70. Team Members You Can't Live Without

Foreign. Hey, my friend, welcome back to leadership in a nutshell where we're cracking the code of that driven mind you've been blessed with, my friend. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. I'm super pumped to be with you here today for episode number 70. We're already tapping 70 episodes into our great time together. Today's title is team members you can't live without. I'll let you put a question on that. I'll let you put an exclamation on that. I'll let you put an emoji on that if you want, whatever it is. But what are we talking about here, man? Team members you can't live without. I think about my career and the career of so many clients I've had the opportunity to work with over the course of my coaching career, and even just peer to peer career and mentoring career prior to becoming a formal coach so many years ago. But I kind of think about the way that I was brought up and the way I was taught, and I honor my education from Michael Gerber. When I went to the E. Myth Academy back in December of 2000. So I'll date myself a little bit. I mean, heck, we're pushing. 21 years ago that I went and started really understanding what it meant to systematize a company in my own path. I read the E Myth Revisited based on my accountant's recommendation. And at the time, I was like, oh, man, I couldn't get enough systemization. What? I can create systems that run the business. That's amazing. I couldn't get enough. Went to the back of the book. What is it like? What's this E. Myth Academy situation? I went there, I became certified as an E Myth consultant, and I'm like, awesome. I'm going to help other people. I'm going to fix my own service business. At the time, I. I'm ready. I had been in business about six years at that time. And it was, I don't know, we were probably four trucks, $800,000, something like that. And it was like, okay, cool. And then I started E. My thing. My company put that in air quotes and, like, systematizing my business, we'll say. And all of a sudden I went, I don't have time to work with other people. This is a lot of work. I gotta fix this business. Then I'll go help other people. Which is kind of the path that evolved for me and why I'm here with you so, so many years later sharing some thoughts and hopefully just more than sharing thoughts and any Wisdom is asking you to ask yourself questions. The goal with this podcast is to get you to take a moment each week and just take a step back and take a moment in time to stop and think for a minute. My goal, one of the reasons I'm on this planet, is to help people think about their thinking and choose their own reality of what they want to believe, who they want to be and how they want to execute their next level of life. That's what I do in my life. Leadership advisory work, it's what I do in my life. Architecture group work, it's what I'm here to do. And so when you think about designing your own life and business and regardless of whether you're an owner or a manager, it's irrelevant. You are the designer of your experience. And one of the fascinating things to me is that as I kind of evolved through that process and went, oh man, I'm going to have systems that run the company. And I unconsciously went into a state where team, team members almost became commoditized in my mind, like, oh well, I build really good systems. I'm a badass system creator. And so the best systems I create, then people can come in and operate those. And if Joey doesn't operate the system effectively or Joey decides to leave, it doesn't matter. It's the system, it's not Joey. Right. And I kind of went through that phase in my career and it wasn't a fun phase. It wasn't fun for me. It wasn't fun for my team or anybody that I really impacted. My business grew and I learned a lot and I got really good at systemization and understanding how to create. What Tony Robbins says, repetition is the mother of all skill. And that is true. As you create repetition based systems and benchmarks in your company, your company's going to grow. It's not rocket science, it's simple math and execution. And so I just want you to think today about team that you can't live without. And I've had a complete maybe a 180, maybe, maybe it's a 270, maybe it's a 360. Back to where I was and with a new understanding. But what I really want you to think about is team members that you can't live without. And I want you to just think right now and if you're in a place to write down, just jot down a quick note, two, three people that you could not live without if they left the business. And I'll give you just a second to do that. And as you do it, I want you to think about like, okay, now what does that mean to me? How many of you got a pit in your stomach right now? Show of hands. Oh, wait, this is audio. I can't see. I'm feeling you. If you raised your hand in your car right now, right? Because what can happen when you go, my gosh, man, if so and so left my business, that would leave such a hole? Oh, my gosh. I know for me, in many parts of my career, I would go into fear and I would go