Author: totallydude

Owning multiple businesses has taught me a lot about what makes a business successful. One of the main things I have learned is that nothing happens without a team, and building and leading that team is what is most important. At The Total CEO we focus on building a business that could run without you. This means that your success is in your team’s hands. Let them focus on the functional technical work and lead.

Start With Hiring

You can’t lead a team if it’s not the right team. The first thing that you must do is hire the right people. If your team is not the right fit for your business it will not allow you to properly manage, or make decisions for your team, which will be fatal to your growth. Therefore as a CEO you must have a hand in the hiring process and pick the right people for your team so you can have the opportunity to lead properly.

“The best thing you can give an employee is a great system”
-Vinnie Fisher

Manage Your Team

Once you get the right base you can finally start managing your team. Managing your team has many aspects, such as, addressing conflicts, prioritizing, and time management. When leading your executive team you do not want to wear them out, stretch them to thin, or get them off track. Being a good manager is not easy but it sets you up for success.

Set Expectations

Being the leader you must set expectations for your team. Although your team may already have some direction on their own they are going to need some guidance. Setting the right expectations will allow your team to operate to their full potential, as well as give you the opportunity to hold your team accountable. This is crucial to continued success, you do not want to lose track of your objectives.

“Good teams don’t happen by accident” -Vinnie Fisher

Lead By Example

At my company Fully Accountable it is on me to set the tone for my team. This means coming into work ready to work. If you give good energy your team will mirror that energy and as a result you will have a high level of productivity. It is also a good way to gain the trust of your team, and use that to your advantage. Push your team to really innovate and be creative and watch your company grow right in front of your eyes.

Be The Decision Maker

A main quality of a leader and CEO is being a good decision maker. Going back to the question ‘Are you creating a business that could run without you?’ is what you need to really ask yourself. Because if you can honestly answer yes to that question then as the CEO you are in the position to make decisions. That is where you need to be for the success and growth of your company, and it all leads back to your team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vinnie Fisher is a two-time best-selling author of The Best Investment: A Better You and The CEO’s Mindset: How to Break Through to the Next Level, and the CEO of Fully Accountable, an accounting, finance and human resources full service and software solution for small businesses. Vinnie also hosts his own podcast the Total CEO, where he talks with business owners and entrepreneurs regarding the joys and challenges of growing and scaling a small business effectively.

I get asked a lot of questions throughout the course of my day, and one of the biggest is this: how do you successfully scale a business? You’re putting in 14-hour days, all your attention is going to your business and still you aren’t seeing the growth you want. I’ve been there, and I know how frustrating it can be to watch your business fail to reach its potential. The answer, I’ve found through extensive experience, is scaling your business with purpose.

What do I mean by that? Think about it this way: growing a business is like swimming against a current. If you’re alone, there’s no way you can overcome the current to get where you need to go. You need great swimmers alongside you; you need equipment so you don’t exhaust yourself or your people; you need to understand how far you’ve gone; you need a clear direction to make sure you know where the finish line is. That is what I mean by scaling with purpose.

When you put these six things in place, your business will grow!

1. Your Mindset

Everything in your business starts with you, the owner. You are the only one who can set the values and mission of your company. You are the one who has to decide what you want your business to look and feel like. Your mindset is the foundation of your business, and it will inform absolutely everything that comes after.

Your team is going to look to you for guidance and approval. They want to understand what’s important to you and to the company. Having a proper mindset is essential to establish the company’s values that will drive and inform everyone’s performance. Once you have your proper mindset and values in place, you can measure everything your company does mindfully.

2. People

Getting the right people on your team in the right roles can be the difference between success and failure. They have to help you beat the current. Maybe one went to swimming college and majored in freestyle, but they aren’t motivated to perform at their best. Another has never dipped a toe in the water, but they are a natural once you teach them.

A lot of business leaders think that getting the perfect person on paper is the end of the hiring process. What they don’t realize, however, is that sometimes it’s better for you in the long term to hire someone who has a great attitude and enthusiasm for the role. Keep in mind what can be taught and what can’t. You should always be thinking about what kinds of people and personalities will complement (or totally sour) your existing team. When we grow, we grow together.

