A recruiter-turned-eight-figure operator lays out six frameworks, hiring leverage, who to fire, how to give feedback, how to raise standards, and how to stop being everyone's bottleneck, that he says fix 99% of why founders stay stuck in the weeds.
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1 weeks ago
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educational
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Big Idea
The argument in one line.
The way out of being buried in your own business is not more SOPs or more training, it is hiring dramatically better people, then holding, coaching, and delegating to them with specific systems instead of instinct.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A business owner with a team of five or more who still feels like everything depends on them personally.
Someone managing performance-based roles like sales, setters, or CSMs who struggles to hold people accountable without either exploding or letting standards slide.
A founder who keeps hiring but keeps getting pulled back into the weeds anyway.
Anyone deciding whether to hire a senior generalist before actually defining the tasks that need to get done.
SKIP IF…
You're a solo operator with no direct reports yet, these are team-management frameworks, not personal productivity tips.
You want interview scripts or hiring-process tactics specifically, this is about the systems around hiring, not the interview itself.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Most business owners blame bad systems for bad performance, but the real fix is almost always recruiting harder and paying more for fewer, better people. Gordon lays out six frameworks built from $150M+ in revenue and 3,000+ consulting clients: a hiring-leverage rule, a culture-skill matrix for deciding who to cut, a leadership matrix for calibrating feedback toward direct-but-unemotional, a two-step formula for raising performance targets without breaking people, the economics of diminishing returns on effort, and a delegation system built around task-level clarity and a five-level initiative ladder. The through-line: stop compensating for weak hires with elaborate processes, and stop training your team to depend on you by always answering their questions.
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A two-year underperforming department didn't improve with SOPs, training, or QC. One dramatically better hire fixed it in 30 days, which becomes the hiring-leverage rule: recruit far higher and pay far more.
04:00 – 09:03
02 · Why You're Probably Not Paying Enough
Bifurcate hiring: offshore low-impact admin work, pay top-of-range or above for high-impact roles. A short-term labor cost increase is usually offset by needing fewer, better people.
09:03 – 11:47
03 · The Recruiting Volume Nobody Wants to Do
Front-loading a painful, high-volume search beats back-loading the pain into months of managing a bad hire.
11:47 – 14:31
04 · The Culture-Skill Matrix: Who to Cut
Plot the team on skill vs. culture fit. The likable underperformer, not the skilled lone wolf, is the quiet plateau-causer that gets kept too long.
14:31 – 23:16
05 · The Leadership Matrix: Tyrant vs. Pushover
Plot leadership style on emotion vs. directness. The target is grounded candor: direct and immediate, delivered without emotional charge, using a public or private script for standards violations.
23:16 – 24:26
06 · Standards vs. Performance Coaching
Standards (fully within someone's control, already known) get held firmly. Performance coaching (skill development) gets a different, developmental tone.
24:26 – 31:45
07 · The 4 Properties of Feedback That Actually Works
Good feedback is specific, frequent, immediate, and visible or graphed, illustrated with a story about fixing a whole sales team's bad behavior with a single chart.
31:45 – 41:02
08 · Raising Performance Standards Without Breaking People
Specific, hard goals raise performance only up to a person's point of ability. The two-step formula: start projections low enough to hit consistently, then raise them until reps hit projections about 75% of the time.
41:02 – 42:33
09 · Why Reps Follow Up Without Being Told
Once projections sit right at a rep's point of ability, they start following up and innovating on their own, without being asked.
42:33 – 47:39
10 · Diminishing Returns on Marginal Effort
Each additional unit of output costs more than the last. A team working only five of eight hours usually isn't lazy, the last few hours just don't feel worth it to them.
47:39 – 51:06
11 · Fixing It: Observation and Marginal Benefit
Three levers: the observation effect (just measure and show working time), lowering the marginal cost of the next unit, and raising the marginal benefit with tiered pay, leaderboards, or status.
51:06 – 55:11
12 · Delegation Step 1: Define What You Actually Need
Break the vague feeling of needing a COO into a literal task list, then eliminate, automate, offload to an existing team member, and only then hire.
55:11 – 58:06
13 · The Five Degrees of Initiative
Outlaw waiting-to-be-told and asking-what-to-do. Everyone should operate at level three (the 'I intend to' rule) or higher, scaled by the stakes and reversibility of the decision.
58:06 – 1:04:06
14 · The Three-Gate Filter for 'Everyone Comes to Me'
Always answering questions trains a team to keep bringing them. The three-gate filter requires the 'I intend to' format, then a quick decision, then a real check on whether it can wait for the next meeting.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Every hour spent recruiting saves 10 to 100 hours of managing later, because most performance problems are hiring problems wearing a training costume.
SOPs and QC time are usually a symptom of having the wrong people, not a fix for it, great hires often write their own SOPs.
A 20-50% pay increase for a high-impact role can be a rounding error against the output gap between an average hire and a top one.
The likable underperformer, not the skilled-but-abrasive lone wolf, is the harder problem to spot, and the one that plateaus a company's revenue.
Grounded candor, direct feedback delivered without emotional charge, makes teams feel safer than being let off easy, because people always know exactly where the line is.
Leaders should react to the pattern a violation represents over time, not just the single instance in front of them.
Effective feedback has four properties: it's specific to an observable behavior, frequent, immediate, and ideally visualized as a graph.
Showing a sales team a single graph of their own bad trial-refund behavior fixed it within a week with zero coaching conversation.
Specific, hard goals raise performance in a straight line only up to a person's point of ability, past that ceiling, performance collapses instead of climbing.
The sweet spot for a performance target is where someone hits it about 75% of the time, that's what maximizes both output and self-taught improvement.
Diminishing returns on marginal effort explain why a team quietly stops working after five of eight hours: the last few units of output cost far more than they're perceived to be worth.
Simply measuring and displaying someone's working time changes behavior before any coaching conversation happens.
Before hiring a COO, break the vague feeling of being overwhelmed into a literal task list, most of that list turns out to be a $6-10K/month admin hire, not a $250-300K executive.
The Five Degrees of Initiative model requires everyone to operate at level three or higher: nobody should be allowed to simply wait to be told or ask what to do.
A leader who always answers questions is training their team to keep bringing them questions, the fix forces people to think through solutions themselves first.
Takeaway
Most management problems are hiring problems in disguise.
WHAT TO LEARN
Six frameworks argue that recruiting leverage, honest culling, unemotional directness, calibrated targets, and forced self-sufficiency do more for a business than any amount of extra training or SOPs.
01The Hire That Changed Everything
A two-year underperforming department didn't improve with more SOPs, training, or QC, it transformed in 30 days once one dramatically better hire was made.
Every hour spent recruiting saves 10 to 100 hours of managing later, because most 'systems' problems are actually 'we hired the wrong person' problems.
Raising pay and raising interview volume are the two levers nobody wants to pull because both are expensive and exhausting up front.
02Why You're Probably Not Paying Enough
Bifurcate hiring: offshore low-impact admin roles to save money, but pay high-impact roles at or above market rate.
A 20-50% pay bump for a key role can be a rounding error against the output difference between an average hire and a top hire.
A short-term increase in labor cost is often offset within months by needing fewer, better people to do the same work.
SOP-perfecting and process-codifying can be productive-feeling procrastination that avoids the real constraint: recruiting and people.
03The Recruiting Volume Nobody Wants to Do
Front-loading the pain of a high-volume search beats back-loading it into months of managing the wrong hire.
Settling for the least-worst candidate out of a small pool guarantees the exact management burden that better recruiting would have prevented.
04The Culture-Skill Matrix: Who to Cut
Plot every team member on skill vs. culture fit: keep the top-right, cut the bottom-left, and treat the other two quadrants differently.
The likable underperformer is more dangerous than the skilled-but-abrasive lone wolf, because they're easy to keep too long and hard to notice.
Put the bottom 20-30% of underperformers on a formal performance improvement plan instead of hoping patience will fix it.
05The Leadership Matrix: Tyrant vs. Pushover
Plot leadership style on emotion vs. directness: the target is grounded candor, direct and immediate but delivered without triggering or emotion.
Most leaders default to the relational pushover, who avoids conflict and lets standards erode, or the tyrant, who is direct but exhausting to work for.
Direct, unemotional accountability makes a team feel safer than being let off easy, because people always know exactly where the line is.
When correcting a standards violation, acknowledge it immediately, deliver it without emotion, and make sure the team can see it was handled.
06Standards vs. Performance Coaching
Standards violations (fully within someone's control) are different from performance coaching (skill development) and need a different tone.
07The 4 Properties of Feedback That Actually Works
Good feedback is specific: restate the exact observed behavior instead of vague praise or criticism like 'good job' or 'bad job.'
Good feedback is frequent: daily or intra-day check-ins outperform monthly or quarterly reviews because the reinforcement cycle is too long otherwise.
Good feedback is immediate: giving it as close to the behavior as possible makes it land.
Good feedback is visible or graphed: a single chart of a team's real numbers can change behavior faster than repeated verbal warnings.
08Raising Performance Standards Without Breaking People
Specific, hard goals raise performance in a straight line only up to a person's point of ability, past that ceiling, performance collapses instead of climbing.
