How to Build a Team to be Successful in Business

So I got a great, great question about how to build a really great championship team. But I'm going to tell you this. I've been talking about championship teams for many, many, many years. I work with thousands of organizations. But here's what I'm going to tell you. The rules around teams have changed slightly, slightly in 2020. So this is the success formula for building teams in 2020 and going forward. So after I show you this, I don't want to hear any excuses that you haven't put the right team together and you haven't covered your basis. I've done some other shorter videos, but I'm going to go into much more detail right here. So take some good notes or copy the pictures because it's critical. Remember this, that as an entrepreneur, your number one skill is your ability to sell. But if sales is your number one skill, then your number one asset, your number one asset is your team, and particularly getting your team to sell. So if you're trying to put a team together to sell or just building a team, These are the 2020 rules, success model for making that happen. Okay, so let's just take a look at it real quickly here. So we're talking about teams building teams, right? We're going to build teams. And so a lot of people work alone and that's a really big mistake because business is a team sport. So we're just. I'm just going to assume that you know that you got to have a team if you're going to build massive passive income, if you're going to weather the crazy economic times that we're going through. But teams are no joke, okay? When it's just you, it's me, myself and I, that's enough psychosis for sure. But when you have team together, there's a lot of other things to consider. So the number one skill, the number one thing to keep in mind in putting together a team is you must learn how to recruit. You must learn how to recruit. And we gotta. Why? Because you gotta. Wouldn't it make a good idea, Wouldn't it be a good idea to have the right person on the bus to begin with? Yeah. Otherwise, I mean, you get the wrong person. We just grab bodies to cover functions, grab a family member, some virtual teammate that claims that they could do all these great things for us and then we find out that they can't. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're not an entrepreneur. Because I have wasted tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars doing all that Like I said, worst thing, grab a family member to bring them in, and then you got another whole level of psychosis. So there's a better way. And good. Good teams and good organizations understand this and how to recruit properly. So the first thing. So we're going to talk about this a little more detail. So to recruit, one of the best things to lead with, and this stands for R for recruitment, is to understand to lead with what I call your. Your mission. Your mission. Yeah. What's the mission of your organization? Now, I know what you're saying. Yeah, Blair, I heard that, too. Yeah, I know. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I didn't pay attention to that either. And I paid the price. I really paid the price until I figured out that you want to get the. You want to get the right people there for the right reasons. Look, if you don't get the right person on the bus, then it's not fair to them because they don't know what their expectations are. It's not fair to you because you thought you had somebody that you didn't have. But it's all our responsibility because we didn't recruit properly. So these days, I lead with mission. Lead with mission. Okay? So, for example, the mission of our organization of Blair Sanger Training Academy is to provide the best teachers, leaders, and facilitators in the world that help entrepreneurs succeed. Succeed. Now, I can tell you that we have several hundred trainers all deployed in over 40 countries around the world. And if you ask any single one of them, without any prompting from me, why they joined this organization, they will tell you the same thing. It's because of the mission. Because of the mission. Why? Because it's something bigger than them. Now, why do you want to do that? I mean, let's say you're interviewing somebody and somebody and you say, well, why do you want to be here? You know, this is our company. Why did you. Why did you apply here? Well, I need to make some more money. Okay, fair enough. You know, I just. You know, I'm sick of being at home. I just need to get something to do. Okay, fair enough. Or somebody says to you, you know, I really want to be part of something bigger than me. Wow, that's a different response. Or they say something like, I really would like to do something where I can become a better, bigger version of myself. Now, you have a choice. Which of those four candidates would you choose? Okay, Because I don't know about you. When things get rough, as they do in business, and when the proverbial. You Know what hits the fan. I want to know who's beside me. I want to know if they're still going to be beside me when going gets tough, as it always does in business in good times and in bad times. So if you lead with the mission, that's the biggest. You know, Robert Kiyosaki and I have been very friends for many, many years. And one of his friends was in. They were both in the United States Marine Corps, and his friend was a general in charge of recruiting. And I said, how do you recruit people into the United States Marine Corps? They don't pay very much and the work is pretty hard. Okay, how do you do it? He says, well, Blair, it's pretty simple. Most people would like to be part of something that makes a difference, part of something that's bigger than themselves, and to be the best they can be. And I go, that makes sense, you know, because the times that I did that worked really well back in the old days of my trucking business, you know, the employee turnover in the air freight trucking and warehousing business back in