Answering Questions [Live Workshop]

Summary

• I learned that YouTube content doesn't need to be about getting viral views. Instead, focus on creating impactful content for a smaller, more engaged audience.
• Only produce content that excites you. If I'm not excited about the topic, it shows and the content performs poorly.
• To fast-track employee training and maintain high quality, invest heavily in the onboarding process. Use intensive training sessions to immerse new hires and build relationships.
• Regain trust from your team through transparency and honesty. Address mistakes openly and involve them in finding solutions.
• When scaling from $3 million to beyond, hire an operator who matches the current scale, knowing you might need a different one as you grow.
• Manage a high number of direct reports by having frequent, short check-ins rather than infrequent, long meetings. This maintains accountability and performance.
• Ignore negative trolling on social media. Focus instead on creating positive content that can bury the negative comments.
• For a business capped on acquiring email lists, increase customer value. Introduce higher-ticket products to boost revenue from existing customers.
• Creating a brand takes time and effort. Despite short-term challenges and low returns, continue to pursue it for long-term benefits.
• Hold people accountable by linking feedback to their personal goals. Critique actions and provide clear guidance on what to do instead.
• Family businesses need careful handling. Sometimes, to grow, tough decisions must be made about who stays. If the family is enthusiastic but lacks vision, create compelling presentations to share your enthusiasm and vision.
• Transitioning to new senior leadership should be slow and smooth. Ensure overlap and frequent check-ins to ease the process.
• Focus on growth activities if you want to scale. Hire to backfill other roles so your time is spent on activities that drive business growth.
• Avoid split attention between completely different business models as it can hinder overall growth. Focus on expanding in ways that align with your core business.

Video

How To Take Action

Implementing Low-Cost, High-Value Strategies for Growth

I would suggest implementing a few key insights to drive growth, whether you're a small business, an entrepreneur, or someone pursuing personal growth.

Content Creation and Brand Building

Focus on creating content that excites you and has a large impact on a smaller, engaged audience:

• Create Engaging Content: Don't worry about viral content. Make videos or posts about topics you are passionate about. The excitement will show, and you'll build a more loyal audience.
• Leverage Authenticity: Keep it real and casual, especially if you're more conversational. This can help in videos or social media posts.
• Consistency: Aim for a consistent schedule of shorter, frequent posts or videos rather than infrequent long ones.

Team Training and Onboarding

For businesses, fast-tracking employee training by investing in a strong onboarding process can make a big difference:

• Batch Onboarding: Conduct a week-long training for new hires to build relationships and immerse them in the company culture.
• Regular Check-Ins: Supplement initial training with weekly sessions to reinforce learning and address issues.

Transparency and Trust

Regain or maintain trust within your team by being transparent and including them in decisions:

• Own Mistakes: If you make a mistake, address it openly and involve your team in finding solutions.
• Consistent Communication: Have frequent short check-ins to maintain accountability and performance.

Managing Social Media Negativity

Ignore negative comments and focus on amplifying positive content:

• Positive Content: Create more positive posts to overshadow any negative comments.
• Don't Engage: Don't waste time engaging with trolls; it’s not productive.

Increasing Customer Value

If your growth is capped, focus on increasing the value of your existing customers:

• High-Ticket Products: Introduce higher-priced products or services to boost revenue.

Brand Development

Building a brand takes time but is worth the effort:

• Long-Term Focus: Stick with brand-building activities even during challenging times.

Accountability and Feedback

Link feedback to personal goals to make it more effective:

• Critique Actions: Focus on actions and provide clear guidance on what to do differently.

Family Business Dynamics

For family businesses, careful handling and clear vision-sharing can ignite enthusiasm:

• Share Vision Compellingly: Create exciting presentations to share your vision and spark enthusiasm within the team.

By implementing these strategies, you can achieve growth effectively while keeping costs low and ensuring high-value outcomes.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"I've learned the difference between getting views and building a brand"

• Leila Hormozi

"You care more about having a larger impact on lesser people"

• Leila Hormozi

"The only thing that builds trust quickly is transparency"

• Leila Hormozi

"Frequent short communication is better than long less frequent communication"

• Leila Hormozi

"If it's staged, it underperforms for me"

• Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

what's up guys so today we have a Q&A from one of our most recent workshops where I talk about gaining trust with the team managing a team and even dealing with hate on social media and so let me know what you think in the comments and enjoy two question two- part question one is what have been some of your biggest learning lessons with your YouTube channel and two what are you going to be changing like any changes forecasting upcoming things for your YouTube channel that you or would recommend you know I think I've learned the difference between getting views and building a brand and I've tried because I I'm really like when I start something new you know I I knew how to do business but I didn't know how to do content when I started making content so I was like very advanced in business very unadvanced and understanding content so I kind of just like tried out whatever people told me to do you know it's like oh this person said try okay [ __ ] it I'll make a video on this that's embarrassing um and so yeah I posted yesterday like one of my first shorts was tough uh but I think what I learned was that what I like why am I making content right and it's not to get viral views and I understand how to do that and it's not a game I want to play it's not important to me and I don't care so much for those vanity metrics it's really to have a a large impact on less people and so that was one of my biggest lessons and learnings is just I care more about having a larger impact on lesser people and that works for me you know I'm not going to go off and make content on I don't know like Mr Beast my content or whatever I don't even know what that would look like for me that'd be frightening but um that that was the first thing I would say that the second thing is probably um I've just realized that any piece of content that I make that I'm not excited to talk about it just I think I think that if it's staged I'll give you an example right Mr Beast they plan everything they do you know practice runs all those things Etc it's all staged it's rehearsed for my content it's really just like teaching things that I have learned if it's something that I maybe other people think would be interesting but I don't think is interesting it justes ever perform as well and so I don't know what that is maybe it's just because I come off grumpy maybe it's because I don't put as much discretionary effort into it I don't know what it is but I try not to film content that I'm not excited to film and then in terms of what's changing or coming um definitely going to try now that we have two Studios upstairs done different styles of content so I'll give you an example which is the hardest style for me has just been learning direct to camera because I'm much more conversational what do I do all day because we think about what do we do all day I have one with people all day I talk to people all day I don't talk at myself I don't present like that's just not what I'm as best at and so what I've learned is like you want to try and capture the formats that you're better in so I think for me it's a little more casual more of just like me doing what I do um and so I think we're going to continue to try to go like that's been the hardest thing for us to figure out and I think we're still figuring out is like how do we go farther in that direction which Shai's right there he's my new creative director hey so he's going to help with that great thank you so much let's go right here hey uh I have a uh detailing company service based um we are uh we have about 15 guys right now we do a lot of polishing like skilled labor um I'm trying to grow it to like 30 to 40 guys um and I'm trying to figure out what's the best way to Fast Track the the training because we like to we prefer to bring them on without really knowing anything because they didn't they don't have bad habits yeah um and then train them ourselves uh so what's the best way to f TR the training and then maintain high quality think about like this right so for a customer you guys have heard like time devalue is very important right so like how quickly can you get this person the value of the product they just got I look at it in the same with an employee which is like how quickly can I get them producing value in the company the fastest way is to put a lot more effort into the onboarding um and so for me for example like structuring out for a role that is duplicative like the one that you're describing you have a lot of this people doing the same thing we have that in a couple portfolio companies and so what they do is they batch onboard people so basically what they'll do is they will every month or however long they will if you're you're already in person I assume for this business um they will have them all do basically like a whole weekl long training and so before they do anything they go through this 7-Day training and then thereafter they have once a week continued training as well as self assignments I really think the upfront front investment of those seven days makes all the world of a difference because you're immersing that person into everything they're building relationships they're building a relationship with you with their peers with the company the amount of like contextual knowledge that they get from those seven days just like far surpasses think about how long you would have to like do to replicate that it's like okay I need seven days let's say they're they're there spending time with people for 12 or 13 hours a day it's like how many months of once once a week meetings with that take yeah you know and so when I think of onboarding I think of not onboarding but acceleration for an employee so it's like I actually feel like onboarding is such a lame term it's like it's really acceleration how do you get them up to speed as fast as possible and so what you need to think about in my opinion is what are the core things that in those seven days they need to learn like to be fundamentally successful uh and so I would probably look at if you have a hard time thinking that through who were my most successful people off the bat and there's two things you want to think about one what skills did they already have when they came in because you say they had nothing they had some maybe it means that they could show up on time maybe it means that they could do math maybe it means that they knew how to say no to customers think about those things right so think about those best people what were the skills they already had and then the next piece is what were the skills that you successfully taught those people because what this is doing is it's figuring out what skill level are you able to successfully teach because we all have one I know for me what level of SK skill I can teach and what one is truly not worth my time based on the business I have or maybe is beyond my level of competence to teach and then I would use that to put together that 7-Day accelerator okay that makes sense yeah thank you absolutely let's go over here right here uh Kevin Lacy I own Bo Lacy Construction in Ohio we're home improvement company uh we did 15 million in sales last year and we kind of fumbled the ball this year and tell you a problem we had was we looked at our metrics and saw that are so we have three calls a measure call you measure the roof a pres you know then a presentation you present it and a lot of times we wouldn't