The Ideal Team Structure for Google Ads Management

[00:00:00] this is the scariest video that i've ever recorded uh i am uncomfortable uh with this topic because i'm giving away the thing that i'm most proud of from an entrepreneurial perspective um however i think this could be of immense value to a lot of people and i also in this really new and fun and unique situation where um talent comes to us and so i've been unencumbered in a lot of ways uh one of the reasons i didn't want to shoot this is because i felt like if i gave away all the tools on my toolbox people would be able to see it reverse engineer and then kind of trick their way into employment but i realized now that if somebody was proactive and actually watch this thing and then follow the rules i'd want to hire that person anyway so i'm just gonna trust in providence and um you know there's something weird it's like a limiting belief that if you've spent a lot of time effort and energy

[00:00:50] figuring something out you you hold it close to your chest and you almost don't want to give it to people even if it costs you nothing because i guess it's like the selfishness of humanity but it's like well they should go through the same pain and heartache that i went through um so i need to get over that and get over my own evils um this is 15 years of trial and error and it's the thing that i it's the thing that i'm most proud of as far as what i've been able to accomplish the reason that i've been successful as other people flat out my my business partner's the smartest google ads guy on the planet i'm not um i have so many amazing folks that work here at solutions eight i hear it all the time i hear people say i don't know how you find these people um it's our team that is extraordinary and you've heard me say things like it takes 245 applications to catalyze one higher that's true i'm going to show you the

[00:01:46] system i'm going to show you how i find the best people in the whole wide world um a couple of notes my system only works for remote employees that i know of i guess i shouldn't say only i've not tried it otherwise this is 15 years of heartache and headache um but it works when you have a larger um group of of people to draw from and it works especially well if you're willing to go international uh and depending on where you are and and you know what your position is that may or may not be something that's that you find to be um possible when you go internationally you're going to deal with certain issues and that's just the nature of the beast and we'll talk about some of those as i go through this training um some of those issues to be honest with your your own clients prejudices um we've got teams offshore i actually one of the very first bad reviews we ended up getting this reversed but somebody wrote

[00:02:37] a bad review to solutions 8 and he said um oh they assigned my accounts to indians like okay set aside the fact that they're literally the smartest google ads people in the world that we hired that just happened to be in india like this dude just decided that any account that was sent over to somebody in india to manage was instantly at risk or something and um i don't i don't like using the word racism because i feel like that's such a broad sweeping brush and it's not it's not understanding enough of the human condition and people's you know prejudices and preconditions and whatever but um that that one got awful close uh that said you have to open yourself up to the possibility that there are resources outside of just 30 miles of your office that are going to be phenomenal and that's the other thing to really be cognizant of we have amazing staff from all over the world and so realize that there there are c-level exec worthy

[00:03:42] employees everywhere you don't you don't you don't have to go to the philippines and just hire a va i mean um my my assistant julianne is one of the smartest humans i've ever met my entire life she can solve any problem our cto yvonne he started out as a va i found him he was a student in poland and um he's now the the cto of our company like you can find extraordinary resources everywhere i'll get off that soapbox i'm going to give you my entire hiring system modify it to your heart's content but know that this has been a decade and a half of of uh iteration so i call it the pareto talent system which isn't by the way my i found out later other people have their own pareto talent system but the idea here is that 20 of your workforce is going to do 80 of your work so just go higher than 20 focus on them and and let me actually get back on the soapbox real quick um you're if you're in the phase of your

[00:04:42] entrepreneurial career where you're trying to find the cheapest resource possible i can tell you i made that mistake for way too long and nothing is more expensive than a cheap resource nothing is more expensive than a cheap resource pay enough money here's the thing about peak performers peak performers need to be paid like their peak performers but they're not it's not that they're greedy people it's that they're winners winners keep score on everything and all they need to know is they're winning when it comes to salary and then they'll move on to the other axes of analysis so um i'm going to teach you how to move upstream but to find pareto talent you have to pay them like the prototalent so one of the best practices is you have to pay at least 10 percent more than the industry's high watermark here's what's interesting is you can go higher in an area that makes that possible so if you know like i can't go to

[00:05:31] silicon valley and pay 10 more than the industry's high water mark obviously so go to where you know that those resources are and this is why hiring remote is really helpful um there's gonna be a what would you say like a quality of life adjustment um based off of where people are geographically and so if you're having a hard time hiring on the coasts go to middle of america or go to canada or go to europe or go to the philippines depending on the role that you need done there's the whole world is available to you so open your horizons and realize that we live in in the world is flat to quote thomas friedman not in the weird internet conspiracy way in the the paradigm way and um there's an unbelievable amount of uh talent out there south america it's unreal the the the folks the gentleman he's currently are operations manager mark um he's in panama he's brilliant um he's eos trained he's been such a blessing to

