99% of my time goes to this one skill

Summary

• If I give discretionary effort to my team, I will get it in return. I give effort to people without expecting anything first.
• I focus on the person as a whole, not just as someone who works for me. I keep track of birthdays, anniversaries, and important life events to show them I care.
• Caring actions, even if they don't come naturally at first, eventually turn into genuine care. Acting like I care leads me to actually care.
• By showing effort and care early, I create a positive environment where the team feels valued and cared for.
• When I replaced a manager who didn’t care about his team, it doubled our sales production because the new manager showed care and listened to the team.
• People aren’t stupid; sometimes, they just haven’t been taught well. Most people can learn and improve if we train them correctly.
• Being a good teacher and giving constructive feedback helps people grow. It’s not about punishing mistakes but encouraging improvements.
• Don't view your team as dumb just because they don't perform well. It's possible they haven't been taught or trained properly.
• Invest in people as if they'll never leave, but be okay when they do. Improve their lives and they'll value you forever, even if they move on.
• Even if some people betray my trust, the value of investing in others outweighs the betrayal. I keep trusting and investing because it benefits the majority.
• If I want my team to show up at their best, I need to be at my best. I inspire them by how I live my life across all areas, not just at work.
• How I present myself sets the standard. When I began dressing professionally, my team followed suit without being told.
• Promoting health by example, like using a walking treadmill, encouraged my team to adopt healthier habits as well.
• Leaders must operationalize care and genuine investment in their team. This isn't just about tactics but about being a leader people respect in all areas of life.
• Great people won’t work for a mediocre leader, so as I improve myself, my team improves too.

Video

How To Take Action

Implementation Strategies for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, or Personal Growth

1. Show Genuine Care

A good way of doing this is to start tracking important dates like birthdays, anniversaries, and other significant events for your team or clients. Create a simple calendar and make sure to acknowledge these events with a personal note or small gesture. This makes people feel valued and appreciated.

2. Give Effort First

When new people join your team, act like you care about their well-being from the get-go. Send a welcome message, offer support, and check in frequently to see how they’re adjusting. Create a welcoming culture by leading with kindness and concern. This will foster a positive environment where people feel respected and motivated.

3. Train and Invest in Your Team

Understand that people are not naturally ineffective; they might just need proper training. Start by setting clear expectations and providing consistent, constructive feedback. Focus on how they can improve rather than what they did wrong. Consider yourself a mentor guiding them towards becoming better at what they do.

4. Lead by Example

Make sure to embody the behaviors you want to see in your team. If you want a professional environment, start dressing more professionally. For health and wellness, show your commitment by incorporating healthy habits like using a walking treadmill or participating in fitness challenges. When your team sees you living these values, they’re likely to follow suit.

5. Trust and Invest Even When It’s Hard

Invest in your team as if they will stay forever, but be okay if they decide to move on. Support their growth and mentor them. This builds long-term loyalty and a positive reputation for you as a leader. Even if trust is broken occasionally, the benefits of investing in people outweigh the risks.

6. Inspire Through Personal Excellence

Focus on becoming the best version of yourself in all areas of life, not just business. When you are at your best, you naturally inspire others to be their best selves too. Strive to be someone who people look up to not just for your business acumen but for your overall character and way of life. This holistic approach to leadership attracts high-quality talent who are motivated to perform and grow.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"If I give discretionary effort, I will get it in return and I will not wait on somebody to give me discretionary effort"

– Leila Hormozi

"You have to Not Just Master yourself and manage yourself you have to be able to do it to such a degree that you can do it for others as well"

– Leila Hormozi

"If you act like you don't care you're more likely to demonstrate to that person that you don't which then they act like they don't care which then perpetuates the cycle"

– Leila Hormozi

"People are trainable when people come into a business either they come in fresh not knowing much at all or they come in doing what they've been trained to do by somebody else"

