Secrets to Building High-Performing Teams That Skyrocket Your Business!

You scale your company by building high performing teams. And here's how. When was the last time you actually had exponential growth in your company? Like really rapid, like large charging rapid growth. For me, one of the first times I ever experienced that was actually in the year of 2021 is when I took my DBA doing business as and turned into a full fledged S corporation and actually begin to hire high performing people or what I thought was high performing people instead. What I got wrong early on was I was hiring the wrong people based on the wrong skill set because I was just simply hiring people that needed jobs. I wasn't thinking through the roles, I wasn't thinking through responsibilities, I wasn't thinking through metrics, I wasn't even thinking about the type of data that I needed to actually know what types of teams I was building. I was stuck. I was building an organization based on willpower and sheer determination and I was making mistakes almost at every turn. Here's what changed. I learned that when I changed myself, I was able to identify the types of leaders and types of team members I needed in specific seats on the bus along with what they needed to do, how they needed to do it, and then how we would achieve excellence together. When you understand that team is a group of people and they're not just employees. In fact, I rarely use the word employee with any of the companies that I build because I want to build a unified team. I learned that I needed to build a unified team during this transition because I went from an employee mindset to a team member mindset. Employees are in it for them, teams are in it for the team. Think about that. In what capacity are you using your own vernacular to control and or tell your team what kind of value they have to the business? As we begin to break things down, I'm going to give you some super quick fundamentals that I used even today to help build high performing teams and to give you the idea. My largest business before I exited had 400 plus team members across multiple states doing high eight figures, almost nine figures in top line revenue on an annual basis. Think about that. Think about the type of scale of organization that that must have required and the symphony of different positions and roles, responsibilities that must have required. Your business is no different. Your business is basically a symphony of team members. And sometimes you're everyone's hitting the same note and firing in all silvers and the music sounds great and other times, man, the tube is off, the flute's off, the drum's off, the shakers are off, you Name it. It just sounds horrible. Well, the thing I'm going to share with you today are the key principles that I use to actually build high performing teams and build great businesses that are actually scalable and profitable. And I think you're going to benefit from it. So let's jump in. Alright, Principle and fundamental number one, hire for talent and for fit.

