The Box Exercise: Hiring Your First Employees and Building Systems

Foreign.

What we're going to do now, what we're going to do now is I'm going to walk you through an exercise that we walk through for starting this process of starting to get moving towards building this team and out of the just total mess that's going on. So for this, I need a volunteer. And I need a volunteer, preferably somebody who is in either a solopreneur or has a small team. And you are just exceptionally lost in your business by that means you are doing everything. You are. It is just a mess of a process and, you know, you need to start clearing this up. So. So I need a volunteer.

I love people that are like, you're on the end.

What's your name?

You have to admit it.

Come on, what is it, Gary? Jared. Jared. Let's give it up for Jared.

Jared, Jamie Tardy. Jamie Tardy.

Jared. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. So, Jared, have a seat.

I'm going to be interviewing you.

Now.

Keep in mind we usually spend like 60 to 90 minutes going through this process, and I'm going to try and get it done in like 18 or 20. So we're going to give kind of the Cliff Notes version. I'm going to try and race through. Is it J A R E D?

Yeah.

Okay. So the company of Jared. Now, Jared, what is your role in the company? What is your title in the company? Or what would you like it to be?

I just want to direct people.

I just realized he doesn't have a mic. Can you get a mic for Jared?

I can't pull this one up.

Someone. Thanks. So I do everything. I mean, right? Is CEO appropriate? I mean, what I want to be is like the head of the company is called the what?

CEO.

The CEO. All right, cool. Thanks, guys. Hello. So Jared is the CEO. Let's give it up for the mic runners.

So Jared is the CEO. And what are the tasks of the CEO?

Well, for me right now, I.

What I mean is, from a CEO, when you are in the pilot or the captain of the ship's position, seeing the future, cool. Being a psychic.

So seeing future, what else are these tasks of the CEO? And if anything comes up during this process and you want to throw them at Jared, Jared will be the filter. But if you want to throw them out at Jared and then he's going to feed him over to me on the board.

I'm just. I'm only going to listen to you, though, Jared.

Okay, keep coming, guys. Strategy. I like the strategy. Steering the ship, the director, the man who's Making sure that. Or the guy or the person who's making sure that everything. Or the guy or the woman. The person.

Us.

I do ufc. You know, you can't.

Yeah, well, you know, I don't.

Good.

Yeah. Directing the culture of the company.

I'm going to call that hiring.

Okay.

Okay. So this. This is good, right? CEO is. Their job is to see the future, set the strategic direction and hiring. Fair enough. It's a good start. All right, let's move on. What are. If you're not. When you're. Would it be fair to say that you are not always operating in this area? In these areas, yes. Okay, so what other hats. When you're not wearing your CEO hat, what other hats do you usually play?

Marketing.

Okay. And what falls in your business under marketing?

Royal product design and product development. And.

Can I ask what his business is? I don't even know. What is your business?

We sell physical products on Amazon.

Oh, what a surprise. Okay.

Good. Good job.

Awesome. All right, keep going. What else falls under marketing? You can throw them at Jared if you want to help him.

Yeah, copywriting, definitely.

Keep coming. Keep going.

Advertising, Landing pages. Advertising.

Yeah. What type of advertising?

What advertising do you do?

Online advertising.

I mean, thank you for narrowing that down.

Yeah.

Facebook, Amazon ads.

Okay, so Amazon pay per click.

It's really basic, man.

It's cool.

I'm up here. It's all messed up.

Yeah, but you said you're completely lost in the details of your business, so throw these details back at me. We're organizing. So what are these other things that fall under marketing?

Yeah, Email blast. If I had an email list.

And think about what you're doing. Like, last week, like, what were you doing last week for marketing?

He's like, crap.

The only thing I do for advertising is I put it on Thomason.

Okay.

And I get out.

Those are bloggers, right? Yeah, I don't know anything about Amazon.

So, yeah, those are bloggers.

All right, cool. So when you're not wearing your marketing hat, what is one of the other hats that you wear in your company?

We fulfill products, so I fill products myself.

And so you're doing your own fulfillment?

Yeah. Okay, well, I do both, but yeah.

Okay, so what are you doing regularly under fulfillment?

We package the products in a mailer and ship and use the post office.

And you're doing this yourself? Yep. Okay, so you're. You're sending or, like, sending packages?

Yep.

Okay.

Okay. What else are you doing under fulfillment?

Yeah.

What's that?

Send palace to fba.

Are you still managing Shipping and. Yep.

Managing shipping.

Okay.

What else we do? I do. We do all the customer service.

I mean, so we're gonna make that a different hat.

Okay.

