How To Hire a Project Manager and Why Most Hire Badly - 10x Talk Episode #5

I'm Dan Sullivan.

And I'm Joe Polish.

And welcome to 10 Times Talk.

Hello, this is Joe Polish and I'm here with the amazing, the wonderful.

Mr. Dan Sullivan. Yes.

What do you think of that, Dan, with the setup of saying the wonderful, all these amazing things, then saying your name. It almost makes you sound egotistical.

Yeah. And it really caught me by surprise. And usually you're not able to do that. So I thought that was really a good trick. Yes.

I was talking to someone earlier today about people that when it comes to ego with people in the speaking business, book authors, gurus, that sort of stuff. As usual, I always refer to you as a person that is just the epitome of a class act and someone who has to constantly be in. Not has to, but who is constantly in situations where you're surrounded by achievers when you are in a position of being around influential people, industry, transformers, achievers, gurus, that sort of thing. You're actually dealing with a lot of egomaniacs at different periods of time. You seem to have gone through this world of dealing with lots of amazing individuals, coaching incredible successful entrepreneurs and kind of being unscathed when it comes to having a big ego and that sort of stuff. What are your thoughts on that? Because that's always struck me as something. You're always a down to earth person. You're always not boastful about yourself and you just seem to keep a real clear perspective on success and achievement.

Yeah, well, you know, I really remember my roots. You know, I'm a farm kid from northern Ohio and you know, I just had a big picture that there was a big world out there. And you know, that there were an incredible number of smart people out there, incredibly talented people out there. And, you know, I developed an attitude about this probably in my teens. And the line I came up with was that I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I just wanted to be in a room where everybody's getting smarter, you know, so I'm not competing with anybody. I mean, if there's really a lot smarter people in the room than I am, I'm in a perfect spot because I'm going to learn a lot from those really smarter people in the room. And the other thing is that my default position is to ask questions, you know, not to give answers. I'm really keenly interested in how people think about their lives and especially how they think about their futures and how they think about the crucial, you know, kind of challenges they've had in the Past that, they had to transform myself. And I just love to have them tell their stories. And most people are really set at ease if you just ask them to talk about their experiences and, you know, what they would really like to have in their life. And I find that oftentimes egotism is just kind of a defense mechanism. You know, they're used to kind of being around people who maybe attack them or challenge them or everything. But if you don't give any, you don't give them any indication that you're going to do that, but you're just going to ask them questions about themselves, usually it settles out really quickly, that is for sure.

Well, cool. Well, we talked on one of the last episodes of 10 times talk about project managers in people's companies. And one of the key ingredients to multiplying your success is to have that area handled in your business. So I'd like to kind of take this episode and turn it over to you related to that particular subject. And if you could maybe just share with our listeners what have you learned about this and why is it so crucial in starting from the standpoint of even defining what project management even means?

Yeah, and I mean, it seems like a pretty mundane subject, but actually in my experience, because I'm almost 40 years now in the business of coaching entrepreneurs on how they grow their businesses. And, you know, there's kind of like two stages to every entrepreneur. There's the they're, you know, they're just getting out into the marketplace, which they usually do as an individual. And usually these, you know, the reason why they're able to, you know, establish themselves in the marketplace is that personally, they have good selling skills. They have really good ability to get other people to let them in on their future. I think oftentimes that's what, that's what you're doing when you're selling is that someone else has included you in their future and you're providing a certain product or service or skill that they find valuable for your future. And that's kind of stage one. And, you know, the vast majority of entrepreneurs never get beyond just being a good salesperson out there. They might have a secretary or they might have a few staff members, but they, you know, they hit a ceiling where they can't grow any further than that. And usually basically all they've actually done is created a salary for themselves. They haven't actually created a business. And so stage two, where the real excitement of entrepreneurship lies, is where you can actually create a company. And that means that it's not just you and not just your abilities. I mean, Joe, when you were a carpet cleaner, way back at the beginning, you could knock on doors and you could carry the stuff upstairs and you could do the work and everything like that. But if you wanted to develop a company, then the best role for you was to be a marketer. The best role for you was to be a salesperson and not to be doing any of the work. And so you had to, you know, develop a team around you. And then you got into the whole, you know, where your true love was is in marketing period, and then helping other. Other carpet cleaners how to take the magic of marketing and to, you know, to multiply their businesses. And you could do that on your own for a while, but then after a while, you had to have a lot of other people who set up the venues, who, you know, followed up with you and where you are today, where you can, you know, you can call people up who are very, very famous in the world and say, I'm having a meeting and I'd like you to be a speaker, which, you know, you're. You're really gifted at doing. But it requires a lot of backup.

