Hiring Your First Employee

The Small business show, episode 356 for Wednesday, December 1, 2021. Greetings folks, and welcome to the Small Business show where we are small businessing every week. Sponsors include the fantastic David vs Goliath podcast and and 30% off your first purchase at napjitsu.com SBS. We will talk more about both of those sponsors here in a little bit. For now, as usual, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How can it be December 1st already, Dave?

Well, it's this thing called linear time, man. It's our feeble human minds, Shannon. I think we have come up with this construct of linear time because it's the best way that we can perceive the actuality of time. I don't think we as humans really can perceive time. I mean, mathematically it's been shown that time can move forward or backwards, but we can't see it that way. Well, that's the thing, right? It scares you. It scares me too, because my brain isn't capable of comprehending anything beyond what we currently see as time.

Your brain in the simulation that we live in. Right.

Or maybe it's that. Right? Yeah, exactly. But I really think that time is far more complex than we acknowledge or that we see. But so we have this linear time thing. So that's how it became December 1st. It's just we agree to do this in this imperfect way because it works for all of us.

That's pretty good. That's kind of like the value of money, right? It has a value because we agree that it does.

Fiat time. Right. Just like fiat money. Yeah. Except the difference is, with fiat time, I don't think there's any legal or physical consequences for choosing to interpret it differently. Whereas with money, it's literally against the law to say that a dollar is not worth a dollar. But if you say a minute's not worth a minute. Yeah, I don't know. That's interesting, right? I mean, last month we had the whole time change thing again, which is also sort of ridiculous in my opinion. Yeah, I saw some statistic and because I saw it, Therefore it is 100% true that that's the way it works. Yeah. It's the last thing I read on the Internet, so therefore it must be right. But the number of deaths from auto accidents goes up for the 10 days following every time change. We do twice a year.

Wow.

Yeah, well, I mean, you had little kids, right? Now they've grown. But like that, those first three or four days after the time change when the kids were like, you know, in school, age like 5 to 11 or something, like, you know, younger kids in school. Those first three or four days were a disaster. Every single time we went through the time change, all the adjustments, the adjustment. Yeah, the kids didn't. They wanted to be up early, they wanted to be up late. Or if you have pets, you look at your pets and the pets are like, what do you, what this is the time. It's now. And it's like, yeah, no, it's not now. Like, like, it's, it's. Yeah, it's just not. I don't think it's all that healthy for us. I'm not convinced it's necessary.

I think it's outlived its usefulness.

There you go. That's.

At some point I think it made sense, but. Yeah, but it's hard to change things as we know, especially things put in by any kind of bureaucracy. It's very difficult to change or eliminate programs or things that are, that are in place. So I think that's what we are.

Oh, that's it. Like, yeah. I mean, obviously the state of Arizona has, has, you know, detached for the most part from participating in this, but then I hear your state has given the powers that be the power to detach from it. And then your state being the state of California, and then as I understand it, like some of your Pacific coast neighbors.

Careful, be careful with the word your. Because, you know, I love living here, but maybe not the government.

Well, no, your Pacific coast neighbors, the states of Washington and Oregon, have both basically committed that if California detaches from Daylight Saving Time, then West coast, then Washington and Oregon would follow suit. And so, but you're right, it's this coordinating it all.

So.

And like, to your point, it's the concept of fiat time. We all agree that it is, you know, 12:00pm Eastern Standard Time right now, or whatever time it actually is. You know, but we all, if we disagree on that, then none of it matters. Like, we, we all, we need to agree to this, this fiat time thing. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

Speaking of time, today we're going to talk about whether it's time to hire your first employee.

Right. See what you did there?

You like that?

I did.

You know, we, we, we jump around a lot on this show. We talk about, you know, different stages of your business. But one of the things that came up recently as we were talking about accounting and employee payroll and that kind of stuff was when is it time to hire your first employee? And what Type of employee. I think that's, that was the start of the discussion what, who's the first employee you should hire? Right.

