476 Jamie Van Cuyk

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] What if the biggest hiring mistake entrepreneurs make is believing they have to do it all themselves? Meet Jamie Van Cuyk, founder of Growing Your Team, a consultancy that helps business owners master the art of hiring. With over 15 years of leadership experience, Jamie transitioned from corporate management to entrepreneurship.

Recognizing the unique challenges business owners face in building effective teams. Jamie developed the H.I.R.E. framework to guide business owners through the hiring process and ensure they find the right fit for their team.

Her approach emphasizes clarity in job roles, understanding company culture and strategic onboarding. Through her podcast Growing Your Team, Jamie shares insights and strategies to help entrepreneurs avoid common hiring pitfalls, and build teams that support business growth.

 Jamie's mission is to empower business owners to become confident leaders who can delegate effectively and build teams that align with their vision.

And before we start the [00:01:00] episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Here's Sanjay, a graduate of Deep Wealth Mastery, and he says, the investment I made in the Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it's a rounding error compared to the value created today and the future value I'll receive.

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Now speaking of growth and adding value, check out what Leon says. He says that the Deep Wealth Mastery Program changed how and who we hire. We've now begun to hire talent today that we never would have hired if it weren't for the program. The talent we're hiring today is helping both increase our growth and profits and our future enterprise value. 

Man, I love that kind of feedback because it's that kind of feedback that's what gets me out of bed every day.

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Welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. So Deep Wealth Nation, we have a saying here at Deep Wealth. Show me your team and I'll tell you your future. So deep default nation, what's your team like? Are they where they need to be? Do you have the right people on the right bus sitting in the right seat, or do you maybe have some gaps out there?

I know if you're speaking to Jeffrey, myself in the early days, wow. I wasn't even on the right bus most of the time. I was doing everything wrong. Well, we're gonna help you with that. We're gonna put an end to some of those bad habits that you may have or things that you shouldn't be doing that you don't even know about. With our very special guest today, you heard the official introduction. We have a very special guest in the House of Deep Wealth, A fellow entrepreneur, A fellow podcaster. Jamie, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. There's always a story behind the story. Jamie, what's your story? What got you from where you were where you are today? 

Jamie Van Cuyk: Hello. Thank you so much for having me today. [00:04:00] So my story, I'll try to make it as short as possible, but there is a lot of curves a lot of things that go into it. So I knew. Probably from when I was in college. I always wanted to run my own business. My dad was, he ran his own business when I was growing up, and I got to see a lot of what he did.

And the, even though he worked really hard, I got to see the flexibility he had over his own life and being there for us kids. I knew I didn't wanna take over his business, so I was just like, what do I wanna do? I don't know. I'm gonna go work for other people and learn as many skills as possible while I figure out exactly what I wanna do for my own business.

So I went into marketing, worked for an international marketing firm for a few years, got into leadership and really learned a lot of leadership skills while I was there. Fast forward to shortly after I had my second daughter. I returned back to work after maternity leave and after a few months I just wasn't feeling it anymore.

I was having a hard time finding a good, reliable daycare for my second [00:05:00] daughter. My parents were watching her when I first went back to work, but my parents are snowbirds, so I live in Florida. They spend half the year in Florida. They spend half the year in New York. I always knew come summer they'd be gone and.

Finally one day it was, it was just one of those days where everything was going wrong, where, you know, it's just like today, everything's going wrong. It's a today thing. Tomorrow will be better. But it was just one of those days where everything was just draining. And finally I just go, you know. i'm so tired of all this.

I'm so tired of trying to find a daycare. I'm just gonna quit my job and become a stay-at-home mom. And I thought about that for 30 seconds and then said, who am I kidding? I am a very career ambitious woman. I will never be long-term happy being a stay-at-home mom. It is just not for me. So what else do I do?

What else can I do? And I was just like, you know what? I think this is the kick I need. I think this is the kick I need to start the business that I've always been talking about. I can do it. I can start it slow while I have my daughter at home, get her a [00:06:00] little bit older so that way she can go off to preschool and then I can be full-time businesswoman.

But I. Take a little bit to build that business in the business that I was building. At that point in time, my ex-husband and I, we were always talking about starting a software development company together. He's a software engineer. I was the leadership side. We had these ideas of an app that we were gonna build, and so I told him one day, I was like.

I'm gonna quit my job. I'm gonna learn how to program so I can help you build this app, because he's really risk adverse. So I knew from a lot of things that he was never gonna take the leap to quit his job until we had something solid that he could, grasp onto. Well, I lasted about six months learning how to program and realized I hated it.

I hated it so much. I was good at it, but I hated it. I was miserable every day. I kept telling myself, well, I just have to wait until we have something that we can go out and get funding for. And then with the funding, I can hire a software developer and I can be on the leadership side. But realized I didn't even wanna be on the leadership side of software development.

It was an [00:07:00] industry that just didn't light me up. And so I was like, what do I do? And I was lucky enough that when I left my corporate job, they kept me on as a consultant for about six months. And with that consulting projects that I was doing, it was all around leadership developments. And so I realized I like doing consulting work and I like doing consulting work in the leadership development space.

So let me see what I can do in that area. But my problem was I didn't have a huge network. I didn't really know what to go out and sell. So I was like, I'm gonna use my chamber membership that I have. I'm gonna go talk to a bunch of people. I'm gonna find out what are the problems, do that market research and then figure out exactly what I should go and pitch companies and also build connections so that way I could have a foot into the door so I could have those meetings.