Yep.

And one of the things that I. That I've discovered about this is that entrepreneurs, for the most part, hire badly. And they hire badly because they don't make a vital distinction that to grow a company, you have to have two entirely different kinds of managers. And one of them, you know, is process managers. Because every business, if you're going to have, you know, repeatable cash flow, it means you have to have repeatable processes that are done the same way every time. You know, there's steps. You know, if we get an order, then the order is processed this way, and then, you know, everything's lined up to provide the service. And then we bill the people and everything. And those are all processes. And you want them to be foolproof. You want them to be, you know, not to break down. You don't want to have errors or anything else. And so you need a person who is. Loves processes, loves doing the same thing every day, making constant improvements, making sure you know that, you know what the business is right now, how it's established. We stay right where we are. So that's one kind of person. But then there's the other part of the business, and that's the business that doesn't exist yet, that gets created out of new ideas and new initiatives and new endeavors. And that requires a totally different kind of manager. And that's not a process. Manager, that's a project manager. And they are two totally different kinds of creatures. I mean, they are very, very unlike each other. And the best way I can say it is that if you as the entrepreneur and Joe, you're just a font of new ideas all the time, and you talk to one of your team members, what will happen is you'll give that team member a new idea. And depending on whether that person is a process manager or a project manager, two radically different things will happen. And it has to do with lists. For a process manager who already has a list, they start the day with a list, and by the end of the day, they have to be through their list, because tomorrow they're going to have another list. If you give them a new idea, they immediately take your new idea and they take it and they put it at the bottom of their list, and they'll get to it if they get everything else done, which they usually don't. So it's two weeks later and you're really getting impatient because nothing's been done. And they say, well, you know, I have to do my process, I have to go through my list. And that's a process manager. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that you gave your new idea to absolutely the wrong person to get anything done. And that's why the project manager is so important, because the project manager also has a list. But the moment you give them a new idea, what will happen is they'll immediately take your new idea and put it at the top of their list. Because what you. The new thing is always more exciting to them than everything else that they were doing before. And they just thrive on new ideas, but they don't like repeating things. They'll take a new idea, they'll go out, and they'll get done what you want them to get done. They'll get the result, they'll bring the result back to you. They'll even create a system to get the result. But they don't want to manage the system and they don't want to repeat the result. They want a new idea, and they want to go out and create something new. If you're going to grow as an entrepreneur, you got to be able to have great processes with great process managers. But if you're an entrepreneur who grows your business, you're like, you're kind of creating your industry, which you are, Joe. You're creating an industry. It consists of new ventures and new possibilities and new opportunities that have never been explored before. You need a project Manager to run out there and literally create the system that's going to support your new idea so that you get the result. And then they'll hand that system off to somebody else. They'll even train the other person. They just don't want to do it again themselves.

Yeah, that is fantastic. What a great way to describe something that probably creates more entrepreneurial angst and confusion for people.

Oh, it does, yeah. Yeah. Because they're just giving the idea to the wrong person and it frustrates the process manager because they don't know what to do with it. And I'll use you as an example. Doesn't Joe realize that I already got a full plate? Why does he keep putting new stuff on my plate? And the project manager, on the other hand, wants something new every day. They can balance a lot of balls. They can take five or six new things and they actually like having a lot of new things and knocking them off and coming back for more. I've seen the difference between somebody just having a company that essentially gives them a salary and other people having a company that turns into an empire is just this distinction between process manager and project manager.

