How To Hire The Best with Dr. Sabrina Starling

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge, hosted by Linda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Steven Libhart.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone, and today we have a special guest. It's Dr. Sabrina Starling, and I'm actually going to let Steve do the intro because he's the person who got her to come on to our podcast.

Well, thank you, Linda. And Dr. Starling, welcome. You are— I'm in the Dr. Starling fan club ever since coming to your presentation at QuickBooks Connect in November. And we're just so honored to have you here today. So thank you for coming. And just a brief intro about Dr. Starling. She's a business psychologist and author of How to Hire the Best series and The 4-Week Vacation. And she's the founder of Tap the Potential, where they work to free business owners from the constant demand of growing the business and how to deal with themselves And give themselves permission to take breaks and be human beings. And you just resonated with me like crazy when I came to your presentation. So thank you for being here.

Thank you, Steve. I'm honored to be here. And any time that I can talk about taking your life back from your business and how to just enjoy life as, as an entrepreneur, as we grow our businesses, I love that opportunity. So I'm very appreciative.

So maybe to kick things off, we could talk about, you know, there's no one size that fits all, and people tend to, like with, with their tech stacks and things like that, you know, I talked to my friend down the street and he told me that this is how he brings people into his law firm and how he hires them and what he does with them and all of that. And they just plop the employee down and expect everything to work. And I, you know, you really tune in on how to hire the right person. To give you the freedom that you need. Tierra has made such a huge difference to all of us here because she's got the ability to herd the cattle, if you will.

Yeah. You know, having A-players on your team as a small business owner is absolutely critical to having a good quality of life. And I'm kind of— it's interesting that you kick our conversation off that way because that is exactly how I started down this path. When I was a psychologist in rural Wyoming, I landed there after I finished my doctoral training because I needed to get my student loans paid off. And if I'd served in a rural area for a couple of years, I got my student loans paid off. So I was working in community mental health. I got totally burnt out. There wasn't enough of me to go around. And I thought, I have to repurpose my skills as a psychologist in some way. And I discovered life coaching, and I hung out my shingle as a life coach. And I started getting a lot of clients who were small business owners, and they wanted to talk to me about 2 issues: work-life balance and employee problems. And they saw me as a psychologist who could help them solve their employee problems. And so they, they would say to me, you know, I have these team members, they don't hit expectations. They just kind of show up and wait around to be told what to do. And it's just every team member I add just feels like one more burden on my shoulders. And I'm—

Are they asking the same thing over and over?

Yes.

Yeah.

And so I would work with them and try to help them coach these team members. But I quickly came to realize, like, this is— there, you can't coach this. This— you can't take somebody who's a warm body and turn them into a highly engaged, motivated employee. And so I just was straight up with these business owners and I said, look, you need to fire them. They're hurting your culture and you need to hire some A-players. And Every one of them said to me, you don't understand, Dr. Sabrina, we're a small business owner in a small town in a rural area. We just have to make do. This is how it is. And I heard that phrase over and over and over. This is how it is. And I started to believe it. And then one morning as I was waking up, and if you've ever had that experience when you transition from sleep to being awake and sometimes you have this bolt from the blue idea and it solves everything or solves some big struggle you've been dealing with. Well, I didn't quite have that experience, but what I did have is I had this powerful question running through my head, and that is, what if it's not true? What if it's not true because we're small business owners and we're in this rural area, we just have to make do? And that really put me on this quest to figure out, like, could I find small business owners who have A-players on their team? And if they do, Would they tell me what they did to hire them? And I thought, well, maybe I'll do an interview series because back then this was before podcasting, this was before, you know, social media. And I thought, I'll just write a series of blog posts on this. And so I found some small business owners and they had some A-players on their teams. And I asked them if I could interview them and they all turned me down.

Oh, wow.

And I didn't understand that. And I said— and I followed up and I said, I'm not— I want to understand, why are you turning me down? And they said, well, because I have no idea. how I got them. If I lost them, I have no idea how I would replace them. It's just—

Well, there's a fear right there to operating the business.

Yeah.

