Why You Can't Hire Top Talent (And How to Fix It)

Sean Weisbrot: I think you were telling me recently that you were having an issue with, it was either delegation or like finding people that you could keep for the long term. Are you still having that problem?

Anna Wong: Yeah, I think that really, interesting and I found it happened to many small, medium businesses as well.

Anna Wong: And you know, honestly, we are not a big company, right? Or, so this is why, we, comparatively, it's not easy for us to find a good talent because sometimes for real, you know. Student or professional from top school. they might have more opportunities to get a job from the, you know, banks or international brands.

Anna Wong: So that's why a smaller company usually will be their second priority. so this is why we end up, it's hard for us to compete with really top talent from those. a big company, which can offer a really good package. And second, I think, you know, honestly when, when, when your company is small and you have to be really all around and which means your staff need to take to, to be multitasking, you know,

Anna Wong: I found, young people nowadays aremore focused on work-life balance. It's not a bad thing. but I think that would add challenges to the company because, you know, they might have to, to, to get more hands in the team. Yeah, so I'm not sure if this is like, our issue, but I just found, you know, it, it, it is quite common in the small, medium sized companies now.

Sean Weisbrot: So I've spoken to other company owners and, one of them I'm gonna be interviewing later tonight, and that'll be the episode that comes out after yours. What he does is he also has a small team, I think is like 10 people, 11 people right now. What he does is he buys each one of them a VR headset. And so they can all play mini golf together virtually and things like that.

Sean Weisbrot: So is there anything that you've been thinking about how you can better engage your team? Especially because it's hard to find talent and it's hard to keep them?

Anna Wong: I think, you know, we offer really flexible hours, I don't need my staff to be in the office nine to five and second is we allow them to work from home.

Anna Wong: And, and they usually, you know, request, you know, Hey Anna, I have a yoga class this morning. Can I come later to the office? And we are completely fine with that. And we do regular, you know, small events for the team.

Anna Wong: Let's say we go for Classes, like, you know, fun activities or happy hour after office hours.

Anna Wong: So I think this is kind of like the activities we are offering to our internal team now, but hopefully, you know, that would work. And, but sometimes, you know, we, I don't want to give stress to the staff thinking, oh, you know, I need to spend time with my boss after office hours.

Sean Weisbrot: So one of the things I tried to do is like, I'll set up something like that and then I won't show up.

Sean Weisbrot: I'll be like, oh guys, I'm so sorry. I've got something else to do. And that way, like, it's the team and not me. And that way they can just like, 'cause like if I leave it to them to organize stuff, they don't. So it's kind of on me to make sure that they are doing things together. And I'll show up sometimes or I'll, I'll show up for part of the time.

Sean Weisbrot: 'cause you know, we don't have an office, so nobody's physically together, you know, a lot of the people are in the Philippines, so some of them actually know each other in person and, and others they don't have the opportunity to meet in person. But we're spread across nine or seven countries, so.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, you know, I've only ever met Mark, my COO and I've just met my marketing director, Nicholas, like in Greece in April, and I'm about to meet my product manager, Joel, who is in Portugal in a few weeks. The other team members, you know, that's another like eight or nine people I've never met before. So oftentimes we only get an opportunity to, to do these things on Zoom or in virtual reality.

Sean Weisbrot: So. So I'll, it's easy for me to slip in, you know, and out of an event. So, for example, like when I was in America, I was 12 hours behind the Philippines. So if they're doing an event at 7:00 PM it's like, you know, 6:00 AM-7:00 AM for me. So I'm like, alright guys, like, you know, I'm tired, I'm gonna get back to sleep, or I've gotta get ready for work.

Sean Weisbrot: Like, you enjoy yourself. So, so I tried to, I tried to not be there the whole time. Or if or at all, just so that they don't have to be like, I don't want to spend time with the boss, but mm-hmm. But I think they like it because they don't get a chance to talk to me too often. It's slightly different because Mark does a lot of the daily operations, and so I'm generally not engaging with all of the team members very often.

Sean Weisbrot: Usually I'll talk to Mark mostly. and I'll talk with our CTO some, so I talk to the different people as needed.

Sean Weisbrot: so I try to let them be like the team, but then of course the team's like, well, we want to hear from you. You know, so like, I actually, one of the things I did was April was a tough month for us.

