Leadership Lessons to Grow the Right Team

 keywords

team building, leadership, business growth, employee development, home service industry


 summary

In this episode of the Off the Ladder Podcast, Branden Sewell discusses the importance of investing in a team for business success. He emphasizes the need for leaders to make the decision to build a strong team, foster a positive culture, and take ownership of their leadership practices. The conversation covers practical steps for team development, the significance of empowering employees, and strategies for attracting and retaining talent in the home service industry.


 takeaways

Investing in a team brings benefits to everyone involved.
Building a team requires making a conscious decision.
Gathering the best team is a trial and error process.
Empower team members with responsibility and authority.
Give credit for success to the team, not just yourself.
Be long suffering with employees willing to grow.
Create opportunities for team growth and development.
Pay competitive wages to attract and retain talent.
Market to potential employees as you would to customers.
Everything in your hiring process should have a purpose.


Titles

Building a Winning Team: The Key to Business Success


 sound bites

"You have to take extreme ownership."
"Put out there the positivity."


Chapters

00:00 Investing in Your Team
03:01 Building a Strong Team Culture
05:57 Leadership and Team Development
08:51 Attracting and Retaining Talent
12:09 Conclusion and Future Insights

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:02.178)
Good morning, everybody. I'm Brandon Sewell. I'm the owner of Seal Pro Painting and the host of the Off the Ladder Podcast. And we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. This is gonna be one of the off the ladder daily podcasts, day two. And you know, just gonna start it out with a quick devotional for you this morning from Leadership Promises for Every Day by John Maxwell.

so today it says an investment for the future. the scripture is so David became captain over them, and there were about 400 men with him. 1 Samuel 22, 2. John Maxwell writes, Most people recognize that investing in a team brings benefits to everyone on the team. Here are 10 steps you can take to invest in your team. One,

Make the decision to build a team. Two, gather the best team possible. Three, pay the price to develop the team. Four. Do things together as a team. Five. Empower team members with responsibility and authority. Six. Give credit for success to the team. Seven, watch to see that the investment in the team is paying off.

Eight, stop your investment in players who do not grow. Nine, create new opportunities for the team. And ten, give the team the best possible chance to succeed. One of the great things about investing in a team is that it almost guarantees a high return for the effort because a team can do so much more than individuals. Or as Rex Murphy, one of my conference attendees, told me, where there's a will, there's a way. Where there's a team, there's

There's more than one way. And so that wraps it up for the devotional. And just to kind of, you know, when you are growing as a business owner and you're on on this journey of getting off of the ladder, this topic right here is so key for that. and a lot of the things that it hits on in this devotional is is kind of

Branden Sewell (02:31.01)
pivotal to you being able to get off the ladder and stay off the ladder. I mean I love how it starts out with saying you have to make the decision to build a team. So maybe that's you right now. Maybe you're driving in your truck or you're up in the morning and you're doing your morning routine or you're on a job site and you're working, you're thinking, man, how do I get off the ladder? How do I get to a place where I can step off this job, where I can

start f working on my business and not in it. Well, the big decision that you have to make is to fire yourself from doing that work and make a decision to build a team. That's it. Like and you just have to start. It's not going to be perfect. you're not going to get it right the first time you hire somebody. you know, you're going to make mistakes, but the biggest decision you're going to make is to to step out and start building a team.

Now gathering the best team, you know, you're gonna get things wrong, but it's a trial and error process. You're gonna refine your you know, your marketing to potential employees. You're gonna you're gonna refine your onboarding process or your interview process, you're gonna refine your onboarding process, you'll refine your training. And that's something that's constantly happening over and over again. You're evaluating, you're gonna hire people, and you're gonna be like, wow, I wish I was.

This, what could I have done differently to catch that before I hired them? And so you're going to have to go through that process. you know, and that there it is. It's a next is like pay the price. Like it's going to take sacrifice, it's gonna cost you something to build a team. It's not just going to, you're not just gonna decide to do it and have everything in in place to

hire and develop a great team. It takes work. you know, doing things together. That's important. You know, making your team feel like they're part of a family. you know, empowering team members with responsibility and authority. I love that it says responsibility and authority. And I mention this all the time. Craig Rochelle, he says delegate authority. Don't delegate tasks. if you delegate tasks, you create a

Branden Sewell (04:57.228)
you f create followers. when you delegate authority, you create leaders who think for themselves and can make decisions in your absence based on the values and the mission that you have as a company. and so that that's a huge, huge part of getting off the ladder. you gotta give credit to for success to the team. You you can't take credit for everything. as you're building, it's important that when the team wins and

Things go well, you give credit to the team. and you know, that's a huge thing. you know, let them know when they're doing a good job, not just when they mess up. you should talk to them more about what they're doing good and reinforce that more than you talk about everything that they're not doing right. chances are they probably already know what they're not doing right. And if you hone in on that.

