How to Keep The New Year’s Momentum Alive with Your Team

Caleb Agee 0:00
I’m talking about our first few months. We would have the Monday meeting, and then we would maybe not have it one one time afterwards. And we realized very, very quickly that the pattern of a week with that staple in it was very, very different than the one without. And so we were like, Nope, this is our thing. We will do it every single time, and we will never stop you.

Brandon Welch 0:23
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. This is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions so you can grow your business, eliminate waste in advertising and achieve the big dream. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m here with my co host, Caleb quad club. AG, ladies and gentlemen, Caleb has joined the quad club. It

Caleb Agee 0:43
is happening. What is the quad what is the quad club? It means that I will have four Ninos in Mikasa

Brandon Welch 0:51
and see that your mi casa, Ninos and your mi casa in

Caleb Agee 0:55
in my house,

Brandon Welch 0:56
four little babies, little

Caleb Agee 0:57
ones.

Brandon Welch 0:58
Caleb has a beautiful family. The Ag family has been part of my family ever since Frank and Maven has been a thing. Yes, and guys, we are almost, we are, like, one week away from being 10 years old. So it’s so cool. The coolest thing about being a small company is you can see people grow and just go through different phases of life. Caleb, you’re an awesome father. Oh, thank you. So yeah,

Caleb Agee 1:16
to learn from you. Little girl on the way, little girl, very exciting.

Brandon Welch 1:20
Do are we sharing names or,

Caleb Agee 1:21
yeah, we can go it is Eva Joe. Eva Joe. Love it, yeah,

Brandon Welch 1:26
yes. So we have, we also have four. We’re in the quad club. Yes, so excited to see you. You

Caleb Agee 1:31
beat me. There.

Brandon Welch 1:32
We beat you there.

Caleb Agee 1:34
Your pace was a little quicker than mine. Yes, but yes, I

Brandon Welch 1:37
have, you know, 10, 810, eight, seven and six. And you’re going to have, I will have 853,

Caleb Agee 1:46
or two and zero. Amazing. So

Brandon Welch 1:49
prayers be with you. That is Caleb’s big dream. We’re going to talk about your big dream today. And so it is a new year. It is everybody’s in this new year, new me moment. And you know, statistically, about three and a half weeks into the new year, this energy, this high, we come back into the office with, just starts to wear down. And so that is the thing we’d all like to keep going. Yeah. So this episode is all about keeping New Year’s momentum alive, yeah. How do you keep that energy and refresh that beyond just a seasonal bliss where you’ve had people probably out for a couple weeks slowing down, and now they’re just energized. But how do you keep that energy going in your company? Yeah, and Caleb is the steward of our culture and our structure here, and so he has observed three things that we’ve done to do that over the years. Yeah, and we’re hoping that you get to implement this in your business today, so people stay refreshed, people stay bought in, people stay excited to come to work. And Monday isn’t a dread, yeah? And, you know, nobody is perfect, but these are things we’ve clunked over the years, and they serve us very, very well. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 2:50
it’s really interesting. This is the first Monday that you’re probably at work. Last Monday was New Year’s Day, right? But it’s really interesting. I hear people at other companies and they say, oh, Monday like, it’s the worst day of the week. I genuinely get excited about Mondays. It’s one of my favorite days of the week. And that’s that, actually, I’d say the same, yeah. And, and it’s surprising to me when people are like, Oh, I don’t really want to do that. It’s, it’s, I don’t somewhere probably in the middle of the week would be my least favorite day if I had to pick one. But

Brandon Welch 3:20
Nate, the camera guy, call me a liar if this isn’t true, but I think FM team generally looks forward to Mondays. Absolutely. Yes, yeah, money is a good thing. So we’re talking about how we do that and refresh energy and keep momentum in your company all the way through next December. And with that, we have three tips. Give us number one. Number

Caleb Agee 3:37
one is come together every week as a team. Feel like you need to give me a low D baseline, boom,

Brandon Welch 3:45
boom, boom. Yeah,

come together every week as a team. All right, so we’ve done this literally for 10 years. I do not think we’ve missed a Monday morning meeting, or, in the case of a long weekend, a Tuesday morning meeting. Yes, we had it on Tuesday last week because we were off. It’s our mmm, we are there at what time meet the camera guy, 9am 9am I’m serious. There’s nothing that trumps this. Even when we have clients in town for a special thing, even when Caleb or I have to be out for a personal thing, it goes on, we appoint somebody else. We appoint somebody Yeah? The magic of this, I think, is that there’s no more than a week that goes by without people aligning to some sort of structure, yeah.

