How To Create A Company That Top Talent Never Wants To Leave

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Hi, Shannon Waller here, and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. Dan, today we're going to talk about one of my very favorite topics, which is how to build great teams. You know, we get comments all the time from our clients, where do you find such great team members? And you kind of joke sometimes, well, we grow them on trees, which is not the case. But let's talk about that, because great team members is something we definitely have. We take great pride in. A lot of our team members stay for a long time. What are some of your thoughts about how to put together and build a great team?

Yeah, well, there's a lot of coach tools that support having a great team, and number one is what's the person's unique ability? But what I try to do is answer for myself, and then what I think is the general philosophy of the company is that we have things that have to be done, okay? And there's ways of testing whether this is going to fall into that person's One, competency, whether they're actually good at that. And the second thing was, is this the type of activity that they would do well? So you have to do that. I think probably the first 6 months, it's not too much different from any other company, except that we start them off differently. And the first thing we start them off with is that we have certain mindsets. That we have to take into account and that we just want them to show up and we want their full energy just to be for what they're doing when they get up. So what we're going to create is a very positive environment for them where they don't have to defend themselves. So you're not going to have to be defending. And we have one starting point, which is unique abilities. So right from the beginning, we want to Find out what it is that you love doing and what is it that you're the best at loving doing it. And are you good at teamwork with other people's unique ability? So I think right from the start we do differently, that everybody's on their own unique growth path in terms of who they are and the kind of work that matches up best with them.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. We don't really know that real clearly, and they don't really know it really clearly. Until they get a certain amount of time in. It might vary from one person to the rest, but I think that's the main thing. You know, someone once asked me, if you had to give up everything that we teach, that we coach entrepreneurs on, and the number one thing that you would hold on to, how you form the company, it would be unique ability and unique ability teamwork. And once people know what they love doing and we've got them placed so that's what they can continually expand the time at work doing what they love doing and they keep getting better and better at and they get really good teamwork, you don't really have to manage them. You don't have to monitor them. You don't have to motivate them. Okay? And better yet, you don't have to fire them. I would say that's it. And so right from the beginning, we're investing in who they are as an individual, and we're encouraging great teamwork with other people. And there's no need for politics. Yes, or drama, especially interpersonal politics. Not so much, you know, the way most people think about politics, but everything is positive. We put the emphasis on positive. We put the emphasis If something doesn't work, probably the system was lacking for it, not the individual was at fault. There was something in the teamwork, there was something in the systematic handoff from one person to another.

So it's not a blaming culture.

Not a blaming culture. It's a winning culture or a learning culture.

Yes, I love that. Dan, what you're making me think of right now is our 4 core values. Which has the acronym PAGE. So it's positive and collaborative teamwork, to be alert, curious, responsive, and resourceful. That's the A. The third one is to get results. We are here for a purpose and a reason, and that's measured by results. And the last, which is— I know is very near and dear to your heart— which is really to provide an excellent first-class experience. And we take great pride in doing that and being very hospitable. So positive and collaborative teamwork, being alert, curious, responsive, and resourceful, getting results. And then finally, excellent first-class experience. And that's part of what we educate people on. And if that's not something that's near and dear to their heart or not in alignment with their values, we're not a great fit. But if they are, this is somewhere where they get to expand on and contribute their own uniqueness.

Yeah. And along with that, Shannon, I mean, we talk about the internal culture, but it also has to do with what we actually do as a business and who we do it for.

Mm-hmm. Say more about that.

Well, our entire clientele are entrepreneurs.

Yep.

Second thing is that they're successful, talented, ambitious entrepreneurs. Okay. And it's above a certain income level. So right now it's $200,000, you know, in the US and Canada, it's $200,000. Okay. So they have to be successful already before they come into the program. And they're very, very positive people with maybe some negative quirks that have to be negotiated with as we go along. And they're very appreciative of the staff. They're very, very interested in how we seem to have uniformly very, very helpful and very positive staff. They're very interested in that. So there's a sort of a reciprocal thing is that they're building companies, and one of the key things for them is to get great people in their companies. So they learn what's in the formal program of Strategic Coach. We have all these thinking tools for them. But the big thing is they're watching us very keenly, how we put the company together and how it keeps growing. And they've seen us grow. I mean, we started in the early years 1989, 1990, we could have a company meeting in a booth of a restaurant.