Start projections low enough that a rep hits them consistently, then slowly raise the bar until they're hitting projections about 75% of the time.
Diagnose both hits and misses out loud in a recurring one-on-one so people build their own awareness instead of just getting a verdict.
Communicate big changes in order of bandwidth: one-on-one first, then team meeting, then a wider channel.
09Why Reps Follow Up Without Being Told
Once projections sit right at a rep's point of ability, they start following up relentlessly and innovating on their own, without being asked.
10Diminishing Returns on Marginal Effort
Every additional unit of output costs more time and energy than the last, so performance naturally plateaus once the perceived cost outweighs the perceived benefit.
A team quietly working five of eight hours usually isn't lazy, their environment has taught them the last few hours barely move the number.
Fixing a small output gap across a team compounds fast, recovering two extra units a day across six people was worth roughly $82K a month in this example.
11Fixing It: Observation and Marginal Benefit
The cheapest fix for diminishing returns is simply measuring and displaying someone's working time, behavior changes just from being observed.
Beyond measurement, you can lower the marginal cost of the next unit or raise the marginal benefit with tiered pay, leaderboards, or status.
A tiered commission structure resisted for years out of confidence in culture and leadership still produced a 20% cash-collection jump the month it was implemented.
12Delegation Step 1: Define What You Actually Need
'I need a COO' is usually a feeling, not an actual role, break it into the literal tasks that need to be off your plate before deciding what to hire.
Before hiring, run every task through eliminate, automate, then offload to an existing team member, only what's left becomes a new hire.
A vague need for a senior executive often turns out to be a much cheaper admin and sales-ops hire once the tasks are actually listed out.
13The Five Degrees of Initiative
Outlaw waiting to be told or asking what to do across the organization, if people are stuck there, it's a training gap, not a them problem.
The 'I intend to' rule requires bringing a problem already paired with a root cause and three possible solutions, not just the problem itself.
How much autonomy to grant should scale with the stakes and reversibility of the decision, not with how senior someone feels.
14The Three-Gate Filter for 'Everyone Comes to Me'
Always answering your team's questions trains them to keep bringing you questions instead of solving problems themselves.
Require the 'I intend to' format before engaging, most people solve their own problem just by being forced to think it through first.
When they do bring it to you, either pick one of their three options or tell them to decide and report back, don't do the thinking for them.
Only interrupt your day for something that truly can't wait for the next standup or one-on-one, and expect a short pushback burst when you first stop rescuing people.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Point of ability
The performance ceiling a specific goal can drive someone toward. Below it, harder targets raise output in a straight line; past it, performance falls off instead of improving.
Sweet spot (goal-setting)
The target zone where someone hits their assigned projection about 75% of the time, which maximizes both their output and their self-driven improvement.
Diminishing returns on marginal effort
The idea that each additional unit of output costs more time and energy than the last, so at some point the perceived cost of the next unit exceeds its perceived benefit.
Observation effect
Behavior changes simply because it is being tracked or watched, independent of any coaching or consequence attached to it.
Five Degrees of Initiative
A ladder describing how self-directed a team member is: waiting to be told, asking what to do, recommending options and acting, acting and reporting immediately, or acting and reporting at the next scheduled check-in.
I intend to... rule
A required communication format where someone brings a problem already paired with a root cause and a short list of possible solutions, instead of bringing just the problem.
Culture-Skill Matrix
A two-by-two grid plotting skill against culture fit, used to decide who to keep and develop, retrain, manage carefully, or cut.
Leadership Matrix
A two-by-two grid plotting emotional charge against directness in feedback, with grounded candor, direct but unemotional, as the target quadrant.
Extinction burst
A temporary spike in old attention-seeking behavior, such as freaking out or escalating, that shows up right after a leader stops rewarding that behavior, before it fades.
“Every hour you spend recruiting saves 10 plus hours managing, it might be that every hour you spend recruiting saves freaking 100 hours managing.”
Sharp, source-cited ratio claim that reframes recruiting as leverage→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
03:20
“SOPs are so important in systems and processes. Usually, that's a symptom of having shitty fucking people.”
Contrarian one-liner that undercuts a widely-held belief→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
12:26
“The likable underperformer is almost always more problematic.”
Names a leadership blind spot in one sentence→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
18:07
“Grounded, direct, unemotional leadership actually makes your team feel safe because they know exactly where they stand with you.”
The paradox framing makes it instantly shareable advice→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
06:58
“Superstars often can be 10 or even a hundred times higher in output than B players.”
Steve Jobs stat citation, punchy and easy to isolate→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
37:26
“There's no shame in not hitting your numbers. There's only shame in not knowing why.”
A repeatable company motto, self-contained and quotable→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
1:00:10
“I hired your brain, not your body.”
Tight, memorable rationale for the delegation philosophy→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
59:43
“Once they have to actually do the hard work, because the hardest part is thinking through the problem, 99% of the time they're like, oh yeah, I figured it out.”
Payoff line for the three-gate filter, satisfying resolution→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
48:00
“When we observe or track something, the behavior of that thing just changes by the nature of observing it. What gets measured gets managed.”
Names the observation effect in plain, usable language→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
1:03:14
“Expect an extinction burst, people might freak out for the next two weeks. You just got to hold the line.”
Prepares the viewer for the uncomfortable part of implementing the advice→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
The Script
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I built three multiple eight -figure companies and two seven -figure SaaS companies now, totaling over $150 million in revenue, maybe even $200 million, and that's just in the past five years. But the thing is, I wouldn't be able to do any of that if I didn't build systems that allow me to remove myself from the day -to -day of my company so everything doesn't depend on me, people aren't coming to me with their problems, and I can actually breathe.
and work on the things that really matter so if you're somebody who wants to do the same and you want to know how to build systems to actually scale your business get you back more time and systems that ultimately mean that your business doesn't depend entirely on you so you can work on bigger picture things things that move the needle and ultimately have more free time with your friends and family or whatever you want to do then this might be the most important video you watch all year because after consulting 3 000 plus clients in the past five years i've really noticed that there's six key systems and leadership frames that ultimately fixes 99 % of business owner problems of why they can't get out of the weeds.
So we're going to break down each of the six in this video, starting with framework number one. Now, before I get into framework number one, I want to tell you a quick backstory so you can really understand how big of an impact this had on my own business. So the backstory is we had a longstanding underperforming department for like two years.
And during that entire two year timeframe, we always put the blame on our own leadership, you know, extreme ownership, right? We thought that we didn't have the right systems, processes, SOPs. We don't have the right tools.
We don't have the right tech for the team. We need to do more training and more QC. And over two years, we created all these elaborate SOPs.
We spent hundreds of hours pouring into this team, doing trainings, doing QC, and it really didn't help that much. I mean, things got a little bit better, but they were never where we really wanted them to be or felt like they could be. And then we made a hire that changed everything.
So we hired this person. They ramped in a week. Usually takes like 60 days to ramp in this role.
Took like a week. Essentially, they basically self -managed themselves. They barely needed to do any training or QC at all.
And within 30 days, it was our best performer. And so obviously it was like a breath of fresh air after two years of doing this. So it made us ask the question, well, what would it take?
To get every single person on the team like that one person. And the answer is pretty obvious. We need to recruit way higher level people, which means two things that nobody does.
We need to do a much more higher volume of interviews to make one higher. So our volume of interview to hire ratio needs to go way up. Nobody does that because when you need somebody, you need them now.
Interviews are freaking exhausting. You're doing so many of them. People suck.
Like you have so many that are unqualified that don't show up. So you get one good person. You're like, okay.
you got the job, let's do it. Okay, so nobody does that. But we need to do a way higher volume of interviews until we find the right person.
The second thing nobody does that we had to start doing is we had to pay them way more. I mean, that's a huge, huge thing. And so over the next six months, using those two things, we overhauled the entire team.
We raised the pay. We also did way more interviews to find one person. The team got completely overhauled and the performance just absolutely freaking skyrocketed so much so to where almost that team is unrecognizable now to where it was six to 12 months ago.
And the best part is. We didn't have to do any more endless QC or coaching. We didn't have to create all these elaborate SOPs.
The SOPs ended up not mattering that much. This is why I think people overweight SOPs so much. SOPs are so important in systems and processes.
Usually, that's a symptom of having shitty fucking people. It just is, okay? The real problem was we didn't have good enough people.
It didn't matter how good the SOPs were. It was like the best SOPs in our entire freaking company. We needed better people.
So the lesson is, is every hour, you spend recruiting saves 10 plus hours managing, it might be that every hour you spend recruiting saves freaking 100 hours managing. Okay.
And so I got this from Brian Chesky of Airbnb. Obviously, I've kind of known this before I heard it. But this is the best sentence I've really ever heard it in.
And that's framework number one. Now, this does mean a few things. I want to break this down a little bit more detail.
So the first thing it means is you probably don't pay enough, okay? And the way I like to think about pay is most hiring decisions you make should be bifurcated, which that means is there are kind of like two types of hires you're making.
There's low impact admin type hires. So like data entry, basic marketing tech, admin, stuff like that. Those can be offshore to where you can save some money.
