Ep #5: Who Are You as a Leader of Your Team?

Hey everyone. I'm Chris Plackey and this is how to Lead for Female entrepreneurs and founders. Because the best way to grow a business is to grow the person who's running it. Let's go ahead and get started.

Hello, gorgeous.

How are you? I keep thinking about you. I am having so much fun, right? Just totally all in with my female entrepreneurs. And I have, if you could see my desk, I have all these notes, these little post it notes, because I keep getting all these ideas of what I need to talk to you about. And of course I don't have enough time and so I just, I'm full of things. All the things, as it were, that I just, gosh, I have so much I want to share with you. I am learning and growing so much from all of the wonderful women that I'm working with and just want to take the wealth of insight that we are sort of accumulate accumulating together and just create this repository. So certainly the podcast is that. So keep tuning in. And then for those of you who want to take this to the next level, I have a group that I'm running specifically for female entrepreneurs called the Executive Group. I'm only accepting a handful of new women to join this group every month. And if that is calling to you, if you've been listening for a while and you are someone who's running her own business and you are struggling with the human capital part, right? Like you have this great idea, you're making money, but you're feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and you're not getting what you need from the people that work for you. Or maybe you don't even have people that work for you yet because you don't even know where to start.

I think we should talk. So I always want to extend the invitation to book an appointment with me. Just go to chrisplackie.com appointment and we can schedule a 20 minute call and see if what I do aligns with what you need. Because the one thing I know for sure is if you have an idea and you've been making money, you cannot give up on what you're doing in the world because it's hard to manage and lead people. Don't do that. We can fix that part. Your brilliance, your vision, your. Your creative genius, whatever it is that you've built and put into the world, don't let that go dark because it's hard to lead people. We can figure that out, I promise. I've helped countless women do that part. I got you. But we have to meet in order to make that happen. Okay, so this podcast is kind of where I think every woman should begin when they start this journey of going from solopreneur to entrepreneur. And what I mean by that is, you know, as a solopreneur, it's just been you and maybe an assistant, or maybe not even assistant, but like you've contracted people, you've hired a graphic designer, you've hired a website person, but it's primarily you. But now you've gotten to the point where now you're really going to start to scale and add full time employees. And you may already be there. Right? A lot of the women that hire me already have five employees or eight employees or 12 employees, but they didn't really ever do this work on the front end, which is why it gets away from them and they get a little overwhelmed. And here's the journey I kind of want to walk you through. I want you to think about when you first decided to start your business. And if you're anything like me, that decision for me was well before I ever took action. I knew I wanted to have my own business, work for myself, do my own work in the world as a coach. I knew that's what I wanted, but I had a lot I had to do to get there. But the way that I felt about why I wanted my own business is in some ways different than the way that I feel now about why I want to have my own business. And so I do think, and I've heard, I think, I know you've heard me say this before, I do think we have to go through this process every time we go through growth and in our lives and in our business, we kind of have to take stock and reevaluate. Like, okay, why am I doing this? Right? I know when I first wanted to have my own business, I was really interested in freedom. I had worked in a corporate environment where I'd had a lot of opportunity to try things, but I still was limited, right? And I just wanted to go into the world and just play and try. And I just felt it in my bones like it was the right calling for me. And while I still want freedom, I'm not as interested in it in the way that I was before. Now it's about.

