As an entrepreneur, the most important thing you can do during this time of economic turbulence is: build a team of profit warriors.
So many businesses were unprepared for this global pandemic and its immediate impact on the economy. But there are always cycles in the economy: cycles of growth, stagnation, decline.
You need to build a business that can—and will—thrive in all three of those cycles. Otherwise, you’ll have to start over every 10 years or so. And you can’t afford to do that.
A critical piece of this puzzle is your team. When you have a profitable team in place, you can I can grow—instead of slow—through this time of uncertainty.
When you learn to build a team the right way—from the inside out—during economic upset, you won’t have too many changes to make when things get hard.
But, it takes skill to build a team like this. Skills that for some reason, many entrepreneurs run away from. So, instead of giving themselves more freedom by building a profit driven team, they stay chained to the day. to day tasks that keep them stuck! Instead, I want you to embrace tapping into a different part of your brain to become a different kind of leader.
Lean in to your ability to innovate.
What innovation have you already created in your firms because of what’s going on right now? Not short-term tactics, but long-term strategic innovations that will spring you forward even beyond where you were before the economic crisis.
The most powerful long-term strategic innovation you can employ right now?
Building a profit warrior team.
Here are three keys to building a profit warrior team that will allow your business to elevate up, not opt-out, during a time of economic crisis.
1.You need a team of people that are profit-focused.
That sounds obvious, right? What has blown my mind every day is that the vast majority of businesses are not built on profit-driven employees. So many business owners kill themselves on a daily basis trying to turn enough profit to pay their service-oriented staff.
Every employee should be required to contribute to the bottom line.
When an economic crisis hits, employees are slashed. Seventeen million Americans have filed for unemployment due to the virus and subsequent economic downturn. This is only the beginning. Many jobs will never return.
Millions of people have had to let their staff go because they haven’t been trained as profit warriors, people who can go out and get new business.
You’ve got to build your team, from the very first interview, with the job requirement that every single employee has to contribute to the bottom line.
Rework every job description in the business so that every person on the team has a profit production responsibility.
You’re not a team if someone is taking, but not giving.
2. Every person on your team needs to be metrics-driven and money-motivated.
Every person has to be in it to win it with specific goals for themselves and their families, specific objectives when they come in to work every single day.
Metrics systems are a formula for the activity of each person, in every role, specific input that delivers a specific output.
You have a formula that is systematic, in a replicable and recurring way, that produces profit every month.
It’s a road map for your employees to follow, not a haphazard free-for-all.
New employees should be able to join your team and be turning a profit within a very short period of time because you’ve set them up for success with your brilliant metrics system.
3. All of your team members are all in, and you’re all in with them.
As the CEO, you set the tone, you set the standard. You have to go all in on your team if you want them to go all in for you.
This has to be built into the essence, the core, the culture of your business. Every single employee. There has to be an inner connectivity where they make or save the company a certain amount of money, empowering them to directly impact the company’s bottom line every single month.
Every single person. All. In.
Now is the time to make massive changes in how you lead your team and align it with these principles we’ve learned today.
If you were already operating online, building your business virtually, you’re primed and ready. Congrats to every business owner doing this amazing pivot.
Focus on the opportunity, not the chaos and drama. Take a step back and see what’s truly happening in the world and how you can build a profit warrior team to get you through any economic turn, both now and in the future.
