started. So last week we talked about leading three different types of people.
I know that was really fun.
We learned about how to identify them and we also wanted to understand which
strategies to employ when we're dealing with that poor behavior.
So I hope all of you guys enjoyed that empowerment, the insight,
the strategy, and even just the practical tools that we took away from that
training. So today we are actually switching gears just a little bit.
We're talking about what it looks like to hire great people.
So we're going to be using some space X strategies for hiring well,
and learning how to train our leaders to do this effectively as well.
And so just before we dive in, I do have a pro tip for you all today.
And this pro tip is all about when you're starting your new week and your fresh
to-do list in your Q book, don't forget to visualize what done looks like.
This is one of my favorite things because you can do it broadly for your whole
week, or you can just do a done. What does done look like for your day?
So an example of this is, you know,
if I'm working on writing blogs for the company done for me,
it looks like I'm visualizing myself actually hitting the publish button on that
article, which means, you know, it's been written,
it's been proofread with all the links and thumbnails, or, you know,
even if for example, I'm working on a thin slice project done,
means I can actually picture and visualize the team's reaction as I am wrapping
up my presentation, or I've not just completed the task,
but I've also delivered, you know, what was expected.
So whatever the task is,
do be sure to visualize the end point and not just the steps.
And this is a tool that will help you with both starting and finishing the items
in your Q book. And then just one quick reminder before we jump in,
as we're going through the material today, please do add your questions,
your comments, your thoughts, emojis to the chat.
We do love to hear what's resonating with you during the training time.
And with that Dion, I will hand it over to you.
Excellent. Thank you so much. I apologize for my voice,
which is totally worn out from all the teaching, training, talking, and meetings.
But I do look forward to this.
One of my favorite times to hang out with you guys
and to meet with everybody and talk through this.
So I was thinking about this,
how I learned the key element of what I want to share with you today.
And by the way, this might be worth the value of the course right here.
So some of you might be sitting and thinking, well, you know, I'm not a manager.
I'm not the CEO. I'm not the owner.
I don't know why I need to know this.
And my answer to you is this will help your career immensely,
especially if you go from this to another job.
And also you'll appreciate why you're here and that you're already in.
And I know that going through this process,
how I first learned this, I was in my mid-twenties
and I was running a software company.
And I was working with a big insurance group.
And we were rolling out sales technology for this group.
And we were training over about 3,000 of their salespeople.
And I really learned early on,
and I was very interested in sales psychology and what makes a great salesperson.
And so I asked the senior vice president of sales,
and I asked him what, his name was Peter Bias, I remember.
And Peter worked for a company called Southern Life.
And they're a pretty big company.
It was a fast growing insurance company.
And I asked Peter, so Peter, how do you find these great salespeople?
I mean, how do you get such amazing people?
He's like, well, you know, when they come in,
I'm looking for people who didn't grow up with a dad.
I was like, what?
And he goes, and, you know, because they had to really fight
because I didn't grow up with a dad and so on.
And then I said, let's go to lunch.
And then I bring my briefcase, even though I don't need to.
And then I say, I want to put in the trunk of their car.
And if they open the trunk of the car and it's a complete mess
and there's dirt everywhere,
and then I know there's not a person who's going to fit here.
And I thought, what a random list of criteria to use.
And so it got me thinking a lot about what are great predictors
of a performance, a high performance person?
Because I mean, how do you decide in a few hours or an hour or two
whether someone's going to be a good fit for your team?
How do you decide, you know, even how to hire them?
So the second part I learned in doing all of this was
I was thinking about how do I hire people above this company's pay grade?
How do I hire people that are bigger, better than me,
bigger, better than the company?
How do I get that kind of talent to take the risk in their career?
And, you know, for it to feel a little bit like a step down,
maybe I can't even pay them what they're being paid now.
But then...
I found an incredible, for me it was a secret, an incredible key on how that actually works.
And what I realized is if you have an amazing culture where people feel it's a space to grow
and expand, a lot of people will take a pay cut just to get out of their toxic environment.
They would take a pay cut to get out of an environment that is high pressure,
massive stress, not much recognition. And then I started to really study this
and was in one of the research papers while I was doing my doctoral thesis. I came across this
research and the research told a story. And the story was from PricewaterhouseCoopers
and somebody had written a paper about why it's so hard to hire millennials. So to all the
millennials, now everyone's starting to focus on Gen Z, so maybe we'll have Gen Z stories soon.
But I love this story because this young person who started working in the accounting firm of
PricewaterhouseCoopers is, as you know, they have whatever it is, 200,000 employees in 180
countries or whatever. So it's a very big company. And so in that big company,
her boss's boss came in one day and she was working and he was like, hey, welcome to the company.
And then he said to her, listen, man, you just got to be here early in the morning, stay late
at night, try to come in on weekends, because that's what I do. He said, I do that.
I'm here all the time. I'm 10 hours a day. I'm here six days a week. She looked him in the eye
and said, I'm sorry it takes you so long to do your work. And I thought, what a great answer,
actually. Right. And it got me down this path of, is there a way to work that you don't,
you can bring an amazing contribution to the business and at the same time still have a life
and love what you're doing? And then is there a way to make it a little more effortless? And that
got me down this whole path around which ultimately became The Edge and all this training
we're doing is the discovery of each of these wonderful components. And then if you do it as
a team and you do it and you work together as a team, that creates a culture that actually
is the most powerful recruiting tool you have. Not the salary, not the title, none of that stuff.
