Episode 132: Afraid to hire for your business? Hear THIS
To really make your business stand out in the marketplace, you gotta get how much your own effort matters and be all about learning and growing non-stop. So always be on the lookout for opportunities that will help you grow personally and professionally and think: “is my business competitive enough? OR am I just content with where I am now?
Every business needs a team to scale, and no business succeeds as a team of one. If you are hiring your first intern, assistant, contractor, or team member, or are looking to hire your 10th, this episode is a MUST LISTEN. We talk the top 3 mistakes small businesses make when hiring, how to fire someone without stress, how to decide WHO to hire for WHAT roles, and how to address money scarcity fears. This is an raw and authentic episode that every CEO needs to hear. Listen as business strategist and leadership expert Veronica Romney who has worked with the industry's TOP names, breaks down lessons learned from helping entrepreneurs scale their team as they go from zero to 8 figures.
Here’s What We Cover and More:
Small business owners must embrace the role of chief advocate and spokesperson for their brand.
Recognize delegation as a tool to scale business, avoid common hiring mistakes, and strategically invest in the right team members.
Support team members according to their strengths as thinkers or doers.
How to approach hiring and firing without fear, instead recognize it as an opportunity for personal and professional growth.
Assess potential hires based on their strategies for achieving outcomes rather than just their resumes.
Product Businesses! Download my free HOW TO GET INTO A GIFT GUIDE/PRODUCT ROUND UP roadmap for free HERE to get more sales and traffic to your site this season.
If you want to land your first feature for free without any connections, I want to invite you to watch my PR Secrets Masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought-after industry expert. Register now at www.gloriachoupr.com/masterclass.
Resources Mentioned:
Join the PR Secrets Masterclass
Join the Small Biz PR Pros Facebook Group
DM the word “PITCH” to us on Instagram to get a pitching freebie https://www.instagram.com/gloriachoupr
Connect with Gloria Chou on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloriaychou
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/428633254951941
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Transcript
00:00:00 Gloria: What's up, small business heroes? I am so excited for this week's episode. So on the Small Business PR podcast, we're all about making marketing and PR strategies accessible and telling you the stuff that quite frankly, no one else is sharing. So today we have Veronica Romney. She's a personal friend of mine. I've been on her podcast. She's a keynote speaker. She is a podcast host. She's a master certified marketer. She's worked with some of the most incredible and well-known entrepreneurs you might have heard of, BossBabe. She's worked with Vanessa Lau, she's worked with Product Boss, Dean Graziosi, Tony Robbins. I could go on and on and on.
00:00:31 Gloria: The reason why I wanted to have her on today is because this is a conversation that I wish that somebody had with me when I started my business. We're going to talk about all things team, hiring, mindset, but most importantly, why you as a CEO, even if you have a small business, why you should be the number one spokesperson for your business. So welcome to the show, Veronica.
00:00:52 Veronica: I'm so excited. First of all, we are actually friends. So it's always fun to do a podcast with somebody that you're actually friends with because I get more of the unfiltered. So let's see how this podcast goes. But I'm really excited to be here. So thank you for having me.
00:01:06 Gloria: Yeah. Last time on your podcast, we got real deep talking about trauma and psychedelics. But before the podcast, I was thinking like, man, like some of the things, some of the wisdom that you've imparted on me. I wish somebody told me in the beginning stages of our business. But I want to start with this question. You say so many gems. One of the things that's always stuck with me is, hey, listen up. If you are an owner of a small business, you are the number one advocate and spokesperson. Can you expand on that? What do you mean by that?
00:01:34 Veronica: Yeah. So I think the most easy to understand examples are actually not personal brands. So like when you're watching back in the day, my favorite commercials was, like Taco Bell with the Chihuahua or Jared before his very public downfall, like Jared from Subway or you see Flo from Progressive. Even companies that don't have an actual human being representative have characters like the Gekko or whatever. You have these personalities or these personified entities that represent brands and are spokespeople for brands. Then you have the sponsored celebrities that will be an advocate for a brand and things like that.
