Empowering People to Take Ownership of Projects and Coming Up with Solutions Brian Minick

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind.

I'm Larry Weddell.

And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I'm here with Brian Minick and Brian has a fascinating story of how his company Zero bounce exploded in four years to over 100,000 paying companies, customer companies in every country in the world. And, you know, you learn some lessons from doing those kind of things. And so thanks for taking the time to share some of your insights today, Brian.

You're welcome. Thank you. I appreciate you having me And Brian.

Let me ask you this, talk about, you know, we're all human beings and you, you know, you got to look for where your satisfaction, you know, you, you get to get satisfaction from what you're doing. You need approval, you know, some kind of side. You got to have success at some point. You got to have success. And part of success is feedback from the people you're around that, you know, this relationship is working. You know, you as a, you know, they're responding to you. You know, you're the, you feel free to make comments, to kid around with them, to make suggestions and have them take it in the right kind of way. But, you know, to know you have their respect, you know, that's not, that's what the rookie leader, the new boss in a situation and an existing veteran team, that's the hurdle they have to overcome. It's easier when you're doing a startup. But talk about that phenomena of working your way up to where you have and how important it is to have the respect of the team and the people you're working with.

Yeah. So to me, it's probably, it's up there on the top of the list of most important reasons, you know, most important things that you should be focusing on as you're trying to grow a company. But, you know, one of the, one of the things that makes me very, you know, fulfilled is getting messages all the time from team members saying we couldn't have done this without you or thank you for everything. And you know, my response is usually, I didn't do anything. You did it. No, no, no, Brian, you did it. No, no, no, no, I didn't do it. I enabled you to accomplish great things which then gave me the satisfaction back. Right. So, you know, it's a very, to me, a selfless thing where you really, you want everyone else to be successful. And when you have success within business units of the organization, that especially you're responsible for, directly responsible for, I mean, that's an achievement. That's a good feeling. And, you know, you sleep well at night, you wake up in the morning energized, and so does the people around you. And so, you know, respect in the business world can be purely based on title, right? So you're my superior and I quote, unquote, respect you form of garbage, in my opinion. I've always looked at it as we're all on the same playing field. Titles are nothing. They're not, you know, it's not what makes and breaks a company, it's the people. So, you know, putting yourself on their level and vice versa, letting them have some, some say in what we do and they understand why we're doing things and have input and decision making as part of that. So for me, that's pretty achieved. It's a very big achievement that is very hard to actually even explain, but it kind of creates some bubbles inside that just make you feel good.

It is hard to explain, but it's worth making the effort to try to explain it because, you know, it comes from the fact that they sense you respect them and you're going to back them and, you know, you're in it together, that type thing. And the other thing is they got to get the idea we're doing something big here. The, you know, this is important, this is big, and you got a big, big role in it. And this is going to, you know, this thing we're trying, it's not just something we're doing to make work or to, you know, to appear to be busy. We're doing this to explode the company, to grow the thing, break it in new markets, you know, come up with new services, new ideas that hadn't been thought of before. And, you know, we tried to revolutionize the way this thing, you know, quicker, faster, simpler, better. And to have that kind of feeling, well, you're really not going to have any of those things happen if your team doesn't have that respect back and forth for you. Fear only goes so far. I mean, you can drive a company with fear, but usually the leader that comes in and drives a company with fear doesn't last long. That's why I think a lot of CEOs have short shelf lives inside companies. They come in, they're going to clean this up. They got a directive from the board of directors that this is screwed up and By God, they're going to come in not, you know, a new sheriff in town. And, you know, they throw things around and yeah, they fix that problem. In the process, they alienate everybody on the team. You know, it's kind of like, you know, win the battle, lose the war. And this thing about turning empowering, you know, what we're talking about, empowering your team. The funny thing, I remember so many things from my experience of going through this when we were building our financial services network all over North America, you always have training centers that you launch things out of and your hub. And so especially back in the dark ages, you know, before all of the technology. But, you know, it was face to face. You know, you had to see people, you had to talk to people, you had to have in person meetings and all. But, you know, in the beginning, Brian, we have to come up with a solution. There's nobody else around.

But.