And so I thought, OK, if we're building this incredible recruiting tool called a powerful
culture, a team of leaders, you know, a lot of people aren't going to believe that. So
how do we go through an interview process that opens up what it is, who we are, what it is we
want? Because it can't just be that we're trying to see, are you a good fit for us? The question
also is, are we a good fit for you? So, you know, we do all the legal stuff of first 90 days of
probation and so forth, but we don't want somebody to come work for us for three months and then say,
I'm so sorry, didn't work out. We've done it once, but I don't want that again. So what is a great
predictor of performance? What things can you learn up front? And so I put together a list,
a lot of different research, all compiled. And here's the bottom line. I always like to give
you just the essence of the thing. So here's the bottom line around what are great predictors.
And we'll start, first of all, what are terrible predictors of success? In other words, so the
three things are, which includes my friend Peter, first impressions are a terrible predictor. Some
people get nervous. Some people misrepresent themselves. Some people don't do well in
interviews and they're great people and you want them to work for your organization. So first
impressions is terrible. Secondly, rule of thumb, you know, that kind of, well, we've always done
this, like, you know, the rule of thumb of, I'll look and see how clean his car is. And if that's
a mess. And he always said his, because he only married, he only hired men who grew up without a
father and his cars were clean. I thought, what a random, crazy decision structures that, and that
sounds crazy to you, but you'd be amazed if you ask leaders what they actually use. It's all this
rule of thumb stuff, terrible predictor and gut decisions. I just had a gut feel about this person,
you know, you can be wrong. So, okay. So those are terrible predictors. What are weak predictors?
Weak predictors are, and they may surprise you, skills, experience, competency, or compensation.
Oh, the last company paid them, you know, $180,000.
80,000 a year, they must be really good. No. The last
company may be terrible at hiring people. Don't inherit
their bad mistakes. So skills, experience, competency,
compensation. By the way, if you're taking notes, you don't
need to, I've put together a massive cheat sheet for you at
the end of this. And have we already dropped it? Yeah, we
already dropped it, did we? Oh, it's already there. So it's all
there, everything I'm talking about. It's on the bottom of the
page. Then the next thing is, so what are strong predictors? And
then I want to share with you what are essential predictors.
So strong predictors are things like achiever patterns. There's
a pattern of achievement here. And if you're doing an interview
and you're going to a job, you want to show that you have
achiever patterns. Secondly, the ability to learn, the ability to
adapt quickly, change, pivot, learn new skills, expand your
job. How many of you are doing the job today that you were
hired for? Anybody did? Anybody? No. Nobody in this. Yeah, I was
hired to do this. And my job just grew. Probably three weeks
in, that job description was close to worthless. Six months
in, I was like, what? They hired me to do that? I mean, it's not
even, you know, maybe at the highest level, like, hey, you
should drive sales. Sure. But in the detail of what they asked,
so the ability to learn, adapt, organizational skills, good
problem solving skills, team skills, the ability to function
in a team to bring your strength in a team, the ability to deal
with change in a positive way, and the ability to grow quickly.
These are very, very strong predictors. Notice I have not,
anybody knows what's missing so far out of that predictor?
Anybody know? I didn't mention what? Education. I didn't
mention they have a university degree, a PhD and nothing, it
doesn't actually matter. As I told my kids, you should go to
college doesn't really matter, because it's a ticket to get
into the arena to play the game. You know, now, you know, it
can't be a completely worthless degree. But at the same time,
even if it was a completely worthless degree, a lot of
companies are just especially big corporations are doing just
doing the check. Oh, yeah, they have a degree. And it's a
terrible predictor, or as Elon said, universities are great,
because you meet you meet people your own age, and you show you
can do your chores outside of that it's worthless. And, and
it's, you know, and I'm sorry, for those of you that put a lot
of time into your academic studies, that would be me. And,
you know, four degrees later, I love I love the process of
learning, I didn't do degrees for themselves. Although my most
useful one is still engineering, because it taught me think and
do math and physics. And so those are very, very strong
predictions. But let me give you the three essential predictors.
These are the three things that make it all work. Number one,
there's a cultural fit, our culture of trust, versus the
traditional cultural of mistrust that most companies run
in is huge. Now, you might say, Hey, man, everybody's gonna love
to be part of a culture of trust. Not true. Because there are
implications about a culture of trust, like we don't check up on
you, we expect that you will act as a leader. And there are
people who don't want that responsibility, they do not want
they are literally people who just want to be told what to do,
show up, do their job, pick up their paycheck, go home. And
that those people will never work for any company, I leave,
because I just don't have time to, to drag them through the
process, because they're not. And because they're not growing
and are in our cultures to constantly train constantly
grow, get that growth curve. Because the one the company that
innovates the fastest wins, right, we know that. And so you
need a team that can actually do that. And then the second big
one is leadership skills. Even if you're just leading your own
contribution, that sense of ownership, I own my inputs on
my outputs, I'm a self starter, I don't need to be told what to
do every day. I don't immediately micromanage, I do
want support, though, but I want space to grow as a leader. That
way, you're seeding your company with with leaders that as you
expand, you've got an immediate resource to build your
organization on. And then job fit, obviously, they have to be
able to physically do the job. So competence isn't nothing.
