Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. Question. Do you think it's possible to care too much for employees or do you find yourself not caring at all? On today's episode, I'm going to bring you some questions I was just asked at my most recent scaling workshop so that you can find out how to be a better leader. How can I learn to care about the employee? It's true. How can you learn to care about them? Yeah. As you do. Not as Alex does, as you do.
Yeah, it's tough. Sole business owner, no partner? I have no partners. I have 30 employees. 30? Yeah, but I'm not as good as a leader as you do as you run your employee. So I want to learn how to take care of them. Why do you want to learn? I will be a better leader. I will be a better CEO if they actually feel that it's not just a job.
but they're covered by their back by someone who really truly care to them. I would ask you this, which is like, what do you do to demonstrate that you care? I don't know how to demonstrate I care them. So that's what I would say, which is like, how do you know that you and I don't have the same thoughts in our head about employees? I don't know. You don't? Nobody fucking knows, right? So all that matters is what you do. And so how do I demonstrate that I care for my team?
I take time to have one-on-ones with them. I put together large vision decks to give them clarity on the company and the vision. I take time each quarter to meet with them and talk to them about their careers. I ping them throughout the day to ask, how's your week? How's your day going? How is that meeting that you have? Does it mean that every day I feel like doing all of those things? No. Just like people are in relationships, if I'm having a bad day,
It's not like every time I have a bad day, I'm going to yell at Alex.
right? Or I'm going to avoid doing dinner with him or like something, right? It's what I do that matters, not what I say or how I feel. And so I think that the biggest way that you demonstrate that you care about your team is you prioritize spending time with them. And so that's why one-on-ones and meetings where you paint the vision and clarify what's going on in the company for them, I would say are the two biggest places where you could do that. The third is just, I would say that
frequency of communication is more important than the intensity of the communication. And so something easy that might be a great place to start for you is just could every day you reach out, do you use Slack? I will. Okay, you will. On whatever communication platform you have, like say it's Slack, and you just reach out to five people that work for you every day.
How's your day going? How is this project going? What do you think about this? Happy birthday. Like whatever it may be. So back in gym launch, when I was trying to learn how to be a great leader, I had a little reminder on my calendar each day that just said like praise. And what that meant to me was I'm going to reach out to five people. That was my metric each day and just say something to ask them something or give them some kind of praise.
Now I just do it inherently because I've gotten reward for it enough and now I like doing it and I'm hooked on it. So I like reaching out to people on my team. I like talking to my team. But ultimately, I think what makes a great leader is a great communicator. And so you have to engineer, I would say, meetings, one-on-ones, whatever, to start the communication. And then eventually you'll want to keep doing it because you'll see the benefit of it.
Thank you. So I guess my question is a little bit different from his. Like for me is how do I stop myself from caring so much about employees? Because there's some people, I'm serious. There's some people who I know I should fire like right now, who I know so much about their life, their kids, their family, that it's hard for me to do that. Then that's kind of tough for me. Yeah. See, I don't see it like you have to stop caring about those people. I see it like you're sacrificing your whole team for this one person or these two people.
Because I've seen it. And this is true. Like the amount of times that people have come to these events and been like, well, I can't fire this one person because and they're like literally leading all of sales and the company's tanking. And so I'm like, so this one person, Sally, is the reason that you're going to let the company go on. You know what I mean? And so I always look at it like my job is to be a steward of the business because the business feeds all of us.
And so if I don't protect the business with my life, like I sacrifice my own personal comfort, I sacrifice the comfort I have in terms of individual relationships for the greater good of everybody here. And so that's how I look at it. So when I have somebody on the team that I know can't be there anymore, and even though I deeply care about them, I'm like, it's either this one person or these hundred people. Which one do I pick? And the job of a leader is to pick the hundred. It sounds terrible.
But there is a point where if that one person is making everybody else's job harder, then you're actually like you're by trying to overly care about that one person, you you
Your behavior shows that you care less about the rest. That's the frame that I have learned. And I would say like in the beginning, I struggled a lot with it because I was like, I really care about these people. And the thing is, it's like you also do them a disservice by keeping them on the team because they're not going to grow within your company. They're never going to excel. So it's like you've got to let them go and move on so they can find the place that actually is a good fit.
I was about to say, do I have to help them find the next job or just let them go, give them severance and move on? I would say that for the first three years of my career, if not four, like I helped people if I could. Now, if they did something super shitty or unethical, no fucking way. But fuck you. I have a blacklist. So I would say if they have been great, they put their best foot forward and you're like, it's just not the right fit, then yes. If they've done things and have shitty performance, don't pass that off to somebody else.
