role that you're hiring for, then that actually spins everything out of control and it's going to bite you on the bum later down the track, right? So that's the first key thing that you need to really fully nail and also understand exactly what they're core metrics are going to be when they actually come into the business. So in terms of a great hiring process for attracting the right talent, really what you want to do, you want to filter as much as possible. I think this hiring someone, we put it off a lot. Unless it's say, like, um, I think most people have got used to now, you know, maybe getting some help in the business, like a va. Um, but again, we're talking about actually putting a process together that you can hire for any person in your business. Because it's. Regardless of what position it is, you're always going to come up against this at some point in that process, right? Or, uh, working with people, whether it's the first month or it could be in the next two years, right? You're going to kind of run into these problems. So what you want to do is actually have a process that filters people as quickly as possible so that you're not kind of going through all those applicants. Because one of the key things that we kind of worry about, I think, is that, oh my God, how, um, last, uh, time I did something and posted it on Upwork, it took me like 500 people applied and it took me ages to kind of filter through all of that kind of stuff. So you actually want to create a process that filters those people out as quickly as possible. So one thing that we like to do is when we're actually writing a job description is one quick thing that you can do is actually put something in the job description when they're applying for the role that they need to, um, put in Their application. So it could be something like, something weird, like, um, I don't know, Studio 54.

Speaker B: Right, right, right. The answer to your favorite movie in the reply.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Or something like that. And, um, we got, you know, depending on how you're actually getting them to answer it, whether it could be through an application form, it could be through just an email or something and get them to put it in a specific spot within the application. It could be the email title and you'll easily see which people do it, which people don't do it. The people that don't do it. You just don't go any further with them. They could have the best application in the world, like, in terms of, um, you know, their experience. However, if they can't fully read something and follow an instruction, regardless of what level it's at, then they're not going to be the right fit. Right. So that's a really quick way of filtering through a lot of people. Very.

Speaker B: And that'll filter probably like 75% of your applicants half the time.

Speaker C: Yep, totally. And don't get dragged back into. Oh, but they wrote a really cool thing here. It doesn't matter. Right. Like, you know, if they can't read an instruction properly on an application, how are they going to read an instruction properly when it comes to actually working with you? So I think that's a really good way of filtering, asa.