It's just not the main thing. And I've hired people before
that had no background at that for the job. But I just I just
went through all the process. There was such a great culture
for they were so smart, there was had real leadership skill,
and I took the risk. And you know, in every case
that's worked out, because people are going to grow. So what we want to know is when we're
when we're going through the process of hiring people, we want to determine a few things like
we want to really get to know the person, because we want to determine how driven are they,
you know, in, in all the attributes you could put towards, you know, a great employee drive
is the one thing that I don't know if it can be taught, I may be wrong, but I in 30 something
years, I have never seen anyone go from a person with no drive to suddenly having a lot of it.
Now, people going through a bad patch in their life, but they normally driven, I'm not talking
about in the moment, I'm just talking as a general. So we want to ask and press questions
right into how driven are they? How do they think? Secondly, we want to ascertain their problem
solving skills. How do they deal with life? How do they deal with difficulties? How do they deal
with failure? And, you know, in an interview, nobody wants to talk about how they failed,
but if they will, but if they can talk about their failure and show how they learn from it,
that is huge. So if you're doing an interview, by the way, I'm not encouraging anyone to leave
the company you're at, that's not why they put you on the edge training. But if, but you know,
we're always investing in you beyond what the company gets directly, right? That's what we say
to our team. We want you to be the smartest person in the room, wherever you go, including
how well you do during the process during the interview process. And finally, you want to make
sure there's a cultural fit. And the best summary I've heard of cultural fit are the three C's.
You want character, competence, and chemistry, character, competence, chemistry. Think about
people you know. Think about, let's start with, think of a good team member in your team.
And if you think about it, you'll realize they count, they are people of character.
They are people who are good at their jobs. They are people of competence, and we like them. There's
some chemistry with them, or the team likes them. We don't necessarily like them every day all the
time, but we generally do. And that works. So think of when one's missing, you can have an amazing
person with great character, incredible chemistry. We all love her or love him two bits,
but they are incompetent, right? Take anyone out. Highly competent. Everybody loves them,
but I don't know about their character, man. Those people lie. They make up stuff.
Or, so again, you take out one of them, and the whole thing falls over.
So we want character, we want chemistry, we want competence. Let me breathe there for a second,
in my voice a second. So we're not going to do breakouts today, because I want to walk you
through the nuts and bolts, and I'm going to give you probably a 15-year journey of a way to hire
the greatest people, and I'm going to give you a detailed playbook. So we talked about playbooks
a few weeks back. Well, today, I'm just going to hand you the playbook book for hiring great people,
right down to every question that you need to ask or can ask, and I'm going to talk through
what's the mechanism for pulling that all together. But before I do, hey, Jalen, do you want
to tell us, you've been through this process fairly recently, and you know, it's a long process here
at Brilliant, right? Four interviews, some of them gone for two, three hours, it's a long process. Tell us
how was for you, what was your experience as you went through it? Oh man, yeah, so that was about
a year and a half ago, and I've been through many interviews in my life, some multi-step interviews,
and I, none of them compared to Brilliant in the best way. And I remember you were, first you were
talking about how, you know, some people would be willing to leave a high stress environment,
even if it means like taking a pay cut or, you know, working less hours, and I feel like I was
kind of there in terms of where I came from before. I kind of just knew, okay, I love the people
here, but I don't love the environment, and it's really high stress. So when I came into my interview
with Brilliant, what I thought was most noteworthy, and you touched on this, Dion, but you said
in the interview as the employer we're looking for, are we a good fit for you? And I remember
Jenny was really clearly giving me kind of the vision of the company. I got some background about
Graham as the leader, and I remember she said to me, you know, Brilliant is a lifestyle, and maybe
it's not for everyone. These are kind of the things that make up Brilliant, and I didn't
realize at the time, but she was giving me all of those details so that I could ascertain for
myself, do I think I'll be a good fit, and I just remember it being one of those interviews where it
felt like they were asking questions that were going to be really hard to answer, and I was
Getting to the core of who I was.
I think Jenny mentioned this in one of our previous edge calls, but I was
kind of like, okay, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't
definitely one of the people that cried in my interview, because I just
know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't
remember Jenny was asking questions that were really getting to, how do I think?
What are my long-term goals?
What are my dreams?
What would that look like here at Brilliant?
And I think it was the first time in an interview that I felt as if every part
of me was being considered, not just that I was being hired to fit a job description.
So, yeah, it was, it was really unique.
And I remember just thinking, well, I've never experienced anything like this.
So yeah, a couple, a couple of thoughts.
Thanks, Shannon.
I appreciate that.
And, and I just, I asked Shannon to do that because I just wanted
you to see from the other side.
We tend as the company or as the manager or the leader to just
see it from our own side, right?
And when we do it as a two-way street, it sets them up to, when you come here,
we are going to make a massive investment in your leadership
development and in your productivity.
And we're going to give you the best tools from around the
world in a single system.
We're going to put it all together for you.
And to make that massive commitment, we got to know you're in here, you know?
So when we see on your resume, you change jobs every 18 months to two years.
I wouldn't necessarily say that's a, you know, that's a bad predictor.
I know a lot of people say that.
I have actually found that, that, you know, it's, it's an okay predictor, but
it's not, it's, it's certainly worth the conversation and bringing it up.
