Answering Your Questions About Leadership [Live Q&A]

Summary

• If you want to have a great, loyal team, you have to work hard to show them how much you value them.
• Respond to every report that your team submits to keep them motivated; if you don't, they'll stop filling them out.
• Honest and direct communication is key when making difficult decisions like letting people go, even if it makes you feel terrible as a leader.
• Night nannies can be a big help for new mothers to balance work and personal life.
• When hiring, look for traits like hard-working, enthusiastic, and detail-oriented people who can also sell; the skills can be taught.
• Focus on overwhelming positive content to counteract any negative reviews or feedback you get online.
• Provide value upfront if trying to get noticed by successful people; go above and beyond in demonstrating your capability.
• Use honest and transparent communication when you need to make difficult decisions or changes in your business.
• Understanding the root cause of staff burnout is crucial; it often comes down to lack of appreciation, impact, and progress.
• When working with remote teams, hire people who have the skill of self-management and provide them with a variety of tasks to keep them engaged.
• Always reinforce and acknowledge the hard work your team puts in, even if the rewards of their efforts are not immediate.
• Judge whether something is truly important to fix by asking if it prevents the business from growing or operating right.
• When it comes to customer retention, focus on decreasing your price over time as the cost to maintain the customer usually goes down.
• Ensure that customers always have new goals, even after achieving initial results, to keep them engaged and subscribing.
• Offer flexible pricing models, including annual payments, as they tend to keep customers more committed.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest implementing the following strategies:

1. Showing Value to Your Team

   • Make sure to acknowledge and appreciate your team's efforts regularly. Simple ways could be regular feedback sessions and public recognition.
   • Create a fixed schedule to respond to team reports, making sure it's consistent. Set aside time weekly to review and respond in detail.

2. Effective Communication

   • Practice honest and direct communication, especially when dealing with difficult decisions like layoffs. Always be transparent and take responsibility when things go wrong.
   • Utilize tools like end-of-week reports to maintain clear communication with remote teams.

3. Hiring Practices

• When hiring, focus on character traits like being hard-working, enthusiastic, and detail-oriented. Skills can be taught, but these traits are fundamental for long-term success.
• Look for candidates with sales aptitude if your business requires sales to thrive.

4. Working with Remote Teams

   • Hire individuals who are self-managers. Make sure they understand that working remotely isn’t an excuse to reduce productivity.
   • Provide a variety of tasks to keep remote workers engaged and prevent burnout. Cross-train them in different areas so they have more versatility in what they do.

5. Balancing Work and Personal Life

   • For new mothers, consider investing in services like night nannies to reduce the stress of managing work and home responsibilities.
   • Outsource mundane tasks like cleaning and grocery shopping to allow more focus and energy on business-related activities and personal well-being.

6. Customer Engagement and Retention

• Decrease prices over time for loyal customers as the cost to retain them usually decreases.
• Continuously set new goals for customers, ensuring they remain engaged and see ongoing value in what you offer.
• Offer annual payment plans to keep customers committed for longer periods.

7. Handling Online Reputation

   • Focus on creating an overwhelming amount of positive content and reviews to overshadow negative ones. Encourage happy customers to leave positive feedback.
   • Instead of fighting negative reviews, address legitimate issues and use the feedback for improvement.

8. Dealing with Burnout

   • Understand that burnout often stems from a lack of appreciation, impact, and progress.
   • Reinforce positive behavior and acknowledge hard work regularly to give employees a sense of accomplishment and belonging.

9. Ensuring Effective Decision Making

• Always ask if a problem is significant enough to impede business growth or operations before fixing it. Focus on solving core issues that have the highest impact on business performance.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi#### "A lot of people get into being an entrepreneur because they want freedom and all these things but then they also want to have this amazing team in all these things well if you want to have this amazing team that is very loyal to you and will like work their ass off at the company then you have to do that for them"

– Leila Hormozi

"Does that make sense"

– Leila Hormozi

"Little things like that are very important in terms of building a culture"

– Leila Hormozi

"Night nanny, night nanny, night nanny, night nanny"

– Leila Hormozi

"You just want to have so much overwhelming positive that you can put out there through content and through reviews and all those things that it eventually will bury any other thing"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