And when I would go to these chamber events, I kept finding myself speaking to small business owners. Over corporate representatives. And at first I was just like, well, this isn't really who I wanna talk to. I was like, but let me [00:08:00] see what I can learn from them. Because business problems are business problems.

They might look different in larger companies, but some of it's the same. And so as I would talk to them, the number one thing that would come up as a problem for them was around hiring and people, and. I had a lot of experience hiring when I was in corporate. I managed a team that was it wasn't all entry level career wise, but a lot of people, it was their first job inside the organization and my team was fantastic, which meant they were always getting poached to be promoted or go elsewhere within the organization.

So it was that great positive turnover, but it meant I was always hiring. And so I had a lot of knowledge about hiring. I had a lot of knowledge about hiring for other people's teams, 'cause some of my co-managers. Would ask me about hiring, and I quickly learned that even though our team members were doing the exact same thing, who was gonna be successful on my team with my management style and the clients that my team worked with weren't necessarily gonna be successful on their team because they worked with different clients and they had different management.

Style. [00:09:00] So I use a lot of that knowledge to just share free knowledge with the small business owners I was talking with. And they would come back to me and be like, oh my gosh, that was fantastic. I got my first grade hire. Can I hire you? Can you teach me more? And at first I said, no. I'm like, I'm looking to go do corporate leadership consulting.

And finally it took a few months for me to be like, why am I saying no? Like small business owners need this knowledge? And I even did some research. 'cause I, when I would say no, I would say I'll find you someone that can help you. And I couldn't find anyone that was talking to the really small businesses.

So we're talking like fewer than 10 employees, typically hiring your first employee. No business, no consultant was focusing on that when they said small business consulting and small business hiring support. It was 50 plus employees. Well, you can't get to 50 plus employees if you're always screwing up on your first few employees.

So finally I said, people want this help. They already are telling me that what I'm giving them is helpful. Why am I resisting [00:10:00] starting this business? So that was about 2018 that growing Your team was born.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So interesting to have a story. And Jamie, completely related, and it's a perfect segue as you're talking about, well, I really shouldn't start this business. I need to start this business. No, I shouldn't start the business. the typical entrepreneurial story and particularly with the major problem that you're helping to solve, which is. should hire somebody. Actually, no, I don't need to hire someone. I'm gonna keep on doing it. And I know you developed the higher framework, HIRE, and it's a brilliant acronym and completely spot on with that. So big picture wise though, let's zoom out for just a moment. And I know Jamie, you'd be perfectly right to say the following with the question that I'm about to ask Jeffrey. company's different. They're on their unique path, their own trajectory, and I can't say. Do this for one company, that it's gonna work for the other company, and yes, I completely hear you on that. That said, though, are there patterns that you see, or what some people call Pareto's law or the 80 20 principle, Hey, [00:11:00] 80% of the team challenges that are coming up arise from the 20% of these actions or inactions, or these specific strategies that an entrepreneur is doing.

What's going on with that?

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yeah, so, oh I, I love that. So I would say yes, when we go to hire, who's gonna be successful on your team is. Completely different than who's gonna be successful in another team. But it's the same core process that gets us to that either good hire or that bad hire. So when we look at kind of that 80 20 rule, I would say what really goes into that is are you clear on who you're going to hire, who you need on your team?

And one of the mistakes I see people make is they say, well, I need these tasks done. Okay, well what does that actually mean in your organization? Who is successful in doing those tasks? So I love to use this example of a salesperson. So if you say, I'm hiring a salesperson, and this person's responsible for making sales, bringing in revenue there's a lot of different thoughts and uh, methodologies and everything when it comes to [00:12:00] sales.

But I'm gonna boil things down for this example for two methodologies. One is the bigger the contract, the better. Upsell. Upsell. Upsell. Get that contract, get that sale as big as possible. The other thought process is sell exactly what the client needs. If it means it's a smaller contract, who cares?

Because we're gonna get that client in. We can do repeat business with them. They'll refer us. So we know once we get a client in, we're looking at that longevity of that client versus that one time sale. And who's gonna succeed in an environment where it is sell as big as possible because you're going out to try to find the biggest fish is completely different than someone who's gonna succeed in the environment of put the customer first every time, even if it means a smaller number on that invoice that goes out and.

If you don't know really what's important to your organization and who's gonna succeed in your organization and what you want, you might hire someone that is really good at what they do, but they're not right for you. [00:13:00] So it's gonna feel like they're always failing as an employee. They're gonna feel like they're always doing things that are wrong, and it's not necessarily that they're doing things that are wrong.

For the type of work that they're doing. They're doing things that are just wrong for your organization. They just don't fit inside your organization. So that's the first thing, is like really not understanding who's gonna be successful in the role, what that role actually looks like outside of just doing X, Y, Z tasks.

And then the other problem is sometimes when we go to higher and small businesses. We should have hired six months ago and we're busy when we're hiring. It's because we lack time in our business already. but now we need to add this process on. That takes a lot of time to find someone. So we say, how can I get through this as quickly as possible?

And that typically means we. Shortchange yourself through the hiring process. We don't spend time doing really good quality interviews. We don't spend time even before the interview view, figuring out what should we actually ask this person to determine if they're the right person for us. We don't spend the [00:14:00] right time sorting through candidates.

