As a small business owner, your level of success will be the average of the 5 people you hire.

Yes, it’s that “average of the 5 people around you” adage again. But it’s true. Who you choose to surround yourself with, whether colleagues, friends, mentors, or employees, greatly impacts who you are and who you become.

When you choose to enter the business world, your end goal is freedom from financial and time constraints. To earn that freedom, you must build a solid business foundation, and then recruit people to your cause, train them, and lead them to continue your company's efforts on your behalf, even when you're not there.

That pass-off of responsibilities from the owner to the team member requires a lot of trust.

If you have hired people with Talent – positive outlook, confident in their abilities, pro-active, quick learners, highly capable, dedicated to the mission -- your business can boom. But if you hire the wrong people, it can be disastrous for your business' momentum.

The type of people you chose to bring on your business journey will ultimately determine your level of success.

Here are some tips I've learned along my business journey, that may help you with yours:

General Approach to Growing Through Talent Hires:

• Acknowledge that your level of success in business will be the average of the 5 people you hire. Then act accordingly.

• Keep in mind that we are all constantly evolving, and we will outgrow people in our lives and in our business. Few will come with you for the entire journey, and the sooner you acknowledge and become OK with that, the better.

• Hire people for where you are going, not where you are today.

• Talent doesn't like being on a losing team; to attract and keep Talent, you must be a winner yourself.

• If you are not hitting your business goal, it’s probably because you hired the wrong people. (Or hung out with the wrong people.)

• If there's resistance in a growing organization, it's often because the business has outgrown a team member.

Identifying Talent Employees

• Skills, experience, and education can be learned. To find Talent, you need to see how they process ideas and problems, how they act and behave, and their values, beliefs and ethics.

• Behavior typically doesn't change; you must hire the right person before they enter your doors. You don’t change people.

• Cul-de-sac Talent (Talent that grows and then stalls) is still Talent. They just need a lot of direction. These are the people who do your to-do lists well, but do nothing of value until you give them the list. There is a place for them in a solid, big business. It’s harder to manage them in a smaller business.

• If you repeatedly have to tell your employee how to do something, you probably don't need them. Talent will pay attention when they are being taught – maybe even take notes!- so you don’t have to start from scratch every time you assign a task.

• If you usually have to follow-up to be sure the job you assigned an employee is done right, that employee is not Talent. Failure to be able to consistently complete tasks – once trained -- is the definition of non-talent.

• Talent needs to check in with numbers each day; it takes only a few seconds. If someone is not reporting in, they haven’t bought in to the mission. If this happens more than a couple times, that employee is not Talent.

• Talent rarely leaves solely because of money; they leave because of lack of business opportunity, learning, and ability to advance.

• When you have hired Talent, you can tell them it doesn't matter how they get there, just that they get the results. The standard is the standard. They either choose to hit the standard or they opt out of being in the position they were hired for.

The Next Level of Talent: Empire Builders

• Once you have your 5 Talent employees, you need to teach each of them to recruit, train, and lead people themselves. These are the Empire Builders. And hiring them is how you successfully scale. You really only need three Empire Builders to have a massive life. The key to a successful and big business is finding and leading them.

• You only need a few Empire Builders to build a massive business. Empire builders do the “it” without even asking, then report to you about what they did. They take the initiative; you don't have to follow up with them.

• Empire Builders figure it out if they don't know; they're open to feedback and love the process.

• Empire Builders bet on themselves; they know what they can accomplish and they are often happy to be paid on commission because they know their value and they produce results. (Non-talent lacks that confidence and goes for salary because they know they can't -- or won't -- do what it takes to succeed.)

• The difference between an Empire Builder and Talent is that Empire Builders have actually built something, while Talent has not built anything.

• Hire Empire Builders and let them hire your Talent.

Which of these ideas stood out to you?

You, as the business owner, create the standards for your organization. And people rise to the expectations of those around them.

What are the expectations you have of yourself? Of others?

It’s time to take a hard look at the people you have hired and put up the mirror. Are they Talent? Are they Empire Builders? If not, go forth and find them!