Torlando On Business

There are times in business where the work just really gets to you. You feel burnt out. Tired. Old. Ready to give in. But you’ve worked so hard to build this thing. Wouldn’t it be a shame to just walk away with nothing?

Hiring talent has got to be one of the most difficult problems to solve in business and yet most small business owners treat it like an after thought. They spend all their time in marketing, sales, and producing but finding the talent to grow your business is left unattended to until it’s too late.

When we decide to hang our own shingle in our respective trade, the one thing people don’t tell us is that we have to become sales people. Unfortunately, our training in our apprenticeships or design school didn’t teach us how to sell. They didn’t tell us to figure out whether we even like selling, and they sure have hell didn’t say anything about the sleepless nights wondering where our next meal is coming from.

The first iPhone couldn’t stream or record videos. At this point, apple knows the lifecycle of its products and it knows failure. The first Apple TV. The Mac mini. The first homepod. The Newton. They’ve done this before but in the past it wasn’t for a strategic purpose. They wanted those products to be a financial success. The difference here is that they don’t need a financial success. They need an infrastructural success. They need developers to bite. If developers bite on the platform, apple will not only kill the oculus but they’ll come after Xbox and PlayStation which ARE solo consumption consoles meant for the introverted gamers who don’t want social interaction and quite frankly, have no interest in procreation. But this is bigger than that still. If the developers bite, this is the operating system that leads to minority report. A future where a head seat isn’t necessary to interact with gestures and full spacial computing. That was the term they used. Spacial computing. Before 8K TVs and 4K streaming there wasn’t much of a reason to produce in 8K. Developing a $70k 100” 8K display wasn’t made for mass purchase, it was made for the movie makers to start producing the content for an inevitable future.

Photo by ActionVance on Unsplash

Team decision-making hasn’t always been fun for me.

This was more popular than kitchen remodels, flooring, home automation, and roofing.

I belong to a handful of Facebook Groups for contractors and I hold a monthly virtual Roundtable discussion group. Many are experiencing the same thing. Leads are drying up.

This critical thought on leadership from my old friend Jack Taggart could help you go home happy today and feel about ten pounds lighter:

It’ll last as long as the fed keeps printing money and the world keeps accepting its value. Any writing on the wall doesn’t change the fact that we still live in a supply and demand society.

The challenge with putting entire generations in a box is that it doesn’t account for different personality types. Assuming that millennials or Gen z as a generation would want entrepreneurship or side hustles is about as reliable of an idea as using the horoscope or Chinese zodiac to define individual desires. 

Recently I was speaking with a group of new entrepreneurs.

Obviously TikTok is that white space for new creators but YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet next to the company that owns it. No way it dies anytime soon. It’s just a more competitive space and creators trying to monetize will have to focus their energize in monetizing micro audiences rather than reaching mass audiences.

Long hours and burnout is a sure signal that it’s time to hire somebody to help you get a few things off your plate. But knowing what you want them to do is critical for that person being successful. If you get the approach wrong from the beginning and don’t know what you need or who you are looking for, it could spell disaster for your company.

In most small businesses and start ups, once you’ve tapped into a great problem to solve and people start buying, you are instantly overwhelmed by what you have to do on a daily basis. That’s where you hope that hiring a team will solve all your problems.