We say, Ooh, this one feels good enough. I'm gonna go with this person. But sometimes we're listening to our emotions and we're not actually determining and figuring out if this person is qualified for the role. So when you talked before about the bus and having people in the right seat in the bus, there's this thought process from corporate is if someone's great, if someone's passionate, just get 'em on the bus and we can figure out the right seat later.

But that doesn't work for small businesses because when you start out. You're riding a motorcycle. It's just you. There's no room for another person, and then you're adding that sidecar. Well, now there's only the main seat that you're sitting in, and then that sidecar, there's no other seat to put this person.

So if they're not right for that sidecar position. They don't belong in your organization at that time, so you have to figure out who do you need now? Because there's not other seats to move them to. It's not until your company gets really large that you can say, okay, this is a great person. We have 'em in the wrong seat.

Let's move them over here instead. They're either [00:15:00] the right fit or they don't belong in your organization when you're a smaller business.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So true and very interesting, and as you're talking about the so much, I'm just reviewing in my own mind on my own journey and lessons learned. Let me ask you this though. I know there are people in the deep default nation that are saying, Hey Jamie, I hear you. It's a great story. Yes, we do need help hiring, but always a but. We don't have the budget to bring somebody on board, and I will have our HR if they happen to have an HR person, or I'll continue doing it myself, or I'll have my assistant do it on paper maybe that cuts it, but it really doesn't. So what would you say to that person of the return on investment, the ROI they're gonna get with working with a professional like yourself?

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yeah. So first off, when it comes to working with growing your team, we have many ways that we work with clients. So we do full service recruiting. That can cost a lot of money, and there are some positions where it is a great return on investment. Then there's other positions where we talk to people.

We're like, ah, you're gonna hire a part-time assistant that's gonna be working for you five hours a [00:16:00] week. Maybe it's not worth spending the thousands of dollars to have us do the full service recruiting. So we have other things that we can. Provide guidance and support through the hiring process. That's not a huge investment.

But one of the things I like to point out to people is there is a significant cost to a bad hire. So when you bring someone in and they're not the right person, you have to think about you spent time, or if it wasn't you, a team member spent time interviewing. They spent time well before the interviews sorting through resumes.

So you sort through resumes, you interview, you're probably doing multiple rounds of interviews, or at least you should be doing multiple rounds of interviews. You make your decision, now you're bringing this person in and they have to be trained. Well, if you did all that with the wrong person, that's all this time that's being spent.

That's not providing you any value. You're not getting a positive return on your investments, so then this person's on your team, you're paying that person who's not a good fit for your organization. I. You then have to, if they don't work out, you have to repeat [00:17:00] all those steps. And sometimes when someone doesn't work out, depending on who they are in your organization, they created an impact that cost you money.

Maybe they lost you a client. Or they cause damage to a client relationship where now you have to go back and fix it. So maybe you had to discount something or you had to give the client something extra to make up for it. They possibly if you are product based, ruined some of your inventory, ruined some of your equipment.

They did things like not maliciously, but just simply because they made mistakes. They weren't the right person for that role. So there's that cost of the errors that they did while they were there. And when there are the wrong hire, they're more likely to make those errors while they're there. there's all those costs that add up and they say typically it costs a company around at least $7,000 every time they hire.

And that is the calculations of how much time you have to spend when you're hiring. 'cause remember. Your time is valuable as a business owner. If you put a dollar value on your [00:18:00] time, you're looking at your time you spent the what you're paying, that bad hire, the mistakes they made and everything you're looking at least $7,000.

And that number's probably actually higher now. 'cause I think that number, the last time it was calculated that I saw it was a few years ago. So in the higher level, the position is. The more that is it can cost up to, for high level technical positions, up to a year's worth of that position's salary to go through.

Hire someone that's the wrong fit. Deal with them on your team while you're figuring out that they're the wrong fit, firing them, and then rehiring. So there's a big cost, and sometimes we don't see it because we're not handing that money over to a hiring consultant or someone who's gonna help us. But it is there in our business.

It is impacting our bottom line.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's huge in terms of, okay, the money I am literally losing because it's the wrong person in the seat. Then you factor in the opportunity cost. It just keeps on piling on, and a lot of the times it's an invisible cost. We [00:19:00] don't see it. talk about culture for a moment. Because the wrong hire, it can be like a cancerous kind of effect on the culture itself.

It becomes toxic. The wrong person doesn't fit in with the culture. It becomes a really bad feedback loop. So when it comes to the right hire, having a rich, vibrant culture, that's actually step two in our nine-step roadmap is one of the X-Factors. Having a trip of culture. Why don't you walk us through how the right people, the right team, can really make a huge impact on culture.

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yeah, so this is a great question. 'cause yeah, the culture really matters. These are people, your team is working together. They are working together, typically very closely when you're in a smaller business and if you've put someone in there that doesn't fit in your culture. It's like the gears grinding together daily.

There is that, those things that make it go from, I like working here to, this is a place I don't want to be. It doesn't matter if the job actually fits, what their passions are, what they want to be doing, their [00:20:00] skills. If there's that person that makes that workplace miserable, they don't wanna be there.

They're not going to do their best work. So bringing in someone who doesn't fit your culture. Impacts everybody for you as the person who is going to be leading them or whoever the other manager is on your team. When someone doesn't fit into the culture, it's one of those things where sometimes you're like I can't put my finger on it, but something's just not right here.

And sometimes it's really hard because sometimes they could be good at what they do and you're like, you're, they're producing the right things, but. I hate having that team member on my team. I hate it. They take so much time and you have to start dealing with this pettiness across the team versus just having a highly functioning team together.

