Performance Culture

Ever since I started my company, I've always loved to coach people. I love trying to help people become more of who they are. I like to see people go from this level to the next level. I love being a catalyst to challenging people and holding them accountable and helping people do what they never thought was possible. And one of the biggest mistakes I made early on was that I focused a lot on the under performers, on the people who were at the bottom of the list. So if I had salespeople, I wanted to help the person who was the least successful so that they can kind of, you know, level up and be able to join the ranks of the higher performers. And the problem with that is that I would just drain my energy trying so hard to help people who were at the low end of the pole. And meanwhile, my high performers were being ignored. My A players who were knocking it out of the park, who I felt like they didn't need the coaching, you know, they didn't get my attention. And that was a huge mistake that I learned later on in my career. Because the truth is that if you pour yourself into your high performers and turn them up even more, that becomes something that is contagious to other people. And those low performers will either catch fire or they won't. And I think it's hard for leaders to know that it's not your responsibility to treat everybody the same. It's politically correct to say that, but who cares? Cheat towards your high performers. Spend more time with them, build into them more, challenge them more. See what happens to the rest of your team as they continue to raise the bar. See who you attract more of when you're recruiting. Watch the impact that high performers have and watch how they respond when you build into them. It's so rare for leaders to do this because it just seems like it's the opposite. You should want to help the people who you want to improve, but it's on them to want to improve. You support them, you just pour yourself more into those high performers and you give everybody in your system the tools and the resources that they need. If it's more training, get it, get it for them. But your attention as a leader should be on your high performers, building into them, giving them more of what they need to do better, letting them raise the bar. When I first started my company, we were collecting for hospitals and doctor's offices, outstanding debts, accounts receivable. And my team was about a 10,000amonth mark. 10,000 was a good number. They made commission. We were nice to people. 10,000 was good. We wanted to hit that bar. People who were underperforming were at 6,000. People who were high performer were at 12,000. When I adopted this mindset, by the time I sold my company, I had people hitting 40,000. It's something we never even thought would be impossible. The amount of money that people were making was incredible. And it was because we started pushing those high performers and we started giving them more responsibility, and we saw the impact that they were having, and they felt that responsibility and they turned it up even harder. People who are high performers are still doing what they need to do to get by. And they're usually really good at knowing what they need to do in order to perform at the level that they're at. But they can always do more. And sometimes people have it in them to chase that down, and sometimes they don't. And our job as leaders is to turn those people up. Don't let them off the hook just because they're the highest numbers. And don't be scared to lose them. Push them harder, challenge them harder, Give them more of an accelerator to make more money, to have more time off. If they can hit and raise the bar, set new records, and watch what happens when you can build that consistency in to pushing and challenging your team to raise the bar. Not only are you gonna feel more energized, but you're gonna see a transformation, not only on your team, but throughout your whole company. Because it just takes a few. You don't need everybody to do it. You just need a few. And you can't be the only one doing it. For too many years, I was a high performer in my system and I didn't have enough people around me. And when I realized, wow, I only need a handful of others who can do this, then I poured myself into those and I watched that just be contagious throughout the system and turn people up or turn them out. So cheat towards your high performers.