Watch these 15 Mins If You Want to Build a $10,000,000+ Company

Summary

• Keep expectations clear by stating the obvious, even if it seems obvious to you, and set core values.
• Accountability is crucial as it connects commitment to results. As a CEO, you are essentially the Chief Accountability Officer.
• Communicate effectively by replacing assumptions with curiosity, actively listening, and ensuring clarity to foster trust.
• Establish a regular meeting cadence, or heartbeat, for your team to maintain health, security, and creativity.
• Recognize individuals and teams to reinforce desired behaviors aligned with organizational goals and values.
• Choose one principle—whether it's setting clear expectations, enhancing accountability, improving communication, establishing cadence, or recognizing efforts—that resonates the most and focus on implementing that in your business.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting with setting clear expectations for your team. Even if you think something is super simple, say it out loud. Make sure your team knows what you need from them. It's like telling someone the rules of a game so they know how to win.

Next, you've got to be all about accountability. Think of it as keeping a promise to get certain results. If you're the boss, you're like the Chief Accountability Officer. Check in with your team often to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

When chatting with your team, swap guessing for asking questions, listen really well, and make sure things are super clear. This builds trust. If your team knows what you expect and you listen to them, they'll be happier and work better.

You should meet with your team regularly, just like a family dinner. It keeps everyone healthy and on the same page. Imagine it's the heartbeat of your work family. Having these regular meetings helps everyone know what's going on and feel secure.

Always say "great job!" when someone does something that lines up with what the team or company wants. If you notice and give a shout-out for good work, people will want to keep doing good work.

Finally, pick one area to work on first. Maybe it's being clear, being accountable, talking to your team, having meetings, or saying "good job". Start with what you think will help your business the most. Don't try to do everything at once. Just focus on one thing and you'll see a big difference.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"Expectations are the verbalization of how someone should act or something should be done"

– Leila Hormozi

"Accountability is essentially the glue between the commitment someone makes and the result you get"

– Leila Hormozi

"Good communication is the bridge between ignorance and understanding"

– Leila Hormozi

"Recognition reinforces Behavior"

– Leila Hormozi

"Good communication within a company is a combination of trading your assumptions for curiosity and actively listening to others on the team"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

