Dave Braun
00:00:03
Welcome everyone to the HireMyVA Team and Business Building Podcast brought to you by Yoogozi.com that’s Y-O-O-G-O-Z-I-.com. In this podcast and at HireMyVA, we help you to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with virtual assistants without breaking the bank and that means your bank; the most important bank. I’m Dave Braun, and I’m here with my good friend, Larry Broughton, my partner in all things, coaching —Larry, you’re a great business mentor. I mean, you got so much advice for me all the time, you know, I love it. So keep it coming, keep it coming. You’re a brother, man.
Larry Broughton
00:00:38
Well, hello, handsome Dave!
Dave Braun
00:00:40
Hello everybody.
Larry Broughton
00:00:40
Likewise. I learn from you every week as well. So thank you so so much, I appreciate it. Thanks for going on the journey with me. I mean, I just appreciate you so much. Just the conversation we had before going live.
Dave Braun
00:00:52
Oh yeah.
Larry Broughton
00:00:53
You know.
Dave Braun
00:00:55
Folks—
Larry Broughton
00:00:56
Yeah, go ahead.
Dave Braun
00:00:57
No, I was gonna say, folks, if you don’t know what happened, here’s the details of what we talked about— Not really.
Larry Broughton
00:01:06
You are a pain in the rear sometimes.
Dave Braun
00:01:09
I know, but that’s—
Larry Broughton
00:01:09
Thank you had some Dave, I appreciate you. And I appreciate keeping what I talked to you about in strictest confidence.
Dave Braun
00:01:19
That’s right.
Larry Broughton
00:01:20
All right. Thank you. All right. Let’s get going on this before I flip my lid.
Dave Braun
00:01:28
All right. So this is episode 101. Excited about this one. We’re ready to start a new—what do you call a new century? Or whatever is. But anyway, so the question is, what is a good candidate for my position?
Larry Broughton
00:01:45
Well, what position are you trying to fill?
Dave Braun
00:01:48
Yeah, exactly, that’s what it is, right? I think the way we would take this is just like, get some good general advice.
Larry Broughton
00:01:57
All right, I get it. So let’s say that someone has a position, a vacant position in their organization. It could be an entry-level position, it could be mid-level management or it could be a senior executive. Like, how do I find a good candidate? Is that really what we’re asking here?
Dave Braun
00:02:11
Yeah, I think so.
Larry Broughton
00:02:11
I think that’s what we’re asking here, right? Yeah. So this is one of those things David, you and I talk about all the time, is that one of the big mistakes that folks make is that they just look at a resume and they pick all their candidates from a resume. Right? Resumes are very important for sure. Finding out what people’s experiences, what’s their training, all about, that’s the cognitive part of the brain and that’s very important but oftentimes, a resume does not measure some of those things that are really much more important than experience. And there’s three things that we look at and that we teach all of our coaching clients and mentees, is this, we really need to be hiring on motivation, integrity, and capacity first.
Dave Braun
00:02:57
Yeah. I love that.
Larry Broughton
00:02:58
First motivation, integrity, and capacity. Mike or Mic, depending on how you want to say it. So, Larry, why is that so important? Well, Dave, we want people in the organization who have the attitude like, I get to go to work today, I get to go serve my team members today, I get to go serve my clients. Right? We want those types of people in our organization and I hope everyone else does as well because there are those people who have what we call an Eeyore too, who always mean life sucks. You know, like Eeyore from Winne The Pooh. Those people tend not to be the greatest additions to organizations unless it’s a very unique situation where they’re corralled off or pinned off from the rest of the world. Right? So motivation first, if you want people who want to be on the team. Number two is integrity. You gotta have folks who you can trust, who do what they say, they say what they do. And motivation without integrity is dangerous.
Dave Braun
00:04:07
Yes.
