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Sometimes things are going to happen in your business where you can't give somebody the growth they're looking for. Or maybe they decide they want something that you don't have an opportunity for that in your business. Or maybe you're not an experienced enough leader that the vision you have for the business is not big enough to fit their vision they have for themselves.
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So last night, I was at a dinner with a group of 10 entrepreneurs, and I want to say most of them were between $1 to $8 million in revenue. One of them said something to me. He said, you know, the biggest thing that I learned coming to one of your workshops and then now spending more time with you, one of the things that I walked away with was I actually felt very jealous of you and your team. And I was like, what do you mean? Because I'd never heard anyone say that before. And he said,
I want to feel the same way, like the same way that your team reflects you so well and you all work so well together and you all joke together and you all seem like you genuinely like being around each other. I want to learn how to do that. And it's interesting because I think a lot of my channel, a lot of what I talk about is a lot more tactical around the operations and marketing, sales, customer success, people, operations, hiring, recruiting, very tactical. And I think the reason for that is because I've really struggled with how to
operationalize leadership and teach the principles that are actually where I spend 99% of my time. Because the reality is, I don't spend most of my days trying to learn each function of a business. I spend most of my days trying to understand human psychology and how I can be a better leader and how I can be a better person that people want to follow. And so...
I went on a little bit of a rant because I didn't realize that was something people wanted. And as soon as this guy said that, everyone else at the table was like, yes, like, I want that. Like, can we learn that? Like, how do you do that? I don't want to walk into work every day feeling like I don't like my team and they don't like me. I want to be able to walk in and feel like I have a community that I've created.
And so, you know, they said, they kind of put me on the spot and said, like, how did you do that? And so I want to share a little bit of what I shared with them with you, because I think, especially at the phase they were at, you know, you're at one million in revenue, three million to eight million. It's all that you have to get past yourself, you know, and so you have to not just master yourself and manage yourself. You have to be able to do it to such a degree that you can do it for others as well.
And so I want to share a few beliefs of mine. And they're not tactics. This is just high level frameworks of how I think about having a team and being a leader that I hope can help you.
The first thing that I believe that I think helps me be a better leader is that if I give discretionary effort, I will get it in return. And I will not wait on somebody to give me discretionary effort. I will give it to them before I've observed anything. For example, when I was a personal trainer, I read a book about how to keep your clients and how to make them absolutely love you as a trainer. And it was one of the best books I've ever read, but it talked about
Putting the extra thought into the person rather than looking at somebody as just your client that you're there to like put through exercises and put on a diet. You know, what's their home life like? What are their best friends names? When's their birthday? What's going on in their life? What are they celebrating? What's relevant? Are they moving? Are they having any big life changes? And.
The thing that I kept thinking about was that's already stuff that I really like doing as a person. And so that couldn't be too hard. And so I made a little calendar. So for each of my clients, I knew when their birthdays were, when their anniversaries, what holidays they celebrate and didn't celebrate, when big stuff was going on in their life. It wasn't even just that I had to like send them a gift for everything, but it's that I would bring it up and I would mention it and I would let them know that I was thinking about them.
And those same principles that I use to basically keep 100% of my clients at any point in time are the same principles that I've applied to having a team, which is it's not just looking at them as somebody that works for you and looking at them as somebody who you get something from because you give them money, but it's looking at them as the holistic person that they are and actually being invested in that person. And I think that what I've realized is that in the beginning, I didn't really understand how to teach this. And
or a term that would even indicate what it is, but what it really is, it's discretionary effort.
It's the fact that when I'm taking a shower, I think about the fact that, you know, my assistant who was living in this house in this neighborhood she didn't like just got one that she really likes. And like, what could I get for her to decorate that house with? What could she, what could I do to help her welcome into that home? I should tell her to take a few days off. I should, I could get her this kind of gift. I could get her that. Like, I want to reach out to her husband and ask him, like, what could I get her? And so it's those moments where you don't have to be thinking about somebody on your team, but you want to because you care about them.
because you act as though you care and then eventually you will. And so I think a lot of times when people say like, oh, I don't really care about my team like that. Well, if you never act like you care, then you don't actually show yourself if you will. And a lot of times you can
Think your way into an action or you can act your way into a thought. And I think that for me, I have always, especially with somebody who's new on the team, I act my way into a thought, which is if I display that I care and I act like I care, eventually I'd really do. When I say act until you care, what a lot of people do is when they bring somebody on
they act like they don't care. And they're actually waiting for some sort of sign, which they don't even know what it is, that they should care about this person, they should trust them. But you're actually perpetuating the not caring and the not trusting by not acting like you do. And so it's like, what would somebody who cares, what would they do? They would message the person on their first day. They would send them something nice. They would get them a swag bag immediately.