Teach and train and grow talent and then also develop maturity. When you go to build a great team. A lot of times, again, I told you before, you hire for the wrong thing at the wrong time or the wrong person at the wrong time because you didn't do enough diligence determining what you need. So once you do that, you're actually going to determine the fit. You're going to hire for fit. You're going to actually hire for that talent, that skill set, if you will, and you're going to use that skill set to the betterment of your business. You're going to train them to your expectations, you're going to train them to understand your value systems as well as their actual job responsibilities and you're going to hold them accountable to that. More importantly, we actually want to develop high levels of maturity within teams. You see team members, much like you come into the business every single day with their hurts, their habits and their hangups, as well as their skills, their gifts and their talents. Every single day you could have one or the other. That same team member could literally be a different person the next day because of their personal life and what's going on. So how do you get around that? Well, we're going to begin to train intensely on maturity. How do we communicate in a mature fashion? How do we communicate from emotional groundedness? How do we communicate in a professional manner that allows knowledge to be shared but wounds not to be? I want you to begin to think about your team and begin to think about your culture of how you're shifting your culture to create an environment of collaboration, expression, fun, joy and diligence. At the end of the day, those types of core values inside of your business are actually going to make the most valuable pieces of progress that you can possibly understand, which is why I want you to lean into that. So after we hire for talent and skill, we began to train the maturity. Now we have to develop our role of accountability. But more on that in a minute. For the time being, I'll go ahead and jump into our second principle and fundamental here and that is I want you to create a leadership environment based on service mindedness. Your leaders, when you hire them, are not designed to be served. You are not designed to be served. You as a leader and them as a leader are all designed to be serving their team, serving the business, serving the marketplace, serving the community around you. What does service really mean? Service means putting the best outcome for the business and the team and the community in front of your personal best outcome. You see great leaders function off of selflessness. Terrible leaders function off of selfishness. Ask yourself right now, which are you? Because there's a subtle difference between manipulation and influence. Manipulation says, hey, I need to do X, Y and Z because it's going to make me look good, feel good and solve my problems. Influence says something completely different. Influence says, hey, what's best for the team? What's best for the business, what's best for the marketplace? What's best for everybody in the commonality involved, what is best for us all? That is a service based leadership mentality. I promise you that Teams gravitate towards service based leadership because they know that they can be safe. And I know the word safe sounds weird in a business sense, but when someone feels identified, they feel seen, they feel valued, they feel heard, they feel appreciated. When they feel all of that and they feel freedom to do their role with excellence, they feel safe. And the safer they feel in your business, the higher they're going to perform in your business. Especially if you have really standardized key performance indicators in building an organization in your business. So I want you to think about that. The third principle and fundamental I want to jump into is leading by vulnerability and transparency. Most businesses, Most leaders, most CEOs, most founders, most entrepreneurs don't want to lead by transparency, vulnerability or anything remotely close to that. They want everybody know they've got it all figured out. They want everyone to actually kind of like kind of lean their direction. Vulnerability and transparency, on the other hand, actually makes teams lean in, not away. When you go at it from the ego perspective, teams lean back. When you go at it from a vulnerability perspective, teams lean in. How do I know that? Because I've done it both ways. I've been the egocentric driver before, I've been the insecure leader before. I've been the person leading out of fear. I've been the person who has not successfully ran teams. And then once I got my skull cracked a few times and I got humbled a few times, then I was able to move on into a whole different genre. Now I understand the importance of vulnerability and transparency, being honest with your team. Honesty begets honesty, Honesty leads to honesty. When you look at the Word honesty. Vulnerability is the key pillar of that. If you can't be honest with your team, you shouldn't expect them to be honest with you. If they feel safe to speak up, they're not going to speak. You're not going to get the wisdom and knowledge you need. So when you're vulnerable about your shortcomings and your fears and all the things that you didn't get right and you're honest about it and. But then you also tag onto that, what you learn from those experiences, you actually create mentorship moments. Those mentorship moments build great teams. They build great trust, they build great value, they build unity. The Bible even says that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand, which means your leadership team can't stand against itself. Your supporting operational team can't stand against the leadership team. You can't have disunity. Unity is so important. And you can only get to unity by trust, transparency and vulnerability. I may have gone too far many times. In fact, sometimes I'm overly transparent and I'm overly honest, but my team knows that when I say something, I'm telling the truth. Even if I over share a little bit. I want you to consider that in your own business and kind of really think through that. How are you showing up for yourself in vulnerability, authenticity and transparency for your team? How are you bringing that to the table? And if you're not, what is it costing you? Is it costing you great team members? Is it costing you market domination? Is it costing you profits? Is it costing you family well being? Is it costing you your health and sanity? What is it costing you? Look, I'm going to recommend you always show up authentically and vulnerably and transparently. I want you to consider being honest with those who are in your stead and those who are leading. And also we can always be considerate of serving them as you're leading them. These things are vital to building unified teams. Vital. It's not about the next secret and the strategy and the technique. It's about the fundamentals. And fundamentally, people want to be treated like real people. They want to be treated like they matter. They want to be treated like you value them. They want to be treated like you can build an organization around them. And my experience has been when you execute with this with excellence, you actually end up having lower overhead, lower turnover and higher performing teams. So the choice is yours. Alright, next up, our next fundamental is pretty important. This is another one that I got wrong a lot. A long time ago when I was building organization, building my company, I Spent a lot of time with, well, the leadership team as we like to call them. So these would be your C suite professionals at whatever stage of business you have. At the time, we had about two or three of us. We had someone who was in charge of finance, someone was in charge of production, and someone that was in charge of like warranty and service and customer care. Okay. As I'm working with them, I'm going through this kind of thing. I began to realize that many of them have better skill sets in different directions than I did. And in that process I actually felt quite a bit of fear and insecurity. So when it came time to promote them, I didn't. And then I end up losing them. And that's what I learned. This valuable principle that I want you to sow into the seeds of your heart. Never, ever suppress your superstars. Your superstars believe in your vision. They believe in the business, they bring value to the table. And honestly, they just want you to trust them. They want you to trust them to execute. And if they don't execute with excellence, they want you to hold them accountable in a loving, compassionate and genuine way. You don't have to yell and scream and do all the funny stuff that people hate. Like, you wouldn't want that in your house. Why would you want it in the workplace? And so instead I want you to lean in and I want you to say, hey man, you're killing it. High five. You know, as an entrepreneur and a CEO and a business owner founder myself, I used to be able to catch people doing something wrong all the time. It was easy for me to find the faults. Easy. You know what was really hard, what was really hard for me was actually finding the things that they were doing well, the things that they deserved a high five for or a bit of a one arm hug or what we call a hundred dollar handshake, or any number of things that reward and appreciate that team member. This is one of those times and one of these things I want you to really consider for yourself. If you suppress your superstars, your superstars will go help somebody else build their organization. And you'll have a constant revolving door of people in and out of that position. Because every time someone gets close to exceeding your level of expertise or your level of success or your level of leadership, or your level of, well, mentorship and influence in the marketplace and in the company, you're going to get fearful. You're going to find all kinds of reasons to self sabotage and exit that person out of your business. Telling you the Most important hires you're bringing to the table are always your superstars. Now, if your superstar does something unethical or counterproductive to the business, that's a whole different conversation. But if they're coming in to play the game and they're supporting and they're growing and they're really serving, they're really getting after, really trying to help you, then come on, dude, let's get after this thing together. Let's go and tell them how awesome they're doing. Let's go and make sure they know what they need to be doing next. Let's do the right thing by them, and I promise you, they'll do the right thing by you. So never suppress your superstars. Our next fundamental is almost on the same kind of thing. It comes down to accountability and responsibility. If you empower your team correctly, you teach them properly, then the next step is holding them accountable to their responsibilities. Also making sure they understand the need, the training of being held personally accountable and personally responsible. In other words, you want them to hold themselves accountable and responsible. You don't want them to act in fear. An example of this might be when you have a team member join the team. They're doing a lot of good stuff, all this kind of stuff, and then they slip up, right? I don't want to have to be the one to call them out in a meeting of any kind. Whether it's a small intimate meeting, it's a department meeting or whatever. I don't want to call them out. I'd much rather them say, hey, Steven, just FYI, I know I dropped the ball on this one thing. Here's what happened, here's what I'm doing to correct it and you should never see it again.

