If you need to hire someone for your small business —whether it’s your first part-time bookkeeper or your 10^th full-time employee — it’s a good sign. It means you’re growing, you’re delegating, and you’re thinking big-picture about your business.

But it can also be pretty scary, whatever stage of business you’re at, to bring a new person in. We all know how the dynamics of a small group can change with the introduction of just one new personality, and how it just takes one rotten apple to spoil the whole bunch.

These 5 mistakes can not only make you look plenty dumb, they can also screw up your business for months or even years — if you hire the wrong person.

1. Talking too much about the job

The first interview is for you to get a feel for the person, and if you spend all of your time talking about the work the person will be doing, you’ve lost a big opportunity. Of course they can do the work, and there are lots of other people who can do the work, too, but there’s much more to it, if they want to work for you — right?

Instead, during the first interview, talk about your company philosophy and culture, and how important it is to the success of the team — even if the team at this point is only you. If the applicant seems bored or wants to “get on with it,” you’ll know they’re not for you. The ideal person will love to hear about how the company “ticks” and will be hanging on every word, will be chomping at the bit to be part of it.

You have a lot to offer, so get into the nitty gritty with them, tell them about how you started the business, talk about the growth of the company, anything but the job at hand. Save the details of the job for later in the interview or even subsequent interviews. Pay close attention to their interest in your company, not just in the job.

Hiring someone who just wants “a job” is a pretty dumb thing to do.

2. Not finding out what the person does in her spare time

What people do in their spare time speaks volumes.

Captain C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger, who made the emergency landing in the Hudson River in January, 2009, saving the lives of all 155 people on board, got his pilot’s license when his friends were getting their driver’s licenses. For fun, he flew glider planes. In his spare time, he was an Accident Investigator for the Air Line Pilots Association and worked with federal aviation officials to improve training and methods for evacuating aircraft in emergencies. There was a darn good chance he was the perfect person for the job of landing that aircraft in the river.

Do you think that a person who loves to have parties and entertain friends will be a better receptionist than a person who likes to spend her free time sitting at home, knitting? People who can use their natural talents and preferences in their work will be much better suited for, and happier in, their work — and what they do in their free time gives clues.

Hiring someone who won’t be able to use their natural abilities in their position is a dumb idea.

3. Not finding out why they want the job

Even if it seems obvious, ask why they want the job. It’s amazing what people will tell you.

• “I’m just biding my time until I get out of school.
• “I want to learn how you do it so I can start my own business as soon as I can.”
• “I have a lot of bills to pay off.”

Not good answers. And these are real, actual answers people have given to me, in job interviews at my company.

• “I’m looking for a place where I can be comfortable, do good work, and contribute.”
• “I’ve always dreamed about having a job like this.”
• “I really like what you do, I think I can fit in here, and I’m very familiar with the work.”

Pretty good answers. Also real, actual answers people have given to me, in job interviews at my company.

You want to know they’re thinking about contributing and sticking around awhile.

And you can tell if people are trying to impress you with their answers, too, so be on the alert for that.

Context makes a difference, too. “I just want to make a lot of money,” may be a great answer if you’re hiring a sales person on commission (provided other things align as well), but not if you’re hiring a personal assistant.

It’s so easy to ask people why they want the job, that it would be pretty dumb not to.

4. Not calling references

Okay, this is a no-brainer. Ask for references and contact them. I really don’t know what she was thinking, but a woman I almost hired gave me the name of a friend of mine as a reference. When I called him, he said, “I can’t talk about her, my lawyer told me not to.”

Do you think I hired her? I did not. That would have made me look pretty dumb.

5. Hiring after the first interview

Two years ago I was asked to review and “shape up” a team of 12 for an entrepreneur who was pretty hands-off in her management style. She was stumped as to why several of her team members weren’t working out — after all, as she told me about one of her hires, “she was so great in the first interview, I hired her right then and there!” And that’s the problem, actually.

