This is Barry mold still getting small business unstuck. One of the biggest places that small businesses are constantly stuck is around people. You've got to admit to yourself at some time you've been sitting there and you said, You know, I don't get it. Most people just suck. Admit that you say I can't find good people. No one's even loyal.

I have such high turnover. I don't understand why no employee works as hard as I do. And in fact, there are some days that you even dream, finding a business that you can run without employees. But you have to remember is the golden equation for keeping employees at your company really is very simple. Do the Employees goals, do what they want out of their career in their life, really match the company goals. When those two things are equal, are in congruence, people stay as soon as their break.

People leave. How do you find that perfect match. Now we don't have to go to Patti Stanger over at the Millionaire Matchmaker, the way that you find it is actually going through these four steps. The first one is hiring, training, managing and firing. And we're take a look how to be unstuck in each of these areas. First of all, hiring is really key.

But who do you hire because you save yourself, no one can do this job as good as I can. Now while that may be true right now, That's no way to grow and leverage your company. Think about in which area you are the best that you enjoy the most. And start hiring in the other areas are the best at sales and marketing and hiring. An operations person, if you like doing operations or product development, go hire a sales and marketing person. But you've got to make sure you start to leverage.

You can't be everything to everybody, you've got to be able to pick one. It becomes a problem in hiring for small businesses, because many owners have a tendency to hire people that aren't as good as them. They see themselves as an A player, they do everything great. So in order to preserve their ego, they hire B players who are only 70% as good. And then the B player follows your example and hires a C player and therefore the organization craters from the top down. You have to hire folks that are complimentary with an E are complimentary to you, that can do a job that you're not necessarily great at.

So let's talk about how to hire first you have to make sure that you get referrals. And you should give incentives for employees that find people just like them. That is really the best way advertising for a job. In Career Builder or one of these other places, you'll get a lot of junk. And you may not find the kind of person that you really need. Make sure before you interview the person, that you get referrals, you get references, make sure that comes in.

The third thing is you can do some research with them. You can Google you can Facebook them. You can also afterwards do a credit and criminal check. When you're interviewing them, make sure you talk about money really early. People are afraid to talk about money, but there's all sorts of folks on the higher side and a lower side that apply for a job and the compensation just is not appropriate. It is very rare that someone that was making $100,000 a year all of a sudden is going to work for $35,000.

And if they are you also have to be aware of that When you're doing the interviewing, if gotta make sure that you shut up and listen, during interviews, small business owners talk way too much, because they feel like they've got to sell the company, even to this candidate because they're so used to doing it all day long. And you've got to ask some critical questions. The most important thing to ask is, and follow this very closely. Tell me about a time when dot dot dot, a lot of people can make up generalities. But when you ask candidates for specific examples of when something happened, and why it happened, people just can't make that up. So for example, let's say you were hiring a salesperson you could say, Tell me about a time when you were able to land the B account and get specific details.

Tell me about a time when you're able to turn around and dissatisfied customer. Tell me about a time when you resolve a conflict with another employee. Tell me about a time when you beat out the competition. Tell me about at a time, when you're able to create a long term relationship, during your interview, the thing that you most need to focus on is not necessarily skills because you can give a test for that. But you have to look at what is the person's attitude. When given a choice.

I always hire based on attitude rather than skills, because you can train skills, you just can't train attitude. Now, a lot of small business owners miss the early warning signs. Early on, once people are hired, they really don't change in the first two to three weeks. Look for Do they have the right attitude? How are during the interview? Have they asked the right questions?

Have they had frequent job changes, and if you're looking for this person to come in to be your Savior, your person coming in a white horse that's going to change everything. That is the biggest early warning sign because no matter how great this person is, they're never, ever going Going to measure up. Once you get them in house, make sure that you have a training plan. I remember in my last company, we had no time to train people, we in fact, when our new employees came in, we even had them build their own desks. And that was just silly because everyone needs training. Teach them how to master the systems inside your company, and make sure that they understand the bigger picture.