And so I'm pleasantly persistent and I said, okay, I know you don't have any idea how they came to be on your team. Would you just tell me the story of how they came to be on your team? And they agreed to that. And so I started collecting these stories. And then one evening in my living room, I just spread all these stories out across my living room floor. And I started looking for patterns and I noticed there were patterns. So I was able to group them into different things that led to those A-players being on those business owners' teams. And whenever you can find patterns, that's the start of a system. And I thought, there is a system here and it's like this big elephant in the room. People know it intuitively, but they're not using it and no one's put it together because there were no books back then written on hiring for small business owners. There was, there, you know, there, there are books that are for corporate, and if you have an entire HR team, that's great. But most who are entrepreneurs don't have that. And so that's how I came to write the first book in the How to Hire the Best series, which was How to Hire the Best: The Rural Business Owner's Ultimate Guide to Attracting Top-Performing Team Members. And I thought I was going to focus on rural business and that was going to be my, my specialty. Well, as soon as that book came out, I started getting phone calls from business owners all over the country, and they would all kind of start off the same way. You know, I'm, I'm not a— I'm not in a rural area. I'm in New York, I'm in New Jersey, I'm in San Francisco. I have this problem. Do you think your work would help me? And I said, I don't know. Let's try it and let's see. And so I did a workshop and it was very hands-on. And I said, you know, let's all come together and let's see if we can solve this. And sure enough, what works in a small town in a rural area works exponentially better when there's more population.

Yeah.

And so, okay, I went on to write multiple books in the How to Hire the Best series. The last one is How to Hire the Best: The Entrepreneur's Ultimate Guide to Attracting Top performing team members. And I always tell people, I never ever set out to be a hiring expert. My main intention— the book that I really wanted to write was The 4-Week Vacation because I wanted to help these business owners with their work-life balance issues. And through the whole process, what I came to see is the reason we have work-life balance issues is we're not desiring to be workaholics. None of us ever sets out to be a workaholic. But when we don't feel confident in our team members and we want to grow the business, the only path forward that we see is work harder, grind it out. And guess what? We have a culture that reinforces that message every time we turn around. I, I've been in conferences that talk where, where burnout is a big discussion point, and I've also— in those same conferences, there have been panels of entrepreneurs on the stage who will say, You just have to grind it out. And so even as we're trying to disrupt this message that yes, you can scale your business, you don't have to grind it out. It's everywhere that, you know what, you're, you're just supposed to grind it out. And it is such a healthy, destructive— it's an unhealthy, destructive mentality in our businesses.

So did COVID change that at all? Because I read about people who are like, okay, I'm not going to work as hard as I used to? Or do we have still that, that perception that I've got to work harder now because I've got to save my business? What are you, what are you seeing after COVID?

I love that you asked that question. I was so happy when, not when COVID happened, but when people started talking more about being able to work from home and, you know, they could, they could exercise during the day and spend more time with their kids and just start. I was starting to hear the culture and the discussion in our culture shifting to let's all slow down. This is a time to pause and reconnect. But what seems to have happened after COVID is, yes, we all have that appreciation. We've had a taste of it now, and we feel like we've got to grind it out. And so, I think it's even worse because we know we have an experience now. So many people in our society have had an experience of being able to slow down and take care of themselves and eat better and have time with family. And now they're back in the hustle and in the grind. And so it, I think it's created an even bigger tension.

So what about the workforce then? Because, you know, you read every day that they're having trouble getting employees to come back to work.

Yes. So, so there's so many good lessons that have come out of COVID We've all learned Most of us have learned how to work remotely. And in the past, I work across industries. We have a lot of accountants and bookkeepers, we have lawyers. We also have construction contractors, landscapers. Oh, wow.

Yeah.

And they all said, we can't imagine running a remote meeting with our team. And that was prior to COVID. Now they're all like, oh yeah, we could do that. We could have a remote meeting. We know how to do it. So we've learned some skills through COVID that I think are very beneficial that will help us to navigate this. And when it comes to attracting A-players to our businesses, we need to understand that it's not just about paying them more and more, you know, and that, that was another byproduct of COVID where we all felt like we had to just increase our wages and salaries and we couldn't afford to hire more people because it was getting so expensive and our payrolls were getting inflated. And what I'm seeing over and over is that A-players have a very different mentality than the average employee. A-players are very intrinsically motivated. So intrinsic motivation means we thrive on learning and growing, and we love challenges. Those are the things that get us excited about coming to work. And extrinsic motivation is the carrot that we dangle with, oh, if you do this, we'll give you a bonus. And, and that's not That's not motivating to A-players. And I'm not saying A-players don't care about money. They do, and they should be compensated, but they don't need excessive compensation to attract them. If we can pay attention in our businesses to the A-players we have and understand why they enjoy coming to work for us, what motivates them and what keeps them around, and we need to identify those as the intangible perks of working for us. And that's what we need to promote and spread the word about, is all the intangible perks. A-players so appreciate opportunities for flexibility. They appreciate being respected. And, and respect is such— it seems like such a simple thing, but it's missing in our workplaces. And when you have team members who have been berated by a boss previously, and they come into your workplace and you talk to them with curiosity about their ideas and tell me more about that, and what do you think we could do here? At first, they're going to be like a deer in the headlights because they don't know what to do with that. It's totally different. And they come to really value that and appreciate it. So that is a— it shows up over and over in our surveys when we survey the A-players on our clients' team about why they like working for our clients. Respect comes up over and over. The other— oh, go ahead.

