What Type of People Make the Best Employees?

Hey, welcome to another episode of the Small Business Show. I'm here with Dave Hamilton. How are you, Dave?

I'm good. I'm here with Shannon Jean. Yeah, it's yet another week of the Small Business Show, February 12, 2020. If the calendar is correct, we're burning through the weeks. We are.

I'm happy to get past it. After the fourth quarter, I'm in the sales sell products and fourth quarter is always awesome. Holidays are always great, but there's always a let in January, you know, Totally. It's. It's an inevitable lack of, of sales and revenue. And I'm. And I always just like, what's wrong? And then, oh, okay, it's January.

Yeah, yeah, I, I have the. I experience the same thing. Because we're mostly consumer based in, you know, in terms of the, the way our revenue structure works, we have the additional pitfall of. The ad agencies that we work with generally don't get their budgets from their clients for Q1 until sometime middle of January. It's just how it works. Sometimes they get like full year budgets back in, like November. That's great. And that helps keep me from really sweating. But it's mid January when we, when they even start saying, hey, so what inventory do you have for Q1? It's like, we're in the middle of Q1, like, but, but this is how it works. The benefit is I have CES to go to at the beginning of January. So I like that eats the first week of January for me, but then the second week I'm here and it's like, man, there's nothing happening. This is bad. This is bad.

Always makes me nervous.

Yeah. Yeah, it makes me nervous. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

But, hey, before we start the show today, we have a good show coming.

Up, so stick around for that. I want to tease that a little bit where I had a random conversation at Believe it or not, at a barbecue joint that sparked my thought process about what types of people are good to hire. And then of course, the corollary, what types of people aren't good to hire. So I will share that. But first we're going to try something new here. Yeah.

Yeah, we are. So after this, we're going to talk about some hiring and I have some feedback on that, as you can imagine. But we're going to introduce a new segment in the intro. Here is. I don't know what we're going to call it, but today we're going to call it my favorite podcast. I listen to a ton of podcasts as you can imagine either on the road or in my office all day. And one of my absolute favorites that I really recommend you go listen to is How I Built this with Guy Raz. It's an NPR podcast. And you can just search for How I Built this or Guy Raz gu Y R A Z. And you know, they do some awesome interviews. It's a total interview show. And even though I'm such a huge champion of bootstrap, small business that start from nothing, there are some of those on this show. But there's also a lot of big companies. They talk to the founders of JetBlue, the founders of Instagram, and some small companies, and just some really great stories. Inspirational. How people have just overcome so many obstacles, failure, mistakes.

Our favorite topics.

Yeah, they talk about a lot. You listen to this show, you'll. You'll probably pick up a few cues of where I've gotten some of my inspiration for some of the questions that ask, you know, every week. And I really think you should be listening to it. You will enjoy it. You can find it on wherever you. Whatever podcast directory that you pull your stream from. It's good stuff.

All right. Well, he is Shannon Jean. I am Dave Hamilton, and this is the Small business show, episode 262. Indeed. I am happy to be here. As I mentioned in the intro, Shannon, I had a conversation. It was one of these random things. I was at a barbecue joint the other night. It's weird to find here in New England, believe it or not, but classic barbecue joint. It was just over the Vermont border. We were over there for a hockey game. My wife and I went early because the game was. The game was on the New Hampshire side of the border. We found this barbecue joint on the Vermont side of the border. So we went. But, you know, we went a little early so that we could have dinner and then we'd go to the game. And it's your. If you've never been to what I would consider a traditional barbecue joint, it's one of these places where you walk in, you order your food at sort of the counter, then you sit down at one of many sort of community tables, wherever you can find a place. And then you wait and they bring you your food. And so you're invariably sitting amongst other.

People and like a picnic table.

It's like a. Basically a picnic table, this place. The picnic tables were slightly nicer, but they were picnic tables. Exactly.

I like it.

No, it's how it should be. That's. To me, that's barbecue. And. And so you Know, you wind up talking with the people at the table, there's music playing. It was, you know, it was great. And this guy that we were, I don't even know how we got. We were talking about our kids and they were going off to college and somehow we got onto this topic and he said, oh yeah, you know, somebody that I worked for liked to hire what he described as T shaped people. And I'm like, okay. And I had no idea where he was going with this. Much like you might not as you're listening to me here, right?

