#003 How to Build a Self-Sufficient Team: Stop Micromanaging and Create Leaders Who Take Action

Exhausted from micromanaging your team while they still don't take action? This episode is why your team isn't duplicating your results and why it's not your fault.

If you've ever thought "why isn't my team showing up like I do?" or "am I failing as a leader?" you're carrying guilt that was never yours to carry.

I'm breaking down:

• Why duplication actually fails in most businesses
• John Maxwell's Law of the Lid and what it means for your leadership
• The neuroscience behind why we get addicted to rescuing our teams (oxytocin and dopamine are keeping you stuck)
• How to stop being everyone's mom and start building leaders who take ownership

This is for the entrepreneur who's done everything "right" but is still doing all the heavy lifting. It's time to build a self-sufficient team.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Okay, so I had two conversations this week that absolutely broke my heart, and they also lit a fire in me to record this episode. So thank you to both of you for the inspiration. These two women, they're both leaders. They both were carrying so much guilt and shame because their teams weren't duplicating the way that they thought that they should be.

And I'm gonna be very real and transparent with you. This is one of the most misunderstood, most painful parts of building a team in network marketing, direct sales, affiliate marketing, social selling, and high ticket, low ticket. Whatever industry you're in, if you are building a business. That has a team attached to it, and you are leading that team.

This episode is gonna be for you, and I want you to know that that duplication isn't something that you force. And [00:01:00] if you feel like you're trying to force it, we're gonna get into this in the episode, then that is your first thing. That's your first area of opportunity. Duplication is something that you model and even then.

Not everyone's gonna do it, so let's unpack this together.

Okay? If you have ever felt like and said these things, had these questions rolling around in your brain, why isn't my team showing up the way I do? Am I doing something wrong as a leader? Should I be doing more challenges, more incentives? Should I be doing more things for them? Should I be holding their hand here?

Maybe you've had a question, you've questioned things in your mind. Why do I feel responsible for their results? Because if you're listening to this episode and this is resonating, I guarantee you that you have felt responsible in some capacity for their results or lack thereof. And before we get into this, and I kind of [00:02:00] share with you these stories of these women, I want you to understand something very clearly.

You are not responsible for anyone else's failures or lack of success. You can't take that on. And yes, we all know that, right? Duh, Stefanie. But there's another piece to this too. That we often miss and we do take credit for. We always like to take credit for the leaders in our organization that are winning, that are having success.

We like to think that we contributed to that, right? And in some capacity you do, but you cannot take responsibility or ownership for that either. You cannot take responsibility for their failures or their successes. You're simply there. To model behavior, to inspire, to do the work yourself, and that's gonna duplicate down.

But a lot of people, they'll take [00:03:00] responsibility for one and not the other. They'll take responsibility for the failures, or they'll take responsibility for the wins. But you can't take responsibility for either, because guess what? At the end of the day, it is not on you. It is on that person who decided to start their own business.

Regardless of whatever industry you are in, they're an adult. They made a decision. It is their responsibility. You can't be responsible for their success or their failures, and if you feel like you are responsible for the results. This is an amazing area of opportunity in your leadership and in your growth.

You are not failing as a leader, and I want you to hear me really loudly. You are just operating under the wrong belief system about what leadership actually is and what your role as a leader is. today actually I'm having a conversation [00:04:00] with one of the girls on my team, and she, she's working her ass off.

She has she's got a few different things that she's doing. She's got a few irons in the fire, multiple streams of income, which I will be talking about on a later episode. And how I don't think that it is conducive until you have reached a certain point in your business and you have at least, I would say.

A million in revenue in a year that you do not start putting your eggs in multiple different baskets. Yes. You hear the phrase all the time of the average millionaire has seven to 10 income streams, and that's true, but they did not get those seven to 10 income streams by doing them all at the same time.

Your energy and your capacity and your focus cannot build multiple things at once and be. Wildly successful in all of them. It doesn't happen. So I will be breaking that down on a later episode. But she is a leader. She is consistent. She is showing up, she's doing, all [00:05:00] the things.

But her team, her downline is, is a little quiet, a little quieter than she'd like. And in this conversation she's sitting there telling me that she feels like she's failing them. That, you know, maybe she's not teaching them right? Maybe she's not motivating them enough. Maybe she's not being a good enough leader.

 I full on, like I just stopped her and I have her journaling on a couple different things that I want her to really sit with and reflect. Because at the end of the day, the power is within us. We have the power to create our realities. And we also have the power to create realities that we don't like.

 so I wanted her to sit down and really reflect on what she's doing personally, not anyone else, not external, but what is she doing or could be doing that could be causing this pattern [00:06:00] because it's something that she's doing. Maybe it's a belief system, maybe it's, you know, something inside of her that I want her to help.

Herself pull out of her own self. And that's where her power's gonna lie. So she's sitting there telling me she's failing them, right? And I stopped her. And I, I also asked her if she had ever heard of John Maxwell's Law of the Lid. I read this book a few years ago. It is called the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

 if you have not read it yet, you absolutely should. If you are leading a team or an organization of any capacity, even if you're in corporate America and you're leading a team, maybe it's a sales team, you absolutely need to read this book to become a better leader, to be self-aware. And she hadn't, she had never heard of this before.

 so if you're like her and you've never heard of this I'm gonna break it down pretty simply, The law of the lid basically states that your ability to lead other people is capped by your own level of growth. So I gave her [00:07:00] an example, and I'm gonna give you the same example. If you and your leadership, your capacity, your coaching, your influence, your, and let's just go social media marketing and how you speak is at a level five in consistency, mindset, skill, whatever.

