In this short motivational interview, host Evan Carmichael asks Chris Bangle and Mark about their biggest hiring fears and shares practical advice for entrepreneurs. Chris emphasizes the need for two complementary designer personalities: high‑energy, “racehorse” creatives who drive rapid output, and quieter, deep‑thinking artists who generate thoughtful ideas. Mark reflects on his own early hiring mistakes, noting that every first hire failed due to unclear roles, poor management, and hiring for talent rather than culture. He stresses the importance of hiring passionate people who love their work and fit the company’s purpose. Evan expands on the mindset challenge many founders face—believing they must do everything themselves. He describes a gradual hiring approach, starting with a part‑time specialist to offload weak skills (e.g., database work) and scaling up as cash flow allows, while warning against letting mis‑hires discourage future hiring. The conversation concludes with a call for viewers to share their biggest hiring fears, reinforcing the central message: building the right team, with balanced personalities and clear cultural fit, is essential for scaling a business.
Chapters
So the question of the day today is, what's your biggest fear?
That's it.
For hiring? Spiders! For hiring?
Spiders! Are you afraid of spiders?
No. Good morning, Believe Nation.
Today's message is get the right people. Over to you, Chris Bangle.
First and foremost, you want designers that bring energy to the table. People who come in, they're highly, highly motivated. They have enormous amount of creativity. You can see it. It bubbles out of them. They seem unstoppable. The best people in that sense that you have, when you're talking to them, they look at you like this. And they go, uh-huh, uh-huh. Look, I just want to do cars, OK? Let's just do some cars. Those are fantastic. Those are the racehorses. You just want to turn them loose.
But if that's all you have, you kind of maybe are missing some intellectual depth.
Actual depth. You have to make sure you get the deep thinkers in there, the artistic bent ones who are sometimes shy, they're often intimidated by the aggressiveness of the other type of people. But they're often the quiet sleeper ones that come up with that deep, deep idea that you go, "Let's develop, let's develop, let's develop, let's develop." So what do you think?
I think for anyone who has experience hiring people, they would say, "This is really, really obvious." What's not obvious though for maybe an earlier entrepreneur, I know myself, is I screwed up every single first hire that I ever did. Every role that I created, every first hire was like, I just wasn't managing them right, I didn't have properly defined roles or expectations, I wasn't looking for the right people, and it was just, I just messed it up. I messed it up every time. 'Cause you're like, when you're hiring, you're just like, oh, thank goodness you're here to fix all of the crap I don't wanna deal with. Here you go. Hopefully you can make it work. And so, I mean, his bigger point is you need people who are passionate, who love what they're doing, who love coming into work, who will— who, if anything, you're like almost holding them back, and you're like, okay, have at it, and then off they go. And then you also need those quiet thinkers who are going to deal with, with the other stuff and impress you and surprise you with what they're doing. You know, that comes down to culture, that comes down to knowing what you want, having clearly defined roles, and having people work within, um, you know, what do you say, you hire for, for for purpose or for culture, not for talents. You can train up talents. You know, looking back, I think that's all obvious to me today. When I started, I just, like, I messed up hires, like, all the time.
So you look at Mark's business now, he's got a million-dollar-plus business. You've got how many people on your team?
There are 9 of us.
9 people on the team. For me, what I took from this is I would go even earlier. Like, I would look at the startup entrepreneur and first address the mindset of, I need to do everything myself. 'Cause most entrepreneurs never even grow to the point where they have a team. And it's recognizing that you can't do everything yourself and that your real growth will come by having people on board to help you. One, for the skills and the talents that you may not be good at, but two, for the extra motivation and boost of having a team and being responsible for them and tackling a big mission. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, one, feel like they can't afford it. You know, I'm just, I'm struggling to get by, I can't afford having somebody on board. And 2, have tried bringing somebody on board and it didn't work out, so you're like, "Ah, I'm just gonna do it all myself." And so to address the first point, the first person I hired was for 1 hour a day. I mean, I could afford 1 hour a day. I couldn't afford full-time, but 1 hour a day to free up work that I sucked at, which is database work. He was much better at and freed me up to do the things that I'm better at. And so eventually I could give that guy more hours and then eventually hire somebody full-time and build my way up. You don't have to think, "I'm dropping this much cash down because I need to bring on somebody full-time." And then for the second part of hiring and making a mis-hire, I guess, and screwing up and feeling like, "Ah, this hire sucks. I'm gonna start over and do it all myself." Almost everybody messes up their first hire. You're not alone. You don't know what you're doing, right? You think you're just hiring for these skills and you've never managed anybody before, you've never hired someone before, so the chances of that just working out, Going down a hill on skis and expecting to be awesome, you know, it's probably not gonna happen, right? You're probably gonna make some mistakes and fall down. And so that happens in the hiring process too, and you learn to get better. I think it's just making sure that the first couple of mishires that you may make don't sour you to the point where you feel like, I can't do anything, I'm gonna do it all myself, nobody can be as good as me at all these things. And then that constantly limits you because you only have so much time in the day. If you want to build something important, you have to build a team.
So the question of the day today is: What's your biggest fear when it comes to hiring?
Ooh, I like that question. Leave in the comments below and we'll join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and we'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of inspresso. I wake up every morning with an espresso, keep me going.
