How To Hire The Right People & Build A Real Business

Hey, capitalists. Welcome to Capitalism tv. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. In today's episode, we're going to talk about building teams, making your first hire, and building a real organization. This is one of the most commonly asked questions that I'm asked about, so we're going to navigate this together. Let's jump in.

A few years ago, I made the conscious choice that I was willing to suck at this until I didn't suck anymore. That I was willing to go through the hard work of not just being a salesperson or an entrepreneur, but learning how to be a leader, how to bring people in who had different skill sets than me, bring in individuals who could complement what I brought to the table so that we could build something really, really exciting. Now I had to seek out mentors and to seek out guidance on how to do this. And three or four years in, I still only consider myself an adequate leader. At this point, I'm still finding my way. And so throughout this episode, we're gonna reference some people way smarter than me, but I'll also share a little bit about what I've learned along in the journey. To kick things off, I want to share with you a clip from somebody that I just admire the heck out of. His name is Brian Lee. He is the entrepreneur that I wanna be when I grow up. Brian Lee is the founder of LegalZoom, the founder of the Honest Company, the founder of Art of Sport, and. And he has three or four billion dollars companies on his resume. And so when I had the chance to sit down with him, I asked him, what is the job of the person at the top? Is the customer the focus of the business, or is the team the focus of the business? Here's what he had to say. What do you think is the job of the entrepreneur? You mentioned what the job of the upper manager is. What do you think that. What do you consider your job and your responsibility once a company is grown?

I think my job and responsibility.

Is really making sure that the team feels empowered.

I think it's making sure that the culture stays intact. I keep talking about culture because I think it's so important. Right. Like someone told me once, I remember when I was growing up, you know, I worked at kfc. That was my first job is at Kentucky Fried Chicken working the drive through. And I remember that my.

Is that because Colonel Sanders came to you and said, I have an idea?

No, it was the only job I could get in high school. And so I remember the manager instilled in me that customer comes first. The customer comes first. And you've all heard this before, the customer comes first. And as I built companies and looked back, I totally disagree with that. I love the customer, but the team comes first, right? In my book, the team comes first because if you treat the team right, if you treat your company right, that's going to end up and the results are going to be happier customers. And so for me, I focus a lot on whether or not the team is happy, whether or not they're gelling, whether or not they're executing and how we could get them even tighter knit.

So it's your job to make sure the team is happy. Do you consider it your job to lead the team or do you expect them to be self led?

I do lead the team when they need to be led.

So I do like to empower as many executives as I can. But at the same time, every now and then you're gonna have to call a shot and that's when you have to kind of step up and do that.

If you listen to Gary Vaynerchuk, you might have heard him say in the when you hire someone, people think that they work for you, but the truth is that you work for them. And what he is saying in that is it is your job to lead them. It is your job to bring out the best in them. Or as Brian said, it is your job to ensure that the morale and the chemistry is there so that they can serve the customer. That's the only way that you ever have the freedom that you want. Going into this business, you don't get free because by doing everything yourself and having a 40 hour workday. Otherwise you're stuck in this box of checking Amazon sales, managing Amazon sales, running Facebook ads, answering customer service. You're stuck in this soul sucking job that you call a business. And guess what? You can't sell that because no one wants to buy your problems. And this is the bottleneck that a lot of entrepreneurs run into. So if you want to get out of that Ruth, you have to now serve other people and go to bat for them. It's an interesting paradox that the way that you get free is by empowering other people, by making the people around you the hero. You getting out of the way so that your job is no longer necessary. Do you get that? So many entrepreneurs think that their skill set is so rare or so valuable that they can never step away from the company. This is often true with Amazon. I almost said Amazon's channel managers because that's what so many of you are. If you're selling products on Amazon and you're doing all the Amazon Ninja ry, then you're really just an Amazon sales manager. Other people can learn that, and you have to go find that person and empower them so that your skill set is irrelevant to the business. So how do you do that? How do you start to bring in people that can set you free? To make this simpler, I narrow my hiring decisions to three questions. I simply, when I'm evaluating a person, especially when it's down to a few candidates, I simply say, have they done it before? Do they have a Rolodex of people that they can call when they run into issues? If not, guess who the person is that they're going to call. Me or you? And number three, are they passionate about what you as a company are up to? Not are they passionate about the results, but, like, are they really jazzed about what the company is doing? Those three things, that's your clear signal. When you've got somebody who has done it in the past and knows how to do it again, they come with a Rolodex of people that they can count on, and they're really jazzed to bring their skillset and their Rolodex to your organization. Green lights across the board. That's when you've got a winner. Should you hire fast or hire slow? We've heard both, right? Well, I sat down with AJ Vaynerchuk, who is the brother of Gary Vaynerchuk, and AJ was very much in control of bringing new people into VaynerMedia and his new project, VaynerSports. So I wanted to hear from him how he builds teams. And this was highly relevant to those in the audience who had one or two person organizations. And so it'll really benefit you. Let's watch.

I did it two very different ways. VaynerMedia started predominantly with my friends from high school and college. Yeah.

So that always works out right. So the big takeaway is hire your friends from high school and college.

