How to Build High-Performing Teams

Most of the repetitive or simple tasks that you have in your business, you should look for ways to outsource that first before you hire internally. Why? It's just straight up basics of math. It will always be cheaper to outsource to contractors and outsource to people who you have the ability to hire and fire immediately because they're work for hire versus it's somebody who's on your payroll, who's a team member who you have to give, you know, three warnings to before you let them go. And especially if you're just starting and you don't really know what the rhythm there is going to be for them to work with you. Outsourcing is great. It helps you find your tempo. It helps you find what you really do as a business to outsource. We got a hot session today. We are going to be talking about how do you build high performance teams. I know so many of you have been asking us like how do you hire a new employee, when do you hire? What's your philosophy around hiring? And how do you build an awesome team that helps you achieve your mission and your dreams as both your individual dreams but also your team goals and your company goals. This is a big topic. Get your journal out. Because I always teach in a framework. So we've got a piece of a five piece framework for you here today. Bust out your journal, shut the door, get rid of the cat, be here able to focus on your dream today. You know, part of taking this time every single month is just to do a little bit of a reset for yourself. So while you're busting out your journal, maybe you write down what are the major projects you have to finish in the next 60 days or by the end of this year? Where am I? What projects am I still working on? Am I being my best? Am I bringing my best energy? Am I taking care of myself so I can be focused and driven? And on how is your performance doing this time of year? Every single time we're here, I want to make sure that you are paying attention to that. Check in on your own high performance. This is about living the high performance experience. So every time you bust out that journal, I just want you to always evaluate yourself. Where are you in your life? What are you trying to do? Are you close to finishing those tasks and just reset? Bust out the journal. And here we go. We're going to jump in really fast today because I've got a huge framework to share with you and here's how I want to approach hiring with you. First, first I want to tell you is not to hire. Very first comment today is not to hire until you figure out a few things. Okay, a few things. The first thing I want you to figure out is what is the business or the brand or the company you're really trying to build over the long term. And I know that sounds like. Yeah, no doubt, Brendan, common sense, but many of you, you're entrepreneurs, you're stay at home, you're maybe a stay at home mom, and you're working on building that side brand or that side hustle. You're out in the marketplace and maybe you're already doing something where you're kind of fully committed to it, but kind of not because you've got this other safe job over here. Maybe you're somebody who just started and you're not even sure what you're supposed to be doing yet. The wrong time to hire is when you don't know what you're supposed to be doing yet, you don't know the business model and you don't know where you want to be in three, four, five years. It's really important for you to get clarity before you hire. And I know that's so common sense, but it's not common practice. And a lot of people hire too soon. And then what happens is because they didn't know the business model or they didn't know what they really wanted, they got in a place where they had a lot of team or that first virtual employee, that first assistant, and they were all kind of running around like, what do we do? What are we here for? And you didn't even have clarity on your purpose or your mission or your ambition for the business. And that's not where we want to be. Because I think the most important thing is when you're going to hire and build a high performing team is that you have commitment for your future. You have clarity when you are hiring. You are not hiring because you have a side hustle. You're not hiring because you have a hobby. You are hiring because you have a clear mission. And your commitment to that is everything. Because you're going to ask people to come on your team who they're committing their life, they're committing their day, they're committing their mortgage payment, they, their rent payment to you. There's a responsibility in you hiring that you got to know what you're hiring for. And that is so critical. I see people do that all wrong, all the time. Friends in Silicon Valley, they get a bunch of investment, they hire 10 people, they don't know what those 10 people are going to do. They didn't know the business model. They ran out of revenue and they had those people on for a year or two and then they ran out of cash and had to let them go. I don't want you to be in that position. So the right time to hire is always when first you've defined that mission, that goal, that business, that dream for that three, five year out plan. And then you know that you're fully committed and you're going to work it. And then you also really take joy in leading and managing people because the truth is you can outsource a lot of things and not have to deal with it. Or you say, listen, I'm going to make sure when I hire, I hire well. Okay, so these are some of the topics we're going to get into today about how to do all of that process with excellence, with real strategy and thinking through it. We're going to bust out this five piece framework for you today on how to develop high performing teams. Before we get to teams, I'm going to give you the very first lesson point and I want to write this down in the journal. And this is the critical thing before you ever think about team and that is this, you need to develop the skills that needed to win in your area of focus. What does that mean? It means, you know, a lot of people want to hire because they want to hire things they don't want to do, they want to outsource things they don't want to do. They want to hire for things that they're not good at. And what I always tell people is listen, before you even think about hiring, once you have whatever the dream is that you have, I want you to first identify what are the five critical skills that you need to develop and you need to master to excel in your career. Like your career specifically, if you're really going to excel in it, what do you need to get good at? What's necessary, that is part of the ongoing sort of operations or the ongoing need of the business or the brand that you're going to have to do and get really good at. And a lot of people don't even have that list. So I literally want you to write down, if you're here with us in your journal, what are the five critical skills that you need to develop to win? Because if you don't know that yet, don't hire. If you don't know that yet, you're kind of just fishing about for excellence and you're never Gonna be world class. And I had to learn this too, because, you know, in my industry, as I came in, the thought leader industry we call it, which is, you know, author, speaker, coach, seminar leader, life coach, business coach, or online trainer, or online thought leader, social media, thought leader. In that culture, which we just call the thought leader industry, when I came into it, everything was outsourcing. Everyone says outsource, outsource, outsource, don't need to do video, outsource it, don't need to do audio, outsource it, don't need to learn how to manage your stage career, outsource it. Everybody said outsource everything, but I was like, you know what? That's just not true. In every given career, there is a set of skills that you have to master and develop into if you're going to become excellent at what you do. If you're ever going to become the highest paid in your company or highest paid in your industry or highest paid in your field, you have to dial it in and understand what are the skills I'm working on. You hear me say this before at High Performance Academy, like, if I parachuted into your house right now or onto your roof and then climbed down and got into your house, if I came into your house and I actually looked at your calendar, we opened up your laptop, we looked at your calendar. Could I see in your calendar over the next couple months, clear block time that you've designated towards developing the skills that are necessary for you to win? Like, is it in your calendar or are you just going to outsource it? And you really have to know what those skills are, you know, for what I was doing, people told me at the very beginning of my career, brendan, you don't need to learn video. Why would you learn video? Just hire a videographer or a filmmaker. Right off the bat, I said, well, one, I just started my career. I'm what you call broke. I don't have the ability to hire 10, 15, 20 people. But everyone tells me, just go hire people. Sometimes you need to develop the skills to do everything in your business until you get the amount of revenue where, you know, you can hire somebody and maintain their monthly retainer or maintain their salary. And that was true for me when I first began. People are like, just outsource. Get a videographer. I was like, I don't have the money for that. So I went out and I bought a cheap, you know, what do they call those things? Flip video camera. Do you remember those? There's a little flip video camera. And I Set it up in boxes in my girlfriend's apartment. And I took a little flip video camera. And I didn't know how to use it, so I had to teach myself how to use it. And then I went around, I tied it to the box with duct tape around this box, and I put little notes next to it. And I would have to get up and go press the record button, come back and like, hi, Brendan Burchard. And I had no. I was, like, freaked out. I didn't even know how to do what I was doing. But I learned how to take that video out. I learned how to upload it, I learned how to edit it. I learned how to put in sound and music and graphics and all these things that took forever ever back then. And I had no idea to do it. So I would be up 2, 3, 4 in the morning teaching myself how to do it. People also said, also, well, Brendan, just hire a marketing manager to send your emails out and build your newsletter list. I was like, I don't have any money to do that. Brendan, hire somebody to do your online marketing. I was like, I don't know. I don't have any money to do that. But here's the other side of it. It wasn't this. I didn't have the money to do it. I also had the foresight to realize these were going to be critical skills to my future. What are the critical skills that will be necessary