The first thing we ll talk about is my philosophy on growing a great team

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Asher Benson
5 years ago
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1 Systems, Teams & Massive Productivity Transcript Here s what you ll learn in this training video: The first thing we ll talk about is my philosophy on growing a great team We ll also cover our 3 part system for collecting all the ideas in your head and giving yourself the time and the focus to actually get things done And then I ll also cover how we run the day to day business in my company. What we do daily, weekly, yearly, etc. to ensure that we stay focused and achieve maximum results So here s my team growing philosophy. Now, if you remember back to Start the Right Business, remember that I stressed it s vital that every entrepreneur build the size and scope of business that they most want. If this sounds foreign to you, go back to the bonus section and read this. It is so, so important. I ve always dreamed of working with a small, lean team of A++ players, people who I adore, that I love working with, people who are dedicated and really ambitious self starters, and that s what I ve created for myself. But way back in the day my very first team member was a part time virtual assistant and I hired that person to help with customer service. Now, it wasn t until years later that my business was profitable enough in my own estimation for me to feel comfortable bringing on a full time employee. So that transition took me a while. Perhaps you re more bold than I am, perhaps you re more confident than I am. That s awesome. I just wanted to reveal a little bit about my own history in this sense. Now we have a small team, we have 5 full time employees, and our goal is to make our company the best place to work. So we have health insurance, we have 401k, we have 401K matching, we have 2 times a year these incredible team retreats where we go to beautiful locations and we get together in person, we have performance bonuses, we have vacation time, inspiration days, and a lot more. So even though we have a small team, my goal as a leader is to make it the most incredible company in existence for the folks that I work with so that everyone feels great, everyone can do their highest level of work and can feel that they re contributing in the way that they most want to, they re working in their genius zones, and that we actually have fun on a day to day basis. We also work with other talented folks on special projects or seasonal projects as needed. So the most important thing that I ve learned about running a successful company relates to this, and this has everything to do with your team. Little quote by Steve Jobs. I notice that the dynamic range of what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that, you re well advised to go after the cream of the cream, the small team of A+ players that can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. This quote really embodies my philosophy as well. We ve been able to grow a tremendously powerful company with very few people, but the very few people that are running it are truly excellent. So here s some clear signs for you that a person is an A player. A players don t wanna do a good job, they wanna do an outstanding job and you can feel this from the very beginning when you re working with anyone. A players take responsibility for their results and they Pg. 1 Bonus Marie Forleo International marieforleobschool.com

2 own up to mistakes without drama. All of us make mistakes, we re all human. But when an A player does something that s not right or creates some havoc in the business, they usually own up to it right away. They say what happened, how they re gonna change it, and how they re gonna prevent it from happening again. A players communicate effectively both in written and in verbal form. This is so incredibly key. People who can write well and who can communicate well are vital to have, especially if you have a virtual business. I mean, I think it s important for any business, but effective communication skills are huge. A players take initiative and proactively solve problems even before you ask them to. This is key. You will see this. It s a very, very subtle quality. Some people are always waiting around for their next marching orders and some people just look around and see what has to be done and they take initiative and they make it happen. That s an A player. A players don t shy away from the tough, uncomfortable situations, they intrinsically believe that everything is figureoutable. So in business, as you know, things go wrong a lot not because you re a bad person or other people are bad, it s just the nature of creativity. It s the nature of putting something out into the world. It s just the nature of life. Things don t always go perfectly. But A players never shy away from problems, they never shy away from things that are tough, they dive in there and say, Hey, we can figure this out. A players will not put up with C players, so this is really important to listen to. If you have C players anywhere in your business and you want A players, you re gonna have to let the C players go because A players will not waste their time with C players. This is huge. I know that in business sometimes it can be really challenging. You grow to like folks personally even if they re not the best person for the job and you ve got to become a leader, you ve gotta be willing to step up and let people go who are C players or even B players if you really wanna have a team that thrives and creates excellence in the world. Now, for more information on this topic, check out a book called Topgrading by author Brad Smart. Alright, so now let s go into our 3 step system to massive results. Number one, you ve got to brainstorm your big ideas. Number two, you want to strategically map them out. And number three, get them done. And we re gonna show you how we do all of these steps. So step number one, brainstorm your big ideas. At least once a year you should have a strategic meeting with yourself and/or your team. Take away all distractions and set aside time to really think through what you d love the next year, meaning the next 12 months, to look like. What do you want to get done? What do you want to accomplish in your business and in your life? Remember if it s not scheduled, it s not real. You learned that in the very first part of B-School in the bonus section, The Follow Through Formula. I recommend that you schedule at least an entire day for this process. This is not a 15 minute conversation, this isn t even really a 2 hour thing. Take a full day to make this happen. You can brainstorm on a whiteboard or an easel pad or even a Google Doc all the things that you wanna do in your business and in your life. So don t hold back. List every single thing that must happen over the next 12 months. So examples are maybe you wanna rebrand your website, perhaps you wanna sell your book to a publisher, have a live event, you want to build and release 2 new products, perhaps you wanna do interviews with the press, submit a guest blog post to 10 top sites, you want to include a 2 week vacation. Whatever it is, get it down on paper, get everything down that you could possibly want to do over the next 12 months. Pg. 2 Bonus Marie Forleo International marieforleobschool.com