Caleb Agee 4:30
And in the early days, 10 years ago, I think I’m talking about our first few months, we would have the Monday meeting, and then we’d maybe not have it one one time afterwards. And we realized very, very quickly that the pattern of a week with that staple in it was very, very different than the one without. And so we were like, Nope, this is our thing. We will do it every single time, and we will never

Brandon Welch 4:52
stop. So we start. We have a very specific way. This has gone on for at least nine years, if not like, nine. A half, we got this slide deck, and we other than maybe a visual Here too there. We don’t, we don’t change it, right? Yeah. So what do we start with? Caleb, we

Caleb Agee 5:09
always start with wins, wins, personal wins from the last seven days, so one week and it can’t be about work.

Brandon Welch 5:15
Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. Yes, and if you don’t come to the meeting with a win. Actually, that just doesn’t happen. Everybody knows. I bet everybody’s thinking about it, driving in, what’s my win? And, man, just the magic of that gratitude. It’s really a moment of gratitude. And it could be things show up on it could be like, gosh, I got to spend a special hour with one of my kids, or my wife and I had a wonderful date night. Or Nate the camera guy bought a new car, yep. Or my dog is no longer sick, or went to a concert, yeah. Or made a cool new recipe. And it’s just, it’s got to be from your personal life. That is the first 20 minutes of our week together. A lot of times the stuff from the weekend before it comes up. And that is two things. One, it just sets a pace of good feelings. Yeah, it’s not in work. It’s like, No, that’s a transition from life to work. Yeah, the second thing it does is it creates an awareness and a shared experience within the team. Yes,

Caleb Agee 6:13
yeah. It’s, it’s an immediate catch up moment for everybody to understand, usually, what happened to them last weekend, last week, and it’s, it’s such a cool thing, because then you have that, you have that rapport already, that would happen, maybe on accident at the coffee pot or something on the way, or the water,

Brandon Welch 6:32
or extroverted people, yeah. And for, like, if you’re thinking of a big, big organization, especially, like, there’s some people that just don’t talk about their things like, yeah. And they might be a little bit more, you know, maybe not negative, but they’re just a little more reserved, yeah. And so introverts, extroverts alike, and

Caleb Agee 6:48
everybody enjoys it. It’s not like pulling teeth or anything like that. It’s fun. After that, we move from our personal wins to we literally, somebody says our vision statement out loud. What’s

Brandon Welch 6:59
our vision statement? NATHAN camera guy, what kind of world are we creating? We’re

Nate the Camera Guy 7:04
creating a world where entrepreneurs can confidently grow their business without wasting money on advertising. That

Brandon Welch 7:09
is, that is the Kool Aid here at Frank and Maven, yep. We take a drink altogether. Yes. On the screen, somebody says it, somebody says

Caleb Agee 7:17
it, yep. We usually just pick on somebody and usually the

Brandon Welch 7:21
new guy, yeah, usually, and if they miss it the first time they want the second Daniel’s

Caleb Agee 7:24
been the new guy around here, we’re like, Hey Daniel, yeah, what’s the world we’re creating? So we do that, and then we pivot to work wins. So in the same way as we did personal wins, we moved to work wins, because that we’ve talked now, talked about our shared purpose. What are we all here to do together? And then, how did we win in that last week, shared

Brandon Welch 7:44
purpose in a business changes everything. Yeah, we are not coming to work to make ads. We’re not coming to work to cut videos. We’re not coming to work to turn knobs on TV and, you know, digital platforms and all that stuff. We are coming to work to save entrepreneurs from wasted money on advertising and help them confidently grow their business. Yes, the world without Frank and Raven, that wouldn’t exist for literally, at this point, 1000s. By the way, we are over 1000 YouTube subscribers. Whoa,