have you ever had to deal with challenges like firing people that you're not sure if they're fit or if you picked the wrong person like delegating tasks when you're not sure if you're training people right or if they're not the right people or even working with family if so then tune in for this episode because we're going to go over all of that plus many more challenges that you face when you're business owner so I asked Frank about um how do I keep remote workers engaged and he gave me a really good tip that he does with you well you do with him um you send the an Excel sheet every Thursday and you ask um what went well what went wrong and how can I help how do you how do you stay disciplined because I tried that before and then after like six weeks I stopped kind of responding to that Excel and they sto filling it out so how can you stay like disciplined and make it fun for them to fill out that every week and make it fun for you as well it's not fun I don't give a [ __ ] about fun like I'm trying to be a good leader I'm trying to build something impactful and so there's things that we have to do that like if you want to have a great engaged team you have like a lot of people get into being an entrepreneur because they want freedom and all these things but then they also want to have this amazing team in all these things well if you want to have this amazing team that is very loyal to you and will like work their ass off at the company then you have to do that for them and so I think about it has like I have to work my ass off to show them how much I value them because I do um but in terms of like do I like the fact that every Friday and you know my assistants can see it on my calendar I'm like looking for them like where is she at yeah Pat knows uh it says like it has at 5 or 6 a.m. end of week report review takes me about 90 minutes to go through all of them and I do it every Friday because I asked for people to submit it on Thursday and I've done that for eight years and I don't think it's like fun but what I do think is fun is having a team that I feel like has a fantastic culture that are driven where I have people that are share the same values as me and where I can retain good people you know so it's like in the micro it's not fun but in the macro it's fun for what you're creating and so I will say this if you don't respond to the reports they will stop filling them out that's just the science of behavior and also I think it's very punishing to ask someone to fill out a lot of data and then not respond to it and so you know at you could ask anybody in here if somebody fills out end report that I review I respond to every single thing that they put in there's probably six or seven sections I respond to all six or seven like almost compulsively like I double check to make sure um and so little things like that are very important in terms of building a culture and so it may not be fun but you will see the fruits of your labor labor in six to 12 months does that make sense yeah appreciate it thank you for sure let's go on this side okay right here yeah really overextending right there like it's gonna pop out of the socket yeah so um we're a husband wife team my wife is home with four kids uh baby number five is on the way in January oh cool and she's like kind of the Lila of the business the one that actually does the work and I'm a little frightened uh like how do we help her at least get down to like she's at like probably 70 hours a week how do we get her to 10 um this is a real question what's the difference between four and five like at this point it's it's it's more of a zone defense we're we're not manto man anymore we get it but it's it's still a lot understood so how old are they uh 10 7 4 2 and you know minus 6 months understood zone defense um okay I was like once you got four five six like I don't know yeah it's just like last one like the last kid we were in the nicku with a baby and like a laptop so that was understood yeah so it's just tough yeah that's a lot um so the way that I've approach this because we have like a lot of moms uh in terms of our portfolio companies in fact we have one right now she just had a baby and she's having her second um is I actually attack it from the home which is like how do we relieve them taking care of the house taking care of grocer taking care of do they have more child care do you already have that I got a I just got a cleaner that's coming in cooking as well great um and then a babysitter like 9 to5 sort of side babysitting yeah yeah like we're still pretty involved so two words night nanny night nanny night nanny night nanny that's been the biggest difference for everyone that I've I've talked to in terms of women that are actually like operating or at an executive level is just um having someone to help Sleep Train the baby because a lot of times like why is it so hard to get they're having to Sleep Train the baby and so it's having someone to help do that for the first couple weeks just a recommendation in terms of in the workplace I always use something like this as a reason to accelerate growth of other people and so anytime that I have something personal come up where I have to um you know take time off work or go do something or I can't do something I'm like who can capitalize on this as an opportunity that's within the team right um and so you know a lot of you wouldn't know but there was presentations that I used to present on this day and I knew I was going to delegate them at some point when we had the events but then what accelerated that was that I had to have a surgery and it fell on an event day and I was like oh [ __ ] that's in five weeks and I can't move any of this and I can't can't move the event can't move the surgery uh that sucks and so you know that accelerated me saying like who could this be an opportunity for and there was somebody on the team who I was like this person would be great at you know learning this presentation and then they like you know something that you might think takes three or four months for somebody to learn when you have a deadline and they know how important it is to do they can accomplish it and so I think this is a great opportunity for her to look at the team and say like let me look at 50% of the work I have right now if I had to delegate it who would I delegate it to and what timeline would I give them and they kind of already have a date because it's like when's the due date yeah so I think it's a really good opportunity thanks for sure let's go all the way in the back the glasses when hiring for uh a position such as a general manager for Brick and moral locations which you know they do a lot of stuff what are the three main threads you look for when hiring for that position so it's an operations manager for a physical location yeah because they but they do a lot of stuff so it's like what's the most important thing you look for yeah well I I'll give you a couple um do you want technical skills or character traits well character trait from me was more important in my experience but technical also helped um I say somebody who's hardworking enthusiastic and detail oriented okay um and then how that translates into technical skills is I want somebody who is sales driven has sales aptitude because when you're running a single location like if you're not able to make sales and generate Revenue that's a little tough um and so I wouldn't want someone who just knows like back office back operation stuff that's actually not when we're looking to hire um like in our portfolio companies that have locations I'm looking for sales or oriented people who we can teach a lot of this customer success and operational side uh too that doesn't mean that eventually one day you're going to have one Mega operator over all of them which that