Yeah.

And so he explained it and he, you know, he's holding his arms out like, you know, in a tee and I'm like, what in the heck? Like this person was literally looking at the shape of these people. Aren't all people T shaped? And no, in fact, it was very metaphorical. What he meant was he wanted to hire people that had at some point in their lives, personally, professionally, doesn't matter. Gone deep into something, regardless of whether or not that had anything to do with what the, you know, the business that he was considering hiring them for would do.

Okay.

And that's the, that's the vertical part of the, the, the T. Right. So it goes deep. Ok. So they've. Somebody that has this experience of going deep, but then the horizontal part is the ability to sort of shift around and do different things. So he wanted people that were flexible but that had had the experience of knowing what it's like to go really deep into anything. Doesn't matter.

It could be a hobby, could be a sport, could be anything.

That's it. Yeah. And I think that's how it came up. Cause we were talking about sports and he was like, is he going to do this in college? And I said, probably not. Only if, you know, if he does, he's like, well, it's really good that he had this. And I think that's how he got onto the T shaped people thing. It's exactly it. Yeah. Something where. And as soon as he said it, you know, the sparks went off in my head and of course I grabbed my phone and I wrote down T shaped people in our, in our agenda list so that I wouldn't forget about it. And it really hit me like, yeah, those are the, those are the kinds of people that I always look for because whether or not whatever they've done is related to my business, the experience of what the benefits are and the pitfalls of diving into something. You know, like we talk, I talk a lot, especially on this show, about the Value of bullheaded persistence. Well, you don't know that bullheaded persistence is a useful trait or skill to employ unless you've employed it a lot and seen the benefit of. And sometimes, you know, you. It takes a little while. Like, that's the whole part of the bullheaded thing, is you got to dig and you got to go. And then finally you get to the other side of it and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay. This was worth putting in all this effort. Here's where the benefit is. Whereas if you don't have that bullheaded persistence because you don't know that there's benefit on the other side of it, you're like, well, this sucks. I'm meeting a lot of resistance, and so I'm just going to bail and go do something else. And that's, to me, that's a bad trait in an employee. Somebody that just bails. Yeah. First sign of, you know, resistance. But it's really hard to ask people because people are selling themselves at job interviews. So you can't ask someone, hey, are you. I like persistence. Are you persistent? Of course they're going to say, yes, I am. You know.

Yeah. So how do you phrase that? Question you at just trying to dig into what they. What they're into.

Tell me what, Tell me what you do. What are your interests? What are your hobbies? What's something that you've really, you know, what, what, what, what characterizes you as just a human? Don't worry about this job. Like, what do you do? What do you do? What have you done? Like, those are the questions I think you would ask to. To sort of get there.

That's really cool. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. A great idea. Because then you also kind of get that. That feel for, you know, how broad their interests are if they've tried lots of different things, or if they say, oh, you know, I. I've been. Whatever you pick a skier, you know, since I was 7 years old or something like that. You know, something that's a little difficult to learn and get going and keep going. I think that's a great idea. I like it.

It really got me thinking. Yeah, it was like, oh, man, T shaped people. Like, this is. But then it got me thinking, of course, about, well, you know, who else do I like to hire? You know?

Yeah.

And I need, you know, the, the second thing on my list is I need adaptable people. Change.

Oh, yeah.

You know, so if I. And this is really hard to Suss out. In fact, I would love your, your thoughts and opinion on this. You know, I, I, I've certainly made the mistake of hiring people that are resistant to any kind of change. And the problem is you don't realize this on day one. You realize this on like day 300 is usually where it, it materializes. For me. It's like, because when somebody comes into a new job, they are expecting change, but then as they get entrenched and maybe this speaks more of me as a manager than, than anything else. Although it doesn't happen with everyone, so maybe that's good. But, you know, they, once they learn a way of doing something, it's like, okay, well that's great. Now you're doing that great. Do it that way for now. Go do all these other things. Learn all this other stuff. Now let's circle back around to that first thing. Let's change that. That's actually not the best. Let's, let's, let's adapt. And some.