And a lot of people view culture as I. When they think of it, they're like, we're gonna go out and get a drink together after work on a Friday afternoon. And it's that's not culture. Yes, you can become friends with your coworkers, you can become friends with your team members and your employees, but that's not what we mean by culture.

By culture we [00:21:00] mean what does it mean to work together? What. How do you approach things in the office? How do things feel seamless in the office because everything just flows. How do you approach things with clients? How do you approach things internally? What do deadlines mean here?

Are you the type of culture that it's just well, deadlines are suggestions. We're just go with the flow and our clients are okay with that? Or are you a culture where it's like deadlines are. Are the end all be all. And we work a week ahead and things like that. It's what makes it so you know, someone is gonna fit in that their work style matches yours.

So when it comes to culture, a lot of times we think of work style is how we really go about finding the people that are gonna fit into a culture.

Jeffrey Feldberg: With that in mind, let me ask you this. So Jamie, it's the good old goldilock scenario. If I hire for a position too early, not great, I'm spending money, the person's probably bored outta their mind. There's nothing to do. I. If I wait until it's too late, okay. We have upset customers. We're falling behind.

There's a lot of stress. There's a [00:22:00] lot of pressure, ideally, and I never really was able to hit this mark myself. In my companies. There's always the latter where, okay, we need someone yesterday. Let's get going on this quickly. When it is the right time to hire, what are the telltale signs? Okay, we don't need the person tomorrow. That said, let me start looking because we do need somebody.

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yeah. So with your business, the one thing I'll say is if you're a business that has seasonality, sometimes that low point is a. Rate point to hire because things are going to tick up and you have that opportunity to train before things get busy. But let's just like look at the, some of the signs that it is time to hire.

And I encourage business owners to really review these in their business at least once a quarter, if not more frequently, to say, am I identifying these signs? So that way, is it time to hire, whether it's that very first person or that next person. So the one is. You're at capacity. So sometimes we look at this as you're saying no to your idea clients, people that you want to [00:23:00] work with, and sometimes you're not saying no, flat out it's, we can work with you, but, and that, but is.

A month from now, I can't start with you until then and things like that where it's just like someone wants to give you their money now, but you're not able to take it now. And so one of the things that we look at here are wait lists. Sometimes wait lists are a great marketing tool for a business.

It's Hey, we're in high demands. People want to be on that wait list. They're waiting for it. Other times wait list means. You can't take on that business now, but it's not really working for you. It's working against you because you want to grow your revenue, you want to grow your business, but you can't bring it in.

So start to look at your business. If you are really getting close to that capacity where you are always, let's say at capacity, and you're just lucky that, okay, that next person doesn't come in or that person falls off right at that time. When then one person's falling off as one person's coming in, that might be a sign that it's time to go to start hiring, because if you're able to have that more capacity, sometimes it's just those mental games of you have that more space, you're [00:24:00] gonna go out and do more of the sales and marketing to fill that additional capacity.

One of the other signs that we look for is you're losing customers due to poor customer support. So this is. It is taking you longer to do everything you used to tell a client, I'll get back to you in two business days. Now it's taking you a week. The clients are always following up with you instead of you delivering things as they expect.

So we're not talking about customers that. Want responses, like the minute they email you we're talking about reasonable expectations for responses or the expectations that you set, but now you're always falling behind because you just, you're busy and that's a sign that it's time to start bringing someone in.

Also, if you are in a business where when people call you, they're also calling three other people and they're just gonna go with most likely the first person that contacts them back. That has a good quote. If you are not able to answer those calls, if you're not able to get a quote out in time and you're always hearing, oh, I went with someone else, that's the customer service level that is [00:25:00] actually costing your business because you're not able to get those quotes out in time.

Sign number three is you wanna do something new in your business, but you can't. So maybe you want to start a podcast 'cause you know how great a podcast would be for marketing for your business. But you can't because you actually need to serve your clients and create your products and do everything else that you need to do there.

Or you wanna open a second location if you're have a physical location, but you can't because how are you supposed to be in two places at once? So some of these things where you look at, you want to do something new in addition to what you're currently doing, but you can't do it because. You can't be two places at once.

You can't split your time the way it's needed to focus on both. And the last sign to hire someone is that you lack skill knowledge that is needed. So as a small business owner, when you first start your business, you realize there was a lot you needed to know that you didn't know. You're probably listening to this podcast 'cause you're realizing there's a lot you still need to learn.

But there's stuff you need to learn to run your business and be that CEO, that head of your business. But then there's also stuff that needs to be done in the [00:26:00] business as that hands-on tactical stuff, that you reach a point in your business where you don't have to do that anymore, or you shouldn't be doing that anymore, or you know you, it doesn't matter how much you try, you're never gonna be the expertise.

So maybe you don't need to learn how to do your taxes. You need to hire the expert who's gonna go do that. The CPA, you don't need to know how to do every sort of digital marketing and ads, you can hire someone to go do that 'cause it's not worth your time to do it anymore. And one of the things I'll say when it comes to hiring, when we say like, well, too early, too late, I don't have enough work for a full-time person, that's fine.

Start small. If, I only have enough work for 10 hours a week, but I need this type of work in my business. Hire someone for 10 hours a week. Yes, that might mean that as more work can go to that position, that person might not be able to take it on, and you might have to hire someone else to replace them with.