00:02:11 Veronica: And so I think a lot of people will hold that mindset or believe that to be true. If you're like a massive publicly traded corporation, that is even more applicable if you are a small business owner or online personality or just personal brand at all. And so one of the things that when I'm working with my clients at any level, I don't care if you're just starting out or you're already like seven figures, eight figures, nine figures, one of the things that I like to make sure that my CEOs, right, my business owners are actually tracking on a weekly basis is something that I call a visionary KPI.
00:02:43 Veronica: So, like everybody in your team has key performance indicators, but we don't give ourselves that even though we're the boss, which is really interesting to me. So I actually like to make sure the boss has the best one because your KPI actually determines your growth. And that is what we call the visionary KPI, which is literally the number of times that you advocate on behalf of your mission and your vision on behalf of your company on a weekly basis.
00:03:06 Veronica: And it can be an audience of one, one strategic lunch, or it can be an audience of thousands of people in a stadium, it doesn't matter. That as many times as you are advocating and being a spokesperson for your mission and vision of your company, the more that you do that and track that, the more that your gross revenue will go up.
00:03:25 Gloria: Okay, I love that, but here's the thing. If I had a dollar for every time somebody said, well, I just have a skincare company, or oh, people don't wanna hear about me, or I'm more of a behind the scenes gal. For people who don't have personal brands, for people who make physical products, who think they don't have to be the face of the brand, what do you have to say for that?
00:03:43 Veronica: I wildly disagree. In fact, the next time that you go to Costco, I'll give you real examples. You can go right now into my kitchen and pull out like my nut butter, for example, or I can pull out my bag of, oh, they're called Hunks. They're like these gluten-free little oatmeal bars. And you'll see more times than not on these new packagings, that you'll see, is the actual, the story of the owner or the founder that like or my favorite chips are the almond based steady chips or whatever they're called. And on the back is a story of their grandmother and she was like having, allergy and things like that.
00:04:19 Veronica: So I disagree. I actually think that even for product based tangible goods, there are the stories behind the why of why this product is even on the marketplace. And that's what I mean by spokesperson like, I don't need you to represent the tech, the technical stuff, we're not features and benefits. Like let Amazon do that for you. I'm talking about, like, why this exists. What's the mission, the vision, the story behind the thing that you want people to have in their homes and their lives.
00:04:52 Gloria: Yeah. I mean, I totally agree too. And lately I've been kind of getting off gluten. So I'm always checking like, what is this? This is just like another, like Cheetos maker trying to capitalize, right? So I totally agree on that. Now here's the thing, what if, you know, we're all busy, right? We have marketing, sales, fulfillment, and now you're talking about this visionary KPI, which I agree with, you know, as a PR gal. So when you start your business, you know your mission and vision, and somehow that kind of gets lost because you're trying to fulfill orders and you're trying to sell. So what is the right sequence of things, or should this always be like number one, most important priorities?
00:05:25 Veronica: Yeah. Well, first of all, it's an eternal KPI. It is not a KPI that gets delegated out. So as a CEO, as you grow, you are in a position where you can start to delegate things out that are not in your zone of genius. But the one thing that you 99% of the time will not delegate out is you being the spokesperson of your creation. Like you birthed it. It's your baby. What better person to talk about their child and mother or the father, right? And so like knowing that this is something that you will forever possess, would you not therefore prioritize it? Right? Like it's your role.
00:06:02 Veronica: Now, I totally agree with you. Back when I was a solopreneur, everything's on my shoulders. Literally I was the customer service rep. He would message me and it was me answering somebody else. I was that person. So I totally get it. And my parents, God bless them, but they've owned a business for 33 years. They had an air conditioning company in South Florida. So I know what it is to literally start from nothing and watch immigrants start with literally nothing including a language of their own, right? So it does feel cumbersome, like, okay, you're telling me that my company will be best served if I'm not behind the scenes of the company, but it seems like as soon as I walk out of the kitchen, everything goes on fire. How the hell do I do that? Like, how do I hold space for being outside of the walls of the company and then also like, everything's right on the inside of the company?