get to the presentation because the customer wouldn't show up to that so anyway when we looked our metrics it lead to closes at uh 20% but they got in from of the customers around 40% so we said well why don't we turn into one stop we present the price on the first call right so we looked at the metric and it totally railed our sales team and T sales system and sales plummeted and we lost a lot of trust with our people so my question to you is how do you gain back the culture that you've had gain the trust of your people mind you we went from 3 million to 5 million to 7 million to 11 and a half to 15 all in that fiveyear span so we're off like a rocket ship and then we fumbled the bag I guess yeah I think the only thing that builds trust quickly is transparency transparency and honesty anytime I've made a mistake in my company one of the first things I think is who do I have to let know that I made this mistake because they see you know and people feel it and if we don't address it and own up to it it's kind of like you know you're married to somebody and they make a mistake and they don't say [ __ ] you're like [ __ ] I'm here I see it you know what I mean and that's like how your employees feel like [ __ ] I'm here watching you fumble you know what I mean and so I I've just found that that is the absolute best way to do it in fact there's been multiple times where I've made mistakes before um you know I want to say the most recent I can think of was probably um two years ago where I presented what I thought was like a really good strategic vision of where what we needed to do and then I basically backtracked about a week later because of a conversation our team was having and I kind of fumbled and it kind of threw the team off and I feel like we didn't make a lot of progress for a quarter and so I just owned up to it I was like listen I was not decisive enough I caved based on all the opinions of other people my job is to decide things at the end of the day and to gather all the information and make that decision and I recognize that's a flaw of mine and that is something that I'm working on um and so I was just as honest as I could be with them I gave them all the historical knowledge the context the data I think it's just that most of the times we feel like how much do we share with our team [ __ ] share everything I don't honestly like I just like my same Mantra with like sharing content it's like I don't not gonna hold anything back you guys ask me a personal all answer whatever I don't give a [ __ ] same with my team like I'm never going to withhold anything overshare on the situation own up to it and then say like I think this is what we need to do to fix it what do you guys think and I think that's something that it's like so many people are like what do I do to grow my company and then I'm like how many people on your team have you asked because something I do before I make any decision in the company is I'm like okay every quarter for example I ask every level what they think what do they think is going well what do they think needs Improvement and what do think they think that I should be doing better because I'm like I would like to know the perspectives from everybody and the thing is is like those surveys that I send out and those questions I ask and then I follow up with people and slack that's probably like one of the most valuable things I can do and it has been that way for eight years and so I think it's like be honest be transparent and then pull from your team on the solution because the more that they feel that they're part of creating that solution the more bought in they are to doing it and because you may have severed some trust it's important that they're bought in so that if this doesn't work as well as you anticipated to they don't feel like it's on you but on everybody does that make sense yeah okay great thank you yeah of course right here hi uh Zach Morrison uh 360 windows and doors three million in revenue and oh my gosh almost forgot okay I have got it I've got it it's okay okay so right now I would describe I'm trying to build the race car of how we run our business and I'm wondering when do I hire the operator whose job it is to go win the races or do I have them build a race car with me me even though right now things are tight things are hectic as I'm navigating manufacturers and other vendors that change the plan out of out of my control so sometimes like we really got to make pivots and that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out like when do I find that person yeah thank you there's no right or wrong answer you could do it now or you could do it later I think it's more of a question of preference and the type of person you're going to get which is I'll say this which is like um to find somebody who the operator at 3 million and also the operator at 100 million is a rare thing to find typically those people are you know people that you know of online and have their own business and they've gone through the whole shebang right um so if you find somebody now they'll likely be great for a season but you would have to be cognizant of the fact that they might not be the person when you're at 20 or 30 or 50 million because a lot of people have what I would call like um gosh Reed hoffen talks about it it's like a Call of Duty or whatever blueprint yeah it's like they have like two or three years that they're really really great in a certain role this is in very high leverage roles if they haven't been in that position before and or they're not able to continue growing right then it's tough to keep growing the company if that person is not expanding and so if you were to hire somebody right now you would want somebody who's Scrappy they are uh they can lead by influence they can really help lead people through ambiguity right because somebody who operates what does that mean lots of change and uncertainty so for example like right now you're at 3 million you're like well this or this thing might change right it's uncomfortable for teams and people because they're like if you come from a company that's like corporate and like nothing changes ever you're like this is absurd right but like that's just how it is at three million and so it's important to hire somebody that has that context but that person might be bored of [ __ ] at 50 million and be like oh my God I'm doing the same thing every day and talking to the team all the time and like communicating emails right they be like oh this is so boring I want to go do something fun right and so I would say this if you were to hire them right now could you grow the business faster yes okay thank you all that to say great right here let's go right here what are your best practices for managing a high number of direct reports across departments any mistakes to avoid uh we're fully remote and I heard you mention weekly reports elsewhere and was curious about that process in particular could you tell me how many direct reports you have across what kind of departments yeah so 10 direct reports and I currently manage Finance operations recruiting podcast production uh there's a fifth one in there so the whole company um my business partner we recently decided that she would just focus on working with the sales team oh I know who is okay understood yeah so she's just focusing on the sales team yeah well I guess the question is how much more of a return do do you get if you were to bring