Larry Broughton
00:04:08
You can have people who are highly motivated but if they cut corners, if they lie, if they shade the truth, that can be dangerous for you and for the organization. So motivation first, integrity, and then capacity. The capacity to grow. You wanna hire people who are not on the downhill side of life. That has nothing to do with age. There are 30-year-olds who feel like, they’ve stopped learning and they’re just coasting. And who was it that I heard say this the first time? I forgot who it was, I heard say it the first time. There’s one way to coast in life downhill. So you want people who are constant learners. And conversely, I know 60-year-olds and 70-year-olds who are dedicated to lifelong learning and they’re highly motivated, full of integrity and they’re still growing. That’s how I hope to be as I age. And so again, don’t get stuck on the capacity is it’s gotta be a young person. I’m talking about that they want to learn, you want them to grow in the organization. Dave, I don’t know very many things that break my heart more than seeing people hired in an organization who are highly motivated, they have a lot of capacity, but the organization outgrows them.
Dave Braun
00:05:20
Yeah.
Larry Broughton
00:05:21
You know, because then they have to be separated for some reason, other than their own, you know, great spirit. And so try to hire people with the capacity to grow with you. So I would say those are some of the things that are really important to start with when you start identifying—, “Hey, I’ve got positions to fill.” Let’s say you—
Dave Braun
00:05:43
Yeah, yeah. Totally agree with you. That’s definitely a great place to start and you know, one of the things I think that we’ve seen some mistakes and in fact, we’re just talking with a client recently, who’s taken advantage of our White Glove Service at HireMyVA where we help find somebody who is a rockstar VA for you. But one of the things that they want somebody to do, especially if it’s like the first person they’re hiring or even the second to start building out their team. They want somebody who is an expert at everything. They wanna have somebody who’s got proficiency and like every single thing in the world. They want them to do everything. And I know, that’s so hard to find and that’s rare and yeah, it’s a unicorn and it’s impossible. I mean, can you imagine, an example or analogy is a football team. You know, you’ve got people who are so specialized to be able to bring that team to win the super bowl. Not every quarterback, can’t become a blocker and a blocker. You know, somebody in the offensive line cannot, you know, rarely, they can maybe catch a pass here and there, but it’s not their strength. Right? They could do certain things, but they’re not proficient at it. Right? And
Larry Broughton
00:07:00
Think about these as special teams players. How many games have been won, by three points or less, right? And you got that kicker who might spend how many seconds a field, how many seconds on the field per game. But they help win the team or win the game.
Dave Braun
00:07:18
Yeah. And I guess if we want to continue with this analogy because I love sports. You know, most of the positions you have, like in football, for example. Most of the positions you have, you want somebody who has a good amount of speed and —
Larry Broughton
00:07:31
Good amount of what?
Dave Braun
00:07:32
Speed. Right? So it’s kind of in a way that’s analogous to making sure that everybody on your team has got motivation, integrity, and capacity. Right? It’s one of the characteristics you want almost, you want everybody to have.
Larry Broughton
00:07:46
Yeah. I like that a lot.
Dave Braun
00:07:48
But I think what happens, what you should do is, you know, you really gotta start with obviously a proper job description and we call it position profile. And you gotta be clear on some of these categories within it. You know, we talked about you can’t have somebody who’s—you can’t try to find somebody who’s a superstar at everything, but you gotta really think about what their role is, what you want them to do and put them in maybe about three or four different categories. And Larry, you wanna talk about a few of those?
Larry Broughton
00:08:22
I wanna go back a little bit though. First, I think I want to give people permission to seek those ideal unicorn candidates. Yes. You may find someone who’s better at more things than you are. Oftentimes these are this generalist. In my experience, I have no scientific data to back this up. I don’t know that SHRM or any HR firms ever done any research on this. My sense is those people tend not to stick around for very long.
Dave Braun
00:08:47
Yeah.
Larry Broughton
00:08:47
You know, so this is a generalist who’s really good at marketing. They’re really good at operations. They’re really good at accounting. So when you’re first starting out your organization, finding some people like that is gonna be really important because you just need help, period, like everywhere. Right? So don’t — like, not look for them because I’m just gonna try to be a realist here first aid and know that most businesses cannot afford to go out and hire a specialist in each of the departments as they’re first starting to grow. When you’re trying to break the $100,000 a year mark, or even the $500,000 a year mark, you don’t have loads of free cash. Most people don’t have loads of free cash to hire specialists yet. So just know that — as they say, begin with the end in mind, know the direction you’re heading, but know that there’s gonna be some incremental steps between the perfect organization chart and where you are today.