Yeah. Who would, who should be your first employee? Yeah, yeah.

And that. So we're going to talk about today, which I'm interested to get your take on it. I have a lot of thoughts on this. As you can imagine. It's, it's an interesting concept and I think a very different analysis now than when it was, when we were hiring our first employees.

Ooh, boy, you may be right about. Of course you're right about that very change because of this whole time, this linear time thing.

Yeah, well, that and, and technology and, and connection and all these things that maybe weren't around when we were hiring our first employees, but are there now. So you have, I think you have a lot more options to consider.

All right, so before we answer the question, who should be your first employee? Because I have pretty strong thoughts about that, do you want to start with how to know when you're ready?

Yeah, I was thinking about this, how to know when you're ready. And I think one of the biggest things is hopefully you've heard us talk about the E Myth, this book by Michael Gerber. And one of the strongest concepts in the E Myth is this idea of creating an org chart for your business. Even though you're the only person, perhaps you know, perhaps you're the only person that works there. And that org chart is, is a future roadmap, if you will. And laying out your name can pick every box. Right now you're doing everything. And I think that you should start thinking or the, the one of the triggers to start thinking about getting help. I need to get someone to, to help is number one, if you cannot get the work done on time, whatever it is you're doing, if you're providing services, if you're shipping orders, if you're manufacturing products, if you can't get things done on time. Now, to my earlier comment, it's much different now. I think it's far easier, like let's say you're creating a product to ship and sell. It's far easier now to find a contract manufacturer, a third party logistics company that can ship your orders. Right. All these things really impact where back when I was doing this, it was okay, I got to hire people, I've got to get this warehouse, I've got to get shipping systems set up, we've got to get someone, you know, got to get somebody to fly to China, we've got to do all These things, that's very different now. And so the decision to bring on staff and build up infrastructure are very, you have to look at them in.

A different light right now. That's a really good point. When we started the Mac observer, it was vital to the organization to have someone involved. And part of the reason I was brought into it at the beginning was we needed someone who understood enough about the details of technology to get a website published on the Internet. Now that same thing is true right now. What's changed is the required details. The bar of entry is way lower than it was back then. There was no Dreamhost or Bluehost or any host. There was no WordPress or Content Manager. The term content management system didn't exist. You had to figure all of this out on your own. And that required a huge amount of technical acumen that right now you could start publishing a website on the Internet without knowing any of that. You need to know one word. I want to publish WordPress. Right. Like, and not even that, but that's one path of taking it. And as long as you knew you know how to type that into Google within about an hour, you can have your first webpage published.

Yeah, that's right.

So you don't need that person involved in your company anymore. Right. Because you do. But you can farm it out as a service, as a relatively inexpensive service, even just like your logistics and all that. I mean, it's scales and ramps up.

And all that, but it's just the same thing, just in a different light.

Yeah, yeah.

And you know, another big, you know, thing that I, I think about when we do, we need to start bringing on staff is, you know, are there opportunities you're missing because you can't get things done yourself? Right. New revenue streams, customers that, you know, want to engage your services or buy your products and you can't get it done in time, you, you know, dropping the ball.

Sure.

And as well, you start noticing maybe your customer service is suffering. Right. Or the quality of your products is suffering if you can't oversee things correctly. And then I also think a big red flag. We talked about this a couple weeks ago when we had Todd from Account Edge On. If you don't have time to do things like accounting or other paperwork that you just have to do as a small business owner, that's a, that's a red flag too. And you can't be doing it midnight every night. Maybe in the beginning, but eventually you gotta, you gotta get some help. But that being said, it's just such A different world. So much of this, you, you maybe you don't have to go out and hire an employee yet. And I think that's the next question that, you know, we can talk about is do you need an employee? Can you use a contractor? Maybe you need a co founder.

Yeah, for sure.

Different.