somebody else in to help manage some of the direct reports because 10 is pushing it for sure trust me like I I I've had I have in the last year had 10 and you can't put the same effort into those people that you would to if you had five right and so I think that's the first thing I would step back and look at which is like are you able to effectively grow the company not just manage it but grow it if you have 10 like are you doing nothing else but managing them no I'm not oh okay so you're truly just managing them no I am I'm not um sorry I misunderstood the question yeah so right now I spend 3 days a week just on calls from beginning to end and then the other three days of the week usually four days of the week uh I try and focus on just solving the constraint first thing I would consider is just if you need to bring in somebody to help you manage and what that role would look like um and what departments it could be over because I would say what departments do you have the most strength in like why did you even why are you over them at all right yeah um I like solving problems so um I have fun in all the different departments um making it tough yeah okay where do you have the least experience um I mean I didn't have experience in doing any of these things okay A couple of years ago I would say right now what I'm really enjoying is recruiting um I really love finding great people I feel like we're building a really awesome team um and part of the reason why I'm managing a lot of people right now is because I'm the one that has more bandwidth to really give these new people attention yeah and train them up make sure that they're getting integrated into the culture and whatnot yeah okay well [ __ ] it if you're going to stick with it then I would say the most important thing to understand when you have a high number is that frequent short more frequent short communication is better than long less frequent communication okay so if you were able to touch base with each of them twice a week for 10 minutes or whatever right and on each 10 minute you solve one problem or you talk about one thing that would be more effective in improving performance and keeping this person accountable then if you were to meet with them once every two weeks for 30 minutes M so whenever someone has like a high number of people on their team I suggest meet with them just as frequently as you would with any others make them shorter call and then just because shorter I would say this the less the higher the frequency the shorter the communication the more effective it is versus I think a lot of people what they do and I've tried this model where it's like I'm going to do every two weeks but it's going to be 30 minutes or an hour but think about then that person has to wait that long to be talking to you so that's the first thing I would say is like the more frequent that you can have one-on ones with them uh and keep them shorter and more focused the more effective that will be um I would say that the the next piece to is that just depending on the Departments you're probably at a point where each of those departments has to have their own type of meeting or reporting structure yeah right and so they might be running their own huddle each week and I would say that when I'm overseeing departments that have their own uh huddles and meetings I will usually sit in on half of them one week and half the next week so I don't sit in on like for example like I wouldn't just sit on sales and marketing I would sit on every single huddle every other week because then when I can also do is it's a chance for me to give the leader feedback more than anything it's not like I'm trying to watch and do work but I can give them feedback how to how to present better how to better collaborate with the team how to hold them accountable more and so that's something that I found to be super useful um if you have the time to do it yeah that's great thank you yeah last thing I'll say um you can facilitate basically like a game tape with all of them so for example um if you have a department where or I'd say like within all of these leaders if they're working on accountabil with their teams or something to that degree then you might have them each uh once a week you do game tape a leadership game tape where you guys each watch somebody's oneon-one and they put it up they're like this is my one-on-one I conducted with my team and you guys basically get to do a game tape with them kind of like you would do a sales call where you give them feedback on that call that they had now you obviously want to keep it um contextualize it which is like I always tell everyone like we're GNA give them one piece of feedback not 12 and just make them feel like [ __ ] okay um but that's all also kind of fun because it's like wow we're like auditing our leadership capabilities um and it's something that can get them working really well together as a leadership team that reports to you thank you Le absolutely we'll go right here how would you uh kind of uh you know go about somebody trolling You negatively on social media or anything like this so that is my simple question I don't have to spell it out too much but I think you got it yeah what is this person doing yeah so some they not one person there is four or five people people maybe competitors or otherwise on a redit or a blind Forum anonymously colling you down or sort of pulling you down or criticizing you so what is the best way that you would see to deal with such kind of situations oh I just ignore it okay just completely ignore it I have so much to doubt there and what happens when somebody who is like prospective client would ask you about that then that's a question I'd just be like who's that okay like for real there like so and so is talking [ __ ] I'd be like who I don't give a [ __ ] you know what I mean like I'm focused on like I'm focused on important things in my life I don't give a [ __ ] what somebody has to criticize me about you know online who I don't even know half the time maybe it's true maybe it's not you know what I mean like half the time I watch this stuff that's like people would be like oh my God are you okay and I'm laughing because I'm like dude the things people come up with nowadays but seriously like it's not worth your time it's not worth your attention people are going to say what they're going to say whether you're the like you can be one of the most prestigious people in the world and you're going to have 50% people who hate you like it just is what it is you know because you represent something else to them and so don't even think about it don't look at it don't read it don't give it attention don't respond to it it's not worth your time like you can get to the end of your life be like I really regret not reading all those troll comments ments on Reddit you know what I mean and not responding that [ __ ] it doesn't matter it's irrelevant like and the thing I always tell people is I'm like and what happens next so you go on you're like [ __ ] this troll I'm gonna come back with like some some good [ __ ] right and then and then they respond with something even meaner and then what like what you're going to change their mind they already they've already made up their mind and like you're the last person that's going to change it so if anything if somebody say something really mean to me I just agree with them I'm like maybe you know like I don't know you know