into anxiety and I would go into pain. I'll go, oh, my God. Here's the reality. There's a balance between self image, confidence and fear. Last week I talked to you about, you know, fear being the real war. Fear and confidence, I should say, being the real war. What I want you to honor today is the fact that, what if your list was longer? Some of you won't even write anybody down on that list of what? The team members that you can't live without. Because either it's twofold, either your ego is too big and you can't write down because it's all you and you're the one that makes it work. You're the founder, you're the CEO. It's all about you. And anybody can come and go. Kind of where I was back in the day of like, oh, I'll just create systems and anybody can run the systems. Or you won't build your list long enough because you're an optimist. You have an optimistic point of view, which you have to have to be an entrepreneur. You pretty much have to have to be a successful manager and a leader, I believe, as well. And so as you kind of think like, well, I can't not live without him. I wouldn't choose for him to leave, but I can't not live. That's kind of where I want you to just think today. And what if you increased your list? What if you built a list where everybody in the company was somebody you can't live without? And you go, wow, Kenny, I mean, that Joey that we just hired in install, I mean, we could live without him. What if Joey had so much talent and was such an incredible human that he might be the general manager one day? What if you start elevating the game and your culture and attracting team and talent that is beyond your wildest expectations and go, my gosh, I don't know what we do have. Joey left. He's got so much talent, he has so much ability. He has so much growth potential. I don't ever want to lose Joey. Here's the thing. We've been taught that to think about people as this commodity. I've said for years that I think people should show up on the balance sheet to be quantifiable. I believe that we're in the human capital investing space. The number one most important asset to your business is your team. And we all say that, don't we? We all know that on some level. But do we truly believe it? Because if we did, because then we would take this investor mindset and go, oh, my God, how can I grow this person? How can I help them elevate their game? How can they become even better? There's that old adage that was floating around for years. Maybe it still is. That whole thing of, you know, it wrecked all of us when we heard it. And then it's been thrown around forever by every consultant on the planet around, you know, well, what if I train them and they leave? That's how it goes. What if I train them and they leave? Well, what if I don't train them and they stay? And what if you just eliminated that dumb shit conversation in your mind anyway? I'm saying I love you. I'm just. I'm just saying, like, what if you just eliminated that and said, well, how about if they're here? I love them, I care about them, and I want them to grow. And how about everybody that is a team member here, I want them to be the very best in their own unique space and their unique genius in the best, like, capacity that they can possibly be. And so I'll soften it a little bit. Maybe it's not that, like, oh, my God, I can't live without them. But the business would not be the same. It might shift, it might change, it might even grow, I don't know. But it definitely would not be the same. What if we took a mindset like that? I don't know. What are we, 11, 12 team members at the time I'm recording this at blue collar, I don't know what we would do if any of them left now. It doesn't mean that they're not replaceable. It doesn't mean that if somebody left, if there was a tragedy and we lost somebody to this human experience, that blue collar would go away or that it would stop existing. But it would definitely be changed because we're building a team of unique geniuses within their unique ability. We're not there yet. I'm not even in mine yet completely. But as I'm committed to that, to go more and more into my genius, to spend more and more time helping you think about your thinking, more and more time in my life, architecture work and design work with high level leaders to think about their thinking and influence their teams and continue to get my leaders in more of those roles and all of our team and our frontline, everybody in those roles, then we can't live without those people. But we're taught that we should be afraid of it. The team that you can't live without. What a concept, my friend. What if we built all of that? What if we. Not from a codependent standpoint, but what if I said, well, sure, systems run companies, but people run the systems and incredible systems don't exist without incredible people. Now all of a sudden we're in this technology movement and we've got all this data and the data is only good, as good as the people reading it and more importantly, utilizing the data to do something with it. Write this down. If I can't live without my team members, I am