– Leila Hormozi

"You have to be someone who people don't just look to for business advice but life advice because you are able to manage yourself and to manage your life"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

so last night I was at a dinner with a group of 10 entrepreneurs and I want to say most of them were between 1 to 8 million dollar in Revenue one of them said something to me he said you know the biggest thing that I learned uh coming to one of your workshops and then now spending more time with you one of the things that I walked away with was I actually felt very jealous of you and your team and I was like what do you what do you mean because I never heard anyone say that before and he said I want to feel the same way like the same way that your team reflects you so well and you all work so well together and you all joke together and you all seem like you genuinely like being around each other I want to learn how to do that and it's interesting because I think a lot of my channel a lot of what I talk about is a lot more tactical around the operations and Marketing sales customer success people operations hiring recruiting um very tactical and I think the reason for that is because I have really struggled with how to operationalize leadership and teach the princi principles that are actually where I spend 99% of my time because the reality is I don't spend most of my days trying to learn each function of a business I spend most of my days trying to understand human psychology and how I can be a better leader and how I can be a better person that people want to follow and so I went on a little bit of a rant because I didn't realize that was something people wanted and as soon as this guy said that everyone else at the table was like yes like I want that like can we learn that like how do you do that I don't want to walk walk into work every day feeling like I don't like my team and they don't like me I want to be able to walk in and feel like I have a community that I've created and so you know they said they kind of put me on the spot and said like how did you do that and so I want to share a little bit of what I shared with them with you because I think especially at the phase they were at you know you're you're at 1 million in Revenue 3 million to 8 million it's all that you have to get past yourself you know and so you have to Not Just Master yourself and manage yourself you have to be able to do it to such a degree that you can do it for others as well and so I want to share a few beliefs of mine and they're not tactics this is just highlevel Frameworks of how I think about having a team and being a leader that I hope can help you the first thing that I believe that I think helps me be a better leader is that if I give discretionary effort I will get it in return and I will not wait on somebody to give me discretionary effort I will give it to them before I've observed anything for example when I was a personal trainer um I read a book about how to get like about how to keep your clients and how to make them absolutely love you as a trainer and it was one of the best books I've ever read but it talked about putting the extra thought into the person rather than looking at somebody as just your client that you're there to like put through exercises and put on a diet you know what's their home life like what are their best friends names when's their birthday what's going on in their life what are they celebrating what's relevant are they moving moving are they having any big life changes and the thing that I kept thinking about was that's already stuff that I really like doing as a person and so that couldn't be too hard and so I made a little calendar so for each of my clients I knew when their birthdays were when their anniversaries were what holidays they celebrate and didn't celebrate um when big stuff was going on in their life it wasn't even just that I had to like send them a gift for everything but it's that I would bring it up and I would mention it and I would let them know that I was thinking about them and those same principles that I use to basically keep 100% of my clients at any point in time are the same principles that I've applied to having a team which is it's not just looking at them as somebody that works for you and looking at them as somebody who you get something from because you give them money but it's looking at them as the holistic person that they are and actually being invested in that person and I think that what I've realized is that in the beginning I didn't really understand how to teach this um and or a term that would even indicate what it is but what it really is it's it's discretionary effort it's the fact that when I'm taking a shower I think about the fact that you know my assistant who was living in this house in this neighborhood she didn't like just got one that she really likes and like what could I get for her to decorate that house with what could she what could I do to help her welcome into that home I should tell her to take a few days off I should I could get her this kind of gift I could get her that like I want to reach out to her husband and ask him like what could I get her and so it's those moments where you don't have to be thinking about somebody on your team but you want to because you care about about them because you act as though you care and then eventually you will and so I think a lot of times when people say like oh I don't really care about my team like that well if you never act like you care then you don't actually show yourself if you will and a lot of times you can think your way into an action or you can act your way into a thought and I think that for me I have always uh