Ep. 601 - Your First Team

0:03AI is not about chasing the latest tools. It's about driving real business results. That's why we partner with Cadre AI. They help leadership teams build and execute AI strategies that increase efficiency, profitability, and revenue. Check them out at cadreai.com.

0:28as we scale especially when you're in the 30 to 100 employees and you're in the death zone you can often get busy being busy you can get busy pushing paper you can get busy managing reports you can get busy working on ideas that aren't necessarily the critical few things but the important many so help each other out by going hey taylor i noticed that finance is getting a little bogged down in some of this minutiae, could you help us with the marketing budgets? Because if we could nail that, we could totally take over the year, right? So get, help each other out, show them the blind spots, show them where they're getting beaten out on the field while you're standing on the sideline.

1:08Welcome to the Second in Command podcast, produced by the COO Alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the Second in Command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies, and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now, here's your host, Cameron Herold. I want to talk briefly for about the next 15 minutes around an idea that I've had over the last bunch of years around leadership and around people. And then we're going to turn it over to our guest speaker, Salim, in about 15 minutes. So I was coaching a company in Florida. This is going back about 10 years now, a company called Blue Grace Logistics.

1:55And at the time they had 400 employees at their office in Florida. They'd just ranked as the number one company to work for in the state of Florida. He was president of his YPO chapter. And I'd been coaching them for four years. I coached them from 40 people up to about 400 people. But when we were at the 400 person mark, there was some politics starting to creep in. In fact, it wasn't just creeping in. It was like a black mold that had kind of spread over the leadership team. It was like this ooey, gross kind of black mold of politics and silos and kind of turf wars and pointing fingers and bullshit that just shouldn't be there in a best company to work for, a best place to work, total open an office environment, a CEO who was amazing.

2:43So I was leading one of their meetings. I did four years in a row. I went down and spoke at their conferences and coached a lot of their people in person. I coached their CEO and their CEO for four years. So I was working with their team and something dawned on me. What's the most important team for the wide receiver, the Cincinnati Bengals? It's the entire team. No one gets this right. Everyone thinks, well, the wide receiver's on the offensive team. So of course that's his most important team, right? The CFO is in charge of finance. Of course, that's his most important team. The CMO is in charge of marketing.

3:15Of course, that's the most important team. No, it's F and not. When we built 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the most important team that any of the six of us on the leadership team was responsible for was the leadership team. We always called it our second team was our functional business areas. So the leadership team was my primary, and then it was marketing and sales and PR and the call center, right? Our head of finance was leadership team and then finance. Roman, the head of IT was the leadership team and then IT. And if you ask any of us, the most important team, it was 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Completely no questions asked.

3:50So when the wide receiver is standing off the field and he's watching the defense play and the defense are now running off the field because it's time for the offense to come on, the wide receivers high-fiving them and cheering them and slapping the ass and saying oh by the way i noticed a couple things while you guys were out there here's what i saw right one other business area for something specific that they appreciated them in the last week and it could have been jay going kathleen i just want to say fucking a to finance you guys crushed it by pulling those reports together for us last week i know you were super slammed but man that lived two of our core values and we just love you long time.

4:32And then Kathleen's like, thank you. That's amazing. But I got to shout out Chez. Chez, you guys over in marketing, man, you guys crushed it. You guys, you know, blah, blah, blah. And that practice every single week with every single leadership team member shouting out everybody. So everyone, and it had to be something specific. It's not just, I appreciate marketing, F off. What specifically did they do that lived a core value or that made your life easier or that made you proud to work here or that drove us towards our core value or our core purpose or our BHAG? What was it specific? And when we call that thing out, super powerful.

5:12So I would encourage all of you to bring that system into your weekly meeting. It doesn't take more than 15 seconds per person. So it's one to two minutes total to shout out another business area for all seven to get shouted out, all eight to get shouted out, right? It's two minutes at the start of every weekly meeting. It will be game changing for the company. A couple other things that I thought about related to silos and politics. I was thinking back to the businesses that I've led or coached. Second one is, does your company have a rallying cry, like a core purpose or a BHAG or a vivid vision, because that rally cry, whether it's win the Superbowl or win the world cup or at 1-800-GOT-JUNK, it was to build a globally admired brand or to make our vivid vision come true or to get to a hundred million or to get to the top 30 metros by the end of 2003.

