I've Hired Over 20 People: Here's How You Build A GOAT Team

In the past 2 years I’ve employed over 20 people. And I’ve learned how to instantly qualify, disqualify, and lead people.

When it comes to leading and managing people the most important thing you need to know and that I wish I knew from the start is you need to have super open communication, as simple as it sounds.

Especially if you work with friends and family because problems is the only guarantee you get in business. And the best way to address these problems especially with the people who work with you is head on.

Unlike with sales with objections where you find it yourself, you wanna set the expectation immediately that whenever a problem comes up they need to tell you directly, same with you. If a problem comes up with anyone on your team, you need to address them asap.

Because that’s why sometimes people start doing sloppy work, have bad attitudes or just quit, no one helped them. And what you need to do as the person in charge is understand them to then be understood yourself.

If you were born in the same environment, with the parents, experiences and had the beliefs as them you’d do the same as them. Whenever I say that to myself it always helps me approach with a different attitude.

For example, once this one guy on my team did some sloppy work on a job site. After the work day I took him with me away from everyone else and beat the shit out of him for it. Jk. I brought the problem up and said “this isn’t the type of work that I hired you to do, if you don’t like the work or don’t wanna do it, tell me and you can leave.” He apologized and we went over how to double check the work and what I again expected of him.

He never intentionally did bad work again.

But sometimes it doesn’t go like that. This one guy I hired did good work at the beginning. But after 3 months he got this ego, attitude out of nowhere and started doing shit work. And on his last day he started throwing the equipment around and moaning like a baby. I told him right there “you’re a grown man, don’t act like that.”

He ended up breaking the equipment from his fit, and an hour later he started acting like that again but towards me and this time I was more direct, I said “Don’t ever talk to me like that, I’ve never talked to you like that and I’ve always showed you respect…” then he starts shouting more and a that point, there was no hope for him. So I sent him his final pay and told him not to worry about the equipment anymore.

There’s also been people who I literally never had to really talk to and who do everything proper who always show up with a great attitude and ready to win. Theres gonna be all sorts of people and the only thing you can do is just focus on the big picture. If someone doesn’t help you, the team, or the business you need to get rid of them and just look forward.

And what you should do is reward the good. Praise and appreciation.

One of the persons who worked with me who did very good work, I’d always go up to him at the end of the day, thank him and tell him what I really liked about his work. And after the 4th time I did this he told me “thank you Issa”.

He said that no one ever talked to him like that, everyone just expects more from him, I think he made a joke about his dad never loving or something too and that guy was a ride or die. And also he ended leading the team too just through example.

So essentially be ready to drop the shitters, be ready to help people when they make mistakes and be ready to give appreciation to those who do good. I swear it’s so underrated. People don’t just work for money, they work primarily for the community they get and the appreciation they get.

Everyone wants recognition for their efforts and a good work environment so give your team that and they’ll give your customers so much more. What an amazing ROI that is.

But before you can do this, you need a team. (depending on where your business is at)

The way I found good people to work with came from trial and error. Most of the people I hired my first year I would not hire again, but most people I hired this year, I will continue to work with.

And the first thing for me when it comes to hiring great people, is hiring people who have a similar mindset to you. Not the same skills necessarily but who have the same views on work as you.

Because working with people who are similar to you is much easier than people who are very different than you. If you want to build a huge real estate portfolio one day, it’s gonna be hard to work with someone who wants to party all his life.

My first hires in my business were my friends. And this is one unpopular opinion I have, if you and your friends don’t work together or better each other, the friendship is honestly useless. You need to help each other in some way.

The friendships where people are only friends because of alcohol, weed, video games, etc serve no purpose, and usually that’s the only reason most people are friends in this day and age. They’re vice buddies.

And as soon as I stopped hanging around my ‘vice buddies’ was when I was able to have actual success. Me and my friends all work together in some way or another, be it actual work or personal development and teaching each other or how to make more in our businesses. None of my friends are useless.

My first hire mistakes was hiring these vice friends. Just because you guys can hangout together or play video games together doesn’t mean you should work together.

Most of my non friend hires came from friends of friends, and the reason I love this is because if the person already working with you is a hard worker, similar to you, honest, etc. Their friends are probably similar so it’s 9/10 times a good hire.

I’d even say that this is the best way to hire, because a good company just recruits itself. They don’t need to constantly find new hires from ads or wherever else to replace current or old ones. Most of the people we hire hear about our business from everyone who works here just talking about how much they enjoy working with us and as a result they wanna work here too.

And I welcome them with open arms. (As long as they aren’t idiots, and can do the work)

So now that you know how to react to bad and good work as well as who to hire, you need to give your team the resources and goals to be able to grow in the company as well as to help them grow.

Because if there’s no way for someone to grow in the company they won’t stay long regardless of how good everything else is. And how I went about setting this up is by finding what people want.

We have a seasonal business so most people just want work for the summer but a few people are helping me to grow this over the next years. So with them I’ve given them the opportunity to help run parts of the team or operations in exchange for some of the profit or % of the business.

Honestly, you will go further with others, but not just anyone. You really need the right people to be higher ups and to really provide value to be able to grow the business, especially if you’re gonna give a % to them.

I’m currently at this stage, so after this next season where we test this bigger operation with more people being in charge of different areas of the business with more sales reps, and more people helping with the work, I will teach on how to go about that as well and the lessons learned.

I don’t wanna teach based on theory but rather on what I’ve done and succeeded/failed with. So subscribe to keep up to date.

Also join our free community if you haven’t to be around other business owners, people who are on the come-up and me as well, because growing with others is much better and faster than working solo.

Thank you for reading and enjoy your day:)

The most important part of my success was learning from those ahead of me, and if you’d like the same guidance check this out: https://issafard.com/mentorship

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