First off, thank you for visiting my Stas Borukhoff site. I hope to share with you my journey and lessons I have learned in entrepreneurship and app development.
When you take your journey of entrepreneurship you are going to meet many types of people. Some people can open new doors and help you realize your goals and dreams, and others will waste your time, try and rip you off, and even hurt you. Who are these people? They may be people you met online, friends, family, or referrals. The fact is that life is too short to waste time with fake people.
Time is Your Greatest Resource
One of the worst things a person can take from you is your time. As you go out to build something incredible you will find many distractions. As I wrote about never taking your eyes off your goal, you have to be able to stay focused, and manage your attention. Master your time and you will master your success. Fail to manage your time and you will find it getting shorter and shorter. The business world is changing and moving so fast these days. Time is now a competitive advantage to those who can use it wisely. Part of that means not giving time to things and people that waste it.
Fakes Waste Your Time
One of the things I wanted to solve with Mobiline app was to solve the problem so many social networks have with fake profiles. If you take Linkedin for example there are tons of profiles saying all kinds of things, but many of them are not verified so people can say just about anything and you may not know if it is true. When you start working with the people you can instantly tell if people live up to their resume. In my experience, it is often rare that they do. If you are a serious entrepreneur looking to grow your project you need to hire good people. If those people can’t deliver then you have wasted your time with a fake. You hired their profile, but that is not what you got. I think about the same things with my Stas Borukhoff profiles. They need to be accurate, you owe it to yourself and the people reading.
Imagine you are climbing up a hill with a bunch of weights weighing you down. This is what it is like trying to build your business or even live your life with fake people. When you start to remove those people from your life, you will find it is so much easier to succeed. You can do this with the people you already know, and thanks to MobiLine you can do this with people you meet.
As a business owner, when assembling a team you want to get it wrapped up so you can get to building, but Jim Collins had it right in the book Good to Great. You have to get the right people on the bus if you are going to succeed and that means you have to sift through a bunch, then realize that maybe half of the people you thought were going to be great because of their online profile will probably not be great at all. It is better for you to know this going in that to find out along the way. Here are 3 tips to steer clear of fakes:
1 – Don’t Believe Everything You Read
This is generally good advice when it comes to the internet. This is why we integrated video into our app because at least if you see the people you can get a sense of who is real and who they are. Profiles are like marketing, they are made to look great. With that being said, don’t be so paranoid that you chase away the great people you are looking for. I have seen people make candidates jump through so many hoops that they end up losing great talent. Weed out the fakes, but not the greats.
2 – Validate Information
If something is important that a person says about themselves or if it is in their profile, validate it. If they say they are an expert in a field, who can vouch for them? Are their endorsements from people who are experts or average people? Are the sources from them, or can you verify them. You don’t need to become Sherlock Holmes, but sometimes just a quick Google search can verify information. If you see something that sounds impressive, ask yourself the context of the information. Is that award easy to earn or something hard to earn? Are their skills that sound amazing tied to working at a job that isn’t exactly the standard for the industry?
3 – Talk with them
One thing about fake people, they often fall short the more you talk with them. Don’t be afraid to dig into a long conversation with a person. Anyone can sound good in the first 5 minutes, but keep talking you will start to see things unravel if they aren’t the real deal. If they are an expert in a subject that you are not, then have them explain things to you and in that you will be able to see if they are just saying nice things or if there is some depth to their understanding. If they can’t explain it well and why it matters, they likely don’t understand it themselves. Ask good questions, don’t be overbearing or suspicious, but just talk and take notes. If they something is important verify with other people in the industry if this is true or the right strategy.
Finally, understand the true value of finding the right people. Once you do, don’t let them go, and pay them well. You have no idea the true value of them until you waste time and money with people who are fake. The total cost of hiring and firing the wrong person must be calculated into the value of the right person. I hope this helps you on your journey. I would love to hear you thoughts below in the comments and thanks for checking out my Stas Borukhoff website!
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