Appreciate it. For sure. What would be the one thing that I should be thinking or behavior I should have if I want to be a world-class manager? Management is far from my strong suit, but I'm having to learn. Obviously, we're a growing team and we're not at the point just yet to put in like a general manager or project manager. So I'm sort of doing that. So there's definitely a school I'd like to get better at because I'm very laid back. Influence. Because...
I think a lot of people think about influence and they think of sales and marketing and being able to get people to buy. But management, in my opinion, is being able to get people to do things. And so buying is just one of those things that influence allows people to get people to do. But if you look at the best managers, how does a manager become effective? They get somebody to do something and not just do something, but also continue to improve at that thing and then learn new things. And so I think that
understanding how to have, and it's not just, I'll say this, the best managers have influence over the widest range of people. The worst managers can only manage like one or two types of people. The best, like world-class managers, put anybody in front of them, they can figure out that person, how to manage them, how to lead them. Old, young, right, left, like all those things, they can figure it out. And so I really think it's mastering influence, which in my opinion starts with
understanding people as they are. I mean, like the root of, I think a lot of my success in managing people has been, I seek to understand them before I judge them, before I accuse them of anything, before I try to tell them what to do. I just always try to understand and to listen first. And that's always served me. It's literally never not. And whenever I see a conflict between teammates, it's often that teammates don't even seek to understand and listen as much as a manager might. And so, yeah,
Yeah. And I think it's also, I'll say this, I've never looked at it and I don't use the term influence much because it seems like in some ways people are like influence, like NLP, I don't know what the fuck that is. But I think that it's being able to communicate in a way that people understand you and also communicating in a way that is encouraging rather than demeaning.
It's like, the best thing to do is at the end of the day, the output is that you get people to build the company, right? You do that by getting people to do things. You cannot do that if you don't have influence over people. You could use authority and threaten people, but they'll fucking leave. So I wouldn't go that route. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. Cool. How do you continue to inspire your team to evolve when you feel like you might be outgrowing them? They've been with me from the start and I feel like I'm kind of...
outgrowing them in a way, but they're still very loyal and I want them to continue to evolve themselves. My question is, what does outgrowing them mean? Do you mean that what you expect of somebody in that role has now changed and so the job is outgrowing them? Yes. Okay. So you're not outgrowing them. The business is outgrowing them and so they're no longer meeting the requirements of the role. Have you told them that? No.
So I would say it's probably 2019 when I remember I had this moment of realization where I was up presenting to my team, actually. I think we had like 100 some people on a stage like this. And I looked at everyone and I was like, oh, no, half of you shouldn't be here. And then after that quarterly is a full team quarterly that we have.
That was when I decided that if people weren't going to be able to keep up with what was changing when the company was growing, I wasn't going to be the reason that they failed. And so the first thing that I had to do is make them aware. And so I had some really tough conversations. And I wouldn't say tough because I'm never going to beat someone down over the fact that there's a gap, but I made them aware of what the gaps were. And so the way I presented it was just like, hey, you know, when you came in, this was the role. And so what I've done, and this is what I did,
I've updated your job description because the company has grown and changed very quickly. And so, so has your role by consequence. And so this is what the role really looks like now. Now, here's the thing. I understand that you didn't necessarily sign up for that and your role has changed a lot as has the company. And so I want to ask you, how are you feeling about all of this? You know, looking at the job description, looking at what, when you came in, what you signed up for, are you still happy with the role?
I start there and then I lead the conversation on. And typically what I try to get to is I like to then have that person, especially when you're trying to show someone the gap in terms of they're not growing fast enough to keep up with the demands, is I update the job description and then I would ask that person, now I want you to rate yourself. I've updated this entire thing. Red, yellow, green. Where do you fall?
In terms of, are you able to do the thing and you're doing really well? Are you like kind of, but you still need to learn more? Are you just not doing it all and you're sucking? And then I would have that person turn it into me. And this is the number one red flag is if they incorrectly assess themselves. It's not that people, I expect them to not have gaps. What's frightening is when somebody's putting greens where reds are.
