Dave Braun
00:00:00
All right. Welcome to the HireMyVA Team and Business Building Podcast, where we help you to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with virtual assistants without breaking the bank, without breaking your bank. I’m Dave Braun and I’m here with my partner, my buddy in crime here, Larry Broughton. Hey Larry.
Larry Broughton
00:00:20
Yes, that’s my life. How are you, David?
Dave Braun
00:00:23
I’m doing great. How are you?
Larry Broughton
00:00:24
Good. I mean a great week it’s been.
Dave Braun
00:00:26
Oh my gosh. Yeah, it’s a little bit cold here in Southern California.
Larry Broughton
00:00:30
Yeah, what is up with that? And the rain and the wind? It’s like they call it weather. Have you heard of that?
Dave Braun
00:00:36
I don’t know if you’re listening to us from Minnesota or wherever. I’m sure you hate us.
Larry Broughton
00:00:46
Yeah. What’s our question this week, David?
Dave Braun
00:00:48
So, the great question here we got is, whom should I hire? Someone who has more skills, but doesn’t perfectly fit what I’m looking for, or someone who specializes in a certain skill and can do it perfectly? Right? So someone who has more skills, maybe more of a generalist or someone who might specialize in something as more of like a specialist —
Larry Broughton
00:01:13
I took it a different way when I first saw this question. And I would put it this way, you shouldn’t be hiring based on just a skill. Right?
Dave Braun
00:01:27
Great.
Larry Broughton
00:01:28
You gotta be hiring a variety of different areas, right? Like what’s their personality. Like, do they get along with people? Are they a good communicator? Do they share the same core values as you and your organization? Those are more important, frankly, in the long run that even the ability to do a specific skill, if they have an aptitude to do the skill, it’s your job as a leader, to make sure that they get the training to get better. Right? And so you gotta, you gotta look at it this way as well. Are they on the upside of their learning curve? Are they plateaued with their learning curve or are they on the downhill side of life? And I’m not talking about age, I’m talking about mentality. And the willingness to learn right? Years ago, I made the classic mistake of hiring a person in our organization who was a friggin rockstar when it came to the numbers part of the job. Because I believe that there’s the arts part of a job and the science part of the job, right?
Larry Broughton
00:02:30
The science, she nailed clearly in the organization of about 15 hotels at the time. Her guest satisfaction scores were always the highest or what we call a RevPAR index, our RGI, like how do we perform against our competitive set, was always the best. Her flow-through was always the best. I mean, she killed it. But guess what? She was hated among our other team members. None of the general managers liked her. They didn’t trust her. They felt she was condescending. And I spent more time managing that darn relationship. And I did the business, right? Smoothing out the ruffled feathers. It wasn’t worth it in the long run. You know, she got to look at it more like, how good are they at this specific skill, particularly as you grow your organization, the comradery that your team members have is pretty vital and important as well.
Larry Broughton
00:03:29
Right? So I guess my response to this David is don’t be hiring somebody just for their ability to do a particular skill, if you don’t enjoy having them in the organization, if they’re not going to be an asset to the entire organization as a whole, it’s not worth it. To me, I mean, I used to dread, some of the meetings that I would have when she was going to be in it because I just knew there’s going to be conflicts. Right? And I found myself making excuses, you know, like why she was in the organization. And I remember when I, you know, David, that we go back and we share our core values with the organization every year. Right? Is this really who we say we are? And then when, I was reading through it, getting ready for that leadership summit, and I was reading through those, she kept coming to mind as like, I’m not living with integrity on this, my core values aren’t reflected in who she is and so I ended up letting her go before the leadership summit because I know there were some general managers who were going to call me out on it because I’d given them permission to call me out on it. Right? So thank goodness she didn’t make it a year in the organization, but she made it longer than she should have for sure.
Dave Braun
00:04:50
Yeah. And this is a very interesting question because I think we can answer it in multiple ways. Like you’re mentioning, I mean, so there’s the skill aspect of it. Let’s set that to the side. And then there’s the fit within the organization that’s independent of the skills. Right? So when we say it doesn’t perfectly fit what I’m looking for, they need to be pretty close to being perfectly fit within, like you said, the core values, the organization, the way they communicate. Right? All of that stuff, they would need to be pretty perfect. Right? But then when you start thinking, okay from the skill perspective, you know, maybe, you need to be having an expert in social media, but the person you start hiring as they’ve dabbled in it, but then they’ve also done email marketing.
Dave Braun
00:05:41
And then they have also done site management or they’ve also done data research and all that kind of stuff. Right? So there, where you’re comparing the skills, that’s where —I mean you don’t compromise on the fit within the core values and the person and all that. But then, how do you handle the skill part? Right? And, I think that ends up being —I think it’s going to always depend. Right? And kind of the way that I look at it is that, if we have different doctors in our lives, we have different people, we’ve got like, I’ve got a family physician, more of a general practitioner who’s really good at a lot of stuff. But when it comes to me needing, like I had to have —remember when I had to have some surgery on my neck to fuse a disc, couple of discs. You remember that?
Larry Broughton
00:06:35
You sounded like Batman?