6:01We always had a rallying cry that aligned, not just the leadership team, but everybody else in the company. And then our BHAG building a globally admired brand. Our quality focus areas, clean, shiny trucks, friendly, uniform drivers, on-time service, upfront rates, aligned everybody, our core values. So you need those rallying cries. And that pulls people away from finance is my most important area. No, no, finance is way secondary to our core purpose and our BHAG and our vivid vision and our core values. So the rallying cry is important. You also want to make sure that you help each other avoid the busy traps.

6:40As we scale, especially when you're in the 30 to 100 employees and you're in the death zone, you can often get busy being busy. You can get busy pushing paper. You can get busy managing reports. You can get busy working on ideas that aren't necessarily the critical few things, but the important.

6:59AI is not about chasing the latest tools. It's about driving real business results. That's why we partner with Cadre AI. They help leadership teams build and execute AI strategies that increase efficiency, profitability, and revenue. Check them out at cadreai.com.

7:24So help each other out by going, hey, Taylor, I noticed that finance is getting a little bogged down in some of this minutiae. Could you help us with the marketing budgets? Because if we could nail that we could totally take over the year, right? So get help each other out, show them the blind spots, show them where they're getting beaten out on the field while you're standing on the sideline. Um, make sure that you take time to get out of the office as a leadership team. Don't do your quarterly meetings in the office. Even if you rent an Airbnb or a breather space or some cool, you know, out of the office space, go somewhere that has some culture and have some fun and sit and break bread together.

8:03I love renting like a big eight bedroom Airbnb and everybody living there for one or two nights. But some time away from the rest of the business every quarter is really, really powerful. As an example, in September, my entire team is flying in. I've got Bianca, Giovanna, Guto, Tia Tadiana, probably now Julia flying in from Brazil. I've got Simona flying over from Italy. I've got Meredith coming in from Oklahoma. The whole team comes in for these things. They're even on these calls, right? But that breaks down the silos when you're all hanging out together and you see the entire business and what you're building together.

8:41I'm actually excited because I'm heading down to Brazil a few weeks to go spend time with my teams. I've got 16 members down there now, so I get to go down. Make sure that you define metrics and accountability is another way you break down the politics and the silos is have two or three metrics for every business area that ends up on your leadership team dashboard. Right, if you have a dashboard that looks like my Zoom screen right now with like 60 people, I don't know who to look at. If you have a dashboard filled with rows and filled with columns and it's all these metrics, you don't know what the most important critical few metrics are.

9:17So my suggestion is that you have a leadership team dashboard that's even just in Excel, it doesn't have to be fancy, that has two from finance, two or three from finance, two or three from operations, two or three from sales, two or three from marketing, two or three from customer, two or three from ops, two or three from IT that roll up to a leadership team dashboard and that's all you see. And you see whether the metrics are green, yellow or red across not just your business area, but you see the leadership team's dashboard. Green meaning that everything's on track for that metric. Yellow means there's something off that maybe we should talk about.

9:55Red means there's a fire we should kind of dig in. And every week, everyone on the leadership team sees the top two to three metrics for the entire business so that we all stay on the same page. And then we can go look at our business areas 20 or 30 metrics later. But finance doesn't want to look at 20 metrics from marketing, nor do they have time to. The CEO doesn't need to or want to, but that's what's going to keep you on the same page is that kind of same page. I also like creating some kind of a game on a quarterly basis. One of my favorite games that we ever played was somebody on our marketing team put the Monopoly board up on a whiteboard.