During the first few months, ensure that there are consistent feedback loops, so you know exactly what's going on. It is critical to really train them on the systems that your business has, because this is the way that you leverage the people in your working environment. Make sure there's a measurement providing incentives and promotions. Think about why McDonald's is the most successful franchise in the world. And we talked about this in step one of this video series. It's really because of the systems that they have put in place that makes them effective.

And there needs to be systems in every single area that you can teach your employees in sales and business development, what's your systems of proposals and how someone actually moves this through the sales process? in marketing? As we discussed in step one, how do you create systematic relationships and operations? How do you actually deliver your product or service efficiently? in finance administration? Do you actually look at your financial statements every single month systems is just not for production.

Now, as you're hiring people, I believe in the 28 day check 28 days important because in most states, it is 30 days before you're responsible for that person's unemployment insurance, and people will change very little in that period of time. Make sure that you get feedback from the staff. Now, this feedback will be biased, but all feedback from different points of view really will work out put together some kind of performance review after 30 days to see actually how they're doing. Now managing for small business owners is very, very difficult because when they start the company, the organization is really very small. It's just that one dot, it's just them. And as they grow the business, they grow it in a hub and spoke kind of environment.

The first thing that they do is they hire one person that works for them, then they hire another person that works for them, then they hire a third person that works for them, then they hire a fourth person works for them. And they have this hub and spoke kind of environment where everything's got to come through them. Well, that may make the business owner feel really great and import. It really is not very efficient and doesn't get a lot done. Somewhere along the line. You have to move your organization to more of a hierarchical format.

And that means that you have to let go of your ego your To let go of being the center of attention, and you have to get out in the middle of everything and give people real responsibilities. managing people are really key, you've got to make sure that there are clear management lines with no back channels. One of the biggest problem I find in many small businesses is that the employee is dissatisfied and doesn't want to talk to their manager, but then wants to talk to their managers, manager or the owner. You can't allow that to happen. You've got to shut off that back channel. Because once you talk to your employees employee, it basically makes your manager, your employee powerless.

Make sure that you give reviews frequently. And very often, the days of the annual review or even a quarter review is really over. Walking around and talking to people on a weekly basis is really the best monitoring of that kind of performance. And make sure that you put some kind of incentives in Place. These can be qualitative or quantitative. So people know exactly what they want to focus in on.

Remember, people respect what you inspect. Let me repeat that. People respect what you inspect. If you set up guidelines, you never look at them, people aren't going to do it. Number four, and this is a very, very critical part of managing and leveraging people. You've got to know how to fire folks.

You've got to be slow to hire, and quick to fire. And this is the only area where I really admire Donald Trump because he knows how to fire people. A lot of small business owners have a very, very difficult time doing this because it makes them sick to fire people because they realize they made a mistake, or they think, Oh, this person has a family or I just can't do this. And how do you figure out which people to fire? I think he use something called the cringe factor, as ross perot might have said there's a giant sucking sound in your company. And that's the people that really aren't being prompt for you.

So what's the cringe factor? It's simply is this when you go to write that person's paycheck every single week? Do you just cringe when you got to do that? Because you know, they're not worth their money. That's the person that you really should get rid of. An alternate way to look at is, let's say that person got run over by a bus, would you miss them?

I've talked to some business owner that said, Well, I paid the bus driver, actually to do that. There is someone in your organization that really doesn't belong to be there. And in fact, they're actually stealing money from you or another way you're actually giving away money to them for no good reason. Pause this video and think about the one person that you're going to go out and fire today. You got that person now makes you go do that, because it will make your company better. Everyone knows that person doesn't deserve to be there.

So let's talk about the actions that you need to take. Make sure that when you go out to hire, you start with the correct sources. Ask your current employees to give you referrals. That's the best way to do it. And make sure when you're doing the hiring, to ask the appropriate questions. Tell me about a time when in training, you've got to spend a lot of time with people and teach them the mastery of the systems you have in your company.

And the big picture. When you're managing them, make sure they're clear lines reporting, and there are no back channels, and you have to give feedback early and often. And make sure that you do not hesitate in firing people think about the cringe factor in order to keep the best people at your company. So what is the one change that you're going to make in your small business? How are you going to strive For minimal achievement, this is very old still getting small businesses on stuff. Have a great day.