Speaker B: Yeah. You could even bold it and underline it so that way it's very clear and you'll see that most people still don't do it.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So those people that do it. That's awesome. Then you can actually have a look at their application and see where they're at and then kind of push them onto the next stage. And the next stage, what we really like to do is to get them to, um, either, you know, do a written kind of interview or a video interview. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean, um, that you're getting on the phone with them or anything like that. You basically ask them a question, um, about themselves. Maybe they tell you a little bit about themselves and their experience and why they're a great fit for the job. They could do it on video, um, especially if they say they're working with customers and things like that. You might want them to do video work in the future. Or they can write it and see, you can see what their writing skills are like. So that's like a really good filter. Number one. You get to see a lot of people very, very quickly about how they present themselves. Um, how they articulate things and how they're able to um, basically summarize a lot of things in a short space of time, but get the point across. No matter what job you're actually, you know, recruiting for, people need to be able to do that at some level, right? So that's another good, really good filter. And then you can then start to go into specific tasks depending on what role you're actually, um, hiring for. So for instance, customer service rep, it might be, hey, we got this email from a customer. How would you reply to that customer? And you could like find an email or just make one up, right? That is a really disgruntled customer. And then you can then start to test, well, do they present themselves in the right way? How did they represent the company, how did they make the customer feel good even though they wrote a really bad email? You know, how did they actually deal with that, with that problem? And then you can go to the next task which might be about, um, you know, how do you, um, how do you do returns, how do you um, maybe, um, maybe they want to do some data entry for you and things like that so you can give them tasks specifically to exactly what you want them to do. That way you get to see them on the job already. And at this point as they go through the process, you might actually get some people that are like, this is too hard, I cannot be bothered going through this process. So therefore, you know that number one, they don't really want the job, they're just kind of scouting around and um, that they're not the right people for you. Right. If they, if they bail out that quickly, then they're probably not going to be a good fit long term for you and your business. So depending on what role you're actually aiming for, we probably would say, I would say around about three tasks is great. Before you then jump on the zoom, call with them and do a full on um, interview with them. Right? So that's the key. You're filtering people through a process. And what you're basically, you know, torture testing, if you like, is can they go through the distance and do they present themselves in the right way for the job? And you'll probably end up with maybe say you've got 500 applicants, you might end up with maybe three that are really, uh, good and then you want to jump on the phone with them and um, actually have a proper interview with them. So some don'ts when you're thinking about hiring, right? Don't just accept the first recommendation that you get. Right. I've done this before. I'm sure a lot of people have done it before where, you know, you've either maybe worked with them, um, previously in another capacity and you didn't really work with them hands on. But you've kind of, you know, from afar, they looked really good. You're like, oh, that person would be awesome. So they did that kind of job. So I'll put them into my business. Don't do that. Right. They may be perfect. What you want to do is put them through the process first. Um, also, somebody that, you know might recommend someone. Oh, my. My sister's really cool. She really wants to do this job on my. My husband really wants this job. Again, put them through the process. Don't just go, awesome, you'll do bosh. Let's have you got 20 hours a week? Okay, let's go for it. Right. Um, also, you know, don't hire anyone without putting them through that process. And don't hire someone just because you've got an urgent need because like we said, you know, a bad hire means that you're going to be doing it again soon. All the energy that we talked about, you don't want to be leaking that out in like two or three months time. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. And I will say that there's like this classic, um, m. I would say it's a bit of a myth out there that, like, you want to hang on to your employees as long as possible because going through the hiring process costs your business a lot of money. But I will say, if you do the hiring process right, and you know, that's. That's when you should hang on to those employees because they're probably good fits. However, if you don't do the hiring process right, don't listen to that myth, because that myth is not applied to you because you haven't done the hiring process right. So if you do it right, then, yeah, you don't want to necessarily let people go willy nilly. But if you don't do it right. Yeah, you probably want to move on faster than hanging onto them because it's just going to bring your business out.

