I don’t look for the person with the best résumé. On the contrary, I typically like the person with no résumé. It tells me they’re always working, so why would they have an updated résumé? I also care less about the perfect skill set and more about the sheer drive to be the best. Those are the people I want on my team. And because of this, it’s usually a gut instinct about the way someone responds to me or a demeanor that just strikes me. So when I see it, I fire.
Ready, Fire, Aim isn’t just a work philosophy, it’s an everything philosophy for me, so it would make sense that it’s even how I have chosen my team. I’m not digging into every skill or strength before firing . . . the second I feel compelled, I want them. That’s why a person who had no corporate business skills is now the COO of Ten Thirty One. She rose to the occasion. That’s why a person who had no directing skills is the company creative director; his talent was giant and he rose to the occasion. I’ve had a tremendous amount of success Ready, Firing, and then Aiming when it comes to my team.
Creating a team that can carry out a magical vision will go down as one of the most difficult parts of building Ten Thirty One Productions. It’s been an emotional roller coaster of frustration, happiness, appreciation, anger, cancerous behavior, threats, intimacy, and everything in between.
It’s so easy to fall back on the notion that if you’re the boss, you’re the boss . . . end of story. But no way . . . I wish it were that easy.
It is absolutely not possible to build a successful business without the support of a team who can make you and your company look good. There are very few one-person shows out there. Even more solitary professions like being an author or artist will at some point need the support of an editor, agent, gallery owner, or manager. The point is to get on board with a meaningful group of people who can help push the ultimate goal forward, and to do it without an ego. Leave the “I’m the boss” mantra at the door. Better yet, throw it in the closest dumpster and never look back. That’s only step one.
Though we live in a nation with 325 million human beings, the pool of talented candidates is limited at best; the pool of passionate candidates is scarce; and if you’re looking for someone who is both talented and passionate, you’d better say a prayer and hope the tooth fairy leaves them under your pillow because that’s about how often they just come along.
At this point, you probably feel as though you know me well enough to guess that I’m not going to be satisfied with a mediocre team of talent around me. The people I choose to represent Ten Thirty One Productions are a direct reflection of my company and of me. And secondly, these individuals need to be able to carry my vision. It’s horribly sad that these types of employees have become such an endangered species.
Somehow we have wound up in what I believe to be an incredibly unemployable population. The level of entitlement from young adults just coming out of college or just entering the workforce is mind-blowing. I am speaking just of my experience from hiring, managing, and firing employees at Clear Channel Entertainment in the corporate sector, and then of course from building Ten Thirty One Productions from the ground up. The old-fashioned work ethic that has seemed to diminish over time or at least become harder to find. I’ve experienced all too often a really disturbing demeanor where applicants seem to think the employer needs them more than they need the employer. And they’re not always wrong.
I’m incredibly lucky with what I have to offer candidates these days. I have a really sexy entertainment company that focuses on content (horror) that naturally yields a high passion level for those who consume it. And since I’m the only company doing all horror all the time, the pool of passionate candidates may feel a little more abundant to me. And to be clear, I use the term “abundant” very loosely. So they come to me passionate about horror—that’s great, but what else? Well, most often, nothing. This has been the single biggest challenge I have been faced with since Ten Thirty One Productions started growing.
Today, in 2017, going into our eighth year, I have eight full-time annual employees. Three of the eight—the creative director, chief operating officer, and senior producer—have been with me since day one in 2009. These three are the dream, the candidates you hope you can uncover if you kiss enough frogs. But, sadly after eight years, I can say I have yet to see anyone else come through our doors who has the perfect storm of qualities that these three have. The other five on the team are key players for whom I have high hopes, and they could be at the level of my “perfect stormers,” but only time will tell, as I have come to learn.
The TTO creative director and chief operating officer started as a husband and wife makeup-artist team. They were working in theaters and on cruise ships, and they saw an employment ad the senior producer (who was an assistant at the time) had posted for our first-ever LA Haunted Hayride. They contacted her because they were huge horror connoisseurs and had a genuine love for live entertainment. They didn’t live in LA but wanted the job so badly they explained that, if hired, they’d stay on the couch of friends for the five weeks and make it work. The more I got to know them, the more I could tell they had a special commitment level. These two would show up early for morning news shoots at 3 am and take naps in the hay wagons on short breaks, then work the event until 1 am. They loved this work, were very talented, and had a huge horror vernacular, meaning they were highly in tuned to special effects, characters, and compelling horror genre narratives and bringing them to life.
At the time, we couldn’t afford annual employees so I had to bid them farewell after the season and hope they’d find their way back to me the next year. They left LA and returned to their cruise-ship jobs. They were also taking extended theatrical residences all over the country. But, luckily for me, they loved their work with Ten Thirty One Productions so much that they built their year around coming back to LA for TTO. I was beyond impressed and quickly fell in love with their energy and contributions to the company. Clearly, by their current titles, you can see that they have done very well moving up the ranks of the company and becoming an intricate part of the machine.