Sean Weisbrot: So at the end of April, I did a one-on-one call with all of the team members, and I was like, you know what, what are you doing in your personal life? You know, how do you see our company as a whole? What do you think of our product? What do you think about this person you're working with? Like, tell me good things about them that you know, that you like.

Sean Weisbrot: Tell me things that you wish they could improve upon. So it wasn't a review, like I knew from Mark and the other people what, you know, these people are good at, what they're not good at, what their frustrations are. But I wanted to hear from them, you know, how they thought, they were doing, how they thought I was doing.

Sean Weisbrot: Some of them, you know, I would say, what do you think I'm doing? You know, how do you think I'm a CEO? And they're like, to be honest, I don't even know what a CEO is supposed to do. It's like, okay, well here's my definitive, what definition of what A CEO is based on, what do you think? They're like, oh, well, you know, I think you're doing the best you can.

Sean Weisbrot: I wish you would communicate a little bit more about our financial situation, or I wish you would communicate a little bit better about, you know, our roadmap. So, I got a chance to learn from them kind of where they are mentally with the team and the, the product and the roadmap and, and me as a, as the owner.

Sean Weisbrot: And, so I think that's really cool because I completely ignored it. It wasn't a performance review at all. Everything that I knew about, I left that outside of the conversation. It was just a chat, just a video call, just a chat with me and the other person and, and they were like, this is awesome.

Sean Weisbrot: Like, thank you. Like, it's so nice for you to take your time to come and talk to me. I'm like, well. Is it really that big of a deal? And one of the guys, he's from Pakistan, he's like, honestly, in my last job I didn't even know who the CEO was. I never, I didn't know the guy's face. I didn't know his name.

Sean Weisbrot: I'd never had a conversation with him. So the fact that you spent an hour on the phone with me is just incredible. I'm so appreciative, like, thank you so much, so you really don't know how important your time is to building team culture and making them happy.

Anna Wong: Do you think it is effective to work remotely? And second is, would your staff feel alone? You know, because they have to work from home. They didn't get a chance to work in a team.

Anna Wong: Because sometimes I'm worried about, I have like, you know, staff, single number staff in China, Malaysia, Singapore, we have interns in US, but, sometimes I'm worried that they might feel alone.

Anna Wong: They don't see teamwork. They might have a fantasy about what a big company with a big team will look like, and that might be one of the reasons they resign because they don't feel they get enough support or see the people in the office.

Sean Weisbrot: From a psychological point of view, humans need humans. So is there a potential disadvantage to fully remote work? Absolutely. And that's why it's important for us as founders to create a culture that is inclusive of that, that allows those people to feel good and you know about their role, to know that they're cherished and respected and appreciated, to know that they're connected to a larger picture, and that's why.

Sean Weisbrot: These get togethers. Yeah. These virtual reality meetings, these town halls, you know, we, we had town halls before where we would just lay out a spreadsheet and go, this is how much money we have left. This is how much we're spending. You know, we know that some of you have asked for raises. Here's the situation.

Sean Weisbrot: We can't afford it. You know, so we want, I think, radical honesty and, and, and appreciation and just being vulnerable with your team goes a long way to building trust with them. Yeah. Is there a replacement for working in the office? No. What's been fortunate for us is that a lot of the people we hire are engaged or married or already have kids.

Sean Weisbrot: So even though they may be physically isolated from the team, they're not physically isolated from the world. Now what they choose to do with their time off, if they don't have other friends or hobbies or other things outside of their family, that's on them. And all we can do is just kind of nudge them to be healthy.

Sean Weisbrot: Now, maybe there's an opportunity there to go, Hey, let's have a health challenge this month. Let's see, you know, who can do as, you know, the most pushups, maybe we get them to, you know, do pushups every day while they're building up their ability to do this challenge by the end of the month. You know, and you give them a reward.

Sean Weisbrot: You give 'em a VR headset or you give 'em, an Amazon, you know, gift card. Like there's things you can do, but nothing replaces physical contact. And yeah, Hong Kong is filled with young people and it's filled with single people, and it's a very lonely city. I've spent, I I, I haven't lived in Hong Kong, but I've been to Hong Kong probably 10 or 15 times, and usually for a day or two at a time.

Sean Weisbrot: One time I stayed for two weeks and Hong Kong is honestly one of the loneliest cities I've ever been in, so I think it's a lot worse for you than it is for me, where the majority of my team is not in. Oh, the team is in the Philippines mostly. So I think it's different for us.