00:06:58 Veronica: And so like, even when I was first starting my business, even if I couldn't afford to pay somebody, I would try to do trades, try to broker really creative deals to get some support. Oftentimes, especially let's say you're a female and it's your business, the thing that can actually help your business the most is if you ask the neighbors to watch your kids. So I was shocked at how much time I was able to carve out for my professional pursuit, but actually was taking away personal responsibilities from people who were generous with me before I could actually pay anybody. So like, I think sometimes we think team and like formal terms, and I think of support in more liberal creative terms.
00:07:42 Gloria: Yeah, I think it definitely takes a village and no one builds a business alone. Even if you're a solopreneur, you would be nowhere without your people who recommend you and are saying your names in rooms, right? I love that. And I know you have two boys, so you're also very busy and we have a lot of moms. And so that shatters, the other thing which is, I don't have time for this. And boom, you're just bussing out with all these. Imagine all of our limiting beliefs.
00:08:04 Gloria: So for the people who are like, okay, now I understand I need to be the visionary spokesperson, immediately they think, oh, well, I need to post more on Instagram. So can you break that down for me? What are the most effective ways where we can show up as a spokesperson and advocate? Because it might not only be social media.
00:08:22 Veronica: Well, and that shouldn't be to be honest with you. I think Neil Patel had, I just saw him post the other day about the return on social media is, like astronomically low compared to any other marketing endeavors. So like, not to say that social media hasn't literally made human beings like Justin Bieber was discovered on the internet, like I get it. I totally understand. But as an aggregate is actually a very difficult platform to break through versus other things.
00:08:51 Veronica: And so one of the things I talk about, even within the walls of some of my programs, like when I'm teaching some of my CEOs about this concept, one of the things that I'll teach and Fortune 3 specifically actually is like, we always have to honor the messenger style that you are, not what you're trying to emulate. So I think a lot of people will see, like for example, BossBabe, right? BossBabe is a big company, has over 3 million followers. And so I think people go, well, if I want to be a BossBabe, that I need to go all in on Instagram because clearly that worked for this organization.
00:09:24 Veronica: Okay, but if you loathe, if you loathe social media and you like propping up your phone or a camera and talking to it, it feels so artificial and organic. If you don't think that's going to translate, it will translate. And one of my favorite thought leaders, his name is Marcus Buckingham, his whole thing is like, you can continue to work on something that you're crappy at and you'll go from like an F to like a D minus, yay. Or you can just pour more into what you're already naturally gifted at and go from an A to like an infinity A. And I totally believe that.
00:10:00 Veronica: And so for me it's like I'm, and I just, I literally will be proud of me. I literally just messaged my social media manager. If our social media plan hinges on me making content just for social media nothing else, we're going to fail. It is the worst of me. I am the best when I am teaching and fulfilling. We would be better suited if you were to repurpose my fulfillment content, where I'm like feeding off the person that I'm mentoring and coaching, or if I'm feeding off the room, because I'm speaking, like we'll be better served if we just take that content when I am fully present, like in my, you know, alter ego, Beyonce self, than if I were to talk directly to my phone, looking at myself, feeling really weird.
00:10:46 Veronica: So no, you don't have to just emulate something else or someone else to be successful. I know people who are making multiple seven figures with an email list that's less than 2,000 people or with zero social media presence. So that is a myth. The best way is to find your unique messenger style. So if you're a better speaker, then you are a vlogger. If you're a better social media starlet or you're a better writer, like I can give you an example, very successful examples of different styles that are all fulfilling their visionary KPI differently.
00:11:19 Gloria: Yeah, I love that so much. And let's be honest, we don't own our social media. So one of the things I always like to say is like, you can put all your eggs in social media, but one day, boom, you're going to try to log in and you're not going to be able to. So, like social media is kind of one of the things that we can't live with and can't live without. But you're right. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs that we all know, because we have run in small circles, they're not focused on social media. They are trying to build their SEO. They're trying to build their email list. They're trying to get better at writing. And that's where PR comes in.
