The Exchanges

Q Sounds like heaven. I could see why, why Rachel, for example, wouldn't give up until I fully understood this. You say that, um, It starts with a good, actually, does it start with a good interview or does it start with a good job description, a good role, uh, layout?

A It's even before the job description. So I actually R and D everything. I call it rip off and duplicate. So the best, um, interviewing processes are by guys, Brad and Jeff smart, who wrote the book top grading and their second book, who. So really what you want to do is think over the next 12 months, what are the five core projects Or big initiatives the COO needs to get done for you, and really outline what those are. So now you know the five big things they need to get done, and then you describe the five behavioral traits that you want them to live with, that they kind of exhibit. So if you're not detail-oriented, you want someone who is, it's like, you know, you just kind of describe their, their makeup. And then from that, you build the job description. So it's really starting with the outputs and behavior traits, you build the job description. So then in the interview process, you're looking to hire people that have done it before, not people that have the theory. So you're not for the classic MBA who might know how to do something. You're looking to hire and poach someone who's actually done as many of those things on that scorecard as possible.

AI assessment note: “It's even before the job description.”

Q Is that too much? Is that like for me to ask for a system? It doesn't have to be that system, but it needs to be systemized. Am I being too anal there?

A No, I, I actually have a system I'm going to send to you, and we can link it in the show notes. It's called the decision filter, and the decision filter is a one pager that has you outline what the project looks like at perfect or at complete. It shows the five success criteria. It shows the ROI. It shows whether you're going to make money or make people happier. It's a great way to hand off a project to somebody because they understand why we're doing it and how it should look in the finished state. Almost like a creative brief for a TV ad is going to look. Um, so if you delegate that project, she'll understand it and she's competent enough to pull together. So again, something that's good enough. She'll write an email that's good enough. She'll handle it good enough. You'll see a few of them go and then you can take good enough and make it a little more perfect later.

AI assessment note: “No, I, I actually have a system I'm going to send to you”

Q How do we think of you as an A, like more, more of an A plus student than I am?

A No, not at all. I was always a C. I was 62% in high school, 62% in college, but I realized that no one was ever going to look at my transcript, so it didn't matter. So I became president of my fraternity. I was on the university ski team. I was doing student government. Um, I was running a business. I had 12 employees when I was in second year university. So I was very active and engaged in everything else. And then school was kind of, yeah, I'll get that. And I think if you can bring a bit of that into your company, you win. I was coaching a CEO the other day. He'll do six million in revenue this year out of his dorm room at Cambridge. He's in third year school at Cambridge. Made two million in profit and he's, he, he was wanting to quit. I'm like, you can't quit. If you're at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale, you stay in school, you finish, but I want you to not go after a four point O be okay with getting a 2.8 for the first time in your life. Call mom and dad and say, look, I'm going to get a 70% average and I'm going to make three million in profit in my last year. They'll be happy. And I think for you, it's a bit of the same thing. You, you, if you can move towards momentum, creating momentum, And not perfection creating momentum. You know, no one ever said perfect creates momentum. So just getting microphones out the door to the guests will wow them. It'll impress th…

AI assessment note: “No, not at all. I was always a C. I was 62%”

Q Why? What was it that you were looking for in those calls that allowed you to know this is the guy who I can work with?

A I knew he had the skills. That was actually kind of, um, non-debatable on the skills, but on the culture side, he was such a Renaissance man. He was such a high gloss individual that he'd done so much at 23. I was worried he would piss people off. I was worried that he was going to be so strong that people wouldn't like working with him. And culturally he would be a disconnect. So when I called his boss, I said, I'm calling about Christopher Ian Bennett. And he said, Oh my God, you've got my, my best guy. And I said, you know, I just have one question. Like, do people like working with him? He said, do they like it? They love him. And so then I knew, right? When, when, so, but you have to do the groundwork on, I don't want to wait 90 days to find out if I was right or wrong, because, because there's too much, the ripples that that can cause can be really damaging. So you just, you have to slow to hire quick to fire.