Caleb Agee 8:13
yeah, it’s hard to get a round of applause with three people in the room

Brandon Welch 8:17
that dotted Ethernet. Yeah, I like it all right. Cool. Thank you so much for listening, but that’s a win for that was actually a win for us. This week, we had 1000 subscribers like Monday morning. Yep,

Caleb Agee 8:27
it’s continued to climb. Yeah, it keeps maybe even

Brandon Welch 8:29
at 1500 Yeah, we’ve got some videos that are kind of being promoted on different channels, and we’re getting new entrepreneurs into our mix, and that is such a big part of our mission. We’ll talk about that later. But shared purpose, if we’re not serving you one to one, we are still creating a world. With this podcast, with our books, with our training events, with our social media posts, we’re creating a world where entrepreneurs can confidently grow.

Caleb Agee 8:53
Yeah, so after we move from those work wins, we usually have what we call the solid rock, so we have this ugly little moss ball that was just a piece of decoration.

Brandon Welch 9:05
It was an ill purchased.

Caleb Agee 9:08
You just sit in your corner, right? It’s, it’s way worse than anything you’re gonna see behind us. And so we grabbed that, and what was the saying that we had a solid, solid

Brandon Welch 9:17
rock doesn’t collect, gathers our moss. A Rolling Stone collects. Rolling Stone collects no moss, but a solid rock collects a lot of moss, would have a lot of same place, yeah? So you can’t move the solid rock. We should, we should have grabbed it. So you have gonna go grab it. We’re gonna show it to you. But segment, we

Caleb Agee 9:35
named him Edgar, yep, just because Yep. And the goal of that is, whoever had it last week? I think you have it this week actually, and I’m watching, and you will pick somebody on Monday morning, and you will acknowledge that they did an awesome job. They were a solid rock last week. Do a little 32nd speech, and you throw it at them, and they catch it, and everybody claps. Yes, the beautiful moment,

Brandon Welch 10:01
yeah. And it’s just, we kind of use the filter of who’s upholding one of our core values, or who’s just done an exceptional thing, right? Yeah. And it could be for any given reason, and it’s up to the holder to pick the next holder of it, right? Yep, yeah.

Caleb Agee 10:14
So after that, we go into some administrative things. We do a Financial Dashboard. We look at our billing for the month. There’s Edgar. He just showed up. If you’re on the you know, listen to audio. You’re gonna have to jump over to YouTube, hit subscribe while you’re there, give us some thumbs ups and grab this video so you can see Edgar.

Brandon Welch 10:30
You might even get Edgar names. Yeah, who knows? Solid Rock award.

Caleb Agee 10:33
And so we move into some administrative things. We do Financial Dashboard. We look at prospective clients and what phase they’re in. It’s a big deal when we take on a new partnership. And so we all acknowledge the ones we are actively talking to, because it’s, it’s two sided, right? We want to make sure they want to work with us, but we got to make sure we can do our best work for them. And so that’s a very intentional part of the process. Then we talk about our week. Riley, our office coordinator, goes over our week and the calendar and all and making sure everybody knows what’s going on, yes, and then we usually reserve 15 or 30 minutes to go over some sort of training or a new process, or revisit a process we’ve had that needs, short of

Brandon Welch 11:16
new happenings in an ad world or the digital platform that’s changed, we’ll watch a

Caleb Agee 11:21
video of somebody that we know is further along in the in the marketing world than we are or pursuing something in a specialized space. Yeah, yep. So we learn together, right? We learn together, and then we end with our values. We believe

Brandon Welch 11:36
in saying what needs to be said, even if you don’t want to hear

Caleb Agee 11:38
it. We believe this is gonna be fun. We say this one every every podcast marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. We believe in filling one glass at a time. We believe if ads don’t bring smiles, fists or tears, they fall on deaf ears. We

Brandon Welch 11:51
believe if we’re not growing you, we are using you. We believe

Caleb Agee 11:54
the best friendships are forged around fires and food. Those are the six