for your future? You have to figure that out. I didn't outsource marketing because, like, if I don't learn marketing, see, marketing is always going to be a piece of my future, isn't it? So I said I had better learn to master marketing. It's always going to be something I have to do in my career. What's the skill that you're always going to have to know and do? And I want you to dive deep in it. I want you to dork out in it. I want you to get excited about it. I would spend hours and hours and hours researching things, trying things, learning about things that I had no skill in. Because we live in a world that's telling this huge lie. And this lie is, hey, you know what? Just follow your passions. Just do what you're naturally good at. Just follow your strengths. And I'm like, well, sometimes your strengths are insufficient to build the business you need to build. Sometimes what you're naturally good at. Just because you're good at it and you like it and you have passion for it isn't what's required to actually Build and sell and do. I'm not saying don't follow your strengths. I'm saying don't rely on your strengths. You know, the truth is your mission and your dream should never be made to bow down to your limited strengths. I had no strengths, natural abilities, or even personally like, intrinsic motivation for online marketing. The question wasn't, do I have these strengths? The question was, is this required for me to build something? That's what you have to figure out, what skills are required, whether you like it or not, and you have to grow into it and if it's critical for your future. So for me, like online marketing was that. So I had to learn how to set up a webpage. I didn't come out of the womb going marketing. I didn't come out of the womb knowing how to code HTML or css. I was like, what, Ruby on Rails? What the hell? Like, I didn't know what that meant. I had to teach myself that because I thought at the time, I don't have the money, or if I had the money, it'd be a risk because I. I wouldn't even know how to manage a person until I get my hands dirty a little bit and see what this is about, see what's required of it. It's hard to hire somebody if you don't even know what it is, right? And a lot of people do this. They go, well, I guess we'll hire a marketing person. And they get that marketing person there. And the marketing person goes, what do you want me to do? And you go, I don't know. That's not a good place for them. And that's not going to accelerate your business. You need to know what moves the needle in your business and higher to that, not just what you like. You need to know what skills are necessary for your future and develop that, not just what you're naturally good at. And this is where people fail all the time. They're just trying to play in their own lane. But once you step into the role of a business owner or you step into the role of leader, it's no longer about just your passions. You have a responsibility. It's called stewardship. You have stewardship to your team, to their mortgages, to their rent. You have stewardship to your company now. You have stewardship to the future. You really have to step into the identity of CEO, even if that's not what you're about. But I've learned so long working with entrepreneurs, some of them just never step into the identity they need to assume to Win. They never stepped into, I'm the CEO now I'm in charge. So they kind of half ass it. They kind of like hobby it. They're not really in that role where they've defined, this is who I am. I'm in charge of building this. If I don't, it all falls apart and take it upon themselves to say, I have to lead here. Well, I have to do well here. Because if they don't do that, guess what? No one else is going to do it for them. So what are the skills you have to develop? For me, that was video. For me, that was online marketing, including building web pages, starting newsletters, sending out newsletters, building opt in pages to capture name and emails, following up with sequences, automated marketing sequences. I had to learn how to do that. I had to learn how to do webinars and all these other things. Not because I wanted to, but I thought, am I always gonna do webinars in my business? Probably better learn how to do them. Not cause I had a passion for it. I was like, I'm always gonna do them. So let me figure it out first, try it out first, do some research. There's plenty of things online that will help me figure that out. And then after that, then I can go into hiring somebody else because I can manage it. So first piece, develop the skills needed to win. And if you don't know what those skills are or those skills don't currently exist in your calendar, meaning you're developing them, then, then you're just going through the motions, you're winging it, and frankly, you're risking your career. One of my favorite things to do, to check to see if I got a high performer in the midst. When I talk with people, I go, what are the three skills you're working on right now and developing? And if they don't know it, I know they're amateurs. Which is it? They're just amateurs. They're beginners. And that's not to judge them. That's just to say they haven't stepped into living what we call the high performance experience. The high performance experience is all about developmental goals. It's all about bringing our best and growing into what we need to. Right? You guys know this. I'll share another one with you. Some of you all know I'm working on right now. I've started my lessons and my training in Spanish, another language I'm trying to learn right now. And it's super hard because I, I don't have the context for it, but I see that Learning Spanish is a critical skill for me in the future. That, and I've set super hard goals on those skills. So that next Christmas, next December, not this December, the following December, I can go to Mexico city, talk to 7,000 people in an arena extemporaneous in Spanish, no notes, no memorization, walk on stage and talk for one hour extemporaneous Spanish. Lord, help me. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it, but it's a strong goal. You got to have the skills. And then you have to say, okay, from these skills, when do I want to be able to execute them with excellence and work towards that? I can tell you it will change your life. It will change your life. What I want you to do as a gift to yourself, the reason you're here is to remind yourself and sometimes reset yourself towards things that are important. So I really want you to look at the next couple months and ask, what are the skills going to be? When will I develop them and at what level? And so, for example, some of you wrote skill branding. Great, you wrote down branding. Now break it down. What does that mean to you when you say branding is a skill? What does it mean? How are you going to develop it? When are you going to execute it? What does that mean? How are you going to develop it? When are you going to execute it? What does it mean? How are you going to develop it? When are you going to execute it? If you don't have that next layer, if you're just like, the skill sets are this, you'll never get down to it. So you got to know, what is it that is that skill? Like, what does it really mean? How do you operationalize it? What does it look like when you do it? How do you develop it from? Are you going to get a mentor? Are you going to buy a class? Are you going to go to seminar on it? Are you going to go, you know, audit a course at your local university? How are you going to drill down into that skill? And then when will you practice it proficiently? That question is more important than the hiring question. The knowing your skill sets as a leader, as a business owner, as building your brand or your company, knowing your skill sets, that's job one. Because what most people think is, well, I just need to hire all these other skill sets, but they haven't even clarified it for themselves. How are you going to interview people for skill or ability if you don't know what your skill or abilities need to be for your future? So this is just Being in integrity with what we're trying to do here. If you're going to hire people for skills and abilities and passion and culture, you, you better know what's up with you. What do you need to develop? What do you need to get better? How are you going to build? And that will serve you so much, I promise you. Promise you? Promise you. Okay, so that's the first point for everybody. Number one, develop the skills needed to win. Now let's get into the conversation about hiring and specifically outsourcing. I promise to talk to you about, because you guys ask me this all the time. Number two, for today's framework of five things. Number two, outsource tasks, but hire for skill and management and culture. Okay, so outsource tasks, right? A lot of. When you're starting to build your brand, if you don't yet have team before you hire a team, I really encourage you to either hire one person and the two of you outsource a lot of the tasks so you learn what that looks like. Because if you haven't outsourced tasks before, you're going to be a pretty crappy manager or leader, right? If you just go, I'm going to hire a bunch of people and you get them on board. But you've never actually managed task assignment and task completion. It gets really hard. So what I tell most people, if you're just starting, which I know many of you were in your brands or businesses or many of you are solopreneurs, and you asked me about this and you said, brendan, what if I'm just hiring my first two people? What would you do? I see my first two people, I might first understand your skill sets. I might hire somebody to be your virtual assistant or somebody to plug one specific skill set hole that you just don't have. But then the two of you before you hire number three, four, five and six, I actually want the two of you or yourself to outsource first. Go to like upwork, go to fiverr. Go to something where you can put out tasks as projects to people and manage that. See how that feels. See if you like that. See if you find yourself going, I don't really like working with other people. Some of you should never work with another human being. You just, you're horrible. You should just know that about yourself and accept that about yourself. Step into that truth. If you don't want to lead or be around people, you know what? You'll find that out pretty soon as you start outsourcing. I really encourage you. In other words, I'M sort of imploring you take baby steps, baby steps into hiring, just baby steps. It's like when you go to college and business school, they're just like, well, start with hiring your team and defining your culture and having a mission statement and values. And I'm like, that's even fast. For most people, the worst thing someone can do is go