Yeah, well, no, that, and that's, that's a good, that, that's a good question. And I think the way to start approaching that is, is backwards, right? For at least backwards in the order that, that you listed it. Ask if what you need. Are you replacing something that you are already good enough at to get the business going right. Or are you, are you so deficient? And there's no weakness in being deficient, you know, is your talent stack far removed enough from that which needs to be done where you need someone else who has whatever that skill is as part of their talent stack? And if, if your business is relying on something that you couldn't provide in an emergency, then you probably need to consider bringing a co founder in or a partner of some sort that is committed to the success of the business that has that in their talent stack.

Yeah, I love that. I love the partnership aspect and I've had them all my life.

Same.

Yes, they can be problematic, but if you do it right and you communicate and set boundaries, create working agreements, I mean if you just search for partner up at Business Show Co, we've done a bunch of shows about partnerships, but yeah, to help you kind of go down that path and avoid some of the pitfalls, it can be a huge asset for you and can help far in a far broader ways than an employee. Yes, you have to give up, you know, some equity or you're, you know something. However, it can be a real game changer for the company. For the company.

But if you don't need a partner or you don't want a partner, then the next step down, I think is employee. Right? Where it's someone that ostensibly works full time for you and is committed to you primarily for their work life that can perform this task. And the question there is, do you need someone full time? Do you need someone committed? Or to your point, can you get away with and can you thrive with? I don't. Get away with is probably the wrong term. Can you thrive? Can you succeed in the ways that you need to succeed by having a specialist to whom you contract out? Like do you need a web designer on staff full time or can you just find a good one that you contract out with and other people use too? Do you need to monopolize their time and attention or not. I think that's the litmus test to ask is it okay if this person is pulled in other directions most of the time?

Sure.

Yeah.

And there's trade offs for doing it either way and you can experiment with that. But that kind of leads us into, you know, what type of employee should be that first one that you hire.

Which one should be that first one. And that is a question I want to answer. But I also want to talk about our sponsors. If that works for you, and then we'll do the. Then we'll answer that question.

Yeah, that sounds great.

All right. Hey, look, we love small businessing here, right? And almost every one of us who is out there small businessing faces competition from much larger companies in our industries. And in order to compete against them and win against them, we small businessing folks need to arm ourselves with all the right tools and resources. That's one of the reasons you're listening to this show. Well, guess what? I've got another show for you. The David versus Goliath Podcast. In each episode, host Adam Degrade covers the five smooth stones that every business needs to slay the Goliath to in their industry. That's why I think it's one of the best new podcasts for small businesses out there. David versus Goliath is dedicated to helping small businesses leverage technology to compete and win against our large competitors. It's so clear that Adam has this passion for educating, activating and inspiring small business owners, covering things like top strategies in digital marketing, constructive management techniques and more. The show is packed guest interviews, sales, role playing and these things. We love actionable tips that you can apply today to help your business. It's fantastic. If you're looking for a great episode to start with, check out the two part series with Bob Taska. It's practical, educational and entertaining. You don't want to miss it. We're telling you, if you're a small business owner or Entrepreneur, the David vs Goliath podcast is a must listen. Search for David vs Goliath podcast on YouTube, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts on. And our thanks to David vs Goliath for sponsoring this episode. Listen, if you're like us and you love that good midday nap, obviously you're not alone. In fact, it's not just us. People like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Stephen King and Shannon Jean and Dave Hamilton have been known to be nappers. So why do we feel guilty when we allow ourselves to take a snooze no reason. Napjitsu is a new way to recharge your body and your brain. And they are committed to committed to changing the culture around rest and napping. Napjitsu's natural supplements were made by people who know how it feels to be tired and productive. Their patent pending formulas have natural ingredients like B vitamins, Guarana, ginseng. These things give you a boost of energy without that crash later. Because each napjitsu product provides brain boosting nootropics to unlock steady energy right when you need it. The result, your peak performance. All day long. Napjitsu supplements are packaged into small packets so you can take them whenever and wherever you might need that energy boost. So whether you need to experience deeper sleep or unlock immediate lasting energy, each napjitsu product is designed to help you achieve your optimal performance. Remember the smart rest more, the wise rest better. Rest up and level up with Napjitsu because for a limited time you can receive 30% off your first purchase when you go to napjitsu.com go to napjitsu.com SBS for 30% off your first purchase today. That's napjitsu.com SBS and our thanks to Napjitsu for sponsoring this episode. All right, so let's answer this question. Who should be your first employee? Now, like this is. I certainly will be answering this from the viewpoint of Dave.

