- We have an IKEA guy in our town,
that you pay him and he'll go pick up stuff
'cause we don't have an IKEA, and that's his business.
(upbeat music)
How do you hire C-level talent, a very different video.
If you've ever struggled with
the fact that your company's growing really fast,
now you've gotta bring in some really talented people
that actually have been there, done that,
are gonna come in and install systems, or maybe,
you know, you've gotta network to find those contacts
'cause it's not natural
that you would know those kinda people,
'cause I'm talking like,
you know, high-level VPs in C-levels,
those folks, especially in the software space,
they're taken.
You have to like kinda go grab them from somebody else.
But I think that there's a simple way,
I'm gonna share this video,
where you can build a very structured and ongoing process
to recruit and attract high-level talent,
and even if you are not ready to hire,
I'm gonna show you how to
have that leverage and those conversations add value
to your business and to your peer group in the market.
You know, I've been fortunate enough to have supported
and helped hundreds of entrepreneurs at this point,
scaling their companies, and one of the roles,
and it's not something like I do, I don't get paid for this,
it's just, I get to meet a lot of really talented folks.
Sometimes it's entrepreneurs in between transitions,
you know, and I usually leverage those people
to add value to some of my coaching clients.
So, helping one of my clients, like Ryan,
hire a VP of Product, or my buddy,
John, hire a CFO.
Or, recently, I had a conversation
with a VP of Marketing
from a company that went from three million to 10 million
in ARR, Annual Recurring Revenue,
and, you know, he was looking for a new opportunity,
so I introduced him to probably 15 different companies.
They were all a perfect fit for him because that's my,
you know, network and value add.
So, like, I just think it's good karma,
and the reason why I call this the IKEA Effect
is because I'm gonna teach you how to approach those people,
interact with them, and really get them to sell
them to you in a reverse way.
You know, there's this great line in a Pitbull song called,
"Ask for money, get advice,
"ask for advice, get money twice."
Yeah, I just quoted Pitbull.
It's a real thing.
So, there's three steps to really do this right.
The first one is source, and I think the best way to source
quality talent is to deputize other people,
is to think about folks that you know interact,
and go to events,
and have access to a certain caliber of people.
I have friends, like my buddy, Evan, who is one of the top
Directors of Sales and he's worked at several SaaS companies,
and he's the guy I recently just pinged 'cause I have
one of my clients looking for a VP of Sales and said,
who is the best VP of Sales you've ever worked with.
And I think, you know, allowing those people to know,
you know, in your network, and say,
hey, if you ever come across this type of role, let me know,
if you ever come across this type of person, let me know,
if you ever come across just an individual
that blows your minds, I just wanna know.
I can always decide if I move forward or not,
but I can't move forward with a candidate
I've never been presented.
So, the idea of sourcing through mechanism
of deputizing is a powerful one that
everybody watching this video can adopt.
The other one is strategizing.
So, once you have a candidate,
let's say I was hiring a VP of Marketing,
what I wanna do is reach out to them and say,
hey, I would just love to get together
and jam on a problem we're having.
You know, maybe it's top-of-funnel.
Maybe you're having an issue generating consistent leads
top of your funnel to get, you know,
qualified demos scheduled for your account execs.
If that's the case, then just sit down
and schedule a two-hour Zoom session or a Skype session
or a video-chat or an in-person,
and just show them your cards, and show them the data,
and say, how would you approach this,
what information would you need,
and maybe they wanna prep before.
I sometimes just offer to pay them.
I say, look, I know you don't consult,
I know you work at this other company,
but you're the type of person that knows
exactly how to solve this problem
and I would love to just get your advice on this challenge.
That's powerful because what happens is,
when people get involved in a business
and they start giving you ideas and feedback,
they feel invested in the outcome,
and there's not a big departure from that
initial conversation with them to a moment or a feeling
or an agreement that, you know what,
maybe you guys work together and it's worth doing.
