There's this one reason why my holding company, as you can see here, has been really successful so far. There's this reason why the diary of a co has been successful as [music] well. And it's the same reason why I love my life and love the work that I get to do every day.
I'm starting to believe that this is actually the most important idea for success in whatever it is you're trying to do in your life. And this idea I'm calling collecting people. >> And you're listening to the Naval Podcast.
Today we're going to [music] be talking about recruiting, hiring, team, and culture. [music] There's a famous quote from Venode Kosla, the team you build [music] is the company you build. Or in other words, they told you it was a technology game when it's really a recruiting game.
If you want to know what I mean when I say I collect people, then let me take you back 2 months to when I was on tour in Asia and I did something pretty crazy. But this kind of sums up who I am. So I put up a story on my Instagram that said this and it said very keen to invest in founders that are building companies that create real world connection community are directly [music] indirectly ending loneliness.
If that's you get in touch and I'm looking through culture test for context cultureest. com which is how we screen candidates to make sure that they're culturally aligned to our mission. I'm going through looking at everybody who's applied for a job or filled out the culture test and I stumble across this one result where this person has 99% alignment and I look across the name and it says Georgia Gibson.
>> So [music] something quite mental has happened. I as of late have been messaging the flight story team because I think that they are so exceptional in terms of their approaches towards innovation, [music] experimentation and like recently community and that's like such my heart is trying to bring people offline [music] and connect and back to the real world and I saw that they were starting to focus on this. So I've been messaging.
However, emails started to go a bit cold and I wasn't getting a response and I realized I needed to get a sign off from the top and I was watching Behind the Diary, which um I'm kind of obsessed with as a show. And I was watching a buyer diary episode and during the episode Steven picks up the phone and he calls someone who does really well in this test. And I was like, "Okay, well that's the quickest way to get his number.
I need to do the test then do well in it and then he'll call me. " And um I told my girlfriend about this and she was like, "George, it doesn't just happen like that. " And I was like, "Yeah, no, it will.
" I couldn't find the test anywhere online, but I realized that it would probably be like embedded within a recruitment flow. So, I I applied to be the head of community, not to be the head of community um myself, but from my company's perspective. I really want to accelerate this decision cuz I think we would work really well together.
So, I put in the deck for my company and then in the auto reply, here's the test. did the test and I remember I was going into the cinema at the time with my girlfriend um and she was like George it doesn't really work like that like it's not that easy and I was like no I have a feeling that I'm going to get called and then I did I came out of the mall and I had a message from Steven being like call me >> so I started talking to her and I'll be honest I had two ideas I thought you know what if I could persuade her to come and join my ecosystem one day she'll replace me and I know this sounds like a crazy to say, but I think if she hangs around me long enough, she's extremely hardworking, extremely smart, and Oxford graduates are probably smarter than me. So, my first thought was like, God, I wish I could just hire her to be my business partner effectively to like come and join me in building my company over the next 10 years.
>> TBC, my company, helps people go offline and we have ticketing solutions and then I also work with brands sometimes to facilitate that as well. >> And obviously at the time, she's she's the co-founder of her own business. She's raised money and she has a team, etc.
But within a couple of days, we had a few phone calls. And it became really, really clear, I think, to both of us that we should work together. >> I kind of said to him, I think I'd have to meet you in person.
[laughter] >> And I said to her, listen, if you want to get on a plane today, I'll fly you out to Bali and we can spend the next 5 or 6 days getting to know each other. >> Let me let me turn this question on to you. Like, what would what would it take make to make you decide that you want to come and do this with me?
What would it take? I think I'm about [music] to take a flight across the world to meet Steven Bartlett because we've been getting on pretty well on text. >> So, thank you.
>> Nice. I'll speak to you later. Okay, >> George.
>> Cheers. >> All right. Byebye.
>> Byebye. >> Now, I've heard rumors that you're not supposed to meet strangers off the internet. I think I actually read that on the internet.
>> So, yeah, just picking up on that. Georgia currently runs her own business. The business is called TBC.