especially with somebody who's new on the team I act my way into a thought which is if I display that I care and I act like I care eventually I really do when I say Act until you care what a lot of people do is when they bring somebody on they act like they don't care and they're actually waiting for some sort of sign which they don't even know what it is that they should care about this person they should trust them but you're actually perpetuating the not caring and the not trusting by not acting like you do and so it's like what would somebody who cares what would they do they would message the person on their first day they would send them something nice they would get them a swag bag immediately they would hold a one one with them quickly so they can greet them on the team they would say hi to them every time they saw them they would ask them how their first day was their first week was they would offer them and see if they need anything right and what you'll see is that if you act like you don't care you're more likely to demonstrate to that person that you don't which then they act like they don't care which then perpetuates the cycle right and so it only takes one person to change a relationship and if you're the leader in the company that's on you to do and one thing you can do is demonstrate that you care for people and eventually they will demonstrate back that they care for you you know there's been a few times in my career where this has made a dramatic difference in my business one of which is I had a sales team and the manager over the sales team this is at jym launch um he was doing a terrible job just to be honest and so what happened was I looked at the sales team and I could tell that he did not care about the sales team he didn't care about them as people he was constantly just drilling them and driving them to make sales like despite what made their personal life look like despite what was going on at home despite any way that they were feeling if they were sick if they had a vacation like he cared not at all and so you know I I went to Alex and I was like listen like I think we have to flip this guy out we need a complete cultural shift here and I think that we could literally like 2x the production of this team if we just had a manager who gave a and so I brought in a new manager and I'm not even joking within literally a week we doubled our sales production doubled and when I asked the team what did why did we double production they said we don't have somebody constantly breathing down in our necks and we feel like we have freedom we feel like we have autonomy we feel like we're being heard and it's just you know what they says it's a way better Vibe right and what does vibe mean it's just like you now don't have an manager who's interfering with your work you have somebody who's making you want to work more and they do that by giving discretion effort the second belief that I have about people that has allowed me to build a team that I really truly love working with is that I do not believe people are stupid I believe that most people are just bad teachers a lot of really astute leaders um and business people and entrepreneurs have this belief and they say this all the time they're like I think I just hired a bunch of dumb asses I think I hired a bunch of stupid people I think I and it's like every time I hear that the first thought that pops in my mind is they're not stupid you just don't know how to teach you just don't know how to train you just don't know how to reinforce behaviors like it's not like everyone comes in this world dumb as hell and so and you know then the second thought is like you also hired them so what's that say about you um but the belief that I've always taken on and is served me more than has not is that people are trainable when people come into a business either they come in fresh not knowing much at all or they come in doing what they've been trained to do by somebody else and maybe that person was an idiot and trained them po does that mean that they're an idiot no most people can learn most things and holding that belief has helped me way more than it has hurt me because I have seen people that were teenagers and so young and so inexperienced do things better than somebody who's had 20 years of experience just because I've believed that they had the ability to learn and I've also instilled that belief in other leaders in my company I think the underlying skill that's needed to teach well is actually your ability to give feedback and when I say give feedback it's really just identifying what good looks like where somebody's at and what's the discrepancy and being able to communicate that in a way that is not punishing but instead encouraging to somebody um and I think a lot of traditional leadership goes in the opposite direction which is we dwell on what somebody's done wrong we dwell on that somebody's not doing well and we keep them stuck in thisy of feeling like acting like feeling like like in out right and I think what the best leaders do the best teachers do is they're really meticulous about presenting feedback in a way that does not feel personal and in a way that anchors the goal and in my opinion the best teachers are able to one know the goal of every student right like what's your personal goal and then they're able to tie every piece of feedback to that personal goal which means hey I know that you want to be coo one day right yeah right I want to be coo one day great so yesterday you did this a COO would have handled it like this what do you think the difference is and then I'll ask them to tell me where the discrepancy is I would say that's one of the most effective ways that you can give feedback