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How to Strategically Craft Your 6-Figure Dream Team

- [Peter] There's no better way to scale your business than literally building a team around you.This is the most refreshing thing you could ever do because you should only be working on your strengths. You should only be in your area of genius and nothing else. I should never upload a podcast. And I never will. Thank goodness. I don't know how. The game plan. Simple. We're going to give you the secrets of the world's elite team builders. I've studied them for a very long time. Some of them became my friends now and there are some great skills that they've taught me. The biggest mistakes in hiring, where to find top talent, and creating your ideal dream team. Now, I'm going to hit on this. Rookie mistake here is, this is becoming more common than I've ever seen. It's called Superman Syndrome where people think they have to do everything themselves. They are doing every task in their business. They don't want to delegate and they think that they can do it better than everybody else. And...

this is the biggest cause of regret in business, is Superman Syndrome. They get in the business for freedom, but instead of them running their business, the business now runs them. Instead of them running their days, their days run them. And the problem is, 90% of what they're doing, they could easily delegate and train someone to be better than them so they can only focus on the highest value tasks that are most relevant to their vision, and their values, and their strengths. And they have more free time for things they love and the business grows. It's crazy. And I saw in a lot of you guys' applications, "I have a problem delegating." Who feels like they have an issue, problem or they are not as skilled at delegating as they could be? Raise your hand. And I was the exact same way. I actually thought that my business would die if I delegated. If I give this away, my business is going to crumble. But then you've got to have more faith in people. Two things. If you're a real leader and you're running an organization that's going to thrive, you have to have a lot of faith in people and you have to be used to people letting you down. That's business sadly. You have to get used to people letting you down. They're going to continue to let you down. And you have to be the one leader that even if they let you down, you still believe in them. That's a key. So, don't have Superman Syndrome. Because I had it and it caused me to be frustrated. I hated my business. You get overwhelmed and burn out. Building a team and developing the right people is really the only way to scale. The only way to build a life on your terms and create more freedom. There's two types of teams. First type of team, you have a big team. There's a ton of people. Everyone loves each other. You're all best friends. This could be sales too. They're not making a lot of money but they're having fun. I've seen this in companies where there's huge teams. They hire anybody. There's no standards. People love each other but then they don't make money so they eventually quit and they never remember you as a leader. They might have had fun but they never remember you. Then there's the small dynamic powerful tight-knit team that has the highest standards, that they might not always love you, because you challenge them and push them. They're making a ton of money. And when they do eventually move on, they'll never forget you because of what you taught them. My sales team didn't always love me because I was very tough on them. A lot of young kids. I was extremely tough because I knew how much it would help their future. They're always saying, "Peter's tough on me. He's a jerk sometimes." I had to have a really, I don't want to say soft, a really understanding and compassionate assistant manager and staff, because I was so tough. I'd be like, "Hey, go talk to them". "Peter's..." "No, it's oh, he just cares about you." But the reality is I was the tough one. If you're the one that's compassionate, hire someone that's tough that drives results. But we had a team that was small and dynamic. I still get emails to this day and Facebook messages, and this was back in 2007, '8, '9, '10, '11 where they are like, "Peter, some of the stuff you taught me that I didn't like you in the moment for, I now use that and I love it. Thank you so much for being tough on me." That's the team you want. Every minute spent making sure you have the right person in the right job, will save you weeks or months later on. And the bad hire these days costs the company 60 plus grand, yet most hiring decisions are made from an hour interview and that's it. It's pretty crazy. I'm not going to go through this in depth because I don't think we need to right now. But there's been 65,000 face-to-face case studies by a doctor named Brad Smart who's very big on hiring, firing, and figuring out the cost, pros and cons. He said his guess for the average company, the cost of a mishire, 25 times base compensation for those under 100,000 and up. So it costs a lot of money to replace a bad hire. So the cost of a mishire, and if you just take care of it and spend more time on the front end, you won't ever have this. The cost of the right hire. The result of adding the right hire is exponential when you hire an A player