Why Modern Creator?

Cole Gordon · YouTube

$30M CEO: How to Build a Business That Runs Without You

Cole Gordon and Jordan Schumacher, who've built a combined $225M in lifetime revenue, trade sixteen systems for scaling a company past the point where it needs them in the room.

Posted

July 9th

today

Duration

1:43:10

Format

Interview

educational

Views

1K

49 likes

Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Getting a business to run without its founder is a systems problem solved by rigorous hiring, scheduled meeting cadences, and reacting to patterns instead of single incidents — not a matter of working harder or getting lucky with talent.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You run a team of any size and keep getting pulled back into decisions your people should be making themselves.
You're hiring for sales, fulfillment, or marketing roles and want a sharper, evidence-based interview process.
You've built one meeting cadence that worked, let it quietly die, and want to understand why that keeps happening.
You manage a remote team and rely mostly on Slack for anything that isn't a scheduled call.

SKIP IF…

You're a solo operator with no team yet — these are people-management systems, not customer-acquisition tactics.
You're looking for marketing or ad-spend tactics specifically — this is a leadership and operations conversation, not a growth-channel one.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Two founders who've built a combined $225M in lifetime revenue trade sixteen systems for scaling a company past the point where it depends on them. The throughline: recruit hard enough that managing becomes easy, run a fixed cadence of meetings with visible KPIs instead of ad-hoc check-ins, and give direct, un-triggered feedback instead of avoiding conflict or exploding at it. Named frameworks include the culture-skill matrix for sorting hires, the Theory of Constraints for prioritizing effort, Bezos's proxy-metrics warning, and Elon Musk's five-step process for simplifying before automating. Across nearly every system, the conclusion repeats: identify the one thing actually blocking progress, build a repeatable structure around fixing it, and react to the pattern, not the isolated incident.

Free for members

Chat with this breakdown — free.

Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.

Create a free account →

Voices

Who's talking.

00:00hostCole Gordon

00:00guestJordan Schumacher

Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 02:05

01 · Introduction & Ranking 16 Systems

Cole frames the episode: he and Jordan have done a combined $225M+ in lifetime revenue, and they'll trade 16 leadership systems for scaling a business past the point where it depends on either founder.

02:05 – 08:42

02 · Cole's #1: The Recruiting Axiom

Every unit of time spent recruiting saves 10x that time managing. Cole shares how he under-recruited and over-coached three separate times, and how raising pay 30-40% to hit the top of market let his teams shrink while performing better.

08:42 – 14:55

03 · Jordan's #1: The Daily KPI Huddle

A daily 20-30 minute huddle with a red/green KPI sheet is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-effort fixes for any team. Cole adds his own related 'Big Three': daily meetings, visible tracking, and end-of-day rep check-in calls.

14:55 – 20:18

04 · Cole's #2: The Culture-Skill Matrix

A 2x2 grid plotting culture fit against skill. The two argue over which quadrant is more dangerous — the 'lone wolf' (skilled, poor culture fit) or the 'likable underperformer' (good culture fit, weak skill) — landing on the underperformer as the bigger trap.

20:18 – 26:06

05 · Jordan's #2: Theory of Constraints

From Eliyahu Goldratt's The Goal: a business has exactly one bottleneck at a time, and effort spent anywhere else is wasted. Both describe running off-sites and department meetings structured entirely around identifying and attacking the single constraint.

26:06 – 32:40

06 · Cole's #3: The Healthy Standards Matrix

A 2x2 plotting a leader's emotional regulation against directness, landing on 'grounded candor' as the goal. The key lesson: react to the pattern (what happens if this repeats 100 times) rather than the single incident, and address it immediately, calmly, and in front of the team.

32:40 – 39:12

07 · Jordan's #3: Running on an Operating System

Remote teams need scheduled meeting structure (EOS-style) to replace the organic conversations an office provides. Rule: anything resembling a crucial conversation — feedback, disagreement — happens by phone or video, never in Slack, because text gets read in the worst possible tone.

39:12 – 45:36

08 · Cole's #4: Gap Coaching and Public Feedback

For every team member, identify where they are, where they want to be, and the 1-3 things blocking the gap — including your best performers. In group reviews, give public praise to the top 10-20% and keep corrective feedback private.

45:36 – 52:41

09 · Jordan's #4: "Here's What I Intend to Do"

From Turn the Ship Around: ban questions without a proposed answer attached. Forcing the team to preload their own thinking turns a 'genius with a thousand helpers' into a real team and cuts the founder's cognitive load — like editing a draft instead of starting from a blank page.

52:41 – 59:24

10 · Cole's #5: The Three Options Rule

A companion rule to Jordan's: bring three options with a recommendation rather than an open-ended question. It reveals how someone actually thinks, not just what they eventually decide.

59:24 – 1:06:18

11 · Jordan's #5: Raising Standards to the Margin

From Andy Grove's High Output Management: build a culture where missing a realistic projection is unacceptable, then slowly raise the bar until people hit it only ~75% of the time — the flow-state margin where follow-up habits form automatically.

1:06:18 – 1:13:42

12 · Cole's #6: The Playbook Czar

A dedicated role whose only job is monitoring Slack daily, pointing repeat questions at existing playbooks, and assigning new playbooks when none exist — paired with a team-wide incentive. Got playbooks into daily use within 45 days and visibly cut Slack traffic.

1:13:42 – 1:20:55

13 · Jordan's #6: Bezos and Proxy Metrics

Dashboards can quietly stop reflecting reality. Bezos once found his support line's real wait was 10-15 minutes, not the 30 seconds reported, by calling it himself — metrics drift as people redefine what counts as a 'lead' or a 'refund.'

1:20:55 – 1:27:31

14 · Cole's #7: Elon Musk's Algorithm

A five-step order of operations before automating anything: question the requirement, delete it if possible, simplify, accelerate, then automate. Reframed through physics: acceleration (growth rate) = force / mass, and most founders only push force instead of deleting organizational mass.

1:27:31 – 1:34:08

15 · Jordan's #7: Competency-Based Interviews

Track-record questions ('tell me about a time...') beat hypothetical ones because a candidate can fake a future scenario but can't fake a documented past — stacking specific follow-ups collapses the information asymmetry in an interview.

1:34:08 – 1:40:52

16 · Cole's #8: One-Way Doors, Two-Way Doors

Bezos's decision framework: treat the ~98% of decisions that are reversible as two-way doors worth moving fast on, and reserve slow, top-down judgment for the rare, expensive-to-reverse one-way doors. The longer the gap between a decision and seeing its real result, the more caution it deserves.

1:40:52 – 1:43:10

17 · Jordan's #8: The Five Traits and the Four Purposes

Five traits to screen for in any performance hire (specialized knowledge, industry acumen, assertiveness, work ethic, mission buy-in), plus a strategy of converting freelancers to full-time hires via a paid project first. Closes on each founder's mission/vision/values framework and an unscripted aside about not talking publicly about charitable giving.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

Spending one extra unit of time recruiting saves ten units of time managing later, but most founders under-invest in hiring because they overrate their own ability to coach up mediocre talent.
The top 10% of new sales reps hit their KPI targets within three days of starting, which means struggling hires rarely turn into stars no matter how much extra training you add.
A rep's income at their previous job predicts where they'll cap out at the new one — someone who topped out at $15K a month often crashes back down to that ceiling even after a hot first month.
Raising a team's pay by 30-40% can shrink headcount and cut costs, because it draws from a completely different pool of talent instead of just overpaying the same people.
The 'likable underperformer' is more dangerous to a team than an openly difficult high performer, because managers keep extending grace instead of moving the person up or out.
In the Theory of Constraints, any time or money spent on a part of the business that isn't the current bottleneck is wasted effort, no matter how good the initiative looks on paper.
Great leadership feedback is direct but not triggered — calm and specific beats both silent avoidance and an angry outburst, and calm directness is what actually makes a team feel safe.
A daily or twice-weekly meeting cadence with visible KPI tracking can fix a stalled initiative in days — one team saw a 10% revenue lift from nothing but adding a daily huddle.
Crucial conversations — feedback, disagreements, anything with emotional weight — should never happen over Slack, because written text gets read in the worst possible tone.
Publicly praising the top 10-20% of a team teaches more than publicly correcting the bottom performers, since everyone learns from a star's mistake but nobody learns from watching the worst person get criticized.
A 'playbook czar' whose only job is watching Slack for repeat questions and turning them into documented playbooks got one team's playbooks into daily use within 45 days.
Jeff Bezos discovered his customer service wait time was really 10-15 minutes, not the 30 seconds his dashboard reported, by personally calling the support line — proxy metrics quietly drift when definitions change.
Elon Musk's five-step process for improving any system is: question the requirement, delete the step, simplify what's left, accelerate it, and only then automate — skipping to automation just speeds up a bad process.
Growth in a company can be modeled as acceleration = force / mass; most founders scale by adding force (people, spend, ads) instead of the faster lever — deleting the mass of headcount, initiatives, and bureaucracy slowing them down.
Competency-based interview questions ('tell me about a time you...') beat situational questions ('what would you do if...') because a candidate can fake a hypothetical answer but can't fake a track record.
Jeff Bezos treats most decisions as reversible two-way doors worth moving fast on, reserving slow, autocratic decision-making for the rare one-way doors that are prohibitively expensive to undo.
The five traits worth screening for in a performance hire: specialized knowledge one step from the exact job, industry-language fluency, assertiveness balanced with warmth, visible work ethic, and real buy-in to the mission.
Bringing a freelancer or agency owner on as a paid project first — before offering full-time — converts to a full-time hire roughly 80% of the time once they experience a well-run operation.

Takeaway

Sixteen systems for a business that runs without you

LEADERSHIP SYSTEMS

Two operators who've generated a combined quarter-billion in revenue trade the sixteen systems — hiring, meetings, feedback, metrics, and decision-making — that let their companies run without either of them in the room.

02Cole's #1: The Recruiting Axiom

Every hour spent recruiting saves ten hours of managing later, so under-investing in hiring is the single most expensive shortcut a founder can take.
A new hire's income at their last job is a strong predictor of where they'll cap out at the new one, so screen for what someone actually made before, not just what they can do.

03Jordan's #1: The Daily KPI Huddle

A daily 20-30 minute huddle where everyone reports one KPI in red or green is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-effort fixes available to any team.
One client saw a 10% revenue lift in its best quarter ever from nothing more than switching from weekly to daily meetings on a single stuck problem.

04Cole's #2: The Culture-Skill Matrix

Score every employee on culture fit and skill: the dangerous quadrant isn't the difficult high performer, it's the well-liked person who never quite delivers.
Likable underperformers survive because managers keep extending grace instead of forcing a decision — move them up or move them out.

05Jordan's #2: Theory of Constraints

A business has exactly one bottleneck at a time, and any effort spent on a part of the business that isn't the constraint is wasted, no matter how good the idea sounds.
As a team's ideas get better, the real leadership skill becomes ruthlessly parking good ideas that don't solve this month's actual constraint.

06Cole's #3: The Healthy Standards Matrix

Plot yourself on emotional regulation versus directness: the goal is grounded candor — direct feedback delivered calmly, not passive-aggressive silence or a triggered blowup.
React to the pattern, not the incident — if being five minutes late would be a problem 100 times, address it clearly the first time instead of building resentment.

07Jordan's #3: Running on an Operating System

Remote teams need scheduled meeting structure to replace the organic hallway conversations an office provides, or communication defaults into Slack chaos.
Any conversation with emotional weight — feedback, disagreement, conflict — should happen by phone or video, never in writing, because text gets read in the worst possible tone.

08Cole's #4: Gap Coaching and Public Feedback

For every person on a team, identify where they are now, where they want to be, and the one or two things actually blocking the gap between them.
In group reviews, give public praise to the top 10-20% and keep corrective feedback private — everyone learns from a top performer's mistake, nobody learns from watching the worst person get criticized.

09Jordan's #4: "Here's What I Intend to Do"

Ban questions that don't come with a proposed answer attached — forcing 'here's what I intend to do' shifts a team from asking you to think for them to bringing you a decision to approve.
The hardest part of any decision is the thinking itself, so a leader who reviews a drafted answer spends a fraction of the energy of one who has to generate it from a blank page.

10Cole's #5: The Three Options Rule

Require people to bring three options with a recommendation instead of one open-ended question — it reveals how someone actually thinks, not just what they eventually decide.

11Jordan's #5: Raising Standards to the Margin

Build a culture of hitting projections at 100% by starting with easy, realistic targets, then slowly raise the bar until people are hitting it only about 75% of the time — that's the margin where real growth happens.
Separate a 'projection' (the number someone commits to and must hit) from a 'goal' (the stretch number they're chasing) so ambition doesn't wreck the credibility of commitments.

12Cole's #6: The Playbook Czar

Assign one person to monitor Slack daily, point every repeat question at an existing playbook, and turn every question without one into a new playbook task.
Pairing that role with a team-wide incentive got one team's playbooks into daily use within 45 days and measurably cut Slack traffic.

13Jordan's #6: Bezos and Proxy Metrics

A proxy metric like 'average wait time' can quietly stop reflecting reality — Bezos once found his own support line's real wait was 10-15 minutes, not the 30 seconds the dashboard showed, by calling it himself.
Metrics drift over time because people subtly redefine what counts as a 'refund' or a 'lead,' so periodically audit the definition behind a number, not just the number.

14Cole's #7: Elon Musk's Algorithm

Before automating any process, run it through five steps in order: question the requirement, delete it if possible, simplify what's left, accelerate it, then automate.
Growth is force divided by mass: most founders try to grow by adding more force (spend, headcount, ads) when deleting organizational mass — unnecessary roles, initiatives, and commitments — is usually the faster lever.

15Jordan's #7: Competency-Based Interviews

Ask 'tell me about a time when...' instead of 'what would you do if...' — a candidate can fake a hypothetical answer but can't fake a documented track record.
Stack three or four competency questions in sequence on the same story so the candidate can't escape into vague theory — force specifics like actual numbers hit.

16Cole's #8: One-Way Doors, Two-Way Doors

Treat most decisions as reversible two-way doors worth moving fast and delegating on, and reserve slow, top-down decision-making for the rare one-way doors that are prohibitively expensive to undo.
The real risk of a decision isn't just whether it's reversible, it's how long the gap is between making it and seeing the real result — the longer that lag, the more caution it deserves.

