Right People, Right Seats: How to Build a Dream Team

Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we're going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving. Hi, and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, and I'm also known as the Geeky Girl. Today, I want to talk to you about some strategies. Are we surprised? No, we're not. We're not surprised. However, this is in regards to maybe the human resources pieces of your business. You might not think about it that way. It is human resources, talent acquisition, retention of talent. Look, I'll be the first one to tell you that the most costly thing that you can do in your business is hire people, fire them, or let them go, and then hire new people. Onboarding new team members is a very exhaustive and expensive thing that you're going to do in your business. It's probably one of the most expensive things. Don't let it scare you. I'm going to give you some tips so that you can go through and think about these things a little differently inside your business. And hopefully, it'll help you to see things a little differently when it comes to your business. Now, there's lots of different ways that we can look at the human resources portion of the business. I will always say that our humans that we work with, our team members that we spend time with, they are in fact resources. Now, as much as your time is a resource and your money is a resource, your You know, those, the computers you use, the software, those are all resources. So are the humans that you work with as well, because your time is human time as well, right? So they're assets, they're resources. To me, they're the same thing. Not everybody likes to think of people as assets, but I really do. I think that we have qualities about us that make us an asset to situations that we're involved in. I can be an asset in a friendly relationship with somebody. I can be an asset in a lover relationship with somebody, and I can be an asset to somebody's business. So to me, that word is not dirty. However, the English language is full of all kinds of different words and all kinds of different thoughts around those words, and some people don't like it when we talk about it that way. So I wanted to preface it for you to let you know how I think about it, and hopefully, you know, if you do have an inkling about it, you can rephrase it, maybe thinking about it a little differently, because it might come up in my vernacular as we're talking. Okay. When we are talking about bringing people on board to our business, at the end of the day, there's a lot of different theories on how and why and when and all those sorts of things. To me, it comes down to the first part of you start your business and all you have is time. You don't have money. The business isn't making a profit yet, and you are just chugging, chugging, chugging, putting in your time. That's just the way typically an entrepreneurial journey begins. Then once the business starts to generate some income and starts to then bring profit— now income and profit are totally different things, which is a totally different call, a totally different video, but let's put that aside just for a moment. So you generate income, now you start to bring in profit. Okay, now you have this profit, which is kind of like gravy. It allows you then to be able to buy more time from other people, as allows you to add a team member in. When you bring that team member in, now you have more time, right? Now you have 2 people perhaps that are working. Now, this doesn't mean to say that you are hiring somebody that is full-time because that's not the case either. Sometimes we just hire somebody on a project. Maybe you're just hiring somebody to do a small thing that happens once a quarter. That's okay too. We're still bringing people into the business so that we have more time to do other things and we're spending less time on the things that maybe aren't in our circle of brilliance. Okay, so when you bring these people in, there's a lot of different reasons why we bring people in. First and foremost, you might have an accountant, and that accountant works with you once a year, maybe at first, and you just send all their stuff to them and they deal with your taxes and that kind of thing. As you grow, maybe you bring in a bookkeeper, and that bookkeeper only needs to work with you every quarter so that they're just putting the paperwork together so that we can hand it off to the accountant at the end of the year. There's lots of different ways that we use people as assets or we bring people into our business. Maybe you bring somebody in that's helping you with like customer service and that kind of thing. Then this is more of a close relationship that you have with these people. So you want to think about how you're bringing people, why you're bringing people in, and it'll change how we bring them in. So I, like I said in the very beginning, it costs you way more money to onboard and offload people and have to onboard people again than it does to keep people on board. But we don't want to keep people just for the sake of keeping people. Okay, so there's a fine line here. But one of the things to think about is this concept of right bums, right seats. Okay, what this means is we want to have the right person on the bus. And we want to make sure that the bus is your business in case you didn't get that one. So we want to make sure we have the right person on the bus. And then we want to make sure that they're sitting in the right seat in order to accomplish the tasks that they need to do. So you wouldn't want to put somebody who is really weak and very, maybe somebody who's really quiet, who doesn't want to take leadership at the back of the bus because they're the one that has to open the door in case of emergency and usher everybody out and make sure everybody stays calm and get them out. Okay, that would be a wrong seat for that person. Maybe that person needs to be sitting more towards the front of the bus, and maybe they're sitting there greeting people and, and smiling at them and making them feel like they're having a good time on the bus. Okay, you also don't want to have somebody who has never driven a bus before or who doesn't have the right license and safety qualifications in order to drive the bus. You don't want them sitting in the driver's seat. Okay. So, when we think about right bums, right seats, I typically think of it from a school bus perspective. I used to drive school bus. Did you know that? A little sly hint about what has happened in Angela's life. Let me tell you. So, I generally think about in terms of the bus scenario. When we bring people on to work with us inside the company, one of the— and this is how I run my business. This is how I encourage other people to run their businesses. And I help other businesses as well to get these things into play inside their business. I want to make sure that I like the people I spend time with. Time is my number one love language. If I spend time with you, I like you. So I don't want people on my team that I don't want to spend time with. End of story. I believe, and there's lots of other people who also believe this— Gary Vaynerchuk's a big believer in this as well— that you can, you can always train people, but you can't change people. Okay. So, you can't change who they are, but you can educate them or you can train them or you can add to their qualifications and those kinds of things. I would rather if I had 2 people that I