Episode 309: Make Your Team a Profit Making Machine with Lia Garvin

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. SkewCast is the official podcast of Common Skew. Leah Garvin is an author and speaker and known as the Team Whisperer. She's the bestselling author of Unstuck and author of a new book released just this week titled The Unstoppable Team: A Simple Formula for Managing Your Team, Reducing Overwhelm, and Increasing Revenue. Leah is a TEDx speaker, host of the top podcast Managing Made Simple, and a team operations consultant who's led teams across Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Bank of America. She brings teams simple and scalable tools to cultivate motivated, high-performing teams, resulting in higher retention, more efficiency, and better results. She's a sought-after expert in the media, featured across Inc., Fast Company, ABC News, CNN Business, and more. And Leah is one of our amazing keynote speakers at SKU Camp, September 15th through the 18th, held at the Virgin Hotel in Nashville. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. Today on SkewCast, I talk with Leah about how to empower your team to help grow your business. We talk about where leaders struggle to motivate their teams, the roadblocks to this kind of progress, and in short, how to turn your team into a profit-making machine. You can pick up Leah's book at her website, leahgarvin.com. That's L-I-A-G-A-R-V-I-N.com, or on Amazon. Before we chat with Leah, we have this incredibly big but tiny little feature that's getting rave reviews from CommerceHQ customers, and that's the copy a shop feature. It's as simple as what it sounds like. If you're tired of recreating shops from scratch for each of your customers, you can now copy an existing shop in CommerceHQ. It'll copy all the product information, including product images, sizes, colors, and pricing, as well as design settings. It's pretty cool. And it's yet just another way we obsess over making something complicated like order entry, reports, and now shops into something quick, easy, and dead simple for you and your team. Talk about making profitable teams. If you're not on Commonsku and you want to learn more, the fastest way is to book a quick one-on-one with our sales team at commonsku.com/demo. Today's episode is brought to you courtesy of us at Commonsku. Now on to my chat with the team whisperer, Leah Garvin. Leah, thank you for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me. So excited to talk.

I want to get to one really important point that you're going to make, but I'm going to place it here as, as a little pin, a little note so that our audience knows where we're going. You said something before we hit record, and that is how simple shifts can unlock progress in the category we're talking about today. I say that because I know a lot of overwhelmed entrepreneurs suddenly tuned into this episode and they're like, I'm overwhelmed. I don't need a new system. And we're going to get back to that topic right there. But before we get to it, can you share a little bit about your background and like why, where you come from, why and how this became more important to you?

Yeah, absolutely. So my background is in driving team operations in the corporate world and primarily in tech. And working within product teams and helping both designers and engineers kind of figure out how to get their work done effectively. I kept noticing along the way that when work wasn't getting done, it was because things were too complicated and it was because people weren't communicating. There was maybe too many systems and processes and people, you know, there wasn't a smooth flow of information. And so I was really on a mission to simplify things. And so that's where, you know, this will come into play later in my story. And I also was really passionate about the interpersonal dynamics that were happening on teams. Now, when you work in tech and you're talking about interpersonal dynamics and coaching and mentoring and getting people talking, for many years, people said, "Oh, you should move into HR. This isn't product operations. This isn't about, you know, getting work done." And I said, "Well, actually, I believe it's fundamental for how we get work done." It's not HR because it's not about policies and, you know, sort of regulations and legal stuff. It's really about the how. And after, you know, trying to simplify work and bring more clarity into how work gets done across— did this in Apple and Microsoft, Google. I really wanted to go out on my own and bring this to more kinds of teams and companies. And in the last year and a half or so, I started diving in with smaller businesses and entrepreneurs and found that, you know, you mentioned overwhelm. Well, a lot of times all of this stuff is resting on that business owner's shoulders to figure it out. And You know, the entrepreneur is the visionary. They're the what and the why. And I like to come in and support people on the how, because a lot of times I think we blame ourselves. I should know how to do this. I should figure this out. And actually the how is a whole other skill set. And some people like doing it, like people like me. And so that's where I come in, is help simplify how work gets done so that you can bring your vision to life.