hire five people and not even know if they know what their business is, what their skills should be, or if they like assigning, delegating, and following up on tasks. So first, outsource and in general, most of the repetitive or simple tasks that you have in your business, you should look for ways to outsource that first before you hire internally. Why? It's just straight up basics of math. It will always be cheaper to outsource to contractors and outsource to people who you have the ability to hire and fire immediately because they're work for hire. Versus it's somebody who's on your payroll, who's a team member who you have to give, you know, three warnings to before you let them go. And especially if you're just starting and you don't really know what the rhythm there is going to be for them to work with you. Outsourcing is great. It helps you find your tempo. It helps you find what you really do as a business to outsource. So I'd love for you to just think about and you haven't done this and you own your business or you lead a team to sit down and go, okay, what are all the repetitive tasks that happen in my business? Like, I really want you write down in your journal today. What are all the repetitive tasks that happen in my business? I want you to just go right down the line. Right, right. On a whole list. What are all the repetitive tasks that happen in my business? Then I want you to go in and segment those. Say, which ones of these repetitive tasks that happen in my business should I keep in house? Meaning hire for in house? Because these repetitive tasks are critical to the business success. Pull those in house. What repetitive tasks happen every single week or month in my business that are important, but they're more administrative or more simple or less complex tasks or less interactive tasks that I can outsource? So you got to have your in house and your outsource list. That's important, right? And then you kind of break those up. Okay. From these repetitive ones that we're going to outsource, I want you to circle the ones that are most important to actual revenue processes of the business. Meaning all these tasks you're about to outsource, which ones of them are really key to you making money? And those are the ones you outsource to very experienced, badass contractors, people who you're going to pay a little bit more hourly for on upwork or pay a little bit more for project people who you look for on upwork or fiverr or wherever you're going to hire people for that have just a little bit more experience. The ones that you circled that touch a revenue process, something that your business does that makes money. So then on the in house processes that you wrote down, the tasks that happen over and over and over and over again, I want you to do the same thing. Circle the ones that touch the revenue process. Those are the ones you're going to get people and hire people who have experience with. Like they've done that, they've been there, they've seen that. You want them to have one year, two year, three year, four year, depending on what you do, a couple years of experience in that role. But those tasks or those rhythms that happen on either side that are not touching a revenue producing process, those are the ones you can get lower, you can pay less for in the outsourced market. And those are the ones in house that you can hire people with no experience right out of the bat, just get them going. If they got the enthusiasm, the passion, they can answer some of the questions we'll tell you about. Those are great for those folks and those folks are also at a different level of compensation for you. So once you start thinking about that, it's like, oh, okay, now I kind of get what I do. And some of you, when you're first starting and you don't know, you know, your task list is this big. If you've been doing your business for a while, your task list is like a hundred items. And so until you've done that process, I genuinely believe you don't know how to hire a lot of people. Just go, I think I need a bunch of marketing people. But they've never actually done. It just takes a few, you know, minutes or an hour or two to sit down, write down all the tasks that make your business happen. Break it down, outsource, in house, revenue producing, non revenue producing, okay. And that's going to give you kind of a perspective of how to hire and what you'll be hiring for. On top of that, then you're also going to be, remember, hiring for management, which is after you're thinking, wow, I might have two, three, four Five people. You're going to need someone who's a project manager or an executive assistant or somebody who manages leads a specific field or task set or activity set in your business. You want to start be thinking about that when you're first building. Your whole focus is finding people who can self manage. It's everything like your first 20, 30, 40 people should all be self managers. If they can't like manage themselves and manage their own to do list or something like that, don't hire them, you'll hate yourself. Find self starters, find people who can manage themselves. Especially in that first 30, 40, 50 people. I didn't share it at the top of the hour but we're pretty lucky. Now if we look at the five companies that I invest the most in and spend most of my time with, we're nearing our third thousandth. Thousandth, is that a word? Thousandth thousandth employee. A thousand across the five companies that I spend at least time with advising every single quarter. And so I've been in that process where you know, in my own internal team, you guys can't see it but we got an awesome badass new team here that we're really excited about. We've been onboarding, you know, our team's going to near 30 some people here in my own brand and what we do with High Performance Institute and then across some of our other companies, you know, we're getting 100 people here, 200 here, 500 there. And we've been really growing. And what I've learned about that process is that one, hire people who are self starters can manage themselves and you can do that until you really get into a lot of people, right until you're, you don't need a lot of management layers until you're quite high in the number of employees you have. And I always get this question so I'm going to give it to you all. I always get asked what do you look for in hiring? And I'm going to break that down for you. First I look for again, what is it that I'm hiring for? So I've got done that list. If you haven't done that list, don't hire. Once you do that list I talked you through, now you can hire. Now we're going to look for a couple things. First we're going to look for in a passion for what we do, which I know is very esoteric but you need to know it, right? For our company, for our industry, we look for people who are passionate about personal development, professional development and growth. Personal Change, self help, people who love personal growth and challenge. We want people who have a passion for that. So we identify the passion related to our company. You have to do that too and you have to be able to articulate it because you're going to look for it in interviews. Then for us, because we're still a startup, we're under 40, some people, right. Our goal is we look for the ability or the history to deal with unknowns and to get stuff done. Meaning people who are adaptable, flexible, who can come in and kind of figure things out and get things done. They have an experience of either starting new things or being on projects where it was not super well defined. The company they worked for or the teams they worked with were fairly flat and self managed. Just people who can kind of come in and figure things out and get things done. Third, we are looking for people who have ownership to any failures or struggles. One of my favorite questions to ask people when I'm interviewing one on one is a question like, tell me about a time when you were working on a project that you really loved and it completely fell apart or a project that was really important and it didn't turn out well. How did you handle it? Tell me about that. And if they describe that and all they do is talk about how everybody else screwed up and they were the savior and then they're probably not the right person. I look for people go, you know what? This was a project we're working on, it didn't go so well and I want them to be able to see. Like, I want them to go, ugh, I'm bummed that didn't turn out. If someone can describe a train wreck with no emotion to it, don't hire them. So if you ask somebody, tell me about a time that you did a project and it sucked and they're like, well, I, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they have no emotion. They're called a sociopath. Don't hire those. They don't do good in culture. Okay? You want to make sure that someone adds feeling and emotion to something that failed in the past that's going to have passion for what you're doing. I always tell people, one of the number one things I love to hire for, which is weird with my new team here, but I love to hire for this single quality. Guilt. I love to hire for guilt. What I mean is I love to hire people that I know if they do a bad job, they'll feel bad about it. We look for that, we ask for that. It's like, describe a time when it didn't go well. And if they describe it without feeling like, bam, bummed, that didn't go well. That's not a person. The people I want to surround myself with, all high performers, I know they have an identity and a need inside. They have necessity for whatever they're contributing to. They want to contribute to it with excellence. They want to do a great job. They want to see it be like, awesome. And when it's not awesome, they're like, ugh. And they go home and they feel bad they didn't make it awesome. If you have employees or team who goes home, they have a bad day at work, they don't contribute, they don't get it done, the project falls apart. If they go home and they don't be like, ugh, that sucks. I wish it could have gone better. We could have done this. If they don't have any emotion to it, that's not the team you want. You want to have a team that has vested interest, where they go home and they're like, man, I'm bummed that didn't go better. Right? That's important for us. Love for the students our company, we don't call them customers. We rarely call them clients. We call them students because you're all here learning with us. I consider myself a student. And if our people don't love our students, that's not going to go well. Because that's a mission of our company. You want to hire people who actually love the customers or clients that you serve every day, Right? Do they love those people? If they don't love your customer or your client, that's not someone who should be on your team. We look for the role model