When you think about the best bosses you’ve had in the past, they’ve been the ones who’ve connected with you as a human being – within professional boundaries, of course, they did not distance themselves from you, were open and honest with their communication, were sure to tell you how appreciated you were, and treated you with respect. It’s important to keep this dynamic in mind when you’re building your investment team because this is the position you’re putting yourself in when assembling experts to manage your money; these are people who, although having skill sets and expertise outside of your knowledge, work for you.

Like any other instance when you’ve found yourself in need of a new hire, the next step is to identify your blind spots within your knowledge base and current bandwidth. This should be easy enough, it’s why you’ve found yourself in need of drafting an investment team in the first place and it’s likely why you clicked this blog in the first place, but let’s take that a step further. Within those blind spots and open roles on your team; imagine that you were in that role. How would you like to show up in that space? Would you want to be someone who knows everything? Be someone who’s well connected and charismatic? Would you come from a different background and apply those diverse skills to this new position? Would you be bullish or friendly? There are no right or wrong answers, only your personal truth.

These answers will serve as a guidepost when you come to hiring your team of investment experts. There are a ton of qualified, incredible professionals in this world who are local to your area and looking for more clients. Figuring out how you, personally, would like to show up in the role you’re asking your prospective expert to show up will reflect your values. Assess their qualities outside of their job qualifications as well. Do they respect and value your partner’s opinion? Do they have good manners and communicate in a prompt, professional way? Don’t forget, these people will be acting on your behalf, and should therefore show up the way you would wish to show up. You can’t be all things to all people if you want to invest wisely, so framing your investment team as ambassadors who are acting in your stead will help narrow the pool of candidates.

Referrals are a great place to start, but on your journey towards assembling your team in your career as an investor,  shouldn’t stop there. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who’s “good with money.” What works for some people won’t work for everybody. Again, there is no shortage of financial advisors, CPAs, or real estate agents, but getting more specific about what you want in the way these people interact with the world around them will point you in the right direction and towards the right team members. In an ideal situation, what would you do? How would you act? Now, how do these people conduct themselves? Once you know, go from there. You’re already off to a great start. This is the one thing that will serve you the best in the long term as you start your investment journey. Hire great people, not people who are simply “good” at their jobs.

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