would happen eventually if you expand locations but for just like a single location um that's what I'd be looking for out of somebody and I think you want somebody that wants to put all that that's hungry they want to put all their discretionary effort into this location because what you'll see is that to make single location metrics work you can't have some giant team and so a lot of people hire the wrong I would say like Avatar they hire people that just want to clock in and clock out to run their locations doesn't really work in a small business single location um at least like the profitability difference is insane like we have one chain and there are locations where we have what we call like the owner operator mindset people where we hired them with the intention of like this is like your location you're running it it's your business um those locations are twice as profitable as the ones that have hired just like clock in and clock out and that's just discretionary effort it's not like they're not doing the job they're just not putting in that extra effort you know yeah got it thank you but like a lot of skills I think for running a single location of of certain things like can be taught it's not something that you need to be able to hire that exact person who's done it before yeah yes for the record my experience is always easy to teach the skills to someone with aptitude and a good hard than trying to H hire you know technical people that are just horrible people yeah just not a match that's great then you're on the right track all right thank you for sure right here I have a question around uh reputational risk uh of being on social media for business so I'll just just give you some context so I'm in real estate um so we buy and sell real estate we have you know a brokerage we have 20 agents uh now we hired a brand strategist you know earlier this year and they said that you you don't have a Google page which is crazy because we sold 300 million worth of real estate we didn't have a Google page uh because say that again so we didn't have a Google page for our brokerage uh and we sold a lot because I was doing it all off YouTube and there was a lot of trust being built there yeah um but we built the Google page then we called our clients as part of our client care uh and we got them to give us reviews and we had about3 reviews in a week uh so that was good five star reviews but then what happened was that you know while I was making content there are haters as well and then one person gave us one star not our client uh they gave us one star then another then another our Google rating dropped down to 3.7 we called Google we are trying to solve that but yesterday I think 3 days ago we actually shut down our Google page uh because that was actually uh impacting our business more than it was benefiting us so how do you manage that especially when I'm looking to scale 10x my you know brand in the next you know two years well I would ask a couple things which is one why were the people leaving the one Stars was it good feedback no so it was just one stars and then saying he's a complete fraud and it's it's it's it's you know when you are you know getting bigger on you know YouTube and you know it's not like we are committing fraud but because you're talking a lot uh about what's happening wrong in the industry there are certain elements who are your competitors who would you know put some and then you have to fight you know a lost cause and that's what we realized with Google of getting those off because they are not our clients so they are not legit reviews um and then we just thought you know it's it's a lost cause so were you are are you losing business because of this we could have lost business because it's a high trust business right people do Google us and right now they find all my you know content there and my website and everything uh but then you know because the Google you know reviews were over 100 we actually had the second you know hit was the Google reviews and that was 3.7 but do you know for sure that you were losing business because of it no I I don't know for sure but I know that that's probably the second or the third most thing that people would do in real estate uh when they are trying to work with someone because it's such a high you know like high involved in business yeah I mean the thing is is that it's and and this is something that I've actually like we've had multiple people in our portfolio deal with and it's I would I don't Focus ever on hiding or or padding the negative or detracting from it like nothing I don't pay any attention to it in fact I someone can say the meanest thing they can make a terrible YouTube video about me and I'm like I don't give a [ __ ] I'm not commenting I'm not responding I'm not going to tell anybody nothing right leave a one star I don't care um instead I just focus on how can I create more positive M and so you just want to have so much overwhelming positive that you can put out there through content and through reviews and all those things that it eventually will bury any other thing so that you know for example if I'm looking at a business and literally everything everywhere is all five stars it almost seems fake so I actually don't think it's terrible if you have some platforms that you have lower ratings because it's like okay that's realistic like I don't think anybody's perfect no business is perfect right and so I would just take all that energy that you focus on like what do we do about the Google it's like what are all the other platforms you know trust pilot for example is one that we could go on and say like how can we increase our reviews there and then add those reviews from trust pilot to our landing page and to all these other things that's what I would be focusing on and I've never seen the opposite work you know I had one CEO who was just paranoid and just like literally try to get a hacker to like hack and I was just like dude like like in all this effort that you put into getting this hacker to take these reviews down which were good in that case I was like these are pretty good feedback like that was kind of [ __ ] up that this person did um like I would have probably left a review too I've left like two Yelp reviews in my life um and so I would say just focus on what you can do to on the positive and also it's like not good for your heads space to focus on that in terms of negative so this is better anyways yeah you know makes sense thank you for sure let's go right here Lea your favorite video of mine is the one where you show behind the scenes of this event and all the rehearsals that went into it a public speaking coach and I work with CEOs and their teams so just seeing that process was great oh thanks the question I had for you is I my ideal clients are a lot like you successful people who run events like these it's a pitch but I've never had to maybe it's coming who knows it's happen I've never had to pitch anyone for my business usually it's referral or they find me online but now to expand my business I know I have to try to do that but I don't know how to get access to people like yourself and what offer to reach out to them with so what would you recommend yeah it's interesting so what's your offer right now usually they have me come in look at all their slides give them feedback on the actual rehearsal so I'm Consulting them on the presentation and the delivery so I don't have an offer per se understood is there a way that you could get some of those things ahead of time and then literally do a review of a piece of it and send it to them it's hard because a lot of these things are confidential yeah until I sign the contract and I show up so I don't even know they're having an event till to reach out to me yeah because the I mean the