The Only Person You Can Hire

I'm Alex and this is the Momentum Podcast made for empire builders, game-changers, trail-blazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy and we're obsessed with creating momentum, so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat, because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few, who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

Welcome to the Momentum Podcast for the entrepreneurial personality type. This podcast is called the Only Person You Can Hire, and what I'm talking about here is hiring true believers in your business. The only person you can hire is a true believer, and I use that title, because I wanted people to listen to this, because this may be the single most important factor in success or failure on a team. And as your team gets bigger, this gets increasingly important, which makes it more difficult, because we all have to understand that if we don't hire true believers, here's something I share with entrepreneurs all the time: If you hire true believers, you will never have to motivate anyone. You'll have to coach them. You'll have to help them. You'll have to give them accountability. You'll have to show them where the very clear outcomes are, what you want. But you'll never have to motivate them.

And if you don't hire a true believer, you will never be able to motivate them enough. And here's how strict this is. This is how serious I am. I want you to hire true believers in your company, in what you are doing. In you, in who you are. And in your market, in who you serve. Because if you have people who are true believers in your company, in what you do, in who you are, in your market, then you don't have to come in and provide this thing called motivation that as CEO's is near impossible. And you're going to have people who give you discretionary effort. You are going to have people who are helping you, rather than giving you a hard time. And you're going to have people who come in and want to see the future you are giving them, that you're creating for them. And so, they're going to give you a lot more support. And I don't just mean hire true believers for your team, I think you have to hire true believers as your team, contractors, you personal care, like who do you use? Who do you go see? And advisers should all be true believers.

I can tell you that when it comes to everyone Cadey and I work with, to the people who are contractors for us to our attorneys, to our advisors, to the people who help us in any way, we work with true. They people who I work with, they listen to my podcast. They buy our content whether we're working with them or not. They've actually come to our classes. They believe in who we are, they believe in what we do. And Cadey and I work with some of the most talented attorneys in the world. Elizabeth Morgan, who's our asset protection attorney is incredible, and she's, she's Elizabeth [inaudible 00:04:09] or not, but she's, I'll call her Morgan for the longest time, but she actually wrote the book on asset protection for financial planners in the United States. And she's also one of our clients because she's a true believer. So, when I'm talking about who you work with, who you have around you that you're paying, you have to hire true believers in every position. And there's a way you can do this. So for your team, you ask for contractors, "Why do you want to work with us? Why do you want to work with me? And why do you want to serve the people we serve?" You just insert whoever it is you serve.

And if you don't think you can do this with a team or contractors, like let me just, I'll give you one example: One of our clients here in Austin, Eddie Rodriguez who runs Masterpiece Builders, when I met him, he was running a relatively small construction firm with one crew. I think they were doing about a half million dollars a year remodeling. And one of the things with Eddie was, she had this belief that he couldn't grow the business, he had this way he really wanted to do things in construction. His team, and they were incredible, they worked for us, they would sweep into a job, so they'd come into a job, they clean things, they make sure they're cleaning on the way in so they don't leave anything in your home, and then when they leave, they sweep themselves out, so you barely know they're in your house. It's incredible, every time they've worked for us, they've done that.

And Eddie and I were talking, and he talked about building helping somebody with their home, it's like this virtuous act. I mean, the guy was incredible. And I wanted to help him in his business, and he explained to me all of these rules, all the way he looked at construction and how he really felt emotionally connected to the people that were getting the work done. And so I started asking him, why wasn't he growing his business? And we resolved that. And then one of the ways that he made sure that he resolved it is he hired true believers. He would talk to people about quality. He would talk to people about sweeping yourself in. He would talk to people about cleaning up on the way out and how passionate he was about the people that they served. And he didn't just find people to work for his company that were like that, he found subcontractors who'd started sweeping themselves in and sweeping themselves out, and then those people would come back and tell him, "Hey, we love working like this. We want more work like this. This means you're doing the highest quality work."

And so, he required it from everyone. And when you hire people who believe in the same things you do, who believe in the same outcomes you do, this is how growing a team, growing a business, gets easier on a daily basis. It's how you get more protection and support. It's how the team starts telling you where the brakes and pacers are instead of trying to cover 'em up, because they believe in the cause. And so, you can all do this.

