So

right away, I hired my first team member right away, two hours a week.

He's now full time.

He's been with us the entire time.

He's our director of web services.

At the time, he had only probably logged into like three websites ever.

But I found him on Upwork.

So let's talk about that.

Um, practically speaking, does that team development come through communicating the mission of the business, the purpose of the business? Like, how do you practically teach that to your employees?

Yeah.

It starts with that.

Um, I'm constantly talking about our vision, mission, and core values, uh, to our team.

But then we worked really hard, um, for the, for the camp, for the church, uh, for our, our company, um, for my coaching business, even for my, our family.

My wife and I, we have, we have seven core values.

At the church, or at the camp, we established five core values.

Talk to that a little bit.

I mean, as a leader, if there's a lot of leaders that understand the importance of development, would you say that it's best to hire someone to do the development because they're just not good at it? And now to that place of what you're talking about is is train on making judgment calls.

Yeah, I think it's got to come from the leader because your voice, your words carry a thousand or weigh a thousand pounds in the business.

An outsider is an outsider who's not going to be here in three months.

Now, you can get coaching on how to do that.

And that's actually how we've designed our coaching to work.

I'll do development sessions once a month.

but it's, it's train the trainer.

With the Academy.

like, you know, when you know, right?

Yeah, you just know.

Some people I have met through churches we have visited in different countries.

But when I'm ready to go, nine times out of 10, our new team, we hire through Upwork for direct hire.

Now, I did just hire a new executive assistant, Emily.

Emily started Friday while my family and I were in the process of taking a four-day travel weekend to get from Liverpool back to the States.

Um, Emily started and she spent Friday and Monday while I was on an airplane training herself and onboarding herself.

What would be your advice to someone who's sitting in those shoes right now?

what would you also attribute a lot of that learning curve to? Were these things that you were, was it a lot of things that you were reading? Did you have other mentors that were business owners or entrepreneurs that kind of helped you along the way? Was it a lot of like your wife and learning from her? Was it a culmination of everything?

It was.

So I've always believed in coaches.

You know, I've had coaches my entire career.

I have coaches now.

You know, I pretty much now since having the business, I've always had a business coach and I always have a leadership coach.

Now, the business coach.

And even if you can even shed a little bit of insight into that process, what made you kind of want to become an author and what that's even done for you in the business?

So what encouragement would you give to them?

Well, I think there are, and we won't unpack all of them here, but I found the five Ps that helps a person rediscover and have joy in their work.

In fact, I have these in a Bible reading plan on the YouVersion Bible app.

So if anybody goes to, has YouVersion on their device, the Bible app, if you go there and just search joy in the workplace, you'll find my reading plan there.

And it's, yeah, it's a five-day reading plan on rediscovering your joy in the workplace.

And so one of the things I talk about in there is, you know, perspective, place, people, you know, so there's all these different things.

So I think a lot of it comes back to taking a deep breath and understanding both sides of the equation.

What do you think could be holding them back in this situation?

I

didn't know that.

So every time we evaluate it, my team evaluates a message for awareness.

They go, does this have the, oh, does this have the, does it make somebody go, oh, I didn't know that.

They had a birthday special that if I give them my birthday, I get a free pizza.

Oh, I didn't know there was a coach that could help me with this.

Oh, I didn't know that they offered that, whatever it is.

Why in the world would you want to spend 6x, 7x more to get those dollars from those leads who don't even know you than to go out and get those dollars from the people who already are silently satisfied or already are fans of yours?

Mm.

Um, and about three months later, uh, when I decided to hire a, an EA, I reached out to her, um, I interviewed her, and another, I, then I, I still did my typical Upwork thing.

Uh, narrowed it down to her and a, another guy on, on Upwork, and I w- I wanted to hire him.

Now, one of the things that I always teach people to do, don't hire a, don't in- don't interview in a vacuum.

Always have somebody else do at least, if...

I do multiple interviews, and we typically have people on the team do one of the interviews.

Well, Marissa sat in these interviews with me, and she'd, you know, ask questions, stuff like that.

So Hire to Grow, tell us about the, the book that's ahead, man.

What are the best options in your mind when it comes to making that first hire in terms of where do I find them? Great.

People have three options.

Option one is being, you can totally just go out and hire someone.

Okay.

So direct hiring.

This is what I do, but I also, I have interviewed thousands of people, hired hundreds and hundreds of people.

I'm just, I'm very comfortable with it.

What would be your advice to someone who's sitting in those shoes right now?