best way like how anybody ever gets my attention is they do an enormous amount of work ahead of time and then find a way to get it in front of me and then I'm like damn that was like really impressive and then I almost can't I'll give you an example I have a a girl who she I put a post up I was like I'm stylist because like I have a tough these pants don't fit right and I was like I need stylist somebody help right and so I put this thing up and it's like everyone submits like you know maybe three pages five pages of like outfits or something this girl sends me 140 page document my photo shop my body into all these outfits 140 Pages it's like I couldn't even say no to her I was just like it was overwhelming and they were all freaking awesome and so I was just like holy [ __ ] and she had the methodology on each one behind why she selected that style and then her offer was you know work with me like I will do this for free for six months and if you like it then we can do business together and I was like I mean how how the [ __ ] do you say no to that I mean like really like I actually I liked it it was great it was overwhelming I love the fact that she hust and I was like I respect that and so I I sent her an email the other day I was like all right let's do it so that's what I'd be trying to figure out for them is like you have to deliver the value ahead of time because options is not an issue for anybody in my position it's like you have overwhelming options it's how do you stand out and become the best option which in a lot of cases like for people that I would say like you know the worst thing you can do is like try and position yourself as like I am the scarer it's like [ __ ] that [ __ ] like anyone that tries to do that me I'm just like dude I just don't give a [ __ ] like I I'm not that way I don't want deal with people that that way but if somebody can give overwhelming value they will get my attention I can pretty much think that for every vendor that we work with at acquisition. comom that's how they've gotten in it's that it's like finding something that you can deliver ahead so for you it's like there's confidential stuff like is there something you can find that's not confidential content they put out things that they have on their platforms anything that you can do where you can do a breakdown and send it to them in an email format something easy to digest um that's what I would be thinking of like how can you do that I'm damn sure that would work okay so I'm going to go learn Photoshop and you'll get an email from me then okay let's go here so I have to uh let go of of a whole department because that's not profitable and the question is how I uh communicated with the team uh so and and also the people I uh have to let go okay so you're going to close the department basically I'm sorry that [ __ ] sucks yeah yeah the way that I would do it is I would first let the manager go consequently then I would meet with every individual how many people are there one manager and three people okay so you'll meet with them all individually I think it's some people do these in group I would never do that um I would make sure that I gave them all a severance package anytime that I've had to shut down a department for any reason um whether it be monetary or otherwise I always try to give them more than I'm even comfortable with because you're just trying to get them off on their feet the next best thing and what I did when I had to lay off our customer service team at Prestige Labs I have the story of this on my YouTube is I literally tried so hard I contacted every friend I had that had customer service departments and I got everybody to say who what roles were needed for them and then I got people lined up with interviews so if they didn't [ __ ] hate me and want me to die I was like well I have five interviews for you if you would like them um I also pre-wrote all letters of recommendation for everybody that I let go so it's like severance package line them up with interviews letters of recommendation meet with everybody individually and accept the fact that you're going to feel like [ __ ] for like a week when I met with everybody I was just completely honest I took it all on me I didn't I didn't blame it on the business nothing I said this is my fault I did not properly hire with you know forecast I didn't know I'm ignorant I literally said I was like I would fire me but I can't cuz I own the company so here we are um yeah everyone else is stuck with me um that's how I felt at the time I felt like really shitty so I think you're just honest you don't put any blame on them or the department or anything you just say like hey I'm really sorry this is terrible news um but I'm going to have to lay you off because we have to close the whole department and also then communicated the same way with uh with the rest of the team because like like they like each other and yeah you have to be as transparent as possible like my transparency saved me with launch because the thing is is that if everybody else they're going to be scared no matter what you say and they're even more scared if they feel like you're lying to them because then they're like well who's next what's really going to happen and so I told my team I was like listen I over hired and it's [ __ ] but like I over hired by a lot you know we had 15 people that like were doing nothing and so I just owned it I said listen I'm not perfect this is my first time ever having a company this big and I made a huge mistake and I'm embarrassed and I'm ashamed and you guys don't deserve this and I will never let this happen again to the best of my ability that I know how obviously I never anticipated this because it really [ __ ] with me as a leader because I considered myself to be like all I ever wanted to be was a great leader for my team and that was that's what drives me in business and then I did the thing that is like the complete opposite of that despite all of my intentions and wishes and so I just was honest about it you know I think it was probably the only time I don't like cry in front of my team you know like I don't but like I think I cried on the call a little bit because I was just like I felt terrible you know and I was like I know you're friends with all these people I encourage you to keep being friends with them they probably [ __ ] hate me um but I was just completely honest and I said I understand if you guys are have lost trust in me or um faith in me but I'm also not going to sit here and lie to you about what happened because I don't think that's going to make anything any better and I would say also just expect that people are going to be like a little shook for to 12 months I know but companies go on for I mean gym launch they they call themselves the survivors of the purge I wish I was kidding they're like I went to the event like this and they were like remember cuz we survive the purge and I was like and I was like dude that's like not funny to me but I like appreciate that you guys like still believe in me um so yeah I'm sorry you have to do that be as honest as possible and just do overextend yourself for the people that you're letting go because how you let them go is going to say it it will it will translate into how you feel about yourself as a leader for the next however long thank you very much of course let's go right here if you don't mind sharing the most effective strategies that you implemented at gym launch for retention and Ascension well retention I don't know if anyone here's read the book gym launch Secrets but we have what we call the five Horsemen of retention a lot of times if you're looking at retention it's really I would say you probably want to switch to instead focusing on retention focusing on time to Value so leading indicator of retention