3 So step two in the process is to strategically map out those ideas, and here s what we mean by that. After you ve written everything out you ve got to go through and ask yourself some tough questions about whether or not you can or will commit to getting that idea done in the next year. This is really, really important. This is not it would be nice to, this is not I think I can make this happen. This is about you having a reality check about your capabilities, about your desires, and about time in the next 12 months. Cross everything out that s not realistic or that won t make money or that doesn t light you up. Again, this echoes a lot of what we talked about in The Follow Through Formula. It s simple, but it works. Now you wanna create another page on your easel pad and create 12 large squares representing each month of the year. So here s a little sample blank page that we often use. So as you can see, it s just a blank sheet with 12 squares: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December. So continuing on strategically mapping out your ideas, you want to write things in each corresponding month that you KNOW have to happen. So promoting a partner s book launch. That s usually a set date. Maybe your cousin is getting married and you have to go to a wedding. Maybe there s a birthday trip that you ve always wanted to take and this is the year. You need to start transferring things that you know must happen in the next 12 months into these 12 blocks. So you wanna do that for every single item on your list that made the cut and start plugging things into those squares. You ve gotta be aggressive but realistic. Do not overdo it. This is probably the most common mistake that creative entrepreneurs make. You have to realize that other things will come up all throughout the year that you need to take care of that you don t know about right now, so please don t bite off more than you can chew. You ll just set yourself up for feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, and like a failure, and you don t need to do that. By the time you re done with this process you should have 1 single sheet of paper with the next 12 months and all of your major projects in it. And, by the way, if you re doing this process and it s April or May or June and you want to get going right now, you don t have to start in January. Start with whatever month that you re in and map out the next 12 months. This piece of paper, once it s filled out, is absolute gold. It needs to be looked at constantly. I have a group of high level friends, folks that are running multi million dollar companies that I ve taught this method to and they always call me up or send me texts or send me s with pictures of their one sheet and they re like, Marie, this thing is saving us. Trust me, it works. So there is more to do, obviously. So let s keep going. You re gonna create a Google Doc or a spreadsheet with categories for each of your main monthly initiatives. I m gonna show you what this means in a minute. You want to brainstorm all of the little things, all of the tasks, that need to happen in order to make those main initiatives, those projects, come to life and then you re gonna add them into your Google Doc. So here s a visual example. This is exactly what our spreadsheets look like. So we create this huge master list of everything that we wanna do over the next year. We create a category for it on the left hand side, the actual project is right there in the middle, and then the person in charge. So we literally list everything that we wanna do and we brainstorm every task that will need to happen in order for that project or initiative to come to life. You re gonna come up with more ideas, obviously, than this one time of year, so this master list is great because when you have a new idea you can come over and you can add the idea and all the steps that will need to happen in order to make that idea come to life. So don t worry about being over the top organized. The goal of this document is really a container and a place to keep track of all of your ideas and main initiatives in one place so they re not floating around in your head. And if you work with a team, this is vital so that everybody knows if they have a brilliant new idea and it s something Pg. 3 Bonus Marie Forleo International marieforleobschool.com

4 that everybody agrees should get done in the business at some point, there s one centralized place that you put your main initiatives, your main objectives, your main ideas into a master project list so nothing gets lost, nothing feels scattered. It all stays very organized. Alright, step 3. And most important step of all, getting things done. So I want you to create a new weekly ritual. Every Thursday or Friday spend time getting your plan together for the following week. You want to get yourself ready to go before you end this week, and here s how. You look at your 12 month calendar and you look at the projects that are coming up. Then you go to your master list document, that fancy spreadsheet we just went over where you organized all your projects and tasks from the 12 month calendar, and then you create one more tab in your Google Doc or spreadsheet list that details out exactly what you re gonna work on in the following week. And, once again, I m gonna show you a visual example in a minute. You re gonna name that tab something like This week or The week of 3/19 or whatever the date is. Again, it doesn t matter what nomenclature that you use or how you do this, the point is that you actually do it and you use words or distinguishing factors that actually work for you. So you wanna start pulling projects and tasks from your master doc and add them into your weekly priorities plan. Remember, you are working from the master list, which was generated from your 12 month calendar. So you re reverse engineering exactly what you want to get done over the next 12 months and drilling it down from month to week to day. Make sure that you and your team are paying attention to the most important things you said you wanted to accomplish in that month or timeframe. So here s a general rule of thumb. You want to keep the amount of projects that you re working on each week to about 3 or less. If one project is massive, than one project may actually be enough. For example, when we re working on B-School intensely, B-School is it. It s the only thing we re working on. Pretty much everything else gets put on the back burner. There may be one or two things that we need to handle to keep the ship running, but generally speaking if one project is just massive, than just work on that one project. List out every task you ll need to focus on each day, who s responsible, and, this is important, what day of the week that task is due. Do not skip this step. This is really crucial because it starts to map out exactly what you ll work on each day of the week. So here s an example, so we just called it this week because it s a general thing but you ll see on the left hand side there s a column for the category. Then there s a column for the deadline, meaning which day of the week this is due. Is it due by end of day, is it due by the afternoon? That all depends on you. The action item, and the person in charge. And then you ll see there s something else really important. You ll see we have priority number one, product creation. Priority number two, lead generation. Priority number three, hire an assistant. Now, obviously this is just an example to give you an idea of what a priority sheet can look like. This is very similar to what we work off of every single week. The thing I wanna point out here is priorities. It s essential that you prioritize for your business. This is part of what stepping up and being an entrepreneur is. No one can tell you how to prioritize, but I will tell you the things that make money, the things that are involved in marketing, those should always be your top priorities. So you always have to take a look and as you move through your calendar and your year, your priorities will shift around. But you as the leader have to always make decisions for yourself and for your team about what is the most important thing to focus on this week. Why is that important? Because if things pop up that take you guys off track, unexpected events, occurrences, opportunities spring into your world that you have to evaluate and deal with, you need to understand if you need to take something off the list, what needs to go? And likely it ll be priority number 3 has to get shifted to next week. So it is vital that you just don t have this huge list of tasks that in addition, you absolutely prioritize each and every week and that it makes sense for the overarching direction of your business. Pg. 4 Bonus Marie Forleo International marieforleobschool.com