00:11:46 Gloria: So I'm so glad you kind of validated that for me, because I think when everyone thinks of marketing is like social media, social media, and they're like, I need to hire a social media manager. And I know that for all the CEOs that you've coached seven, eight figures, they're not asking that question, because they're beyond that, because they understand that it's not about, who's doing the messaging or what the vehicle is you as a CEO deciding what is that message that you want to play into.
00:12:10 Veronica: Yeah, I think it's interesting, because like, there's four main sources of traffic, because you're a visibility expert, right? And so for me, I look at it as a marketer, I think of it, we look at it very similar, like we want traffic, we want visibility. And so like as a marketer, I'm like, okay, well there's four main buckets of traffic. There's social media traffic, there's search traffic, there's paid traffic. But the one that I feel like gets zero, like it doesn't get its due respect, is like relationship marketing to me is the best form of marketing in so many regards, because before the internet, before social media, before anything virtual or digital or online, was literally business, was conducted by relationships.
00:12:55 Veronica: And so for me, it's like, I don't know why people, like I think people stress so much social media traffic when really forming relationships. I just watched, by the way, so people have context. I watched you present earlier today in a group that we're a part of on pitching and putting yourself out there and connecting to another human being, even if you don't know them yet. I'm like, that's exactly right. Every relationship starts at zero, but it has to start somewhere. And so anyways, I'm a big fan of what you teach, PS.
00:13:28 Gloria: I'm a big fan of what you teach. We could spend the whole time just being like, no, I like you more. No, I like you more. No, you. We won't do that for our audience, but there's a lot of love here. You've really transformed the way I think about many things, and I want to shift gears a little bit because we cannot build a successful business without delegating to others. I don't care if you call it an intern or a contractor or full employee with benefits, you will get to that point. I think a lot of people don't ever think that it applies to them, but you have fundamentally shifted for me what is my role in this.
00:13:57 Gloria: And so can you talk to people who are maybe thinking about, Oh my God, I have so many things I have to start delegating, but they have no idea how to start and they have no idea what is the right mindset so that they don't have to burn and turn through 10 people before they get that one right person.
00:14:13 Veronica: Well, okay. So what I will disclose is probably the first fatal hiring mistake that I often see with entrepreneurs is they try to hire themselves. That's usually the first one that I'll witness is because the CEO, especially a solopreneur, is doing everything, they immediately think, okay, well, I need somebody who could be a jack of all trades, you know, Swiss army knife that can do lots and lots of things because I need help everywhere. It's like I have holes in every area of the boat. So like, I need somebody who can plug a marketing hole as well as a, admin hole or operations hole. And that's actually where you're going to get in trouble because the reason that you're a visionary in the first place is because you are abnormal. It is abnormal that you can do so many things.
00:15:03 Veronica: And I'm a, anti-transfer burnout person. We're not gonna transfer burnout from your shoulders to another person's shoulders because then you're trying to burn, trying to burn, right? So we don't wanna do that. I rather surround myself with acute people, people that do particular skills very well than a lot of generalists. I'm not a huge fan of like, five bazillion generalists on a team. So when I'm working with CEOs, again, at all stages, I don't care if you're just starting or you're already up in, like seven plus figure range, right? This advice is still true for both categories.
00:15:38 Veronica: The very first thing that I do with my CEOs is I have you do like a shed list. Think of it like a food journal, I guess, but basically like, puke out on a piece of paper, a Google doc or whatever, all the things, all the functions that you're doing within the walls of your business. Some of them you're going to enjoy, and some of them you're going to loathe. So I think your affection or hatred toward the activity should also be documented. But I just kind of want you to spit out everything. Where we often see the first level of help come in is when you want to get rid of more admin stuff or fulfillment stuff or customer service stuff, but you'll see CEOs hold on to marketing as long as possible, especially if they're a personal brand, right? Which I'm totally okay with, I don't care.