is how quickly do we deliver value to the person who purchased the product or how quickly do we get them to use the product the two usually go hand inand but like getting them to use it and then get value from it as quickly as possible that's the for the most part one of the highest like highest leverage things you can do to retain somebody the second piece to it is did you know that more customers leave a company because of customer service rather than the product or the price interesting right that was a study that just came out by Mackenzie it was like two months ago um and so uh I say that because I think a lot of people think oh customer service customer communication all the soft [ __ ] that this is how you actually have a business and so I would focus on time to value and the communication that I have with the customers and what kind of experience I'm trying to create for them because when you think about retention there's two sides to it there's results and there's experience and a lot of businesses uh tend to especially smaller business deliver great they can deliver results but the experience is kind of shitty it's like you don't always get back to people in time you don't know when you're going to hear from somebody it's inconsistent right where on the other side some businesses are great experience right these are the kind where like you know say you have a friend and they're in like a mastermind or something and it's like you one day you're like hey man like how much more money are you making you've been this Mastermind for two years and then they're like the same and you're like well what the [ __ ] why are you paying 30 grand a year for a mastermind if you're not making any more money and then they're like oh [ __ ] and you're like you know they had these cool like events and we go this thing it's this whole thing right and so the best businesses where you have the retention zone is where you are able to deliver High results and high experience both of those and so like our team knows this because we talk about like for these workshops like how do we increase the experience not just from a professional standpoint a personal standpoint you guys travel here you come a long way some of you out of the country like how do we make it as comfortable as possible we got a long way to go but I do believe that that's where you are able to retain a customer at the highest and so those are the things I'd be thinking about in terms of Ascension um retention is obviously the first piece to it in terms of ascending people I think most people trying to send people uh too late and so a lot of the times it's like everybody every buyer has a different phase that they want to upsell right and so there is a phase of buyers that are very excited in the beginning and they want more of what they've already got and so they're actually usually eager quite quickly like early on you know in the first couple weeks four to six weeks maybe even where they're like I just want more of what I just got it's kind of like think about if you go shopping it's like okay for women you go you go shopping and you're like I'm I'm gonna go shopping but like the next weekend you don't want to go shopping but when you're shopping you're like all I want to do is shop I'm ready to spend money right now and so a lot of buyers are like that it's like they're in a buying phase and they want to buy in the beginning and so how I look at it is you want to have indicators of when you can offer so for gym launch for example we did not offer anybody to upsell or ascend until week six unless they left a testimonial where they earned back not just their initial investment but 50% more of that so it's like 1.5x what they put in is what they got out then we would say all right this person's so excited and they left a testimonial let's reach out to them and see if they have any interest in ascending and a lot of times those people would Ascend then we also had that the six we mark because we knew that what was six weeks six weeks was right after we had the first time to Value which was the average gym owner made back their initial investment in the first 30 days and so 6 weeks in people have already made back their initial investment plus some and so it's like great that's a great time to ascend people because they've already made back their money they've seen value from the program and then the last phase is for the like the lags I would say which is kind of like cleanup um and for that um what we used to do is like you know kind of send a letter or an email with like a personal video just like hey how's the program going like do you need more help because you're actually kind of slow right and so if you think about it it's like you have all these different person that are going to buy from you and they all are ready at a different time and so the business that makes the most offers to ascend Tastefully like given the indicators will upsell the most people so again it's like you want the indicators like left a testimonial hit the time to value or like they haven't and maybe they just need more help does that help yes it does thank you okay cool let's go right here so we didn't plan this but we're an all female group um in medical practice and when I first open I kind of swung the p pendulum like a doctor put your head down and work and that didn't work so then we did a 180 and uh people didn't feel appreciated there were different things so swung the pendulum the other way and then did too much like gave too much too many parties too many things yeah so now I feel like I'm kind of in the middle kind of figured it out but then I'm trying to lead by numbers so I saw your video about using metrics but that still doesn't seem like it's um it's being well received and I don't know but it's but you can't argue with the data so how how do I use that as my lead point to still keep the pendulum kind of in the center I I'm always willing to give and take but I feel like there's still this emphasis on give give give um by the company and and not so much on the other side Have you shared with them any of this um I have um but again it's all women so and I I don't know I don't know how to um it it feels like it's very emotional discussion but it doesn't come back to it stays on the emotional side it never comes back to the factual side and so do I have the wrong people or is it my delivery like I just try to figure this out and I just it's it might be a combination of both right um because I would say like you know we've got I mean I our team has like 50% women probably and I I mean I don't think that they don't they don't argue with the facts you know um and I think that that that's something you set as a president as their leader which is like what's acceptable and what's not what's okay what's not you know I don't look at a guy a girl any different I have guys that emote too like you know it is what it is um I would say that in terms of changing the culture towards being more data oriented yes that's something that I would deeply communicate with them as to why it's so important and so you know for for our team for example anytime that something is really important that I want to continue to get the message across it's like I'm going to continue talking at them over and over again about the topic right and so like you know something that's this quarter top of mind for me is like communication silos you know as our team has expanded we added like almost 20 people this last quarter uh communication starts to segment and we're not getting enough pure communication and feedback and so like at our quarterly that's what I talked about at our you know uh I did a leadership Q&A that's what I talked about and so it's continuing to reinforce the message of why it's important and so for you uh