as a leader because a lot of times we give feedback I think traditional advice puts you on opposite sides of the table and when you're on opposite sides of the table with somebody feels like your competitors rather than teammates and I think in order to make it feel like we're on the same team headed in the same direction you have to be able to present it in a way that is getting them towards something they want rather than having them run away from something they don't want I'll give you an example when this was really real for me in a recent situation is I had a leader in my company and that leader ran a division and he was constantly you know almost micromanaging the team he had a team of five and you know I started to realize like this is not looking good I don't know if this guy's the guy and I knew because one day he sent me a message and he was like NE is a dumbass and dropped the ball on X Y and Z and her ex her presentation was horrific and and I was like this is really bad and so you know this entire time he'd been telling me how he couldn't get out of the weeds because his team was so dumb and I just knew I was like that's not it I was like his team is not dumb he doesn't know how to teach them how to do anything and if anything he suppresses them and so I let that person go and I promoted somebody from within and what that person did was they allowed everybody to display the level of competence that was already there um and he did that because he believed in people and so he actually put the effort in to train people and to teach people and because he did that what we saw was that we did not have a team of dumb asses we actually had a team of leaders of people who now a year and a half later are all prominent leaders in my company and so the difference was that one guy thought that people were dumb and stupid and the other guy thought that people believed in his team and knew he could teach them so like that's the difference that this kind of belief makes so if you you're saying to yourself right now like my team is dumb I want you to take a look in the mirror and say like are you even a good teacher do you how to teach people really and if you don't even know what the word teach means you probably don't you know another example of this is I had a Director of Finance at gym launch and that Director of Finance um had a team of six people and she kept saying that they you know they weren't smart enough and she need to hire more people and like she can't get anything done and and so I actually ended up bringing in a CFO and having her swap out that Director of Finance and that CFO literally ran the same team and with her leadership coming in and telling me she's like listen they' just been trained wrong like this isn't they're fine like they're fine they haven't been told what to do well they don't have Clarity they haven't been trained because I was like listen are they the right people like you know all I've heard is bad things for the last six months and so she came in and I really didn't know what to think at first but within a period of eight months you know we went from having financials delivered 30 days after we closed the books to having financials within three days of the month being closed we went from having quite literally like a show of data to having an entire dashboard that was delivered to me on a bi-weekly on a weekly basis and we went from having a culture where everyone just seemed like they deferred to their leader to having many leaders within the department and so again you know it wasn't because and you know in this instance my Director of Finance didn't believe people were dumb but she was not a good teacher right and so simply swapping somebody who is a bad teacher out for somebody who's a good teacher I got to actually tap into the potential of the team that already existed the third belief that I hold about leadership is that a core piece of leadership is that you invest in people as if they will never leave but know and even hope that they will a lot of leaders the reason that they don't they will never have the culture that they want is because they are too afraid of investing in people and then leaving they're more afraid of that than they are of not investing in people and them staying and a lot of times what people say is like I get I get what you're saying Lea but what if I put all this energy into someone and and then they leave and it's like oh yes so what if you invest all this energy into making someone's life better you make them a better person and then they leave does that mean that you've done a bad job like there's a lot of reasons that it can be good for somebody to leave a company now are we saying that we want that every instance of course not we want people to stay when we love working with people and we like them but the point of it is is that this belief prevents so many people from putting the effort into their team that actually builds an amazing culture and so something that I've always kept Forefront of mind for myself is invest in them as if they will never leave but be happy when they do because and I think this again like I don't know if this is you know this is just what's personal to me but it's like my reputation that I have with myself is I don't want the relationship to just be good while somebody works for me but I want someone to feel like when they don't work for me if they choose to leave or go somewhere else like I'm still somebody that they can look to that they can uh consider a mentor po that they could call when something bad happens um because again like it's thinking about the person first rather than just the relationship as your employee and I think that you know and maybe this is