00:16:21 Veronica: The point of the shed list is that you're just kinda like letting go or putting on a piece of paper everything that you're doing. And then what I like to do is I like to have, like different highlighters, so different, color for a different baby of the business. And I go through my list and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna highlight it red if this is serving my prospect, somebody who has never purchased from me. Then I'll take another color, I'm like, okay, this is serving the person who has purchased from me, my customer. And then my third color, usually yellow, is I'll highlight things that are serving neither. It's not the prospect or the customer, it's actually the company, like filing my LLC, filing my trademark, filing my taxes, blah, blah, blah.
00:16:58 Veronica: And what I try to do is I'm like, okay, here are the colors of the rainbow. Some colors I like more than others. I will try to find a person who can take on just one color at a time, not somebody who can be a little bit red, a little bit blue, and a little bit yellow, because that's called a Frankenstein. And we don't want Frankenstein people. We want Swiss army knives. I'd rather have somebody who's all yellow and can do a little bit of everything in the yellow than somebody who's across all the colors.
00:17:23 Gloria: Ooh, that is so good. I hope whoever's listening, you're rewinding. So what Veronica just said, such clarity. Instead of hiring someone who can do every little thing, hire someone for one specific zone who can then be mediocre at other things, but really good at one area, right? Anything else that we should know? Oh, here's a big one, which nobody wants to talk about. I want to hire, but I just don't have the money to.
00:17:46 Veronica: Ah! I get mad. I get mad about this question because I think it's so short-sighted. And I'm not, by the way, 98% of human beings have money issues.
00:17:59 Gloria: I'm there and I'm still there. We talked about it on your podcast.
00:18:01 Veronica: Yep. Money, a lot of people have negative relationships. You know who talks about this a lot? One of my former members, Kate Northrup, she's really great about articulating the relationship with money and almost like a shitty ex-boyfriend. It's just the, right? Like we have this negative relationship with this thing that we want more of, but we converse about it in a way that it's like, well, why are you with this dude? So it's really interesting. So you have to be very careful on how you even talk about money. So. But I only bring that up because money is a thing and there's an, it's complex. And so like, if you're a business owner that feels like I just can't afford it, to me, if you allow me by listening to this podcast, may I challenge you to reframe how you're looking at it?
00:18:47 Veronica: Because the reframe isn't so much, how I can't afford it. The reframe is, well, how can I afford it? If I give away this yellow stuff, this yellow zone activity to somebody who's gonna cost me $15, $20 an hour, let's say I put them on retainer, so it's gonna cost me anywhere between like $1,000 a month or more, how many clients do I need to sell to make $1,000 back? Because theoretically, if I give away 15 hours, am I replacing those 15 hours with sales activity to make more money or am I dinking around? So this is where discipline is one of the most underrated CEO attributes that you'll ever find.
00:19:23 Veronica: We talk about grit, we talk about resilience, we talk about a lot of things, but discipline is everything. If you don't have the discipline to replace what other people take away from your list with revenue generating activity, then it doesn't matter. You're not ready to have a team member because you're not disciplined enough to show up for them and anybody else that comes their way.
00:19:45 Gloria: Oh my God. So many mic drop moments. God damn. Okay. That is, wow. Listen to that part again. Actually listen to this whole part again. But what you said, your reframe is so amazing. I think that if we don't have discipline and if we always put off hiring someone, we will be dinking around and we will be the CEO that's doing $10 an hour customer service things. I think the more that we can narrow our scope of work as CEOs, which is doing our spokespeople activities, like pitching ourselves, the more successful it is. So I love how you said that. Let's say someone is cash flow positive and they are making some money.
00:20:19 Veronica: Yay.
00:20:20 Gloria: And they're ready to hire. So you already said like yellow zone, green zone. What are some of those? So now we talk about, how do we get to keep that person because I'm someone who has hired 30, 40 people and I've burned and churned as well. And I've actually called you out to do a power hour because I was really struggling. Most of us are not leaders. I was never taught, I never played sports. I tried to, but I was benched a lot. I mean, can you imagine me playing lacrosse? I don't know what happened.
