Flexibility and goodwill are of the essence when you are an entrepreneur and when you work with entrepreneurs.
Being in the 2 categories, I pay great attention to those qualities when I meet a candidate for a job at Intotheminds. Unfortunately, most of the time I’m not happily surpized. Most people whom I meet behave like “simple employees” and expect a cool job, with good money and little to do.
This is unfortunately no something that I can offer. This is not even something that I WANT to offer.
The people I want to take onboard should have entrepreneurial qualities. In particular they should be self-starters, curious and willing to do the extra-mile for customers. If you think your mission stops when the last invoice is paid you’re wrong. Working with and for entrepreneurs is like a religion. It never stops.
Learn to give before expecting to receive
 If you want to land a job with us be prepared for a few tests. The first one is the “Give and Take test”. I want each candidate to be tested on his/her willingness to invest time to convince me he/she is the right one. Practically the first interview concludes on an exercise (one or two actual customers’ problems to be solved) that the candidate has a week or two to research.
The good thing with this kind of test is that it is a very useful filter. Most candidate will never send their thoughts back and are automatically dismissed.
Why is it important to learn to give before expecting to receive?
In business you need to create confidence. Asking upfront to be paid (without knowing whether you’ll be able to bring any added value) is not my vision of how business should be made.
I refuse to make offers before being 100% sure that we can help our customers. That’s why I invest time (and money) to first understand the customers’ problems and THEN making an appropriate offer.
It works with all kind of customers but especially well with entrepreneurs. The reason is simple. Entrepreneurs are über-sensitive to the value of money and want to make sure that what they buy will really make them better off.
Advice for your marketing strategy
What about going back to your current and past customers to talk with them about their needs? Sometimes we lose the connection to customers and start living in a different world without taking the reality of entrepreneurship into account.
Posted in Strategy.