like ignore absolutely no because my my only point the reason why I was asking is that do you initiate or recommend from a business standpoint uh any legal action or something like this or a media uh PR agency or something that was my in that context not personally how do we take it personally okay I still would ignore okay perfect because like at the end of the day like what I mean like lawsuits Take Years also because they don't give a [ __ ] about businesses to bus he did this or said this slandered me they're like oh yeah so you'll have a court case in a year trust me I mean like I have plenty of those things happening right now and like they take forever they take a ton of money and it doesn't really matter like it's just it's not worth your time like instead focus on burying all of these things with good stuff like if there's bad stuff online focus on how can I create so much overwhelmingly good stuff about my business online that people don't even blink at this you know it's like I was using this example in video the other day but like you know there's iconic people who have been for example like you look at musicians and stuff and they've they will go on till the end of time people remember their music but then they do something really [ __ ] up like really [ __ ] up but like the thing is they still have statues made of them and they still have albums and they have shows in Vegas where people perform as them why is that because there's so much good that people were over they were willing to overlook the bad thing and it was a bad thing and so I look at the same with any kind of thing in brand which is like if there's so much overwhelming good people will Overlook the blip of bad that is out there even if it's like crazy untrue I mean we have people saying untrue stuff all the time about our business using our business to Market theirs doing all sorts of illegal [ __ ] and it's just like it's also just a complete time and attention suck and if I'm not actively having my business burned down by it then why do I care wonderful thank you very much yeah for sure right here we're an online education company that provides continuing education courses for mental health therapists and we've grown primarily by acquiring email list and doing email marketing and we have a big ass list so like 250,000 people which is pretty big and soon that email acquisition channel will be capped out meaning we've acquired like every list that we could that we could get and that'll probably be at like 400,000 people and there's a million therapists in our Market okay so we can't get any more list in that and at that point when we get 400,000 emails we'll be at like 2 to three million a year we're currently at like 1.2 so um when we do cap out at that acquisition Channel what would be your strategy and priorities in order to break past that level well I would I would probably be looking at how do I I guess my question is this which is like how much is each customer worth to you right now $120 that's what I'd be looking at right like how could we make the customers worth more because that's a very valuable list that you have right so you you just recommend squeezing the juice out of that list well I mean I guess my question is why is the customer not worth ,000 or 3,000 or 5,000 right and it's something I've really been I've actually focused a year full year of attention without any marketing just trying to solve that problem and actually doubled it actually it was actually worse than that that's awesome which is cool really good and it's weird cuz so we have three courses um average price is about $50 a course so it's low ticket stuff yeah but we also have a membership subscription where you get everything for $300 a year okay and we want to sell as many of those as possible which has been successful and um I guess the reason why we're not getting as much repeat business as possible like when it comes to the individual courses it's because there's just there's a lot of competition in the market but it's a topic based industry people want to take courses that they're specialized in or that um that their clientele is in so if I'm if I'm a therapist and I specialize in trauma or something I want to take a lot of trauma courses or anxiety I want to take anxiety courses and what kind of courses do you have we cover all topics I mean very we have cover it all do you have people that like almost are like the faces of each of those kind of courses not really I mean we have 80 speakers who teach for us and there're we have amazing speakers I mean world renown speakers bestselling authors Ted Talk speakers who teach those courses um okay but I think the my hypothesis is the reason why people don't come back to us is because there's not much loyalty customer loyalty to brands in this competition since there's so many options you can get these C courses from I think that's true there's just what I think is that they just want to pick the uh they just whoever whoever gets in front of them at the right time they'll take or whatever I just want to take an anxiety course right now go to Google boom boom boom I would say this which is like if you establish a brand of your company then they'll buy anything that your company has right and so the brand of youran company the reason it's not strong is you have ad associations you know what I mean so your strength is also what's making it difficult which is like if they like they might like half of the instructors they might not like half whatever it might be right but I think it's understanding like what's the brand of the company that that's one piece to this because I think that if you can establish a strong brand meaning strong associations that your company has that compel the people on your list then they'll want to buy more stuff from you and my question is just like how can you sell more expensive stuff to these people right because they clearly want to improve their skills you have a huge list and like that's probably the most valuable thing about your business is this list you have so the question is how do you find more products to sell to those people but I think someh that does start especially in this industry with what kind of brand have you created for the company and I don't think that it's impossible to do I think that just most people don't stop and think about it and so the question is how do you create that kind of trusting brand where they believe that you know and that the reason I asked about like having associations with some of these world around people like could they be the faces of the marketing could they drive faces of different sections of the the group like this person owns anxiety and OCD and this person owns you know depression and this or like whatever it may be right because those could be stronger brand associations if you find people in the industry um but the second piece like the real one like we boil it all down is also just you need higher ticket products to sell to your customers in my opinion like rather than saying how do I keep getting more customers like okay well if you got four or five times as much like you're on the right track you doubled it that's great I just think we need to like we're doing like incremental improvements we need to have a differenter of product you know what I'm say that's something we're looking into um a cert certification courses yeah so which are so was about $300 to $2,000 price point range let's