00:20:44 Gloria: So I was never like a team person in a way, and I've always gone kind of rogue. And that's why we're entrepreneurs, because we are really good at doing things on our own. So how can you help the people who are getting ready to hire their first, whether it's assistant or an intern, to not make the mistakes that I did? And how can you set them up for success?
00:21:01 Veronica: Well, okay. I mean, it's a whole conversation in and of itself, and we could go on for hours, but for the purposes of this podcast, and another kind of powerful reframe, if I may. I find the reason that most CEOs don't identify as a leader is because the burden of somebody else and their lives and their livelihood and their paychecks and their family feels really heavy. However, ironically, the same person that feels burdened by the care of another person, like a team member, is also willing to put everything on the line to transform a stranger's life.
00:21:42 Veronica: So like, right, you're a PR expert, genius, goat. You are helping human beings on a daily basis with your services, your products, your information, your knowledge to help them transform their lives, their businesses, their families. But then when you look at your team member, which is really what you're doing too, if you really think about it, you're in the business of transformation, you don't look at it that way.
00:22:05 Veronica: So like I had this big moment for me, like I was working with like a parenting coach and like, I suck as a mom. And she looked at me, her name was Hope, ironically. She's like, Oh, Veronica. I don't really fully understand what it is that you do, but you seem really good at it. And it seems like you work with a lot of crazy personalities and like you’re a leader, and da, da, da. Like what makes you think that's not, transferable skill in your own household with your children? You're so right.
00:22:30 Veronica: So I say that because I think a lot of CEOs are willing to put themselves out there to serve and transform the lives of strangers who buy from them, but they don't look at the opportunity for their own team members in the same way. When you decide to build out a team, you are now also in the business of transformation just internally, not externally.
00:22:52 Gloria: That is such a beautiful way to put it. I think a lot of times we do see it as transactional, especially if it's, contractor, especially if it's not full-time work. But the way you reframed it will give us such better ROI. Another thing that you said, when we worked together was, you know, obviously don't hire someone, Jack of all trades and be, more specific is, you said you need to separate the thinkers with the doers. And the worst thing you can do is get someone who is a strategist and then make them do the actual, like execution. Can you explain to me what that means?
00:23:21 Veronica: Yes. So different people have different, one, they have different experience, they have different mastery. So that's true, right? Like somebody who has 15 years of experience is very different than five months of experience. So with that set. But also, I, again, because the CEO is all things, I think if you've never had a good model for yourself, or you've never come up from corporate or military or like a really like structured environment, you don't see how it's possible to have distinction or in layers or yeah, just differences between personnel, right. So for me, one of the things I teach in my programs is like, for example, taking a marketing team. There's a difference between marketing execution, marketing project management, and marketing thinking.
00:24:11 Veronica: And like having one person do all the things is actually not advised. So like this, the example I like to use is like, you would never have a copywriter set their own deadlines. That seems oxymoronic. But I think a lot of us actually do that. We expect our vendors, our contractors to not only execute the thing, manage themselves, set their own deadline, QA their own work, and then if none of those steps work out, it's their fault, not our fault. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, it doesn't work like that. There's no way that it works like that.
00:24:45 Veronica: Even me, I'm like a really gifted marketer, sure, but I have other marketers help me market myself because I can't even see myself objectively. Like I'm too in the jar of my own being to see objectively the label of my jar. I'm all up in the jar. And so it's the same thing with our team members. Sometimes when they're all up in their own jar, they can't be objective with their work. And so stupid mistakes start to happen because there's nobody to back them up in a different area of health and expertise.
00:25:14 Veronica: So also just as an extra layer, some of the best doers, especially creatives, they have ADHD, they're neurodivergent. And so like, I would never take somebody who is a smart creative and have them project management themselves. Their brains literally don't work like that. So like, I'm never gonna put somebody in a position to fail. I wanna take somebody and exercise and extract their greatest gifts and then supplement what they need around that.