So let's talk about what are the steps we go through.
And there's four steps in the hiring process and then the actual onboarding.
So we'll call it five steps.
So they're the interviews and there are four of them.
Then we make the candidate an offer.
They confirm the offer.
We send them an agreement and then they're, they start and they're onboarded.
So what we're going to focus today on is just step number one,
which is the hardest by far.
And that's the interview process.
So when we go through the interview process, what we want to do is we want
the person who's going to be working closest to that person to do the actual
hiring, it doesn't help if I'm as the president of the company, I'm hiring
somebody who doesn't actually going to report to me.
So if, so in this case a lot of times when we go through this process, we've
set it up in such a way that the manager is going to drive the process.
And after each interview, the manager has to call their manager, their leader.
So for instance, when Jenny was hiring Jalen or someone else, or somebody in
our team was hiring, they were calling me after each interview, the
last interviews with me anyway, but the, they were calling me.
And what I found in the beginning is that they didn't
rigorously apply this process.
And you may remember when Dia was with us, she went through several
hires and she said the single thing she wish she did, she wish
she implemented this thing.
Exactly.
It's like the Q system.
If you implement it exactly, and you don't soften the questions,
it will really help you.
So what we want to do is have a high-level interview plan.
We know there's four steps and we want to tell the interviewee, the
candidate, Hey, we're going to take you through a four step process.
And then while we're setting this all up, we put together what
we call a participation table.
Now, what do we mean by that?
Because there's the managers doing the main interview, and then usually
the second interview involves someone else often from somebody who's,
you know, is going to be able to be financially make the offer.
And then there's going to be an interview with the team they will
be working with, and then there'll be the interview with the owner,
CEO, president, whoever the most senior executive person running the businesses.
So each of those steps, each of those four steps is what we, we're
going to go through and put that together in that fashion.
So, so in the, in the, in putting all this together, I will, let's go
through the, the very, you know, the very first process, so we, we,
sorry, before we do that, so we write up the interview, we go
through the participation table.
Then we want to have a high-level description of what the
position requirements are.
Obviously we have to have a range of offers that we've
prepared financially to offer.
And so it's very high level at this point, because you want to be
able to customize it based on, if you get an exceptional person, I
think as a general rule, if you find an outstanding person, regardless
of their age, their gender, their background, their education, if
they're an outstanding person, hire them.
I mean, it's so rare to find such good people.
I would say find a way.
And so you don't want to set the upfront structure so tight.
type that you knock out a great candidate who may not be a perfect fit but would easily be able to
grow into what you need and would just be a great person on your team. So you hire good people even
if you're not sometimes I've hired people even when I wasn't looking for them because I bumped
into them along the way and I said you should go through the interview process. You definitely want
to get their resume beforehand. I know we said you know look for job skipping and all that all that
is we're looking for patterns, we're looking for conversation points, we're not disqualifying them
beforehand and then we want to tell the candidate hey we're going to take you through a
five-step process. Each interview may last you know two to three hours and by the way you cannot
rush this. You cannot rush this. So let's talk about what happens in interview number one
which can be anywhere from two to four hours. I once did one that was seven hours so it was
because it was for a C. I was hiring a president of my of a company so that was longer and we did
I think all four were over three to five hours. Now not everything is going to be that
long and here's why it takes so much time especially when I tell you that fundamentally we're
going to ask one question that sounds very counterintuitive and as Jalen said at the beginning
of the call this is a variant or a version of what SpaceX do. Last year SpaceX and Tesla had
over a hundred thousand people apply for jobs and I think they and they hired 1500, 1.5 percent.
So these are some of the best candidates in the world, some of the smartest technical people in
the world. As we've already mentioned before this system is designed to solve that problem
but it's also designed to solve your problem. So here's what we're doing in interview number one.
We're measuring performance and the strategy here is to drill down as far as possible on the one
key question. Here's the hardest, here's the question. What is the hardest problem
you have solved or difficulty you've overcome? What we're trying to determine here is are they
self-driven and how they deal with challenges. If somebody now when I say you think that well
they'll answer that in five or ten minutes now what do I ask? You need to ask but how did that
happen? Where did that happen? So tell me what is the most difficult thing? Well the most difficult
thing was learning to sell properly and I loved selling but then I got on this team and you know
there were 20 sales people on the team and then you know I grew up and I just worked so hard
and I just didn't have their background. I was the youngest on the team so I had to do and then
they explained the details. Well so where did you end up? Where are you in the sales? Where did you
end up? Well I end up as number three. Well why weren't you one or two? Well they were better
than me. In what way were they better than you? What did they do that you didn't do? What is it
that they took on that you didn't take on? You've got to press them. This sounds unkind but you've got
to press and press as we say keep driving down the road till you hit the t-junction till you've got
to keep pressing and here's how you know you've got to the end of it they start repeating themselves.
Here's one thing I've learned. Oh I was on a team and we took the company from a million dollars to
five million dollars and we did it in 18 months. Cool. How many people on your team? Well there
were four of us. Okay and how did you do that? Well we did this and this. Then you find out if
you press the details they don't know the details because they weren't the one driving the process.
They were on the team but they weren't the originator of the idea. The real leader will
know the details and will answer your questions all day long. That's the key. You have to keep
pressing them. Keep pressing them. Who did that? What role did you play? Explain that role to me.
