https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpKz22P84iM

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 business owners i think we can all
agree that one of the most important things that happens as we grow is
that we learn frameworks and that's why when you look back at what you
used to accomplish you know years ago it seems like you could fix those
problems so easily because you have frameworks with which you've learned
to think right and so uh it took me six years to build my first eight
figure company six and a half to build my first eight and a half figure
uh sorry multiple eight figure company because that was the the same
company the next company that i did that was multiplied figures was it
took me a year to build and the one after that took me six months and so
we've gotten faster and faster and faster at doing this and now we've
done over 120 million in sales across different industries and one of
the key frameworks that i've developed or helps me think through things
is something to share with you today all right so there's kind of three
levels employees or talent right and this really applies to you or your
uh your team itself because at the beginning it's you right and so
depending on where you're at you may you may be at one of these

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 levels or you may have to recognize it
in others and i'm going to say in in three different ways so i have a
nice little nine nine grid here the simplest way to think about this is
in the beginning you have to learn what to do all right this these are
the skills right and that's because which you are in the beginning is an
individual contributor all right that means you actually have to get
things done in order for them to you know happen right and so what
you're doing at this point is you're doing right all of your time is
spent doing the things right learning what to do etc now the reason it's
really important to be able to recognize where you're at is because then
you'll be able to look through this framework and immediately see what
you need to do next to the same degree you may have gone through this
but not have recognized the shifts and you can look at an employee and
say i think they are in this bucket i think they are in this bucket i
think they have the potential to get to this bucket etc many times
people will stick at one level because of their own beliefs that they
have about themselves which is why we you know laila and i believe that

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 identity is very fluid if you want to
be successful because you have to be able to change what you think about
yourself in order to become the thing that's going to to de-bottleneck
the business because ultimately it's costing every single human on earth
a billion dollars a year not knowing how to create a billion dollars a
year in revenue right and that's how i always think about this it's like
it is costing me so much money my ignorance is costing me so much money
and so hopefully with this video i'll break down some of the other
things that you won't be ignorant to so you can recognize them in other
people so level one is understanding what to do right which means you're
an individual contributor and what your time is spent is doing all right
the second level here is is understanding uh how all right so you
started to do it right the what you figure this out but then you have to
figure out how you're actually doing it right and the reason for that is
because the next level you become a manager all right and that's making
sure that other people can do that thing and they're consistently
executing at a level that works right and so here what you're doing is
you're teaching right you're teaching

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 other people to do the thing right and
so at the beginning you're doing right as an individual contributor you
have to focus on what it is right the next level you're doing you're
doing all the doing and you're like you know what i feel like i
understand this better right i didn't feel like i understand the
sequence of how this works right and then you can teach other people how
to replicate that skill and at the very end i'll show you how to apply
this to departments in a second all right so stay tuned for that but
this is level one right as you're looking at yourself or an employee
right level two is oh i think this person could teach other people i
think they could manage them and as a quick caveat here like not every
like managers don't necessarily need to know how to do something better
than an individual contributor there's always going to be niche
expertise etc but they should understand how it works right and so this
is just an important like just nuance to note there right the third
level is what i look at is the who right and i know this may sound odd
it's like what and then how then who but that is

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 kind of what it evolves to over time
all right the title here is a leader all right and these are very
different than managers which is something that i had to i had to
realize as i was scaling the business and you know usually at this level
this is where you're at your you know three-ish million dollar a year
level and this is what allows you to you know crack crack open to the
million plus uh per month level so 10 10 million pluses you have to have
leaders that are engaged right the thing that you're doing here is
you're systematizing all right and so what i'm gonna i'll say this a
different way too because i think it's worth noting is building the
machine that builds the machine all right and the reason that's
important is because first you're doing it then you're teaching it and
then you need something that can teach it for you that's kind of how
this works right so it's always it's it's um it's not delegating it it's
systematizing so it's really i was trying to be thoughtful about what
word i was going to use there because it's like is it delegating it is
it is it is it

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 handing it off it's it's systematizing
it and there's a lot of different ways you can system you know build a
machine that builds the machine but if you think through this in terms
of your own frameworks the way the reason that i like this is that you
can actually grade yourself in terms of where you're at you can grade
yourself in terms of where a team member is at and you can even grade
departments right within your within your business which depending on
what your size is your departments might just be might be things that
you were doing right if there's if you're a solopreneur for example then
like you wear all the hats your finance your hr your legal your i.t your
marketing your sales your product your fulfillment your all of those
things right but as you grow you know in the beginning you'll have your
first core team of probably five people and they'll fulfill each one of
those functions you have somebody who helps you with you know delivery
you'll have somebody who helps you with you know finance who does the
bookkeeping maybe somebody helps you with marketing maybe that's you
somebody helps you with sales etc right and so what you can do is you
can look at a department and say what level am i involved here right and
eventually the goal is that you can move

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 right move above right me equals you
know ceo and so you have a team of leaders who are building the machine
that builds the machine for you so that the actual whole thing works
without your um without you being there besides providing the vision and
strategic insight for making decisions right and so for me i define this
within a business where i'm no longer on the slack channel so in our
portfolio companies if i am no longer on the slack for that company
meaning no one can reach me besides the one person who's in charge of
that company that is what i believe is a truly uh delegated business
that acts as a portfolio where you are actually an owner right i can't
say the amount of times i like i talk to entrepreneurs and they're like
oh yeah i could totally take this new project on like my business is
totally systematized and and i'm like dude like no it's not like your
phone's blowing up twice since we've been on like since we've been
sitting here talking like like yeah i mean just because you don't have
to respond to something in the moment doesn't mean that you don't have
to eventually respond to it or make a decision or etc