start at 2,000 yeah cool seriously so you validated that was you validated that like should we tap that yes and the thing is like 10 and 300 like yes it's more but like it's still also like in the same Stratosphere it we want to bump up a tier to have a more premium product that we can offer the people who want premium and based on listening to your stuff it validates because doesn't the certification courses having to charge more for them creating those courses don't take much extra resources or effort out of our pocket at all we just make the courses longer and add some extra Jesus to it I mean I have a friend and she has a certification that she charges $188,000 and her business has 50 million a year and it's not even actual like therapist education like life coaching right right right yeah people will pay for this stuff and people buy off of a webinar with no sales call yeah that's power brand you know right right right so if you can borrow somebody like that's brand you know what I mean like think about that thank you very much awesome hey Lea uh I run a e-commerce product business and my question is most of my Revenue currently comes from one distribution Channel and I'm slowly investing into brand and like more on website for D Toc sales but it's timec consuming and it's kind of like what you said sucks in the short term but it'll benefit us in the long term yeah I'm trying to evaluate is what I'm doing the short term even worth it because it is timec consuming or do I just go back to how I'm currently really generating revenue from that one platform why did you start doing it in the first place because we need to build brand and to have differentiation in our products brand is what's going to stick out so how does building that channel do that how does the channel building that channel do that so okay yeah when you say Channel tell me what what do you mean like so most of the sales come from Amazon but we don't own that customer base y but if we sell on website then it's more scalable understood okay got I feel you um so yeah this is a tough one because I will say this which is I've talked to a lot of people who have brands on Amazon specifically right and if they boil it down and do all the math they they sell more off of Amazon than they do off of theirs exactly right yeah um I guess the question is like one what did you decide is to be the constraint of your business right now uh I need like a CFO highle bookkeeper to do the sales forecasting and all the math that it takes to require a to run a Ecom business okay okay and then the second piece is right now having the other sales channel on your website like how much effort is that taking what what part of it is taking effort like making Instagram reels and doing the video editing capturing the video video creating the content ideas you think it's building a brand or do you think because it's like absolutely I'm definitely building a brand okay uh feel confident on that it's just like the returns is like pennies compared to Amazon yeah well what do you want I want to build a brand then keep doing it it takes [ __ ] years you know what I mean it's like nothing worth having is easy from the start and everything that's easy from the start is harder later on and so if that's what you want then I would keep doing it now it's going to be harder it's going to take more time it's going to be all these things but it will pay off eventually the first two years I even made content I felt like just like is anything ever gonna is this ever going to work at all you know what I mean it's like I've even I'm surprised when people ask me about it and so I think um and I would say that like compared to some people might say oh that your brand grew quickly but like it in reality I think it's like anything in life it's like the slower it is to get going the easier it is to accelerate later on and so I think it's worthwhile if you actually have that goal of building a brand to keep doing it thank you yeah for sure right here um I love how tactical your content is on YouTube really appreciate that and combining that with uh how you talk about being ruthless with your culture what are some tactical ways that you implement accountability in a way that feels good for your culture I think that in order to implement t accountability in a way that feels good somebody needs to understand how to give a critique versus an insult you might have seen this in some of my content but I think this is the root issue with most people giving feedback which is they don't give feedback they insult somebody I think like the biggest example I thought of was when I was watching selling Sunset and uh yeah Mary yelled at Christine and she was like just just stop doing this and she was like doing what she's like you're just a [ __ ] just stop being a [ __ ] and I think about how many bosses are like just stop being mean just stop being mean just stop being mean or just just stop being late hey just stop talking like that just stop and so instead right because that's just insulting somebody it's associating them with something negative critiquing somebody is just talking about where they are and where you would like them to be right and so I always talk about if you want to hold people accountable it's much easier to know what their goal is because then you're holding them accountable to their goal not even to your goal that you set for them but to your goal the goal that they have set for themselves and so every person that comes into my company I want to know where do they want to end up right and most people here really want to grow and they really want to go on to whatever the next level the next level sure or even become a CEO one day have their own company right and so if I'm starting a conversation with you want to do this right they're like yes that's where I want to go I'm like okay so you know when you did this and they're like yeah I'm like so if you want to go here do this instead that's it that's the difference like people like how do you hold them accountable I'm like I just tell them what to do instead and I anchor it to the goal you told me you want to be a CEO one day you did this here's what a CEO would do and it's not even my goal that I set for them it's the goal they set for themselves I think it all boils down to that it's just tell someone what to do instead anchor to the goal that they've expressed to you that can be on a one-on-one that can be in a feedback conversation that can be in an end of week report it's in written it's verbal it's just always telling people what to do instead because then you have them focused on the future and what they're going to do next not beating themselves up for what they did wrong in the past is that helpful yeah I do and watching selling Sunset that's absolutely it's a great show yeah got it no that's super helpful thank you good for sure lots of lessons there okay we're gonna go here let's go right here we I have a cafe in CA Valley and the issue I came on board six months ago I took over and we implemented changes with changes came some challenges and here I am today six months later I'm going to come back and I'm going to say acquisition. told me and they're going to say acquisation who and why do I care they nobody that I know has ever gone to anything like this I don't I don't think there's anybody that I can relate to that we can share common um experiences so I'm I'm wondering how do I ignite the