And you can throw them at me now if it's fresh in your mind, but let's stick under. Keep under fulfillment, if possible.

Yeah. Inventory management, definitely. Thank you, everybody, for your help.

Keep throwing them at me. Jared, what else falls under fulfillment, if anything? You can tell me if you're done.

I'm done.

Okay, let's move over to customer service then. What are some of the things that fall under customer service?

We answer the emails. I answer the emails.

Okay.

Solve any of the problems that they have.

So I'm gonna call that fires, because there's always a fire that comes up. Right. Go on.

Refunds.

Yeah, refunds.

Okay.

Feedback, definitely.

We have an automated system that asks for feedback.

Okay, so you're managing some tool or software here.

Yes.

Okay.

Are you getting reviews?

We are.

Okay. And that. Would that be fair to put under customer service in your company?

Yeah.

Okay. What else would fall under customer service, if anything?

Yeah. I mean, just with all the relationships with our customers, anything.

That's a pretty generic thing under customer service, so I'll leave it. That's about it. Okay. What other hats? When you're not operating in a CEO's position, a fulfillment position, customer service position, or a marketing position, what other hats do you wear in your company?

Yeah, finance. All the accounting and bookkeeping and balancing.

Everything.

All that finance. So bookkeeping.

What else, Jared?

Yeah. Budgeting.

What does that mean exactly in your business? What does that mean?

Do I have the money to buy inventory or not?

That's budgeting. Do I have the money to stay in business or not?

All right, now, if we had the full 90 minutes, I'd go way into this, deeper. But in the interest of time, we'll just say budgets go on.

Cash flow management.

Thank you.

I need you to tell me what this means in your business.

Well.

I just make sure that I can keep running my business. So whenever I have events like this, we just always go through our expenses and our income and determine what we can do to make it all work.

Okay, so I'm pretty much it.

Totally interrupting. But who's we?

We.

I have one. I have one person who helps me, and that's my spouse. Oh, yes, she's right.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

She helps me out a lot. Cool.

Now.

What'S that? Honest question. Do you both want to be in the business?

For now?

Yeah. I want what you want, not what is. Okay, now what is it? That is what you. Is what you want for one of you to exit?

Yes.

Okay, cool.

I want to get her out of the business as soon as we can.

And what. And.

Where'S your wife? She's over there.

Wife. Do you want that too?

Okay, great. So that's where we're gonna go with. That's what we're gonna go with.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah.

So what else. What other hats would you wear in this business? I'm tempted because there's so much I want to go into really deep on these points. But let's get a high level.

Yeah, we research. I research, sorry. New products, product development.

I think we have right here. We have it under marketing and we could massage this. But let's leave it here for now. What. What other hats?

Well, legal. We. I hired a company to do any legal. But I get advice from a legal person. So any problems that I have with registering the brand, I. I do as well, you know.

Okay.

Registering the business.

I'm actually just in the interest everything. I'm actually going to put it up here because that's kind of just strategic decisions.

Yeah.

So we're going to just let it fall under here. In the interest of time, is there anything that you're doing regularly that requires. And let's include your wife on this since we want to get. Since we want to separate that we want to cut those ties eventually. Not with the wife, but.

What's your name, by the way? Kelly. Kelly. What things are you or Kelly stuck in right now where there is just mess and it takes up a lot of your time and. Or energy.

The most of time that we take is fulfilling the orders and the customer service.

Okay, so these two points here, fulfillment and customer service.

Yes.

Just so we make sure we've got all of the junk on the board. Is there anything else? And Kelly, you can shout this out too. Are there any other hats that you guys wear that are taking up time and energy from your business?

I think we got it covered. Pretty.

Kelly, would you say that this is at least 80% of your business? Okay, cool.

So.

Okay.

Ryan, can I step in? I know I do this exact same thing. And so now I'm just going to interrupt. So it's hard to just sit at one place and just think of them all. So record for two days. I make my clients do this. They hate me. But in 15 minute increments, record what you're actually doing or get like rescue time or something like that and put that on your site. On your computer. That way you can start to get all the other pieces. Because I'm sure there are other things too. And he just. We can't think of them right now.

So, Jared, you are the CEO of your company, correct?

Yes.

Okay, so in a perfect world, you'd be operating as the CEO, seeing the future, setting strategic direction and hiring, correct?

Yes.

All right. We're on the same page. That's what the CEO does. What are you actually doing?

Everything else.

All right, so stand up with me.

Are you sending packages? Yes. Shipping?

Yes.

Inventory?

Yes.

Are you doing your own bookkeeping?

Yes.

