Finding Great People

I think public accounting ruined me from the beginning.

A statement I have both thought of and heard  best articulated from our CFO here at Caliber, Leland Harty, on many occasions.  

The reality of being an entrepreneur building a company, for me at least, has been the thought of focusing on our HR systems, recruiting processes, and related tasks, seemed to be such a low priority in the early stages of our company.  

What I have found is that I came from a world, Big 4 Public Accounting, that has tremendous recruiting, training, and 'indoctrinating' systems to ensure new hires are not only the best of the best, but dedicated to the success of the organization.  Because of this, I missed the boat, early on, in how important it was to make sure we had that here at Caliber.

Invariably, every organization states the importance of having a great team, specifically in a fast-growing period of the Company's life.  At the risk of sounding cliche', It has been Caliber's ability to attract great people that has truly built much of our success - whether that comes in the form of new team members or new customers.

Today we are taking time daily to review our people.  We discuss it weekly in our executive team meeting, as the FIRST thing on our agenda.  We have created an intricate hiring process to ensure we have 'A' players.  We focus on having great people and I have come to love this element of my role at the company.

I share this simply to give an opportunity to someone similar to me, from the beginning, to help avoid the same mistake.  As an early-stage entrepreneur, even when you only have 1 or 2 team members, focus everything you can on them and ensuring you have the right people.  They are typically your largest expense and deserve tremendous attention.  No business owner can achieve true greatness without his or her people providing the fuel, the fire, or both.