Dave Braun
00:09:46
Yeah.
Larry Broughton
00:09:46
And I would encourage you to try to find people in the beginning who are going to allow you more time to work in your strengths.
Dave Braun
00:09:56
Right.
Larry Broughton
00:09:57
And in your desired position. So I think that that that’s really important. And you asked me to comment on something. I’m sorry, what was it?
Dave Braun
01:10:06
Yeah. Like when we’re trying to say that, you know, we gotta take the characteristics, not the characteristics, maybe the skill levels that you want to be brought into this particular position and align them in the categories such as—I mean for what they’re doing, they’ve gotta be really, really, really good at this. For example—
Larry Broughton
01:10:27
Required proficiency, this is like, a non-negotiable. This is absolute, you must be able to do this. Is that what you’re talking about?
Dave Braun
01:10:33
Yeah. Because if, say you’re really good at something in your business but it’s just sucking a lot of time and you need help with that. Well, then that’s something that you want to have somebody proficient at or it could be something that you just like, hate doing. Well, you just gotta get it off your plate. You want somebody that’s pretty good at that. But there are other things that you don’t necessarily have to have that are, you know, a rockstar at that particular skill.
Larry Broughton
01:11:00
That’s right. So you got the required proficiencies. You’ve got the kind of nice to have, you just have to get stuff off your plates. Sometimes you just need people who have a good understanding of it.
Dave Braun
01:11:11
Right.
Larry Broughton
01:11:11
And there’s actually time in your business life cycle to get them up to speed, to actually learn more, to become more, more proficient. Right? And there’s probably just the icing on the cake. The nice to have. Boy, wouldn’t it be great if we had these, right? This is where you’ve gotta project. What does your organization look like? What’s your organizational chart look like a year from now, two years from now, five years from now, and just start working toward that. No one and I mean, no one ever starts their business or during the first couple years of their business has their ideal org chart in place, their dynamic, they’re moving constantly. They’re working with a client. Now, what I would suggest is build your ideal org chart. And if the position’s not filled, leave it blank or put who’s actually acting in that position today. That helps. So that you always got it in your mind that, Hey, here’s the direction that we’re moving on this.
Dave Braun
01:12:13
That sounds like a good podcast episode is encouraging people on how to make the first steps in doing that and then fulfilling them. That sounds like a good episode we should do.
Larry Broughton
01:12:22
Yeah. Now, what I wanna encourage folks to do is as you’re developing your position profiles or your job descriptions, talk to experts, that you know. Talk to people who are in the industry. Talk to your mastermind group. Go to our community and ask questions. Hey, what are the best practices that people in this role have done before that I have to be looking for? What’s the best Kolbe profile or the best Strength Finders Profile that would help me fill in this position. Because if you’re gonna ask somebody like me to come in and start doing accounting or to be a chief operating officer, it’s wrong, it’s gonna be a mistake and it’s gonna be more of a headache than it’s even worth. So use the community, use your network and start asking a lot of questions, but it means that you are gonna have to do a little bit of an investment Dave, of under a hundred dollars, get both the Kolbe and the Strength Finder’s Assessments. And if you need help with those, you can always reach out to us. We do have kinda short coaching and consulting gigs that we can help you through this process, but make sure to give some assessments to make sure you’re getting the right person on the right seat on the bus as Jim Collins likes to say.
Dave Braun
01:13:45
Yeah. And we talk a lot about the Kolbe A index, check out episodes, 86 and 87.
Larry Broughton
01:13:53
How do you remember this thing? See, this is why Dave’s on the team and Larry is just the figurehead.
Dave Braun
01:13:59
It’s in my notes.
Larry Broughton
01:14:00
Oh, well there you go. Okay.
