the only skill you need to build a $1M company…
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about the 3 levels of leadership, how to lead a team, and how to unblock your team so they are willing to do what you tell them to do. I also talk about how to make sure your team is loyal to the leader and unblocks them so they will be loyal to you.
Transcript
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going to take you on the journey of how I went from hating the business I had built and feeling
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like no one was on my side to today building a business where I'm pumped to hang out with my team
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and love every second of my day. And it all comes down to this one skill, leadership.
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The first part of leadership that you need to understand, it's this. Your team doesn't work
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for you. You work for your team. So I moved to Silicon Valley and I got exposed to a completely
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different way people led. I had these 26-year-old kids running around raising hundreds of millions
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of dollars, leading these companies of 1,000 employees. The way I thought you managed people
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was a certain way, and I was exposed to a completely different style. That's when I learned
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the three levels of leadership. The first leader is the title leader. This is maybe the person
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you've worked with when you worked at like an entry-level job or just starting in your career.
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this person pretty much says the words I'm your boss do what I tell you to do because they have
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a title they think everybody's got to listen to them so most people get it wrong and then they
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have people that are leaving them all the time because they're paying them a little bit more an
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hour an extra 50 cents an hour person leaves they don't quit the company they quit their boss
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usually a title leader worst way to lead people the second level is the trader this is a person
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that says if you do this for me I will trade you for these things the challenge with that style
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is that the moment somebody else will trade them for more,
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It's I'm not here to get them to produce for me,
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but it changes the whole frame, the whole conversation.
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No leader will be able to affect massive change
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When all you're doing is trading with other people
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or telling people, do this because I'm the boss,
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The servant comes in and says, hey, I just want you to win,
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and if we all win, we all get to succeed together,
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The trader's like, okay, how do I get them motivated?
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All right, I'll give them an incentive program.
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They're literally just there because it's transactional.
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Which brings us to the second part of leadership, which is leading without doing their job.
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Most people, the way they lead, it's not their fault.
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They hire people and then as they hire people, they tell them what to do.
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They go off, they try to get busy with their own projects and they come back,
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they check in on people and make sure they're moving forward and they're doing what they do.
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The challenge with that is that there's only so many people you can do that with
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until you wake up in the morning and you spend your whole eight hour, maybe 10 hour day
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just telling people what to do and check in on people
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In that style, we focus on a completely different set
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of objectives and by our example, we unblock people
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so you don't end up building a business you grow to hate.
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and they tell them what to do next i call it the tell check next loop and it sounds great this is
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what i've been taught this is how my first boss delegated to me they told him what to do the check
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they got it done they told me what to do next of course very productive until you get to about 10
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or 12 employees and the whole thing breaks apart and you feel overwhelmed transformational leadership
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is completely different number one is we want to start with an outcome let's say the goal was to
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climb mount rainier we're not going to tell them how to climb them out we're going to tell them what
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the outcome is which is we're going to get to the top it's 14 000 some feet at the top you're going
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to be healthy you're going to feel vibrant you're going to be with this crew of people you're going
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to look around it's going to feel amazing you're going to be in great shape you're going to post
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the flag down there you can take a picture and you're going to let everybody know you made it to
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the top of rainier it's going to feel great we really want to define the definition of done this
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is what completion looks like then we use measurement that's number two we got to measure
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measure exactly what progress looks like so we can use a simple thing like elevation gain per day so
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you just ask at the end of every day text me the elevation gain per day that way we can start
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figuring out is the person on the right track and are they making enough progress each day step three
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is coach at the coach level now what we do is anytime there's a measurement that's off let's
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say that one day they made a thousand feet of gain the next day they report back and they only make
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10 feet. Well, on the coaching staff, you say, hey, I noticed you went from a thousand feet
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in one day to 10 feet in the next day. What happened? Well, I got lost. Interesting. Well,
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what happened? I didn't know. And I went down this path and ended up in a ravine. So I had to
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circle back. So I didn't make a lot of progress that day. What are some options that you could
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have evaluated to help you avoid doing that in the future? Hmm. Well, I could have bought that
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map from the guy at the beginning of the trail. Yep. That sounds like a great idea. You coach
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the person up on the strategy to avoid making the same mistake or make better decisions and that's
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the difference is when you follow the transformational leadership approach you're transforming the way
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somebody works so that that way you don't always have to be the smartest person in the room most
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people get stuck at a level because their team can't grow with them transformational leadership
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is all about developing your people so that they can give you more so that you can go further which
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brings us to the third part of leadership, which is to build your talent engine. I have a ton of
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friends that have businesses and they end up in a position where there's key people that aren't
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performing, but they can't fire them because it would cause so much pain in their life. They keep
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them around. In many ways, they feel hostage to an individual. They know they're not great,
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but they're not that bad, but they're definitely the reason they're not able to grow. And that
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becomes really tough. And what I've discovered is that if we don't build a process for identifying
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great people and bring them onto our team and developing them and keeping them around then
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we'll always be at the mercy of the worst performing person in our company and for many
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businesses that person's holding back all the potential growth in profit so to do this at the
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high level there's three things you got to get great at you have to acquire talent you have to
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train talent and you have to retain talent so the skill we need to develop is acquiring talent every
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business has two engines they have the engine that gets the customers and they have the engine that
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building the customer engine to get new customers,
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then you won't be able to synchronize with the demand.
