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Human Capital

When I was putting this together somebody said to me do not call it human capital calling human assets and to me it is human capital and I tell you why because every person has a value you know, of course we all people and we have our our individual values people that we contribute to whatever but for a business and this is about building a business people have an actual monetary value for your business so the old rule of what you put in it's what you're going to get out that supply here too and I will tell you from someone who has made a lot of lot of mistakes when it came to that it took me a long time to really figure out why this is so important and I've completely changed the way I interact now with the people I work with have always been tough love but now I really tried to be much more understanding and also look about the you know, the whole person, their issues in their province before it was all about well, you know it's more about the business I think we're really going away...

from that it's not just about the business about you know how people's individual contributions can be acknowledged appreciate it also be, you know, sort of part of the whole I'm going to start with a funny story this is I'm known for my backdoor strategies and my backdoor strategies are all about sort of finding things that are really unique that a fund secret backdoor strategies. I did a lot of business at the bar not like you think, but I believe that when you are out to do business, especially when you travel for business, the bar is an excellent place to do business at. And here is why, when people go in the travel to other cities, they are in conferences or in business meetings all day long. What signals the end of the day in the beginning ofthe the stress is over. Happy hour, exactly. So I developed the cinderella rule, and the cinderella rule goes like this. You always dress up for the ball bar three drink maximum in bed before midnight, you walked to your room alone thiss strategy has is probably one of my strategies off by became so successful, and I did so much business at the bar because I did a lot of business with men, and I did, of course, a lot of business with other women business owners, but I found that when you are fun to be with and you're not a boar and you go and you talk to other people and you interact with other people, but you know exactly what your limits are. And then you just walk away and everybody else can go crazy and whatever they tell you, you know, my lips were sealed, so the next morning there was no awkwardness and I'm I bet you've seen this, you know, that awkwardness that sometimes comes the next morning when you know, people having hangovers and when they did other things we don't talk about so is easy to avoid use the bar as one of your most important networking tools and become really, really good at it. I have so much when I met princess at the bar I mean no joke, so let's talk about the next one about connecting with me because a lot of few have been sending so many great comments, please tweet, send us updates your ideas, our twitter handle is iga rhythm and then hashtag is be out alive thank you very much and I always liked to hear about your ah ha moments I'd like to hear about what you what you're thinking about questions you having if you have questions for audience members by all means, you know, send them in we have andrea on standby, who's helping us and of course our fabulous hosts jaco and jean marie to you know, to help us filter this in so we can make this a really interact of course because my intention my only goal is to give you as much and as many tools as possible that you can't take away, including the workbook so that you can, you know, take this and end with the excuse eliminators that we've provided for you. Start your business and get really serious about it. And again, you know, I wanted to give a shout out to our audience member here, audience members here what the greatest thing to me was this morning. I mean, I think they'll really look different, you know? And I want every iterated again, you know, you look more professional, you look more, you know, like your your body language is already different. I mean, I can tell that you are serious about building a business and you just said to me, I feel it and if I feel like that, everybody else out there must be feeling just the same way. And I think that's, you know, that's what my big, wise that's, why I'm doing this? Because this is the fuel I run on and just like this, other businesses are other business owners will have the same experience and that's, what philip was talking about philippe was talking about is it's, not that you feel bad about calling them it's, you feel bad for them when you don't call them huge difference in a shift in the in the thinking off a successful sales person and six successful entrepreneur people need what you have they need your information, they need your program they need your art. They need your photography. They need your advice than eat your nutritional program. They need your jewelry they need ah lot of these things that you're providing to help them to feel look better than they are right now on facebook we have I have several groups. One is the women's code and the other one is photo biz fan so you can just go there and if you feel so compelled to like it and get engaged in the interaction I have a also a group on facebook which it which you have to apply for it's, the photo biz coach and in linked in I have two groups which is photography business we just reached yesterday with the people that are coming through here twenty three thousand members and the other group which is a women specific group called the women's code and of course you can always follow me under be articulate why did I tell you so much about me? Well, guess what is the biggest capital of your business yourself you're it so in the workbook and I know you connie is is my is my person to go to four pages twenty eight right all right so on page twenty eight what we have we have this in here where um again you know you have the room to talk about about yourself and I know a lot of you don't really like talking about yourself get over it because your client needs to know why are you qualified to run this business? You've heard it my instant qualifier is I saw the company to bill