Looking for the right attorney isn’t always easy. You need someone with integrity and sound advice. An even bigger lesson you need to learn is that you can’t rely solely on a professional—you need to start learning the ins and outs of the legal issues yourself. Understand something, putting the future of your business in anyone else’s hands can be fatal, so hire wisely, and do yourself a favor—start learning.

Ask, and Ye Shall Receive

Creating a new product or business can feel like scaling a huge mountain. The higher up you go, the more exhausted you get, and the harder it is to breath. Well a startups not that different: it can leave you feeling lethargic and out of breath, maybe even a little bit confused. So when it comes to finding an attorney who can take on some of the weight for you, you shouldn’t be entering into another grueling arena, right? Wrong. You may get winning referrals and recommendations about a potential candidate, but you have to make the hard decision of whether or not you can trust, work, and enjoy adding them to your team. There’s a lot at stake with this choice, and the wrong decision could obliterate everything you’ve worked towards.

Let’s say you’ve plucked out a small handful of potential attorneys and scheduled initial consultations with them. What now? What do you do, and what questions can you ask to ensure that you successfully weed out the wrong ones? Start by studying their backgrounds. Figure out who they’ve worked for and if they’ve worked for startups before. Ask them entrepreneurial questions and see how they answer. Ask about past failures and successes and how they handled both. If you ask the right questions, you’ll be surprised how easily you separate the yes’s from the no’s

Finding that On-Call Attorney

Hiring an attorney doesn’t mean you’ll need to hire a regular employee. It would be exhaustive for said attorney to sit in your office for hours each day, consuming your budget and transactions. In the startup phase, these areas are often straightforward and don’t always need to be handled with an attorney’s assistance or approval. At this stage, you’ll want someone who can look over certain areas and assist only when needed.

Overtime, you may find that certain transactions require more attention by an attorney in order to get things moving. Figure out which transactions you don’t feel one-hundred percent about, and ask each attorney you interview to explain his or her experience with them. Those who can help you understand will be the ones you’ll feel safest with when they begin assisting you in the startup phase. Be sure that any professional you’re considering has plenty of experience working with someone who is learning how to become a successful entrepreneur.

Understanding the Costs

It’s no secret, hiring an attorney costs money, sometimes—a lot of money. The good news is, the right attorney will be the one who’s worked with startups before and understands that cost is a major concern. If you’re trying to decide how to expand a business, a good lawyer will provide you with key strategies to keep costs at a minimum without compromising your own legal obligations.

From establishing good risk management plans to organizing a system with you to actively limit your legal fees, an attorney should always operate with the notion that while you do need their services, you also need to keep costs down. One of the best and most effective ways of successfully achieving an affordable “lawyer maintenance plan” is to establish an active strategy wherein you can do some of the work yourself and send documents to the attorney for review, instead of having the lawyer draw up these documents from the ground up.

How about that Billable Hour?

Find out if each attorney you’re considering offers AFAs, or alternate fee arrangements. Although this is a fairly new way of billing, alternate arrangements for paying your legal fees can really save you a lot of stress, hardship, and money (all of which an entrepreneur needs at start up). There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there who meet an attorney and right away ask what his or her hourly rate is. Instead, ask if they offer an alternate fee arrangement.

Law firms, as well as many other types of providers, consultants, and representatives have used the “billable hour” as the standard for determining payment for decades. Although it’s still the predominant methodology for pricing legal fees, the AFAs are quickly becoming quite popular. Find out the specific options that each attorney offers and what they entail.

Tolis Dimopoulos, the founding member of Sophos Law Firm, PLLC, explains that “Any lawyer that works with startups should not only be willing to explore working with you using an alternative fee method but also be willing to implement it and regularly use it.” These alternate fee arrangements don’t use the traditional “billable hour”, and may include variations such as fixed project fees, contingency fees, and monthly subscriptions. You’ll want to inquire about the availability of such options before making a final hiring decision.

Now that you know more about hiring an attorney, there’s one aspect of all of this that an entrepreneur absolutely needs to understand—you need to learn a lot of this yourself. You can’t simply thrust your legal and financial issues into the hands of an attorney without doing a little research yourself. Do research and ask tons of questions. The more you know, the better off you’ll be, and the more likely your business will be to succeed.

You don’t have to be a stellar goal-setter-follower-achiever to excel at creating a new product or being a successful entrepreneur, but you do have to maintain the effort, the drive, and the motivation to be smart about which goals are the most important for you to follow and which ones can be put on the back burner without compromising your success.

