"Empower Your Team: Strategies to Increase Productivity and Trust"

If you have a team, you need to make sure they're empowered, that they're taking on projects instead of just tasks, so you can stay productive and focus on the big picture to grow your company. Otherwise, you're going to get caught in the trap of doing the same thing over and over again, running on the treadmill, and never seeing significant growth with your business. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. I believe that hungry entrepreneurs deserve help, and today I'm answering a question from a loyal YouTube viewer, Pablo, who wrote in to say, "Great video, Evan. My concern is about the productivity of people I manage and the impression I may give if I'm unreachable or unavailable to meet them, see them, or talk to, talk to them when they need me. I feel I could lose their trust or lose opportunities." So Pablo, this is important. When you're selecting your team, most important thing to start with is you're picking the right people. Okay? I like running a no-crisis business. And that starts with getting the right people on board. If somebody needs to be micromanaged and I need to watch over them, they're not the right person for me. I don't like micromanaging. I don't like looking over somebody's shoulder and making sure they're doing their work. You gotta love what you do. You gotta love what this business stands for and put your everything into it and not need to have constant supervision. Okay? If you're having a problem with that, It's your selection. You gotta get better employees. Next up, you're talking about trust. You want to hire people who can take on projects and not just tasks. The difference is really important. If you give somebody tasks, you're telling them exactly what to do. Do this, do this, do this. You're training them and they go do it. But they're always going to come to you with questions and what the next task is. The next step up is to hire people who could take on projects. Where you say, "Here's my goal. Here's what I'd like to accomplish. Go out, make a plan, and help me do it. And we'll review the plan together, and you go and implement." You want to build trust with your employees? That's the way to do it. Give them real responsibilities. And if your people aren't ready to do that yet, either you've got the wrong person, or you need to train them to think bigger with their opportunities at your business. People like to come to work for me because they see other opportunities to be able to grow instead of just doing a task, a task, a task. It's so important because that frees up your time. If you have to get caught into the day-to-day running of your business all the time, you're never going to be able to focus on building new opportunities, on growing the business, on doing new things to take your business forward. The last thing I do that, that really helps build trust and make the employees feel like they're part of something bigger is every person on my team, from the marketing person all the way up to the people who are core to my business, I meet with them once a month. We sit down and we have a monthly meeting. These are the full-time staff of my company, and we talk about what they want to accomplish. We talk about how the past month has been, what they want to accomplish going forward, what challenges they're having, and I lay out what my plan is for them. People want to know that there's something bigger in it for them than just what they're doing right now. Some people want to manage a team. Some people want to learn new skills. Some people want to develop into new areas. You can help them. You have to know what they want, and that comes from sitting down with them regularly. So meet with them once a month, ask them what their goals are, talk about what they're going to accomplish for the next month, and do a review. I don't have that many issues that happen day to day anymore. I don't have to be super responsive because my team handles everything in my company. They know what they're doing and I've trusted them with the responsibility of doing their projects so I can focus on the big picture stuff with my company. Okay, so you have to start off with bringing in the right people. Then you've got to assign projects and not just tasks and trust that they're going to follow up and do the work. If they can't, you got to get new people. And 3, you have to follow up once a month, show you care, take an interest in their development. And if you show that loyalty to them, they will give you their heart and soul and help you build your company beyond what you ever expected. Good luck, Pablo, and thank you for all the comments that you've been leaving on the videos. For those of you watching, if you like this one, please give it a thumbs up below. And I want to hear from you too. Please leave a comment under the video. It makes me want to do more, and I'd love to hear what you have to think about this video, or if you have a question for your own business, please leave it in the comments below and I will answer you. Thanks guys, I'll see you soon.