Hiring the wrong people

Foreign. Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach, coming to you live today, Tuesday, September 20th. Guys, this is day 20 of me going live every single day this month. Okay? I'm amazed. I still have ideas. No, just kidding. I have a lot of ways to get ideas. And today's topic I'm so happy to be bringing to you because here's one of the things that is the biggest struggle for businesses as you're growing is hiring new people. And I can't tell you how many clients come to me and they have made a mis hire before. Maybe they hired someone to help them with their LinkedIn. Maybe they helped hired someone to help them with their marketing. Maybe they hired someone to write their blog for them. I don't know what, like, across the board. I'm going to drop my pen. I got so excited and they made the wrong hire. And the company was either a scam or they weren't as good as they thought they were, or it just didn't work for their business. And the shitty thing about this is that it not only breaks trust with potential service providers out there because he had a bad experience once, it breaks trust with yourself because there was part of you who got taken in or there was part of you who just made a bad choice. And so when you've made a bad hire, I just want you to remember that you are human. And how many friendships have you had in your life with people who turned out not to be great? And how many, like, weird situations have you ended up in your life? Like, your business is not going to be any different. Okay? Your business is not going to be any different. This is part of starting and growing and learning, and we all have to go through it. And it's shitty, I know. But you're going to get through this and you're going to make better decisions going forward. To highlight this, I want to share some of the bad hires that I've made in my life because it happens to all of us. And I want to. I want us to start normalizing, making mistakes in our business, okay? Because we're not going to be perfect, okay? Far from it. Like, there's no such thing as perfect. And hiring is one of the hardest things. It's. Especially when you have never outsourced this portion of your business before. Okay? Hiring someone to do something that you haven't actually set up as a separate job before is really incredibly hard. So I just want you to know that you're not alone. I've done it Pretty much everyone else has done it. In growing your business, there, there are two philosophies here. There's higher, fast, fire fast, then there's higher, slow, fire fast, okay? Doesn't matter which one you go with, but you have to, you have to complete things as fast as possible when things aren't working out, okay? So I'm going to share, I'm going to share some of my own experiences. I will be vague when speaking about an individual who couldn't help help themselves, like, just didn't know what they were doing. I will be very specific and name names when a company was a fraud or a scam, okay? Because I'm not about hiding when someone else is, is being purposely deceitful out there in the world, okay? So my very first hire that I regretted was my very first va, my very first virtual assistant. This person came very highly recommended by a mutual friend who was seeing that they were struggling a lot during the pandemic, okay? So this person was really smart, had gone to not necessarily an Ivy League school, but up there was. Had their masters. Like, I didn't even graduate college. And here is this person who is struggling and I was able to give them some work. And I talk about can do itis a lot. And can do itis is that sensation that happens in your business where you see all the problems that you could potentially solve and you're like, I can do that and I can do that and I can do that and I can do that. And what it does in your business is it actually kills it because you're doing too much and people don't understand how you're useful to them. Now we can have canduitis for other people, right? So in this case, let me just make up a name for her. Lisa. Lisa started working with me as my va. We kind of did a little assessment as to what her trainings and qualifications were, and we decided that she could write blog posts for me and help me with some backend stuff in my business. Now, this person had no training as a virtual assistant. This person was trained as a classical copywriter. And honestly, personality wise, like, our styles were very different. So when she was writing blog posts for me, she would come to me with ideas like when, like, what's it like being a female in LinkedIn, wanting me to take the victim angle? And that's just not my style. That's just not my style. And so a lot of the writing that she did for me, I had never actually used because it was really taken from that victim mentality and I just didn't find it resonant with my business at all. Now. Really smart person. But here's the thing. We. We can hire all the smart people we want. If they don't have training in what we're doing, it's just creating that much more work for ourselves. Right? So Lisa made up name for this person, had no experience running a business, didn't know what a webinar was, had a really hard time supporting me. And really, ultimately I couldn't utilize her for much. And there was a lot of insecurity on her end because she knew that she didn't really know what she was doing. And it ended up just being too much emotional work. And so we had to complete work with each other because I couldn't spend all of my time reassuring her that she wasn't going to get fired. Every single call we were having, this. This situation was awkward for many reasons. Here's someone who I genuinely wanted to help through a hard time, and it just didn't work out. We also had that friend in common. So there was navigating that relationship after the fact. And it was, it was hard as a coach who encourages other people because I saw how she could start, you know, multiple businesses and be super successful, and it just wasn't what she was interested in. And so. And she was just hoping for a paycheck, you know, she was hoping for a paycheck to help her through this time. So