Hey, I'm FM fans. It's Sean here. And I want to let you know about something pretty cool. You have an opportunity to get onto my first million. How does that work? Well, we're going to be doing a live episode on June 8th, and it's going to be our first demo day. A few lucky startups are going to be able to pitch us. Their company live on my first million soon. It's gonna be like Shark Tank. You're going to hear them pet. You're going to hear our reaction and we might actually invest our money into these companies if they're any good. It's like a live episode of Shark Tank done to my first Million Way, which is going to be
I see a little more real talk than what you see on Shark Tank. We're doing this in partnership with our friends at stocks.com. If you're looking to raise some money, go ahead and apply its stocks sto. NK s.com / MF M as in my first million so stocks.com MFM that's where you apply. If you want a picture start up to us. Now, on to the
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back. Sup y'all, Sean? Here. I'm gonna be doing the question of the week where we give you just the tips on what you need to be more successful entrepreneur. So it's just me alone because I'm in Hawaii right now and say I'm going to be traveling to and I'm in a hallway of my hotel. So hopefully nobody walks out here while I'm doing this. Otherwise might get a little noisy, but let's go ahead and listen to the question and then I'll answer. All right, here
goes,
Hey, it's Ruby from the UK, obsessed with the, my first million podcast. So, my question is, I'm a non-technical Founder for a nap. The doctors kitchen is sort of like a headspace for healthy eating. And my question is, I'm about to make my first major higher in a product manager. I was just wondering if you have any tips for how you hire, for those big roles to sort of protect yourself. Do you put them on like a monthly running contract, like for a couple of months, feel them out before you give them like a full-time role with?
Vesting, shares and equity, and all that good stuff. Or do you just have to just go with your gut feeling and intuition and get as many advisors to sort of vet them for you. So I wonder what your thoughts on that are anyway, keep up with great work. Love the podcast and thanks a lot.
Okay, so that's I think his name was rupee rupee from the UK. He's asking about making his first major higher quick question, because people are obviously the most important thing when it comes to building our company, especially at the early days, because they're the ones who build the product.
I'm going to bring up a couple of things here. I'm gonna do this rapid fire because I think it's a pretty easy answer here. First things first.
You said your first hires a p.m. That's not usually the case. So I got a little bit of a red flag there for you. Your, you said, you're the non-technical founder. So I think you should be the one essentially figuring out what the customers want writing this back and having your technical co-founder build the thing. So typically you don't hire a p.m. As your first major higher because you as the CEO or is the head of product or whatever. You're the one doing it. You don't, you know, product managers are meant to manage larger fleets of Engineers. That sounds like you're at a pretty early.
So I'm going to assume for a second that you have less than 10 Engineers. If you have less than 10 Engineers, I personally do not believe you should be hiring a p.m. Because you're basically delegating the most important thing, which is figure out what customers want, building it. Testing it with those customers and then that feedback loop, and no one's going to care and no one's going to be as good at that as you are as the founder at the early stages. That's my personal belief in Ray. Dalio is book.
Principles he talks about this. He says, you know, imagine a company as like a big box with a little box sitting on top. Okay. What's the big box? The big box is where it's like the machine that makes the product. It makes the thing that goes out to customers. And so in that machine you have engineering. You have customer support. You have sales. You have all these different functions and you might be working in one of those, right? So as the CEO, you might be the head of sales, right? Because you're the one, picking up the phone trying to go customers. So, you're working in the big box, but then there's this little box sitting on top.
And that that he calls out I think like a level 2 person level 2 player in your company is not making the thing for the customers. It's making the big box. It's basically making the machine that makes the thing. What does that mean? That means a level who was like what you typically imagine as a CEO or an executive, somebody like that where they're not day-to-day actually making the product but they're hiring and firing and promoting and incentivizing and structuring the company in a way where it will it will
Deuce things that the customers want. And so the way to think about this at early stages at by day. You're going to be working, you know, at level 1, in The Big Box. You're actually going to be doing something. Maybe it's writing code. Maybe it's talking to customers. Maybe it's selling, maybe it's customer support, whatever you got to do, you're doing it. And then at night, you move up into the little box and you say, how can we make this machine more efficient?
Maybe we should hire some customer support reps because I think I've figured out the customers kind of, was have the same five issues and we just need somebody on the frontlines. Answering them at this point. That would let me go do these other three really important things and usually and so basically, your job as the CEO of a start-up is to, you know, first figure out how to make a product that customers want and then fire yourself out of the process of making that thing, right? So you eventually fire your. You at level 2.