I think it’s important to have several interviews with the same person — and not to hire from one interview. The person may not present the same later, and you may get fresh insights from different meetings. This also gives you time to see how you really feel about the person and if any red flags pop up. Ask different but similar questions at each interview to see how consistent the prospective employee is. See if they’re impatient with this process. If they are, drag it out even more. Let them know how important hiring the right person is to you. You need people who can follow your cues and align with your thinking. It’s difficult to figure all that out in one meeting.

This one really makes you look dumb — especially if it’s pretty obvious a short time into it that you hired the wrong person, just because you were in a hurry.

So you know what to do, right? Avoid these 5 mistakes. You’ll be way ahead of the game when it comes to hiring the right person for your business — and you’ll look anything but dumb.

 Q.

“I’ve heard you talk about the energy of business and how important it is to attract clients to you instead of pushing yourself on them. But how do I do this? I want to take action and when I hear things like this, it makes me think you want me to sit in a lotus position and meditate to get clients. That doesn’t seem realistic to me!”

A.

I love this question! And of course, you’re right on both counts.

I do think it’s important to attract clients to you and not push yourself on them — does anyone really like cold calls or pushy sales people? I used to force myself to do cold calls and I can tell you it was the worst part of my day. I know the energy I projected while doing them was forced, and it came through on the calls. It’s no surprise I wasn’t very successful at it.

And, you’re right again, attracting clients to you is way more than meditating. It involves 4 things:

1.) being very clear about the kind of clients you want to attract
2.) being as authentically attractive as you can be to the kind of clients you want to attract
3.) being visible to the kind of clients you want to attract
4.) being aware of the energy you project around this entire subject

1.) Be very clear about the kind of clients you want to attract

I can still picture myself gritting my teeth as I took direction from a particular client in the early days of my graphic design firm. I did not like the man, but I thought I wanted the work. He was intrusive and pushed his religious beliefs on me. He was arrogant and over-inflated his ability to get me connected to important people, and I fell for it. The work he promised me was soooo alluring . . . and of course, it ended up costing me money in the end. When I moved my office recently, I threw out boxes and boxes of the greeting cards I designed for him that never sold.

When I started being intentional about the people I wanted to work with, I was amazed at how often I’d lowered my standards and worked with people I didn’t really respect, just because I wanted the work. As I look back, the outcome of the work I did with people I didn’t respect or work well with was never my best, anyway. Funny how that works out.

Who do you really want to work with? Do you have a preferred client profile, not just by industry or niche, but by personality and working style of the individual you want to work with? Think about it — if you go back to your most successful projects and client situations, does a pattern appear? Don’t your favorite clients have pretty much the same things in common? Don’t those attributes make you want more clients like them? Write this stuff down while you’re thinking about it.

2.) Be as authentically attractive as you can be to the kind of clients you want to attract

Like attracts like, right? It’s funny how many business owners miss this part, and I did too. We want these fabulous clients, but aren’t really that great to work with ourselves. You have to ask, “What kind of people do my ideal clients want to work with? What attributes are they looking for?” Make a list and compare yourself to it — how do you stack up? I have to admit there were many times when I fell short and these two lists did not align.

I used to be late for meetings . . . a lot. Heck no, I’m not proud of it, but I’m trying to make a point here: I wanted clients who respected me, but in reality, I wasn’t really respecting them. Several of them called me on it, too. I’m sure I could go into my other faults, but what I really want you to get out of this particular point is — do you have some work to do to match up with your ideal client? If she’s looking for her ideal, do you qualify? And remember, we’re talking about being authentically attractive here, so no putting on airs or personas. I’ve had to do some work, for sure. Heavy, huh?

3.) Be visible to the kind of clients you want to attract

Okay, here’s where the rubber hits the road: you’ve got to get out there where your ideal client can see you. Consistently. This is your action step.