Oh, I was gonna ask, is the other, the other way to, to kind of build off of that is it's, um, well, how did you come up with this idea? Where did this stem? Like trying to gather sort of more curiosity, which I feel like we do a lot. We, we wanna— I don't know, you could probably speak to it better, uh, Linda, but we We try to foster this circular conversation, I guess.

We do. And we, we don't want everybody having head down and just constantly in the numbers. But then we don't also want to be having meetings that go on for 4 hours where we're just talking about nothing and not getting any work done. So there's like a little bit of a balance there. But I think part of, for me, because I'm older, is understanding the generation and beyond, maybe 30s, that age group, right? Because that'd be my staff, understanding where they come from. Because I think a lot of times baby boomers, in my case, they're gonna be like, oh, you know, my way. And I hear this with the other room. Oh, our way is the only way that's right. And this generation is not right the way they do things. They're lazy. They're this, they're that. And I think sometimes it's more of a perception. I think every generation thinks they did better than the other. I think sometimes, like, I look at my daughter and I think sometimes she looks at me and sees that I gave her a bunch of stuff. And she also looks at me as an overworker. And I looked at my grandfather that way too. But I looked up to him, which is different than I think it's perceived.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. That I'm looked at as I overwork myself. Sarah overworks herself. You know, you two found each other fantastic, but you both work way too much, and I'm not going to do that in my generation. And I found that for me, I pulled it back a little bit, and now she's on her own and realizing by me not rushing to help that she's learning that it's going to be more about, oh, now I think I get a little bit of this because now I'm sitting here, I'm on my own. No one's helping me. And now I maybe get it, but I actually don't want her to overwork. But then I sit back and say, well, that's where my success has driven me, and I like what I do.

Yeah.

And so there's that too. There's the dance of loving what I do. And but I wanna understand people that work for us. Sarah and I have talked about it where we've looked at it and said, what can we do to make the team happy and get the production out of them? And how can we build more people on our team Because you can't replicate people. I can't clone Nicole, or I can't clone Mirna, or anybody else on our team. Tiara. I can't clone any of them. How do I, how do I replicate it with a different human being and have that happiness? Is it about figuring out where they want to be in their path of working with us?

Oh, you're asking— there's so many good questions in what you just laid out here. Um, my mind's going in 20 different directions, but what I, what I want to say First, I want to acknowledge that most of us who've been successful equate our success to hard work. And we don't, we don't know if we could have been successful if we would have worked 10 hours a week less.

Yeah.

Maybe we would be more successful, right? But we have no way of knowing that. So we just assume working hard equates to success. And the most mind-blowing conversation I had Years ago, I actually got to meet Michael Gerber, who wrote The E-Myth. I think a lot of business owners know who that is. And I got to ask him a question. And I stood there and I thought, oh gosh, Michael Gerber, I get to ask him a question. It better be a good one. So, I just finally said to him what was on my heart. And I said, I'm a business coach like you. I coach business owners to put systems in place and hire great people. And they're having great success. I am overworked. I'm tired. They all want to work with me. How did you do it, Michael? And he said, my dear, I own a coaching company and I have never coached a day in my life. And I—

Oh my.

That answer at first made me so mad because I thought, you know, how dare you? You know, like my head was just exploding. And then I just, I just, I pulled myself together and I thanked him. I said, thank you. And I just walked off. And as I walked off, it all started to fall into place. And I started realizing that he was saying to me that I need to approach my work in a different way, that what I thought was the way to succeed, which is work harder, work harder, that wasn't his path. And he got there in a different way. And maybe he worked hard to get there. Who knows? I have no idea. But he said it put a different possibility in front of me. And so I started asking myself, what do I want? And I was— I had a baby at home and I was really clear that I wanted to be there and be a mom and have a successful business. And I had to figure that out, like how to do both. And so what I got really clear on is what would feel good to me about the amount of work I'm willing to do. And it just came to me 25 hours a week. Because that was the amount of time I was willing to put her in daycare. So if I could run my business and grow it on 25 hours a week, I would feel like, yes, I'm in a good spot. And so I have done that for the last— she's, she's going to graduate next year from high school. So 17, 18 years. And what I have learned in that process is that limits force innovation and creativity. So I I had almost a nervous breakdown the first couple of years in business because there was so much to get done and I only had 25 hours. And what I got clear on is if I start my day asking myself, what is the highest value activity? Like, if I can only get one thing done today that's going to grow this business and make things better and move us forward, what is that one thing? And I just started my day every day asking myself and making sure I got that one thing done. I mean, there, there were 20 other things on the list to be done. They didn't all get done, but I got my one thing done. And what I came to realize is that this applies for all of us, whether we're business owners or employees. So we— and if you're an A-player in a business, your list of to-dos is endless because you're the A-player. You get things done. So everybody comes to you and says, hey, could you— I know you're busy.