So, here's some of the things I'm looking for when I'm interviewing, when I'm talking to people. When it comes to a contractor these days, Cadey and I usually place an ad on social media or somewhere else, and then when I talk to people I say, "Tell me how much of my stuff you've listened to. And what does it mean to you? And why do you want to be a writer for us? Or why do you want to write copy for us? And why do you want to help be an assistant for us?" Or whatever it is that we're looking. Why do you want to run ads for us? Because I want people to give me an explanation that lets me know they know who we are, and they know why they're working for us. Because guys, here's math that never works. When you hire the best person for the job that doesn't believe, it's not the best person for the job. And far too often, entrepreneurs get into this tug-of-war in their head where they're saying, "This person looks good on paper, but oh, this person over here I had a feeling about them." And here's where I can tell you 100% of the time, where I've trusted the paper and I didn't trust my gut, oh, it was not the right, right hiring decision.

But, when I was hiring and I knew someone believed in us, like let me give you another example from the real estate industry: So Cadey, my wife, was a top realtor in South Florida. When I sold my consultancy, she got a real estate license, and she did a ton of business and she did it in a really effective way. She used a lot of our systems that we train. And so, she very quickly became one of the top agents in South Florida, and in real estate one of the hardest things you do, is once a contract is signed, is get it all the way to the closing table. But it's a journey, because you have to get credit approval and loan approval and make sure everybody's in the right place on the same day, and all the repairs have been made, and inspections and everything that goes along with real estate, and it's crazy administrative. It's not strategic at all. It's tactically administrative.

So, that was one of the first things we got off Cadey's plate, and we went talking to closing coordinators, people who do this position, and I remember when we found the person we worked with, we asked her, "Why do you do this? Why do you like closing coordinating?" Because it's a hard part of the job. It's the part where all the problems are coming up. Once a contract's signed, it doesn't mean anything. Once a contract's signed means you got a liability that you need to get to a closing table, and like so many things come up and arguments come out, and negotiations, and it's not a particularly fun part of the deal. And it usually is someone who likes systems, who likes structure.

And then Cadey found a woman who said the reason she really loved being a closing coordinator was because as a kid, she moved all the time, and she knows how traumatic and how hard of an experience it is, and she wanted to be able to help people who were moving, and so she just loved being able to be involved in all these closings where she was matching people with houses and helping them get into the homes, and that's going to be a true believer. That's someone who believe in who you're serving. And I remember her telling Cadey, and I want to work with you because I've never seen anybody come into this market and do as much business as you have, and I've been watching you for the past six months, and it's incredible. And I remember thinking this is just too easy.

And Cadey hired her and it was a game-changer. And this is how you create a business where you don't feel like you're the fuel every day to get the team to go forward. Now remember, you've got to put the right systems in place, communication systems, and forward-looking planning, and make sure that people understand where you're going. But when you fill the team with true believers, you don't have to motivate the team, which is most of the work that we do as entrepreneurs. Most of what we do is trying to motivate the team. And I'll describe how it feels for you, those of you who are in business. It's that feeling that every day you're either pushing or pulling some part of the business forward, and making it grow, and the difference is, when you hire true believers, you get to coach people passionately pursuing your success and theirs. Because when you hire true believers at the base level, they see your success as theirs.

Cadey and I, recently we've hired a ton of people to our team, and we're adding more. And we hired an assistant who is absolutely amazing, but she's also incredibly passionate about what we do. And she loves our customer. Like, she's excited about helping entrepreneurs. And she know my stuff, like she is so good helping me with social media and with putting stuff out there and making sure that we have a continuous presence, that in a lot of ways, I told her she's posting my stuff so well and in such a good frequency that I feel like sometimes I'm coaching myself, because I'm seeing what she's helping me get out there. And it's just been done so well. The only way that happens in a short period of time, is when you hire first, someone who's crazy-talented and let's be honest, somewhat obsessive, and someone who is a true believer. Because, they know you. They know you well enough, or they know how they want to help you. They know your client. They know your company. And if you're growing a business, and you're growing a team, this will make the difference between you being excited about spending time with your team, and you feeling like you don't want to walk into the next executive meeting.

