She Ran It Better Than I Could. The Company Grew Without Me.

She's the CFO at one of our customers, and I've been watching her for a long time before I can do anything about it.

The way she runs her team is the first thing I notice. She's stern, and she makes the work fun. She motivates instead of dictating. She's organized down to the bone, with SOPs for everything a CFO or COO should have. And her people want to do better, for her.

I can't touch her. She works for a customer.

How long should it take to hire a key executive?

As long as it takes to really know the person. For her, it was the better part of a year.

Then the owner of that company confides in me. He's selling, and he's worried about his people landing well. I ask his permission to court her. He says, "Absolutely, but she can't leave before the close."

So I interview her slowly and openly. The conversations are honest from the start: if you ever had the chance, would you come? At the close, I make the offer, and she comes aboard.

That's the core of With Me, Not For Me, the hiring discipline I teach. The answer to hiring a stranger is to refuse to. Turn them into someone you've watched. I didn't need interviews to tell me how she'd run a team. I'd already seen it.

She proved steady through the hard years. She rode the 2008 downturn with us, when 80% of our revenue disappeared, and helped grow the company back.

How do you know when you're in the way?

The moment I knew came when I vanished.

About a year after my divorce, a ski wreck took me out for three months. I came back to a company that had grown while I was gone. She had taken over exactly as she should, fully capable.

That's the lesson I still teach: I was in the way.

Professionally, and with a smile, she pointed me to where my value actually was, which was with customers. She took the rest: hiring, firing, the whole operational side. She could do that because I handed her the authority. It was my Five Questions in practice. If the answer to all five was yes, she could make the call, any size, without asking me.

Coming back to a company that grew without you is the best news an owner can get. It means the business no longer depends on one man's calendar, and it shows you exactly where your time is worth the most.

What does the right person want?

When I sold EssentiaLink in 2015, I made sure she had somewhere to land. She wanted to bet on herself. She bought a franchise to be her own boss as she started a family, and I backed that move from corporate to entrepreneur every step.

Patience pays. And underneath all of it is something I believe about great hires: the right person wants to be able to make a difference. The business already ran well before she came. She joined because she could move it. That's who you wait a year for.

Who in your world have you been watching that you'd wait a year to hire?

~b