I think it's good.

Well, with that.

Yeah. I also think, though, when we've discussed this on the show before, you all, you have to be careful about.

Not.

Getting people that want too much change. Right. Because then it's tough to keep people satisfied in a specific role, especially if it's something that just has to get done every day. And it's kind of, maybe it's a little more mundane or more administrative. Those people, I would argue, maybe that's where folks, you know, you place people that, I'm trying to say this nicely, that don't embrace change, that want the routine, that want to come in and, you know, work the numbers or do the data entry or do it every time. I have, I also, I love change. Like, as, you know, they talk about it here all the time, but it, if you have too much, too many people that want change all the time, I think it can be a bit chaotic. So it's a balance of, okay, what role are you hiring for? Okay, I know this role, this whatever. It's a salesperson or it's a technician. And we're going to have to change the way we do things all the time. New products, whatever it is, that person should, you know, be really open to change. But maybe the HR or the bookkeeping people shouldn't be as much.

Oh, I like that. Yeah. That fair. That's right. Yeah. Because you do.

It's a balance.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I always say, I worry when I realize that, you know, the business or some aspect of the business is on Autopilot, but they're actually need to be. But some should be. That's true.

Yeah. Some parts of it in the event. Because the same thing happens every day. The checks come in, hopefully, you know, the bills are paid, hopefully. And things happen on a routine basis. And there are lots. We, we are such champions of change here that I, I don't want to overlook that, that routine. And there's some people that are fabulously successful based on, you know, routine of if you figure out how to do something very well and you can do it over and over again, you know, more power to you. So, so it's a balance, I think is. I guess.

Well, I think even with that the ability to have either self awareness or the ability to listen to someone else. And that's very different than, you know, hearing someone else. But, but you're right, that routine stuff is fine except when it stops being fine. Right.

You know, can't get stale or they get stagnant.

Right. Yeah. Well, even, and even accounting, I mean I, if I look at the history of, of you know, even backbeat media, I mean it, yes, it's an old business in that it's 20 plus years old, but that's not that long in the, in the history of, you know, the modern world. But still in the course of that business, I mean, everything that we do in regards to our accounting has changed dramatically. You know, we didn't have the idea of a payroll service 20 years ago. It existed, but radically different. You know, ADP was the only game in town back then.

Right.

Right now there's, there are literally a dime a dozen, you know, and you can pick one that you can do from your phone. Well, we didn't have smartphones. It wasn't even a thing. Right. So, you know, depositing your checks is something that you do on a smartphone now, which obviously we didn't do back then. So the ability to recognize when adaptation needs to happen, even amongst the things that are mundane, you know, that is important. I think so. Yeah, you're right, it's a balance.

I agree it's not. And I think that a lot of it, like to your point, boils down to communication and knowing, hey, this change is coming, we're going to start doing our payroll this way and communicating with people. And some, you know, people in your organization may be like, awesome, let's go. And other people, like what? Wait, I don't know. So it's just understanding how to present it, how to, you know, work within those groups because, you know, each of each of them have their, have their value. I, I want to point out, you know, I really like this, this T shaped concept and trying to, you know, go deep into learning about, you know, what other, what people are interested in and see how deep they've gone. And it kind of. I, I have this favorite question in, in every interview and because we, we would interview a lot of people and I would always forget the detail. I know it's terrible to say, but I'd have their resume. But, you know, after I talk to, you know, 20, 25 people, I'd be like, all right, all right. What was that? Was that guy that or that lady?

You gotta ask him a qualifying question.