This is probably not uncommon to a lot of industries, but there's been a fundamental shift in our industry, and that is that pre-pandemic there was the sales and marketing role, or let's say sales role was largely on the shoulders of a lone wolf salesperson type. Right. And then, and then what happened is that technology grew as clients grew and as our clients changed, there became far more team-dependent selling. And so no longer was there one sole person. So what that meant was communication became vitally important. Working together became vitally important. And more than one person is working with with clients. So all that lead up to say, I think building a successful team is the hardest work a leader does. I mean, landing clients is hard. Running a business is hard. But, but building a solid team is probably the hardest thing I've ever done anyways. You cover 6 primary areas that help create unstoppable team. And for our limited time here, I'd love to touch on one particular area, but we can go any direction you want. And that's how to empower your team to grow sales.

Yes.

How big of a struggle is that with most leaders?

Well, I think the struggle is, is more that it's not set as an expectation. And this is what I started to see working with more and more business owners with my signature program, the Ops Playbook, where we dive through and set up kind of lightweight processes and sort of working norms across these 6 dimensions. And one of them is priorities and another one's expectations.. And what I started to find was business owners would feel like, ah, I have the weight of growing the business and finding leads and, and, and, and business development and sales all on my shoulders. And I don't feel like I can do it anymore. I'm paying people a lot. I'm, you know, I'm trying to create a great team. Why aren't they invested in the selling? Why don't my team members see that? And the first question I'd always ask is, well, do they understand that's something that you even want them to be doing? And it was really interesting because I was working with a CEO, business owner of a PR company, and she was expressing these things like, you know, she's always out there going to conferences and doing the sales and running these trainings and things like that to bring in business. And she had two PR account managers that were really crushing it with clients. But as we talked through it, they had no idea that they could talk about sales, that they had a role in that. And so in working together, we set clear expectations on, hey, not only are, you know, is it part of your job to, you know, talk with the PR clients about, hey, you know, 6 months from now I have this idea to kind of talk about forward-looking work so they'd continue to, you know, have a vested interest in working with you. But also we set targets on, hey, so this is part of your job and you're going to be held, you know, held to hitting this target of revenue or kind of you know, bringing in these clients. And when we communicated that to her team, her two account managers brought in $13,000 of business like within two weeks or something ridiculous. And it was such a wake-up call that they did not want to do it. They just had no idea. Yeah. You know, and so I think the big thing I say around turning your team members into, you know, sales drivers and growing the business, they have to know that's an expectation of them. They have to have a clear target and then you have to evaluate them on that, right? So, another piece of this ops playbook framework is performance because a lot of times we ask people to do something like grow the business or build a great team culture or whatever. And then we're only evaluated on something that's like more in our job description. Like it doesn't connect. I'm like, well, yeah, if I have time, I'll grow the business, but I'm going to do this first. So, we have to rethink the evaluation and the incentives too. And when we do that, we set the clear priority with targets, we set clear expectations for each job, and then we set, you know, we measure people on that and we show them, hey, you are evaluated on those things. That's where you see that flywheel and that's where each of your team members see their individual role in growing the business.

You could not have shared a better example for this particular industry. It's the exact same story. The salesperson, let's say it's those two salespeople again. You have the owner out here going, why isn't anyone else carrying the burden of new business on their shoulders with me. I feel like I'm the only one that's worried about this. Yeah. The two account reps though have been landing client— or have clients they're working with. They're already clients working with, and they're growing those clients. So they— so they're doing their job in the sense of, right, I'm, I'm growing business, but it's with my existing client base. But this target around differentiating between existing client growth versus new client growth, is that some of the nuance that you're talking about?