Yes, that's right.

But because I live in the viewpoint of Dave and it's nearly impossible for me to not live in the viewpoint of Dave, I'm going to treat this as though it's generic advice and applies to everyone. But I'm certain that I'm wrong. But I don't think I'm entirely wrong. Our first employee, really the first employee we hired at the Mac observer was about 6 or 8 months in. I was doing. We had. I had a partner, Brian Chaffin. He and I split up the tasks like you're supposed to in a partnership. I'm still proud of the fact that we did this 23 years ago and we weren't idiots about it. We were idiots about a lot of things. This one thing we did. Right. That's normal. Yeah, right. Oh yeah. No, I'm still an idiot. In fact, now I'm even more so. I'm just aware of it more. But he took care of, essentially took care of the content side of it, publishing things, finding content to publish on the web. And then I took care of the technical and financial side. So making sure we had the platform from which to publish or with which to publish. This Content and then also that there would be money to pay for the aforementioned content. And I found that I was shirking my responsibilities for doing the sales of advertising. And I know this is going to sound strange to people who know essentially what I've built my career doing, but there's a reason for this. I was shirking my responsibilities of doing ad sales in favor of doing the programming and other things that the business needed. It needed all of them. But I was spending far too much of my time on the programming side and the technical side than I was on the sales side. And I realized it was because sales is a game of negativity where if you make 20 phone calls and you get 19 no's, that's a successful day. Right. You know, because you got one yes. And that's what you're looking for. You're always looking for the yes. So 19 no's out of 20 calls is a good day. And you know, spending those same, whatever, three or four hours programming was 100% successful. I mean, sure, there's frustrations with both, but you know, I'm doing a thing, I'm in full control of the outcome of what I'm doing. And so I would lean towards the productive side, which now shouldn't be all that much of a surprise to people out there because both had to be done. I could easily justify saying, well, this has to get done, so I'm going to work on that. And so our first full time hire was a sales rep. And because I realized sales needed to be a full time job.

Yes.

And yep, you know, I think for a lot of businesses that is probably going to be your easiest first hire because you're going to bring someone in who is directly responsible for bringing money in. And that makes it way easier for you as the entrepreneur, small business owner to carve out a chunk of money to give back to them. Right. You're not just paying them to do something that's not directly generating cash for your business, whereas with sales they are in fact directly generating cash for your business makes it way easier to wrap your head around giving them money. I could easily have, have shifted gears and hired someone who was a far better programmer than me. Right. That and arguably that might have been the, a better path. Right. I don't know. This path worked out all right. But you know, who knows, we might have been smart enough to create our own content management system for sale in the end. And you know, you've heard that story here before. Yeah, yeah, but I, it certainly for us And I. It wasn't my idea. I was out to lunch with a friend who had run several companies and he was obviously running one at the time. And he's like, I think you should hire so and so Greg Snyder, who was someone that we were actually, that was buying ads from us and they're. The company he was with was actually going chapter 11 or something. And so it was like, well, he's not going to have a job. I think you should hire that guy to be your sales rep. He knows what the buyers want because he is a buyer currently and he's going to stop being a buyer very soon. And. And it was like. Right. But I could wrap my head around the idea of giving someone, giving money to someone who was going to bring in more money for us.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think that that's a. It is. You're correct. It is a very common path for a new small business owner. We need to hire somebody to help me sell stuff. I think that's. That's it. My take on it is a little different.

I figured. Yeah, yeah.

