Living The Red Life - Mastering Leadership: Crafting the Perfect Team for 2024

Starting point is 00:00:00 generally high performers or even if you look in pro sport, they're looking at how do I get 1% better, right? It's kind of fascinating, whereas the underperforming employees actually see it as a negative, whereas the highest performing employees see it as a positive, right? And that's just the growth mindset of successful people versus non-successful people. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today, we're going to talk about leadership, building out teams,

Starting point is 00:00:39 building the perfect team and how to set up your team for success. So I'm going to take you through about a 10 stage framework that I use with my team going into 2024, my department heads, my managers, my leadership team, and how to actually build a team, right? So I've grown my team to over 100 people and I've managed over 300 employees when I worked as the CEO for a big company. Now, what's interesting with building the team is having the right frameworks in place, because when you hire a leader or a manager, many of us make the mistake of assuming that they can then manage, right? Now, a lot of the time they have strengths and weaknesses like every person. So we've learned as a company to really provide that in-house training, even if

Starting point is 00:01:22 they come at you with this amazing resume and they've done all this stuff and they sound amazing on an interview, you have to continually build those systems and frameworks and SOPs just like you do for a new staff member, okay? So if you're listening to this, maybe you're zero employees, right? It's just you and maybe you're 10 employees, 20 employees, 50 employees, but I promise you this framework will be amazing, whether it's your first hire, your 50th hire, your 100th hire, right? And it's going to be a training that hopefully will stay with you for a very long time and you can revisit as you're growing your team. To start, I'm going to take you through the 10 points, right? What are the most important areas when it comes to building out your teams, managing your teams, your department

Starting point is 00:02:03 heads, and building the right systems to scale a team, okay? So the 10-point framework that we really cover, and it's not necessarily in an order, this is just the framework. Number one is time management and maximizing the ROI within a team, okay? So time management is so important, most people can't manage their time effectively, that's why entrepreneurs, the ultra successful ones are successful because they simply get way more done than other normal people within a day, right? And obviously they're able to work on these really high leverage tasks. And if you actually ask billionaires, one of the biggest things they'll tell you is time versus leverage. Okay. And what that means is billionaires and ultra successful people are able to leverage every

Starting point is 00:02:47 say 30 minutes or hour block way, way, way stronger than a regular person can. So if you look at a regular person, they might do X amount within an hour that provides X amount of ROI to the business. Now a billionaire or a CEO or a visionary and entrepreneur is in that same hour is able to provide 100 times more leverage to the company. And that's what makes them so great and why they can build these big companies. So being able to get your team focus on highest ROI activities, even within their role, is so important. And now, look, a graphic designer might not be creating a $2 million deal, right? It's not his role to do so. But he might be able to make a decision within his day of, do I work on some random social media post? Or do I work on some top performing ads that could go

Starting point is 00:03:40 and make a million dollars for the company, right? So even within a smaller subset of a business, everyone has a role to play. So the first part of this framework is really getting the team aligned on time management, making sure they're driven towards ROI-based tasks. And one of our core values is ROI, because we want our whole team to constantly work on it, and we constantly have to work on it with the team because naturally people don't do that, right? That's why not everyone's a millionaire, because a lot of the time people get lost in the day to day, they procrastinate. And there's an amazing book by Brian Tracy that I have a lot of my team read, and I've read several times

Starting point is 00:04:20 called Eat That Frog, where it tells you to do the biggest, most important thing first, because generally human nature and Neanderthal brain does the opposite. tells you to do the biggest most important thing first because generally human nature and neanderthal brain does the opposite we like to do all these little things to get an endorphin rush and feel like we're productive when really they didn't do much they just it's kind of busy work versus high leverage work so the the first part of the framework is building systems frameworks techniques productivity techniques to maximize the time efficiency and ROI of the team. Second one is project management and task completion. So what that means is how are we managing all the projects in the company? At any one point, we might have

Starting point is 00:04:58 thousands of tasks going between all of our departments, right? So say we have 10 departments, they might all have 50 tasks right that's 500 tasks going at any one time so how are we project managing you know we have about three or four kind of project task managers throughout the company of 100 staff and obviously within a division or a department a department head is generally a project manager in some capacity too like our head of design is managing all the projects within the design that's coming in from marketing and celebrities and all that stuff right so the second piece of the framework is how do you build the right project management systems what softwares are you using how you're tracking it how you're

Starting point is 00:05:42 updating it how you manage task completion we have end day reports. We have time trackers in place. We have the project managers in place. We have daily huddles in place. All of these things to maximize the project management and the task completion within the company. Next one, number three, delegation frameworks and what I call hamster wheels. Okay, so this is the third part of the framework. How are we empowering people to delegate? Because progression within a company generally comes from someone's ability to take a project or an initiative, own it, make it better ideally, and then delegate it to someone lower than them.