Really about purpose and service. And I'm actually willing to give up some of the freedom and create a more substantial organization than it just being me. Right? And so I've had to do a lot of my own evaluation of what am I doing now versus what I was doing seven years ago when I started. Right. And so I want you to think about that for yourself. So who were you when you started your business? How would you describe why you were launching your own business? Whatever it was, what was your reason? What were you trying to achieve? And now that you're where you are today, maybe your reason is the same, maybe it's different, Maybe it's a hybrid, right? What is it now? Why is that so important? Because I believe that as our business grows, we grow, right? And we're in. Well, if we want our business to continue to grow, we need to grow. And some people are better at that than others. If you don't do the work of growth, your business will also be stagnant. Like that just happens over and over and over again. The entrepreneurs that I work with who really move past these stuck spots are the ones who are actually willing to do the work on themselves. And I know that initially, you know, if you have a difficult issue with some of your team members or people aren't doing what you want, or you just feel like you have all the wrong people, you really want to just change all of that, and then you think everything will be better. And I'm not actually disagreeing with you, that actually could be true. But the woman who's going to make those decisions has to think differently than the woman who got you into those circumstances. Right? So we have to work on you. We have to do some real stretch assignments in your mind about what's next. And so I just have a series of questions that I want you to think about when it comes to your business and yourself as a woman who is leading, and you really are leading, both a business and a team. Now, I appreciate the team helps you deliver the results of the business, but I really want you to think about these two things, because I think as a solopreneur, you tend to think about your client, your sales, your customer, your revenue. Once you become an entrepreneur, we have to think much more holistically about the business, about your vision, and about the team that's going to help you get there. So I would be curious for you to really define yourself. You know, who are you in this role? Do you have a job description? What is your job? What is your contribution? What does the business expect of you?

Right. A lot of us gloss over that one entirely. Right. So what is it that you're responsible for in your business and to your team?

Right. What do you find is easy? What do you find is difficult? What do you love most to do in your business? Now this is super important because.

Founders really struggle here. You know, we are technical experts. I'm a coach, that's what I do. And one of the challenge, most challenging parts about being a really great coach and not having a lot of my own business, running my own business experience, I've led and managed teams for years, is I've really had to do my own growth in being a business owner. Like everything from insurance to. Right, like all the crap you have to know. And so, gosh, it's so much nicer if I could just coach people. I really prefer just coaching, but I can't just make that part of my platform. And as my business continues to get bigger, that will have to continue to change. I'm going to have to find ways to leverage my talent and my skill and my vision. And it can't just be all me. And I watch my clients have the same issue, whether they're in retail or coaching or lifestyle or, you know, staffing. There's all sorts of firms, different kinds of people that I work with. And so many of my clients are still, quote, unquote, work in a desk.

Right? You're not actually leading the business. You have to step out of the business. Because if the business is always relying on your technical competence, the business can't exist without you. And if you have plans to grow the business, to sell it, you cannot be, you physically cannot be integral to the success of the business or the business. People will only buy the business if you stay in it, which of course sort of defeats the purpose of selling it. Right. So keep that in mind. What do you love about what you do? I just asked a client this the other day and she said nothing. And that's so common.

So many of my clients when I first start working with them are just so overwhelmed by their business, they don't know where to start. And it's heartbreaking to me. I'm always so glad when those women find me because I know it's going to get better.

Because they have brilliant ideas and they do brilliant work in the world, but they're tired because they've tried to do too much with, with not enough tools to help them in managing and leading their business.

So some other questions to think about as you're really transitioning into the space on how to lead, right? Really think about yourself. Like, what.

What are you like to work for? Like, if I could go out today and talk to people who report to you, what would they say about you? What do you think you are like to work for? And then what do you want to be like to work for? What do you want your employee experience to be? We talk a lot about the customer experience. We talk a lot about.

How we want people to experience our company from a brand perspective as customers or clients.

But what do you want employees to feel as employees? What's the brand that you are cultivating as an employer for people who work for you? Have you, have you given it some conscious thought?

Because the truth is it's being cultivated whether you're doing it actively or not, right? Like it's happening. That's what culture is all about. So you're either doing it with intention or unintentionally. So I think you getting really clear about what you want that employee experience to be is critical. I had a conversation with another client about this last week and she hadn't really thought about it. She's just expanding, she's making really good money, she's got an incredible idea, great platform, and so she's going to grow her team. And so we had this conversation like, how do you want to employees to experience.

Your business working for you? And she went away and thought about it and then she sent me an email and said, I want employees to feel like they won the lottery working for me. And it was life changing for her, like, because she's never really thought about it. She thinks about how she wants her clients to feel that way, but not her employees, right? And then as soon as she started thinking about it that way with her employees, like, her brain kind of exploded, like, oh my gosh, what would that mean about so many things? Right? So some of the other questions then that kind of fall under that is, you know, why do you hire people.