Well, you know what, I'm going to then ask you to kind of describe how do you know who that person is, suggestions, ideas on how to locate them, how to start this whole process. Because in your experience, I'm sure you find all the time that most people don't understand this distinction. I mean, I certainly didn't do it until I first heard you talk about it in Strategic Coach. I don't know how many years ago that was when I first heard you say this wasn't too long ago, but basically I just saw a ton of eyes in the room pop open. And these were people that go to strategic coaches, successful business owners, and these are people that have their act together in so many ways. And it was really like a revelation. They had never heard anything or thought about something like this before. So I think it's great to have this discussion because it certainly is a 10 times multiplier. I want to relate to you something that happened just earlier this week. I was meeting with my financial advisor, who's great guy, smart as heck. He's been my advisor for probably 13 years now. And a couple of my CPA and then the assistant of the. The CPA who was another CPA and my assistant Eunice, and then the one person in my company that kind of takes a CEO sort of role, but we use different titles At Piranha Marketing, we collaborate over elegant Opportunities versus chief operating officer, things like that. But anyway, we're sitting, having this conversation, and one of the, you know, I really don't like looking at P and LS all that much. It's one of those things that we have to look at our financials and kind of see what's working, what isn't, and just discuss where we're heading. And I was going over, trying to get their recommendations for me on how to categorize certain activities in my business. These were not the people that are obviously implementing what it is I come up with. These are just my CPAs. And so I'm going over different things that I'm doing to make money. And I'm in the room recording this right now, where I actually have the whiteboard, where we have the meeting. And so one of the things is my 25k group, my genius Network mastermind. Then I have my I love marketing podcasts I do with Mr. Dean Jackson. Ethical Services, the cleaning niche, which I still sell things to, licensing of my intellectual capital space marketing, which is a future venture that I'm going to get into in the space and marketing and advertising industry, angel investing and advising people. The CPAs just had no earthly idea how to categorize this stuff. And a lot of it was being categorized under Genius Network. And I'm like, well, some of these things don't have anything to do with Genius Network. So we got to break it out. And everyone had this dumbfounded look on their face like they don't know what to do with my ideas. And there was just one person in there who, like you're describing, loves new ideas and would want to run with it, whereas the rest of them just didn't even know how to think about this. I'm certainly not a cpa, so I'm like, well, you guys need to figure out where to properly allocate where I'm spending time, money, and energy, what's coming in, what's going out, so that I can look at the P and L and know that this stuff is in the right place. That's still an ongoing thing I need.

To get figured out.

But it so relates to what you're saying here.

Yeah. And I just want to point out something that what your frustration was, and perhaps their equal frustration, is that the process manager has to take new information and put it in the existing categories. A project manager says, oh, great, we get a chance to create an entirely new category.

Yep, exactly.

So who cares what the existing categories are? Let's create a new category and we'll put the new information in the new category. So they're not, they're not, they're not contained in a certain sense. They're kind of entrepreneurial. They're a staff person. You know, they're, you know, they, you know, they work within somebody else's company, but they have kind of an entrepreneurial attitude. They love the new. They love creating new methods, they love creating new systems, but they can't initiate that. Somebody else has to initiate it. You have to be the person with the new idea. As soon as they get the new idea, they love it, and they'll go out and they'll create the reality around it in terms of structure and organization and packaging, but they're not the person to actually initiate the idea.

Right, right. And I am a great initiator and so getting things done. So let's talk about. So what do you do? So now that someone has this really incredible wisdom and insight and understanding in thinking about this, because it goes back to one of your quotes, because I'm going to constantly bring up the quotable Dan Sullivan, which is one of your books, and never own anything that eats while you sleep. And people should buy those books immediately and keep them next to their bed and read them all the time. But one of the quotes that you have is the problem is never the problem. The problem is that you don't know how to think about the problem. And so I think with this episode, you're giving people a way to think about a problem that they just never knew how to think about.

Yes.

So, yeah. Now that you've kind of defined it, what would you recommend?

Well, you know, I'd like to drop back and mention another great friend of ours. I mean, you mentioned Dean Jackson, but another great friend. Friend of ours is Kathy Kolbe. And Kathy is one of the great geniuses of developing people in the world. You know, she's right in, she's right in the Phoenix area with you, Joe. But Kathy came up with this amazing profiling system which is called the Colby Index. And what it is is that it's a, you know, it's a questionnaire like most of these tests are. But when you're hiring someone, you hire to get people with a particular profile and how they get their results. And you and I, Joe, are in a particular category which is called innovator. And what we do is that we're great idea people. We can come up with a lot of new ideas very, very quickly. We don't need a lot of information to create a new Idea. So we tend to have not long fact finders. We are not follow through people. You know, we're not the people to create the systems to actually do things. But we can really generate ideas and think about new things in new ways. But if we're true to ourselves and we really want to be happy within our abilities and to have those really lead to great success in the world, then we got to surround ourselves with all sorts of people who aren't like us. And the project manager in the Colby system is right down the middle. So in the Colby system, she has what is called insistent. You know, where you're really, really powerful and you will insist on acting this way and then you have another area which is called resistant. You will resist this type of activity. I will resist research, I will resist analysis, will resist creating a system before we start doing things. I'll just start with something and you're the same way. But the middle ground is called accommodating. And these are people who are not insistent. They don't start things and they're not resistant. They don't resist anything. But they can accommodate resisting people. And they can accommodate, they can accommodate insistent people. And you know, it's a, it's a profile you can do right on the web. You know, I just highly recommend everybody who's listening, just go to kolbe.com, that's k o l b e dot com. It takes you about 20 minutes to do the test. I think it's 35 bucks. You know, just give me your credit card number. And as soon as you do the test, you get the results back. And it's just one of the great eye openers that I think anybody gets in their life. Because, because she just nails you. She's just got this amazing algorithm based on human psychology that just basically identifies how it is that you get results and where your comfort zone is. And the mediator, which is right down the center. There's not a lot of them. They're kind of in a minority of the population. But you know them, when they see them. They just like getting involved with anything. They can communicate with anyone. Communication skills, they have tremendous relator skills. They're very good organizers, they're very fast responders, but they don't start anything and they don't resist anything. So you gotta be treat them carefully because one of their real problems, they can't say no to anything new and they can get overwhelmed.