Starting point is 00:06:20 And that's called progression, right? That's how someone grows from an average employee to a more senior employee, to a supervisor, to maybe a manager one day. So how are we, especially with a management team, making sure they delegate? Because again, you would assume incorrectly that if a manager is great and a manager comes in the company and has this amazing resume, they have this ability like we as entrepreneurs have to take something, delegate, take something, delegate. But they don't. I can tell you, I've hired very expensive managers with glowing resumes of 20 years in corporate, and they just don't. They get bogged down and trapped in the weeds. And sometimes you have to be the one or a C-suite person above them sometimes has to be the one to say, hey, look,

Starting point is 00:07:04 why are you doing these six things when you could give it da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, right? So you still have to really coach people and build these frameworks with the team to do that. So delegation's a big one. Next is frameworks. Frameworks to me are like, kind of like systems, but better. Frameworks are more like how are you tackling an initiative? so i just built for example a social media framework which is kind of a mind map of everything i want to cover across every channel including kpis examples timelines um so it's really a framework that someone can take and run with okay um and then finally hamster wheels within this part of this leadership training what i'm talking about here is how are the managers

Starting point is 00:07:45 building new systems to revolutionize their department versus just doing it the old way. And I reference to this McDonald's, right? So I think McDonald's innovated their company at some point when they built the iPad or tablet-based checkouts, right? So if you go into most McDonald's now, when you go in, and I don't eat at McDonald's

Starting point is 00:08:05 often, but occasionally my, you know, my wife will run in when we're driving from Tampa to Miami, and you go in and they don't have anyone, maybe one person at the front now, and they have just like 10 iPad screens, right? So if you look at payroll for McDonald's, as a company over a year's period, they probably saved millions, tens of millions, maybe of dollars, right, around the world, because they've removed maybe, I remember as a kid growing up, I would go to McDonald's and they have like eight people, right? So imagine that eight people, pretty much like what, 16, 18, 20 hours a day, right? Because they're nearly open 24 seven, across like 1000s of McDonald's. Think of that payroll

Starting point is 00:08:45 they saved. And that to me is they created a new, and I call it my business, they created a new hamster wheel, right? So they totally revolutionized departments. So within this area, we're looking at how do you revolutionize your department with better efficiencies, automations, and systems, or even AI. Next part, okay? Number number four situational leadership and psychology right because this is something again that not most people have especially you know more junior managers right maybe the highly paid six-figure managers will have more of this but how are they handling situations adapting their leadership style doing performance enhancement tactics to constantly improve their team work with different people within their team different departments

Starting point is 00:09:30 different areas of risk and opportunity and problem solving and crisis management so this is situational leadership okay and again this could be a whole hell a whole episode right just on that all right next, next, okay, next, because I know there's a lot here. Next, coaching and having hard critical conversations. I think most managers are generally better at praising than they are on giving feedback on how to be better, and that's a big part that's missing

Starting point is 00:10:00 because a lot of the time, they don't like having what I call hard conversations. I actually think hard conversations and uncomfortable conversations are one of the healthiest and best things you can do in life in general, but especially as a leader. So I actually kind of force, especially because we're a high performance workplace, we kind of enforce every manager to have a 15 minute call every month where they're giving critical feedback, right? Because generally most of the time an employee will think they're doing well if they don't hear anything or

Starting point is 00:10:30 if they get told good job on projects, when generally pretty much every employee will have some area to improve on, right? Now, some employees will have a lot of areas and they'll be underperforming, whereas some employees, you know, will meet with and they aren't underperforming, they're exceptional at what they do. And it's just like, how can they go to the next level? And actually, what's interesting is the best employees love the critical feedback the most, right? Because the, you know, generally high performers or even if you look in pro sport, they're looking at how do I get 1% better, right?

Starting point is 00:11:03 So it's kind of fascinating whereas the underperforming employees actually see it as a negative whereas the highest performing employees see it as a positive right and that's just the the growth mindset of successful people versus non-successful people so having hard conversations is probably the best thing you can do because it's the best thing you can do for your business and it's the best thing people you can do for people because now they are very clear on the expectations right and now if they can't meet the expectations that's a different conversation they're just not a fit for the role or don't have the skill and that's best for both parties to exit at that point right but at least the high performers or the medium performers can keep working to get

Starting point is 00:11:42 better right and of course you want to foster a culture where people keep working to get better, right? And of course, you want to foster a culture where people are here to get better, right? And eventually when you become a big corporate billion dollar brand, you're going to have what I call tire kickers, just workers, they clock in, clock out, they're collecting a paycheck, they don't like their job, right? But obviously our goal as a leader, especially when we're sub a thousand employees