Dave Braun
01:14:01
It’s in my notes to make sure we mention it because that’s so important and it is well worth it. So I mean the worst thing normally that’s gonna happen is you do two or three of these things. You spend a few hundred dollars. Yeah. But you think about how much you can actually gain or lose by not getting the right person and in your position.
Larry Broughton
01:14:19
Yeah. I think that we’ve done a webinar or maybe an episode on the cost of a bad hire, where we actually have given specifics and it ranges anywhere from one and a half to two and a half times an annual salary if you get a bad hire. So spending a few hundred dollars to get the person on the team is absolutely valuable. It’s invaluable.
Dave Braun
01:14:45
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things practically is that, getting a social media manager, marketing type person from the Philippines to join our team and we’ve got pretty good requirements list, just like what you said, talk to a couple of people, was researched online and have a pretty good list. And then talked to our team and our White Glove Service of how, what really makes sense to be proficient and not proficient at, that’s pretty good. And Larry, you and I do need to talk a little bit about Kolbe scores for this person. The best ones. Yeah. Good. The best ones.
Larry Broughton
01:15:25
All right. Good, good.
Dave Braun
01:15:27
All right. Anything else that we want to say on this?
Larry Broughton
01:15:30
So the question was, what’s a good candidate for my position? I think just to wrap up, make sure you’re not hiring off of a resume, just a resume, make sure you’re really — you are looking for clues and asking questions about motivation, about integrity, and about the capacity to grow. And I would say that you’re gonna have to identify what are the absolute must-have required proficiencies. What are those things that be —I dunno, kind of those things that they’re proficient at that just need to get done quickly or what are the areas where they just need a decent understanding of it that they can learn later on if the time is there and then kind of what are the nice to have as far as skillsets. But the big takeaway, Dave, I think is what you just got through saying, reach out to the people that are in your community and your network and in your mastermind group or to your mentor, to your coach and get them involved too many people, Dave, try to make these decisions on their own.
Dave Braun
01:16:33
That’s right.
Larry Broughton
01:16:33
Listen, the entrepreneurial journey is a contact combat sport. You must be on a team. Try to take on the world by yourself is a big mistake, which is why we do what we do to try to help people.
Dave Braun
01:16:49
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You gotta have a coach being a mastermind, at least some of those kinds of things. I mean, I’ve been doing it since 2014. I went up to about seven years now and it’s changed my life and my business. I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.
Larry Broughton
01:17:04
Yeah, absolutely. Good. All right.
Dave Braun
01:17:06
Good. Okay? Well, all right. So hopefully you guys got some good stuff out of this. I know I did, but thank you for being with us today. And remember building a team is the way to reclaim your freedom. And we’re of course here to help you with our course and community. And we talked a little bit about our White Glove Service, where we find a rockstar VA for you. Okay? So three things we’d love for you to do right now we’d really appreciate it. Number one, subscribe to this Podcast if you haven’t already done so, either on your phone, your IPhone, or your Android phone or on YouTube, hit the subscribe button down below and click on the little bell next to it so that you will get reminders when a new episode comes up. And number two’s give us a rating, preferably a five star, you know, leave a comment below this, maybe ask a question or say, Hey, we want you to talk about this subject in another episode, something like that, because each comment you leave helps us get the word out. And then number three, of course, go to Hiremyva.com for more information on our course and community and our White Glove Service. Because remember even without experience, you’ll learn how to prepare for hire and thrive. That’s so important. Thrive with virtual assistants. Larry and I have helped a lot of folks. We want to help you too. So go to Hiremyva.com for more information.
Larry Broughton
01:18:23
Yeah. In this episode, and all these episodes are brought to you by Yoogozi.com, which is really our online website or online portal where you can get bite-size nuggets of learning for entrepreneurs, leaders, and, and high achievers. Go over to Yoogozi.com and see that. And as we wrap up here, I just want to remind you of this, God bless you, God keep you and God hold you. Now, go out and do something significant today my friends, go get ’em. We’ll see you next time. Bye!
Dave Braun
01:18:53
Bye folks.