gates if I say that I don't even need to say anything else because it's an instant qualifier now most of you may have not sell the company to bill gates but that is just one off the qualifiers that are out there qualifiers are that you have a degree a qualifier is that you've done extensive research a qualifier is that you dated yourself against all odds and you know for for for janice a qualifier is for someone who against all odds came you know the underdog on the dog story which everybody loves people love survivor stories thrive on survivor stories instant credibility but people say wow if she did this and you know in our host keep on bringing up sort of where I come from that I was one hundred thirty five thousand dollars in debt and all this adversity had piled up on top of me and there was no way out I mean it was it I was going down in flames if you go down at least go down in flames don't drown in a puddle drown in the ocean it's much more worth it jazz yes I'd like to ask you because I'm on lengthen but and I did it all wrong I have someone else's picture for my profile picture of some a picture that I've taken of someone that I thought was the picture looked really nice but I have nothing else there because I didn't know what to write about myself do you think that my story is it is good enough teo to write that people would want me just because my story not unlinked id yeah I would think that they would want my qualifications if yes you know what they would really depends theirs away what I recommend to do is you can ride your qualification almost like a biography and add the key achievements so if if you don't have you know these thes academic touch points and you don't have the mba or you don't have the whatever degree you can say you know keep it key achievement is a quick thinkers you know comes up with solutions in a desire to help other people transforms other people's lives so you can talk about this in sort of thes these times of terminologies and it's an expertise and I think that's what people often misunderstand this people think that especially a professional network is just about actual academic qualifications I find that not to be the truth you're looking at somebody who has only a photography degree and we're not even entirely sure if that german photographer degree because it was a two year college back then now it's a three year college is that a batch lowers that really an associates degree I mean there's a hot discussion about this you know how qualified am I really but what's my qualification come from the school of hard knocks with the masses and survival and an undergraduate and tenacity so when you have the story to tell sometimes realize experience supersedes academic achievements there's a lot of people out there that have great academic achievements that don't have careers that are very exciting and forgive me if I'm judgmental about that but there's people out there that are unruly dyslexic that I suffer from a d d that have gone on to great achievements. So who are we to say so whatever it is that makes you special you have to find a way to turn that into an advantage so my inability to follow other people's leads and having to map out my own path is at a disadvantage is an advantage okay, so to me you are and here I am uh so if you know and I know and that's what this about me issue no which is why we spend some time on this is what is it about you that are that is so special and it goes back to what other people say about you she's so nice he's so compassionate she has a genuine desire you know she makes me feel good she relaxes me she makes me comfortable she is she has this this thing about her she's so positive you know when she walks in the room all I do is smile so whatever that is about you know draw that out and it's okay to write that down and and say hey you know what do you what do you think of my best qualities? And people will tell you and that's something you actually should ask a family and friends and people that really like is like you are my best friends because why? And they say because your smile lights up the room because you make people so welcome you are so genuine you know whatever it is draw all of these things and that's what I want you to describe you know because this is what sets you apart and we talked about making people comfortable we taking the cheese out of the picture I mean that's you know that's a qualification it's an academic certificate for making kids comfortable in on cheesy good well, now there is it's it's it's your it's, your achievement and on that we are going to have a question and answer session coming up because this is really a segment the human cabot I want to be very, very interactive with you I want to talk about you know what experiences you have with hiring people or what challenges you have to talk about yourself or envisioning your teams and as we go through the next couple of slides and we'll talk about the team and howto hi aware to hire, please take special notice and fire away your questions andrea is ready in the chat room about what you struggle with as you're building your teams and as you were, you know, getting ready or you thinking about or thinking head off hiring people and getting them into your team so fire away let's talk about your team so each team has a president, a ceo at the very top a president often has an executive assistant that is, you know, we used to call them secretaries, but now the executive assistance or sometimes a virtual assistant we have marketing departments, we have sales departments, we have product development, we've graphics and design riding project management, web design, a development in programming and social networking. So ah lot of this is very important to think about who you going to put on your team, and here is why in an organizational structure you are the top and then everything sort of goes goes down like a parliament, right? So in the beginning it's just you and then we have you being thie you know, the top of the permit, so all these other departments it's really all you, but as your company grows and we add people underneath you, we need to add people in jobs that actually exist. Why? So we can find people to hire. So what happens a lot of times is a big danger for especially small business owners is that you think if you only could clone yourself because you're so good at everything that you know