The New Secret Superpower for Entrepreneurs | David Asarnow | TEDxEmory

David Asarnow is a visionary entrepreneur and digital marketing leader, a guru of the business community. Hear his talk! David Asarnow is a visionary entrepreneur and digital marketing leader. David is the highest award winning ClickFunnels Certified Consultant with Six Two Comma Club Awards and an 8-Figure Award.

David is passionate about helping entrepreneurs and thought leaders create massive value, leverage, and profits through proprietary strategies implemented through his Digital Marketing Agency, Business Nitrogen.

David has an MBA in business results. He built a new $45 million division for a company over five years. Launched a franchise company ranked a TOP 15 HOT Franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine.  Been a top business coach and speaker for Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes. And his agency Business Nitrogen managed over $24,000,000 in paid digital advertising over the past year. 

These successes have made David the go to expert for businesses looking to accelerate their results, and he is excited to help even more entrepreneurs through his book and program, The Competition. 

Is Hiring Your Greatest Entrepreneurial Blind Spot?

Hiring the RIGHT Talent is ONE of the FASTEST Ways to Successfully SCALE Your Business…Yet 9 out of 10 Entrepreneurs Avoid it Like the Plague!

The Ultimate Shortcut to Hiring is One Step Away…

Please start by sharing some information about you & your business below: 

While most of us already know that we need TOP talent to grow and scale our businesses, the majority of Entrepreneurs struggle “cracking the code” when it comes to successfully attracting, qualifying, hiring and ultimately RETAINING the right people for their team.

And how could they? It’s not like they teach us this in school. And I’ve yet to see a training program or course that outlines a proven formula and step-by-step process to successfully hiring right-talent for each unique business out there (as let’s face it, we’re in a league of our own having built an Entrepreneurial based business… AND each one of our businesses is completely unique, and therefore requires very different things, especially at different junctions of our growth).

It’s the Greatest Entrepreneurial Blind Spot.

If you’re reading this, most likely you’ve reached a pivotal point in your business where you’ve become painfully aware that either your sales and marketing have hit a plateau (or in some cases have taken a dive), OR your sales and marketing efforts have far exceeded the infrastructure you’ve put in place to support it. 

The quickest, sure-fire way to SCALE and break through that invisible glass ceiling is to add the right talent to your team that possesses the right specialized knowledge and skill set to get you where you want to grow.

This is truly a defining moment in your business. It’s where your business will either:

• Shift in the RIGHT direction and move in an upwards trajectory (SCALE), or

• Shift in the WRONG direction, and spiral downwards at an accelerated pace.

Having worked directly with Entrepreneurs over the past 20 years helping them successfully grow and scale their businesses, I know a thing or two about what their mindset is, and what usually happens next.

Entrepreneurs either hire the wrong talent, OR they avoid hiring completely. 

Tell me, does any of this sound familiar? 

• You avoid hiring because you honestly don’t know what you really need, therefore you don’t have any idea where to even start.

• You’ve hired in the past and it turned out to be a complete disaster so you’ve resigned to the fact that you’re just a “bad picker” and now you don’t touch it with a ten foot pole.

• You experience pretty high turnover (more than 10% a year), so you are constantly trying to “plug the leaks” in an effort to keep the boat afloat–making it nearly impossible to focus on the future needs and hires of the business.

• You procrastinate because you know how terribly time consuming hiring is, and you simply don’t have the time to invest in it.

• You push it off to another team member to “handle” and magically expect this person to know (or learn) the secret formula to hiring the right-fit talent for your unique team and business.

• You’ve never abided by the rule of “Hire slow, fire fast”, so you admit to cutting corners when qualifying, screening and hiring so you could check it off your to-do list and move on to the next thing.

• You decide that you don’t really need a new team member, so you task your current team with new, additional responsibilities and tasks necessary in an effort to push forward. As a result your current team is pulled away from their current responsibilities and they become completely overwhelmed. Now things are falling through the cracks, and you feel like you’re in a worse situation than you were before…so do they.

Here’s the thing that you may not know (and I only know this because I’ve scaled multiple businesses).

There are 3 BIG mistakes Entrepreneurs make when it comes to hiring… 

Oftentimes the people who got you to where you are, aren’t necessarily the ones that will take you to where you want to grow.

David Asarnow

Mistake #1:

Not hiring the right talent to get them where they really want to be. 

It’s vital to have the right key players in place to help you break through that invisible glass ceiling so you can successfully SCALE.

This is not to say you have the wrong people on your team in place… It simply means you need unique talent that possesses the specialized knowledge necessary to get you to the next level in your business.

This also means keeping the people you do have in place focused completely on what they do best to really gain traction to scale your business. Each team member working within their unique talents and coming together to collaborate is the difference between a high-performing team and a mediocre team. High-performing teams take you to the next level. 