Are you setting budgets? Yes. Do you get reviews?

Yes.

Do you get. Do you manage tools?

Yes.

Feedback? Yep. Refunds? Fires?

Yep.

Send emails? Yep. Marketing? Product design. Is that you?

Yep.

You have anybody who's doing the design, you do it yourself.

I did hire somebody recently do to do this specific design.

Oh, great.

But I have to manage him to get what I want. I have to tell him what the design needs to look like.

Just for fun. I'm gonna let you have that one. Okay, we'll skip it. Are you doing the development?

Yes.

Copywriting yourself?

Yes.

Landing pages? Yes. You build them yourself, leadpages, but you do them. Yep.

In that tool.

Okay. Amazon, apc, ppc. Yes. You're doing that yourself?

Yes.

Okay. Sending out emails, if you had a list.

Yes.

That's you. And working with bloggers?

Yes.

You do that yourself?

Yes.

Okay, so that's not product design. That's the rest. Okay. And. Oh, we forgot finance. Oh, no, we got it already. Dang it. So you're doing all of this and you are doing the CEO stuff up here, right?

Yes.

Are you seeing the future?

I hope so.

I mean, so you're not.

You're not really doing. You're not really setting. You're so in this that you're really not looking out into the future? I'm.

Yeah. Not enough. Okay. I mean, I could maybe a day or two.

Do you.

I see the future instead of like a year. You know what I mean? Like a long term plan.

Are you setting any strategic direction? Do you guys have like a target 3, 612 months out? Do you have a stake in the ground saying of where you guys are going next?

Not a stake in the ground? I have a vague idea.

Okay. And how many people have you hired?

Well, sort of one. Full time employees? None.

So it's like sort of one.

Sort of one, yeah.

So.

This is what you're actually doing, right? Right.

So this is where the CEO operates and this is where you Are you're the red line? Pretty much everything but product design. So how's your CEO doing?

Well, I'm doing okay. I'm not. I'm not where I want to be. I'm not doing my strengths.

So let me, let me. Let me try differently. This is Bill. Bill is your CEO and he's doing redline stuff. How's your CEO? How's Bill doing?

He's overwhelmed completely.

So let me. Why don't you help him out?

Yeah. Bill ain't doing his job. Your company doesn't have a CEO, so.

No wonder we're busy and overwhelmed. Now, of course, I'm only talking to Jared. None of you can relate with any of this, right?

You're in good company, Jared. Okay. Thanks for playing along. Sure. So, Bill, the CEO ain't doing his job. So how is this company gonna do if they don't have a CEO? How long are they gonna be around? Would it be reasonable to think that whoever is doing this redline piece, since they don't have a CEO who's leading the charge, would worry that it's all gonna go away one day because there's nobody actually leading the charge of where we're going. So this guy redline has a lack of job security because he doesn't have a CEO telling him where they're going. And we all know that naturally, if there is not this being set in a direction, if there is not leadership, if we aren't going anywhere, then activities are naturally going to fall to the lowest return items because fires are going to come up, and fires are going to be put out.

Faster than anybody is going to lead the charge. Can you relate with this? So we tend to fall down to the lowest ROI activities. So this is the prescription.

What would you say.

Are the lowest ROI activities, meaning which things on here do not put money in your bank account?

Refunds, for sure.

Okay.

What else? What else does not put money in your bank account?

Well, I mean, there's a lot of things that don't directly put money in the bank account. Tell me which ones they are directly managing. My inventory doesn't directly put money in my bank account. I mean, it's important, obviously, but. Okay. Managing the tools doesn't put money in my bank account. Okay, what else? You could probably click them all. You could probably.

How about over here? I mean, this.

Sending packages would be probably the. The most thing that puts money in my account.

So you get paid to go to the post office.

I get paid when they. When I click that, it's shipped Great.

So that's sales.

Yeah.

Do you get paid to go to the post office?

No, I don't. Not oh specifically.

Oh, okay. Well, then we'll add that one. What about shipping stuff? Do you get paid to manage shipping?

No.

Oh, okay. Now we're getting somewhere. Anything else that doesn't add money to your bank account?

All of them.

I'd argue that some of these actually do.

For example, I'd say if they're in. In a vacuum, if we've got somebody who's leading the charge to increase reviews and conversions, that would be something that puts money in your bank account. If you have somebody who's emailing a list that puts money in your bank account. If you've got somebody who is growing the sales and driving down the cost for pay per click and outside channels, that would be putting money in your bank account. We on the same page now. There's certain things like running to the post office does not put money in your bank account. It probably takes money out of your bank account. Yeah. So while this is sales related because it came as a result of sales, it doesn't put money in your bank account. These things do drive sales bookkeeping and managing budgets does not put money in your bank account.