They would hold a one-on-one with them quickly so they can greet them on the team. They would say hi to them every time they saw them. They would ask them how their first day was, their first week was. They would offer them and see if they need anything, right? And what you'll see is that if you act like you don't care, you're more likely to
demonstrate to that person that you don't, which then they act like they don't care, which then perpetuates the cycle, right? And so it only takes one person to change a relationship. And if you're the leader in the company, that's on you to do. And one thing you can do is demonstrate that you care for people. And eventually they will demonstrate back that they care for you. You
You know, there's been a few times in my career where this has made a dramatic difference in my business. One of which is I had a sales team and the manager over the sales team, this is at gym launch. He was doing a terrible job, just to be honest. And so what happened was I looked at the sales team and I could tell that
he did not care about the sales team. He didn't care about them as people. He was constantly just drilling them and driving them to make sales. Like despite what it made their personal life look like, despite what was going on at home, despite any way that they were feeling, if they were sick, if they had a vacation, like he cared not at all. And so, you know, I went to Alex and I was like, listen, like I think we have to flip this guy out. We need a complete cultural shift here. And I think that we could literally like 2X the production of this team if we just had a manager who gave it. And so,
I brought in a new manager and I'm not even joking. Within literally a week, we doubled our sales production, doubled. And when I asked the team, why did we double production? They said, we don't have somebody constantly breathing down on our necks. And we feel like we have freedom. We feel like we have autonomy. We feel like we're being heard. And it's just, you know, what they says, it's a way better vibe.
Right? And what does vibe mean? It's just like, you now don't have a manager who's interfering with your work. You have somebody who's making you want to work more. And they do that by giving discretionary effort.
The second belief that I have about people that has allowed me to build a team that I really, truly love working with is that I do not believe people are stupid. I believe that most people are just bad teachers. A lot of really astute leaders and business people and entrepreneurs have this belief, and they say this all the time. They're like, I think I just hired a bunch of dumbasses. I think I hired a bunch of stupid people. I think I...
And it's like, every time I hear that, the first thought that pops in my mind is, they're not stupid. You just don't know how to teach. You just don't know how to train. You just don't know how to reinforce behaviors. Like, it's not like everyone comes into this world dumb as hell. And so, and you know, then the second thought is like, you also hired them. So what's that say about you? But the belief that I've always taken on and has served me more than has not is that people are trainable. When people come into a business, they're not just like,
Either they come in fresh, not knowing much at all, or they come in doing what they've been trained to do by somebody else. And maybe that person was an idiot and trained them poorly. Does that mean that they're an idiot? No. Most people can learn most things. And holding that belief has helped me way more than it has hurt me because I have seen people that were teenagers and so young and so inexperienced do things better than somebody who's had 20 years of experience.
Just because I believed that they had the ability to learn. And I've also instilled that belief in other leaders in my company. I think the underlying skill that's needed to teach well is actually your ability to give feedback. And when I say give feedback, it's really just identifying what good looks like, where somebody's at, and what's the discrepancy. And being able to communicate that
in a way that is not punishing, but instead encouraging to somebody. And I think a lot of traditional leadership goes in the opposite direction, which is we dwell on what somebody's done wrong. We dwell on that somebody's not doing well, and we keep them stuck in this cycle of feeling like shit. And I think what the best leaders do, the best teachers do, is they're really meticulous about presenting feedback in a way that does not feel personal, and in a way that
anchors the goal. And in my opinion, the best teachers are able to one, know the goal of every student, right? Like what's your personal goal? And then they're able to tie every piece of feedback to that personal goal, which means, hey, I know that you want to be COO one day, right? Yeah, right. I want to be COO one day. Great. So yesterday you did this. A COO would have handled it like this. What do you think the difference is?