And we did.

Oh, we had a Christmas party. I think it was, you know, early years we had a Christmas party. Everybody fit in the same booth. Now we're 130. Now we're in 3 countries. Now we're in 4 separate workshop centers. So they've watched us grow, and a lot of them are with us for many years. Clients are with us for 15, 20, 25 years. But what they're noticing, our staff members are also with us 15, 20, 25 years. You're a good example. You're in year 33, I think, as we're doing the podcast. So I think they're very observant. They're watching what we're presenting front stage, but they're watching how we operate backstage. And they're very, very appreciative of the, kind of people that we have inside of our company, and that gets communicated to our staff. Okay. And, you know, a lot of them are young when they join the company, and a lot of them have been through the educational system where there's a definite negative attitude towards the business world. You know, I don't care which country— the UK, Canada— the educational system is generally negative towards business, negative towards people who are really successful business people. And they develop an image. And of course, they watch movies, they watch TV, and the business people are generally pictured as villainous. The bad guy is usually a business person—

unethical, greedy, crooks, take advantage of others, all the things.

Yeah. Madly driven, don't care about people. And a lot of our team members, not everybody, but almost all of our team members are directly in contact on a person-to-person level with our entrepreneurs. And so they're getting a lot of appreciation back from our customers. As a matter of fact, we have a rule. If there's ever a fallout between one of our team members and a, you know, an entrepreneurial customer, and we've had situations, not a lot, If there's ever a collision and we get to the bottom of it, you're much more likely to be fired than our staff. And we let our staff know that, that we're going to take your side if there's any collision. It may be a misunderstanding, but it may be wrong behavior on the part of the entrepreneurs. So we always tell them that you don't have to put up with bad behavior by our customers. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm high up in the organization and I'm the head coach and I'm the person. So I've never been badly treated by any of our entrepreneurs in 35 years. I've not been badly treated, but our team members have been badly treated. We tell them the moment you get bad treatment from the entrepreneurs, you tell us and we'll take your side. But if you let it go on and on and you don't tell us, you're making our job very difficult.

And you've said before, Dan, that that creates an incredible sense of safety for your team. And I think that's a really astute perspective because a lot of entrepreneurs haven't been an employee or team member forever, if ever. But you kind of get what's important to a team member, and being safe is a— psychological safety is measured.

Well, they can't be at their best if they don't feel safe.

Exactly. There's one other direction I'd like to go on, and this is something that you've said before, and that is you have to be someone that great people want to work with. Can you talk to that a little bit?

Well, it comes up and we see this early in the program where people are just, in often cases, haven't been successful at growing teams.

Yeah.

Or the other thing, they're moving from being a sort of self-employed entrepreneur. I mean, they can be making a lot of money. They can be making a half million. But they've never really had much more than a secretary, a series of secretaries usually, which they call secretaries. So they say, well, in my area you can't find great people. They'll name geographic area. And I said, well, the great people are there, they're just not looking for you. If you want to be a team member, you got to be a great entrepreneur. And that also includes being a great person.

Mm-hmm. What great coaching, Dan. And what specifically do you advise people to pay attention to, to be a great entrepreneur?

Well, what are great team members looking for? Yeah, they're buyers too. I mean, you consider, you know, that you're hiring someone, you're the buyer. But in today's world, you know, a lot of our entrepreneurs are from the boomer generation. I'm ahead of that. I was born 2 years before the boomers, but the boomer generation, they're starting to get elderly now. I think the last baby boomer technically crosses 65 in 2028. And the other generations, you know, the employer was always the buyer. And I says, more and more in the marketplace, the person you want to hire is a buyer too, and they're getting more picky about where they go. And team members are looking for two things: is that it's a meaningful business. In other words, from their perspective, you're doing good in the world. And the second thing is, do you invest in me when I join? Do you really make investments of time and training, correct testing to see that I line up with the things? Just a whole environment there. So I think that the criteria that people in the marketplace have for going to work for someone— and the thing is that the employer generation has a bigger population than the employee generation. We don't call them employees, we call them team members because employer sounds a lot like corporations, and we're not a corporation, we're an entrepreneurial company, and all of our clients are entrepreneurs. And you're not corporates, and for the most part, they're not managers.

