Challenge to Lead: Build Stronger Teams. Scale Smarter.

It’s magical when you find a good employee and integrate them successfully into your company. But you can’t just then give them all the things!

As a small business owner, we spend too much time worrying about the far future when we don’t have the near future solidified. If you’ve got someone who has the skills, the aptitude, and the desire to work for you - take it and be grateful every day.

Have you ever thought about how you manipulate yourself?!

You have to recognize who people are and then decide - do I accept them? Do their strengths outweigh their flaws? Because we are all flawed. And sometimes the secret answer is distance, not removal.

The types of people who start a business are not typically the types of people to run it until they die. Every leader needs a succession plan!

Sometimes your team finds things out before you want them to. We are all imperfect creatures and should expect to mess up from time to time. How do you lead through it?

It’s amazing how many things we know in our core but need external validation before we believe it. Find someone who can be your mirror.

Knowing yourself is step 1 of leadership, but step 2 is understanding how to hire and lead around that knowledge.

I’ve spent the past few months reflecting a resetting and really thinking through some fundamental pieces of my future. In this episode I talk about how I did that, what options I considered, and what I ultimately chose.

At times it becomes apparent that what got you here won’t get you THERE. That’s when it’s time to bless and release. Let it go. Thank it for what it has given you.

Your job as a leader is to the team first, to the individual second.

People hate change - unless it’s change they are enacting. Here are a few tips for getting people through the transition.

I think the most important thing you can do is find someone to listen to and bounce ideas off of. Most leaders are visionaries and that means - lots of ideas! Lots of ideas that maybe don’t make sense given your skills and current business model. The trick is sifting through them for the gold.

How to measure your people for culture fit, productivity, and skill match. Then using those things to determine when to cut ties!

No one likes being told what to do, especially when it’s a hard thing that will cause them personal pain. Instead, open the conversation and see where it leads. If you’re set on your outcome, gently steer it down that path.

“Integrity gives you real freedom because you have nothing to fear since you have nothing to hide.” Zig Ziglar

Everyone on your team needs 2 numbers - the first one represents what they do on a daily basis. This is the one directly in their control. The second one represents what you expect to happen as a result of that action.

Having key performance indicators (KPIs) won’t just improve your profit margins, it will improve your team.

First and foremost - people join communities to achieve a goal. That goal may be their career, or sharing a hobby, or launching a business. But they want success. After that, there are 2 more necessary ingredients for an epic culture.

“He who is communicating is connecting.” What kind of communicator are you? Do you cut people off or talk over them?

Every business has unavoidable parts - marketing/sales, operations, and finance. You must understand each of them before you can hire them out so that you can eventually be an effective leader. But getting there can be a painful and frustrating journey.

You’ll be really sad when they leave and take all that historical knowledge and action with them, and they will give you signs that it's coming.  Pay attention!

Stop forcing relationships to work - sales, marketing, clients… friends! Pay attention to the non-verbal clues and ditch the dead weight. When you find YOUR people, that’s when the magic happens, but you’ve got to make space for them.

There is a time in a place to leverage your energy to get things done, and a time, and a place to leverage your intelligence and the intelligence of the people around you to get things done. Which one do you need right now?

One of my favorite quotes is by Lao Tzu and goes, “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” I will take it one step further and say that before you can even watch your thoughts, you need to watch your emotions.