a point again is like I like being an employer because I like being a mentor to people and so I can remain somebody's Mentor even if they don't work for me and that's okay with me because sometimes things are going to happen in your business where you can't give somebody the growth they're looking for or maybe they decide that they want something that you don't have an opportunity for that in your business or maybe you're not an experienced enough leader that the vision you have for the business is not big enough to fit their Vision they have for themselves and so an example of this is when I was running gym launch um we had a guy and he was in the sales department and he was he'd worked side by side with us since we had first started in fact when we were flying out to gyms he was one of our first sales guys and I really liked him and so we got a really good we built a very good relationship and I definitely put a lot of disc discretionary effort towards him you know not just educating him on sales but just in general and I want to say about 4 and a half years into working for us um him and his wife started a business on the side and I found out about three or four months after they' started it because we were at our team Meetup and he was on the phone I guess he was talking to his wife I was saying going off the business and I went to him and I was like what are you doing and he was like oh my gosh I you know I I'm not quitting like I still want to work here like I just you know also want to have this business so like I don't want you to be upset like BL and I was like bro you need to quit and he was like what what are you talking about like I love this team I want to and I was like no no no I was like you're done like you have gotten so much over the last four and a half years and if I felt like you weren't ready to have your own business and do this I would tell you because most of the time people aren't but you are ready I was like go do it take the risk like put in your 30 days just help help me backfill you that's all I asked but like go do it and he that's what he did he put in his notice and we had about 30 days of transition you he helped backfill himself and you know we've remained in touch since and I've talked to him on the phone many times since then given him advice on his business you know he's gone through the ups and the downs and all those things you know but like at the end of the day do I consider that a loss that I made someone's life better no of course not I consider that a win and I consider that like the brand I wish to have with myself which is it doesn't just go like the relationship doesn't end with when somebody isn't working for me but it's a relationship that I can have for the rest of my life as hopefully their Mentor or somebody they look up to now here's the thing on the other side of that you know what happened right before that was I had somebody that I invested a lot into she was my director of HR and we were very close um we actually pretty close in age which I think a lot of times you're close in age you have a lot of similar interests and hobbies like usually become closer on a team and because you have more in common right and I put so much into her and she kind of came in with little experience and I as much as I could gave her everything in my brain right and she became almost like my right hand and she was my right hand for about two years and she was somebody that I saw really ascending in the company like I was like one day she could even be like a COO or an operator like there's all these big dreams I had for her and I had spent so much time training her that when I got a text message um it was the more morning before I was going to be letting someone go it was a screenshot of her telling that person I was going to let them go and warning them and saying they didn't agree with it and I remember in that moment I was just absolutely just so upset because I couldn't believe that I'd put two years of my life into this person and this happened and I remember after that happened and we parted ways I remember thinking like I have a choice right now because I feel terrible I feel like I was betrayed I feel like I don't want to trust anybody I feel like I was taken advantage of and you know I looked at it as just a numbers game which is you know if I bring 10 people in and I invest in all 10 of them it's probably going to pay off with like seven to eight of them and then for two to three they might end up just like completely me up completely me or leaving early or something right but I don't want those three incidences to rob me of the seven and so I made a decision in that moment I was like I will continue to trust people and I will continue to invest in people and it doesn't matter that I feel like this is part of the game and this is the price I pay to have a team that I love working with is that I have to bear these moments where I feel betrayed and that is just the cost of having an amazing team is that because you build an amazing team through really investing in people and trusting people you're ultimately going to have to bear the cost of when you invest and Trust in the wrong people and that's okay that's just part of it and I think that has served me more than it has not served me in business the last belief that I hold about leadership and definitely not the last but the last I'm going to have for this video is if you want people to show up and to be their best then you have to be at your best and so I think a lot of leadership in my opinion a lot of the books I read early on a lot of the leaders that I listen to to it's not that they told me what to do it's that they inspired me by who they were and that has always