Yes, I've seen that happen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're almost, I mean, they're like A dog. You can kill them by throwing the stick, you know, I mean, just throw a stick and, you know, they'll just go out and get the stick until they drop dead, you know, but they will not stop running after the new. What they think is a new stick. You know, I'm looking at Paul Hamilton. He's one of my project managers. He's running the actual. The 10 times talk from my end in Toronto. And he just put his two thumbs up. Yeah. And I said, yeah, I got to take care. I got to be very careful that I don't run Paul into the ground, you know?

Yeah, well, you know, it does happen, and you can take really incredibly good people and burn them out, and, you know, you think that they have some discretion of stopping and knowing, and they really don't.

No, no, they don't. They don't. So I'm on a new idea quota with Paul, you know, I only get so many new ideas in any given time period, and that's for his safety.

That's great. So what else about Colby do you recommend? Because I've interviewed Kathy before. You guys have recommended Colby for a long time, and you use it in all aspects of hiring people and strategic coach.

Yeah, we run our organization. I mean, we would never think about even defining a job unless we use the Colby method to actually define the job that gave us the profile. And then we have the profile, and then we put out the word that we're looking for particular person, and we test the person when they come in, and if they don't hit a. A pro, you know, they're a fit on the Colby profile. We don't hire them. Even if we love them, we think they're great, they respond. If they don't hit the Colby profile, we don't hire them. You know, I mean, I'm just so totally clear about this. I think she's an absolute genius, and I think she's given an amazing gift to the world.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's a really strong recommendation, too, that if they don't hit the profile, we don't hire them. How many employees do you currently have, and how many have you had throughout the years? Because I just want to give the listeners a perspective that this is not something you came up with yesterday.

Yeah, we have 100 right now. We're right around 100. And I would say, you know, I mean, even with the wisdom that the Colby profile has given us over the years, and we started, you know, with Kathy when we were a very small company, and, you Know, I easily. We had a hundred who joined us who aren't there anymore. And for one reason or another, they didn't fit in because you can't measure. The one thing that no test will measure is motivation, Joe. You know that yourself. I haven't seen a psychological profile yet that measures motivation. So you can have a person who's a perfect fit using all the existing testing mechanisms, but they're just not motivated to actually take advantage of the opportunity that you're giving them. You do your best, but it's not a science. It's an art. And like every art, there are really, really good tools, but it isn't a science. There isn't 100% predictability predictability about it. That's what science is. Science gives you 100% predictability. Art, you got a feel for it, but it's not predictable. Right, Right.

Okay, so now that someone does a Colby and you identify what their MO is, what else needs to be set up in your company in order to fully take advantage of this?