How did that contribute to the success? How did you move from one to five million?
What was the reason it was only one million? In other words, was it about to go to five
million anyway? In other words, did a previous group do all the work? It's like politicians
right? A new president comes in. The last president spent eight years fixing everything and now the full
fruit of it hits and they go look I've only been here three months and I've solved all these
wonderful problems. There's no way you solved all these wonderful problems. You're just getting
the inertia of someone else. So you need to be careful that somebody doesn't position themselves
as a high performance person and the way you find that out is do they know the details and you need
to press and press and press and let it take as long as it takes. The next thing you're trying
to come to a decision if you want to do the next interview.
If not, thank them for their time, be gracious, send them a
note afterwards explaining. You appreciate that. And here's what
we're pressing for. Let's say in this interview, I've determined
how this person thinks. And because I've determined how they
think, and I think this is a really, you know, go getter,
self starter, think this is going to work. What I'm looking
for next is what's the risk and support this person needs?
Everybody needs support. Maybe they're maybe, you know, when
they started their career, they may be further in their career
now, and they didn't grow up with some of the tools, you
know, some of the tech tools, or they didn't, they're not familiar
with some of the software that you used, or, or maybe they just
need support where, you know, they, they have some quirk, some
need support, we all have that, right. So your job is to as
you're going through and pressing and pressing, and by
the way, you want to press them a little bit, I don't wanna say
forcefully, but directly. And the reason is, you want to see
how they handle your pressure. The interview is a stressful
place, let's see how they do. And every now and again, you can
just back up, you know, lighten it up and say, hey, we're not
trying to trap you, we're just trying to get to know you. And
so as you go through that process, people must feel like
you're genuinely trying to find. Now, when when we ask that
question, a lot of people think, are you asking that my personal
things I've overcome or business things? And we say,
well, which one would you like to answer? And often they'll tell
you, you know, I went through a divorce, or I lost a child or
tell you a really heartbreaking story and how they coped with
that. There's a lot to be learned from somebody who
volunteers that kind of information. But as you know,
legally, you can't ask that kind of information. But if they
volunteer it, you know, let them run with it. But I we're trying
to find out what have you done professionally. So I hired a
young man who, who, you know, was an engineer. And he was in
his early 20s. And but when he was when he was 12, he designed
a new electronic system that used a very sophisticated
acoustic, you know, mechanism. And he designed the electronic
from the ground up built built the thing and he sold it to the
military. And they wrote him a check for, you know, $15,000 or
whatever. And then when he was 16, he did this. And when he was
18, he did that. Do you think I'm sitting there wondering
which school he went to? And whether it was MIT or not?
Seriously, I'm just fascinated by this person. You did that? No,
but you actually put the components in the PC board? Yes.
And you tested it? How? Where did you get the money? Well, I
borrowed 200 from my uncle and so and so and then I and you
just see how they hustle, right? That's what I'm looking for
their second interview. Now we're going to drill down to all
the areas of risk. So what we do between the steps is usually
this person is doing the interview checks in with the
manager and says, Look, these are all the things I've learned.
As the person training managers, I can tell you almost always
step one doesn't get done properly. Almost always, it
takes some skill, it takes some learning, because they back off
and you may need to jump in and be part of that process
initially, if you're the leader, because you really want to press
that first point. Point two is now we really now one of the
most powerful techniques and strategies you can use for role
to is role playing stuff like, hey, we're launching a new
project. How would you approach that? We haven't got much social
media, we want to revamp our entire social media. What steps
would you take to make that happen? If it's a social media
person you're hiring? Things like what do you think the key
factors for success are? If they can't identify upfront what the
key factors of success are, there's a problem with that. In
other words, so a lot of role playing, so we would put together
several role playing scenarios. So one of the fun ones we did,
for those of you know, my friend Pedro Odeo, we were I was
hiring an executive assistant for him. And I asked, you know,
the previous executive assistant to we were doing this
role playing thing. And we were talking a bit when we were
planning it, what would be the most, you know, what would what
would really test her in this idea with her approach. So I
just had them pull up Pedro's 120,000 unanswered emails in his
Google, in his Google Mail, and she scrolled it up on the screen
and you saw the numbers and she because he had cherry picked
some of them. And she said, and so I said, some of them were
spam, some of them were really serious, some of them. So how
would you approach this? And what do you think the key
factors of success here are? That was a really that
conversation went on for 40 minutes.
That's trying to get her to see, you know, for us to see how she'd handle it.
She kept great answer by the way.
So the decision we're trying to get to here is, okay, look, it looks
like we're coming in for land.
If you feel like there's just too much risk, there's too much support.
You'd end the interview there.
If you feel like, well, I think there's an opportunity to take the next step
forward, you may say, Hey, look, we have, we have a position, here's the title.
It'll be, you know, be, be reporting to me or one of the team leaders.
Here's, you know, we have a range.
This is the range.
What are your expectations?
And we want to find out at this point that we are even in the same ballpark,
because if they have expectations financially, that is so far above our own
pay grade, but at this point, they're also becoming aware of your culture.
Because in between in step one and two, you're throwing in bits
about what the company thinks, how we do leadership training every
week, how we do this, how we do that.
You're constantly peppering the conversation with your own culture.
Now, interview three is a fun one and it doesn't have to be, I've never
actually seen it go more than two hours, but here's where you're going to
introduce them to the team they would be working directly with.