Starting point is 00:12:02 or at least sub 500 or 200, is to eliminate those people right to keep that culture of everyone's here because they want to be here where after you get over a couple hundred employees i think it's much harder to do that but especially when you're sub 100 employees you should be able to do that and that's something that that we try and do right we're right at that kind of tipping point where we do see people come in and we're like, oh, they're just here to collect a paycheck. And it's like, they do their job and it's whatever, right? But generally a lot of our people are still here because we're still in that hundred range where they're here because they love it and they do anything for the company

Starting point is 00:12:37 and they're all in, right? And they're obviously your best people. So next one, one-on-one meetings and performance reviews. We kind of talked a little about one-on-one meetings and performance reviews we kind of talked a little about one-on-one meetings but this is different more like general meetings with managers managers should be meeting also with all of their individual staff on a weekly or bi-weekly or at least monthly basis and then structured performance reviews right every quarter we do a performance review we structure as a lot like Google. If you've not read work rules, it's just called work rules. It's from the old HR director or HR leader at Google that built all the HR and culture. And obviously Google became very famous as a great place to work

Starting point is 00:13:17 at one point, right? I don't know if it still is or not, but it became very famous for a great place to work. So we've took a lot of initiatives from different places, but Work Rules and Google has been one of them. We structure our performance reviews every quarter or every four months. We try and do every quarter. And then we also used to, we've got to get back into it now, but we used to do peer reviews.

Starting point is 00:13:41 So where each department or their peers would give them a rating and feedback too and it was anonymous and it was a lot to pull off and do because it was managed like getting hundreds of people to do reviews like to their peers anonymously and chasing everyone to do them but uh that was pretty interesting because you know you as a manager or leader has a perspective and then your team have a perspective and some a lot of the time it aligns where if someone sucks they suck and everyone agrees they suck whereas sometimes it'd be interesting because like the team would think they would suck and you would think they would do good or vice versa so um having one-on-one reviews is so important right so as a leader you

Starting point is 00:14:18 if you have a big team as a leader you should do it with the managers and the managers should be doing it with their staff if you have a small team say it's just you and like 10 staff you should do it with the managers and the managers should be doing it with their staff. If you have a small team, say it's just you and like 10 staff, you should be meeting one-on-one with all those staff every month, right? And you should go through, you know, what they're doing well, what they're not doing, big projects they need to work on, any personal development they can be doing, any SOPs they need to write, anything they, any of their ideas they want to bring to the table, right? And I didn't do this for many years when I started my business because I didn't have a training like this, right? But hopefully, you know, you do start incorporating these things because eventually, you know, as you'll always hear from billionaires and CEOs, you have to invest in your people, right? The people make the business.

Starting point is 00:15:01 So next one, effective meetings. You know, I spend about six hours a day on meetings. I've spent more than that. I've spent less than that over my life, but now I'm pretty much over every department and doing a lot of meetings with celebrities or agents or a C-suite and all of that sort of stuff, collaborations. How'd you run effective meetings, right? How'd you run meetings effectively? How'd you run meetings in a way that obviously produce an ROI? Most staff will hate meetings because most staff aren't managers or systems people or, you know, they're more like creative workers. But meetings are generally very important if ran well. They can also be a time suck if they're not ran well, right? So really having effective meetings and a structure for

Starting point is 00:15:45 them and a process for them and an agenda for them and someone taking notes, all the basics. Well, it might sound basic to me now, but I didn't used to do this. I didn't know how to run them. One of my friends, Cameron Herald has a good book on why meetings suck where he teaches you how to do meetings properly. I mean, I'm sure there's a podcast and stuff on there on that too. But make sure you are doing meetings. Don't shy away from them, but do them well. I think one of the biggest weakness I see with entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs are like lifestyle entrepreneurs. They just want to be hanging out, you know, traveling the world and stuff. And that's great if you want to do that. But eventually, if you want to run a big business, you do have to have meetings right every company in the world big companies have a lot of meetings it's just

Starting point is 00:16:29 because you get everyone together and you discuss a lot of stuff right so we have daily marketing meeting we have a daily project meeting right and then our video team meet every day as a group my design team meet every day as a group my sales team meet every day as a group. My design team meet every day as a group. My sales team meet every day as a group, right? So pretty much every department at my tech team meet every day as a group, every department, every, every department in my companies all have daily meetings because it's the easiest and the best way to get aligned, right? Like you have to get aligned every day with what you're doing. So meetings can suck, but if they're around well, they won't suck and they'll help everyone get super aligned. Okay. Last couple, recruitment and interviewing. Very,

Starting point is 00:17:12 very, very important. You must have constant recruitment going on as you're growing. Okay. You will never have enough great people. We never stop recruiting. We're always recruiting for about five to 10 roles, sometimes even more than 10. We talk about always having a reserve bench. If you watch basketball or football or soccer, they always have a reserve bench. And I've made that mistake many times where we've not and we still do. And then someone leaves or you have to get rid of someone. You now have a two or three month gap with not having that person.