Cool, Cool.

So let's start here because it's a really easy one. Our role now, our objective is to take these hats that don't have activities that drive sales and drive the bank account. And before I do that, we want Bill to be here.

I'm still calling him Bill.

You can call me Bill.

Okay, Bill.

We want Bill here. We want you operating here. Because anything that would fall outside of here is a threat. It's now removing the CEO from running the company. In the same way, we want to box in.

This as a role, meaning if this person does anything that falls outside of here, it's now a threat.

Now, this is at first, this is messy and we'll go into what that looks like. But for now, we want ideally this to be its own box, and we want customer service to be locked into its own box. And we want marketing to be in its own box. And we want finance to be in its own box. And if this person, if marketing person starts to do customer service, they have now stopped being the marketing leader and they have become the customer service person. What do you think this does to this person? It throws them into this. Which throws them into this. And now we've got more red lines all over the place. And since it's multiple people, it's going to be Multiple colors, it's going to be an even bigger clusterfuck. So that's what it's going to look like if these people fall outside of their boxes. But if they stay in, then you are here to lead the charge. And these are your highest dollar an hour activities because we're actually building something lasting. You guys getting this? This making sense? Yep. So this is how we start to identify what we need to do in order to break free of our business. There are a few caveats to this. If, for example, you say, you know what.

Look, Ryan, you're handsome, but I don't really need a full time person here. I don't really need to do anything with this. Bookkeeping is kind of a pain and a half, so. But I'm not gonna hire somebody to do bookkeeping. But budgets like we worry about, that's a case by case decision. I'm not gonna put someone in this box. Okay, great. So what we can do is we box in. Let's get a different color.

We're gonna box in just this piece. This is a freelancer. If it doesn't fall under an entire hat, then this is just a freelancer. And look, I have had somebody manage bookkeeping for me. Same girl for like eight years. And she manages all the books. And I pay her $50 an hour. And she works six hours a month, pays bills, pays affiliates, does P and L, gets everything ready to send over to the accountant for end of the year stuff. I never think about books unless it's from, you know, we need to evaluate what the numbers look like. Where do these expenses go? I don't. I never think about it. If there's a mystery expense and my assistant doesn't know where it goes, I might have to give input. But I'm never doing this for. For a total of $300 a month. So this is like, I don't have a finance person. I just have this. So if this is not a full time thing, we can spin this off to a dollar per hour person or freelancer who's now taking this off the same thing here. If right now where you are in your business is, look, inventory is really something that Kelly and I need to stay on top of. And maybe if we stripped out a lot of this other stuff and Kelly was just worrying about this, she could spend fewer hours and she was just worrying about this, it would clear up some room for me to start managing these other boxes. So that means first thing you do when you go back to Utah, when you go back to Utah is You're going to be at the very least boxing this in. Because for $8 an hour, $10 an hour, $15 an hour if you want, the fastest package shipper ever is taking all this off your plate and running and doing this on a per shipment basis or a per hour basis. Freeing up, just for example, versus Kelly to only worry about this. And now we have two boxes off of the CEO's plate. So now we're getting some clarity now. And this. So Matt and I did this for a while. This process came out of late night frustration of why is nothing getting done, why are we all on the same page but nothing is moving? And went for a two hour walk. Just frustrated as all get out. Pulling out old journals and realizing that I had started to kind of massage this process. And we did it in my old business and it worked beautifully. And all of a sudden I got to operate way more here than I was down here. But we weren't doing it anymore. So we started to reverse engineer this. And when I, when I put it like this, Matt and I looked at it was like, get it now. I understand why we're all frustrated and stressed and nothing gets done. Get it now. Because we don't have CEOs and leaders. We call ourselves CEOs and leaders, but we're really bad CEOs and presidents. There's actually nobody in that role. We're doing all this instead. So we start to move all this off. And for a while it was okay for us to say, for a short time, we're gonna wear multiple hats. For a short time, I am gonna be in ours. I think it was, I'm gonna be CEO and marketing guy. I'm okay. It's not perfect. I don't want to be marketing guy forever. But as we're building, I'm okay wearing two hats for now. And then Matt was product development and product management, inventory, all that. He's going to wear those two hats for now and we can fill in the rest. But eventually we're on the same page that we got to be up here. So it's okay to wear certain hats at certain times, multiple hats at certain times, as long as we're clear about what's in the box. And if at any point I step out of the hats I wear and come to customer service, Red Rum. We, we have.