[00:06:27] us so don't think that you need to just focus where you've been focusing if you feel like well i'm going to have a hard time paying more here's why you have to pay more for the system to work you're going to ask people to jump through an insane number of hoops with this system if you're not paying more there's no incentive to do that so take the issue of money off of the table put people in a position where they're not worried about finances and and and now they can worry about all the things that you want them worrying about like like actual growth um so that's that's if that you're not comfortable with this stop watching because this is what it takes in order to go get the top talent um now once we have that established you're going to use this job description and the magic is in the job description by the way let me zoom in just a little bit um first thing we're going to call this the remote whatever so let's i'm hiring for

[00:07:22] a client manager remote client manager remote google ad specialist remote graphic designer whatever you want to use the word remote often early and often some folks aren't used to remote employment even now so you want to make sure that they know this is a remote job because it's something that people seek here's what's interesting when i say pay more than the industry's high watermark this is part of that comp package people will actually accept less money if it means they get to work from home because they're saving money in a significant number of ways um and it's it's worth understanding what it is that you're bringing to them so allowing a remote environment with autonomy and freedom um is a huge give it's massive and especially nowadays you know in a post-covered world this is one of the things that you can you can do to set your your whole world apart so if you're not set up for remote employment

[00:08:15] get that way because this is where the entirety of the world is moving um so and you'll notice that i'll be repeating the word remote throughout the job description because not everybody's accustomed to the fact that this is remote and you're going to want to reinforce that especially depending on where you're positioning this geographically at the very top of every job description we say when you apply please make sure your heading reads as follows i actually read the instructions if they submit an application and i don't see this in the subject line or the top of the email and i'm actually not the one that goes through this but if the hiring manager doesn't see this in the subject line at the top of the email they ignore it they ignore the submission this is how you're going to filter out all of your submissions because when you're paying 10 percent more than the industry's had a watermark

[00:08:55] and by the way we pay a lot more than that depending on the role some roles we can't afford to pay a lot more than that but you know some of our roles we can pay 3x um depending on where they are geographically and what that means is you get you could get a thousand submissions and you need to make sure that you have the ability to filter through those submissions um very very very quickly and get to um you know separate the wheat from the chaff so i actually read the instructions this is a signal this is a signal to anybody who applies to read the instructions here's what's really funny is you're going to get a ton of people that don't even do this ignore them they're they're of zero value to you i get people that say i actually read the instructions in their submission and then they don't follow the instructions which i think is funnier because at least somebody who doesn't put this i know that they're just applying to every

[00:09:41] single job on the list this is really important next up you have to sell your company you can see how old this is by the way because we are still at 20 employees we're almost 70 now um so this is an old old template um don't be the company that positions themselves that approaches from above i've read some job descriptions where it's like you know we are such and such company with such a phenomenal legacy and in order to work with us you must complain it's like f that you're going after peak performers you're going after high-end talent you need to attract them you are marketing to them you and y'all this is going to be pervasive throughout the entire tenure you serve them your talent is more important than your clients i know it's a weird thing to say and everybody's like oh the client's all that matters the clients on the pedestal your employee especially in the agency space if you're in the customer service

[00:10:36] space at all but especially in the agency space your staff is the most important asset you have you need to market to them you have to make sure that you're a place that somebody would want to work that you're that you're collaborative and you're protective and that you're and you're going to help them grow so let them know what's awesome about you don't do the the approach from above ivory tower stuff it's it's you're going to you're going to repel peak performers and high-end talent you're going to get a lot of the the egoic like oh i just want the the cool logo on my linkedin and what's my title going to be you don't want those folks you want the people that are going to want to perform and and you want to make sure they're culture fit so give them a sense is your culture like you can i think this is i love this i wrote this 10 years ago maybe more we're a group of hardcore problem solving custom code hacking

[00:11:18] status quo bucking out of the box thinking genius digital gangsters breaking out the creative solutions of the vengeance and the passion of thousands of governments obamacare sauce there are some people that are going to read that be like yeah i don't want to work here this is too playful it's nerdy it's dumb it's stupid whatever cool i'm glad we're not a fit because guess what when you work here you got to put up with me every day and i wrote that and that's kind of how i am like my you know mark mentioned earlier um or might have mentioned earlier this is my second recording by the way because i messed up my first one so if i didn't mention him forgive me but he's helping us with the operations and management he has to raid me and all the time on meetings um it's important for people to know what they're getting into give them a sense of your personality set the bar high we're the best google ad agency in the