I would say that they probably need a session where you explain why data is important because this is the way I would position it my job is to look out for the business because the business feeds everybody here and I can't do that without data and so listen I don't like collecting data more than any of you guys right like I don't like having to have spreadsheets and systems and like typing in numbers like that's the last thing I want to do I'm I got into this because I want to help people right but we can't help people unless we have all that and so you have to tie it back to how it impacts the people that they actually want to help and how it affects them too exactly how's it going to give them more job security how's it going to actually help them help the patients more like every time I'm thinking about how to get a team bought in I'm thinking of how does it benefit this these individuals rather than me the company the customer it's like how how's it going to be individually beneficial to everybody here so I think that's what you want to speak to and if people are opposed to doing things I think it's also like this is not a democracy at the end of the day and so just because you guys all don't want to do this this is what I have to do to make this business work and for us to actually serve our patients to this degree so if you don't want to do this like let me know in private but either get on board or get off like at some point you have to put your foot down and say like this is unacceptable because if your team is not adhering to a a way of doing things that's going to make you a better business owner A Better Business it's going to help grow the business it's going to help the customers more then that's just irresponsible to let that behavior continue okay thank you yeah of course right here there are a lot of us medical doctors in the room that have left just regular Western medicine and are doing our own practice what is the best piece of advice for those of us like I own a med spa I know he's got a Cardiology you know trying to prevent people from actually needing a cardiologist there's a lot of us that we're not taught business in med school yeah what's the best piece of advice for those of us that actually want to do this and do it big you need to make a decision of which way you want to go okay so I'll give you an example which is um I talked to a plastic surgeon because I got my nose done and he was like how do I grow my business and I was like dude you have two routes which is either you get in the business of training other doctors and learn how to expand locations but that means you have to know are you a good teacher a lot of plastic surge for example very egotistical they're like I am God look at your face now and I'm like okay um it looks good though by the way I was like yeah it's not bad right but seriously though you get what I'm saying it's like I was like are you the best teacher um vers is like how do you get the absolute most like I would say like Tony Robbins it right like Tony Robbins has maxed out the like personal brand like in terms of how much money he makes from it in terms of the team size he has learned how to leverage himself to a degree where it's like he is the main deliverable right and he has all the people that help facilitate that but I see it as like those are the two routes you have like the Tony Robbins route and you have the trainer route and so I think it's for everyone that it's it could be medical it could be you know just like um Owner Operator Practice of any sort that's kind of decision that has to be made is like which routee do you want to go the reason I say it for medicine is because a lot of you guys are in a position where you have built a really great reputation um and that can go a long way as well and there's a lot of um I would say more opportunity on the training side than there is for somebody like a gym owner it's just not the same and like the purchasing power of somebody who wants to get better at medicine is so much higher than somebody who wants to be like a better gym owner you know what I mean yeah so I would say it's starting with like making that decision and it's knowing yourself it's like do I want to teach and train people also know that some of them are going to like take everything and then be like [ __ ] you bye right and can I deal with that am I accepting that downside versus like this downside which is like a lot will rely on me I will have a lot of upside too but a lot will rely on me that happens a lot in Aesthetics you'll train people and then they'll do their own thing totally all right just that decision yeah okay thank you I don't think there's a right or wrong just knowing yourself what you want yeah cool of course right here hey Lea so I actually talked to you about a year ago on one of your q&as and I asked you how to um or how I would help how I would recruit people to help me franchise my junk removal business yes so since then we've doubled um our Revenue we open a new location and that's awesome yeah thank you really good thanks I talked to a few um Executives at like franchise level people that cover the whole country yeah I feel like I have a way better understanding now of franchising um but we have three locations currently and I know originally said you said to get try to get to maybe like 10 locations I don't necessarily see the benefit of like we would basically spend every cent of profit for the next two years to get to that level and I feel like um we wouldn't gain anything more than we have now yeah that's my question why would we not franchise now tell me because I don't like your advice okay um well here's the question is like what what's the goal with the business because here's let me give you my perspective okay yeah often times a lot of people go to franchising because they don't know how to extend the LTV of the customers at each location and so the locations themselves are not making them the money back fast enough that they don't want to keep opening locations whereas like with our brick and mortar um businesses for example like we look for businesses and then find out like what is not optimized here then we're like how can we optimize lifetime value so that we want to open more locations and then we don't want a franchise because why would we want to do that we could just own them all ourselves and take all the money for ourselves right um and so that's why I'm in favor of just not franchising in general and just doing more work on the model itself to figure out like how do we just earn back our initial investment faster in terms of franchising the reason I say getting to 10 is because also if you think about it if you're trying to franchise um a lot of people again they start franchising too soon and then what happens is that they realize that their model is not optimal and so like what you're saying like well we're going to put all every dollar in it's like well how long does it take to recoup the initial investment from the location my first question because you're just going to pass whatever that pain in the ass on is to that franchisee the second piece to it is just are you building something that you want to sell soon are you building something because you want to build a big brand like I think that's the next piece because like franchising versus owner operated like I would be wanting to talk to people seeing like if I if my goal is to sell the business which model right because you might be able to sell Less locations that are owner like owned by you and get the same amount of money as triple the locations that are franchised right because franchise location metrics are usually worse than owner operated metrics where it's like you own all of it just because you see those people are usually better operators