Yes, very true.

Entrepreneurs, what they are is innovators. What they are is really great marketers. They're really great salespeople, and learning how to manage has never really been high on the list of things. They hire managers, you know, they're leaders, but they're not managers.

Okay, so true.

So if you're hiring and you don't have a bigger future yourself as an entrepreneur, great team members who want a bigger future aren't interested being with someone who doesn't have any future.

Dan, your two points about what people are looking for and that they're also the buyer is so spot on in my experience. So, as someone who's passionate about teamwork and it's funny, your second point, do you invest in me? Literally, my last Team Success podcast was The Value of Investing in Your Team. I actually said that. That's the title. It's going up shortly, but it's so true because it can look like wasted time. They're not doing their job, you know, all this other stuff. And today we just happened to have a fabulous event this morning where we invested heavily in our team in terms of their connection with one another, their future to our goals, their contribution, their own creativity, eliminating friction and drag, all the things, you know, half a day. And that's not a small investment with the 70 5 people in the room, but that's going to pay off in spades. And we do see it as an investment, not a cost. Again, there's a mindset there. If you're hiring team members and you are treating them as a cost versus an investment, you are never going to get a good return.

I think that distinction between am I considered a cost or an investment is immediately communicated when you first, you know, someone is just applying for a job. I think they can pick up right off the bat, am I going to be seen as a cost or as an investment. Doesn't matter what kind of words you use, you're going to communicate your mindset.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, and it's interesting, Dan, it's one of those ones where people just have to really get it. I mean, you've been coaching this mindset forever, but it is a mental shift for some people who've always seen people on one side of the income statement, you know, their costs, their expense, but to really treat them as an investment means like any investment, you put things into it so that it will grow. And people are such a phenomenal— give you such a phenomenal return. You're someone who's really great at doing that. In my experience, you provide direction, you provide meaningful work, you give clarity about what you're looking for, and then you let people figure out their own way to do that. And if they need training or education or learning to accomplish it, you're like, great, go do that. I mean, that's why it's so much fun to be in teamwork with you.

Yeah, well, the big thing is, as much as possible, I want to blueprint their path in the company so that they'll succeed. I'm only interested in people being successful, what they're doing individually, what they're doing in teamwork. I want the teams to succeed, and you build from the bottom. I mean, you have success for the company, but it's really the culmination of the investing in every team member, okay, and getting them into great teamwork with each other. The top line takes care of itself if you organically grow where there's just level after level of excitement about their work. They love their work, they love working together, they love the projects they're working on. Success is just guaranteed from that. The other thing is where you're looking at your revenues and your profitability, and you're working backwards, and I want to get there with as little cost as possible. I think that doesn't attract great team members.

Uh-huh. Yeah, because the team member is then a commodity. You're going to look to swap them out with someone who's cheaper and less experienced because you think that's going to pay off better. You're not going to invest in long-term people. In terms of longevity, our company is— well, I'm sure there's maybe a few others, but I think it's unique. Exactly. Good people don't leave, right? And it's kind of amazing.

I mean, I haven't seen the update on it for about 6 months, but easily more than half have been more than 10 years. I mean, now out of 130, we have 25 who are closing in on 25 or longer years. You have seniority. You're the furthest distance away from the starting line. That would be true versus the oldest, though, without any thought in mind of a finish line.

No. And also with enormous amount of freedom and trust, which is incredibly enjoyable. We were chatting about this before, but it's about creating an environment, and we've done that in a previous podcast, where people can show up as great. And certain people are right fit for a company and certain people are not. That's cool. But there's not a lot of barriers to being great here, which I think is a key part of it.