[00:12:04] world we're the best i want the best peak performers want to work for the best and you need to be confident that you can reach that and if you want get there put yourself in a position to where hey we're working towards being the best so sell yourself this is about you and who you are and what it is that you have to offer them what we're looking for you'll notice that this isn't really a job description this is more uh 50 000 foot view so this isn't what they're gonna be doing every day um instead now here's hey we're looking for a new whatever it is graphic designer google ads specialist whatever look at me reminding them this is a remote position and it's a remi and i'm doing that again because when you're hiring internationally not everybody's used to this narrative yet as a matter of fact when we were hiring in india at a certain point a lot of the applicants kind of thought it was a scam they're like you're gonna

[00:12:51] let me work from home and we're like yeah google has three offices in india by the way some of the best talent you've ever seen so well trained so well tenured um just an amazing resource for us uh so make sure especially when you're hiring internationally that you remind them this is a remote position you're working from home that ends up there are a bunch of people by the way that can't do that they just can't function in that environment we'll get to how to read through them too so i'm going to explain 50 000 foot view of what the role does and is obviously my language is specific to my role make this specific to your role but but begin managing expectations here this is another soapbox i want to jump on a lot of people that try to especially when people are trying to hire offshore for some reason we built this weird story of the unicorn va who can do graphic design and video editing and manage

[00:13:40] traffic and build a website and call your mom and set appointments and and it's like no nobody can do that nobody can do that that person doesn't exist and if they do they're expensive you're not going to have them for a very long time have a specific job you want this person to do you are my client retention manager you are my onboarding manager you are my google ad specialist you are my graphic designer don't hire for 50 rolls and i see this so often especially with smaller companies they go try to hire and you know it's okay my graphic designer also does our video edits that's fine because we don't have enough graphic design work to justify the full-time role so jacqueline who god bless her is going to have to edit this video does our graphic design and our video editing those two things are closely enough aligned and our needs are broad enough to where that works but if we were if we were actually selling graphic

[00:14:32] design you'd want us one resource just for graphic design one resource just for editing because i don't need hardcore video editing but if i did it's unfair to ask somebody to be an expert in both of those things even even though they're closely aligned don't bundle resource requirements it's not fair to whoever it is that you're trying to put into this role these and a jack of all trades is just really difficult to get a hold of um so fifty thousand foot view salary growth opportunities this is the other thing that i think people do incorrectly especially with offshore talent you've heard the stories about the people who are like oh yeah i got my va in the philippines for 300 bucks and they do everything i need to do and they're awesome and then you they're not a person they're an email they're a repository for tasks realize that this is someone that wants growth too um i feel like we've sterilized

[00:15:27] this is gonna sound so dramatic but i'm just gonna say it i feel like we've sterilized the humanity of offshore labor uh don't do that you need to if you're especially if you're looking for peak performers people farmers in the philippines are just like people performers in the us are in canada they want to know what the growth opportunities is too and a lot of them a lot of the the the real badasses have been with the company for 10 years and the ceiling was immediate and they're they're pissed and of course they should be you need to let them know this is where you get to go so job title reinforce the job title start at this is important it's an important note let them know hey there's room for growth it starts at whatever it is and if you don't know what to pay by the way go look at all the other positions that are available in that geography for that role see what they're paying find the

[00:16:13] high water mark add 10 percent that which that's what you're paying pay more now you'll notice that i never ever ever ever ever never ever do a range and i don't do a range because a lot of and this is going to get dicey too but i'm just going to say what i say and then you guys can all cancel me my personal experience is that certain cultures aren't comfortable with or aren't as comfortable with negotiation um and sometimes it's to their credit you know maybe culturally they have a stronger commitment to politeness let's say if you give them a range it puts them in a position of discomfort where it's like oh gosh i'm going to go after and consult and or go on after and and negotiate and you know draw my sword and whatever it's been an issue in the past let them know this is where you're already 10 more than the the high water mark and you're already hiring peak performers so don't do that thing

[00:17:06] depending on experience this is what i'm paying i'm paying more than anybody else willing to pay because i want a badass um don't do the range make sure that they know it's usd too by the way that's also really important depending on where you're hiring from give them very specific people want to know how to win this is how you win you're going to work under a full-time client manager as you learn the trade you'll be assigned new clients slowly as you build your confidence you'll be great all my client managers are laughing at this right now because we're blowing up and so we're just throwing clients at newbies um with scaffolding with protection um but very clearly i'm a liar you'll be graded on your client retention and campaign performance here's how you win once you're managing a full slate you'll be promoted to a full client manager so this is the growth opportunity um strong opportunity for

[00:17:54] client managers who take and this by the way is very true one of our client managers regina she's managing and she's the executive director of a whole new business that we launched um so there's a lot of growth opportunity depending on the direction they want to go client manager can become a strategist um successful client managers are first in line for uh promotion to our strategy team um so let them know what you're going to pay what growth opportunities look like and then let them know what they need to be able to do this is three to five core proficiencies at absolute most if you have any more than three to five you're you you have two roles you're hiring for now um or more they need to know google ads kind of i don't need people to run google ads i need them to know it well enough to talk to clients about it uh they need to know client management obviously marketing strategy zoomed out i could

