A hidden common denominator to all successful entrepreneurs - by Patrick Valtin

Expanding your business always starts with NOT attracting the wrong people! Successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs (Apple), Kevin P. Ryan (DoubleClick), Tony Hsieh (Zappos.com) or Richard Branson (Virgin Group) spend 60 to 80% of their time finding top players and avoiding trouble makers! 

This is where they make the difference. If you hire the right people you don't have to manage them. Most of your wasted energy, your trouble and your frustrations come from a minority of people who should not have been hired in the first place.

"We employ 200,000 people. So I can make the case - and I have for years - that the most important discipline at Starbucks is human resources." - Howard Schultz, Starbucks

"I used to think business was 50 percent having the right people. Now I think it’s 80 percent. The best way to be productive is to have a great team. So I spend more time than most CEOs on human resources." – Kevin P. Ryan, Double-Click 

" One of the most important aspects of being a superior leader is hiring people smarter than you. Top leaders spend more time putting the right team in place to accomplish their objectives than they spend on planning, strategizing or many other components of their job." - Bob Prozen, author of "Kiss Theory Goodbye."

"I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way!" - Lee Iaccoca. 

"I have participated in the hiring of maybe 5,000-plus people in my life. So I take it very seriously." - Steve Jobs.

The tip us thus simple: you need a competitive edge, a No-Fail Hiring guide to attract and recruit the top players, so you can surround yourself with honest, dedicated and able people who share your core business values, while appreciating your performance standards.

Over 80% of your problems as a leader or executive come from having hired the wrong people. Be smarter in the hiring process and you won't need to work so hard later!

Patrick Valtin,

Author "No Fail Hiring."

What is Negligent Hiring and Retention?

     Hire or retain an employee whom you know or should have known had a criminal record or a tendency to injure another and you are risking all you have ever worked for.  Tallahassee Furniture employed a man in the yard and let him drive the truck. Then they sent him out to delivery furniture, which required that he enter the homes of the customers. He delivered a sofa to a customer who gave him a TV. Later that night, after work, he returned under the pretense to get a receipt for the TV to prove he didn't steal it.  She let him in, for he had been a representative of the trusted store. He attacked and raped her.  Judgment against Tallahassee Furniture for $2.7 million. He had a record of violence.
     Juries have zero tolerance for employers who are careless in hiring, allowing high risk people to enter the homes of customers, resulting in injury.  Juries give compensatory damages (award those damages that are provable such as lost income, medical bills, even pain and suffering, etc.). On top of that, if the offense is particularly heinous, they award punitive damages to punish the defendant and set an example. Most states have punitive damages, and aggressive lawyers inflame juries to award monstrous verdicts.  Witness the multi-million punitive damage award in the infamous McDonald's spilled coffee case. The largest punitive damage award in negligent hiring I have seen was for $40 million.
     How can you avoid the possibility of this happening to you?  We can guide you through this minefield.

L D Sledge, JD

Why No Fail Hiring

      

     CEO's and upper management often delegate the time consuming business of hiring to a junior, with little guidance or plan in mind except just to hire a person competent to do a job, they hope.  Management doesn't have time.  They fail to realize that quality employees = quality production.

      Most innately know the vital importance of the task, and usually have no clue that there is a specific technology in hiring that will spot the good ones and the bad ones. It is a daunting task, and a dangerous one.

     When a business starts, the entrepreneur hires the first employee--himself. The goals, purposes, plans and polices and ideal scenes must be clear to start. Then, to expand, he/she hires someone to take on duties that must be delegated to put attention on creating the business. From there the success of the business depends on these employees not just doing their job, but being loyal and having the company's success as a primary consideration. This factor depends on more than leadership and orders. It depends on the quality of the employee. One who will do a stellar job and not sue you.  

     Suppose the employee is lazy, or even criminal.  How can you tell at the time of the hire?

     Have you ever heard of Negligent Hiring and Retention?  Did you know that the average jury verdict is $1.6 million dollars?  Did you know that the lawbooks are filled with huge judgments against small business for sex, age, pay, and disability discrimination, as well as sex harassment cases?  Later blogs will lay these problems out clearly.

     This is where No Fail Hiring comes in.  Buy the book, take a workshop, remove the guesswork and become a master hirer.

L D Sledge, JD

    

Introduction: L. D. Sledge

 I am L. D. Sledge, co-author of No Fail Hiring with Patrick Valtin.  As a successful attorney for forty three years, I have the experience needed to assist small businesses in hiring the just right employee and avoiding the disaster of having the wrong employees. I have personally had employees who turned on me and as a result I lost my practice.  It is my goal to teach, in blogs, workshops and consultations, how to pick winners and sidestep the legal dangers to prevalent in hiring and managing employees.  

Today's litigious environment is a minefield for the unwary businessperson who wants to make an honest living by applying skills, resources and energy in this risky entrepreneurial world. There are enough worries just handling the day to day business without having to sweat legalities and the possibility of violating some federal or state law. Today the business terrain is littered with the bones of entrepreneurs who ran afoul of bad employees who sued and obtained horrendous judgments from juries using the punishing tool of punitive damages, often damaging the business beyond repair.

My blogs will hopefully shed some light in these difficult areas. I will never give legal advice in these blogs. Consider my viewpoint that of a realistic teacher who wants you to succeed.  Stay tuned. I hope to make it interesting as well as informative.