Where does your ideal client hang out? Is this an in-person kind of visibility you need, like old-fashioned networking, or do you need to be digitally visible, with social media? Or both? Or maybe you need to create some buzz with PR, or get out and speak — there are lots of ways to be visible to your ideal client. Just make sure all this work you’ve done to match your ideal client to you is presented in the right places — you have to be strategic about it — and that you’re sending the right signals.

4.) Be aware of the energy you project around this entire subject

So now we’re back full circle to the question of energy again. Your energy is real. People can feel it. And whether you’re conscious of it or not, you use it every day in your business.

You’ve heard that if you talk to your plants, they’ll be healthier and grow better. It’s been scientifically proven with special cameras that can photograph the energy fields of the plant.

During experiments conducted by Russian-born physicist Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, when a plant was exposed to “dangerous intentions,” its energy field got smaller. When intentions were positive, as when people came to the plant with a pot of water or even just a smile, the energy field of the plant increased.

If our emotions and intentions can affect plants this much, how much can they affect the people we want to work with — our clients and the people we want to have as clients? If a plant can tell if our intentions are right, and if it will increase its energy field because of our emotions, just think of the implications this has for business and our interaction with clients!

This strategy grows over time

So, while it’s not a quick fix and you’re not going to attract a new client tomorrow with this advice, I do believe “pull” marketing strategies are much more fruitful in the long run than “push” marketing strategies, and if you follow the steps above, you’ll see there’s much more to it than sitting around contemplating your navel all day.

And I think you’ll also find, like anything else in life that’s worth it, it takes time, but the positives far outweigh any frustrations. You probably didn’t gain the trust and loyalty of your partner overnight, or any other significant relationship.

And that’s what we’re talking about here, isn’t it? Relationships?

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Q.

“I don’t really know how to do marketing for my own business — I avoid it because it makes me feel uncomfortable. I’ve always gotten business by referral in the past, but I can’t count on that for regular business anymore. How can I start to effectively market myself without feeling like I’m being pushy, which then makes me apologetic and ultimately ineffective?”

A.

This is a really great question, and it has got to be one of the things I have to reinforce most in my clients — the real reason you owe it to yourself and your clients to market your business. Most small businesses have a problem with this . . . even marketing firms who create marketing campaigns for clients feel some degree of “ickiness” about promoting themselves.

Why you feel icky about marketing

First of all, why does the thought of marketing your company make you uncomfortable? It’s because marketing has gotten a bum rap. It’s all those years of dinner-time telemarketers and used car salesmen and people pushing products and services on you that you don’t want or need, and the strong desire you have to not be like those people and/or companies.

Well, you don’t have to be.

You can market differently. You can market with integrity.

What is marketing? 

When you think about what marketing really is, you realize you have a choice — and you don’t have to take the icky route.

Marketing is simply getting what you have to offer in front of people who don’t know what you have to offer. And if you do it correctly, marketing is getting what you have to offer in front of people who want what you have to offer. 

It can also be getting your ability to solve a problem in front of people who want the problem solved. 

There’s no pushing or coercing involved.

It’s like if you had extra potatoes

When we all grew our own food (no, I’m not that old, I’m being hypothetical here), there was no need for food marketing. If you needed potatoes, you grew potatoes. But what if you had extra land and extra potato seeds and one year you decided to grow extra potatoes for other people in your community — how would you let them know you had the potatoes?

You might decide to put them in a wagon and take them to the town square. (Because you grew these potatoes before the Internet and had no other means of distribution.) As a service to your neighbors, you would take the potatoes “to market” (hence the term marketing) so they would know you had them available. Maybe you’d find a piece of wood and write “Potatoes” on it so people could see your wagon and know what you had in it.

And if you were really helpful, you might yell, “Potatoes! I have potatoes!” every once in awhile so your neighbors could scurry over and take advantage of your bounty. They’d be so pleased you did this (because they needed to feed their families), that they would pay you well for your potatoes. You did them a service by taking your potatoes to market and letting them know they were available.

Everyone wins. No one feels icky.