or a superstar because it's going to raise the bar for the entire team. It's going to raise the standards for the entire team. It's going to raise the culture and the morale and it's going to be easier to attract other A players because there's already great people there. So the benefits of the right hire are exponential for the business. Here's the biggest mistakes I've seen. You guys can probably relate or have seen this. Hiring too fast. "I need someone. Hurry. I like this person. They're awesome." They're dressed nice. They're promising all these things. They sound perfect. Two weeks later. "Remember all these things you told me that you did? Why aren't you doing those?" People tell you what you want to hear and they sound perfect in the interview. So hiring too fast, firing too slow. Hiring another entrepreneur for the task. That's a problem, not the role. Now, certain roles require entrepreneurs, a lot don't. Entrepreneurs are very hard to control and a lot of them don't like systems. They don't like micromanagement. A lot of people you have to micromanage at the beginning so you want to hire for the role not just for the task. Hiring somebody too much like you, has been a problem I've seen. Hiring based off somebody's promise of success versus their past results and real experience. When you get really good and you're intuitive, you can base things off promises because you know and you can tell based on certain things, maybe calling referrals or whatever. But when you're newer, you definitely want to base nothing off a promise or off words because is it pretty easy to talk about what you're going to do? Yeah, people can make themselves look out to be the perfect candidate with their words but when actions come, it's a different story. Being too impressed by formal education. You guys know this. I think, I'm not going to say names, a couple of the biggest most innovative companies, do not let resumes come in the interview. They don't want resumes. "That means nothing to me," they say. We want to talk to you and base it off you, not a resume. Some people spend hours on their resume when some of the biggest companies don't even want resumes. I think in 10 years, people aren't going to even need resumes. They're going to need themselves and portray who they really are and what they've done. And not having a structured and intentional hiring process. Before you think about hiring anybody, you must make sure you're ready. A lot of people think they need to hire people but they don't. They're not ready to hire somebody. They can still be more effective and do certain things themselves. So before you really understand if you should be able to hire somebody, you have to know if you're maximizing your time. Important questions. You probably want to get this down. Are you absolutely busy beyond belief that you're unable to get done what needs to get done on a daily basis? If you're not, you don't need to hire someone. You don't want to throw money away. I want to make sure it's the most effective investment possible. And you have to figure out this, how much is your time worth per hour? How much is your time worth per hour? How much would you be willing to pay in order to buy back an hour of your life? I know people that are making half a million to a million dollars and they're crushing it money-wise, but they have zero time. They're like, "Dude, I would pay $1,000 for an hour of my time back." Then they learn how to hire people for less and they're making more money and they have freedom. I know people that don't need money and they want time. I know people that need money and don't need time. They want to work more, but they want more money. So it all depends on your situation. Here's some questions that I ask. You want to jot these down if you can. How much money can I make? How valuable is my time to me right now in this current state? How valuable is my time? Am I valuing my time at a higher level? Because for me guys, it's more about values and legacy, and who I am, and what's most important to me. I've turned down $10,000 speeches. One was in Chicago in January. That's a given right there because it's Chicago in January. You can't pay me enough to go there. Sorry for the Chicago people watching. But the reality is, it didn't match my values. And I've done three speeches to inner city kids in L.A. free. How do I turn down 10 grand and do free speeches? Because that's what's most important to me. You've got to keep that in mind. Next. How valuable is money to me right now? What if money was the most valuable thing when they booked me to speak in Chicago? I'd get on a plane. But it wasn't. How overwhelmed do I feel? Is this going to contaminate my freedom or contribute to my freedom? And then lastly, is this a strength of mine? This is a very, very valuable set of questions. Is this a strength of mine? And if you aren't maximizing your time or making money yet, you need to get crystal clear on why. And the reason I'm going through this before we dive into the leadership and to the actual building the team, is because if you don't know these things, the same problems will keep happening. We want to start with a very strong foundation first, and work up from there. So, important questions. Do you have your non negotiables in place like every single week? And I'll talk about this. But is your prize fighter routine