If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you know I am fanatical about TEAM. I believe that building a dream team is THE most important element of experiencing true entrepreneurial freedom.
All the sales and clients and growth in the world doesn’t mean freedom for you as an entrepreneur if you don’t have a dream team backing you up every single step of the way.
Otherwise, you’ll just be trying to do it all and be it all on your own.
There’s no freedom in that way of doing business.
I hear from business owners almost every week asking for more resources and information about building an Unstoppable team. They see our amazing leaders, performers, and contributors in our company making waves, and a huge impact every single day.
They want to know: How can I build a team just like that?
There are two sides of entrepreneurial success.
Side 1: the sales and marketing, the positioning and branding. That’s how you grow profitably. But the team behind that—Side 2—is how you’re able to systematically create a healthy, sustainable business that will stand the test of time and allow you to continue to grow and thrive in your role as a CEO, achieving your goals without burning out.
I’m really committed to helping people build dream teams. I’ve seen so many entrepreneurs work themselves to death, because they didn’t have a good team. I’ve been working for years teaching CEOs how to build a team and get the most out of that team, because my mission has always been to simplify the path to financial (and lifestyle) freedom through entrepreneurship.
Here are six elements you absolutely need to build your dream team.
#1: Risk-taking
As an entrepreneur or leader who wants to get people to walk on hot coals for them and commit to giving their absolute best to the company every single day, you have to increase your ability to take risks.
It means giving more trust, being willing to try more new things, being open to taking steps with your team that you feel uncertain about, and pushing yourself to do things completely out of your comfort zone as a leader in order to help your people succeed.
The risk can be financial or releasing control or stepping into a completely different way of leading. Taking the risk of trying a lot of new things. Helping your team get what they need from you.
You will need to become a great leader if you want a team that performs at the highest level for you. Those things are interconnected. You’re not going to build an amazing team that goes out in the world and shatters ceilings and creates unbelievable breakthroughs without being a leader at the helm, who’s also pushing yourself to do the same thing.
#2: Faith
This one is really hard for people. I’ve talked openly about how faith is my secret weapon. I lean on my faith, my belief, my trust in God, my relationship with God, in a lot of the decisions I make and the way I show up in the world.
That said, I’m not necessarily talking about faith in a spiritual or religious sense here. I’m talking more about faith in people. So many times, I see a high level of skepticism or worry or doubt or uncertainty that leaders have in themselves and their abilities, and that trickles down to their people.
Your level of faith in yourself has to go from a 2 to a 10 if you want to see people performing at a level 10 for you. What you see from your team is a direct reflection of how you’re operating internally. Your faith in yourself has to rise, and so does your faith in each person on your team.
Many times the difference maker in the performance level of your team is their level of certainty and confidence in themselves. Your number one job as a leader is to help them to increase their self-confidence. This starts by pushing yourself to have more trust in your own self, in your intuition, in your capabilities, in your decision making.
It all starts with you.
Once you make that commitment to yourself, and you believe it, and take action that aligns with it, you will see those behaviors translate and replicate in the ways you see your team showing up every day. Working hard to instill in them the level of faith you have in them will increase their faith in themselves.
#3: Investment
There are so many kinds of investment—investment of time, investment of money, investment of emotional concern/care/commitment. Your level of investment in your people needs to go through the roof.
You cannot expect them to run ahead of you. Your job is to look every single day at ways you can make even more commitment to their success, even more commitment to their goals and to their dreams. A commitment to help them become who they need to be to take your company where it is ultimately capable of going. Your investment in them will directly correlate to their level of investment in you.
People ask me every single day how I get such a high degree of commitment from my team to what we’re doing in our company. Where I can get this special energy, this magic? Everyone wants to know.
The magic is this nucleus of caring and commitment and concern and investment and love. It is so strong and deep and emotional that it’s almost like a force field. When people enter into it, they become a part of it. When they become a part of it, they want to spread it. They want to bring others into the force field, this special unit where everyone operates in lock and step together.
That’s what I want to help each of you build as well. There is no greater joy, nothing more fun, more mind-blowing than watching yourself and a handful of people become a team of people who are doing this thing together with this amazing bond.
When the company wins, everyone wins. Each and every person on the team can experience and accomplish their dreams through the vehicle of this unit of everyone succeeding together. It’s your role and responsibility as a leader to help each member of your team see how the opportunity to grow with you will help them accomplish what matters most to them.
Your job every single day is to ask the question: How do I make that easier for people? How do I make that more attainable for people? How do I make it more visible, top-of-mind? How do I help them celebrate progress? How do I help them see as they’re making improvements?
I see a lot of people who want to hire contractors and part-timers who are doing various tasks for them, but there’s no commitment or investment in these people’s lives. And they wonder why people are making a minimal investment back.
As a start-up or small company, you won’t be able to offer the largest base salary or fly your team on private jets to islands, but there is quite a lot you can do in small ways every single day to show people that they matter, to elevate them and help them grow.
Happiness comes from progress, from growth. Give that valuable gift to them.
#4: Unwavering positivity
You need to have an ironclad abundance mindset that literally cannot be infringed upon. Without it, your people will struggle to perform and grow. If you aren’t working every single day to see the endless opportunity and abundance available to them, then negativity and mindset blocks and doubt will creep in and completely knock them off their game.
You have to intentionally insert unwavering positivity. Intentionally cultivate an abundance mindset with your team every single day. You need to be showing them and telling them and conveying it to them. Helping them to see the unbelievable opportunity and potential in your space and in your market and where you’re going, so they truly feel and believe and go forward executing for you.
#5: Personal growth as a leader
So many people struggle for years with the same cycles, patterns, and issues in their business. And they don’t do anything to go out and learn how to change themselves, change their mindset, change their skill set, increase their self-awareness, and their behaviors to stop those cycles and create new ones.
This is why I started Legacy Leaders—for entrepreneurs and business owners who want to lead better. Leadership is nothing more than a set of skills that you acquire over time. There are systematic and strategic things that you can learn and do to become a better leader and make progress almost every day to get higher performance, better results, and bigger commitments from the people who work for you.
Now might be the time to evaluate: what is the last investment I made in becoming a better leader, and what does the next one need to be? And how soon does it need to happen to achieve the goals I’m setting for the year ahead?
#6: Your commitment to making working for your company a dream job
For me, the number one thing I’ve always been obsessively focused on, and I will continue to be obsessively focused on, when building my team is making working at my company a dream job. I want people who come to work for me to say, “I can, I want to, and I will work here for the rest of my life. The rest of my career will play out here, because all of my dreams, all of my goals, are going to be met here.”
Is it impossible? No, it’s not impossible. Do most people put any thought, care, concern, time, energy, effort, or money into it? No, they don’t.
If you have the inclination to care enough to take action on it, you also have the opportunity to create a space and a place where people want to spend their career, where people feel like their needs are being met, where people feel like there are advocates and champions for them, where people know and feel and trust that they’re being groomed and developed, and they’re growing and learning and expanding—and they can also grow their income along the way.
That starts with an intention and a desire to do just that.
I really want you to take a serious look at the role you play as a leader and how you can step into next-level leadership as the CEO of your company in this next year.
No matter how great you get at sales and marketing—and you know how much I love teaching business growth strategy—at the end of the day, if you don’t have a dream team behind you, all you’re doing is creating a really hard job for yourself. And that is not our goal.
I want you to have freedom, fulfillment, flexibility, be able to put your family first and have fun doing it. And all of those things hinge on bringing together the sales and marketing to build the brand with the dream team to back you up.
Are you ready to build your dream team?