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and your calendar just explodes and you're overwhelmed
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Not being able to hire fast enough is just as bad
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as not building a marketing engine to get customers.
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Those are two things that have to happen in parallel,
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so they come together at the exact same moment.
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And because you know how long it takes you to hire them,
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well, what if I hire somebody and I train them all up,
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And my response was, what if you don't and they stay?
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We build the people, the people build the business.
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So you have to invest in not only hiring talent
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in a way that doesn't take any extra time from me
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So I always ask myself, what does a 10 out of 10 look like?
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And then I list what questions I might ask the recipient
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of that work if it's delivering something for a customer
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We define the criteria of what 10 out of 10 looks like.
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Typically, it's just recording yourself doing the work.
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Well, it's got a good hook, it's got great copy,
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just record yourself and talk out loud while you're doing it.
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I wanna be able to go from zero to hero as fast as possible,
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and have them go through all the training links
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of me doing the work or somebody else on my team
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40 hours of recording and watching and taking notes,
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to see if they picked up what we were throwing down.
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while I was doing the work that needed to get done
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administrative roles, people that do the work that you sell.
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The hack here is to train your team on principles, not tasks.
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because the principles are universal and evergreen,
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meaning that regardless if the system changes behind the scenes the principles will always hold
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true telling somebody how to click a button and go and create an email that'll become stale very
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quickly number three is to retain the talent one of my favorite ways to do this is use five-year
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goals see i learned a long time ago if my vision is big enough for everybody in my team's goals
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and dreams to sit inside of it makes their selfishness and their drive aligned with mine
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which is usually the last interview amongst my team,
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professional, personal, what does that look like?
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to share with them how what we're trying to accomplish now
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My whole philosophy is I wanna invest in their development.
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to join my marketing team and that team was gonna grow.
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And honestly, what I really needed is to hire somebody
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I remember this person I was interviewing said to me,
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my five-year goals is to have my own marketing agency,
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which is awesome because I need somebody to come in
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that's an aligned goal once i knew that then i could map all the training all the projects all
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of their desires to developing themselves and understanding the skills i taught them how the
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business worked all with the mission that someday they could be ready to go start their own agency
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now some people would say that's crazy why would you do that and then they leave the truth is if
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you do that they'll probably stay because they continue to grow and develop people want to stay
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in an environment where they get to become more where they get to become better where they get to
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sharpened steel by working with other people they respect and admire and usually by the time they
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want to go do their own thing they've been with you for four or five or six years honestly that's
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a long time and if they've shown up every day driven to learn how to do that for themselves
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to support you that's better than the person not having that desire not investing in themselves
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not wanting to become that person and you always having to push them forward which brings us to the
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fourth part of leadership which is simple become the person the big idea is that leadership is
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The person who can recruit, develop, and retain top talent.
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The person who can show up powerfully all the time,
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It's in many ways becoming the person you needed
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Because that person that shows up with kindness,
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directness, have achieved these levels of success
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that you admire, that's really what we're striving for.
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I remember one time I was coaching with my fitness coach, Alan, and I asked him, why
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You're incredibly inspiring, your physique, your commitment, all these things.
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And he's like, man, I just don't want to be one of those guys.
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He's like, you know, just persons always posting their photos and make it all about social
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And as we were working out, I looked around the room and you had Schwarzenegger, you had
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it. And I said, did those people inspire you? He said, well, hell yeah. They're the people that
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made me want to become the person I am today. And I said, interesting. Imagine if those people
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never posted a photo. I want to encourage you to consider, maybe you're being a little selfish
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because I know that there's a kid that follows you and because you don't post, he's not being
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inspired. And it was crazy because when I asked him that, he then told me, he's like, it's kind
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of nuts because I used to weigh 320 pounds. I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, man, I lost 100
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pounds in like six months and i decided to get into fitness that story those photos that journey
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that's inspiring he became the person he needed most in his darkest days but he didn't tell
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anybody so at the end of the day leadership is not only about developing yourself but it's sharing
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your transformation with the world that is the big idea the more you become the more you can give
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the better you get the better your team will get the bigger your team is the bigger you will be
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it's a forcing function most people don't want to share online because they're worried that people
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that follow them are going to judge them because they judge other people it's kind of funny because
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how you judge other people is the fears you create for yourself it's like my father-in-law where he's
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always leaving reviews on other people's site and then he won't post his artwork on the internet
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because he's worried people are going to judge his artwork well of course because you're the
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person judging everybody else's service leaving reviews everywhere you can't be a pro-rated level
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reviewer and not have a fear that people are going to judge and review your artwork when you post it
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so a lot of people they fear the judgment but it's self-inflicted because of the way they see
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the world the world isn't as it is the world is as you are so the way to overcome that fear is
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make it about serving people make it about the other person don't make it about you don't make
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it about i'm worried what other people are going to think make it about i wonder how many people
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I could inspire. That shifts everything and it makes it about others, not about themselves.
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Leadership. That's where I spend 99% of my time. But if you want to learn the only four skills you
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need to build a billion dollar company, click the link and I'll see you on the other side.