you, if you had somebody who can just duplicate, do the exactly what you do over here and then do exactly what you do over that, you cannot grow a business like that, so you want to be the best at what you do, and you want to find out what you're not so good at what you don't like to do, and you want to hire somebody for that is soon as it is possible it soon as it makes sense in the business. So again, big big warning many me cloning is bad people are asking about this yesterday actually, they were saying, how do you make that decision of when is the time to bring in other people? Is it when you simply have run out of time yourself and you realize you can't spit yourself any further or is it when you have sufficient capital now or sufficient profits that you could afford to hire somebody what's your sense of this? Okay, we're going to cover this in a minute, but I'm going to actually talk about it right now as it came up so here's the rule when your time is more valuable doing something else that brings in more money you need to outsource that so if cleaning the office takes you two hours and would cost you fifty dollars, fifty pounds fifty euros but you could make in two hours two hundred euros dollars or pounds should you be cleaning the office at that point that gets outsource so you rot walk away with one hundred fifty dollars profit if you do your own wordpress site, you're not a programmer but you trying to save money so you spend insane amount of hours trying to figure out which plug and it's screwing on up your web site this time and you spent ten hours a day and then four more at night these fourteen hours you could be on the phone telling other people on how to improve their lives at fifty dollars, one hundred, two hundred two hundred fifty, five hundred whatever your rate is, so you have to make the evaluation iss my time well spent with this or should I rather be investing my time in money generating tasks? The fastest way to the cache is to focus on money generating tests and we'll go about, you know, we'll go into greater detail, but you know, it came up, so I wanted to address this let's talk about the people you work with, so consider everybody on your team, a social brand ambassador and again, you know, I'm not going to do this to to to blow smoke, but creative life really kind of got this down, and when I walk around here, I really feel that people are connecting with each other. I mean, do you feel that that vibe I mean, it just has such a team feeling and effort in its its comfortable and sne eyes and we feeling good be feeling welcome that is everybody here seems to understand what the brand is and they're all brand ambassadors off that same message impressive, right that's our goal we want to achieve, we want to achieve that it's also good to recognize that other people see that people are not perfect, that our people on our teams I just like our clients that they have kids, they, you know, have family emergencies and that's really but there's also something that's changed over the last couple years we used to see this rigidness especially when the wall street thing was so so powerful was all about perfection was all about running for the money it's all about not showing a crack in the armor was all about perfectionism that's really changed it's perfectly ok now to have family emergencies to cover for each other to be nicer to each other to support each other in a different matter so this is all part of the team building as we understand it now we want that almost like a family type thing because we need each other to pay our bills and to you know move ahead in life and to advance and to have a good time if we spend so much time in the job we may as well do it with people we enjoyed being with that are contributing something to our no point the caring aspect another thing I really like about my experience here is being cared for when I get that feeling you really mean what you say you really genuinely want me to be happy you want me to you know to feel better it's not just a cell have you ever been in a situation with somebody where you feel so much just selling uh it's like dude you know get to the point or here's here's another one really bad sales pitch hi my name is so and so were the contractors and we're doing an estimate in your neighborhood uh and we happened to be there this afternoon would you like us to come by a two or three o'clock by your house and we provide free estimates you know what I say no I said can you get a better sales pitch please? You know we appreciate a good sales pitch we appreciate somebody you know doing their best and this is another thing I really want to put out there when you get a call from someone whose job is it to do that it's also okay to help him out a little but I connected with someone from the los angeles times and I didn't know but the los angeles times had this whole small business support service that they've developed for you know with websites support and with with programing support and with copyrighting and video support and I you know and he was pitching me and I didn't get it so I said well you know me ever being the training okay who was your customer? What are you trying to do what's the benefit to the customer and he's like looking at me and he's he's getting all nervous it's okay let's let's schedule a college's go through this together and then he called me and he said you know just these five minutes that you were working me on on being better really made me think about what I was saying and that helped me to really identify my sales pitch and I recognize that I was all over the place because I couldn't tell anybody what I really was doing it's because it was unclear to me what the benefit waas so you know let's help each other there's nothing wrong with it if they're open if they're open to it you know so it is a certain generosity that comes with it and we do genuinely care about people he's a great quote from uh john rockefeller he says good leadership consists out of showing average people how to do the work ofthe superior people I learned this personally this example by a photographer by the name of barry let egan who was one of the first vogue photographers so by the time I met him he was already off a significant age and I was a representative at the time for hair and makeup artist and as I am schlepping you know these doesn't off books into the studio and you know barry