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I recently spent an extended period of time in a small Montana town with a surprising selection of gastronomic offerings; Mexican, Thai, Italian, Greek, wonderful bakeries and at least two creperies.

During a conversation with a local grad student she summarized her reluctance to visit one of the creperies by commenting “I prefer food without the anger, thank you very much.”   Her comment referenced an employee who worked for one of the creperies and practiced the consistent habit of taking an order without even the glint of a smile (more likely one of annoyance).  Pouring the batter on the griddle, this employee would proceed to slap the customer’s chosen ingredients on the crepe with an attitude of anger and unrest.  Extra cheese??? (heavy sigh), Ham…Ka-whack!  Detaching the delicate creation from the griddle this employee would slap it on the plate and shove it towards the intended recipient before proceeding to delight yet another customer…..yes, this was consistent, predictable behavior, not just one bad day.

Wow, what a story and what a poignant end result: a non-raving fan.  Looking for the learning in this story?   If you own a business where you and/or your employees interface with the public, be mindful of the attitude you portray to your customers.  Sure, all of us have challenging moments (a recent Jet Blue flight attendant comes to mind) and times when we are not at our best, but in this case the behavior was so predictable that the patron opted to no longer frequent the business.

I believe every business with a public/consumer interface will experience invaluable benefit (and ROI) from integrating personality profiling into their hiring practices. A simple profile can provide accurate information about an individual’s skills and temperament, enabling you to place them in a position where they and your business will thrive.  Well known profiles include DISC, The Keirsey Temperament Sorter, Meyers-Briggs and my personal favorite, the PREP Profile, which can be customized to job position and existing management personalities.  In Jim Collin’s phraseology: It’s about “getting the right people in the right seats on the bus.”

1.    Let an Intern Grow with the Company.  It’s so hard to find dedicated and loyal employees. Bringing an intern on board provides a “test-drive” of their abilities. This intern can learn the company inside out and help you brainstorm. At the end of the internship, there is a good chance that you will want to hire that person full-time. By this time, the goal is to build a trusting relationship with the individual. This is usually much better than hiring someone you are unfamiliar with.

2.    Bring Fresh Ideas to the Table.  It’s always nice to have a fresh set of eyes look things over and provide new and different opinions. The interns of today are the future buyers of tomorrow. Get their opinions. See what they are into. Test things with them. Have them ask their peers about products and services.

3.    Go Social Media Crazy. Employers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars having social media consultants teach their employees the ropes. These students already have integrated several of these social media tools into their daily lives. Give an intern a stab at running your online marketing. You may be surprised by what she can do.

4.    Micro-Manage When Necessary.  Look, many interns have never worked in the “real world” before. They have a different perception of how things work and how tasks should be managed and prioritized. Don’t assume anything. Teach them the ropes. Encourage them to ask questions. When assigning tasks, specify how much time they should be spending on each task and set your expectations.

5.    Make “Commitment” Your Magic Word. Take it from someone who has had both bad and good experiences with interns, stress the word commitment. In the interview process, ask the intern what the word commitment means to him. Explain clearly what you expect of him, the time commitment you would like, and how you feel about people who don’t take their commitments seriously. You want to hire an intern that you can rely on.

With this in mind, we interviewed some entrepreneurs who have had to go through this situation:

Kevin Burton, CEO,  Burton Asset Management, Inc.

One of my first employees is still a great friend but no longer works for me.  As the company grew and the demands of our entrepreneurial firm pressed, he “felt like he was working for the Man.”

In a strange twist, I, the guy who was the best man at my friend’s wedding and had been friends for over 15 years had to let him go.

1.  His salary demands were outrageous.
2.  His work standards suffered because of our relationship.
3.  We didn’t see eye-to-eye on growth.

I remember a long talk we had as I was letting him go.  I said, “Look, I’d rather have a friend than an employee.”

I didn’t want it to get to the point where business resentment impacted our friendship.

In an interesting twist, we’ve had massive growth in the past six months and are exploding in a space he loves.  He and I were talking yesterday and he said, “I hate that you are finally in the position to take the company to the next level, and I can’t see myself there.”  It was strange because the work he could be doing for us is the work he
loves- but I guess I’m still the Man.

Question and Answer:

Q: How did you eventually separate business from the personal relationship?
A: I fired him.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve done as the Founder of our company.  I mean, this guy is really, really good at what he does.  But in the end, what did I need?  What did he need?  We both needed to be ourselves and remain friends.  “Look, I can hire a guy to do what you do,” I said. “But I can’t hire a friend.”  So there it was.  He wanted to work on computers and systems without constraints.  My business model needed to be more constrained so that we could sustain our rapid growth.  There wasn’t a trade-off to be had there.  Nothing to negotiate.  Staying friends, that’s what was important.

Q:  Was there any point where you thought the friendship would go down in flames?
A: Big time.  He embarrassed me in front of a client once and on several occasions was late or put me in a position where I was unsettled because we’re doing the OJ thing to an important meeting.  It was how he was wired- the last minute guy.  I’m the ten minute early type.  I had to think about how I wanted to approach that with him because as a friend, there was a lot I could have said that would just be nasty.  As a boss, there were things I could have said that were nasty, too.

This is the main problem with hiring friends, you have the potential to have personal stuff you might say or do get mixed with the professional stuff.

Carlos Chiossone, sprout.net

I unfortunately had to do this twice. Both times, fortunately, both people understood why, and we are still good friends. You just need to make it clear from the start, business is business, and I can be a jerk of a boss.

Question and Answer:

Q: For what kind of role did you hire your first friend that didn’t work out?
A: He was hired as Director of New Business.