And so that tells me, okay, that's not great because then the next conversation is going to be, well, I actually disagree. Here's my assessment, right? That's how I kicked off all the conversations. And I'll tell you what happened is that a decent amount of people were like, you know, this is not actually what I signed up for. And I liked it when it was smaller. And here's all the reasons why. And I was like, okay, cool. So then can I help you find a different job? And like, I can't even tell you how many people that worked for that company. I ended up getting jobs with my friend's companies because I was like,
We're just never going to be that small again. And I get that there's a lot of things you get at that size that you're not going to get anymore. And that's fine. You can go work somewhere that is going to stay small. It's not here. Right. And so that's the first thing that happened. The second thing that happened is that most of the people that didn't fall into that bucket
We were able to put a plan together of what were the yellows and the reds and where did we need to focus. And what I do is I put together, you know, a 30-day plan. This is the key piece. Put together a 30-day plan of what they need to do. Something with one metric that you can track. Like what's the one thing that if they improve would improve this person the most? And then I have them track that metric for those 30 days. And then I evaluate at the end of the 30 days.
basically their rate of progress, which is it's not like they have to be a 10 out of 10 at the end of 30 days. That's not feasible. But have they greatly improved in terms of like they were at a five and now they're at a 7.5. Okay, well, that means that in three months, this person could be at a 10. And so I care more about rate of progress than perfection. And so that's how I assessed. And then what I saw is that, you know, half of the people improved greatly and went on to be great fits for the company. And then the other half of the people
didn't improve at all, and I had to part ways with them. And so I at least knew that I did everything in my power to help them rise up, right? Like I supported them. I gave them a clear metric. I trained them and spent a lot of time with them, having them shadow me, me shadowing them, reviewing their work, giving them feedback to make sure that I gave them a fair shot. But I would say this, which is like everyone says they want to join a small, fast-growing company until they get inside one.
And then they get to feel how painful it is and how hard it is and how there's all these crazy changing interpersonal dynamics. There's the changing teams. There's lack of clarity. There's lack of boundaries. There's all these things that are unclear because there's so much accumulating at once. And so some people don't actually know what they signed up for. You know, they're just like, I don't want to be in corporate or this or that. So I want to come to a small company. Sounds great. And they're like,
Yeah, but we don't want to stay. And then you become a growing company and then people feel uncomfortable and they want to go find another company and hope that that one stays. So thank you. That's amazing. Yep. Let's go over here.
So where's the balance of keeping the team updated on what's going on in the business from a higher level, especially from the entrepreneur level? Say 10 or less employees. Is it different with the larger business? But the appropriate balance of keeping them updated on what's going on so they're not
in the weeds of what they're doing but not knowing what's going on higher level uh versus given too much or they like are rolling your eyes don't care freaks them out yeah i think it's different with every team in terms of what level of uh teammates you have so like i guess i would ask what's the composition in terms of like advanced versus intermediate or beginner level employees they're advanced for the roles that they're in but they're also very specialized so uh
healthcare providers, for instance, and, you know, salespeople and operation manager tend to be more interested in the higher level stuff, but the healthcare providers tend not to be as much. Yeah. For instance. That makes sense. Um, I try to always share as much like of the higher level stuff, right. Or like the more, uh, sensitive information. I always try to overshare the good. So I'll say that like, and I probably tend to try and share more, not less. Um,
I mean, I also personally, if somebody doesn't care, like they're not personally in the company. So that's individual to your business too.
I would say that make the information available to all of them. It can be in a format of a newsletter, for example, like something I did in my last company that I'm probably going to start doing in about a quarter here is I would just write every Sunday, like an update on the company and I would send it out and then allow people to read it. And I would actually put a little thing in there to like reply to a joke or something. And so I always knew who read it and didn't read it because they would reply. Yeah.
And so I think that you can make it where it's like you're not pulling a meeting together to go into detail about things, but you can make written word available so that the people who want to dive into it can dive into it if you want to be flexible like that. At the same time, I mean, how do you know that they don't care, I guess, is my next question, because like that in itself is kind of an issue. And this is with like otherwise like high performing, like good employees. Yeah. Do they not know the importance of.
I think it's the just going to that headspace about it thinking that long term or not. It's just too high level for what they're for what they're ready to handle and then a little bit is fine. But then if I do that too much, then it's overwhelming. So I'll say this, this thing that one of my CFOs said to me, which I thought like ring really true, which he was saying something and he was like, Listen,
Because I was like, I'm going to say that all this stuff with everyone. He's like, listen, Layla, he's like, nobody but like you, me and like three other people give a fuck about our EBITDA. Okay. And I was like, and so what that actually like how I actually took that was that we need to sell the tell people about what's going on in the business. So whenever I'm talking about the business with the team.