And there's kind of two tiers of offshoring. There's like South Africa and Eastern Europe if you need really good English speaking and critical thinking. And then there's Philippines if you don't need as good English speaking, which is even cheaper.
So a lot of those data entry, admin, basic stuff like that, you can offshore and save a lot of money that way. But then there's your high impact performance hires. So that's like your recruiters, executives, managers, sales, marketers, coaches, et cetera.
These, sometimes you pay, well, not sometimes. pay at the top of the range or even sometimes even way above the range like almost what we had to do in our department is like set a new range okay compared to what was market rate and the way i like to think about this to figure out what you should pay is first really identify like who is actually the type of person you know would effing crush in this role like who is the dream hire even if they're unrealistic Okay.
It's almost like developing your ICP, but for recruiting, but you really want to think through like, who's the type of person I could put in here. And they're so good. I wouldn't even have to train them.
And then the second thing you do is you ask, what would it take to get that person? Usually it means way more interviewing and you got to pay them way more. But oftentimes what you'll find is you might only need to pay like two to five grand a month more to get that person.
And that might not seem like a lot to you, but you have to realize that's a 20 to 50 % increase in pay. For that position and when you have that it puts you an entirely different bracket of talent in the recruiting marketplace Like I've seen it to where if you even increase the pay by two grand a month might not seem a lot to you You'll get entirely different interviews coming into your funnel based on that new pay in the scorecard and the job description and all that stuff So that's number one number two is you might think well, oh man, like my margins already aren't that good Does this mean increasing my labor budget?
Well, let me tell you how this played out in my own example. So yes, in the short term, I did have to pay overall more in labor. But what happened over the long term, which is very interesting, is we had such an increase in performance output that we ended up paying about the same or even less in some months.
Okay, so in almost all examples, a small increase in labor. Okay, you get so much more output that the output has outsized returns compared to essentially the compensation that you're playing. So this is a way of saying like, since we hired so many better people, what happened was, is we needed less people.
And so all those people made more, they were happier, they were easier to manage. And then we had a smaller team doing the same capacity as a bigger team that was hard to manage and needed all these elaborate SOPs. It's like the best of all worlds, right?
And I think back to this Steve Jobs quote, where he says that superstars... often can be 10 or even a hundred times higher in output is b players okay so oftentimes the money will come back around but in the short term you may have to pay more but again it's in the short term but you gain it back in the outsized output and then some implication number three of what this means is when you do this and this is what i mentioned You'll find SOPs are so much less important.
I find people get stuck in SOP masturbation where they're always like perfecting and creating their SOPs. And really what they're doing is they're procrastinating on doing the actual thing that'll scale their businesses. What's happening with clog code right now is people are like vibe coding all this stuff or trying to codify their entire fucking business.
And it's like, dude, like you're working on a bunch of stuff. That's not even the effing constraint of your business. Like your constraint is you need to train your fucking salespeople or you need to hire better salespeople, whatever it is.
Right. But they're trying to clog code their finance department or clog code Calendly away to save a hundred bucks a month or whatever it is. And it's like, dude, maybe you should just focus on what's actually going to drive your business.
But you know, the reason that stuff is so popular and clog code and all that stuff, which it has a lot of value. You know, we just hired full -time developers who just do development within our business so that I am not. you know, trying to do that.
But the reason it has so much valuable is it's, it's like dopamine hijacking to where it's like addicting to actually do again and again and again. And it's the perfect way to make you feel like you're doing really important stuff without doing important stuff. Okay.
So it happens with SOPs. The new version of that is vibe coding. Now, none of this means, I just want to have a caveat.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't train. You shouldn't have resources. You shouldn't have support.
You shouldn't have SOPs. Okay. Obviously it's not an either or it's a both.
right? The key is to have both. My point is there's a lot of people who do neither, or there's a lot of people who just constantly are crazy on the training and the SOPs.
And it's like, dude, the entire time you just had bad people. Okay. And it's going to take you far less time and be way less draining.
The training will be if the talent is actually good. And in fact, I wouldn't bank on this, but great talent. Sometimes they'll just come in and make their own SOPs.
Okay. Problem solved. So the fourth thing, this means also is like I already mentioned, you have to massively increase your recruiting volume.
So this sounds obvious. The reason we don't do it though, is recruiting, frankly, it's annoying. It's time sucking.
We often have shitty systems and waste time with terrible candidates. And we're often in a rush, right? Like, so we hire, you know, we interview 20 people, 12 of them were like, dude, recruiter, why'd you even give me these people?
I don't even want to talk to these people. They're terrible. Then you have eight and like four or five aren't a fit.
And then you're just working with the least worst option. Okay. So by the way, plug for my recruiting business.
If you need help with sales recruiting or any type of recruiting for your business, just reach out. If we can do it for you, we'll let you know. But what happens is, is you end up with the least worst option and then you spend a hundred hours managing when you only needed to spend 10 more hours recruiting.
And so, um, The way I like to think about it is instead of front -loading the time and pain, essentially this is kind of like a delayed gratification thing. Instead of front -loading the time and pain it takes to do the recruiting, you back -load it.
So it's like you're punting it later on to where now you're going to have to go through hell managing this person. So it's kind of like an instant gratification trap because you get reinforced instantly and you get instantly gratified and you feel good for filling this role. The pain goes away, but you're really just punting.
that pain longer so again i've learned this in three different departments i hope i swear i never have to learn this again but every single time we've done this it's been one of the biggest order of magnitude shifts i've ever made in my business so we're just finishing up our last eight figure boardroom event in scotland inside of a castle chateau type of place it was absolutely phenomenal we had 200 of the highest level operators in the space people doing minimum at least a million dollars a year but many people doing anywhere from 500 grand a month a million a month if not more and so the next place we're going to be going is new york so if you're looking for a mastermind that specifically has two things number one It's specific to actually your business.
So you can leave away with tactics you can implement. I've been a part of a lot of masterminds. And the issue I constantly find when I join masterminds is there might be high level people in there, but they're in all sorts of different types of businesses.
And you can't leave with specific tactics that actually apply to your specific situation. The other issue of masterminds that I have is sometimes you join the mastermind and you're the most advanced person in the mastermind, which is exactly why there's a strict revenue requirement to be here. And the average person, not even average but median person inside of this mastermind is at least probably doing about 500 to 600 grand a month and so we have people again doing all the way to nine figures that have been with us for the last three days so we're doing the next one in new york if you're interested in coming you can click the link below go to the next page there's information if you qualify we'll have to speak with you first and if it makes sense you can check out one of our masterminds so hopefully we'll see on the other side now that you know how to improve your team quality you might want to know who to let go.
So framework number two is called the culture skill matrix. So essentially, on this axis here, what you have is culture fit on the y -axis on the x -axis you have degree of skill so how skilled they are for the role versus how much of a culture fit they are so obviously in the top right you have skilled and culture fit right you obviously want to keep those people and develop them and the bottom left it's pretty obvious you're going to cut those people they don't have the skill they're not a culture fit right like nobody has an issue firing those people now on the bottom right you have what i call the lone wolf where they're skilled but they're not a culture fit And then on the top left, you have what I call the likable underperformer.
Okay. These are people usually keep too long. So pop quiz here.
What do you think is more of a problem? The lone wolf or the likable? They're both problems.
But which one do you think is more of a problem? The lone wolf or the likable underperformer? Well, I would say the likable underperformer is almost always more problematic.
And the reason why. is the lone wolf is much easier to identify if you're a strong leader sometimes you can train them up and then if they you know the thing everybody says is like there are cancer to the culture well they could be right but the way i like to think about it is is it a benign cancer or is it a cancer that's actually growing and spreading right if it's benign maybe we can manage them if it's not that we need to cut it okay so i'm not saying lone wolves aren't a problem keep your lone wolves The thing is, is that you're probably, you probably don't have an issue identifying lone wolves on your team, right?
They're not sneaky. What's sneaky, what really gets you and just sets you back to where you're plateaued on the same amount of revenue for like a year is you have too many likable underperformers on your team. So these are the people that, you know, it's like Susan, she's such a great culture fit.
you know, always takes the feedback. She's trying so hard. She shows up.
She really wants to be here and she loves the company, but you know, she sucks. Okay. So you got to cut Susan.
Okay. What happens is, is you like this person. They're great.
You keep them way too long. You're really hoping they improve, but the writing is on the wall. You can see it in the data.
They're not improving and they never do. OK, so the action item is here is you need to put these people on performance improvement plans, which is a different training in and within itself. But this is the big thing that I want you to do if you're watching this, because I have people that I know who their entire team is likable underperformers.
Now, I wouldn't recommend putting their entire team on notice. OK, you might you might have a little bit of issues if you do that. But, you know, take the bottom 20 or 30 percent and.
put them on performance improvement plans because a lot of those people need to move up or move out and you need to raise the standards of the team over time, which brings me to the next framework, which is how do you actually lead the good people you already have? So this is framework number three, which is the leadership matrix.
So on the left here, what you have is your degree of emotion. essentially in your leadership and your feedback. And on the right here or on the X -axis, what you have is how direct you are, like how Steve Jobs -esque radical transparent you are.