And then I'll ask them to tell me where the discrepancy is. I would say that's one of the most effective ways that you can give feedback as a leader because a lot of times we give feedback, I think traditional advice puts you on opposite sides of the table. And when you're on opposite sides of the table with somebody, it feels like your competitors rather than teammates
And I think in order to make it feel like we're on the same team headed in the same direction, you have to be able to present it in a way that is getting them towards something they want rather than having them run away from something they don't want. I'll give you an example of when this was really real for me in a recent situation is I had a leader in my company and that leader ran a division and he was constantly, you know, almost micromanaging the team. He had a team of five. And, you know, I started to realize like, this is not looking good. I don't know if this guy's the guy.
And I knew because one day he sent me a message and he was like, name is a dumbass and dropped the ball on X, Y and Z. And her X, her presentation was horrific. And I was like, this is really bad. And so, you know, this entire time he'd been telling me how he couldn't get out of the weeds because his team was so dumb.
And I just knew I was like, that's not it. I was like, his team is not dumb. He doesn't know how to teach them how to do anything. And if anything, he suppresses them. And so I let that person go and I promoted somebody from within. And what that person did was they allowed everybody to display the level of competence that was already there.
Um, and he did that because he believed in people. And so he actually put the effort into train people and to teach people. And because he did that, what we saw was that we didn't have a team of dumb asses. We actually had a team of leaders of people who now a year and a half later are all prominent leaders in my company. And so the difference was that one guy thought that people were dumb and stupid.
And the other guy thought that people believed in his team and knew he could teach them. So like, that's the difference that this kind of belief makes. So if you're saying to yourself right now, like, my team is dumb, I want you to take a look in the mirror and say, like, are you even a good teacher?
Do you know how to teach people? Really? And if you don't even know what the word teach means, you probably don't. You know, another example of this is I had a director of finance at gym launch and that director of finance had a team of six people and she kept saying that they, you know, they weren't smart enough. She needed to hire more people and like she can't get anything done and
And so I actually ended up bringing in a CFO and having her swap out that director of finance. And that CFO literally ran the same team. And with her leadership coming in and telling me, she's like, listen, they've just been trained wrong. Like this isn't, they're fine. Like they're fine. They haven't been told what to do well. They don't have clarity. They haven't been trained. Because I was like, listen, are they the right people? Like, you know, all I've heard is bad things for the last six months. And so she came in and I really didn't know what to think at first, but within a period of eight
of eight months, we went from having financials delivered 30 days after we closed the books to having financials within three days of the month being closed. We went from having quite literally like a show of data to having an entire dashboard that was delivered to me on a biweekly, on a weekly basis. And we went from having a culture where everyone just seemed like they deferred to their leader to having many leaders within the department. And so again, it wasn't because
In this instance, my director of finance didn't believe people were dumb, but she was not a good teacher, right? And so simply swapping somebody who is a bad teacher out for somebody who's a good teacher, I got to actually tap into the potential of the team that already existed. The third belief that I hold about leadership is that a core piece of leadership is that you invest in people as if they will never leave, but know and even hope that they will.
A lot of leaders, the reason that they don't, they will never have the culture that they want is because they are too afraid of investing in people and then leaving. They're more afraid of that than they are of not investing in people and then staying. And a lot of times what people say is they're like, I get, I get what you're saying, Layla, but what if I put all this energy into someone and then they leave? And it's like, oh yes. So what if you invest all this energy into making someone's life better? You make them a better person and then they leave? Does that mean that you've done a bad job?
Like there's a lot of reasons that it can be good for somebody to leave a company. Now, are we saying that we want that every instance? Of course not. We want people to stay with them. We love working with people and we like them. But the point of it is, is that this belief prevents so many people from putting the effort into their team that actually builds an amazing culture.
Hey guys, if you already don't know by now, I am actually fairly active on LinkedIn. I may go so far as to say it's actually become my favorite platform. So if you'd like to connect with me, just send me a request or hit follow. And shout out those who've been sharing my posts and tagging others. And so something that I've always kept forefront of mind for myself is invest in them as if they will never leave, but be happy when they do.
Because, and I think this again, like, I don't know if this is, you know, this is just what's personal to me, but it's like my reputation that I have with myself is I don't want the relationship to just be good while somebody works for me, but I want someone to feel like when they don't work for me, if they choose to leave or go somewhere else, like I am still somebody that they can look to, that they can consider a mentor, that they could call when something bad happens. Because again, like,
It's thinking about the person first rather than just the relationship as your employee. And I think that, you know, and maybe this is a point again is like, I like being an employer because I like being a mentor to people. And so I can remain somebody's mentor even if they don't work for me. And that's okay with me because sometimes things are going to happen in your business where you can't give somebody the growth they're looking for.