Speaker C: Well, yeah, because you went again, I think the cost, it's that money, time, energy equation. Right. Because we're really focused on the cost. Right. The money, because it's what we can track. Um, oh, it cost me a lot to hire that person. But really, um, the time and the energy and the money, you're probably going to lose because you're going to end up having to go back and pick up some of the stuff that they're not able to do or they're not doing well, then that's costing you the growth in your business for sure. So you have to kind of think of it that way as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, and we talked about this. You'd mentioned the job description. So this is kind of the other don't. Another big don't for the hiring process is don't put up lazy job descriptions because you have to be very clear about the role you're hiring for and the applicants should understand what they are applying for. Because if you put up something when, you know, we've also done this before, we've put up something weird like, you know, you know, customer. I, uh, don't even know what it was. It was like, customer, wow, um, director or something like that. And people are like, well, I'm not really sure what that exactly means, but it sounds fun. So let's see what it is. And then they go apply for it and they're like, yeah, that's not actually what we're talking about here. So, um, um, you definitely want to spend some time defining accurately the role of the person. So clearly state what it is, clearly name what it's called. So what is the job called on the market? So if you don't have the right description, you're not going to get the right applicants. So you need to have that description very clear. Otherwise you might spend a lot of time filtering and the applicants are looking at the wrong thing. Because you know, there's some things out there like you could put maybe marketing director. And what you really meant was you need somebody to run your ads for you, which are two different things. Right. Marketing director is more of a creative. An ad person would be more of a technical person. So if you don't choose carefully what you're actually trying to say, you're going to get a ton of the wrong people applying. So keep that in mind when you're actually writing the description. You also want to put in what your core values of your company are in the job description because you want to again, find people who are looking for that and you want to deter people who are not looking for that or don't have those values because everybody will, you know, fib a little on their application or pretend to be a certain way just to get a job. But you should be able to tell if you've clearly defined everything in the role, whether or not they're going to be doing things, ah, long term for your business. The way that you want them to. Also, what type of behaviors do you want this person to have? You should write that in the job description. It's something that if you don't explain it, you know, for example, like, there's a lot of grumps out there. I'll call them grumps because there's a lot of cynical people in the world. Um, if you start putting, like, you know, this person should be happy, ready, energized and ready to work every day, there's going to be a lot of grumps that are like, that's not me. Like, they just will flat out just, you know, define themselves and say, that sounds awful. I don't want to be that person. And they won't apply. Fantastic. Don't apply. We didn't want you to apply anyway. We don't want to waste that energy, and we know that'd be a waste of your energy. There's just certain people that will, that will know that's not them. So if you write that in there, right, Behaviors, then that'll actually deter some of those people. You also want to develop the deliverables you want this hire to achieve in the first 12 months. So actually give them clear milestones and goals that you want them to hit in your business. Now, it's always dependent on the role and what tasks you're hiring for and what that person's supposed to do. But if you put a growth goal in there of some way, like, uh, for example, if, like, you're saying you got customer service, you want to say, uh, define a way to use our customer interaction, uh, to help grow our customer, um, lifetime value with orders or whatever, like, turn those people into repeat buyers. And that's a growth strategy you want this person to achieve. Well, if you put that in there, that's going to be on top of mind right from day one. Whereas if you tell them six months in, hey, by the way, I want you to take this interaction that we've had and start really finding a way for these people to, you know, repurchase from us or buy other products, they're not going to really know what that means. They're not going to deliver that growth strategy. Or, you know, even if you give them the strategy, they're not going to deliver the execution on it because it's not what they were signing up for. Right. You just gave them a huge task that wasn't put on the plate from the start. But if you put it on the plate from the start, they'll know exactly that that's part of the role.

Speaker C: Yeah. And when you actually come to interview them, Right. If, um, if you can then ask them about that and you'll be able to tell if they have no idea or not. I'll try. Maybe my, I mean, usually the best ones will go, um, you know, I actually have no idea what you're talking

Speaker B: about there, you know, or they'll say, you know, I kind of know what you mean, but I don't know how it applies to your business yet. I'd like to learn on the, on the job, but I'm really willing to learn and make that happen. That's a, that's an honest answer. You can accept that. But if somebody actually knows your business and says, oh, yeah, so like, I've done this before, I've worked with customer support. Uh, and in this business, I actually was like, hey, you know what, Here's a promo code at the end of our conversation. You can go and buy it from our Shopify store. Well, that's one, one idea right there. Like, they could just take that and use that right there. So if you didn't know that and that person tells you that, then you're like, oh, well, that is a strategy. I'm write that down.

Speaker C: Yeah. And they're going to be better than me at doing what you're doing. Right. So, yeah, no, that's really good. And I think, um, and to that point, you know, we really want to stress the importance of hiring people who aren't just focused on just completing daily tasks. Right. They should also help you grow the business and make it more efficient if that's part of your core values. And I suggest that, ah, at some level it has to be right. You know, you want to get results for people, you want the best products. You know, obviously you want to grow the business and you want to make sure that you do it in a way that is, um, that is efficient for you. Right. So when you're doing that, you want to be looking for those types of qualities. Hire someone who's got the ability to do more than the job than you're actually hiring for. This goes right back to that most common mistake that we talked about earlier. Because if, if in the future you know that you want this role to maybe grow into another type of role, or you know that there's going to be a different type of role in the business in the future and that you can actually harvest talent, if you like, within the business, then it's always really good to have your eye on that as you're starting to bring people in right now. They're going to be at some points where maybe there's just jobs where it's literally just going to be a one and done. Right. And that's totally fine as well. But if you know that you're going to have a, um, specific type of role in the future and that this is a great way to start to bring people in and make sure that you, you know what that other role is going to be about and how to hire for that. Also, you want to think about the qualities of the person, right? It's not just the hard skills. So what kind of qualities do they. Do they display? Have they got detail, focus? When they're actually giving you their answers? Are they detailed enough? Um, have they been strategic? Have they thought beyond the role that you're actually asking them for? Can they be adaptable? Are they too rigid, that they're just like, I just need to know what I'm doing every day and where's my process? Right, yeah, um, that's pretty tough for