So in the top right, what you have is grounded candor to where you can give feedback, but it's not emotional. It's untriggered. Okay, that's very key.
Then you have people who they're not direct and they're emotional, which means they're passive aggressive. OK, so this is triggered and indirect. Then on the bottom right, you have tyrant, which means like that's like kind of like the Steve Jobs type of person to where they're always extremely honest, but they have a temper.
They're very triggered with their feedback and they're very direct and they're like hard to work for type of people. And then on top left, you have what I call the relational pushover, which means you're calm, but. you know, you kind of avoid the truth.
Like you sweep things under the rug. You're constantly giving people the benefit of the doubt. And what you're finding over time is the standards in your company are eroding over time, okay?
And it's because you're being too nice. Like you're not, again, you're not passive aggressive to where you basically don't say anything and you always make any snarky comments or whatever, right? It's a little bit better than that.
But both of these, the relational pushover and the tyrant are issues. Where you want to be is grounded candor, where you can be direct, immediate, but you do it in a way that's not triggered and it's unemotional. So most people, and this is just natural, they fall under two categories.
Most people either start relational pushover or they start tyrant. Okay, I actually put... passive aggressive here.
What I meant was tyrant. So they start relational pushover or they start tyrant. I mean, some people are passive aggressive too.
That's even worse, but most people like they have one of the two, right? Then they need to get to grounded candor. And so I'll give you an example from my life is I started as a tyrant.
OK, I was somebody who was I was always direct. I never had issues telling people what was wrong, what was acceptable, what was not acceptable. You know, this sales call sucked or this fulfillment call sucked or this onboarding call sucked.
This is not up to standards. I always was like that. OK, but my issue was getting the triggering.
The directness was good, but I needed to get the triggering and all the emotion. removed from that. Now the relational pushover people, the big thing with them is that, and this is not how I started, but this is a lot of, you know, I have a lot of clients that are like this.
And so the big thing with them is that they always kind of sweep things under the rug. Okay.
It's not that big of an issue, whatever. And they're kind of like laying over like a good example of somebody who is a relational pushover is if you're leading your sales team and all of a sudden, like your salespeople are giving you a bunch of advice on how to run your business. Like that's usually you're showing up as a relational pushover.
And the thing with that is a lot of times what happens is, is you become kind of this Jack want to hide situation to where you're really nice. You put up with it for so long, but then one day you've had a fucking enough and you explode. OK, so most people start as relational pushover retiring because they're good at one of the two.
You need to go towards grounded candor. And the paradox thing is or the paradox of this is, is that grounded, direct, unemotional leadership where clear boundaries are set. It actually makes your team feel safe because they know exactly where they stand with you.
So I'm going to give you an example in a little bit. It'll help you kind of. dig this in and help you actually make it a little bit more concrete.
So how do you actually do this? So number one, and this is going to be vague, then I'll give you an example. Okay.
Number one, you immediately always set the standard and let, let somebody know a standard was violated. Number two is you have to do it. And this is what's most important.
You have to do it without emotion or triggering. Okay. The third thing is you want to react proportional to patterns, not individual activities.
So what I mean by this is Being late once may not seem like a big deal, okay? But...
If being late becomes a massive pattern across your entire team all the time, it's a massive fucking deal. You can't even run a meeting. Okay.
So this is how, like, if you ever heard like John Wooden, it's all important about tying your shoes or these great leaders. They're like really big on the details. This is why, because they're not reacting to the individual activity.
They're reacting to not only what that activity means, but as if that violation and standards happened a thousand times in the future. Okay, not one time today. And so that is the biggest shift a lot of relational pushovers need to make.
Okay, so let me give you an example. So let's say somebody is late. Okay, so just to give you some context, let's say you run a company, you know, this is how my company works, by the way, where we have a policy that you need to be on time with your camera on, on a laptop, and you can't be on your phone.
We state this very clearly in the beginning to anybody in terms of how we run meetings. Okay, you can't be on your phone, no camera, you can't be laptop, no camera, and you got to be on time. Okay.
Now sometimes people are late because they're working with clients, et cetera. If you're going to be late, the rule is you have to post in the team channel that you're going to be late and why you have to do it before the meeting time. And the reason needs to be client facing.
All right. So like you were running over on a sales call, you're running over on a client call, et cetera. Obviously some emergencies come up, but it's just kind of like is what it is.
But 99 % of the time, if you're late, it's probably going to be because you're client facing. So With all that said, that's the policy.
What do you do now if somebody is 10 minutes late to a meeting with no notice, which is an obvious violation of standards? OK, so like the relational pushover, they're going to give them the benefit of the doubt, sweep it under the rug. You know, maybe it's whatever.
Or they'll give like really light feedback because they're kind of scared of upsetting that person. The tyrant is going to like. Rip the person's head off as soon as they show up on the meeting.
That's what I used to do. So anyways, neither is right. What do you actually do?
Well, there's two ways you can do it and they both follow the same principles. And I do think, by the way, that one is public, one is private. So the two ways you can do it, one is public, one is private.
And both are fine. So part of it is your leadership style. And then also some is better in certain situations depending on what it is.
OK, so I'm going to give you both tools and you decide what works for you, depending on the situation, as well as your leadership style and personality. But both work. So let's say somebody comes in 10 minutes late.
The public way to handle this is in front of everybody. You would say, hey, John, you know, why are you late without notifying us in the group? John says whatever he says.
OK, thanks. Thanks for letting us know. You understand we have a policy where you're on time.
And if you can't be, you put the reason why in the group before the meeting time. John's like, yeah, I know we have the policy. Okay, great.
So, you know, we have the policy. So this won't happen again. Okay.
Thanks. Then you move on with the meeting. Okay.
The key is, is it's given directly, but you're not, it can't come with a bunch of emotion behind it. And if you're struggling with that, you probably should convert to private. OK, because if you look like you're emotionally tearing some, if you're triggered and you're emotional on a meeting in front of your entire team, it's not great.
So option two, I put option one here, but it's really option two is private. OK, so let's say John comes in 10 minutes late to the meeting. You would just the most important step is you want to acknowledge it immediately.
John, hey, good to see you. Can you hang back five minutes after this meeting so we can discuss why you were late coming on to this meeting in the first place? OK, great.
Move on. All right. Again, you have to do it without emotion.
So the key with both scenarios, though, is there has to be a degree of the team seeing you're holding the standard. So in the private example, what we do is we don't actually coach him on the issue right there. But we say, hey, will you hang after the meeting for five minutes so we can discuss issue that lets everybody else on the team know, OK, he's handling this.
Right. Because your team needs to know that you're handling it and you're holding the standard. Otherwise, they're like, well, why the fuck did I show up on time?
All right. And the same thing, obviously, in the public option, they see you handle it. OK, this might seem aggressive, I guess.
I don't know. I originally was a tyrant. So this is this is not aggressive to me at all.
This seems like kind of patty cake. But this is what you want to do. OK.
And the thing is, is that the paradox here, if this feels. direct for you is it actually makes the rest of your team feel safe because they know exactly what you accept and what you don't accept. And in most times, believe it or not, if you have a good team, they want to see that person who was late and disrespected the values and the rules that they're abiding by.
They want to see that person held accountable. OK, so the keynotes here to some distinctions before we move on is these frameworks are for setting and holding standards. So in other words, holding people accountable to stuff that's 100 percent within their control and they know they should be doing.
So what we're talking about right now is like timeliness, people doing their admin work, showing up with the right dress code, stuff like that. OK, the other type of feedback that you give is called performance coaching. Right.
Which is more performing on their role. This is not like there's a difference between essentially stuff where it's like it's totally within their control to do it, like showing up on time and they know it's wrong. They know there's a policy.
It's all within their control to just do it. Right. There's a difference between that and performance, which is maybe they kind of screwed up at the end of a sales call, not saying your objection handling framework the right way you want to said.
Right. That's performance coaching. And that shouldn't be something that ever is like.
delivered with some crazy tone or like you're reprimanding somebody or whatever. Standards, you need to be much more direct. I mean, performance coaching too, but standards, it's like you need to hold the standards.
Performance coaching, we're developing people. These are two different things. So you got to put on two different hats as you're doing them.
So let's get in a little bit of performance coaching. So this is an entirely different framework. And based on real behavioral science of how you actually coach people and how organizational change on the individual level actually happens, what all the research shows and supports that stuff actually like.
what actually works in terms of coaching is it has to have four distinct properties. So the first one is it has to be specific. So it has to be tied, any feedback you give has to be tied to an observable behavior.
So for instance, if you say good job or bad job, it does very little, okay? I'm not gonna say it does nothing, but I mean, it's close to nothing, all right? So either what you wanna do essentially is restate exactly what they did.
and then praise it. Or you want to outline exactly what they did, demonstrate what to do differently, ask if they understood the difference of what you demonstrated, and then have them re -demonstrate it or role play it back with you in like a sales example, right? So like, let's say somebody said the perfect closing line.
I'm just going to make something up. Let's say somebody said the perfect line that closed the deal. That's exactly what's in the training.
And it's also what you told them last week. So you want to restate, Hey, uh, John, you said X, Y, and Z. Exactly.
You see that here in the transcript. Great freaking job. That's exactly what you want to say to get a deal at the end of the call.
