When Should YOU Start Hiring Employees? Ask Mr. Wonderful #5 | Kevin O'Leary

Hey, Mr. Wonderful here, and this is another episode of Ask Mr. Wonderful. Now, what I like about this is no-holds-barred. You ask me any question you want, and I give you the answers you ask. I answer. Now, bring them on!

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Hi, Mr. Wonderful, this is Mica from Jersey. So, I recently started my own company and I just want to know when do you know when to start hiring employees. Right now, I have a few clients at hand, and I just want to know when is the best possible chance, like monetary-wise, to start hiring my first few employees or should I continue doing things on by myself and my partner, Mike?

A great question. Let me tell you about having employees. The only reason you had employees is sales are growing. You don't add employees unless revenues are increasing because you can't afford them. If you have sales growth, then you have to start thinking about getting support people so your customer service level stays in the top quartile. That's when you hire people. You're always keeping your eye on: how do I service my customers? How do I make sure my employees are happy? How to make sure my investors are happy? Those are your three constituencies. But number one is you've got to have happy customers, and the reason you bring on the risk of that extra overhead is you need employees to do that.

So, no hiring anybody until your sales go up. Every time you double your sales, you should add a couple of people to do customer service and support in all areas of the business, whether it's accounting, whether it's, you know, what you do online to support them, whether it's marketing, whether it's sales. Those people are supporting customers. At the end of the day, that's how it works. No hiring anybody until sales go up.

Hi, Mr. Wonderful, my name is Luis. I am from Mexico, and I've been following you for the past four years. I would like to ask you because you have said in the past that you have been to every beach on earth. I want to know if that's even true and how did you manage to accomplish such a difficult goal? How did you do that?

It's one of the benefits of traveling. Every beach on earth, I met all the locals, tried all the local foods, and that's when I became Chef Wonderful because I'm a fantastic chef. I recreated all those dishes with my certain Jeunesse a qua that I added myself. So, my dishes all come from my journeys to all these countries and all these beaches, and now Chef Wonderful is born.

Hi, this is Amed from India. Actually, I wanted to ask you that how can I overcome my self-doubt and other people's opinions, especially my close ones like my family? And how can I grow my business to run?

Actually, Swapnil, fantastic question. You know, every entrepreneur has self-doubt. It's just that you don't want to show it to the outside world. People want to follow somebody that knows where they're going, but you have to be able to deal with your insecurities. You can't let your family tell you you don't know what you're doing, not when you have a burning desire to be an entrepreneur.

The key to success, though, is to find somebody that has master skills. If you're great in one area, find someone who's better in another area that you're weak in. That's how you can really reduce your self-doubt and make your outcomes much better because you're reducing your risk by getting a partner in the business. But don't let someone tell you you can't do it. That's just crap, particularly from your family. Many people are jealous about entrepreneurs; they want to try it but they don't have the guts to do it. Even within a family, that happens. It doesn't mean you don't love them; it's just you're not listening to them when they give you all that naysayer stuff. Stay focused on the goal and deal with your insecurities. Everybody has them.

Ready? We're sitting on the set of Shark Tank Season Eleven being taped right now. All of this money is mine. When I make an investment, it's my personal cash. That's why I care about it so much. I care about these deals because it's my cash.

Hi Kevin, let's talk about branding. I saw you live at the NAC tour in Atlanta in July. One of the things you mentioned was branding is a new cost to consider. If damaged, it could cost billions of dollars. How could senior executives, who are at the pinnacle in their career, effectively invest in their personal branding?

Be an amazing question! Personal branding is really interesting. One of the reasons I'm doing this YouTube channel is to talk to people directly to see what I'm really like when I'm outside of the Shark Tank. You know, I'm not wearing a suit right now; I'm just being honest with you about the decisions I have to make every day like everybody else does. I'm an ordinary person like anybody else that focuses on the task I got to get done during the day. But you, right, you raised a really interesting question.

Personal branding is about integrity and honesty because people smell from a mile away these days, and so you've got to be honest with people. Even when it's hard to be honest, it's important to be honest because your reputation, you know, is very, very long time to build, and you can lose it just like that if people feel you're being dishonest.

Hey, Mr. Wonderful, my question for today is I'm 20 years old, and I don't know what to put my main focus and attention to right now. I'm going to college and I'm looking to start up an e-commerce business, like drop shipping and things like that, or creating YouTube, some sort of thing to create passive income. But I don't know if I should put most of my focus on that or school or continuing working. I really don't know.

Hey, Rolla, let me give you some advice. A little bit of focus here. The two things I like to do simultaneously—and I always did—is I worked while I went to school. I picked a discipline that I thought would advance my opportunities as an entrepreneur or just in getting me more money in any job. While I worked at night, I was often a waiter or slinging beer at bars or anything I could do to make money. I often worked as a bartender. I did everything when I was in school, but I focused on disciplines that I thought I could turn into something later.

So, I did both, and I think maybe that's something you want to think about. Why just only have one? When you're young, you've got lots of energy. You only need five or six hours of sleep; spend the rest of the time learning and working. Cash and knowledge—they go hand in hand. Good luck!

Hi, Kevin. I was wondering—I’ll give you a little background knowledge. First, in 2016, you did an interview on CNN Business, the YouTube channel Dirty News, and I was wondering. So, back then, I saw in 2016 when I was 11 years old, and I watched every single episode of Shark Tank, and you were talking about your dyslexia. At that time, I was in fifth grade and I was still inverting all my letters and numbers. So, could you talk more about how you kind of like became super successful but you also had like a disability at the same time? Because it really means a lot to me. Thank you so much. Biggest fan. Thank you. Actually, thank you.

Thank you!

Hey June, great question. Sounds like you have a little dyslexia too, and it comes in various forms, and everybody's different with it. I was really falling behind at your age in reading and math because of dyslexia, and I found this wonderful woman named Marjorie Garlic, and she had a partner named Sam Rabinovich. They brought me into a class— I think 16 and 19 of us— all had dyslexia, and they taught us that dyslexia is a superpower because I could read a book upside down in a mirror, which is a strange thing, one of the attributes of dyslexia. You never know, and that's one of the reasons I was inverting my letters too.

But she said, look, one of the biggest problems with dyslexia—and I've had to overcome it—is that don't let it eat away at your self-confidence. Go back into that classroom where people are giving you a hard time and say, look, I'm actually a superpower. I can do things you can't do. I can read this book upside down in a mirror; you can't. And the kids in my classroom, whoa! How'd you get that superpower? I said, well, it's just one of the superpowers I have; it's called dyslexia. But I don't use it against you; I'm just using it to advance myself.

It was a way of just getting into the self-confidence of getting around the problem of having to learn with that. So, if I had to read with a mirror, I did, but it got me through math and reading scores. And you'd be surprised to learn—Daymond John, who I work with on Shark Tank, who's been wildly successful, he has dyslexia. The guy that started JetBlue Airlines, he had dyslexia. This is not something that's going to hold you back. In fact, it can even be a powerful ally to give you self-confidence in business.

So, I wish you the best. Don't let it ever hold you back; it doesn't have to. There's lots of examples of us that are in this special superhuman club that we use to our advantage.

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