mentality. We. We look to hire people who we can see having the ability to one day manage us. Like when I have my team interview other people, I go, could you see that person managing you one day? Maybe not managing you as your career, but managing you on a project? Could they be the lead on a project for you one day? And if you don't get that vibe that they could lead you, then that's not the person for us. We want people who can lead and take step up on different projects with us. So when you're hiring, hire people who are above you, hire people who can lead you, who can manage you, and that will do an awesome service to your company. We look for people who have a passion to take initiative, add new value. We look for people who have a spirit of collaboration. You know what the spirit of collaboration always ends up being. It's two things. Number one, spirit of collaboration is enthusiasm. Do they have enthusiasm for the job, for the gig, for what they're doing? Does that enthusiasm show through? Like, I always hire for enthusiasm. But then two, collaboration requires openness. It requires openness to new ideas, to new people. And that openness, when people have openness, they have a different way of receiving and giving feedback. They're more in the learning mode. And so we're looking for that. And then finally we look for heart. We look for people who you can just tell from their demeanor, their character, that they care for other people, because that's everything with your team. One of the things that we get asked all the time is how long are your interviews? What are your formats for your interviews? You know, I'll be honest, it depends on the company that I'm hiring with or for. I'll tell you in most of what we do, across the brands that I serve or the companies that I advise, you need a 30, 45 minute interview, tops. Like, interviews should be quick because you should know what you're asking for. By the time they get in the door, either you, your HR company, or the staffing company you're working with, they should have already done the preliminary work to see, like when they come in the door, they're already qualified, like at a technical level or an interest level, like they should already, or a project management level. Or, you know, you see their library of work before. Like it should be obvious that they could do the job or they have interest in the job. So by the time they get in the room, you're not really qualifying their intelligence or their skill sets or their personalities. Because frankly, you could assess all that before they get in by looking at their resume, by looking at their library of work in the past, by giving personality assessments in advance if you want to do that kind of thing. Some of our companies, we give personality assessment in advance. Some of them are, we don't. So it's up to you. So you have to imagine by the time they get in the room, the whole point by the time they're in the room is that's a few questions to really gauge them on the things that are most important to you. Okay, so let's walk through just a few of those that we do here. Questions like what attracted you to wanting to work with us? Like, what about our company or this role made you passionate about it? Tell me about a time that you set a difficult goal and you hit it. Tell me about a time that you were on a project or had a goal and it totally failed. How did you handle that? That gets to the points I made earlier. Who do you admire the most and why? I love that question. Because you start to see people's heart come out in an interview. Who do you admire? Why do you admire them? But also, who do you want to be a hero to? Or who do you want to admire you. Which is a really great question because it gets people really thinking about how they live their life and for whom. And it gets to a more personal level often in interviews. What do you think would make you successful here? That kind of checks. Have they paid attention to the company? Do they know what they're applying to? Do they know what your culture is like? They have any. Have they done their homework? Let's see, have you seen our website or what we do in the marketplace? Do you have any advice that we could already be better? Like, where could we improve? What we do? We. What do you know about us? What could we do better? Give us some advice to see if they're actually paying attention. What project would you consider your most significant career accomplishment? I just like to say, what's a project you've done that you're really proud of that was really the most important thing? And you hear and get to see their passion and their enthusiasm and the sense of fulfillment that they might have. We also like to say, why would you like to be part of this team? Like, what is it about this place? These types of questions, they're not the end all, be all questions. You could go pick up any book on interviewing at your local bookstore and see, yes, please go to your local bookstore and see, like, hundreds and hundreds of questions. You have to know, what are the questions important to you? And that's it. That's it. And if you ask the right questions and you get the right vibe, then it's like, okay, because by the time they come in the door, they can probably do the job. Now in the interview, it's all about those things of, can you see the passion, feel the heart, feel the fulfillment, see that they're a good person, See they have enthusiasm about it, see that they're ready and they're hungry to do the work, see that they're confident. We did. You know, we've done interviews in the past with some of our companies. The persons we interviewed, they lacked, like, they didn't really want to be there or they didn't seem like they would be good fit for a team. They were more of, like the individual contributor and they were smart and. But you couldn't see that they would be, like, willing to work with people. And you're not trying to hire all the same type of person or same type of skill set. But you are, as a leader, and you should write this down. You're not trying to hire the same person, not trying to hire the same IQ or personality, but you are trying to hire the same kind of heart. You're trying to hire somebody who has enthusiasm for their day, for their work. The kind of heart that wants to do excellent work. The kind of heart that wants to get to work. The kind of heart that cares about other people. So I always say, when you're building a culture, you're not building a culture based on skill set. You're building a culture based on heart set. Like, are these people who care enough about each other and have high enthusiasm in their life and for the role? And if you get that right, you're going to create some kind of magic. And people won't know the magic. They won't know you thought through all this, but all of a sudden they'll start seeing it right off the bat. They're like, oh, there's something special going on here. And it's because you hired for the heart set, not just the skill set. Make sense? Okay, make sure. I know I'm going fast, y', all, but I'm trying to do a lot with you today. Let's move on to our third big point today, before you hire, or it's part of your hiring or onboarding process. Because now let's just assume that you decided to hire and now you're going to bring people on. Or before that, I want you to do number three. Step number three is name your values as things we do. Write that down. Name your values as things we do. What does that mean? Well, you know, the old days, like in the 80s and 90s, they. Maybe you don't know the 80s and 90s. I don't know how old you are, but in the 80s, 90s was very big. Like, put your values in words up on the walls all around your office. It was like integrity. As if any company didn't have that as a value. But let's. Integrity, right? Or you'd have another one over here of just, like, love or like one singular word, you know, excellence. And it was all over the place. And then there was a, you know, a big poster with an eagle flying and a motivational quote from Les Brown or something. Right? You remember those. Like, that was really exciting times. And people loved all that stuff, and that's all really good. But the issue with it is people don't own it and live it, because you're not naming those things as things that we do versus just cold words on a wall. And so you have to take all of your values and say, what do we do here that makes us unique or good? And so, like, if you have values in your mind that you want all your people to have, write all those values down as a list. But then write them in a way that really defines what those values are as things that you do. So, for example, when I share with my team, when I'm onboarding, I share these four things. I say, okay, these are what make us unique and special. This is what we do here as a culture. So I say, this is what we do as a culture versus just a word or a value. Let me give an example. Like, first one, we challenge ourselves. That embodies almost everything that is important to me in this brand, in this business. We challenge ourselves. That's something that we do, right? We challenge ourselves. And so when people turn something in, did you challenge yourself on that? Okay, did you set a larger goal? Are you going for a stretch goal? Are you trying hard things? Did you challenge yourself with what you're submitting here? Right. We want to always challenge ourselves to develop deeper skills, better abilities, better ways to contribute. So we challenge ourselves here. We're going to push, and that also allows an understanding. Like, we're going to challenge you. Because it's not challenge yourself, it's we challenge ourselves. I'm going to challenge you. I'm going to challenge you. You're going to challenge you? You're going to challenge you? You're going to challenge me? Like, setting the context. The challenge is part of this thing. We challenge ourselves, and that's the expectation that, for me, embodies tons of principles, tons of philosophies, that embodies hard work and excellence, that embodies the openness to feedback, that embodies the willingness to push beyond our comfort zone. Embodies so many concepts. We challenge ourselves. Now you need to make a list like this. I don't want you all to just go and, you know, use mine. I want you to be like, what's. What's important to you? What do we do here? The second one for us is we take care of each other. That's a huge one. I've been in, you know, other companies where they say we treat each other like family or, you know, we care for each Other like family. Whatever it is. It's like we just say, we take care of each other. And that embodies that. We're attentive. We're present with each other. We know each other's story. We know what's going on in each other's lives. We're here for you if something sucks and you need a shoulder to cry on or