Brandon Welch 11:57
core values of Frank and Maven. You should have some, and they should have some and they should be things that are actionable and that people can actually observe. Not we believe in honesty and integrity, but believe in some sort of outcome. Yes. And every person in the room eventually goes around and says those right, yep. So I’m just gonna recap this real quick. Start with personal wins, transition to company value and vision statements out loud. Everybody needs to hear you guys say why you’re here. Then you go to work, wins. Then you go solid rock award. Who has done a big special work win, who’s been exhibiting the character that we want in the company. Financial Dashboard. You guys should be reviewing some sort of KPI with your people. Hopefully it’s something that relates to the bottom line somehow, so everybody can have shared purpose. There we go through our week. We look at what’s going to be challenging with a week ahead. Everybody sees it. I know if Nate the camera guy’s got a crazy week, so I’m aware if you know maybe more, if I should bother him or not, yeah, or how can I help him? And this promotes him, helping each other learn something for about half an hour together. Go through a training topic, always make each other better, and end with your values. Then everybody

Caleb Agee 13:05
gets up, everybody gets always end it. Nate, do you remember how I always end it? I say, Guess what? Guys,

Brandon Welch 13:11
it’s gonna be great week. It’s gonna be a great week. Yes, that’s that is

Caleb Agee 13:15
literally how it ends. Every single you’re

Brandon Welch 13:16
running a television program. And in our case, guys, this is we spend 1000s of dollars and hours and effort like this is a two hour meeting every week, yeah, and that is expensive, right? Very expensive date. The camera guys are expensive. Audrey’s and Leslie’s and Riley’s are expensive, yes, but we do this because it pays such a dividend. So that is how you start your week. The same way come together every week as a team.

Caleb Agee 13:40
Yes. Can you kick off? Number two for us,

Brandon Welch 13:44
go through challenges together. This is number two. You want to keep momentum alive in your company. You need to go through challenges together. Life is going to give you enough like work challenges. And you know that whole trauma bonding experience with the people you’re closest with, maybe that’s your friends, hopefully, at some point, that’s your co workers. But we try to make positive challenges. And when we’re all working together for development of something together, we learn from each other. We watch each other, and we it builds this kind of respect and observation of each other. Yeah, and there’s no better way, I think, to learn and just connect with your team and people you spend a large amount of your life with than to do something that is beyond the work. Yeah. And so we’ve done this in a lot of ways over the years. It started as 100 day goals, yes. And everybody had to report on their 100 day goal, yeah. We we go back to that every once in a

Caleb Agee 14:42
while. Yes, it that. It also creates having these challenges to go through together. It also creates the good kind of accountability, the good kind of accountability, and I think that accountability has got a bad rap right now, in general, but, uh, the good kind of accountability is Brandon. I know what you’re trying to get to. You’re trying to do, and I’m going to check in with you on Monday morning and say, Hey, how’s that coming along? And then you have to say, I didn’t do so good, or, Hey, I’m crushing it right now.

Brandon Welch 15:10
Over the years, I’ve literally seen in our in our team, and these are their words, not mine. Yeah, we’ve seen the outcome. We’ve seen people quit addictions. We’ve seen people save their marriages, literally go back to a person that they were going to divorce. Yeah, we’ve seen people get out of debt. We’ve seen people buy houses years ahead of when they thought they were going to Yes. We have seen people improve their faith. We’ve seen probably 1000s of pounds lost, yeah, and ounces of water, drinking, yeah, drinking. Drink. It dragon. Yeah, you got it. And it creates this momentum when you see somebody else doing well, it’s not this, you know, jealousy factor. It’s like, I want to do that too, yeah. And it’s inspiration in its healthiest form. And so go through challenges together. You, as the leader, set the pace for this. You say, Guys, we’re not doing this to shame anybody. We’re not doing this to make anybody feel anything except for empowered and inspired. And that’s why the team chooses the challenge. Generally, yes. They choose their thing, yes. And all you’re doing is saying, dude, I don’t care if you want to get better at like, Dungeons and Dragons. That’s cool, man. Like, yeah. How are you going to do that? And if there is a challenge, it’s like, tell us, give us an update. Yeah. And so they build the framework, they sort of build the check ins. And yeah, I will say this, sometimes this challenge leads to people discovering that they want to work somewhere else. Yeah. And that’s okay. That’s okay because if we’re not as a team, if we’re not as a company, if we’re not as a brand, growing you instead of growing you like improving your life, then we are using you, and that is not the kind of company want to be. So yeah, here’s some other things you can do. There’s we have one going on right now that is super cool.