Why People Don’t Set Goals

People avoid setting goals for a number of reasons. What’s your excuse?

• I don’t set goals because they’re not serious enough to write down.
• I don’t set goals because I’m already trying my hardest.
• I don’t want other people judging me because of the goals I set.
• I’m afraid of failure.

One of the biggest hindrances to successfully following through with meeting goals is setting too many at once. While ambitions great, it’s important to acknowledge your limitations and avoid setting yourself up for frustrating failure. Burnout’s  a hideous monster, and all too often, it forces us to backtrack on the things we really want in life.

If you’ve reached the breaking point, open your eyes up a little wider. There’s a spark out there with your name on it, and it’s lighting up to say, you can do better. As an entrepreneur, you’re responsible for your successes. You’re responsible for your failures. If you can’t set goals and follow them through, then you need to find another calling because you’ll never grow your business without them.

Accountability Groups and Networking

Ever heard of an accountability group? It’s exactly what it sounds like. A group that will keep you accountable for following through with your goals. For most, being accountable to others is far more important than being accountable to themselves. The thing is, we don’t like letting others down.

Tom Peters, the author of In Search of Excellence, and a widely-respected expert on business management proposes support groups for entrepreneurs that create positive environments in which goals, plans, ideas, and solutions can all be discussed and shared with colleagues and peers. Using peers as a springboard for ideas, feedback, and advice on starting a business (and maintaining one) and being able to create public accountability for your actions is highly conducive to successful goal setting.

Put It in Writing

When you put something down in writing, you’re forcing yourself to make a commitment. Writing it down (either by hand or electronically somewhere), starts a whole new process of accountability. You can no longer push it to the back of your mind. It’s there, staring you in the face.

When you write down your goals, be sure to make them as specific and detailed as possible. Your goals should be a road map—highly detailed, visible, and easy to follow. Otherwise, you might find yourself getting lost along the way.

Networks and Communication

Sharing thoughts, ideas, concerns, and experiences with others creates opportunities for others to do the same with you. The thing is, you don’t have all the right answers and the paths you come up with aren’t always the most efficient. Other people think and process differently, so their ideas could be invaluable to you.

Some people are natural communicators while others struggle immensely with it. While taking entrepreneurship courses and business classes, don’t just focus on business principles. If you’re interested in opening your own business, excellent communication skills can connect you with the right people who can point you in the right direction. Start cultivating better communication skills today, and focus on growing your network; it might be the thing that keeps you from making a disastrous mistake in the future.

Don’t Ignore Obstacles to Goal Setting, Defeat Them

When you were a kid, and someone asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, what did you say? Did you want to be an astronaut? How about a teacher? Maybe you wanted to be a movie star or even become an entrepreneur. It was easy, right? Your plan for making dreams come true was just to do it. What’s changed with your goals, now that you’re an educated adult? More importantly, what makes people give up on their dreams and abandon their goals? The answers are simple: Roadblocks. Obstacles. Challenges. Fears.  The process of growing up tends to go hand-in-hand with disillusionment. As time passes, huge roadblocks and obstacles become ever-present, and you swerve to avoid them. It’s that fear of the unknown danger that forces us to abandon our goals and seek protection.

But, nothing worthwhile was ever achieved easily. Learning how to build a company takes goals and goals take hard work, active networking and communication (even sometimes a bit of luck). The obstacles will always be there. You’ll always have a choice to make. But if you take the simple steps of writing down your plan, gathering your army, discussing and devising a battle plan, and following through with the goals of that plan, you might be surprised to find how easily your goals become realities.

Great entrepreneurs tend to be self-starters with immeasurable work ethics. But that work ethic can get them into trouble if they try to take on too much themselves. That’s why it’s so important to turn your entrepreneurial skills and attributes into defining qualities of a powerful leader. For some, leading comes naturally, delegating’s second nature, and your staff’s a breath of fresh air. For others, communicating a vision to a new group seems like a huge undertaking.

Great leaders take many forms. If you can think back and remember someone who changed your life like your last boss or a business mentor—even if it was simply an elementary school teacher—chances are, they had some,or all, of the following five traits of a great leader.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness involves many factors, including knowing how you come across to others and being realistic about the challenges you face. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is crucial to objectively assessing your business and making clear decisions. If you’re a control freak or a person with a tendency to sound snippy before ten in the morning, it’s important to realize these factors so that you can work on overcoming them. A self-aware person understands their flaws and actively seeks to overcome them. You got where you are because of who you are, never take for granted that you are your best asset, but remember that you’re also flawed just like the rest of us. A person who sees both sides of themselves and actively seeks improvement tends to make a better leader.