somebody to help you with your work. Like, we care about each other is important. We take care of each other. We take care of each other like family. We take care of each other like, we're all in this together. And that embodies openness, that embodies the willingness for feedback, that embodies the support, that embodies compassion and empathy and kindness. I don't have to put empathy on a frigging billboard in the office. I go, we take care of each other. And that embodies that word. Does that make sense? That's what I'm saying to you. Like, write it out as we do these things. Like, that's why I'm saying it. Name your values as things we do. Instead of pushing the value. Say, this is what we do here. We take care of each other. And that one phrase embodies it so that if someone ever screws up, here I go, hey, look, we take care of each other. You're being to this person. Knock it off. It's not living up to value. I don't have to go, well, you know, we have this value called empathy. And I noticed in your last meeting, you were kind of abrupt with somebody. Like, you know, like, that's not. No. It's like, hey, we take care of each other. Remember? Do you agree? Do you feel like you were taking care of her there? No, you weren't. And that gives you a different language to be real and human with. Number three, we love on our students. It's everything. Like, we love our students. We want to. It's like, if I see an email and it's short and abrupt to our student, I'm like, that's not how we do this. We love our students. We take the time to write a little bit of a longer email. We're thoughtful about them, we care about them. We're compassionate with them. I don't have to say all those things. We just say, we love our students. Does that demonstrate that you are willing to go the extra mile for them because you love them? Because, listen, our students, they not only perpetuate our mission, they're not only our purpose. They pay the bills. So take Care of these people. They got family, they got responsibilities. Do a good job for them, Love on them. Because you know what? They got hard days just like you got hard days. So have compassion for them and show that. Fourth thing we do in terms of naming our values is things we do. And you can have a whole list of this as just ours is we bring the joy. We create a positive atmosphere, a positive community. We want that enthusiasm and that joy and that positivity because everybody has had the opposite. And when you have the opposite, it sucks, right? We've all worked for a negative leader. We've all been in a negative environment. We've all been in that place where you're just doing tasks and you're like, God, this job sucks because there wasn't a spirit that was imbued there. And you've all heard me say, you know, the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates energy. I don't believe we just have joy spontaneously, though. It can happen. I think we're responsible for bringing the joy in our life. We have to bring the joy into our workplace. You're not always going to have tasks that make you feel perfect and bright and fulfilled. So you know what, it's about how you carry that load. It's about your attitude to the activities, about your understanding of how things all fit together to make the big difference. These are concepts that you share. When we say bring the joy, it's like, bring joy into your work, even if the work is unloading the dishwasher. Bring joy into the work, even if the work is as simple as like answering 50 emails. Bring joy into the work. Even if You've made your 50th quote card for the week. Like, it's like you have to put the meaning into your work if you're going to be world class and not hope for the meaning to come out of every activity and task. Right? It's so important. It's like Muhammad Ali said he hated every single workout. At some point he hated them, but he knew he had to do them to be excellent, right? It's easy not to, you know, enjoy everything that you do. So you have to bring the joy to that thing. So this is what I meant by name your values. So maybe you and your partner, your spouse or your team sit down and go, okay, what are the values here? And let's operationalize them with phrases versus words and phrases that mean something to us, that make us unique. Like those make us unique at High Performance Institute. That's like, what makes us unique. It's like, oh, we challenge ourselves and we take care of each other because we want to be high performing and we love our students because we're very mission driven to what we're doing and our positive energy is really exudes here. So we bring the joy. And it's like, that's for me, what makes us unique. You might have different things for your company, but if you're trying to hire and you can't explain that stuff, then you're just another person hiring, like a soulless corporate HR person that we all fear. And I really think that's important because I see that in so many times. And it's important because after you have hired your fifth person or your 10th person, you know how it can get. You can be like, okay, you kind of go through the motions and you don't feel it anymore unless you do these things. Like, because I do these things, I feel the hiring process and my sense of team and spirit in a different way than if it was just like, here's the employee handbook. Here you go. Go down the. It's like you have to have. It's different. What are you creating? What kind of workplace do you want to come into? And you got to name those things if you want to claim those things. Hey guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter because I have a resource for you related to this episode and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way, just go to progressmode.com, click on Private Group to apply to. See you can get into Ultra and we can take it to the next level by getting in person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progressmode.com with that. Since we're really talking about this idea of naming your values, things that we do in some way, we are always kind of glancing around. We were talking about hiring this idea of leadership and I know I get questions on us all the time. And I still have two more points. So far we've covered three points. Number one, develop the skills needed to win for you. Number two, outsource tasks, but hire, skill and management. I gave you my hiring questions and our criteria. Number three, name your values as things you want to do as a team. In a culture. And as you as a leader. We still got two more to go, but before we do that, I want to take a, a quick break here with you. In a sense of answering a question I always get like, how do you, when we're talking about hiring people, ask, well, how do you think about leadership, Brandon? Like what, what do great leaders do now that you've hired these people or that you're hiring? What's a great leader actually do for their team? So I'm going to roll. We have a great video from our training archives for you on this, on how I approach leadership and what's important to me in it. And you want to take notes on these ones too because once you have these people now you got to do these things I talk about in this leadership training video. And then we'll get to these last two pieces of our five part framework today on hiring and running a world class team. This video is going to help you a lot with that. So with that, Jess, roll it. People always ask me, Brendan, what do leaders actually do? You know, maybe, maybe you're leading a team or you're in charge of a large organization or you're just trying to even lead your own life. I mean, what is it that leaders actually do? Many of you know, this was my graduate school work and in 2001 I wrote a book called the Student Leadership Guide. And I never had any clue that thing would blow up the way that it has. And this framework for leadership, it's called E6 is from that book and it's been used at I think 40 of the top 100 schools in the world. Major corporations from around the world, major associations have called me in to speak on this topic because it's a great framework for leadership. It answers that question, what are the major practices of leadership that we must enact on a continual basis to be able to have the amount of influence and impact we desire in our work lives or in any role in which we're leading other people. So let's get right into it. The first E of these six E's is envisioned. Great leaders envision a compelling and different and vibrant future than what is here. They have an alternative, clear view of what the world could be like tomorrow than it is today. Right? They have a shared purpose. They believe that they and others would be compelled by, interested, inspired by and want to work towards. And that's a big deal. And you always read about it in leadership, right? You have to have vision. I mean it's biblical where there is no vision. People perish, right? We know the power of having that vision. So you have to sit down though and actually do it. The reason we say envision versus just have a vision is you have to sit. It's a practice of envisioning what should tomorrow look like for my team? What should tomorrow be like for my business, for my organization? What should tomorrow be like for my life and not just tomorrow. A long term mindset and view. The dream, right, that magnificent obsession, that bold desire, the moonshot goals and purposes and missions of life, the bigger picture that's envisioning a different reality in the future than we experience today. And that's what everybody gets excited about in leadership. Where there's no vision, there's no leadership. Where there's no vision, people perish. So you have to envision, and I say that these are six practices of leadership and not six steps. Because it's not like you do envisioning once and then you move on in the process. We always have to continually sit down and envision where are we, where can we be going? It's an active process. If you set a vision one time and you forget about it, it's not going to help you accomplish the influence or the impact you want in your lifetime or in those that you lead. The second e here is enlist. As you're developing this vision, it's not just your vision. You're enlisting other people to share their voices, their perspectives, their dreams, their desires for where you could be going. You know, I think that the most important leadership lesson in the world is that people support what they create. If people are involved in the ideation of a vision, they're involved in creating ideas, of brainstorming, of figuring out what it is that we are about, what do we stand for, where are we going? Great leaders enlist that from other people. They're constantly asking people what they think, how they feel, what things they desire and need. And it's that enlistment that is always going