In this episode of the No Days Off podcast, host Brian Gubernick explains that when scaling a business, the most critical factor in hiring, partnering, or collaborating is the candidate’s effort and will, not just skill or knowledge. He argues that while skills can be taught, effort and work ethic are intrinsic and harder to develop. To identify these traits, Brian shares a curated set of interview questions designed to surface motivation, resilience, productivity habits, personal drive, social influences, competitive nature, and recent learning. He walks through each question—such as “What gets you out of bed in the morning?” and “Tell me about a time you missed a goal and how you turned it around”—and explains the insights each can reveal about a person’s willingness to put in hard work. The episode serves as a practical guide for entrepreneurs and leaders to evaluate potential hires or partners by focusing on effort‑based indicators.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today I want to talk about business. Specifically, I want to cover what it looks like to bring talent in your world be it an employee that you're hiring or a partnership that you're considering or someone that you're going to collaborate with to get your business to its next level. Here's what, here's what I know about business, my experience over the past 2 decades. More oftentimes than not, every time I hit a ceiling or my company hits a ceiling, it is not usually the how, like how we're doing something. Or the what, like what we're doing. It's almost always the who, who we're in business with or who we're missing. In other words, for every ceiling that I hit in business, I am usually a relationship away. It's not always about the system or the model. It's typically a relationship. Who do I need to bring into my world that can help us make this breakthrough? So when I think about hiring or partnering or collaborating with somebody, it's usually to get us, of course, to the next level. Now, when engaging with this individual, there's lots of different things that we're going to consider. That individual's track record— have they been successful? What's their skill level? What's their knowledge? You know, who are they as a person? But I think the most important characteristic to evaluate, the most important thing that I've found in, in, in terms of determining if somebody is going to you know, have a likelihood of success or lack thereof. The thing that stands out most to me is almost always effort. Their willingness to put in the effort, their work ethic, their commitment, their desire, their passion to push through obstacles and achieve goals. My experience over time has been that while I can skill somebody up, develop them and their, you know, their performance or what influences their performance, like skill or development of say sales scripts or development of presentation skills or teaching them, make them more educated around a subject. I can do all of these things. I can skill somebody up. However, what I've found is it's not really all that possible to develop someone's will, to develop someone's effort. Yes, I can hold someone accountable. Yes, I could stand next to them and make certain that they do it. But more oftentimes than not, when you leave the room or when that accountability dissipates, that will or that effort very much could do— can do the same. So where am I going with this? When I'm hiring or when I'm engaging or I'm looking to collaborate with somebody, The number one thing I'm looking for is their effort. So what I want to chat about right now are the questions that you could be asking someone. I'm not going to have all of the questions here, but the questions that I ask when I am engaging with someone and I am, I am intending to discover if in fact they have the effort, the ability to put in the effort that I believe the job or the partnership entails. So here's some questions I like to ask, and I would encourage you to use these questions if in fact you're trying to gauge someone's willingness to do the hard work. First question that comes to mind for me, it's one I ask of pretty much everybody that I get in the business with. I ask the following: what gets you out of bed in the morning? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Really simple question. Not necessarily a simple answer. What I've found is that those that tend to put a bit more effort in, have a bit more will and desire to succeed, they also know what gets them out of bed in the morning. They know what's driving them. They know, or at least have a passion for discovering where they're going. So I love to ask the question, what gets you out of bed in the morning? And then just sit there quiet. And I'll probably have some follow-up questions based on whatever answer they give me. Next question. Tell me about one of your proudest accomplishments. What did it take to achieve this? What did it take to achieve this goal? I'd love to hear answers to this sort of question. Tell me about something that that you accomplished, one of your proudest accomplishments, and what did it take to get there? Now, once they tell me, I'm of course gonna follow that up with, did you encounter any obstacles along the way? I'm gonna assume you ran into some obstacles. What did you encounter along the way? And then based on that response, I'm gonna ask, how did you overcome those obstacles? How did you persevere and push through those obstacles? You can learn a lot from that series of questions right there in terms of effort, in terms of resilience, right? Somebody that struggles to tell me about an accomplishment doesn't make them a bad person, but high achievers typically don't have a challenge telling you about something they accomplished, anything, and