And the thing is, the faster you go, there's more decisions you to be made. And what I found, you know, our job, we were preparing people for leadership. We were trying, you know, the purpose of it was not just to make sales. The sales were a byproduct of the training and the development of the leaders who as quickly as possible would have their own core of a new team and they could launch and get their own location. And so you're trying to empower them to be independent leaders on their own. And in the beginning, I used to stay up nights kind of, you know, you have so many decisions to make when you grow. And, you know, I just drove myself nuts with this. But finally, guess what? I wore myself out. And I said, I just, just from the sheer volume of this thing, I just reached a point where I said I would my job, Brian, became to be the guy, to recognize where we were headed and what was getting ready to be a problem and to go in the group and say, hey, we're doing great, things are happening, we're compounding. Unbelievable. But guess what? Growth creates bottlenecks. Growth. You outgrow rooms, you outgrow pipelines, you outgrow. Maybe this will take 30 gallons of water an hour through this pipe. But if you hit a gusher and you need 100 gallons of water, you get a river, you know, you're going to overflow, you're going to flood. So you read these problems with size of training, class size of facility, size of everything. And I just got the point right, where I changed how I looked at my job. And I look to my job as I'm the guy who's got to recognize what's coming. Go get the team. Team leaders and say, hey, we can keep doing what we're doing, but you know, we're going to explode this system. And so we've got a lead time now to think about it. What are we going to do about this? Because we're going to be there pretty quick. And so some. What I found was sometimes the dumbest guy in the room had the best idea. This is undeniable, really. Not always, but give him a chance to throw some ideas out there. And that's when magic can happen, because that stimulates you too, because you start firing back. You know, you stimulate each other rather than you have to be the person, you know, because you decide, you know, Moses is on the mountain, he comes down with the ten commandments, and. And he's got to ram them down everybody's throat. You know, that's the way a lot of leaders run their businesses forever. You know, we've got some marketing people who work with us out of Miami in our art business. And their father had a furniture company down in Argentina. The oldest daughter was a whiz at business. She went to school, she got her degree. While she was doing that, while she was growing up, she essentially ran the clothing factory. And then she got her degree. That's her father. Only if you do it my way. It's like, what, you know, she had been running it already. Why not trust her? And her thing was. Her thing was, why did I go to school if you're not going to let me run things? Use what I've learned, Experiment, grow, drive this thing up. I've already proven that, that I can run it your way. But, you know, the future is going to be different. Guess what? He didn't budge. She quit. She moved to Miami from Argentina. Her little sister went with her. And that's why. That's why they're in Miami today. And the father had no one left, so he had no choice but to just shut the factory down. He couldn't even get anybody to buy it. And the thing is, stubbornness plays out in failure. Everywhere you look. You know, that's easy to find examples, but that's why, you know, the success. Success is not necessarily genius all the time, but it has to do with being flexible, being dynamic, getting good people, getting good ideas on the table, batting them around and say, which one do we want to do next? And so it all comes around. You know, the respect you get from them really relates to. And to build that respecting team really comes down to empowering your people to take ownership of projects and come up with solutions, don't you think?

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I couldn't agree more. I mean, you have. If you don't trust your decision makers, then what are you doing? Right? That's not the right person. And, you know, one of the things that I found challenging as I was shifting from making all the decisions to hopefully making very little decisions was always agreeing with the decision that was presented to me. Right. Or the direction that was going to be chosen. So, you know, there's plenty of times where I didn't agree 100% with the path, but I said, you know what? This person's more connected to it maybe has a different point of view. I've gotten all the information. I don't think it's wrong. I think it's just different, and I'll let him go for it. And if they, if they fail, what's the worst thing that can happen? I always think about what is literally the worst thing that can happen. Now, if we're talking about a life, life's on the line. That's different story, right? But if we're talking about, you know, will this piece of marketing be 10% effective or 11% effective? What's the, you know, is that worth not trusting somebody? Is that worth kicking or kicking their legs out and ruining everything you're going for? No. So, you know, trust them, and if you don't trust them, you should evaluate that person. That's just really how I feel. But once they, once they say, oh, I know you don't agree with the decision completely, but this is the way I really think it should be. And you let them do it. If they fail, it's okay, and they will think differently next time. And so I think that's just what's continuously important is that let that process, let people fail. I actually think it's super important to let people fail. Like, we've, we have not moved as a country because we've been successful on every single thing we've done. We've failed all over the place. And you have to just live and learn. And so letting people live and learn is how they're going to also help you grow and put that trust back in. Right.

There's a couple of other aspects to it, and that is when you come up. When you come up with a growth situation and a growth problem or opportunity, you really don't know if the solution, no matter who comes up with it, is really going to work. Just because the leader comes up with it doesn't mean that it's going to work this time. It may have worked the last 10 times, but that doesn't mean that at this volume, at this scale, at this geography and this market climate, that that is going to be the answer. And so you really don't know until it plays out. But a lot of the success will come from how enthusiastically the plan is implemented, you know, once the decision is made. And what I found was just like you, when the team came up with a solution that, you know, I had tried 15 times and it always fallen on his face and it didn't work and this, that and the other. And. But, you know, they were excited about it. I would say, go, go, go, because I knew even a mediocre. I wasn't saying that the idea was mediocre, but even if it was a mediocre idea, if it was implemented with extraordinary enthusiasm, you got a high likelihood of success. And if it's their idea, they're going to be a whole lot more enthusiastic at implementing it than if it's some that Moses brought down from the mountain and told him to do it this way.

You know, Larry, I think it's so important when you talk about. So, you know, I'm a young guy, and the one thing that has been super important for me as I continue to evolve in my career and, you know, continue to get higher and higher positions within companies and essentially lead them is you can't forget where you came from. Right? And so I remember being the young. The young kid on the block who had tons of ideas and tons of energy and presenting those ideas to leaders in an organization that I was in, for them to just kick it right back in my face and say, sure, but it's not a priority for us. Thanks for the idea. Yeah, it's deflating. And so, you know, you want to see me never come up with an idea again, Kick me down a hundred times, I'm gonna leave. Right. And so you know, the one thing that, that I promised myself was to never forget where I've been. And so when these people have the ideas, I literally like time machine back into myself. When I was there saying, you know, let me do the idea. You know, let me do the idea. All I wanted to do was the damn idea, you know? And again, what's the worst thing that happens if it fails? Do we go out of business? Probably not. Did something maybe get 2% better? Maybe. And that 2% over 10 people, over six ideas per year each. That's growth.

Right.

That's where people are closing their eyes and being, you know, too cool for the room. And it's just. I just totally disagree with it. Something that I think is super important.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Thanks so much, Brian.

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