Okay. I know that seems like a little bit of a difference, but that's exactly what you want to restate exactly the defined behavior of what they did. But more often than not what you're worried about is okay how do i actually change the behavior when they're doing stuff wrong you want to outline exactly what they did wrong hey so you see how you said this exactly what i want to say instead is this exactly okay does that here's why does that make sense okay great here's how it should sound you say it role play it to them okay now hey you role play it back to me okay this is very key All right.
Sounds very basic. It's very key. The next thing.
So there's four properties we're rolling through, right? The next thing that in terms of performance coaching and feedback, you're giving your team is the more frequent, the better. So frequency.
So the more frequent, like daily or intradayly is much better than monthly. Okay. This is why based on all the behavioral science, like annual performance reviews are completely fucking useless.
I always intuitively knew they were quarterly reviews. I'm like, what are we going to achieve with a quarterly review? Like They're just going to come and ask for a raise.
I mean, it's just, there's not much you can achieve because the reinforcement cycle was too long. So what you really want to be doing is you want to have frequent or daily comms with your meetings. This is why like daily standups work.
Okay. This is why end of day meetings work. All this stuff, you know, more frequent, the better.
If you're, if you're hiring and ramping new people, meet with them every fucking day. It'll work a lot better. The other, so the third property of good feedback.
is that it needs to be immediate. So you want the feedback you're giving them to be as close as possible to the behavior as you can, all right? It's really the same logic as frequency, but it's two different things.
So for instance, our sales manager, one thing that he does very well is he actually listens to the call in real time. And then if they don't have a call after or their next call no shows, he immediately calls them when they're free to give them coaching on the call they just had.
You see how that's immediacy. And then if you think about it, if he does that three times a day with one rep, he's doing the immediacy at a high frequency. Okay.
So you see the difference. And then if he's being specific about it, he's hitting all three. Now, the final thing that's really cool is good feedback and good performance coaching should be visible or graphed.
Right. Or think about it this way. It should be trackable.
So if you can show them a graph of their behavior and its consequences, it can produce immediate behavior change. So let me tell you a story. So we were doing this thing where.
We were basically selling people on trials to where it's like, okay, come in, have your onboarding call, then decide if you want to continue or not. And this was not an issue for like the longest time. And then for whatever reason, it just kind of diffused through the team and everybody started doing it way too much.
And what we did is we just created a table or a graph. It was like some visual representation. I just punched all our data through clog code, had basically an image come out.
And it just showed what their refund rates were and what their success rates were on all their trials. And essentially, it was really bad. And as soon as I showed every single individual rep that graph, the behavior ceased immediately, right?
When you think about this, it's crazy. If it's so much more effective than, hey, guys, watch out for the trials. Hey, guys, we're getting a lot of refunds from your trials.
Hey, guys, you're not tying down your trials well enough. I just showed them a graph. I didn't even say anything.
I said, guys, what do you guys think of this? The response was like, I remember on the meeting, they were like, oh my God, holy shit. Literally that week, it was done.
It was fixed. And so think about that. When you can actually graph their behavior, that does a lot of the work for you.
It's pretty easy. You don't need to like expend a lot of energy into it, which is why if you think about it, leaderboards, monthly leadership board or monthly leaderboards, quarterly, yearly leaderboards are really key. Like we have quarterly and annual leaderboards.
Obviously we. We KPI and do projections with like, let's say our sales team on a weekly and monthly basis. But then what we're also doing is looking at quarterly and annual performance and people really compete and get obsessed with those leaderboards.
So that's driving performance and driving positive behavior. And that's just like a thing that's passive that we're not even doing anything. Okay.
So let me give you another example. This is like very extreme, but if you think in limits, it can kind of give you some ideas of what you could do for your own company. So another example, like graphing behavior and visibility is if you were coaching people on how to do, let's say discovery on the sales call properly, you could demonstrate the exact behavior you want to fix.
Okay. Like, Hey, I want you to open the discovery in this specific way with this language. Then what you could do is just have AI or a VA.
basically graph on their next 30 calls on a scale of one to 10, how well they replicated the behavior you demonstrated to them. And at the end of each day, send them a graph every single day so they can see their progress and their performance. This is like hardcore, but if you could imagine doing this, they're going to fix their behavior.
Like I guarantee it'll get fixed. Because every single day they're seeing a score. Every single day they're seeing a score on this one thing based on all the calls they had that day.
And it creates a much, much, much better behavioral reinforcement loop. Hey, 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.
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And the software does so much more. It's really the only product designed specifically for sales teams with inbound booking systems. So if you're interested, go to saleskick .com, check it out.
Now back to the video. We talked about how to hold standards. but now we're gonna cover how to systematically increase performance of the team over time beyond.
Just giving feedback. So this is framework number four. I call it raising performance standards.
So a question I always get is a lot of people, especially as they get to know my team, they're like, how do I raise the standards of my team the same way your team is? And a lot of it we kind of already covered, but I want to share with you another framework of essentially raising the floor of acceptable performance. Okay.
In other words, I call this raising performance standards. And this is going to apply to performance -based positions. So sales, setters, CSMs, copywriters, media buyers, anything where there's measurable.
performance output, keyword measurable. Okay. So there has been a large body of evidence.
If you look at this to where essentially what this graph shows, you can see on the screen is specific goals. If a goal is specific, then the harder the goal, the higher the performance up into a point. So let me repeat that.
As long as the goal is specific, then harder goals drive higher performance in a linear relationship. until they hit what's called a point of ability. That's where this graph kinks here.
Okay. And honestly, a better representation of this graph is it'd be going like way down. Okay.
Like this, right? Like it really falls off a cliff because once the goal exceeds point of ability, performance drops off a fucking cliff. All right.
So let me give you the classic example of this so you can kind of get it because you're like, okay, great dude. Sweet. But this is what I mean.
So A lot of sales teams, you'll have like a sales rep who projects eight units every single week and they consistently hit two, okay? The reason why this is so fucking detrimental is that there's tons of evidence in behavioral science that goals, specifically specific and hard ones, increase performance in a linear fashion up until the point of ability.
But what this rep is doing is they're consistently setting targets that exceed point of ability. And what happens then is the goal becomes meaningless and you lose all the substantiated benefit from setting a realistic goal. OK, that is going to drive performance.
So the question becomes, how do you create a framework that consistently engineers targets that are near the limit but don't exceed the limit so we can properly optimize performance? Well, you're in luck. That's what I'm going to cover right now.
So I call this the two -step formula for raising performance standards. I have done this for a long time. I've known this for probably eight years now.
But it really kind of became concrete when I saw that goal -setting study. So two -step formula. There's step 1A and step 1B, and then there's a step 2.
So step 1A and B, you need to do at the same time. So step 1A. is establish a culture where not hitting projections and KPIs is unacceptable.
You're going to have to do that in a one -on -one conversation to kind of let everybody know individually you're doing a new thing, and then you announce it on a meeting. One thing about team communication, by the way, is you have to understand the context in which you communicate dictates the bandwidth they have. The bandwidth they have dictates the receptivity they have to your communication.
So what I mean by that is if I tell somebody something one -on -one, they have a much higher bandwidth to receive the information. If I send that person that feedback in the massive team Slack main channel, the chance that they're going to take in that feedback or even fucking see it is like nothing, okay?
So a lot of times if you're really trying to affect change or trying to get communication to diffuse in your organization, what you want to do is you want to start with the most highest bandwidth. communication context is and scale it up over time. So what I mean by that is you start, like if I gotta make a crazy announcement that's like fucking big, I'm gonna tell everybody one -on -one, then I'm gonna announce it on departmental team meetings, then I'll announce it on the team -wide meeting, then I'll post an update video in Slack.
Do you see how I'm scaling up the communication? That's how you wanna do it. So anyways, I'm gonna start one -on -one to let them know, hey, we're gonna do things differently here.
That's step 1A. Step 1B. is in order to do this, you start setting projections that are easier to hit in the beginning, okay?
Because what you wanna do in the very beginning is you wanna set projections that are low enough to where the rep gets consistent in hitting projections. And what you'll find here, because you're gonna have to start the projections pretty low, it's okay for them to set a projection. which is their bare minimum fucking standard, like they're going to fucking show up next week with this goddamn, you know, fucking two units.
Okay. That's the projection. And they can set a goal.
If they want to set fucking eight units or whatever, knock your fucking socks off. That's, that's between you and yourself. You need to get me too.
That's the projection. Okay. So it's fine in the beginning to have projections and goals over time.
You won't need both. Now, when they hit projections, which is again, that bare minimum standard, what you want to do is you want to reinforce them hitting it. The way you want to reinforce it is you want to have, preferably, an individual meeting with them about the week.
Let's say today is Monday, and I have all my one -on -ones with, let's say, my sales reps, and I'm going to review last week and what happened. So let's say they hit projection. I want to diagnose on that one -on -one what they did well and specifically reinforce that.
I can also do that on the team meeting, quite frankly, because the meeting environment adds a little bit of pressure, which makes these reinforcements slash punishment, it makes it a little bit more effective. So I can do either. But I want to diagnose specifically what they did well and reinforce it.