3. Your Real Numbers

No one can make progress unless they understand the impact of what they’ve done so far. Maybe you’re swimming as hard as you can, but you’ve gone off course and lost your way. In order to truly scale your business with purpose, you absolutely must identify your real numbers and make sure you are informed on the status of those numbers regularly, and in a way you can understand.

This is something you and your team should do together. Identify what matters most to your business. Is it new customer acquisition? Sales and marketing ROI? Where are you succeeding? What can you do to amplify or duplicate that success in other areas? Where are you failing? What do you need to adjust to turn that around? Your real numbers must be revisited and measured constantly to make sure your business stays on the path to growth.

4. Products and Services

This one can be the most difficult for passionate business leaders to grasp. It’s wonderful to have a lot of different offers and ideas for how to satisfy your customers. It’s fun and exciting to innovate and bring new ideas to market. The trouble comes when you’re spending so much time planning new products that they never see the light of day.

As business leaders, it’s our responsibility to make things happen. Products can’t get sold if they’re sitting in R&D forever. Keep simplicity and focus as your goal. You can always improve upon a product or service later down the line. Often, doing so can be even better for your business because you’ll have gotten some of the most valuable input out there: customer opinion.

5. Sales & Marketing

People in sales and people in marketing don’t always think alike. People in marketing love to create conversations and engage with consumers. Their work is both creative and analytical. They are always coming up with fresh ways to get your products in front of the customer, as well as meticulously measuring the effect of those efforts. Their work is carefully crafted, planned and executed.

Salespeople are generally more pragmatic. They are go-getters who can quickly change tactics as they read the room. They are numbers people; the more people they talk to, the more likely they are to make a sale. The truth is sales and marketing depend on each other. Even though they may have different strategies, they must align with each other so both groups can be successful. If you want to hone in on your product or service’s unique sales proposition, unite these two groups. This will inform the direction of both your sales and marketing people, and only amplify their efforts.

6. Processes & Systems

When I talk to people about processes and systems, one of the things I always say is, “We can walk down a dirt road as long as we have the equipment to pave behind us.” Even if you haven’t solidified how things should be done in your company, you can always start defining it now. This comes down to having the people who are doing the different and important roles in your company document how they work. Getting started is as simple as encouraging people to start writing down what they do and how they do it.

Even if these processes change over time, you’ll have a written record that can be easily adjusted or changed as you grow. I can’t stress to you how important this will be for long-term business growth. Along with refining your real numbers, you’ll also refine how things are done in your company. As new people join your team, you’ll have the blueprint you need to bring them up to speed.

These six areas are ones that I know from experience have the power to drive your business forward to 6 and 7-figure growth. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, do some thinking about these areas as they relate to your business. I bet you’ll immediately see at least one or two concentration on which you could improve. If you want more guidance concerning scaling your business with purpose, get in touch. We’d love to help.

When you are looking to hire someone for your company, the personality of the individual plays an important part. But many business owners fail to realize the importance of this crucial fact and end up hiring the wrong people for the job. In my own career, I have come across many hiring managers who have never looked beyond the skill set and qualifications of candidates until they face the consequences of a wrong hire.

Ignoring the personality type of your candidates results in short- as well as long-term effects, and almost all of them are unfavorable for your business. When you hire an individual to work for you, they bring to your workplace a different persona. It’s your job to find out whether that persona fits in with the values, attitude and behavioral requirements of your business or not. You can’t just say that anyone will do as long as they have the right qualifications and experience!

What if you hire someone who has the perfect resume and test scores, but has a nasty habit of blaming others every time you find something wrong with their work? Such people not only cost you money, but also are detrimental for the growth of your business. If your employees are not going to acknowledge their mistakes to improve and grow, how is your business supposed to do so?

Here are some of the major consequences of hiring the wrong personality type:

THE BLAME GAME

This is in relation to the first example as discussed above. Normally, people who like to play victims blame others for their problems. Ever heard of “The sales team got back to me after the deadline, so it’s because of them that we are behind schedule”, or “Why does the boss always have a problem with me?”

If you hire people who have the victim syndrome, your workplace will radiate negativity sooner or later. Such individuals always blame others for every single thing that’s going wrong in their lives. Their attitude and behavior will influence other employees and pretty soon the negativity will be all around, lowering the morale and causing emotional distress.