excitement from my team when their morale is kind of severed and and how do I do I'm I'm a big cheerleader naturally yeah but they also see that as being gullible and who what does she know so do they work for you yeah girl okay they do this is a family business and we are family it's family operated familyowned my uncle is a chef my dad is a pastry maker I mean we are all family no no disrespect there's really no disrespect I have a great team um and they really follow Direction in that sense but in terms of growth they've been about the same for the last five seven years and so they I feel I've see a loss of Hope for this growth that we talk about yeah and so now that I'm being hyped up about it they're not at that level they're not seeing the bigger picture they don't have that same vision and I've been trying to inspire that but um I think it's much more challenging than that it's it's much easier said and what's your okay family's tough yeah I've worked with many people in my family and I keep that to myself because I don't want to talk about negative stories of my family online um do work with my dad now and he's fantastic to work with um it's tough because sometimes no matter how hard you might try as a leader you know the saying like you can't be Jesus in your hometown like there's only you can't try harder to change somebody they have to try harder so what it feels like right now is you're trying harder to change somebody and I guess I would ask you this question which is assuming they their behavior changes not at all right can you implement the things that you learned here and grow the business yes okay great that's a win okay they don't need to be excited well if if you don't need if seriously if they don't need to change their behavior because I'm just looking right how long have you worked with them six months okay but with the family business for the last 15 years right so what's the likelihood that they're going to adjust the same thing let me just tell you this the same thing happens in people who buy a business they buy a business that was family-owned or that's been the same team for years right and then they say to me they're like I'm coming in I'm trying to change things and I'm change takes a long time in something like that like especially the longer that those people have been there the longer they've been doing that job the same way for a long time economically speaking in those situations what most people do is they buy the business and take the team out if they want to grow it if they want to stay the same and just want their investment returned they keep the team in there right and so for you if you it's tough for me right because like the the part I'm like sometimes you got to boot out the family you know um I have personally fired my family so not easy didn't talk to me for like a year um but I knew that that was the reason my business wasn't growing and so I'm not saying you need a fire family but I am saying that I think that family businesses work really well because we have a tight relationship and there's this trust that is hard to build that it's you have all this time and all this trust that's already built right so it accelerates doing things together the difficulty is when that same Dynamic actually prevents the business from growing because people don't want to they have different desires right you want to grow the business they probably don't care and so I think it's just if you can implement the things that you learned here today without needing them to change then I think that's great a win because they can work there and you can grow the business if that's an issue then I think you have a harder decision to make at hand and that's just me saying that like I I think I say it and people like you don't understand no I do I just don't want to share those things publicly but I do understand right I just at the end of the day want growth more than I want anybody including my family to like me yeah and in all transparency my family would love to grow I mean they have all the enthusiasm easy don't fire them no I won't fire them I just I would like the entire team to be on board and not just the fact family I think they believe in me and what I can give but I do think that it takes the entire team to move this forward and I care about them so deeply because they've carried this forward on their own for so much time so I'd love to have them stick around and see these wins um but I do understand the the challenges I have up front and so um yeah I just thought I I I thought if they're not shitty here's what you can do you can I'm just joking with you you can how I would do it is like essentially back in the day when I would go pay for expertise or H I don't know go to an event or something like that I would essentially compile everything I learned and almost like make like a almost like a webinar for my team that I was presenting it to to bring them through the Journey that I went through to get them excited and I will say that something that I put a lot of effort into is when I want to sell I would say like present an idea to my team I always think sell don't tell like how can I make this just as compelling as when I heard it for the first time and I probably put I mean I put I've made way more decks for teams than I have ever for customers and I continue to try and think every day with every interaction how am I selling them on my vision and what I'm doing and myself but then in these moments where there's change you really have to put a lot of effort into it meaning like if you want to change something in the business it's not just doing a presentation and selling the team it's also probably meeting with each person oneon-one and saying like anchoring to their goal and then how this is going to help achieve that goal and so I do think if you put that effort in you could definitely do it like I I literally if I were you I would go back I'd be like okay I have all my notes let me think of the core things that like I learned that like hit for me and then I'm going to put those into like a slide deck presentation and I'm just going to present to my team this journey that I went along for these two days and then like what I want to do because of it what do I want to change or what would I like to do um I could say that also you could end it with just like I would love your feedback and thoughts on all these things I just learned like what were your takeaways from all of my notes and then kind of lead the horse to water and ask them like okay well what do you think we should change from here yeah thank you best case scenario Leila and Alex told me to do so we're GNA do it it's gonna happen the hard part will be what you're saying but I'll do that thank you thanks absolutely okay let's go a little further Sarah guess what Sarah's my cousin full disclosure yeah full disclosure Sarah's my cousin that's why I thought it'd be funny thanks Lea um so I've got a people question for you yeah um over the last few years we've scaled the business it's almost become unrecognizable the senior management team who hire I hired and I put in place they're really good and I and I I I care for them deeply they're they're great people the problem is is that I've realized in order to scale the business to the next level taking it from 15 million Topline now to 2030 million I'm going to need a senior leadership team and at the moment I'm currently recruiting for a CFO and