You’re actually doing your prospective clients a favor when you let them know about the availability of your products and services

Have you ever searched for something you wanted to buy and not been able to find it? Sure you have. When you finally did find it somewhere, did you feel like you stumbled on a best-kept secret? Did you feel like telling the shop owner he should advertise more so people could find him? Yes? Would that marketing have felt icky to you, or would you have been grateful for it? I think you can see what I’m getting at.

Marketing that is authentic and correctly done is a service to the customer. And, businesses that don’t market themselves are doing a disservice to their customers by making their offerings difficult to find.

So think of potatoes the next time you think about marketing your company. Remember that someone is looking for your service — how can you get what you do “to market” so people can find you, in a genuinely helpful manner? What can you do that would make them feel grateful instead of icky?

When you’re putting together your plan, just leave the ickiness out.

Do your clients truly value your work, allowing you to charge what you’re worth, and trusting you to do more for them?

You may think you’re describing your work’s true value in conversations with clients, when you’re really not. They may not be getting it.

If you don’t think they place enough significance on what you do, it may be because you’re not communicating well enough — and if that’s the case, you can’t blame them for not knowing.

It’s not your clients, it’s you.

This takes digging and thinking and putting some meat on the bones of how you talk to clients. It may be more you, ahem, than them.

Take a look at these five ways you may be talking about your work that stop clients from placing more value on it:

1.) You may be doing work you don’t believe in. If you’re not well placed in your work or if you’ve chosen the wrong niche — if you really feel you should be a dog trainer instead of the copywriter you are (but you became a copywriter because it was the path of least resistance), or if you should be working with authors instead of executives — it’s going to show in your work. It’s going to show in the way to talk about how you serve your clients. And it’s not going to sound as valuable as you think it does.

You’ve got to be passionate about what you do in order to interest people in working with you — you’ve got to be so passionate that they can’t help but see the value in it. If you can’t be passionate about your work, find a way to be passionate about the way you deliver it.

2.) You may be offering what you think your clients need instead of what they actually want. People value what they want, not what you think they need — it’s that simple. The first rule of marketing success is to find a starving market, not to provide something and then talk people into buying it. Do you know what your clients really want?

3. You may be talking from your point of view instead of your client’s. Things often look very different from the client’s point of view — have you put yourself in his shoes? Have you put your offer in language that shows you understand what he’s up against? I love the C.S. Lewis quote, “What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you’re standing.” Yeah, and the same goes for what you value.

4. You may be doing what everyone else is doing, or saying what everyone else is saying. Do you blend in with the crowd? Does your message sound exactly like your competitors’ messages? Do you “exceed customer expectations” or help your clients “get to the next level,” “live the life of their dreams,” or blah blah blah blah blah . . . Nobody values that stuff. Heck, no one even hears it anymore.

5. You may be telling them what you are instead of what you can do for them. Do you tell people you’re a coach or a web designer and leave it at that? Very few clients are looking for people with titles. Most clients are looking for solutions to their problems, results, transformations, or things that will make them feel great.

If you think you’re doing pretty well on this list and your clients still don’t value what you do, well, it may be time to look elsewhere in the client pool. Or find something else to do that people will value.

This TED video was sent to me by one of my readers, Kay Rosburg of Dever Designs. She said it distilled for them the way they need to market themselves to potential clients, and that it touches on some of the things I articulate in my webinars and materials, just presented differently.

It’s a fabulous video, and as Kay went on to say, it’s well worth the 18 minute length.

The message is clear

The speaker, Simon Sinek, is so clear with the language he uses to express his leadership philosophy that it can leave no doubt as to what he means — and what you should take away from his talk.

It’s so simple that most of us miss it.

It’s simple yet very profound. It’s nothing new, yet he puts a new, fine point on it. And just in case you miss his meaning, he thankfully repeats himself many times.

