How to Hire People Better than You with Carolyn Everson

Intro: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, Co- Founder and CEO of Bolster, and I'm here today with my friend Carolyn Everson. Carolyn is a longtime media sales executive, including a long run leading a large part of Facebook's advertising business. She's currently a board member at Disney, Coca- Cola and Under Armour. Carolyn, good to see you.

Carolyn Everson: It's great to be here, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Matt Blumberg: All right, so the last time I had you on the show, one of the things you said that really stood out to me was that when you got hired at Facebook, Mark said to you, "Your job is to hire people better than you." First of all, there are very few people better than you that I can tell, but-

Carolyn Everson: Not at all. It was the best advice I've ever been given from a recruiting standpoint.

Matt Blumberg: So my question is, what are your tips for executing that advice? 'Cause it's good advice in general.

Carolyn Everson: Yeah, so what I think what he was trying to instill in me, and quite honestly, I don't think I really digested it for about two years. So for two years, I felt like I was a whack-a-mole leader running around the world, trying to solve problems, meeting with clients that had issues, going to help open new offices, and-

Matt Blumberg: Running the business.

Carolyn Everson: Running, I was in it.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah.

Carolyn Everson: But then you start to realize that this thing, and this thing is Facebook, was going to be way bigger than any individual could ever be, and that actually my most important role was to hire people better than me so that they could help scale the business, and frankly, build a legacy where at some point all of us would step down and the business would continue to grow, right? That's what you need to do as a leader. So for me, it was around being very self- critical and aware of things that I did not have as much expertise in. For example, I had done business in APAC, but I hadn't lived in APAC. I needed somebody that was on the ground that had local knowledge, and I found that in the person, Dan Neary, who runs APAC still to this day for Facebook. He literally became a Singapore citizen. He grew up in the US and his knowledge of that region was exceptional and sort of unrivaled, and so when he would come into our leadership meetings, he could tell me within the three top things that I needed to be paying attention to, whether it was Southeast Asia, India, dynamics in China, and it was like getting briefed by an expert. I took that model and thought about that in each of the regions and then the sectors that I needed the experience in. I also looked at the diversity of perspectives from creative, from media, from all of the different functions that we would need to have on the leadership team. So I think in order to do that, you have to be prepared for this. This is the single question, Matt. If Mark were to have called me up on the following Monday after I hired somebody and said, " We're going to do a reorg, and now you're reporting to Dan Neary," as an example. " Would you throw up or would you say, this is actually going to be great, because I can learn from him and he is an amazing leader?" He or she in whatever instance it may be.

Matt Blumberg: Right.

Carolyn Everson: That's the litmus test.

Matt Blumberg: That is-

Carolyn Everson: Then what I told my leadership team, I would tell them the same thing. So when they were hiring country leaders for the UK or France, I'd say, " What would happen if I made a switch and you had to report to them?" You could tell by people's faces like, " Ooh, whoa, that would not be a good day." Or, " You know what? This person's so, so darn good, I could see it happening."

Matt Blumberg: All right, so that is a brilliant litmus test, and I love the concept of thinking about team building and what's the missing piece of the puzzle. But the thing you said that really sticks with me is that figuring out what to look for in someone else starts with looking inside to see what's missing-

Carolyn Everson: Correct. Absolutely.

Matt Blumberg: And how you can partner for success. Carolyn Everson, thank you so much for being here.

Carolyn Everson: Thanks for having me.