Caleb Agee 16:52
Started this morning. Started this as you’re listening. We are all in the middle of it. Yes,

Brandon Welch 16:56
it’s called 50 to fit it’s tough. I kind of adapted it from 75 hard to begin with. But there’s some certain things you can’t like, you know, ask people to do from 75 hard. So, yeah, we just said, Hey, what equals the best energy a well nourished body, a well hydrated body, a body that has had space and a brain that’s had space to process things, a a mind and a soul that is reading and learning and challenging itself is the healthiest, most energetic soul, a body that is rid of toxins from the food and other substances we consume, a body that is well rested and a body that is not distracted. So we built this 50 to fit challenge. And it’s literally a daily measurement. And it goes like this. We give so there’s 10 points possible. We give one point for 30 minutes of workout, three or an extra two points for an extra 30 minutes of workouts. If you work out an hour, you get three of the 10 points. Yep, if you drink your water goal, which everybody has a way to calculate that half your body weight in ounces of water a day. Another point, if you get up in the morning and do 15 minutes of either quiet time or prayer or meditation or whatever that is to you, there’s something spiritual, calming, contemplative for your day. Yeah, that’s another point. Tracking your food. We use My Fitness Pal, everybody tracks their food. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if you ate five pizzas. I don’t care if you ate a bag of carrots.

Caleb Agee 18:31
You have to acknowledge that you ate five pizzas, though, yes, because you tracked it. And listen, some

Brandon Welch 18:34
of us are just fine eating five Yeah, okay, maybe. But, um, you track your food and you take a screenshot of that at the end of the day, you cook two meals a day, instead of going out or have somebody else that you’re not paying cook for you. That’s the idea. So that’s a financial slash, a nutrition goal and a conscious goal. So instead of swinging by Chick fil A for breakfast, I might eat a handful of berries and fried egg for breakfast. For breakfast, right? Yep. And then I’m hopefully that’s making them contemplate either bringing their lunch or making dinner at home, and we’re encouraging more time spent with cooking, with family and friends, right? Yes, seven hours of sleep. That’s self explanatory. They get a point for that. Then 15 minutes a day limited on social media. So everybody has a device that can tell them how long they’ve been on social media, and it’s just like, keep that to 15 minutes. Yeah, here’s the cool part. Here’s where you as a leader, here’s where I am so excited that we as a company get to do this. You’re checking in daily. We have a Slack channel, or you could use a text message group or an email chain or something. Everybody reports their progress daily. It’s the healthy kind of accountability, no shaming whatsoever, yes. Just excited if you did good, it’s Hey, you can do it if you didn’t make it. Like everybody’s got things going on. But there are weekly prizes. Forever had the highest score, and at the end of this 50 days, whoever has the most points, 1000 bucks, crap. Cash prizes. And we have some smaller cash prizes for second and third place.

Caleb Agee 20:04
We need to Nate you need to make sure you put it like a catching sound right there. Yes, if let’s try

Brandon Welch 20:09
it again. 1000 bucks, 1000 bucks, 1000 bucks. 50 to fit challenge. This is a this has been one of my favorites we’ve done. We also do professional challenges, professionalism challenges like this, points based over a certain period of time. Yep, it’s things like, showed up to work early, read X amount of books, responded emails by the end of the day, picked one professional skill to make a noticeable improvement on. Like, there’s, there’s measurements that we do that throughout the year. Yep, one that is awesome for us, and it’s a little bit more consultive and maybe enriching a teaching experience. It’s called Dream manager. There’s a book by Matthew Kelly known as the dream manager, that’s sitting right over here on the shelf. So you should get a copy of this. I don’t care if you are the beginning, middle, end of your career. If you think things are going awesome or they’re not, this will help you align your actions with the desire, the outcome that you actually want to help you make more impact for you, your family, your friends, your surrounding, your work and your bigger thing that you’re contributing to. Yeah. But he also has a coaching program, yeah, where there are dream manager certified coaches, yep, we’ve hired one of those to come in and teach our team the principals. There’s 12 chapters, so we generally go through one a month, yeah, throughout the year. His name is Bill burkin. If you’re local, yeah, or if you’re not, hit us up and we can get you connected with him, but their other dream manager,

