Month: August 2016

Hiring is one of the most important aspects of building a successful business. The people you bring in to scale your business can make the difference between growth and stagnation. As a business owner myself, I know hiring can be a challenge. But why is it such a huge obstacle? The answer is not just to scale your company, but to scale your company with purpose.

I was talking to a friend and mentor of mine about the idea of negativity bias the other day. Basically, our brains are like Velcro. They’ve become trained over time to recall negative experiences more easily than positive experiences. So, when we have negative experiences on-boarding people, those experiences stick with us and influence our future attitudes. The same is true for business owners when it comes to building a team.

Holding onto Negativity

Let’s say you secure someone you think is going to be great. You get them started and while they have the experience you wanted, they lack the “go-getter” mentality you really desire on your team. Or maybe they are really enthusiastic and try hard, but they don’t have the practical skills to execute their tasks properly. When it doesn’t work out, you’re left with a negative experience you’ll bring to new hiring situations going forward.

Like it or not, those negative experiences will inform your choices in the future unless you make the effort to break out of that mindset. It can be tough work, but it’s necessary if you want to scale your company with purpose. I can tell you right now, you aren’t going to grow your company to your most efficient model without an effective team, no matter what. There are certain things you must accept and work through to develop the positive mindset to help you get the right people working with you..

Get in the Right Mindset

I have the privilege to be around a lot of companies, including my own. Every successful company I know has accomplished the difficult task of properly assembling a team. This entire process starts with you, the leader. 

If you’re frustrated with hiring, or if team building has been a disaster, it’s because of the culmination of negativity you’ve built into the hiring experience. You’re bringing that mindset into new hiring scenarios, which pollutes the experience from the outset.

You have to work through the negative associations you’ve accumulated towards hiring. Part of doing so comes with acknowledging that hiring is more of a process than a one-time thing. Focus on the bigger picture. Ultimately, getting the right person is more important than getting the person right the first time.

Allow Yourself to Strike Out 

Hiring can go wrong. Bad experiences will happen. You might get someone you think is going to be amazing only to be disappointed later. It’s not fun, but it’s not the end of the world either. It’s important to recognize that sometimes, you’re going to strike out. Once you accept this inevitability, you can focus on building the principles of hiring over time that will help you make fewer questionable choices less often. 

Trial and error is fine…as long as you’re maturing and learning as you go. Over time, build a clear and concrete plan for how you hire and what the hiring process should look like. While it might be uncomfortable, you’re constructing better hiring principles..

One Way Or Another, You’re Going to Pay

When you’re filling a role in your team, what do you hire for? Are you looking for someone who has all the experience you want from the get-go? Do you want to hire someone less experienced, so you can have a bigger role in their training? Either way you look at it, you’re making an investment.

If you’re bringing a really experienced person on board, you’ll pay for it in salary. If you’re bringing on someone greener, you’ll pay for it in training. On top of that, you still have to train for culture. You, as the business leader, have to decide what’s appropriate for the role you want to fill. 

In my experience building teams and scaling businesses with purpose, I’ve found that project managers tend to perform better in an environment where they are trained up. A lot of their job depends on how other people work, so picking someone with a great attitude and enthusiasm to learn is generally a great idea. If you are seeking to hire someone in a more technical role, like finance or programming, you might be better off with someone who has more experience.

Train for Culture

Once you’ve hired a new person on your team, you have to have a committed attitude towards training. For most business owners, training can be an even bigger issue than finding the right people in the first place. Training is essential to ensure your team can duplicate efforts and expand beyond your shadow. Then you can scale in exactly the same way.

In my world, you don’t hire A-players; you make A-players. At the outset, I want people who can dedicate their time and effort; I want people who have the right attitude paired with an ability (and willingness) to learn. As a leader, it is vital to invest in a powerful training process that will prepare your team and company for success.

Launching a new business takes a lot out of a person. You’re pouring all of your passion and energy into making it successful. You’re working long hours and you’re probably missing quality time with your family and friends. There is so much riding on the success of your business that it’s all but impossible to focus on anything else.

Maybe you’re dedicating so much time to your business that you’re missing dates with your spouse or your kid’s last soccer game. Perhaps you’re frustrated because you can’t seem to get the right people into the right roles in your company. Most likely, you’re staying up at night agonizing over what’s holding you back. No matter what obstacles you’re facing, the last thing any business owner wants is for this outpouring of time and energy to be all for nothing.

Collaboration Helps Everyone

Sometimes we can tell that something isn’t right, but we can’t quite put our finger on it. It could be just one small adjustment that’s holding us back from a huge breakthrough. Having an outsider’s perspective in these situations has helped me every time. As a business owner, I need to know that I can call on my peers for support and guidance. And I want to make sure that my peers know they can call on me, too.