on. A great leader is always enlisting other people to believe in the dream, to shape the dream, to stay dedicated to the dream. It's an honest and authentic and a genuine desire to see other people be involved in the process and to enjoy that process. I mean, it's so vital. And that methodology of what you know, how do you get people involved in it? You're asking questions, you're paying attention to their needs, you're reflecting back to things that you're hearing. You're always enlisting others to support and to build this vision, this ideal future. Together. The third thing that great leaders are always doing is embodying their message. They stand for something. There's a congruence between who they are, the behaviors that they're enacting into the world, how they treat people, what they're working towards and what they say is important. Right? That, that's, it's just basic line, it's integrity. You know, it's a congruence belief between what we say we're after and how we are behaving. There's nothing more important, is there? You know, it's like it's that old message. It's like you don't believe the message unless you believe the messenger. So as leaders, we have to stand for and demonstrate and show and portray what we are really believing in. I mean, are we really, is our team and people around us seeing us work for it, sweat for it, sacrifice for it, champion it over and over and over again, Even when it's hard, even when there's conflict, even when people are pissed, even when people want to quit, are you still there? Do you still stand for it? If you do, you become a legend. Third, fourth, what we have to move on to is now empowering people. Empowerment means we give people the decision making authority and the trust to be able to work towards this vision, to allow them the autonomy, the strength, the input to equip them with the knowledge, the skills, the abilities, the technologies, the tools, the training to allow them to succeed as they march with us to achieving something extraordinary and phenomenal. That's vital. That's what empowerment is about. And a lot of leaders who come in with a big vision, they get everyone excited. You know, they seem like they want everybody involved and they do a great job of standing for it, but they don't equip their teams to kick some butt. They never get to that place of real stride, of real momentum, and that happens all the time. Training other people and equipping them with everything they need to succeed has to be a vital practice of every great leader. And again, it doesn't happen just once. That's a huge failure in the working world, especially in corporate America. Great leaders come in, they nail the vision, they get people around it, they stand for something, but they only empower people at the beginning. They give some training and then they just disappear. Training has to be consistent. Coaching has to be consistent. Equipping people to deal with the new challenges, the new tools, new technologies, the new competitive realities, that's vital. We have to have that in place, right? So we've got We've been doing these practices. We envision a better future. We enlist other people to help shape that vision, to believe in that vision, to support that vision. We stand for something by embodying our own message. We empower other people to be able to support and to be able to win. Then we have to evaluate some of the hardest things that we do in all of leadership, to evaluate the key people who are with us, their contributions, evaluate their skills, evaluate their needs, and to evaluate the ethics that are going on in our organization, in our team. Are we being. Are we being excellent and are we being ethical? Is the questions that we're evaluating on right? Are we being excellent and ethical as we are progressing? Which I guess would be the third question, are we progressing? If not, why Are we being ethical? If not, why? If our people are not being excellent, if not, why? These are the questions that we have to ask. Ask is this practice and evaluation? It's like every day as a leader, you know, you've got to keep your thumb on the pulse to see, hey, how are we doing? Are we alive? Are we moving forward? That evaluation also brings up the incredible challenge that we face as leaders, which is to give honest, direct, immediate, constructive feedback to those people who are trying to influence and lead, you know, to our collaborators, to our friends, to our followers, whatever word that you use for them. I mean, it's vital. It's vital that we are paying attention and seeing when things are going off the rails, you know, that we never check out. I mean, it's a consistent process of checking in, seeing how we're doing, and paying attention to really evaluating the progress of our mission. And that final thing, that sixth thing, that thing that makes the magic encourage, you know, to encourage, to be the champion, to be the cheerleader, to be the person who always motivating, inspiring, uplifting people to never just have. You know, a lot of leaders, they get their pet projects and they get excited about it, and they disappear. No, man, you need to encourage on a continual basis. You need to light people up. You need to have it in your heart and in your soul that desire to want to lift people up, you know, to lift them up and lift them off their butts, to get them excited about things. You know, if you can't motivate them with your passion and. And your example, then what are we doing? You have to encourage people. When this gets hard, you know, when you're working towards a mission, it gets hard. Longer term, the more people involved, the bigger the organization, the bigger the vision, the bigger the dream, the longer the duration to accomplish it. The more struggle, the more challenge, the more conflict, the more discord, the more disappointment, the more frustration, the more doubt, the more delay. All those things happen. Leaders have to deal with them. And the way they have to deal with it is always being that encouraging voice. When the chips are down, when it looks most bleak, you're still that beam of light. And when it gets dark, when it gets challenging, when there's conflict and turmoil and turbulent seas, you're solid. You're somebody that they know they can go to. Because you're always going to turn a negative into a positive. You're always going to help them see the alternative view the next step. You're going to champion people. You're going to champion the mission of the cause. That's leadership. That's the six E's of leadership. Envision, enlist, embody, empower, evaluate and encourage. And I'll say, what overlays all this is a philosophy about what we're doing, that it's important to us that there's a purpose, there's a mission to it, that we feel that deeply within us is so powerful. And we honor, we respect, and we love those we work with. Last thought. You know, I never use the word. I try to. Maybe I use it in this video a little bit to give us context, but I try never to use the word follower. You know, people aren't following you. No, they're actively engaged. They are collaborators. When you get people to collaborate with you in all areas of these six E's, you're building leaders. You're building collaborators within the organization, within the team with those who you are serving. A magic happens. It's now it's not just you the leader. It's a group of us. We are a pure set of leaders. We are the movers and shakers who are shaping and making this mission happen every single day. We love to work together. We have fun. People are standing up. They now are helping come up with vision. They now are championing and cheering on, bringing in, enlisting other people. They now are doing all their skills standing for something. They're living that value and the truth. They now are empowering other people and championing the cause. They're your eyes and your ears, evaluating how the organization, how the mission is going. They now are encouraging it so it doesn't just ride on your shoulders. When we do that. Right then we have this thing called leadership. All right, everybody, I hope you enjoyed that. Look at, at what I think you have to do when now you've got a team, and you're trying to lead them well, because if you don't empower them well, you don't evaluate them well. It's not gonna go so well if you don't have a business yet. But you've got a mission and you really believe in it, and you're gonna do the work. You need to figure out what is the business going to be, meaning how you're gonna make money and sustain it, but ultimately, if it's gonna last, like, the reason you start thinking team is because you start thinking beyond yourself. You start thinking about how far and wide do you want your product or services or your mission to really go. And look, if you don't care how far it really goes and you kind of just want to do your own thing, that's okay, too. I basically did my own thing for about six or seven years of my career where I had one or two outsourced contract team members who helped do a lot of work. But I didn't think about it in terms of team or culture or bigger vision. But once you want to start serving your students with more excellence or reaching more clients worldwide, or having more products and services that you sell so you can scale your business, you got to start thinking about team. Okay, so let's jump back in to these five things I promised to share with you today. Number one, I said you got to develop the skills needed to win. You got to clarify those. I gave you some ideas for how to do that. Number two, outsource tasks, but hire skills and management and culture. Number three, name your values. And we talked about what that meant as things that you do as well as leadership principles. Number four, this is important. It's the hardest thing. It's the most important thing. Number four, instill the role model mentality. You have to instill the role model mentality in a team if they're ever going to be high performing. And here's a couple ways that you do it. Number one, you have to always ask people if they're being role models in their life. Just like as a leader, ask them all the time. Not in the business, not in the career, not in the job. In real life, do you feel like you're being a role model in your life? How are you doing that? How's that showing up for you? Are you a role model for your daughter? Role model for the kids, Role model for your wife, Role model for your partner? Role model, Role model for somebody who you're trying to be a hero for right now? Who are you trying to really step up for? Who needs you on your A game? It's always asking them to be the best of themselves for others. Like, I never asked someone, like, just be your best. Just be your best. I never do that. Instead, be your best for other people. Be your best so you can be an awesome dad. Be your