EP #399: A Mistake Most CEOs Frequently Make

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Intro: While it is extremely difficult and while it does come with a lot of responsibility, a lot of headaches sometimes, and frustration, it also is absolutely incredible to be a part of something that you know you  could never have created on your own. For me, that is the biggest reward growing a team, bringing  together people with different skill sets, different backgrounds…

You are listening to the Not For Lazy Marketers podcast, episode number 399. 

Emily: Hello, everybody. I hope you guys are having an amazing week. I’m coming off of a week where I actually  flew in four members of team Hirsh, and it wasn’t like a team retreat where we were just going to have a bunch of fun. We did have fun, but we did a ton of work, my brain was so fried at the end of  every day. I rented an Airbnb close to my house, a beautiful Airbnb, so we had a lot of space  and we just worked on SOPs, on processes, on brainstorming, and on training videos, just the things that I felt  like if we don’t all step out of our day to day for a couple of days and  you know, meetings, and just the day to day grind, we are never going to do this. We’re never going to  update these things, smooth these things over, build out Asana checklists, all those things. So I flew  everybody out here and we had this whole list of things that we were going to do like an agenda, each day we’re going to do this. We had already done brainstorming beforehand so  it was amazing. Then two nights we went out to dinner, we did an escape  room and it was just like full 12 hour days of people-ing for me. So  by the end of this week I was like,  okay, I am going to do nothing now for a few days. I feel like I put on a live event or  something huge or went to a big live event so it was incredible. It’s always so amazing to me when I  get around my team and I hear the collaboration and I sit back and listen. So that’s part of what today’s episode is about and inspired from this.

When I sit back and listen to  team members, or sometimes it’s not even team members, it’s coaches, or it’s an expert on something,  and you really force yourself out of the mentality of ‘you know what’s best and you know exactly  what to do’, and, and you’re kind of operating in that automated mode so much amazing things can  happen. People ask me all the time, ‘isn’t it so hard to  grow a team? And what do you like about it? What do you not like about it ‘. While it is extremely difficult and while it does come with a lot of responsibility, a lot of headaches sometimes, and frustration, it also  is absolutely incredible to be a part of something that, you know, you could never create on your own. For me, that is the biggest reward, growing a team, bringing together people with different skill  sets, different backgrounds, different strengths and weaknesses to mine, and then creating  something incredible and creating a company that’s incredible, creating a culture that’s incredible and  creating results for our clients and our members. That’s what we spent the entire week doing, asking ourselves and working on things that are just going to improve the efficiency and the quality of  work that we create in our company. So it goes so much beyond what I could ever do myself, so it  was amazing.

So today I am talking about a mistake that most CEOs frequently make. This is  something I was reflecting on for myself after this week.