So I want to basically build their awareness. So I'm like, okay, great. Hey, dude, you projected two last week, you hit three.
What do you think were the best things that worked for you last week? And I want to kind of dig into that to make them think about it. Praise those behaviors.
Now, what happens if they miss? Okay, it's the same thought process. What you want to do is still have that diagnosis session with them to where it's like, hey, you know, a saying in my company is there's no shame in not hitting your numbers.
There's only shame in not knowing why. So they're going to have to show up to the Monday meeting and I'm going to be like, okay, great. Hey, dude, you projected three last week.
You came in at two. Like you came in, you were one away. What kept you from getting one more?
You know, where specifically did you fall down that was within your control and how them self -diagnose this trains their awareness. But what's also happening is they're having to explain themselves on the whole meeting in front of everybody. I'm not going to berate them or anything or like, you know, throw them out the fucking window.
But it creates a light consequence without it going too far. Right. So either way, what we're doing is we're adding a consequence to projection, which is how we're going to drive behavior.
OK, so. Again, think about it. We're going to start low, right?
We want to start with stuff that they should 100 % be able to hit in terms of projections. Now, again, because we're starting so low, if they can't hit it, they probably can't even be on the team anyways, and they're going to get removed quickly. So what's going to happen is at first, they should be hitting it all the time, okay?
Then now we're at step two, which is we slowly raise the projections over time. The sweet spot, I learned this from Andy S. Grobe of IBM.
He was like the famous COO. He wrote high output management. The sweet spot.
is, and by the way, the sweet spot is defined as where you're at or near the point of ability, right? The limit of ability. The sweet spot is when they're hitting projections about 75 % of the time, okay?
At that point, their skill has to go up to shift the curve further, right? So the skill has to go up to increase the performance ceiling. Now, why does it even matter?
Well, I mean, first of all, the reason it matters and the reason trying to get all the reps to their, their respective sweet spot, because every rep is going to be different. The reason it's important for all of them is number one, it'll maximize performance, right?
Pretty obvious. We already showed the goal setting study anyway. So you're maximizing the performance, but where this will show up is you'll see people because they're so obsessed about hitting projections.
They'll stay up to like, they'll be putting in a deal at like 1150 right on a Friday night. And you're like, dang, dude, I didn't even coach you. And I didn't even tell you to do that.
They're just doing it. Right. It naturally occurs because of what's happening in the environment.
You've culted an environment that gets you the behaviors that you want. So a lot of like what happens on my team that may not happen on a lot of teams to where people are like staying up late, putting in deals late, you know, booking a fucking call after dinner sometimes with their family or whatever it is, you know, like that happens because it's a byproduct of this.
Does that make sense? It's not directly, we're not never directly asking them to do any of this. They're just doing it on their own.
Okay. So it maximizes performance. The other thing it does is it creates a lot of innovation.
And so, you know, the way I learned this stuff is because the first organization, not the first organization I sold in, but the last organization I sold in as a professional full -time sales rep, they had a system like this pretty much. There was differences, but it was more or less like this. And I pretty much innovated our entire outbound and follow -up systems.
There was no systems for it. But because like the inbound leads weren't enough to hit my projection, I had to essentially to assure I hit it every single time. I innovated all of our outbound SOPs and our follow -up SOPs from scratch and figured out all these systems that still today I teach to clients.
And that innovation only came from the pressure of being at that sweet spot, being at that point of ability. And then the last benefit you're going to get is, and this is kind of goes on with number two, but I want to split it out just to really emphasize it is your reps will follow up like hell with your fucking leads without even asking them.
So a thing that I get all the time about sales teams and followup and all this stuff is like, what are the followup systems? What are the followup cadences? What are the, and I'm like, okay, gosh, if you're asking that question, you're, you're definitely thinking about it the wrong way because followup is.
pretty freaking easy. And yes, like I do give my team best practices and language of how to do it, but it's like out of anything I teach my sales reps, it is the fucking easiest thing that they'd learn. Okay.
It is so easy to learn. All right. It's not hard.
It just follow up is just a matter of you do it or you don't do it. So the easiest way to get them to do it is not like. punishing them or like trying to micromanage them or creating this elaborate system or SOP or whatever.
It's essentially slowly raising the projections over time to where you're at the sweet spot to where they simply just can't hit it without effective followup. Then they're going to follow up like hell naturally without you having to do anything. Okay.
So I learned this too, by thinking back to the last organization I sold in and I was like, man, why did I follow up like a fucking Banshee without anybody ever telling me to? Like I just did it. It just naturally happened.
And a part of that was being in that environment. It was like, well, if I didn't follow up and I didn't follow up like at the highest level possible, I wouldn't be able to hit my projection. Right.
And I had to hit that projection because I've been reinforced with that so much. Okay. So a little transition at this point, we talked about raising standards and coaching and proper target setting and increasing performance.
The next concept is a little sneaky. but it's really important to understand, understanding, maximizing performance. Okay.
So this is kind of shifting to more of an economic concept and it's called diminishing return on marginal effort. So this will apply to all positions, but it is going to make, again, the most sense for performance based positions, which is most of what we've been talking about anyways. So the definition here is performance positions operate on a concept called diminishing returns on marginal effort.
Okay. So what the hell does that mean? Put simply, The next unit of production always is valued the same, yet it costs the individual more in the form of time, energy, money, and effort.
And thus, the next unit of effort or the next unit of production on the margin has less net benefit. OK, so they have less returns on their own effort. The individual does the more production they generate.
OK, this might seem pie in the sky. I'm going to give you a concrete example. OK, that's what I do.
So if you look at this graph right here, what it shows is the X axis is sets completed in one day. The Y axis is the effort to get that set. OK, so I know it's a little dark here, but what this graph shows is every additional qualified set that the setter gets takes more sacrifice in the form of like time and energy in their day to get in the previous one.
All right. So to explain, imagine like imagine you only had 100 units of energy in one day and let's say eight sets in a day is the theoretical max you can get in that one day. OK, this is all theoretical here.
The way this works is to get that last set, to get the eighth set based on this graph, it's going to take 30 % of your entire day just to get that last qualified set. To get the last two qualified sets based on this example, it takes 53 % of your total time and energy of that day. I'm not saying that's how it always is.
This is just an example, but this is directionally very true. Okay, so what does this mean? Hopefully you're still following me.
What does this mean? Well, let's say you have a full team of setters. You have six setters and they hit five sets a day on average.
So by industry standards, we think that's kind of good, right? But what we don't realize, especially since they're working remote, is they're really only working five hours out of that eight hour workday. Now, you know, immediately we're like, oh, they're lazy.
Is it because they're lazy? Not really, right? That's just a label we're putting on people.
That could be a loaded phrase. It could mean a lot of different things. The better way to think about it is that their environment is reinforced this behavior because they've realized that if they spend three extra hours grinding, they might only get one or two sets.
They're experiencing what I'm talking about. They're experiencing diminishing returns on effort, okay? So what happens is this consciously or subconsciously, they realize the net benefit's not there and they just don't do it.
Okay, so this is a graph that basically shows this. So this graph shows that at set five in this example, the perceived, perceived is a strong word here because it is very important because it's different for different people. The perceived marginal benefit of getting that next set is equal to the perceived marginal cost.
So in other words, after set five, it's a net loss in getting that next set based on their perception. In other words, like they'd rather relax, not go to work, do something else, stroll on TikTok or whatever. Okay, this is not perfect science.
but it's the right frame to think about all of this. And so just to show you why this is important, here's what happens when we fix this. Because I guarantee for a lot of you, this is happening in your companies, whether it's for setters or whether it's for something else, all right?
So here's why it's important to address. Let's say you fix the issue and you get that two extra sets a day out of your six setters. Now that's 12 additional sets a day times 21 working days is 252 additional sets per month.
That's an extra calendar and a half. of closer calendars filled, and I did that based on eight slots a day at 21 working days, we spend 55 grand to fill one calendar. So that means at least for our company, we would have saved 82 and a half grand a month in ad spend.
And considering our sets, show higher, close higher, and also there's diminishing returns also with ad spend. So when we decrease ads, CPC actually goes down as well because we're cutting the worst campaigns at the margin. Right.
So you can see we're probably, you know, at least going to save 82 and a half grand in ad spend. Realistically, we'll probably make 140 grand by fixing this. Hopefully that makes sense.
If you're a business owner who has appointment setters or an outbound sales team, you're going to want to hear what I have to say for a second. So a multiple eight figure business owner texted me the other day. And when he started using dollar .io for the first time, his pickup rates went from 9 % to 20%.
So imagine doubling your pickup rates and ultimately the throughput of what your outbound salespeople and setters are going to get. How does that impact your business? The answer is a lot.
So if you want to check out dollar .io for a phone sales outbound system, just click the link in the description. or just go to dollar .io. Now back to the podcast.
How do we fix it? Well, there's two things we're going to leverage. One is the observation effect and two is manipulating marginal cost, marginal benefits.
So specifically think about like you have three levers to fix this. The first thing, and this is like where you should start because this is like super easy and it's so freaking effective is you just start measuring working time. OK, this is the observation effect, which when we observe or track something, the behavior of that thing just changes by the nature of observing it.