best so you can take care of the kids. Be your best so you inspire the people around you. Be your best for others. Because we'll all do something more for other people than we'll do for ourselves. Often a lot of people never, ever get into personal development until they've screwed up their life so bad, they either had to or they had a bigger vision and they knew they had to grow into something for others. Like, I would probably be a worthless human being if I didn't want to serve other people, because in that desire to serve other people, I had to grow into a better man. Who you are today is a direct reflection of. Of the level you've wanted to serve at in your life. Like, if you sit around the house for hours and hours on the couch watching Netflix and doing nothing with your life, and that happens to people, and it happens at different. I mean, different times. And it's like. But if that happens, it's because at that moment, you have no real heart or desire to really serve people at a higher level or a deeper level. It's easy to go through the motions in life when we just focus on ourselves. When we just focus on ourselves, it's easy to, you know, placate and live the comfortable life, Go through the motions to just make enough rent, Go through the motions to just get through the day. Go through the motions to just barely do the minimum job. And those people are easier to spot one because they'll always be the underperformers in a peer group in any given culture, any given society, they'll always underperform because they don't have a bigger thing pulling them to higher performance. A lot of people's development stops at their own personal ambitions. But a lot of people's personal development really advances when they go into the service mindset, when they start thinking about servant leadership, when they start caring about other people. And I really believe that as humans, we only get as far in our personal, professional, or even spiritual development as far as we want and as deep as we want to serve, because otherwise we just stop. Right? A lot of people, they stopped growing after high school or college, I bet. You know, a lot of people like that. They learned a lot. They Were the A student, they got really far. And then one day they just stopped development. Even though they were the star, they were the star and they stopped their development. Why? Because they stopped seeing beyond themselves too, right? Because, look, an A player will only take themselves as far as they have personal ambition for. And until they have ambition to lead a team or get better, they won't develop. This happens in all sports. I mean, watch any sport legend talk about their career, right? Watch Kobe Bryant, star player, start talking about when he had to focus on team and how that changed his mindset and made him better. Watch Michael Jordan talk about the same thing. But then watch any community organizer, great political leader, any great business titan. When it became about something bigger than just themselves, everything changed. It wasn't about Walt Disney just drawing more cartoons of mice. He could see a place where people were going with their families and having an extraordinary experience that he wanted to create for them, right? If he had just focused on his personal ambition, he'd be a great cartoonist. But because he focused beyond his personal ambitions, he became Walt Disney. Got it. So there's other ways to think about the role model mentality. And I've done a great training on this and we pulled from the archives for you guys because we knew it would align with this curriculum very well. It's about being a role model and what that really means and how you can be a role model. Because if you can be the role model, that's setting the role model mindset. But some of these ideas you might want to instill in your team. So we'll play a video here in a second on that. And it's really important with that that let's roll this video, take notes on how to be a role model and think about how you can instill that in your team. And I'll share some ideas with that as well when we come back. How can you be a role model for other people? You know, you obviously care about influencing those around you in a positive way, that you want to leave an important mark in the world. You want to make your own dent, you want to leave a legacy, you want to contribute something significant. You want your family and your friends and sustainability side to look up to you and celebrate you, but also learn something from you. So how do you be a role model? Everyone always says you should be a role model. How do you do it? I got a couple ideas. First and foremost, be there for people. You know, a lot of the world is sort of half hearted in what they're doing. You know, you've got the half interested parent, you got the half hearted lover, you got the half engaged teacher or professor. And people are lacking full presence and awareness with the people they are around. And because they're in a distracted mode or they're dissipated in their energy that they're not really there. You know what I mean? It's like some people have a father, but the father's really not there emotionally, spiritually. As an example, they're not available to other people. You gotta be there in if you're going to be a role model. You know, it's so easy just to go through the motions, but not actually engage with people, not actually create that emotional connection to be distracted. And today it's almost, you know, it's almost a joke. You go out to dinner with people and they got their phones out and they're texting the entire time. They're not creating any authentic communication because they're on their phone, they're distracted. And if they're not on their phone, they're looking at the phone phone, you know, they're suspecting that that phone's gonna buzz. They're like ah, you know, and so they're not actually in the moment with others. A great role model. Think about somebody who had great influence in your life. You know, maybe you had a grandparent or a caregiver or the guy or gal down the block who inspired you or that teacher. I bet they were really good at getting present and just being with you. You know that even if they were really busy people when they connected with you, they were right there. They were there. And it's that old thing Jesse Jackson said is people don't want our presence, they want our presence. They don't want our gifts, our stuff, they want us. So if you want to be a role model, you got to learn to get to be there. You got to develop your own level of mindfulness and awareness to the moment in such a way that you can actually be engaged with people, people again. Right. Get there and also be there consistently. Right. Be there consistently that the person who has the greatest influence in your life, they're there, they're consistent. You know, I have a lot of people in my industry and we call this the expert industry or the thought leadership industry. You know, the bloggers, the YouTubers, the content creators. There's a lot of people come in and say, but you know, I want to make a difference like you did. I want you to your views, I want your followership, I want your fans. And I said great, go create content and they'll create one video and then they'll bail, and then they're upset that they're not being perceived better or they're not making their. Their difference. And it's because they're lacking consistency. You know, I didn't rack up, you know, 50 million plus views and over 3 million fans on Facebook while the time we're shooting this, because I did it once in a while. I did it every week. You know, if you want to make a mark in the world, you got to be consistent. You got to stay on top of things. You got to be there for people. You gotta be there for your family, your friends, those that you care for, those that you lead, those that you serve. And if you're online and you're trying to make a difference, you gotta be there consistently. Not once in a while when the muse strikes as a job, consistently as a mission, be there. That's the first part of being a role model. The second part is to project positive energy to the world. There's a lot of haters. There's a lot of dissent. There's a lot of upset people. Your job, if you really, truly want to be a role model, is to learn to tease out the positive things that are happening. It doesn't mean there's not negative, and it's not being, you know, someone who can't see the difficulties of life, but it's being that person who even the difficulties, you can tease out the lesson or the positive thing that is there and amplify that and show that to the world. You know, a lot of people speak ill of their careers or their industries or their companies, and they just bemoan things and they talk negatively all the time. Well, people who are speaking negatively all the time, you know what they are? They're bitter. They're not the role models. They're less interesting as humans than those who are noticing what's going on and turning it into a positive direction, even if it is bad. Look, it's not to say that they never acknowledge or discuss or be aware of the negativity. It's okay to call a wrong a wrong, but what they're going to do from the wrong is say, this is wrong. But I could see there's positive intent here, or I could see this one thing good, that did happen. Let's talk about those. And now let's talk about what that new positive direction is going to be. And also think of yourself as exuding positive energy to other people. You know, when I walk by people on the street, I often say in my mind as I pass them, I say I wish you joy, abundance, love and health. And I just say it in my mind. And maybe they don't know what I really say, but they can feel it. Like there's a positive intention coming from me towards them. And I want you to do that. If you really want to be a role model, people need to see that you have positive intentions for them and that you're sharing positive information, positive content, positive vibes with the world. Next piece. I would say the third idea that just comes to my mind thinking about role model that I think is so vitally important is that you help other people discover their truths. That means you ask questions of others, you engage them, and you really do ask them questions that get them thinking. You're sort of Socratic in your approach to asking questions. You're trying to elicit them discovering something deeper about their own lives. You're asking them what is it you really want? You're asking them what's truly important to you. You're asking them what is it you want to focus on and be and achieve and do and feel? You're truly focused on the other person. You're not going around, ahaha, I am the role model. You're not focused on you, you're focused on them, right? Matter of fact, if you think about these first