Perry Belcher: Fix 90% of Your Business’s People Problems in 30 Days

According to Mark Ford, and this is his thing, and almost no one argues with it that I talked to, that's achieved a great deal of success. 70% of the success is people, 15% is the business model or your idea. 10% is timing, and 5% is everything else. So for us guys that think our marketing is the key to our success, it's not a sustainable key to success. People are a sustainable key to success.

What's going to happen next is you're going to hear a presentation from a guy that's going to deliver to you a skill that I believe from the impact filters and from a lot of requests over the years that people want to know how to do. And you'll hear what that is in a moment. So I will introduce him. His name is Perry Belcher. How many of you know Perry Belcher? Okay. He grew up as the son of a single mother in a housing project in Paducah, Kentucky to become one of the most innovative business owners, leaders and investors in America today. To date, Perry has recorded some $500 million in direct online sales for his companies. And he's advised his clients to sell billions. In 2008, Perry found a digital marketer with his partner, Ryan Deiss that would go on to be the largest direct marketing training company in the world. In addition, Perry has founded or Co founded 11 companies, seven which have resulted in seven and eight figure exits. He's known as a master copywriter, storyteller, media strategist, and inbound marketing expert. Give it up for my friend, Perry Belcher.

Cool. Well, hey, I gotta do a big boy talk today. I usually talk about copywriting and selling crap and things like that, but a little bit's changed for me lately. I don't know where the. How can I. Is there a confidence monitor thing where you can see the slides? There we go. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's a little bit different for me right now. I had a really good year last year, So I had four exits in the last 12 months. Two of eight figure companies and two of seven figure companies. So yeah, thanks. So I had to kind of. I appreciate it. Thank you. So I kind of had to put on my big boy pants now. Cause I'm out of shit to do. I don't have anything to sell. So I'm starting new companies again. So I'm replanting after Ryan and I had a 12 year run with digital marketer and I sold out my interest to Ryan to digital marketing and Roland recently. And we sold our TNC event or a Big piece of it to Blackstone Group, Clarion, and we sold another part, another company, part of another company to Agora. The Agora companies. So it was a really good year. So going back and looking at, hey, what am I going to do now? I got to plant some new stuff. And you get asked all the time, if you teach, if you had to start all over again, what would you do? Well, I got to start all over again, right? Or I got to quit and retire. And I didn't feel like doing that because I'll get even fatter than I am now. So when I went back and kind of did a postmortem of everything I've done in my life and what I've done well and what I've done poorly, and the latter is a much bigger column, I kind of discovered, I think, that my biggest challenge was people, you know, getting the right people on the bus, building the right kind of teams. And I study things a year at a time. So I'll study storytelling for a year. I'll study cults for a year. I'll study copywriting for many years. But this year, this past year, I began studying people and team building. And I've had a lot of help. Fortunately, guys like Mark Ford, Michael Masterson, as some of you know, Michael Masterson is now a business partner of mine, one of the driving forces of the Agora companies I was fortunate enough to hire and bring on to my company. Now one of the first employees of Zappos and a COO of Zappos, merchandising VP and eventually CEO of Zappos, is now at my company. Can you imagine how disappointed he is? But I learned a lot about hiring from him. I learned a lot about how people work and how to motivate people. And I think entrepreneurs have this consistent challenge of how to hire, how to motivate, how to compensate, and how to retain people. So I want to talk to you about what I've learned most. Everything I'm teaching you here, I'm applying now in my businesses, and we're seeing great results. Most of it I did not create. So I want to give the proper people credit as I move along. So here's what I realized. People are the whole ball game. It's hard to get a lot of entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, to agree to almost anything. If you talk to five really smart people who've done great things in their life, they all have differing opinions of how they got there and what they did. But the one thing people almost universally agree that I talk to that have built big successful companies is that roughly these are the numbers. People make up 70% of the success or failure of any venture. The people you put on the bus. And we tend to spend a lot less time than 70% of our time concentrating on that. Right. I'm a business models guy. I think that's what I've always. Business models and marketing, right? It's always been my thing and it's been able to push me through. But I've probably picked up, you know, fortunately, I've picked up millions of dollars, but probably stumbled over hundreds of millions of dollars by not having the right people in my organizations, Especially from the very beginning. So according to Mark Ford, and this is his thing, and almost no one argues with it that I talked to, that's achieved a great deal of success. 