That is precisely why we created the Total CEO Mastermind: to use and share the varied and dynamic experience of dozens of profitable business owners for everyone’s mutual benefit.

Launching a Business is a Risk

In a world where 8 out of 10 new businesses will fail within their first 18 months, it takes a special kind of leader to make a business succeed. More than that, it takes the kind of leader who knows goals aren’t accomplished alone.

No one person can be everything a business needs to thrive. No one person has all the skills and talents it takes to grow a company. At the heart of every truly successful business, you’ll see collaboration. It’s what we practice every day in the Total CEO Mastermind.

Risk vs. Reward

Every business owner has to live with some degree of risk. We’re all risking our money, our time, our energy, our focus and, ultimately, our happiness. The saying goes, “there’s safety in numbers.” For businesses, this adage is even truer. Imagine, if every time you launched a business, you had the best practices and ideas of dozens of other successful business people at your fingertips.

Members of Total CEO Mastermind know how much you can gain by listening to your peers. I can give you one example. One of my members was stuck in a partnership that was actually hurting his business. He wasn’t sure how to approach changing the terms of the partnership, so he asked us what we thought. Through a subsequent discussion, he came to the conclusion (and we all agreed) that he needed to get out of the partnership altogether. Once he did, he experienced a total “ah-ha” moment. His business ran more smoothly and he saved himself a ton of worry and stress.

For all the trials business owners face, Total CEO Mastermind becomes your group of leaders who can offer valuable guidance. We’re your ticket out of the hurdles you’re trying to jump. We’re the inner circle of experienced business owners who get it. We’re the people you can call on when you feel alone or when you don’t want to admit you’re out of your depth.

Ready to Collaborate?

If you’ve seen yourself in the scenarios I’ve described and feel like you’re not getting what you expected out of your business, your focus could be in the wrong area. How many hours a week are you working? How much of that time are you spending doing things out of your wheelhouse? Most importantly: are you happy right now with the way your business is going?

If you feel like something is missing in your business, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, collaboration is key. Insights from dozens of successful business owners will help you. Why not give Total CEO Mastermind a try?.

We’re a group of leaders who understand we can’t wear too many hats. We’ve all had to have the guts to take off the hats we shouldn’t be wearing. Most of all, we work together to help us all break through to the next level.

That’s the spirit behind the Total CEO Mastermind, and it’s why I love doing what I do. It’s also the focus of our upcoming Mastermind event, August 24-25 at the Cleveland Marriott Downtown at the Key Center, where members will gather to collaborate. This is the secret to our success, and we’re ready to share it with passionate business owners who want to excel and supersede their goals, and who also strive to help others do the same.

If that’s you, it’s not too late to apply for a spot in our Total CEO Mastermind! To reserve your place, apply here.

We have been conditioned to make a conscious effort to separate our work lives from our family lives. Once we get home at the end of the day, we switch from business mode to family mode. This is a healthy practice for most CEOs because after a hard day at work, we can go home and spend time with the people who make it all worth it.

But does being a CEO actually stop once you leave the office parking lot? Or are there some commonalities when it comes to raising children andrunning a healthy company? I’ve identified the similarities and it starts with consistency.

Whether it’s the rules you set in your household or your family’s weekly routine, consistency is an important factor. In order for your children to follow the rules, you need to set them and stick to them. If you make too many exceptions or don’t lead by example, then they tend to steer off track. The same goes for your business, if you set a clear mission for them and you stay true to it, then they will follow that path. If you lead by example and guide them in the right direction, they have a better chance at succeeding.

All children desire structure because they need it to guide them through life and use it to make better choices. Your company would fail if there wasn’t any structure set into place. By providing your team with the proper training; making sure they are doing their job and placing them in the correct roles will empower them.

Children need to follow a healthy routine such as brushing their teeth, eating dinner at a reasonable time, finishing their homework every night, doing their chores, going to church on Sunday’s and the list goes on. This list is unique to every family but if there is consistency and structure, it can lead to a healthy routine. This is similar to your business in the form of a checklist, which allows your employees to follow a routine everyday in order to be consistent with their work and make sure deadlines are met.

What happens when this structure is not set into place? Well, it can lead to mass disorganization within your company and you will end up in a very tough position. If children do not have some sort of structure, they tend to search for it and often times end up in the wrong place.

So, do not lead your company down a path of destruction and instead create a guide (or training tool) to help them succeed. Once you get home after work, your mindset may change but you still remain the CEO of your household.