Yeah, exactly. And getting really, really clear, not only with those roles that have a direct line But with every single role, right? So maybe you have someone that's doing packaging and order fulfillment. Maybe you have someone that's doing customer service. Maybe someone that's doing something that feels a little less directly involved in the sales and the business growth, right? We want to connect every single role to how you grow the business because you don't want to have some people that think, oh, that doesn't apply to me, right? So everybody, we connect the dots. So let's say it's about packaging and shipping. Well, we say, you know, hey, with all the competition around there, with Amazon drone shipping your packages in 2 minutes, right? Like, we have responsibility to to our customers to, you know, to get things there on time. So, your role as the person that's, you know, doing fulfillment of orders, you are pivotal in client retention. You know, you are pivotal in client satisfaction. And so, you paint that picture for every single person. And then again, you set clear targets. So, that's why when an order comes in, it's got— we have this SLA around it, or that's why, you know, we have this for customer service inquiries. That's why we have this process. But it's all about connecting to what the bigger goal is of your company or team. So that people don't think that their job— like, well, yeah, this job, sure, they have a role in it, but I don't. That's where you start to lose the accountability, and I think that's where people start to feel like, well, you know, what's the point? They don't— they're not as motivated. But I think when you feel bought in, you can really, you know, you, you feel fueled to help build that thing regardless of what the industry is.

Yeah. Do managers and leaders struggle mostly with communicating this, mapping this, priorities, a tactical system? Like, what do you see common challenge they're having when they, they get it right? They understand that that's why our warehouse folks exist, is to serve our clients.

Yeah.

Where do they struggle the most? Where does it break down?

It's a great question. I think I would say all of those, but I think they all bubble up to communicating it. Like, I think it's, it's in our minds, we're thinking about it every day. It's so obvious to us as the business owner because we're— we eat, breathe, sleep this, right? And then for our teams, you know, even if they really, really care, they're just not thinking about it as much as we are. And so, I think it's that translation of, you know, what we're thinking and how do we bring it to life for our teams in a way that makes sense to them, that they're excited about. And actually, that's why I have coined the term for myself, the Team Whisperer, literally, because I was thinking, well, what am I actually doing here with teams? I'm translating, you know, what's— where there's communication gaps between business owners and teams. And when the business owner is so clear on the vision, or they've written it out and they're super you know, it's like so obvious and your team members aren't bought in, that's a sign that there's more communicating you can do, more context setting, more, more clarity, more connecting the dots, um, that has to be done. It doesn't mean they're, they're the wrong fit or they don't care. Yeah, there's so much we can do on, you know, bringing to light communication before we make any judgments. And so what I like to do is figure out, well, once I've heard from the business owner, well, where are the teams confused? Are they, you know, Is it that they— so let's say, I think one thing that comes up a lot, and definitely in larger companies, but any, is like, we, we have too many priorities, or I don't agree with the priorities. Well, that's, you know, that's very subjective. What does that really mean? Does it mean I don't see my role in them? I don't agree with them. Like, you know, I don't want to do this. I don't like my job. Like, there's so many things to unpack when someone is not on board that I really like to dig through that. And then again, connect the dots back to, well, we're all on the same page. We all have the same goal. How are we going to get you to kind of be bought in along that way? Yeah.

Let's go back to your comment that I loved about simplicity and making this simple because you come from the technology world. So you're— we haven't even talked about this off mic, but you're likely very familiar with OKRs. Yes. And the Traction book, you know, they call them rocks and their priorities every quarter. There are these systems and methodologies out there. And for some business owners, they can be obtuse or just, just hard to get your hands around, or they're complex and they're convoluted. Let's get back to that simplicity. Is there— you have a whole book coming out about this, so we can't cover that in the next 20 minutes. But is there a foundation or a process, or what are like some baby steps for us to get going with this?