70% of the success is people, 15% is the business model or your idea, 10% is timing, and 5% is everything else. So for us guys that think our marketing is the key to our success, it's not a sustainable key to success. People are a sustainable key to success. Talent wins games, teams win championships. Right? So retain. You know, it's very difficult right now in this market. Unemployment rates are very low. The competition for talent is great. Right? So how do you build great teams? Talent's hard enough to find, but to get people to work in teams together, and you guys probably have a lot of great people to work for your work with you already. You've got to do a couple things, and it really all starts with you. You got to get your people running toward the proper end of the football field if you're going to win a game. Right? People are running against the green. Won't make anything happen. And everybody thinks, oh, my. People all understand. They're all good. We've got this culture. I hear people talk about culture all the time. I hear people talk about focus and all those things. But you should do this experiment when you get home. If you don't do anything else that I talk about, please do this. Go back when you go home and write these five questions on a piece of paper or form and ask everyone in your company, independently, without talking to someone else, to fill these out and hand them back in to you personally. It will shock the shit out of you what people think you do and how they think you do it. Here are the questions, and they're really. These are the Peter Drucker questions. What business are we in? That one will throw you off, because you would think everybody's going to get that one right, right. I'd say 30% maybe. Who is our customer? What is our customer value? What have our results been so far and what's our plan for the future? Right. If you get an agreement above 30%, you're beating the average of everybody I've worked with so far. So how do we expect a team to work as a team in one direction if we don't tell them what direction to move in? So that's on you. Right. So I'll talk about how to get that. Right. So I gotta really move because I'm not used to this speed. I'm from the South. It takes us 20 minutes to say howdy. Alright. So the first part's hiring. Right. And I'm not gonna spend too much time on it because I don't have a lot and it's a big subject. But we believe now in the rapid hiring process. So my fellow Steve Hill, that came from Zappos, Zappos had to hire something like 2,000 people in 18 months when they were on the rocket ship up right to acquisition by Amazon. It was inevitable and they developed a pretty cool. They developed some principles. Netflix, Patty McCord that wrote a book called Powerful, if you get a chance to read that book, talks about how Netflix did the same thing. But it's a rapid hiring principle and basically very unorthodox. Pre interview as many people as you can. Try to get as many people onto like a Skype interview or a phone call as you possibly can. Pre interview them. We Love Indeed and LinkedIn. We've used a lot of the combined services without too much success. Indeed and LinkedIn do the best for us. We do a live interview with a scorecard. Right. So we'll ask 10 or so questions and we score the answers one through 10. We're looking for people that score over an eight. Right then. And this is the part I don't think anybody does. You reveal the mission of the job, right. The milestones and the timeline or deadline that these things have to be met in to the applicant. You're clear. Almost like you're hiring a contractor. This is what we're doing. These are the milestones that we're going to measure you by. And this is the timeline that has to be done in. And you ask them, can you do this? How many of you have actually done that in a job interview ever? Very few hands, right? You just hire somebody. This is a job. You want it or not? Yeah. Come in and we'll tell you all about it later. Right. You would never hire a Contractor that way. Think about it. You would hire a contractor to build your house. Hey, you're a pretty good contractor. Yeah. All right. Hell, build me a house. You wouldn't do that, Right. It doesn't make sense. But we do it all the time, right? Get their agreement and ask them. I usually ask them here, what are the first three things that you're going to do that'll fuck them up, boy. Because half the time. Oh, yeah, yeah, I can do that. Ain't no problem. Yeah. They have no idea what the first three things are they would do. Right. And then here's the shocking part, the unorthodox part. If