And the big thing is I want to be freed up to do what I'm really great at. So, you know, oftentimes we'll have a conversation. Someone's talking about getting a team member and let's say, you know, it's $50,000 a year and I'm just talking about present marketplace. And they said, well, 50,000 is a lot. And I said, I don't know how you pay them, but you don't have to pay it all up front. I've never seen a situation where you're paying a new team member up front the entire first year's salary, right? Then I said, usually it's 26 investments that you have to make. Okay, so how long is it down the road before you know you've made a good investment? You know, the employment legal system in all 3 countries that we operate is that there's 3 months of no fault, that you can make up your mind. Well, you know, that's 6 pay periods. The other thing is, if it's $50,000 a cost, you'll probably be disappointed because you're always saying, you know, can't you work harder? Can't you work longer for the $50,000? But if you look at the $50,000 as an investment, it's actually not an investment in the person. It's an investment in yourself that you're going to get freed up if you pay this person $50,000. If you can't do 4 or 5 times more valuable work yourself, you're the cost.

I love that.

Yeah, you're paying $50,000 for you not to get any better. It's probably a cost.

Uh-huh.

But mine is an investment. I don't see anything that we pay our team members as a cost. It's an investment. And the best way to get the return on investment is have them every day do what they love doing and do it continually better, and then expand and multiply what they do with great teamwork with other people who love what they're doing and they keep getting better and the team gets better, all the team members get better. That's worth investing in.

It sure is. Dan, I want to focus in on the teamwork part because Uniqability, a lot of people can wrap their heads around that. It's me doing what I love to do and do best, you know, has an impact, all that sort of thing. But the success criteria for being a coach and being successful at coach is that you are really good at working with other people. And I think that's a shift in mindset, because that's not really a focus in— I'm going to say— other types of businesses. A focus for you has been great teamwork, and I love being in teamwork with you. So let's talk about that and why that's so critical, because you can have unique abilities, but if they're not in great teamwork with other people, it still doesn't work.

Yeah, well, first of all, I don't like doing everything, and this is our 35th year of the company. And I would say right now, day to day, week to week, quarter to quarter, over the whole year, I'm 95% in my zone of just doing activities that I love doing. First year, I might have been 30% in the zone of what I like doing. And all the investment in team members says every year freed me up. And then what we do is we invest in people who free up our people. I don't want you doing anything that you don't love doing and aren't really good at it, but I don't want anybody in the company to be in that for long.

Mm-hmm. There's a small example that I want to share. It's kind of funny. So we were doing a recording. In this case, it was for a book, and I was hitting record, which is not hard to do on Zoom. But then I had a little panic attack because I couldn't figure out where the heck the recording went. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can't do this. What's wrong with me? All these things. I did find it, by the way. It wasn't gone. I had just filed it, which was the problem. I should have just left it on my desktop. And your thing was, oh, we need to get another team member here. You shouldn't be doing this. So we went from 2 to 3, which I call a teamwork triad, and it just made the whole process so much easier. So that one simple little thing where you freed me up, not from anything super hard or complicated, but it was still an irritant and still something that could go awry, was just a great example of just what you're talking about so that I could be even better at what I need to be better at. So thank you for that, by the way.

Yeah, and I would say this, there's a deal that we do that isn't necessarily formal, but If it's working for us and it's working for them, there's kind of a deal there that their life outside the company may not be entirely happy. And we ask them not to bring that unhappiness into a happy zone. We say, look at it this way, there's going to be a part of your life, no matter how unhappy the rest of your life is, there's a place where 8 hours of 220 days where you can be in a totally positive zone. But please don't bring the unhappy stuff into the space. What you'll see is that this happy spot that you get with us will actually expand into the outside world. You'll start developing standards about who you want to be around outside, but we don't want you to bring the outside world inside the company. And that is a good deal.