A Strong Team

As you surround yourself with others, keep in mind that your team can make or break you. If your team seems disconnected, there’s a good chance that you might feel like you’re going it alone. So make sure to carefully select a strong group of individuals who share your vision for the business.

In an Entrepreneur.com article on successful leadership, Harvey Mackay noted that, successful entrepreneurs know how to hire effectively.

The hiring process involves identifying and attracting the right people, as well as retaining them. If you don’t believe in your team, its members will not rise to the occasion. If you realize that you can’t believe in your team, then perhaps it’s time to start choosing your employees more wisely. Leadership is always easier when you hire right the first time.

Inspiration

Your inspiration’s your passion. What drives you to keep working toward your goals? What empowered you to start your business in the first place? If you feel yourself becoming unmoved by your business, try to reconnect with your sense of purpose. Inspiration should go hand in hand with your vision and goals, it should be clear to each and every employee. If you’re truly in touch with your passion, and use it as fuel for your business, soon enough everyone on your team will share in it. As you grow your business and hire new employees, seek those who understand and believe in your passion, then—continue inspiring them.

Communication skills

Effective leaders are effective communicators who understand that getting the message across involves more than being articulate. In an article for Forbes.com, Alan Hall discusses the communication traits of great leaders, from modes of communication (emails, tweets, phone calls, articles, and blogs) to personal characteristics that are evident through a leader’s messages (confidence, enthusiasm, gratitude). Other key traits of good communicators—they share their plans and goals, they have a calming effect on those around them, and they know how to inspire and encourage others.

Keep in mind that you can talk, tweet, and motivate all you want, but without listening to the people around you, communication will only be a one-way street. Effective leaders take the time to understand their employees. They listen to their concerns and ideas. And they know when morale is low, even without being told.

Perseverance

Entrepreneurial leaders have a number of traits that tend to be ideal for leadership. But one trait that seems to empower them to be great leaders is nothing more than their perseverance. It’s that ability to show up day after day, working and discovering through trial-and-error. And each successful and failed decision makes a tiny deposit into their entrepreneurial account—the type of deposit that builds an invaluable web of assets.

Yes, great leaders have the kind of perseverance that turns behaviors into habits, and habits into instincts. For the exceptional leader, perseverance is not a fix-all or a motivational mantra. It’s a way of life. 

Here’s the big problem with the meeting being such an exhausting structure: overtime it will start affecting the company as a whole. In his book Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni said that “the company’s culture would come to mirror those meetings.” If your meetings are a flop, your company is at risk of going the same way.

A key component in the development of an entrepreneur is figuring out how to run an exciting, idea-fueled meeting where employees are actively engaged and no one leaves the room feeling drained.  And you know what, it’s not that hard. Lencioni gives several tips to avoid Death by Meeting, so let’s take a look at those:

Start by moving meetings from traditional to non-traditional.

• Figure out what the purpose of the meeting needs to be. If you go in focusing on too many projects or critical issues, you’ll never find time to resolve them all and more than likely—nothing of value will be accomplished.
• Ensure that everyone understands the stakes. If there’s an issue within the company, make sure people understand what might happen if the right choices aren’t made. Lay out the stakes of the issue so that people can better figure out the best game plan.
• Every great movie has a “hook,” so should your meeting. Get employees interested from the outset (which is the hardest part), and ensure that the meeting stays engaging enough to keep them interested for the duration.
• Find the time. Always make sure you have enough time for your meetings. If critical issues arise, the worst thing you can do is abruptly end the meeting because you’ve gone over the specified hour.
• Here’s something that may sound surprising, but conflict helps to make meetings more engaging. A healthy amount of conflict is vital, if there are two sides to an important issue facing the company, don’t be afraid to let those issues be debated. In fact, do everything you can to insight debate. By the end, hopefully all conflict will be out on the table, and everyone will be better equipped to handle it in a more productive way.

Now that you’ve got the above in mind, let’s consider Lencioni’s “myth of too many meetings.” If all of your meetings consist of dreary-eyed, half-dead employees, too many meetings would probably be a problem, but they shouldn’t be. If you can create a dynamic and innovative meeting style that actively catches and keeps the groups attention, more meetings can only help you.  A meeting’s intended to amp up productivity, so clearly define what the meeting will be about, only cover those topics, send people off with a clear vision of what they need to get done, and don’t be afraid to schedule another meeting to cover the topics you weren’t able to get to in this one.