[00:18:44] honestly probably even remove this a little bit because if you know google ads you know client management you probably already know mark marketing strategy now problem solving i include this because our client managers are the biggest problem solvers that we have so i've got my three to five at four um you know you could maybe if i tossed in another one it might be like if let's say i was hiring offshore for this i i'm all of our client managers are in the us or canada so this isn't a big issue but let's say i was trying to hire offshore for this i'd say strong english proficiency for instance and then you're done don't have any more than that and obviously your ideal candidate description is going to be very different than mine because you're hiring for very different roles i'm just giving you an example here of the way that we have this outlined successful personality profile i actually don't use this anymore this is

[00:19:25] an old part of the template we used to have people fill out a personality quiz i stopped that i found it to be limiting and it got gray as to how it was how we were judging people and i didn't like that um so i took this out but i've still got it in the template if you want to use it you can use it make sure this is the section where you put your skunks on the table so if they have to speak english or or you know spoken and and written um if they're willing to work a u.s time zone if sometimes they have to work nights and weekends whatever it is what are all the reasons that somebody wouldn't want to work here put them out up front throw your skunks on the table protect yourself protect your time protect them this is a remote position you have to have really solid internet you have to have reliable power one of the things that we let everybody know is all of our jobs start with a 60-day trial period to make sure that

[00:20:23] we're the right fit for each other and i reiterate this in the interview by the way i say look let's say i hire you and god forbid for whatever reason two months from now we're not the right fit what happens if i are you walking away from a 10-year career you know your bird in the hand and i just ruined your life because i don't want to do that i don't want to take that risk and what's nice about it is then they assume the risk and they're like you know what that's a risk i'm going to take and here's why and now i feel better about myself um all your skunks on the table this can be really long by the way it doesn't matter let them know everything that that could potentially go wrong because that will help narrow this list down higher to your values this is worthy of some time as a young entrepreneur i always used to think like the whole mission statement listed values i always thought it was

[00:21:04] stupid i thought it was lip service and um i remember being a kid and working at mcdonald's it's one of my first jobs and uh when you're in the break room at mcdonald's they had this poster up on the wall of like our core values and it was all the all the routine things you know like integrity hard work teamwork and i remember being like that is definitely not true here you know there's people spitting in food and managers that were being conniving and rude and like put signing people up for the midnight shift just because they hated them and it was it was a horrible work place so i think that all of us had that experience where you've worked at a place or been exposed to a place that didn't serve their values and so it's it's created this um it's almost a red flag it's turned it into a joke the problem is is either you establish your values and hire and manage towards them or other people will do it for you

[00:22:02] so you you don't have the luxury of not establishing values all that will happen is you won't be in control of those um this isn't an academic pursuit this is one of the most important things you can do for your business know what your values are our values are threefold truth responsibility and love i say heart because love really turns people off for some reason it kind of like makes them uncomfortable like i'll say love and then instantly they're like oh my god who is this guy he's quite the hippie um whatever you should shift things up semantically just to make sure that you're not scaring people away but these are this is what makes up solutions eight this is what's important to us and these are the things that i manage to if i'm trying to build leaders in my community or our work community let's say really they could make all the decisions they need to make according to these three values what's true

[00:22:47] first and foremost and these aren't ordered hierarchically they're ordered chronologically though first what's true because that's no matter what it has to be true then what's the most responsible thing for us to do right now and then what would we do if we really cared about this person figure out what your values are what are your values hire to your values put them out there and here's what's really cool actually i wish i could share this we just hired a gentleman um as a client manager and i've known him for some time and he reached out to me uh i don't know if he wants me to share this so i'm not gonna share the screen but he actually reached out to me on messenger and he said let me just pull it up and read it to you um i saw your video i posted a video talking about needing needing help needing talent the thing i love uh about it most was the thing you said about truth responsibility and heart that you

[00:23:43] needed people committed to the truth be responsible but also care about care and but also karen you want to promote a culture where people are valued and honored i showed it to my partner and she said all caps oh my god you have to work there that is you um he's been here for three days and he's already an absolute total rock star i just got a slack message from the head of our our team saying oh this guy's amazing y'all values are so important put your values out there but then but then you have to commit to them don't become mcdonald's with their values up on the wall and not not adhering to them like you're going to make mistakes you're going to make slip ups that's fine make sure that your team knows what your values are and that you're hiring people against those values can't stress this one enough it's been so important to and for us and every single time we make a decision i get to