17Jordan's #8: The Five Traits and the Four Purposes

Screen every performance hire for five traits: specialized knowledge one step from the exact role, fluency in the industry's specific language, assertiveness balanced with warmth, visible work ethic, and genuine buy-in to the mission.
Bringing a freelancer or agency owner on for a single scoped project before pitching them full-time converts around 80% of the time once they experience a well-run operation up close.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Theory of Constraints: A management idea, from Eliyahu Goldratt's book The Goal, that any business has exactly one bottleneck limiting its output at a time, and effort spent anywhere else is wasted until that bottleneck is fixed.
Culture-skill matrix: A two-by-two grid plotting how well someone fits a company's culture against how skilled they are at the job, used to separate top performers from lone wolves, likable underperformers, and people who shouldn't be on the team.
Healthy standards matrix: A two-by-two grid plotting a leader's emotional regulation against their directness, used to diagnose whether a feedback style leans passive-aggressive, tyrannical, overly accommodating, or calmly direct.
MQL (marketing qualified lead): An incoming prospect that has been scored highly enough, usually through intake questions, to be considered ready for a real sales conversation.
PIP (performance improvement plan): A formal, time-boxed coaching plan given to an underperforming employee, meant to fix the issue before a possible termination.
One-way door / two-way door: Jeff Bezos's framework for sorting decisions by how expensive or possible they are to reverse — most decisions are reversible 'two-way doors' worth moving fast on, while irreversible 'one-way doors' deserve slower, more centralized judgment.
Proxy metric: A number, like average support-call wait time, that stands in for a harder-to-measure reality, like actual customer experience — and one that can quietly stop reflecting that reality if its definition drifts.
EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System): A popular system of structured weekly leadership and department meetings, used here as shorthand for running a company on a fixed, predictable communication cadence rather than ad hoc conversations.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

26:06bookThe Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

27:30bookRadical Candor

45:36bookTurn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet

59:24bookHigh Output Management by Andy Grove

1:20:55bookThe Book of Elon by Eric Jorgensen

1:00:00productSalesKick ↗

1:28:10productDialer.io ↗

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

02:05

“every unit of time you spend recruiting saves 10 times that amount of time in managing”

punchy ratio claim that reframes recruiting as leverage, no setup needed→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

03:20

“the top 10 percentile of reps, they were in KPI within the first three days”

specific number makes a counterintuitive hiring claim credible→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

15:00

“does this individual raise the caliber of the team that you're hiring them into”

quotable Bezos-attributed hiring heuristic, one sentence, universal→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

21:40

“Is every tumor cancerous or are some tumors benign?”

vivid analogy that reframes a hiring dilemma in one image→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

26:50

“When everything looks like or when all you have is hammers, everything looks like a nail.”

familiar idiom re-applied to marketing-brained founders, instant recognition→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

33:20

“you have to assume that written communication will be interpreted in the absolute worst way possible”

blunt, actionable communication rule with obvious personal relevance→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

40:50

“publicly, focus on the best 10 to 20%. And then privately, you just spread your time evenly.”

counterintuitive management tactic stated as a clean rule→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

46:40

“I hired your brain, not just your body”

sharp one-liner capturing the whole delegation philosophy→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

53:20

“certainty sells”

two-word maxim, endlessly reusable→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

1:14:20

“he just picks up the phone, calls customer support, and proceeds to wait fifteen minutes”

concrete Bezos anecdote that proves the proxy-metrics point vividly→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

1:21:40

“I only need one. Delete. That's my favorite.”

tight callback punchline referencing Elon Musk's algorithm→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

1:27:40

“previous performance is the best indicator of future performance”

Charlie Munger-attributed maxim underpinning the whole interview technique→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

1:34:20

“98% of decisions are two way doors”

specific stat gives Bezos's framework instant credibility→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

1:42:30

“80% of the time, there always is”

punchy stat closing out the freelancer-to-fulltime hiring strategy→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

Topic Map

Where the conversation goes.

00:00 – 14:55denseRecruiting and hiring leverage

14:55 – 45:36denseMeeting cadence, feedback, and culture matrices

45:36 – 1:13:42denseDelegation and raising team standards

1:13:42 – 1:34:08denseMetrics, systemization, and Elon's algorithm

1:34:08 – 1:43:10Decision frameworks and final hiring criteria

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

metaphoranalogy

00:00So I'm here with Jordan Schumacher, CEO and Leader, which does over $30,000,000 a year. And combined with both of our companies, we've done over 225,000,000 in lifetime revenue.

00:08And in this podcast, what we're gonna do is break down the eight leadership lessons, systems in our companies that we use in frameworks that have ultimately not just allowed us to scale out of our companies and scale up to a multiple eight figure level, but do it in a way where our companies don't entirely depend on us.

00:24So if you're somebody who needs help with hiring a players, hiring superstars, building up executives in your company to where you could remove yourself out of the company and ultimately create systems so your business runs without you, this is gonna be the podcast for you. So, Jordan, how are we doing?

00:39Doing great, man. It's good to here. We're gonna cover these eight things, and I'm gonna be selfish on because it's my own podcast and start with the first one.

00:47So my number one thing, and this is a lesson that I've learned hopefully enough times where I don't have to learn it again, but I'm probably gonna learn it again. I told you a little bit about this last night is this is the axiom, which is every unit of time you spend recruiting sends 10 saves 10 times the units managing.

01:07So every single unit of time you spend recruiting saves you 10 times that amount of time in managing. Right?

01:13And so I'll give you a little couple stories is so for me, I've I've made this mistake three different times. So the first thing was I always knew that I was a good sales trainer.

01:24Right? Like, can train sales. And so, um, in one of my companies, you know, when I went back when I went from having three companies back to one, I came in to actually being the sales manager again.

01:33And I kinda just you you know, it's kind of embarrassing because I run a sales recruiting company. But I got lazy with the recruiting because I just figured, you know, okay, this guy's good enough.

01:43I'm really good at training sales. I can train them way up. And like some people I did, but one of the biggest breakthroughs that I had is I ran an analysis on all of our different sales reps.

01:54And so I want you to guess, I wanted to see basically out of everybody who's worked out over the past couple of years, how long it took them to get into KPI. And so I want you to guess how long it took.

02:06From everyone. So we're talking All the people who worked. Yep.

02:11Thirty days. So

02:13the top 10 percentile of reps, they were in KPI within the first three days. The first three days.

02:22And, I mean, there was times where, like, I was so over indexed on myself as a manager where I'm like, I'm gonna spend, you know, ninety days fucking training, which is embarrassing because this is, like, what I do. But it's almost like, oh, I'm like, oh, well, I never would tell a client to do that, but I'm like, oh, well, I'm different because I'm so good at sales training.

02:37So the top 10 percentile was, like which was, like, our best reps here at three days. Then the, let's say, other top, like, 50 percentile, so people who were like, they made it and they were above average, they took anywhere from 30 to maybe 70 calls, which is anywhere from two weeks to a month.

02:57And they were pretty much in KPI. And they also, uh, the other common thing we saw in that, uh, progression was that essentially, they all they all consistently got better.

03:09Everybody who worked out was a consistent improvement. Anybody who did well and then went into a rut never worked out.

03:17That makes a lot sense. At least for us. Yeah.

03:18Yeah. I don't know if you've had experience with that. The my experience is what we found is

03:24an incredible correlation between a rep's past income levels and, like, where their set point is and where they tend to cap out on any new offer. And so Oh, interesting.

03:33If like, that's one of the things that that we test for, and certainly we don't recruit as many reps as as y'all do, but we spend a lot of time on how much were you making at your previous offers. Because what we found is we will we would have a rep come in, and maybe they were making $15 a month on average at their last offer.

03:51They'd come in and absolutely crush it on our offer, maybe make $20.25

03:56grand, and then immediately tank the next month because their set point was at $15 a month. Yeah. Well, that makes perfect sense.

04:03Yeah. Which is kinda weird because it's like the comp structure almost kinda f'd you in some ways. But, for us, it was the opposite.

04:09So we made a couple changes. So number one, once I realized that, I was like, okay. What I'm gonna do is is, you know, it's just interviews.

04:17Even I mean, I'm a I I literally do a recruiting business. We do 600 interviews a month, you know, for our clients and stuff. But, know, it's like one of my our managers doing the interviews.

04:26A lot of times, would catch him doing just, like, finding the next person who is good enough. And the key is is to literally force yourself to just two to three, maybe even five times the amount of interviews that you do for a single role.

04:41Because, like, I don't know if you had the same experience, but I've found that if you do 20 interviews for a single role, a lot of times the person you end up finding is somewhere between twelve and twenty to where you're like, holy shit. You know, this this is the fucking and you'll know when you find it. It's like you go from like, I think they could where you're like, holy fuck.

05:01Even if we didn't need this person, we gotta make room for this person. You know? Like, that's kinda if you make every hire like that where it's like the you've had that before, you're like, man, we don't have, like, the room for this person right now, but find the room.

05:14Yeah. Yeah. Well, what if you just did that for every hire?

05:16You know? You'd have a pretty good team. I'm I'm also kinda talking to myself here.

05:20So, anyways, that goes back to the axiom I was saying is, like, every if you if I just spend a little bit more time recruiting, then I have to spend way less time managing.

05:29And I'll tell you another story about this, and this is the one I told you yesterday, is for our recruiting team, what we did and we did the same thing with the setters. All we did was we increased the pay, uh, team wide pretty much by 30%.

05:43And, you know, that might that only might be 3 or $4 a month. That might not seem like a lot to us, but to somebody else, I mean, that's a massive difference. A 40% increase in their And so when we did that for our recruiting team, it happened with our Sutter team too.

05:57Literally, like, you access in the recruiting marketplace an entirely different trough of talent, and we were able to basically turn over most of our recruiting team in the past eighteen months, and it's just the best team we've ever had. The setters, like I was telling you, we increased the pay by 40%.

06:12Now all of our setters, we have on track earnings for eight to twelve k, whereas most people are, like, paying their setters, like, five to seven, five to nine. So eight to twelve k, I when I made that shift, this is at the end of last year, I essentially outlaid 25 k extra a month in labor.

06:29But the setters we brought in, which are really closers who I downsold into being a setter, so they were like junior closers with an ascension path to being a closer. They outperformed so much that I was telling you yesterday we cut we were able to cut ad spend by $250 a month because we generated so many more appointments.

06:47So it just goes to show in, like, the moral of the story is, number one, it's to increase the volume. But a lot of times, even in just increasing the pay to, like, the top end range of the pay scale, you can have a team of less people who's more efficient and better. And the other thing is too is you need way less, like, processes and systems and whatever.

07:04Because that was the other thing is, like, with the recruiting team especially, we spent years not thinking we had the right process. We need to make more SOPs. We need to do this.

07:12We need to do more training. We just raised the caliber of talent. Turns out, we didn't have any of those problems.

07:18We just didn't have good enough people. It's so true. You know?

07:21So a lot of people, they just get in process system masturbation, and it's like they don't have the good enough people. And if you have a good I mean, if you have good enough people, they will actually make the fucking processes.

07:30Yep. You know? So I don't if you found the same thing before you move on to year one.

07:33No. Uh, a 100%. I think in

07:36my early days, I had this story that I told myself, which was, I'm gonna find, like, raw unproven talent. I'm gonna pay below market rates Yeah. After the arbitrage.

07:45And because I'm such a great coach, I'm gonna coach them up and they're gonna just, you know, be the uncut diamonds that that become incredible. Yeah. And number one, there's no higher ROI investment that you can make than, like, the labor on your team.

07:58Like, the labor efficiency ratio, if you pay an extra like you said, you paid $25 extra Yeah. To save 200 That and $50 in ad that doesn't exist anywhere else. Even with our recruiting team, we actually ended up needing less people.

08:10So we paid less than we did two years ago for more production. For more production. And everybody makes more, so they're all happier.

08:16Yeah. I I I see that, and if I'm speaking to my past self here of not wanting to pay above market rate because of whatever I felt market rate should be or was fair or whatever. And it's just the data is just overwhelming.

08:29Pay more access

08:31top 1% talent Yeah. And it pays for itself in in space. And and being a good coach and a good leader and a good manager is not about training bad people to be good.

08:39Right. It's about training good people to be even better, and it's actually really like, great leadership is you recruited an amazing person in the first place, and it's not really a ramping thing.

08:50Yep. It's a retention thing. And this is where I think if if if every single person on your team was so good to where you were thinking not, how can I train this person to be better, but how can I keep this person?

09:01Yep. Because that is still a training management skill set. Right?

09:04Because you still have to identify with really good hot top performers Yep. Where they're lacking, how do they essentially get better, how to keep them happy, how to keep painting the vision, how to help them maybe make improvements in their personal life. But, you know, most people, they only have maybe two or three people in a department tops where they're thinking that way or even worse.

09:24They're spending the majority of time on all the worst people and then on all the best people, and the worst people are the most likely to churn anyways. Yeah. And then and then your best people feel ignored and that Yeah.

09:33They're with people who suck and then they churn too. Yeah. So, anyways, that was my number one.

09:37What's your number one? Can I ask you a couple questions Yeah? On that?

09:40the learnings from the ramp period with your sales team. Right? Yeah.

09:44Hey. My top performers ramped in three days. How did that change your ramping behavior with with new hires?

09:48Well, I mean, number one is we just had way less leeway. Mhmm. So we were like, okay.

09:53If they ramp I mean, the bet not

09:56so when I say the bet the top 10 percentile, I'm talking, like, hall of famer level reps. Yep.

10:02They basically were in KPI in the first week. Like, the people who are they're not just number one one month, but they're like, they can stay number one or number two for twelve months at a time. They just basically they were good right away.

10:13So number one, how did it change the ramping behavior? Okay. Well, the main thing is is if we focus more on recruiting and we just get somebody really fucking good, it's so much easier for us to manage those people, which also, by the way, means we can have a bigger team.

10:25Because my my rep to manager ratio can go up, and I can have a flatter organization opposed to a taller organization. Right? A lot of tall organizations are because a lot of people fucking suck.

10:36So you have to have a lot of sucky people, and you have to have sucky managers to manage the sucky people. So then the other thing, what what changed about the ramping behavior? Um, the other thing, especially, but, okay, with sales is we don't need to give them as much time.

10:49We don't need to give as much call volume. So we'll just test more people, and we split their calendars. So you know how our system runs.

10:57We have live transfers. So we'll we have enough volume of live transfers where we'll split live transfers. We'll split new calendars, and then we let see how they do a two weeks of that.

11:06And then there'll be churn we might have some churn from that, and then it kinda just filters down and filters down and filters down. But frankly, like, it's it's usually obvious who is good right away, and it's just getting out of this muscle of I can fix the person.

11:22Right? It's like, you know, if you're in a bad relationship, you're like, I can fix the person. That's a bad relationship.

11:26You know? It's the same thing as you really wanna see and I'll give you a great example. We have a great vintage of new guys coming in right now.

11:34And one of the things I have seen from this vintage is when some you have obviously, you have to have good training. Like, you know, imagine building a course for your clients.

11:43There needs to be a course for your new employees kind of, like, actual training and SOPs and all that stuff to go through. If I listen to the first call and my first impression's like, damn, you know, this dude went through the freaking training.

11:54Like, this is polished. Right? If my because especially too when they're raw like that, usually they follow it to a t.

12:01It's actually later on when they start adding in their own shit, which can be bad or good. If I'm like, damn, that person went through the training. Damn, that person kinda kinda fucking sounds like me almost because they reviewed so many of my calls, which is what I tell them to do in the training.

12:14That's a good sign. They almost always work out. If I watch a if I watch the first call and I'm like, I don't even think this person I'm, like, not even gonna give them feedback.

12:23I'm gonna tell them to go back through the training. You should just fire that person. They I've never had anybody like that workout.

12:29I you ever, like, had somebody where it could be any position, but you're like, okay.

12:36I'm not even gonna give you feedback because, like, you should have just went through the training, and it's almost like, I'm just gonna tell you what was in the training. So if I have that, I just fire them because they're not good. Now, obviously, you need to, like, lead them the right way and set clear expectations and have good onboarding.