together the most impactful 15 minutes of a keynote that I just did at gymcon on the five principles of management which is really the five principles that I have put together that I've used to grow and scale the three businesses that I did and achieve a 100 million dollar net worth by the age of 29 and these principles are still what I use today to scale acquisition.com portfolio companies what I want to do today is talk about like making money so these are the principles like I said that we have used to build gym launch Prestige labs and now acquisition.com and all of the portfolio companies within it so what is it that makes a small business into a big business right it's really something quite boring which I call the five principles of management let me tell you why this is important the average coach on a sports team actually has a 30 variation on team success ironically the average CEO has almost the same influence on a business and I know this because I lived it so I want to give you guys a little bit of context as to why I actually am so passionate about this stuff so my first job out of college was actually at 24 Hour Fitness never had sold before literally just fresh out of college understood exercise had lost a bunch of weight myself helped people on the side and I had a boss and his name is Mike and Mike was the manager of that 24-hour fitness and Mike I would say is the reason that I did not quit sales why Mike was a great communicator he was predictable meaning like he was at work every day he showed up with enthusiasm he was excited he was constantly encouraging and at the end of the day he made a really hard job fun not Mike Cayman he was unpredictable and then he was fear-based when I knew that he was going to be the one there for a long period of time I was like well I'm clearly going to leave so I stopped selling people into my roster at 24. and I remember he said to me one day I remember his clearest day he was like Layla if you don't hit quota this month I'm going to run you over with my truck back up run you over again and let you on fire yeah I was like off and he made a really hard job freaking horrible we went from breaking records to actually like mediocre like we fell below even the average of a location and all the top trainers including myself left and this is experience is what put me on a mission to create a business where people actually genuinely loved working because I myself understood the difference of what it's like to genuinely love working somewhere versus be somewhere where you hate it and you dread it and you cry in your car on the way to work every day these are the five that I have used in every business that I have grown and in all the businesses that we advise I teach them these things let's talk about the first piece that goes into this it is keeping expectations clear expectations are the verbalization of how someone should act or something should be done but without properly defined expectations or spoken expectations nobody understands how to play or win the game and so what you have to understand is that even if somebody has experience and you expect them to come in and understand it's like well this is so obvious you're a trainer it's so obvious you're a coach you have to State the obvious and I think that's where most people Miss is that expectations honestly most of the time are saying the that you're like this I think this is completely obvious but they don't know because where they were it might have been completely different core values start here this is the highest level of expectations that you could set with anybody on your team if you actually live and die by the values that you set with the organization it's where everything else stems from they are the root beliefs that the organization operates from so they are the principal perspectives that guide the organization's Behavior if you lead with values you can get people to adhere to 99 of what you need them to right so say speed is King is your value right so do I need to have a set of rules that says clock in every day by 8 AM sharp respond every teammate within 120 seconds respond to every lead within 60 Seconds instead of saying all those rules you set the one thing which is the value which is speed is king So we covered expectations let's move on to the second one accountability is the quality or state of being responsible to one's obligations means holding them responsible for their actions and results as a person who manages people it is your job to let people know let your direct reports know let your team know how they are doing in relation to how they are expected to be doing in fact it is the number one job of the CEO and of the founder because what you do is you don't delegate accountability you disseminate it down those people right below you you hold them the most accountable so that then it disseminates down from them into the rest of the team and it took me three years to figure that out because what I did was that I was I didn't understand that it's really not CEO it is Chief accountability officer you are the one that holds the standards for the whole organization and the way that you do that so that everyone else sees is how you hold your leaders responsible even if it's just one person with you you need to pour all your energy into that person so they can disseminate it down to everybody else when we ran gym launch in 2018 we had 120 full-time employees and at that point in time I didn't really understand the account of LEP I didn't repeat things enough I delegated the responsibility of accountability to the leadership team and I didn't really fully understand how important it was and because of that we had really low effectiveness of the team and it felt really bad in fact there was a day when Alex and I were on a walk and we looked at like the bank account or something and we're like holy we just had the biggest month ever I think it was like 4.5 million dollars and we're like I can't believe I'm like 24 which made 4.5 million dollars in one month like that's insane remember I looked at him and I was like I hate this I feel like a third of the team is not doing anything I don't know what to do so I really sought out to understood what I was doing wrong and that was when it all came back to accountability and what I realized is that I just wasn't holding people accountable on the team I wasn't telling them what they needed to do I wasn't setting expectations I was behind their back thinking about how shitty they were doing but not really telling them well enough to their face and so I started doing it I made a commitment I was like I'm not going to do this anymore because I was too nice I was like too accepting I was too nice I didn't set the standards High Enough and so finally when I turn that around we went from 120 full-time employees to 75. why because when you start doing that you realize the people that have just been skating by the whole time and we held the same Revenue did that suck yeah blue it was like literally the lowest of my career because once I started holding people accountable people got pissed people got mad people didn't like what we were doing they felt like the company was changing they felt like things were like and it was all because I was trying to raise everyone else up and I made them aware of it I was like listen I've been up I haven't been holding you guys accountable but some people joined that team because they liked that they didn't like being held accountable but I can tell you it was the best thing we ever did for the business what I realized is this is that accountability is essentially the glue between the commitment someone makes and the result you get and without it the two are divorced from each other and you see all these people doing things and it creates no result and so the question is how do you hold someone accountable accountability is an