Hiring Your First Employee as an Entrepreneur - YouTube

You're an entrepreneur.

You just started a business and you're asking that question everybody struggles with.

Who do I hire first as my first employee?

Do I hire somebody in sales, marketing, operations, accounting, finance, product development,

legal.

Who do I hire first?

Now, before I answer that question for you, it's a very simple answer.

But before I answer that question for you, you got to keep one thing in mind.

If you're a startup, and you're an entrepreneur, and you're already funded, you have money,

that group that gave you the money, is already expecting you to have a team together, because

they're not going to give you the money without you having a team to show here's who I have,

okay?

I'm assuming that I'm talking to the group that doesn't have money today.

You're without money.

You're trying to stretch every dollar.

You're wearing multiple hats yourself.

Like, you're the CEO, CFO, COO, CMO, you're every single thing in the company, you're

doing right now.

It just so happens your business card says CEO.

So who do you hire first?

Look, you got a lot of departments.

And a lot of people will tell you who to hire first.

For me, it's a very simple thing to be processing and thinking about.

So look at it this way.

Any sports team that already has a position, if a team already has a quarterback, you're

going to go get another quarterback?

No.

If a team already has a very, very strong center, you going to get another center?

No.

If you're running a business, whatever your strength is, the first person you hire is

your opposing strength.

That's your first hire.

Your opposing strength.

Well, Pat, what do you mean opposing strength?

If you're in sales, most salespeople who are very, very good in sales, are not necessarily

very good in operations.

Now if you're very good at operations, you're probably not very good in sales.

If you're incredible at product development, most product development people don't like

to be around a lot of people , so you need sales.

If you're in sales, and you're a great salesperson like Ray Kroc, but you don't know what product

to develop, you need somebody here [product development].

If you're someone who's very good with money, and maybe even you have money, but you don't

have an idea, maybe you meet up there [with product development].

But the point I'm making to you here is whatever your opposing strength is, that's what you

need to start off with.

Now, let's say this other thing for you to be thinking about.

I'll go dig a little bit deeper.

In the game of sports, everybody that builds a team, they generally build it around their

philosophy of what's the most important thing to invest their money into.

Let me explain what I mean by this.

Some teams build around one player.

Okay, so for instance, Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan, they built around one player.

Michael Jordan was the main player.

Then they brought supporting cast to be around him.

The San Antonio Spurs builds around a system.

They're not building around one personality, one player.

That's why they've been playing for 20 years, and they're winning 20 years.

Whether they go from David Robinson to Duncan to Lamar, Marcus, Aldridge, and Leonard, it's

a system they're building it on.

Right?

I don't know what you're going to be building your business and your philosophy and system

on.

But what I could tell you is whoever you choose as your first next, determines what you value

the most.

Sometimes, sometimes generally the most logical people, the people that are most.

. . and everything is very logical and organized, like the administrative folks, sometimes they

think they need this [finance and accounting].

Sometimes they think they need product development only.

Logical.

Sometimes they just go, everything is just way too logical, and they forget that you

need sales.

If you don't have somebody selling, you don't have volume revenues coming in.

If there's no sales going on, done.

It's just purely a done deal.

Right?

So back in the day when a lot of companies would do very, very well and they would develop

these guys that would become the CEOs of the company, everybody who got started with the

company back in the '60s and '70s, you read about, they all had to do sales at one point

of their career.

Why?

Because they had to touch the customer to know what the customer's like.

That is my focus.

I like to hire this [sales] first.

So if you're not sales, I like to hire this first.

When I got started, I'll tell you for myself, I was this [sales] first, and I'm marketing.

This [sales and marketing] is me.

So guess what I needed?

I needed here [admin], I partnered up with here [product development], somebody that

designed the products that I needed.

So without this, I don't have a product to sell, so I got product to sell.

And I needed admin.

Then I got this [finance and accounting].

I already had somebody that was helping me out with this [finance], but then I got this

and upgraded this to a whole different level.

So as you're thinking about this with your business, whatever business you're running.

Take a sheet of paper out and ask yourself, what is my strength?

And what are the opposing strengths that I need?

Go recruit that person.

Go hire that person.

Stop hiring people that are just like yourself.

It's cool to be around people that are just like yourself.

It's fun when you're around people like yourself.

That's good maybe when you have a friendship, but not when you're running a business.

You're trying to create a business and a business, if you run out of this [money], you shut down

the business, you're going back to having a job.

So you've got to make sure you make the decision of who you hire first in a very, very proper

way or else you won't be in business for too long.

Hey thanks for watching this video.

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