A great leader hires people smarter than them. They see them as a blessing, not a threat. I was hosting a workshop recently where a guy, he was doing about $30 million per year, and he was asking how to get to $100 million per year. He said, who do I need to hire? So I said, all right, well, what's your C-suite look like? One of the big pieces to get to from 30 to 100 is you need more high-level experienced people that you bring in, because then they become mentors for everyone who's not. I said, you know, who's the highest-paid employee? And he was like, well, the highest I pay anybody in the company is about $100,000. And I was like, do you have any C-level people in the company? He was like, no. And I was like, well, where do you spend your time? And so he spent his time across operations, marketing, and finance. And based on the nature of the company being manufacturing, that makes sense. There's a lot in finance. And so I said, well, gosh, like I would think at this point we would want to bring in, I would say to start a COO and a CFO, and then you can focus on the marketing and then we'll eventually outsource that. But there's probably a lot of founder magic there. It's going to be harder to get out. And he was like, yeah, I would do that, but I can't trust anybody close to the money. And I was like, okay, why? He's like, well, they could screw me. If anybody knows how much we make, if they have access to seeing the money, if they have access to controlling it, you know, because like right now I control all of our expenses. Nobody has a credit card, all these things. And it's funny because the next question I asked him was, what do you think is a greater threat to your business? One off random chance that the person that you hire is a thief and steals all of your money because somehow they bypass all the banking systems too, or that you don't hire the right talent to grow your business? Which one has a higher likelihood of occurring? One is a surefire way to destroy your business. Don't hire smart people to grow it. The other is like a very like one-off edge case scenario that maybe could destroy your business. Yes, that is always a possibility. And the question that I posed after that was, what does your business look like in five years if you don't hire these people, if you do nothing? He's like, well, that's a good point, right? Who knows what he did with that information? But I say that to impress upon you the point. There's always the edge case scenario that somebody could fuck you completely. They could steal all your money and somehow get away with it. And somehow your business would burn down and go to zero. Yes, that could happen to all of us. COVID could also happen. But on the more likely case scenario, it's that you hire smart people and you don't give them any authority and they leave and your business ever grows. Because that is what happens to business owners day in and day out. Even if they hire the smart people, they don't want to give them authority because they're scared of their capability. And so they withhold and they control everything. And for that, they don't get anything out of them. And they don't get to capitalize on the growth that those people could actually bring into their business. And here's the thing. It's not just that those people can bring growth into your business. It's that those people can help grow you. It's funny because I had somebody ask me, one of my friends one time, she said, who have you learned the most about business from? And at that point, I told her, I was like, the people that I've actually learned the most about business from right now are these two people that I just hired that are executives. It wasn't an outside mentor, it wasn't a book, it wasn't a mastermind, it wasn't a course. I got to hire these people and I get to I almost look at it like rent their brains like I get to use their brains for this many hours a week as these people who are smarter than me in these areas like what a blessing that is that I don't have to go learn everything for myself that would take forever I get to shortcut my way to success by using other people's brains just like you shortcut your way to making more money in investing by using other people money you can shortcut your way to success in business by using other people brains It the same concept it leverage And if you don hire people who are smarter than you you never get that leverage. And here's the thing, great leaders do not hire to maintain status quo. They hire to move up status quo. The goal is to hire people who beat you at what you were doing, who are better than you at what you were doing. If somebody can't be better at you at one thing that you were doing with one 10th of your time, You are not hiring smart enough people. Think about it. Does this person raise the bar of the team and of the company? Or do they keep it the same? Or do they lower it? The next point is that being able to pick the right person is far more valuable than being the right person. When I was growing my first business, I wore all the hats to start. Head of sales, head of CS, head of finance, head of ops, head of customer billing, head of product, everything. And I was constantly focused on how I could get better at those things. Like, how do I learn more about product? How do I learn more about sales? How do I learn more about marketing? How do I learn more about CS? And I had a mentor say this to me, and it really stuck. He said, Layla, you don't need to get better at any of those things. You need to get better at picking people. And I was like, huh, why? He said, it's the one job you will never grow out of. And that stuck with me from that day on, because I was like, holy shit. What I recognize is it's more important to be able to pick the right people than to be the right person for the job. Because my job is going to change all the time, but I have to pick the people to take it after me. My business is going to change all the time, but I have to pick the people that are going to do business with me. You don't build the business. You pick the people, invest in the people, and they build the business. And that's the thing. No matter how brilliant your strategy, if you are playing the game solo, you will always lose to somebody who's playing it with the team. And that starts with knowing how to pick people. So the reason that I got so passionate about recruiting and then the reason I'm so passionate about HR is because I've recognized that is something that I should never not know how to do. That is something I should always hold close because the one thing that builds the business is the people that are here. And so I should be good at picking those people and teaching others how to pick those people. I will, yes, be head of finance at some point, head of CS at some point, product and marketing. I have played all the roles and I will always, my job's always changing, but the one job that never changes is picking people to help build the business. And the best leaders that I know focus on this more than any other thing. They all say the same thing. We all sit there and everyone's like, you guys are where you are because of marketing and brand and sales, all these things, right? We all sit in the back room and we're like, we all know it's because of the people. Everybody knows. And I think it's where perception is reality, which is like, you see people on social media like myself and like other people, and you think they are successful because of who they are and what they're doing. but the likelihood of that being true is very low. The reason that they're likely succeeding is because they're so good at picking everybody else that works for them. Your business gets to a point where it's so big, it is impossible for you to do any one job. Instead, you