Anna Wong: Yeah, honestly, now I'm back in Europe for summer holiday. I think it will be wonderful someday.

Anna Wong: I mean myself no longer limited to a physical location, right? Like I can work remotely like you abroad, and I can still manage a local team, or not necessarily local because my tech team now is in Pakistan, and I have China.

Anna Wong: I have a team in China. But at the same time I have girls here in Hong Kong. So this is why sometimes I think, do I need to add more team members in, in the office so they will feel, you know, there are more people, more energy. yeah. So this is what I, I was being, has been thinking.

Sean Weisbrot: I wouldn't add people to add people, but if you want to be able to go and travel while you work, then maybe you need an operations manager.

Sean Weisbrot: You, maybe you need someone that's there to manage the events and the other things you do. You have the energy to think about how you can 10 x your revenue, you know how you can take your company to the next level, where if you're there and you're worried about whatever thing, whatever fire is appearing on a day-to-day basis, then you're, you're not able to really think at a higher level.

Sean Weisbrot: Especially if, especially if I NZ is not in Hong Kong, then you have the right to not be in Hong Kong if you don't want to. I know we've talked about this a few times. You're like, I would love to go to Europe. You're like, you're like, I wanna be in Europe. That's not fair, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's like you, you are the only person limiting yourself from making that happen.

Sean Weisbrot: If you wanna be in Europe or you wanna be in New York or whatever, you have to find a way to do it. Whether that's increasing revenue, to be able to pay someone to bring that What, yeah, I

Anna Wong: Need, just preparing that. No, before the COVID I was traveling. Right. And now these two years, it's kept challenging.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I know I was in Vietnam for two and a half years and then I was in Miami for 11 months. So for me, like there, there's this term, I don't know if you've heard of it, called Revenge Travel

Anna Wong: Revenge. No, I don't see any revenge travel now. But what, well, I Hong Kong cap line got used to staying.I mean, I was, you know, chatting with a friend and he barely heard people want to stop traveling like the local people.

Anna Wong: Because they need to go back to see the parents and they start sending their kids to study abroad. So, many experts start, you know, training for their business trip or trip leaving Hong Kong.

Sean Weisbrot: So the term revenge travel is like for someone like me, I basically, like I said, two and a half years in Vietnam without leaving and 11 months in Miami, all I did was fly to Atlanta for a week.

Sean Weisbrot: Or no, I drove to Atlanta 'cause I was afraid to fly. So basically three and a half years for someone like me who's used to seeing five new countries a year. You know, all of a sudden for three and a half years, I can't go anywhere. So now I'm like, I'm gonna go here, I'm gonna go there. Like, I'm planning on seeing six countries this year.

Sean Weisbrot: You know, six new countries. I've already been to Greece, Slovenia, and now I'm in Spain. This my third time in Spain, first time in Greece and Slovenia, about to go to Portugal in a few weeks. So for me, like the idea of revenge travel is like, I'm so pissed off at being stuck in one place for so long that now I'm gonna go everywhere I possibly can.

Sean Weisbrot: That's revenge travel. It's like. Because of the pandemic costs have gone up because of inflation. The cost has gone up because of the war in Ukraine. Costs have gone up, but I don't care how much it costs, I'm going to do it anyway. That's revenge travel.

Anna Wong: I think now if we are running the podcast, it's easier for you to do that. Sometimes I wonder if you are leaving your own country. You know, and, and start in the new one and start your business in the new country or city, and it's kind of like, you have to start from scratch again.

Anna Wong: You get what I mean? Because, you know, why don't you just expand your business in the city where you have the most content?

Sean Weisbrot: Well, for me personally, I mean, the way that nervous set up is that it's meant to be a global software. Kind of platform. So there is no, it, it, it's different from FEW, right?

Sean Weisbrot: Because your business is hyper localized for the market that you're in. And even if you expand into another market like Singapore or Indonesia, it's still gonna be hyper localized for that specific market where nerve is a single solution that's meant for a global market.

Sean Weisbrot: So, will we need to make minor adjustments for marketing for different markets? Yeah, of course. But it's different because you have physical events, you have people meeting locally there. and with the podcast, which I'm now turning into its own education company, it's also a remote company.