Running a strong meeting from start to finish will make a positive impact on company culture and efficiency. If employees know that meetings are engaging arenas where important decisions are made and input is valued, they’ll make the most out of the time at hand. As you think about how to expand your business and become consumed by the size of your agenda, effective meetings will be all the more important. Meetings don’t have to be a punishment. If you can insight discussion and force employees to focus on critical tasks, they’ll more than likely leave feeling reinvigorated and ready to get the job done.

Well, not necessarily.

It’s true that, being the entrepreneur, means being the one who first tears though the unknown, trekking the quickest, best path through the thicket of uncertainty. Early on, you’ll learn to spot what works and doesn’t work. But the real challenges come when the forest gets even thicker, when the mountains get higher, and when the rivers get harder to wade through.

These bigger challenges require teamwork, and teamwork requires delegation. And delegation requires—and this is the hardest part—giving up a slice of control. This seems to make enough sense, but why is it that so many of us entrepreneurs have a tough time with it?

It comes down to a few key things:

• A fear of losing control
• A belief that we are the only ones who can do the job right
• A feeling that there’s not enough time to adequately train another person

These are the challenges many entrepreneurs face when learning to let go.

Randomly delegating tasks is never the answer. As highlighted in an Entrepreneur.com article by Dr. David G. Javitch, choosing the best person for the job, identifying project goals and steps, setting clear milestones and deadlines, providing feedback and conducting a post-project review are crucial when it comes to passing along some of the workload.

Here’s a piece of small business advice—learn to delegate and don’t make excuses not to.

Practice progressive delegation

Delegation’s an evolving process. If you’re just beginning to hand over control, start by delegating less-urgent or important items. If you’ve got something that requires immediate, careful attention, there’s no reason to try to delegate that to individuals before you know they can handle it. The smaller the responsibility, the less chance it has of catastrophically failing if you pass it on.

As you and your business grow, you’ll find—if you’re mindful—that you’ll be able to pass on increasingly important tasks to the right individuals

Delegating works best when you build up a staff that you can trust to carry out certain tasks. The best way to do this is by mixing low importance and low urgency items with progressively higher ones. Don’t assume that only delegating non-challenging items successfully will allow you the same outcome once you start delegating more difficult ones. Once a person has proven themselves, try giving them tasks—that won’t risk serious disruption—but are still challenging and require hard-work and commitment.

If you can let go and learn to progressively delegate, you can build an incredibly powerful team. An environment of successful delegation allows younger, less experienced staff  to grow into positions where they themselves will learn to delegate and coach others.

Monitor employee progress

Once you’ve started delegating, don’t be afraid to monitor the success and failures of those tasks. But keep this in mind, you’re not being a good monitor by being suspicious or overbearing. Employees aren’t going to trust themselves if you don’t give them a little breathing room.

The best delegators walk a fine line directly between micromanaging and a hands-off approach. If you don’t keep a solid middle ground, you’re likely to run into some extreme problems. If you’re micromanaging, you’re probably not delegating at all and you’re employees may feel untrusted and ultimately, unimportant. On the other hand, entirely neglecting a delegated task risks grossly mismanaged expectations and potentially hazardous results.

Progress monitoring—like learning how to delegate at all—is itself an evolutionary, trial-and-error process. Over time, aim for a more systematic way of gauging progress with timely updates, moderate oversight, and fewer interventions.

Don’t forget to follow-up

Don’t simply abandon the person or delegated task once you’ve passed it on. A Successful delegator checks in on employees when necessary and asks themselves the following:

1. Were key objectives met? How satisfactorily were they met?
2. Was the task met by or ahead of deadline? If not, is there a legitimate reason?
3. How far did the employee go above and beyond what was requested?
4. Did the employee have a “get it done” attitude about the task? Did he or she try to own the task, or were you repeatedly asked subsequent questions during its duration?
5. Has the employee proven themselves? To the point of you delegating more important, urgent tasks with less oversight?

You know the basics—Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, and other social media platforms that actively engage customers and attract new ones. If  you want your company to survive and thrive, you need to take advantage of every form of social media you can get your hands on.

But it’s not that easy. As emphasized in a recent Forbes.com article by Stephanie Chandler, “social media is not a magic wand.” Rather than serving as a failproof tactic for how to expand your business, it’s a long-term solution, and it can’t be your only marketing strategy. However, when executed with intent, social media marketing can help you gain exposure, promote your business, and even generate sales.