Or maybe they decide they want something that you don't have an opportunity for that in your business. Or maybe you're not an experienced enough leader that the vision you have for the business is not big enough to fit their vision they have for themselves. And so an example of this is when I was running Gym Launch, we had a guy and he was in the sales department. And
He was, he'd worked side by side with us since we had first started. In fact, when we were flying out to gyms, he was one of our first sales guys. And I really liked him. And so we got a really good, we built a very good relationship. And I definitely put a lot of discretionary effort towards him. You know, not just educating him on sales, but just in general. And I want to say about four and a half years into working for us, him and his wife started a business on the side. And I found out about three or four months after they'd started it,
because we were at our team meetup and he was on the phone. I guess he was talking to his wife. I was saying going off the business. And I went to him and I was like, what are you doing? And he was like, oh my gosh, I'm not quitting. I still want to work here. I just also want to have this business. So I don't want you to be upset. And I was like, bro, you need to quit. And he was like, what? What are you talking about? I love this team. I want to... And I was like, no, no, no. I was like, you're done. Like,
You have gotten so much over the last four and a half years. And if I felt like you weren't ready to have your own business and do this, I would tell you because most of the time people aren't. But you are ready. I was like, go do it. Take the risk. Like, put in your 30 days. Just help me backfill you. That's all I asked. But like, go do it.
And he that's what he did. He put in his notice and we had about 30 days of transition. He helped backfill himself. And, you know, we've remained in touch since. And I've talked to him on the phone many times since then, giving him advice on his business. And he's gone through the ups and the downs and all those things, you know, but like at the end of the day, do I consider that a loss that I made someone's life better?
No, of course not. I consider that a win. And I consider that like the brand I wish to have with myself, which is it doesn't just go like the relationship doesn't end with when somebody isn't working for me, but it's a relationship that I can have for the rest of my life as hopefully their mentor or somebody they look up to. Now, here's the thing. On the other side of that, you know, what happened right before that was I had somebody that I invested a lot into. She was my director of HR and
And we were very close. We were actually pretty close in age, which I think a lot of times you're close in age, you have a lot of similar interests and hobbies, like usually become closer on a team. And because you have more in common, right? And I put so much into her and she kind of came in with little experience. And I, as much as I could, gave her everything in my brain, right? And she became almost like my right hand. And she was my right hand for about two years.
And she was somebody that I saw really ascending in the company. Like I was like, one day she could even be like a COO or an operator. Like there's all these big dreams I had for her. And I had spent so much time training her that when I got a text message, it was the morning before I was going to be letting someone go. It was a screenshot of her telling that person I was going to let them go and warning them and saying they didn't agree with it.
And I remember in that moment, I was just absolutely just so upset because I couldn't believe that I'd put two years of my life into this person and this happened. And I remember after that happened and we parted ways, I remember thinking like, I have a choice right now because I feel terrible. I feel like I was betrayed. I feel like I don't want to trust anybody. I feel like I was taken advantage of. And, you know, I looked at it as just a numbers game.
which is, you know, if I bring 10 people in and I invest in all 10 of them, it's probably going to pay off with like seven to eight of them. And then for two to three, they might end up just like completely f***ing me up, completely f***ing me or leaving early or something, right? But I don't want those three incidences to rob me of the seventh.
And so I made a decision in that moment. I was like, I will continue to trust people and I will continue to invest in people. And it doesn't matter that I feel like.
This is part of the game. And this is the price I pay to have a team that I love working with, is that I have to bear these moments where I feel betrayed. And that is just the cost of having an amazing team, is that because you build an amazing team through really investing in people and trusting people, you're ultimately going to have to bear the cost of when you invest and trust in the wrong people.
And that's okay. That's just part of it. And I think that has served me more than it has not served me in business. The last belief that I hold about leadership, and definitely not the last, but the last I'm gonna have for this, is if you want people to show up and to be their best, then you have to be at your best. And so I think a lot of leadership, in my opinion, a lot of the books I read early on, a lot of the leaders that I listened to, it's not that they told me what to do, it's that they inspired me by who they were.