they do agree and they give you reasonable answers and they've scored the eight plus, hire them on the spot without hesitation. There's a couple of reasons for this. Number one, in this market, you can't let somebody walk out the door who's a good hire. You need to lock them down at the table because it's too competitive market. Secondly, it's pretty low risk if you have a prenup. So what we'll say is, look, here's what we need done. Can you do that? Yep. What were the first three things you. That sounds reasonable. Great. You're hired. Here's the salary we're paying you. And I'll talk about salaries in a second. A compensation. But if you don't hit these early milestones, we'll have to park company. You understand? Right. So then there's no hard feelings when somebody is dismissed because they can't meet the task. But almost nobody sets that prenup at the interview. Right. So that's hiring. Golly, I gotta move fast. This time is eating up. So this is the important stuff that I learned from Mark Ford. So when you're building your teams, you need to understand there are four kinds of people, four types, four roles. In any organization, almost everybody falls in one of these four roles. Those are craftspeople, growers, tenders, and profit producers. The biggest failure that we make as business owners, managing teams in compensation and motivation, all those things, is thinking that all those people are motivated and driven by the same thing. They're not. They're completely different. Their motivations are different. Everything's different. So who is a craftsperson? If you were building a house, a craftsperson would be the person who lays the bricks, hammers the nails, puts on the roof. Right. But for us in our business, and these examples are from my business, it doesn't may not apply to yours. It's graphic artists, customer service people, technical people, accountants, logistics, HR, etc. Their responsibilities are to follow a mission, take care of the mechanics of the business, make sure that the customer wins, develop systems. Who do they work for? They work for the tenders. I don't know where the marks are. If I'm walking on a mark, tell me and throw a tomato at me. So, and what are they motivated by? This is really big deal. They're motivated by appreciation. And these are the big things you're going to find. The top three roles are all A's. Try to remember the three A's. Appreciation for craftspeople. They want a clear direction, training, feedback, to have a voice that's heard by management, and order. They also like a very nice environment. Good craftspeople will work for less money and harder in a nice environment that they'll work in a bad environment for more money. That's the reason people have all those big fancy buildings. Wow, this is fast. So how do you compensate those people? We pay them 110% of local salary, plus we give them awards. A really nice environment that's stable. And they almost never work remote. They like. They tend to like the camaraderie of coming to the office and working because they tend to be kind of, I'll say, lonely people, but less social people. Right. So their family. Their second family is at home. Right. No marks. You can walk wherever you want. Oh, thank you. All right, cool. So tenders. So the second person is a tender. We call them managers in a lot of cases.

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I think I skipped a side. I think I can talk. I can talk you through this. There's a slide in here for this. They got out of order, so I don't have time to screw up. Oh, there. It's out of order. Okay, so the second person actually. The second person is actually a grower. Yeah, that's right. So tenders are born of craftspeople. Remember that. Tenders are born. Write that down. Tenders are born of craftspeople. We're gonna get to tenders in a minute. That's what messed me up. Okay. The second kind of person is a grower. These are probably who you are or were at one point. In your organization, they're the people who drive top line revenue. They make the cash register ring. They're the marketers, the copywriters, the affiliate managers, business development people, product producers, traffic buyers, right? Their responsibilities are to follow a mission. Oh, excuse me, that's out of order. That's what it is. Their responsibilities are to drive top line revenue. That's an inaccurate slide. But their motivation is very, very, very different. Their motivation is admiration. Not appreciation, but admiration. Big difference, right? They need individual wins and individual measurement. I never pay group commissions or group rewards to growers. They're all compensated individually. They demand really very little management. They have to be managed by metrics and numbers, not by somebody standing over their head going, did you make that call today? Did you make that call today? Did you make that call today? You can't do that. We give them, we call it remote freedom. In other words, you're kicked out of the office. We don't allow growers to work in our office. And there's a reason for that. There's a strong reason for it. Because if you don't do that and you give them the freedom that they need, you're going to create a giant rift between them and your craftspeople. Tell me if you've experienced that, why does he get to come to work whenever he wants to and I have to be here at 9:00 in the morning, right? Because he makes the fucking cash register ring. Right? That's why. So. But you can't say that. I can't hear. I'm just kidding, guys. If you're watching at home. And they need a constant challenge. They need to be changed. They need to change and challenge constantly. So how do you compensate them? We pay 200% of average salary versus individual compensation. 