Fire yourself at level one, right? You the exact fires you the salesman. So that's usually how this goes. It sounds like you're trying to do that where you the exact you're trying to fire you the product manager, but my warning to you is this at an early stage before you have product Market fit. That's usually the wrong move and I'm assuming you don't bottom reflux and ever heard of your product and but I could be wrong. And so we will answer what to do. If your post broader Market fit, if you're hearing me say this phrase product Market fit product Market,
What the fuck does that mean? Right? What is what is the definition of that? Well, there's no easy. Definition, people have tried, but honestly, there's no easy way to measure it. Some great quotes on this are, there's a tactical one, the Shaun Ellis question. The Shaun Ellis. Question is, you survey all your users and you say if the you know, you could no longer use this product. Would you feel? You know, not disappointed somewhat disappointed or very disappointed. He says, if 40 percent of people say very disappointed and you've got product Market fit. Well,
It's a good indicator, but it's not foolproof. Marc. Andreessen has a quote, something like part of Market fit is like having sex. If you don't know, if you have it. You're not having it as something like that. I love that one. But the, you know, the real one, is the real feeling that you get that. I've the best of the one that best describes it to me is as a Founder. You often feel like you're pushing a boulder up, a hill.
You're pushing your product into the market, you're trying to find people that want to try to convince them to give it a try. It really feels like you're pushing a boulder up and held high effort. Then at some point when you actually when things click and you actually hit properly fit it, no longer feels like you're pushing it, uphill. In fact, it feels like the boulder is now going downhill. It's going faster and faster, and you're just running trying to keep up. And that's usually when you have a lot of customer demand and now you need to hire more people, just to fill it just to not disappoint them, just to give, you know, fulfill the promise you made to them.
And that idea of chasing the boulder downhill. That's when you want to start hiring PMS because you figured out what people want and now you're scaling up. So that's my general advice. Now, let's say you, did you say you were there? You're chasing the boulder down the hill. You do want to hire p.m. How do you know it's the right price higher? How do you go about hiring them? Well, I love to say I say there's my kind of personal belief is that interview suck because interviews are like First Dates. It's just two people looking at each other in the face in line to each other right? You're both.
Trying to pretend you're perfect and it is, you know, this is a great place to work and I'm I'm a great worker. And in reality. We both know that that's not true. You're two imperfect people trying to make a match. And so the best way to do that is actually to try to work together, right? The best way to find out if you want to work together is to try working together and it's going on a date. And so you you actually, you know want to go do an activity, not just sort of sit there at a table and ask each other questions and the activities usually project. So I will often do a contract gig.
Consulting gig a trial period. If I can try to hire somebody and I'll let them know. Hey, look, here's what we're going to do. Here's what success looks like. And look, we're, I would just say by default. After 2 months. Let's consider this over. Unless we both before we even get there. We're going to know. Hey, this is awesome. I'm really I'm loving working with you and you're doing a great job. So I will often baked in a by default three months in this is over.
Unless it's so awesome that we both want to opt in and I found that that works better than the opposite when you hire somebody and the default is over. This is great. I'm in forever and then when it's not so great, you're like, well, it's not bad enough for me to fire them and that's how you get stuck with kind of mediocrity inside your company. So that's my preferred way of doing it. I don't always do that because it's kind of a case-by-case candidate by candidate situation. But if you ask me in a perfect process, that's what I would do. I would set up a project.
On a trial basis. Usually between 1 and 1 to 3 months and I would let them know. Hey, I'm looking to find somebody full-time but it's going to be really, really hard for me to find someone who I really trust, because I think there's a big role and have a high bar. But I would love, I think I see that potential in you. I would love to give this a try. And look at the end of this three months. If it's going great. It's going to be a no-brainer for us to make a full offer to you. And if it's not look, we're gonna have three months. Where we learned a bunch. We
Know each other. You're going to make some money. It's fully paid and and hey will be, you know will pull the plug on something before without having committed long-term to something and disappointing each other. How does that sound? And most people are pretty down for that. They actually are open to that. And so that's my preferred way of doing things. I don't like you said ask advisors to interview them. I think that's a bit pretty big ask so you got to get good at this right? You want to develop great gut judgment on people and the only way to do that is to go hire and Fire.
And promote and you know, like basically get a bunch of reps, make a bunch of mistakes, be really thoughtful each time. You're hiring and each time you assess how it's going, be honest with yourself. If you do that your feedback loop alone will help you get good at this thing, right? Because in the long run, it may not actually be this higher. That's the important one. It's the you getting good at hiring, right? And so you want to develop that skill and you can't really delegate that out either, right? That's your primary job as an executive compensation.
Okay, so best of luck rupee. Thanks for calling in with that. And thanks for everybody for listening to one question
Friday. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like a travel, never looking back.