some of the skills which I know that I can't I I can't do um so my question for you is I work so closely with the senior management team I brought them on I I deal with them directly they work with me so closely but I realize that I'm going to have to remove myself from that that place to the new senior leadership team I'm trying to build but I want to do that in a sensitive way that doesn't disinf franchise them upset them but do it in a sensitive way um while still keeping morale High I'd love to know how how you would treat that how you how you would do it yeah I've done it many times um not many you know like three but um I know it's sensitive so I would say one I never do it all at once right I start with one and I do it very slowly so that it's a slow transition so often times you know what will happen is I'll bring in somebody who's a new senior leader somebody's reporting to me that person you know most of the time knows like it might be coming because it makes sense um and so I say eventually like in a quarter I would like to transition you under this person um here's what the transition plan I I propose would look like basically it's usually that you know I'm going to help see out the next quarter help collaborate with the new leader on what they're going to help that person do for the upcoming quarter and then I'm going to still meet with them either every two weeks or every month as the transition happens so basically they will start meeting with the new leader a month before so they start having meetings with them while I'm still overseeing them and then I will meet with them the same for a couple weeks after depending on who it is and how I think it's going it might be two weeks it might be a month and then I keep a Cadence for usually until I feel like it's not necessary of like maybe once a month touching base with them um but it's really paying attention to that transition process of like creating the overlap because if that person and usually when I talk to the senior leader I'm like listen you got to hit it out the park in these calls because I'm trying to transition you guys over and and we need to create some like a relationship here and so usually by the time I make the transition if I've done it like that they're happy to go under them if anything they're like you know what I know that you can't overse me forever and be my boss forever and I respect that and I know that's what we need to do to grow the company and by then I feel like they're okay with it um I've seen that to work the best I just kind of do that Playbook um and also edifying the person that's coming in like I try to edify a senior leader coming in I don't try to overe excite because I think that people are always a little bit more skeptical when you bring in a leader versus somebody as an individual contributor especially when there's existing leadership it's a little bit harder to bring someone into the fold but I think that if you bring in the Right leader they they know how to move they know how to build those relationships anyways and so usually they they have a decent amount of success um and I would say this is like I'm I'm always checking in with people too once I transition them under somebody and saying like how is it going like do you like reporting to them like are you getting support you know all that kind of stuff and that's also dependent on the type of teammate you know some people are more autonomous than others and some people are chattier than others um and so I would say take it slow make sure there's overlap in the process and continue to check in with them thereafter to make sure it's going well thank you super helpful thank you absolutely Lea this is going to be the last question okay sure all right right you raising really high yeah yeah I'm in a position right now I'm new in the business I'm three years in um I've been doing everything myself so started Marketing sales operations I run a masonary company and what company masonary so I do a lot of like concrete Y and BOS and stuff like that so here's what's been happening I've been um when I don't focus on the business I'm closing deals and I'm filling my schedule but then I have to focus on fulfillment so pretty much project managing and then my guys don't have work for about a month it takes me to like fill my schedule up again so I'm like bouncing it out it's been I've been growing year over year but like I'm just want to know what you you think like what's your perspective on this and what what do you like doing more um I hated operations and I started becoming good at it and then I was like oh [ __ ] I kind of like it um so I I would say I don't know um what do you think is more valuable to the business I think marketing definitely um just because it gets me business more customers so yeah so the way I look at it is for you to grow you spend more of your time on growth activities simple as could be your calendar the more it has growth activities the more likely the business is to grow as long as you backfill the other activities so would that be hiring a project manager yeah what stopped you from doing that just because I don't have that consistency of work but you won't have the consistency unless you go and create consistent demand yeah okay I see what you're you just have to set the expectation okay which is like I need you so that I can create consistent demand for the business it's going to be chunky in the beginning you're going to have to fo the bill for that but the work is going to keep flowing and so I'm going to need you to be handling all this and the cool thing is that if it's chunky in the beginning you can take that time to really um develop that person spend time with them get them really trained up on it so that when demand is consistent they've spent all that time getting onboarded that they're ready to handle it so I actually look at it as a benefit in some ways okay thank you yeah absolutely okay let's do one more right right here so excited hi Lea um I'll be fast because I know I'm the last person really fast um so uh I'm uh we sell uh Moss ball plant terrariums to plant shops and nurseries and flower shops so we're in a thousand uh plant trops across the country wow um and I was really inspired with you and Alex how you started with gym launch but then you switched to a physical product and started selling Prestige labs to complement that and I kind of wanted to go in the reverse Direction um cuz a lot of uh plant nurseries and flower chops are run by people who are not technologically or marketing Savvy um so uh when did you know to start like an adjacent business uh I think it was a mistake so oh gosh I wouldn't do that again okay bummer that was quick yeah no it was a massive distraction I think that the business would have um grown a lot faster if we had just done expanded into different languages that was actually like our because the gym industry in like South America for example is like always a little bit behind North America and so it was really like do we expand into South America or do we do physical products and I think at the time we just really liked the physical product idea but it is a completely different business and it was very hard to do both and I think we would have been a lot more successful if we had just done one now it was obviously still considered successful but it didn't feel that way when we were running it because I knew that my attention was split just m balls