Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I`ve taken the first steps to grow my business to the next level, having
moved from doing "everything" myself to doing "nearly everything." I`m still
working 70-hour weeks! The thing I find most difficult to let go of is the
contact with the client. The money is there to hire an assistant, but how do
you delegate such an important task, when the words chosen in an e-mail
reply can make or break a sale? Clients are very sensitive, and it drives me
up the wall when I`m communicating with a "low-level" employee who clearly
doesn`t care. And, even if I do find a great person to help, how will it free up
my time if all they do is forward e-mails and phone messages to me?

Why does this person`s job position have to be client contact? Why not hire a designer to do the graphics, or layouts, or whatever it is that`s causing a 70-hour week?

One of the hardest things for many people to learn is how to delegate. Usually, the problem source is in their own mind, the concept of control, and their definition of quality. In my experience, when anyone resolves their internal conflicts with the psychology of control, circumstances bring them into contact with exactly the person they`re looking for to help in the business.

Maybe break down your business into global tasks. For example, you have a sales task, client assessment task (where you learn what the client wants), customer service, creative development, and so forth. Look at which tasks are client-specific, and which are more generic.

My thoughts, anyway....
craig :-)

Thanks, Craig.

I`ve already taken the mental leap that I didn`t think possible even two years
ago and hired contractors to help with the graphics. Volume has gone up so
much that now I`m the `traffic` manager...some days I do nothing but answer
e-mails...dealing with questions and red flags from the contractors as well
as the clients as the job proceeds. The opportunity exists to grow the
business exponentially...I can`t hire salespeople because I`m already out of
time and can`t possible handle more volume, yet I`m unsure how to find
someone trustworthy who will take care of the customer like I do. And yes,
there`s the worry that any person knowledgable enough about graphics and
customer service to do "my" job would be tempted to cut me out of the
picture entirely.

I`ve hired a bunch of people in my day, some bad, mostly good.  But I haven`t made even one bad hiring decision since starting to religiously follow this single rule:  No matter how qualified the person, how well-suited to the job, or how well I hit it off with him or her, I never, ever hire anyone without checking his or her references - three at least (4 or 5 is even better).  If the references don`t speak about the candidate in absolutely glowing terms, I don`t hire the person, period. 

By the way, I`m always sure to ask questions that would invite any doubts or negatives to come out in a way that seems like it wouldn`t hurt the candidate.  For example, first ask: "What would you say are John Doe`s strengths?"  then,
"Everyone has areas where they can improve.  What are John Doe`s areas for improvement."  The other question I always ask, and I think it`s the most telling, is, "Would you hire John Doe again?"  On this question, anything less than an immediate and firm yes is reason to pass on the candidate.

Good Luck!

Lynn Herrick

-------------------------

Lynn Herrick
Managing Member
The L`innovation Group

L`innovation - helping small businesses turn problems into profits.   

This goes to a post I did about handling adversity. "The universe isn`t broken." Your business is growing, you need someone to help, and your worries are all about their being incompetent, or wanting to steal your business, or otherwise being catastrophic. Why aren`t you excited about finding someone who`ll be as interested in growing the business? Why are you voting "against" hiring someone horrible, instead of voting "for" hiring the right person?

Although people today don`t want to consider that there might be a larger pattern to life than what we can see, increasing pressure from leading-edge physics, information theory, and growing stagnation in the existing theologies and philosophies are starting to make it an important question. Add in artificial life, going beyond artificial intelligence, robotics, and neural networks over distributed processors, and the question becomes even more critical.

What`s that got to do with this? Everything taking place in your life is a resonation to the core formula or basic "layer," or the "key" of your personhood. It`s in relation to your current psyche, your thoughts, your emotional state, and your intentions.

Whomever you find in your life is resonating to all that you are. Therefore, stipulating the premise, if you hire someone they`ll be very much like you. The problem is they`ll be like the real you, not the image you have of yourself.

If you have hidden anxieties, you`ll manage to hire someone with overt anxieties. If you have insecurities, they`ll be insecure. If you hire someone they`ll be the perfect reflection of your real state, the honest self, down there where you have to be totally honest with yourself.

Right now you`re coming across as suspicious, distrustful, worried, and afraid. As such, until you change, you`ll probably hire someone exactly like that, and say, "I knew it! I knew I shouldn`t have hired someone!" Before you find that perfect associate-employee, or assistant or potential partner, you`ll have to BE the person you`re looking for.


The universe isn`t broken, so if you see something as a "problem," it`s because of your own control issues, or ego, or a belief that somehow we live in a malevolent existence. We don`t. Resolve those fears, worries, psychopathologies, and philosophic principles, and you`ll find the perfect person to help in your business.