It's a really good deal. And I think it gives people— I mean, anyone with a lot of young kids, we're like, thank God it's Monday, is often the feeling. Because here's where, in my case, people actually do what I ask them to do rather than no. We know what to expect from people. We know that they're going to do it, and we know they're going to love it. We know their Kolbe and their CliftonStrengths and their print are all a match for what they're doing. And it's such I'm going to say dreamy, but it's such a gift to work with other people who love to do what they do as much as I love to do what I do. And those things are very, very different. So yeah, it's a little oasis no matter what else is going on, not only in your own personal world, but just the world in general. There's a lot of negative news out there. And when you know that when you're coming into Strategic Coach, it's going to be positive, it's going to be purposeful, it's going to be productive and profitable. That's pretty appealing. Again, it's that oasis from everything else.

It kind of comes down to Babs and me because that's the kind of personal life we have outside the company. I mean, we're— we've led a very, very positive life and we're suited to each other. It's not a relationship we've ever had to work at. It was just a relationship that always worked and I don't come to work to have it be different, right?

Nice.

Yeah. And I would say the other thing is that I think half the impact that we make on our entrepreneurs is that we're setting a model of how they would like to have their company to be but have never been around a good model. And so they come in and there's the official part of the program, you know, the thinking tools, you know, that we create for them. And the whole program is a vast universe, expanding universe of entrepreneurial thinking tools. But I've always noticed, and I've noticed more probably since COVID was actually forcing everybody to operate virtually, but certainly since they came back and we're back in the environment again, there's a keen interest in how we put together the company we did. We don't realize sometimes just what an impact our example is for how we run the company, more so than what takes place in the workshops. And what takes place in the workshops is also an example of how we operate, because they'll run into a dozen team members in the course of a workshop, and then they're all upbeat, they're all responsive, they're all helpful.

Uh-huh. Yeah, like the food's there, the workbooks are beautiful, they have the right—

I don't think you can coerce people to be that way.

No. No. And we genuinely like and enjoy our clients. We're very excited when we see them. Dan, I want to give a shout out to the latest book, which is Everyone and Everything Grows: The Extraordinary Thinking Tool Culture of Strategic Coach. So if anyone wants to know what happens on the backstage, this is it. And you've done just a fabulous job of kind of pulling out the key elements, including no defense budget.

Yeah, I was certainly part of the team that put that book together.

Yes, you were, as was I. You've done such a great job of explaining our team success in that book. So I think it's funny because based on Who Not How, and it's great to find your whos, but there's a lot of depth to that. How do you work together? Who are you looking for? Who do you need to be? Which is what you've spoken to today. I think you have to be someone that great whos want to work with, and you need to be that as an entrepreneur and as a human being. And I really appreciate that because I think it's an element of the conversation that's usually kind of forgotten.

Yeah, the question that you asked to start the podcast is one that I posed where I was invited by one of the other coaches to come in and talk to, you know, it was a workshop of people who were early in the program, I think a year or two years into the program. And I just came in for 15, 20 minutes and all the questions were about hiring. And a lot of people don't realize that The generations have gotten progressively smaller. Okay, the thing about the baby boom generation, they actually had a lot of children, but not as many as the baby boomers. And then the baby boomers had children, and they're not as much as that generation. So the generations have gotten smaller. We're in the UK, we're in Canada, and we're in the United States, and those are immigration countries. They have a lot of immigration, so you can offset birth rates through immigration. I think that the United States, basically all those who were part of the British tradition, the UK itself, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, there's always this immigration way of making up for, you know, that you didn't have sufficient birth rates. Yeah, but the big thing is that where they're scarce, they get choosier.

Yes.

Yeah. You have to be good buyer that you have a total set of standards who gets to work at your company. But they have a set of standards too about what kind of company they would be willing to work for. So there's been a real shift in the marketplace, and this is affected by political issues and economic issues, cultural issues. that wasn't that way for all time and then it suddenly shifted. It's been shifting continuously, but it has to do with supply and demand. Okay. And it also has to do with the educational system. I think as a general statement, has become increasingly negative towards the business world. So people come in with attitudes First of all, if someone has an attitude of negativity towards business and towards you as a business person, it's easy decision to make because you're not going to allow that into your environment. Mainly I'm looking for mindset. I'm really looking for mindset. Mindset's number one, and then willingness to learn, which is another mindset. And they got to be smart enough to be able to master new things. But my feeling is I'm always looking for a mindset. I think more and more of the people who are young and they want to become a team member, they're looking for a mindset too, in a way that they never did before.