I have now stopped doing my job. I have now started redlining the whole thing, and that's a problem. Does this make sense so far?

Yeah.

So what out of this are action items for you to start clearing up these boxes.

Well, like you said, this is gonna be my first action item when I get home. This is gonna be easy for me to implement. The hiring process, when we're talking about that, is important to me because I've been trying to think, oh, yeah, I can really do this. Just how do I get the right person to handle this?

Great. So I can't give you a magic wand for good people to show up, but I can give you the first step. For all of you, the first step here is when you've got a box that you need to clear off. You are to write a job description for this box. You have all of the tasks in here of what that person will be doing, which makes it really, really easy for you to start mapping out what that job is. How many of you are like, I know I need help, but I don't know what I need help with.

You get clear by writing the description of what this box is. Now, at first, you'll hate me for this because you'll bring in somebody eventually and. And you'll be like, I gotta take. This is what invariably happens.

What do I do in this situation? Damn it. All right, here's what do this, this, this. I'm gonna go operate in my marketing box. Fucking Ryan. And then they're gonna say, what do I do in this situation?

And at first it'll feel like another thing, but by day five, as they're starting to develop these, all of a sudden, this box starts to get off of your plate, and it gets locked in. Make sense?

Yep.

So, first task. Write a description for the first box that you are going to hand off to somebody.

Step two, Write a process.

For one of the points underneath.

The headline.

We write how we do the process. This is the way to start building clarity systems and processes in the businesses that you run. We like to hear about systems and processes, and we're like, oh, great, that sounds like two years of my life. Thank you very much. But we can start the process by getting clear on what the role is and what the process is. And now it becomes a little bit more clear about what the right person looks like, because we have them described and we have some processes and we can know. Does this process make sense to you? Are you capable of doing this process? And if so, we have a candidate. Does it make sense? Does this provide some clarity for you and Kelly about how to start getting things off your plate so that your company has a CEO again?

Yeah, it does. Cool.

Give it up for Jared.

Thank you, sir.

Good to meet you.

Turning off microphones is not in my box.

I have people for that. Do this.

I got people.

But you do, though. Wait, let me say this really quick. So it's really interesting to see Ryan's trajectory too. Cause when I first interviewed Ryan, he was like, oh, you can come do an interview at my apartment, blah, blah, blah. And then we just did another interview. He's like, come to my office. You can meet my team. They're amazing. I was like, oh, my gosh, you can see how much you've grown, like, insanely.

And that only happened as a result of clarity. That only happened as a result of getting very, very clarity on what it is that we wanted to do and where we were going and who we needed and that. I told the story yesterday, but one of our team members, Chris, said, I need you to put a stake in the ground and tell us where we're going, because I can build anything, but I have no idea what you want me to build. And that was a cool moment for me to realize. I really, I haven't set that. I haven't been operating in the strategic direction piece. And that brought so much clarity and trajectory to our team and where we were going.

I think that's what's so interesting is as you start moving forward, these things will come up. Don't be like, oh, well, then I have to know that in advance. You won't know that until someone on your team necessarily goes, oh, and then you need to tell us. Right. Ideally you would. Don't get me wrong. Ideally you'd be like, I'm the CEO. This is the way we go.

But.

But I'm sure as you were going through, you're like cobbling it together and figuring it out as you go and getting better and better and better. Because most of the time you guys see this and you're like, it's kind of scary hiring somebody. And like, cash flow. We were just all really worried about cash flow and how do we do all of that? So how did you deal with all that?

Yeah, well, first of all, if you can't afford to pay someone $20 an hour to take this off your plate, something else is very, very wrong. Something else in your business is you're not thinking on high value activities enough. So if $20 an hour to start moving things off your plate is a threat to the books, something else is very, very broken. Because the stuff at the top line of it is $1,000 an hour is $10,000 an hour. What is releasing a new product, selling A new product, working with, getting your customer base to rally behind a product. What is that all worth? At first there's grunt work and then it staves off and it's immeasurably valuable. It's immeasurably profitable on an per hour basis. So the longer you spent, you as CEO spend doing $20. Just to think of the arbitrage there. If you have activities that are $5,000 an hour and you're spending time doing things that are $20 an hour, you are losing $4,980 per hour that you do that thing.

And when you look at it that way, by me and the, the initial process is to say, you know, it's quicker if I just handle this. I'm just going to handle this this one time. I'm just gonna take care of it. If you recognize that you taking care of it for the next half hour is actually costing your business $2,490. Oh.

It would actually be better for me to pay somebody the $20 an hour for me to do that.

That was the shift in that type of thinking.

