How and When To Find Your DREAM TEAM

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Hey everyone, my name is Scott D. Clary. Today I'm going to be breaking down the dynamics and the nuances of hiring the team. Now, riddle me this. If you're a CEO, if you're a manager, if you're an owner of a business, you're an entrepreneur. Let's do a thought experiment here. I want you to imagine for a second, leaving on a week-long trip. I want you to think that you're going to an isolated destination you have no access to internet. Would your business survive without you? Now, if the answer is no, you're among the majority, believe it or not, but you don't have to be. There's another way to approach business where you aren't just building yourself a job. You're building something that is self-sufficient. You're finding the right team that is self-sufficient, capable individuals that can help you grow and scale your company. Now, where did this topic come from? Well, in a recent success story podcast interview, I spoke with somebody who's managed to achieve this many times over. His name is Charlie Fink. He is the co-founder of Clearco that used to be called the ClearBank. And you may have recognized them because they are one of the leading startups in Canada. He's helped the company scale from just three initial founders to over 1,000 employees. Not only that, but he specializes in building teams into self-sustaining entities. It's an impressive feat. It's not easy to do, but I was very excited to pick his brand on how it's done. So I'm going to review some of the points that he taught over in the podcast, and then I'm going to provide some additional context based on my experience as to how to build the best possible team. So let's take a closer look on how and also when you want to build that dream team. But first, let's answer a major question. Why do you want to make yourself redundant? If you're a hands-on team manager or startup CEO, you may view the idea of redundancy as a setback rather than a goal. If the team no longer needs you in order to function or even to excel, then maybe you're thinking in your head, you've done something wrong. You think you're the captain of the ship. And without you, things will surely fall apart, right? Not necessarily. In fact, it's arguably critical that you end up hiring yourself out of a job in order to scale and grow your startup. For example, imagine you found the perfect product market fit. And your startup is starting to take off. You put together a great team of engineers, marketers, and salespeople. But there's one key area that's lacking. You're the only one with any expert knowledge in your specific industry. And if you're not able to step back and let go of some of that control, your startup's going to hit a ceiling. It's simply not scalable or sustainable for you to be the only one with all the answers. You need to find people who can help you take your business to the next level. This is a concept Charlie Fang knows inside out. Having scaled many teams himself, you can find his interview on my YouTube channel if you want. If you want to hear the full thing, but basically, here's a brief rundown of his experience. So, clear code. One of the most successful startups to date in Canada and probably arguably globally. It's aimed at democratizing access to capital through the use of AI. A market, the company managed to successfully corner. Now, in his role within the company, Charlie has managed to turn every single internal team into a high-functioning cohesive unit. His team building know-how has assisted and building the company up into the powerhouse and the absolute goliath that it is today. So, what did he do exactly that allowed clear code to be the success that it is? So, I mentioned this before, hiring yourself out of a job. Let's start with the basics. Who should you hire and how should you go about hiring them? Well, it's important to remember that teams make up will largely determine both the company's early success and its ability to scale. You have to find people as the founder and CEO who compliment you. While your goal is to eventually leave the team to their own devices, it's crucial to find people who will compliment your skills and weaknesses in the early stages. Clashes between personalities can quickly derail progress. So, it's important to find individuals who share your vision and are able to work productively together. On the podcast, Charlie also raised a topic of team diversity, which is especially important in early stage startups. This is why more emphasis is often place on complementary personalities as opposed to similar ones. I speak about this a lot when I refer to culture. Building a strong culture is not just hiring people that are similar to you. It's hiring people that may understand the same vision and may be as excited and evangelistic about what your company is trying to accomplish, even though that's arguably hard to do. But still, the point is you want people that bring up complementary personalities. You don't want people that are the same as you. You don't think the same way as you. You don't want people that act the same way as you. You want people that add and you can't add talent. You can't add ideas to an organization. If everybody who works in the organization is exactly like you. So, you need to get people who will get on board with the mission for the company. But most critically, they have to be able to see things from different perspectives. Also, he made an interesting point about the difference between hiring people who are the same as you and hiring people that compliment you. He mentioned this is a great quote. He said, there are two ways to hire. One is hiring people who compliment you and then there's hiring people who are similar to you. They're not two separate concepts, but the same concept. It's important to hire people who compliment your skill set, but are actually similar to you from a worldview perspective. What Charlie means by this is rather than choosing between complementary team members or similar team members. We should be aiming to hire those who exhibit both complementary and similar outlooks on the world simultaneously. Hire the people that you'd want to work for. So, when I say similar outlooks on the world, what I mean by that is it's not they're coming from the same spot, same demographic, same neighborhood, same country, but they have the same work ethic. They have the same principles. They have the same things that are universal, that are industry agnostic or business agnostic. Those are the things and the values that they bring to the table while solving problems from a different perspective that is shaped by their own particular worldview. Now, this is one of my favorite pieces of advice that Charlie gave in relation to team building, and I think you'll agree that it makes total sense. Hire people you would want to work for if roles were reversed. Now, you may ask why? Why is this so crucial? We'll think about it like this. Your end goal is to build this team into a totally self-sufficient badass machine that can run entirely on its own. It needs to be able to scale, develop, hire new members and produce results all without you. In that case, it makes sense to hire people who you would want to work for because chances are they have the same goals and aspirations and business acumen and ethic is you. They're also more likely to be invested in company success since they'll see it as a reflection of their own work. Ultimately, people, incredible people make organizations great. If you're going to attract better talent and the best talent, you have to understand that the best talent won't be working for you, but it'll be working for the people that you hire. Another thing you should always think about is prioritizing diversity when building this team. Imagine for a moment that the word diversity has never turned into corporate jargon, which unfortunately it has now. Forget the sugar-coated stock images of people from different walks of life coming together around a table. It's not that simple. Instead, let's think about what diversity