So when you are interviewing candidates, keep an eye out for the victims. You can identify them by asking questions like, “How do you grow professionally? Tell us about a problem that you solved at your previous firm?” or you can ask point blank, “What do you think of people who blame others for their mistakes/problems?”

TEAM PESSIMISM

If you weren’t careful while interviewing the candidate and didn’t ask the right questions, you might end up with pessimists. Such people always find something bad about any piece of good news that you deliver.

“Hey! Did you hear? We landed that huge client!”

“Really? But isn’t he really finicky? We will probably work more than we have to on other clients.”

And just like that, acquiring a huge client won’t be looked forward to. Such an employee will spread pessimism in the team and before you know it, you will have employees asking to not work on that client.

This is just one scenario. There are so many other things that might go wrong if you hire a pessimistic individual.

TEAM TROUBLE

Narcissists are the root cause of team trouble. Being one of the dangerous personality types, narcissists are careless about commitments, manipulate others in the office and refuse to learn from their mistakes. They don’t get along with anybody and value their opinion above everyone else’s. Such people don’t fit well in teams and neither do they make good managers. They don’t take advice and disregard the opinions of others.

But the problem is; narcissists ace interviews! They will be charismatic and self-confident during the interview, almost always leading to a wrong hire. But if you go prepared, you can spot the red flags and save yourself some team trouble by looking out for signs of cockiness. In the interview, ask them about working in teams. Do they make discouraging remarks about their team or their sole focus is on their own abilities?

BAD COMPETITION

There is good competition, and then there is bad competition. Progress, growth and development come out of good competition. But bad competition leads to bad blood and low productivity. People who have an attraction for the spotlight are the cause of this bad competition. They rant all day long and up-scale every tiny thing they do. Whatever you say, they will always have done something more difficult, challenging and nerve-wrecking than you ever did.

“I am so glad that I am done with this report! I have been working on it for ages.”

“That’s nothing! You won’t believe the client I just had to deal with today. I would rather do your report.”

People who make out their work to be better than others stir a feeling of resentment and inferiority among others. It might be that the client was never that difficult and the report was nerve-wrecking, but the other employee would end up feeling discouraged and inferior.

LOW MORALE

Like it or not, there are people who are responsible to take the morale of a team to an all-time low. Social loafers are people who are inherently lazy when it comes to working in teams. For small businesses, it is more problematic because every employee counts. Such individuals make others do their work for them and possess an aggressive and passive attitude in the workplace. Other team members begin to resent them as they don’t do their share of the work.

You can spot this kind of personality type during interviews by assessing their energy levels. Look at their body language and posture when they walk in and answer questions. You can even take them out for a cup of coffee during the interview to delve into greater depth. It’s a smart way to get them moving and see if they are able to keep up with you.
You can probably relate to all these consequences as you would have come across a situation where you made a wrong hire and the candidate was not a cultural fit. I have seen this mistake repeated over time in my career and the main reason behind this is that “Personnel issues typically stem from the fact that we often hire for competence instead of culture.” So do consider the personality types of candidates before making the final decision – it will be worth it!

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.

If you’re a new entrepreneur and you’re struggling to get your business to the next level, you’re probably doing at least one of these four things wrong. It’s not a criticism; it’s just the simple truth. I’ve learned a lot in my 10 years as a CEO and as a founder of dozens of businesses. I know because I’ve been in your shoes, and a lot of the time, I learned these lessons the hard way.

The good news is that there are some simple steps you can take to address these pain points, reinvigorate your business and ultimately succeed. This first pain point is probably the number one issue I deal with when I consult with executives. It is also something I’ve been guilty of in the past. If you don’t solve any other problem, let it be this one.

1. Wearing All The Hats

I talk about this extensively in my book, The CEO’s Mindset. If you want your company to be successful, you cannot do every job. The first step is to figure out what you’re really, really good at. When you’ve identified that, you’re halfway there.

Let’s say you’re great at marketing and sales. Most CEOs are. If marketing and sales is your sweet spot, why are you bogging yourself down trying to read financial reports? It takes time away from what you can best contribute, and it undermines the responsibility of your accountant. To be truly successful, you have got to let people who are better than you at different areas of the business attack their tasks in their own way.