10:34But I mean, it was a five foot long by five foot wide Monopoly board. And every one of the real estate properties was a project. So there were, you know, the two purples were two IT projects and the three light blues were three finance projects. And each business area had houses and that you'd get like two houses on one of your properties if it was 50 % completed. So let's say the project was to, you know, roll out a marketing calendar. That would be one of the colored houses. And when that marketing calendar was at version two and it was being signed off on, maybe I had two houses. When it version three and we were getting it, you know, beta tested, maybe there were three houses.

11:15And then you got the hotel when the project was rolled out. and it was just really fun on a weekly basis at daily huddle to update the monopoly board so that you could keep everybody on the same page and then it's kind of fun when you're cheering on finance for getting a hotel on one of their properties because they get to go up and spin the wheel and community chest or chance is like dinners for everybody in the business area or free coffees for everybody in the business area or you guys all have to run through the tunnel and get paddled and like we do silly stuff as well but whatever it is that keeps you on the same page is how you break down the politics and silos and turf wars you see like the games and having fun and updates on projects but it's together as a team is what's really critical and then the last part is the last two parts the first is that the core values start at the top or really at the bottom.

12:12I think you should flip your org chart upside down and have the CEO and the CEO at the bottom of the org chart, supporting the VPs, supporting the managers, supporting the frontline staff, and everybody's supporting the clients, right? So if your job is to support everybody, it's also to be the ones who live the core values. You can't show up late for meetings and go, sorry, I'm late. What you're really saying is F you, I'm disrespectful. I think my time is more valuable than yours. So if you want to keep the company on the same page and really build that strong leadership team, it's everyone has to live the core values and that has to start at the top.

12:51You know, leading by example is critical. And then the last one is just to help each other, right? We're there to help support each other, to help remove obstacles with each other, to help, you know, if we see somebody stressed or we see they're struggling in their daily life, just to be there and support them. Because sometimes they had, you know, a tough couple of plays out on the field, and they just need us to chew them on a little bit when they're off the field. You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO Alliance founder Cameron Harold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share, and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our other podcast streaming platforms.

13:29For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOalliance.com.

13:55All right, listen up. If you're the COO or a second-in-command leading a company doing between$2 million and$200 million a year, this is for you. We connect you with a vetted network of elite operators designed to help you grow faster and make better decisions. We have over 175 members globally and we've had 800 COOs join us. And if you don't get at least 10 extra investment in revenue or cost-saving ideas, we'll give you your money back. Here's how it works. First, the vetting. Most COO networks are built for volume. They accept almost anyone, regardless of experience, role, relevance, or really even what area of the business that you're operating in.

14:33That puts you in a room with people at completely different stages, facing completely different problems, which makes the conversations less useful. We don't do that. Every member of the COO Alliance is a true second in command inside of a$2 million plus company actively running a team and every applicant goes through a live vetting call before joining. So that's what keeps the network relevant and high level. Second, the group model. A lot of networks group people at the exact same level. It creates comfort, but it doesn't create growth. We intentionally build groups with a mix of people slightly ahead of you, people that you can help and people that can help you because they're all operating at roughly the same level.

15:12This creates better conversations, stronger thinking and real forward movement. Third, structure and community. Most networks lack structure. There's no agenda, no accountability and no clear outcome. We fix that with every session designed with a clear objective. So you leave with decisions, not just random discussions. and outside of the sessions, you're part of a real network that you can tap into anytime with people you've already solved problems with that you're dealing with. Everything is confidential and everything happens consistently. You get 12 monthly mastermind sessions. You get AI-focused sessions.

15:48You can come to two of our in-person COO Connect events every year and now a third that we're operating globally because as an operator, you don't rise to your goals, you fall to your systems. We build that system for you and here's our commitment. If you attend at least 10 sessions over the course of a year, if you show up and engage, if you don't discover at least 10 times your investment in value through new revenue or cost savings, we're giving your money back. And out of the 800 plus members that we've had, only four have ever asked for that refund. This is why the best operators don't do it alone.

16:23So if you're the COO running a$2 million plus company and you're still figuring it out alone, or if you're the CEO running that company and you think your COO is, apply now or drop us an email. Check us out at COOalliance.com.