[00:24:32] point back to the values i get to point back to the values i get to almost blame the values for you know anything that we're doing that's hard or that's difficult or that's not popular now this is the secret sauce to apply remember at the very top where i said you have to read the instructions here are the instructions super clear spelled out and crayon if you're interested submit the following a link a link to your resume a link to your resume you wouldn't believe how many people attached their resume uh pdf format with the following naming convention this doesn't matter i could get an attachment in a doc format with a different naming convention it doesn't matter just give them a couple of really simple little hoops to jump through to make sure that they can follow instructions especially when you're working with somebody who's remote they're not in the office you need to make sure they have

[00:25:20] significant attention to detail one of the criticisms i got from somebody that i was sharing this with is you're precluding talent that is really good at a lot of things but doesn't have great attention to detail here's the problem in a remote work environment attention to detail is a prerequisite i understand how you could have employees you know in an in-office work environment who could let things slip through the cracks but they're amazing at whatever when you're remote this is non-negotiable as far as i'm concerned um so link to your resume in a pdf format with the following naming convention bam details of and then insert your role experience here right details of role experience here they now they don't have to necessarily have experience but you want them to speak to something that's applicable to what you're hiring for and this will be more or less necessary depending on the role that

[00:26:13] you're looking for if you're looking for an entry level role maybe you leave this out this is one of my favorites if you're an animal what animal would you be and why there's one answer i'm looking for that i instantly exclude any applicants if somebody goes humans are animals uh and it's always the smart ass that says this here's the problem you didn't intuit the spirit of the question and this is somebody that if i put you in front of one of my clients they'd rather be right than be successful because people are going to ask stupid questions or they're going to put you in a position where you can play gotcha um or you know you get to outmaneuver them i'm giving them the opportunity to kind of show me how you know sneaky they want to be um with their their intellectual parlor tricks um that's number one number two is you get to see a lot of creativity from some folks uh and you get to see the way they

[00:27:04] see themselves so if you're an animal animal would you mean why if somebody phones this in like you know i'll get applications all the time where it says dog that's not helpful to me put some heart into this freaking thing you know this is your very first foot forward if they're if they're not able to put any time into the application process they're not going to put time into into more important things that you want them to do on a day-to-day basis when it gets tedious right this is not something you should steal you should find your own there's a lebanese christian poet named khalil gibran who i've always loved he wrote the prophet i've got a bunch of copies somewhere anyway um i just get a big kick out of the guy he has this quote work is love made visible and i've always that's always really resonated with me because i feel like when you serve people in a business capacity i teach my children that money is a

[00:27:54] money is a representation of the value provided other people um and i've always wanted to find people that feel that way too like hey when we're working we're not here because we have to be we're here because this is how we bring value into the world and maybe that's a little dramatic and you know there's some i'm putting lipstick on a pig in some ways because if everybody had a billion dollars nobody would work and we all know that right but then they always say like figure out what you would do if you had a billion dollars and that's the thing you should be doing for a living but i like the idea that work is how you show workers how you show the world love and i'm using that word that makes people uncomfortable that's for me though that's for me so i asked people what does this mean to you personally my assistant julianne her response was so good i posted it to facebook and i was like and i hired her on the spot i was

[00:28:43] like this is amazing and i could just tell she was she was a phenomenal culture fit find the thing that means something to you there's a quote out there maybe maybe there's like a bible verse like whatever it is find the thing that that speaks to you on a soul level and put that out in front of people it's a little vulnerable right like it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about it and be like you know god this guy's kind of a sort of a weirdo um that's okay you're hiring people for you you're having people that are going to be a part of your organization you want to know how they feel about the things that matter to you submissions should go to i don't like hr portals because they inhibit my ability to do stuff like this so i have you know i'll do a custom email address it'll be like you know see i'm at solely.com or whatever but submissions go to this email this is important i'm looking for people

[00:29:30] that format their submissions in a way that makes it easy for me to review some people will follow all the instructions but they bundle it all in one paragraph that it's so hard to look at i don't want to that's again we're remote most of the communication that we have is going to be via email if you can't write a good email i'm not going to hire you sometimes i include this sometimes i don't it depends on how many applicants i expect if i think i'm going to get way too many i'll include this 90 of the applicants will not follow the instructions none of them will be considered that's true by the way it's nuts to see it's nuts you know it's sad actually sometimes i don't include this i also let them know hey i'm happy to answer questions we're humans so i'm asking people to jump to a ton of hoops now you're going to post this wherever is applicable if you're looking for a really specific role there's really

[00:30:20] specific job posting boards so you know if you're like i really need somebody that knows python there's a there's a couple of job posting boards just for python developers otherwise online jobs.ph is great for talon in the philippines freelancer is great for international talent a lot of uh south asia remote code's great for south america um linkedin is when we're hiring out of canada linkedin has been amazing indeed has also been really good flex jobs for people looking for uh flex and hire my mom i've had mixed experiences with these aren't the only job posting boards they're just a handful i don't like upwork i don't like upwork because it's a freelance community so you're taking a bunch of people who are used to making their money as freelancers and you're trying to get them as ftes that's not what you want to do go post your job posting to wherever is applicable and i'm gonna i'm gonna measure my statement here