But that's better than waiting until you have enough work for a full-time position. So start small. You can also, [00:27:00] for certain things in your business, hire contractors or freelancers to support you for a little bit instead of jumping all into a full-time position. Not every position needs to be full-time at first.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Some great insights there, and I would imagine, Jamie, as artificial intelligence, AI continues to make its impact both on the personal side. Also on the business side. becoming harder than ever to really find the right candidates because now ai, you hear these stories, it's writing resumes, and on paper, a person sounds terrific if we're not paying attention or we don't have the right kind of system in place. Well, maybe the best job that person did was in the interview or on the resume itself, and now we bring them on board. Wow. It's a complete disaster. It's not a fit. I would love some of your thoughts on that.

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yeah, so I hear a lot about people being upset because. AI is helping people write resumes. Well, guess what? There's been whole industries out there for years of people helping people write resumes, career centers in colleges, help people write resumes. You can literally hire someone to do it. Now, it's just a different [00:28:00] tool that's helping someone do that.

So your job when you go to hire is to really figure out what this person's skills actually are, even someone wrote their own resume. The few words that I put on a resume don't really tell you a whole lot. They're only telling you like the tip of the iceberg. And I could have a saying on my resume and someone else had that same bullet point on their resume.

But what it means to us and why we put it there could be completely different. So one of the things I always say is a resume is a gatekeeper to determine who should get an interview. And you should know what to look for on that resume to say, yes, this person gets an interview, or No, this person does not get an interview.

And I've seen a lot of this with my clients in the past is they let things sway them when they're looking at resumes that don't matter. Like I remember one of my client, we were going over and she goes, okay, I'm gonna bring this person in for an interview. And I asked her the question, I was like, why?

And she looked back at the resume and she [00:29:00] goes I don't know. And I'm like, okay, well, I trained you, we just talked about what we should be looking for on a resume to say that someone's qualified for an interview. So let's remember here are the things that make someone's qualified for an interview. Do they have these things?

And she looks back at it and she's like, no. so it's like, okay, well why do you wanna bring them in for an interview? And she goes. I think it's just because the resume's pretty when I talk about that example, people always laugh. Like you could just chuckle as well, but this happens all the time and we hear it and we think it's silly.

And where everyone goes, I wouldn't do that, but we do it all the time. 'cause we get swayed by stuff that actually don't matter. So I always teach my clients. Here's what we are looking for specifically on a resume. Typically, it's three things. If they have these three things, we're putting them in the yes pile.

If they don't have these three things, we're putting 'em in the no pile. If our guest pile is really big, then we'll have three more things that we consider are nice to have. Things that will then, either sort out or, separate that pi, that guest pile a little bit more. So it's a little bit smaller of who we should start with our interviews.[00:30:00]

And those three things will change depending on the role, depending on what matters. So if you are hiring an assistant and the number one thing that's important for you is. I need this person to have been an assistant before. I don't wanna train this person from the ground up. Okay. Have they been in an assistant role before?

Yes. Okay. That's one of the things that might put them into Yes. File. No. Okay. We easily them the same thing. 'cause you might be hiring an assistant and you're like, I don't care if they've been an assistant before. I just care that they can show that they can manage deadlines. Okay. Have they been in roles before where they've actually had to manage deadlines?

Let's look at that. So we look for things depending on what is important for this role, and we bring them into an interview. Once we bring someone in for an interview, every question we ask should tie back to what it means to be successful in the role. So we don't believe in any generic interview question guides here growing your team.

We make sure every interview guide that our clients use, that we create for them, or we guide them to create themselves. Is 100% specific to that role and to [00:31:00] that idea candidate for that role. So every question can tie back to say, yes, this person has what I need, or, you know what, that was a good sounding answer, but it actually doesn't fit with what I'm looking for.

And with a, a lot of the questions, sometimes we even. give our clients a little cheat sheet and we'll put the why underneath it. Remember, this is why we're asking this question. This is what we're looking for. This is why this is important to you in your role. So that way, once again, we're not getting swayed by.

That was a really good conversation. I feel like I connected personally with that candidate when they can't do their role. So we always say we wanna make sure they can do the role first, and then let's listen to our emotions in those connections second.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So true. We're busy. We're under

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yep.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yes, I need someone, wow, look at this resume. It looks terrific. Let's just speak to this person. Maybe I'll hire them. That did such a great job on a resume. Perhaps I'll be the person I'm looking to hire. So I hear you that you're there. You're helping us determine, okay, what do we need?

What do we want?

What do we not want? The [00:32:00] kinds of questions, the kinds of candidates that we should be looking to. Let's make a big assumption here. We're gonna take a leap. Okay, Jamie, we're working with you. We've now hired the right person, and then all too often I see these horror stories. They actually do hire the right person, but the team or the entrepreneur of the company, they have no onboarding process.

They say, okay, Jeffrey, welcome day one. You go figure it out. Let us know how it's going and we'll check in in with you from time to time. And it's a disaster. Perhaps a person quits or they don't have the right information and they're just floundering along not what we want. So when it comes to onboarding, what should we be doing?

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yes, onboarding is so important. Onboarding, starting from day one, has a huge influence on whether that person's going to be a long-term employee with you or not. So studies have been done that show the less time you put into onboarding, the more likely that person's going to leave you within six months.

So onboarding is super important if you want your employees to stay, and if we put all this time into hiring and then we're gonna train this person, we want them to stay. So onboarding needs to be very thorough process. [00:33:00] So a lot of people will come to me and say, but I'm hiring someone. That is supposed to be an expert in their role.

