Two Millionaires Answer the Questions You’d Ask Off-Camera

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
All right, it's the new year, but it's the same old us. And we wanted to do something for you guys. So we wanted to do a mail bag of fan questions. So people have written in questions. We are going to answer them. You ready to jump in, Sam?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:13)
Yeah. All right, here we go.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:22)
Question number one, what is the biggest mistake you've made in your business that you have not spoken about publicly yet? And how has it shaped your decision-making?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:30)
Man, I've got a great one for this. Tell me if your experience has been with this. So I tend to hire ambitious young people and I take chances on them. And I hate to say it, but the majority of the time, that is a horrible plan. And it's significantly better to hire more experienced people and pay them a lot more money. And I get way better results.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:50)
So when was this mistake? Is this like, I've been making this mistake forever or this is a-

**SPEAKER_2** (0:55)
Forever, man. Look, this is like, my mistake is like the American dream, you know? Like, give me your broken, your weak, and your ambitious young-

**SPEAKER_1** (1:05)
I can fix him. Yes.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:07)
And I always want to do that because I'm into the romantic idea of that. And just I recently, at Hampton, we've hired significantly more experienced people and they cost two or three times more than a young and upcoming person. But the results are like five or ten times better.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:25)
Right.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:26)
And I just make this- I always- I get so emotional and I always find the- people say hire high agency people or hire these people whose growth rate is really high. But in general, it's just kind of better to say, hey, you already did this at this other company. Do it here, please.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:43)
So we were just going through a hiring process. I wanted to hire somebody on my content team. And we found this kid who was great. He sent in this like wonderful video. Like he made this video application that was super funny. And it was well done. And I was like, yes, this is my kind of guy. Young, green. Yeah, he used to do this. You know, he just graduated. But like this video is amazing. I got to talk to this guy. Talk to him. I like him. Good dude. And right before we hired him, you know, we asked a very simple question, which is like, so we want this to go well, right? We want this to be great and we want this to work. And so like, does it make sense to just go with somebody who has never done anything even remotely like this? Or are there people in the world who have done very similar things that we could go talk to first? And should we not like lean in that direction? And as soon as we had that like very simple sanity check, because I'm like you, I fall in love with the sort of angel investing in people idea. It's like the raw up and comer, never done anything, found this diamond in the rough, why do I like that? It's not for generous reasons, because it's like I feel cool that I found that thing, right? It's like finding a needle in a haystack, the diamond in the rough.
But that's, it is, like I have such a low hit rate with that. Right, by definition, you're gonna have a low hit rate with that strategy. And if it matters, and if there are people who have done it before that are way more proven in this category, like why are you not going in that direction? So I've definitely had that same mistake sometimes.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:15)
It can work.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:16)
And when it does work, it's the best story.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:18)
It's the best. But like, check this out. This strategy that I've been doing, it's been working well. So I love hiring consultants and agencies. But I'll say, I'm only gonna hire you for two months, and you're gonna do the work for the first 30 days. But in the second 30 days, it's just you teaching me what to do. And so I have found experience of getting a young, ambitious, high agency, green person and teaming them up with an agency. And I have had some results with that. But in general, just hiring more experienced people and paying them more money, it's just typically the way to go. And that sounds so duh, but that's the biggest mistake that I've made.