those days in Southern California was easily over 110, 120%. You would lose that many people have to cycle them through. But we had less than 20% employee turnover. Why? Not because we were the highest pay employer for sure. But it was mostly because we had a mission. Our little trucking operation at LAX airport had a mission to be the best air freight trucking operation in terms of customer service and support in America. Now were we. I don't know if we were. I doubt it. But, you know, that was our mission. That was our goal, and everybody was there for that. People put in extra hours and did all kinds of amazing things because they were going for the mission. And so mission critical first, because it keeps you lined up. Otherwise these days you'd be distracted by lots of different things. Okay, so one of the ways to recruit is to lead with the mission. The second thing you want to take into consideration is do they qualify? Obviously, is qualification. Qualification. Now what do I mean by qualification? Yeah, do they have the skills? That's okay, but are they disciplined? You know, are they optimistic? Do they have the right energy level to meet your culture, these kinds of things, to ask those. Those kinds of questions. So I'm really big on whether people like to learn, are they willing. I'm going to talk about that in a second. Whether they really like to learn or willing to be trained. And I really do that. And if they've had some experience of having to do that, that's the type of person I'm looking for. But the other thing here to consider too in recruiting is like I just said before, is that you need to ask them why? Why do they want to do this? So again, this leads to this mission, leads to the why? Why do you want to do this? Well, because I want to be part of something bigger than myself. Let me tell you a little secret. You can get the best players on your team. You can actually have a dream team. Even if you don't have a lot of money. In some cases, people will actually pay you to be on your team. By the way, it's called a franchise or licensees. They actually pay you to be on your team. So you can actually do that. But your mission's got to be strong and you can't promise them a lot of money. I mean, you might try to do that, but in these economic times, that's a little dicey. But the one thing you can say is this, is that if you work here, if this is you and you work with me and we're all about education and we're going to mentor and work with you, have great teams, you will become the person you've always hoped that you could become. You will become the person you've hoped that you could become. Now, you can live up to that promise because I'm going to show you how to live up to that promise in a moment. Okay? But you can't guarantee money. But you can always, I'm sorry, you can always be there to offer growth and people want growth. And you guys. And if people don't want growth, you got to find out, do you want those kind of people on your team knowing that another pandemic can come down the pike that would go through a depression, recession, deflation, whatever's going on, you want to have somebody that is willing to grow and learn. Otherwise, if they're stuck, they're going to stuck. They're going to get you stuck. Okay? So hopefully, I mean, there's more. A mission consists of other things too. Your values, your rules, your code of honor. I'll talk about that in a second. But again, just to give you the thought that lead with mission first. And if you don't have a mission, you have them. I going to say this, you probably have a mission even if you haven't written one down. Think about why you do this. If you're just doing it for the money, I got it. But you know what? You're going to have a hard time recruiting because you're Making the money. And they're not. Okay. And so the idea is, what is the bigger plan? What is the bigger goal? And don't be afraid to set your goals high, your mission high. You don't have to conquer the world, change the universe. What is it? Starbucks? I think their mission statement is to change the world. That's a big one. But one neighborhood, one neighborhood at a time, one cup of coffee at a time, one neighborhood at a time. That's it. Just where you're at. Got it? Okay, now, second skill. Second skill. Clearly, now, I'm a big believer in this. You're going to recruit, but you also have to know how to. How to train, how to train, how to teach, how to train people to be good team players. Like, we go to Mount Kilimanjaro. I take a group of people to Mount Kilimanjaro every summer. And it's an amazing. We call it the mountain leadership experience. Because the lessons of leadership on that mountain in a seven day period are astounding. Astounding. And some people say if you just show up and you show up for work and you show up on time, then that's 50% of the game. Well, let me tell you, that's just not true. Whoever said that is not an entrepreneur. If you are going to go to Kilimanjaro, for example, you have got to train before you go there or the mountain is going to kick your butt. If you haven't been training financial literacy, little voice mastery, winning the war between your ears, this pandemic and the economic times will. Will crush you. So you have to train. You have to train and prepare for the day when your task is called for. Okay? We always say that leaders have to be teachers. Leaders have to be teachers. And if you're still watching this video, you're one of them. But you got to learn how to do that. Why? Because where are people going to learn? They're not going to learn in school. They're not going to learn how to be on teams. They're not going to learn how to think for themselves. They're not going to learn anything other than be good, do as they're told, and at the minimum, at the mediocre level in school. Don't even get me started on that. So training, if you're going to build a team is a critical part of keeping your team fresh in 2020. This is more important