Here are five helpful tips for maximizing your social media marketing efforts:

1) Set Clear, Attainable Goals

If you set a goal of shooting ten baskets in a row, would you stand to the side of the hoop and aimlessly throw the ball? Of course not. So don’t aimlessly employ social media marketing tactics. The above-mentioned Forbes.com article highlights the importance of clearly defining your goals when it comes to social media marketing. If you’re using social media to increase website traffic or improve brand recognition—to see results—you should actively target the goals set out in your strategy. Need help crafting a strategy? Don’t hesitate to hire a consultant, or at the very least, seek the advice of a friend or acquaintance with social media expertise.

2) Select Effective Social Media Channels

With all of the social media platforms out there, it can get overwhelming trying to find where best to focus your marketing efforts. Do your research. Take time to familiarize yourself with the social media channels that might best suit your needs. Use Facebook and Twitter as testers, then prioritize the other media outlets that you think will best reach your market. Once you’ve found the platforms that work best for you, make it a point to update them regularly. Keep in mind that different channels may target different demographics, so know which audience your talking to and which tactics will work best for them.

3) Tweet Strategically

Tweeting’s a quick and easy way to give your customer’s a small bite of information. But don’t inundate your followers with tweets that sound like advertisements, or they’ll likely stop paying attention. A recent article from Blogtrepreneur.com emphasized the importance of strategies such as varying the format of your tweets, keeping them short and sweet, and asking questions that encourage follower feedback. Gizmodo also shared some helpful Twitter nuggets in the article “How to Be Popular on Twitter.” Tactics include using hashtags, replying to tweets that mention you or your business, and making time to tweet tidbits that are interesting—even if they don’t directly promote your business.

4) Blog Regularly

If you’re searching for small business tips in the social media marketing arena and want to further promote your business, then prioritize your blogging efforts. Blogs attract current and potential customers to your site, so provide creative content that they’ll enjoy reading. Don’t let your blog become a graveyard. Make it a priority and update it as often as you can (fyi—updating your blog regularly will improve the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website. Google favors sites that consistently provide fresh content.) Aim for 2-3 posts per week that are engaging and useful, that help to reinforce your brand, and be sure that your voice shines through so that when viewers read it, they’ll know it’s you.

5) Connect with Others

Your business is the product of real-life experiences mixed with the teachings and philosophies of mentors you’ve had along the way. So use who you are—your personality—and what you’ve learned to humanize your brand. People respond to individuals and products that they can relate to in some way, so start conversations, and pay attention to comments from your followers. Responding to other members of your social media community (as well as sharing their posts and updates) goes a long way in connecting with your audience on a personal level.

Another recent Forbes.com article spotlighted the importance of being social media savvy, author and Digital Royalty founder Amy Jo Martin advocated for using social media outlets to share words of inspiration, helpful information, exclusives, and entertainment rather than sticking with “business only” posts and updates.

The popularity of social media and its emergence as a key marketing tool takes the old saying “It’s not personal, it’s business” and turns it on its ear. Today, businesses should get personal (or at least social) if they want to make an impact.

Inspiration can become cyclical. When you’ve got it, product ideas run rampant through your head and keep your adrenaline pumping. When inspiration wanes, you end up in a rut, uninspired by what you see—forced to deal with the same old ideas and models day in and day out. When this happens, slow down and re-imagine that initial spark of inspiration that first fueled your passions, and see if you can’t find that life-changing momentum that energized your business idea in the first place.

Start by Changing Your Routine

In a July 2012 article from Entrepreneur, psychology professor and author Samuel R. Sommers shared some advice on the art of breaking routines saying “The smallest of changes in context make a big difference in motivation levels. In fact, research tells us that changing our environment can lead to a burst of fresh thinking and increased drive.” If you feel stuck in a rut, work from a café, hold a meeting outside, disconnect from social media for an hour, or take a mid-morning walk. The inspirational payoff can be huge.

Connect with Your Peers

Starting a business can leave you feeling disconnected. If a new endeavor becomes a full-time job, chances are you’re spending large amounts of time alone in order to accomplish your goals efficiently. Add the fact that your friends with steady desk jobs are spending weekends at the lake with their families, and you’ll start feeling sick of it.