Could you do this?

And A-player says, yes, of course. And it just— their workload just expands. And so I think one of the key pieces for us and for us to do with our team members is to always come back to, if you can only get one thing done today, what is the most important thing? What is the highest value activity that you can do that's going to move us forward in the business? And when we can communicate that to our team members, here's the key result that I'm looking for from you. If you get that done in 8 hours today, great. If you can do it in 4, Even better, and you can have those four hours back. That's your time. And so it's when we run our businesses driven on results. It's not about the hours that we put in, and our A players who are intrinsically motivated see it as a challenge. Like oh, I don't have to work a forty-hour week if I can get all this done and do it in twenty-five. And they will—

this is exactly why I wanted you to be here today. You, you talked about this at your presentation and I was like, this is it.

Are they on salary then? And you're motivating them to get the full week? Oh, interesting. Sarah?

Yes.

So we, all of our team at Tap the Potential is part-time. We don't have anyone who works full-time. We have a mix of salaried employees and independent contractors. Um, and the salaried employees are not full-time. They're, they are compensated for full-time. I make sure that their wages and salaries are in that, in, in that line, but they have freedom and flexibility. And just at the beginning of this year, we went to unlimited vacation and sick leave.

Oh, wow.

Yes.

And the, the reason I did that is I didn't want all the administrative hassle of tracking all this vacation and sick leave. It's, it's a huge— you guys know, with bookkeepers, there's a lot of hassle in tracking all of this. And I thought, well, what happened? Because I take 4 weeks of vacation a year. Like, I'm— I take a full 4 weeks off plus additional time when my kids are out of school or whatever. I want that for my team members. And what does it look like if we give them unlimited vacation and sick time? And the way the, the SOP that we have around this is you have a result you're responsible for. That result is key to the business. If you want to be out, you have to figure out how that result's still going to be delivered, whether you're here or not. And so that may mean finding another team member who can fill in or doing things ahead of time or whatever, but they're responsible for figuring out how to make sure that result is covered.

They have permission. They have permission to be— to own the process. I love this.

Well, it's like holding that torch.

It's like that torch, like that you're thinking of, like the Olympics. Yeah, you're the lucky duck, you get to pass it, you pick who you want. Yeah, I love it.

I run, I run my business on the belief that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So if I get to take time off, so do my team members. And when I take time off, I do it in a responsible way. You know, even if I have to be out of the office for an unexpected emergency, I make sure stuff gets done. And so They can do that too. I've hired A players, and that is the key. When we know that we've hired these A players who are intrinsically motivated, who want to do a good job just for the sake of doing a good job, we can trust them. And so many of our policies and procedures are based on keeping the warm bodies in check. If we don't allow warm bodies on our team, we don't have to have all of those policies and procedures. And I, I would even go further and say we need to be very careful that we haven't created policies and procedures that are noxious to our A-players. And to give you an example of this, one of the reasons I put particular team members on salary is because they were part-time and they were hourly, and we would travel to conferences, and they want to go to all the sessions because they want to learn. But now they're over 40 hours a week and they're getting overtime, and my payroll is going, you know, through the roof. And I thought, you know, this— what if we just put them on salary and then we don't have to worry if we go to 50 hours when we go to a conference because we all want to go to all the sessions and all the networking and all the fun activities after hours. And they get to go to the conferences, they get to learn and they enjoy. And so be it. And then we don't have all that hassle of tracking all those hours. And so where it was getting noxious is they would come to me and say, I know I'm supposed to stay within this amount of hours, Dr. Sabrina, but I'm going to go over by 5 hours. Because of, you know, this conference thing, what, what do I do? And then we get so tedious because we have to figure it all out. And we just get— we take that out. So look at what policies you have and ask yourself, is this conducive to A-players or is it making their life unnecessarily hard?

And it creates safety for them. They know they can count on that salary and they probably— I'm going to guess here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that their productivity probably improves under that scenario as well.

Well, we've only done this now for 4 weeks, but we feel like it's working.