was going through them and he's like uh huh and you say in the next one is going huh and I'm going oh this is going terrible this is this is bad you know he's going to just tell me that the eye line eyes bad the hair is bad that the breakup horrific and he put him all the way in a stack this high and then he looks at me he says anyone will do like what I was used to people like critiquing the tiniest little things and don't on me that a really good leader we'll get anybody to do a great job and at that moment that's who I wanted to be, I wanted to be that person that could take average people into superior leaders and that's why I like this quotes much you like this and people genuinely have this in them. We often underestimate this and when we don't recognize that they are good at something because we hammer them over the head with stuff that they're not good at. Luckily not everybody needs to be good at everything. I am very good at accounting, I tend to get really sidetracked and then, you know, obsess over five cent that don't balance, which is why I work with a bookkeeper who very clearly explains to me that looking for those twenty dollars of those five cent is not worth two hours off my time. So that's why we need people that compliment us or that add a skill to us that we don't have so that we broaden this so many me cloning is what bad ok, good, so we hired to our weaknesses I am an idea person surprise and so for me you know this being out and about the talking I really thrive on that does my passion, I love it so I want to have people that keep me grounded makes sense imagine there'd be two of us or three of us, so I'm very specific about the people that I bring in on where I want them and what function they need to achieve. So I have a project manager for the simple reason that I don't want to do it, and I don't want to keep telling other people you know, when the stuff is, do I push this out? Because I want to have idea when I throw my ideas to her and then I want her to tell everybody you know, when they're due dates are and to deliver the product to me, that's how I want it because I work with an outsource team all over the world, and if my team is watching you guys are the best best test team ever, they say a people hire a people be people higher sea people. Why do you think that is there's? So much to do. Maybe pardon is there's so much to do, and you don't want to do it all yourself. When a person hires on a person, they hire them because they recognize skill in other people, an insecure leader has to mount his superior superiority did I say that right? And has to hire people that make him look better by hiring people that are below him is that good for the business of bad for the business? Bad for the business? Yes. So when somebody walks into your officer into your life and you're ready to hire, should they be better at something than you are? Yes. Yes, yes. The answer is yes. Now, can you clarify the distinction between a person and be person to see person? Is this based on personality type? Are we just talking about, um, what system are we defining? A, b and c by oh, that's. Great. Great question. Well, this is not based on meyer speaks. We will talk about myers briggs personality types, huh? In a little bit, I think it's actually, in this session, I am a certified myers briggs practitioner, but this is based up on people that a certain level, like in in a sort of management styles. If you want to like the a level of management executive level and above and the b level being, you know, management and below, I find a lot of managers hire people that are not as good as they are because they want to save their possession, which is a whole other problem in itself, which I address in my corporate portion off my business, which we're not going to do here right now, just know that you do want toe always hire the best people and people that are better than you had something? Those are the people that you should bring onto your team because they, you know, they rise it to the next level from ellen, who says I have lots of hiring and firing experience, I have found that personalities are as important as skill sets or knowledge, and if someone wants to learn and help, they typically will learn and help nice, just some feedback and then actually on the flip side, uh, philip in belgium says at his work there are average people who don't want to be good, they just want to be good enough not to be fired on that's good enough for them, okay? And if you know, if I have somebody like that in the team, what I what I do, this is where we this is where we have to talk to people on what their objectives are. If somebody has no objective and no desire to grow, then they're going to be in a position where they're shuffling papers from left to right. And if there is a position for that in your company, where you can have people just doing these tests and there's a lot of businesses out there, you know, especially in manufacturing. Where that's exactly what what what people who say well I don't live to work I work to live so I want to do is I need x amount of dollars and I want to bring that home and that's all I want that's okay there's nothing wrong with that if there's a room for that in your company that's ok? And I think that's that's great I mean, if I work with a copywriter for example I want my copyrighted too not wanting to be a chef I want my copywriter to be a copywriter and I want my programmer to be a programmer to be an invested programmer and I want you know so so we don't in l a we call him slash people you know, bartender slash actor or, you know, web designer slash musician so we don't we don't want slash people you've known people who have the chosen profession and sort of stick with that. All right? Uh here's the question went to hire so hee are the reasons tau uh when you hire first you're going to automate we are going to be talking about automation a lot. I find that very exciting and you hourly rate it's more valuable than the expense of paying somebody so we talked about that, you know, with the cleaning example should you be really doing certain things and you are simply ready for growth when are you ready for growth is when you're working fourteen hour days and when your bank account says that you are ready for growth and the person's knowledge contributes to the bottom line of frees up time for money making activities but now