But consider this, entrepreneurs who seclude themselves from meeting new people and keeping in touch with old friends, will lose what sparks their inspiration in the first place. Humans need people to become inspired to create things that other people need. It seems simple, but when work becomes your life, you forget what’s important. Get out there and talk to your fellow entrepreneurs. Meet for coffee, discuss frustrations, successes, and new ideas. Track down business leaders who are where you want to be, and let their stories serve as inspiration, especially when moments of doubt prevail. Even if you can’t physically meet with other people, find an interesting podcast, or listen to TED talks that focus on issues faced by people like you.

Reconnect with Yourself

As you become consumed with the day-to-day realities of running a business, it’s easy to forget why you started your business in the first place. Post your mission in a spot where you can view it daily. Be grateful for the fact that you’ve been given a chance to live your life’s passion. As mentioned in Under 30 CEO’s article titled “40 Pieces of Inspiration for Entrepreneurs,” conjure the precociousness and in-the-moment attitude you held as a child, electronically file compliments given to you by others so you can read them when needed, and continue to evolve into the person you’d like to be. Most importantly, remember the times in which inspiration has helped you overcome challenges of the past.

Keep Going

Being uninspired can lead to self-doubt—which may be daunting if your initial burst landed you recognition or some token of success. How will you continue to help your business grow at that pace? Inspiration is a special thing, but it doesn’t always come together magically. Rather than using your lack of inspiration to fuel anxiety, here’s an idea: show up for work anyway.

In her TED Talk titled “Your Elusive Creative Genius,” bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the mystery of creative inspiration, especially in reference to the doubts she faced while writing the follow-up to her popular novel Eat, Pray, Love. Her advice: keep going for it, even when grand, transcendent inspiration fails to make an appearance. As Gilbert says, “Don’t be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be.”

As you continue on your entrepreneurial journey, don’t forget to look for inspiration in unexpected places. When inspiration is there, be thankful for it and revel in the moment. And remember those moments when you’re going through a dry spell, they might be exactly what you need to get your creative gears turning again.

Dismissing someone is a powerful, symbolic act that sets the standard for the kind of performance and character traits your company values. Fail to remove people who are no longer contributing—or remove them, but in a harsh way—and you will spread the seeds of mediocrity and fear that eventually cripple businesses. Learn to fire well and humanely, and you’ll build a powerful sense of accountability and camaraderie among your team, perhaps the most defensible competitive advantage in business.

Firing well actually begins with hiring well. And an important part of starting a business is helping to foster a culture that attracts the right kinds of employees to begin with. Hire wisely and build a funnel that gets the right people on board, and you’ll need to fire far less often.

But no matter what—as any good mentor of small business owners would tell you—sometimes things just don’t work out. Before you fire the person in question, make sure you cover your bases: documenting problems along the way, giving the employee a few chances and warnings, and then, if it comes down to it, learning as much as you can about the legal issues around firing in your state.

Executing the Firing

Once you have prepared the way, it’s time to act. The longer you wait, the worse it is for everyone involved. “Executing” is the proper word for a firing, because it often feels like an execution to the person who is being terminated. Euphemisms like “downsizing” or “rightsizing” seldom remove any of the sting from a dismissal, so avoid them.

Here are a few small business tips about firing that will help you make the ordeal as uneventful and merciful as possible:

1. Always dismiss employees at the end of the day, at the end of the week. You do not want to make a scene, so it helps if most employees have left or are leaving. Fire at the end of the week, so the former employee has the weekend to adjust to his or her new reality.
2. Break the bad news in a neutral area, out of view of other employees. You don’t need an audience. And try not to have all dismissals in the same room, or soon employees’ blood pressures will go up every time they are called to a particular room.
3. Have two people in the room. It’s best to have the immediate supervisor and someone higher up in the company present. Let the person who has more authority deliver the bad news. It makes it seem more final and less personal. To prevent a humiliating situation, avoid having security in the room or escorting the employee to clean out his or her desk unless there are sensitive files.
4. Be firm, simple, and clear. When the moment comes, use clear and direct language, with no equivocation or room for negotiating: “Bob, your employment here is not working out, so you cannot work here any longer, starting now” or “You are no longer a good fit for this position, so you cannot stay with the company any longer, beginning today.”
5. Focus on the future, not the past. Do not rehash old problems; there’s nothing to be gained by it except to get in an argument. Stick with the mantra: “It just didn’t work out.”
6. Have any severance agreements in writing and ready to sign. Have this even if an employee may need to review the agreement and sign later.
7. Talk as little as possible. Most people will not hear or remember anything past “this isn’t working out,” so don’t waste your breath. More words will only serve to inflame an already difficult situation.
8. Above all, protect the dignity of the person. Make this about actions, not about personality or self-worth.
9. When finished, end the meeting. Have a neutral third party—not a security guard—walk with the person to collect belongings and help him or her to the door.
10. To burst the boil of anger, consider inviting the person who was fired out for a cup of coffee approximately two weeks after the firing has taken place. Make it clear beforehand that the meeting will be relatively short. You definitely won’t always get a “yes” to this request, but if you do, open by asking how the person is doing. Then listen. And listen some more. Allow the other person to vent, until he or she feels fully heard. This simple gesture can go a long way in clearing the air, saving you and your firm from years of bitter chatter, and in extraordinary cases, maybe even the threat of a lawsuit.

