Secrets to Building High Performance Teams

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the brendon show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, sometimes on online to tens of thousands of people or live on stage where I was speaking on some stages across the world. Or these might be some of my monthly training programs and highlights of those that I do every single month with our monthly students. So I know you're gonna really enjoy these because these are a little bit more of a deep dive look at some of my training as a personal and professional development trainer. You know, I focus so much on helping you find that deeper level of motivation and start practicing some of those high performance habits with. Well, you hear me talk about many of those concepts in these special episodes here. These are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here on the Brendon show. So I hope you enjoyed them. Please note that as you hear me speak in many of these, you'll hear me reference something because sometimes I'll have been training live or on video or on stage or through a broadcast. So you might not be able to see something that I'm suggesting or motioning to or maybe even drawing out on a flip chart or motioning towards on a presentation, but you'll get the gist of it. So make sure you bust out your journal. Take some good notes here because this is really valuable insights on the mindset or the strategies that you need to adopt in order to improve your life. And if you want to go and get more content like this, but much more deeper and have more of an interactive relationship with me in this type of training, make sure you join our high performance monthly training program. That's our monthly subscription program where I go live with you and our high performance students every single month and I try on a new topic or a new piece of research that we've created from the high performance institute and I train on that and then I do q and a and actual live coaching, interactive coaching with people every single month. That's called high performance monthly and you can Access it at brendon.com monthly that's brendon.com monthly B-R-E-N-O-N.com monthly to get deeper dive training similar to this.

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Shows, best of trainings. How do you build high performance teams? I know so many. You've 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? 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 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're 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, 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 that'll let them go. I don't want you to be in that position. So the right time to hire is always when first you have 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. And this is the critical thing before you ever think about team, and that is this, you need to develop the skills 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 going to 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 gonna 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 were 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, Brendon Burchard. And. 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 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 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 would be necessary for your future? You have to figure that out. I didn't outsource marketing because if. 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 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 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 hire 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 in 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 going to do webinars in my business? Probably better learn how to do them. Not because I had a passion for it. I was like, I'm always going to 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. That's just 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'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 don't have the context for it. But I see that learning Spanish is a critical skill for me in the future. 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. 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're 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 faster. 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? Write down 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, 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, I can 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 100 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 somebody who's a project manager or an executive assistant or somebody who manages or 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 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? You don't need a lot of management layers until you're quite high in the number of employees you have.

All right, my friend, I hope that you enjoyed that bet of episode. Was that inspiring? Were you fired up?

Did you love it?

If you did, make sure you do me a favor, go out on social media somewhere and share that episode.

You know, just go out, post it.

Somewhere, post yourself listening to it. Make sure you hashtag the Brendon show because when you do that, I can look you up and we can find you on Instagram and post that in the social media. And sometimes we do all expense paid trips to people we find. We just randomly select people, we send them gifts, autograph books, swag T shirts, all expense paid trips to some of my seminars. So make sure you let us know, share what you thought about this episode out there on the social media worlds and then we can find you and celebrate you. And also I would love to invite you to join us in our high performance monthly program. So just go to brendan.com monthly, that's brendon.com monthly. That's where we do deeper dive trainings.

Like you just heard.

But we do that every single month and there's some live Q and A there and I do some giveaways, and we give students in that monthly program tickets to my seminars and some extra special training on leadership. So make sure you check it out@brendon.com monthly. I appreciate you being part of this community of so many people dedicated to finding that deeper drive of motivation and practicing high performance habits so that they can become extraordinary in their careers. In your personal life, in your health, you can live an extraordinary quality of life. And sometimes you just need a little bit more training and a little bit more nudge, a little more energy, a little bit more drive and consistency. And I'm hoping that being part of this community with the Brendon show, I'm providing that to you in some way. So thank you, my friend, for listening. I look forward to seeing you or listening with you on the next episode of the B R E N D O N show.

Sam.