'cause a lot of small business owners they'll say, I don't have time to train. This isn't my area of expertise. They're the only person who's going to really be doing this. So I need someone who's had this experience before who's an expert, and we set up a hiring process to determine if they're an expert.

So they say they're an expert in their role, so why do I need to onboard them? I should just be able to let them free on day one. And I say, yes, they've done that role before, but they've never done it for. Inside your organization. So onboarding typically has two different phases. One, it's teaching them what they don't know in order to be able to succeed in their role.

So the skills. So sometimes you're gonna bring someone in that says, you know what? They have four out of the five essential skills. And I'm willing to teach them on this fifth one. So we have to make sure that we actually teach 'em on that fifth skill that they need in order during the onboarding process.

But other times we're gonna say they have everything that they need. I don't need to teach 'em on [00:34:00] any skills, but I'm teaching them how to do those skills inside my organization. I'm gonna teach them. My processes, I'm gonna teach them my systems. I'm gonna teach them my expectations on what it is to do something, right. so typically when a new employee is not working out, even though they have the skills, it's because there's been no training on what it means to do those things right? Inside the organization. So the new employee is making up their own assumptions. They are deciding on their own what it means to do something right.

The business owner or the manager is looking at that stuff and saying, that's not right. But then they're not resetting expectations and they're not training them. They're just like, well, they'll figure it out. They'll eventually get it. And then it's this whole thing of the employee still thinks they're doing things right, saying they didn't get any negative feedback, they didn't get any constructive criticism.

They're like, I'm doing things right. I'm doing things well. And then the business owner and the manager is like getting more and more upset because they're not doing things right. And it's this whole lack of communication from the fact that there was no proper training or [00:35:00] onboarding to teach them what to, it means to do it right.

So one of the examples I like to give here is, let's say you're hiring a bookkeeper. Bookkeeping is bookkeeping. It's pretty much the same unless someone is cooking the books. It's gonna be the same pretty much anywhere. But what are your expectations with that job? What do they need to provide to you?

Are you someone, or even if we go a step farther, they do some set of just like the transactions, the accounts is receivable, accounts payable, they're doing some of the reporting. Are you someone who knows enough or they can just provide you the reports and email and you know what you're looking at?

Or do you need someone who's gonna sit down and explain things to you? Are you the type of person that you can identify when something's off? Or do you need someone who can identify when something's off and communicate it to you? what do you need there? They're essentially, their job's not changing, but what you need from them and what you're expecting from them is changing.

So you really need to make sure you're teaching them how to do their job inside your organization. And I understand you are busy. If you're [00:36:00] hiring someone full-time, you do not have 40 hours to sit down with someone on their first week and train them, and I would never expect you to be able to cut out 40 hours in their first week to train someone.

So the way we approach onboarding and growing your team is, I like to say it's like a stair step method where we train them on something. And then the team member can go and do projects around that area. Then we train them on something else. Now they're able to go do projects on item A and item B, because we've trained them on that.

And sometimes that training can take a few weeks and we're getting some work out of them because we're able to train them a little bit and then let them free. Or we build things in on the onboarding plan where they can self-learn. So one of the things when I bring on a new employee is. I have my own podcast, on a lot of podcasts, and so part of their onboarding training is they're required in the first week to go listen to so many episodes of the Growing Your Team podcast.

Why? Because I want them to really get to know our brand. What do I talk about? [00:37:00] How do I approach certain subjects? What's important to us when they go to talk to our clients or work on projects they really understand the growing your team method and things like that. That's a simple thing in training, that they get to do something they're learning, but it doesn't actually take my time.

So we'll build in things in onboarding that don't take your time, but the other person's learning. And also with onboarding, we have to focus on. We can't just let them fly free. Sometimes we need to do things with them and then let them do things on their own as we check behind them, and then let them fly free to be able to do it on their own because they proved that they can do it.

I.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So really what I'm hearing is, and this is something that as business owners, entrepreneurs, founders, we often don't get it right and we end up wasting the same time again and again, and that is when we're onboarding. Why not document it? It could be something as simple as, I'm just gonna record, we're having a conversation right now.

You and me, you know what, Jamie? I'm just gonna record it. Not perfect, but when you get promoted or you [00:38:00] move on and the next person comes in to do what you're doing, okay, they're gonna watch this and see what we're doing. Or, Hey, Jamie, part of your new description of what you're doing here is I want you to write down everything that you're doing so that when you wanna take a

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yep.

Jeffrey Feldberg: or you wanna get promoted, whoever's gonna come in and help out.

They know exactly what to do, and over time. We build this up and we have this internal knowledge base. It could be a wiki, it could be a cloud document, whatever. It's gonna be something where the entire team can modify, update, take a look at, to begin to answer questions. Thoughts about that? 

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yeah, so I love that. And because it's one of those things, like I always tell people before you bring in that first team member to do that role. Don't spend too much time creating your training ahead of time. And the reason I say that is because you'll forget to train on things. You'll forget a step in there because it's so ingrained.

I don't know if you've ever seen it, but there's these videos, and I know back when I was in high school, one of our teachers did this for us as well. It's writing directions to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And we're [00:39:00] like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is so easy.

But there's videos now and this, there's this one. It's hilarious. And. It's like all the students, they forget to even say to take the bread out of the bag, to open the jar of peanut butter to use the knife to dip into the peanut butter. It's just 'cause they, you focus more on these like high level things and because there's so many things that just come second nature to you, and it's the same at training.