A lot of CEOs, a lot of my friends, a lot of you guys who listen to the podcast, you’re like me, where we are very fast, we operate and move very  fast, we know what we’re talking about, we’re likely smart and intelligent, which is how we’ve built, what we  have. We operate at a different level, and I’m not going to say a higher level, but a different level in  speed than most. I don’t know if you guys have felt like this your whole life, but I have always felt  like people just can’t keep up with me and it’s actually been frustrating, not in a good way where I’m so awesome. People can’t keep up with me in a way that I’m like, why can’t they, I  don’t understand. You know? It’s been frustrating and that I’ve realized, over time, is the mistake that a lot of CEOs make, we get so wrapped up in that constant moving forward. Like this is what we have to do, we have to do this next and pace and speed that we sometimes miss out on opportunities to hear a  different perspective or to let somebody who actually could do something better than us take control.  I see this mistake happening a lot with people who start to not even just hire a team, but hire  support in the form of they hire an agency, or they hire a VA, or they get a copywriter and they want to so  badly let go of what they’re trying to pass off and get off their plate, but they don’t and they end up micromanaging. They end up micromanaging that person and taking away  from what the person or the company or the support or the coach or whoever it is, is able to bring into  the picture. So I was reflecting on this this week because, being with my team, I had to consciously,  a couple of times during discussions, somebody would say a suggestion or an idea and immediately I was like, well, that’s not a good idea, or I’m going to cut that off or, you know, we  should do this. Here’s the problem, you guys, as a CEO, even if you don’t want it to be this way,  when you speak, people will agree and they’ll be like, ‘okay, yeah, that’s right, we should go that way’. So  if you cut in without actually taking a second and hearing different perspectives and ideas, and just  trying to be more open to it than you maybe would be, if you don’t do that and you just cut in and  take over which we do so well and so easily, without even realizing it, people won’t actually speak up.  One thing I’ve noticed is I have gone in the past and tried to say, it’s okay to speak up, I  want you to disagree with me and I want you to tell me, but unless you actively demonstrate that, people won’t because they  don’t even realize they’re doing it. It’s like this whole dynamic, when you have a leader in the room, and  most CEOs like myself growing up, I just naturally was always the leader, like I can’t not lead. When I’m in a  conversation, I’ll take over the conversation, I don’t mean to, I have to try not to on purpose  and most of the time it’s because I  want to move faster than the room is moving, or I’m like, ‘okay, this is  the way we need to do it, let’s just go’. Even as a kid, you know, I’d get in a group, there was no  leader, I’d be the leader. I think as CEOs, like what happens is people need a leader, okay? So other  people, they want a leader, they  want to follow somebody and that’s how humans are designed. We need a leader. We  want to follow a leader, when we were kids,  it’s our parents. Then we look for that leadership in different areas, so if you’re in a room  where you’re the leader, and oftentimes unless you’re in a room with a bunch of other CEOs, you’re  going to be the leader, if you don’t create the space intentionally where you purposely are like in your  head, ‘do not talk, just don’t talk for a second or do not step in, or let them make that  mistake or let them like, have a conversation and then step in’. If you don’t purposely and intentionally  do this, you will never hear other perspectives. It’s not because you didn’t give them  permission and you might have said verbally, ‘what do you think? I  want to hear what you think,  make sure you disagree with me if you do disagree with me, people won’t, unless you are quiet first. The second you jump in and  you start to take over and you give your thoughts, generally, I’m not saying every time, but generally  people will agree with it. They’ll then think, ‘eh, my idea was dumb, I’m not even going to say that’. So  I have found myself often in situations with teams or even other companies that I’ve hired, like a video company or other people, and I come in  and take over and I’m like, ‘this is the way it’s going to be and this is my idea’, while that’s good, you have  to make sure that you are not actually losing out on potential because the way it should be is that for so  much of your business, you have to drive the vision, but you should hire experts who can do things  better than you and who can actually execute better than you could and that is truly amazing when that happens. So sometimes I witnessed this happening in the back  end of other businesses, especially if somebody has previously run their own ads or has  marketing experience or copywriting experience or whatever it is, they aren’t willing to let go of any  control and provide trust, and obviously I totally understand, trust has to be earned, it has to be earned  by my own team members. But if you’re hiring a team member, an employee, a company, a  coach, and you don’t trust them, the relationship is never going to work. You have to go into it with that  trust and tell that trust is broken. But if you don’t go into it with trust and you try to take it over, you  might as well not be in that relationship. So in this week with my team, we had a couple of all team discussions. We went to a table, we all sat down and we were discussing certain topics with how we should do  things, and there’s times where I could step in and be like, ‘no, this is how we should do it, this is what I  think’ and then everybody would just be like, ‘okay, yeah, we can do it that way’. But there was so much  value in not doing that and letting the discussion happen for like an extra five minutes before I  said anything, and then what happens is they all go, ‘well, what do you think Emily?’ Like, they all look to me, and then I can speak. And so much for me, like my team’s in the day to day, they are the ones  working one on one with clients and working with our Market Like A Pro  members, and they’re in, what you call, the front lines. 