Those that can do that with excellence, especially publicly, man, that's a team, buddy. That's somebody who says, I dropped the ball, but I picked it up and I ran like hell. That's the kind of team members you need in a building and scaling organization. The ability to have personal accountability and responsibility for one's actions. One of those like intangibles that when you find it, it's like finding a diamond in the rough. However, it's your job as the CEO, the founder, the owner, the creator of the C suite professional, to create a culture of personal accountability, responsibility. Which means that when somebody does hold themselves accountable and personally responsible for something, an error, a mix up or whatever, that you don't dress them down for it, you don't embarrass them for it. You don't create a way for them to feel guilt and shame around it. Instead, what you're doing is you're going to elevate them. You're going to say, man, you know how rare it is for someone to actually stand up and actually like be honest about something that they made a mistake on and then take ownership of that mistake. You know, rare that is. Joe, dude, good job, man. Go kill it. Next time you see the tonality change, do you think Sally over here is going to make a mistake next week or Rex over here is going to make the mistake the week after next is going to stand up or be verbally honest about something they messed up? If they're going to get dressed down for it, the chances of them standing up to do that again normally is going to be much higher because you recognize it as being something of value. Personal accountability and responsibility are always things of value. And that's where I really want to kind of really hone into. I want you to consider how you're showing up for your team. Consider the culture you're building for your team and what this accountability, responsibility structure looks like. Because a lot of businesses never actually tell the team what they're responsible and accountable for. And then they fire the team member even though they were unclear with the instructions and the leadership to begin with. That is what we don't want. What we want is unity, consistent unity, consistent accountability, consistent responsibility, consistent integrity, consistent character, consistent honesty. These things build unity, these things build teams. So consider your business right now and where you're at in your business. Do you have an accountable, responsible culture of unity and passion and diligence and all the good stuff? Or is someone always dressing somebody down out of ego, out of insecurity, out of fear, out of impatience? What's going on inside of your organization? And if it's not working the way in which I've described, I want you to try my way for about 60 days. Give it 60 days of actual, like committed diligence, of shaping the culture, being honest, being accountable and responsible, and actually showcasing this as being a value add to the team and watch as your entire company shifts. This shift is going to cause a rise in profitability over time that you're probably not going to really fully appreciate until it happens. Trust me on this. Just give it a shot. 60 days. Give it a shot. Alright, Next fundamental. I want you to empower your team to execute well. How do you empower a team member? Well, first of all, you got to make sure they know what they're doing. You have to make sure they know what expectation you're putting in front of them. They have to know the milestones that are being measured against. They have to know what winning looks like. They have to know the value they create to the business. They have to understand the responsibility that they need in actually executing at a high level. See, empowering comes through encouraging words. It comes through mentorship, it comes through training. It comes through just being committed to being a great business. I used to tell my teams all the time, especially before I exited, that we didn't just have a construction company, we had a construction company that was technically a personal development company. We spent more time teaching and educating and mentoring our leaders and our team than anything else. Every Friday morning production meeting, we would always have a 15 or 20 minute segment of me sharing my heart. That and a key principle of life and business to try to raise the higher value of the company, try to raise the team member value, try to raise the experience and build the culture. And once you have that done, all you gotta do is reinsert what we already mentioned, which is accountability and responsibility. And you got a great culture, you got high performers, you got a business doing well and you got catapulting profits because the business is unified, the systems are tight and you're leading well. Profitability is a byproduct of leading will, plain and simple. Thinking around the corners, planning the next steps, hiring the right people, teaching the right culture, being accountable, being responsible. All of these are major things to building an organization that can last the test of time. And I know you can do it. I know you can. Because if I can do something like that, after all the mistakes, all the junk that I've been through and like literally all the bad leadership decisions I made, then literally anybody can do it. No matter where you're starting from.