maximized? Is your morning routine set you up for a winning day, or just another day? Do you have your profit-producing activities in place every week? Are your profit activities being executed? Have you applied the 80/20 rule to your current workload? If you have 10 tasks throughout the week, 8 out of the 10 probably aren't going to be as valuable as the 2 that make the most difference. So, 2 out of the 10 are probably going to yield better results than all the other ones combined. And do you understand the importance of energy throughout the week? And are you the type of person an A player would want to work for or do you need some work to do as far as developing yourself? So, these are questions I would ask myself before hiring somebody. Jeez, I'm not even maximizing my time. I don't even have my non-negotiables in place, why I'm going to hire somebody, and I'm not even effective right now. When I'm effective and I'm executing on all cylinders, then I know I need to hire somebody. And if you want to know what A players or what top people think about when they're getting hired if they want to work for a company, can they teach me something? That's one. Is there long term growth here? Right? Can I make money with this company and this person? Are they in it for the long term? And a big one, do they practice what they preach? Integrity is very high on the A player list of why they work somewhere. Does this company have values? CreativeLive is an amazing place to work and we were talking about yesterday how they have a ton of values. Like right when they get hired, I'm guessing they probably tell you the values. And that's a pretty cool thing to be able to work for someone that has values that they stick with, that they continue to promote day in day out. Got it? So, let's get into the delegation part. So, the three lists to freedom. This is from our friend Chris Ducker who is amazing entrepreneur. But there's three lists here, things you hate doing everyday, things you can't do yourself, and things you shouldn't be doing. So not now, but you're going to take some time to really fill this out. There are things you hate doing that you're doing right now that's taking all your energy away. There are things you can't do yourself that you're trying to do yourself and learn and figure out, and it's causing you to kill your energy. And there are things you shouldn't be doing that you're doing every day that kill your energy. How many of you guys can think instantly, you at home as well. Type in maybe some things you're doing that you don't think you should be doing, or not your strengths that you want to delegate, right? How many guys instantly can think of things that you want to delegate right away? Raise your hand. All of you guys. Awesome. So, you need to make this list. Here's some examples. Checking e-mail, managing social media, hiring basic submissions, inquiries, researching travel options, can't do. And it's funny, guys, there's a lot of things I cannot do, and I have no clue how to do. People might think I'm an expert at it because I have a great like online presence. I love social media and building value online. I can't do a lot of stuff. I only go all in on what I'm good at. One of them's speaking, I love training and speaking, right? And there are certain things I should not be doing, I should not be managing all my e-mails, which I don't anymore but I used to. I spent hours on e-mail, right? Now, I have someone for that. So, take 10 minutes, we'll answer your question. Take 10 minutes to create your...not now, but later tonight or tomorrow, put in 10 to15 minutes in your schedule to create this. And the delegation rule is this, if it's not a strength and somebody can do it 80% as good as you, delegate it. Delegate it. If it's not a strength and someone can do it 80% as good as you, delegate it. And most of the time your questions will be answered because I want to make sure I go through all this. So, creating your dream team. So first, once you figure out what you want to delegate, you need to decide exactly what you want and need, right? Figure out exactly what your company represents and stands for. And a lot of this stuff. This is a training, guys, where a lot of this stuff is going to be done afterwards, right? We can't dive into your business right now. I wish I could sit with you one on one for hours, and do this, it'd be amazing, but we just can't do that. So, this is stuff you want to write down, watch the course again and again, continue watching it to where you map this stuff out. Create a process that makes the person prove themselves. I'm going to go through exactly what this means. If you don't have a strategy, you recruit who you are not what you want. Does that makes sense? I'll say it again, if you don't have a strategy on who you want, you're going to recruit who you are, not the exact ideal candidate. So, building your dream team. Decide exactly what you want and need. What people do you need in your business? Do you need a sales superstar? Do you need that admin executive assistant? Do you need someone systematizes analytical? Do you need someone that's a results driver? Do you need a CEO, COO? Think about that, you have to really put some time into who you need for your organization that's most congruent to the 6-month ideal outcome. Next, what will their role be? Now, can you