Speaker B: an online business to really deal with too.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, usually, especially in Amazon business, everything's changing, right? And so especially, you know, new to west and things like that. So if you haven't got someone that can just go with that flow and go, yep, no worries, let's get on it. And, uh, I'll work with the customer and say it's a customer service person, et cetera. They're not going to be able to, um, move with the, with the fast pace of the business. Same with agility, adaptable and agile. Like, how quickly do they morph to new situations? Are they creative, do they have critical thinking? And have they got leadership skills in the future? Now, this is not necessarily that every hire has to have all these things, but what you're assessing is more like the softer areas of how they deal with things and the way that they go about things behaviorally rather than the specific experience that they've had. Sometimes it's hard to kind of pull these out, but you want to start to think about questions that allow you to start to bring those through. And I think doing some of the tasks, you want at least one of those tasks to kind of show that. Right. Also, you want to make sure that you're looking in the right places. So, um, usually maybe what we do is, like we said before, we might ask for a recommendation, we might post on our Facebook page. Um, but one of the core things that you can do is actually find companies that you admire and head to hunt them. Right? Great way to do this is on LinkedIn. So you can go on LinkedIn. And you might think, I can't go and ask an Apple customer service manager to come and work for me. Why not? Right? Just go and ask the busy. They might not come and work for you, but the key thing is to, um, understand what their role is. Maybe you could actually say, hey, I'm a new business owner. I'm, um, looking to hire the best customer service. I know Apple gives the best customer service or whichever company that you admire. And, um, just say, would you mind spending a couple of minutes just bullet pointing what you do and what makes Apple so great? I think it's this. But I would really love to understand from your perspective. Maybe they don't write back to you, but maybe they will. I mean, I know a lot of people that, you know, students used to write to us and ask, you know, can you help me out with my project or whatever? And I'll be like, yeah, cool. You know, I think it's awesome, like to be able to give back. So, um, don't kind of stop yourself from doing that kind of stuff. And you'd be surprised, especially in this environment, how many people want just what you have or what we want or, you know, they want to work from home, they want to be able to stay at home with their kids, they want that freedom, but they don't want to start a business. So, you know, that's the great thing about businesses like ours is that we can actually offer that to people as well. And that's a really big value add for people like this in this industry because they don't get to do that very often with a big company like that. So there's also, you know, obviously that you can go and headhunt. Um, also a great resource is something like indeed.com. you can actually, um, post jobs by, um, area. So for instance, you can go in and say, I want someone on your time zone. You can even if, say, you're working in different marketplaces, you could like post in those marketplaces. So you just want to have a think about what's the best type of person that you want to work with and what location do you actually want them to be in. Sometimes you might not care, but usually, you know, especially when we're working online, we could post somewhere and then we realize that someone's on a completely different time zone and it's a real pain in the ass to kind of work with them. Right. Um, also, if you have A customer email list. That's a really good place to start. Guess what? They love your brand already. They love the way that you work. Um, I know my husband has got a lot of his employees just from posting on his own customer list. So you'd be surprised even if you've got only a couple of hundred people on there, it's always worth it, kind of putting it out there. It also shows that you're hiring and that you're, um, growing the business as well and that you, you're a bigger company. So that's always a really good plus as well. Also, you've got your Facebook page. You've obviously got maybe some social media stuff that you do for your brand. And you can also just use LinkedIn itself as a platform to be able to post jobs. Um, if you've got a friend in a similar field, you could also ask them to post as well. And then any past colleagues that you may have worked with and things like that and of course, recommendations. But the idea again is you want to go really wide at this stage. Right. Don't just rely on, um, maybe somebody in your group or your community that they've worked with before. That's an easy way, but it might not be the best way to be for you to be able to find a really, really good person. Even though they've maybe been trained before, you don't know how they've been working in that business or how that other person has trained them before, either.