12:50I mean, you know, those are all givens. But as long as you're doing that, yeah, if you have that behavior, that's not good. I think it's the it's the permission to like, give yourself permission to make the cut quicker because the opportunity cost and just the hard cost of ads if you're running paid traffic of keeping a rep for longer than you need to is just so high.

13:07Like It's super high. Super high. And it's actually faster to again, if you make your average higher at interview five, waiting till interview 20 is much faster because the goal is to get a ramped rep, right, or a ramped employee no matter what the position is.

13:23Yep. If you rate wait till number 20, you're actually to get there faster even though you had to wait couple weeks longer in the recruiting process.

13:30100%. So that's one thing I would say for sure is just it's it's a big thing.

13:36It's like the more time you spend recruiting and the more you also pay at the top of the market,

13:42you know, it it makes everything so much it makes your life so much easier. I think the heuristic then I'll I'll move on. I think the heuristic I think Bezos has this quote in one of his shareholder letters or someone, but it's basically like, does this individual raise the caliber of the team that you're hiring them into?

13:54Yeah. Uh, for me, the the number one thing that I've seen that will immediately improve the performance of any department or team or company is just super simple, but I don't see it happen nearly enough.

14:07It's just implementing a daily twenty or thirty minute huddle with a simple KPI sheet where every single person shows up to that huddle who's involved in the department reports on a single KPI with red or green metrics and what the number one objective is for the day. Yep.

14:24I have never seen anything that, like, you can implement and with certainty see it to cause behavior change on a team or a department and actually move things back in the right direction. Yeah.

14:35And with with whatever essentially

14:37you also wanna fix within your company. I'm trying to think there's something just recently that, uh, I cannot remember what it was, but we were having a problem, and, like, something just wasn't going well.

14:48And I was like, okay. We're just gonna set up a meeting cadence, and it might not even have been it it wasn't even daily.

14:55It was just I mean, we went from no meeting cadence to we're like, let's meet on this problem two times a week. The problem's fixed. Yeah.

15:01It's just we needed to meet on the problem. But, you know, what's funny is is that when I first started the sales training recruiting company, you know, obviously, we give them recruits, but the thing is is most people, especially in our industry, they have no idea how to run a sales team, let alone a team. And the thing is is they don't know how to run a team, but if you don't know how to run teams, it really shows up in your sales team.

15:21Right? Conversely, if you know how to run a sales team, you could probably run almost any team.

15:26I mean, you know, obviously, a developer team or something that's kind of a different skill set. You know, there's it's not a whole blanket thing. But if you can run a sales team, you can run the fulfillment team.

15:34If you can run a sales team, you can run the marketing team. If you can run a sale because it's just the most highest performing team, and you're how good you are as a recruiter, hire manager, leader, etcetera, shows up immediately in the metrics.

15:46Right? So, like, it's just obvious if you're good or not, which most people aren't good, but then they're like, oh, there's no good salespeople, whatever. So, anyways, we give them the rep, and then, you know, what I realized very early on is they're not good at being a leader, training, managing, etcetera.

16:00And I'm try so what I was trying to do is figure out what are, like, the little things I can do that make the biggest impact that we can implement with clients ASAP. This is, like, 2020. And, dude, none of these people were running sales meetings.

16:12We run one sales meeting a week. You know, I'm like So we kinda came up with this concept called the big three.

16:19Run daily sales meetings. I might I might forget one of the three. Oh, no.

16:23I remember. Run daily sales meetings, then it was implement, like, visible tracking. Pretty basic.

16:29Pretty basic. You know, you'd be surprised. Sometimes I'm like, show me your tracking, and I'm like, can you read this?

16:34And they're like, no. And I'm like, well, like, the tracking is for you as the CEO. You know, you don't if you can't read it I know your ops person made this and they think it's great.

16:43If you can't read it, it has no purpose because you need to read it and make decisions. They're making it for you. So daily meetings, proper tracking, and then end of day reports.

16:51And then, honestly, the next level of end of day reports is our manager just calls every single rep at the end of the day and asks how they're doing. I love that. That dude, it helps so much, and it is annoying probably for most managers because it's the end of the day.

17:02But, you know, reps, they go through their day. They have a bad day. They're like, I hate my life.

17:06I forgot how to sell because I didn't close anybody to so you gotta, like, dust them off, and it's gonna be okay, buddy. You know? Get a good night of sleep.

17:13So those three things, if we could just get clients to do those three things, that's it. Oftentimes I mean, there was one company we worked with, um, I can probably say it.

17:23We worked with one a subsidiary of Agora Financial or yeah. Agora Financial. And they have, like, a bunch of different they're like a conglomerate.

17:30But they have one company that does all the phone sales for all their divisions, and we worked with them. And they're they were very bureaucratic. Right?

17:37So it's hard to get things done and changed, but we did we did just tell them to run a daily meeting. And this guy ran a daily meeting for, like, two weeks, and I think he had I mean, they did a lot of revenue. And I think they had, like, a 10% lift in revenue just from that.

17:50And, I mean, we're talking, like, they're doing, like, you know, hundreds of millions. So they had, a 10% lift in revenue, their best performance ever just by meeting daily. It doesn't I mean, that's incredible.

18:00It also doesn't surprise me. And it works for marketing. It works for sales.

18:03It works for fulfillment. In another company I was involved with, not leader, we were having an issue on the fulfillment side where, basically, our turnaround time for a deliverable was, like, twelve hours, and it needed to be six, basically, per team member. And they were meeting once a week on Mondays to kind of like go through forecasting.

18:21The first thing that I did is I said, okay. Moving forwards, we've got a Google sheet. Everyone has their name and the number of deliverables and we're just gonna meet every morning at 9AM and we're just gonna fix.

18:32And we're just gonna cover how many deliverables were done the previous day. It's so easy. Literally, within three days, it was fixed.

18:39Yep. So

18:40it it is so interesting. Like, anytime I launch a new initiative like, if you launch a new thing and it doesn't go anywhere and honestly, there's I'm actually just thought of something where I'm like, I'm actually making this mistake myself. I should have a meeting for this.

18:52But if you launch a new initiative and it's not going anywhere, most of the times, there's no I call this initiative based meetings. Mhmm.

18:59So you need a cadence for that. And and, frankly, the the tighter the cadence is like, you wanna make something happen really fast, meet at the beginning and at the end of the day.

19:08I love It's gonna go fucking super quick. Right? But it's just natural that people need deadlines.

19:15Yep. You know? It's why in sales, when when a prospect wants to push to a follow-up call and they're like, dude, just send me the link.

19:21Just send me the link. I promise I'll do it. I'm like, no matter what, even if you're a 100% positive they're gonna do it, you have to set a follow-up because even just psychologically, it acts as a deadline.

19:32Yep. If you ever wanted to get my one on one help in terms of scaling your business, then listen up really fast. So we're taking on a few clients where I can personally one on one audit their business across marketing sales, operations, fulfillment finance to be able to tell you what your constraint actually is, and ultimately, what are the one to three things you need to do next to be able to scale working entirely one on one with me.

19:53So if that's interesting, there's a link in the description that'll say Cole one on one that you can go book. But, essentially, not only will you get my personal advice, but we'll also be opening up our entire playbooks of my $36,000,000 a year company across marketing, sales, operation, fulfillment, finance, so you can basically model the best practices of what we've done right into your business, and it'll include the opportunity to meet in person up at an event with me.

20:16So if that's interesting, click the link in the description and mount back to the video. Okay. You ready for the next one?

20:20Let's do it. So you're gonna love this one. Have you heard of the I got this from Ryan Dice.

20:24Have you heard of the culture skill matrix? No. So culture skill matrix.

20:29So imagine, and maybe we could even put this like as a as a thing on the screen. So imagine you have like a matrix. Right?

20:36Yep. And so on like this side, the y axis is culture fit, and this side is skill.

20:43Right? So, like, you go the further you go up here, the more culture fit. The further you go here, higher skilled.

20:48So, obviously, in the bottom left of the matrix, you're gonna have not a culture fit, not skilled. You're probably not gonna hire that person or you're just gonna fire them pretty easily. Right?

20:59Then over here, right, in the top right, you would have culture fit and skill. Right? Like that's an a player.

21:05You know, you're gonna keep that person. You wanna focus on retaining them, etcetera. Then so in the bottom right, you have highly skilled but not quite a culture fit, which is what we called like the lone wolf.

21:19So we have that. And then you have a high culture fit, not as much skilled.

21:25Mhmm. Now, I'm gonna I'm curious what you think. What do you which one of those two do you think is more of a problem?

21:30Is more of a problem? The lone wolf. I disagree.

21:33Really? Yeah. Tell me why.

21:34The lone wolf, sometimes they're too lone wolf and, yes, they gotta go. A lot of times, you can rein that person in.

21:42So, like, you've heard, um, oh, there's some story in Hormozi tells it, but it's like there was some maybe it was like Steve Jobs when he was a maybe so maybe this is not a story Hormozi tells. But I think, like, Steve Jobs or somebody like that, when they were in their first job, they were so eccentric and so, like, crazy and hard to deal with, but they were so brilliant.

22:02The the manager was just like, look. We gotta lock them in a room. And I think they even assigned somebody to just, like, make sure that nobody, like, nobody even just had to interact with them.

22:12You know? Just guard the door. I forget who did that.

22:15I think it was maybe maybe it wasn't Steve Jobs. Maybe I'm mixing up Ken Griffin. But there is times where it can work if you can manage it correctly, and it's position dependent.

22:24I think the, um, so the top left one, culture fit but not skilled, I call that the likable underperformer. How many people have you had?

22:35Because a lone wolf, you know it's kind of an issue, and you can kinda gauge it. We need to let this person go, or, like, fuck.

22:40Okay, we can manage it or whatever. It's fine. Likable underperformer is what kills people.

22:45Mhmm. Because you're like, okay, well, I really, you know, Susan, she she's just trying so hard.

22:53She's great. I mean, she's such a culture fit. And in in the middle of Usain, then also, you know, she's not been performing for three months.

23:00Like, let's just give her another pip. She's already been on a pip. Let's pip her again.

23:05You know, let let's give her more resources. Let's give her more training. And then you start catering to this person.

23:10And these people just stick around forever. Yeah. And then do they ever perform usually?

23:15No. Right? I mean, I'm, you know, I'm not saying you just fire them immediately.

23:19Put them on a pip, try to give them the resources, whatever, but you gotta move them up or move them out. But people people keep the likable underperformers for way too long.

23:30Some people's teams, it's all likable underperformers. Just a bunch of culture fitty people who aren't good, who have no edge.

23:39I don't know if you disagree with me, but I I agree and disagree. So I agree that, like, the likable underperformers is the biggest trap that you can fall into because it's so easy to give them another month.

23:49Exactly like you said. I think the risk with the lone wolf though is it can like, if you have multiple of those individuals that aren't closely managed, it can just destroy

23:59the overall culture and trust on the team. Well, think about it this way. Is every tumor cancerous or are some tumors benign?

24:07True. So as your lone wolf, it's like a tumor. Yep.

24:10Is it benign or is it propagating? Yeah.

24:13I I That's that's that's the thing. Some tumors are benign. And there's some people also with strong enough leadership.

24:20They're a lone wolf in every other culture. They'll they'll they'll fit into our frame. Yep.

24:25Right? And so as long as and it also depends on the role. If you have a developer who is a lone wolf, but, like, they don't have to interact with anybody, or maybe they just interact with you and that's it, and, like, they don't need to interact with anybody else on your team, it's also not that big of an issue.

24:39So I think it depends. I I Have I let go of lone wolves? Yes.

24:42I told you about one yesterday. Yeah. I can't say it publicly.

24:44But I have done it, and you have to sometimes. Yep. But I do think I think people understand that.

24:50Yeah. My point is is that more people mess up a likable underperformer. I completely agree with that.

24:56Think it's it's almost like the Dennis Rodman effect. Right? Like, you can have a Dennis Rodman, but also Dennis Rodman was really fucking good and it worked for And you also had to have a Phil Jackson.

25:03Yep. Exactly. So, like, if and then Michael Jordan.

25:05So if you don't have the right leaders like, you put him on a different team where he's the best player, it's it's not gonna work. Right?

25:11So, anyways, what's, uh, why don't you go to the next one for you? Yeah. Next one for me is probably the thing that has impacted, like, my day to day decision making more than anything else, and it's the theory of constraints.

25:21And so it comes from a phenomenal book called The Goal by Eli Goldratt written in September. I would recommend anyone reads it. But basically, the tldr of the book is that business is just a system and in any system, there can only be a single constraint or bottleneck and any effort or investment into any area of the business that's not the constraint is literally a waste of time.

25:44I've made this mistake so many times where I am naturally very good at marketing. And so in my head, everything is a marketing problem and I try and solve everything through the lens of marketing, but oftentimes

25:55marketing is not the constraint and it's just a waste of effort to it. When everything looks like or when all you have is hammers, everything looks like a nail. Exactly.

26:01Well, most of my clients do the same thing. And I always say, you're trying to solve a sales problem with marketing, or you're trying to solve a sales ops problem with marketing.

26:09Uh, sometimes I'm like, you're trying to solve a fulfillment problem with marketing. You know? And so it's very, common.

26:17And it's just and and I have this issue too. It's like, I try to solve a lot of problems.

26:21Like, I look at when I think of new businesses I could do or start, I always think call funnel, sales team. Like, I just, like, think through the lens. Can I run ads, call funnel sales team?

26:31Okay. I'm not interested, you know? And so and I think of that too.

26:34I think of can we just I think a lot of things through sales, you know? Yep. I'm like, oh, well, is there a fulfillment problem or can I just train the sales team how to set better expectations?

26:43You know? I think the other piece where this really comes into play as well is like as you grow as a leader of your team and the average caliber of your team increases, the ideas that your team has are genuinely gonna be good.

26:54And there's always an infinite number of like really good ideas that your team will bring to the table. I think teaching your team this framework allows you to actually prioritize in a cohesive way Yeah. Where it's okay.

27:06That's a great idea. Does it actually solve the constraint that we're facing this month? If not, let's park it and come back to it at a later time.

27:13Yeah. Do you do this at your off sites? Because what I do is I identify what is the number one constraint for the company Mhmm.

27:20And the prep for everybody's off-site.

27:23In my memo, I write before the off-site. I write a memo so they can kinda know where things are at and what I'm seeing before they write their preps. And then so we operate off a single company constraint, And then each department, I kind of guide them to identify their own constraint in their department, which in order to do that, they also have to know what's the actual goal in their department.

27:50So each department has a departmental constraint or a departmental goal and a constraint of that goal. Mhmm.

27:57And so all their prep is just designed around that. Mhmm. Does that make sense?

28:01Now Yep. Now, the reason we shifted to this is because I don't know if you had offsites that were like this. We'd have off sites and it just becomes this, like, brain dump of everything we could do that doesn't fucking matter, and then everybody's assigned a bunch of tasks at the end.

28:13And then nothing gets done. Once we shifted to this or or or stuff gets done, it's just done on the end that port, we're like, why do we do this? Yep.