Unless you’re a sadist, firing is never easy. There’s never an “easy” way to dismiss someone from a job. But there is a more prepared, mindful, fair, and dignified way of doing it. As you start your own business, help set a good standard by ensuring that when you have to fire you do it well.

In other words, don’t add fuel to the fire.

And getting the right people on the bus demands a strong hiring funnel—that is, a step-by-step process to attract and hire the right person for the right job in your company, and to measure their progress and performance once they’ve started. Any “start your own business” class led by a successful entrepreneur will highlight the importance of measuring the cost and efficiency of each step in the process, in a way that helps you improve it over time.

A hiring funnel can help

1. Predict how soon today’s recruiting efforts will allow your company to sell and make more products in the future
2. Measure how each step in the hiring process impacts the quality of the people recruited, so that you can decide where to focus your efforts to improve the hiring process
3. Calculate the per-employee and total costs of hiring

The best hiring funnels are wide enough to collect a large number of talented people, yet quickly narrow based on belief systems, personality, and skills so that you can find those who are the best fit for your company and a particular position.

Steps in the Hiring Funnel

While every business will have a different hiring funnel—and, in many cases, specialized hiring funnels for different positions—there are generic steps that all hiring funnels share:

GENERATING LEADS

In order to attract the right people, you need to be fishing in the right ponds with the right bait. That means finding places where talented people congregate—whether that be as generic a place as a job board or a social media site, as localized as a college campus with “starting a business” classes, or as specialized as a technical job fair—and then sending a clear call to action that excites the type of person you want to hire enough to raise his or her hand (or click a link or send an email).

What should this clear call to action look like? Start with the key success factors (KSFs) to your business. Does the success of your business opportunity depend on competitive-minded salespeople? Then that should come across in your job ads and recruitment efforts.

QUALIFYING

Once you collect a large enough number of interested leads, you need a way to sort the excellent from the average. Of course, the best sorting occurs with clear messages (like a mission statement, vision statement, and specific job description) that encourage the wrong candidates to self-select out.

Compensation structure can help qualify as well. The more you pay for performance, the more likely you are to attract someone who believes he or she can accomplish the task. It’s generally a good idea to confirm compensation expectations early, so you do not find yourself in a difficult negotiation at the end of a long and expensive recruitment process.

You’ll also want to apply the most restrictive and least expensive qualifying criteria as early as possible in the funnel. That way you can focus later, more expensive, more nuanced qualifying efforts on a handful of high-potential candidates who are more likely to accept an offer.

INTERVIEWING

Interviewing is expensive and difficult to do well. You’ll get better at it over time, but start by performing (and training others to perform) behavioral interviews—that is, interviewing in a way that uncovers demonstrable, verifiable work experience fitted to the position you’re trying to fill, and finding people who can “get the job done” and reinforce the culture of the company.

CHECKING REFERENCES

All too often, reference checks are perfunctory and designed to confirm a preconceived conclusion. This is a big mistake. Reference checks are your last chance to prevent serious hiring mistakes and should be a serious effort that in many cases includes background checks (disclosed early in the process to weed out bad actors). Aim to go far beyond the few references listed on a resume or job application to get in touch with the applicant’s direct superiors, subordinates, or clients.

OFFER AND HIRE

Making the offer and hiring someone is equivalent to closing a sale with a customer. You need to make sure you have listened carefully to what a candidate wants and needs, so that you can craft an offer that gets each side what he or she wants the most, at a cost that makes sense for your company.

If you were clear about compensation structure and amounts early in the process, compensation negotiations should be fairly easy. If they’re not, it may be an important sign of deeper issues.

EVALUATE AND ACCULTURATE

At best, fewer than half of the people you hire will turn out to be good long-term fits for your company. Management guru Peter Drucker says it’s actually only about a third of the time. That’s why it is so important in the first ninety days to have a provisional period where you not only do everything you can to bring someone wholly into the culture of the company, but where you watch carefully to eliminate any hiring mistakes as quickly and humanely as possible.

