Bill Lyons

One of my heroes in business is Tony Robbins. I went to my first event in 2003 and to Date With Destiny in 2005, and I was blown away. In 2005, my first company was bringing in about $10 million in revenue, and in 2006 we hit $20 million. I attribute a big part of that to the Date With Destiny event (the same event in the movie “I’m Not Your Guru”). It was an opportunity for me to shift my values and my mindset. I was operating at a peak level and I was unstoppable (or so I thought) until the real estate market crashed in 2007.

The company went from $20 million back to $10 million and then eventually to nothing. I lost it all. I went through a rough few years. In 2013, Tony had his team reach out and ask me to be his personal guest on Business Mastery. It helped me realign with my values, gain new insights and strategies, refocus and ultimately reinvent myself.

Hire slow and fire fast. Culture is so important to a business. You’re not going to eliminate bad hires all together, but the best way to avoid them is to not attract them in the first place and filter them out the best you can. Spend time on the basics: Conduct background checks and reference checks, but also implement real behavioral assessments that are tailored to the performance-driven culture you want to create. The things that work best for us are multiple interviews, job shadowing and auditions.

I promised myself back in 2013 that when I rebuilt I would hand pick each hire one by one and attract the best of the best. I stayed disciplined, hired slow, fired fast and ended up getting REALLY lucky. I knew that 95 percent of it was good character and the other 5 percent was the mechanics that I could teach. Good people add value, positive energy and passion. They follow the vision, reciprocate, act with integrity, earn trust and above all take care of the client. Good people are the most valuable thing in any business, so you must take care of them so they will always take care of the clients.