00:25:42 Gloria: Ooh, I love that so much. And I think a lot of times we want to just kind of put it on everyone because it's easy. Like people who really, oh, I want someone to just pitch for me and be my publicist and then they just throw money at the problem, but then they come back with nothing. So I love how that's kind of a similar analogy. Of course, it's so much easier to just hire someone and be like, okay, bye. And then that's it. And so that's why we hear about onboarding and success and metrics and KPI. So you talked about the distinction of who we should hire, having clear expectations. Do you have any other general tips on maybe, what their 30 or 60 days could look like?
00:26:16 Veronica: Yeah, one of the things I talk about is the difference between outcomes, strategies and KPIs. This is something important to me because I think a lot of people are like, okay, I'm gonna, let's take a social media manager as an example But I hire the social media manager and then I will either keep working with them or fire them if they're not getting me enough followers That's the metric. That's the KPI, number of followers, follower growth. Cool, so I'm, you hired somebody for the outcome of growth because yay, that's going to serve your business. And then you have a clear metric, which is the number of followers that will determine if it's successful, right? Wrong.
00:26:54 Veronica: KPIs don't measure outcome. KPIs measure strategies that achieve outcomes. There's a big distinction. So like, yes, this person's outcome for you is hopefully social media growth. And we're going to look at this very black and white number to see if it's happening. But what strategies are they deploying that will actually achieve that outcome? Because the KPI is measuring the strategy. So the example I like to give, if you guys are readers and love to read a great, great book is Bob Iger's book, Ride of a Lifetime, the Disney executive, the Disney CEO. And he talked about that one of his outcomes for Disney when he pitched himself as a CEO to the board was he's like, I want Disney to be known for world-class content, the best animation on the planet.
00:27:47 Veronica: Cool. The board can hold him accountable to that, and then they can grade their movies and see if the movies were grossing money and like, there it is. But the way that he could have achieved that could have been radically different. He could have either just poached all of the best animators on the world and paid them three X their salaries and any other competing business. Or what he actually did, which was, he was most famous for, is he bought Pixar from Steve Jobs, which at the time was the number one animation company.
00:28:16 Veronica: So he did it through an acquisition strategy, not a poaching strategy. Do you see how, like the strategy is actually what's being measured, not just the outcome that you're paying somebody for. So when you're hiring people, yes, you're hiring a social media manager. Yes, you're hiring a publicist or a PR expert. But what I really like to ask them is what are your strategies for me in achieving this outcome?
00:28:40 Gloria: Ding ding ding ding ding. That is so good. I feel like if so many people listen to just that one snippet of this podcast, when they hired anyone, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because I cannot tell you how many people hire people because you know, their resume or they've worked with so many people, but then they just try to apply the fit in the box strategy. It's almost like trying to put, like, a one size fits all sweater to everyone. And your question just gets past all of that to the root of it. Is this going to work for me? And so I love that. I'm going to take, I'm going to use that actually.
00:29:08 Veronica: Use it.
00:29:08 Gloria: What are your strategies for me? We could talk about this for decades. I feel like you can teach a whole college level class on this. But the one question I need to ask is, people are also afraid to hire because they are afraid to fire. So they never start. And it doesn't get any easier. Like I let go, 30 people by now. So do you have anything around that? Even if the person listening to this hasn't, hired yet, subconsciously, they might be thinking, well, then I'm stuck with someone and I have commitment issues. So how can we get around that?
00:29:39 Veronica: And I, full disclosure, it's the worst part of the job for me. I… break ups personally, professionally are just hard because even when it's super obvious, it doesn't mean that the person receiving the news is, like, going to be, like, classy about it. So either it goes really poorly. They storm out, they give you the middle finger on the way out, or they never saw it coming and they're hysterically crying and they can't pay their bills. And you're just like, you're just the prick in between no matter what.