really means. Diversity is the inclusion of people who are different from you. It's the acknowledgement that everyone has something you need to offer and it's the understanding that a team with different backgrounds, ideologies and experiences will always be more successful than a team of clones. This takes me back to how you want to hire. You want to hire people with different world views, but similar business and ethical principles. The concept of diversity in a team building extends far beyond the color of someone's skin or whether they attend church on Sundays. It encompasses a range of traits, including personality type, work style, education and skill sets, life experiences, gender and other demographic identifiers. When building a team, it's important to remember that diversity should be one of your top priorities and this isn't only because it's a right thing to do, it's because it makes good business sense. A team with a variety of perspectives can come up with better solutions, communicate more effectively and be more successful in the long run. So, now we have an idea of what we should be thinking about when we start to hire a team and we know that we need that team, but when do you actually build that dream team? Well, building a self-sufficient team doesn't happen at the snap of a finger and in the beginning stages that you start up, this usually isn't your main goal. The first few people you bring on should be able to help you get your business off the ground. They'll be your core team, but as you grow, you want to expand and fill the gaps with other specialists. So, when should you start building that dream team? Charlie had some great thoughts on your first few hires. So, he mentioned that the first 10 hires are incredibly important and let's be honest, like for every company, I want to back up a second and just say that for every company, there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach either because for your first 10 hires, the people that you look for and when you hire them and what job function they actually do within your organization, it's going to differentiate an extreme amount depending on which industry or category or thing that you're trying to accomplish. But Charlie did pose highly useful ideas that will help you focus on your first 10 hires and make them the best that will set the precedent for all the other hires that you bring into the organization. So, he mentioned that you should look for people who share the same conviction for the mission that you're trying to go after because over time, it's always going to dilute. So, it's almost a warning wrapped with a piece of advice. You don't let the quality of your team slide as you add new members because if the original solution isn't strong enough, it will dilate into a weaker solution as more people are added. This is going to happen no matter what, but you can bet it's going to happen a lot quicker if you don't have people that are on board and understand the vision and the mission of the company from day one. So, to make sure your first few hires are rock stars, you got to put in extra effort during the recruiting process. Here's a few tips. Cast a wide net. Don't focus exclusively on your contacts. Reach out to friends, family, alumni, networks, see if they know anybody who would be a good fit. Founders run the risk of hiring people that they've always worked with before because those people feel safe they can trust them. It's not a bad idea, but cast a wider net than that. Use social media wisely. So, platforms like LinkedIn can be great for finding potential candidates, but you need to be thoughtful about how you use them. It's easy to come across as spammy if you reach out to someone without taking the time to learn more about them first and their experience of whether or not they're the right fit for the job. So, if you are proactively reaching out and recruiting people, do it with care and do it with a little bit of research first. Get personal. So, when you do reach out, take time to introduce yourself, explain why you think that candidate would be a good fit for your team, make sure to emphasize the core values and attitudes so that you can see if they reciprocate the same attitudes. And then lastly, follow up. Don't just send a note to somebody who you really want on your team that all star candidate and then forget about them. After you've interviewed someone follow up, see how they're doing. It shows you care about the people that you hire, which you should be caring about and that you're invested in their success. And obviously, even if you hire somebody who interviewed them yourself as a founder CEO and they aren't a fit, you still communicate with them when they don't get the job. You still have to communicate with them, but constant communication over communication is always best. And if you put in the effort, you'll be able to find people who share your vision and are excited to help you achieve it. Now, after after you hire this first initial rock stars and the question is, what do you do about scaling? What do you do about scaling your team? So, when you're satisfied that your foundations of your team are strong, this means that your team can confidently run itself with you not being present and that you have the bandwidth to begin taking on new team members. How will you know when the time is right? How will you know when those core positions are operating without you? So, if you feel like the team that you've hired is performing well and meeting and exceeding goals, that's a great test. If your team has bandwidth to take on new members and help train them without sacrificing quality or performance, and ultimately when you feel ready as a founder CEO, you usually will know it'll be intuitive whether or not you're ready to bring on more people into your organization. If you feel like the people that you have brought on are functioning, they're running, they're exceeding and excelling and that's when you start to scale up. And if you can check all these boxes and it's probably time to start scaling, but be careful. If you're not 100% ready, hiring more people than you need can do more harm than good. Remember, there's a lot of time, money, and energy invested in hiring people. So, if you bring too many people on and you're not ready to properly onboard them and to help them succeed, then it's going to be stressful for everyone including yourself, your core team, your founding team, and your new hires. So, a couple closing thoughts on team building to scale. When you're building up teams from square one, remember that you're weaving together a group of individuals with different skills, personalities, and goals. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to happen overnight, but that's a sign of diversity and strength. And if it takes a little bit longer to find the right talent and to bring a diverse group into the organization, you're doing it right. With the right attitude and a lot of hard work, you'll be able to find and assemble the perfect team for your startup and not only that, but you'll have the ability and the freedom to step away from the day to day and work on your business's vision, which is the most important thing that you have to do as a CEO. Now, building a startup is hard. Don't get me wrong. Making yourself redundant is harder. It takes time, effort, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. But as any entrepreneur will tell you, it's also one of the most rewarding experiences in life. When it comes to team building, there's no one way to go about it. Simply get out there, find your best and brightest minds to help you turn your vision into a reality. And honestly, I'm so glad that Charlie had this conversation. If you want to learn more about his thoughts on going from zero to one in the startup and then one to ten, please check out Charlie Fang's success story podcast. If you enjoyed this breakdown of how to build a team, please hit that like button, hit subscribe, leave a comment below with any other business topics you want me to cover. I'll get into them. Have a great day and I'll see you soon.