they have better controls that's all my information I want to give you so you know what's in my head so I guess the question is what's the goal is it making money is it selling yeah so I I think the goal I mean I don't want to sell I want to take the company public and go like waste management style and like m& and so so right now how long does it take to recoup an initial like all the problem is so to open a new location you might be looking at like $60,000 but most of that is just a vehicle so then once you max out that one vehicle then you just need to get another vehicle for another 60,000 and then you get another vehicle for another 60,000 so it's like we're like we can open more locations but we can also just grow our current locations so I feel like I just want to plant a million seeds and just grow all those trees instead of like slowly grow like you know know slowly planting one seed growing it for three years planting another seed growing it for three years but I mean we can make the 6 so cash the issue cuz like why couldn't you just the cap the capex I think is is the biggest issue yeah yeah because I'm thinking to myself like well why wouldn't you just open more okay so if we like really take a step back it's actually cash flow that's the issue yeah because you would own them if you could just have the money to open them yeah yeah like it's trust but it's like very uh like reliable profit but it's just like not a ton of profit to where we can open up like locations very quickly it's basically like $60,000 every three months to to to scale a business to scale each location well I see your options as this which is you could franchise if you want to the risks there are I think now you have quality assurance and management of all the franchisees which is another business of its own per se um you could slowly open up the owner operated model just using your own cash flow which um will take longer and require a lot of patience um but I'm sure they'll be more profitable in terms of locations um and then it will snowball eventually because you'll have enough profit and have maximized uh probably every ounce you can out of them and then the last option is that you find a way to get money and then you combine the two together and you can go a lot faster but that requires personal preference because some people are totally comfortable doing that and some people are not I don't advise on either of those things because I actually don't have a personal preference either way I think just depends on the person and their risk tolerance gotcha thank you for sure right here uh how do you how do you keep remote workers engaged and on task without micromanaging well the first question I had was about end of week reports and so do you do those not currently but I will be okay uh that's the first thing I would just say um keeping remote workers engaged like I would say that you one I'll say this when you hire people people remotely you do need to hire people in my opinion that have more of a base level of skill than if you were to hire in person and here's what I mean by that a lot of the times there are certain people of certain experience levels that it doesn't make sense to hire remotely because they don't have the skill of self-management I made this mistake in our first company by hiring people who didn't understand that you know just because you work remotely doesn't mean that you're doing laundry you're you know leaving for 3 to 4 hours from you know 12:00 p.m. to 400 p.m. you're when you have a job that's an actual 9 to5 that you're on customer service right um that would be tough or right and so you know is people who didn't know how to manage themselves and they didn't understand that remote work didn't mean like oh I'm just not working as much as I would be in person and so I think it does require like you have to determine like what are the base level skills that I I actually don't think I should be training in people I should just be hiring them already coming with those skills that's the first because in person um there's certain people like of that experience right like that same person who like literally left for 4 hours and also was like doing laundry on a call um if that person had been in this office that behavior would not have been physically able to happen and so that person could work in the office and probably be productive but not able to work at home that's the first thing the second thing is that when keeping people engaged a lot of times in my opinion it's getting people to interact with people that are not on their team and also giving people a variety of tasks and so the more variety somebody has in the job the more engaged they're going to be for the most part and so some something I think about a lot with our team is how do I build an organization where I give people a lot of variety in terms of the work that they do so they can acquire a lot of skills and they have a lot of interest um because if somebody has a lot of variety in the things they do they're constantly have something they can be working on and progressing in and I think that a lot of people like that because if you have one thing and you get really good at it you get really bored really quick and so it's like how do we put people on projects how do we give people other things they can do how do we cross Trin people how do we add more variety to the job I actually think that that fundamentally whether it be remote or in person is how we should be thinking about how to keep workers engaged um that combined with you know like positive reinforcement for doing their job you know I think a lot of people think like well I paid you to do the job so like you should be engaged it's like well not really um you know if you want people to be really engaged like put discretionary effort towards it then they should be high five handshake great job you did good work as often as possible and that's just a cultural piece cool great thank you okay let's go here the back I own a chain of martial arts studios and um something we struggle with a lot is retaining staff we profit share with the Comm location leaders the head person the head instructor and they make anywhere from 70 to 100,000 a year but we constantly have people who say they're burned out due to stress or overworking our average hours work last year was 41 A2 hours per location leader so I've done a lot of things to make their work environment better and different incentives and things but we're still struggling with it so can you give some tips on how to deal with that employee that says I'm burned out what what to do now I think a lot of the times people are burned out because they're not feeling the reward from their work in some way um and so that could be that they don't feel the impact they're having it could be that they don't feel they're making progress or it could be that they feel like they're not appreciated or recognized by their team or their boss and so most of the time when somebody I'll tell you this if somebody tells me they're burnt out they ask for more money one I don't have a problem if either of those things are truly the but a lot of the times it's actually feeling underappreciated feeling like you're not seeing the impact of your work or you're kind of like stuck in a rut like you're not seeing big progress like think about it for you when do you feel burned out like I think for a lot of business owners like we feel like burned out when you're trying really hard and you're not seeing the fruits of your labor right and so for a lot of uh workers I would say like they feel that way when the same thing is happening for example when Alex is writing his book it's like a lot of people don't write books because if you really want to write a good book it takes a very long time it's super