#213: Hiring (and retaining) high-quality contractors [Voice Memo]

Jay Clouse [00:00:00]:
Hey. Happy Friday. I had a thought about hiring today that I wanna pass along to you. In our business, we only have 2 full time w two employees. That's myself and my wife, Mal, and the rest of the people that we work with are on a contract or project basis. Now, I've worked with a lot of people at this point and some of them, it's just not been a fit and I've discontinued work with them. Others I've worked with for literal years And in some positions like, video and assistance and design, I've worked with the same partners again and again for a very long time. And, in some positions related to, like, social media or other, creative work, things have been much shorter lived.

Jay Clouse [00:00:48]:
And I've seen a couple of patterns that I wanted to pass along in terms of who seems to work well and also how I retain people because the people that I have wanted to continue working with and continue to retain, I've been very successful in keeping them engaged and interested in the work that we're doing. So first, the patterns in terms of who I hire that seems to work out. What I find is if if I'm hiring somebody who looks at the work that we're doing together as their art, that seems to work really well. I'm looking for high agency people who look at the work they do as, like, their expression. They find fulfillment from it. It's not just a skill they're monetizing and trying to get the most, money possible from as many clients as they can work with. Really really looking for people who look at this as a collaborative artistic creative process. Those are the people that I tend to work with longest term because they tend to be driven enough to innovate in what we're doing.

Jay Clouse [00:01:54]:
And over time, you have to change. You have to adapt. Your style has to change. Your format has to change. The things you try have to change. And if I'm the one driving all the experiments, all those changes, all of the innovation, you know, pushing us to get better. If it's just me doing that, it gets to be really heavy and unsustainable because I'm also splitting my attention across multiple things. So when I've hired people like Connor on the YouTube side and he looks at this as, you know, his art, his canvas to work with as well, he's always pushing, the channel forward and trying new things and making his own creative decisions that he thinks will have upside on the channel as a whole.

Jay Clouse [00:02:38]:
Now in other circumstances, I've hired people who clearly have skill and ability and an impressive portfolio of work. But once we begin working, I really just feel like a client. It's really hard to hire like an agency for a lot of things because an agency's, incentives are often to service as many clients for as much revenue as possible and also keep the time commitment per client as low as possible because their capacity is what dictates how many clients they can take on and how much revenue they can make. So when I've worked with full scale agencies, a lot of times I've been disappointed more times than not because it's just been difficult to get them to care about my work as much as I want them to. And I get it. It's just an incentives thing. There's no reason for them to care about what I'm doing as much as what their next client is doing or what they are doing. But when I hire somebody who, I'm able to pay them enough to be essentially one of a few or their only client, then they really really seem to approach the work with more creativity, more interest, more curiosity and that tends to work better.

Jay Clouse [00:03:52]:
So when I find those people, I really try to hold on to them as long as I can and you know, the the way to do that is a, if that person has shown you that they look at your collaborative work as partially or in whole their art as well, that means they're really gonna want, creative control, empowerment, support. And so I try to be really empowering of their ideas and supportive of their ideas. I try to give them a lot of space and autonomy. And I also try not to make material changes to the work unless I believe very, very, very strongly that I know better. If If it's just kind of a disagreement of I believe this, but you believe that and I don't have a ton of data to support what I believe, I'm gonna let them make the call because this is their art. And when you make material changes to their art, it no longer feels like their art. So give them a lot of space to run and try and fail and that's okay. I also am pretty lax in terms of deadlines sometimes because life happens.

Jay Clouse [00:04:55]:
Things happen. Things slow down. I never want a partner to come to me and be, like, really stressed out that they can't hit a deadline that I put in place or they put in place. Because if they are saying, hey. I'm behind on this and you push and you say, no. It's gonna happen on this date. What you're probably gonna get is less of a quality product than what they would do given the proper amount of time. They're thinking to themselves, I need this much time to get this thing done to the degree that I want.

Jay Clouse [00:05:22]:
Again, thinking this is their art. And if you say, well, too bad, I need it tomorrow. They're not gonna be able to make the thing that they wanna make. It's not gonna feel like their art once again. So give them a lot of time and space and support. And anytime I approach working with anybody, I'm often asked, you know, what is your budget for this thing? And I like to, of course, make things fit in my budget and I could try to dictate terms more often. But when there's somebody really high potential, really high quality, what I really try to do is say, hey. I want you to tell me what's gonna make this exciting for you if you wake up in the morning with an item on your to do list to work with me on this thing.

Jay Clouse [00:06:03]:
I want you excited about that and not dreading it and feeling like you sold yourself short or you agreed to a price that's not worth it. I need everything you feel about this project to come from a place of excitement, and you let me know what the price point is for that to be true. And they'll come back with a price. And, hopefully, that works within what I'm thinking. If not, I will say, hey. Here's what I can do. Can we adjust the scope in some way, or can we build up to this? But I like to start from a place of what's gonna make you excited about this. Because, again, you're gonna do your best work when you are excited.

Jay Clouse [00:06:37]:
So those are my thoughts on hiring as of late. I feel very lucky with the people that I'm working with on different aspects of the business. And it's because they're really high quality people that look at our work together as their art, and I give them a lot of space and a lot of support to do it.