The current senior producer came on board pretty much at the same time Alyson and I decided to build the company. She was one of our dear friends and was producing beautiful events all over town for a well-known restaurant group and production company. We had met her a couple years earlier when we hired her to cater an event we were building for Clear Channel. She was incredible, didn’t miss a thing, knew everyone in the industry, and could hustle like a mother. We knew we wanted her help, and by this time she had become a close friend, so we enlisted her. She ended up being the one who discovered and recruited our last integral player, our production director, who completed the roster of needed members.
We had a team.
That is not to say it’s been all puppies and butterflies. As with any long-term relationships, struggles are unavoidable. And these relationships have been no different. We’ve hit some serious bumps along the way, some that could even be described as head-on collisions. But these are also the interactions I’m the most incredibly proud of because we worked to find resolution with each other. This is the epitome of creating leaders. You stick with your commitment to them even when it’s easier to jump out of the plane and pull the rip cord. Every time we work through the struggle, we come out of it stronger. And these three have been proof of that commitment.
Other players have come and gone, and some of them were also incredible pieces of the puzzle that built us. Our turnover is very small, with most of the key employees staying from four to eight years and counting.
So what’s the problem? It sounds like we have the dream team. The difficulty was that, after our first year, it was virtually impossible to build a team big enough to handle the demand on our attractions.
We were able to put butts in seats, but they weren’t excellent butts. More often, they weren’t even mediocre butts so, as you can guess, they weren’t going to fill my seats. Here is where the rubber has met the road. This is where choices had to be made regarding which projects we could launch and which would have to be a slower roll.
For example, last year we’ve been approached by: four new major metropolitan markets who want us to bring Haunted Hayrides to their location; over a dozen people who have properties and want to do a Campout; two iconically famous recording artists who want us to build them a themed attraction; one of the most famous movie producers in the horror genre planning a new movie project; and the head of a major Asian entertainment company for an installation in Shanghai. Just in one year.
I have wanted to say yes to every single one of those opportunities but, obviously, with a team of eight, I’d sink the ship.
It’s been an incredibly hard balance because walking away from opportunity, for me, is like nails on a chalk-board. Having Mark (Cuban) on the team has been valuable in these times because he has been critical in reeling me in and talking me off the ledge when my eyes are bigger than my stomach, so to speak. We’ve actually had some pretty contentious conversations because when he tells me to wait on an opportunity, I feel like the world is ending and want to jump through the phone. However, having a partner like Mark is rare. Having such a tenured big-business resource to fall back on when I don’t have the answer gives me peace of mind I hadn’t had before he joined the team. And that’s not to say he always has the answer, but he’ll ask the right questions, which can often lead me to my own answer. So, I try to remember that there are times when I may not be right and listen to his words, “Mel, don’t drown in opportunity.”
A new producer and two new creative assistants have recently been enlisted into the Ten Thirty One Productions ranks, and the new energy has been good for morale and for freshening up brainstorming and content creation.
I can honestly say that everyone on my annual staff feels like a Ten Thirty One Productions soul mate. My single biggest challenge, in terms of time, has been to create a culture where they can flourish, stay engaged and motivated, and become leaders.
I’ve also learned that my best successes have come from people whom I’ve targeted because I’ve spotted something special, or people who have actively pursued me because we were offering their dream career. Not one single person on my team came from a want ad placed in an employment outlet. We did find my creative director and chief operating officer that way initially, but not for the big roles they have today. We’d placed an ad for a makeup artist, and I actively groomed them for growth in the company in the years following because I recognized something special. This is an important point because I truly believe that when someone is special and has extraordinary talent, passion, and work ethic, they are typically not answering want ads because they already have a job.
People like this are uncommon, so their employers keep them. That’s why I believe when you are starting or growing your team, you must conduct an active search, not a passive search. By that I mean you must pay attention to the people you cross paths with, and when you see someone who impresses you, don’t just pass them by. Let them know you noticed them, and that you have an opportunity, and that you’d love to stay connected if they’re ever in the market for a change. I guarantee you the person will always want to at least hear about your opportunity. At that point, you have a shot at selling them, so be compelling. Don’t sell them like a used-car salesman; make them want your opportunity so badly they start to fight for it. This is not an effort to get you to beg because good talent is so hard to find, it’s a chance to make a connection with someone who may just become your chief operating officer one day. If what you have to offer sounds appealing enough, most motivated and hungry candidates will start to fight for the opportunity. This is what I call an active search.
The passive search, which unfortunately is more common, means posting opportunities and waiting for the résumés to roll in. This method will flood your inbox with applications from every unemployed or unemployable person who lays eyes on the posting, whether they have your specified qualifications or not. This pool of people is more likely to be desperate for money and willing to take anything they can get. The problem is often that someone let them go or they quit. Both scenarios should lead you to an unfavorable conclusion. If someone let them go, it’s reasonable to assume they were not valuable enough to keep or make the cut. And if a candidate quit and is now seeking a new job, it means they quit without having another opportunity lined up, which can often also be a red flag. There can always be an extenuating circumstance here, but generally speaking this has been my experience.