[00:31:16] different regions will yield different levels of proficiency based off of what it is that you're looking for so you will find as a stereotype that certain areas have amazing developers but they're not great at creatives or amazing creative but they're not great at traffic management or you know amazing copy creation but they're not whatever and i realized the that's a rat's nest of a of a statement but i don't care because it's true um i'm not going to tell you what i think about each region because all that'll do is just get me in trouble but i will tell you that um you're going to find pockets you're going to find pockets where it's like oh my goodness this is awesome like this is a great place to go for this this thing and then you can narrow down your hiring based on on what it is that you're looking there and that kind of makes sense right like different areas focus on different um for a bunch of different reasons

[00:32:17] um you know maybe it's where the the universities happen to you know there's a bunch of school there or or it just so happened that a lot of that work ended up in that direction like for instance here's one that i don't mind design pickle which is the graphic design agency um started hiring out of the philippines which i think based on everything i've heard from russ who's the guy who started design pickle was kind of arbitrary he was like looking for offer talent ended up with a filipino graphic designer decided okay i'll just go there well now if you're looking for graphic design help there's a massive amount of graphic design help in the philippines and it's because design pickle kind of got the ball rolling so i'm not trying to be racist or prejudiced but i'm just letting you know that you are going to see common denominators behind where some of the successful talent is we see a lot of google ads proficiency in india

[00:33:04] because google went to india and started training a bunch of indians i'm um this is going to get me in trouble but i said it anyway uh the process you're going to post the job description to the job board depending on where you are in your career and whether or not you have help don't filter these submissions yourself it's long it's tedious it's arduous and it's easy worked out source so have a va filtered if you have a va anybody who's not qualified nixom anybody who didn't actually read the instructions anybody who didn't answer the questions properly anybody with crap formatting is gone here's the thing that i've run into in the past i will see a submission come through that i'm so excited about they have amazing experience they've worked for an agency that i really respect they had this awesome client they have like one of their answers blew me away but they didn't follow the instructions

[00:33:53] i don't i can't think of a single time when i've broken my rule and i've been rewarded for it if they didn't follow the instructions don't consider them period um disagree with me in the comments uh review a short list remove any candidates that aren't qualified now this is what you are doing by the way so your va did all this easy things for a va to do now you take the short list and you're like all right i don't feel like this person's right this person's right look at their resume by the way look at their resumes one of the things i look for is staying power it's like man you haven't been at a single job for longer than seven months you you scare me um that won't be like i won't nick somebody just for that especially in the gig economy but it's one of those things that you can use to to kind of call the herd you shouldn't have more than 10 finalists if you have more than 10 you might want to

[00:34:40] go back and start you know figuring out how to narrow down and you'll also potentially in the future put together one more hurdle um you know add something to the job description uh you know maybe like a personality tester or something that would push away a little bit more people um when you have your finalists and you know we don't always have ten by the way sometimes we have three for the last role that we hired for the technical writer we had three um do a trial project couple of notes this is paid this is paid you want to pay this because um especially folks offshore people are used to being taken advantage of i can't tell you how many horror stories i've heard about you know people getting a gig on freelance or something and doing a bunch of work and you know maybe they were getting paid uh for paid for their work over a period of time and then all of a sudden their employer decided like okay i'm kind of

[00:35:40] done with this and then they just ghosted them it happens all the time offshore labor is hypersensitive to being taken advantage of so pay them for the trial project and now when you're paying them you can actually it's helpful because you can hold them to a higher standard if you have people do a trial project they'll probably do it or you know at least some of them but you're going to note you always wonder like i wonder if you would have done better if actually paid you for this because they're kind of doing something for you so pay for the project and pay in advance here's a pro tip let's say you're gonna you know give them doesn't have to be significant by the way like like just let them know that you're you're putting skin in the game first so i'm gonna pay you 20 bucks to write this blog or you know ten dollars to do a little social image design or fifty dollars to create this campaign or whatever

[00:36:24] pay in advance here's what's interesting we were hiring just as an example the technical writers we shortlisted three we sent them each a payment for the trial project same child project two of them came back with the project one of them never did what a cheap way for me to learn that you're not necessarily aligned with my values you know like okay you got to steal 10 bucks for me or whatever it ended up being um i'd much rather learn that before i go you know put you in a position where you have access to all my clients so pay in advance it lets them know you respect their time and with offshore labor again you know my father's from pakistan and he tells me these horror stories about pakistanis employees and how like they again to stereotype but how they're like lured the the salary payment over people's heads and they're always late they're pushing it back and they make people beg for it and um you know just like really