expectation tied to a measurement and the only thing that can amplify it is feedback expectations are in the form of their job description the core values of the company and the expectations you set for them now I'm going to measure that with scorecards with kpis I tie to that person's role and then the last piece that is the one that can either make this better or worse is feedback when am I telling them how they're doing with the measurements that are tied to the expectations so the more communication you have with somebody on your team about how they are doing the more accountable they are held all right so we covered expectations we've covered accountability now we want to cover communication good communication within a company is a combination of trading your assumptions for curiosity and actively listening to others on the team good communication is the bridge between ignorance and understanding so if somebody you tell them something and they still don't change their behavior you have not communicated well so why should you care I have literally never had anybody tell me that they have quit a job because the boss is over communicated so it's your job as a leader to set the tone for what communication really is because the way that people perceive you from your communication skills is directly correlated with how much people like and trust you and so generally speaking in order to Be an Effective leader you want to be liked and trusted there are four keys to success in communication there is energy engagement emotional control and exploration okay so energy is the number of exchanges that you have with your team both verbal and non-verbal the second is engagement which is the distribution of energy amongst the team and then there's emotional control emotional control is just how well we can manage and control our emotions more precisely and our emotional reactions to other people on the team teams that stayed calm and neutral when receiving communication right and not having some big emotional reaction we're considered to have a higher emotional control and then lastly is exploration the communication that teammates engage in outside of their core team the more congealed they are the more that they understand what each other do and they talk to each other the better the communication so what does good communication look like this is it it is energy times engagement added to emotional control times exploration now we've got Cadence the fourth piece in the principles is how often regularly scheduled meetings happen in your business think of it like it's a heartbeat for your team okay without it it's really hard to know how healthy the team is reliable meeting cadences can really help eliminate uncertainty and promote security and creativity in your business if done well I think a lot of people do enjoy it now if you feel like you're constantly in a reactive mode you're never able to get ahead you're frustrated that you and your team aren't on the same page you're in the dark about the real problems in your own business and you're confused as to what everyone does with their time and you're anxious that things don't move fast enough then this is probably for you and I think it's worth listening there are three elements of a successful meeting Cadence purpose pulse and preparation pulse is the Cadence that determines if meetings are productive or pointless how do you determine the pulse activity times size so how much activity you have in your company like are we rolling something new out High activity are we starting a new marketing game high activity are we doing not Jack new at all low activity size of the company are you guys going to have the same amount of meetings as like via acquisition.com or like gym launch no the second is purpose the purpose of a meeting Cadence is the reason for why each meeting individually exists is it strategic or is it tactical tactical is it's a meeting focused on the doing versus strategic the why and it's long-term focused now the last piece that really makes these two things effective is preparation preparation is the process of making a meeting useful and it is having the right information the right people and the right agenda what information should the attendees have ahead of time in order to achieve the purpose of the meeting the second is what people should attend in order to achieve the purpose of the meeting one is a contributor those are people that have information that would be useful to let the decision makers know of so they can make the right decision and then lastly it's just a simple agenda which is like what needs to be discussed or shared to achieve the purpose of the meeting the last piece in terms of the five principles of management is recognition recognition is the acknowledgment of a person or team's behavior that supports the organization's goals and values right recognition reinforces Behavior if you want someone to do more of something recognize them for it there are four pieces to recognition there's really the one the who the how and the when the when are you going to recognize somebody one would be when someone completes a goal the second is effort based so a recognition of an employee whose behavior is most likely to drive results the third is Milestone based okay so this one is probably one of the easiest ones it's like your first day on the job 90 days with the company you're off like your probationary period it could be a yearly anniversary a birthday then lastly is value which is recognition of behavior that exemplifies a core value in the company the second is the who can you recognize their behavior in front of the entire team which is even more powerful because social recognition is more powerful than individual and you know what's even more powerful than that in most companies is that peer-to-peer recognition and then there's the what there's formal recognition and there is spontaneous recognition formal recognition it's the predetermined and predictable way to acknowledge behavior and accomplishments in a company that might be yearly you've got MBC of the year it might be quarterly you have quarterly reviews attainment of a goal we do a thing at gym launch called the Jedi award it might be monthly Employee of the Month spontaneous recognition is a flexible and timely method to positively acknowledge behavior and accomplishments it looks like shout outs it could be a handwritten card it could be a wow gift it could be like someone did something awesome I'm going to send them flowers right now recency beats intensity when you are recognizing someone a high five is more powerful than telling them they did a good job 10 minutes later this drives Behavior more than any compensation plan why because compensation is so delayed that our brains can't even associate what Behavior has driven it and then there's the how you know how are we doing those things just a couple of examples of how you can actually recognize your team tactically there's written verbal and reward-based recognition Okay written company newsletter verbally shouting them out on a meeting telling them in their one-on-ones and then there's reward you could plan an activity for them and so the ideal scene is that you start small and you add in variety that was all five okay so what did we cover how to set clear expectations how to hold people accountable how to communicate effectively how to not set a totally boring communication Cadence and how to deploy recognition but I would love for you guys to do is pick one of these things whatever you felt like after listening to resonated with you as being the one that you need the more of in your business and that be the one takeaway you have from this talk if you try to do all this it's way too much takes way too long but if you can do one thing when you walk away I think that's a gift we can all give ourselves thank you guys for your time