And before those team members come on, you want to call those team members
and you want them to ask, come up with their own questions that they
would like to have in a colleague.
Right.
I would like to, Hey, tell me how you would do this.
Tell me how you would do that, et cetera.
But then I love the team to ask, answer this question.
What do you wish you knew before you worked here?
And they say, we can tell them that.
I said, yes, you can tell them that you can tell them what you wish you
knew before you worked here at Brilliant.
Well, I knew, I wish I knew it was all remote.
I wish I knew that it was all, you had to be a real self starter.
You really have to take the leadership training seriously.
You have to implement it.
I mean, if you've heard something and it's been two or three weeks
since we talked about it and you haven't implemented it, you're
going to just get lost here.
I wish I'd known that.
Right.
Or I wish I knew that, you know, whatever it is.
So when, when the, when the candidate hears that the messaging is so
powerful that you're so confident in your culture and that you're willing
to have such an open discussion with somebody new from the outside.
That's very powerful indeed.
And again, the other decision is now at this point, we're
trying to get to land the plane.
So there's chemistry, we're looking for chemistry with the team,
there's chemistry with the team, there's competence we've
established along the way.
We've obviously determined something of their character.
And then the last interview is a vision conversation, which I've never
done a short is 30 minutes, but, and here, what we're looking for is the fit.
And I've, I like to do these interviews myself at the end, because I like to
know, you know, do they really believe in it?
Cause I don't want somebody just looking for a paycheck.
Of course we want to pay them what they worth.
And the way it's set up at Brilliant is we pay lower salaries, but we have
a very aggressive bonus structure.
And we explain that to people and why we do that.
We do that so that if we go through difficult times, we don't have to lay
people off or lay one or two people off.
We don't want, you know, we don't want one person to suffer a lot.
We'd all just suffer a little, but if we do well, we all very, you know, we, we
share, and so we can talk about compensation, bonus structures and all
that stuff in a, in another session.
So at this point we're through all that.
They've, they've agreed.
Uh, they've agreed.
We've sent them a letter, uh, with an offer, which got the high points in it.
They've already signed it.
I won't have the interview until I have that signed letter.
I don't want to waste my time dealing with people who are still considering.
If our team can't convince them and the person they're going to work
with, can't convince them to join.
I don't want to be the person who has to use the power of persuasion.
Cause I've learned if you have to talk them into the job, then you have to keep
talking him into staying in the job.
And so that's a bad idea.
So if our team can't get them there, I don't want to get them there.
So I wait until there's a signed offer letter.
That's just the letter.
It's not the, it's not the full agreement.
We don't go to the expense of doing an entire legal agreement.
We just write it out on a paper.
Hey, welcome.
So good to have met you.
High points.
This is what, this is what your job would be title, et cetera.
And sign you if you're in agreement.
Once, once we got that, the meeting gets scheduled and I go
through the meeting with them.
And then I get my own opinion and then I tell them, look, if there's for some
reason in this conversation, in step four, it could still be a no go situation.
I know we offered you a letter, but if there's any red flags, my team
missed, I want to let you know.
I'm going to reserve the right to still call, you know, to, to withdraw the
offer because there's no legal binding contract at this point, there's
just a high level agreement, that's why.
no agreement at this point. That's really important from a legal viewpoint. Now, there is a lot of
ideas. You might say, I don't know which questions to ask and so on. So I'm going to pause there for
a second. And then I'm going to go through exactly what to say in every call. I'm not going to read
through the whole thing. I'm just going to show you where it is on the cheat sheet so you know
where to go. And I'm just going to make a couple of comments. So let me pause for a second.
Team can give me some feedback.
Jalen, you said your first interview was three and a half hours? Yeah.
Yes, it was. It was a good interview. But I also wanted to say, Dion, how you were sharing,
you don't want to convince someone to join the team because you'll be convincing them to stay.
And I think that was also something that felt very unique in my interview because I never felt at any
point as if Jenny, who was interviewing me, was trying to convince me to join. It was more, hey,
this is what our company is like. You can ask questions, hear some advice. But never at any
point did I feel as if she was trying to woo me. If anything, once I knew the details and the big
picture of the company and the vision, it just gave me an opportunity to think of that for myself.
Is this a place that I want to be? And then when I decided yes, it was just all that much more
exciting because I chose it. I didn't feel like I was kind of being like tugged in that direction
anyway. So I thought that was a really good note that you said that. Thank you. Any questions from
the team? Any questions, anyone? All good. So I know you're sitting listening to this, maybe,
and you're thinking, well, I may not hire people. Listen, if your group grows,
you're going to be hiring people. And at some point, learning to hire people might be one of
the most powerful leadership skills I know of. I've hired several CEOs. I've hired several
presidents. I've hired a lot of senior executives. And the biggest team I ran with the technology
firm, I had 11 people on my senior management team. It was me as the CEO. There was a president,
very capable guy. We even had our own attorney, full-scale CFO, the whole thing. I had the whole
group. And my chief operating officer was the guy who just retired from the military. And he ran,
you know, as I've shared before, he ran the whole electronic war for the first Gulf War.
