The Three KEY Questions You Need To Ask Before Hiring An Expert ft. GWEN BORTNER

Have you ever hired the wrong expert? That person could have been a business consultant, a website designer, an AI specialist, a business coach, a personal trainer, or even a dog trainer to help you with a puppy. Most likely you've dealt with people who didn't do what you thought they were going to do. And as a result, it costs you time, attention, money, effort and energy. What if there was a way that you could reduce the chance of error and end up hiring the right person for whatever it is you want done? That's the purpose of this next 10 minute talk by Gwen Bortner. When you hire the right person, your whole life becomes even better. You have less stress, and from a financial standpoint, the investment is much more profitable. Gwen is a business advisor, speaker and trainer. Over the past 40 years, has owned multiple consulting companies, worked as a consultant for Ernst and Young, ran the IT department for a regional phone company, and has been a sought after instructor on the national knitting circuit. Yes, knitting. With over 43 million knitters just in the United States alone, which is a hell of a lot of knitters making everything from scarves and shawls to sweaters and skirts, it's not surprising. She was a best selling author and traveled the world on cruise ships teaching knitters of all skill levels. The reason she's here today is we're going to hand out knitting kits and just. I'm kidding, just kidding. The reason she's here today is not to talk to you about knitting, but instead the lessons she learned during those years that turned out to become priceless pearls of wisdom. Gwen's title is the three Questions Asked Before Hiring an Expert. Surprising Lessons Learned from Knitting. So please help me welcome Gwen Mortner. Thank you.

Thanks, Joe.

Yeah, thank you so much.

So I am following a really tough act because Devin and Nels are both so like spiritual and grounded and we are going to get down to tactics and practical things because that's by nature. If you know me at all. That will not surprise you. If you've ever hired an expert that didn't quite satisfy you, you know how disappointing that is because you were really hoping they were going to be your answer. And my goal is to have that be a thing of the past that you have three questions that you can ask and answer that will get you on the right path with any expert that you're ever hiring. Now these are definitely not the only questions you need to ask. They are just the starting point. But the idea is if we can reduce the feel to some of your best choices that are going to check all your boxes and provide a satisfactory result that's really going to get you where you want to go. And at this point you're probably saying, ok, so what does any of that have to do with knitting? And that is a fair question. But all the years I spent in consulting before I landed in the world of knitting, I knew these questions were really important, but I couldn't get them down to a simple, concise version. But when I landed in the world of knitting, it was really easy to see how to bring them into a super, super concise way. Doer or teacher, specialist or generalist, flexible or fixed. Now that's probably a little too concise without some context. So we're going to jump in. Now that first question, doer or teacher, you probably all heard that saying, those who can do and those who can't teach. And it's generally kind of meant as you kind of a deprecating sort of thing to teachers. But there's actually some really sage advice if you read in between the lines, because doing great things or following in the footsteps of greatness seems like a really good idea. Let's hire somebody who's done this amazing thing. But that's not necessarily as valuable as if you're trying to do the thing yourself. Can they actually transfer that knowledge? And so you get to this question, doer or teacher. I saw it all the time in the knitting world. A celebrity designer in the hand knitting world, I know you don't believe there's such a thing, but there really is. Would be hired to come in and teach and the students would just be like through the roof because this famous celebrity expert was going to teach them. But most of the time they would walk out of class and they would be frustrated, disappointed, or worse, they would be feeling like they had no ability to learn. But it wasn't actually their problem, it was the designer's problem. Although they could create beautiful designs, they didn't actually have any skill to transfer that knowledge to other people. And so that's where we get to our first question. Doer or teacher, are you looking for someone to deliver something to you, all done, packaged, beautiful, bow on top, or are you looking for someone to transfer their knowledge to you? And if so, then you're looking for a teacher. Now the second question, specialist or generalist, is kind of along the same line, but a little bit different. I'd have students come into my class after taking a class from an expert and feel like, oh my gosh, I just didn't learn as much as I thought I was going to learn. And in this case I had taken classes from this particular expert. So I knew this wasn't a question number one issue. They actually could teach, but they were especially specialists. They went really deep, really, really fast, assumed a huge amount of foundational knowledge that a lot of the students just didn't have. What they needed was a generalist, someone who could come in and help them see how all the parts fit together of their previous knitting knowledge with the new knowledge. So they got this strong foundation before they went deep. And so that leads to question number two, specialist or generalist. Are you looking for someone who's ready to go deep with you and are you sure you're actually going deep on the right thing? Or do you need someone to help you think more broadly about the whole picture and figure out what the root cause is and then bring in a specialist? Now the third question, flexible or fixed, comes from my point of view. As a left hander, I learned to knit from my left handed mother, but I knit like my right handed friends. And so I always thought of knitting as a two handed sport. I mean, you kind of use two hands, right? And I didn't think there was a left handed way to knit until I entered the world of professional knitting instruction and discovered, much to my surprise, I technically knit right handed. No one was more shocked than me. But what I also discovered was most teachers could, couldn't actually teach true left handed knitters. And if they could, often they just wouldn't. They would say, no, you have to do it the right handed way. Now there were other teachers who were like, oh yeah, that's no problem, just reverse everything. Well, that doesn't necessarily work either because sometimes there's some specific nuances or some orders. And the problem was with those students, if they didn't get the same result as the right handers, they couldn't tell them why. They didn't know what went wrong. And this is where we lead to the question of flexible or fixed. Okay. Is the question flex? Is the solution flexible? Are we going to be able to make changes? Are we going to be able to adjust it to our environment? Or does it actually need to be done in a particular way, a particular process, particular sets of procedures and orders? It's not that one is necessarily better than the other, but we do need to understand where that difference is because if we don't, we may be needing to make changes that we aren't planning on or we may lose efficacy in the result.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to Joe's free book and you can get a copy there.