00:30:08 Veronica: So I think it's not so much that people are scared of firing. I think people are scared of being the villain. Nobody wants to be the villain. We want to be the heroes, especially visionaries. We want to be the Walt Disney's. We want to have the legacy. We want to have the impact. We want to be the hero of our own stories. And so firing or letting people go and disappointing somebody is villainy. And that's what we actually want to avoid at all costs. Cause it's like, no, that's not how my story is supposed to go. The truth is whether or not somebody views you as a hero or a villain is actually on them, not on you. You just do the best that you can.
00:30:43 Veronica: But when it comes to firing, I think for me, it has never gone well when I've put it off and it's never gone well when I've been ambiguous. So like, clear is kind. I mean, Brené Brown, right? Clear is kind. And the one thing that I do try to do so that it's not a shocking thing is I do like to meet with my team. And again, I say team loosely, it's not W-2. I'm saying, anybody in any role that supports me, I don't care if it's an intern, 1099, retainer, W-2, I don't care of the classification. If you are on my team, because you serve the business in any capacity, I'm meeting with you regularly. So I try to have at least every two to three weeks, kind of like check-ins. They can be super formal, like it's a call, or it can be informal through Voxer or Slack.
00:31:32 Veronica: But every couple weeks we're having check-ins where I'm asking them like, what's working well for you? What's not working well for you? Where do you need more support? And I'll either validate what I think is also working well, and I will also validate or add to what I think is not working well from my perspective, but it's always a communication from both sides of what's working, what's not working together on a regular cadence so that when it's been a couple weeks where it's not good and it hasn't improved, no one should be surprised.
00:32:02 Gloria: Boom. I love that. It's also a skill. So it's not like you, you know, I'm still learning this after the 30th firing and every time you get a little better at it. But if you never give yourself the opportunity to let your business be a playground for that, then of course you're always going to be stuck at this level. So think of hiring a market, you know, and firing as a room for you to grow and practice. So that has personally helped me as well. So we talked about so many things. We talked about why any CEO, it doesn't matter if you run an ice cream store, if you knit sweaters, or you have an eight figure coaching, but you need to be the number one spokesperson for your business. We talked about who to hire, how to hire, and you talked about, don't hire Jack of all trades.
00:32:43 Veronica: Yep.
00:32:44 Gloria: You know, hire someone that has a specific, unique zone of genius and then maybe can do two or three other things. We talked about mindset shifts around why people don't want to hire because of lack of money or they don't want to fire. Is there anything else that's super critical that we still need to talk about when people are hiring their first team member?
00:33:00 Veronica: Look, if they can hand you a baby in the hospital and send you off in a car scene, good luck. I think it's very applicable to starting a business. I think we start businesses because we have a level of confidence to even start the business in the first place. And then being an entrepreneur, you are constantly confronted with things that you're bad at and have no idea what you're doing. This is like, it is the refiner's fire. It is the greatest container for personal growth that you will ever, ever go through. And I think there's so much expectations, and this is coming from a Virgo that's saying this, you guys, but there's so much expectations to have it figured out and to be perfect and to be a great leader. And it's not like that. We're all work in progress.
00:33:47 Veronica: And as long as you're radically okay, with being a work in progress. So like, even when I cringe about some of the things I did, maybe my own leadership abilities a couple of years ago, I always come back to the fact that like, yeah, I would never do that today. But when I did do that, I can genuinely say I was trying my best. And that's all that's required is every day you just try to do your best.
00:34:12 Gloria: Yep, every day, a little bit better, 1%. Thank you so much. You have so much knowledge from working with some of the most successful entrepreneurs at the beginning stage. I really call you, I know you call your dream team architect, but I call you like a business Wikipedia. So, so much knowledge. How can people find you and find out about you, whether they're hiring the first employee or their 10th?
00:34:33 Veronica: Yeah, everything's just on VeronicaRomney.com. So let's hang out there.
00:34:37 Gloria: Yay. Thank you so much.
00:34:41 Gloria: Hey, small business hero, did you know that you can get featured for free on outlets like Forbes, the New York Times, Marie Claire, PopSugar, and so many more, even if you're not yet launched or if you don't have any connections? That's right. That's why I invite you to watch my PR Secrets Masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought after industry expert.
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