three ideas I've even come up with, my mind I shared with you is one, be there for them consistently. Number two, positively engage and share positive energy for them. Number three, ask them questions to help them discover themselves more. Because think about the person who had so much influence with you. Didn't they kind of teach you, you know how to think and they taught you how to think by asking you questions, good questions. And so they ask you questions about life, about your career, about what you wanted, about your standards, about your values, about things that you just found important. And by you thinking about those and answering them, it was just being in their space that you learned about yourself. That's your job. Now if you want to be a role model, help people learn more about themselves, help people help themselves. Help people discover something they didn't know, just through discussion with them. Just through discussion. And then the fourth idea comes to my mind automatically when we talk about role models is just get it done. If you're in a career and you want to be a role model, succeed, that's how you're going to make that difference. People are going to see you getting your dreams done. They're going to see you knock your goals off. They're going to see you rise from adversity. They're going to see you rise when you struggle. They're going to see you be so resilient and so dedicated, so committed that you can't help but achieve. And as you achieve more, as you succeed more, more people look up and go, wow. That person must have some traits or knowledge or skills or information that help them get going. Let me follow them, let me ask them questions, Let me learn from them, and then they'll engage with you in a different way. When you succeed, people see you as a role model. So keep fighting for your dreams. The world needs to see more humans out there chasing after their dreams, being our authentic selves. And you can be part of that story. So go do that. I hope these ideas helped you, because the world needs to see you be the best of you. I said secrets to building high performance teams. Number one, develop the skills first that you know that you need to win in your career, your field, or your industry. Number two, outsource tasks. Hire for skill management and culture. Number three, name your values as things that we do here so it becomes a common parlance in the company. Number four, instill that role model mentality by asking your team if they're role models by you being the role model and doing the things we showed you in the video. Number five, set weekly rhythms and quarterly goals. So important. I wish I figured this out earlier in my career, honestly. And that is how important it is for a team to sense that they're high performing. There's gotta be a lot of momentum, and that momentum has to come every week. It can't come just quarterly. And so I kind of developed this idea of a weekly rhythm oriented around all the companies that I work with. And weekly rhythm is taking each team and helping them understand there's this weekly thing that is always happening that everyone is contributing to or your team is contributing to. And it just every week and they get to start that process every week and end that process every week with a contribution or a completion. And setting that up for your team is so simple. You just have to think through it. Like in my company, it took me a little bit to think through, but I thought, what can I build that around? Oh, I'll build that around how I release YouTube videos. So I'll release a YouTube video every week. And what I'll do is I'll use that as an anchor point to set a weekly rhythm for the whole team. So, okay, guys, I'm gonna drop a YouTube video. And when I drop that YouTube video, I want this team to grab it and do this stuff with it, and. And the social team do it and do stuff like that. And ad team do it and do something. And everybody kind of rallies around that one single thing. Like, we have a big company, but everyone has that thing to rally around and do something with that thing each week. And that creates a shared weekly thing that the team is working towards to release, to complete, and to do. And sometimes you have to architect that because we could. We don't need to do that. I could just post a YouTube video, but I chose that as the thing that would give us a rhythm. You follow? You don't have to do that, but it makes the team feel a greater sense of momentum. In certain industries like mine, that also creates a greater presence in the marketplace, more consistency in the marketplace. Better for the career, too. So it kind of matches the goal of what we're trying to do. But it gives everyone a role on a weekly type of rhythm. And it's so important to do. I mean, it can be so simple. Someone asks about a receptionist, okay, what's something that happens or should happen every single week that that receptionist could be part of that weekly rhythm? Maybe it's like, okay, every week, everybody on the team spends one hour in customer service. Okay, every week, everybody on that team spends one hour a day calling customers. Like, you just create something, even if you have to architect it for them to rally around. Every week is so important because, listen, is it true you don't have to do this? Yes. But then what happens is after month three or four or five, people don't feel like they've contributed. People feel like, well, I'm doing all this work, but they're not seeing it completed. When you all. I hope you all read this book. One of the things that activates, that drive, that motivation at a fulfillment level is when we are part of a process where we get to see something start the middle and complete. A lot of people who hated their jobs didn't actually hate the job. They hated the fact they never saw the job make its impact in the world. They did something, but they didn't see something complete often enough. So even if they were doing meaningful work or fun work or creative work, that lack of progression every week to see something happen is okay, you know, for a few weeks. And for a great professional or someone with lots of experience who's had that, they can go a few months and then they feel bored, and then they feel like, why are we here? And then they feel like nothing. I'm doing all this stuff, but nothing ever happens. So setting that weekly rhythm for the team to rally around is really important, okay? Really important. That makes a team high performing because it creates a rhythm, right? It's like the pistons just firing every week. That's the rhythm. Everyone needs rhythm, right? You think about dancing, the base of dancing is just the rhythm. But then you got to have the splash. You got to have the special thing that you do and that's your quarterly goals. That's the bigger things that you're after as a team or as a company that you're managing towards. That gives everybody aim because everybody needs aim. So probably out of all the biggest companies in the world right now, in the, let's say the top 10 highest valued companies, whether it's a, you know, an Alphabet slash Google or an Apple or an Amazon, most of these companies are managing teams to quarterly goals. They break down their yearly, their three year, their, all the way back it up into quarterly goals. And that's a really big piece that you and your team have to figure out too, right? First, establish the weekly rhythm that gets everybody kind of knowing what you're doing, what the company is, and then start overlaying those quarterly goals. If you all need some kind of thought or guidance or advice on that, please remember to read the book called Measure what Matters by John Dewar, who's kind of a disciple of Andy Grove from Intel, who kind of created that famous system or that phrase, have you ever heard the phrase? I guess it's an acronym, the acronym okr. Objectives and key results. That came really from Andy Grove and team perpetuating that in a broader space like quarterly goals, that's as old as organizational development. But the way to manage towards that, Andy had a really good perspective about that. So make sure you read that book, Measure what Matters by John Dewar. You'll be so happy you did. If you have a bigger team, it's necessary. But even for yourselves at an individual contributor level, if you're just going through the motions all year long, you're not effective. If you're just playing, you know, and you're just going through the motions, you're not effective. So please do me a favor and if you give yourself a gift, even beyond hiring somebody, and you should probably hire people sooner than later, but if it's just you, I'd love for you to take some time and think about what are your quarterly goals personally and professionally and start back ending your calendar into that. So if a quarterly goal, that's three months from now. It's like, okay, what do I really want to make sure I'm steadily working towards? Because a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs and I know this story, you guys know it too. It's easy as an entrepreneur or even executive who has a safe job to kind of just bounce through the year, go through the motions, you contribute, do good stuff, you do a good job. But without that rhythm of seeking a quarterly goal, you find yourself bored, especially after year two or year five. You are solopreneurs, you're entrepreneurs, or you're that high performing executives who you really don't need to set quarterly goals anymore because your job is safe or you're good. I want you to be great. And you can't do it without those stretch goals, working hard toward those things. Every single month, I want to give a shout out. Every single month. Listen. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people qualify to be here. You're here. You all care about your personal development at a whole higher or other level. This means start thinking about team. Because if you care this much more about your personal development, you probably got a mission you're working on. You know, there's something rattling inside that's a calling that's being called forth for you to activate in the world. I want you to listen to that intuition that says, maybe it's time to grow, maybe it's time to reach more people, maybe it's time to make a greater difference. And all you have to do is accept the reality that you might need help for that. And once you can accept the reality that you might need help for that, that will lead you into that desire to build a team. And once you start building a team and you have responsibility and stewardship to the team, you realize you want to do it well, you want to do it well for them, you want to do it well for the company, you want to do it well for the mission. So follow that intuition, that calling that says maybe these next 12 months, it's your build year.