Читать книгу Torque - Michael Ashley - Страница 6

You may be tempted at this point to run out and hire the most expensive employees you can find, and pay top-dollar to build up a great team. Pause.

It’s not just about leverage, remember, it’s about torque! That means we need to figure out how to generate the leverage we need and apply torque so we end up with an A-Team that doesn’t eat up all your cash flow. The trick here is two-fold: Don’t hire expensive consultants, and look for good people you can develop into great employees!

First, let’s talk about consultants. When we started FastPencil we had about a million dollars in the bank and consultants knocking at the door. They are eager to show you how to spend that money, and just as eager to get as much of it into their pockets as possible. But we were naive and we trusted a guy who claimed to be the first head of marketing for Yahoo, and an angel investor as well as the head of a small Silicon Valley fund. He gave us a proposal to be our marketing advisor and he would only charge us an arm and a leg, plus some equity—of course. We were ambitious and wanted to rocket into the industry with a splash, so we signed him on. He showed up once a week with a powerpoint slideshow, some text-book marketing lingo and nothing of value. After about a month we realized we had just committed a ton of our cash, plus equity, and were losing time. Fortunately for us we caught our mistake early and severed the contract as soon as we could.

This happened three other times over the course of a year, where we hired an expensive consultant who promised to deliver and failed. By the third time we had finally learned our lesson about expensive consultants—just don’t hire them in the first place.

“Wait!”, you might be saying, “If I shouldn’t run out and spend all my money and equity hiring the absolute best people available, the one’s at the top of their game, then who do I hire?” You hire good people that you can train and develop, people with strong integrity and values. If you find people with integrity and values that are inline with you and your company, you’ll be able to grow them into great employees who not only give you the leverage you need, but generate the torque necessary to keep it growing.

Build your own A-Team. A team of players who are passionate and eager to play. Good people who are dedicated and teachable. Not the team of expensive professionals or consultants, your own personal A-Team.

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TorqueTip: Don’t build a team, grow a team

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When my son was in Little League I coached his baseball team. We had 14 great kids, some were better then others. But the kids I liked coaching the most were the ones with passion, energy and a good attitude. I would much rather have a kid on my team who continuously gave 110%, then a star player with a bad attitude.

The same is true with your business. Look for a team of A-players with lots of passion, integrity and values. Which leads us nicely into the next section on finding good people.