And if you've grown a team, and you're in that place, where you feel like you don't want to walk into the next executive meeting, I want you to start asking yourself, how many people around you are true believers? How many people around you, especially on a larger team, are true believers in the company and what you're doing, in you and who you are, and in your market and who you serve? Because if anyone in your company doesn't believe in one of those, I think you have a liability. A big liability.

And I don't just mean passively believe, I mean passionately believe in the company and what you're doing. In you and who you are, and in your market and who you serve. Because if you build a team of these people, you will never have to motivate them. But if you have people on your team that don't believed in you, don't believe in your company, don't believe in your market, here's the challenge. You leave them in there long enough, you miss them, they can start turning true believers against you. Because if anyone hears the same noise over and over and over again by force of conditioning, they can turn true believers against you. And far too many entrepreneurs keep the wrong people on their team because they think, "Oh, I don't want to fire someone," or "I don't want to admit I made a hiring mistake," or "Oh man, we need that position filled. We've needed it for so long." Or any of those things. But here's what I want you to know: As soon as you built a team, or started building a team, who you have on that team is the most important thing there is to you as an entrepreneur. Because you put the wrong person on team it's going to suck you all down.

You hire all true believers, you get the right people on the team, it's going to change your life. It's going to change everyone on the team's life. It's going to change your market's lives. It's going to change an industry if you do things right. And so if you want to be entrepreneurs, one of the few, because less than ten percent of entrepreneurs ever build a real team. Ever really have an infrastructure. Every really force themselves to go through the growth and the behavioral change it takes to go from lone gun to transformational leader. But if you're one of those who has, I want you to make this incredibly difficult journey easy on yourself, easier, not easy, but easier on yourself, by hiring true believers.

Because growing a business will never be easy. People have challenges, markets have challenges, suppliers have challenges. Sometimes your clients will have challenges. There's no such thing as a business with no problems, unless it's just closed. Like I always say, "Your business is broken, and if things go well it always will be." But when you hire true believers, it's going to give you the protection and support you need to step into your role as the leader, not just of your business, but of the movement that your business is creating. The change you want to make in the world. The outcomes that matters to you. What is that thing that you're driving for? When you hire true believers, it allows you the space to become who you need to be to not only lead a much larger company, but to lead your movement. This is the only person you should hire.

And the last thing I want to mention is that everybody always asks me, "How do you hire true believers?" Well, I gave you some questions you can ask. And then I want to give you permission to do something. Trust your gut. Start hydrating more. Walk in the mornings. Study the Keystone habits I've shared in the podcast. Take my Momentum Masterclass. And lower pressure and noise in your life, so that you start trusting that feeling that tells you what you should. So that you start trusting that feeling that tells you what direction your should go and what decision you should make. And when you're interviewing, trust your gut that says this person is a believer or isn't.

One of my clients, Layla Hormosi, and Alex, and her husband, Layla are growing their company called Gym Launch and it's a phenomenal organization. It's amazing what they're doing. And we did a call this week together, and Layla had it on a slide, that what I've given her license to do and what she's learned how to do even more, is trust her gut. And as a result, she's gone from a three-person company to over 20 people. They've gone from low seven figures to run rates of over eight figures. And even higher. And I'm trying to figure out how fast they're going to get to nine figures, and it's like they're on a freight train headed there. But one of the main reasons is that Layla has trusted her gut, and she will only hire true believers. She only hires people who are passionate about helping her, about helping the company and about helping gym owners. And I can tell you, every client of theirs feels that support, because businesses today that are successful aren't just companies. They are social movements. And the most important social movement in your business is the one that starts with your team. Because that's the team that's going to support the movement. That's the team that's going to create true believer clients. That's the team that's going to help you grow this business, support the entire movement.

And when you have the right people in the building, that is the foothold of your movement. When you have the right people in your building, that is the birth of the movement. When you have the right people in your building, that is what will radiate out and attract the right people to your movement. So, hire true believers and you will experience a disproportionate level of success to just about anyone around you who's hiring and building a team.

Thanks for being here with me. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe to the Momentum Podcast so you get all the downloads automatically. And do me a favor: Leave me a review. We are over 100 now, so I'm shooting for 150. But it was awesome. We were stuck at 99 for a week and a half, or two weeks. It started to wear on me. So, I appreciate the 100th reviewer. Maybe I'll read that on one of the podcasts coming up, and would appreciate you leaving one as well. And remember, when you hire, hire true believers.