have to be the person to find the people to do all the jobs. And I've just found that to be true, which is if I pick the right people and I put them on hard problems or big opportunities, my business grows. It's not when I myself go on every problem and every opportunity because at some point that's not scalable. If you the one solving every problem and taking advantage of every opportunity then that limits your business And so the only skill that will forever endure is being able to pick people And so I ask you this which is like how much time have you put in to learning how to pick people? How many interviews do you take? How many screenings do you watch? How many interviews do you watch? How much of a structure do you have in place? You know, the reason that I invested so much into recruiting and human resources in the beginning is because I wanted to safeguard against picking the wrong people. And I think I've been able to scale businesses so quickly because I just pick a lot of the right people from the beginning. I don't have to waste all that time replacing people, hiring new people, turning people in and out. I don't have to worry about churn so much because when you have to constantly worry about churn because you're constantly losing and gaining new people, that distracts you from accomplishing any of your business objectives. Picking people is the one skill that you will always need. The next point is that the best leaders are also the most adaptable. Business changes all the time, whether you want it to or not. The environment changes, the market changes, the platforms change, things inevitably change. And you cannot control that. The only thing that you can control is how you react when it happens. I witnessed this in my last business. We used to rely heavily on Facebook ads. And what happened was that over time, the platform matured. And so it got harder to advertise on the platform. Eventually, one day, the platform did a Facebook slap, where they basically changed their whole algorithm overnight. And overnight, so much of what we did that was so effective completely vanished. What happened next was fascinating because I brought to my team what had happened. And I said, listen, we have to adapt here. We have to figure out something different. Half my team was like, let's do it. Let's move forward. YouTube, LinkedIn, Outbound, all these things. And the other half of my team resisted it. They said, we don't want to do that. Let's just figure out how to make this work. I'm sure it's going to come back tomorrow. They tried to negotiate with reality, meaning they argued with it. And what I saw is that those leaders that were arguing with reality, they were fighting the fact that change was occurring, couldn't move forward. So we were spending all this time in the problem and no time in the solution because we were resisting what was real. We were resisting what had happened and we were arguing with reality. The best leaders don't argue with reality. They adapt to it. The best leaders don't avoid failure or change. They use it as an opportunity to get stronger. They say, how can we use this negative experience or challenge to become better? And the best leaders that you will hire will make your job easier, not harder. And a lot of that starts with accepting change and adapting to it. Adapting means a change in the environment occurs. So you change your behavior as well. Not adapting is when a change in the environment occurs and you refuse to change your behavior out of fear because you're scared. What if I fail? What if I can't figure something out? What if, what if, what if, what if, what if? The best leaders learn to adapt to that change and they come out stronger on the other end. What I have found is that if you have a leader who argues with reality, they create so much uncertainty in their teams. Because think about it, right? I'll give you an example. When COVID hit, My entire team looks to me. The government just said that none of our customers can do business And those are the people who feed us and pay the bills What are you going to do I didn try to fight it I didn try to argue with reality You know what I said I was like all right guys our customers have their doors closed So here's what we're going to do. We are going to completely pivot. And we might only pivot for six months because we don't know how long this is going to happen. It's going to be hard. It's going to suck. And it's going to make us stronger. I didn't try to fight it. I didn't try to say, you know what, maybe it's going to go back. And in that time, it was so fascinating because I actually watched my customers who argued with that reality fail. We had gyms as customers. The gyms that went out of business didn't go out of business because of the environment. They went out of business because of their response to the environment. It was the ones who said, well, what if they change everything back in a week or in two weeks? I don't want to change anything. They were so scared of failing and they were so scared of what was going to happen if they made the wrong loop that they refused to change. And because they refused to change, they ended up dying. Because what happens if you don't adapt to the environment is the environment eventually overtakes you and you become a victim of the environment rather than using it to your advantage. And that is what happened to so many of them. The ones who got stronger were the ones who said, screw it, we're gonna change the whole business. Maybe it's for six months, maybe it's for 12 months, but we're gonna get through this and we're gonna be stronger for it. And that experience taught me how much our ability to adapt and respond during times of chaos, during change and during hard situations dictates our success. If you want to be the best leader and if you want to have the best leaders, you have to be adaptable. Here's a question to ask yourself. Do I argue with reality or do I respond to reality? I ask myself this. I'm like, am I arguing with reality right now? Because I'm scared I'm going to fail. Because I'm scared of what happens next. Because I'm scared of the change. And if you just let go of all that fear and all that angst, all the anxiety around change and you just leaned into the change, how much more would you grow from that? And what could you capitalize on that maybe you're not right now? What stops people from being great leaders is not fear of success. It's their fear of being betrayed, of losing, of failing, of judgment, of change. It's not the fear of what happens if I succeed. It's the fear of what happens if I fail and everyone sees. Here's the thing. I'm sure you've watched this video and now you're like, I get it, it's important. But all this fear comes up. It's like, what if people betray me? What if they think I suck? What if I fail? What if I lose money? What if all these things? But the other question is, what if you don't try? What does your life look like five years from now? If you don't really try to be the best leader that you know you could be, what does your business look like? What does your life look like? And how much do you respect yourself? would you respect yourself more or less for trying? Here's the thing. You don't need to pick all of these at once. Pick one of these points that resonated with you the most and just focus there. Leadership is the compilation of so many skills into one. Give yourself some grace, tackle one thing first and stay focused on it until you feel like you've really nailed it. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this video. And here's the thing. If there's any one point that you want to know more about, you want to dive more into, let me know in the comments what point that is, and I will make sure to queue it up for a YouTube video.