Caleb Agee 21:41
it’s coaches. It’s really cool to see. Really cool. Yeah? It’s the effect

Brandon Welch 21:45
of hiring a personal like a life coach for your team, but you’re doing in a group setting, and it’s so powerful. Yeah, so do challenges guys, even the little Edgar solid rock thing we did is kind of a challenge to say, Who can you know, show excellence in the next week. Point is you want, you want to have an extra component that kind of intercepts with life and intercepts with passion and intercepts with just the reward and the feeling of having good camaraderie with your team. Yeah, that’s good. Anything you would add to that? Nathan Campbell, guy,

Unknown Speaker 22:24
I don’t think so. I can say it’s definitely helped

Brandon Welch 22:27
me. Five stars from Nathan boom, cool. Third is,

Caleb Agee 22:30
third is make sure each team member has a one on one. There is basketball game. Uh, yeah, one on they play one on one basketball at lunchtime. No, um, we talked. We’ve talked a lot about the group, where this whole episode is about momentum, and if they’re these are, this is the time you can change things, and it’s not weird for your team. Yeah, that you can. You could excuse. You have a good excuse. New year, new US, New us. You just kind of pivot it. If you’re driving in right now and it’s Monday morning and you’re listening to this, you can call a Monday morning meeting and everybody be like, Oh, that’s kind of weird. They’ll be like, Oh, but that’s the first Monday we’re here together. So I guess that makes sense. Maybe he’s feeling or she’s feeling good about this. So

Brandon Welch 23:14
you do this middle of second quarter in the going, what for?

Caleb Agee 23:17
Yeah, what’s going on? Something weird, yep. So you have every excuse to make changes right now, and that’s why we’re talking about this right now. But more specifically, we talk about meeting together as a group. And then here we talk about meeting with each team member has a one on one. So in our office, we actually keep our team a little bit tighter. And we have, we have about 12 people here in our office. I meet with every single person on a monthly basis, and I have you sure does those meetings scheduled on my calendar? They reoccur on the second Tuesday at 4pm or whatever. Usually they’re at the end of the day. I find I do my best work at the beginning of the day, so I reserve that time and later in the day is more for meetings, but they come into my office. It is a time for I schedule it for 30 minutes. Sometimes it goes for 45 or an hour, but it’s scheduled for 30 and sometimes that’s all we need. And or if we don’t have time to do more, we cut it off and we move forward, but I turn on. Do not disturb. I put my computer to sleep. I pivot my chair. The the chairs in my office are behind my desk, so I pivot my chair and I look at them and give them, give them my full attention. And that is a moment where you can be a coach, you can be a mentor, you can be a leader for these people and and give them attention that they wouldn’t get otherwise. Yes, I see everybody in our office all week long. All week long, we are we’re rubbing elbows with each other all week long. But that doesn’t mean that they get my attention. Yes, in this way and in this meeting, I. I try to talk less than 25% of the time, if I can, and the words I’m saying, most of them are questions. Tell me more. Yep. How are you doing? Is usually the first one, how’s, how’s, Nate. That’s usually the first question. Good. And I just let that, let that one roll and see where it goes. I don’t really know. No agenda

Brandon Welch 25:19
on that. Nate. Very good.

Caleb Agee 25:21
Oh, no, very good, very good. So that is such a powerful, powerful time with those people, and I can invest in them. And a lot of times what we see is I can see things from their perspective. So, so important, so very often, I can be running a gun and be like, Oh, I wish they would. I wish they would step up in this way. Or why is this thing? Have a hole in it, and come to find out it’s my blind spot, yes, as a leader, and I haven’t, I haven’t looked at it from their perspective. And they need a structure. They need a system. They need help. They need whatever

Brandon Welch 26:01
they may, they may even have challenges with, you know, somebody else that’s a leader in this company.