And so that's like a principle from quantum physics. But, you know, we all do this. Like what what gets measured gets managed.
Observation effects is a cool name. So anyways, how do you do this with like your setters, for instance? does this automatically.
It's a big reason why companies who get on dollar .io get increased performance. If you use a different dialer, DialerOS also does this. But this is the most effective by far.
It costs you nothing. So do this first and see if it fixes the issue. The other thing you could do is decrease the marginal cost.
So what can you do to make getting that next set easier? Can you make their admin at the end of the day easier? We have an AI agent that helps all these reps do their admin.
Because they don't like doing it. I don't like it when they miss it. And also, I'd rather have them selling.
So we have an AI agent to help them do it. You can also increase the marginal benefit. So how would you do this?
Well, the classic example is you could shift towards a higher commission percentage and less base. Pretty easy. You could also tier.
the commissions based on increased performance, right? So what happens is, is like the more sets closed they get per month, or maybe if they get like the sixth or eighth set in the day, they get a little bump, right? So what this does is it increases the marginal benefit and it kind of extends the runway for net benefit is the way to think about it.
So I'll give you an example. We actually did this with our closers, not our setters, but we added a tier commission system. And for the longest time, I just thought that, you know, look, we're so good at culture.
We're so good at leadership. We're so good at management. pay a freaking flat rate.
We don't need to do this goofy tier commission, fancy bells and whistles, calm structure to get our reps to perform. There's a lot of ego. Well, this year I decided to try it.
And the very month I implemented it, our cash collection went up by 20 % in one month. So, you know, even me, I can't outrun, you know, behavioral economics. The other thing you could do is marginal benefit is not just money.
So you can award status for tiers of behavior. So a great example of this is if you are showcasing leaderboards, like we talked about earlier, two reps fighting it out super hard at the end of the month, trying to win a competition to be number one or get an award or bragging rights or whatever. Like you can if you think about that happening, that's driving a lot more performance, making that next unit worth it.
Right. So that's why leadership leadership. leaderboards in general are great another thing that we did is we had a pod competition for our ams so like we did a 60 -day competition where they divided into pods with the pod leader and the person and the group who got the most upsells or retention or revenue or whatever it was they got all these perks right and then the biggest thing of course is the leaderboard and the bragging rights and all of that stuff and making it fun so it makes The benefit of getting that next unit so much more than outweighs the cost, which if you think about those competitions and stuff, that's how you get people staying up on the weekends working and on a Friday night working and all that stuff on their own volition because they want it themselves, not because like you're punishing them into it, which is just going to burn people out.
OK, so we talked about. frameworks for managing performance -based positions, one thing I do want to talk about is non -performance -based positions. Because everything we've talked about has been setters, closers, CSMs, account executives, people doing fulfillment, maybe your copywriters or media buyers.
But what about your admin people? What about your ops people? What about your executives, your managers?
So let me give you a simple framework to finish this off on delegation. So we're going to talk about how to delegate. So I'm going to break it down into steps.
So step one is the first thing you have to do is define what you actually need help with. This will sound pretty obvious, but it is not obvious. I'm telling you.
So you got to define what you actually need help with. So it may sound insane, but most people hire without even knowing what they need help with. So the first thing you want to do is define and operationalize the activities that need delegated.
OK, when you do this, it makes it obvious of what role or roles need filled. And it also save you a lot of money because a lot of times people overhire. So a great example of this is in this graph here is like somebody saying, oh, I need a COO.
Right. A lot of times this is a feeling, not a need. Okay.
So if we go down here, like they'll say, I need a COO because I'm constantly in the weeds. This phrase is loaded. So what we want to do is we want to break it down operationally and do what is actually happening.
And what are the things that are going on right now that they're doing that they need to get off of their plate? Because almost always when I hear, especially this, I'm picking on the COO one because it's like so obvious, but almost always when I hear that, what they're really saying is I'm overwhelmed. And so they don't need a COO.
So anyways. Phrase is loaded. We break it down to what is actually happening.
All right. So what I'll do is I'll ask them to define. And in this case, you're to do it on yourself.
But this is how I coach clients is I ask them to define what exactly are the tasks that are on their plate that need delegated. OK. Usually a lot of times I get more feelings.
So I have to keep chunking it down. Right. So like I'll get like, oh, well, the marketing is a mess.
You know, people always ask me for stuff and the sales admins crazy. So then I have to chunk it down. OK.
Within marketing specifically. What is the things, like what is the task? that needs delegated?
Within sales admin or sales, what is the task? You need to operationalize this in the task. And so sometimes they're going to have to go away and come back.
But then let's say they do know off the top of their head and they give me all of these things. So here's all the tasks. I need offloaded.
I need to make sure my reps do admin every day. I need to input numbers in the tracking. I need to make sure that sales tracking is accurate.
I need to know how to onboard new reps and give them access to everything and all the tech and know where to go. I need to build funnels. I need to set up marketing tracking, integrating marketing platforms and Zapier and all the connections when we're launching funnels.
I need somebody to do QA before marketing goes live and somebody to manage the email, right? So let's say that's all the tasks that they gave. So a lot of times that they're going to go from, I needed a COO and then they give me all these tasks.
And then guess what happens? I look at the tasks and I'm like, okay, if number one, Is there any of this that could be eliminated or automated or AI -ified, right?
Like that's, you know, obviously what we always want to do. But oftentimes, no, they're like tasks that do need done. And so then the next thing is, okay, well, great.
Can we off -board these to anybody currently on the team? That's always preferred. So we don't have to spend any more money.
And then when we get through the first three steps, eliminate, automate, AI, and offload to a current team member, then we go to the next step, which we bucket the tasks together for a new hire. So in this case, if you look at all these tasks I listed here, what we end up needing essentially is a marketing tech slash admin person and then a sales admin, right?
This is less than $10 ,000 a month in expenses, right? It even could be like six, to be honest, if you got like overseas South Africa stuff. You did not need a $250 ,000, $300 ,000 a year COO.
But I will tell you what, this shit fucking happens all the time. And the thing is, is that when they do hire the COO, the COO just ends up hiring those admin people anyways. And then you really have no margin, okay?
So the first thing is you need to operationalize it. That's step one. Step two is you want to use a framework called the five degrees of initiative.
I didn't come up with this. I forget who did, but credit to them. And essentially, the five degrees is level one, people wait until they're told.
Level two, they ask you what to do. Level three. They come to you with recommendations.
You pick one of the recommendations, then they act. Level four is they act, and then they told you why they did and what they did it immediately. And then level five is they act, and then they just fill you in on the one -on -one that you have once a week.
All right? So obviously the goal is you want to move people up this way. But here's how I would think about this.
Immediately what you can do is outlaw one and two. There should be nobody in your organization that is waiting to do something until they're told, or has to ask you like, hey, what do I do?
If you're getting that, it's probably an issue with your job description, your scorecard, your training, et cetera. If you have good job description, scorecard, onboarding, training, you have a good daily standup, you have a good one -on -one meeting cadence. If you have all those basics, you should never have one and two, okay?
So really where we're starting pretty much anybody in the organization is level three and four. So level three, I like to think about this as the I intend to rule.
So nobody should come to you with a problem. What happens is, is they should come to you with, hey, here's the problem. Here's why I think the problem is happening.
Here's the root cause of the problem. I came up with three solutions. I think we should A, B, or C.
A would be my preferred because here's why. B and C, not so much because of here's why. Which one do you want me to do?
Or do you think I'm thinking about this the wrong way? Okay. That's what level three is.
As a baseline, everybody in your organization should be following the I intend to rule level three. Okay. We're going to talk about why this is so great in just a second.
Level four is again, what we already covered is I did X. My thinking was Y. Let me know if you'd have done this different.
OK, so when you're onboarding a new hire, you need to outline which responsibilities fall under number three and number four. And you can do this as you're working with people anyways, because like sometimes, you know, somebody is always going level three with you on something and you're like, dude, you can just go level four.
You can just do it. Let me know when you do it immediately. So this can be an ongoing thing as well as something that you kind of like break into your scorecards and your trainings, etc.
The way I like to think about what to divide into each category is stakes. And essentially, the higher the stakes, the lower on the rung it's going to be. The lower the stakes, the higher on the rung.
And stakes is defined as the level of consequences long term due to a wrong decision and also the irreversibility of the decision. So if they're making an irreversible decision, I want them to run it by me. I still want them to give recommendations and do the thinking.
but I need to sign off on that, okay? But over time, we wanna essentially move everybody upwards. Now, I wanna finish off by talking about this last thing, which is the cure to someone who always gets pulled back in.
Oh, I always get pulled back in. I hire these people, but I always get pulled back in. The truth is, or when people say, everybody always come to me for everything and it always depends on me.
Okay, the truth is, if everyone's always coming to you for everything, or depending on you to get stuff done or pulling you back in, two things are happening. Number one, you're reinforcing that behavior by making their job easier every time you oblige.
So you got to think of it from a behavioral perspective. It's like they've learned, you've taught them that they can bring something to you. And instead of them having to do the hard work that costs them time and energy of thinking about it and doing the thing, you just do it.