we have to. The lessons that I learned here, you have to not give jobs as favors. Okay? I know, like, you start a business and you're like, I could help so many people by employing them and, you know, people I care about, people who really need it. And we do. We just can't give jobs as favors. Especially when you're for scaling. Okay. Because you just don't have the cash flow for it. Okay. Maybe when you're a multi billionaire and you have all the money in the world and you won't notice if you pay someone and they don't do much for you. But in the meantime, no, no, you cannot give jobs as favors. You also have to hire people who have a specialty in what you need help with. Okay? We are not going and finding someone who has like some qualifications and saying, oh, cool, how can I utilize that in my business? No, we have to start with what in my business do I need help with? Where am I struggling? What will make my life easier? And then we have to go and look for that. Okay? So it can feel. It can feel like you're being mean when you're coming across people who want to work for you and they're saying, hey, listen, I could do this, this and this, especially when you like them, but you cannot hire them. You cannot hire them. You have to hire for the expertise that fits your business need and, and that is it. Okay? So that is number one. Number two lesson that I learned. Oh my God. I hired this social media company this year and they came recommended by someone I trusted. And that recommendation soon dissolved because they started failing. The other person that they were serving it was Alpha Creative Agency. It is a digital marketing program or, you know, service that is out of Southern California. The owner is Savannah Jordan. And basically their social media, their TikToks, their Instagram is all about how it's a seven figure agency, how they help their clients get like hundreds of thousands of dollars in the door, how they do all of these things. And red flag that I didn't pay attention to because I had this recommendation was that there weren't any actual client testimonials that linked back to actual humans when I signed up. And I don't know if there are any, are any now. I haven't gone and checked. So that was one red flag. Red flag number two is during the sales call they asked this question and it just rubbed me the wrong way. But because they came recommended, I overlooked is why should we accept you as a client? Which is just one of those like nagging takeaway questions that I find just really gross. I also have learned not to trust companies that talk all the time about how much they make. Like, great, you have a talent for bringing in money, but does that translate to your clients? One of the interesting things, so, so I worked with this company, there's a three month engagement to start and very quickly, like they did not follow through on things that they had set up contractually in their business. They. It was just a fucking mess. It was a disaster. And my OBM and I tried so hard to find ways to make it work with no avail. And I never saw a single result from working with them, which is different from my previous social media person who I've gone back to working with because she's incredible. And the reason, the reason I switched in the first place is because I felt like I just needed a bigger team. And that was actually not the answer. It was not the answer. This is one of the biggest mistakes I've made in my business so far. They charged like $5,5500amonth for this work. They didn't fulfill on two thirds of the work they did over three months. And when we confronted them about this, we had a very blunt and kind conversation with Savannah, the owner, and we listed out, this hasn't been done. That was in the contract. This hasn't been done. That was in the contract. This hasn't been done. That was in the contract. And she responded, oh, you know, yes, let me, let me go to my team and see what we can do. And we were just asking for a small refund at this point. She emailed back later that night saying, you know, we're not going to refund anything, when their own contract said that they were legally obligated to do all these things. So thank goodness I had put this purchase on amex. American Express is one of the best for fraud protection. And I was able to do a chargeback for the work that they had not done. And later I, I became friends with someone that they separate who worked for the company who they had separated with. And that person revealed that, a, no, they aren't making seven figures. Barely. Like, they're. I mean, they're barely doing half that. And B, their clients weren't getting any results. Their clients were not getting any results from working with them. And I found that really disgusting that they posted about this so much. So you cannot believe the hype that people put online unless they're sharing testimonials that link back to real people, unless you're seeing actual reviews by real humans. This is one of the reasons that I love working with Tommy Murshad Parish. I always mess up your last name. Tommy. I'm sorry. Because he does these beautiful video testimonials and, you know, they're actual humans in their actual human, like, living settings, and they're sharing about their experience of working with me and the results that they got from it. I trust that. I trust posts and reviews that are shared on LinkedIn that link back to an actual human. Not hearsay testimonials. And, and, you know, proof of concept that someone shares. That's just a Canva design. Do not work with this company. Do not work with them. What's interesting is, after the fact, we actually found out that Savannah's dad, I think, was indicted for stealing money from his clients, like millions of dollars. And I might be misquoting that, but it seems to run in the family, this kind of taking advantage of other people and not delivering what you promise. So do not work with them. And number three, trust your bad feelings. Trust your bad feelings. If you get bad vibes from someone if you have even the hint that this isn't going to be the right fit. I'm thinking about someone that I worked with who I don't think they were a bad