Caleb Agee 26:05
Yeah, yeah, that could be, that could be the case too. I

Brandon Welch 26:08
think a pod podcast host maybe, oh

Caleb Agee 26:10
my gosh, no.

Brandon Welch 26:14
We don’t, in all honesty, like one of my favorite leaders and coaches on this is Randy Mays, who’s taught us so much over the years. And he talks about if, if there is a problem in your organization, and it’s it’s a surprise to you, you failed as a leader. Yeah, like you people having problems just should not be, like, bad reviews and bad like events outside of something just a fluke, like some, some outside force, people being upset should be, should not be a surprise to you. No,

Caleb Agee 26:49
you should know that that team member was having a bad day or a bad month or or something’s going on life. They haven’t, they don’t have this skill polished up. And you’re, you know that they’re operating at 50% and you are actively working on growing that skill, and they should know it too, that team membership, yeah, and so that’s kind of the other part of it. My rule is I never let somebody leave my office without having been challenged in some way. And I specifically, I’ll take notes if there’s anything else noteworthy during that conversation, but I specifically write down that challenge. And next month, when we meet again, I’m going to say, hey, how have you been doing with speaking up in meetings? How are you doing with making sure you collaborate with your team? Yeah, I’ve noticed that you’re, you’re a one man band, a lot of times I want you to make sure you go and get feedback from your team. And that’s the challenge for that month. And the next month we’re gonna say, How did you do with that? Yes, I a lot better, and I can see the result, and I can feel it, and I can and so we make sure that they have a challenge. And then the other thing I’ll say a lot of times, if somebody’s kind of straying and they’re having we’re using the word challenge a lot, if they’re struggling, if they’re showing up late, if they’re, if they have some actual employment issues, bad attitude, if they’re, you know, whatever that is, they’re not performing in the way they should be. Yeah, that is also an anchored time that we can visit, that I don’t necessarily wait for that meeting to address things if they’re but if, but if it’s tomorrow, I probably will. I’ll probably just talk to them at that point. It’s a little less scary than be like, come to my office and they’re

Brandon Welch 28:30
like,

Caleb Agee 28:32
and so it should not be a surprise for your employee. If they’re performing, when they’re underperforming, they should not be waiting for their annual review or a quarterly review, even to know whether or not they’re doing a good job, they should know exactly where they stand, pretty much at all times, and that is why we have this anchored one on one every single month with every team member. Yep,

Brandon Welch 28:55
to be kind is to be clear. Yes, to be clear is to be kind. So a courageous conversation is what my buddy Tom Douglas calls that. And it’s just like, man, if that scares you, or if that stresses you out, a level up and realize that you are doing everybody a favor, and by letting somebody continue in a bad pattern, it’s not serving them, because they either have false reality that they’re doing the right thing, which is not kind, no, or they are taking advantage of you and your team members by knowingly doing it because they think you won’t call them on it. And that is also not kind,

Caleb Agee 29:30
yeah, it’s not fair to everybody else in the organization. So have the courage do those

Brandon Welch 29:33
things. And it’s so it Caleb’s So, right? It’s so much easier when that’s already in pace, and then that’s not a extra stressful, like there’s a there’s a flow and a momentum, even inside your process here that creates that expectation.

Caleb Agee 29:47
It naturally. It naturally happens. The other thing I noticed leaders. We talked to a lot of business business leaders, and a lot of things me included, right? You, you end up in this place where, like, oh, all these things land on my. Plate. I feel like, if I’m not involved in this, I’m the one who has to finish it up, who has to do this stuff. When you are actively investing this time in challenging people to grow past where they are, it pays off in that they rise to the occasion and they’re able to to take those things from you, yes, that you’ve been holding on to, right? These are your, I hate the word, like direct reports, right? These are the people that report to you, and they need to know exactly what you expect of them, and they need to hear that, and you need to call them up to that place, otherwise those things will land on your desk. You