[00:37:16] inappropriate work environment and a lot of employees are hypersensitive to that pay early pay often you like clockwork just make sure that they know they're not going to have to deal with that with you and this is the very first you get to establish the precedent now so you pay them ahead of time a couple of notes on the trial project don't tell them a due date instead say hey here's the project please let me know how long you think this is going to take and when you think you'll be done so how long is it going to take a number of hours and when anything going to be done how long is it going to take because you don't want them to inflate the time but you don't want them to underestimate either now you get to see how well do they manage expectations how long how well do they fulfill those expectations and then you get to see whether or not they you know if they say i'm gonna be done by friday at noon or

[00:38:00] whatever did they deliver friday at noon um we had a young man that we tried to hire for social media management and he promised something on friday never delivered on monday patients who runs our marketing team followed up and he said oh yeah i'm going to need until tuesday by the way can i have monday off because it's chinese new year or whatever and we're like all right this isn't gonna work um you're working with somebody in a remote environment so you need to make sure that they can actually deliver um and not just on their work output but also manage themselves manage communication you know update you on what's going on and that's such a great opportunity to see like how well do they communicate do they follow up um do they give me a progress report i like to do some things like all you know let's say that they need to log into canva or whatever in order to get access to the design assets

[00:38:45] that we want them to to modify i'll send them the wrong username and password and then you know let's say they said i'll have this done by you know friday at noon if we get an email friday at 11 am saying oh the password doesn't work now i know okay you're somebody who leaves things to the last minute um use the trial project as an opportunity to see not just what how well they're going to do the job you're hiring them for but how well they work you know what the work process is like when you have remote employees this is really important um i don't make people track time i don't do any screen shotting of desktops and yeah i know like sometimes somebody's gonna just check out and go watch netflix or take the dog for a walk or go take a long lunch that's good that's what we're like the remote autonomous free work environment that you're offering is what attracts your peak performer don't put them in a position

[00:39:37] where they feel like they're a cog on a wheel or you're not going to get peak performers once the trial project is done you should kind of know who it is that you're going to hire and by the way don't tell me that you can't build a trial project for something i don't care what the role is except for maybe sales you should be able to build a trial i'd be really really shocked if somebody can hit me in the comments if you think you have a role that you can't create a trial project for i challenge you to drop that and i'm not saying that i'm going to win every single time i'll just be interested in seeing this once you're done and you've paid them for the trial project and they've delivered now you're going to do the interview if you even need to do the interview yo we've hired straight at our trial projects like oh we found our assassin um in case that's not the case here's your interview template

[00:40:22] thank you so much make sure you acknowledge the fact that they followed the instructions and that the bar was set high bring up something ultra specific and make this heartfelt by the way this needs to be human you just made them jump through hoop after hoop after hoop after whoever now you need to bring it back down to humanity and say hey look i really love the fact that you said you'd be a dolphin because whatever like connect on a personal level um let them know i think you'd be an excellent fit for the role which by now by the way should absolutely be true everybody that you have should be an assassin let them know we're going to schedule an interview we want to do face to face this is really important a lot of people don't like this they don't like having their camera on that's a problem at least for me that's a problem i'm i need to be able to see you i need you to be on zoom i need you to have your camera enabled and

[00:41:12] so you know different people from different countries and different cultures have different feelings on this my feeling is i you have to be comfortable with this if we're going to be working together remotely and so this kind of helps me weed out folks that have a massive issue with that i give them a link a scheduling link but i don't let them i don't give them a conference link instead i say you choose the video conferencing tool and then you send me instructions on how to use the tool to this email address treat me like someone who's technical proficiency you're unsure of don't treat me like an idiot but send me and by the way they can choose whatever they want google needs zoom this is also you just want to make sure that a remote employee can go and solve a quick problem this is just a quick problem hey where should we meet oh google meets here's how to use it um if you're hiring somebody who's working

[00:42:03] remote they have to be they have to be self-directed enough to do this if you have somebody who comes back to like oh my goodness well we could use zoom if you have zoom installed but is go to meeting okay and like like you just need to you need to get over the folks that need to be directed with every little thing because they're going to be very difficult employees to manage remotely um especially if you don't have like you know a a assembly line type role that you're hiring for um once you've scheduled here this is the least important part of the process the interview doesn't matter hire who you like i like to ask people where they see themselves in five years and by the way i don't mind hiring people that are like oh i want to start my own agency that's great entrepreneurs are great i've helped people start their agency i refer them work now um i just want to know i just want to know like

[00:42:51] what's your vision for yourself like in the future is there anything that i can do to help is there a way that we can align ourselves so that our growth trajectories are the same this is a question that i have to ask a lot and this generally ends up being true because you're hiring performers you're going to find people that are like dude you could run this company i'm afraid you're overqualified let me know why that's not an issue and you know if you're paying a lot more than other people are paying you're going to get a lot of overqualified people but bring that up early and often uh because here's the other thing is you know sometimes people are going to get bored in a role that's too lowly for them so if you bring this up in the interview process it now pushes the onus of responsibility onto them to you know a bring their a game and then b when they are ready to move on you've at least highlighted this fact