I think it's doing really, really well in the UK. She's got a co-founder. She's raised investment.
She's got a team. And in the next 3 or 4 days, I've got to persuade her that the best decision for her future is to leave all of that and come with me. Wish me luck.
>> Hey. Um, so on the Georgia thing, yeah, she's just a really great person. I want to hire her.
I think she's amazing. >> So, I'm trying to hire her, but it's difficult. >> I think I'm about to go fly across the world.
I've never been to Bali. >> Georgia is about to arrive and yeah, first time I'm meeting her. Hopefully, she's not a weirdo.
>> God from the White Company. My god, I've got so much leg room. >> She's more concerned that I'm a weirdoid.
She has flown across planet Earth to meet a a guy she's never met before. >> Crazy. >> I'll be right back.
She's about to arrive. >> Georgia is a badass. She's just like a badass.
I mean, like if if if I were to say, "Right, George, if I'm saying hypothetically, [music] you leave your company. " I mean, obviously, I'd have to leave my company to do this. Like, that's a no-brainer.
So, I'd have to leave my company. I'd have to sort all of that that out. >> This is a bit crazy.
I understand how uh an objective observer would look at this and go, "I think Steven's lost his mind. " But this is how I've built my entire career. When I feel like I find someone who is rare, who is um special, who is aligned, [music] I will break any rule that I need to break to get them on board the bus.
>> And I've broken so many rules. Every single hire, we had to break some core rule of recruiting. Some core rule of recruiting.
>> I'm going to leave my company. The plane on the way back, I made a list of every single person that I now need to contact. I think there's like over 57 people on that [music] list.
>> Okay. Met George in Bali 2 months ago and she's worked with me pretty much 7 days a week, 24 hours a day for [music] the last 2 months all over the world. She's been in LA with me, Europe, Davos, Florida, you name it, she's been there.
And I have to say I was totally right about her. She's exceeded my expectations. [music] I can't imagine the impact we're going to have together on Steven.
com over the next 10 years. And it all started with a decision that she was going to break some rules and I was going to break some rules to get her. >> You're going to have to break rules to get the best people because the best people are not cogs in a machine.
They don't fit into a neat and comfortable place. And actually if you look around my companies, you will find people who we broke huge rules to collect [music] who were doing very amazing other things when we met them. >> Georgie and I, we were building the business.
So all the signals were really positive. We honestly we were so happy. [laughter] Absolutely no reason to pivot or move.
>> This is a fun plot twist for a Wednesday. >> Instantaneous connection >> who were retired. My plan was always in December 2025 to [music] retire.
When I met Steven, Georgie and CBS, as if I had known them for 30 years and I had that [music] feeling of, oh well, [snorts] life meant that we had to come together. >> Who had no plans to go into work. >> I couldn't have been further away from looking for a job.
I had just sold my company. I'd had [music] the most intense couple of years of my life. I had a 3-year-old.
I had a one-year-old and was just about to find out I was pregnant again. And he was like, "If it's not a problem for you, it's not a problem for me. " >> When it comes to collecting these people, you've got to be brave.
You've got to be gutsy. You've got to be ambitious. >> The best people want to do meaningful work because they're aware of their potential.
The best people know that deep down. They want to work on something big. About 10 years ago when I started my first company called Social Chain and we got to about 150 team members, I remember turning to my co-founder and asking him, I wonder if this pain never [music] stops.
And about a year later, after we hired a couple of exceptional people kind of accidentally, like I didn't really know the importance of hiring [music] good people and we kind of accidentally hired good people. I reached this place [music] in the business that I now call the promised land. And the promised land is the place you get [music] to where the business is able to run itself and you can therefore focus on the things [music] that only you can do.
There's a founder that actually works here in my office and she's called Alice and she's building a business called Mileof that does women's runear and I was actually talking to her about this the other day because I think she's at that point where things are hard and maybe she's wondering how it will ever be different and the [music] connective idea between Tala represent Gym Shark was they hired someone that's done it before and that seems to be in all of those stories this catalyst moment where the graph changes, >> but at what point or how big a team do they have under that? That's what's interesting. >> This is the answer.