than ever. Let me show you why. Okay, so if we take a look at the training element, there are several components, one of which is Technical or business development? Technical, business development. In other words, they have to have skills. If they. They're gonna do programming, they need to have some programming skills. They do selling. They need to be taught some selling skills. Okay? And I would say you need to teach them because selling in 2020 is way different than it was in 2019. The psychology is different, the process is different, and the customer is way different. Okay? So you can't. Some of the. Some of the overall things like you got to handle an objection, but you don't handle objections the same way. That's another video for another time. You don't present the same way. You don't close the same way. Just like you don't build team. Just like training is not. Was optional and good companies do it today. I don't care how small your team is, if it's two or three people, training is not optional. Things are changing too quickly. So you've got to be able to give people the technical skills and development or to bring it in, allocate the resources so people can continue to learn. Because things change very, very quickly. I think that's obvious. Okay, but here's the. Here's the wild card. And this is why 2020 makes it different. Good training provides what we call PD, personal development, personal development training. Now, what's personal development training? Personal development training has to do with the little voice between your ears. You know the one I'm talking about? The one that went. What little voice? What little voice? I don't have one. That's the one. Okay, so that little voice is a little voice. That could be depression, confusion, upset, anger, lack of confidence. What? All these things. So again, particularly if you're working with a sales team, critical to teach them the tools to master the little voice in their head. Okay? Critical to teach them that. So that's why I wrote the book. Hold on. That's why I wrote this book. Little voice. How to win the war between your ears in 30 seconds or less. We have many organizations that have taken this book and they go through it, do the exercises that are in here. 20 techniques to be able to control that little voice, particularly when it pops up at the worst possible opportunities. Why am I saying this? Because if you do that, there's. None of your competitors are doing this. None of them. Oh, we do personal development. Oh, really? What can I do? Well, we do time management. Are you freaking kidding me? That's not personal development. Personal development is being able to emotionally, emotionally handle whatever comes down the pipe for them. Being able to handle it In a patient, stable, mature way. Now, I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but I'm sure you've seen plenty of people over 2020 not acting like mature adults are, not act, not because there's anything wrong with them. They've just never been taught how to manage it, how to handle it. And you don't have to be the expert either. You don't have to be a psychologist. Just need to bring in the training and materials, I mean the book, whatever, to teach people that a, you have a little voice and it's the little voice that's going to sabotage it. And like I said, In 2020, there are little voices that we didn't really have to talk about that much in 2019. I mentioned one in a few minutes ago. Depression. Depression is a killer. Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. The amount of alcohol abuse, substance abuse, human abuse, substance abuse going on, suicide rates around the world is astronomical. Nobody's even talking about that. The ripple effect of the pandemic from that perspective. But if you want to have a solid organization, if you want to have a solid organization, you can have solid training that prepares people to handle it. Put it on the table, talk about it, it's not a big deal. And prepare them. Prepare them to handle the rigor. See, in the Marine Corps, they prepare those guys to handle anything that comes after them. Your organization can do the same thing and it doesn't cost you hardly a dime to do it. It takes some time, but you don't need to even be the expert. Now think about this. If I'm recruiting somebody over here in my dream team and they want to do this and, and they know we got this, how good of a recruiting tool is that? How great Recruitment. And again, of course, the organizations that I've worked with over the years, the one we work with, the Singapore Airlines of the world and the l' Oreal brands and IBM and lots of great, but hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs like you, we've done the same thing. It doesn't take much. And that's why we are able to get astronomical sales at a very increases in sales in a very short period of time. Okay, so technical development skills, personal development skills, and one other piece, listen to this. Because training is not in your head. It takes practice. Practice. It takes practice. What I mean by practice, you've got to practice the skills. You don't read a book on how to drive a golf ball off of a tee. I mean, you might read the book, but then you got to Go out to the tee and you're whack bucket after bucket after bucket of balls. You're going to practice it, right? There's not a soccer player in the world that's not going to practice striking the ball, striking the ball, juggling the ball, all these things. But you know what? It's crazy to me that people would go out and try to make money without practicing. They're going to practice on live customers that could be giving them credit cards or writing checks. Stupid. Okay? So with the success that we've had, the success you want to have in 2020 and 2021, and you can do this on zoom, you don't have to have them in one spot. Is that is practice these skills. You practice them as a team. I don't care if you got 200,000 people on your