Yeah, yeah. So what I like to ask myself is, you know, what, what is the easiest way to get to this outcome? And I think, you know, when anything feels complicated or budget approvals or expense reporting or really onboarding, whenever it's like, well, what is our objective? And this really became a quick story from when I was back at Google. I was managing a program manager that ran this product launch review. And it was a 30-minute meeting. And when I became the manager of the team, I was supposed to take this on because the meeting was very contentious and no one wanted to go to it. It was seen as very complicated. And I asked my team member, share more about this meeting. And she She sent me a 35-page document detailing how to run this 30-minute meeting. And I, I said to her, like, okay, I'm not going to read the document. Write me a one-pager saying what is the goal of the meeting, um, where and where are you getting stuck. That's all I want to see. And she said, okay. Well, she was kind of mad I didn't read the document, I'll tell you.

Sure, right.

But I said, you know what, you are losing people based on this like on this thing, like this is why it's confusing. And we said, okay, the goal is that we want people to review the product before it, you know, gets implemented and customers see it. And the, the blocker is that individuals weren't entering their bugs in the tool. And I said, okay, well, that's very easy, right? That's an accountability thing. So we said, okay, everyone that comes to this meeting is expected to enter their bugs and we're not leaving the meeting until the bugs are entered. And when I started running it, that 30-minute meeting got down to 18 minutes because people wanted to go back to work. And it was like, hey, we had introduced all this complexity and what if this and what if that. And so I like to boil down to, you know, what are our objectives and where are we getting stuck? Same thing, right? If you have an expense reporting or budget, you know, like stuff like that gets really, you know, complicated. I think setting a threshold like any expense up to $500 or $1,000, I trust you, right? Like, go for it. You don't have to ask me for approval. You're gonna be waiting.? And then you say, OK, well, if it's over that, what are the categories where you need approval and who does it go to? And then boom, you're done. So, I think really sort of boiling it down to kind of first principles is a really helpful approach. And then I apply that to the 6 areas that, you know, I cover in my book and that are part of my framework, which is, you know, onboarding, which means like, how do we get people set up for success from day one? You know, we could do a bunch of stuff, but like, what is our objective is really that that person feels welcome and that person knows what success looks like, right? So like, that's kind of the foundation there. Priorities is another category. We talk about not having too many, not being too vague, right? Those are my kind of— those are the two expectations. We don't want to micromanage, but we don't want to, you know, have no idea. So let's say like, what are the kind of key working norms around getting things done? With work tracking, it's how do I know the capacity of people and the status of work? So with work tracking, I say get rid of everything, all the complicated stuff in every system. Just track those two things. That's going to get you 80, 90% of what you need. So that's what I mean about simplicity and how I have reframed process. And, you know, I don't— I just— I try to make sure that everyone's getting the answers they need without setting up more. It's like, where can we remove steps and kind of bring, you know, shorten the distance between like thinking of something and making a decision and moving forward.

Yeah, I have some insight into our industry. And so anytime I see content like yours, that's really amazing and simplified for folks. I see it through the lens of our industry, obviously. And so one of the phrases that got my attention was turning your team into a profit-making machine. I mean, it's just music to any leader's ears who's in sort of a sales-forward business. One of the buy-in is one of the hardest things. And I have a hard question—hard because it's probably too dependent on circumstantial stories—but is it possible to motivate employees today who have no financial interest in the outcome? Or am I asking the wrong question? Is it more the question is, should we reframe how we look at our business and make sure that everyone is vested in some way? And I don't mean ownership as much as I mean making sure people are vested.