As soon as you [ __ ] possibly can >> because everything is downstream from that and all of the problems that you're contending with and the manufacturing and this supply, all these black boxes that you're trying to like see inside these unknown unknowns, all of them are solved afterwards. And I call this the promised land. I remember [music] sitting late on Friday evenings talking to my co-founder about the pain.
We've got all these people, all these problems. We don't know the right answer. We can't see the future.
We've never done it before. This is the first time. The promised land as a founder is the day you bring in those people >> and they tell you what to do [music] and they run the business and you focus on the thing that only you can do, which is that intuition you have as a founder, the thing that created this thing.
You [music] know what my life is and isn't. No one else can have that. But lots of people can do finance operations.
>> Yeah. >> This business was [music] my chance of like playing out the experiment. What if from the very beginning you aim at getting some of the most exceptional people in the world to come and work here.
Do I have to go through the pain? Is there zero pain? >> Is the are the numbers bigger?
Way bigger. And actually when I first met Teddy and Levi in their office at Perfect Ted, walked through their office where it used to be. I looked around and I saw all these young people and I thought, "Oh, they're making the same mistake I did.
They're [snorts] in the same thing where everyone in this room is younger than no. They've never done it before. Two years ago to the day, this room we're sat in now has no paint and no walls.
And we've got a little fake desk set up here, a little prop desk over here. And they sit down with me and my friend um who's a organizational psychologist or whatever, [music] and they say, "Oh my god, man. " Like >> what's interesting is when we first started the business, we felt like we were begging people to get on the journey with us.
It was three of us at a kitchen table. We were like, "Just trust us. Just trust us.
" And we couldn't really afford much. We could we could afford people coming out of school. We could afford we could afford >> all my time now >> is spent hiring people.
It's like I've been in three or four interviews today. I'm on LinkedIn every night till 1 in the morning DMing people, finding people literally you know what it's like and then Teddy's doing the jobs of a junior ops person because the ops team is struggling [music] and it's just the whole thing feels like a like >> this goes do you remember our first conversation about senior people? You remember, didn't you?
We were talking about this. Like someone was joking yesterday that I just collect people >> and what they mean is I'm just looking for exceptional people. >> Yeah.
>> That I've encountered over my life and I'm just collecting them in this space. On collecting people, I do come across [music] really really exceptional people that I there's a girl that used to work for me at my last place. Unbelievable.
[clears throat] She's perfect. I haven't really got a role for her. But on that point, part of me wants to just be like, she's [ __ ] smart.
She works really hard. She'll be great at what she does. I just hire her instead of [music] looking for people that are so specific for a certain role.
>> Yes. And sometimes I I collect them but I don't employ them for years. So Jules is a fun example.
She applied you know Jules my super stuff. Simon Cal for 10 years. >> I'm I interviewed her 4 years ago.
>> It [music] was co I was working for Simon Cal. I'd been working for him for 10 years running his family office and [music] this guy just popped up on LinkedIn. He had his quirky little hat on and we went back and forth on email a little bit >> cuz she interviewed for Dom's job to be my manager and I was like, "Not quite there.
" >> And I got down to the last two [music] and then he decided not to go with me. So I was like, "Oh, okay. That wasn't meant to be that.
" >> Four years later, I knew I remembered and I messaged my friends. I said, "I told you about some Simon Cowwoman. Does any of you remember her name?
" >> And then suddenly I was checking my junk mail [music] at 5:00 a. m. one day, just scrolling through my junk mail and saw the name Steven Bartlett.
was Steve just saying, "Hi, don't know if you remember me. We spoke four [music] years ago. " He's like, "I've never forgot you.
Um, [clears throat] I wasn't ready for you then, but I think I'm ready for you now. " [music] Basically, do you want to come build an empire with me? >> Yes, I remember her name.
Sent me her thing, and I hear she's here. >> What What kind of practical steps are you taking to integrate [music] the new players with the existing? >> I'd say the most important one is being less scared to have an uncomfortable conversation with somebody.