Starting point is 00:17:43 And then because you need them, you make a rush higher and then that rush high is terrible. And now you're six months later and you still don't have the right person. So try and have a reserve bench, keep recruiting. In our peak growth over the last two years, we got up to 800 interviews every single month. Now we're down to like two to 400 interviews every single month, which is still a lot, right? And we have, we got up to three full-time recruiters. Um, now we're at like one recruiter and a head of recruitment. Um, but yeah, and I do, I do final interviews still for a lot of key staff, not every staff, like, but for key staff, I'm still doing final interviews. Um, we're trying to find a

Starting point is 00:18:24 players, taking them from other companies not my friends companies or people in this space necessarily i'm not i'm i wouldn't cross that ethical border some people do i don't i don't think that's fair but like you know random corporate companies or whatever um what else um we have kpis to hit for that so and then we have a good interview process uh we used to do group interviews. We've done hiring events back in my Tampa office. When we grew to a hundred staff, we sometimes had 30 people in every Friday and we'd hire a couple of people from that 30 and, and it was pretty cool. So we've tried a lot with recruiting. I've learned a lot. I wouldn't say I'm the best, perfect

Starting point is 00:19:02 recruiter, probably better than most, but I still have a lot of work to do. And one thing we've just found we're recruiting to is have good 30, 60, 90 day probations because I would love to say I'm the perfect recruiter. I think I'm good at reading people, but some people that you think are going to be bad are actually really good. And some people that you think are great

Starting point is 00:19:22 are total disasters, right? Because they just missell themselves are great are total disasters right because they just missell themselves and they want the job and then they just can't handle it so um definitely have probation periods too okay next last few all right so conflict management how are you handling conflicts navigating conflicts resolutions for conflicts within the company, within the team, with clients or vendors. KPI and performance, we've talked about a lot. How do we monitor KPIs? We've talked about a lot for staff, but then how as a business do you monitor KPIs, performance? We do a weekly meeting on all of our KPIs. We do a weekly all staff where we go for all of our figures and we're always linking back to KPIs. So we have clear benchmarks. My staff at any point should be able to tell you what the revenue

Starting point is 00:20:10 is. They should be able to tell you what the goal revenue is. So everyone is clear and aligned towards KPIs and performance. And then for within a business, we're also setting clear KPIs, right? So how do we set clear KPIs within the business for every department, right? So video is supposed to produce X amount of video. Social is supposed to get X amount of Instagram shares and comments and engagement. YouTube's supposed to hit this amount. The podcast's supposed to get X amount of downloads. The finance team is supposed to collect X amount of pending money, the refund rate has to be lower than 1%. So everything has a KPI. Okay. And if you're not doing that, again,

Starting point is 00:20:51 I didn't do this for like 10 years of my life, but everything should have a KPI eventually. Okay. And the final one, again, taken from my friend Cameron Herald, vivid vision, right? Like, what is the big vision? What's the vision for the company, the growth of the company, the company's goals, and then also the vision for each department and then even each individual staff member within the department, right? Where do they want to grow? What are their goals, ambitions, and then how can you as a company help them get there? And then how can they help you as a company get to your vision and goals, right? So having that yin yang relationship. So there you have it, guys. I know it was a lot. I know it was fast, but hopefully it was a good

Starting point is 00:21:29 framework because I guarantee there's a lot in there you're not doing. You're going, holy cow, really? That's really what it takes to run a big company? And the answer is yes. And, you know, that's the cool thing about podcasts like this and books. You can learn from 12. You know, I've been doing this leading teams i mean i in theory led my first team about 20 years ago as a teenager um but you know i've been leading decently sized teams for like eight plus years now um and obviously had my own company leading some sort of a team for 12 years so uh actually 14 i think at this point so look you can you can learn so much by taking these and slowly

Starting point is 00:22:06 starting to apply them, right? You're not going to get there instantly, but you can slowly start applying these. And these are all the things we teach a lot of our members in our mastermind or in our circle programs, because they come to me for marketing. They come to me for branding social. But really, once you've got that stuff figured out, it's the people, the systems, the team and the frameworks that will scale you to success. So there you have it. A bit about building teams, culture, systems, frameworks of a big, big company, 100 plus staff, right, going from 10 to 100 million right now. And I'm sure when I get to 100 million and I have four, five, 600 staff, I will do another version of this because in three or four years,

Starting point is 00:22:45 it will all change again, right? And then I hope in 10 or 15 years, I can do another one when I'm at a billion dollars and I have thousands of staff and can give you the lowdown on how that looks. But there's a lot of growth and learning even for me during that period. It never stops. That's the beauty of entrepreneurship. See you guys guys soon keep living the red life

Living The Red Life - Mastering Leadership: Crafting the Perfect Team for 2024

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