141 How to Build an All-Star Team Through Trust

Treat your team like family. - Lewis Howes If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at lewishowes.com/podcast/141 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:11Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to Five Minute Fridays. That's right, we're back. Back every Friday. And I just had my team in town with me for a couple of days this week here in Los Angeles. And was super excited to connect with them. One of them has been working with me for a year and I've never met her in person actually. So it was good to get the core group of my team together. Couple of other people that have worked part-time and a newer hire who I did not fly out yet. But eventually I'll have them come out here again soon. And I want to talk about, I get asked all the time, you know, how do you find great people on your team? I've got some killer all-stars. And the goal is to find the varsity squad.

• 0:52Lewis Howes?

  I have gone through, you know, over the five or six years I've been building my online business and being an entrepreneur, I've gone through a lot of JV players. And a lot of it, I take all responsibility on my end. Because I didn't know what to look for. I didn't know how to properly communicate. And I didn't know how to set clear expectations. So I want to talk about how I found my team, how you can find your team and the power of trusting your team to run the ship for you and with you. So the first thing really guys is you want to find quality people you can trust. And that you can trust them with basically your, you know, your information.

• 1:33Lewis Howes?

  Because my team has access to a lot of the trainings that I do, a lot of the backend content. You know, all the stuff I do, they have access to it because I want to empower them. I don't want to be micromanaging them or having them check with me. And then me implementing it, I want them to implement it and really empower. The growth of our mission, which is to serve 100 million people. And I can't do that by myself. So I've got to have great people around me. So the key guys is to find all-star players. So here are the four things that I look for when I'm hiring someone, the four things I look for. The first thing is attitude, because if someone brings a negative Nancy attitude, I just don't want them on my team.

• 2:13Lewis Howes?

  You know, from playing sports a lot, whenever we had that one person that was always complaining or rolling his eyes or never uh doing the work or just getting in trouble and had a negative energy, it brought the whole team down. So I'd rather take someone with positive energy and train them the skills than have someone super talented with negative energy. I don't want them on my team. I don't want them anywhere around me. I don't care if they're the best person in the world at what they do. If they bring the negative energy, I don't want that unless they're willing to shift it before they come into my workspace. So the first thing is the attitude. You want to find that. You want to make sure that when you're talking with someone, you're hiring someone, you take your time and you connect with them and you make sure you feel out their attitude.

• 2:56Lewis Howes?

  And get, I mean, listen, guys, ask them for references because you want to ask those people, what is their attitude like? And if they're, if they say that, ah, sometimes they're negative or this and that, then you probably don't want them on your team. But if they're like, you know what, they were always positive and always excited, then that's a different story. That's the people you want to look into further. So that's number one is attitude. Number two is hustle. I, again, hustle is huge for me. I'm a hustler and I didn't really think I had much talent. I had a positive attitude and I had hustle and that's what's gotten me to where I'm at now, along with building great relationships. But when, you can't really teach hustle. You know, someone's either got it or they don't. You're either lazy or you like to work and you like to get things done and you like to be.

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  Hustling. So I look for someone who loves to be productive and not just busy, but someone who loves to think ahead and be creative on how they can be efficient with their hustle. So it's not just about being busy work, but someone who is like smart and developed systems so that their hustle is leveraged and maximized. Okay. So you want to find someone who's smart enough to create a system to maximize their hustle and create this momentum of unbelievable energy. That's what you want to create. If everyone on your team is doing that, man, it's hard to stop you. So that's number two is hustle. The next thing I would say I look for is integrity. So I've had, you know, people in the past who just weren't their word.

• 4:25Lewis Howes?

  When we, when I'd set clear expectations, which is something you really want to make sure you do when you're training someone is to set clear expectations. When I would do that, the people, you know, would, I would say, you know, when are you going to get this done by? They'd say, you know, Friday by five o'clock and then I don't hear anything until the next week. And then they, they send it in and they don't give me, uh, they don't clear with me. They don't renegotiate their time. All they do is give an excuse or they don't say anything. And that for me is out of integrity. So you want to be clear with your expectations. Otherwise you're just going to be like, you know, frustrated that the person didn't do what they said they were going to do. Now, if you need to renegotiate your time and you need to renegotiate something, that's a completely different story. That's okay. But if someone says they're going to get something done

• 5:09Lewis Howes?

  or they're going to deliver something with a certain expectation and they don't, and they just make an excuse, then that is a no-no. Again, that takes down the energy. That takes back, uh, the efficiency and it brings down the whole team. Cause it's bringing down the mission and your vision. So that's integrity, guys. You gotta look for integrity. And again, when you're cross referencing, uh, references, you want to make sure you ask about that. And then the fourth thing that I look for everyone is talent. So you notice the talent wasn't the first thing. I feel like you can train people how to do a lot of the things in business. You know, there's definitely people that are skilled in specific areas. You know, I'm probably not going to hire someone that doesn't know how to do video editing. Unless they're taking classes and they're skilled and they've got experience.

• 5:54Lewis Howes?