Alright, final fundamental and principle. Celebrate team member accomplishments and then take ownership of your responsibility. Here's what this looks like. It's very easy for leaders in the organization to see you currently accepting all the accolades. You know you just got a recent award in your business, there's this person is bragging about your business, all this kind of stuff. It's very easy as the founder and CEO to say, yep, we killed it. Doing great, thank you so much. Give it up. Come on, give it up for me. Give it up for me. I'm gonna tell you right now, your team is like, dude, what the. Are you serious? Dude? He was literally on vacation that two week period. We got this award for like we did the thing, we grinded it, we did it. So here's what I'm gonna recommend. And this will actually help you with your humble confidence and remove your ego out of the way. I don't care when it is. I don't care if you did all the work yourself. Always find ways to recognize the team ahead of yourself. You see, great leaders don't need the accolades, they don't need the appreciation. They don't need the front facing things. What they need is they need the company to grow. So why not reward the team with the efforts that they're putting in place? Because they're putting the place in your name. Like they're working hard in your name, they're serving clients in your name, they're making sure money's coming in in your name. They're making sure the operation is successful in your name.

I always going to recommend you actually give away the credit and accept the responsibility. That means nothing more than when credit's due to come in, you give it to the team. You broadcast it. Hey, John, I really appreciate that accolade, but honestly, it was John, Amy and Ben over here and they were kicking butt, man. What? Let's walk over there and shake their hand. They killed it. Hey, guys, come over here.

Atta boy, Atta girl. Let's go. These types of things build unity. In contrast, if Ben and Jane over here make a mistake and the customer is looking at me saying, dude, what the. What the earth? Right? And you reply back, well, honestly, it was actually these two people over here in this department. They really screwed the pooch. They're really screwed it up.

How do you think they feel.

Being called out, being treated as less than sure they made a mistake. But haven't you made mistakes?