Yeah, so I, I always ask him if there's.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to hold your question. Ah, okay. Because. Well, I want to talk about our sponsor, which text expander. And the reason I want to talk about it right now is we're talking about how there's those of us that like change and those that don't. Well, those of us that like change generally. That means we don't like the routine stuff as much. And textexpander can help people like us to deal with those routine things that might be otherwise tedious, like answering emails. Especially when it's the same email that has come in over and over again that your customers ask this question. It's a simple answer. Why don't they just already know it? Right? We've all been there, or at least I have. And rewriting that email or digging into your email to find the last time you sent it and copy and paste, that's a pain in the neck. And it adds to your frustration because you don't want to do the mundane stuff, but you have to because they're your customers. Well, you can have your cake and eat it too, because textexpander is built for exactly that. What you do is you take that text that you're going to send those customers when they ask that routine question, and you put it into textexpander. And you do spend one time really crafting and honing it. And then the next email that comes in that's asking that same routine question. You don't have to get frustrated. You just solve it. You put pull up textexpander. You can either do it with a menu dropdown or you can even do it from your keyboard. That's why it's called textexpander. You type something short, it expands into your longer thing. You get to pick what you type. You type your little Snippet, boom, it expands. Now you've got the answer there. You don't have to proofread it because you've already done that. You hit send, you're done. Now you can feel happy about how efficient you were at answering the mundane, routine question. And you can share them with your team with textexpander for teams. So you gotta check it out. Go to textexpander.com podcast. That's where you can get 20% off your first year subscription there. And our thanks to Textexpander and the folks at Smile for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, tell me, what is your magic question?

My favorite question that I always ask to try to remember each person, I always jot some notes down is I just say, you know, if there's one thing you would like me to remember about you when I'm reviewing the potential hires, what would that be? And I, I've had some interesting things. Two, two that really are interesting answers. Two things that really stand out to me. One was, and I didn't put a lot, you know, I didn't know a lot about this before I talked to the person asking the questions, they said, oh, I was a, you know, studied to be a dental assistant, you know, and I didn't really go anywhere with that. I, I changed my career and went to the tech field. But I always remembered, I'm like, wow, you know, dental assistants, they work with such tiny little spaces and, and the tools they use are so fine, you know, everything. So I thought, this perfect, this is perfect for a technician that's going to be working on microelectronics. And I wound up hiring them. They were, they were awesome. And another one is a guy that, you know, worked for us for years. He was a train guy, model trains. And he said, oh, I build entire landscapes, you know, with trains and mountains. You've seen those before, right?

Yeah, of course.

And, yeah, and I, I just remember thinking that level of detail and talk about going deep, that's.

That there's your T shaped person.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it kind of reminds me or that that T shape concept is, you know, I think I was trying to get at that with this question of what is it about you that makes you stand out or makes you ideally suited, you know, to, to this position. So I, I think it's, it's, it's a really, it's a great concept because you don't, you don't want. I don't know what the word I'm looking for. You don't want Single, you know, you want your employees to be multi dimensional, right?

Yeah.

And have a lot of stuff going on and have great things in their life and, and to bring something to you, to, to your company and your culture as well. I think it's really, I think it's really important.

Yeah. Yeah. What do you want me to remember about you? I. I like this idea of it's up to you. What right now, I might remember other things, but it's up to you right now. Here's your chance. What do you want me to remember? Yeah, I am.

And I'll never forget those. Those two were. Because they. Oh, they really stuck with me, you know, and I've had people say, oh, I'm really into this. And I think also a lot of this. I always. There's a few things in hiring that I always ask myself when I'm getting involved in it. One is, you know, experience or education, you know, what's more important.

Right, right.

And the other one is personality. I'm always looking for this personality that I think it's critically important because you want them to have a positive output. They want, you know, you got to get them into your team and, and work well with other people. You got to think about their leadership potential and you got to kind of put yourself in the position of a customer interacting with this person. How's that going to be? Yeah, you know, I mean, we use this, you know, we've talked about it here all the time. Would they pass a beer test? You know, would you go have a beer or a cup of coffee with this person? Would you sit at a barbecue joint and have a conversation with them?

Right.

Well, that, that's a, that's somebody you probably like. Oh, okay, cool. If, if you want to. Well, let me, let me flip it. If you can't see yourself hanging out with that person, how good are they going to be with your customers?

Right. Oh, yeah.

And so personality, I think, is really, really important. The experience or education, you know, I always go back and forth with it.