We will forget things that become second nature to us. But if someone has never done that before. They don't know that little step is needed. So I think sometimes recording things as you're going through it. So even if you're not speaking out loud, every step people can see it. But then sometimes as you go and train that first person, you'll realize, oh, I forgot to tell you that.

Oh, I forgot that was important. I forgot that I do that because it's so second nature. But you're right, you've never done this before. So sometimes we have to train someone one time. In order to catch all the little things that if we just went through and created that training before that person ever arrived, we would forget.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Jamie, [00:40:00] as we talk about bringing you on board to help us out, it reminds me of a typical scenario where, okay, my taxes are coming due. I'm not gonna take it to the accountants. I don't want to pay them, so I'm gonna learn the tax code. I'm gonna learn how to fill. Out all these forms, I'm gonna do all the numbers myself. Same thing with hiring. If we're busy, if we have bigger things to do and we're not focusing on this like you are, this is all that you do. You breathe this stuff, you go to bed thinking about it, you wake up thinking about it, that I can bring somebody like you on board. So what does your process look like? You've now come on board with us, okay, Jamie, help us out. We have this position or these positions that we need some help filling with. at it. What do you need from us? What's gonna be happening? So what should we be looking at time-wise? How long does it typically take? And then what should we expect?

What's the secret sauce that you're bringing to the table? 

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yeah. So I would say our secret sauce, we'll start there because all our, all the ways we work with clients, we really start here with our secret sauce is we're not putting butts in positions. We're finding that right person for that right seat in your organization. So we start off [00:41:00] every project with what we call the hiring kickoff call, where I walk my clients through a series of questions to really understand.

Who is gonna be successful in this role? So not just the tasks, but also that work style, that culture, that everything, like what's important about this role, so we can really develop who that idea candidate is. And then everything else around the process is designed around that idea candidate. So we might hire an assistant for your business and assistant for another business.

And that business does the exact same things as you do. But it looks completely different. Or whether it's a head of HR or whatever it is, we wanna figure out what does that mean for you to be successful? So we developed that idea candidate. We then work with clients in three main ways.

So our basic package is we write the job post, we write the interview question guides, and then our clients go on their own and execute it. So they're, that's typically of clients that understand the hiring process. They're just too close to their business or they don't have time to write a good job post or interview question guides.

So we write those for them. They go off on their own and execute everything. We [00:42:00] then have our two packages where we are heavily involved in the process. So the one is our consulting package, where, once again, our clients are doing the work, but we are guiding them every step of the way. So we create the interview guides for them.

We create the job post. We are then teaching them and guiding them every step of the way and holding them accountable to get through the process. We then help them create their onboarding plans once they've hired someone as well. So with that, I typically say with our consulting, probably from beginning to end, we're working together for about three months.

And a lot of that is as small business owners are busy, so sometimes it's just that reminder of. Okay, we gotta get these interviews on this calendar. We gotta get this done. You gotta make a decision. So we're moving, helping them move forward and through the process. Our goal as a client goes through that consulting process once, because they're learning a lot, and then they either go down to where future positions, they just have us write the job post and interview question guides, or they move up to our top tier package, which is our full service recruiting.

So with full service recruiting. We take over most of the process. That [00:43:00] way the business owner can focus on actually running their business and serving their clients and doing everything else that they need to do. So after we write the job post, we post it. Growing your team, reviews all the resumes, growing your team completes all the first round interviews, growing your team coordinates with the candidates.

For the second round interviews that are done with either the business owner or a representative from the business, we handle all candidate communication. And everything, so that way we take over a majority of the work. I typically tell people when they sign on for a full service recruiting package, from when we start to, when that new hire starts in their business, it's typically about six to eight weeks, which seems like a long time.

But we have to post a job, we have to conduct interviews, we have to do second round of interviews, and once again. Once that business owner gets brought into the mix, sometimes they don't have a whole lot of time. And once you make your decision, typically people have to give at least two weeks notice of their current job before they can come on and join you.

Any, if they don't have to give two weeks notice. You typically need time as a business owner to get ready for them, make [00:44:00] sure that onboarding plan is right, make sure their computer's gonna be set up, make sure any equipment that you need or logins is ready to go, so that way they feel like when they show up on day one that you are actually expecting them and not having someone start and have nothing ready for them.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, so it sounds like. like it's a done for you system. It's not a cookie cutter approach. You're coming in, you're taking a look at what do we need? Okay, Jeffrey, here you are. This is your culture. This is your team. This is what you really want. This is what you thought you wanted. But no, we've done the needs assessment and you're actually over here, not there.

So you're putting that all together from the sourcing of the right candidates all the way through to, yes, this is. The 1, 2, 3 people that any one of these you can hire, you can't go wrong. And then once that's done, what I'm hearing you say is, okay, here's the onboarding plan. Here's what it's gonna look like on day one.

Here's what it's gonna look like on day 101. How am I doing with that,

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yes. Yeah, so that's a great way to say it. We like to look at it as like we're the matchmakers, so we're helping you realize who's gonna be that successful person. We're helping you identify through the process. [00:45:00] How to identify. Once you know who the successful person is, how to identify if an individual is that right person, and then making it so you go through that process correctly, that you're not, is, we like to sometimes refer to it as dating.

