Look for confidence
Diamond and Deshe needed to have confidence when they started a business that no one had heard of before. When your mission is a simple one, it becomes a lot easier to explain it to the masses and exhibit confidence when doing so. In the case of SafeAuto, the vision was to provide minimum auto insurance coverage for minimum budgets.
“We were very focused at the onset of being the best in our line of business and not trying to be everything to everybody,” Diamond says. “We have never varied from that core mission.”
The two men had confidence that this simple idea could serve as the foundation on which to build their business and attract the kind of employees they were looking for. They wanted that same kind of brash confidence to be an attribute of every person in the organization.
You can get a read on confidence during the first interview with a job candidate.
“I’ve always seen in my experience that the way you handle yourself and your ability to convey a message is important,” Diamond says. “If you can do that, you can sell any product or service. When I look for potential in people, I look at them and how successful they are at selling themselves to me. If they are successful selling themselves to me, whatever job function I give them, they could be successful in it.”
The point is, if you’re the one doing all the talking in the interview, that’s not a good thing. It just doesn’t show much confidence.
“It’s a two-way interview,” Deshe says. “It’s not just that we ask the questions and they give us the answers. We can learn a lot by the kind of questions that they ask of us, of the company and of our background. We can see to what extent they have done their homework. Are they interested? Do they really know anything about our company or are they just applying for a job just for the heck of applying for a job?”
You want to get a dialogue started. The candidate asks a question and shows interest to you. You respond and show the candidate that the business means a lot to you and the confidence in both of you grows. The energy becomes contagious and that’s how ideas are born and how a business moves forward.
Once someone is on board, you also need to take a lead role in feeding that energy and showing confidence in what you’re doing as an organization.
“Heads of the company, they are the moral compass of that enterprise,” Diamond says. “You really have to take that role very seriously. People want to believe in the vision of the principles. Ari and I are very fortunate that, together, we make up a team of business owners that share the same principles and values and it permeates our entire organization.”
Take advantage of the pressure and the scrutiny that comes with being a leader and give the people who are watching you something positive to see and feed off of in a good way.
“You are under the microscope much more today than in the past for every action that you take as a business owner,” Diamond says. “Ari and I have always believed that we should we walking in the same shoes as our management team in order to gain the kind of credibility and loyalty that you want from your key people.”