Mistake #2:

Hiring the wrong talent. 

For the most part, hiring the wrong talent is a direct result of poor screening and lack of qualification. Not only from a skillset level, but from a culture standpoint too.

Many Entrepreneurs aren’t exactly clear on what they need. If they do know what they need, sometimes they are not clear on exactly what qualifications to look for in the candidates they attract. The result? People are hired that are “generalists” not specialists. 

Some hire too quickly and don’t do their due diligence in assessing the candidate’s qualification and skill level.

Taking the necessary time and effort to ensure candidates can REALLY do what they say they can do takes a well thought out and properly executed skill set exercise and evaluation to ensure they in fact possess the knowledge and “how to” experience needed to perform the job at a superior level.

With that being said, after actually finding candidates out there that really can do what they say they can do, you must also ensure they are a right fit for your company culture. 

Culture is one of the biggest reasons for high-turnover in companies, and unfortunately it’s the most overlooked, (especially during the hiring process which is bazzar to me). Culture alignment is VITAL. Evaluating every candidate to ensure they are aligned with your company culture is equally important as ensuring they possess the specialized knowledge and skill qualifications for the position at hand.

Hiring the wrong talent is COSTLY, and not just from a financial perspective. Think about the opportunity cost of hiring the wrong team member. 

Hiring the wrong talent also robs you of two more precious investments… Time & Resources.

In our world, TIME is something we just don’t have enough of as it is. As visionaries we need to be focused on doing what we do best and propelling the business forward.

Time invested in attracting, qualifying, skill set testing and culture fit testing aside… After hiring a new team member, time and resources are invested in onboarding, training, and getting new team members up to speed on all the inner workings of your unique business…which indirectly leads us right into mistake #3. 

Mistake #3:

Not actively working to RETAIN team members, and overlooking the revolving door of talent within the organization. 

Losing one team member isn’t just a loss of that person and their knowledge. It’s the loss of investment in that team member. All the time investment, effort and energy that was put into acquiring and training that team member to get them to the level they were at. 

Now consider some of the other costly losses associated with losing a key player and the detrimental effects on your business: 

• Loss of productivity and efficiency
• Increased errors
• Abandoned projects
• Freezing (if this individual did not SOP their tasks and responsibilities and you don’t know how they did what they did)
• Loss of moral and team engagement
• Cultural impact (internal and external)

Making one or all three of these mistakes is exactly why most business owners fail to ever scale their business. On the other side of the coin, avoiding these mistakes will get you on the quickest path to scaling your business. 

Now here’s the moment to really pay attention…

Hiring the RIGHT Talent Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult, Frustrating, or Time Consuming…

If It’s Done For You.

What if all the heavy-lifting was done for you? And you were only handed the highest qualified candidates that checked every box you were looking for?

NO more:

• Creating Job Descriptions
• Posting on Job Boards
• Culture Fit Screenings
• First Round Qualification and Evaluations
• Reviewing Resumes and Cover Letters
• Skill Set and Experience Testing
• First or Second Interviews
• Negotiating Salary or Benefits

Just the highest quality candidates delivered to you on a silver platter that you just perform a final interview with…

That’s exactly what we do for our clients through our Nitrogen Hiring Network. It’s just another way we help Entrepreneurs scale their businesses… Hiring right fit sales, marketing and operations talent specifically for Entrepreneurial teams. 

For Entrepreneurs By Entrepreneurs.

Right now, no one that we’ve seen… (Literally NO ONE) in the market has developed a proven process for hiring RIGHT FIT talent specifically for Entrepreneurial businesses.

My team has been hiring specialized talent for Entrepreneurial teams for over 20 years.

Here’s just a sneak peak of what our “done for you” hiring package looks like: 

• We meet with you to determine exactly what role(s) you need to fill within your existing team structure (if you don’t already know).

• We identify any gaps you may or may not be aware of in your existing team structure and give our recommendations.

• We spec out all the responsibilities for each individual position you want to fill–tailored specifically to your needs.

• We build a marketing funnel specifically for that position to attract the right candidates.

• We perform a rigorous screening and qualification process with all candidates that apply for the position, including giving each candidate a behavioral AND cognitive* assessment and score it against the job profile we create.

*By the way, cognitive assessments are imperative as they measure how quickly a person can pick up new concepts. You can’t grow fast unless your team members are adept at learning new things quickly. 

• Culture is a HUGE element we include in our qualification and screening process. We find that most Entrepreneurs skip over CULTURE in the hiring process… we do NOT.

• We take each candidate through an exercise our expert team has created to evaluate each candidate's skill set and experience for the position.