Speaker B: Yeah. So from this point on, you're probably very confident about the who m you're going to hire from your application process. But now that they're actually hired, you have to make sure that you know what you're doing and you have to train them on their new role. Right. So, like, if you don't have this process sorted out, you could have all the greatest applicants in the world and they could still crash and burn because they're not set up for success from your onboarding and your hiring or your training process. Right. So you definitely want to create an onboarding schedule with what they need to be set up. So say like, here's the first 30 days, here's what I expect. This week I'm going to have you do this. Next week I'm going to have you work on this. And for example, since we've been using the customer service thing, you probably want them to, like, draft up response emails before they send them, just to get the process of you looking over it, making sure that they're not, you know, sending Something that's absolutely going to harm the business or, you know, it's not the right voice or the right tone or wherever. You can kind of critique that as you go in the first couple of weeks, and then you kind of let them go on that. But you definitely want an onboarding schedule. So that way they know exactly when they're going to kind of get up to speed. You also want to ask them how they best learn and how would they like to go through their first hundred days. So it's not just up to you to determine that. You might know that most people learn by doing, but maybe this person wants to study some stuff first. They want to go over some materials before they start jumping in. And that's great because then that shows you that they're willing to actually go in there and see what the role is, you know, specifically about. Before attempting some tasks, you got to really know them and they got to know you. So that way you can build this relationship and make it work. Right. You also want to leverage the work they've done previously in the interview. Interview process. So any tasks that you ask them during that process, you want to see like, hey, this is what you already have done. This is kind of what we're going to do again. And this is the task that you'll have. You want to create a bond and rapid communication cycle. So we call this like the open office policy. You want to use, uh, you know, some sort of slack or some. Something that you can communicate, right? So slack or Skype or WhatsApp, um, for like texting and getting things, you know, that quick communications. So that way they don't feel like they cannot come to you for certain things. Right. You also want to teach them always to come with you for a solution when they're stuck. Because you ultimately want to be needed, right? You want to be needed because you want them to know that you're there, but also so that way you can still have your hand in the pot of making, uh, the processes more efficient, improving the things. And if there are real problems, you want to know that and not be isolated from that. So that way they get solved in a way that makes sense for your vision of the company and not just because it's kind of like telephone, right? Like you say you want it this way, and then 10 people down the line after you not managing certain people for long enough, and then new hires coming in, they've got a completely skewed vision or whatever of that. If you don't make that very clear and kind of keep your hand in the pot, uh, often enough, right? So when you do get questions, make a loom video or write up an SOP or whatever, just create that very clear process and explain it and index it in like a Google Drive or a Dropbox folder so you can come back to it later. And if you're hired right, the new employer will be better than you in their role, right? So that's the whole point. Like you set them up for success so they can actually take that, grow themselves into that role, make them better so that way you never have to do it again.