So I did that with VaynerMedia, and honestly, that was just because they were people that I knew were smart and that I could trust and because social media was so the wild, wild west, and because Gary was at the forefront of it, we could afford to hire people without a certain skill set. In the early days, because we were figuring it out.

With VaynerSports, it was the opposite. Like I mentioned, we needed somebody with a certified license in order to do that business. So what I would say is the most important approach I took in starting Vaynersports with the team building side, to answer your question, that I would do and recommend in every way was I took my time.

I probably spent in total 10 to 15 hours of interviewing the same two people over a course of six months and ask around and researching. Like, I was fortunate I had the luxury of not having to start right away. My actual plan when I left VaynerMedia was to take time off, so I had the leverage. I wasn't dying to get into the business. I thought I was going to take a year off. So I spent an inordinate amount of time making sure that I liked and believed in and wanted to be in business with the people that I started vaynersports with and then really kind of took the same approach with hiring this team. VaynerSports is a much smaller business as an industry than VaynerMedia was. And so it's that willingness and that patience to build slowly because if you don't know these people prior, you want to take your time and make sure the chemistry is there.

When I started this journey, I sorely, sorely underestimated the value of chemistry on the team. And it was a lesson that I had to get kicked around a few times in order to learn. Sometimes you can bring in somebody with an all star resume, but if they don't jive with the rest of the team, then there's going to be breakage, there's going to be, there's going to be disharmony. And the truth is, none of us perform the best when we're on our own. We perform the best when we're with a group of people that we really, really trust. This is a little bit of a silly story, but I really discovered this when I was doing improv in Chicago. The training was so much about learning to trust the people that you were on stage with. It had very little to do with the technique of improv. It had everything to do is, do you feel comfortable knowing that the person across the stage from you has your back? Does the person next to you get your humor so much that you can pick it up really quickly? If that's not the case, then you're operating from this closed fear mentality. And that's such the case with teams too. If there's not a mutual trust among all members of the team, then everyone operates from this scarce, fearful place and no one performs well when they're in that place. So the thing that you have to watch out for when you're building your team is, does this person get you? Does this person Jive with your style of doing business. It's not about going and getting the highest performers from every team. It is about getting the people that will be the highest performers on your team. You might remember the scene from the movie Miracle where the coach is putting together the all star hockey team and his advisors are like, you didn't pick the best players. And he said, I don't need the best players, I need the best team. That's when you're free, when you can go out and get what the team needs, when you can build the right team. It's not just about going and getting the people who killed it at that team because that team had other resources, they had other backgrounds, they had other sets of experiences. It's about what your team and how you work. We're all building our businesses around a few core skill sets that you brought to the table with or the opportunity that you sought out. So you need a different set of people and a different set of experiences in order to complement that. It's the only way that you get free. A big misconception that leaders and entrepreneurs have is that you're hiring people for a job or for a role. That's not the case. Where we are the highest performers is in our zone of genius. That area where things are effortless, where we're in flow, where we're creative. You are not hiring people to check things off the box. You are hiring people for their genius. Susie Batiz is a friend of mine and she echoed this when she was talking about how she leads Poo Pourri, which is a multi hundred million dollar company. It's the bathroom spray that you or someone you know has in their house. And Susie talks about how she used to think that she was hiring for jobs or. But really what she has realized is the team performs best when everyone is in their zone of genius.

I used to.

Have employees to do a job, so I wanted something out of them. And now I more think of collaborating with genius, with people living in their genius.

Like I love collaborating everything here. Most of things are collaborated with artists. Right? I love playing with artists, but I didn't realize that's what I'm doing in my business. That's the best way to do in business.

That's such an aha.

It's such an aha. And I really hadn't thought about it. I knew I was choosing people to be in their genius more, but I didn't understand until this moment. So thank you. But it's when someone is in their genius.

I get to be in my genius, and there's no frustration and there's no tension in my experience, or very little.

Yeah.

When people aren't in their genius and you're trying to get something out of them that's not in their genius, there's a lot of tension.

You got to this point by working really hard by yourself, but the way that you transition out of that and you have your freedom again is by empowering and bringing in other people. You can't do that by yourself. You need other people to be able to set you free to live the life that you want.

And.

And the way you do that is by setting them free to be in their zone of genius. That's what it requires for you to be a real leader, for you to have real freedom, to have a real business. You have to give other people what you want. You want freedom, you want to be in your zone. You want to be a high performer. You have to create that environment for somebody else so that you can do it for yourself as well. Entrepreneurship can be lonely, and especially when you're at the helm and there are other people counting on you. And the way you make it through that is by hiring the right people and empowering them to be in their zone of genius so that you're navigating that experience and that journey together. If you're playing this game alone and you don't want to do that anymore, we have a community that is navigating the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur, being an investor, being a capitalist together. It's called the One Percent. You can join us over@capitalism.com the Number One. That's our monthly community where we are opening opportunities together. We are supporting one another. We support each other's products and each other's businesses, and it really is a community of people who are navigating this journey of entrepreneurship and this journey of capitalism together. We'd love to have you inside over@capitalism.com 1. If you enjoyed this video, we'd love to hear from you. Take 30 seconds, please, and just let us know how we're doing and what you'd like to see in the comments. And if you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to the channel and we'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for watching it.