200%. They're hard to find, you know, copyrighted royalties, 3 to 5%. These are examples. Median affiliate, 25 cents, a front end order. Brand managers get 50 cents per renewal for my $17 a month continuity programs. List managers get 2% of the net of whatever they sell via the list, et cetera. So these are some examples, but it's all individual compensation. Never give a grower people to manage. That includes all of you. Chances are when you're giving people to manage, you're probably less successful if you're a good grower. Growers are terrible managers and they have no ascension path within your company. That sucks, right? But you've got to set it up to where they can make more money than the managers like at Agora companies. A Good copywriter can clip off $100,000 a month if they got a killer promotion going. The managers aren't making anywhere near that. You gotta be okay with a grower making way more money than you in a short term period. From time to time, maybe even a long term period, be happy you got them. But they can't manage people. If you do, you'll slow them down. Right. They'll spend all their time trying to manage and they're terrible at it. Instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing and generating revenue. All right, so tenders, third kind of person, they're general managers, project managers. They manage craftspeople, they measure growers, they coach growers, and they hold margins. They help the profit. They help the profit producer, which is the fourth kind of person, hold the margins. They work for the profit producer. What motivates them? Authority, autonomy, a clear vision, order titles, shocking titles, and a seat at the table. So these are your managers. How do you compensate them? It's very different. Up to 150% of average salary paid in quarterly bonuses. This is the way we do it. Although after listening to Craig, my buddy Craig Clements talking earlier, we may go to monthly. I think it's a better, better gig. But if they hit 100% of goal, they get a 25% salary bonus for that quarter. If they hit 150% of goal, they get 50% salary bonus. If they hit 200% of goal, they get 100% of salary bonus for that quarter. Right. It's a little bit deferred. So that's how you compensate a tender. The fourth role is the profit producer. This is the person likely running your company. And they're usually not an entrepreneur type person, they're not a growth type person. They're a profit kind of person. Right. They're the person in charge of making sure there is a bottom line to the bottom line. Right. We're all junked out on selling more, most of us. Right. You need one person in your organization, this profit producer, usually a CEO role that manages the bottom line. Right. These are the present CEOs or publishers. Their number one responsibility. Everything else is very secondary, is profit. They set the mission, Work with the board to set the mission. They make deals and they recruit talent. They don't hire it, they just recruit it. The tenders hire it, they attract it. Their motivation are profits winning, watching other people succeed, and probably having an equity position in your company someday that you should freely give them profit. This was the thing that Mark Ford made a Point to me and I got two minutes left. And it's hard to get in your head. Profit is an unnatural state. The natural state of most businesses is breakeven. You've got customers at the top who want more for their money. You've got vendors who want to give you less for your money. You've got employees who want to work less for more money. So the pressure between creates an upward and downward pressure that creates a break even cycle. And that's why most businesses left poorly managed will run at break even until there's an unfortunate event. And they won't have the resources to recover after that unfortunate event. That's unpredictable. And they go out of business. So profit is in a natural state. So your profit producer is not going to be the most popular person in the building, which you probably all want to be, because I do. I want everybody to love me, right? But a profit producer doesn't care. They just say, no, you can't have that raise till you make more money. No vendor, you can't have more money for that item. We'll go somewhere else. And customers, sometimes you can't have everything you want for the amount of money you're paying us. And that's just what they do. It's not something that fun