Speaker C: Yeah. And um, you know, that's the ultimate, right? That's what, you know, depending on which role that you're actually hiring for. Now I know there's probably a lot of people going, yeah, but you know, these role like that, you know, if I want to hire an Amazon brand manager or something like I just don't have the money right now to uh, be able to pay someone because that's the point. A plus employees, you have to pay them well, right? You have to pay them for the job, maybe tie some of that remuneration into a bonus, that type of thing as well. Because you want them to feel, you know, that they're valued in the business as well. If you don't have that type of, um, cash flow right now, how do you get that expertise in your business? So one key thing you can actually do is look to expert consultants to help you so you can actually do this. I know a lot of people probably don't know, but you can actually hire specific consultants. And I'm not talking about, you know, courses. Don't do another course. Right? Just don't do another course. Right. You know, because it's only as good as the information, right? You want someone to come in and look at the business specific area that you're looking at and give you a roadmap or a strategy to be able to execute. Some good ways to do this, um, in certain areas of your business could be supply chain, right? I can't. There's probably maybe 1% of the whole of. Maybe not even 1%, 0.1% of the whole of the Amazon seller universe that um, understand supply chain to the nth degree. Right. Um, and that's because naturally as entrepreneurs we're about growth, right? We want to, we're focused on sales and we're focused on the profit. That's what we, that's what we want to do. Or creativity in some way. I was lucky in my business that um, actually My business partner was a supply chain director, so he actually had all that stuff nailed. And so we got the, you know, the, the experience of that. But you can actually hire supply chain people to come in, look at all your processes, look at all your documentation. They can also look at, um, cost areas that you may be not even thinking about, you didn't even know existed. They can look at your forecasting, they can look at your planning, they can look at all those areas and your working capital. All that cool supply chain stuff that you probably don't even know exist. They can save you money, they can save you time and they can save you energy. So if I was looking for a consultant and say I'm at that real growth stage in my business, that is one expert consultant that you could bring in, pay them a fee and get them to give you a complete roadmap of how to actually change some things up there. Also tech, right. If you're looking to maybe build your own customer list, you're looking to, um, maybe build some funnels or maybe even just spreadsheets in your business, that type of thing. If that's not a natural thing for you, but you've got the idea, you know exactly what you want to do, but the thing that's stopping you is actually just doing it because of the tech, you know, liability. This was me, Right. I just do not. And also as a CEO, setting up a landing page and, um, sticking, you know, zapier or whatever you want to do together, right. To make shit work, it's not your best use as a CEO. Um, you've got the vision of how it's going to go. So you want an expert to come in and literally just set it all up for you. Right. And that's like a one and done. It's done. Right. And then maybe you keep them on as a project so that they can change things as it goes. That's a really good one as well.

Speaker B: Same like graphic design too. Like, you don't want to be doing graphic design yourself unless you're actually good at it.

Speaker C: Exactly. Because even, even if you're good at it and you love it, it's still not going to get you where you want to go. Right. It's not the thing. Yeah. Also CFO, you can actually hire CFOs to come in, have a look at your business and actually give you a roadmap. Again, a bit like a supply chain specialist, where they're able to say, okay, you're leaking money here, um, you should be spending more here. That Type of thing. Right. And actually we mentioned Cindy Thomason earlier and um, that's the kind of thing that her company does, is looking at a profit first system.

Speaker B: And just in case you don't know what a CFO is, a chief financial officer basically looks over all the money, the spends, the cost, all that stuff, and make sure that you're profiting as much as possible.

Speaker C: Yeah. And you know, we'll be able to see where you're leaking money and give you a proper roadmap and also give you some parameters, give you some, you know, things to aim for but also to stop doing. Um, then you might want to think about contractors versus full time because that's another thing. Actually, it's a really common thing. When we say hire people, people go, yeah, but people, uh, are only going to work for me for five hours a week. They think that you have to put like a 35 hour, 40 week role in place. And um, you don't at all. Right. My first hire, I think was five hours a week and they were working for other people. So what you want to do is you want to hire an expert who only has a few clients. Right. And get references from those clients. Now what I mean by that is sometimes what we tend to then do is go to an agency and what we're saying is marketing agencies, those big agencies that have many, many, many, many clients now, they might have some good processes. And I don't want, um, to, you know, this is not a bashing exercise. It's just based on our experience. What we found is, is that they're not going to do it to the nth degree that you really need as a small business. Right. I've worked with massive agencies in corporate. Their systems and processes are set up to the point where, you know, you're working with creative directors, you're working with, um, you know, account managers and account directors. And it's this whole ecosystem that's set up for big clients, not for small businesses that need agility and need to run. And you need to understand all the metrics and all this other stuff. Right. So, um, I still think hiring your own people once you've understood the processes is the better way to go. Because you're just probably going to end up leaking out that time, that money and the energy with agencies, if you're not fully sure about what your core strategy is and you've got big bugs.