Well, let's say I've got the product project manager profile. So I'm, you know, this is the subject that we're talking about here, Joe. So I'm, you know, we can, we can go into other areas of building a 10 times organization, you know, and other, other conversations. But let's just say, say for me, I, I would start my organization with a project manager. I'm an idea guy. And I just want somebody who, you know, right from day one is going to take my ideas and is going to find the, you know, the actual way of getting results. And one of the things I can create a project, I want you to hire me a process manager. See, a project manager can create a process manager, but a process manager can't create a project manager, you know, so I was, my first hire would be a project manager. And you know, and essentially in a kind of funny way, I actually, you know, we actually did that in the early days. I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't basically say absolutely. Truthfully, that's what it was, but they were far more of a project manager than a process manager. And then, you know, and what I want to do is I want to be in the idea business because I'm a front stage guy. I'm not a backstage guy. I'm selling, I'm coaching, I'm creating new materials. I'm not a backstage guy. So I want somebody who can actually create my back backstage, my backstage structure. But here's the interesting thing, and we have A couple tools. When you join Strategic Coach, there are two very powerful tools that we, you know, that we provide to all the multipliers because that's what I call entrepreneurs who are in Strategic Coach. I call them our multipliers. And we provide. One of them is called the Impact Filter. And it's a thinking process that takes about a half hour. And I basically lay out exactly what I expect this person to do. And I say, this is the purpose why you were hired. This is why it's so important that we have you. This is the ideal outcome I'd like to see from your being on board. This is the worst result that can happen, you know, if it doesn't work out, I'm going to tell you it's the worst result that can happen for us and worst result that's going to happen for you, but we're not going to go there. This is the best result that can happen. And then if you are really, really successful, this is how I'm going to measure your success. And then I give eight measurable criteria. Up to eight. Sometimes it's not eight, but as many as eight criteria. You know, this will be true. This will be true. And I will measure your performance. And so that's. And so when the person comes in, I sit down with them and I say, I'm going to walk through this with you and you have a copy of it and I'm going to walk through. If you have any questions or anything about what I've said here, I want you to get up from the meeting at the end of this and you're just absolutely crystal clear how you can be a hero to me in your new job. I want, I want to blueprint your success in my company and this is how I want to do it. And I give them. And I said, you know, we'll review this. Maybe it isn't quite the way we want it. So maybe a month down the road we'll take a look at this and maybe we'll make some adjustments or we'll find out some additional skills that you have that I haven't really included here. So anyway, that's the big thing, the Impact filter. And I know Joe, you know, you've become a huge fan of the Impact filter, you know. Oh, yeah, Yeah.

I mean, I'm doing a conference call with Peter Diamandis later this afternoon. We've got 2,300 people that are registered to be on this one hour call. And the main way that I organize the whole call is with an Impact filter. It's your tool. What do I want to have happen? What's the outcome? Why is it so important? What's the worst thing that could happen if I don't do it? What's the best thing? So I sell myself on what it is I want to have happen and how do I measure success. It's a great process. The takeaway that I got from today is simply just defining the difference between project and process. Management is going to be huge for so many of our listeners. I know it's just opened up a door for many people that they might have never even known existed or thought of this way. And then secondly, one thing you said early on, questions are infinitely superior than answers. And your whole process of strategic coach is really creating an environment for entrepreneurs to come and really be asked the right question and thinking it through and learning how to develop those habits of. Some people may think, oh, well, spending 30 minutes thinking something through. Well, if you're going to hire someone, you have an expectation. You always talk about direction, confidence, capability and clarity. If anyone listens to us on 10 times talk or reads any of your materials, you hear words like that quite, quite a bit. And the reason that you talk that way is because you've learned no entrepreneurs operate very well without confidence, direction, capability, clarity. And by asking yourself the right question and having a process to go through it, then you can become a lot clearer and then you can avoid, in some cases, years of frustration and hiring the wrong person and wasting money and not realizing your opportunities. So I think this is huge.

Yeah, it really is, Joe. And I've just, you know, I've personally worked with more than 6,000 really, really successful entrepreneurs. I mean, by the standards of the world, you know, you have this thing, you know, the 1%. Well, my people are, you know, I mean, when you look at the success that they have and their incomes and their, you know, their wealth, they're in the 1/10 of 1% on a worldwide basis. And yet a lot of them have never really gotten over the hump in terms of this process manager, project manager distinction. And when they do, you can just. They take off like a rocket and they just realize, you know, I've just been approaching this whole situation wrongly. I burned out people, and they didn't need to be burned out. I've hired Ron for, you know, specific positions. I've given the wrong people the wrong work to do. I've not set up expectations correctly. And this is all correctable. I mean, these are fairly simple rules, and they always work. I mean, the only thing I can say about this stuff is that it just always works.

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, okay. So for this episode, thank you so much, Dan. And for all of our listeners, let us know at 10 times talk, the number 10xtalk.com give us your comments. What did this open up in your thinking for you? If you could honestly admit if you've never been aware of the differences and distinction here and what you're going to do about it. For those of you that have actually utilized Dan's process for figuring this out, let us know what it's done for your company and give us your comments. Go visit the website. And certainly anyone that's listening to our episodes certainly knows someone, some entrepreneur out there struggling, suffering because they are not aware of this. So please share this episode with them. Tell them to listen to it, and you may very well help them out quite a bit and help yourself out in the process. So we will talk about more awesome stuff on the next episode of 10 Times Talk. So thanks, Dan.

Okay, thanks, Joe. Sa.