Sean Weisbrot: It's also, you know, automated and, and scalable. So. I choose to do businesses that don't need me to be in a physical place, because the idea Exchange was the opposite. The idea exchange forced me to be in a specific location for the whole year round, and that was frustrating. You know, I wanted to build something remote and Idea Exchange didn't allow me to do that, and that was one of the reasons why I had to let it go.

Sean Weisbrot: But. Hmm, I, but it took me from there, from 2015. It took me another two and a half, three years to be able to figure out how to work as I travel. And then it took me another year and a half to figure out what business I wanted to do, you know, after I wanted to start. And, and that's why I got the idea like, okay, well I'll start in Singapore and the team will be remote.

Sean Weisbrot: So that's been very helpful because I haven't had to worry about the pandemic, like it didn't. It didn't hurt our business at all. It didn't cause us to have to change the operations of the business because we had started remotely. So our mentality and our daily operations, nothing changed. Right. and that was very, very beneficial.

Sean Weisbrot: So, when I think about going to different countries and quote unquote starting over, I love the challenge because in essence, I'm starting to build a network, right? I've built a network in Greece. I met, so one of the people who's invested in a fund outta a Switzerland that's invested in nerves is from Greece.

Sean Weisbrot: So while I was there, I got to meet her. Very, very interesting woman. Her company builds ships, like literally, they build ships from the ground up. Greece, incredible business. And I got to meet my friends. One of them is a multimillionaire doing real estate in Greece. It was a family business he took over.

Sean Weisbrot: So every country I go to, I get to meet really cool people. And now if I want to go back to those countries, I know those people, you know, I've already made friends with them. And if I meet somebody that might need those people, it's all, you know, it's all networking.Like you, as we've been talking about this whole time, it's like I.

Sean Weisbrot: I don't see it as something difficult because I've turned the process of starting over into a system. So I know every time I'm going to a new country, I just apply that system. It takes me at, you know, probably seven or eight hours of work to get that done. But if I'm going to a place for two or three weeks or a month or whatever.

Sean Weisbrot: I know exactly what to do in order to get into the local economy and the local community very quickly, and to lead a local lifestyle almost immediately. And in doing so, I put myself in a position where I get to meet really great people very quickly, and I get to, you know, make good friends, and I get to have awesome experiences.

Sean Weisbrot: For example, I was invited to a Greek wedding. You know, if I went to Greece, not knowing anybody, I would've never been invited to a Greek wedding. But I got to go to a Greek wedding and it was incredible, and the wine was amazing, and the cake and the food, and the dancing and the music, it was all, it was all wonderful.

Sean Weisbrot: And I would've never had that experience if I, you know, hadn't met that person. you, you may have met him before. His name is Giannis. He's a Greek guy in China. Yeah, he is a good friend of mine. I met him in China.

Sean Weisbrot: You know, we were friends there for years and he left, you know, I left China five years ago.

Sean Weisbrot: He left China two years ago because of COVID. I hadn't seen him in four years. So I decided I would go to Greece and we met up there and you know. His birthday was a few days after I was supposed to leave, and he was like, Hey, you know, if you don't mind, like, I would love to have you here for my birthday.

Sean Weisbrot: And I was like, yeah. I extended my trip a few extra days there and on like the night before or two nights before I was supposed to leave, he's like, oh, by the way, there's a wedding you wanna come to? And I was like, hell yeah. I wanna go to a big fat Greek wedding. You know? So I don't, I don't see it as a challenge.

Sean Weisbrot: I see it as exciting, you know, it's to start over.

Anna Wong: Yes, definitely. I would be excited when I was listening to what you're talking about, and sometimes like for women, especially, you know, here in Asia, you always have to think about the next three to five years.

Anna Wong: And so not just for business, but at the same time for personal life, let's say, You know, Eners and my friends, they already got kicks, baby. So you have to start thinking about, okay, can you really know, do whatever you want in traveling to different countries and cities. And I think that is one of the challenges.

Anna Wong: And as a woman, they might think about it.

Sean Weisbrot: I think you can have that, but it starts with making yourself not necessary on a daily basis. So if you can build up the team and you can build up the revenue, or they can help build up the revenue so that you don't need to be part of the daily operations of the company, then you can start a family.

Sean Weisbrot: You can have a baby and you can still travel. It just requires having that mindset, having that plan and taking the steps to make it happen.

Anna Wong: Yeah. I think you mentioned a good point. Start getting it planted, so, shuffling plans as well.