[00:43:43] how long is this 43 minutes holy cow i thought this was going to be a lot faster um your people are the most important part of your business give them freedom support autonomy uh especially now like though it's it's easy to freelance it's easy to find a job like the whole all i do anytime i go out which is an often but anytime i drive around i see nothing but like help wanted signs you know i might the the grocery store by my house is paying 20 bucks an hour or something close to that like like it's you know and i realized that we just printed 40 more money that's ever existed so a lot of that's just inflation but it's also i mean my first job was four dollars for 15 cents that's how old i am um it's a it's a buyer's market seller's market whatever it's an employee's market it's an employee's market and you have to be an employer that they want to work for um so build an environment and an ecosystem

[00:44:44] that supports that for my agency owners i don't know if this is true for everybody if you're hiring for an agency no you're not going to have people for longer than two years generally speaking in two years is a long time you can't inhibit their growth you know i hear some of my buddies talking about how to keep people and slapping golden handcuffs on them and all that stuff and i mean there's something to that i try to do that too i wanna i wanna keep my my best people around for as long as i possibly can but if somebody wants to leave support them because otherwise all that's gonna they're still gonna do it but then they're gonna do it behind your back and and that's going to hurt worse so you know we've had employees leave to start their own thing and i make sure i make a show of it like i let people know like hey this is awesome what my my uh buddy colin schmelbach he just we just did a youtube video together he

[00:45:32] left and and and started his own agency he gave me six months notice super generous really appreciated it it let me transition all of his clients over let make sure everything was you know kosher uh uh he gave us insight into the accounts that he was managing like it was so helpful that versus two weeks night and day so when he did it i made sure to make a really big show out of like oh man that's awesome let me help and support you and here's what's really interesting i had a young man who worked for me years and years ago his name is donish um donish rolled off started his own agency left in all the right ways we stayed friends he ended up getting a client who's a massive name you've read all of you've read his books is all i'm going to say obviously for reasons i can't tell you who it is but danish was like oh this is more than i can handle and then refer them back to me i promise you these people that

[00:46:24] outgrow you they just become part of your network and if you treated them right and helped them they're going to remember you and when they outgrow you and become bigger and better than you you're going to benefit from that too because you'll start eating from the scraps at their table so i'd be really careful about trying to imprison your employees give them growth opportunities and growth paths and then when they outgrow you support them in that because you're only going to benefit from it long term what else do i want to say i'd love to learn from you here too there's things that i don't know i think i've built a pretty good work environment but you know i'm sure there's everybody's my biggest fear is that i'm michael scott or bill lumberg and nobody's telling me you know and i know they're employees that just like can't stand the sound of my voice but um for the most part i think we've done a

[00:47:14] pretty damn good job and i've got some people that i'm just like just adore and i'm so grateful for but i could learn and i know there's always room for improvement so if you if you've watched this is my secret now this is like my secret sauce y'all this is the thing that i'm most proud of so if there's holes here or things that i can improve upon please let me know um so i i'm a little less concerned with you know making people jump through hoops because people that are proactive and reach out and say hey i want to work there they they tend to be a little bit more um just closer to the short list i guess is all so anyway i'm going on too long i hope this is helpful i'd love to know from you whether or not this was a value and i'm rooting for you i'm rooting for your business i think the most important thing that we can do as entrepreneurs is build environments where other people can really give their gifts

[00:48:04] there's something like truly magic about that you know um it's a it's a it's a trust that we're given and i'm really proud of it i employ 70 people john and i are approaching 70 anyway and i still kind of look at that marvel um feels good and it it has just served me you know like i've benefited from it greatly so um yeah everybody that works for me smarter than i am and better than i am in every way and that's a platitude i used to hear and i'm like alright well that's some hoorah that people just say no that's definitely true it's definitely true um anyway thanks so much for watching i shoot a video today i'll see you tomorrow wait before you go i'm constantly looking for amazing people to come join our team so if you're passionate about google ads and you're passionate about customer success please go to solate.com forward slash apply and we'd love to see you as a part of the solutions 18. also if you like

[00:49:03] this video give us a thumbs up it lets the youtube algorithm know that we actually know what we're doing and uh don't forget to subscribe we shoot a video every single day and i don't want you to miss out on any of it lastly if you have questions comments concerns confessions or you just hate my face my voice go ahead and hit us up in the comments we get very little human interaction and even the heckling is something that i kind of get a kick out so thank you so much for watching thank you for being subscribers if you're a subscriber don't forget to apply if you're interested in working at solutions8 otherwise i'll see you tomorrow