Well, it's funny millionaires that I think every single millionaire I've ever interviewed said they wish they had hired sooner.

Amen. Right?

And it's scary and I totally understand that a thousand times over. And like I, when you hire somebody, you're like crap, right? But thankfully we now have upwork and all these other places where you can get places that are freelancers and you can attempt it. You don't need to hire a full time person with benefits or anything like that. There is no, thankfully, nowadays there is no huge jump. We can take little baby steps. I hired a VA who apparently had hired another VA to do her work. She was so crappy. It was so bad. Like I didn't know what the heck I was doing. Now I have a full time team that are utterly amazing and you learn, you mess up over and over and you're like, that was dumb. That was really dumb. That was dumb again. And then you get better and better and better. So tell us a time or two or three that you were dumb, Ryan, in this process because we want to feel better about ourselves knowing that you're dumb in this process too. You're welcome.

I've probably felt the dumbest when I ignore big problems and don't address them. And that, and in this context, it means keeping people too long.

Ooh. Okay.

So Travis said something to me. I don't know when, but, but I heard, I heard his voice in My head the other day at 3am where he said that stress is the result of us ignoring something. We get stress when we are ignoring problems. And.

A couple weeks ago at 3am Esther started screaming.

And I get up, I change the diaper, she's still screaming. And now I'm angry and I can't sleep because now I'm just worked up. And all of a sudden, because now I'm in a pissed off state, I'm thinking about everybody, I'm pissed off at everybody.

Not me, right?

We'll talk later.

All of a sudden I'm not even thinking about Esther anymore. I'm thinking about all the people I'm pissed off at. And I heard Travis Sago in my head, I heard Travis Sago in bed at 3am Say to me, we get stressed out because we're ignoring problems.

Couldn't sleep, I get up, I get my journal out and I start to write down who I'm angry at, why I'm angry at them, and how I'm going to fucking handle it. And what's interesting is as I start to just even think about how I'm going to handle it now it can be managed, now I can do something about it. And for three months I've been angry at this thing when all I had to do was be real with myself and handle it. And I felt really dumb that I had let this fester for so long without just calling it out. Because you know what? Those conversations with those people weren't nearly as hard as I thought because it was simply as, you know, I'm noticing some problems and I need to address these. And doing that, I have some concerns about X. And doing that was.

In two days I cleared up 80% of the things that were stressing me out and I felt so dumb that I had let them fester. And sometimes it's, I have some concerns about this and I don't want to have to have this conversation again. And if I have to have this conversation again, we need to make some decisions. And if that comes up again, then it's just simply making a decision.

See, and I love that. So one of the quick tips, because a lot of people are we don't fire fast enough. You've heard this a thousand times. Hire slowly, fire fast. Right. I like to set expectations up in advance so it's easier to fire people because that sucks. Nobody, everybody hates firing people. It's the worst thing in the freaking world. Sucks. So what I do, and I don't know what you do on this, I'D love to hear it in a sec. Is whenever I hire anyone, even a freelancer, I give them a time limit. I go, we're gonna do a test. It's gonna be a month, two months, three months. We're gonna do reviews at certain checkpoints so I can give you feedback and let you know whether you suck or not. And I actually sometimes say that. And then if they don't perform, it's way easier to let. I let someone go a couple weeks ago. Not that it was fun in any way, shape or form, but we had already performed. Every expectation was very clear when we go through. And when you do that, you can at least feel good. That like crap. I know I have to have this conversation because it's the date I said I was going to have this conversation, even though I really, really don't want to have this conversation. That's why you do employee reviews later on is stuff like that too.

So that is the difference between agreements and expectations.

Ooh, I like it.

Expectations are loose ideas in our head that can be violated and nobody knows it. An agreement that you have up front is just a simple evaluation. It's a pass, fail. It's did it happen or did it not happen? And so if you have an agreement up front rather than an expectation.

There'S clarity. That's true. And I mean, just other examples like romantic relationships. How many of you get mad at your romantic partner because you had an expectation that wasn't met.

Had nothing to do with what you agreed upon, had everything to do with you just had an expectation. Guess what? You made that up. And we blame the other person for not meeting the expectation that we made up.

It's the same exact thing with hiring and managing teams. If there's expectations, great. I have a bridge to sell you too. It's gonna be great. But agreements are clear. We can manage them, and we can easily evaluate them.