• Candidates are put through multiple interviews with different members of my team and the background check is the last step before the candidate is ready to be delivered to you.

What you’ll get from us after all this is two or three HIGHLY qualified, screened and vetted candidates that we feel 100% confident will be a perfect fit for you and your team. 

Hiring the RIGHT Talent is ONE of the FASTEST Ways to Successfully SCALE Your Business

And now you have a DONE FOR YOU solution to attaining the perfect talent for your unique business. See if we are your recruitment solution–apply below.

🍎 How to Think Different™ Like Steve Jobs

Ever heard the saying, "Give the customers what they want"?

Well, Steve Jobs was famous for taking a different approach. He said: "Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do."

This might seem counterintuitive at first glance, but in reality, this mindset challenges us to think outside the box and push the boundaries of what's possible.

By anticipating our customers' needs, we can develop innovative products and services that resonate with our target audience and set our business apart from the competition.

For example, AI has been all the rage lately…And many don’t know whether it will save the world or ruin it.

But among all the chatter, we realized that we could take advantage of the power of AI to conduct targeted outreach for our clients at MASSIVE scale, while maintaining an ultra-personalized touch.

What do I mean by that?

In today's fast-paced world, people are bombarded with dozens of marketing emails every single day.

Most of these emails either get marked as spam or are immediately deleted by the recipient, never making a real impact.

Now, imagine sending individual emails, carefully crafted to highlight the things we admire about each recipient's business, mission, vision, and values.

…While at the same time sending a custom sales or marketing recommendation they could implement  right away, providing them with valuable growth insights for their business.

Sounds really time-consuming, don’t you think?

I mean, surely nobody could dedicate 100+ hours per week to send out these hyper-personalized emails to thousands of individual companies…

Well, that’s exactly the reason why I launched Best Buyer AI: A new technology that automates the process of sending out these emails, combining the power of AI with a genuine human touch at massive scale, with the ability to actually track performance metrics.

This ensures our outreach not only stands out from the crowd like a sore thumb, but also delivers REAL VALUE to the recipients.

Now, other companies might be dabbling in bits and pieces of this concept, but no other company aside from ours has been able to achieve this level of personalization at the SCALE that we're doing it.

That's where we see a revolutionary pivot for us in order to serve our clients at a higher level.

So by incorporating Steve Jobs' philosophy and leveraging cutting-edge AI technology, we're able to provide a unique and impactful service that truly sets us apart in the market.

So now, the question becomes…How can you adopt this forward-thinking approach in YOUR own business?

To best answer that question, let’s take a look at two other well-respected companies that adopted this philosophy and ended up transforming their respective markets. 👇

1. Netflix and the Shift to Streaming

Once upon a time, Netflix was a humble DVD rental service that competed with brick-and-mortar stores like Blockbuster.

But as the company grew, they began to see the writing on the wall as the internet evolved and recognized the potential of streaming content.

So instead of waiting for customers to demand it, they boldly took the leap and invested heavily in creating a seamless streaming platform in 2007.

Today, Netflix is a household name, while other physical movie stores like Blockbuster have become a nostalgic memory.

(Funny enough, Blockbuster actually had the opportunity to BUY Netflix for only $50 million back in the early 2000s! Can you believe it?)

Netflix's story is a prime example of how being able to identify and capitalize on emerging trends EARLY can help your business jump, skip, and leap over your competitors.

1. Tesla and the Electric Vehicle Revolution

Back when electric cars seemed like a futuristic fantasy, most Entrepreneurs shied away from the challenge of starting an EV company.

Elon Musk, however, embraced the risk and dove headfirst into the world of electric vehicles when he bought Tesla Motors in 2004 for only $6.5 million.

The odds were stacked against him, and even Musk himself admitted that starting an electric car company was, quote, "idiocy squared."

Regardless, he strongly believed in Steve Jobs’ philosophy of giving people something they didn't even know they wanted yet, and boy…Did it pay off!

In 2008, Tesla introduced the Roadster, a sleek and powerful electric sports car that shattered all preconceived notions about what an EV could be.

It proved that electric cars could be both stylish and high-performance, making the world sit up and FINALLY start paying attention.

Here's a picture of a young Elon Musk with the first-ever Tesla Roadster.👇

As Tesla continued to innovate and push the boundaries, other automakers were left scrambling to catch up.

The once-skeptical market started to shift, and before long, Tesla became the highest-valued car company in the world, with a market cap of over $500 billion (it even hit over a TRILLION in 2021)!

Tesla's meteoric rise just goes to show the true power of foresight and calculated risk-taking. Don’t you think?

Now it's time to ask yourself: How can YOU challenge the status quo and create game-changing products or services for your own business?

To your success,

David