@SunKing,
@Chase wow huge huge insight, so basically if i’m reading you right,
the art of war could never be obsolete because it’s a fundamental piece of strategy in itself. It’s also interpreted differently because of the nuances of strategy mixed with the strategist’s already intuited understanding. The tactics work and they may have counters but it doesn’t matter because most won’t take the time to master them, or they may not even prefer the methods all together. Those that have read it won’t even have the knowledge to identify them because they haven’t absorbed their essence.
You’d have to be up against an A level strategist for you to be read and countered assuming you’re employing these strategies correctly at all.
Precisely.
Every guy's going to get something a bit different from it and retain parts to greater or lesser extent than others.
More skilled, experienced, dedicated guys will get more from it, and the higher up the skill/experience/dedication ranks you go, the fewer of those men there are alive and active in any one given field at any one point in time.
In reference to this, do you have any suggestions for us? That solid original seduction material that’s dusty and old but has that universal hold like the art of war. Things we can practice and master for real results without fear of wasting time?
Thanks Chase
Well, sure. Seduction-wise, you can't really go wrong reading the old stuff. You can start for free
grabbing the zipped archives of some of the old greats... Mystery, Zan,
@Gunwitch,
@A2daMIR, Lifeguard, MrSex4uNYC, BradP,
@Razorjack, Woodhaven.
Swinggcat's book
Real World Seduction is priceless; any of Mystery's old courses are great, though they're aimed at advanced students (Mystery recommended that only guys who were already successful getting one-night stands should learn his method -- basically to progress from intermediate or low advanced to highly consistent advanced game). David Riker has a conversation course that's very popular with advanced gamers, including on this forum (
@Teevster introduced me to it). David Shade's stuff is recommended for bedroom mastery. Zan has a video course I watched as a beginner that was filled with incredible mindsets on women and relationships I sucked up like a sponge.
I'm still fond of
The System by Roy Valentine, the second book I ever read on seduction (after Swinggcat's
Real World Seduction). It's very simple, but very powerful, and was as formative for my early game as Swinggcat was.
The Game is a fun romp, and probably the best piece to get you hyped about pickup ever written. Tucker Maxx's book
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is a laugh and it's what got
@Hector Papi Castillo started.
There's so much great old stuff that if you could just collect it all in one place and organize it properly you'd have all the seduction knowledge you're ever going to need. You don't really need any further innovation beyond that, except to adapt techniques to specific new environments (e.g., dating apps... and whatever novel ways to meet women emerge in the future).
@ZacAdam and
@uriel,
The 5 star reviews that you guys see?
Yeap. It's either the negotiations were smooth, person was nice, and the testimonial came after......... and/or the results were actually thousands of dollars in advertising and that the company itself has a lot of money to throw away.
Yes, that's true. There's a lot of "Well we spent so much money on them... they can't have been that bad. Just because it didn't work for us doesn't mean it won't work for anyone else. They're really nice people! They kept showing us all these great metrics!" going on in reviews.
When I check reviews these days I look real hard for specifics. What SPECIFIC things are people saying about this individual or agency? A bunch of generic 5-star reviews doesn't tell you much. You need to look for the meat.
Also some quick results at the start that usually don’t scale later.
As a customer, you’re riding the hope wagon at the beginning.
Pretty typical in the advertising industry.
Yes, definitely.
Although in our case we didn't even get that!
But I have had friends that did. They get off to what seems like a great start, then it all falls apart and the agency spends a few months promising them they will return to that early success but they never do.
@ph40,
Well, I know you're not here anymore, but for posterity's sake, let me answer that question:
Fascinating insider info, Chase. Could you go into a little more about the challenges you face hiring smart people as a successful small business owner? Or have you ever published articles about it? I find the world of small business highly intriguing when you need to devote so much time and brainpower to judging people's capabilities to determine how they can best serve your organization.
Let's say you're hiring remote, which is what our hires tend to be. I've run businesses before where we had an office and we hired on-site employees, but of the 250+ people I've hired over the past decade or so 95%+ have been remote, so I'll talk about that.
When you hire remote, you are always going to get one of these people:
- The contractor who can't do what he says he can do and completely lacks the skills
- The contractor who tells you he's working on it but never does more than a few hours' of work, ever
- The contractor who promises to do a great job and looks promising but flakes off after a while
- The contractor who thinks whatever hour cap you set for him is what he should bill every week, regardless the workload
- The contractor who's a rip-off: keeps telling you how great he himself is, but his work is crap and his rates are insane
- The contractor who's reliable, doesn't overcharge you, and isn't slow, but whose work simply isn't up-to-par
- The contractor who's very talented but happens to be both slow and expensive
- The contractor who's young and hungry, ready to work hard, and who produces decent results
- The contractor who's a workhorse: dependable, reliable, does solid work, and isn't too expensive
- The contractor who's a star: skilled, fast, and anywhere from reasonably priced to expensive-but-worth-it
Pretty much anyone you can hire is going to fall into one of these camps.
The #1 and #2 contractors are the easiest to sift out and you will tend to fire them fast. They identify themselves right away.
The #3 - #6 contractors are harder. They can seem good at first and it may take you a little while to recognize which camp they're in. You may struggle with letting them go until they do something egregious enough. Often it may take several egregious things before you finally make the call.
Anyone from #7 to #10 is usable and will probably fit somewhere on your team.
