The main challenge for Bill and his clients is finding talented people. There is a big shortage of qualified people all over the world and on top of that, it’s difficult to retain good talent. This episode features a ‘best of’ episode from Jeff Hoffman, who is excellent at attracting and connecting with people!

Jeff Hoffman is a successful entrepreneur and the Founder of Priceline, UBid, and ColorJar. Jeff has worked alongside celebrities like Elton John, Britney Spears, and NSYNC. He knows a thing or two about what it takes to engage people and on today’s show, he shares his expertise in team-building practices that bring good people together!

One of the most important lessons Jeff learned about scaling up is the value of teams. As a founder, you are used to doing everything and anything in the beginning. The problem with this, though, is that if your company does well, you start to think you’re pretty good at all of this.

Once founders hit a later stage in their company, they find themselves overwhelmed. They are working harder than ever before and putting in more hours than they’ve ever done before, yet, despite this, they’ve stopped growing. The truth is, you’re never going to do anything massive or at scale by yourself.

Jeff was not smart enough to understand this in the beginning, but through his mistakes, he’s learned that the day you start taking some of your time to delegate your tasks and to find people that are smarter than you to run the company, is the day you can finally work less and be less stressed.

Jeff had to make an active effort to find talented people. Sending out an ad doesn’t work. The best people in your market aren’t looking for a job, so schedule the time to scout them. The second part of running a successful team is getting out of their way. Let the people who are smarter than you do their jobs!

Your real job as a founder is to build a workplace environment and culture that people love to go to, where the best people in the industry all want to work for you and never want to leave. Your job is to take care of the people who work for you. When you’ve achieved this, you never have to worry about the growth of your company.

Interview Links:

Jeffhoffman.com

Jeff on LinkedIn

Resources:

Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops.

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube