You’re an entrepreneur. You just started a business, and you’re asking the question everybody struggles with. “Who do I hire as my first employee?” Do I hire somebody in sales, marketing, operations, accounting, finance, product development, legal? Who do I hire first? Answering that question when hiring your first employee is a very simple answer. But before I answer that question for you, you have to keep one thing in mind. If you’re a startup entrepreneur that’s already funded, the group that gave you the money expects you to have a team together. Why? Because they’re not going to give you the money without knowing what type of team you have. So I’m assuming that I’m talking to a group that doesn’t have money today. You’re without money, and trying to stretch every dollar. You wear multiple hats. You’re the CEO, CFO, COO, CMO and more. You do every single thing in the company. It just so happens that your business card says, “CEO.” So who do you hire first?
Hiring Your First Employee
Look, you have a lot of departments. And a lot of people have an opinion about who to hire first. For me, it's a very simple thing to process and think about.
Opposing Strengths
Look at it this way. If a football team already has a strong quarterback, are they going to get another quarterback? No. If a basketball team already has a very, very strong center, are you going to go get another center? No. If you're running a business, whatever your strength is, the first person you hire is your opposing strength. Here's what I mean by opposing strength. Most salespeople who are very, very good in sales are not necessarily good in operations. And people that are very good in operations, are generally not very good in sales. Most people that are incredible at product development don't like to be around a lot of people, so they need sales. In contrast, if you're a great salesperson like Ray Kroc, but you don't know what product to develop, you need someone that's good at product development. Let's say you're someone who's very good with money. Maybe you even have money, but you don't have an idea. In that case, perhaps you meet up with someone in product development. The point I'm making to you here is the first person to hire is someone with your opposing strength.
Building a Team
When it comes to who to hire first, here's another thing to think about. In the game of sports, everybody that builds a team generally builds it around their philosophy of the most important thing to invest their money into. Let me explain what I mean by this. Some teams build around one player. For instance, for the Chicago Bulls, it's Michael Jordan. He was the main player. Then they brought on supporting cast to be around him. The San Antonio Spurs built around a system instead of one personality, one player.
Your Business Philosophy and System
I don't know the philosophy and system on which you'll build your business. But I can tell you that whoever you choose as your first person to hire determines what you value the most. Often the most logical and organized people, like the administrative folks think they need financial and accounting first. Or they may think they need product development only. Sometimes they focus so much on logic, they forget they need sales. And if you don't have someone selling, you won't have a high volume of revenue coming in. And if there are no sales, you're done. Right?
My Focus
Here's my focus. I like to hire sales first. When I first got started, I was sales first and marketing. Sales and marketing is me. So guess what I needed? I needed admin. And I partnered up with product development, someone who designed the products that I needed, because without product development, I don't have a product to sell. And I needed admin. Then I got a higher level of finance and accounting.
Application
To apply this to your own business, first take out a sheet of paper. Write down the answer to the question, "What is my strength?" And then, "What are the opposing strengths that I need?" Then, go recruit that person. Hire that person. And stop hiring people that are just like you. It's cool and fun to be around people like you. That's maybe good in friendship, but not when you're running a business. You have to make sure the person you decide to hire first is done in a very, very proper way, or you won't be in business for long. You'll run out of money and have to go back to having a job.
Why You Should Subscribe to Valuetainment
Let me make a case for why I believe you need to subscribe to Valuetainment, and also join the notification squad. Look, there's two ways you can learn about business. One of the ways is to go to college and learn a bunch of theories by professors who have probably never ran a business before. Or you can watch Valuetainment, ran by entrepreneurs that have built and sold businesses. You can learn from our mistakes and what we did right. And by the way, I'm willing to bet anybody that the person that watches Valuetainment instead of going the boring college route will beat the person that goes to college.