And my experience is. Is different too, when starting, you know, various companies. And I would, I would say that a lot of people go through this as well. You know, tell me at feedbackusiness show if I'm wrong or right. I don't think. Well, I think many small businesses don't have the luxury of hiring someone for a single specific role.

Fair.

Right. And I only speaking to my own experience. When we hired my first, my second business, my third, you know, starting right out of college and hiring a person, we hired this, you know, wonderful young woman, but it was just one of those things where it was like, hey, we need help, you know, but we need you to answer the phone. We need you to make sales. We need you to help with customer service. You know, I didn't know anything about this breakdown, you know, the org chart. Of course, I hadn't read the yet. And so it was just kind of come help and we'll tell you what to do and we'll work it out as we go along. And we developed procedures, and looking back now, we developed systems that eventually led that person to become, you probably guess, a sales manager. Right, right. But she worked her way into that role. But she had done everything from shipping orders during the day to answering the telephone, routing calls, solving problems. And I would say there's a lot. I mean, I don't know, it's anecdotal, but over and over when I've hired people, it's Been like that. Oh, I need you to do this. But if you also have this skill, I can show yourself doing this.

Absolutely. Oh, yeah, no, for sure. You. Right. You will choose the. The one you're essentially your breaking point. Right. Like, I desperately need somebody in here to do this, but absolutely. Just like you are applying your talent stack everywhere it can possibly apply in the business. Make it clear that that's going to happen with your employees. If I would say make it clear to them, but definitely make it clear to yourself that, you know, you're a small business. Everyone, you know, the joke is everyone wears many hats. And that's.

That's right.

That's absolutely a good thing. Yeah.

And that is when you're talking to people either to hire, you're talking to other people about referrals. Is that. Can you get that person that has a myriad of talents or at least the willingness.

Yeah.

To experiment with different things. I don't, I don't think your first employee can be a specialist. I don't think they can.

No. And you probably don't need that. If you can contract out for those special skills, you may not be able. Especially now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Especially now. And like, I want, you know. Yeah, I would have hired a salesperson, but I. We really didn't have. I mean, we just didn't know enough. It was like, well, we'll just answer the phones and we've kind of got a tiger by the tail and we're doing this and we're doing that. And so, you know, just come in and do what we're doing and then we'll eventually divvy thing, you know, as we go, we'll divvy things up. I mean, when I talk on this show, it sounds like I have a ton of answers, but at the time, the way. Only way I know that is because I've flutzed along, you know.

Yeah. History is. Is much easier to see going backwards. Yeah. Right. The line.

Exactly.

The line is straight when you look backwards. Yeah.

Yeah. And so you. And I think I did it at the next business as well. It's like, okay, well, we have this thing going and we, you know, when we were doing deals on the web, like, well, we need somebody could do this, but maybe they could also do this. And, you know, we got people in there to just kind of run things for us because that was a smaller business and didn't have a ton of needs. So I think you have to ask yourself or find someone that is flexible. They need a basic skill set. But maybe more than anything else, they need a willingness to dive in with you and help you develop these things as you're growing, especially as your first employee. Really important.

Yeah, I know that. And that's. I mean, yeah, I don't disagree with that. Even with my recommendation that you're going to hire someone who's a salesperson, in many businesses, that same person needs to have that willingness to do whatever. Yeah, it's okay.

We want. We're hiring you to do sales, but, you know, when we're backed up, we need, you know, we need help on this. We're just getting started.

Yeah, you're going to be doing all kinds of things.

Yeah, you got to be open and transparent and just be. And really, in many ways, just go, hey, we're doing the best we can. We don't. I don't have all the answers. You're the first employee. Do you want to come along with this ride? For us, it could be, you know, with us, it could be tremendously beneficial for everyone. And you want somebody that can jump into that. If the OR versus someone that's like, ooh, they don't. Who do I go to for hr? Right. That we don't have an HR department. You know, we're going to use a company like Bambi and have them run our hr. Right. Because that makes way more sense. And it's only about 100 bucks a month.