>> Mhm. you know, >> and it's going to be messy and it's going to be messy for everyone and like it's going to be painful and there's often going to be a problem that there's no comfortable or nice answer [music] to. You know what I mean?
So, it's also just like iterating and being nice to yourself, recognizing that like you're doing your best in this >> gray area. >> We are harsh on ourselves as well. >> The wonderful thing is what was [music] saying is these are all like old problems.
These are all psychology problems >> and so they're not like the answers are well tested. you told us it was going to be a thing and you told us to bring in like some proper season vets >> and we said yeah we'll do it and we didn't do it. The truth we didn't do it is cuz we probably didn't have the money to do it at that point >> and now we're finally in a position where >> we have to >> but I get it and that that's what doing that they're hiring they're hiring that layer now.
So my my in hindsight the game is to is to bring um the experience in as soon as you can without losing the naivity and and the founder intuition and the kid that the 16-year-old I think to own the future you understand both the past >> and the present. >> So it means that you do need the like the 16-year-old that understands Tik Tok and what Brat means. Like I don't know what that means.
So I need I need some Gen Z here to tell me what Brat Summer is. But at the same time I need Nikki who's been the bossing consultant. You know it's that blend that creates great companies.
thing. One of the things I've realized that I wish I knew 10 years ago as a business owner and a founder is [music] there's two types of problems in business. There are old problems which are problems in business that people have solved before like finance and HR and cash [music] flow.
And then there's and legal and then there's new problems. New problems are things that most people haven't solved before because they're new problems. things like AI and how to do marketing because the platforms are always [music] changing and anything related to innovation within your industry.
So, if you're facing an old problem, the solution is to hire someone that knows how to do it. The mistake founders make is they spend 2 to 3 years figuring out HR solutions that have already been figured out and so they should have just hired someone who knows how to do that so they could focus all of their energy on the new problems, the innovation, the thing that's going to give your business a unique edge. And I think this is partly why I collect people because I don't want to spend five minutes of my time on a problem that I could hire someone else to do.
I want to spend that five minutes on the new problems that really nobody else has solved before. And that will create a unique edge in my industry. So, this is a word of warning and probably one of the ways you can accelerate your career is to be able to identify and call out whether the thing you're dealing with in your business with the project you want to start is an old problem in which case you need to hire someone or a new problem in which case you need to experiment as fast as you can because nobody has ever solved that problem before.
But the person that does is going to reap a lot of the rewards. >> Hey Behind the Dary gang, it's me Will. I shoot and edit these videos that you guys are watching right now with the team as well.
And what I'm about to tell you might make me lose my job. Now, you might remember a few months ago that Steve made you a promise and he said if we get enough signups, he will drop 100 of these limited edition Behind the Diary hoodies. We got over 2,000 signups.
And I've spent the last few months making perfect premium hoodies. I'm talking thick fabrics, [music] embroidered on the front and on the back, invisible pockets, boxed hood. These things are perfect.
And as a result, it's been a lot more expensive to [music] make them than I thought and than he would like. So, let's make a deal. The hoodies are live now and there's only a hundred.
If you don't tell Steve, I'll drop a link below and you can be the first to get your hand on these first ever Behind the Diary hoodies. Thank you so much for watching these videos. This is honestly a bit of a dream come true for the team.
So whether this is a gift for yourself or a gift for someone else, why not take a look at the link below and [music] get yourself one of 100 hoodies. Thank you for watching. Back to the episode.
New York, New York, the most incredible city on earth. So this morning I've got Kevin Hart on the podcast. So just woken up as you can probably tell.
I'm going to ask him about this idea of collecting people as well because he strikes me as someone who against all of the odds, against the odds of getting terrible grades, against the odds of where he came from and who he was around, has managed to climb to the top of multiple mountains, of both comedy, of entrepreneurship, of investing, and so much more. So, I'm going to ask him about collecting people, cuz he's a real collector of people if I've ever seen one. How much of this game have you learned in hindsight is about people?