28:19When we shifted to this, there's there was way fewer tasks assigned, and then essentially what happened is we only focused on the things that actually matter.

28:29It it really helped us, and it was way less overwhelming, and we got done way faster. I love that approach. We we started with that approach, and then we moved, like, as the company grew, it became less clear that there was like, oh, a single constraint in the organization that all departments could contribute to.

28:44And so we sort of drifted away from that, and and moved into like, okay. Well, what's the number one priority per department and sort of took a bottoms up approach? And it just wasn't nearly as effective.

28:53And so we've since moved back to like, nope. Everyone is focused on the number one constraint in the business, and departments should have some priority that unlocks that constraint.

29:03Yeah. And when we did that, it's just everyone is focused. Everyone knows how to prioritize.

29:07That's essentially what I'm Yeah.

29:09Exactly. Yeah. Same process.

29:10Alright. You ready to move on to this Okay. I have another matrix.

29:14We need to cue the image. So I call this the healthy standards matrix. I had to come up with a name for it yesterday.

29:19And the premise is also there's kind of a combined lesson to this, which is you don't wanna react to a situation in the You wanna react to the pattern of this potentially happening a 100 times in the future. So first, I have to explain the matrix.

29:33New matrix. Okay? Yep.

29:34Y axis and x axis. So you as a leader, the y axis is your emotional regulation.

29:41So at the bottom, you have, like, you're super triggered, and at the top, you have, like, you're very grounded.

29:48Okay? Then on the x axis, you have essentially your degree of radical transparency.

29:54So, like, your inner Steve Jobs, we'll just call it. K? So if you're basically at the bottom where you're very un un you're not direct and you're also very triggered, what is that?

30:07I'm curious if you can guess. Passive aggressiveness? Exactly.

30:11So you're triggered and indirect. Right? Let's move one over.

30:14So let's say you're super direct and you're triggered. Just anger. You're a dick.

30:20Well Yeah. I call it the tyrant. Right?

30:21Which is kind of like the Steve Jobs y type of thing. Yep.

30:25Right? Then top left, you have basically the relational pushover to where you're super, like, you're grounded, but you can never put your foot down.

30:35And then in the top right, you have, like, grounded candor, which is like you know, if you've read the book radical candor, I've kind of adjusted this from that. But it's basically like, you could be a strong leader, you can be warm, but you can be direct. Yep.

30:47Right? And the key is is you have to be very direct about everything.

30:52And what people struggle with that is is they they they oscillate between either most people, to be honest, they oscillate between passive aggressive or tyrant, or they it's like they have, like, two they're caught in, but they never really end up here.

31:06The key is you have to be very direct, but there's a difference between being very direct and being triggered and not triggered.

31:14So if somebody's late to a meeting, if you're like, why are you late? Like, if you're like, why are you late? That's very triggered.

31:20Yep. But if it's very calm and it's like, Sam, why are you late?

31:24It's it's there's like a diffusion of the energy. Right? And so it's like that combination of being a strong leader who's very direct, but you're not being triggered.

31:34Will Gadera, you know that guy, uh, unreasonable hospitality? Mhmm. That's who I got this from.

31:38Is he's like, uh, there's some video where he explains it, but he's like, when he's ordering people in his servers around the restaurant and giving them feedback and criticism, like, he's not in the because, you know, there's, like, different camps where there's, a camp where you should just praise everybody all the time.

31:53I think that's also, like, kinda BS. Like, I think praise is also very important because that's reinforcement, but you have to give feedback.

31:59And the key with feedback is you can't do it from a triggered place of energy where you're projecting yourself into the situation, and you're essentially being like, I would have never done that. I would have never been that stupid.

32:10Therefore, I'm really mad that you are stupid.

32:13Does that make sense? Yes. It does.

32:14I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that. I completely completely agree. And in my experience, it's what what was the the upper right quadrant, like someone who's in that state, the relational pushover.

32:23Upper left. Upper left. There you go.

32:25The relational pushover

32:26will often flip flop between that and tyrants because So what happens is this is what I was gonna say next, is it's the jack on the hide. So this is what happened with clients. I was coaching this lady the other day and she was basically like, my team thinks I'm a I'm such a bitch.

32:40And I'm like, okay, what happened? So I started asking questions, I started diagnosing, what I figured out was she was bringing on these sales reps and they were being late to a meeting and they were doing this and they weren't filling out their admin and they were filling out their report. And she was giving them the benefit, oh, well, I'm kind of upset about this, but I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt.

32:58I'm gonna, okay, whatever, you know, it's fine. I'm not gonna say anything. But then she got three weeks then, there was a trigger.

33:06Right? And then all of a sudden, she's like, why the fuck are you filling out your reports? So it it goes from the passive aggressive to boom, like, now I'm triggered one way, I'm triggered the other way.

33:16Whereas it wasn't addressed immediately in a triggered way, which sets the standard for how everything happens, which was what I was gonna say is my next next concept. I got this from some lady who did PR for, uh, Palmer Luckey and Andrew Rollin, like, Elon Musk and all these people.

33:30Just got it from a podcast. But she was saying, like, these great leaders, they they they almost sometimes seem like they're overreacting to certain situations, but what they're doing is they're react they're reacting to not the situation, but the pattern of if that situation happened a 100 times in the So let's say somebody shows up late to a meeting, and let's say it's five minutes late.

33:51I have a process in my company where if you show I mean, there's certain departments where you should really never show up late, but, like, if you're in sales, okay, your call might run over, you can show up late, but you have to let the group chat know you are running late and you're on a meeting. And also, how long do you think it's gonna take?

34:05I mean, that's a quick message. It takes two seconds. Yep.

34:07So there's a clear process for that. If somebody does not follow that process, I immediately stop the meeting when they come on the meeting. And I'm like, John, you didn't put anything in the chat.

34:15Why are you late? In front of everybody. Right?

34:17And then I'm like, okay. Great. Do you understand that's not the process?

34:21So you can't do that. Cool. And then usually what I'll do that's kind of like a little uncomfortable, but it's direct and it's not triggered.

34:28Usually just to kinda break the tension. If I can, I'll just like find something.

34:32I'll poke fun at somebody else. I'll make a joke, kinda breaks the tension, then we're we're back to the meeting. Yep.

34:36If it happens again, I'm gonna call it out again and be like, look, you know, this is how we do it because we have a core value of this. That behavior doesn't align with this.

34:44You have to find a way to show up and follow this process, or we have to find a way to part ways gracefully in front of everybody.

34:51Done. But it's like calm, you know?

34:54And it's important that everybody else sees it so they know where you stand with all these things. Because the weird thing is is people think it's like I'm being a dick, but actually, it makes everybody else feel safe.

35:07Because the more people understand where they stand with you, the more even if it is like, okay, there's clear boundaries this.

35:16One, when people understand what your boundaries are and they're very clear, they actually feel safer around you. I know that's a paradox.

35:23It makes total sense, though. Like, there's nothing less safe than someone who's a Jekyll and Hyde. Right?

35:28I think the other piece too that I know you do a great job of is, like, the consistency of feedback. Right?

35:34And and I think, at least for me in the past, anytime I've held back on giving feedback, it's like, oh, I don't wanna, you know, throw this person into a mental loop or or what whatever the thing is. The more frequently you give feedback in a non triggered level way, the more it normalizes the feedback so that the other person doesn't have an emotional response to it either.

35:52Which again And they'll actually like the feedback.

35:55Right? Yep. Because you're giving it to them in a non triggered way, you're just trying to help them, and you're trying to serve them.

36:01So again, to put a bow on what I was saying, it's, um, again, is them being late to a meeting one time that big of a deal? No.

36:09But imagine, what you always have to do is, what if this happened for the next hundred days? What would my reaction then be? Well, you'd probably be pretty pissed.

36:17Well, don't be pissed. But you need to correct the pattern. Yep.

36:21Not and so people who seem like they have those meticulous high standards, it's like, wow.

36:27He's so crazy about them showing up on time. Well, I am crazy about having a company where nobody shows up on time. So I have to nip it in the butt right then and there.

36:36I don't know if you have anything else on that. I completely agree. And, like, particularly in a remote company where Zoom calls or calls are the mechanism of communication,

36:44if you start to develop a habit where it's normal for everyone to be two minutes late, I mean, like, if you actually amortize that out across the team, that's hours. It's hours. It's a lot of time.

36:54And it's just lack of a standard. Right? Like,

36:56you you have to let people know exactly where things stand at all times.

37:02There's it's gotta be clear.

37:03I totally agree. Cool. What do got next?

37:05Next, uh, running on an operating system. So this goes back to running a team.

37:09Right? Like, for a remote company, which I think most people listen listening to this are in a remote environment, you don't have the benefit of a daily commute and an in person office to create structure and allow organic conversations as a team.

37:23And so the way that you overcome that is through structure in the calendar and structure in the communication cadence. And so the process that we use is very similar to to EOS.

37:32I don't know if you're on something, uh, similar. Maybe I am. I don't We we love it, but it's basically having a set criteria where every Monday, the leadership team meets and we go over the company level metrics.

37:44And every Monday, departments level teams meet and they go over department level metrics. Right. And having that consistency of communication cadence throughout the weeks gives your team a place to bring issues to so that it's not just just chaos in Slack.

38:00I think that a mistake that I see made is when there's no formal communication structure week to week, day to day, month to month.

38:09There's nowhere for ideas or things to go, and so it's just it's just chaos everywhere as go ahead. But we we basically do the same thing. I don't I don't call it EOS,

38:18but we meet our leadership team meets on Monday and Thursday. I found that cadence is fine. We could do more if we needed to, but I found this fine.

38:25I meet with all the departmental leaders on Monday, then also all the teams meet on Monday. So, I mean, that's kind of the same thing. Same thing.

38:31And then, I mean, a lot of the times too, we have I mean, a lot of the departments obviously meet every day. Yep. Right?

38:37Oh, this is what I was gonna tell you, is I have an axiom as well, where anything that is if if if you're like like, you've heard the term crucial conversation.

38:47I'll just use that term. Anything that is a potential crucial conversation, whether that's giving feedback, potentially having a disagreement, whatever it is.

38:55If you even think it's in that realm, it should be never be delivered over Slack. It should always be in a phone call.

39:02Because what I always tell people is, you have to assume that written communication will be interpreted in the absolute worst way possible.

39:12And so I think having really good cadence in meetings as well shifts a lot of that communication on to Zoom anyways where people can get all levels of communication, not just the words.

39:23Because some people I mean, people too type the, like I'm like, dude, you see how the way you type this message? Like, I know you didn't mean it this way, but it's totally interpreted this way. They're like, well Like yeah.

39:33It's like, when you have a dessert, you gotta pick up the phone and just call.

39:38Don't know. I don't know who it is. Completely agree.

39:40Or at least a voice notes because tonality is everything. Like, you can come across as a total dick in a written message, and there's just so much that can be lost in communication. I I completely agree.

39:49Yeah. You want me to move on to the next one? Move on.

39:51So I call this gap coaching,

39:53and I also wanna I combined it with talking about pips. I I I feel like you're a big pip guy. I like pips.

39:59Are you a big pip guy? Pips are great. So, um, the way I think about it and most people again, I kind of I I I I'm sort of, like, alluded to this earlier is, number one, there's an issue with what especially sales, but any performance level department, people's attention all goes to the worst people, the bottom 20% of the team, which by the way is the most likely to churn and performers.

40:22But the mindset is, oh, man. If I could only get these people to perform like this, then my x y z revenue would be this. My department would be doing this.

40:32Well, the issue is, number one, those people are the most likely to churn, so you're having a huge sunk cost with all the time you're spending in them. And it's probably the more you spend time with them, the more likely you are to keep them too long. The people in the middle, those are the most likely people to actually go to the top, but you're not focusing as much time on them.

40:48And then a lot of them don't they're like, oh my gosh. I'm so glad Susie is doing so well. I don't have to mess Sue, I Susie's just the greatest.

40:55I don't even have to coach her. She just does her job. But then Susie leaves, and then and when you ask her why she's leaving, she says, well, know, I'm not growing.

41:03Well, no shit. Because you didn't give her any coaching. Right?

41:06So what I always tell the managers is, with everybody on your team, you need to be able to identify, it's just like sales. Where they're at now, and where they wanna be, and then what's the key one to three things that's keeping them from getting to where they wanna be. And so, like, with sales reps for instance, I'll I even know my managers know, but I even know with all my sales reps, what is the key thing with each of these people?

41:30Like, one like, one person, the main thing he needs to work on is when he talks to people who aren't the most qualified prospects, he gets really frustrated, then it bleeds into his next call. The other person, he needs to take more calls. All his metrics are good.

41:42He needs more live call volume. The other person, he has a low follow-up show rate. So, like, something's happening.

41:47You know? So the main thing you need to work on is this. The other person, dude, your discovery really sucks.

41:52The other person, your business acumen, when you talk to higher level business owners, $100 a month to $500 a month, your closing ratio on that segment's really low. So I always have them. Even the people who are really good, I'm like, hey, dude.

42:02You're really, really good. I think you'd agree you're not as good as you potentially could be. So, like, you might even be the best on the team.

42:08But to get to the level in which I know you could be, where you could be doing this metric, that metric, this metric, and making ultimately this amount of money, there's a gap for you where you need to focus on this. And more you focus on this and the more you really nail that down, the more you're gonna see, like, your income's gonna be up here, and you're gonna look back at where you were and be like, dang, I can't even believe I was selling that way before.

42:30So and and put more time on the best people. And the way I do it too is if you're doing team meetings, like a sales meeting or let's say a fulfillment meeting where you're reviewing an upsell call or something like that, publicly, you should focus on the top 25% of the team to give public feedback.

42:47Because if the best person was messing it up, everybody could everybody else probably messes it up. So they can learn from any any mistake the best person makes, everybody can learn from that.

42:56But guess what? If the person does something really good, everybody can learn from that too. And what do top performers need?

43:02They need a little reinforcement and public recognition. So it's like, dude, you did so well. This is can you explain why you did that?

43:07So then they're kinda coaching the team. They have, like, more of a status. They feel recognized.

43:11They feel better. And, also, instead of, like, taking the whole team meeting and ripping on the worst person where you're like, you did this wrong. You did that wrong.

43:19Then the whole meeting's negative. Your best person's like, I'm just gonna get on Slack because this is fucking boring. Like, this person's making mistakes that I was making three years ago.

43:26That's not engaging. So publicly, focus on the best 10 to 20%.

43:31And then privately, you just spread your time evenly.

43:34Does that, um It makes a ton of sense. And I'm curious, like, what is your you know, obviously, you can focus on areas for improvement. You can focus on things that are going well.

43:42Do you try and keep an even balance between that, or how do you balance out, like, hey, this sucked, or hey, this was great. Do more of that. Um, I'm just, uh, again, it's a non triggered way.

43:51I'm just honest, but I just try to be

43:53honest about every single part of the call. This is good. This is not good.

43:57This is I mean and sometimes I'll go through it and be like, dude, this is I don't have much feedback here. This is phenomenal. The real question is, why aren't you in this every time?

44:04You know? Like, this is really good. So it just depends, but I will say this.

44:07Like, I I do try to if I have a feeling that, okay, if I review this call, it's gonna be embarrassing. Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna destroy this person, then that needs to be done privately.

