Adapted from his book, “How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights from the Heart of America”

Robert Jordan, Entrepreneur & Author

To build a successful company, you need more than a winning idea. You need amazing employees who can carry out — and improve upon — your vision. How do you hire such people? I interviewed 45 company founders, each of whom started, grew, and sold a company for $100 million or more, or took their company public for $300 million or more. Here are some of their hiring secrets.

Don’t hire too many people like yourself.

If you do, they’ll all be dreamers and lunatics. Successful businesses need different kinds of people with different skills.

Hire effort, attitude, and values first.

After you’ve found these three qualities in a candidate, then look at skills, expertise, and experience.

Don’t be embarrassed to hire people better than you.

The people you hire who are smarter and better than you will hire people who are smarter and better than they are. That’s how you build a world-class company.

Hire people’s behaviors and value systems.

Dig a bit deeper than just their technical skill. Look for people who have a passion for solving problems for your customers.

Hire to your weaknesses, not your strengths.

Each person you hire should improve the overall functioning of your business.

Focus on getting people who have an entrepreneurial spirit.

Find people who understand what you’re trying to do, buy into your vision, and will be passionate about making it happen.

Hire people who are nice, not just smart.

If you hire people who are smart but jerks, they’ll just hire more smart jerks.

Consider part-time people.

Depending on your business, it sometimes pays to hire a lot of people who work three days a week. Often they get as much done as five-day-a-week full timers.

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Robert Jordan has been launching and growing companies and helping other entrepreneurs do the same for the past 20 years. He is author of How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights from the Heart of America (RedFlash Press, www.HowTheyDidItBook.com), a collection of interviews from 45 leading founders who created $41 billion from scratch. His newest endeavors are RedFlash project implementation team, and interimCEOinterimCFO, a worldwide network of interim, contract, and project executives.