Hire the right people
As a potential investor, Geiger once met with an entrepreneur to
learn about the man’s business. During the meeting, Geiger continually looked at his watch and checked e-mail on his BlackBerry, and he
finally decided to get honest.
“Do you love this business?” he asked.
“Well, of course I do,” the entrepreneur replied.
“Well it’s not obvious to me,” Geiger said to him. “This is something
that should be your mistress, your addiction. This is something that
you should consume me with your passion and draw me in with your
emotion and your love of this thing. You sound bored when you’re
talking to me about it.”
The lesson learned is that if you want to attract other people to your
business, you have to be excited about it yourself. The more enthusiastic you are and the more success you see, the more other people
will want to get on board with that.
“There’s an allure there that you’ve been successful, and you’ve done
it in the right way, and you’ve not detracted but attracted more people, so I like to think of it as an expanding tent and welcoming more
and more people into the tent,” Geiger says.
As you welcome people into your company,
you have to make sure that they will fit with
the culture that you’ve created. For instance,
Geiger says that across his senior leadership
team, spirituality is important. While his team
varies from Hindu to Catholic to Muslim to
Baptist, the common thread is a spiritual rooting, so he feels it’s important to have someone
who will mesh with that. Additionally, balance and prioritizing family is important to
his team members, as is giving back to the
community with their time, skills and talent.
“Those aren’t things that we don’t necessarily say, ‘If you don’t do that, you’re not going
to be successful,’ but what we focus on is if
those are things that are appealing to you, we
think we’ll be more compatible and therefore
work together as a team better,” he says.
While you’re looking to see if people will
match with your culture, you also owe it to
them to be completely honest about what
your culture is like and what you expect of
them as a team member if they were hired.
“I don’t think there’s any substitute for
being completely open with people and
spending time with them and letting them
know it’s something that we’re intentional
about and serious about,” Geiger says. “I’m
always clear and say to every single person I
interview, ‘We’re not trying to trick you in to
working here. We’re trying to decide whether
you’re good for this business and we’re good
for you and your family.’ That’s a process we
challenge people to go through themselves.”
Lastly, while you may be in one place with
your business, getting to the next level will
require expertise beyond what you currently
have, so hire accordingly.
“I was at a presentation once where a
woman said that she hired executives like she
bought shoes for her children — one or two
sizes too big,” Geiger says. “I thought it was a
very cool metaphor, and when they came to
me, I said I bought size 12s for my kids.”