 I’ve watched many CEOs make the mistake of trying to dictate what the employees, the team  members have to do that are experts in their field, that are on the front lines and it totally impacts the  business and the results and honestly, the satisfaction of that CEO, because who wants to be micromanaging, that’s so miserable, but yet a lot of us do that without even realizing that we’re doing it.  If your hiring process, your process of bringing in support or your process of hiring a coach  or whatever it is, this doesn’t even have to be a team, this is anybody that you are trying to hire and get  

support from to get help in your life, in your business, It could be a coach, It could be a  program you’re buying. If you don’t go into it all in and with the trust and willingness to listen and step back,  because we have such a dominant personality, you will 100% miss out on opportunities to leverage  different skill sets and leverage different abilities.

 I just reflected on this weekend, I watched it play out where I wanted to jump in and take over at least three or four times and made myself just pause and listen. And I didn’t always agree, I  don’t always agree. You know, sometimes I’m like, ‘no, this is how we’re going to do it’, and I do have the  final say, but the other piece to this is the people that you get support from, and this is especially true with  employees, the people that you get support, if you don’t allow this, then it becomes, they just are like,  well, we just do what the boss says. So you see companies where employees start to just like clock  in clock out and they don’t think critically it’s because that culture’s been created.

So this is an  opportunity for you to reflect for a second. Again, this goes beyond just employees. I’m obviously coming off a week where I was with  employees and I was reflecting on this and how powerful this is, but this is everywhere in your life. I think people with our personality type, with our dominant nature, get into this place where we  shoot ourselves in the foot and miss out on ideas and opportunities because we shut them down before  they can even get out. So this is an opportunity for you to think about a place in my life  where I could get a little bit more quiet and a little bit more curious and just listen, and I don’t have to do  anything. I don’t have to execute a new idea. I will tell you sometimes there’s a lot of bad ideas, but it’s  important that the bad ideas can get out there because there might be one gold mine in all of those ideas. It’s just like when you go try a bunch of things in  your business or marketing and like 9 out of 10 don’t work but that one just absolutely crushes it. If  you’re not trying all the things, then you might be missing out on something you could do. You’re not  trying enough, same thing, if you’re not circulating enough ideas and conversation and the ability to just  listen, you might miss out on something really important and really huge because you’ve convinced  yourself that you have to run everything. I promise it is so powerful when you can start to let  this go and it’s essential for scaling your business. I mean, if you’re at a place where you’re making a  million dollars a year and you don’t have that team, this is something you really have to look at because I have watched many business owners hire an employee or hire a company to do something and then they take over and they almost like basically put in the same amount of effort as if they were  just going to do it themselves, then, why’d you even hire them? You may as well just do it  yourself because you can’t let it go, and that doesn’t help you. That is going to prevent you so much from  growing your company to the next level and getting that support. So this is my opportunity for you to  reflect on that. This actually goes beyond just business, but where is an opportunity if  you, especially, if you have that dominant personality like me where you’re a natural leader, where people naturally will be quiet and listen to you, it’s just the way it works, right? And, I’m not saying  that like when I’m in the room, everyone listens. It’s just people look for leaders and if you’re a leader, you have to intentionally make sure other people have a voice around you and  can voice their opinions and strategies and ideas. Again, you don’t have to go execute any of them. Some, a huge percentage are going to be bad ideas and you’re going to be able to take your  expertise and your opinion and explain why that is not a good idea, which empowers the people around  you to not be afraid to bring those ideas, but to also feel empowered themselves about why  something’s not being done and it’s not just because, so, and so didn’t say, it’s because there’s a  reason there’s a why there’s a strategy behind it.

All right, you guys, I thought this would inspire you. I  thought this would give you something to think about. Thanks so much for tuning in today and I’ll talk to  you on Thursday.

Thanks for listening to the Not For Lazy Marketers podcast. If you loved this episode and want deeper  support with your marketing head over to helpmystrategy.com to see how Hirsh Marketing can help  take your marketing to the next level. No matter where you’re at today, we help our clients scale faster  than ever, find hidden leaks in their funnel, experiment with new creative marketing strategies and help  their business explode and be more profitable than they ever dreamed possible. Head over to helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify for a free strategy audit with team Hirsh.

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