Q: How early on did you know it wasn’t going to work?
A: About 3-4 months after he was hired

Q: Did you stop being friends with the person that didn’t work out?
A: No, they understood exactly that business was business. I do remember we did not go out for beers probably for the first 3 months or so after I had to let him go, but we were good friends prior to hiring him, we remain good friends.

Q: Would you hire friends again?  If so, with what caveats would you do that?
A: It’s a touchy subject, but while they understand that doing business does not last forever and that I have to make decisions to keep our business growing, then I will consider it.

He was hired as our 12th employee. I never believed in having sales people as all of our business came from word of mouth. But since we had a new web product to promote I decided to hire him. He did a great job in gathering possible buyers, showing the product and getting response. Unfortunately sales did not come in. In 1999 we introduced some of the first easy to use e-commerce sites at super low price, it was an amazing product but the small stores still had little understanding on how to use the internet for sales. Readysites.com grew 3 years later.

Q: For what kind of role did you hire your first friend that didn’t work out?
A: Senior art Director

Q: How early on did you know it wasn’t going to work?
A: It did work but she was the first of 4 art directors to have to go due to slow downs.

Q: Did you stop being friends with the person that didn’t workout?
A: I sat her down and explained that business was business as we discussed years earlier when I hired her. I gave her 3 months to find work but unfortunately she did not. We remained good friends.

She was and is a great art director. She had no web experience when I hired her and learned on the job. She became very good, but her style was not what we needed at the moment, the client she handled was moving their work to India. Of course, letting her go did not go well at first, the stress from it overwhelms everyone. But from the beginning we cared about each other and understood the fact of business. We remain good friends.

Vince Collura, Team5 and Gotham Photo Company

I have hired my share of friends for both www.team5.com and www.gothamphotocompany.com.  3 turned out to be disasters.  2 turned out to be excellent moves for both of us.  There are a lot of grey areas.

Question and Answer:

Q: What kind of role did you hire your friends that didn’t work out?
A: Developers and designers

Q: For the two that did work out, what made their situations works?
A: Being extremely mature.  More so than thier ages would warrant.  Even though they were employees, they took ownership of their work, as if they were partners.

Q: Did you stop being friends with the people that didn’t work out?
A: At first, yes.  Time heals all wounds, and we are now on good terms.

Q: Would you hire friends again?  If so, with what caveats would you do that?
A: Yes.  They have to understand the difference between work and hanging out.  I am not their friend at the office, and friendship puts thier jobs at risk more than helping them.

“It isn’t the people you fire who make your life miserable, it’s the people you don’t.” Harvey Mackay

A couple weeks ago, we wrote about the importance of finding help when building your company. But sometimes when you find help, you find the wrong people. Cutting ties with a wrong-fit employee is one of the hardest things to do for any manager, but not doing it can destroy your start-up and make you miserable as Harvey Mackay mentions.

There are a few facts about hiring in a start-up:

• Some people are made for start-ups
• Some people aren’t made for start-ups
• And some people think they are made for start-ups, but they aren’t

Start-up life is hard work and has its own culture when compared to any other type of employment. A successful hire is often forced to work in strained environments without a lot of support. Some people strive in this environment, and others crash-and-burn.

As the manager/owner, your job is to determine if they are keepers or deadweight. At a start-up, you can’t be in the business of grooming talent. There are too many things to do and too many roles to fill. Cut your deadweight quickly and save yourself the headaches.

I have the (mis)fortune of being a Los Angeles Lakers fan. But one of the joys of being a Lakers fan is getting the chance to watch Luke Walton play basketball. Luke has an incredible feel for the game. Basically, what this means is that he understands the rhythms of the action, and knows how to do the right things at the right time to help his team win, whether it’s rewarding big men who run the break by getting them the ball, or knowing how to space the floor to give Kobe Bryant room to operate.

Because of his feel for the game, Walton is a key player for the Lakers, despite the handicaps of being slow, (relatively) short, and unathletic.

Similarly, some people have a feel for the startup game. They know when to raise money, and when to bootstrap. They can sense the right time to launch a product–not so early as to make a bad impression, not so late as to be a me-too competitor.

Working with someone who has a feel for the game is a joy. Progress can seem effortless, and wins just keep piling up.

On the other hand, working with someone who lacks a feel for the game is frustrating and unproductive. You can’t trust them to do the right thing on their own, and micromanaging them simply produces a time-consuming and unreliable robot.

Feel for the game may not be obvious from a resume–it’s not about going to the right schools or working at the right companies, just as basketball isn’t simply about obvious factors like height and athleticism. But once you’ve worked with someone, you’ll never be in doubt.

I recently worked with a great team of young entrepreneurs. They had done a phenomenal job of building a product that their customers loved, but were having problems figuring out how to sell it to big companies.

Off the top of my head, I ticked off the usual things you need to make an enterprise sale: analyst coverage, trade press, white papers, case studies, etc. They were amazed, because trying to figure out this world had been so difficult for them.

The key to remember is that your hard is another’s easy. Maybe you’re great at programming, but you think “the revenue thing” is a dark and somewhat sinister mystery. To a business guy, it’s a simple matter of selling a product to the same customers that he’s sold to for decades.

That doesn’t mean that the business guy is any smarter or more capable, just that he has different skills and experiences. Remember, to a business guy, extreme programming is what you call it when coders drink Mountain Dew and code while skydiving.

The ideal path is neither the arrogance of believing that what you do is more important, or the cringing self-flagellation of always looking to others for approval. Focus on doing the things that others find hard, but you find easy, and find partners who can do the things that you find hard.