AI assessment note: “I just have one question. Like, do people like working with him?”

Q almost, almost too good to be true. Step out of the way. Let me do that for you. And I could not only trust them with all my banking information, but also let them go and do that. And that's, that's possible. Have you seen that done? First of all, you're nodding and smiling as I say that, like, yeah, of course that's possible, right? I want to acknowledge that.

A Yeah, it's, it's very, it's, it's not easy to do, but it's much easier to do than we think if you really are clear on what you're looking for. And if you spend the time on the front end to make sure that you're hiring the person who has those traits, who, you know, like I had drinks last night with a friend who I hired 16 years ago, and we were laughing about the fact that I did 12 reference checks before I hired him, seven business and five personal. And the final business reference check I did was to his boss, a guy named Mark Hamilton. And I phoned his boss while Christopher was standing right beside me at my desk. Christopher knew that if I called his boss, he'd lose his job, but he also knew if I called his boss, his boss would tell the truth and he would get the job at 100 got junk. And he's like, no one would have ever gone to that depth. And I said, I had to, it was a big decision for me to hire him. And I wanted to do my groundwork. Well, I actually had a VP and a director tell me not to hire him. And I'm like, no, you know what? Everything I've done is checked out. I know you two are wrong. Turns out that those two were gone within six months, and Christopher Bennett went on to become an icon at one-hundred-got-junk.

AI assessment note: “it's not easy to do, but it's much easier to do than we think”

Q What do you mean? Like, what's in everything that I might not, that I might not get?

A I want to know a time that they lied in their career, because everyone has, where we've embellished or we've stretched. I want to know it. I want them to tell it. I want them to tell me the regret and how they were pained about it and why they did it and why they thought it was okay at the time. I want to know something they failed at, and it's not that they're too detail-oriented. I want to know when they really screwed something up and it cost the company money. I want to know where they stretched or embellished on their resume. I want them to show me the point. And I'll say, look, everybody does show me one spot on here where you're kind of exaggerating.

AI assessment note: “I want to know a time that they lied in their career”

Q I think that's a good rule actually. Um, so how do you set the person up as an entrepreneur? How do you set the COO up for success when they're starting out?

A Great question. The first part is really, truly making sure that you have, have interviewed for the trust side of the business so that day one, you can implicitly give them the passwords and trust everything because that, that just locks you together. Um, the second part is making sure you have date nights. So you have a weekly meeting with the second command one on one for an hour where you can get in sync. Um, the next part is making sure that you realize that they're going to be okay. You've hired someone that can do this. What you want to do is watch for the ripple effects. So think of them like a big boulder that you're going to drop into a pond. They're going to create ripples. They'll create good ripples. They'll create bad ripples, but your job in the first 90 days is to watch the ripples As they're getting up to speed, you have to watch for all the ripple effects that they cause. Most people miss that. They're so worried about getting the answer, the CEO up to speed that they miss all the things that are happening to the current team and customers and suppliers. Um, and then it's just alignment. It's really making sure that you give them the opportunity to run the areas that you don't love to do that. They're excited about.

AI assessment note: “The first part is really, truly making sure that you have, have interviewed”

Q what I've seen. Visionary entrepreneurs can come up with great ideas, but they don't even know like how to get an Uber or maybe an Uber they know how to get, but the basics of how to make stuff happen, they're not, they're not strong on. So do you have an example of, uh, an executor COO who you've worked with Or how that would work out in an organization?