Speaker B: Yeah. If you're, if you're thinking that you're going to hire an agency and they're going to save your business, then that's probably the wrong reason to hire an agency, right? Like almost no agency, they set up templates. And as I always tell people, like templates don't work in your business because you're not trying to stay like everybody else, you're trying to stand out from everybody else. And that's how you get traction. So you need to do things better. You don't do that with templates and standardized processes and, you know, just general help from other people outside of your business who are not working for you. So the more you can create, create that custom experience inside your own business, that's how you're going to really grow that culture and that, that, you know, that process that's going to define you from everybody else out there.

Speaker C: And I would say if you are thinking about working with an agency or you're working with an agency right now. So let's think about some that you might do. Um, social media maybe. You know, there's a lot of social media agencies out there. Um, in my experience and now clients experience, what I found is that they say, I can post for you three days a week and I'm going to do these specific type of posts. Now, as a person who really wants just to get that off their plate, you're like, awesome, you're going to relieve me from this. You're going to end up spending probably a thousand dollars a month for one, uh, channel. So maybe it's Facebook, maybe it's Instagram. Even though, guess what guys, you know, they're linked together so you can actually do them at the same time. Um, but they'll charge you per channel. They'll also charge you per post. And then they're just going to do some generic posting. Right. They're not looking at how many followers are you getting? What's the actual link back to sales? How's it actually going to grow your business? Yeah, they're just doing the task of posting and uh, costs a lot of bloody money to do that kind of stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah, when it breaks down and you're like, hey, well I just need somebody to do this. But then it's like if it's by task, it can add up really quickly because you need more things and more communications to your customers. But if it's going to cost you more than it's worth, what's the point?

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So it makes you feel good because something's been taken care of. But actually again, it comes back to resources. You know, could that thousand dollars a month or $500 a month be better spent on a contractor, say, that comes in who works with you specifically, understands the business, understands the values, understands your vision. And um, you've got core metrics that they're going for because you can try and do that with an agency and I've never really seen it work. You know very well where they, they, they're held accountable to those things.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, they'll have their own metrics that they provide their performance off of, uh, based on what you want them to achieve. That might not be what they're striving to achieve.

Speaker C: They'll give you a report every month and you sit there and go through the report and just go, oh, that looks good. No idea what you're going to do with it, right?

Speaker B: Yep, exactly.

Speaker C: So, yeah, unless they should come to you with this is the report. So therefore, ah, the action plan is this. Yep, yep.

Speaker B: Cool. All right, so just to recap on everything that we talked about today about hiring A plus talent, the first thing you obviously want to understand is what's holding you back from growing. Then you want to understand the processes that get great talent every time. So obviously create a filtering process in your application, uh, process. Then you want to know what role you are hiring for and how to communicate that. You can't be vague on that. It has to be very clear. Then you want to hire employees who think beyond their daily tasks so that way they can help you grow the company. You want to look in the right places for the best talent because you don't want to be sitting there going down rabbit holes or making Craigslist ads and then finding whoever comes up. Right. Then you want to have an onboarding and training process that sets employees up for success from day one, so that way you don't take good talent and ruin them. And then if you can't afford to hire a big hire, obviously look for consultants and experts to help you kind of manage your business. So remember guys, now that you're armed with this information, it's your job to implement it into your business and grow your business through action. Also to get some absolutely free training on what it takes to have a successful business to fuel your lifestyle. Head to goteamreal.com to download our free training today and we'll see you next week for the next Sprint to Profit episode. And as always, we wish you the best for you and your business. Bye for now.

Speaker A: Don't forget to subscribe. And if you would like to get more information about selling on Amazon, head to goteamreal.com for some absolutely free training.