team, you got 20 people on your team, you got 5,000 people on your team, all in their little teams, they can practice these things. And you train. And part of the training is to train your, direct your leaders how to do this, which is another whole wild card that can explode your. Explode your business in a big way. Okay? So practice is not thinking about it. Practice is actually doing it. All right? And finally, the third skill, the third critical skill. Clearly, if you're going to have a team, you gotta get that team to perform. You gotta get the team to perform. Otherwise, why have a team? If they're gonna sell, they need to generate income. Cause sales equals income, right? If they're gonna produce something, they need to get it. Actually produce relatively on time and on budget. Whatever it is that you've got a team for, they need to perform. So the secret to performance, I mean, there's lots of books written on it. But here's what I'm going to say about performance. Let me make sure you can see this. Let's put it over here. When it comes to performance, one of the key issues is this one right here, that stands for accountability. Accountability. In other words, you've got to be able to measure your process. If you can. Now, sales is great because you can measure everything, measure your marketing. You can measure the number of views to a social media post, the amount of engagements, the amount of conversations, amount of conversions, all kinds of stuff you can measure. And from those numbers, you can improve and tweak. Because in the sales process, for example, every business, your business has a selling cycle. It may have five steps, ten steps you're using. Social media might have more steps than that, but every single one of them can be measured. And the percentage of conversion from one step to the next can be measured so you can improve it. If you do not give a person the ability to see what they're doing and hold them accountable to what they're doing, you're never going to get improvement out of it. Okay? And if somebody doesn't like that level of accountability, then you don't want them on your team. That's why over here, when you ask them, when you ask him, when you're qualifying them, you ask them questions about, do you. Are you okay with being held accountable? And by the way, accountability doesn't mean that your numbers are good. You hopefully they're good. It means that you're accountable to whatever it is you did. You're willing to stand behind it and explain it and commit to getting better, whatever that is, that's accountability. Now, there's also an accountability to a certain level of behavior. Because over here, one of the pieces of the mission is something, I'll just put it right here, is something we call a code of honor. C O H, Code of honor, which is the topic of this book, Rich Dad Advisor book, Team code of honor, which is what every great organization and every great team has an internal set of rules. An internal set of rules. So if I were to blow this out to the next triangle, code of honor would be out here as well. Here's why, why, why am I saying this? Because with the. So let me put it over there so you can see it. Mission plus code of honor, okay? Why? Because to the person that you're recruiting here, when they see this and they see the standards that you're offering, they're going, that's who I want to be. That's who I want to be. So I've always recruited, we've always recruited with our code of honor. We've always recruited with. We've always recruited with the mission statement, okay? So again, there's an accountability to that behavior. So for example, what I mean by code of honor. Let me give you an example. If you don't know. So if one of our core values is teamwork, so our number one rule is never abandon a teammate in need. So that's the rule that this supports teamwork. Does that make sense? Okay? Or if in fact accountability is a core value, then we say there's no blame, no justification, no excuse making. Everybody takes responsibility, and that's a rule. And if somebody breaks the rule, somebody else calls them out on it, okay? So you've got to have this level of accountability or there's no Prayer. So accountability to numbers and to behaviors. Numbers and behaviors. Numbers and behaviors. Okay. And use the code of honor for that. And you use numbers to look at that. Okay, now what's the other. What else do you do? Well, it's about correction. It's about correction because with the numbers, we correct. Okay, so we're not doing. So we're making a lot of presentations. We're not closing a lot in sales. Okay, so what do we have? What. How do we correct it? Look at best, best practices many, many other things behind this triangle, but we got it. Got to understand that we're in the business of correcting, not punishing, not scolding. Correct, Correct, Correct. You were given a right foot and a left foot, not a right foot and a wrong foot. You make a mistake to the right, you make a mistake to the left. As the late Dr. Buck, Mr. Fuller, said, that's how we will learn. No such thing as a straight line to any destination. No boat goes in a straight line. No airplane goes in a straight line. No missile goes in a straight line. It's always constantly correcting, correcting, correcting. And you have to put that into part of your culture, part of your code of honor that everybody's willing to correct. Let me tell you something about performance. When we go to Kilimanjaro, it's a very big mountain, 5,900 meters. Okay? It's up there, oxygen level, about 50% of sea level, effectively. So it's not a dangerous climb, but the oxygen makes it very difficult. That's why you have to train and train and train and train and train and train and train before you get there. But even when you get there, you may have a good day, may have a bad day. You need to make corrections to your diet, to your water intake. But here's what we learned. It's about one step at a time. So performance is based on