44:18Yeah. Because nobody else is gonna benefit from that anyways. It's not necessarily about I'm not afraid to destroy them publicly.

44:23I'm just like, nobody else is gonna benefit from this. So I it's it's not a good use of everybody else's time.

44:29Hey. If the way you sell your product or service is through phone sales, you need to stop using booking systems like OneSub, Calendly, iClose, and other booking systems that aren't designed specifically for a phone sales approach or a phone sales team.

44:41So we at SalesKick just launched a new calendar and booking system that'll decrease your cost per booked call because it's conversion rate optimized specifically for call funnels, whereas most other calendar systems are meant for corporate all purpose booking, and it'll increase your show rates.

44:55So we've had clients see 30 to a 100% increases in their show rate because our calendar system is specifically designed for call funnels and other funnels that are high volume sales call booking funnels. And the software does so much more.

45:06It's really the only product designed specifically for sales teams with inbound booking systems. So if you're interested, go to saleskick.com.

45:14Check it out. Now back to the video. I love that.

45:16And what what's your approach? Like, obviously, that's that's very, like, sales performance driven. Do you have a similar approach for nonperformance roles?

45:22Right? Maybe it's marketing ops fulfillment.

45:24Um, I think it's I mean, a lot of it is the same. It just, uh, it just the level of aggression and intensity in those type of departments aren't as much.

45:34But, like, you know, it could be it could be as far as I mean, I'm always coaching people on how quickly can they get stuff done, what's their timelines, you know, what's their level of team communication. Right? Are they being clear with their communication?

45:45Are they over communicating? Are they following the core values? Hey, our core values are this.

45:49That means you have behaviors like this. When you did this and didn't, uh, move it through to the pipeline to let somebody else know you were done and then it delayed the whole project by a week. Do you see how that doesn't align with our core value of getting stay in sync?

46:00So that you you asked me this. Thinking about getting stay in sync, what is the main thing you think you should have done in this instance? So, I mean, I I do all that stuff too.

46:07I mean, obviously, in a marketing meeting, we're not going to be reviewing a call from a top performer. We could be reviewing copy if it's a Copy Chief meeting. So that would apply.

46:16But same thing with ops. A lot of that stuff is more the behavioral standards, timelines, deadlines, a lot of that is also over communication.

46:25Right? If that if that deadline was unrealistic, were you proactive at explaining, hey, we can't do this and here's why.

46:32Right? Yep. So I love that.

46:33That's how I think about that. Last thing I'll say about PIPs, uh, I just don't think PIPs pips, performance improvement plans, I just don't think they're used enough.

46:40I found with our team, and I give a lot my managers a credit to this because they have been more aggressive with pips than I naturally was when I was managing. And I find that the more people go on pips, number one, if it's truly somebody who's never gonna work out, they'll just quit.

46:56Then also, a lot of times, especially with people on our teams because they do really wanna make it work, nine times out of 10, it just gives them like an oh shit moment, and then they just they come right back up and sustain. You know?

47:08I love that. And so that's just what we found. I think it's because people, like, really wanna stay here and they're good people.

47:13They just might kind of fall into a little bit of a rut. Um, but I'm curious how you do pips and if you found the same thing. I definitely have.

47:21We don't do it enough. We should do it more, uh, and use it more as just a standard coaching tool. Yeah.

47:26Mean, dude, we'll have, like, performers that have been good for, like, three years straight, and they'll some of the managers will pip them.

47:33And it's they're like, oh, shit. I'm on a pip. Like, they just it it it and it's not like, hey I mean, there's different levels of pips.

47:39It's kind of like I call it like a pre pip and a pip. So it's like, you can even say you could even pip somebody that they're about to go on a pip, you know?

47:49And even that will help. And a lot of those people who have been with you for two, three years, you hit them with that and they're like, dang, like, I I'm not the type of person who's on a pip. What the fuck am I doing?

47:59And, you know, they just fell into a rut with the job, you know, because it becomes a job instead of, like, something where they're performing. Yeah. It's a and it's a huge pattern interrupt.

48:07Right? I think a lot of people use It breaks their pattern. Yes.

48:10Totally. Yeah. I I think a lot of people use PIPs as, like, this is just the formality to go through before you fire someone.

48:15But if you actually use it as a coaching tool, it serves the purpose that it's intended to which is improving performance. And it also instead of you having to fire people, they'll just quit. Right.

48:24I know I know you definitely probably have that experience. Oh, yeah. For sure.

48:27Yeah. For sure. Yeah.

48:27If if you put someone on a pip who is just not cut out or of engagement, has something going on personal life, whatever, you put them on a PIP and they they opt out, which is Yeah. The best case scenario. I thought you'd be a big PIP guy.

48:37It sounds like you need to do more PIPs. Sounds like an easy PIP. Are you thinking about some people you need to PIP right now?

48:41I'm literally taking notes over here. Are you thinking about somebody? Yeah.

48:44We're rolling out some PIPs. Well, I'm telling you, they work so well, and it's just good because if somebody's heart's not in it, they'll quit. Right.

48:52And if their heart's not in it, they're not gonna in a performance level position, they're not gonna perform anyways. Nope. And then other people I mean, we've had people where you put on a pip, double performance.

49:00That's huge. And then they're fine, You know? And so I think and and you can use for the ex for your really tenured people, you do the pre pip.

49:09You know? And I always end it off with and while that's not too exciting, what is exciting is, like, we wouldn't even be having this conversation if I didn't think that you really shouldn't be here.

49:19Like, I think there's no reason somebody like you shouldn't be here. And if I didn't think you could achieve x, y, and z, we wouldn't even having this conversation, I'd be letting you go.

49:27Yep. Right? So while it might not be that exciting that look like your metric needs to be here, otherwise, we're gonna have to find a way to part way gracefully, what is exciting is, like, I'm a 100% confident that you should be there.

49:40And also, I'm gonna give you the extra support by doing x, y, and z to get you there. I just need you to have the commitment that you're gonna work with me on that. You know?

49:49So it's like the what's I got this from Josiah. It's what's not exciting, what is exciting. I love that.

49:55It builds so much trust too because your team sees, oh, they're in it with me. They're investing in me. We're on the same side.

50:01I love that. What you got next? Next one is super tactical, but, uh, going back to the premise of this, which is if you're a founder trying to get yourself out of the business, I don't know if you had this experience early on, uh, at closers, but as you grow your team, you get to a point where all of the questions come to you as as the leader.

50:19You're the knowledge holder. Everyone's asking you for your opinion, your feedback, and it's just impossible to to keep everything straight. Yeah.

50:25And the phrase that I implemented, I got this from a book called Turn the Ship Around by someone in the Navy and an Admiral. The premise I have that book on my shelf.

50:32I've never read it. Dude, it's I mean, I can give you the TLDR. It's it's a great book, but the TLDR is a single phrase in the book.

50:39And so the premise of the book is admiral, uh, or whatever in the navy takes over the worst performing I believe it was a submarine in the navy.

50:48Worst performing bottom metrics at all levels. And so when he got in, uh, and and started taking over from the previous admiral, he realized that the entire crew did not make any decisions for themselves.

51:00They all routed everything through the admiral, and so it was like the genius with a thousand helpers. Right? It wasn't a real team.

51:06Yeah. And so the the there was a lot that he did, but the core phrase that he implemented throughout the entire team was moving forwards.

51:14No one on the team could ask him a question without ending that question with here's what I intend to do. I knew you were gonna say that. And I learned that from you, actually.

51:23And it's so I wrote that down. It was one of mine too. You you you fucking stole one I'll take it.

51:28It's so trite, but just

51:31forcing your team to do this resolves, like, 75%

51:34of issues. Alright. So I'll have to I'll have to give mine.

51:37That was my number seven. So I call it a three options rule, but I intend to either option one, option two, or option three. I think option x is the best one.

51:46But yeah. So people listening understand how powerful this is. The main thing, like, when people are like, dude, I always you'll hear it like this.

51:53They'll say, I always get pulled back in. I always have to make decisions for people. I always have to clear the bottlenecks.

51:59I'm always getting pulled back in. That's kinda how they're like, I can't open my Slack. It's like, it's just draining.

52:04You know? And the big thing is is what's happening is you hired somebody's body and you didn't hire their brain. Right?

52:11And you gotta sometimes you're like, yo, I hired your brain, not just your body. Right?

52:15I need I you to do the thinking. And the thing is is what happens is is when you can implement that rule, what they start to do is they have to think through the solutions themselves and the thinking is the most taxing part.

52:28Yep. So when they give when they do and preload all the thinking and then bring that to you, number one, you might be like, option one, done. Right?

52:38Like, how little of energy of that is, you know, opposed to processing it, thinking of pros and cons, thinking of the different solutions. It saves you so much energy.

52:48The other thing it does is it helps you see their thinking because if you're really gonna develop a team member, it's not about just coaching them on what they've done or their behaviors. It's about coaching them on their way of thinking because everything is downstream of If you have very high cognitive IQ people on your team, you know, you're like, this person's thinking is really good.

53:07So it helps them reveal their thinking, if that makes sense. And I think that is so so key to actually be to coach them, and it takes a lot of the like I mentioned earlier, it takes all the cog then to blow it off you.

53:19And a good analogy is, uh, do you have anybody on your team write your copy? Yeah.

53:25Okay. Great. So if you have to sit down and write an ad and it's a blank page, right, how much more energy is that for you than let's say somebody brings you an ad and then you revise the ad, you chief it, and you might end up writing a whole new ad for them, but you're starting from something on the page.

53:43Yeah. It's 10 x. It's 10 times.

53:45Right? So like, you know, a lot of times, when I used to write copy for clients long time ago, I used to say they'd they'd be like, why do you want us to write it?

53:54Because like, you're so much better at this and like, I suck.

53:58I'm like, it's true. You're not good at this. However, they could write like the worst thing on the page and I swear to God, I would just read it and I just I just know exactly what to do.

54:09Whereas I have to start with a blank page for them, I'd be like, I gotta do some research, I gotta do this, but a lot of times I'd read their ad and this is what happens every time, you read somebody's ad, something that's three fourths the way down the page, you're like, okay, that's a thing. I gotta move this all the way up, and now I gotta write the whole thing about this.

54:28But you you get it, you know what I'm saying? And so it also is like the non blank page effect, and it reduces your cognitive load as a leader.

54:37You know? Absolutely. Yeah.

54:39So I was prepared for that one. Dude, I stole it from me. Sorry to sorry to Anything you wanna say on that or you want me to move on to the next one?

54:44Move on. So, um, this is how to gradually raise the standards and set the KPIs in your industry.

54:51So to raise the standards on your team, I think you'll like this one. So, um, there's three steps.

54:56I got this from Andy s Grove. Have you read that book, High Output Management? Dude, it's fucking great.

55:00You would like that book? I need to reread it because I read it when I was so I think I think I read it when I a sales rep. But, um, I need to reread it because I'd probably get, like, an entirely different version of it.

55:09But I got this from him. Um, number one, so here's how essentially, like, people are like, how do you have such high standards at your company yada yada yada? It's also the this is how I answer.

55:19How do I get my sales reps to follow-up? You don't you don't do it through building follow-up systems. You do it through this.

55:24So first, you have to establish a culture where not hitting projections in your KPIs is not acceptable.

55:33Okay? That's step one. Now in conjunction with step one is you first have to establish that culture by setting projections that are very realistic.

55:43They can hit a 100% of the time. And a lot of times that means you kinda have to teach them there's projection, which is your bare minimum standard you're gonna hit if the shit hits the fan, and then you have your goal. You can have your goal, but like, if you say you're gonna hit three this week and that's your projection, you're staying up till midnight on a Saturday fucking going for three.

56:00Right? So like, what are you for sure gonna do? And so that process needs to happen for at least probably two or three months to where they get in a they get in a habit, like one of our core values is high SADY ratio.

56:11When you say something, you do it. When you say something, you do it. You hit.

56:14You hit. You hit. You hit.

56:16And that builds a level of confidence that lends to certainty. Certainty sells, especially for your sales team, you can do this on all departments. So then what happens is is as they start getting in a rhythm where they always hit, 100% of the time, they're always hitting.

56:30Because again, what the worst thing you want is and I and I don't have an issue with like 10 x, but I just it's a different concept I think that doesn't apply to this. Is you don't want the sales rep every week to say, I'm gonna hit 10, and they hit two. Yeah.

56:41Like, what does that fucking do? It just ever your words become meaningless. So the words have to the word and the commitments have to start meaning something and you have to do that by starting small.

56:50But then once the culture is established and you start to see people really like, they're gonna hit the projection no matter what, you slowly raise it up. And you do that, and what you wanna do is you wanna get it to the margin.

57:03The margin is where they could do everything in their power, but only 75% of the time, they're gonna hit it.

57:11That's what I got from Andy s Grove. Because when they're operating at the margin of really what's, like, their comfort zone, their level of capability, their level of performance, number one, that's actually where how they get in the flow state.

57:22Flow state is the intersection between doing something that's challenging that they're interested and passionate about, um, that's like challenging them. It's it's like not too challenging, but it's not too boring.

57:32Right. It's it's another matrix. Yep.

57:33Yeah. I like the matrix. So, um, you slowly cook it up.

57:37And what happens is is as you have those people operating at the margin, what happens is like on a sales team, in order for them to start hitting their projection, they just have to do follow-up. Like there's no way they can do it without follow-up because literally if you're just relying on one call closes, two call it's not possible.

57:56So in order like, people ask me, how do I get my sales reps to follow-up? This is how. Should you give them best practices and blah blah blah?

58:03Yes. But people are like, what's the cadence? What's the system?

58:07And it's like, okay, I can give you some best practices. There's no like automated fucking cadence. The best system is is this system to have the right culture.

58:17Mhmm. Because if the standards are essentially high enough, they will just do it automatically.

58:22And I learned this from my own personal experience when I sold for traffic and funnels, dude, we had some freaking high and this is what happened. This is what happened. I didn't know it.

58:29So when I read that book, actually was like, oh, that's what was happening there. And I don't know if he read the book either, but like I just I was like, okay, that's exactly what happened in my old sales job. Nobody ever taught me how to follow-up, but I was probably one of the best long term pipeline follow-up closers in the industry, if not the best.

58:45That was like, I was so fucking If you talk to me, I was gonna follow-up until you bought or died, and I was very good at it. Nobody ever taught me how to do it, but I was forced to do it because I could never hit my projections with just one call or two call closes alone.

58:59I had to do that, and I also was unacceptable in that culture show up on Monday and not hit your projections. Mean, you were you had some fucking explaining to do.

59:07It was scary. So I'm not saying you gotta be scary or whatever, but you have to have that culture. And when you have it that way, a lot of these other things will happen as a byproduct of that.

59:19I love that. What do you do when you have a rep coming in, right, who who does take the shoot for the moon and even if you miss, you land in the stars approach to their goal setting? So they just set wildly unrealistic I'm like, you can set whatever goal.

59:31You're not gonna talk about that on this meeting. You're gonna set a projection. Yeah.

59:33And then you can DM me what your goal is. You can do whatever your goal is. I care that you hit this.