2. Not Knowing Your Numbers

In every business, there are key performance indicators (KPIs) that you, as the owner, must know. You should absolutely be receiving reports on your daily, weekly, monthly and annual progress. But that information needs to be clear, concise, and easy for someone who doesn’t have a finance degree to understand.

Together, with your finance department, establish the most important KPIs for your business. Set a scale for variations in the positive and the negative. Make sure that positive variance is in green and negative in red. Your eye is drawn immediately to potential problems and you can intervene right away, rather than down the line when you’ve lost money. Cutting the fat and making reports simpler is a process that will take time with your team. Ultimately, though, it will save you lost hours and help you make more money.

3. Not Enough Sales

Nine times out of ten, this is a problem of too much planning and not enough action. I tell my clients all the time: just pick ONE thing, and take action to get it to market. You could have a whole line of products in development, but your end customer doesn’t have even one of them in their hands. The biggest factor for generating sales is making sure your product or service is top notch, that you are filling a viable need in the market, and that you ensure your potential customers know about it.

So much of sales and marketing is trial and error. You won’t know what works until you try something. A lot of sales people will tell you they close a different way with each and every client. You can always change up marketing campaigns and sales techniques—that part is easy. What’s hard is getting a product out there and then listening for customer feedback to make it better. Don’t overthink it. Just get the product out.

4. Bad Hiring Practices

This is so important. So many businesses hire people only for their competence, without thinking about how their personality and values will fit in with the company. A person with your ideal background who doesn’t share your company values will be a bad employee. Every time.

It is vital for business owners to ask the right questions in the interview. Competence is the easy part. Their CV should tell you a lot, and the rest you can screen with a short skills test in the applicable job area. The questions you need to focus on are the ones that give you a sense of who the person is. What do they care about? Are they motivated? Do they believe in what your business is trying to achieve? These are the questions that will place the right person in the role.

I could talk on and on about how important these factors are for the success of your business. My number one goal is to help business owners untrap themselves in order to take their organizations to the next level. To learn more about how to solve these pain points and grow your business, read my book, where I cover these areas and more in greater detail, along with useful exercises to help you build a better foundation for your business.

Hiring Practices are a major key to the success of your business, which it why it should be a thought out process that allows you to identify exactly who is capable of fulfilling those positions. Throughout my career I’ve managed over 1,600 employees, and there are 3 ways I approach interviews when I am trying to figure out who the candidates truly are and where they belong in my company.

#1) TEST THEIR CORE VALUES

By asking questions related to your company’s mission and values you can quickly identify whether or not a candidate will be a good fit. A great way to figure out if they match up during an interview is to ask questions that don’t necessarily have a right or wrong answer. For example,

Q:  Here is a list of values, please select 5 that you feel are the MOST important

A: This is where you align your values and ask them questions about why those are important to them; or ask similar open-ended questions that test those values.

Q: Do you prefer to be micro-managed or macro-managed and why?

A: This will tell you the environment they work best in and how they get things accomplished. The best answer will depend on your personal management style.

Once you start working with someone, you being to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Especially when you are working together in groups, then you can easily identify who should take on which tasks. Which brings me to my next point…

#2) ARE THEY A PROJECT OR PROCESS PERSON?

You’re probably asking, what does that even mean? Well it’s simple, actually. Does that person like to come up with innovative ideas and take new initiatives? Then more than likely they are Project People! Also, DO NOT expect them to do repetitive tasks that will put them to sleep. Instead, that is where a Process Person comes into play because they like to do the same tasks over and over, and do them more efficiently each time. This does not mean that Process People are not creative people, it just means that when it comes time to execute their creative ideas, they FREEZE!

Are you wondering which type you are? I did too! A lot of people identify to one or the other right away but some people feel that they share qualities of Project and Process type people. This person is what we like to call, Hybrids. Hybrids are people who can come up with ideas but doesn’t necessarily want to create the ‘Big Picture’. They fall short of vision but once they identify it then they can run with it.

If you can identify whether the candidate is a process or project person then it will make it much easier to place that person in your company. Hybrids, on the other hand… well, they can be more difficult to place but once you figure that out then they could be a major asset to your company!