That's it. Yeah, it's way cheaper. And if cash gets tight, you can, you know, walk away from an agreement like that, whereas walking away from an employee, you certainly can. Most employment is at will, you know, in this country, here in the U.S. but even still, like, it's. It's not nearly as simple as saying we don't. We're gonna. We're gonna put a pause on this, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

So, you know, there's lots of great resources out there. So once you've kind of figured out who or, you know, the type of person you're gonna. You're gonna hire. Yeah, I. I think there's a. A kind of like a talent stack you need to develop, and the more you work on it, the more successful you're going to be over the long run. And I'm talking about skills like how to perform a job interview.

Right.

There's not a lot of places that teach that. And, you know, I think that it's a very important skill. And I would suggest if you have the opportunity to sit in with that, people that have experience and listen to Them interview or, or, you know, you can do a search on YouTube and there's a bunch of like job interview videos you can watch up there. But you need to put some effort into learning how to do this because you're going to do it a lot over the course of your small business career.

Yeah.

And yeah, you know, there's, I've made terrible mistakes going with my gut instinct about people and, and then I've made some of the best hires of my life going with my guys.

Right.

And, and so, you know, you need to learn what kind of questions you ask. I found myself to be the most successful. Once we had another employee, I let them get involved in the hiring of the next person so that I could take a step back and, and observe a little bit more and not be in the moment. So I would help come up with the questions, but I would let that person, hey, you run the interview. You're going to be working with this person. I also felt it empowered that employee you were having do the interview because you're like, wow, I'm really in this process and I get a say in who I work with every day. It was pretty successful for us. And then I got to ask questions. I've mentioned this before in the show. I would always ask at the end, hey, we're interviewing 20 people for this role. What should I remember about you? One thing.

Yeah.

And, and, and so it was. I, I really enjoyed that process. So learn how to do job interviews. I think that's a really good skill to, to stack up.

I like it. Yeah, no, that, that's a good skill. I, I am also reminded of Gary Von Meer's comment about his 80% rule when hiring someone you know, especially if it's something that is in your talent stack or you have had to develop and now is in your talent stack, and now you're going to hire someone to do that. They will not do it the same way as you. Whether they do it as well as you or better than you or worse than you remains to be seen. But you have to assume that they're not going to do it as good as you, especially if you're a control freak entrepreneur. Now, hopefully you'll eventually figure out that most of the people you hire to do things wind up doing them better than you. But your fear is going to be that they are going to do it worse than you without question. And they will. Even if they are generally better than you, they will have moments where they make mistakes and you will see that as them being worse than you, though they're probably no worse or maybe even better than the mistakes you made. And so Gary's 80% rule was, look, if they can do it 80% as well as me, then that frees me, then it's, that's good enough. That frees me up to do the things I need to do to work on the business and grow the business and move it forward. And, and really that 80% rule is most of the time just a perception of yours. It's not, it's not actually true, but it is an important thing to, to remember.

So, yeah, I really do like that. I think that's a, that's a great thing. And you know, I think it's also, you got to do it a little at a time. It can really seem overwhelming. Like if you search, you know, oh, what sort of things do I need to hire employees? I mean, there's just a laundry list of, you know, all kinds of stuff. But that I, and I don't want to harp on this too much, but the fact that there are outsourced, you know, companies you can contract with to kind of help you with that now, like Bambi or onboarding, hiring, it's just a huge leg up on the, on the way. You had to do it before and kind of build these systems yourself. I think that we talked about the Small Business Administration a few weeks ago. They have some great resources up on the website about hiring and managing employees as you're getting started. And we'll put a link to the show notes. I really think there's some good tips there. Nolo Press, which is a site I love for do it yourself folks like us. There's things you need to learn about, you know, when you're hiring. They have some good links and some good guides and things you can get involved in. Don't be afraid to do it. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. You know, you're going to have to kind of COVID your, your butt a little bit on certain things to be sure you do it or if there's a problem that comes up, you have some coverage. You want to make sure you have some, you know, insurance by that, by that point. Yeah, but once you get a few systems in place, it's, it's going to be great and you're going to be.