59:37So you coach them down to like Yeah. I mean, I'm just like, well well, what we need, uh, I need a metric that's realistic. You're gonna hit no matter what.

59:43You can write on your wall whatever the fuck you want to. I like that. I like that.

59:47So that's just how I do it. I love it. There you go.

59:50Anything else on that or you wanna move on? Let's move on. Okay.

59:52What do got? My next one is how to roll out a playbook system that you actually use in your company. So I think everyone knows like what a playbook is, Why it's beneficial.

1:00:00And most people write when it never gets used. Exactly. And so what we implemented when we, uh, were were rolling out playbooks, this was many years ago, uh, that actually worked really well is implementing a temporary role that we call the playbook czar.

1:00:14And the Playbook's Czar's only role was to just troll Slack once a day and anytime anyone had a question, check to see, okay, does that Playbook exist?

1:00:25If it does, comment in the thread, go check the Playbook. And if it doesn't, assign a task to create that playbook. Oh, wow.

1:00:30And so we paired that with a team, uh, challenge for the quarter, which I think we just picked some arbitrary number of number of playbooks. It's like we're gonna create a 150 playbooks this quarter. And if we do it, everyone gets a $250 massage.

1:00:43And so we paired those two things and within forty five days playbooks were being used on a daily basis throughout the team. That's pretty good. And what what what did you experience

1:00:51after that happened? What was the benefit of everybody using the playbooks? The benefit was the number of

1:00:58questions that were pulling people into conversations. Conversations. Yeah.

1:01:02Yeah. That that didn't need to be So the conversation Slack traffic went down. Oh, yeah.

1:01:06It went down and people felt more empowered. The speed of execution increased because people knew now, number one, how to do things themselves. But most importantly, like, the reason that most playbook systems fail is because they're never up to date, and so people know even if they look there, it's not gonna work.

1:01:20Right. Most importantly, people learn to trust the system which allowed them to then actually solve problems themselves. Interesting.

1:01:27Yeah. We should probably do that. You know, I air so much on the side of what I said earlier which is just try to hire really good people.

1:01:34You know, it's like when you hire somebody who's really good They figure it out. They just figure it out. Yeah.

1:01:38You know, they're like, I'll make the playbook. I want those people. Yeah.

1:01:42I I think everybody wants those people but they should do I I should honestly do what you do. I'm like, uh, it's like one of those things I'm like, I probably need to do that and I don't really want to, you know?

1:01:53It's it's short term pain. You should. I should.

1:01:56Yeah. That would make a lot of sense. Because things fall out of date too, and then you get on an off-site and then somebody's like, hey, man.

1:02:03The x y z thing's out of date, and then you look at it, you're like, Jesus Christ. I'm like, how are you training people? They're like, shadowing.

1:02:11Like, okay, well, thank God we hire really good people because we have no like I mean, I'm I'm over exaggerating a little bit. I would probably say we're more advanced than most people when it comes to this, but we would we're probably we would be much better if we did that sure. I highly recommend it.

1:02:24Okay. You ready for the next one? Let's do it.

1:02:25So have you heard of Jeff Bezos' over indexing on proxy metrics? No. This is from his Lex Friedman interview.

1:02:32And so, basically, it comes from the story that he was in a meeting with executives, and he was arguing that he had heard, like, from kind of qualitative level data that their customer service line wait time was too long. And the the executives were showing him, no.

1:02:47Look at the metrics. Like, it's thirty seconds or whatever. And so he was like, okay.

1:02:51Well, it says it's thirty seconds, but I'm like, seeing all these reviews online or whatever it was, that it's not thirty seconds. Like, people are waiting ten minutes or fifteen minutes. So he just picks up the phone, calls customer support, and proceeds to wait fifteen minutes.

1:03:03And so the lesson of this is is that, you know, a proxy metric is essentially a metric that explain it's a proxy to try to explain what's happening in reality.

1:03:13You know, always say the quality of your company is what happens on the quality of the front lines. Right? So Yep.

1:03:18Really, how good or not good your company is is only a measure of every single customer facing interaction of your company.

1:03:29Does that make sense? Mhmm. So, like, as you go up to level like, different levels of tier management or things happening on the back end, they they can improve your, uh, the company or your quality if they empower the people on the front lines to do better.

1:03:40But realistically, it's like in our business, it's the ad they see, if they got a setter call, or what SMS or email automations they got before that, what the funnel look like, what was the messaging on the funnel, the branding on the funnel, how are the setter in the sales conversations, how was the onboarding call, how was the contract and all the the handoff process, What is after onboarding call?

1:03:59Like, what is time to value? How do you know, all of those things. Right?

1:04:02Like, that's what the customer that that's the whole thing. Right?

1:04:04It's the customer facing interaction parts of the business are essentially the quality of the business, which really all of these metrics, they're called proxy metrics, is our attempt to evaluate what's actually happening on the front lines.

1:04:18And sometimes, they can be off, and you have to kind of go like founder mode and just really actually qualitatively look at what's happening on the front lines.

1:04:28Because there's two types of ways you can measure your business. There's qualitative metrics and quantitative metrics. Quantitative is the proxy metrics.

1:04:34Qualitative is like, I I watched your sales call. I watched 10 of your sales calls, You know? And sometimes what's happening doesn't always those doesn't always line up.

1:04:43So I'll give you a great example. You know what an MQL is? For people who don't know, it's a marketing qualified lead.

1:04:48So maybe somebody comes in, they apply, they answer some questions. We deem that as a you know, we graded one through four. Ones are, like, spam.

1:04:55They get canceled. Twos, we're not sure if we can help. We send those to a setter.

1:04:58Threes and fours are MQLs. And then from MQL, we have, like, an MQL, uh, like, app to MQL ratio. We have cost per MQL, etcetera.

1:05:06So there's been times across the company where we're getting a lot of complaints about lead quality.

1:05:13Then we look at MQL. MQL ratio, MQL cost is the same. So based on the proxy metrics, we're like, hey, there's nothing in the data that's validating what you're saying.

1:05:24Now, nine times out of 10 when the sales team complains about quality, it's like, dude, you just had a weird calendar in a bad couple of days. You're gonna be fine. Dust yourself off.

1:05:30Next week, you'll probably have great quality. Yep. You you gotta add your sales team to like, dude, quality sucks this week.

1:05:36Is there anything you guys did with marketing? And you're like, nope. And then next week, they're like, dude, whatever you're doing with marketing, keep doing it.

1:05:42The quality is amazing. You're like, I got you, buddy. You didn't change anything.

1:05:46Not a thing. Yeah. It's like always what Uh, it's just, you know, but you gotta from their I'm not trying to shit on salespeople because I'm a salesperson.

1:05:53I love salespeople. It's just their their day to day is so micro Right. That it they feel so big to them.

1:05:58Whereas, like, we're thinking is like a COO or a marketing director in week to week swings. But there has been times where let's say the MQL hasn't changed.

1:06:08It's still around $350. And I'm hearing all this quality thing, and now I'm hearing it for like the third week in a row. And I'm like, okay, let me batch 50 calls and just let us just see who's on the phone.

1:06:18And there has been I I say nine times out of 10, it's usually just like a weird thing that's happening. It's not really the sales team.

1:06:25I mean, it's not really the quality. It's just kind of a, you know, sales team kind of thing that's going on. But there's been a couple of times, maybe 20% of the time where I'm like, no, this is this is like drastically off.

1:06:37Like there was a time with RCA, this is probably in 2022, where I'm not sure what happened, but man, we were getting people with like face tattoos out of prison, you know, consistently over three hundred pounds, like, disability.

1:06:50I'm like, okay. Yeah. This is a quality issue.

1:06:53And then you look in and you're like, well, MQL says it's the same. And then I figure out they changed the definition of what an MQL was. And so what happens sometimes is, and you could see this in companies, people over time, they'll play with the proxy metric.

1:07:09And they'll optimize the proxy metrics subconsciously by changing how the metric is actually qualified, and how it's measured, and how it's done. So like another one is like, we track refunds in in in several different stages.

1:07:21And we found that we had this metric called non onboarded refund Mhmm. Which means they refunded before they hit the onboarding call. Mhmm.

1:07:29I come to figure out what qualifies as a non onboarding refund. Now is also they didn't sign the contract, which which is fine. I understand that's something you might wanna track, but they might have onboarded.

1:07:40Okay. That's a little bit different. Yep.

1:07:41Right? Or it's like they were sold a love it or leave it trial. Okay.

1:07:46That's a little bit different. And so like what happened was is just all of this everything just kept getting lumped into. It's a non onboarding refund.

1:07:54And it's an over index on optimizing a proxy metric and not really just looking at what's happening on the front lines.

1:08:01And that's why I think there's such a trend to this, like, founder mode, Elon. You know, Brian Chesky's about this now.

1:08:08There's also Jensen Huang runs his organization like this, where it's a flat organization. Because I think the more you can be in tune on what's happening on the front lines,

1:08:16the more you have, like, a better feel and a better optimization of what's going on in your business. I totally agree. Going back to to your boy, Andy Grove, and high output management, like, he describes this.

1:08:26And, like, basically, you can view a department or your business as a black box. And the KPIs that you look at are like little slits, little windows in that black box. So you can kinda see a snapshot of things passing behind it, but you don't really know what's going on until you actually go there.

1:08:42Uh, to to your point on Elon,

1:08:46uh, great book, The Book of Elon by by Eric Jorgensen. One of his quotes is like, if there's a problem, you as the founder need to physically locate yourself where the problem is, which in the case of a remote company is like, do the fucking call reviews. Go on the fucking Zoom calls and Yes.

1:09:00Learn for yourself what's actually gonna happen. To the front line. Like, if you think about your business as a conveyor belt or like a factory, like, he literally does, he goes and talks to the person at the problem where the factory is actually at.

1:09:10Yeah. And when you do that, an hour of that gives you more data than ten hours staring at a spreadsheet trying to figure out time used to do, and I'm like, fuck, we should do this again. It's one of these things, it's kinda like the thing you just mentioned where I'm like, fuck, we should do that.

1:09:22And we we do do it and then we stop doing it and then we do it again. Is like when you're having certain issues of client success, or it could be a lot of different things, is doing audits.

1:09:33It's, uh, what we call I think we call it client journey audits to where you have somebody put together the sales call, the interactions in between the sales call and the onboarding call, the onboarding call, all the CS calls, all the Slack communication. And then, I mean, honestly, you could probably put that all together and, like, put it into a LLM and get a lot of good data from that.

1:09:53But it's like you when you actually physically go in and see the client journey and and, you know, it's never that complicated. Right.

1:10:01It's usually like, oh, well, this is pretty obvious. Like, ever does that and comes away with like, what should we do?

1:10:06It's like, oh, well, duh. You know? And this is why I say to our coaches, most people aren't stuck because they know what the problem is and they don't know how to fix it.

1:10:15They're stuck because they don't know what the problem is or they're trying to fix the wrong problem. And so the more clear we can get an accurate diagnosis, the more clear on the solution that we could become.

1:10:27And the best way to get an accurate diagnosis is like what you were saying going right to the front line. Yep.

1:10:32Cool. Anything else on that or you wanna move on to the next one? Now let's move on to the next one.

1:10:36Uh, my next one is comes from Elon Musk. Uh, have you heard of Elon Musk's algorithm? Yeah.

1:10:41Yeah. Yeah.

1:10:43I I only need one. Delete. That's

1:10:46my favorite. That's Delete. Absolutely my favorite too.

1:10:49I think with, you know, AI and vibe coding, it can be so tempting to create an automated solution around something that should never exist in the first place. And so Elon Musk's algorithm, his whole process for systemizing, uh, it's it's five steps.

1:11:03And so his first step is make your requirements less dumb. And so he's got a whole spiel around so many things exist, reports exist, so many processes exist in a company just because that's the way it's always been done. And something might be done a certain way because some intern four years ago randomly said we should do things this way and it just the system never got updated.

1:11:24And so step one before automating anything is looking at maybe there's a report that you wanna audit. Looking at it and asking, does this report actually need to exist? And if so, can we make it simpler?

1:11:36And if not, why not? And who is responsible for telling me that we can't make it simpler? So that's step one.

1:11:41Step two is, to your point, delete. Try very very hard to just remove the process altogether. Is there anything that we can do to just delete the process altogether?

1:11:49It's my favorite. Also mine. Step three is simplify and optimize.

1:11:53So if we can't get rid of it, can we make it easier? Step four is accelerate. Can we make it faster?

1:11:59And only after you go through all of those steps in order do you find a way to actually automate the process. And oftentimes when you do that, you find that the process doesn't need to exist whatsoever. Yeah.

1:12:10So you know how Elon was a double major in economics and physics? Mhmm. So, um,

1:12:15I you know, that's a very, like, physics level of thinking about a business. And partly where I think he got that from in a sense is are you familiar with the equation of force equals mass times acceleration? Yes.

1:12:27So if you rearrange that equation, it also means that acceleration equals your force divided by your mass.

1:12:35Right? So let's define these terms in business language. Acceleration is not just velocity, but it's the rate of change in velocity.

1:12:42So it's growth rate Yep. And how fast you're actually growing faster. Okay?

1:12:46So in order to grow faster we all wanna grow faster. I think we do. Okay?

1:12:51You either could do two things. You could have more force. Right?

1:12:54So this would be, like, a good way to think about this is, like, the leverage equation from Naval Naval Robbenkant. You could have more people. You could add more capital.

1:13:02You could add more, uh, code. You could amplify it with media traffic, but it's like, how do we add more?

1:13:08People, capital, labor, traffic, doing more. K? The other thing though to go faster is we could change the mass, and we could actually make the mass go down.

1:13:19How do we actually define what mass is when it comes to a company? I haven't I'm gonna think a little more about this because I haven't come up with a great definition yet, but I think it's the number of people in your company multiplied by the number of commitments that are actively made in terms of their roles, responsibilities, things they have to do, the level of bureaucracy they have to go through, and the amount of initiatives and different things you're doing at the company times the people you have.

1:13:45Does that make sense? I think it's a really good word. And you know too, like, with people, if you take an organization from, let's say, you know, five people to 25 people, that's a five x increase in head count.

1:13:56But in terms of communication like pathways, I don't remember. It's like a 125 x increase.

1:14:02So most people, do you think they try to make their company grow faster by increasing the top end of the equation force or by decreasing mass? Of course, by increasing force.

1:14:13Ever I mean, that's exactly what I do. Yeah. I'm like, let's do more.

1:14:16Let's spend more. Let's have more people. Let's do this.

1:14:18But how can we just decrease the mass to go faster? And step one of that is delete, you know?

1:14:26And that's where, like, when I learned that equation and and thought about thought about it that way in business,

1:14:32I thought about Elon's algorithm and how deleting stuff is the fastest way to actually go faster. So that that equation, I had never thought of it that way, I think it's a 100% right. And I think also part of the reason that we have a tendency to want to just increase force is that's the thing you get an immediate feedback loop when you add something and it creates a result.

1:14:53You don't get a dopamine hit when you delete something that doesn't need to exist. I do. Well

1:14:57Yeah. I'm just kidding. Uh, I do.

1:15:00I get a big one. But anything else on that or you wanna go to the next one? No.

1:15:03Let's move on. So it's my turn. Right?

