How to Buy Back Your Time w/ Chris Do | Ep 457

0:00If you're a service-based entrepreneur, you're going to be met with this thing that they're finite units of time and energy that you can put into the world. So the way that you scale is you find people who not only share your values, but can take some of that labor that you're putting into the work and do it for you. Initially, they won't think or work like you, but over time through some training and if they're smart, they can pick it up. So you're trying to move units of time away from you to someone else who's going to be less expensive than you. so you're going to buy back your time. That's what you need to do.

0:37So what I like to do is to look at where I'm spending the largest concentration of time that is the easiest for me to pass off. This could be like simple manual labor. In everything that we do, there are administrative tasks, manual tasks that we need to do, like filing receipts, categorizing different expenses, doing the production work. Whatever it is that seems labor-intensive, you should get rid of that first because that's the easiest stuff to delegate. Where it gets really tricky are things like taste and experience. Hold on to those for right now. But eventually, over time, if you are able to educate the person who works for you and teach them how you make decisions, eventually you get to that point in which they can start to take over those responsibilities.

1:17My best hires are typically people who are familiar with the work that we do, have deep expertise themselves and see power in collaboration. so many many years ago one of our key first hires was this young man his name is tom he wanted to intern for me it didn't work out so when he graduated school he had told me i'd love to come work for you and i said look i'm not sure it's a great fit but i'm willing to try you out so he started out as the very lowest entry position which is junior designer and within a very short period of time he moved to art director and creative director and essentially ran the creative part of the company for me.

1:55People like him are rare to come by. They're highly educated. They're experts in what they do. They're open and collaborative. They understand the bigger vision. They're very attentive and they understand the responsibility of running a company. So with that hire, I was able to take my first real break and took a three-month sabbatical because Tom was there to do that work and I could trust that things will be done. He could make decisions in the best interest of the company in the manner that was closest to the decision I would make.

2:25Chris Do: In the 30-year history of me running two different businesses, most of it have come from referrals. I ask people, hey, you know, some people can do this. Or I'm always talent scouting, so when I see somebody excel somewhere else, I got my eye on them in case something happens to them. But in the early days, we created a little bit of reputation for ourselves doing the work. It was my wife and I working. And with that work that we produced, It created a little bit of buzz within the community. And you realize if you're still in the same city or state as where you went to school, you leave behind a little residue.

2:59Chris Do: So people in school would find out, hey, I'm doing something exciting and they would like to do that with me. And so that's usually how we found people. I find that when you post job postings onto platforms where that connective tissue isn't there, there's no point in common. There's no shared values or interest. they're interested in getting paid and your interest is getting rid of a problem. Those tend to be a lot more difficult. Some things to look out for when you're hiring people is what is on the resume is a work of art. I mean, fiction. People will write whatever to make themselves seem most impressive to you.

3:33It's resume fluffing and that's what they do. And so if you base your hire on the resume and whatever credentials they have, you are probably going to set yourself up for failure. People will write in that they went to Stanford or to Harvard or to Yale when they might have attended a night course or did a semester there. And they do that because they know those names get eyebrows raised and potential callbacks. What I'm more interested in is what can you do for me in the specific situation and structure in which we have? A classic example of us failing this was when we hired a name person who worked at a big production company who had worked on all these amazing projects that we've watched and love, plugged them into our machine.

4:18And before we hired him, he said, oh, I work long hours. I'm ready to go. They say all the things that tickle the boss's mind, but in reality, it's not real at all. So when we hired him, he left early and it seemed like he was very lax days ago about the workload. And in truth, in the few weeks that we had him, I started to realize this guy can't do anything. And I'm not saying he's a fraud, but the structure in which he came from had hundreds of employees. We had five, we had eight, and it just didn't work. So ultimately I had to tell him, I'm not saying you're not talented, but we're just too young and scrappy and small and independent for it to work because I'm not seeing anything that you're doing.

4:58He's so used to having so many people working under him that this was not going to work. So I warn people, be careful of those markers of success. and we get caught up in name brands, whether it be a famous client or a famous former boss or something like that. And just let the person show you what they're capable of given the parameters that you have and the resources.

5:21Chris Do: I'm famously bad at firing quickly, which we need to do. It's pretty evident to everyone at that point. It's beyond reasonable. I will come in, we'll have a conversation. I like to let people know where they're standing and say, look, I don't know if it's you or it's me or what's going on. I'm not here to point fingers, but we need to get something done and it doesn't seem like it's happening. Do you have an explanation for this? Can you reassure me that I've got this thing wrong? And oftentimes they know. I try to tell people in a way that gives them grace because people are very stubborn and they're prideful in that when you say it's not working out, you're not good, even though they know it's not good and it's not working out, they have to prove to themselves and to you so they just drag the process out even longer.

6:05Chris Do: so I find that a lot of people enter these kind of conversations too emotional boxing someone in and an animal that feels trapped is the most dangerous animal of all and they'll just claw your eyes out at that point by slowly dragging out the process maybe filing a complaint a lawsuit against you so give people a lot of grace so that they can exit in a way that allows them to keep their pride in their humanity