I think what's so funny is that business, we say business is simple, not easy. Not easy, but very simple. When we look at this, you're like, oh, that makes perfect sense. You just drawn little boxes. Ryan, good job. Oh, you can. With colors. Great, Great job. But being able to see that and going, oh, my gosh, that changes what I now do, right? And whatever those things that we're going to do might not be easy because, heck, we're entrepreneurs. We, like, do really crappy hard stuff all the time because we're crazy. But being able to push through that and do that anyway and having these ships that will change your trajectory like, if Jared kept going, he would drive him and his wife both crazy. Just doing that forever without shifting anything. Thank goodness you came here. Right? And we'll come back next year. Okay. I'm working for you.

I'm working for you.

Right?

But what do you think? Because I know we only have a few minutes left. Like, what do you think is the parting advice for them to go, like, okay, this is great. Let's hope give them something to, like, take away.

Well, I think that the big takeaway is being very clear of what's in that top box of what, what is. You call them strengths. I keep saying things that move the needle, things that make a difference. And what are those activities or what are those habits or what are those things that make a difference? And we build around that. But when we don't have that identified, it's easy to get just lost in the noise and lost in the mishmash, and you get all these red lines everywhere.

Well, and let me clarify, though, too, because you might not be a good CEO, by the way. Let's just say that, like, I'm not saying everybody should be trying to be the CEO, because some of you might suck at that stuff, right? Like, if you're horrible at seeing the future, don't do. You don't want to be the guy being. Trying to see the future or hiring any of those things. You really have to figure out what those strengths are, and then you live in whatever that box is.

Is.

It's not as though you have to be the CEO right now. Does that make sense? Okay, sorry.

Are you cool taking a couple questions? Oh, sure. Cool. Let's do that. So. Wow. All right, let's go into it.

That's an interesting point, actually, that you don't necessarily have to be the CEO. It's your business. You can do whatever you want. So if you want to be the investor.

Okay, what are the responsibilities there, and what do you need to build around that? If you want to be the face, like, if there's nothing that you would rather do but be on stage talking and leading workshops, how do you build around that?

My team calls me the talent. I think I feel like an idiot. They're like, she's the talent.

Careful.

She's the talent. I'm like, shut up.

Hey, guys, I just gotta say that your collaboration is speaking right to me, so I suggest you guys keep doing that. So I'll go right into it. So when you're in the leadership position, and what I've heard a lot is you want to get the right people on the bus first and then figure out where they supposed to be. And that's what I'm getting from this. So my question is, what if you see somebody who should be driving their own bus? What if there's somebody who's tackling every single thing you give them and it's never enough for them and they need to be doing their own thing? And you guys working together is never going to get.

I know.

We're both like Christians.

I want this one. Okay, I need an answer for both of you guys. Hold on. Good.

Thanks.

We're going one out of one. Rock, paper, scissors. It's going to be rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Ready?

Just going to fight him.

Okay, Rock. Let's get in sync here. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Dang it. Go ahead.

I'm a winner. Just so you know. So, okay. I had this exact same thing actually happen to me not that long ago. I knew in advance, and she's amazing. I knew advance that she always kind of wanted to do her own thing. And that makes it really tough to hire somebody because we're entrepreneurs. We want them to do what they want to do, right? So. But things started to change. You start seeing issues, and I go, we need to have a heart to heart. I don't think you're really in this anymore. And she goes, I'm a bad employee right now. And I was like, you said it.

But it's one of those things where everybody sort of knows. Do you know what I mean? And you want them to be happy as a human being, not just in your company. Like being an upset employee. Was that fast enough? So you can answer your question.

Yeah, I have a completely different answer.

Good.

First of all, you're not getting the right people on the bus. And then figure out where you're going. You're figuring out where you're going and you're picking up people along the way. So figure out where you're going so that you know what the route is so you can pick the right people up.

So that's a completely different question. The original question is, what if I see somebody who it's never enough for them and they need to be running their own thing. You evaluating that they need to be running their own thing is your projection. They may be perfectly happy running your company. And if that's the case, that's just what we call a keeper. And that's somebody that moves up in our company and we're very, very thankful for those people. Not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. Not everybody Wants to be up on stage. Not everybody wants to be answering customer service emails. But for all of those things, there are people who absolutely love it. There's a story that Dan Sullivan likes to tell where he talks about his bookkeeper who's been with him for, like, 15 years, and he thinks that's the most boring job in the whole world. Like, who would want to do the same thing every day? And so he asked her one day, are you happy in this work? And she says, oh, Dan, it is never a dull day here in the office. You never know what you are going to find. And it's like, we have different strengths. And so when you say that person really needs to be running their own thing or doing their own thing, that's your projection. And if they do want to run their own thing, either a awesome, because now you can give them their own department or their own company that you now have a good partner in, or you have that and you address it and you get really good work for a while until they figure out how they're going to go out on their own.