Dave Braun
00:06:36
Yeah. That was a few years ago. I was in so much pain. Right? But I needed a specialist to do that. My general practitioner, he couldn’t do that at that particular time. So, I think it depends on, what are you hiring for? Like, if you’re doing your first hire as a solopreneur and making the transition, you may want to get a little bit more generalized. But then as you round out and build your team, you’ll need a few more specifics.
Larry Broughton
00:07:07
One of the things, Dave, I think what we can do and what these folks can do is listen to what we talk about in both preparing the higher section and that is to bring people on doing project-based stuff first. Try them out. How do you folks get along with each other, right? How do they get along with the rest of the team? If you have other team members, there’s no reason why you can’t do a, “Hey we’re going to keep you on for a month”. Now the real —you may miss out an opportunity to work with a real rock star. Cause most rock stars are looking for some permanency or at least some kind of predictability. Like I’m not looking just for project-based, I’m looking for something a little more long-term but it is an opportunity, you know, give them a couple of projects. But I’m reminded Dave, of this acronym that we use oftentimes, you know, MIC or Mic, M-I-C. Right?
Dave Braun
00:07:56
I love that. Larry. I love it.
Larry Broughton
00:07:58
And so that, what we’re trying to do is encourage folks not to hire just for skills or experience. You know, when I’ve surveyed hundreds and hundreds of high achieving entrepreneurs and leaders, and you ask them, what are the kind of criteria in which you hire people experiences. You’d like number five, six or seven with people. But the top three things generally fall in this order, motivation, integrity, and capacity. Those are the things that we really ought to be looking at. Like, imagine if you had hired somebody who is really good at skills, but they lacked motivation, right? It’s like, you know —You are too, right? You want to hire someone who is like, “I get to go to work today, I get to get up today.” Not like, “I’ve got to go work with Dave today. That’s going to suck.”
Larry Broughton
00:08:50
So motivation, first. Integrity, we know about integrity, right? That’s a real strong character thing, right? You know, the problem is that when you hire somebody who’s highly motivated, that lacks integrity, that’s dangerous. That’s just that the criminals are made out of. Right? So you want highly motivated, lots of integrity, and then capacity. And by that, I mean the capacity to grow because my sense is that you’re doing that, you’re trying to gain more freedom so that you can grow your business. Well, if they’re good for you today, and you’re doing, let’s pick a number, you’re doing a hundred thousand dollars in revenue today, but next year, you’re going to be doing 500,000 or ultimately going to be doing a million dollars a year. Good for you. That person better be able to grow with you or hopefully, they’ll grow with you. Right? So motivation, integrity, and capacity are the things I think to consider besides how good to you —how many keys can you punch on a keyboard in a minute.
Dave Braun
00:09:47
Yeah. Because your business is going to morph over time. It’s going to change. Right? You know, you think about just social media, for example. How many jobs, how many companies were there around social media 10 years ago? Not too many, right? So things—
Larry Broughton
01:10:04
Done together now, yeah.
Dave Braun
01:10:06
And we have to morph along with the environment. Just like in the last year, being able to manage virtually, and do work virtually. That’s a requirement now, it wasn’t a year ago. And so you’ve got to have that capacity, the ability to, and change and to grow and bring up your skills over time because so many things change.
Larry Broughton
01:10:29
Yes. That’s good.
Dave Braun
01:10:31
Okay. Anything else, sir?
Larry Broughton
01:10:32
No, I think we got it. And this remind people that if we didn’t nail it like we think we do because we think we’re awesome. Then go to the community. That was a good Chuck Horn, right?. Darn, we’re awesome. But if we didn’t nail this, then go to the community forum or make a comment here where you find this video and ask us a question about it, ask us to clarify. That community form is so darn powerful or jump on these calls that we have, you know, every couple of weeks. You know, as part of the tribe, you get an email that says “Hey, don’t forget to sign up, make RSVP for your spot in this upcoming call.” And then we can address it there as well. But again, if you want some additional coaching or mentoring, we’re around to do that for you as well, but please participate. This program is only as good as the effort that you put into it.
Dave Braun
01:11:22
Great. Yeah, absolutely. That’s, the way it is with just about everything in life. All right. Well, thank you all for being with us today listening. But remember building a team is the way to reclaim your freedom and we’re here to help you. Larry and I love helping folks. We’re helping a lot of people in Hiremyva.com right now. But what we want you to do is these three things, number one, subscribe to this podcast if you haven’t already done so. We’d really, really appreciate it. Number two gave us a rating, preferably five stars of course. And then number three, go to Hiremyva.com for more information on our course and our amazing community. Because remember, even without any experience, you learn how to prepare for hire and thrive with virtual assistants. We’re helping people in there, we’d love to help you too. So guys and girls and everybody else, just go to Hiremyva.com for more information.
Larry Broughton
01:12:19
I have got the giggles. I’ve been fighting this —Anyway, my friends do yourself a favor. Do the world a favor and go do something significant today. All right, God bless you. God, keep you, God hold you. All right, go do something significant and go get them.
Dave Braun
01:12:37
All Right. Absolutely. Bye, folks.