tedious right and so when he goes through that process it might be you know six hours eight hours a day for a year that he's writing this book and so while he's doing that he's seeing no reward from it at all and so like it's not it's like a dark place to be where it's like you're working so hard and like nobody gives a [ __ ] right they just expect you to come out with this thing and like if it's not like to the best of it's they're just like and so I try during that entire process to like tell him like amazing you worked on it so hard it's going to be so great like constantly constantly as much as I can reminding him of how great it's going to be how hard he's working how impressed I am by him how much I admire him for how hard he worked because I'm like I don't want [ __ ] do that right uh like I'd rather be over here so um just like really I'm not making it up but I'm trying to be the reinforcement because the work is not yet reinforcing and so in my opinion what a great boss does is that they reinforce the teammate until the work reinforces them so an example might be if you have somebody a weight loss coach you run a weight loss business or a gym or something right um and they have people that they're trying to help lose weight and they're not losing weight yet right like you want to be the one that reinforces that person great job you know what you stuck with the plan you did this until the scale says you've lost weight and I look at that as like the job of a coach or a boss is to bridge the gap of the reinforcement until the work reinforces you itself you reinforce them instead thank you Yep this side right here um I love your content content by the way um so you mentioned that every business owner um thinks that they everything in the business is breaking and so what is your framework to evaluate if that something is real like is is is breaking for real or if it's just something that the business owner wants to have better well I would say that the main thing is like is this the reason you're not growing is this preventing us from growing is it preventing us from the business like actually operating right so like is this preventing the business from growing because we don't have enough Cs and we aren't able to retain people is it preventing the business from growing because you know we have we don't have enough salese I I would be thinking about it through that lens versus like just not being perfect and so a lot of times people that are great operators also have like very high standards and so not being perfect is enough to say it's broken but the reality is a perfect business likely makes no profit and doesn't grow because we're so busy tying up all these details that will never be that will never exist um at least not in the first 10 years of a business that it's like you miss what do you call it the force for the trees um and so that's why I always ask myself like is this the biggest problem I should be working on right now like if I put my time here like you as a business owner where you put your time that's the most valuable resource that exists is literally your attention and so like I constantly am auditing like should I even be putting my attention here I'll even have where like someone asked me a question I'm like is this really where my attention should go sometimes I just ignore it because I'm just like I shouldn't even be think about this and so it's almost like thinking of yourself as a resource is it the best use of your time to be solving that problem and if it's not the best use of your time maybe it can be the best use of somebody else's time um but I think that the founder and the CEO's time should be spent on the biggest problems or I would say unlocks in the business like what constraint do you have to unlock to grow the business and I try to put as much of my time in those areas as possible okay thank you yeah good okay one more right here thanks Lea so the main question is about the I have a fitness online fitness coaching business so it's about the retention part so we have a 48% churn so only 4% of people that buy the first year still buy the second year so the question is what should we do um we have uh two tickets so it's 800 three months 1,400 six months so most of the people get good results at six months and they don't want to pay that price for the next month for the next months so the question is should they put uh lower ticket monthly subscription and what type of um service should we give yeah if you look at for example like SAS how what do they do as time goes on for customers like if you look at SAS products and this is from like a breakdown from um pricing IO is basically like the companies that retain the most customers what they do is actually the price goes down over time which makes sense because usually it costs less to retain a customer than it does to get a new customer so it makes sense that you would also charge them less over time because then they're incentivized to stay with you so then the cost of switching is also higher because then they'll have to go in at somebody's you know new customer rate versus they get to stay at your old rate and so I look at it as like this which is one how do you incentivize them to stay with pricing that matches the effort because once somebody's gone past that initial phase I know the reality which is like it's not as much on the coaches anyways or anyone that's checking in with them so they do cost less to maintain anyways the second piece is how do you frame that to them which is a lot of times what happens is that people in weight loss sell somebody on you're going to come here and lose weight but they don't talk about what happens after versus if you look at the companies that I've seen that retain the most they are like oh we have three phases you know the first is like rapid weight loss the second is you know here's you're going to hit your goal in phase two and we're going to like really dial it in whether it's this this or this and then the third is what we call and they make up some word that means maintenance right don't call it maintenance because that doesn't sound sexy um and that's like we're going to reorient you into how you can you know ramp back up start eating more you know whatever usually reverse dieting to some degree um and then we're going to set a new goal because what we've seen is that for people who lose weight and this is true uh they need to set new goals and so for me when I was doing Fitness stuff reaching back like 10 years um what I would do for all my clients is like once they hit their weight loss goal we had epic races we had Spartan races we had bodybuilding we had bikini competitions I was like listen you always need a goal even if it's just to get strength to maintain whatever and so if you look at the programs that have the highest retention they always have a goal it just isn't always weight loss and so I think it's just you have to set a new goal post because right now they don't have one and the likelihood is like you're don't you're not going to actually have helped that person because they're probably going to gain the weight back if they don't set a new goal anyways does that help yeah a lot would you do it like uh monthly or would you like monthly sub subscription or a longer term incentivize them to purchase annually okay so like Bar None like of all Industries getting someone to pay in full for a year has more success and higher retention so it's better for the customer and the company um so I would offer that as the first offer and the second offer is like here's our three Monon and here's our month-to month okay thank you so three payment options at most okay thank you of course all right guys Neil's gonna come back and he's goingon to wrap it up for everybody I appreciate the leftovers he