we're too high you find people on places like ellen's dot com hire my mom, dot com taskrabbit, dot com fiverr dot com linked in and craigslist and you can also if you are somewhere else in the world, please let us know if you have any resources that you want to share with our hashtag miata life or put it in the chat rooms and share with our other viewers on what other good sources are to hire. I have actually hired almost my entire team through the lands, so in that scenario would they have other jobs as well? Do they work part time for you or is it a full time situation? Most of minus all freelancers is all part time. Yeah, so I work, I work on ours and I work on teams or or or tasks and I find that really, really works. I did try outsourcing into, uh, the philippines and I did have some experience with india it did not work for me because I found that the time difference and the just the cultural difference was for me personally I'm not saying this for everybody but I'm saying for me personally it was very difficult I couldn't I just didn't feel comfortable enough I want to be able to call somebody in a similar time zone so that you know we have the same amount of time when we're working added because otherwise they have to be really self sufficient to you know, to produce tests before we move on quick just a quick question about the slash people you're describing why do you see that as an issue on do you have a solution for it? Because some people will genuinely have two things that they're doing their life or sometimes even more right? Well, we're talking about this from a business owner perspective as a business owner you must be selfish I'm not saying that there's something wrong with you people doing that I'm saying when you want to grow your business, you don't want that because what if that other portion off the slash takes off and now they're off and they say, you know what? I got the gig I'm going on tour and you're in the middle of the project and you're a musician programmer slash musician says yeah, but you know the band just got signed we leaving next week and you are three weeks away from the launch itself as a business owner and this is strictly a business decision is when you do that, you run the danger that the slash the other portion off the slash could kick in at any time, so for me personally and that's, what my recommendation is, I always try to find somebody who's really one hundred percent what they say they are because the chances they're going to stay around and because we make an investment when we hire people, we trained people and we, you know, and we tell him he liked with my copywriter it takes a long time for somebody to adapt on my voice I mean german so english is my second language, but I write a lot, so I have to have somebody who is going to be able to maintain my voice at the same time, you know, prove reads it but doesn't change it too much. I've I've had proof readers and they change everything it does even sound like me anymore, so you know, it takes time to train, so if she was someone to take off, it would have it would take me months to train somebody you know, to produce it in the same amount of effort. So that's, why I don't really recommend that good explanation thank you. And so what to ask when you have a person coming in for an interview, there is a lot of stuff out there that can research about standard interview questions how do you think I feel about standard other people's interview questions? I'm so busted cell I always try to think about why do I really want to know from them? So I do ask some off you know the standard questions but I try to throw in a little bit of my personality why wouldn't you ask somebody's like, how can you help me grow my business? How committed do you think? Can you be to an environment where it's just me and you? What what would you bring to this job? That's outside off a general job description would you be a brand ambassador? If you were to be a brand ambassador? How would that make you feel? What would you what would you do? So you see how there's just the's like welding? This is personal and they're they're they're working with you so it's okay to know about them? Uh, question always says if money was not an object, what would you rather be doing right this very moment? And in this I would not work another day in my life because the passion is the passion to the money it's not the passion for the project. I want the passion for the project and I'm so proud to say that everybody on my team and even though they work for me and with me by when I'm having a bad day and I do, but my team will stick together and and make me feel good and reiterate that I'm doing the right thing how many people's lives I change how many businesses have transformed? They tell me my own stuff they cite me my own chapters in my own books remember on how you wrote this in here is like you you're just having a moment of the superhuman paradox is going to be okay really it is and that to me is, you know, is so powerful when you work with a team that has that where you get that feeling off that connectedness of that really being being together, watching out and what my team did for me, which was amazing and, you know, I have somebody in argentina who just moved to peru I work with a programmer who is in italy, I have a executive assistant for the photog beside of sits in philadelphia, I have an executive assistant project manager who sits in denver. Yeah, somewhere in the rockies and I have a copywriter who is it's in australia currently tracking the himalayas or some some some place which, you know, I can't reach her right now for the next two weeks, so my entire team and I hope I'm not forgetting anybody and if I do it, forgive me but for my birthday, and remember, they're all over the world, literally all over the world. They got my project manager's sister, who lives in los angeles, to get this huge card, and they all wrote me a note. And then the sister copied a, printed it out, cut it out, glued in a card, went to the flower mart. Broad, mabel chaos, I swear, was this big, and they brought to my house and all the little notes say, you know, we really appreciate working with you, because we understand you're passionate and you come to contribution to what you're trying to do, and we are on board. It's, powerful men, even if a team that works with you, it's really, really, really powerful stuff.