Yeah, well, I think ownership actually— I like to talk about the ownership mindset, right? And I do think you can create buy-in through that. And I see that as having personal accountability. And so when we set clear priorities, which I often equate with goals like, hey, this is our big goal for the year or for the next 6 months, maybe it's a revenue goal or reaching as many customers. And we say, like we talked about a little bit ago, how every single job connects to that and why that job matters. Right. So we talked about, you know, the fulfillment or the shipping thing or the warehouse, like why nobody in your team sees themselves as, you know, sort of extraneous or like A-team, B-team. So that's one thing. And we've already touched on that. But I think there's also investing in your, in your team members' interests in their careers and things that kind of show I'm investing in you like beyond this job today. Quid pro quo. Yeah, right. Like saying, hey, let's make some time. Maybe it's an hour a month. It doesn't have to be like, you know, a ton, but like for professional development, find a training you want to go to or a conference, and maybe you pay for, you know, one, one thing per year or whatever you have budget for, or you invest in, you know, someone to host a workshop around something like sort of demonstrating an investment in people that's beyond just this job and shows them, you know, I'm bought in to invest in you. I think that helps a lot. And we don't know what people are interested in unless we ask them about it. So it means having career conversations routinely, you know, maybe every 6 months saying, you know, what are your bigger goals? How can I support you? Looking out for stretch opportunities doesn't— you know, it applies more to some roles than others, but I think it's worth asking everybody kind of where they're interested in things. Yeah. And then the third thing that I think creates buy-in is, is really having a culture of recognition. And appreciation. And recognition lands when it's specific and it's really, you know, it's authentic to that person. And so, you know, there's that 5 love languages. Well, there's the 5 appreciation languages, the same love languages. And asking your team members, hey, when I want to say thank you or appreciate or reward you, what lands for you? Yeah. And an interesting story, I was working with a client that runs a wellness clinic, and she had this— the CEO decided to raise the prices on one of their, one of their most popular services. And one of her employees that kind of ran sort of the front desk, that was kind of one of her core employees, was pushing back on it. And she was really negative on saying, how can you do this? Our clients are going to be so upset. And it was— we were like, this is— what is going on? Like, you're supposed to be bought in. Like, it doesn't— it's not up to you. And it was— she was really pushing back, and we kept You know, I mean, like, what is going on here? And we kept sending context and talking to her about it and giving her, you know, I think the CEO maybe set too much context with a whole other story of like what level of communication to give. But anyway, and then she, the CEO sent around like a little kind of self-quiz of what's your appreciation language? And this office or front desk manager put someone sitting down with me and showing me something. And it was a light bulb because we said, oh, she was rubbed the wrong way when this price change was announced and she was just told like, okay, you have to start communicating this. She, you know, she wanted what would make her feel valued. And part of the process was one of the managers sitting down with her and saying, hey, this is coming. I want to talk through it. What are your ideas? And sort of bringing her along, not giving her maybe decision-making power, but still like showing her she's, she's brought along the way. Right. And that was a big wake-up call of, of, okay, sometimes when people aren't bought in, it's because we haven't communicated in a way that works for them. Yeah. And so I always encourage folks to ask team members, you know, what is your appreciation language? How do you want to be recognized? And quick caveat, and I know people listening are going to say, I can't pay them more, I can't give them a raise, I can't give them a promotion. Right. And I love to say that, hey, if you know someone says, hey, you know, I just want— I just want to get paid more. That's, you know, that's what I want. You can— you can acknowledge and honor that even if it's not possible. So I can say, hey, Bobby, you know, I know that, you know, you're really, really wanting that, that raise this year. And as we work towards that, I wanted to appreciate you in this way for this moment. So you can still say, I heard you, I care, I'm working on that. And then it's not possible and I'm doing this right now. So it's not like you say, well, Bobby, we don't have a budget for that. Like, forget it. You know what I mean? Like, you can still show you value. I think those are all things I've found really effective to gain buy-in across teams.

Even when you can't pay them more in that situation. There's so much we can unpack with this topic, which, which we plan to do. And so we will break some news about that and how we plan to explore that with Leah later. But we are going to get into this topic down the road. But you have some really cool resources. You have this really cool checklist that I love called the Thriving Team Checklist. You've sent me a few tools and resources as you work with business owners today, lately, what have been the biggest struggles? Are there distinctions between the big— like what people are struggling with today versus what they were struggling with 3 years ago?