And I was going to ask you on that topic for culture, because most, I mean, even us as owners, but also serving our clients, most cultures are, a lot of the policies and procedures are built because somebody ruined it for somebody else.

Right.

Right. one seed in the apple there that's like— so, so I'm presuming probably through your own work, the way that you shift a culture in a firm of any kind, any sort of business, this changes the dynamic. It almost— I wonder, do you find that it would weed out those people naturally? Do you find the light bulb moment hit certain owners of businesses where like, hey, this person's got to go just clearly?

Yes.

And, and definitely the business owners, The first one to get it. Because once you've had— once you bring A players on your team and you see the difference between what A players do versus warm bodies, then you start to think. And it's really about the confidence. Like, as you build your confidence that you know how to hire A players, it's easier to fire the warm bodies. But if you lack confidence in knowing that you could replace them with someone better, you're going to tolerate it. And so the business owner is the first one to get to that point of, I'm not going to tolerate this anymore, because their skill set builds in hiring and they feel like, okay, this working. But the beautiful thing is when the team members quit tolerating the warm bodies. I've had clients take their 4-week vacation and come back and be informed by their leadership team that someone was fired because the team members— that, that person was violating an immutable law of the company, and the team members felt empowered to handle it and knew that an immutable law means non-violable standard. You do that and you're gone. And they took action on it. So the team members stop tolerating it.

This is brilliant. And, and the other option that I see a lot of times that fosters naturally— we see this, we hear this— because we sometimes become the threat or that outside firm coming in to support. But it also fosters this, I'm, I'm owed this. What do you mean you're owed this as an employee? I don't understand. Where did this— I'm sorry, I, I swear I put the hat on of all liabilities of everything. And now I'm, I'm indebted to you as the employee. And you hear this as coaching. Just, we don't mean to step into that realm, but we as business owners, we hear it, we feel it, we see it in our own at times. What do you do with this kind of process when you're doing this work?

So I think it's recognizing where that team member is coming from.

Okay.

And I hear that there's a feeling of threat in there, that somehow that individual feels threatened by you, your firm, and how you guys are there. And so one of the things that's interesting to me is whenever we're dealing with employees, we have no idea what prior experiences they've had with outside firms, with bosses, consultants coming in. I, as a consultant, get it all the time. Like, the team members aren't happy that the business owner is working with Tap the Potential until they understand we're here to make a better culture. Then it's kind of like, oh, this is kind of a good thing, the A-players. But the ones who have been hiding out, who have been doing things they shouldn't be doing, or getting away, you know, testing the boundaries, those are the ones who start to feel threatened by, you know, the business upleveling. And when you guys are coming in, it's because the business is upleveling in some way, and that is inevitably going to feel threatening to the team members who are not the A-players. And, and so in How to Hire the Best, one of the foundational pieces that I teach is that we want to always hire team members whose core values align with ours. So we have to identify what are our core values, and that's just kind of like how we do life. And we know our core values are violated when we get upset or angry. And so that's how we start to identify what are these core values that we have, and we turn them into immutable laws in the company. And so when we hire team members who have similar immutable laws, they do life very similarly to how we do life. And that's where the culture really starts to improve and take off. And so whenever you're going through this, this transition in the business where you have some team members who are well aligned and others who are not well aligned, it's, it's natural that there will be some team members who leave. And I, I have had— I have been brought in by team members to help a business, and those team members have been fired. And it's because as we did this immutable law process, it was really clear they were trying to use me to undermine the business owner. Like they had a difference at a core value.

Oh my goodness.

Yes. Yes. So it's, it's really just looking at, hey, we're here to help. And the, the employees that are reacting in this whatever way that's, that feels negative, that's about them. That's about their mindset, where they are. And we can be curious about how we can support them. What do they need? How, how do we set this relationship up to be successful? And we can do those things. And they have to meet us. They may not meet us there.

No, I used to own a day spa, and I did kind of what you were talking about a few minutes ago. I created layers within the day spa. When you interviewed with us and you were hired, we immediately gave you a questionnaire to fill out. What's your favorite color, your favorite flower? What's more important to you, time off or success in everything that you do at work and putting those hours in? And what do you want to do with your life? Do you want to buy a house? Do you want to buy a car?

Where are you?

And we would get that questionnaire going and then we would share that with our department heads. This is who's coming to work in your department. And to your point, we would be able to go away on a trip, maybe to a convention or whatever, and come back and found that the garden weeded itself.

Yes.

