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SHOW NOTES

“I’m always going to be improving myself as a leader, but I want to empower and give my leaders and my managers the ability to also improve themselves.”

I’m no longer the most important person in my company. I’m completely removed from the day-to-day of my business, which means my team members carry the load that I used to carry alone.

And they require the “personal + professional development” I used to require, too. That’s why I hired the author of People-First Culture, Michel Falcon, to provide weekly team trainings and workshops for my leadership team.

And in this episode, I’m explaining how that happened, why, and the massive benefits we’re witnessing as a result.

If you’re a 6- or 7-figure business owner, you’re heading in this direction, too – so this episode is must-listen! Tune in, and then share your takeaways on Instagram. Tag @emilyhirsh for a shoutout!

NOTE – listen to episode 58, “Behind-the-scenes of my personal journey from $1M to $3M,” for more about my growing pains with building a team.

Key Points:
[4:03] My team is now carrying the load that I used to carry alone, and here’s what that means for my company.
[5:18] “I’m not the most important person in my company anymore!”
[6:49] I remember saying, “I will never have a full-time employee.” And now I’m budgeting for 30+ employees and their training!
[10:22] But know this – a lot of employees value growth more than money.

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[social_warfare]

Episode Transcripts:  

Emily Hirsh: I’m Emily Hirsh, and this is the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Attention innovators, influencers, creators and game changing entrepreneurs, your internet domination begins right here. We are the powerhouse marketers that you’ve been looking for. You’re already making waves in your industry, and we’re here to help amplify those waves of change by creating a connection that cuts through the noise. We take everything you’ve built inside your zone of genius and find its audience. With killer strategy and laser eye for impact, we launch multimillion dollar campaigns and skyrocket your reach online. And now we are doing the unheard of, we’re unveiling everything we’ve learned, taking you behind the scenes with the Hirsh Marketing Team, and giving away the secrets to our clients’ success. Stay tuned for top converting strategy, ROI reports, and insider knowledge that you won’t find anywhere else. You’re changing the world, and we’re the team to help.

Emily Hirsh: All right you guys, so every single time I do an episode behind the scenes of my team and growing my company and operation stuff and being a leader, I get literally so much response that’s like, “Do more! Do more of this.” So I hope you guys like this. I enjoy doing this stuff to be honest. It’s what I spend most of my days doing, so the marketing strategy really comes from me being a part of my team meetings and learning what is and isn’t working for my clients, because I’m not in the nitty gritty of the marketing anymore of like, client accounts. And so, what I spend my day doing is leading my team and growing my company and getting to that $10 million mark. So this is something fun I want to share with you guys, and I hope it’s inspirational.

Emily Hirsh: I hired an author to work with my team. So, I hired the author of People-First Culture. It was an amazing book that I read a couple months ago, and it really resonated with me. It’s a great book, highly recommend it if you haven’t read it. It’s an easy read, and it’s just really about the culture, and … the culture in your company, but also the culture that you give clients, so the customer experience. And I just really resonated with it. So I actually reached out to the author, because I had another friend who read the book and did the same thing and actually hired them, and I was like, “That’s amazing, an amazing idea.” And so I hired this author to work with my team, directly with my COO. Right now I come on the weekly calls, too, but we basically do a weekly call, and he just advises us and gives us tips specific to our company. And it’s amazing …

Emily Hirsh: so far (we just started). He’s also coming to do a workshop and a keynote at my team retreat happening in June. I’m super excited, flying my whole team to Austin to do an in-person retreat. And so he will be there for one of the days doing a workshop with us. And so why am I sharing this with you? I’m sharing this with you, because it’s a shift for me in that I’m actually investing in training … in multiple ways, this is really just one of them … but investing in training and education and support and really, coaching for my team – and not me. And that is new for me. A lot of us, like at the, I think, the stages of around six figures to seven figures, and those early seven figure years … which I’m talking like I’ve been in multiple years! It just feels like that, but it’s really [been] like, I don’t know, a year and a half since I hit a million [dollars] … You really focus on yourself. And you are everything in the business, and you are what has to be improved, whether it’s mindset or a strategy or like, how to build the systems in your company and the operations and everything.

Emily Hirsh: Like, as a CEO at 1 million [dollars], you are everything. At six figures, you are everything, and that’s what your focus has to be. But in the last really three to four months, I’ve realized how crucial it is for me to build out my leaders, and my leadership team, and my management team. And not really for me, because honestly I have two direct reports. Everybody else in my company is reporting to somebody else, and they have to represent and hold this load that’s as heavy as I used to carry [for] the entire company. My operations manager of the ads department has the entire ads team under her, and she has to … it’s leadership down when you’re in this place … and so she has to be able to be her best and lead and implement systems and be that example [on] so many levels, as well as structure and process and systems, that I can’t do it for her. I have to support her in that. Same with my COO, same with every leader in our company.

Emily Hirsh: And so I hired this author to work directly with my COO … like I said, right now I join the weekly calls … and to work with my team, all focused on “How do I improve the team? How do I improve our culture? How do I improve our operations? How do I improve the experience on the team?” And then also, that carries over into, “How do we improve our culture for our clients?” So we’re looking at things like the onboarding journey and like, “What are small things we can add in? How do we improve our communication? Let’s look at the problems and things that have come up in the last month and get suggestions.” And so, I’m sharing this because it might be time that you start looking at this. And it was a real “aha” moment for me when I realized … and I think it takes setting aside, you know, ego. I’m still the face of my company, I will always probably be, I love that. I love being that influencer and being able to have this connection with people and an audience and share my journey and be real and behind the scenes.