Did you get called out? Did you get a. Did you get like talked down to in that same exact situation? This client comes to me and they say, hey, Steven, you know, dude, we had this major failure of this major thing over here. I don't get it. Like, what happened? It's gonna be very simple. It's like, you know what? We're always striving to be better in the marketplace. We clearly made a lot of mistakes. And I will work with the team and accept full responsibility for the mistakes. And I'll go work with the team to make sure we actually get this right the next time. Just give me a day or two or whatever and we'll figure out what the concession needs to be to make sure that you're satisfied and to make sure we're continuing to build a successful organization. What I just did is I just shielded Ben and Jane.

The guilt and the shame that comes with being called out rather than actually like pointing the finger at them. Great leaders don't feel the need to point the finger. Great leaders just need to feel the need to be present.

Great leaders don't have a problem taking responsibility.

Think about that. How do you show up for your team? How do you show up your leadership? How do you show up as a CEO and a founder and a creator, C Suite professional? How do you show up?

Are you taking the time to reward your team or are you taking the time to criticize your team? If you're criticizing your team, especially if you're not actually letting them know that they're doing something right on a regular basis, you're destroying your unity. And you can't scale a company without unity. Again, the very beginning of this video very clearly said you can't scale an organization without a high performing team. You can't build a high performing team if everybody on the team doesn't want to perform at a high level because of this unity. This is how we solve this problem. I'm going to give you one more quick tip before we hang up here. I want you to use the five to one approach. Every time you feel the need to have a course correction, I want you to do it in love and grace and mercy and a bit of a sandwich approach. Hey, Sally, you did great here. We need to correct here. And you're also really killing it over here. Thank you very much. Okay, that's a correction. That's a very, very quick correction. Obviously some conversations are a bit more sensitive, but still same kind of premise. On top of that, I want you to do something a little bit different. I want you for the next week or two to catch Sally doing five things right.

I want you to literally say, you know what, Sally, I really appreciate. I saw you go to the women's locker room or women's restroom. Obviously you'd have to be a female because you wouldn't be in a women's restroom if you're a male. But I saw you go here and you picked up the toilet paper roll and you put it in the trash can and somebody else left it on the floor. I know this is a silly example, but it's true. I just want to recognize the fact that I see your integrity, I see your character to actually care about the company up to make sure that we don't have debris laying around that customers can see.

I know it's a silly example, but it gives you the point. The point is we want to catch Sally doing something right on a regular basis. And this is something I got wrong for a really long time. I want to tell people how awesome they're doing continually. I want to appreciate and affirm them on a regular basis. So when I do need to have a difficult conversation with one of our team members about something needs to be corrected, then the conversation is not quite as rough, it's not quite as abrasive for either one of us because Sally has already taken the time to receive affirmations and awareness and actual love and grace by just being recognized on a regular basis. So she's even more apt to listen to the course correction to begin with because she already feels affirmed in other places. It's no different than how you invest in relationships. You want to put so much love in buckets often as you can and show up as often as you can. So when there's a problem like the whole world doesn't come to an end, it doesn't fall apart. If you want to build a high performing business, high profitability and scalable organization, you've got to build high performing teams. The tips I gave you today will absolutely work. I want you to work on putting them into place like immediately, if you're not already doing them. And number two, I want to start working on your mindset. Okay. I created a free series called the eight Figure Mindset Makeover that I want to invite you to take advantage of. I'll put it in the show notes below, but I want you to make sure that you understand it and to a point of understanding your mind and how your mind actually controls your actions. You see, eight figure, nine figure entrepreneurs do things very differently than six and seven figure entrepreneurs. They think differently. And if you can learn to think like an 8, 9 and even a 10 figure entrepreneur, you can become an 8, 9 or 10 figure entrepreneur because you changed your mind, which changes how you operate. So I want to invite you to take advantage of that whenever you have time. If not, no harm, no foul. We just here to love you. We're here to help you win. We're here to help you grow. Like, can't thank you enough for checking the video out. Much love. I'll see you again. Take care. Peace.