been something that has been top of mind for me and I probably put more time into that than I do into any tactic is how can I be someone of such character that I earn the respect of other people of High character how can I be somebody who people don't just look to for business advice but life advice because I am able to manage myself and to manage my life and I think a lot of what creates a leader that people look up to and are inspired by is somebody who's not just one-dimensionally good at one thing like I I can't think of many people in life that I look up to because they're very good at making money right like do I follow do I like watch some of your videos maybe sure like I'll watch videos for money but am I inspired by you do you inspire me to want to follow you would I move across the country to work for you probably not because I don't because I don't see the rest of your life and I think a lot of the times something I've distinguished and I've continued to teach people on my team is I believe the best leaders Inspire in all facets of life um you know it's not just one area but they're able to manage themselves in all the other areas of life as well and so I've always tried to do that and I think that probably stems from you know I got into fitness I lost a lot of weight I worked on my mindset I tried to work through managing my emotions there's just been a lot of things in my life that I've tried to do to better myself and I've seen it pay off when I ended up starting a company because I already had the skills to help myself therefore I was able to help others you know I remember first uh the first time in my career when I realized that essentially just how I showed up for my team would train them on how they showed up for me was I was on a call with about 10 of my teammates the team was literally like 10 people for gym launch and I showed up every day in sweatpants and a hoodie with no makeup my hair and a bun and I remember looking at my team one day and thinking like dude they all look like they just rolled the out of bed and I was like that's kind of embarrassing like I don't want a company that looks like this I remember I literally looked at the call and then I was like oh you look like this you look like you just rolled out of bed therefore they all think it's acceptable and so what I realized is like it doesn't matter what I say it doesn't matter what rules are in place it doesn't matter matter what the employee handbook says what you do sets the standard for what's tolerable and acceptable for the rest of the team because people don't listen to what you say they follow what you do and how you show up and so I literally I started doing my hair I started doing my makeup and guess what happened I didn't say I didn't tell anybody to show up any different way within a month everybody started showing up differently everyone looked better they had their hair done they had makeup on they didn't look like they just roll out the bread they looked like they brushed their teeth and I was like holy crap like that really works like I don't have to say anything it's just how I show up that will dictate how others do another example of this is throughout the entire time my own gym launch one of the main objectives I also had especially because we were a company centered around Fitness was like I don't want people to join my company and be less healthy and I think there's a lot of times where people join a company and other pieces of their life fall to the Wayside and so what I did was I I had a walking treadmill and I would constantly be walking on calls and what I found is that all of a sudden you started looking and over like a span of like six months after I got the treadmill and there was one day when like three qus of our team was on a walking treadmill because they were like oh I didn't know that was okay I can have a walking treadmill and what's so funny is that then everyone started losing weight and everyone started getting healthier and then eventually we started doing step challenges as a team because we're like this is pretty cool and I had like testimonials from my team about how much weight they lost working on the team because we promoted a healthy environment how did I promote a healthy environment I didn't go say go eat healthy and diet I just did it myself and displayed it and so it's not what we say it's what we demonstrate to our teams and I think what it does it also allows people to put importance on other areas of their life when you demonstrate that you do that for yourself I hope that these Frameworks or these principles help you guys I um I know they're not like fully flushed out but I'm really I really want to do a better job of figuring out how to operationalize leadership because like what irks me is like a lot of the traditional leadership is like be honest be trustworthy be these things one nobody knows what those things mean and then two nobody knows how do you tactically do that and so I am going to put more effort towards figuring out how to translate this down because at the end of the day the hardest part of building a culture is not it's not in the process it's not in some project management system it's not in the CRM it's not any of the tactics it's in who you are as a leader and how you show up for your team and I have just seen like as I have become a better person I've learned to manage my emotions more I've learned to be kinder I've learned to be more considerate I've learned to have more patience I've learned to communicate better my team has gotten better and it's not because of Any tactic I've deployed it's because great people won't work for a mediocre leader and so the better you are the better Talent you will attract