Now, the beauty of being in Genius Network is that magic AI review summary that we get. So you don't really need to take a whole lot of notes here because they're going to like summarize it for us, which is kind of magical. But I want to do a quick review. So question number one, Doer or teacher? Ask yourself this question. Am I looking for something to be delivered with minimal to no involvement for myself and my team? If so, doer or am I looking for something to be more delivered so that we can learn and be able to do it ourselves over a long period of time? If so, then you're looking for a teacher. Now, question number two, specialist or generalist, Ask yourself, are we sure we're dealing with root cause issues, or is it possible that we're dealing with with surface level or symptom issues? If we know we've got root cause, bringing in a specialist makes perfect sense. They're going to be able to go deep, they're going to be able to help prescribe things, they're going to be able to get to solutions faster. But if we're dealing with symptoms, we really should bring in a generalist who will look more holistically at our entire environment, all of the things that are going on in our business, and first determine the root cause. Question number three, flexible or fixed? Transformational change is always going to require some adjustments. But when, where, how, who? All of that is a question that needs to be answered. And so start by saying, is this a customizable solution? If it is, does it retain the same efficacy? And if it does, how long is that going to take? Flexible? Or is this a solution that's a little more stable, a little more fixed? It's going to have to go through certain procedures, which probably means there's going to need to be changes to your organization. How big are those changes? How much impact is that going to be on your business? And is that going to be worth the trade off? Now, I would love to tell you there are right answers, but there are no right answers. There are right answers for each particular situation, and every particular environment may have a different answer. And this is by no means all the questions you're going to have to ask. There will be a ton more questions that are going to follow as you go forward, but it is the place to start. If you start with these first three questions, doer or teacher, specialist or generalist, flexible or fixed, you can start going through the process much, much easier. And just imagine for yourself how much nicer it would be to eliminate all of your less than optimal options really early, because that's going to reduce a ton of decision fatigue on your process. Also, by managing your expectations, you can totally increase the overall satisfaction with the project. And in doing so, you're going to save time and energy, and more importantly, money, and therefore get a much better return on your investment. And so, the next time you're ready to hire an expert of any sort, ask yourself these three. Doer or teacher, specialist or generalist, flexible or fixed. And if you do that, disappointment should be a thing of the past.

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