The commanding, the commander who ran all of that in the war. And you say, how does a little
company in Atlanta with, you know, 70, 80 people hire a person like that? And this is how we did
it. People wanted to be in an environment that they got up every day, where they were appreciated,
where they could grow. And you say, well, he was retiring. Yeah, but they retired him pretty early
out of the military. So he had a lot, you know. And I also learned, by the way, for those of you
who are looking for high-powered leaders, do not be afraid to pair a really high-powered leader
with a young, inexperienced team. That's a really good idea. I think I may have shared this before,
but I did hire two ex-IBMers. They both worked directly with Lou Gertzner, the CEO,
later the chairman of IBM. And both of them had, one had built a $400 million project. And here I
am, at that time, I had 25 people. And here I'm trying to hire him. And honestly, I had so
many young programmers there in their 20s, and some couple in their 30s. I also hired the two
guys who wrote the original Java manuals. There were two guys from in California who wrote the
original, when Java was a brand new programming language. I hired them and brought them to Georgia,
these two guys, and paid them more than I paid myself as the CEO. And the reason I did that was,
I wanted to see the company with incredible talent, because I knew a very powerful thing.
And this is the thing I learned when I was studying the best practices. I learned from Gillette,
the shaving company, Gillette. And so when Gillette needed a new CEO, they hired this new incredible
CEO. And then they had a board meeting, and the board said, so what's, you know, first month,
what's going on? What's the plan? What's the vision? He said, I don't know. They were like, what?
And next month, the same thing, next month, the same thing. So finally, he said, what do you keep
saying? You don't know. He said, no, no, I'm going to go and find the best people in the world.
And it's taking me time. He was literally flying all over the world to find the very best leaders.
And then I'm going to put those best leaders in a room. And then together, we're going to decide
what to do. First who, then what? And this was, it was so powerful that Collins, who wrote Good to Great,
about this this particular experience and I followed this up and I thought if you can solve
first who, then what, here's the bottom line. The company you start will go through many twists and
turns. You'll try expanding into a new area, into a new region and it will or won't work. You're
going to try new products and they will or won't work. I've only, I've been here at Brilliant
coming up for four years and I can tell you that in that time we've pivoted several times and where
we are today, we're actually three organizations, not many people know that. We're a full-scale
church, we're a leadership company, Brilliant Leader that runs all of this leadership company
and Brilliant Perspectives with our self-development programs are all there.
But that's not where we started and when I first came there were two companies, there was also
Brilliant Bookhouse and I merged the two companies and made them one and I brought the two teams
together. So when we did all of that, it always comes down to how good is your team and so when
you're hiring people, don't rush this, don't rush the process and if you're finding that you're a
little uncomfortable but you can't quite put your finger on it, give yourself permission to go back
to step one. People will get worn out by it but at least you made sure. So Robin.
Yeah, we're right there. You know, I've gotten this information from you once before
and we are currently looking for a spokesperson business developer to kind of take my place for
going to the shows and presenting and developing our things and we're also trying to hire a
full-time inspector and just going through this actually a second time, it just seems like a
little overwhelming for me and it's like I feel like I just have to, I don't know, I don't know
where to go. I just want, we haven't even gotten the ad together and we also
have our inspector who may be on the line and he's presented us with an offer but
it's a little pricey. We're not in a place to afford it so I've got to get with
him and kind of talk to that. So we're in the thick of this right now, Dion, and all of this seems
seems overwhelming. It is overwhelming but you can be reductionistic and the reason it's
overwhelming is because I've taken the time to see where leaders get stuck or managers get stuck
when they go through the process and to literally all the training I've done over many years
and captured it and put it down to exact questions what to ask and so on but the way to think of it
is to be a bit reductionistic. If I can figure out how they think and how they're driven,
step one, if I can figure out how will I need to support this person. Well, I don't
I don't know much about computers or whatever. If we're an online company, you not knowing much
about computers might be a problem unless you show that you're really willing to learn and you're
willing to grow. I mean I've hired a lot of people who are older and were willing to learn the new
tech so I just want to know what the support is and then the third thing I want to know is will
the chemistry work with our team. So I think with those three things I can go a long way.
If I know that you're driven, you can learn, you're interested in your own growth, I don't want to be
more interested and have a bigger vision for your life than you have. I don't want to
hire you and then I get all excited about all the stuff you can become and you're like yeah
whatever you know so and I've had that and I find that all that happens when I hire someone
where there's that issue going on where they're not and I'm not looking for somebody who's like
perfectly driven obviously but I am looking for somebody who wants to grow is leaning forward who
you know what I'm talking about you see that in them but if they're just looking for a paycheck
and they want to trade some I've got 30 years experience I can tell you I've made more mistakes
hiring the guy with or the woman with 30 years experience than I've had taking a risk on somebody
who has no experience. I don't necessarily mean they're younger I just mean they have no experience
in this kind of job. I've made more mistakes going for the big names and I've also found hiring a
pre-Madonna man there are a lot of work to manage and I've done that I mean I've had
I've had incredible you know people but sometimes loyal
focused, someone who's willing to learn with character and fits our company might just
be the better long-term play, just saying.
So what I would do is to write a list of what for you are the top three things, what are
the three negotiables from everything I've said, and you can go through, pick out questions,
pick out whatever to help you think it through.
What are the three things that matter to you?
And I can tell you that for those of you that have a natural gift for exhortation and encouragement,
you are your own worst enemy in the interview, because you will encourage them and it's so
exciting and you need to be here and you don't mean to do that, but you will literally be
talking them into it.
