Is it even possible to hire the right people into the right seats in your company? What if you can hire another person just like yourself, or even better, imagine cloning yourself 20 times. I didnt believe it was possible. Just last year around the same time our company employed only 12 employees and we were struggling to find talent. Today, we employ 33 employees and even though we can always improve, we are better organized as a team than ever before. What happened, and how can you learn from our experience? I am well aware that my competitors will read this, and they will find it shocking that I am disclosing a company secret that is giving us an advantage over them. I have no problem taking that risk for the sake of helping my clients, and my loyal readers succeed in their business.
It was 2006 when recession hit my first ecommerce company, we had 47 domestic employees on the payroll. I remember that day clearly, October 10th, 2006, we went from $350,000 per month to $50,000 per month. The revenue drop felt as if I was hit by a truck at 200MPH. Weeks passed, and the revenue never returned, it felt like I didnt die after the crash and I was left helpless on the side of the road in a cold dark winter with no one around. I was convinced it was a Google update or something! (Years later I found out that it was the recession hitting us early) Unfortunately, I did not have anyone like Shopping Cart Elite to ask for advice or a mentor to consult. I just couldnt believe how a drop like that can happen out of the blue. As time went on, hard decisions had to be made.
We laid off 70% of the staff, cut advertising and started thinking outside of the box on what we can do to afford new staff. It might sound gruesome, but I didnt regret firing half of the people. In fact, I was happy to let them go. Half the people were complete idiots, the only reason they remained employed because we did not know how to hire the right people. The other half started out to be pretty good, but after working with idiots for so long, some of them quit, while others became lazy idiots themselves. I am sure you heard of a quote Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience, well when you put idiots next to smart people, the idiot effect becomes contagious and in time you are left with a bunch of idiots working for you.
Oversea outsourcing was around but not as popular. If you think power outages, slow internet and poor accents are bad today, you should have been around in 2006. But none the less, I could not deny the fact that:
a) There were millions of people looking for jobs oversea
b) There are more master degree graduates with higher education in India than the whole population of the United States
c) The currency exchange made it possible to hire someone extremely good at a third of U.S. minimum wage
d) There was no taxes, audits, insurance to worry about (dont even get me started!)
e) I was sure there was at least one person who would be a good fit
I tried hard to make it work, I hired and fired dozens of people overseas over the years. I even paid for their computers, internet and generators to try to make it work, just to see it fail. There was one thing that I didnt do! I didnt give up because I knew that globalization will eventually disrupt the world, and I wanted to be ahead of the game. Failure is a detour not a dead end street said Zig Ziglar, and I couldnt agree with him more. It is funny to me how failure is not failure if you gain an asset from it.
FAST FORWARD
It was October 2012, I just finished reading the book called Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I was inspired because I could relate that Shopping Cart Elite was building a great product. But I was also upset because I knew that Steve Jobs was not telling the whole story, and I knew that a great product was not the only thing that made his company the most valuable in the world. I went on a mission to find the answer, and boy did I find it.
I DIDNT JUST FIND A BOOK. I FOUND THE BOOK! I found the BIBLE that APPLE followed to the tittle. Let me repeat that one more time, so you can register this in your head.
I FOUND THE BOOK THAT MADE APPLE THE RICHEST COMPANY IN THE WORLD.
I FOUND THE BOOK THAT OUTLINES EVERY SINGLE LITTLE STEP THAT YOU WOULD NEED TO TAKE TO REPLICATE APPLES RESULTS.
This means that if you read the book, understand the book, and embrace the book, then there is no other information in the world that you will require in order to become a great company.
To prove to you that Steve Jobs followed the book, I even found a video of Steve Jobs describing some of the processes he used which is directly from THE BOOK.
Now I am not going to disclose the name of the book here because if you truly want it, you will make an effort to get it. (HINT: Inquire about Shopping Cart Elite and ask the sales representative the name of the book because everyone in our company is required to read it).
EMBRACING CHANGE
Implementing THE BOOK literally turned our company around 180 degrees. The author of the THE BOOK also suggested other books to read, and Ive read them all! One of the books was so captivating that after embracing it, I found the gold mine that I was looking for since 2006. It was not a gold mine per say, but it was a ROADMAP to and around the gold mine. This book gave me the ability to HIRE THE RIGHT PEOPLE INTO THE RIGHT SEATS. The book introduced me to a psycho-analysis test. I applied this test to myself, and I was SHOCKED! The psychoanalysis test was invented in mid 1900s, and I was amazed that it described me better than I can describe myself 70 years later.