person. I think they just genuinely weren't qualified to do what they were doing. And in the. I don't know, in the sales call that we had, there was just, like, a big push for me to make an investment that, like, I wasn't really sold on. And they didn't. They didn't do a great job of connecting with me, but I really, really wanted the solution that they offered, and so I overlooked it. And then I enrolled, and it was just the worst, worst decision of my life. Well, not the worst decision of my life. Alpha Creative Agency was the worst decision of my business. But, yeah, there was. Just trust your instincts. Your instincts are never wrong. Okay? You have. You have your fear voice that. That speaks up and it's like, oh, well, this might not be worth it, but you also have your intuition that says, hey, something's not right here. Something's not right here. I'm not gonna. Your intuition generally doesn't know what's not right, but your intuition will pipe up and say, back away. For some reason, we want to back away. Always trust that voice, Hussein. It's annoying to hire the wrong employee to both parties. So knowing the reasons for that mistake is very important to avoid him avoiding happen again. And knowing it is possible to find a job that suits his qualifications or the possibility of training. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Like, I love this. Thank you, Hussein. Because oftentimes we feel bad for not hiring the person because, like, they're not getting a job. We forget that there are thousands, millions, billions of jobs out there that they can go and get. And we're not the only person with a job that they can. They can apply for. And actually, if we hire them when they're not the right fit, what we're doing is we're actually shutting them off to other opportunities that will be a better fit for them, that'll be more generative for them. And so. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Not hiring someone can sometimes be the kindest thing that you can do for them, especially if it's not the right fit anyway. But I just wanted to share this because it can feel so icky to be in your business and make these wrong decisions and. And invest money and not see a return on that investment. And it's normal. It happens to the best of us. Even people who train on this shit sometimes hire the wrong people. Thankfully, I have also hired some other really incredible people who know their stuff and who are incredible supports to me. So. Re. Re Pierce, she's my obm. She's absolutely amazing. Jess Bruno, who does my social media, Instagram, Tick tock, that kind of stuff. She's incredible. Helen Marino, she helps me send the copy on my website. Tyler Cook. Guys, Tyler Cook is one of the best email marketers that there is out there. He's helped me structure my whole back end of my email system to, you know, to stay in touch with my humans. Who else? I feel like I'm forgetting someone, right? Photographers, you know, in your business, you're going to make the wrong decision and that happens and it's okay. And you just need to forgive yourself, learn the lesson, but forgive yourself and move on, okay? And do your due diligence with your next people, okay? Often the mistakes I've made in my business have all been for lack of doing due diligence. Because I'm a trusting person. I know I would never submit myself for a job unless I knew I 100% could do it. I would never submit myself, our job. If I were lying about what I have accomplished with other people, I would never do that. And I assumed that everyone out there would operate the same way. And I mean, this is the, the fundamental human position is that we project how we would act onto other people. And that's where we get in trouble because not everyone's going to act like us anyway. With that, I want. Oh, Sean, let me see what you. This is the long one. You, you make some very good points here. We just had a case of bad colleague here who is not who he said he was and actually turned out to be a rotten egg. I had a bad feeling about him and along with other colleagues had to write those reports. He is no longer with us today. Make your background checks. Yes, I think he's. I think you mean make your background checks, not male background checks. Yeah, unfortunately there, there are some bad eggs out there. I have an ex boyfriend who, when I started dating him, I didn't realize he was actually a con man. Here's the problem with bad eggs. They're really good at convincing people that they're good eggs. Right? Otherwise they wouldn't have gotten anywhere in their business. Like it just wouldn't have worked out. So you absolutely have to do your due diligence. Even if someone seems like they're a good egg, even if they seem like they check all the boxes, even if they have you completely fooled. You have to go and get references. You have to go and dig, especially if it's your business, because it's not like you're working for a corporate overlord who has lots of money to waste. You don't. You're starting out, you're scaling, you're investing money back into your business. You have to be careful with that. So, Sean, thank you for sharing that. That's a great example. Anyway, I have to get back to writing my book, guys. This is day three. We're not, we're not close to finished like this is. Let's not, let's not kid ourselves here. But learning some really valuable lessons about what works and what doesn't work, which I will be sharing in a webinar either this week or next week. So stay tuned for that. Thank you so much for joining. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. This is still September. We're going to be going live for the next 10 days of this month. So stay tuned. And if there are any topics you would like for me to go live on, then please DM them to me because I would love to make sure I'm going live on stuff that's really, truly helpful to you. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus again. Thank you for joining me. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing rest of your day and week. And yes, and make your background checks. We'll leave it on that. Thank you, Sean. All right. Bye, everyone. Talk to you soon.