Recently a business owner posted to a B2B Facebook group we are both a part of, asking:

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, so please don’t DM spam me. I’m getting to a point where I need to hire an individual (not a consulting agency) and not via upwork to work WITH me to build out GoHighLevel automations, funnels, and websites.

I need to be more sales focused while keeping oversight over the funnels and automation build processes.

I have tried to hire in the past but my hiring strategy only lead me to hire “talent” which wasted my time, had to completely redo their projects, and was out of my money.

What tips do you have for hiring some solid talent?

Ugh! I can totally relate.

I hit a ceiling/plateau for years because I couldn’t find talent.

So I responded to him in the group, and figured it made sense to share experience here as well, in hopes that the content gets indexed by a search engine, finds someone else with whom it resonates – and maybe even helps!

The startup mindset is a gift and a curse.

My early days were dog-eat-dog (we were a lean, scrappy, frugal, in the trenches, hand-to-hand combat, guerrilla style agency) and I came to identify as that. Expanding beyond that involved switching my mindset.

What helped (and perhaps even drove) the business in the early days, morphed into the ugly monster holding us back.

Just like it’s eye opening the first time you learn “it’s not about revenue, it’s about net”, it’s equally eye-opening to learn “it’s no longer about net take home, but back to revenue”.

So what does that mean in practical terms?

(1) “Overpay for better talent.”

I say overpay because this penny-pinching side of me that identified with the early days was holding me back from paying GOOD talent (ie. the type that could one day become a CTO/COO which is what we’re after) what they were worth.

But it could also mean “overpay” because that same frugal mindset ensured I would see their work (and work ethic) and nothing was ever ‘good enough’ because I was filtering everything through this lens of “am I getting an ROI on this person?”

(2) “Get out of my own way”

Learning that the quality of our service probably had to slip in order for me to offload my workload was a tough pill to swallow but it’s been necessary to get past my bottlenecks.

Coming to terms with the idea that the service we provide through hired talent is objectively worse than it would be if I did it myself hurt my ego, but so would any company. I’m sure Bezos sees delivery compilation vids on TikTok and his blood boils. I had to learn to say “so what?” and work on correcting the SOP’s and workflows as an overseer, instead of grabbing the metaphorical steering wheel.

Those two ideas helped me, but they’re a LOT easier to type than they are to execute.

‘The Ego Is The Enemy’, as Ryan Holliday says

Hormozi would have a snazzy equation infographic where he demonstrates the idea that there’s more “net ROI” because you have twice as many clients, and twice as many sales calls happening in the same number of hours, but in the end, I think for me, it’s just been a healthy shedding of ego.

What started as healthy ego (wanting to be the BEST for our clients) became unhealthy ego (unable to grow to the number of clients that need our help, and unable to improve the number of lives we aimed to). Allowing for errors, mistakes, and work I’d have previously called “trash” has helped.

‘Hail fellow, well met’ and other pithy closing remarks

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes my blood boils and I want to go full scorched earth when the mistakes pile up – that’s the nature of having built something from the ground up through nurture, and love.

But that’s also the trade off of ‘raising a kid with 6 parents’ instead of ‘me, solo parenting’.

The way I see it… If you’ve ever fantasized about taking a vacation and not checking your email, the obstacle is the way.

Hope some of that is applicable to your situation. I am super empathetic your spot, as I was stuck there for a while.