MBA1802 How to Motivate Your Remote Team + Free Ride Friday

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Hey Yo. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Your daily business workout every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Free Ride Friday. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. All you got to do is leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. It's that simple. We're going to announce this week's winner later on in today's episode. In today's episode, you will learn how to motivate your remote team. Many of us have moved to remote work and running a remote team because of COVID 19. Some of us have been running a remote team even before the pandemic. Either way, many people ask me how do I motivate a team that's not right in front of me? How do I get them to feel inspired? How do I get them charged up every single day so they can do their best work well? In today's episode, I'm going to give you three tips. Three things that I have found move the needle the most. When it comes to motivating my remote team. All three of these things you can implement immediately. In fact, I'm going to encourage you to implement them in the next week or two. They're simple, they're practical, and it's actually going to motivate your team not for a moment, but for the long run. So we got a lot to cover, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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I want to start today's lesson about busting a myth when it comes to motivating any team, physical or remote. If you're using words, if you're using speeches, if you're using praise and charm and just trying to rah rah your team into motivation, that's the only thing you do that's not gonna work. Those things don't hurt. People need to hear a kind word. People need to feel recognized. People like to know that they're valued. But words alone don't move the needle and it's not sustainable. You can't continually pump up your team always, especially if you're remote. This is why I recommend these three strategies I'll share with you today. Because it has nothing to do with what you say. It actually has a lot to do with what you do. So let's jump into strategy number one, and this one's quite simple. If you want to have a motivated team, hire motivated players. Hire them from the get go. Here's the thing I learned in business hiring people for the last decade. People that are motivated, people that have a good attitude, that are self starters, that don't need external forces to do what they have to do. They're just ready to go get it every day that's inside them. No one gives that to them. That's a choice they make. Okay? It's really hard to train that to give that to someone. So why make your life hard as a business owner? Find people like that already and hire them. You want winners? Hire Winners. That's how you get a winning team. The Yankees know this, the major league baseball team that won so many championships because they know they get great players on the team, chances are they're going to win. The same thing goes with business. And this is what I mean by motivated players. I mean people that make you feel energized after spending some time with them. If you interview somebody and at the end of the interview you feel lethargic, you feel down, you don't feel motivated, that's a bad sign. A lot of people hire people like that because they're like, oh, the resume is great, they got great experience, but they're on the interview and they're not motivated. You think they're going to be motivated and positive and be a great influence on your team day in and day out when you hire them? No, one of the things I look for is when I interview somebody, how do I feel afterwards? Do I feel better? Do I feel motivated? Do I feel like, man, I want to speak to that person more? To me, that's a huge, huge sign that I should hire this person. Of course skills matter. Of course experience matter, but so does attitude. And I can argue that attitude is actually more, more important. Like I heavily weigh attitude, much more. Why? Because I can skill somebody up. I can train them into a new skill. I can give them the experience you need. Now, obviously they need a minimum level experience to do the job, but if they have a great attitude, I'm willing to work with them because I can't buy that. I can't train for good attitude. People that are self starters, that are self motivated, that's a gold mine. So how do you get started with this strategy? Make one hire in the next few weeks solely based on attitude. It doesn't have to be a position that's going to really make or break your business. This could be, you know, an executive assistant. This could be a entry level support agent. The point here is that you are getting used to, you're flexing the muscle of I value attitude, I value hiring people that are motivated. I'm going to find somebody that's really motivated that I can train. If they have the skills and experience, great. But if not, I want to hire somebody with the best attitude possible. So go ahead and take on that challenge. Make that higher. Tip number two, give your team members an opportunity to fail. I know this sounds a little scary, but I'm going to put you at ease. When people are not feeling stretched, they don't feel challenged, they don't feel like they're learning something, that they're growing, they are bored, it's not exciting, they don't look forward to going to work. I look back in my career and the most exciting moments are when I'm doing things that are a little bit scary. The things that I haven't done before, something new that forced me to get better. This increases their job satisfaction and helps them be self motivated. They're really pumped to go to work. But if you give people the same tasks day in and day out and you don't challenge them, this is a recipe for disaster. This is a recipe for mundane work and a very lukewarm attitude. I'm not saying you have to challenge them every moment of the day, but even if it's just 20% of their time, they're doing something that's new, that's challenging a new project. What we like to do over Ninja is that in every department, we like to spend at least 20 or 10% of the time for each employee on something new, on growing their skills, on contributing to a project, to be part of a team, to be part of anything, even if it's planning a party, it gets them excited about work again. And if they fail at this thing that they're not a hundred percent qualified for, that's okay. You don't have to give them something that's going to be the downfall of the company. It could just be an experimental project. It could be a project that has very low stakes. But for them it's a high because, hey, it's something new. It's something that I'm being empowered with. This company trusts me. They feel valued. So allow them to have some time to work on something new. That something's challenging that, that they can possibly fail at. That's exciting. People are alive when they're at the edge. All right, how can you implement this? Well, carve out a new project for your team. We started doing this a few years ago on our team retreat. We actually started this project and continued it after the retreat where at Webinar Ninja we built something called the Webinar Ninja Academy, which was like a library of all these great training videos for our members. It was like the Netflix for webinars and everybody in the team contributed from the designers, from the developers support team created great stills and great descriptions. Carl, our media editor, edited the videos. It was a lot of fun because we all got together to build something amazing and it was something different from the day to day. We continue to do this with new projects inside of Webinar with different departments as much as possible. So you can come up with a small project just like that for your business. So your team, no matter how big or small, can work on something, even if it's just half a day, once a week. This can make all the difference. Tip number three Remind them of the why. As the leader of your company, your job is to remind your team the impact your team members are making on others. It's very easy to get bogged down in the day to day meaning, you know, say for example, you're an engineer and you're working on a piece of software or you're a designer or you're a copywriter and you're kind of in your zone doing your little thing and you don't really see the big picture. You, the leader of the company, your job is to remind them, hey, look at the impact you're making. Your little sales copy is bringing in awesome customers that are being impacted by our software that is changing their life. They're able to earn a living and spread their message and help help other people in turn. This is the why. Yes, we're a software company, but really we are a means to allow other people to live their dreams, to build the business they want to serve other people. This is the bigger mission. You have to remind people of this because it's easy to forget when you're just focused on your work. This gives everybody meaning. It reminds them, man, I'm important. I am making a difference. I'm making an impact. It makes people remember I'm actually doing this for somebody. A user, a customer, a mom, a dad, a student, a doctor, whatever it is. Share your customer testimonials with your team. Allow them put a face to a name. We try to do this with our all hands meeting. Every month we do a meeting with everybody in the company. I like to share, you know, videos or written testimonials or some of the nice things that our customers say about our company, about our product because really they're saying nice things about them. Your team. This goes a long way because it recenters people and allows them to be motivated to get up and go and work for your company and for these people every day. We need meaning in life and we need meaning in our work. Otherwise it's just meaningless labor. So we need to remind them what's behind the work, how they're impacting others. So choose how you're going to do this, whether it's sending an email to your whole team with a few customer testimonials Sharing a chat you had with a customer, sharing an article that got posted or tweet. Do this now, put it in your calendar and make sure you get it done within the next week.