Okay, so I need to say something. Gary Keller talks about this too, because the reason why I couldn't do that, because I agree with you, I think that's exactly what you should do if your people don't care about money. Because I was like, we can put you in your own department. We can make you happy. You can charge for. You can make as much money as if you were on your own.

Right.

But if freedom and not having a boss is important to them, and these are all clarifying questions that you need to find out. Right. If you can move them up because they're a rock star and they're utterly amazing, please do that. Hiring a new person sucks. Right. But if you cannot, that's where that happens. Have you had that conversation with them yet or no.

And that's what sucks. Because you're like, crap. And you've known it for a long time that you've had to have that conversation.

Yeah. It's something you're ignoring that you just need to say, I have some concerns.

Yep. Action item number one.

Crap. Does this make sense? All right, cool. Thank you. Okay, we're going to have time for two more over here.

Hey, guys. Ari Cohen from Los Angeles and Chelsea here.

Not for long.

Yeah, not for long. Soon to be Austin. Yeah. Moving next month. Really awesome collaboration. I used to be a business consultant at my day job before I quit to do this full time. And I would do similar things. And of course, being in the problem, you don't see your own situation as clearly. So one question was, Jamie, you said that if you don't like doing the CEO stuff, you don't have to do it. But then the question would be, how would you find someone to run a company? And then they would be your boss.

I have. There are millionaires. Yes. They have done that. So this is a long. This is not really you. You guys don't, unfortunately, probably have to do this because you don't have the money to pay the CEO that's going to be better than you.

Right.

At this point, just so you know. But, yes, there are millionaires that I have interviewed that now have a CEO, because, okay, when you look at this, and no offense, CEO is still a job. Like, the people that I work with are owners. CEO here, owner here, Very different. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think that's cool. The other one, real quickly is like, so let's say you hire, like, we just hired our first two VAs, which we are now talking about. We want to hire an actual employee that is in town. We can meet with them and manage them and lead them, but with a VA, let's say they do. You give them 10 tasks, and they do five of them well, and five of them not so well. And we're like, we just want to fire you because you suck. Or should we just cut back their tasks and hire a second person, fire them?

Because as a VA, you can find somebody who can do 10 tasks really, really well, I hope. Right. Unless they're in different boxes and you're trying to, like, mesh somebody together, because hiring is kind of a pain. You're always trying to find. And don't get me wrong, there's never, like, perfect, perfect, perfect, everybody for every task. But in general, if half of their work is crappy, half of their work.

Is crappy, then probably more than half of it is, and you just don't know it.

Yes. Which sucks.

Cool. Thank you. Is Jeff woods in the house?

Yeah.

Give it up for Jeff Woods. So you saying this reminded me of Jeff woods. Is sit. Is that you way in the back? Yeah. So he's sitting way in the back. He's actually a really big deal. Thank you. I hope you're okay with me saying this. If it's not. Well, I have the microphone. Jeff is one of the new CEO. He's the CEO of one of Gary Keller's new companies. And so Gary is the owner. Jeff is the CEO, setting the strategic direction, making big decisions, and then proposing to the Owner, so it follows that process. So Jeff is a super big deal. I'm really proud that he's here.

He's amazing. He just introduced me to Bruce buffer from UFC 2, by the way, yesterday. I'm so excited.

So we need to do one quick one, and we'll go here.

Hey, how are you doing? My name is Raymond. I'm from Miami, Florida. And this is for you, Jamie. So I own several different businesses, not all of them inside of of the tech industry. So I've hired plenty of employees. I want to go.

Or.

I would like for you to elaborate a little bit more on what the culture test is. I mean, you mentioned it, but you didn't say what it was and what you look for in it.

Okay, so there's. So I have so many, like, email me, because I will send you specific interviews that sort of talk a little bit more. Because we have, like, two minutes. Great. Because there's culture. And then what I was talking about specifically, it's called the Culture Index. Right. I think you can go to kisgingroup.com which is Doug.

That sounds easy to spot.

I know, it's horrible. I'll introduce you to Doug. He'll tell you if you want the culture Index, which I highly recommend. This is not for Doug. I did not an affiliate in any way, shape or form.

Let's do a podcast episode on it. We'll do a Freedom Fast Lane podcast about the culture Index.

That'd be perfect.

Well, no, I'll have Doug be on your. Yeah, I'll just introduce you to Doug. Doug will tell you everything.

Okay, great. Well, we'll make it happen in some capacity.

Problem solved.

Hey, Jamie, thank you for being here. Let's give it up for Jamie Tardy.

Thank you.

It.