I mean, I think we're getting, we're getting way too far down the road for the person who's listening for first employee. Right. But you're right, it, it is going to get easier. But, but I would say maybe don't listen to the last three minutes that we just talked about here. Well, really, because you're gonna. Because you're gonna convince yourself that you're not ready to hire. Like, because all you need is one, excuse me, to convince you to wait a month. Right. Like, like it's super easy. I know what this is. Like, it's really difficult to hire your first employee at any business, even if you've done it at prior ones. And you can say, oh, well, this time I'm going to wait until I have my HR stuff in. In check, and, and then I'll. Then I'll bring someone on board. So don't wait. Like the last three minutes were, were valuable, don't get me wrong. But. Yeah, but, but not for you. Not yet. Don't.

Because the reason I point them out.

It will be a liability. Yeah, yeah.

The reason I point them out is you likely you're going to stumble across this stuff as you're doing some research.

Yeah.

And don't let it stop you. Just start. Just get, get, you know, get things going because you're going to have to. You're not going to find somebody to hire right away or, you know, and we're going to do a whole show on how to do interviews. I think that would be really helpful that you could listen to in the, in the coming weeks and then just, just get out there and do it. Get that experience. Like everything else, it's all about action, and we believe in action here. And maybe you interview 20 people and not hire anybody, but you're certainly going to learn a lot during those 20 interviews.

Oh, you're going to. Yeah. You're going to know. And if you do interview 20 people and you wind up not finding the one that you want to hire, look in the mirror a little bit and figure out why you haven't said yes to any one of those 20 people. I mean, it could be that they're all awful candidates, but I doubt that. It mostly is. You are. You're setting your standards so high.

Right.

Allowing yourself to say, yeah, I tried, but no one was out there to fill the role. So I'm gonna have to just keep doing what I've already been doing and I, you know, I won't have to pay anybody in that whole thing. So. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll leave you with something that. Yeah, and I'll leave you with something that, as we wrap up here, that has served me well. I've always. Or I've learned over the years that I Hire for personality versus experience.

Interesting.

I think that you need, you know, obviously you hire a salesperson, there's a certain personality that is interested in sales and that kind of thing. But I believe you can train most people to do just about anything and if they're willing to learn, but they have to have the right kind of personality to fit in your company, especially if it's your first employee to work with you, you need to connect with them, and they need to be able to connect with the other people and as you grow your business and create this culture. So don't discount personality because it's really. I think it's really important, and I've had more success leaning on that into the, you know, well, this person, maybe they don't have all those skills, but they really had a great attitude when we talked with them and we brought them in and they walked around and, you know, they had a smile on their face and they're willing to do whatever it takes. That's a. That's a better hire than somebody who's, wow, they've got all this experience and they may be very good technically, but, boy, you know, they're kind of, whatever their personality is, maybe not a good fit. Yeah, that's my take on it.

I like it.

I'd love to hear. Yeah. What you think. Feedbackusinessshow.co. and like I said, we'll step back into this and do an episode on interview tips. I think that would be worth revisiting here coming up for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. I. I think there's. I think it's good advice. I think we got a little off the rails at the end, though.

I've been known to do that.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think. I think we overstacked the agenda and I worry we. We gave people too many excuses not to make that first hire.

Well, let us know. Tell us, let us know if you are a new. Yeah, you know. Feedbackusinessshow.co. we always want to hear what we've done wrong. That's probably more useful than what we've done. Right?

Yeah. Yeah, right. Oh, no, it's super helpful for us. Yeah. Feedbackusinessshow.co. make sure you check out those sponsors. Go listen to that David versus Goliath podcast and check out napjitsu.com SBS that's all we got for today. Thanks for listening, folks. Happy December. Get your taxes straight. Keep living that charmed life.