You're not expecting that engagement ring on day one. Like how do you work up to that? How do you make sure that you're not throwing in the towel for something that's actually gonna be really successful?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, so some terrific insights there. And so let me ask you this. As you look at where we are right now and the workplace is changing so much, and just before we go into wrap up mode, we have work from home, work in the office, all these different kinds of headlines and culture clashes. simply, some jobs can't be work from home.

They have to be in the office for any number of reasons or in the plant or whatever the case is gonna be. But big picture wise, Jamie, where are you at today as we record this conversation? How should we be thinking about the, again, the culture, work from home, work in the office? Where are things now?

Jamie Van Cuyk: So I think there's still a very big mix all over the place. [00:46:00] I think small businesses are doing a lot more successful when it comes to work from home. Than a lot of larger corporations, mostly because if we start allowing employees to work from home, sometimes it's because us ourselves have been working from home.

So that's been our culture from day one. I think as a small business owner or any business owner, I. You have the power to make the decision of what you want your culture to be. Whether that is a full in office, whether that is we are all fully remote, or whether that is a hybrid. So don't let other people sway You.

Don't feel like you have to bring everyone into office if you don't want to be a fully in office and don't think you should not. Dictate that your employees have to be in office when that feels right for you. So you get to decide what is right for you and your business, and then just make sure you're building the business that is right for it.

One of the challenges that corporations have faced when it went from everyone go to work from home when things were shut down with COVID was. They didn't have processes set up [00:47:00] for working from home really. They allowed people maybe to work from home occasionally, but they weren't set up to be strictly work from home, and then they put band-aids on gaping wounds because they knew eventually things would come back to the office.

And so if you are gonna have a culture where it's hybrid work or work from home, you just need to make sure your systems, your communication tools, all that stuff works no matter where people are. If you have a team that is remote as a leader, you need to make sure you're actually putting in the right time, effort, and energy to build relationships with that.

How do you build that culture? And make people feel like they're actually a part of your company versus someone who's just doing work and getting a paycheck from you. And that's different when you're not having that bumping into each other in the office. It, so it takes a little bit of effort and, but you get to decide what you want.

I see a lot of people successful In all of it. So really just make sure that [00:48:00] whatever you do, you're building your systems, processes and communications tools around that. I'm recently working with a client that they had been all in person because they own A warehouse they own, they're building things.

They're making things. And so as you said, like certain positions can't be remote, they can't be hybrid when you actually have to physically be there to make the product. But now they're growing to where they have a lot more of administrative and office positions. So they're really in that thing of how do we balance this out and what does this look like?

And so one of the things that they said is. For right now, they don't have any 100% remote working positions because their core of their business is in that location, and they want to make sure that everyone is a part of that core of the business, that they're all seeing it. So they have some hybrid roles where they're like, this position doesn't need to be here five days a week, but they at least need some sort of presence in the office.

So people know each other's faces, and they continue that culture that they've always had. Will that change in the [00:49:00] future? Maybe. But for right now, that physical presence is important to their culture.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay. Some terrific insights there and. Terms of, okay, what do we want?

Jamie Van Cuyk: I.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Where's the marketplace at? What's the culture like and how can we find a win-win, win for everyone? Always some terrific advice on that side. And speaking of advice, as we go into wrap up mode, it's a tradition here on the Deep Wealth Podcast. Jamie, I have the privilege and the honor for every guest to ask the same question. here's the question. Let me set this up for you. It's a really fun one. When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. Jamie, it's tomorrow morning and you look outside your window.

This is the fun part. Not only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open. It's waiting for you to hop on in what you do. You're now gonna go to any point in your life, Jamie, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be. What would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom, or, Hey Jamie, do this, but don't do

Jamie Van Cuyk: Ooh.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What would it sound like?

Jamie Van Cuyk: Ooh. I love that. So I'm thinking like, [00:50:00] first I was thinking it was like, what, when would I go back to so I think I would just go and tell myself that not everything is going to work out the way you expect it to, but everything is bringing you something positive. So even the things that don't work out, don't stress so much on.

What went wrong, but focus on what you learned so that way you can build that stronger future.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's terrific advice. So as entrepreneurs, how easy is it for us to say, oh, I did this wrong, or I failed at this, or I failed at that. What I'm hearing you say is, Hey, sure, maybe it didn't go exactly as you wanted, but what went well, what went right? It's a terrific way of really celebrating the wins and enjoying the journey along the

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yeah. Well, and I think it's also like in the stuff that went wrong, I. There's sometimes a lot of positive stuff that was in that journey that led to that poor outcome. But if we only focus on that outcome, we missed everything along that journey that was actually positive. I.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I have some [00:51:00] great insights and advice and Jamie, speaking of advice for the Deep Wealth nation, if they have a question they wanna speak with you, perhaps they even wanna work with you and help you have them onboard the right team members to get them on the right bus, in the right seat, to take the company to the next level.

Where is the best place online to reach you?

Jamie Van Cuyk: Yeah, so you can go to growing your team.com. From there, you can schedule a meeting with me. You can check out the Growing Your Team Podcast, read more about our services and everything that we have to offer, and yeah, so that's the best place to go. So growing your team.com.

Jeffrey Feldberg: In Deep Wealth Nation, the great news is it doesn't get any easier. It's a point and click. It's all in the show notes. Well, Jamie, it's official. This is a wrap and as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, first say congratulations and as always, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe.

Thank you so much.

So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast [00:52:00] empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

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Thank you so much. 

God bless.