one step at a time, one week at a time. Don't worry about next month. Don't worry about the end of the year. Just worry about. Let's just get through today and tomorrow one step at a time. Because if you focus on the summit, it can be intimidating. If you look at the goal, what's our goal for the end of 2020, 2021. Who knows what even the dollar is going to be worth next year if we're going to be paying for it in bitcoin, gold, silver, or US Dollars? I don't know. Okay? So it's hard to look at that. So just take it one step at A time otherwise people freak out because too big, they overwhelm, I can't get there, and they give up. Remember fear, which in 2020 kind of overlays all of this because fear is rampant around the world. Is your job as a team leader is to understand that that's in the room and do your best to move the fear away and replace it with courage and faith. Courage and faith. Courage and faith. Say those words, okay? That's your job. That's why leaders have to be teachers. You teach that, you teach that because people, what are they going to learn it? They're not going to learn it at home. They're not going to learn it at school. Not learning it, certainly through the media at all. Okay? So accountability, correction. And then, of course, one of the big things I'm an advocate of, caw. Now, what that stands for is to celebrate all wins. Celebrate all wins. One of the rules in sales. Anything good happens within a 50 mile radius, you take credit for it and celebrate the win. Okay? Dr. Seligman wrote a great book called Learned Optimism where he actually studied salespeople, different insurance companies, I think metropolitan life. And what he found is certain people that did really, really well in sales, even without a lot of skill, had a different mindset. And that was one of them, was that they celebrated wins and they celebrated the wins of other people. And even when something went bad, they minimized that. They minimized it and even looked at the mistake as a win because they learned something. Okay? So this is part of the culture, part of the culture of understanding how to get a team to perform. Now, here's the other thing I'm going to say before I wrap this thing up. There's way more on this. As a matter of fact, I could say that on performance, behind this, there's another triangle maybe we'll do on another video about the goals that you said. How to set the goals, how to create a plan, and how to manage the little voices. Remember right here, personal development, this is all about. I should put that up there so you can see is that that's all about little voice mastery right up here. Because that is where everything gets undermined. Remember, if sales is your number one skill, this is your number one asset. But your number one liability is that little voice going on between your right ear and your left ear. So the last thing I'm going to say about this, I've used Kilimanjaro as a. As a metaphor. That's why I go every year, because there's so many friggin lessons about my business and teams and everything. And that's why the people that go with us are all blown away, and all their businesses grow as a result. But here's what we learned. The summit of the mountain is not it. The summit's not it. The goal is not it. Whatever your goal you're setting for yourself, particularly in 2020, 2021, it's important because it's a magnet that pulls you and your team in a direction, so it aligns you and keeps you moving. But you're going to find by the time you get to that goal, whether you get to it or not, the goal was. It was not nearly as important as the ripple effect of all the other things that took place along the way. I mean, people. We get to the top of Kilimanjaro, and people are actually sad. Why? Because the trip is almost over. And all the friendships that they made and the experiences they made and the things they learned and the sights that they saw and watching, you know, being able to see the curve of the earth and filling the earth, rotate under your feet as the sun rises, all these things became the big. Became the main event, that the summit was relatively inconsequential. People go up there, take a picture. Okay, let's get out of here. Because the altitude is a little tough. Okay? So keep in mind that you as a leader. Michael Gerber, the great Michael Gerber, wrote the book e myth. He says, I agree with them wholeheartedly. He said that that business is a school because every day in business, you're learning lessons, right? We're all learning lessons. So if we're learning lessons, who's the teacher? That'd be you. You're the teacher. Those are all those great things that happen as a ripple effect on the way to the sales goal, on the way to developing another business, on the way to scaling up. Whatever we're trying to do, it's all good. But the ripple, like I said, but the ripple effect is the real good stuff. All the things that people learn along the way. Your job as a teacher, leader, leader, teacher, is to be able to point out those lessons and bring those lessons to mind so the training never stops. You become more than a leader. You become a mentor, a teacher, a sage, a coach, whatever. And it's fun because you learn, too. So remember, the summit's not it. The summit's not it. Every climber will tell you that the summit's never it. It's everything that happens on the way up and on the way back down that changes your life. The summit is just a point in time, a place for you to get to. Because what comes after that summit? You know what the reward for a good job is? This team knocks out a great job. You know what the reward is? You got it. A bigger job. What's the next one? And right now, our job is to get our teams, our families, our businesses to thrive and survive no matter what the economy is doing, no matter what is happening out there. And we can do that. And hopefully this will help you build your successful team. This is success team model for 2020 and going on. Use it and be amazing.