You’ll most often find yourself spending much more of your time trying to fill positions when you engage in passive searching. So much of that time is wasted just drowning in pools of undesirable candidates. Like everything else we’re discussing in these pages, navigate your path by actively taking shots and going after the extraordinary talent that may not always be looking for you. Look for them everywhere, and when you see that sparkle, fire. Or Ready, Fire, Aim!
The second piece of creating that killer team can be summed up by one of my favorite quotes. Author Tom Peters said: “Leaders don’t create followers. They create more leaders.”
Nothing gets me more excited about a new employee than watching them want more. When my employees tell me they want to be the CEO of the company one day, I swoon. That is exactly the hunger and motivation I want walking the halls of Ten Thirty One Productions. I don’t want to hire an assistant who wants to keep their job as my assistant forever. I want them to want the kingdom.
Every person that I bring into Ten Thirty One is a person I have every intention of turning into a leader. The more leaders I have, the better our work becomes, and the volume of creating grows exponentially because then those leaders should ideally also be making leaders out of their team members. This is the ideal situation and the ecosystem of a really healthy company. And while it sounds easy enough, it’s not. Aside from finding this leader-worthy talent as discussed earlier, egos can really get in the way. Power can really affect someone’s behavior.
In the early years of Ten Thirty One Productions, I brought on an assistant once my workload was getting unbearable. It was one of the first annual positions I added to the company once we had the revenue to finance it. My intentions were to put every piece of information from my head into her head so there would be two of me, in essence. She was hungry, very good at her job, and had a lot of relevant experience, so I had really high hopes for her. She grew quickly. I gave her a lot of responsibility and a lot of autonomy.
I think it’s important to understand that you don’t foster growth in leadership through micromanaging and ruling tyrannically. I have found that learning curves are shorter, and stronger leadership is developed when you allow people to fall on their faces. Sometimes they need to fall hard because it’s important for them and for their employers to see how they get back up and what they do differently afterward.
My assistant did very well with both. She took the responsibility and soared, and the autonomy was not misplaced because she was a self-starter and didn’t need me to give her a daily checklist. We were a team, a great team. And as I stated, I don’t want assistants who aspire to stay assistants. I knew she wanted more, and she earned it, and so she moved up the ranks of the company to assistant producer, then producer, until she was named general manager about four years later.
I strive to be a leader whose team will bust through walls for me and have my back without question. That means you must pay constant attention to the way you are treating and interacting with your employees. You must bust through walls for them too. Even when something isn’t my responsibility, if I can help, I do. The leaders of my life did that for me, and those are some of the most pointed memories of my relationships with them.
My assistant was experiencing some personal issues that I’ll keep private, but they were serious in nature, and it was clear she needed help. Because she offered so much support in my life and was such a big part of Ten Thirty One, of course I wanted to help her out, so I did and covered travel expenses and some other items. I felt like it was the right thing to do. Occurrences like this would happen every once in a while, and I was happy to help, if I could. Exceeding expectations with your actions and compassion help to build solid trust and a good partnership, which are invaluable to the team.
Sadly, as the years went on and her power started to grow, so did her ego. She started to treat the very people she had been working next to for years with disrespect and impatience, including me. The staff who worked for her during events cringed when she was in the area and didn’t dare step out of line due to fear. I take responsibility for letting it get to that point. I should have noticed it happening, but I had put so much of the day-to-day management into her hands that I didn’t see how destructive her leadership had become. It was actually the opposite of leadership. The whole team felt like there was a black cloud sitting on top of us each day. She spoke in short and aggressive tones, and if something didn’t go her way, she’d storm out and start crying. It was bad.
In the cloud of her ego and self-righteousness, she started making colossal mistakes—mistakes that would cost the company money and make us look less than extraordinary. Finally, one error was big enough that it cost the company tens of thousands of dollars, and that was the final straw for me. Upon requesting a meeting with her the following week to discuss this and many other items, I received, in response, her resignation letter. Clearly, she saw the writing on the wall.
I cannot even begin to describe how quickly the team’s energy improved. It didn’t just improve—the team seemed elated.
When you’re living inside a dysfunction, it’s incredibly hard to see outside of it. But when you finally do step outside of it and look at it from there instead of within, it’s so much clearer. You can see how bad it really feels or felt.
This gave me the clarity to never make that mistake again.
Despite the dissonant ending, I did appreciate her years of valuable service to the company and to me.
The point is to lead.
Lead ethically and morally. Treat your team fairly but not necessarily equally. Find the most impressive candidates and give them everything they need to rise to leadership. And when the team wins, give the team the credit. Hold up your best talent into the spotlight and let them feel the rewards of strong leadership. When the team loses, let them feel that too. And when you feel compelled to step in, to mop up the messes of the loss, don’t. Let your prospective leaders find the solutions and the lessons. And even when someone you’ve supported in ways that transcend your position as an employer fails to recognize it, act with integrity and love. Because, remember, even if they’re no longer in your organization, the eyes of your future leaders are still on you, and they are the circulatory system of your company.
Your staff is the most important asset you have for maintaining the health and sustainability of your company. Don’t underestimate this relationship, or you will find yourself in the profession of recruiting.