0:00

Very common question I get. Gary, how do

0:02

I get my employees to work as hard

0:04

as I do? My reply on email,

0:06

to make them equal partners. The way

0:08

I think about getting team members on

0:11

board is by caring more about their

0:13

needs than mine. People talk about wanting

0:15

their employees to be loyal. Yet,

0:18

they're not loyal. When

0:22

I was 14 years old, the

0:24

first time I worked in my dad's liquor store, he

0:27

didn't say a single thing to me on our

0:29

40 minute drive to the store until

0:32

we got to the parking lot. And then he turned to me

0:34

and he looked at me and he said, keep

0:37

an eye on the employees, they all steal.

0:40

As I'm older now, I understand him. At the time

0:42

I was very emotional about this. For

0:44

me, my employees

0:46

are my family. I think

0:48

we have audacity at

0:51

the ownership level, at the leadership level.

0:54

The way I think about getting team members

0:57

on board is by caring

0:59

more about their needs than mine. The

1:02

way I do it is through empathy

1:04

and compassion and putting

1:06

myself in their shoes and asking why

1:08

would they want to be on board.

1:12

I reverse engineer their emotional graph

1:14

and then on an individual basis,

1:17

I try to understand where they are on their journey.

1:20

Sometimes kids come into my company and the first time

1:22

I sit down with them, they

1:24

say to me, one day I'm gonna run this

1:26

whole company and I'm thrilled. I'm

1:28

like, please, I'm getting old. That

1:32

same employee five years later sometimes

1:35

walks into my office and says, I

1:37

need more work-life balance because

1:39

now they fell in love and they're

1:41

starting a different chapter of their life. And I love that.

1:44

I don't judge them for not wanting to

1:46

work 14 hours a day anymore. I

1:49

respect that that's their interest. I

1:52

think it's a leader's obligation

1:55

to reverse engineer the wants and needs of the

1:57

people on their team. Not only.

2:00

philosophically, but in reality on a

2:02

day to day basis. And

2:04

I think that's a very, very

2:07

hard thing to do, but I think it's

2:09

required to build something big. When

2:11

you have the intent to care, you ask

2:15

the questions. You

2:17

know, when people come up with

2:19

excuses of why they haven't accomplished something,

2:22

it's often predicated on the fact that they didn't want

2:24

to know the answer at the time. Do

2:28

you know how many business owners avoid one-on-one conversations

2:31

with their employees because they're scared they're gonna ask

2:33

for a raise? So

2:36

that one's very easy. It's called intent.

2:39

One of the hardest things for a room like

2:41

this to do to build scale is letting go.

2:46

You know, people want to micromanage because

2:49

they don't realize their ego is tied up in it.

2:54

People that start businesses have

2:56

incredible pride in

2:59

being the best at the thing to

3:02

the demise of scale. Anytime

3:07

someone says that they're not

3:09

growing to the level of their ambition or

3:11

hopes and dreams, 99

3:14

out of 100 times it's based on ego. It's

3:19

they're incapable of creating

3:22

scale because they

3:24

fear scale because

3:27

they fear it in two ways. One

3:30

is a very good one. They're scared that if

3:32

they're not doing it, the client is not

3:34

getting the quality of

3:36

execution that they're accustomed

3:38

to, which is coming

3:40

from a very noble place, but

3:45

is required to make scale. Or

3:49

two, they don't realize how much

3:51

pride they have in telling everybody that works

3:53

for them that they're better at the thing

3:55

than all of them. Both of it comes

3:58

from a place of fear. You know, I think. I

4:00

think a lot about that when I talk

4:02

to businesses that entrepreneurs run,

4:05

I'm trying to understand can

4:07

they see that fear is dictating

4:10

them, thus having

4:12

them on defense versus

4:14

offense. Most entrepreneurs and small

4:16

businesses want to win the game

4:18

one nothing. They

4:21

don't realize that that's what they're doing, but that's what they're doing. And

4:24

I think for me, I wanna win

4:26

the game 17-14. 39-32,

4:29

116-104. Most

4:34

people don't have the appetite to make 104 mistakes. ["The

4:37

Big