I felt as the man who invented this test was watching me my whole life, except he was already dead before I was even born. This test can be applied for any purpose, personal or business, and it will predict not only who you are, but what you are good at. After applying this test to every team member, I finally understood why certain people including myself did a terrific job at certain tasks, and sucked at others. Once we implemented this book, our company started working like a well-oiled machine. It was quite incredible that just a week prior we looked like a bunch of chickens running without our heads, and a week later we are all working together as a team and hiring a new staff member every week. It was a true overnight transformation.
OUTSOURCING DONE RIGHT
What would you do if you went on an interview tomorrow, and the interviewer asks you, How much money do you want to make by working at this job? And you reply to him well I will be happy with $85,000 per year, and then he tells you, How about I will start you off at $300,000 per year, and if you do well I will pay you $1,500,000 in 12 months. Sounds crazy?
Well if you offer a Philippine worker $15 per hour they will be considered the 10% of the richest in their country. In fact, the highest salary in Philippine is $30 per hour, the minimum wage is $0.75 (75 cents), and the government salary is $2.00 per hour. Do you even understand what will happen ten years from now when internet and hardware will become a commodity worldwide? You will experience a global disruption in the workforce at 200MPH yourself. Its already happening right now, and you cant stop it.
Do you even realize that you can change someones life by paying them a salary that would be equivalent to a million dollars in US? I still cant grasp it. Now I am not saying you should start anyone off at $15/hr, but you can hire and train the right people that will become your loyal employees with a goal to earn that salary one day. Fifteen dollars per hour compensation would not be an issue for your company if it was successful. Thus, it is a reality to hire a super star team for your business that you would never afford domestically.
I used the knowledge from THE BOOKS to try hiring overseas again, and this time it was a SUCCESS! At first I was surprised at the results because for every 50 candidates we would interview, we only hired one. The psychoanalysis test consists of 16 behavior types that break up into four categories. The four categories are leaders, workers, managers, and visionaries. If you are a talented individual, you will find yourself having the ability to switch between a leader and a worker, or a manager and a worker.
We found a pattern that whenever we would hire a Manager he would not last more than a month. Now as soon as we see a sigh that an interviewee has a manager behavior they automatically fail the interview. It was also fascinating to find out that 70% of the world population has a manager behavior, which is why we find mediocre productivity at companies worldwide who employee managers to do a leader or even a worker job.
CONCLUSION: ARE YOU A MANAGER?
You can be the smartest person in the world, with the ability to build the worlds tallest Sky Scraper. However, regardless of your abilities, you will never be able to build it alone in your lifetime. Your productivity is as big as your Team, and if you are alone then you are doomed to fail.
Shopping Cart Elite can fully automate your business, but it won't do any good if you don't have the right people in the right seats. I hear stories from my clients all the time about how they are overwhelmed with all the work. When I would ask them, Why don't you hire someone to help you? They would reply Most of the time the people we hire, are fired within weeks. They train them, teach them, mentor them and in conclusion they fire them because they just don't get it. What they dont understand is if they hire the right people, they wont need to manage them or show them anything more than once.
Getting the Right People in the Right Seats
Hiring the right person does not mean hiring the most experienced or the most qualified. Spending hours with your team will not get you results because people who are not in the right seats will not:
- See the bigger picture.
- Understand the role that they play within the organization.
- Be enthusiastic about fulfilling their duties.
If you decide to hire a John Doe for a marketing position, it is crucial that you consider how well John is going to blend in with your core values, and company vision. It is also vital that you consider whether or not John may be better off in a different position in the company. He may be applying for a marketing position while his specialty is managing company accounts. So it is your job as an executive to make sure that John ends up in the right seat.
When a person is in the right seat, he or she will be able to employ their skills, maintain their enthusiasm, and fulfill their roles in a more pro-active manner.
TAKE AWAY
a) THE BOOKS mentioned in this post will change your company, and it will change your life. It did it for us, and it did it for everyone that we recommended it to.
b) It doesnt matter if you hire someone in US or Oversea, there are idiots everywhere, and there are smart people everywhere, you just need to know the process of hiring the right people for the right seats.
c) You can hire the right person for the right seat for a few dollars per hour.
d) A psychoanalysis test will help you with hiring the right person for the right seat.
e) Shopping Cart Elite can help you automate your business and marketing.
f) Shopping Cart Elite can give you the books to read in the right order so you can embrace them and implement them in your business.
Start a trial and speak to one of our team members about growing your business with Shopping Cart Elite.