Or is it the same thing? You know, I think, I think motivation is pretty low right now. I think that's something that sort of started dipping in COVID and hasn't really— yeah, has really been pretty rough in engagement for a long time. I think folks that are managing people across hybrid offices and navigating remote. If you, if you weren't fully remote and you switch into that, how do you set up working norms? I think those are some of the challenges. And then leaner times, right? Business owners having to put on many more hats. Yeah. And so feeling like, you know, I'm very much in the weeds or I have to do this role while I don't have budget to staff this up. But that can create burnout across that business owner and then across the team because they're observing you always working. So I think those are some of the themes that through, um, you know, in, in my book The Unstoppable Team and in my podcast Managing Made Simple, I try to always talk about ways to save time because that translates to money and that you can then reinvest as a business owner in other things. So like, if you're finding yourself doing tons of different jobs, wearing many hats, I think a lot of times business owners feel like, well, I'm protecting my team, I can't let go of this, right? Like, I you know, they're already overloaded. I have to do this. And I challenge you to think about, you know, is there someone that has an interest in growing into a manager or in leading a different area that, you know, would really be eager to take on some of that work? And to not always assume— and that's why these kind of career conversations are important, because if I said to you, hey, you know, I'm doing— if I'm thinking in my mind, I'm doing a lot of this marketing stuff and I haven't asked anybody on my team if they have an interest in anything, But you here are wanting to, you know, take on some scope and lead something. If I know that, now I can say, I'm not delegating this to throw it over the fence because I don't want to do it, or, you know, it's because I want to give you a leadership opportunity. And that framing is going to get more buy-in. It's going to help someone step up, you know, even when they feel somewhat at capacity because they see what's in it for them.

Yeah, it's as business owners and as managers, sometimes it's our, it's our biggest strength and our biggest weakness that we can, we can figure out how people are sort of wired. Hired and fit them into the right roles. But then that becomes these blinders where they can do only that thing. And the other thing you mentioned was, I think it was in The Atlantic or The New Yorker that talked about it took us years, like decades upon decades to build the work culture we had pre-COVID. And it's going to take a long time to build the new work culture that we're in. And we're literally in the first beginning stages of a brand new work culture rolling out.

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, knowing that there's You know, there's that. And then also, you know, a new generation entering the workforce that has a very different relationship with time, with money, with loyalty, with work. So we have a lot going on that we, that we're figuring out. And I would encourage folks to treat whatever norms you're establishing as experiments and look at something for 6 to 8 weeks. Say, hey, we're going to try all going in the office for 3 days and let's try it for 2 months. See how it goes, and then we'll have an open feedback loop. We'll talk about it. Or we say, hey, we're all remote. Let's do a Monday, Wednesday, Friday 15-minute standup just to create a connection. Let's try it. And I think where we get stuck is thinking everything's all or nothing and people are disagreeing. They're like, I don't want to do that. And it's like if we treat everything with kind of this sort of growth mindset experiment, we're all figuring it out. There'll be feedback. We can tweak it if it's not working. That's going to help you establish some of these rhythms in, in, in this kind of remote hybrid distributed team situation where we don't always know what works for everybody.

So, Leah, what can we expect having you join us at SKU Camp, leading us through this experience of creating the unstoppable team?

Well, I am so excited to be joining because, you know, I am all about giving people practical and actionable tools that you can apply literally coming out of this workshop or talk. So I want people to feel empowered, like they know exactly what to do to carve back time for themselves and again, to turn your team into these profit-generating machines that are going to help grow and scale your business.

Thank you so much, Leah. Thanks for joining us today. The book is The Unstoppable Team. The podcast again, Leah, tell us the name of the podcast one more time.

Is Managing Made Simple.

Oh, music to my ears. All right, Leah, thank you so much for joining us and we'll be talking again soon, my friend.

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKU Cast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKU Cast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.

Mm-hmm.