Right. You know, education. The only reason I stop you there is because saying experience or education, I certainly am of the. I mean, I am of the. Not only the school of thought, but. But the school of experience is education. It's just a different type of education. Right. So did you, did you learn in school or did you learn elsewhere? Right. Like that. I get what you're asking. I mean, I totally understand what you're saying, but I just didn't want to pit these two things against each other. They really Are.

No, no.

Ideally you get way of learning. Right.

Yeah. And ideally you wind up with a candidate that's. Oh, I. This is where my foundation was. I went and I learned this and then I went and I've had these experiences like your T shape concept. I'm really into this and this helps me in this thing. But I have to say, after hiring, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people over the years, I would say in my opinion, experience, I lean on the side of experience being more important.

Same. Yeah, yeah. And that's, I think for me, I've always thought that that's. Because that's what I know more than the edge. I mean, I certainly.

Yeah.

Quite a bit of education, but me too. But I, I, you know, I, I didn't finish college. I, you know, wound up. I went to college at a weird time. I wound up going to the wrong place too. But the things that I wanted to learn, I. Which was computers and programming and stuff at the time, I knew more about than most of my professors at the time. Like that has changed now. I understand, of course. And I also, like I said, I was at the wrong school and I approached it all the wrong way. Like, there's a lot we could probably do. A whole episode about how not to go to college.

Well, you succeeded despite your education, right?

Well, that was. It is. I found that I was. It was the end of a summer. I had made more in that summer then friends that had graduated were making as their salaries for the first year. And I was like, oh crap, I got to stop working because I got to go back to school. I hate what. This is stupid. And I thought, wait, this is stupid. I can do this. I don't need school right now. And the world changes. I may not make that same decision today. Who knows. But the opportunities that were available to me were available to me and I took them and you know, so I, I definitely have experienced the value of experience. And so that's why I think I. Those types of people resonate with me because I don't know how to take somebody. I don't have the personal experience of having a PhD and then going into the business world. Right. There are people that do that and they're wildly successful.

Absolutely, totally fine. Of course.

But I don't have that experience. So I don't know how to take somebody like that and say, here's the next thing to do if I want you to do the things I want you to do. I don't know.

No, no. Well, we're bootstrappers Right. We've started these things over and over again on our own and we've just by sheer will made these companies succeed, is the way I look at it. Because it's hard. It's very difficult. And there's times where you're just like, man, this is really tough. But it doesn't mean you don't value those folks that like, have a Harvard Business School degree. That's awesome. It's great. And you know, it's wonderful.

But I can, I've learned things from those people for sure.

Yeah, yeah, of course. But in this, in this especially, I think in the small business world, that experience out there, whatever you're doing, you know, it, it goes to teaching you, like what you mentioned, adaptability and, and also, I think equally important problem solving, either in your day to life or at your. Another, you know, experience with a job that you had before customer service, you know, technical ability. Now, I also think that as a small business person, if you're on a budget, I think you can often find talent that maybe doesn't have the education but has the experience, and I think that you can fit them into your budget. It better.

Right, yeah.

Because I think that education, the higher you go, there's a, you know, certainly a perceived value that, okay, I'm gonna get paid more. Now, that's not always the case. Right, but. Because you still have to get out and prove yourself. But I think if you want to bring people along with you that add value to the business, sometimes that experience, you know, you can, you can get them in a little more, you know.

Yeah.

In your, in your budget.

More in your budget. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you're, and then I would argue, though, that with experience, you're also going to have to help them unlearn some of the ways they've been doing things. If that doesn't fit what you're, you know, the way you do things or the way you want your culture and your, your team to work, I mean, they have to be able to be adaptable enough to where they can go, oh, well, this is the way we used to do it. But I, I, you know, yeah, let's change because, or I'll change because this is the way you guys do it.

Right.

You don't want to get someone that's just like, well, I've always done it this way and so I'm going to keep doing it that way. That that's not going to work.

Right, right, right.