1:15:05It's your turn. So do you know the difference between competency based interview questions and situational based questions?

1:15:12Tell me. Okay. So Charlie Munger says, if you wanna predict somebody's behavior, do you look at their projections or do you look at their track record?

1:15:20You look at the track record. Right? Because previous performance is the best indicator of future performance.

1:15:25So I'm not saying in an interview. Right? A situational question is, hey.

1:15:29If we brought you into our marketing team, how would you go about building x, y, and z or integrating yourself into the marketing team in the next ninety days? Right? It's a future based question, and that's called a situational question.

1:15:40Right? I I do think there's value to those. You should ask them, but they're inferior.

1:15:45So I'm not saying they're bad. I'm just saying they're inferior to what's called competency based interview questions, which is called CBBI. There's a book about this.

1:15:53And essentially, these questions start with, tell me a story in which, tell me about a time in which, give me an example in which. So I'll give you a few examples you can use for sales. So tell me about the last time that you won a deal due to extreme, proactive, over the top, crazy level sales effort.

1:16:14I love that question. What happened? Right?

1:16:16See how you can't fake the answer to that question. Now, if I also if a sit if I use a situational based question, and I said, hey, if you're in a situation where you have somebody who, you know, it's a come to Jesus level sale and you really gotta push them over their fear to to to move forward, what would you do?

1:16:34Right? The issue with that question is, it assumes that they can do what they say they can do.

1:16:40Right? It's not referencing what they have done. And in that question exactly, every great salesperson has some good war stories, you know?

1:16:47So another one is like, what was your best month at x y and z company? Okay. My best month was 20 units.

1:16:52What was your worst month? 10 units. Okay.

1:16:53Well, that's like 50% of what you're actually capable of. Right?

1:16:58So obviously, there could have been changes lead flow and this and that and whatever, but, obviously, that was 50% of what you're capable of. What was for you personally the biggest learning lessons from that experience?

1:17:09They say, blah blah blah blah blah. Great. And how did you take that to implement it?

1:17:13How did you implement those lessons to bounce back in the coming months? And what happened in your performance then? So you see how, like, I teed them up into that question to where they can't escape the answer.

1:17:25It's like a reality based question. You know, another one you could say is like, hey. So when I call your manager, what do you think they maybe say is gonna be like your biggest strengths?

1:17:34Okay. Great. You know, blah blah blah.

1:17:36Awesome. And then what do you think, you know, maybe they tell me are your one or two biggest opportunities to improve? Okay.

1:17:43Cool. And how long ago were you working there? Okay.

1:17:45That was nine months ago. In the past nine months, what have you specifically done to work on those two things? Right?

1:17:51That's great. So you see how you can't escape the question. Right?

1:17:54I'm not saying you should just just only answer only ask those questions. People be like, Jesus Christ. This person's, like, turning me into fucking roadkill on this interview.

1:18:01But it helps you understand, like, what have they actually done, not what do they say they're gonna do.

1:18:10Right? Because there's information asymmetry in favor of the prospect on interviews, which means they have more information really about how they're gonna perform than you are.

1:18:19The same way a buyer has less information about how good your product is than the seller. And so what you these questions help you collapse the information asymmetry to have more signal, if that makes sense.

1:18:31Like another one is, like, what are your main professional goals? Tell me all about that. Oh, I wanna do this.

1:18:35Wanna do that. Great. What are your personal goals?

1:18:37Like, what are the one or two main personal goals that you really want to do? I asked this guy this and he was like, I really want to lose weight. Okay.

1:18:43Great. And how long has that been your goal for? What have you specifically done in the past nine months to pursue that goal of weight loss?

1:18:51And this guy in particular said, I've lost 70 pounds. And I'm like, good for you. You know?

1:18:55Good for you. And he does what he says he's gonna do. Yep.

1:18:58Right? You can't Can you fake that? Oh, I wanna lose weight.

1:19:00I'm working on losing weight. Doesn't mean anything. But he's actually committed to doing what he said he was gonna do.

1:19:06If you're a business owner who has appointment setters or an outbound sales team, you're gonna wanna hear what I have to say for a second. So a multiple 8 figure business owner texted me the other day and when he started using dollar.ao for the first time, his pickup rates went from 9% to 20%.

1:19:21So imagine doubling your pickup rates and ultimately the throughput of what your outbound salespeople and centers are gonna get. How does that impact your business? The answer is a lot.

1:19:30So if you wanna check out ..ao for phone sales outbound system, just click the link in the description or just go to Dialogue. Now back to the podcast.

1:19:38I totally agree. And I think, like, that particularly

1:19:41obviously, for sales roles, but for any role, particularly marketing, it's so easy for people who have never done marketing to sound like marketing geniuses because, like, theory is Yeah. Very obvious, but it's much more difficult to actually execute on those with sales, by the way.

1:19:55Some people can spit out the NEPQ,

1:19:57the whatever I'm teaching, the all the stuff. Stuff. Right?

1:20:00And then you're like, dude, you sound like shit. And then you have another guy who likes zen and vapes and has to smoke a cig at the end of the day and he just rips.

1:20:09You know? So like, it just there's just a difference. There's a difference there, you know?

1:20:13But anyways, continue. Yeah. And so asking asking the specific questions of what have you actually done, also listening for, like, specific objective KPIs and data tends to indicate that someone has actually done the thing or not.

1:20:25Yes. Like, I have increased, you know, ROAS by x percent or my close rate.

1:20:31Anytime someone gives specifics, it's a sign that they've done the thing. Absolutely.

1:20:35Anything else on that? Do you want go to your next? Let's go to the next one.

1:20:38Uh, so this is coming from Bezos, going back to Bezos decision making framework. And, uh, I think it comes from one of his shareholder letters, uh, talking about the difference between one door and and two doors.

1:20:49Are you familiar? Yeah. One door and two way doors.

1:20:52Yeah. And so for me, this has been super helpful, uh, like in a business. So his whole premise is that a decision is like a door Some decisions are one way doors.

1:21:15Meaning, if you make that decision, you're either past the point of no return or it's prohibitively expensive to unwind the decision. Mhmm. And so his whole framework in terms of how to make decisions, how to assert the what he wants done in the business versus giving his team autonomy is segmenting the decision into, is this a one way door or a two day two way door?

1:21:3598% of decisions are two way doors. Right. And if so, then he is much more willing to take the risk and disagree and commit to something that someone else wants to be done to let them learn the lesson even if he knows he's right as opposed to on the 2% of decisions that are one way doors, he's much more autocratic.

1:21:53How do you reconcile

1:21:55the fact that there's clear one way doors? Let's change our offer. Yep.

1:21:59Right? But there's also two way doors that are technically two way, but there's differences in risk.

1:22:09So I'll give you an example. Like, if I wanna test a new ad, if it doesn't work, we shut it off. I mean, is actually risk in that because I gotta put the money behind it, but you know, let's just say it's whatever.

1:22:17But let's say I'm like, we need to pay cut somebody. I mean, that's a two way door. We could increase their payback up, but there's a risk that I decrease it and they churn.

1:22:29Mhmm. You know? So how do you reconcile because I don't think that's a a binary thing.

1:22:36I think it's like there's clearly one way doors, and then it's how it's it's not is it reversible or is it not reversible? It's how reversible is it.

1:22:44Yep. You know? Like, we wrote out an initiative in our company, and we're rolling it back now.

1:22:50And, you know, it's a two way door. At the same time, I'm like, fucking ass. Like, I wish I just didn't roll this thing out in the first place.

1:22:56Like, there's a cost to it, you know? So I'm curious how you reconcile that. I think I mean, I've made this mistake multiple times too.

1:23:01I'm thinking of an initiative right now that that we're rolling back that's expensive.

1:23:05And I think it's on the front end understanding, okay, what what is the likely cost and, like, actually giving some thought to what is the cost of rolling this back? And then if there is a significant cost, making sure you've got either daily or weekly indicators into how it's going so that ideally, you can course correct sooner as opposed to waiting a month or a fucking quarter and then it's super expensive to wind you back.

1:23:27The the I I almost think the more risky it is, the more it's closer to a one way door, the longer the lead time between

1:23:35how do I say it? The leading and the lagging indicators. The longer that relationship is, the more risky it is.

1:23:40I agree. Because, like, you could do something in the first three months that looks good, and then you didn't realize there were second, third, fourth order effects that are coming back in to bite you. Yep.

1:23:47You know? So anything else on that, you wanna move on? Move on.

1:23:50So, uh, do you have a framework for like certain things you look for in every hire? I wanna hear Okay.

1:23:57Your Well, I wanna know how this compares to what you do. So I look for five things in every hire.

1:24:03This works this is a more applicable thing towards performance level positions. You know, it's probably not as applicable, let's say, to an ops person, but, like, sales, fulfillment, marketing.

1:24:17This is really good. So I look for five things. It used to be three things.

1:24:20I expanded it. So you're getting the this is the first time I think I've, uh, said it. So I expanded from my, uh, three things to five.

1:24:26So the first one is specialized knowledge, which kinda goes back to what we talked about earlier like, have they actually done what you're trying to do? But have they done it specifically? And like, think about it like lanes.

1:24:35You know, there's different sales management. Okay? You know, you could be managing a big team at Salesforce enterprise.

1:24:42You could be managing a car sales floor. You could be managing a home service company with a bunch of selling techs. You could be managing a huge brokerage of real estate agents, or you could be managing a high ticket closers doing Amazon FBA.

1:24:53You aren't gonna tell me that those all those things are similar. The same way is there's different types of sales. There's like relational sales, like a mortgage mortgage broker or a real estate agent, etcetera.

1:25:03There's transactional sales, which I define as, like, anything that could be sold in the sales cycle of, uh, thirty seconds or or thirty seconds or less. That'd be quite transactional. Great.

1:25:11Thirty, uh, days or less, which doesn't mean you're treating I hate the term because it's like, it doesn't mean you're treating your prospect like a transaction. It just means, like, a fitness sale, it's all one call close. Like, that's Yep.

1:25:22On a spectrum of transaction, I mean, that's, like, as much transactional as you can get. There's also enterprise sales. There's also, like, I would even say, table side selling, home service sales is a little bit different as well.

1:25:35And, like, almost all that service industry sales is a little bit different, like auto repair, HVAC, garage door, that's its own thing.

1:25:44Right? If you take somebody from one, put them into the other I'm not saying they couldn't do it, but, you know, what I hear a lot from my clients, especially sales management, is they'll be like, you know, dude has a Amazon FBA coaching offer with six six reps.

1:25:59And he's like, dude, I just got the best sales manager. I'm like, yeah, what was going on? He's like, well, they managed 400 real estate agents at x y z brokerage.

1:26:09And I'm like, he's like, if they can manage 400, my my team's gonna be doing, you know, my team's gonna be twenty, thirty reps in no time.

1:26:19And I'm like, number one, the sales process is different. Number two, like, managing 400 people is, I mean, it's an entirely different business for one.

1:26:28But number two, it's almost like an administrative position to a degree. I mean, it's not, but it's like a very executive numbers systems position. It's not like if you have six high ticket closers, you might hire somebody and give them the title of sales director, but I always have this framework.

1:26:44I say, there's the title and then there's the real title. And you need to know what your real title is. I'm calling you sales director, you're a sales coach.

1:26:52Or sometimes I'm like, you're a sales coach and therapist because you need to dust these guys off, regulate their emotions, and coach them on how to be better. You're not I mean, yes, director, whatever.

1:27:02You're really a coach because in our in our industry, especially, you know, if you have a team of less than fifteen, twenty people, which is most teams, you're not you don't really need a director to redo your whole sales process and to play a bunch with the CRM and do this and that and then tell you to change your marketing.

1:27:18Right? You need somebody who just coaches these guys, creates a relationship with them, retains them, trains them. It's like coach, QC, stamped on the forehead.

1:27:26Right? But a lot of people don't do that. So the first one is specialized knowledge because they have to have done the thing, but it's specifically the thing.

1:27:34You know, like if I build a company in high ticket or whatever you call this, uh, online service.

1:27:40If I build an online service company, if I go build another online service company, you would probably take a good bet I would do it successfully. If I go build a b to c, uh, consumer application that requires a network effect, you're probably gonna be like, I'm happy for you, man.

1:27:58You know? Cool. Okay.

1:28:00You're like, holy shit. Like, you know, maybe I succeed, but I'm basically just starting all over with some requisite business knowledge.

1:28:07So and I'm not saying, you know, you're not allowed nobody's allowed to go build something different, but, you know, you wanna you wanna think about the one step away rule at max. It's like they need to be one step away. Like, maybe they had a 20 or 30 person Amazon FBA team or high ticket team, they're going back.

1:28:22Right? So it's like they're they're still one step away. Or maybe it was they had a fitness coaching offer that they got to 2,000,000 a month as sales manager.

1:28:29And yeah, Amazon FBA is a little bit different, but like, I mean, that's barely a half step away, you know? Okay. So the next one's industry acumen, which means and this is again, marketing, sales, fulfillment, ops, finance, probably not as important, even though finance to a degree, it can be important, is how well do they understand the specifics of the industry.

1:28:48Mhmm. Right? So like, can they speak the language?

1:28:51Like every industry is kind of a tribe. Like if you go to an event, can this If this person showed up at an industry event, would they follow all the lingo?

1:28:59When they're talking to other people in the industry, would those people be like, oh, they're one of us or oh, this is an outsider. Does that make sense? You know, I'll give you an example.

1:29:06I've been studying a lot of home service industry. There's different lingo. You know, so when they say turnover, do you know what that means?

1:29:12Uh, no. You would probably think employee turnover. Yep.

1:29:15No. It means the amount of, uh, tech basically, the amount of service calls that turn from the techs that turns into replacement leads.

1:29:25Interesting. At least in HVAC. That's what turnover means.

1:29:27So, you know, I'm studying this industry. I'm like, turnover. Like, they're like, oh, we want really high turnover.

1:29:32I'm like, what the fuck? You know? No.

1:29:33That that it's a totally different thing. Right? So can they speak the language of the industry?

1:29:37Well, in sales, fulfillment, marketing, I mean, marketing is obvious. Right? This is really important because if you can't speak the language of the market, how are you going to market to, sell, or coach the market?

1:29:48Do they wanna be coached by somebody who's like them or somebody else? Right?

1:29:53The best way to be a good coach or a good salesperson or even a good marketer is in a lot of ways to fall in love with the market. Like, if if you really are obsessed with the market, you can really speak to a specific chunked down version of that in your marketing and so on and so forth.

1:30:07So that's very important. Right? The third thing is assertiveness and disagreeableness, which I would say is not necessarily that important for marketing, but I would say it's important for sales and fulfillment, especially if your coaches need to be strong leaders.

1:30:20And so this is really for performance based, uh, only. But you've heard what's the personality test that there's Myers a Briggs. It's not Myers Briggs that does assertiveness to disarrableness.

1:30:29Oh, yeah. It's I forget what it is, but there's one you can test But this it's like their level of presence, groundedness, confidence, and a lot of times, you know if you have this because these people generally, they either in the interview process need to be sold a little bit, which people think is a red flag.

1:30:48The best people you ever gonna recruit need sold. Of course. Yeah.