And that has always been something that has been top of mind for me. And I probably put more time into that than I do into any tactic is,
How can I be someone of such character that I earn the respect of other people of high character? How can I be somebody who people don't just look to for business advice, but life advice, because I am able to manage myself and to manage my life. And I think a lot of what creates a leader that people look up to and are inspired by is somebody who's not just a
one-dimensionally good at one thing. I can't think of many people in life that I look up to because they're very good at making money. Do I watch some of your videos maybe? Sure, I'll watch videos for money, but am I inspired by you? Do you inspire me to want to follow you? Would I move across the country to work for you? Probably not because I don't see the rest of your life. And I think a lot of the times,
Something I've distinguished and I've continued to teach people on my team is I believe the best leaders inspire in all facets of life.
You know, it's not just one area, but they're able to manage themselves in all the other areas of life as well. And so I've always tried to do that. And I think that probably stems from, you know, I got into fitness. I lost a lot of weight. I worked on my mindset. I tried to work through managing my emotions. There's just been a lot of things in my life that I've tried to do to better myself. And I've seen it pay off.
when I ended up starting a company because I already had the skills to help myself. Therefore, I was able to help others. You know, I remember the first time in my career when I realized that essentially just how I showed up for my team would train them on how they showed up for me was I was on a call with about 10 of my teammates. The team was literally like 10 people for gym launch. And I showed up every day in sweatpants and a hoodie with no makeup and my hair in a bun.
And I remember looking at my team one day and thinking like, dude, they all look like they just rolled out of bed. And I was like, that's kind of embarrassing. Like, I don't want a company that looks like this. I remember I literally looked at the call and then I was like, oh, you look like this. You look like you just rolled out of bed. Therefore, they all think it's acceptable. And so what I realized is like, it doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what rules are in place. It doesn't matter what the employee handbook says.
What you do sets the standard for what's tolerable and acceptable for the rest of the team. Because people don't listen to what you say, they follow what you do and how you show up. And so I literally, I started doing my hair, I started doing my makeup, and guess what happened? I didn't see, I didn't tell anybody to show up any different way. Within a month, everybody started showing up differently. Everyone looked better, they had their hair done, they had makeup on, they didn't look like they just rolled out of bread, they looked like they brushed their teeth.
And I was like, holy crap, like that really works. Like I don't have to say anything. It's just how I show up that will dictate how others do. Another example of this is throughout the entire time I owned Gym Launch, one of the main objectives I also had, especially because we were a company centered around fitness, was like, I don't want people to join my company and be like,
less healthy. And I think there's a lot of times when people join a company and other pieces of their life fall to the wayside. And so I
What I did was I had a walking treadmill and I would constantly be walking on calls. And what I found is that all of a sudden you started looking at over like a span of like six months after I got the treadmill. And there was one day when like three quarters of our team was on a walking treadmill because they were like, oh, I didn't know that was okay. I can have a walking treadmill. And
What's so funny is that then everyone started losing weight and everyone started getting healthier. And then eventually we started doing step challenges as a team because we were like, this is pretty cool. And then I had like testimonials from my team about how much weight they lost working on the team because we promoted a healthy environment. How did I promote a healthy environment? I didn't go say, go eat healthy and diet. I just did it myself and displayed it. And so it's not what we say, it's what we demonstrate to our teams. And I think what it does, it also allows people to understand
put importance on other areas of their life when you demonstrate that you do that for yourself. I hope that these frameworks or these principles help you guys. I know they're not like fully flushed out, but I really want to do a better job of figuring out how to operationalize leadership because like,
What irks me is like a lot of the traditional leadership is like, be honest, be trustworthy, be these things. One, nobody knows what those things mean. And then two, nobody knows how do you tactically do that? And so I am going to put more effort towards figuring out how to translate this down because at the end of the day, the hardest part of building a culture is not, it's not in the process. It's not in some project management system. It's not in the CRM. It's not any of the tactics. It's in who you are as a leader and how you show up for your team. And, and,
I've just seen, like, as I have become a better person, I've learned to manage my emotions more. I've learned to be kinder. I've learned to be more considerate. I've learned to have more patience. I've learned to communicate better. My team has gotten better. And it's not because of any tactic I've deployed. It's because great people won't work for a mediocre leader. And so the better you are, the better talent you will attract. ♪