Many times employers will ignore certain ‘red flags’ when it comes to a candidate’s personality because they have the ability to perform whatever task that needs to be accomplished. This IS NOT the right way to go because certain personality traits could prevent them from accomplishing those very things you know they are capable of doing. Which brings me to my last point…

#3) DO NOT IGNORE PERSONALITY TYPES

You can hire someone who is great at interviewing and identify where they’d be the most competent, but if their attitude is not well suited in your company it will end in disaster. This is something you should identify right away. I have interviewed hundreds of people and there have been times where I have been fooled. An interview goes great and you get excited about that candidate but when they start the job you are wondering where that person went. Sometimes there is a personal explanation, but the majority of the time, it is their attitude.

There are 3 things you should look for in a candidate; effort, attitude and ability. Many companies overlook attitudes if the candidate has the ability to do the job… this is a HUGE mistake. Of course you want them to capable of the job, which they more than likely are if they got the interview, right? So when it comes down to the actual hire, attitude is the most important.

All of these are interconnected, which is why it is crucial to figure out if the candidate matches your core values from the beginning. If someone has a great attitude but admits that they aren’t great at some things, then do not dismiss them because of their mediocre interview skills. Truly try to get to know your candidates from their values and ask them what your ‘mission statement’ means to them. These are the clear indicators on who is going to be the best fit for your company. Also, identifying which roles are going to match their personality type will add to the value of your business.

As CEO’s we tend to want to do it all! We have such a great passion and vision for our business and we want to conquer every last detail. This is a good drive to have as a business owner, but at what point does that become overwhelming? SO overwhelming that we are taking on too many tasks and forgetting the reason for started the company in the first place. This is the moment where we lose our mission and need to take a step back.

Clear Mission:

Relax and go back to the basics. Have a meeting where you and your employees can get on the same page about what the company stands for and what they are accomplishing. Every person on your team should interpret the mission in the same way. When a team member faces a challenge, then they can refer back to the mission statement in order to make the right decision.

As a leader, it is your job to make sure your mission statement aligns with every area of your company. You are also responsible for making sure each of your team members clearly understands what it means and that they are a good match with those values.

Your Team:

When your company takes off it is a wonderful thing! However, understand that you need the proper team to maintain that success. We already know you want to do it all and control each area of business, which is why hiring is a crucial part in the success of your business. We tend to want to clone ourselves in our company. Meaning, we hire people just like us because we feel that will be the easiest way to make sure things get done.

Your team should be able to handle parts of your business that you cannot handle. Leaders have a certain set of skills that allow the company to scale and grow, but they aren’t always good at the back end of their business. It is important to hire people that are going to do those things better and more efficient so that you have the time to run your business.

If your staff is unable to make progress and doesn’t share your vision, then maybe they shouldn’t be on your staff. This is a great opportunity to see which team members can reduce your workload. This is also a perfect time to identify if you need more people on your staff or better people on your staff.

Execution Attitude:

Make sure you understand that progress is key, not perfection. As a business, you need to be progressing in every area or else you are wasting time perfecting something that will cost you time and money. This idea refers to having an Execution Attitude!

Execution Attitude is a key element of a healthy CEO Mindset because you are actually acting on your ideas rather than just creating a ton of strategies. Do not get stuck in an Execution Paralysis, because nothing will ever get accomplished. If you think of something great for you company, then test it out! You can perfect it along the way, having it LIVE rather than perfecting thestrategy. Companies need to remain innovative and driven by making progress.

Culture:

Often times we hire ability over attitude, because we know that they are capable of doing the job. However, that should not be your only focus when fulfilling positions on your team. I have hired many employees that were more than capable of doing exceptional work, but when they joined the team their attitude was bringing down the momentum of the company.

Some of the greatest interviewers ended up being lazy, unreliable and detached from the company. I understood that I was ignoring their attitude (or red flags) during the interview because they looked good on paper. Employees can always be trained and have the ability to do the job, but it is so important to make sure they match up with the culture of your company. Identify their core values at the beginning by asking them questions that could reveal those personality traits.
A Healthy CEO Mindset relies on your ability to identify those key elements in your business and understand your role within the company, as well as your team. Take the time to identify these 4 elements in your business and see the difference it makes.