  But there are certain things you can hire people for. If they've got hustle, they've got a great attitude, if they've got integrity. Then you can train them in a lot of the things that we're doing, at least with building a business. And building a business online. You know, if they've got any type of skills, if they've got a high school. You know, degree or a college degree, things like that, then they can learn these things. Okay. It's not that challenging when you're trying to build your business. But you want to find someone who is talented as well. If you can find someone with the all four. Then you've got a killer package. You've got an all-star player. You've got someone who's going to be on your varsity. Starting five. And that's what you want to look for is those key players who you can put on the court. As your starting five. If you've got some good players, but they're going to be on the bench.

• 6:40Lewis Howes?

  Those aren't the type of players you want. Maybe those are some interns. That you're working in, that you're developing to see if they're going to grow. Into becoming more of a part-time, full-time employee, one of your key all-star, uh, starting five. But you want to make sure that you've got players that could all play. In the rotation of your starting five at all times. That's what you want to look for. And here's the thing, guys. I get so many people asking me, well, how do you find these people? And to be honest, it's taken me years to, to figure out how to. Really communicate effectively so that the people that I'm working with on my team feel seen, feel heard, feel appreciated. Because I think there's a lot of people out there who hire and then just treat their team like crap.

• 7:23Lewis Howes?

  And that's not something I want to do. You know, my team came out here. We went hiking today. We went on a, I took them on a helicopter ride yesterday around Los Angeles. We went to a meditation class. I took them out to eat everywhere. You know, my goal was to really make them feel, uh, you know, appreciated and heard and seen, which. Cause they're worth it. They're incredible. Uh, another thing is most people don't pay their team what they're worth. And so their team feels resentful or they're always looking for the better option. They're always looking for someone else to hire them. Um, or they're not giving their best effort because they're resentful about it. They're not, they're frustrated. They don't feel like they're getting what they're worth. So you want to make sure you pay people. What they're worth, whether that's people in the United States or in your own country, wherever you're listening to this, or if that's outsourcing it overseas,

• 8:08Lewis Howes?

  you want to pay people what they're worth. Don't just try to undercut them. Create the win-win. Obviously, you know, make it fair. Okay? And that's really the key, guys. You gotta pay them what you're worth. Make sure when you're training people, don't just throw them in and say, go. You've really gotta be patient those first couple of months. If you're lucky like my team, you know, they pretty much were seamless within the first couple of weeks, getting them trained up. I had some training materials and documents already that I handed over to them and said, go through these first. So I trained them up first, be patient with them. One of my employees, I switched her over from some of the content stuff to doing a lot of the podcast editing and she was completely newbie.

• 8:52Lewis Howes?

  And it took her a few months to really get the system down, but now she does an incredible job and she's, you know, by being patient and working with her and allowing her to mess up and not get frustrated. It's now created a seamless process with the podcast editing, with the whole show notes and with everything. And it's beautiful. So that's really what you want to do. One thing that I like to do that I've been, that's been working for me is a daily check-in. I'm not trying to micromanage everyone. You know, I've got a small lean team. But what I do want to know as a, as someone who's, you know, paying all the salaries and paying all the overhead and has a lot of expenses, is I want to make sure that what I'm investing in is getting me a return, right? Making sure that what I'm doing to invest in my team,

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  that they're creating and being productive to move things forward for our mission. So I have them just send me an email at night when they're done with their workday with an update of what they created and what the results they produced. And if they have any questions for me. And that's really, guys, how I do it. It's taken me a number of years. I'm still learning. You know, I'm definitely not perfect at everything I'm doing with my team. I'm still learning to, to be a better, you know, coach or teammate myself. But it's a process, it's a journey and you want to give yourself that flexibility, be patient. But the key is to find positive people with a great attitude. Find people who want to hustle and who will love to be a part of a mission.

• 10:19Lewis Howes?

  Find people with integrity who are their word and find talented people, people that can develop skills over time if they don't have them yet and will become talented in what they do. And that is how you trust your team to get the most out of your team so that your business was more efficient, more effective, more productive, and get you the results that you're really looking for in business. That's the key, guys. Hopefully, this has been a helpful Five Minute Friday. And make sure to treat your team like family, you know, really treat them with the respect they deserve and they're worth because they're doing a lot with you and for you. And you want to just treat them really well. That's, that's the key. Have a big heart, but also make sure you're being clear with your, you know, instructions

• 11:04Lewis Howes?

  and training and making sure you're not crossing the boundaries of a working relationship, but treat them with the respect that they deserve because they are definitely worth it. This has been episode number 141, Five Minute Fridays. Go back to LewisHowes.com/141 to check out the show notes here of the main key points that we said for how to find and develop and trust your team and how to hire the right people and how to really build that out. Again, LewisHowes.com/141. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends because I would love you so very much if you do. You guys are incredible. Thank you guys so much for all that you do. This is Five Minute Fridays. My name is Lewis Howes. You know what time it is.

• 11:47Lewis Howes?

  It's time to go out there and do something great.