create this and figure this out in 10 minutes? No, this takes a lot of adapting and adjusting, trial and error. But then, you eventually get to your ideal person. Here's a big one, who's involved now that could be a conflict with your business? There's a girl in my academy that was working 78 hours a week, she was making about $110,000, but she had a couple of bad seeds that were just so negative, but she felt so bad, right? And the moment she got rid of them, it was a weight lifted off her shoulders. She now makes over a quarter million, and she works less and spends time with her kids, which is amazing. But that was one of the biggest things. When I asked her this question, she goes, "Oh my gosh, there's like two or three people that just..." she didn't even think about firing them because she's had them for so long, she didn't think about it. But when she got rid of them and replaced it with people that were more vibrant and excited and fired up, the business blew up. People took more responsibility. And this will make the process of hiring and training a lot easier as well. Now, this must be based on values, culture, and the vision of your current business. You have to hire based on your culture, your values, and your vision, not just in the moment what you think you need, okay? So, what's your company culture? People work for somebody, but they'll die for a cause or something that matters. So, write this down and circle it, okay? Make your business about something, like a movement, a cause, make it about something. People need to be a part of a movement, about something that matters, all right? Make your business about something, a cause. What does your company culture represent? This is the third time I asked it, but most people can't answer this. If I go into a company and I ask the CEO, and then I ask the receptionist, then I ask a salesperson, then I ask an admin, what's the purpose of the company, what's the vision? I get always all different answers. The great companies, you ask anyone in the company what the vision is, they'll all have the same answer. You guys want them, if I walk into your business right now, I ask everyone on your team, what's the purpose of this business? If they don't have the same answer, your business is hurting, and it doesn't have the biggest upside that it could right now. So, you've got to make sure you have the vision intact where everyone knows what the value and the vision is of your business, okay? You're hurting, you're missing out on a lot of opportunity if you don't have that. What do you value most? What does your team value most? What's the vision and purpose of the company? Now, with the clarity on your values and your vision, you can write a description of your ideal person, okay? So now, you have the clarity of writing your ideal hire, okay? So who do you need to hire? Positions, roles, duties, revenue, increase potential, maybe they're paid off commission, maybe they're paid a salary, maybe they're paid based plus commission, there's bonuses, I don't know. This is not something that we're going to dive deep into, but you do want to figure out what's ideal for that situation. I always like giving everybody on my team a bonus schedule, and I hire people that are bonus-driven. When I used to hire my receptionist, I used to ask them, you can have this an hour, let's say it was back in the day, $15 an hour, or you can make 12 an hour, and have all these bonuses, if they said 15 an hour, we didn't hire them, instantly. Because they're the bare minimum not the push themselves type that wants to push for more and go the extra mile. That was just my take, though. So, where to find talent? Work through your network and connections. This is going to be very valuable because I've spent 10 years doing this. I mean, years doing this the wrong way. So, where to find talent? You need to work first through your connections and your network. You wouldn't believe some of the people that I've talked to that found their best employee or best hire through Facebook or through LinkedIn which is crazy, right? Or through someone on their team's cousin or friend. So, work through your connections and network first. Before you pay any money, work through all the connections and network you have. Second, your own team. Your own team. Social media, and this is way different than 10 years ago. They went to job postings, Craigslist, right? I haven't heard a lot of people getting A plus players on Craigslist. People can't even show up to sell stuff. There's like so many... Now, if you're an A player and you got hired on Craigslist, salute. I don't want to feel bad. Someone's like, "I got hired on Craigslist. I'm an A player." Social media. Here's a big one, local colleges and universities. There's a lot of people that I've helped get hired from local colleges and universities. You just call the career center, you call the business school. "Hey, I am an entrepreneur. We have a business. I'm looking for some students to have an internship with me. Anyone that's good at blank, blank, blank, video editing? Do you have any students that will be willing to work for me and I'll pay them or it will be unpaid?" You won't believe how many people at the college they'll send you for free. So call your local colleges, universities. Explain what you're looking for, what business you have, and then have