How important it is to like collect the right people. >> Before you get to the right people, you run through wrong people. With wrong people, you can go like, "They're wrong.
They don't work. I got to get somebody else. " Or you can grow with people.
I'm a believer of the grow. I think it's dope when we can all say we started a certain way, but we're ending up in a completely different space. Along that journey of growth, some people won't make it.
You can be patient and you can want the best for some, but they might not want the same for themselves. [music] And the people that have worked so hard to help this business get to where it is today, I have a service to them as well. How do I bring in the right valuable assets to put us in a bigger position to win?
Sometimes you got to let go of [music] things you thought would be the thing. So I'm a firm believer in talent, but the only way that you realize that is to get out of the way. [music] Ladies and gentlemen, I am somewhere above the south coast of England.
I'm landing in London in the next 20 minutes or so, but I just wanted to jump on here quickly and have a conversation with you because Kevin Hart said something that is so important as it relates to collecting people. And if I don't have this conversation with you, then I'm probably going to be doing you a disservice. This whole video will do you a disservice.
Kevin Hart talked about how to get to the right people, you have to go through a lot of the wrong ones. And unfortunately that is the case unless you have a framework for knowing how to avoid the wrong people. And it's taken me I'd say about 15 years to build the framework that I'm about to talk to you about.
The minute I land in London, which will be in a couple of minutes time, I'm going to be in the car and I'm going to draw you the framework that I use to make sure that the people I'm bringing into my life are aligned, are the right people, are going to add value, aren't going to be leeches, aren't going to be toxic for my mental health. I'm going to draw that for you on my iPad. at the minute the plane lands.
We landed about 15 minutes, so stay with me. Um, but it was an incredibly important conversation because Kevin Hart said something that I think is so important generally about how to like level up in your life and it's a really really unappreciated idea, which is this idea of being comfortable with your ignorance. >> I am I'm very secure in myself and being the dummy in the room.
You can't [music] be afraid to like verbalize your ignorance. And what you'll find is that information is not free, but it's available. It's not actually hard to obtain.
It's only hard to people that are very insecure about just verbalizing, I don't know where to get it. >> Like by definition, if you are not the dumb person in the room, you probably don't want to collect people in that room. And I think what he illuminated for me is actually whenever you're in a room where you're the dumb one, [music] where everyone else knows things that you don't know and you end up asking them, "What the hell does this mean?
What does that word mean? What does that big word mean? What does cash flow mean?
What does net profit mean? " That's a room where you should consider throwing out your net and collecting people because that's a room that is by definition value additive. Anyway, I land in 2 minutes and then when I land, I'm going to draw you my framework for knowing how to avoid the wrong people when it relates to hiring or collecting people in your life.
And this is a framework for both personal and professional people collection. And uh yeah, we'll be in London in about about 20 minutes. Okay.
Um a couple of things that have really really helped me figure out how to avoid the wrong people and find the right people. [music] The first is a book I read called working backwards. It's written by two former Amazon executives that left who were involved in building the people function there.
And they use this idea called bar raising. The idea is very simple. So if your company or team or just you on your own, if this is currently the level you're at, [music] the next person through the door is either going to raise the bar, they're either going to maintain the bar or they're going to lower the bar.
They have to raise the bar. And even at Amazon, they say that if you've been at this company for two or three years, you should feel like you wouldn't get in this company. You wouldn't get through the interview process right now because the bar has raised so much since you joined.
And this has been such a useful question to ask myself when I meet someone and I fall in love with them and think they're so amazing is I say to myself, does this person raise the average? And also the other thing that one of my mentors told me at the start of my career is he said every single person that you invite into your life will either make you wired or tired. Um [music] and your job is to make sure that you invite more people that make you feel wired in.
And you know what I mean. You've been around these people that give you the zooies. They make you feel excited when you talk to them.
They energize you because of their ideas, their ambition just the way that they are. And then you've been around those people that kind of drain you of your energy for whatever reason. Sometimes you can't even articulate it.
listen to that. [music] And lastly, another thing that's really helped me throughout my entire life, and this is honestly the most important thing when it comes to collecting people, hiring, building your circle is you're going to get it wrong. You're going to get it really wrong.