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To wrap up today's lesson, there are three ways I found that really helped me motivate or have a motivated remote team. One. Hire motivated players. Number two, stretch your team. Give them great projects, new projects allow them to fail. And number three, give them reasons why. Remind them of why they're doing what they're doing every day, who they're impacting, who they're helping. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 on RIE show, but today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is. Keegan. Keegan says Love Omar and his guest speakers. 5 stars. Always great info for small business owners. One of my favorite commute podcasts. Thanks Keegan for that great review. Your mission is to email me at omar100-mba net so I can hook you up with the free ride to EZ course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course in 30 days. It retails for $500 over at EasyCourse co. Or you can win for free. Just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you can win a free ride to ezcourse just like Keegan just did right now. Listen in on Friday to see if you want. It's that easy. Thank you so much in advance for showing us love on Apple podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. At the end of the day, your team wants to feel valued. They want to feel respected. They want to feel trusted. The more you can do that, the more motivated they will be every day at work. Now, I don't have all the answers. I'm not perfect. I'm still learning. I'm still trying to improve. I'm still trying to be a better leader. But the key word here is I'm trying. And people can feel when you're trying to. So try out the three strategies I shared with you today as soon as possible to get your team going. Thank you so much for listening. And I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu. Fire tens across the board. I could be happy with anything even though I order the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time.

Maybe score a two for five dollar deal on a sausage McMuffin with egg and more. Limited time only. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Single item at regular price.