Here are the main points of Sinek’s talk for business owners:

• inspired leaders think and act from the inside out, from the why to the what

• people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it

• the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe (not, who want to buy what you offer)

• the goal is to hire people who believe what you believe (not, who have specific skills or experience)

• people will do the things that prove what they believe (which means they may or may not buy from you — depending on what they already believe, and what you communicate)

• true leaders inspire us

Wonderful, wonderful lessons here. Watch the video. Take the lessons to heart.

Thank you, Kay.

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Business Conundrum #35

Q. One of the reasons I started to read your stuff more seriously is because you admit that you sometimes didn’t know what you were doing in running your business, and that you’ve felt like a fraud at times. I really resonate with that — but I find it so difficult to talk about it.

I’m in a very competitive industry where it could damage my business to admit that sort of thing, and even though it hit me between the eyes when I read your words, I often don’t even admit it to myself. I need to take risks, but how can I get past the fear and isolation that sometimes creeps up on me, that “Oh my God, what did I get myself into? I hope I can pull this off,” fever I sometimes get when putting myself out there?

PowerSmarts #35

A. This question is actually a combination of questions I’ve heard from several people this past month. And each time it’s come up, in very confidential conversations, I can tell the person I’m talking to is revealing something so personal, and they’re positive there must be something wrong with them for feeling this way. That they’re “less than” or lacking in some way.

And when I tell them how often I hear what they’ve just told me — which is quite a bit — they’re dumbstruck, and thankful to know they’re not alone.

Far from it. There are a lot of us out there who have felt exactly the same way.

I’ve learned a lot about small business owners by working with you, talking with you, supporting you, and being one of you — but most of all by being honest with you. Sharing my fears and failures, as well as my successes, and what I learned from them is the only way I know to answer your questions and teach you what I’ve learned. And because I know that no one can know everything, I also know that you probably know quite a bit — you just may have a few gaps here and there to fill in. It’s really not a big deal. But let’s look at what is a big deal.

Here’s what is really important:

You started a business. You had an idea, and you ran with it. Against the odds, and against the advice of probably quite a few people, you stuck your neck out to do something you believed in — and you made it work. That’s really something! Not everyone will or can do that. You did.

You are a business owner. You made something out of nothing. You’re making commerce! It’s the ultimate creative act. (Well, it’s at least one of them.) Do you know how many people have great ideas and then never do anything with them? But you, you did something with your ideas.

I know, you have some bugs to work out, but you’re working on it, right? If you’re reading this, chances are you’re working on your business. So that’s more points for you.

Dang, you’re good.

So now back to the question: how can you deal with the fear and isolation that sometimes creeps up on you, that “Oh my God, what did I get myself into? I hope I can pull this off,” fever you sometimes get when putting yourself out there?

First, you say to yourself, “Dang, I’m good.”

Then, you remember that Marcia told you you’re not that unusual, and all business owners feel like that at one time or another.

And then you buckle down and work like heck to do the best job you can, learning and growing from each new experience. So that the next time you say to yourself, “Oh my God, what did I get myself into?” it will be a bigger stretch, a bigger opportunity, with bigger rewards.

And you will do just fine. Because you are a business owner. And you know how to make something out of nothing.

It’s my Holiday Coaching Spree!

And I only do it once a year.

For the past 2 years, during the month of December, I’ve opened up my time to give complimentary Laser Coaching sessions to people on my email list — as many as I could fit in.

Last year, I added low-cost Holiday Coaching to up to 8 people, as my holiday gift to you. This special 4-session package is only offered at this time of year, to a limited amount of people.

I’m doing it again this year, and I’ve added something brand new! A never-before-offered 61% discount on my individual coaching sessions — that means my new Spot Coaching sessions will save you almost two-thirds over what you’d normally spend. But only for a limited time.

If you’ve been looking for a way to work with me in an introductory way, or a way to add low-cost sessions to your current or past coaching with me, this Holiday Coaching Spree is the answer.

Go here to learn more now — spaces are filling up!