could hire for a position that I'm working directly with. And the difference was this person has all the qualifications, but they suck to spend time with. And this other person, they have some of the qualifications and they can do a pretty good job, but they would love— they're in a— they're They're somebody who likes to learn. They like to think outside the box, and I like spending time with them. I'll pick them every day. Okay, I will happily invest in somebody who I want to spend time with. If I'm doing something where I don't need to be involved in the project really, really deeply, like the whole, like, I mean, I don't have to love my accountant, right? I don't, because I'm not sitting side by side. We're not doing things together with them. That's different. I'm hiring somebody in that capacity. I do like my accountant and I do like my bookkeeper. So it's different, but you don't have to because they're not directly working with you all the time. So to me, talent acquisition is first and foremost, do I like you? So there's lots of different ways that you can do, or that you can use. There's lots of different things that you can use in order to acquire the right people. I have an entire training on it. We can drop a link to you in the show notes here for you if you'd like. Number one that I take out of that you can take away from this is that I want to actually like the people. I can always add to their skills along the way. Now, I will tell you that one of my longstanding team members, she's been with me since 2019. So, oh my gosh, that's what— wow, that's a long time. But her role today is not the same as what it was when she came to the business. And here's where the retention comes in. Often we have conversations. And I will ask her, do you still like what you do here? Are you still happy in your role? Do you like the work that you're doing? Do you feel part of the team? Like all those things. I want my team members to feel like they are winning when they're on the team. I want them to feel like they are going to benefit from the business as much as I do. I want them to be ingrained in and wanting to be part of because ownership matters. If you have somebody working for you and they hate their job and they hate what they do, but you keep shoving things down their throat to do, they're not going to like it and they're not going to take ownership of their tasks. Now, there are some times where we've had to have some what I call come-to-Jesus moments. And, you know, I mean, there's lots of things I do in my business I don't like either. And sometimes it's, hey, do you like what you're doing right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm really liking what I'm doing. Well, is there anything on your plate you'd rather get rid of? If I could get rid of this, I'd really appreciate it. Okay, I don't see a way to get rid of that yet. Do you see a way to get rid of it? Do you see a way that we can do something different there? I'm asking her opinion not because I'm trying to be fluffy because I actually care. I really do care. I know that she's done some thought on what she's doing inside the business. And sometimes, she has a solution before I do. Sometimes, she's like, yeah, you know, we could do it this way instead. Fantastic! That's awesome! Other times, it's, do you think you could hang in for X amount of time until I'm able to take it over or until we can find somebody else on the team to take it over? Sometimes, we just all have to do things that we don't love but we're good at, right? So, those are some things. Always investing in the team in terms of time, in terms of caring, your wanting to be part of those conversations and wanting them to have valuable pieces in those conversations. I know that that person on my team who brings this to me has already spent time worrying about it or time thinking about it. And they might have already come up with a solution that Could be better than anything I come up with. It's possible that I love what they came up with and sometimes maybe not. But we can have a conversation about it. Honesty is important. So, when I'm talking about retention, I'm not talking about keeping somebody in the same seat. So, that person might have started out as the door opener. Maybe they moved to the emergency exit in the middle of the bus. And then maybe at some point, they moved to the fire exit at the back. Now, maybe in those moves, they were comfortable in the front and then they were comfortable in the middle and then we moved into the back seat and all of a sudden they don't like that. They thought they would, but they don't. It's okay to move them back over to the middle of the bus or some other seat somewhere else. Okay? So retention isn't about just making sure people don't leave. It's making sure people are happy at what they're doing and you are seeing their best. You are— they are able to provide their best quality. Because doesn't it feel better as a team member to provide your best every time rather than coming in going, I hate my job. I hate what I'm doing. We all want to be working from our best self. And so, anytime I can facilitate that, the better for my team members. Now, like I said, there's no sort of magic to this. However, it's about listening. It's communication. It's about understanding. It's about working together. And supporting each other. I often talk about the team as being like a tire wheel. So think about like your bicycle wheel and there's a whole bunch of spokes, right? There's the hub in the middle and of course the rim and the rubber, of course, around the outside. But the spokes are what's most important. The spokes is what keeps the integrity of that entire circle together. To me, a team is the spokes. Nobody is the hub. I'm not the hub. Nobody else on my team is the hub. We are all interconnected. We're all interdependent on each other. And when somebody says, oh my gosh, I'm about to drop this ball. Can you help me? There's somebody to help them. That includes me because there's times when I've dropped the ball and I need them to help me too. So when you're thinking about putting your team together, yes, team acquisition or client acquisition is important. Finding the right people for the job, that is really important. But I would always say lead first with, do I like this person? Do I want to spend time with this person? In terms of retention, keeping your talent on your team, really important to remember. That being open and honest, those communications, being real with each other and making sure that they're enjoying what they do is the most important thing. So, I hope that you can take some little tidbits of paint away from this and apply it to your business. I hope that it makes some— it brings you some clarity in terms of how you can find the right people, how you can put them in the right seats, move them around the bus a little bit sometimes, and then how to keep them on your bus if you are finding that you're really, really enjoying them on your team. I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll talk to you next time. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. Your support means the world to me. You can find show notes for this episode and other goodies at overgiversanonymous.ca. And if you enjoyed this episode or you enjoy the podcast in general, why not join us in the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group where you can connect with overgivers from all over the world? Head on over to geekygirl.ca/group.