1:30:51It's like, come on, dude. Either that or they're like relentless with their follow-up, you know? Like, they're just like persistent and assertive and aggressive.

1:31:00And you also see in the interview process to where, like, they'll be very specific about certain questions they want answered. They might even cut you off in like a in like a respectful way, and they have a presence about them that leads a conversation.

1:31:13They're very articulate. So you need kind of that like like the way you wanna think about it is okay. If I'm hiring a coach or a salesperson, is this the type of person you can hold somebody accountable at the end?

1:31:24Right? Or if they get out of line, they can realign. Are they somebody who can be direct?

1:31:29Right? And it's kinda like that matrix we talked about earlier. We want the directness with warmness.

1:31:33Warmness. And and by the way, when I'm hiring people, you know, I know the the bottom right was tyrant.

1:31:39Obviously, that's a that sounds like an aggressive word. But it's easier to actually take a tyrant and turn them into an emotionally regulated leader than it is to do the opposite. Because in anything that you're ever training, it's much easier to train people when they've crossed the line, and then you're like, alright, dude.

1:31:57You you you're up here. The line was over here.

1:32:00You you kinda see how you crossed it. Like, this was the line. You you you're way up here, dude.

1:32:04So I need you to come back. It's easier because now they see the line. Where if they're if this is the line and somebody is essentially like, they're not even up to the line in terms of let's say absurd in this, it's hard for them to even see what that looks like.

1:32:17Does that make sense? Yeah. It's easier to subtract than it is.

1:32:19Yeah. It's why we always tell salespeople on the side of being too aggressive because when you cross a line, we'll help you see where the line actually was. Mhmm.

1:32:26So assertiveness, disagreeableness, that's number three. Number four is work ethic.

1:32:30So a lot of ways you will be able to identify this is people with extensive morning routines, people who have extensive learning and training, like reading and courses and whatever regimens.

1:32:42Do they do extra work on weekends? Like you can ask in the interview process, how do you typically spend your weekend? That's not like a, oh my god, they don't work weekends because they have four kids.

1:32:50I mean, look, like, you know, it's fine. But I'm just saying, like, somebody who's like, oh, I work every weekend. Okay.

1:32:56They have the work ethic. So and also, if you test for this in the personality test, I think it shows up as conscientiousness Mhmm.

1:33:02Which doesn't really sound like work ethic. I don't know why that term is related to that, but that's what I've heard.

1:33:08And so, you know, a lot of guys like, I have a guy right now who's starting, and this guy is, like, so like, I mean, it's, like, religious about honing in his craft, and he just studies, like I'll give you an example is I mean, he's the type of person who when he takes that first call, you're like, dude, this guy's went through the training.

1:33:26And also, like, we'll review a little bit of a call in a meeting. He'll just on his own, go review the rest of the call by himself afterwards.

1:33:32Stuff like that. Right? And then the fifth thing is buy in, of course.

1:33:36So buy in to the mission, vision, and values. I don't know how you think about mission, vision, and values, but I feel like is the vision is where we're going. The mission is why we're going where we're going, and the values is how we're gonna interact on the journey of going where we're going.

1:33:48I totally agree. You know? So, like, I think about it like we're we're getting in a boat.

1:33:51We're going across the ocean, and it's like the exciting destination is the vision. The mission is why.

1:33:58The values is how we're gonna interact

1:34:00on the journey of going where we're going. I'm curious. With with mission, do you ever break or have you ever broken that out into, like, here's the external mission.

1:34:07Right? Here's why we exist for our clients, which is obviously the most important thing. Well, I have a different framework.

1:34:11It's called the four purposes of our company. Mhmm. So number one

1:34:14is to, um, get our clients results. Number two is to develop the team internally.

1:34:20Number three is to donate to charitable causes, and number four is profit. And profit enables all all the other three. Yep.

1:34:26So and what we do a really good job of because, you know, like, when you're in a sales and marketing type of business, I mean, we look.

1:34:33If we take somebody we take in people from 5 k a month to 800,000 a month. I mean, in multiple, you know?

1:34:39And obviously, that's not a regular result, but still, I mean, that's like insane. And does that massively change your life and their family and their clients' lives because they're impacting more? Yeah.

1:34:48Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:34:49For whatever reason though, it just doesn't translate as viscerally to like when I had that medical company. When somebody's like, oh my god, I can like not use walkers for the first time. Even me saying that, you see how it feels different which is weird.

1:35:04I mean, 0 to $800 a month, I mean, that's a big difference. But, you know, I say this person didn't have to use the walker.

1:35:11I I don't know why. Why does that there's something about that that emotionally feels different, and I think it's because it's more tangible. Yeah.

1:35:18I mean, 0 to $800, like, that's a very abstract abstract concept, whereas that's concrete. Right.

1:35:24So that's the challenge, but one of the things I've done really well is, you know, there's a clear mission where I tell everybody, I want them to look at this experience with our company as the most whether they go on and stay here for twenty years, they stay here for a year and go do something else.

1:35:40What do they do? They look back on their time here, and it was the most transformative time in their career.

1:35:45I love that. Like, that's because that's how, you know, working at TF was for me, and I wanna pass that along.

1:35:50And so that's very powerful as well. Yeah. I think mine is very similar.

1:35:55Like, my selfish you know, uh, we try and do a good job of communicating our vision as well, but, like, my selfish goal is that we grow at such a rate that no one on the team feels like they need to leave to get growth elsewhere. Like they can, and that's totally fine. Wish them the best, but that we're growing at such a rate that no one feels like they need to move on.

1:36:11And I think that's, uh, for a lot of revenue stuff, it's easy because, you know, we have like a vision and a mission and stuff. And I'm even thinking as I'm saying this, I'm like, ugh, like should I redo it? Does it need to be better?

1:36:22But do I wanna change it again and seem decisive?

1:36:25But it just doesn't hit like when I when we did the medical company, I helped with I mean, I largely really helped ideate the mission, vision, and values.

1:36:34And, man, I came up with it so quick, and I was like, dude, this is the greatest thing I've ever heard because, you know, it's health care, and it's people's lives, and it's extending the time they get to have not just, uh, longevity, but health span and all these things, and you feel it. You know?

1:36:50And with revenue, market you know, you don't feel it as much because like you're saying, it is

1:36:57abstract. It's an abstract concept. I think what we did, um, it's certainly not perfect, but which I think was a better approach that we've done a better job of is so we do, uh, have a philanthropic initiative as well, and we build homes in Mexico.

1:37:10So this year, we'll we'll be behind, I close think, to a 100 homes built in Mexico. That's pretty cool. And so driving the focus to that and, like, the pictures of people who, for the first time in their lives, get the key to their house and have never lived in a house before in their lives, like, that brings tangibility to all of the abstract numbers and KPIs.

1:37:27Yeah. I donate, um, personally to charity, and I never even talked about it, which is probably not good. You should.

1:37:33It's like I might as well talk about You really should. But I have this thing where I'm like, I don't wanna be the type of guy who talks about it, you know? Because you know some people, you're like, yeah, there's some people, man, they donate so much to charity and then they're like, they can't shut the fuck up.

1:37:45Yeah. And you're like, dude, like, like, look, I don't as long as you gave the money to charity, like, whatever. If it's about raising your own status, like, whatever.

1:37:53The money's still with people who need it and blah blah blah blah. But I'm like, Jesus Christ. Like, it's just, like, disgusting.

1:37:58And I I just way I was raised, you know, even self promotion for me, which I mean, I've I've learned to do probably pretty effectively, but it it's not a natural thing for me. Like, came from the Midwest. Yeah.

1:38:08You know, it was shut the fuck up, put your head down, work hard. And also don't talk about money because no one has it. And and don't talk about money.

1:38:14Yeah. And so

1:38:16that's kinda how I grew up and stuff, and I've just never I mean, I've donated like well into 7 figures in the charity. I've just never even talked about it. It's a paradox of charity, right?

1:38:25It's it's like if like because to your point, if you give money to charity, you don't want to talk about it for those reasons. But if you don't talk about it, then there is a risk of an external perception being you're a selfish motherfucker who never donates to charity. And so Here it's a I am.

1:38:38I'm laundering my reputation as we speak. I love it. There you go.

1:38:41Yeah. Alright. Is there anything else we wanna talk about there that was good or you wanna move on to your next thing?

1:38:46That was fantastic. Let's move on. What you got?

1:38:48Okay. So this is I'm I'm actually really curious to hear your take on this because this is a little bit of a counterintuitive approach that's worked really well for us when it comes to recruiting.

1:38:57And where we have had a a significant amount of success hiring for more, like, operations, marketing, even some finance roles is actually starting with someone who is a freelancer or, a solo agency owner Yeah.

1:39:13And then bringing them in house that way. And so, like, for a typical marketing person who's very talented at what they do, most people in those roles realize, okay, I could make more money having three to five clients doing my thing than than working in house. Yeah.

1:39:26Right? Yeah. I got a lot to say on this.

1:39:27Which is which is very true and as someone who used to run that business model, your life sucks when you do that. Right? And you know this as well.

1:39:35And so what we've have probably close to, like, an 80% success rate doing with someone that we're really trying to recruit is if we know that we're hiring for a role and we found someone who's perfect for the role, but they're doing the the agency freelancer thing, we'll bring them on board as part of a project, like a scoped project that allows us to do two things.

1:39:55Number one, allows us to actually work with them and make sure that they're a culture fit and that they're as good as we think they are. But number two, it exposes them to our team, and we've got a pretty great culture, pretty dialed systems. Like, we've got things happening.

1:40:08Generally, the interaction of someone who comes in is, oh, wow. This this is this is different than typical clients that I work with. Right.

1:40:15And so at that point, and I make it well known to them, I'm just like, hey, my goal because I used to be in your shoes is to be your favorite client. Right. And like, I think a mistake that a lot of people who hire outside consultants is is they just they just cook them.

1:40:28Like, they just abuse them. Yeah. And it's so shortsighted.

1:40:32And so anyways, like, try and develop that that relationship, and I just start asking them on one on ones. Like, hey, how's the business going? Anything I can do to support?

1:40:39How are the clients? Yeah. Inevitably, they start complaining Bitching.

1:40:42Yeah. Yeah. Bitching about clients.

1:40:44I'm like, dude, I I totally get it. I was there. And, uh, after a couple months, I just lay all cards on the table and I'm like, look, man, this is going really well.

1:40:51You're a great culture fit. It seems like we're having fun working together. Is there a world where we just have you come in full time?

1:40:58Yeah. And 80% of the time, there always is. Yeah.

1:41:01I call that the we're your biggest client strategy.

1:41:04So, you know, the thing is though is and I'll just be honest. You have to run a very good operation for this to work.

1:41:13And you guys do. I mean, that's why I wanted to talk with you about operations is because, you know, you guys genuinely run a good company.

1:41:19And I know that because I've known you for so long, and I just know how you guys operate in your thesis and all and all these things about how you run a company. And so this doesn't work if you are not a breath of fresh air for that person. Right.

1:41:31You have to be the breath of fresh air. I pretty much do the same thing.

1:41:35I mean, I do it probably a little bit more directly than you, but I'm like, okay, maybe bring them on for a project. Then I'm like, hey, you know, how's these clients going? Oh, know, it's blah blah blah blah blah.

1:41:45Let's be your biggest client. Right? And then a lot of times too, you know, it's like, I'm fine with them key because with most people, like, let's say it's a marketer.

1:41:53Let's say it's email marketer. Right? And you might wanna bring them on for more stuff than just email.

1:41:57Think we outsource email and have a great experience. But let's say they're doing a bunch of emails.

1:42:02You know, a lot of times what'll happen is 20% of those clients are like they're like, dude, it takes me three hours a week. But then they're like, I fucking hate these other people. So I'm like, look, dude.

1:42:12Just because because the only thing is with some people like that, the pay expectation could be very high. Yep.

1:42:17And so you can build that into the comp plan long term, but I'm like, hey, why don't you keep your best two people? But can we get 80% of your time? And I used not to think I'm like, you know, oh, it's a 100% of nothing.

1:42:28But dude, with people who are really good, 80% of their time is better than a 100% of somebody who sucks. So I'm just like, that was fine.

1:42:36And you know what mean? I'm willing to help them with their other thing too or maybe send them referrals or whatever they need, you know? But that's kind of general generally how I think as well.

1:42:42I I totally agree. I think there's a real like, some people just like, there's a real, like, identity benefit to

1:42:49being able for them to say, like, I'm doing my own thing. And, like, the net effect of them having one or two other clients that don't take any time is that they actually give more to the business than if they felt, quote, unquote, trapped being full time on on your business. I totally agree.

1:43:02I agree. If you enjoyed this podcast, you're also probably gonna like this podcast I also did recently that you can check out by clicking the screen right here.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Combined, these two founders have generated over $225M in lifetime revenue — and they open by promising sixteen specific systems, not vague advice, for getting a company to a point where it no longer depends on the person who built it.

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA

1:00:00productSalesKick ↗

1:28:10productDialer.io ↗

FROM THE DESCRIPTION

PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.

Click here 👉 ↗

OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.

Frame Gallery

Visual moments.

Frame at 00:00 from $30M CEO: How to Build a Business That Runs Without You

Frame at 02:00 from $30M CEO: How to Build a Business That Runs Without You

Frame at 03:11 from $30M CEO: How to Build a Business That Runs Without You

Frame at 03:57 from $30M CEO: How to Build a Business That Runs Without You

Frame at 05:20 from $30M CEO: How to Build a Business That Runs Without You

Frame at 07:13 from $30M CEO: How to Build a Business That Runs Without You

Watch next

More from this channel + related breakdowns.

1:45:10

Cole Gordon · Interview

How We Went From $0 to 8-Figures in 8 Months

Cole Gordon and Brian Ostermiller reconstruct how they built four eight-figure sales teams, covering hiring, leadership, live objection handling, and the financial close framework that changed everything.

April 10th

1:49:54

Cole Gordon · Interview

Content vs Ads: Experts Debate Which Is Better in 2026

A timed, poolside debate where Cole Gordon pits his own CMO against an organic-agency founder over one question: which $10M business is worth more?

July 3rd

2:03:33

Cole Gordon · Interview

After $150M in Ad Spend, We Rank Every Marketing Funnel for 2026

Two operators who've collected over $150M from cold ads run a live S-through-F tier list of every high-ticket funnel, then break down the offers, creatives, and show-rate systems actually working now.

May 7th

Video of the Day1:56:44

Cole Gordon · Interview

Meet The Genius That Industry Leaders Hire For $100M Launches

Jason Fladlien has done $250M in webinar sales. Here is every framework, in order, from the $7 ebook that started it to the $100M launch that broke the record.

June 25th

Video of the Day1:29:42

Cole Gordon · Interview

I Studied 5,000+ Offers. These 8 Make People Absurdly Rich

Cole Gordon and Daniel Fazio break down 8 high-revenue service offers — from beginner cold email to 8-figure sales floors — and the structural principles that make each one work.

June 18th

1:22:48

Cole Gordon · Interview

$150 Million of Sales Knowledge in 82 Minutes

An 82-minute practitioner masterclass on high-ticket sales — from belief-transfer mechanics to building and managing a team that closes without you.

June 15th

Chat about this