Ooh, Dan, I just had an insight from what you said. We talk a lot, and I talk about this in the Team Success Handbook and Team Success podcast, is to not have an entitlement attitude. But I just realized that can be in reverse. Exactly. Employers have had an entitlement attitude, and that's gotta go if you're gonna be able to attract and retain the best people out there.

There's a negotiation going on, and each must come up to the standards of the other person.

Uh-huh.

Okay, but going back, and this was your question that launched the podcast today, workshop room I was invited in just to come in and visit with them. They've heard about Dan, so here's Dan. So anyway, I come in, but right off the bat they went for growing a team and putting a company together. And they said, you seem to have a lot of great people. Where do you find the great people? And I said, we're the type of place that someone with that attitude is looking for. So don't put too much attention on being acceptable to people in the right place, okay? Because they're actually looking for someone who has standards. But the biggest thing they're looking for is that you yourself as an owner have the big future that gives them a lot of room to prosper, gives them a lot of room to grow and increasingly be valued for who they are uniquely, who they're valuable for. So I said, If you're not growing, if you're not expansive in terms of your own life and your own future, they're not looking for you. Doesn't matter how much you offer because it's not going to last long anyway. Right. Yeah. So anyway, a bit of a golden rule about that. Have them do unto you as you would do unto them.

Right.

All sorts of ways of looking at that. But what kind of environment do you as an entrepreneur want to live in? I'm a fun-loving guy. I'm an enjoy-life kind of guy, you know. I only want people who keep my enjoyment and fun level up.

Well, and Dan, there's something else that you said is that you want people to succeed.

Yeah.

You know, you want to have fun, you want people who contribute to that, and you want people to succeed. That is an incredibly attractive mindset for any team member who is looking to grow, who wants to make a contribution. So, just that the fact you're not looking for people to fail, you're not looking for a cog in a wheel, you're actually looking for people to invest in and to help them succeed and grow. I mean, that just captures it all right there for me.

Yeah. Just one last thing. We have a team member who's 25 years or so that we both work with closely. I interact with her a lot because she's directly involved in my projects. She takes on an enormous amount of responsibility in the company that's freed me up. Kathy Davis is her name. And I said, Kathy, I want you to realize that I'm giving you a compliment. When I'm not with you, I'm not thinking about you. And she got it, you know, she got it. I know you're really great at what you do, and I know you're doing great things, so therefore I don't have to think about what you're doing.

It's such a profound statement, Dan. At first it sounds a little bit like, what? What do you mean you're not thinking about me? But imagine the opposite, because I've had a situation where—

I'm thinking about them all the time.

You have no idea the lost sleep that's happened, the lost hours.

It's energy, energy.

It's kind of terrible. And so it's like the highest compliment, the fact that you're not thinking about them because you're a trusted partner, you're someone you totally know is going to get it handled, or they're the person that's going to handle it. You don't even have to think about them. Like, how fabulous is that? That's unique ability, unique ability teamwork in action, because they're just so good at what they do, you don't have to worry about it. If you are worrying about them, that's actually the problem.

Oh yeah, yeah.

So I love that. It's such a fun twist on what people expect. I really, really, really appreciate your thinking and your mindset. I'm gonna get the transcript and use it as a template for something on unique ability teamwork. Your mindset and your attitude has attracted and continues to attract really, really great great team members with whom I get to work. So thank you for my own personal experience. But it also provides incredible leadership and direction to others who may have been trained or raised or just fallen into a different way of thinking about it. And I think this really helps provide the what and the why and the how for how to do it differently so they can have great team members too. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. This has been awesome.

We get together a lot socially, Shannon, but I want you to know I don't think about you at all when I'm at work.

Highest compliment ever. Thank you, Dan. Same goes. All right, thanks so much.

Thank you, Sharon.