And then at the same time, you know, if you're looking for a cfo, you know, you know, a VP of sales and those. Those guys, your people. Great. That. That you may need to go after somebody that really has that education to get them in and understands all that stuff, and that's great. So it's just. I think it's position or it's more applicable, depending upon what they're going to do. And. But. But I wouldn't write one off over the other. You know, they both have their. Their virtues.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, and hiring is really difficult. And I don't think. No, it's not that I know it for a fact. You're never going to know how that person is going to do by having them sit through an interview or sit through multiple interviews. You know, you're just not going to know until you get them in the door and have them start doing the work. Some of the things I think you can do to mitigate, you know, and to lessen surprises is get your. The other employees involved. I used to always have one person from each department, even just sit in for a minute, a few minutes to talk to this person and give you another outside assessment. And I would. I would have them make sure they brought a question in. And so the. The technician, the tech department would say, hey, we got to come up with a question, you know, or two for this new prospect. They would come in, so. And they would get to ask a question, and, you know, I would get the question beforehand or, you know, our HR person. So we knew what they were going to ask, and it was two. Twofold. Right. It allows them to kind of get a feel for this person, especially if they're the ones that are going to have to work with them. And it also gets them involved in the hiring process, which I think is really value. Valuable for your team, your loyalty. Because they're like, oh, they're interested in what I think. They're not just popping bodies in my department and saying, deal with it.

Right, deal with it. No, they at least get to feel like they've had a say. You know, I learned something immensely valuable last year. I was on a local political committee. It was crazy. In fact, the results of it wound up getting national news. It was a mess. They thought we were waging the war on Christmas. It was crazy. Yeah, well, that was you. That was me. What we had was a PR problem. And I realized that, like, day one. And I also realized that, you know, as the town rolled it all out, I was not invited to Be. I mean, I'm not a town counselor, so I wasn't part of the spreading of the message. I was part of identifying the problem and proposing solutions. So I didn't get to be part of the rollout of the solutions, which was the problem. But what I learned on this committee, and it was a committee about inclusiveness in, you know, winter holiday festivals is really what it was. And one woman that was there who was part of a group that thought they were being excluded from this event, it really turned out that they just didn't understand what the event was because we were doing a bad job of promoting it. Bad pr. And these people never came, you know, that felt like they were excluded, when in fact, no, they weren't. And in the course of the committee meeting, which was only five of us, you know, this woman realized, oh, I probably should be going to this thing. I've essentially excluded myself because I only understood that the event was for other people, when, in fact, it's for everyone. It's like, right. So that's how we identified this. But she did say something that really struck a chord with me. She said, you know, we're gonna have. She's like, I can be the example in some way, the proxy for some folks that felt like they were excluded. She said, but I'm not those people. She said, the difference between me and them is that I'm here, and I get to feel like my voice has been heard.

Oh, yeah.

She says, even if the decision of the committee doesn't match what my personal recommendation would be, if I'm out, essentially, if I'm outvoted, I get it. I'm outvoted. But I know that everyone that's voting here in this room heard me, even if they choose to ignore or not go with what I said.

You had your say.

She had her say. She's like, all these other people, they're not here. They don't have their say. We're going to have a major problem. And it turns out she was absolutely right. But that really hit me, like, wait a minute. Really? You just want to be heard? I mean, she wants more than that. But at a basic level, it's like, if I feel like I've been heard, that deals with a lot. And it was like, you know, I never. I never thought about it that way, but I'm. You know, of course. I mean, we're humans. We're all that way.

Sure.

And. And your point about bringing those people into the interview, they. They probably will bring something valuable to the interview. But even.

Oh, they do.

Even if they don't, for sure, you.

Know, they still, they take something valuable away from it.

Bingo. Right? Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

From everybody. I mean, we would have the front desk folks that, you know, I mean, the, I hate to use the word lowest, but you know, the, the kind of. Well, I guess I will use it. The lowest level employee.

Yeah.

To the highest. You know, you want to get them involved in that process. And I got to the point where I kind of realized, you know, I hire a specific type of person and that's not always who we need. So I would kind of step out and just go, okay, here's our general manager. You bring in whatever department we're hiring for. They need to come in, they need to, you know, talk with this person. And then the, you know, they browned up, say, well, this is, these are the people that we think we should hire out of these, you know, here's their resumes or whatever. And I go, great. Which one? You pick. You know, it's your, you're going to work with them. But I would always remind them, I would say, look, when we, I feel that when we have to fire someone, it's a failure of management much more than sometimes it's not this way. But more often than not, it's a failure of management because we either hired the wrong person or we didn't get the per. The training the person needed to succeed in the role that we wanted them to do. I've seen it time and time again. Some people are just nuts and you know, that's not going to work. They're not going to work out. And you got to fire them.