them send you kids. That's a huge way to do it. There's nothing else besides these four where I found my entire team. Work through your networking connections, number one. Two, your own team. Three, social media. Four, local colleges. I would be willing to bet that I could almost put local colleges at the top because I've seen so many people. Anyone have any questions regarding the details of that? You literally call your colleges and explain the position you need. "Hey, I want a young person that has experience in video editing. We have a great company and we've done this revenue. We've been in locally for five years. I just need someone that wants to kind of get mentored and I could take under my wing, and it'll eventually be paid after the first six months. Let me know if you have anybody." And I've never talked to a career counselor who was like, "No, we don't have anyone." They're always excited to get kids jobs. Got it? So, attracting superstars. Background's not as important. It's who they are and not just what they've done, okay? And there's a lot of things you can do to see if they are a superstar after the interview like optional workshops. You always want to do a two-week trial with people though. You never want to say they're 100% officially hired until the two-week trial. Always want to make them prove themselves in the first couple of weeks. And it's rare that after two weeks, they totally do a 180 and they're someone different. It's very rare, okay? So, you want to make sure that they have a sincere interest in helping your company and clients succeed. So there's questions I'm going to give you guys to ask. You want them to have ego and confidence. A little bit of ego is good. You hire someone that's insecure, they are too easily influenced and they're the ones that if something happens, they quit. You want someone that's in it for the long haul. And this is what you're looking for when you're attracting A players. I would hire people that had these skills that I realize was A player that they had no experience but they would break every record. They're 19, they make six figures in sales. They break every record. No experience but they had these things. They have a superior skill set where they've mastered a certain skill. Whether it's networking, maybe they have a big network. Maybe it's communication. Maybe they have a lot of market knowledge in a specific area that you're like, "Wow, this person has been studying blank for like five years. He could bring me some new ideas to my business." Right? Now, are you going to find all of this in one person? It's rare but you want to be very selective and you want to take your time. Remember, hire slow, fire fast. Most people hire fast and fire slow. Now you want to hire slow, fire fast. They want ongoing training. So I always had optional workshops. "Hey, we have an optional workshop next Thursday at 6:00. Stop. You're not going to get paid. It's optional." What do you think the A players did? They're there 20 minutes early. They are the opposite of bare minimum. They're are the extra mile unrequired type of work. And then making it official, placing the ads, you need to make them prove themselves before anything. Use your ad to start screening out candidates who don't fit your mold. The title can read "Sales Superstar Needed, Earning $50,000 to $300,000 First Year." What is the sales superstar going to focus on? $300,000. Like when I was hiring, and this is relevant to any area, but when I was hiring receptionists, I would say, "Receptionist Needed ASAP. Very, Very Selective. Read the Entire Ad Thoroughly." Very selective. You won't believe the people that actually didn't even apply because it said... "Oh, they're selective. Dang, and I'm done." Right? So the title of the ad is very important. The push away, let me give you an example of this. You want to give very clear... A lot of people try to hide the hard work. I've seen this a lot in ads, and I've done a lot of dissecting of companies' ads and small startups' ads and they hide the hard stuff. If they're making outgoing calls, they don't put that in there. I put that in first like when I had receptionists that were calling personal recruits or marketing to people and they were doing cold calls. You will be making cold calls all day, like 200 a day. What's that going to do to most applicants? "Oh, I can't do that." But you know if they're applying, they want that. But a lot of people just apply and don't read and they just apply everywhere. So you also have to make them prove themselves, which I'll give you an example of. Following directions. I always say at the end of the ad, "Please respond to this ad with a paragraph of what makes you the ideal candidate and what makes you different than most people applying." You will not believe 60 plus percent didn't respond. They don't respond with a paragraph. What does that mean? They don't follow directions. You give them a task. They're not going to follow that. So you have to make them prove themselves, okay? We've done surveys where we asked a bunch of questions and they can answer those. I've had people do video responses. I'm not going to dive deep in each of these but you guys can kind of check them out. So there's personality tests that you can do. Whatever you feel like is most relevant to who you're hiring, pick some of these. But you want to make