I will always address when things are going wrong and I'm very transparent. I have no problem doing that. But when I'm like announcing and talking about everything we're doing, I'm doing it in a way that I would almost sell a customer on a product. So like as your company grows, it's not that you stop selling, it's just you change who you're selling to. So like, for example, tomorrow I'm going to lead our team quarterly. I've put together an entire deck on the vision of the company.
And like, I take a long time to put it together. And like lots of stories and metaphors and like pictures and like just as much effort as I would put into like somebody might put into a webinar.
But I put all that effort in because I don't think people care about numbers and they don't care about what I'm saying. But it's like, you need to feel it. You need to understand what it's like. You need to have a big vision. And then you need to bring it down almost to a departmental level. It's like something that I do is basically like tomorrow I present that, right? And then I say, how does this drip down to every department? How does this ethos of what we want to represent in the world drip down into customer success, sales, marketing, et cetera? And that's something I ask them to engage in because I actually did it myself and then
And then I was like, oh, you know what, though? What I know is that people get way more bought in and excited when they get to participate as well. They get to help build out that vision. And so I think it's almost like selling them on that vision and then making them feel like they're a part of it, too, by asking them,
feedback on it and also to help. How does this look for your role specifically? Because what most people want is like they get bored with the vision, all that stuff, when they feel like they don't have any impact. They're not going to be the reason it succeeds or fails. But when you can bring in every person asking for their feedback, asking them to help, I don't know many people who don't get excited. Does that help? That's helpful. Thank you. Let's go all the way in the back.
Hi Leila, I was on your live stream in March. So you told me to, well, I asked you how to scale sales while also improving fulfillment and you said there's no problem in fulfillment. So you told me to do a vision deck and hire more sales, which I did. So we went from 50K months average for the last three and a half years to consistent 130K months now. So thank you. Awesome.
I was like, she was going to say that shit didn't work. No, just don't. Fuck you. Your advice blows. No, it's okay. Okay. So my follow-up question is basically now what? So we're at, so my product market fit is super high. I'm super, super niche, which I changed in January. So two closers, four setters, high ticket fitness, six coaches, and I'm just managing everyone right now.
I love it. Well, asking you one, congratulations. That's like really great growth. So really freaking cool. Two, in terms of yesterday, what did you identify as your constraint? Time and then sales. Okay, so your time. Now, why sales? Because if we scale that, it's going to directly increase revenue.
So you mean you need more salespeople to increase revenue? Yes. Understood. And then your time. Yeah. Where's your time going? Split between sales and fulfillment. Managing sales? Doing sales? Managing sales. Understood. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Understood. Got it. Okay. So it sounds like sales manager. Okay. Yeah. And then they can hire more people? Yeah. So the next level for you is here's the thing. If you hire a sales manager...
Don't just hire them and throw them to the wolves. Like really have that person sit with you side by side, watch everything you're doing and then monitor their performance. Like shadow them running the calls, shadow them running game tapes, shadow them running one-on-ones. Make sure that they're going to uphold the standard because this is the place where a lot of people go wrong. The amount of companies that we see that apply for acquisition.com and their sales are like this because they switch out sales managers all the time because they're never good at onboarding one.
And so I think that making sure that you spend the time to really like make sure that person will be successful because you've been doing it so you can teach them what you've been doing. That's going to be, I would say, like the linchpin, in my opinion. OK, thank you. Great. Yeah. And great job. So I was in college.
kind of the space the headspace of solopreneur for a while i did everything myself kind of you know traveled around a little bit too um and now i just hired my first person last week um sales rep and i was just wanting to ask you a simple question like what would you go about like how would you go about the payment and like the structure of the payment for sales reps um
Sorry, if you do salary plus commission, like what, you know, to drive incentive and to also make sure, you know, that they're taken care of. Yeah, I have controversial views on this. But I think that you could go honestly either way based on your company size. I would probably say a low salary, higher earnings potential. So the smaller a company is, the more I would say commit to lower base, higher upside.
As a company gets bigger, you can switch those. And because the brand also gets bigger, and so you can set more expectations that come with the job in terms of metrics versus when the company's smaller,
I think it makes more sense to have lower base for any role that comes in and then higher upside and earnings potential. So might be like they come in and you have to do research on this because there's legally you have to have a certain minimum that you pay somebody as a sales rep based on like, for example, California right now, completely fucked, like minimum wage, salary, all that. It changes it for all sales reps. So make sure you understand by their state, like what can you pay them in terms of their minimum salary? And then...
I would say that I would give them very high earnings potential. So like almost uncapped.