building for mediocrity. If I can't live without my team members, I'm building for mediocrity. And I'm not talking about, oh, a GM and an ops manager. I'm not talking about, I got a solid service manager. I'm talking about all of your team. If you can live without somebody, you are average, you are embracing mediocrity and you are setting the bar too low. You're shooting for the curb, as we might say. I want you to elevate that. I want you to challenge that. I want you to say, man, we're building a team of unique geniuses that we can continue to help them get more and more in their own capability with higher capacity, with higher output, with higher performance, with higher fulfillment, with higher love for what they do, which is also going to in turn continue to evolve. That's ultimately what it's about. But when we run around scared, like I talked about last week, if I'm afraid, well, I can't build this to where if Chris left, then everything would come tumbling down. If Chris left, it would suck. Are you kidding me? I want nothing less than for Chris to leave. I don't ever want him to leave, but that would massively wreck this business for a moment in time. But I have self image, I have self confidence and I trust in my partnership with God, universe and spirit that if that happens, then that's the next part of my life and that's okay. But make no bones about it. Things would be painful, things would be challenging. Things would be a new evolution process because it would be a change. If not, then I've got the wrong president. If I've got a president of my business, I'm like, oh yeah, he could leave tomorrow. We wouldn't miss a beat. Then you've got the wrong person. You need to elevate your who's a little bit. You need to be mindful of who you are as a who. So how do we do this? Number one, we address our own confidence. I've talked in the past, there's a difference between confidence and self image. And I want you to really lean into your self image here. You might not have the confidence to do everything that this team member might do. Trust me, I, I built a. I can't stand when people say trust me. Strike that. And actually don't edit it out. I love it. Actually, we don't even edit this anyway. What am I saying? And now, you know, we don't edit it because I'm rambling along like that and it would get edited out if we edited this. I'm sorry. I love hanging with you. Bear with me. I got a point here. My point is that I built a contracting, very successful contracting company not knowing the skill. I'm not a plumber by trade. I'm a damn good drain cleaner. I'm a good salesperson, but I don't know how to do the work. I don't know how to do electrical, I don't know how to do H Vac. You wouldn't want me putting a water heater in. I could probably get through it from my years in the field. But you don't want it. So the reality is I don't have confidence in that skill, but I have massive self image in myself as a leader and myself as understanding the universe. And therefore, if a plumber left, it's like, okay, I'll figure it out. I want the best in the marketplace. But if that happens, or some of you have had team leave recently and go on their own, it's happened to everybody. It's happened to all of us. We see it happen and that's okay. It's part of the evolution of the world and what needs to happen, that's okay. So check your confidence in your self image and then manage that fear. There's nothing to be afraid of. The only thing is that things are going to change. So don't be afraid to change. There's nothing to ever be afraid of. Third thing, I want you to think about is unique advantage and just leaning into your own unique advantage and helping others lean more into theirs on your team. The bigger team of unique advantage driven individuals, the better you're going to be. When we call it unique genius, Dan Sullivan calls it unique ability, whatever it is, where it's those couple of things that you're better like, you cannot compete with somebody's unique genius. What they're here to do the thing that they're best in the world at, there's no competition for it and there doesn't need to be. And that's where we get stuck, is we don't allow people to go there because if that's all they do for the business, there's such a big hole if they leave that we're afraid of having that happen. I'm telling you to go into that hole, go deeper with your team, get people that you can count on to do just what they do better than anybody in the world. And then continuing to train, to coach, to evolve. The world's built on average. You don't want to be built on average, do you? I don't think you do. And that's why you might want to do a little check in. Do I have team members I can't live without? Maybe I'm shooting for mediocrity. Maybe I need to build more team members that I can't live without. I'm Kenny Chapman. This is leadership in a nutshell for the driven mind in home. I want to thank you for being with me. Episode 70 Team members, you can't live without making a phenomenal week. I can't wait to connect with you next week. Until then, I'll talk to you soon. Cheers.