Well, yeah, I mean, you could argue with those people. The failure of management is that you were unable to foresee that. But, but, but yes, you're right. Most of the time it's. Yeah, you're right. Most of the time it's failure management.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of interesting. But so the last thing I would. I'll leave you with a question because I've, I've never quite known how to ask a question that would answer this and that is I want to hire optimists. I'm just a firm believer and that's just a life changing mentality. What question or action can you, can you pick up from prospective hires? So could you ask a question that, that they would reveal themselves to be an optimist? You know, hey, is that glass half full or half empty? I don't think that works. But, but I don't know the answer to this, but I've been searching for this my entire life trying to come up with, and I have not succeeded. But the people that have succeeded for me have always been optimists.

Is that this T shaped person, Are they optimists in general? I mean, somebody that has the experience of going deep on something, you have to always. Not always, but I mean, more often than not. Like, the only way you get deep is by believing that there's something of benefit.

Yeah.

Maybe on the other side of all of this dang effort. Yeah. Right.

I, I, Yeah, yeah. And now, of course, you know, I'm looking for some, you know, two sentences that I can ask and they go, and they answer and you go up. Got it.

Okay.

But I don't know if there is.

I wonder who that, like, how would you, I mean, you know, could you ask them? I feel like you kind of have to propose a scenario.

Yes.

Or, or have them describe a previous scenario. Something where it was like a, basically a scenario of mostly failure and, and.

Have them see how they looked at it. Right.

See how they looked at it. Yeah, yeah. Because it's like, what do you take, what do you take away from this? You know?

Yeah.

And, and maybe set it up in a way where the leading question is towards pessimism. Right. So that the optimist is the one that's like, you know, honestly, that's not that bad. You know, here's. We can solve this, man.

Yeah, that's true. And so go ahead.

No, I think that's how you have to do it. Like, because if you lead them to optimism, you're going to get that answer.

But yeah, so you got to ask if you're, if you're listening to this and you've got this figured out and you agree with me that we should hire optimists, please send me how you, you know, an email. Send us an email how you've done this. Feedbackusinessshow.co. i would love to get your feedback and hear how you've done it and, you know, or come up to the small business support group at BusinessShow Co Facebook and, you know, post it there. I would love to share it because I just, I really don't know. And I want to know.

Yeah. Oh, that, that's, I mean, for people like us, that, that's the, that's the million dollar question. Or it's some worthwhile question. I don't know what the value should put on it, but, but I think.

It makes a big difference.

It makes a Big difference.

Yeah. And hey, we'd also, you know, like all podcasts, we're going to remind you to please go leave us a five star review up on the Apple Podcast directory, the podcast app on your Mac or wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it's, you know, whatever director you pull from or on YouTube. You can also go up and leave us a review because we post these to YouTube. Makes a big difference and it really helps us bring the show to you.

It really does. Yeah. Indeed. Indeed. Thanks for listening, folks. Thanks for your answers to the questions. See, I'm being optimistic here. This isn't a tough to solve. We will just ask our listeners and they'll tell us it's totally fine, man. That's. Yep. You know, maybe that's it. Maybe there's something to this, right? Maybe it's a. There's a meta. If we zoom out, maybe we already have the answer. Because that's optimism for you, right?

We might. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know, man. Well, we'll find out. In fact, we'll keep doing this show until we find out and then after that we'll keep doing it anyway. That's. That's how it's gonna work. Like he said, go listen to us, you know, subscribe to us on YouTube. We would love that.

Yeah.

Review us everywhere that you can think to. We would love to have that too. It really does make a huge difference. Thanks to our sponsor textexpander.com podcast. And thanks, Shannon. Good, good show, man.

Thank you, Dave.

Yeah, it is the charmed life we live here. We'll see you next week.