Emily Hirsh: I’ll always be that, but I’m not the most important person in my company anymore, in terms of who needs support, because I can make content, and I have two direct reports, but my company, my leaders have to carry this load and be able to be their best, and that’s my job to make sure that’s happening. And so, this is, you know, something, instead of me investing in masterminds … I am [still in] my original masterminds and, you know, really there for the community of entrepreneurs. That’s what I find the most helpful right now, is just having entrepreneurs around me who are around the same level, peers. But I don’t feel like I need the coaching that I needed a year ago, because I’ve put in so many systems and I’ve implemented so much that now I need my team to do it, and I need to provide my team with that training. And so, we’ve bought other courses, and we’re even going to look at, you know, sending our team to different events. But really like, that’s my focus is investing in my team in this way.

Emily Hirsh: And so, I’m enjoying being on the calls with this author, ‘cause he’s brilliant, and I’m grateful that we have his help on the team, but it’s for my team. And my COO has that direct communication with him, and she gets to experience that growth, and I’m beyond happy that that’s happening. So once you get to this place where you’re not even in the day to day anymore, you have to make sure that you’re providing your team with the resources that they need to be in the day to day, and to be their best, and that the processes are there, and the systems are there, and the operation is there … so that then, at the end of the day, our clients are all happy, and we have the best team out there. And I want to always be able to confidently say that. And I can always confidently say that, and have always been able to, but I have to keep, you know, we’re never done working on it.

Emily Hirsh: And so, I put aside a budget every month that is for investing in my team, not me, not resources for me, not for me to get better, but my team, because I really see that as so important. And I only know so much, like I’ve gotten to this place, too, where I’m like, I don’t know everything, and I felt that way for the last year. I felt that way as soon as I hit seven figures, it was like, “Okay, I could get here by hustling, but now I need some help.” And that is when I actually brought … my last year I’ve worked really closely with … the first half of 2018 especially … Alex Charfen helped me so much, and I went and implemented those systems. And there’s some things in your business that you absolutely can’t just hand off and say like, “Okay, I wish somebody else would just do this for me.” The like, core foundational pieces of your business you have to do.

Emily Hirsh: But once you have the training and the processes and the foundation and the systems set up so that somebody can come in and be set up for success, you don’t have to do those things anymore, but you have to make sure that they constantly have the resources that they need. And so, at this point, I know how to be the leader that I am today, and I’m always going to be improving myself as a leader, but I also want to empower and give my leaders, and my managers, the ability to also improve themselves. Because if they do that, then it affects the four or five, six people that are below them, and it’s so powerful. I never thought I’d have a team this big. Honestly I remember saying like, I’ll never have a full time employee, ‘cause that’s so expensive, which is hilarious. Like I really said that. And it is the hardest thing, growing a team, and if you haven’t listened to my podcast of going from $1M to $3 million, go back and listen to that [episode 58]. It was probably my best podcast.

Emily Hirsh: Like well, I don’t know if it was my best in terms of marketing advice, but like I said at the beginning of this one, you guys love the team stuff. I got so many messages about that podcast, and that was all about team for me. And so, my focus has been that, and it’s the hardest thing. Like I shared really transparently in that episode, why it’s so hard … but it’s also the most rewarding thing. Having a team that is that many people working in your company, moving things forward, moving that needle forward, growing the company, supporting all of our clients is so powerful, I can’t even put words behind it. And it’s worth every single struggle that it took to get here and that I will go through in the future. ‘Cause yeah, there’s always going to be … managing people is hard. There’s always going to be struggles and issues, but you work through them, and they feel less and less hard as you grow honestly, because you’re like, “Just another day, just another day in the life.”

Emily Hirsh: So that is why I hired an author for my team. Go read the book People-First Culture if you haven’t. And if this inspires you at all, maybe it’s just investing in like a $100 dollar training for your team, or a course. But really think like, your job as a leader, as you grow your team, is to make sure your team has the resources to not only do their best, but also grow. And if you give people the resources to grow, they will be so grateful. A lot of employees value that more than they do money. I’ve actually, like I didn’t know, realize this, but when we’ve done culture meetings in our team, people have said the exact words of, “I don’t care about the money, I just don’t want to be bored. I always want to be learning, I love learning.” And so a lot of times … I must attract that on my team.

Emily Hirsh: But when I realized how much of a value that was for people … I mean people just feel inspired to get up, and to do their job in the morning, if they’re growing and if they’re becoming better and if they’re slightly challenged but they get to overcome those challenges and then see the reward pay off of their work. And that’s my entire team, because I set up that culture. Hopefully this was helpful for you guys. What [I’d] love is if you love this episode, can you tag me in your Insta-story? Screenshot this, tag me in your Insta-story, tell me that you’re listening to it, and I will re-share it on mine. I love to see those, it’s so much fun. And again, if you like the team stuff, tell me, because otherwise I’ll just keep doing marketing tips. But I really do get a lot of requests for behind the scenes team stuff, so I’ll keep that coming, sprinkled in over the marketing stuff. Thanks so much for tuning in today guys.

Emily Hirsh: Thanks for listening to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Go behind the scenes of multimillion dollar ad campaigns and strategies, dive deep into The Hirsh Process, and listen to our most popular episodes over at HirshMarketingUnderground.com. If you loved this episode of the podcast, do me a favor and head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review, so we can reach more people and change more lives with this content. That’s all for now, and I’ll catch you next time.