You know, because, and we didn't have to do it. We didn't have to be involved in it yet. We were the people that made sure that on their anniversary, they got a yellow rose because they like roses and the yellow Color yellow. And we really created that culture. And in the day spa, in the hair industry, people, you know, they covet the client. It's my client, Sabrina. You can't touch my client, even though you do better hair than I do or whatever. And we taught them that, okay, that's your client, but treat them like the client belongs to everybody. Are you referring them over to Linda to get a facial? Are you referring them to Sarah to get their hair color done? Are you— Are you making it so that that client comes back and enjoys this entire experience that we have to offer? And then, number 2, teaching them how to use the products and how important those were and not abuse that to keep the costs where they should be. And we included him in that whole process of everything that went on in that company. And we were approached by somebody with a lot of money that paid cash for the business, and we walked away in a great condition. I mean, you— this is great. Yeah, thank you. It just— this is why you resonate with me so much. And it's like finding those A-team players and compensating them and find out what makes them tick. I love that you have unlimited time off. How cool is that?

Yeah. And what you shared about the onboarding process where you take the time to get to know them So often we onboard team members, we get focused on, did you fill out all your paperwork? Is, you know, is that form—

And go to work.

And, and it's all about checking those boxes and making sure all the paperwork's done. And we really spend time at Tap the Potential with getting to know them first. So we have a questionnaire very similar to what you just identified.

You're doing that. Oh, I feel like I did something right.

Yeah. And, and, you know, we talk to them about what are your strengths. We give them the People Map assessment. We give them the CliftonStrengths. And then we share all of that with the team. We— and it creates these opportunities for people to find commonalities so they connect.

Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait right there. I gotta interrupt. I'm sorry. So, if I come in as a new employee and I take this CliftonStrengths test, you're going to share it with my whole— the whole team I work with?

That is so cool.

That is so cool.

Yeah, because everybody needs to know what your strengths are because we want people to work from their strengths. And we tell our team members, We're going to ask you once a quarter, maybe twice a year if we're in, you know, really busy mode, but at least twice a year we're going to ask you, what are you doing that you don't like doing?

Yeah.

And what are the things you're procrastinating on? And I have learned that when we procrastinate on something, it's because we're working outside our strengths. And so I want to get that off of people's plate. We can find somebody else who loves doing that, get it to them and let them exceed with it. And while they're doing it, we're freeing up our A-players to work from their strengths. And when A-players are in a role with clear results that align with their strengths, they will be 900% to 1,200% more productive than a warm body. And that's how they can work a 25-hour work week, because we're taking stuff off of them that doesn't align with who they are.

You know, I, I love this conversation. I, and Linda, I was gonna share this with you this morning, but I haven't had an opportunity. I was watching, um, Diary of a CEO. I love watching his clips. And he, there was a clip on there and he was talking about how they interview employees. And he said his— it came to this similar style analogy. Look, I might invest 1 hour of each person's time on my— basically his A-team— to interview you or review you, but I also spend 18 months having you on my team, 6 months to acquire you, 8 hours of paying my team just to have you here to sit and interview. And I— he's like, people given me a hard time about. I'm overboard. And then I've got 18 months to figure out, essentially, if, if you don't leave, I've spent 18 months of time. He aggregated it all, and I was like, wow, that's kind of smart.

It's—

yeah, it's a longer hiring process, but we've heard this. I've learned it says that we hire slow and foster. And really, I feel like what you're doing is bringing back those simple core principles of processes that in this fast day and age we've gotten away from because we've had demand or we've had to fill a warm body seat and then we disrupt this and then wonder why it's broken.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, one of, one of the things that I teach business owners to do is to really identify what the sweet spot is of the business. And we have a whole process that we take business owners through to do that. And then we want to envision the sweet spot X-ing. So if it's going to be 3x, 5x, 10x over the next few years, whatever that X number is, what are the key roles that are going to need to be filled during that time period? And once you get clarity on that, then you start everywhere you go, every conference, every networking opportunity, you're letting people know, hey, we're going to be looking for people who are like this. And you describe the personality characteristics that will be needed to be successful in these roles. And you say, who do you know who, who's like that? Would you make an introduction? What you don't say is, who do you know who's like that who's looking for a job? Because A-players are not reading classified ads. They're not on Indeed. They hop from one opportunity to the next. And so you, your role as the CEO owner is chief recruiter. And chief recruiter is just building relationships and letting them know, hey, I want to get to know you. So-and-so recommended I talk to you. I understand you're like this. Tell me a little bit about you. And, and, you know, we're going to have some opportunities coming up that are, that are like this. And if that ever interests you, I'd love to follow up with you. I'd love to have you put in an application or submit your resume. And you're just building the pipeline. And that keeps you out of, oh my gosh, we're busy, we're growing, we've got to hire, we got to just get somebody in the door and get them in a seat, make sure they fill out that paperwork and let's go. You know, that's, that's how we tend to hire. But this is a much more like strategic approach. And it feels— I can't tell you how much more peaceful business feels when you run it this way versus react, react, react.