The hiring funnel steps above are a great place to start. But as your company grows, tasks and roles will become more specialized, which means your hiring funnel will as well. No matter what it eventually looks like, if you focus on (1) being clear on what you’re looking for from the beginning, (2) measuring the effectiveness at each step and adjusting accordingly, and (3) ensuring company culture fit during the hiring process and probationary period, you’ll chances of getting and keeping the right people on the bus will increase dramatically.

THE BUSINESS MODEL AND GROWTH PHILOSOPHY
How profitable is the business model and how will the firm grow?

The nature of an opportunity will lead you to a business model, where choices in customers, production processes, and pricing decisions create a certain financial model. This financial model will in turn have certain revenue streams, variable and fixed-period costs, investments, and margins. All of this means that the type and speed of your growth will depend on the opportunity chosen, your personality and your beliefs about business and growth, and the economic context surrounding you. Your growth philosophy has implications for the type of employees you attract and hire, and how people are acculturated and paid.

MISSION FOCUS
Who comes first on the mission statement?

All companies have different stakeholders: customers, owners, employees, suppliers, the world at large. Mission statements, which describe the company’s reason for existing, tend to elevate one of these stakeholders above the rest, usually by mentioning them first. The idea is to be clear about who will derive most of the benefits from the venture.

For example, the less transparent and powerful the economic model, the more likely the appeal to intangible motives will win the day. In a business with low or non-existent profit margins, where most of an employee’s incentives come from intrinsic or non-monetary rewards, it is likely that the employees or “the world” will be listed as the primary beneficiary on a mission statement.

REWARD SYSTEMS
Are employees rewarded in cash (extrinsic) or intangible (intrinsic) ways? Is individual achievement or coordinated group effort more important to success?

Incentives may be extrinsic (monetary) or intrinsic (non-monetary), and reward either individual or group effort. Extrinsic rewards usually pay employees in cash, yet they may have the unintended consequence of ambitious individuals trying to game the system for their own benefit, leading to a breakdown in trust.

Intrinsic rewards tend to be more inspirational and encourage groups of employees to strive toward a common goal that cannot be easily measured in cash. However, they require great effort in hiring and acculturating employees, and top management must be completely dedicated to achieving the value-based goals and maintaining the culture.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
Is the power shared based on merit or on egalitarian principles? Is the focus on the needs of the customer, employees, or top management?

Organizational charts, when drawn well, show how power and responsibility are shared in an organization. For example, companies where power is shared more equally and where egalitarian principles are revered tend to be “flat” (have fewer levels), while firms focused on rewarding merit tend to be more organized around customer groups or key processes.

Key Ingredients for a Successful Culture

While all successful company cultures are unique, there are cultural practices that many successful companies share:

A CLEAR AND COMPELLING BELIEF SYSTEM
Successful cultures develop a vision of an idealized future for the company and a compelling mission that makes progress toward that vision measurable, and they develop beliefs and values that hold everyone together in good times and bad. In most highly successful and enduring companies, it is clear why the company exists and exactly what type of person will prosper there.

A CONSISTENT HIRING (AND FIRING) PROCESS
Any good small business mentor, small business mentor program, or blog with small business advice will tell you that in order to grow that small business in a sustainable way, you must get the right people on board. Strong cultures emerge when companies hone systems that attract, screen, hire, and acculturate employees who can get behind the company’s vision of the future, who can believe in its mission, and who can practice its beliefs. Successful companies also fire those who can’t.

INCENTIVES ALIGNED WITH KSFs
Companies with healthy cultures also tend to have their incentives aligned with their key success factors (KSFs)—those things that the business must be adept at in order to survive.

These incentives may be intrinsic (internally felt) or extrinsic (externally rewarded); individual or communal; or positive or negative. They must align and encourage everyone to execute the tasks that are critical for the firm to advance its mission.

The strongest company cultures tend to have a consistent fit between the business model (profit levels and ownership of key assets), the mission statement, the types of incentives, and the organizational structure.

Company cultures are mysterious and hard to define, and they always evolve organically over the life of the business. But one thing is crystal clear: there are simple measures you can take in the beginning to increase the likelihood of your company’s cultural success.

My Entrepreneurial Journey is an entrepreneur program packed with the tools, frameworks, and mindsets that entrepreneurs at all stages of the game need to grow successful cultures. Join today.