Keep Surrounding Yourself with Losers? Here’s Why.
I recently had a young entrepreneur ask how to attract the best teammates to his business. After making some bad hires in the past, he wanted to avoid the same mistake in the future. He looked at my team and was blown away by their commitment and passion for taking my vision and making it a reality. Plus, he knew from reading my book that I once had terrible employees who even tried to sabotage the business. He wanted to know how I made the switch.
Whether you have dozens on your team or you’re gearing up to make your first hire, keeping losers at bay is the best way to ensure the long-term success of your business. Here’s how to identify the losers and weed them out before they take root and cause your company to wither up and die.
Defining losers
The definition of a loser changes after high school. It’s no longer the outcast, the weirdo, or the foreigner. In fact, when you enter the business world, things go topsy-turvy. Some of those losers from high school may be the biggest winners around. And the popular kids? Not so much.
Losers come in many flavors in the real world. A lot of them don’t want to work hard. Others may laugh at your big ideas. They may grumble about the work they have to do to feed their family.
But one thing that sets losers apart is their intense connection to the past, which shows itself in one of two ways.
1. Losers with a positive past count on previous victories to keep them ahead of the game. They’ve not done anything new in a decade, yet they feel entitled to future success. These people meet obstacles without fear. Unfortunately, their confidence is built on a foundation of ignorance. Encounter a new problem? Keep doing what worked years ago, and it will go away — except it never does.
2. Losers with a negative past expect to keep failing. The world is out to get them, and there’s nothing they can do to get ahead. So they don’t try. Business troubles are par for the course, and these guys are so beaten down they don’t fear problems any more. They just crumble and take their licks, no questions asked.
Now that you know who the losers are, you may wonder why you keep them around.
Understanding the why
There are a few reasons why you let losers linger in your circles.
Maybe the losers in your life are family friends. Or maybe they’re family. Maybe your first hires were losers and you don’t want to admit you screwed up by hiring them or you aren’t comfortable firing people.
Then again, the losers in your company could look like winners from the outside. They’ve got the skills you need, and when you see those skills on a resume, you label that person a winner. So instead of truly vetting the character of potential hires, you give folks who look good on paper a free pass.
The end result? A team of losers.
But you can’t stop the flow of losers because you don’t dig deep enough before hiring. That’s why I don’t settle for a single interview and focus less on skill set and more on mindset. Someone who is teachable and hungry for success can be taught skills. Someone with a negative mindset, regardless of work history and skill set, is dead weight. A lifelong loser.
Yes, hiring is always risky. But the smartest entrepreneurs do all they can to minimize that risk. I do this by putting candidates through a brutal routine. Potential hires for my businesses must come to headquarters as many as four times and meet with different people every time. If they survive those interviews, I meet with them.
Why push candidates so hard? I want to see if they show up on time (a.k.a. early) every time with the same energy and enthusiasm. My team comes in every day with incredible drive, and my new team members need the same thing. Otherwise, things start to crumble. My new hires need a fire in their belly, and losers don’t have it. So, they decline the second or third interview, because they’ve got better things to do.
Hiring practices, however, aren’t the main reason you’re surrounded with losers. The biggest reason you surround yourself with losers? You.
How to distance yourself from losers
Are you self disciplined? Clear on your business plan? Do you know where you’re headed? Have personal productivity? Are you structured? Have a morning routine? If not, you won’t attract anyone who has those qualities.
You need self-discipline, self-drive, and self-motivation. You need to follow a morning ritual and to live a structured, driven life. To attract winners who like this, you need to be that first.
Not living like this? Keep surrounding yourself with losers? Then maybe you’re a loser, surrounded by fellow losers. I’m being brutally honest here because I used to be that guy, and it took some nasty encounters with reality to wake me up. Hopefully you can wake up sooner.
Admitting this is not easy, but you either own it and overcome it or live as a loser all the days of your life. Take it from a reformed loser. I had to do some serious soul searching to come to terms with the fact that I was a loser. I didn’t see myself that way, but everything I did screamed LOSER!
Once I saw this in myself, I looked to winners and modeled my personal and professional lives after them.
Winners work hard. Really hard. Crazy hard. But they don’t sacrifice their family on the altar of hard work. They don’t hire team members only for their skill sets. And they don’t live sloppy lives, expecting their past accomplishments or failures to determine their future.
They have ordered lives that attract other people who are like them. Winners. For empire building, there is no better tool. So cut the losers out of your business. Then take your roster of passionate winners and give them the power and freedom to grow your company and improve clients’ lives. That’s how you grow your business empire.