what it took to get there. Next question I like to ask, Real simple one. Hey, walk me through your ideal productive day. Walk me through your ideal productive day. I just want to know, like, what's a productive day look like for you? Now, the operative word here is in fact productive, not take me through your ideal day. Take me through your ideal productive day. I want to hear what winning the day looks like to this individual. Next question, similar to the very first one, which was what gets you out of bed in the morning? This question is, hey, what keeps you awake at night? What keeps you awake at night? Now, of course, I don't want to see— I hope nobody's lying awake all night. And this is more of just a figure of speech, but what keeps you awake at night? When you're going to bed, you know, what's on your mind? What are you thinking about? You know, what, what, what are you aiming to, you know, push through or accomplish the next day? You know, I've had some of the best answers. What keeps you up awake at night? I had someone last week say to me, I am not where I want to be in life, and I think I have so much more that I can be doing and achieving. That's what keeps me awake at night. Now, does that answer, you know, mean that that person has, uh, the effort the work ethic, the will to succeed? Not necessarily, no. But if you tell me, hey, I'm not where I want to be just yet, and I'm— I stay awake at night thinking about how I'm going to get there, I don't know, that could be an indicator that they're on the right path. Next series of questions: tell me about a time where you didn't achieve your goal, where you missed the mark. How did that feel? And I'm quiet. Let him answer. Now, do you remember— this is the question, follow-up question— do you remember what you did right after that failure, right after you missed the mark? Do you remember what you did? Did you lose any motivation? I'm going to assume you did. How did you turn things around? So a couple leading questions, of course, because they're human. If someone fails or misses the mark, You know, they, they maybe, they maybe they were sad for a day or two or three. Maybe they, you know, hid at home for a while. I don't know what they did, but we all go through this sort of thing. We all lose a little bit of motivation. Those that succeed though, those that are willing to do the, do the, do the hard work, they turn things around. That's what I want to know. How did you fail? And more importantly, how did you turn things around? Next couple questions, a little bit different, but I'm a big believer that like attracts like. People tend to hang out with people that are similar to them. So I asked the question, if I asked those that know you best how they describe you, what would they say? What would your best friends, those that know you best, say about you? And then in follow-up to that, I'd say, how would you describe them? How would you describe those that you know best, your friend group, your social group, those you spend the most time with? Again, what am I trying to find out here? I'm trying to find out what environment they surround themselves with, because I know that if they describe a group that I think are high achievers, you know, those willing to do work, and again, this is just a best guess based on what's being shared. Odds are they're like these individuals. Next question. This is me. This is just something I always ask. It may not be for you. I want to know, did you play any sports or did you compete in anything when you were younger, when you were in elementary school or high school or college? Were you an athlete or did you compete in something else? Were you competitive? And of course, do you compete in anything now? Be it recreation, maybe it's a sport still, maybe it's, you know, it's anything. I'm just curious, are you a competitive person? Competition doesn't— being competitive doesn't necessarily mean you're effort-based. But I don't know, I mean, if you compete, those that regularly compete are competing not to finish third or second, it's usually to win or accomplish something big. Or bigger, right? That means to me that there's some effort required if in fact you're trying to compete, be it compete with yourself to be a better version of you or compete with others in, in whatever the competition entails. The very last question I have on my list, and again, this, this is just a handful of questions. It's by no means all-encompassing, but these are just some very, very direct questions that I ask with the intention being gauging someone's work ethic and effort and will. Last question. Tell me something that you learned or developed over the past year. A new skill, a hobby, maybe it's a habit you developed. Tell me something that you learned or developed over the past year. What did it take to do this? How did you, how did you do it? I, again, this is just very much a a question around what effort did it take? You know, how did you commit to it? Tell me about the commitment. Tell me about the action steps you took. So this concludes the list of questions that I'm asking to gauge what I believe to be the most important characteristic that someone I bring into my world must possess. And that is the will, the hunger, the effort to go out, to get after it and get the job done. Hopefully one or two or three or all of these questions can be utilized by you this week or this month as you're engaging with people and looking to bring, you know, that next high achiever, that next influencer, that next collaborator into your world to help you achieve those goals that you've set. That's all we have for today. The No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day, brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