A Yeah, they're often the people that see things in reverse. So when the entrepreneur is really great at the vision and can see where we're going and is great at talking big picture and where we're headed, the, the second in command will see that and they understand the delta between where we're going and where we are. So they almost see all the steps in between that naturally. So they Logically can ask the right questions and can put the systems and processes in place. Um, one to save the entrepreneur from themselves, but two to kind of organize a little bit of the chaos and also allow the entrepreneur to stay in their unique ability. You don't want a second in command who short circuits the entrepreneur. You really have to, um, to almost honor the fact that they are ADD and bipolar and have Tourette's and think out loud. Right. Right. And that's their, that's their unique ability. That's exactly who they're supposed to be. In fact, we use some profiles at the COO Alliance where we profile all the CEOs and the COOs that are members and everyone's Colby profile that is the entrepreneur or high quick starts. All the COOs are very high fact finders and follow throughs. They're just totally different makeups.

AI assessment note: “they understand the delta between where we're going and where we are.”

Q But if you want to do that, if I were to say, I don't know if I could find someone who does all this and And much of this is, is like content creation. So is it more of a content manager?

A It could, well, it could be a content manager. And that's where we're going is instead of saying I need to hire a COO. No, you need to hire someone to get a bunch of stuff done. And here's the stuff that I need to get done that I'm bundling into a role. What do we call that? It might be content manager. It might be director of content. It might be a product manager. It So start with that. We may not solve it right now, but that, but you're, you're, you're asking the right questions. What do I call it? So here are the next steps. Once you know what you're calling it and you know what the compensation will be, you put the compensation in the job posting itself. Cause I want you to turn some people away who go, oh, I want to make 300. Oh, this isn't a 300,000 dollar roll. Delete. You don't want to waste your time talking to people that want three times what you're paying.

AI assessment note: “It could, well, it could be a content manager.”

Q buy podcasts. Like they, why would they trust the guy who's having trouble trying to lead his organization when he tells him, go sign up for top towel. Only a person who's got it all together has the credibility to tell you what's, anyway, that's the way people think. Um, so why don't we start with the basics? What is a chief operating officer? What does that person actually do?

A So the chief operating officer and it's interesting, Harvard wrote an article about the misunderstood role of the COO came out about 12 years ago. Amazing article. And it talked about the seven distinct roles of chief operating officers. So I'll give you an example in my wording when it's a little different from their article, but A COO could be very outward facing, you know, talking to the market. It can be very inward facing, focused internally on the organization. It could be sales and marketing focused, engineering and process focused. It could be, you know, very operational or very finance focused. Essentially, the second in command is almost the yin and yang for the entrepreneur. So whatever you, you love to do, whatever your core strengths are, whatever your unique ability is, you want to hire a second in command who really loves and is great at all the stuff you suck at. And they actually love working on it. So if you hate finance, they love it. If you hate engineering, they get off on it. If they're, if you don't like sales and marketing, that's their, you know, that's what makes their boat float. So you're really looking for that true partner. And then secondly, you're looking for a huge amount of trust where you literally almost on day one can give them your bank account information, your credit cards, your access. Absolutely. You know, I had someone recently, a clie…

AI assessment note: “Essentially, the second in command is almost the yin and yang for the entrepreneur.”

Q work would lead them to do this today. So are we eliminating people who've never done this? Someone who's maybe really organized, who's a go-getter, who is eager to, to, to prove themselves? Are we then saying that person is not a good fit? And it sounds like maybe that is, that is what you're saying because this is such a top role. We want someone with experience, right? Yeah.

A I actually hired those kinds of people for every role. Like I take business really seriously for me, business is a full contact sport. So the example I always use is, is this, if we wanted a swimmer to join our team, like their job was to be a swimmer. You want someone who knows how to swim all four strokes and knows how to win world records or someone who has broken world records in all four strokes. Do you want someone who has gone to the Olympics or someone who knows how to go to the Olympics? And if I'm building, if I'm building a company, I want somebody who, who is the people I like to hang with the right cultural fit, but I've done what I need them to do. And in more cases, they're actually working somewhere, which means I need to go poach them. But the days of hiring people for attitude and training for skill, the days of hiring the The kind of master all trades or jack of all trades, master of none that gets you seven to 10% growth, but it doesn't get you the hyper growth.

AI assessment note: “the days of hiring people for attitude and training for skill”