I think you have a really high chance of creating resentment and things like that. And I'm not saying don't address it, but don't make that the big thing that you focus on and never address like acknowledge the things that they're doing well. If you acknowledge the things that they're doing well enough, then they're gonna be more receptive to feedback. and then stopping your investment in players who do not grow.

The way that I feel about this is I will always be, you know, first off, I'm a Christian business owner. one of the fruits of the spirit is long suffering. And so I will always be long suffering with an employee who is willing to grow. Even if they're messing up and making mistakes, if they have an attitude of owning it and a willingness to keep trying to get better.

Then I will be long suffering with them. And that's I think that's a characteristic you know, that Jesus has with us. Like we're not perfect. We make mistakes over and over and over again, but he will forgive us 70 times seven. You know, there's the story or you know, where someone goes to Jesus and says, How well, how often should we forgive? And he says, 70 times seven. So, you know, be forgiving.

Branden Sewell (07:24.654)
be long suffering. and really just, you know, the people who aren't willing to grow, of course, get them out of there. But just because somebody makes mistakes, be careful that you don't get rid of people who have a lot of potential because you aren't willing to be long suffering and patient with them. create new opportunities for the team. So, you know, you've gotta

create a business where employees feel like they have a growth track, right? If you just bring people in and, you know, they just feel like they're at in a dead end and they don't have the opportunity to grow or get to the next thing, or if you don't have a growth mindset as a leader and share that, then great people want to have great opportunities. They wanna, you know, improve their lives, improve themselves. And so you have to foster an environment

where growth is taking place. Right. And you know, lastly, give the team the best possible chance to succeed. I think this kind that kind of goes along with my favorite leadership book, Extreme Ownership. At the end of the day, you know, whether you find a great team or are able to get off the ladder is really gonna come down to your own leadership.

Can't tell you how many times I talk to guys who are like, there's just not good people. you know, I can't find good help. You don't understand. I'm like, I have an amazing team. I love my guys. They're not perfect, but I love them. Like these guys show up day in and day out, and they take care of our customers, they get the mission. and and like I said, that doesn't mean they're perfect, but man, they do an awesome job. And

You know, the other thing that I would say is, you know, I try to pay them pretty competitively. you know, if you have a guy, you know, who comes in and you're not willing to pay him what he's worth and he's good at what he's doing and he's helping you, pay him more. I mean, and you know, there is a boundary to that, right? Like some guys I think have unrealistic expectations. but you know, they want to

Branden Sewell (09:48.94)
they should just go like start their own business with what some some guys want to get paid. but, you know, if they have a realistic expectation, I'm saying like a guy who wants to get paid, you know, twenty three dollars an hour and you're paying eighteen and the guy is like running a crew for you and, know, leading and taking initiative and taking care of customers, and you're just not willing to pay more.

I would just evaluate like where you're at with that. and so yeah, at the end of the day, you have to take extreme ownership and say, like, hey, if I'm not getting good people, if I'm not attracting great people, what am I doing wrong? because most likely it is a situation where you are not marketing, you know, the same way that you market to

potential customers, you have to market to potential employees. And you have to foster an environment and an experience where great people are going to want to come to, they're going to be attracted to. so and that takes work. So you got to work on, you know, how are you marketing to those employees? So job listings, how are you reaching out to them? Do you have an incentive for get for your current employees to bring on others?

you know, some type of bonus structure for that. you know, how are you onboarding and training? how are you interviewing? Sorry, you need to focus on your interviews. Like, are you interviewing just for skill set or are you interviewing for character? Do you have a systematic approach to interviewing? All of these things need to have a system. Everything needs to have a purpose, everything needs to be refined and

there is a psychological aspect to each one of these things. there is a, you know, it it's like it's scientific. It's you know, your approach has to be data driven. It can't just be whimsical and feelings. You can't just put stuff out there and, you know, just s you know, one of the things you you see pretty common in trades based

Branden Sewell (12:09.496)
Post for hiring is like, you know, better have a license, like, you know, and all this negative stuff that they'll say in a job listing, like, must have a license, can't have this, don't do that, blah blah blah. And it's all negative, right? It's already assuming negativity. Put out there the positivity. so anyway, there's a whole that could be a whole nother conversation. And the purpose of these episodes, these short episodes is.

is to keep them short. So I hope that you got something out of this quick short episode. again, if you didn't listen to the first one of these, I am going to be recording these short podcasts. My goal is to keep them like 15 minutes or less. something that you can listen to on the ride to a job, listen to while you're working and get some quick

Really you know, effective takeaways for you and your business and give you just something to think about, something to take action on today. so I'm gonna be doing these daily for a period of time to see how they perform. and please share your feedback. Let me know what you think, let me know topics you might want me to cover if you're listening. make sure that you subscribe to the channel.

Leave me a review. I'd really appreciate that. Share this with somebody else if you find it helpful. if there's content in here that's helpful to you. And as always, if you need any resources for your business and to get off the ladder, check the show notes below. that makes it a close to this episode, and I'll see you tomorrow on the next episode of Off the Ladder Daily.