And yes, you want to promote it well, but at some point you have to stop and see, is
this person going to be a fit?
So think of the actual cost of having the wrong person and then doing the rehire in
six or 12 months.
Just think about the cost of that.
That is hugely expensive.
A lot of people say, well, you know, I've gone into deals where, you know, somebody
And for those of you that, you know, ever find yourself in this situation, I've gone
in and somebody wanted to hire me and they offered me something.
And I literally asked for 70% more than they were offering me.
And they were like, what?
And then I explained this to them.
I said, look, you're not buying my hours.
You know what one of my hours is capable of?
And so I had to explain to them what they were getting in me and that I could deal with
several functions at the same time.
And then I just stopped and said, okay, let's say you go and hire someone who's cheaper
and in six months time, you have to hire someone again.
Well, it turned out in this particular case, they'd already done that.
And so I asked, how much did that cost?
You don't give me the dollars, but just take a second to tell me how much did that cost
you?
And I said, I bet you it cost you more than the extra money I asked for.
And they said, okay.
And so they agreed to it.
I wouldn't budge a bit of what I knew I was worth.
But what that said to them was, I also had to sell myself.
So if somebody, short answer, if somebody's asking you for more than you prepared to,
it's up to them to show you that they are worth the additional value.
It's not just like, it's not a shouting match as to who can negotiate the best, right?
So let's say you and I are role playing this and you want 100K, but I've got 80K to give
you.
It's up to you to tell me why you're worth more than the extra 20K.
And if you can, that will show you might be worth that.
And I might have to go and find the money, right?
Or if you're struggling to show me that, then I don't know that you are worth that.
Just saying.
I mean, if you're that good, show me.
And often I will go back to point one, let's drill down again into that great thing you
said you did in the industry.
And I want to see if they really know them.
I hired a woman who was senior executive, big insurance company, a senior VP of marketing.
And then she came and worked for us.
We were literally 15 people.
And I hired this huge, impressive marketing director.
I genuinely could not afford her, but I found a way.
And nine months later, I let her go.
And the reason I let her go, I'm just pointing out that stretching isn't always the right
answer.
And the reason I let her go is because she came from corporate America, man.
So where's the HR department?
I said, that would be you.
And how do we get lunch?
That would be you.
And you make your own tea, and you do this, and you do this.
We're 15 people.
Who did you think?
You think I'm going to come and do that?
So they were like, do we have like a...
Who writes contracts?
That would be you.
And who?
That would be you.
She was not geared for that.
She did not like that.
And when she did the corporate, she asked me, what's my marketing budget?
I said, a budget?
Yeah, we don't really have one of those, but let me think about what should it be.
And she came back with this elaborate thing, like we were an insurance company.
And I was like, man, hey, we're just a small company in this industry.
You're going to have to get a lot more creative than that.
So I think she wanted like $200,000, and I said, how's 5,000 sound?
So I think...
So if I had known what I knew now, I would have role played all that with her up front
and not hired her and then figured it out.
I would have thought she comes from a big company.
She has certain expectations.
I can't deliver on those expectations.
I was so flattered to have her as part of our team, I went, so there is no shortcut to this.
Well, all the rest are there. All the questions are there. What you can ask. Performance questions,
role playing, trying to find who they are. And I even put several positions and examples. I did
a social media manager, and I threw through all that information. I threw in, you know,
supplemental questions you can ask. You can go through that process. There is a tremendous
amount of helpful, practical information. But as you said, Robin, at some point,
you just got to cut it down to the top three things that are not negotiable for you.
And if you genuinely can't afford them, no matter how good the three Cs are,
maybe you just genuinely can't afford them. And by the way, if it's purely an issue of money,
there are creative ways to structure money. Hey, how about I pay you this now? We hit this
milestone, I up it to this, that milestone, and you agree to milestones, and then have a more
generous bonus structure. That's another way a small company can hire great talent.
A lower base than they're used to, but very generous profit sharing or some other method.
I wouldn't trade shares, though, in the beginning. I wouldn't give them stock options right up front
until they've been with you for a while. I wouldn't put that on the table.
Not in a small business. I've seen that backfire too many times.
Questions? Anyone else? Well, I hope that was helpful. I hope that from all this training,
you're able to hire one great person. Maybe you're just trying to hire your first employees. Anybody
trying to hire their first employee and you're thinking, or their second? You know, like, I don't,
I don't know. This will definitely help. Maybe your first employee should be an executive
assistant. People say, I'm not big enough for an executive assistant. You'll be amazed. Here's the
logic, and if you give me another few seconds, I just want to, I should put this in up front.
If your first employee or one of your early employees is an executive assistant,
it will free you up. What's your time worth? What can you contribute to the organization?
Nobody can contribute to the company than you can. And if you can free your time up,
and it may be worth hiring somebody at a lower pay grade to free up one of your other people
who are in your culture, are growing, who are leaning forward, and free them up to take a new
role rather than hiring someone in sideways. Anyway, with that, we will end and we will see
you all next week. Thank you, and don't forget to fill in the survey afterwards. Really appreciate
it. Over to you, Jalen. Nope, that was everything. Thank you all for joining. We are out of time,
but do fill out the end of call survey and let us know what thoughts you have and what
questions you have. And we'll see you next week. Bye, everyone.