sure you have people that are proving themselves that actually you know that they're jumping through loops to get to work for you. That's a huge key. And then you want to create a landing page. Now, the idea behind the landing page is to fully educate them on the ideal position and literally make it to where they know everything about the position. So if they come into the interview like, "So tell me more about," you know they didn't read that page. So this disqualifies a lot of people, this page. So by the time they actually get to talk to you or your assistant, they already went through all of these loops. Explain the position top to bottom. Once again, make them take some type of action. The more action you can make them take before they get hired, the more you know that they are serious about the job. Now, it depends. If you're just hiring maybe an admin or a receptionist, it's different, okay? Have a scheduler on the next page to where they can pick a time and schedule. And what I did is I had a set of questions and I had my most intuitive receptionist or executive assistant ask them questions and get a feel out for them. So let's say 100 applied, 20 made it to here, 7 or 8 made it to the scheduler page. She connected with 7 of them. Three would actually get a chance to meet with me. And by that time, I've usually liked all three of them because they all went through all these loops. But I usually hired one. I used to waste so much time hiring these people or talking to these people that didn't even...they weren't even serious, right? I'm not going to go to the short interviews if you're trying to hire a sales superstar where you bring them in and you literally say, "You know, it said in the ad that we were hiring a sales superstar, someone that was a top percent in their field. I'm just not getting that superstar vibe from you. I just don't think you're a superstar." Now, 95% will go, "Okay. Thank you." What will a sales superstar do? "What are you talking about? Why do you not think I'm a 5%? I'm a superstar." You're like, "You're the one." Does that make sense? And it's a good way to check yourself. What would you say if someone is like, "I'm not getting the superstar feel from you." You're like, "Ah!" Right? You want to get fired up. So virtual assistants. I mean I wanted to give as much tactical context, Chris, as possible because some people need virtual assistants. Don't be afraid to pay more for someone who's qualified. Hiring in a different time zone can help. Always check references and past work, and be very clear and precise. Communication is the biggest key when it comes to virtual assistants. - [Female] So the question I had was first, we talked about, are you too busy that you can't get things done yourself? And then next, you went into the three lists of freedom. So I'm kind of curious when should you stop doing so much yourself even if things you aren't good at or you shouldn't do or you can't do. So when...like, if you do have the time, when should you start delegating even if you do have the time to do it but maybe it's something you don't want to do or you shouldn't do or you can't do? - Yeah, I think a good indication, you have to know in your gut when it feels right. But when you're so overwhelmed that you can't focus on the things you're good at, you need to get rid of stuff. If you still can focus on what you're good at, and you're still crushing and you're happy and not overwhelmed, you don't need anybody. But if you feel like, A, it's hurting your income because you're focusing on things you shouldn't be doing, or B, you feel overwhelmed to where you're not even enjoying what you're really good at, then you need to hire somebody. So there's no right answer to this. That's the problem. You have to weigh it out to where if you can see where someone you're hiring makes the business more money, and let's say your time is worth $100 an hour and you can pay someone $30, then you should hire right away. But it just depends on how you're feeling in the moment as far as if you think that you can delegate and you are super busy, then do it. If you're not busy at all, then I wouldn't do it. So it just depends on your schedule. I would break down your schedule, break down exactly how much time you're spending on each thing, where the revenue is coming from, how your business is looking, and then make a decision from there. But always, if there's something that's proven in your business to make money and you're not doing it or don't know how to do it, I would hire that instantly and make sure there's a ROI on hiring that person to where if you hire them, they're making more money than you're spending with them. Does that make sense? Yeah. Good question. And I could talk more in depth of that but that's a tough question because there's no like, "When this exact thing happens, then hire." That's why I tried to give as much context as possible where if you guys are feeling super overwhelmed but you're not making any money, you need to totally flip what you're focused on. If you're making money and you're overwhelmed, then anything that you're overwhelmed about is not a strength. Delegate it and then continue making money. If you're already making a ton of money but you have no time, delegate what takes time and focus on your strengths. Does that make sense? Good question. Really good question.