Recruiting and Building a Team
Recruiting rockstars is something that just never stops.
It must always keep going.
It never ends.
How do you recruit these people?
What does it look like?
I know I’m preaching to the choir a little bit here.
First of all, you must identify talent. That is the first thing. It is recognizing this person is a rock star.
The strongest organizations are built on recruiting rock stars.
It’s not just recruiting the easy ones. It’s not recruiting the people who need you.
It is going hunting.
I’m hunting for rockstars. I’m hunting for empire builders. I am hunting for people who can lead and exponentially develop an entire structure.
Those people are not that hard to identify if you’re paying attention.
Here’s the problem.
They’re intimidating to talk to.
The number one way to know if someone is a rockstar is if they intimidate you.
If it’s scary for you to bring up the idea, that’s how you know you got a rockstar.
“She makes half of million dollars a year in her corporate job so why would she ever do this? She is just awesome and great.”
That’s who you should talk to.
Because if you get three people like that, those three empire builders, those three rock stars will multiply the entire organization.
That’s the key.
You’re going after the rockstar.
First of all, you just identify who they are.
Then compliment their work.
Compliment them. People never get tired of hearing how awesome they are.
This blows me away.
Even the biggest celebrities. They never get tired of hearing how awesome they are.
It is one of the easiest ways to open a conversation.
Not in the fake, blow smoke kind of way but in the genuine honest, heartfelt appreciation.
I know people that have millions of followers, and they love getting a nice email that says you’ve impacted my life in this way because of this and that.
It’s a powerful way to do it.
Then show them a vision and a future.
Here’s the thing. You have an opportunity to map out something that a lot of people can’t.
A lot of roles have ceilings. In almost every job, there is a peak, a place where it caps out, but you are in an incredibly unique position to offer somebody a vision that never stops. That actually could keep growing and get better and better.
The sharpest people in the world, the most intimidating ones, they’re going to be the quickest to see it. They’re will recognize it.
They’re probably will have to leave something behind.
But the other thing about these rockstars is they know they can do it.
They look at the path you lay out a path in front of them. The vision. The spreadsheet of a model. You show them what does these exponential three look like out to a thousand people.
That person will look at it and they say that they can do that. They’ll decide in one moment that they can do it.
They will go and they will do that. That is what you want.
Show them a vision, map it out for them. Do the work of illustrating what that looks like and invite them to join.
If it’s a real rockstar, you won’t even have to invite them. They’ll invite themselves.
If you can show them a path of what their life could look like, many times they’ll recruit themselves.
They will sign up and then invest in their growth.
And this is another place where humility comes into play. We need to be open to the idea that somebody will grow bigger and faster than even I will.
And that is not something to be scared of.
That would be something to be proud of.
Why is it that we want that for our kids? Every parent wants that for their kids.
But then sometimes in the professional world, we get all territorial about this person’s advancing too fast, etc. You should treat it the same way similar to the honor that you have of shaping your kid’s life.
It is the same honor and privilege that you get when you are impacting the people on your team.
Invest in their growth and become an advocate for their future; you become their biggest fan. Don’t expect it to be the other way around where they’re your biggest fan.
You need to become their biggest fan.
Creating a Legacy
That is how you will recruit these people. You’re helping them build a legacy.
Many people are realizing, especially today, that legacy is greater than money.
Many people are realizing that they’ve spent too much of their life chasing money and they haven’t spent enough time building a legacy. They get towards the end of their life or the end of their career, or they wake up one day and they’re so burnt out.
You have an opportunity to help people build a legacy; something that lives longer than they do.
That is amazing. That is so extremely rare and that is such an incredible gift.
It is worth sharing with the sharpest, most intimidating people of all because they’re the ones actually capable of doing it. They’ll see the vision and will do it.
If you can help someone build a legacy, then you’re really making an impact.
This isn’t about elevating yourself.
Sometimes that happens as a by-product, but sometimes there are structures where people would pass you.
That’s not something you should be afraid of because money shouldn’t be your highest pursuit either.
It’s not that we don’t like money. We love making money. We’re good at making money.
We advocate making money, but money isn’t going to be the most fulfilling thing to you.
Legacy and service really will be.
The other thing is you must remember that great leadership isn’t just about producing great results.
It’s not.
Great leadership is largely about producing other great leaders.
If I can produce great results, that’s a good thing, but it dies with me.
If I can produce other great leaders, that is the legacy. It outlasts me; it outlives me.
That means that the impact of my life lasted longer than my lifespan.
That’s what influential leadership looks like and is something to aspire to.
One of the highest hallmarks of a great leader is when they develop people and processes that fully replace themselves.
Not just more money, promotions, results or records, trophies, plaques, or titles, but you developed other people capable of leading.
You guided some other people on this journey of maturity, which is a difficult journey. It’s a very difficult journey.
That is what we want to aspire to.
The way that you do that is to surround yourself with the best and the brightest– the people who scare you most, most intimidate you, the people who could be better than you.
That is who you want because that’s how you change the world.
You get to have a part of that. You get to be a catalyst in that.
That’s what influence looks like.