#7 you can put in charge of anything that's not mission critical and benefits from perfectionism (these will tend to be perfectionists).
#8 you can throw at busy tasks where you don't need perfection, just something "good enough."
#9 contractors you want on your day-in, day-out roles: folks you need checking in on a daily or near-daily basis, cranking out consistent solid-quality work without much variation or change.
#10 contractors are your A-players. They're rare finds and will only work for you if they like the work environment. They tend to be picky about where they work, and can be, because they're in-demand.
How do you figure out who's whom?
I got this tip years ago from a guy running a company with 60 people working for it. We've had our numbers up there but I don't think it's been over 45 folks working at GC (most part-time; we only have a few salaried)... right now it's around 25.
Anyway, you write a compelling job post (use your copywriting skills) that emphasizes the fun parts of the job, benefits, etc., and not just what needs to be done. You want A-players applying, after all, and they're going to pass over boring-sounding work. The headline is the most important part, as with anything you write. Include a call-to-action that asks for something specific so you can tell who actually read your job post vs. who is just pasting a template cover letter as his response. If you want to maximize the number of applicants you have to sift through, take 20 minutes and invite a bunch of contractors who look good to apply.
I will generally only accept applicants with 100+ hours worked on a freelancing platform (usually more) and $10K+ earned (usually more). The reason why is because when you go lower than this, that's when you start to run into a much higher proportion of flaky and low quality contractors.
There are many more people who decide to try contracting, only to flake off or not take it seriously or not have the skills, than there are people who actually devote themselves to it as a serious profession. If you're busy, you do not want to have to be chasing people around to make sure their work is up-to-snuff and that it is actually getting done. You want people who are serious about their work whom you don't need to hound to do it. Your best odds of getting that by far are with folks who've already shown they're in this camp by amassing hours + pay working freelance.
What about all those new freelancers just breaking into freelancing?
They can get work at a company that's new to hiring freelancers and doesn't have this kind of screening criteria you will have as a company that's been hiring much longer; or, they can get work at a contractor mill that sucks up lots of contractors, runs them through a training/screening process, and anyone who can swim, swims.
For you, as an established hirer, you need to be minimizing the time you spend accidentally hiring #1s-#6s.
Most freelancing sites give you the option to immediately hire applicants without even interviewing them. Don't do this. Always ask at least a few questions first. I send one message with a few questions confirming the freelancer can do certain things we need done certain ways, or asking for a rough estimate how long he expects something to take. Or I may send him our operations manual for that role if we have one and ask him to review and let me know if everything looks all right or he has any questions. The answers tell you a LOT:
- Some people will tell you they're ready to get started and won't even answer your questions or acknowledge they read whatever you sent them --> big sign you're going to have a LOT of trouble communicating here. Pass on these to save yourself some headaches
- Some people will respond to your message without an answer, instead saying they want to get on a phone call with you. They may be trying to talk you into signing them, or maybe they just like calls a lot more than text. Either way, I'm the employer and I asked a question in a message and don't WANT to have to get on a call if I didn't ask for a call, so... Pass
- Some people will respond with specific answers and say they're ready to get started. Sounds good
- Some people will respond with specific answers and also propose a call. Sounds fine. If you don't think you need a call, just say you don't think you need a call and you can hire them and get started
- Some people will respond with specific answers, plus also ask YOU a few good questions. These are either A-players or they're folks who know the interviewing game well (since this is good general interview advice: "Be sure to ask a few relevant questions back"). It's basically 50/50... either A-player or skilled interviewer. Either way, 50/50 odds someone's an A-player are still encouraging odds, so you have to try that contractor out
Anyone you didn't weed out during the interview process, you then inform you'll be hiring to a small (paid) trial job, just to see how the two of you work together. I try to always hire 4-5 people to the
same exact identical task.
For instance, if we need to format some ebooks, I don't give each freelancer a different ebook to format. I give all 4 or 5 of the freelancers I hire
the same exact ebook. Then, I compare:
- How long it took them
- How many hours they took / how much they charged
- The quality of the ebook they produced
- How responsive they were and what my feeling was working with them
I then make a decision about who'll be our provider going forward. I thank the others for their work, leave them a nice review (unless they did a REALLY terrible job!), and move forward with the best contractor as our provider for that role going forward.
The 'hire 4-5 people' part is so key I can't stress it enough. You'll be tempted to skip this step, and will think you probably know who the best is just from his application and his interview, but 80% of the time
you will be wrong. Time and again people will show you that the ability to interview and the ability to put together an impressive profile/portfolio does not directly relate to how well this person will work with
you. You need to get him on a trial job and compare him against others to find out.
Every time I've skipped doing a 4-5 person vetting trial, I've usually ended up with people we need to replace after a bit because it turned out they were in the #1-#6 camps. When I put 4-5 people on a trial job though, after having already put them through all the other early screening criteria, we almost always end up with someone who's a #7 or better.
Anyway, that's a bit about how we find good people and get them on the team.
There's a lot more I could say about retaining people, about growing people's roles, and so on, but those are the main challenges at least with getting the folks you want on the team while minimizing the time you need to devote to folks who aren't as perfect a fit (and the vast majority of people -- wonderful people though they might be -- won't be perfect fits... so you really do need to be doing some sifting here to find the ones who do fit).
Chase