Brandon Welch 30:37
know what? They’ll respect you more. Yeah, and like, even if it’s hard, even if you’re just like pouring salt in their wound, or if you’re being a hair in their cereal bowl, as our friend, our friend Megan likes to say, oh gosh, eventually you will get the respect in your company and your culture, will get the respect for being the vehicle that took them to a higher level. Yeah, heard it said one time, leadership is taking somebody where they want to go, but wouldn’t have necessarily gone on their own. My friend Brian McDonough said that actually, that’s really good, and so good. So be the one that takes them where they want to go. Yeah, anything you’d add to this,

Caleb Agee 31:12
the only last thought I would say is this probably works for about a dozen people. I wouldn’t say that you could actively meet with many more than than that and that, that point you have, I would say, you have middle managers, and you, yeah, are actively the two pizza rule, yep, two pieces. You’re

Brandon Welch 31:29
gonna have to stretch and do it for probably the the next four or five you might be doing this with, like, you know, 18 people, yes, but conquer and divide. So if, if, at times where we’ve been, you know, heavier on Team count. I’ll take some of them, yes, and Caleb does some of them, yeah. But you need to have somebody on your team that for every 12 to 14 people, and that Jeff Bezos rule is the by the time you can’t feed them with two pizzas, you need another leader. But this person needs to know what’s going on in their life, what’s exciting them? What are they pursuing? What’s their next big dream? You need to know their kids names, their dogs names, what are they doing this last weekend? Where do they go to church? What? What are they trying to make happen? And, yeah, I’m glad you said that, because a lot of our friends listening have 5200 people. Yeah, yeah. It’s like, just make sure, get together with your I hate the term middle managers. We get together with your leaders. A better way to say they’re leaders. Yes, your leaders, there’s leaders, and, you know followers, and you know soldiers and all that stuff. But you should be modeling for those leaders. You model it for them. You do it with your six leaders. They do it for their 10 exactly, soldiers a piece. And then life is good. And then any bigger problems that can rise to the top that you need to help them address is better. So my friend Rich Carlton is so good at this. Yeah, he is so guys, this is pouring into your people. You want to you want to have momentum. You have to create momentum. That’s the big thing. You’re coming together every week as a team. You’re going through challenges together, keeping something exciting. You’re making sure each team member has a one on one that levels everybody on the same thing, pushes everybody to a higher level and protects against anybody going below a certain level. Yeah, just doing that, notching up, notching up, notching up, climbing that ladder. That’s what we all want to do. Yeah, this is what builds good companies. Is what builds good people. You don’t need to add to that.

Caleb Agee 33:22
No, I would. I, well, I was going to add to the end here, because I have two things I want to say before we before we start signing off. One, if you’ve not gotten, if you’re new, if you’re one of those new subscribers and you have not gotten a copy of the Maven marketer, this Brandon’s book on all things marketing, we don’t really hide our secrets. We share them with everybody, and that’s what we’re doing here.

Brandon Welch 33:44
Choose to do it without us. You certainly can’t. You

Caleb Agee 33:46
certainly can’t. Every secrets in the book. You can find this on Amazon. Just search the Maven marketer. We’ll have it in the show notes. If you do, you want to grab a copy of that. We talk about

Brandon Welch 33:54
vision, values and vows, which is very relevant to today’s conversation. Yes, you talked. You heard us talk about our our values, like you want to have that sort of thing, we teach it in chapter 19 and 20, yep. Second

Caleb Agee 34:04
thing, if you’re not on our email newsletter list, we send out every Monday and every Friday, we send an email out, and this is where you get updates on these episodes. But then you also get a lot of relevant extra content. And then, frankly, Friday is more of an inspiring, uplifting thing. And so I would encourage you to go to Frank and maven.com you can put your email address in there if you want to. You’ll

Brandon Welch 34:29
get all this stuff. Yeah, it’s good. So it’s free. We’ll never do anything except for help you grow your business, eliminate waste and advertising and achieve the big dream, yeah, and that is, we’re gonna leave it. We’ll be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing question. Life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why are

Caleb Agee 34:46
just a fancy lie. Have a great week.