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Well, this question came up in our last community call. And so I’m glad that we’re addressing this, maybe in a little bit more compact format, which is just a great reminder. Folks, one of the most valuable parts of this program is the community and the community calls that we do twice a month, I think we’re doing them right now, where you can come out and ask your questions. Our goal here is to help you get more freedom. I will just remind you, wherever you’re listening to or watching this podcast, it would help us out if you put comments in there, it helps the algorithm, and people find it easier. And frankly, it gets a little bit more banter and communication between everybody. So the question is, what if my VA wants to change their hours? It’s gonna happen.

You don’t even need to do this program. Is it the wise thing to do? Yes, it’s the wise thing to do. Dave, let me take just a quick stab and I’m gonna hand it over to you. So why do we do it? You know, they’re a saying “Know Thyself”, and so yes, I’m a believer that we have to step out of our own mess sometimes and do a little bit of self-analysis. You know, they used to say like, stare at the Naval a little bit, but you got the cognitive brain, you got the conative brain, there are different types of the brain. What I love about combining the Cliftonstrengths, it used to be called Strengthsfinder 2.0 and it’s morphed over the years. And Kolbe is that it measures different parts of the brain. The conative brain I’m fascinated with. The conative brain is what early Stoics used to talk about, Aristotle used to talk about the conative brain.

It’s hard to do that until you get a thousand subscribers, but yes. But we gotta start somewhere, right? I loved this conversation for a bunch of reasons. He was just dropping some value bombs like out of the gate, you know, like things, like focus on results. You know, when you’re bringing team members on board, particularly VAs. The other thing is that I loved and some of this is just, Hey, TFTR, thanks for the reminder. When you start looking at people who have had success in business, you can start connecting the dots. And another thing that he said is to hire people who are better than you. One of the things that you and I talk about all the time is to hire people who are bolder and better than you. Bolder and brighter than you are. Another thing I thought that was gold is when you’re talking about integrity. You said it’s easier to find people who are competent than least to find people with integrity.

Most states in this country are at-will employment and they could walk any day of the week, without giving you any kind of notice. And so we have to be respectful of them. I do know that there have been times in my career when I’ve been really clear on the vision of the organization, I was really clear on what type of team I wanted to build. And more than the position I was trying to fill, I was saline, here is where we’re going as an organization. And so I do a casting call, basically looking for rock stars to fill a particular position like senior leadership positions.

You step in, in a positive manner, just like good coaches do, and correct them not in front of anybody. You don’t critique people. You don’t criticize people publicly. You certainly don’t do it in front of a guest, unless you’re really savvy enough to know how to turn things around a guest or client, whatever you call them in your organization. So let me start with that. You should always be doing performance appraisals. But let me back up. I know what we’re talking about here. You know, most organizations don’t do any kind of performance appraisals.

I think you can disseminate memos and those types of things, that’s fine. I would really stay away from confidential information. You gotta remember also anything that’s in text or email can either be screenshotted or shared somewhere else, unless you want the world to potentially see what you’re doing. And I’ve seen a lot of personal stuff. Frankly, let’s think about—we could probably sit here in just a matter of a couple of minutes, come up with all kinds of scandals that have been caused because someone has texted, sexted, and emailed inappropriate stuff to somebody who thought it was only between two people.

So here’s what the flashpoint says, it says, quoting someone and then disagreeing with them is not something done often, but there are times when it’s needed. Part of being a great leader is leading by example. Forging through obstacles by determined actions, thoughts, and willpower. And when we admit our fears and continue succeeding in spite of them, that exemplifies great leadership because then we’re teaching others to do the same and sending the message that no matter what our fears are, we won’t let them control us. Instead, we will use them for the greater good. So while it’s good to share our inspiration, true inspiration comes from sharing our fears and our courage to succeed through them. Now, here it is again. So while it’s good to share our inspiration, true inspiration comes from sharing our fears and our courage to succeed through them.

Well, let’s talk today about what we advocate a lot. And one of the things we advocate is that in order to reach your fullest potential, you’ve gotta build a team. But some people have asked us, what would you say are the top three myths about building a team? And it turns out in something that Larry you’re teaching and I’m there with you, a group of entrepreneurs about how to get to having their business get up to like a seven-figure level. And so, just this last week you did an awesome training. And we talked about those top three myths about building a team that some people really think are facts and the reality of their myths.