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 right like those are things that are
still levels of involvement that require your existence and presence and
so for me it's if i'm not in the slack channel i have one meeting a week
with the with the owner of the owner the um with one of our portfolio
companies the manager operator etc of a portfolio company and between
that time and the next time the company can continue to grow without my
direct involvement that is what i would say is checking all the boxes
for me and if something's not checking all the boxes you can check all
the boxes at a business level but you can also just look at this as a
department level and the reason i think this is so important is that it
can give you a grade that you can look at to improve so you might have
you know marketing and you might have sales and then you might have you
know product and then you might have you know uh shared services which
would be like i.t legal hr all that kind of stuff right and you can look
at yourself and think okay do i have in sales for example do i have
people who can like am i the one doing the sales okay well

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 maybe i'm not doing the sales well i'm
the one who's teaching people how to sell okay well have i built a
machine that teaches people how to sell so that i don't have to do the
teaching of selling so i can actually just bring people in on a
consistent basis and get them up to speed right that's where you start
looking at like hiring one two three sales people a month right and they
you put them through the machine that builds sales people right and so
you can look at these levels within each of the departments so maybe
maybe that's what you're that's where your sales is at right you've got
a machine that builds the machine awesome but is your marketing there
right do you have a machine that builds the machine there or are you
still doing are you still teaching people right and here's here's one of
the the things that i think for me it took a long time to realize is
that it's actually your strengths oftentimes which which becomes almost
always the bottleneck in the business because the things that you don't
know you're far more comfortable giving away to people so that they can
build these things right because they have better expertise because they
know how to do teach et cetera and that's where you as a ceo as an
entrepreneur is you actually have to walk them through these things so
it's like okay great

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 so uh you know you know how to do some
whatever it is the the delivery of your of your product you tell someone
to do that it's like great now i need you to teach someone else how to
do that so we can build a team of people who are doing that so we can
scale right and then finally at a certain point it's like man i'm
spending all my time teaching it's like okay well we need to build the
machine that does the teaching for you and so i think if you can think
through this framework for each of the departments that you have in your
company you'll figure out where your bottlenecks are and it'll at least
give you a grade and so every quarter you can look at your your your
business on a on a little little sheet like this and think okay do
people know what to do do we have the base skill okay do we have the
sequence the how to do it right teaching people step by step how to do
this process right and hold them accountable and then finally can i find
somebody who can help systematize and build the machine that builds the
machine that recreates the skill over and over and over again and other
people right and so that's kind of the process and what's interesting if
you listen to uh reid hoffman founder of linkedin he talks about the
difficulty for most employees most people to jump these levels it's very
difficult

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 for most people which is why
especially like rapid rapid growth companies they'll often have to you
know change out i'll say leadership with quotes here just anyone who's
in charge because in the beginning there's probably more managers and
over time there need to be leaders and a lot of times the managers
despite their tenure aren't actually leaders right and so when i'm
looking at talent within our own business i'm thinking okay who's a good
individual contributor and sometimes sometimes amazing leaders are
terrible individual contributors and sometimes a lot often times good
individual contributors are terrible leaders right and so it takes a
very unique person which is why being an operator so hard is that you
have to really master all of these levels so that you can recognize it
and teach it in other people because ultimately what we're doing is we
have to walk the path that every person who's behind us must walk which
is why entrepreneurship is such a such a growth-oriented you know
occupation like you have to grow yourself in order to attract people who
have who are who are at a certain level right like imagine if you're if
you if you were to start working for somebody and you feel like you know
way more than them and that they're

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 just have no idea what they're doing
right then it's unlikely that you're going to be very influenced by that
person that person's not going to inspire you to do anything on the flip
side if you if you were to start working for somebody and you you aspire
to be like them you like their character traits you love the way they
operate in their personal life and how they do business etc then that is
somebody that you were being led by right and so for us as entrepreneurs
like a lot of times we have to think like how can i improve my character
what are the traits of mine that are deficient so that i can hopefully
inspire people that i can bring people in at this higher level and then
actually be able to execute because i can't tell you the amount of times
i can't even like most entrepreneurs i've talked to i'd say 95 percent
of them oh my team's amazing i love my team they're awesome and at the
same time they have all these horror stories about teammates and i can't
say like amount of times that i've talked to somebody they said their
team was awesome and i talked to him nine months later like oh no that
team wasn't awesome this team's awesome right i'm like dude the
perspective in which you you make judgments is flawed and i don't
believe anything you say because every time you've said this it has been
wrong so why would i believe differently now and so these are the levels
that i think

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 of for myself my employees departments
and then ultimately the business this is just a different way of
thinking through it hopefully is valuable for you if you have these
frameworks you can look at your own businesses apply things faster and
break through the bottlenecks that you have so you can get to where you
want to go if you like this you know subscribe check out one of my uh my
next videos that are coming up and um hope you uh keeping awesome and
accomplish all your roles