Well, and to your point of getting that one thing done a day, picking that one thing out, how do you coach owners to stop working in the business and work on the business? You know, because that's the magic question.

It really, it really is. So most of the clients who come to work with us at Tap the Potential come in and they— we have a lot of accountants and bookkeepers working 60 or more hours a week, um, and working on the weekends and late at night. Some of them Work through the night, work the next day. I mean, that especially this time of the year. And so saying to them, you know, if you could just get in 6 hours a week of working on your business, and they're like, where, where do I find these 6 hours? So we really teach them a process of time blocking. And so much of the initial work that we do with our clients is helping our clients to understand that we're— when we context switch, we are losing 80% of our productivity. So context switching is keeping your email open while you're working on another client's project and going back and forth, and then you respond to another email, another. Every time you're context switching, you're increasing the chances you're gonna make a mistake and you're slowing yourself down. So just learning to time block is, is critical. But there's also getting things off of the business owner's plate. Learning how to use an executive assistant to take some of these, these less valuable activities off the plate, it starts to free up hours. So it's like we just try to find a little wedge, like how do we get a wedge of time so that you're not feeling so overwhelmed? And it's a snowball effect. So once that starts to come into play, then we start looking at what else can be delegated. We have one accountant who We've in just 3, I think 3 or 4 months' time with us, she's able to take a full day off each week.

Nice.

She came in meeting, meeting, meeting, like her schedule was packed and she was working on the evenings and weekends to get work done while she was in these meetings all the time. And now a full day off each week.

That resonating with you, Sarah? It's funny because I just, I read something somewhere. It might have been a Zapier article or something, and it talked about Turning off all the alerts on your phone and on your computer.

Yeah.

And I schedule it now. So at 8 AM, I get a notification with everything that I needed to look at, and then it doesn't happen again until like 3 o'clock that I get another notification. And there's another one like at 7 PM, and I don't look at that if I don't— I will look at it if I want to, but I shut off LinkedIn, Facebook, all of that stuff.

Yes.

It's really peaceful now. It's so much I was constantly distracted during the day, and I didn't realize how much that was sucking the life out of me until I shut it all off. And I'm like, this is really good. And I remember, I will never forget, Seth David said this in one of our sessions. He's a mentor of me and Sarah's and Steve's. And he said, with working over the weekends, and he said, don't be afraid that the work won't get done. The work will still get done.

Right.

And I, I remember him saying that. I remember him at the time, I thought, Well, that's stupid. No, it won't get done. And he was absolutely right. If you take a moment and take that time for yourself, which for me tomorrow, I already booked my beach chair. So I have a beach community and I've got a beach and I made a goal mission to myself this year that at least once a month I'm going to get to the beach. And it's February now. So I have another new one.

That's one of the things I love about you, Linda, is that you do your beach time and you do your yoga time and all of that. And Linda and Sarah know So, I'm an Airstreamer. I have an Airstream travel trailer, and I'm an officer in the Colorado Airstream Club, and I'm passionate about it. And from May till October, they never know where I'm at. But I make— I show up for the meetings, I work with my team, I get up early, I do my thing, I've got it all in the Airstream, and then I go have a hike. You have to give yourself permission to stop because you can't take care of everybody and everything if you can't take care of you.

Yes. And I believe so strongly in the small steps forward. So, for those who are listening who are thinking, I don't know if I can turn off my phone or notifications, I challenge you at 5 o'clock, set that hard deadline. You're going to go home, you're going to turn, you're going to put your phone down, turn off notifications, and just be present. And what happens is every time we're doing that, we're recharging ourselves. So, we will be more effective the next day versus continuing to just grind it out. That's where we lose our effectiveness. So this is really about the more you rest, the more you recharge, the more productive you are. Um, one of the things that I want to offer to your listeners is my chart of $10,000 an hour activities. And it's really, it lays out the difference between a $10 an hour task, $100 an hour, $1,000. Or $10,000. And I say print this out, laminate it, put it behind your computer monitor so your eye falls on it regularly and you'll see yourself doing these $10 an hour activities. And that's when you'll realize, oh, that's brilliant. I need an assistant. Oh yes, I need to delegate this. And it really gets the ball rolling. So you can get that at tapthepotential.com/10k.

I love that.

That's wonderful. Thank you so much.