And how do you want to pay people? And I know this sounds like such an odd question, I think, for a lot of people, because compensation doesn't get a lot of attention. But I believe that how you pay people is a philosophy. It comes out of a philosophy that you have. And again, it's either going to be happening unintentionally or intentionally. So let's get intentional because especially if you're smaller and you just have a few people, how you pay people matters now because you're going to start building off of it. But what happens is a lot of people, when they start paying people, they just think, well, how do other people pay people? How much do people normally make who have this job? And that becomes like your litmus. And then you're like in this tactical decision making process when you haven't really anchored how you pay people. Because philosophically, right? And so like, for my. My philosophy for paying people is, Is about results.

I could care less how many hours somebody works. If I don't get the result at the end of the day, I'm frustrated whether it took you two hours or 17. Like, I want the result I don't want. If I have to do part of your job that I paid you for, it's a no.

Right. So I have to be really clear then about how I set goals and how I talk to people about the work that I want them to do. Because most people think they're just get paid to work.

Not to deliver a result. And it's a different way of thinking.

And then we have people who, you know, do you think people should get bonuses? Do you think people should get some sort of incentive plan? Do you think people should be paid commission? Do you think people should get a profit share? Like, there's so many ways to think about paying people.

And there isn't a right or wrong one. It just has to align to your philosophy.

You know, profit share says if we win, everyone wins. It also says if we win, everyone wins. Even if you're a flake.

And you didn't and you didn't perform unless your percentage of the profit is tied to your goals.

Right. Like, I've never been a fan where everybody gets a bonus if the company does well because there's always people who don't perform. And of course, because I'm results focused, that's where I get the issue. I think it should be about individual contribution is how people are compensated. So how you want to pay people is an important leadership decision. What you are going to make important as a leader is an important decision. So we talk about expectations a lot. And I'll probably do a whole podcast on expectations here shortly. So I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it. But I do want you to think about one of the big things to avoid. And maybe the best way for me to say this is to ask you a question that you can think about. What are the assumptions you make that other people think about working.

That you've realized are assumptions. So, for example, one of the assumptions that a lot of people make is that people work hard when they are paid well. The other assumption is that people know what being paid well means.

What you think is being paid well to someone else is whatever it's expected, it's not anything special. But when it's your money coming out of your pocket, right, like you think very differently about that money than somebody else who might just be working 35 hours a week for it. So how we pay people is a direct correlation of our philosophy. But then the expectations we have of people who work for us, we have to get out of assumption land. We have to be able to communicate them. But most of clients that I work with, at least initially, don't have any clue what their expectations are of other people, because they think other people think like them. So they don't even think of them as expectations. It's just like, well, doesn't everybody think this way? No. I can promise you, most people that you will hire will not think like you, which is where a lot of your frustration could be avoided if you calibrated and set clear expectations on the front end instead of assuming that people think like you. As an entrepreneur, this is probably one of the biggest frustrations I know you have, which is, why don't they get the work done like I want them to? Why do I have to always remind people, why can't they just get it done? Like, what is the problem? They don't think like you. Right. So who are you as a leader? What's easy, what's difficult? How are you different today than you were when you first started your business? What is it like to work for you? What do you want it to be like for employees who work for you?

What's your philosophy around paying people money? And what expectations do you have of people who come onto your team? I think that's a lot for you to ponder, even yet. But if you're finding that the wheels are frazzling on your team and you're just. You're. You're overwhelmed, you feel unfocused, you feel like you're drowning in your team, I would invite you to start right there. You've got to ground who you are as the leader of this team. There are so many more things I would want to talk to you about, but in the short window of time that I allot for this podcast, I can't overwhelm you and I can't get into all of it. But you know best who you want to be as a leader of your business with a team and who you don't want to be. But you have to explore it and pay attention to it and give it energy and attention. So take some time this week. Listen to this podcast a couple times, Write those questions down, write down your answers, and if you feel like you do want more support and you want to work with me and learn from other women like you. Then let's schedule some time and meet and talk through what your immediate challenges are. And I can tell you how the work I do will help all the things go to chrisplackie.com appointment but until then, have a great week and I'll talk to you next time.

Hey, don't miss a thing. Make sure you join my community@chrisplacky.com SL Connect. Once you join, you'll get all the information on exclusive and private experiences that I'm offering to my clients. I can't wait to see you there.

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