5 Alright, step 3. Getting things done continued. Don t forget you ve got to make time every Thursday or Friday to get your new weekly priorities plan ready for the following week. So this is about taking some time to really plan things out and developing this habit. It s huge. So while getting your priorities plan together, you wanna check your calendar and account for travel, maybe you ve got a dentist appointment or anything else that could impact how much you or your team will realistically get done the following week. That s a big word. Realistically get done the following week. Now, when you first get started, yes, you re gonna have to guesstimate how many projects you can handle and how long things will take. That s natural. All of us have to guesstimate when we first get started. But this is why it s vital that each week, again, Thursday or Friday, you evaluate what worked, what didn t, what got done, what didn t get done, how come, and you can adjust your plan for the next week accordingly. Over time you re gonna get to know yourself, you re gonna get to know your team better in terms of how long things actually take to get done and that will help you really adjust, just like a pilot who s constantly adjusting her flight plan to get to her final destination. You too are always gonna be adjusting your priorities doc as you go. So now let s talk about daily or weekly meetings. So in my company we have a daily team call for 15 or 20 minutes to make sure that all of us are staying accountable to each other and getting things done on time. That we re actually following that priorities list. We share updates, we talk about projects, progress, news, and we go through every single item to ensure that everything is moving ahead. And as a 100% virtual company, which we are, this connection time on a daily basis is vital for us. It s vital to stay emotionally connected, intellectually connected, we tell stories, it s just it s awesome. We love our daily team call. Now, if someone needs to have a one on one conversation they often say something like, Hey Marie, can you stay on the line? We can talk more about X. Or if we make a discovery on our daily call that warrants a deeper conversation or perhaps several meetings, we ll schedule those times for more in depth discussions. So really, that daily call only lasts us 15 to 20 minutes on most days. Our calls take place at the same time every day of the week so it becomes a habit and a ritual. Nobody misses it. Now, if you re a one person shop and you don t have a team, here s what we recommend. Have a short 10 minute meeting with yourself at the start and the end of each day to stay on track and adjust your priorities document as needed. Just because you don t have a team doesn t mean that you shouldn t use these exact tools. These will help you get so much more done. So muy importante, don t pay attention to everything on your master list all at once. Remember, that s the huge list of everything that you wanna do. It will totally overwhelm you if you look at that thing. Only look at it one time per week to create your priorities document for the next week. The majority of your time is really spent looking at your weekly tasks, your weekly priorities document, and making sure that you re staying on track with your 12 month calendar. So remember, your master list is the place to add all those new, incredible ideas, however, you should only focus on your weekly priorities list, which generally has one to three priorities at a time. So final thoughts for you to keep in mind, this system is really simple and that is the genius of it. Whether you re a one person shop or you ve got 7 to 10 people on your team, this works as long as you use it consistently. It s probably been the biggest phrase I ve taught you throughout all of B-School and consistency is really the key to so much success and happiness in life. So it will take you time to turn this into a habit, but I will tell you, it s worth it. It took our team a few months, maybe 2 to 3, to really make this entire system a core practice and now we would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever dream of not using it. It s especially great for ADD Pg. 5 Bonus Marie Forleo International marieforleobschool.com

6 creators like me. I go right to my list every single day. I see what s assigned to me, what I have to get done, and then I just do it. So I wanna end here with a great quote by Mark Twain. The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks and then starting on the first one. So thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed this presentation and, as always, thank you for being a part of B-School. Pg. 6 Bonus Marie Forleo International marieforleobschool.com

SYSTEMS, TEAMS & MASSIVE PRODUCTIVITY (HOW WE GET THINGS DONE)

SYSTEMS, TEAMS & MASSIVE PRODUCTIVITY (HOW WE GET THINGS DONE) HERE S WHAT YOU LL LEARN IN THIS VIDEO My philosophy on growing a great team Our 3 part system for collecting ideas & giving yourself the