So, two hours is kinda cool 'cause it gives you enough time
to kinda assess each other.
You could do it over
a lunch and then kind of make it a working lunch,
I've done that as well.
You know, I hired a CTO for my company, Flowtown,
and it was through this process,
and that individual is one of the primary reasons
that company went on to, you know,
50,000 customers and eventually got acquired,
because they built the technology, the hard stuff,
the super hard stuff that made the company work.
And I just think the right CTO, the right VP of Sales,
the right VP of Marketing, can transform your business.
We're talking 3x growth in a 12 month period,
and it requires you to get to know them
and really strategize as a way of getting advice
and having them sell themselves on you, and get committed,
and that's why it's called the IKEA Effect.
You know, when you build the furniture for IKEA,
there's been this proven stat that people are more committed
or have a higher perceived value to the furniture,
not because of the price but because they actually
were involved in putting it together.
And that's what happens when you ask for advice
through these really senior people,
is they're committed and involved in the business
at that point and it's not much more to ask them,
hey, is this something you see, you know,
maybe moving over to and making a part of your life
for the next three to five years
'cause I think we could create something special,
and that's kinda the language
and the conversation that I have.
And then, finally, the third area is select.
You know, everybody talks about vision and values
and mission and, you know, KPIs and all that fun stuff,
and those are all important, but
to me, when you hire somebody
and you select the right candidate, you know,
assuming skill and experience and all these things,
and CALM structure and all that stuff is on the same level,
it's really about values, you know.
And this is what I tell people that I coach,
is that your values are there to help you
hire and fire people,
and it's your responsibility in the interview process
to test for those values, and you know it in your soul.
Nobody's ever said the words,
I wish I wouldn't have listened to my gut.
Those words have never been uttered
in the history of human existence
because we all know in the early days.
And sometimes you have a void to fill,
and you're eager to get somebody onboard,
but you know there's something there and you have no proof,
this is the crazy part, you have no proof,
you can't put your finger on it.
You just know they're not a good fit,
and usually within six to 12 months, they're gone
because the values were disconnected,
the way they liked to work and the way your team works.
You know, I had a good friend of mine, Mike,
who hired a VP of Sales, and he knew when he hired him,
this guy was super driven, cutthroat, aggressive,
verbally abusive in his approach,
and he knew in the early days
he probably should've let him go,
and instead, he didn't,
and it was a really tough conversation nine months in,
when they thought they were rocking and they started
building out the sales org and all this stuff,
to then come in and swap him out with somebody else.
I mean, at scale, these are really tough decisions
but, you know, those are the three strategies.
Now, I wanna give you a tip, you know,
because really you've gotta do three things,
you've gotta source, you've gotta strategize
and you've gotta select the right candidate,
and it could feel overwhelming,
but the most important thing I could share with you is
hire a recruiter.
Now, don't hire a recruiter to send you a bunch of résumés
that you then have to filter
and they're a bunch of
ding-dongs and unqualified people.
Hire a recruiter to run that process, to source people,
to identify, to go on your LinkedIn, to make a lead list,
to reach out, get them, you know, interested,
get them connected, schedule the calls with you,
reach out and see, you know, if there's a fit,
just to get advice,
to maybe even take care of payment for consulting,
or whatever it is.
I think that so many companies don't realize
there's a skill and an art to recruiting.
Great recruiters know how to do that.
They can play third-party,
boasting how incredible you are as a company and a founder.
You don't have to do that.
It sets a really great frame for that conversation
when they come in and get introduced to you,
and they can run the pipeline and the process
without you as the CEO having to do that,
and I think that is huge leverage in your business.
So, that is my tip for you to do.
As you use the IKEA Effect to hire C-level talent,
you wanna find somebody that can actually run, manage,
be accountable for the process to give you more bandwidth.
As per usual, I want to challenge you to
live a bigger life and a bigger business.
I'll see you guys next Monday.
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I will see you next Monday.