So you're just training on your, every single time you oblige this, like God complex, I'm going to be the savior. and i'm going to do it myself because i'm so important every time you oblige that you're just training them to keep doing that okay then the other thing that's happened is you are also getting reinforcement for being the freaking savior because you're like yeah that's right i can only do that this is why i'm so important which essentially is a global reinforcer So it's a vicious cycle.
You're reinforcing yourself the more you do it. And then you're also reinforcing your team. So how do you get over it?
I call it the three gate filter. So this is what you do if you're experiencing that everybody's coming to you for everything problem. So gate number one is you have to require everybody again to be level three.
You have to require everybody to do the I intend to format. So if somebody comes to you with a problem and it's not phrased in I intend to, you remind them of that rule. You send them away.
You tell them to come back. After doing that, right? The beauty of this is what, here's what happens.
Once they have to actually do the hard work, because the hardest part is thinking through the problem. So once they do the hard work of thinking through the problem, 99 % of the time, they're like, oh yeah, I figured it out. It wasn't a problem.
Okay. So again, just don't train your people to do it. That's what happens is because once they know that, okay, I'm going to, he's going to send me away.
I got to think through it and give him three solutions. A lot of times they're like. Yeah, it's obvious.
The solution is this. I'm just going to fix it. And then they just let you know they fixed it.
So a lot of times that just kills it right then and there. That'll fix like 99 % of your problems. All right.
And then also, even if they do bring it to you, it's much less brain power for you to just go, oh, OK, between A, B and C, A, go away. All right. And the other thing is, too, is when you have them do this, it develops your team's thinking and makes them better.
Right. Like I always say, like I hired your brain, not your body. OK, and what you want to do is you want to develop their thinking.
But at the same time, you want to see their thinking, which is what the three option format gives you. Because if you can see their thinking, you can be like, wow, this person is not thinking about this the right way. It'll be obvious when you hire the wrong person.
You'll be like, whoa, you know, or you'll be like, oh, I really like the way this person thought through this problem. This person has higher IQ than I thought. OK, so it's a really great way to actually qualitatively measure your hires as well and train them on how to think about.
the right way to solve problems and do their role correctly which it's all about what's up here with your training right gate number two right is so first you require the in2 format that's gate number one gate number two is you decide if this is a level three four or five okay so you can either do a couple of things here you can pick one of the three options that they gave you which is level three um let's say you okay so you can pick one of the three options which is level three a b or c Or you could just tell them to do whatever they think is best.
And then they let you know immediately after they chose and what happened. That's level four, right? Or level five, you can tell them to do what they think is best, but they let you know on the one -on -one.
All right. So like, again, when somebody brings you the three options, you either pick, okay. Sometimes you got to freaking like do the thing yourself or redo it.
I guess that's like stage one, but that should be rare. Because if you're having to do that all the time, you got the wrong person. So either you have to redo it because you hired the wrong person, or you just pick one of the options.
You tell them to pick, let you know, or you tell them to pick, let you know on the one -on -one. Then gate number three is only if it's something that must require your attention and effort. OK, so if it's something to where it's like, OK, I am for sure going to have to get involved with this, which challenge yourself, by the way, do you really need to get involved?
But if you really do, because it's like a crazy fucking thing. The first thing is ask if it can wait to the next scheduled meeting, which is a one on one or a stand up. Right.
So like the one on one you have each week or the stand up meeting team meeting that you do every single day. Ask if it can wait till then or the last resort is you just address it now. Because maybe your payment processor went down, you can't process payments and you're getting sued and everything's going to fall apart and whatever.
Hopefully it doesn't happen. But as you can see, that will filter down 99 % of stuff that derails your day. Because most stuff that you're getting pulled back into is not world ending stuff that needs your attention right now.
Even if it does need your attention, it can get pushed to a stand up or pushed. to a one -on -one. Now, one thing I want to say about this is when you implement this, expect an extinction burst, which basically means people might freak out and be like, I can't, you know, if you've been doing every, if you've basically been doing somebody's job for them and then all of a sudden it's like, you got to think for yourself, you got to come up with your own solutions.
They will kind of frail out for the next two weeks. Oh, they might freak out. Oh, I don't know if I can do it.
I blah, blah, blah, blah. They might have a little freak out. And that's basically like their way of it.
essentially what they're doing is they're increasing their behavior to try to get their reinforcement. You just got to hold the line and not give it to them. So anytime a behavior is going extinct, what happens is it gets worse before it gets better and then it goes away, right?
So just know that's going to go on and hold the line. That's it for this video, guys. We'll see you in the next video.
And if you want to check out another video on the channel right here, you can go right here.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The claim up front is a track record, not a theory: three eight-figure companies, two seven-figure SaaS businesses, and over 3,000 consulted clients. What follows is the six-framework autopsy of what actually gets a founder out of the weeds, and it starts by arguing that almost every management problem people blame on missing systems is really a hiring problem.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
03:42concept
The Recruiting Leverage Rule
Every hour spent recruiting saves 10, possibly 100, hours spent managing. Credited to Brian Chesky of Airbnb.
Steal forReframing a hiring budget request as a managing-time-saved argument
04:14concept
Bifurcated Hiring
Offshore low-impact admin roles
Pay top-of-range or above for high-impact roles
Split hiring decisions into low-impact roles you offshore to save money, and high-impact roles you pay well above market to win.
Steal forBuilding a compensation philosophy doc for a growing team
11:47model
The Culture-Skill Matrix
Keep & develop (skilled, culture fit)
Cut (unskilled, not a culture fit)
Lone wolf (skilled, not a culture fit)
Likable underperformer (unskilled, culture fit)
A 2x2 for deciding who stays. The likable underperformer quadrant is the dangerous one because it's easy to keep too long.
Steal forQuarterly team reviews or performance-improvement-plan triage
14:31model
The Leadership Matrix
Grounded candor (direct, unemotional)
Passive aggressive (indirect, triggered)
Tyrant (direct, triggered)
Relational pushover (indirect, calm)
A 2x2 for calibrating feedback style. Grounded candor is the target: direct and immediate, but not emotionally charged.
Steal forCoaching new managers on how to deliver hard feedback
24:26list
The 4 Properties of Effective Coaching
Specific (tied to observable behavior)
Frequent (daily beats monthly)
Immediate (close to the behavior)
Visible or graphed (trackable)
Behavioral-science-backed properties feedback needs to actually change behavior.
Steal forDesigning a team feedback or coaching cadence
34:05list
Two-Step Formula for Raising Performance Standards
Step 1A: establish that missing projections is unacceptable
Step 1B: start projections low enough to hit consistently
Step 2: slowly raise projections until hit-rate settles around 75%
A method for engineering targets that sit right at a person's point of ability instead of exceeding it and becoming meaningless.
Steal forSetting weekly sales or setter targets without demoralizing the team
42:42concept
Diminishing Returns on Marginal Effort
Every additional unit of output costs the individual more time and energy than the last, so output naturally caps once perceived cost exceeds perceived benefit.
Steal forDiagnosing why a remote team's output flatlines mid-shift
51:06list
Delegation Framework: Eliminate, Automate, Offload, Hire
Define and operationalize the actual tasks
Eliminate what doesn't need doing
Automate or AI-ify what can be
Offload to a current team member
Only then hire, bucketing remaining tasks into one role
A sequence for turning a vague 'I need a COO' feeling into the right, and often much cheaper, hire.
Steal forScoping a new hire before writing the job description
54:57list
The Five Degrees of Initiative
Level 1: waits to be told
Level 2: asks what to do
Level 3: recommends options, you pick, then acts ('I intend to')
Level 4: acts, then reports immediately
Level 5: acts, then reports at the next one-on-one
A ladder for how much autonomy a team member should operate with, scaled by the stakes and reversibility of the decision.
Steal forOnboarding docs that define how much a new hire should escalate
59:14list
The Three-Gate Filter
Gate 1: require the 'I intend to' format
Gate 2: decide if it's level 3, 4, or 5
Gate 3: only interrupt now if it truly can't wait for the next meeting
A filter for leaders who keep getting pulled back into their team's problems, designed to stop reinforcing that dependency.
Steal forBreaking a founder's habit of being everyone's first call
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
10:28product
“if you're looking for a mastermind that specifically has two things... click the link below”
Pitched mid-video as a natural extension of the recruiting-and-leadership story (his own high-revenue mastermind event), rather than a hard cut to an ad.
Add Modern Creator as a preferred source and Google shows you more of our breakdowns in Search, Top Stories, and AI Overviews. It only changes what you see, and you can undo it in your Google settings anytime.
Add to Preferred SourcesOpens your Google source preferences with us pre-loaded. Tick the box and you're done.
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.
Two direct-response operators sit on a patio and trade the actual numbers behind their businesses: setter pay, application grading, spend cuts, and the leadership gap that shows up once you're past eight figures.
The Skool founder walks Cole Gordon through the whole build — the network-effect bet, the year-long hunt for one engineer, the 11x price cut, and why he still won't let AI write his code.
Two direct-response operators trade notes on the offer changes that took a low-ticket start to nine figures, and why most health offers stall at the same monthly number while a handful pull in millions more.
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