And it's really about what you do when you realize [music] that you've made a mistake. I've hired thousands of people in my career now, and I um still haven't got it right predictably. And honestly, like the people that are slightly older watching this now will be able to relate to the fact that most of life is having the uncomfortable conversation quicker.
Honestly, there's been several times in this season of my life where someone has lasted for one day for 3 days um in our company because it just wasn't right. And I'm [music] proud of that. That's a good thing.
Um you never get hiring right. You never get people collecting right. But the important thing is when you do make a [music] mistake and you do get it wrong that you rectify it as quickly as you possible possibly can.
So having those difficult conversations the way I've like framed it in my head is like an act of respect um for all of the people here that um are giving so much. And um last thing I wanted to say behind the diary is I was always an outsider when I was young. Um, a lot of you know my story, but I was pretty much the only black kid in my area.
We were the poor family, etc. , etc. Always felt a ton of shame.
Always felt very, very different from everybody else. And uh, I don't know, it was hard to find my people when I was younger. And as an adult, I have the opportunity to surround myself with them.
So many of my actual real life friends are former colleagues of mine. I think 90% of them are. And as someone who has probably always considered them to be a bit themselves to be a bit weird and to be a bit of an outsider and not really to fit in any in any way, I think part of the reason why when I find these people who are outsiders themselves and don't really fit in either um why I collect them so quickly is because I guess it makes me feel feel less alone in my weirdness and being an outsider.
And I I look at the people we've collected and I think you know what actually I've just collected a bunch of absolute outsiders. >> It was co I was working for [music] Simon Cal. I'd been working for him for 10 years running his family office and then I got cancer.
So for me [music] my focus shifted into a different battle. And then when I sort of came out of having COVID and [music] cancer, I came out not really knowing who I was or where I fitted. Um, I was at a [music] proper crossroads at that point.
>> I'm gay and when I was growing up, I didn't want to be. When you start to realize that you're not the same as everyone around you, you can spend a lot of that effort trying to see how to be the same and to repress it. For me, I really didn't really fit in in a lot of groups.
>> So, maybe everything I said in this video is not true. >> Maybe it's not about performance and talent, culture. >> Everything [music] can be achieved when you have the right people in the room with you.
if you're kind of willing to shred some of the older versions of yourself and maybe confront some of those fears. >> And I guess it comes down [music] to that feeling. Do I feel like it can be done with you?
>> You know, I I believe in synchronicity and I believe that sort of life meant that we had to come together and >> like it felt like an like a a force [laughter] like pushing me. >> That was the reason why I just felt very very strongly. It was a really strong signal.
Maybe it's just some playground trauma that I haven't been able to shake. [snorts] I'll let you figure that out. >> His number and so >> let's show them >> what >> that cuts back to them.
>> Oh, okay. Um, >> keep that in. [laughter] >> What the [ __ ] was that?
>> He's a good boy. He's a good boy. [laughter] He's a good boy.
Hello mate. Look how much better Pablo is doing. After about 4 weeks of being really, really, really, really sick.
He is back to happy zooies. He's a good boy. He's a good boy.
He's happy and healthy again. And he's fat again. Thank God.
Do you want to know what happened with George Gibson? It's 2 months later. I'm in London.
It is 11:00 p. m. at night time here in my office and it didn't work out.
Turns out she was a stalker. >> It got really, really, really crazy. She started showing up in the middle of the night um with a rake and uh knocking on the door.
She she did some she stole my cat and um she bounced me. >> Hello. [laughter] I'm joking.
She's still here. I mean, Friday night, that's the end of behind the diary. Friday night, midnight, you got [ __ ] Will Lindsay Perez.
This is how hard this guy works. He's sketching behind the diary ideas on the [ __ ] window. What a vandal.
Badass. Look in his behind the diary hoodie. You can get one of these if you subscribe to the channel.
Please hit the subscribe button. I really appreciate it. Means a lot.