Sound like mumbo-jumbo? Maybe so. It would take me too long to demonstrate all the arguments, which is why I`ll hopefully put up a Web site for all of it. But the bottom line is that physics and philosophy are merging, and both point to the same view of a much more complex reality than we`ve been paying attention to in a long time.

Thanks, Lynn. Great, specific questions that I would not have thought to ask.

Thanks, Craig. To be honest, your point of view is a little "out there" for me.
How does your theory explain that we all start out innocent and trusting and
learn from direct experience that we had better be more careful? Bad things
happen to good people all the time, and the bad people are adept at
choosing and manipulating trusting victims.

We`re not talking about why bad things happen to children, or why people die, or how come there are more people today than a thousand years ago. We`re talking about one particular person, at a particular time in life.

I understand the theory is "out there," but so too was the concept of computer networking only 15 years ago. If you examine reality from the perspective of information, it conforms much more readily to our observations than if you explain reality from a mechanistic perspective.

All I`m saying is that you can explain life prosaicly or poetically. The two explanations amount mostly to the same thing, but one is more intriguing than the other. You can believe/explain that your problem of finding the right assistant is external, based on the "luck of the draw" and other people`s personalities. Or you can suppose that you are an important variable in the things that happen, and who moves through your life.

I`m not discounting that you`ve had bad experiences, leading to doubt and distrust. I`m proposing that the degree to which you hold your personal experiences to be the baseline for all life on Earth, across the board, that`s the amount of bias you`ll inject into your future decisions.

People who enjoy talk radio have the choice of saying that "everyone is talking about" whatever`s the topic. That topic may occupy all the hosts, all day, on many stations. But really, if you tally up every single caller, it amounts to what....maybe 30 per day? Is that really "everyone," or is it only a fraction of "everybody?" It only appears to be everyone, and we project a trend analysis using statistics and probabilities to suppose how many people in the state or country are actually talking about that topic.

You can always look back in time, accumulating bad experiences and their memories, and the result will be an increasing anxiety when it comes to taking risks, and a decreasing objectivity as to what`s happening right now---today.

I`m suggesting that you account for your biases in whatever way they`ve been installed through negative past experiences. Stay focused on the idea that that although you may flip a coin 10,000 times and it`s come up heads every single time, the next toss of that coin still has a 50-50 chance of being either heads or tails.

Regardless of what`s happened in the past, your own actions will modify what`s happening now in favor of repeating that past if you so choose. Only if you find untrustworthy people, consciously or unconsiously, will you have problems dealing with the business. But it isn`t "inevitable" that you`ll find those people. There are still a boatload of honest, trustworthy, competent, and intelligent people looking to help you.

As trite as it may sound in modern "sophisticated" times, the fact remains that if you greet the world with a frown, you`ll meet many unhappy people. If you greet the world with a smile, you`ll find lots more happy people. Your own actions definitely bias the experience you`ll have, just as your own fears will bias the decisions as to who you will hire.

Your question is about finding "reliable" help. My question is whether or not you can differentiate between reliable and dependable. It "sounds" like an insignificant difference, but you rely on someone with values and competence, or depend on someone who controls your life. It`s only our internal thought process that colors our view of reality. It`s that internal process that makes us feel as if we`re relying on someone, or depending on someone.

We can explain someone`s actions using the highly complex principles of psychology. Or, we can explain those actions using a more poetic language of music, resonation, and so-called vibrations (like...good vibes, dude!) :-) Which do you prefer?

I think it`s simply more fun to go with a more visual explanation based on "what key are you playing your life in, and what`s the song you`re attempting to write with your business?" Which musicians are you hiring for the band, and why do you need two drummers?

If you don`t want to give up the client contact, it`s only you who`s proposing that you do so. You`ve asked how to find someone who`s much like you, to handle the one area of the business you don`t want to let anyone else handle---because they likely can`t do it the way you do it.

The high likelihood is that in your search you`ll only find people exactly like you, who don`t want to work with anyone else, want to control the situation, want to do it their way, and disagree with "the boss" as to how to modify their customer interactions. See?

And so you`ll likely over-react and find people who have no initiative, can`t handle anything, have no idea about client relationships, and no interest in anything other than a paycheck. Isn`t that what you`re already experiencing?

It`s the "approach" you take to hiring and partnering with people that matters, not the apparent pool of talent available in your local vicinity. It isn`t about how to "prevent" someone from ripping you off. It`s more about figuring out why you get involved with people who do so. Is it random luck? Is it an infinite mystery? Are there no explanations whatsoever? This resonation "theory" goes a long way to offering some useful food for thought. And, it happens to also work.

The reason I read S.u.N. is so I can see things like this.



Please, S.u.N. members, we need to hear more from employers.

:-) Interesting problem. Are we hiring reliable help, or reliable help? I too would like to hear from employers and HR people as to how to test for reliability...other than a 90-day trial period with a no-excuse termination clause.