Yeah, I feel like you give what you're saying. I mean, I do it inherently too. It's like a savior thing for myself is when you work so hard, you begin to start saving yourself in weird ways, small baby steps. But I feel like what we're saying to the audience is you're giving yourself permission to say it's okay. And I, I do these things there. They don't— I actually don't talk about them. But I have moments where I literally, being formerly an event planner, I'm on stage and I shut down. And I've always done this, and I do it in weird ways, but it saves me. It's a personal thing to me, and I've always felt that that's just how I, I recharge and I rebuild. I'm terrible. I'll say it right now, live. If I'm on a business travel trip, I'm— I do not like trying do 2 things at once like that. Nope. I'm here. I'm spending time doing this. This is what I'm going to do. If I have to, I'll engage, but only if I have to. And Tira is the one that helps really kind of keep me in the front of that. Otherwise, no, I'm not good at it and I'm not going to do it. It's just not going to happen.

Yeah.

Because I need that time. Yeah.

You've cultivated presence for yourself.

Yeah.

And, and this awareness that I can be better when I'm here and I'm fully present and I'm not trying to do all these other things all at the same time.

Yeah.

We try to tell even staff, if Sarah isn't like, Sarah goes to a lot of these, she's on a lot of boards, right? So she's in a really, set herself in some really high places. She's there to be with a bunch of people. It's not just during that piece of time that she's there learning or whatever, she's there to help give feedback to a software company, for example. But after that, it's networking with all these hand-selected people where so much comes out of it. It's like, just leave Sarah alone. We're lucky because we're together.

We do it the same way. Yeah. Yeah.

Back and forth. But, you know, Sarah's actually taught me too. We've had a client on an email responder one time, and the person was like, I'm on vacation. And I forgot how it was worded. I remember saying, Tierra, capture that because the person was like, I'm not responding to anything. The, the way they wrote it, I thought, But if we ever put that on our responder, they would be like, what do you mean? I'm hiring you. I'm paying you every day. And, you know, I pay you once a week or whatever. How dare you not answer? And I remember Sarah pulled me aside. She goes, see this response here? They have to understand it's a 2-way street. They're not gonna get instant response because that's what I was doing. I was instantly responding.

Oh, that's so dangerous.

Yeah. Yeah. I was training them to expect that.

That's exactly it.

The expectation that I was gonna answer like that.

Yeah.

I shut my notifications off, and it's been eye-opening for me because that was my go-to. I didn't want to see the red dot.

I'm so happy for you. And because I know you. Yeah, it takes— it's taken, what, how many years?

It's not an overnight process.

But I think what you've given us, Dr. Sterling, is you've given us opportunity to say, hey, whatever stage it is, it's okay. Just start it. And I love that. Yeah. Yeah, it's like that permission somebody else has to— sometimes you need that outward permission to be like, it's all right, take 5 minutes for my cup of coffee. I don't need to have everybody in my face and catching up on all the emails or—

Right.

And we will still be successful. And that's what I want everyone to hear. Yeah, you can work 10 hours less this week and you will still be as successful next year, if not more successful, because you're going to be more strategic because you You're thinking at a higher level when you're not so stressed.

Yeah. Get away from the computer screen for a little bit.

Yeah, I love— I mean, I do. Honestly, it's the joke in my house. I'm going to do the dishes or clean the fridge because I need to get away, and this is my outlet. So it's kind of— it's whatever. It's small. But you've brought to us so many— I mean, we have to— I know in our show notes, we're going to have places to connect with you. follow you? Steve, you mentioned there's like a newsletter or some sort of thing that you follow.

She's— I just, I love her. I don't think you know that, but I walked away from— I walked away that day on— I was up in the clouds after I talked to you because I was like, you just resonated with me. I'm like, yeah, is an answer.

Thank you.

The best place to follow me is on the Profit by Design podcast. If you want to hear more of all the things I've shared today and more in depth, we record every week. We have tips, tools, strategies to have a sustainable business that's profitable. Because, right, we all want to be profitable. And then also my company is Tap the Potential, so you can check me out at tapthepotential.com.

It's an awesome name.

I love it.

It's beautiful. Yeah, it's very creative.

Well, Tiara, my dear, to support the Accountants Law Pod, please take a moment to like, share, and review this episode. And be sure to subscribe to this podcast on YouTube and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. If you have questions, topic requests, or guest suggestions, you can email us at info@accountantslawpod.com or send us a message through our website, accountantslawpod.com. To join us in the Accountants Law Lab, which meets every Friday, visit our website at accountantslawlab.com to sign up. And to work with Dr. Sabrina Starling, read her books, The Four Week Vacation and the How to Hire the Best series, and listen to our podcast. Profit by Design, follow the links in the show notes below.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being with us today.