🔥 This Week’s Agency Insight

From Jordan Ross @ 8 Figure Agency

September, 17 2023

My COO left his COO role at a $20,000,000/year business to come work for me; a 20 something year old entrepreneur running a multi-7 figure business.

I took an unorthodox approach to make this happen, and when it comes to hiring your #2, you should as well.

I broke down my exact formula that enabled this to happen so you could recruit the best talent in the world. 

Here is how I did it.

My Hiring Methodology

Don't hire an executive after a few interviews

One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses make when hiring is to commit too soon.

Imagine going out on a date with someone you just met online. 

After your first date, you think things are going to go well…

But after 6 months of dating this person that swept you off your feet the first time you met, you find out….they’re fucking nuts. 

After getting back on your feet, you try the dating pool again.

This time you meet someone who, again, sweeps you off your feet. You feel in your heart this is the real deal, but you go through the process to ‘feel them out’ and verify your gut.

Turns out, this is the person of your dreams, and you’re going to spend the rest of your life with them.

You would have missed this opportunity if you had proposed to the first person after a few dates.

Get the point?

If not, let me spell it out for you with my story on how I hired my COO: 

In our first interview, I asked Matt a few important questions:

• What are your long term goals personally/professionally

• What would be the ideal working scenario for you

• Would you be comfortable in a role play? 

By asking these, I began to understand what Matt wanted to accomplish in his life and his career…and then we role played on the job scenarios so I could truly see what he was made of.

Trust your gut while hiring

I felt something in my gut during that first interview that was electric

I got full body chills and had the sense we were meant to do epic shit together

I shared this feeling with Matt, but said lets start a collab with a few clients

The #1 thing I have learned from 8F is to trust my gut for hiring

My gut has never led me astray and every time I don't listen to it, I make a bad hire

Test your talent over a series of months via PT work

Once Matt started consulting a few clients, I began 'courting' him to see how we can collab FT

• I found out what he was making/year

• I found out what he needed from me to leave his job

• I demonstrated I was a worthwhile leader and he could trust his career with me

Over the course of 8 months, I began laying the framework for him to come work for 8F

• I set aside additional cash

• I made sure I increased profits to afford a C level executive hire

• I gave him the continual assurance we were ready to bring him on

This is critical

I waited months to ensure Matt was who I thought he was

I didn't have the NEED to hire him immediately

Because of my intentionality with this relationship, I knew exactly who I was 'getting into bed with'

This mitigates a bad executive hire

Demonstrate alignment to your executive candidates over months by showing them you are the real deal

During the course of those 8 months, I showed Matt on several occasions:

• My mission aligns with his

• The future growth potential of 8F

• The work we do is awesome (he was loving his clients and the impact he was making)

In addition to all of this, this wasn't my first time managing someone older than me

I had managed over 2500 during my time at Amazon

I built up the skills and demeanor to be a person worthy of excellent talent working for them

The #1 person you must lead first is yourself!

Don't overlook this step

After several months, Matt had built up a serious level of faith in me and the company

Enough to make the leap from an 8 figure business to a 7 figure business

90 days before he left his FT role, we met to build a transition plan

We identified how we could gracefully leave his 20M/year business with respect and how he can successfully transition into 8F as our new COO.

Using these four step processes I have been able to identify and onboard high level talent.

Thanks for reading. 

P.S Want to build an hands off, no stress profit generating agency? 

Harness the power of processes, and systems to build a profit generating team that function with or without you. Click here to schedule a meeting

The 8F team will be ready to give you a free consultation.

Killer Content (My favorite pieces of content from last week):

• Podcast: How I Got A Sponsor to Pay Me $20,000 For My Live Event 

• Long Form Youtube: The CORRECT Way To Use Airtable To Scale Your Business

• Short Form Youtube: Don't Make This Mistake With Your Agency

Stay Happy

Stay Hungry,

Jordan Ross

CEO & Founder @ 8 Figure Agency

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