How is it done is the key, so you kind of know what to expect. So if I had to rate them, rank them, I would hire a friend before I’d hire a family member. This is me personally. So pros, you kind of know what to expect and in some cases, you understand what their strengths and weaknesses are. In some cases, the folks are gonna work hard for you. Now, there are other sides of the coin on all of these.

I think that there’s a couple ways to do this, but it all depends on what kind of task you’re actually giving them, you know, you’re doing it with one person or two people. There are some folks out there, Dave, who don’t— they say it’s part of the interview process and they don’t pay the candidates to do this, We don’t do that here.

This is one of the tough things, Dave when you’re on the entrepreneurial journey because oftentimes most businesses start out with zero clients and zero team members. And you as the business owner or entrepreneur have to be responsible for everything. And most of us don’t know everything. Right? And so maybe it’s like, you need accounting done. You don’t know how to hire a VA to do your accounting or maybe you are a spiritual coach and you don’t know how to have somebody do your marketing or your graphic design. It’s those kinds of things or SEO or whatever it is that you might hire a VA for. Well, this is why most people, or — no, that’s not accurate.

Joe DeChiara: I’m a scientist, I look at results and then I try to work it back. So for years, I said, well, maybe I’m not growing because of my mark. So that’s how we met. I spent a long time to learn marketing and after eight years, it still wasn’t working. So I said, something is not working. And that’s when I reached out to you actually since something’s not working and I’ve got to figure out what it is and it was this, I was hiring the wrong people. I wasn’t training them and that was it.

You know, anytime you’ve got a significant relationship that can affect you in, you know, in any way, both positively and negatively, you really should have some type of an agreement. You wouldn’t go into business with a business partner without having an agreement or at least a contract. I mean it’s— because I think it’s so important to get this stuff down in writing because once you actually get it in writing and you both read it and you sign it.

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.

You hired somebody and then two weeks later, somebody else comes along. Well, two things: How do you know that the person that you hired, isn’t a Rockstar? generally two weeks, maybe it’s a month. You don’t know until, unless you’ve really invested in them that they’re not gonna make it.

Even if it’s a virtual assistant, that’s actually someone working in your physical office and your brick and mortar space. It seems to come down to three areas, Dave, and we can kind of maybe rip on the things more than we can do that. But the first one is like communication and communication style. Second one is using project management tools. And the third is, you know, some people actually have to track time.

I think Dave, the first thing is just, we have to accept that mistakes are gonna happen because we are dealing with humans and we are humans. Mistakes are going to happen in business and so we have to learn some tolerance around mistakes. The second thing I would say, and this has to do, particularly for us is that we have to develop a culture where our team members, including ourselves, accept responsibility when they make a mistake.

This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions that we get because entrepreneurs, business owners, leaders, high achievers, we tend to do so much. We know we need help. We hear about these mystical, magical unicorns as some people call a virtual assistants and say, I want one of those or two of those, or like one of our client’s cases four of those within a very short period of time but I don’t know what to even hand over to them.

What I encourage people to do is when you’re trying to do these postings for your virtual assistants, there’s to consider posting not necessarily a job description, but what we call a position profile job descriptions are oftentimes awarded broadly position profiles are much more detailed than what are the skills, the specific skills that you need, the achievements that they’ve had in the past, what your expectations are for, for this person and how they’re going to fit into the organization. It’s not just a list of things. And so it’s a little bit semantics, but we do go through this with you in the program. But this is a really good question, Dave, because it’s not like so easy, like I’m going to sit down and I’m having somebody follow a specific recipe and how to bake cookies.

I know that you have kind of a rule of thumb and you can expand on it in a bit. But I would think, like for us in the Philippines, we use them from everything from general VAs to graphic designers, to web developers, to researchers, and pay anywhere from $4 to $9 an hour. Generally, I think it’s a fifth to a 10th of what we would pay here for a similar role. And I know some of you are gasping at that, but you have to know the cost of living is a lot different in the Philippines than here.