people like us want to do. That's why we're handicapped. And that's the reason I have a guy like Steve now who does all that. And it's awesome. What do you pay them? Salary? Whatever it takes. Plus 5 to 10% of the net profits. It's a lot. It's a whole lot. But they're totally worth it if you can find them. Oh, Jesus, I'm out of time. Can I extend or no, Joe? Huh? All right, I'm almost done. So now those are the four roles. These are the four types of people. This is very short. You know the four roles. Now, there are four types of people in your organization, right? Front runners. These are people, not roles. Front runners, middlers, laggards and obstructionists. Who knows all these roles, right? You all have them right now. So what do you do with these people? How do you deal with them? Laggards. Fire them and leave an empty seat. Go back tomorrow and fire their ass. Do not hesitate. Do not pass go. Get them out of your building. They are a cancer, a blight on your organization. They're the worst. They're the boat anchor dragging down everyone else. And write this down. If you don't write down anything, nothing will kill a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a Bad one. Nothing will kill a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one. It's the biggest sin you can commit in your business. What do you do with the frontrunners? Load their wagon, give them more to do. You want something done, go to a busy person. Here's the great part. Fire and leave an empty seat. If you don't, you'll say, well, I'm going to fire that guy, but I'm going to look for a replacement first. I got to do this and I got to do that and I got to do this and I got to do that and you'll put it off because you know why? Because it's unpleasant. And what do you want everybody to love you. It's an unpleasant thing to do. Nobody likes firing anybody, I don't think. Unless you're like masochist. But here's a little trick. Go to the front runner and say, hey look, I'm gonna fire. If I fire Jimmy on Tuesday, will you do his work until I find somebody else? Front runner will say, fuck yeah, let me fire him. I've been waiting for you to shit can that piece of shit forever. I hate that lazy motherfucker. Right, they will. Cause they detest that. Just give them the work to do. You got somebody willing to do it, get the salary off and take your time finding somebody. Who? Right? The third kind of person. The third person, but they're number two on the list are the middlers. You just leave them alone. Unfortunately, your company is going to be built mostly of middlers. These are people in the middle. They're the average. Some are going to rise, some are going to fall. As you give more to the front runners, right? They're going to delegate that down and either the middlers are going to pick it up and become front runners or they're going to be overwhelmed and they're going to become laggards and eventually they'll wipe out. Right? Then lastly, you got obstructionists. Who has an obstructionist in their business right now? Somebody who's just a pain in the ass, just screws up everything, argues with everybody. Nobody likes, right? Always, right. So what should you do with them? Fire em faster maybe. And this was the wisdom of Mark Ford, and I'll give him this, and it was genius. He said most of the time when you have an obstructionist, they're like a kid acting up in class because they're bored or they're in the wrong classroom. You've got a craftsperson in a grower's role. A grower's in a craft person's role, a manager in a grower's role. A lot of times we'll say, oh man, that guy, he's really kicked ass. He sold so much stuff. We're gonna make him a manager now. Right? And he's excited about it because he thinks that's he or she thinks that's the escalation path. Then they find out they suck at being a manager, they can't sell anymore, they're frustrated and they just start acting out and picking on everyone else. It's not necessarily their fault. Most of the time it's not their fault. Right. You just got to get them in the right role. Alright, so last thing. Quarterly evaluations. Dismiss the bottom three people, promote the top three and then have a team building event. Right after that we do two day off site meetings. I'm not talking about this. Make sure your people understand these five questions. There's not enough time for that. Create a board of your profit producers. Put them on a board, advisory board. Create an internal advisory board within your business of your people. They'll be glad you did. They'll feel like they're respected and share and edit a written plan that everybody buys into on a piece of paper and signs with an ink pen. There's something about signing your name to something like a contract. It's not a contract, but it's an agreement everybody agrees to. Then everybody's running toward the right goal post and you win. And if you're really good, you can outsource all the stuff that's not decision making to someone else. Thank you very much. Sorry that took extra time. I appreciate it. Thank you.

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