You can only effectively lead, recruit, attract, influence people who are at a five or below, you can't recruit or coach or lead someone that's at a seven if you are not there yet yourself. You don't have the skillset in order to do that. I think that the greatest expense in life is lack of knowledge, and that's really powerful in itself because if you wanna be more.

Powerful. If you wanna be more influential, if you wanna help more people, the gap there is in your knowledge, There's a little quota out there that says skills pay the bills, right? And the skillset comes with increasing your knowledge. Now, it's not a [00:08:00] bad thing that, you know, maybe her level of influence and leadership is at a five.

 she mentioned, she's like, I wanna work with people like you who are driven, who can, you know, who don't need to be handheld on all these things. And I just simply explained like, we're just, law of the lit is a little different. If she was at a 10 and I was at a 10, like we could co-create together.

And this is where it becomes super, super, super powerful. You just have to increase your level of influence, and there's so much power in that because you have complete control over that. So when you're building a team, you are gonna attract people who are where you are now, and where you were, the version of you prior to today, and the level of growth and knowledge and skillset that you possess now.

Some of them are gonna be ready to grow and some of them are not, and it's not your responsibility to pull or drag them with you. How exhausting your responsibility, however, is to [00:09:00] keep growing, is to keep leveling up, is to keep being the example for these people that you have connected with. That is your job.

That is your responsibility. I love Mel Robbins. And she always talks about the Let Them Theory. And if you have not went out there and read her book, I highly recommend doing it. I actually recommend listening to the audio version versus reading the book. 'cause she definitely goes on little tangents, but she talks about let them, let them do what they want, let them not do the things that they're supposed to do and then let you, this is the piece that a lot of people misunderstand is then let you.

Operate how you need to operate from that. And this isn't control, this isn't ultimatums. This is nothing like that. These are boundaries. actually the girl that was staying me with me this week, we worked through a lot of boundary limiting beliefs And she left and she's [00:10:00] like, I can't thank you enough.

Like, I feel so much lighter. your responsibility is to keep growing, to be the example, the influence for other people. 'cause when you do this, when you start doing better, when you rise, when you increase your lid capacity, right, you're gonna start attracting different types of people who meet your new frequency.

 you can't carry the people who aren't willing to do the same. You just can't, you're gonna get burnt out. You're gonna be so disappointed it's not realistic. I talk about realistic expectations all the time. Now I wanna talk about the myth of good leadership, quote unquote, if you could see my little fingers right now, we're doing air quotes and doing things for them.

This is where so many people, especially in the beginning of leading a team or mentoring or coaching, anything like that a lot of women get wrong. We think that, and I am guilty of this too, I'm call myself out. I've been in this industry for about 10 years. I made this mistake in the very [00:11:00] early years of being a leader and a coach and a mentor.

This is where a lot of people, a lot of women get it wrong. We think that being a good leader means doing things for them. One of my favorite quotes is, If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day.

If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for the rest of his life. sometimes we think being a good leader means, doing their content for them, managing their schedules. Reminding them, convincing them to show up to team calls, holding their hand through every single step. In the case of my friend, it was, it was so crazy, it was managing her lead, like her 41.

She has 41 people that she's mentored right now managing their leads, managing and doing their leads follow up, nurturing their leads, getting on their sales calls. Booking the sales calls, all the things. And I'm like, holy shit, sister, [00:12:00] when do you fucking have time to do anything for your business?

And she said, Stef, that's why I am. Like, I, I cry. Like I'm, I'm, I don't, I'm so exhausted. I'm so burnt out. I don't have time for me anymore. And they were, you know, I, I saw some messages and I was like, nope. So here's where we're gonna set some boundaries. And that's what that's, this is gonna look like, and it's going to be for their benefit, because you're not gonna be giving them a fish.

You're gonna teach them how to fish so they can eat the rest of their lives. And as a coach, as a mentor, sometimes we think that we're doing them a solid. And we're not, we're disempowering them. We're saying with our actions that we don't trust you when you're operating in that way. That I don't trust you to do this yourself, so I'm just gonna go ahead and do it.

And how selfish of us, how selfish we have to give people grace and room to fail and fuck it up and be there to help them [00:13:00] get back up and understand their areas of opportunity. Now with that being said, like I'm all for support. I support my team. I'm all for coaching. I'm all for being available, but with boundaries, with respect.

' cause at the end of the day, obviously I have a lot on my plate. I have a podcast. I have a team of 600 that I am leading. I have. Uh, you know, other things that I'm doing. I'm currently in the process of writing my first book, which I just said that out loud, you guys. I just said that out loud. Oh my gosh.

Um, but I am, and I'm gonna leave the title secret for now. Um, but it's gonna be so good and a lot of people think that leadership is rescuing their team or, motivating their team doing these challenges, like doing so many things for their teams. I see it all the time. I see it all the time.

And then I see leaders burnout and they get exhausted and then they stop working because they are in a mental health crisis. And I can say this because I've been there once. I've been there, [00:14:00] um, and I'll never be there again. I learned a lot of lessons on that journey and I don't want anyone to have to go through that if they don't have to.

So let's talk about story number two. Talking about my friend. man, you guys, I almost thought that she wasn't gonna get on that plane because she was so just burnt out. And I'm so glad we did because we had such good conversations.

And you know, she's not on my team. She's not even in my organization. She's in a different team, has different coaching, different leadership, and they're absolutely amazing. I wanna throw that out there. I know her coaches, I know her mentors. They're amazing. but sometimes you have to hear things from someone who's been in similar situations as you.

So when we, when we got real about what she was doing and why she was doing it, she admitted she thought she needed to do everything for her team in order for them to succeed, because if she didn't do it, then there would be no duplication in her team. There would be nobody else winning. I asked her how that was working for her. She laughed because it wasn't, it wasn't at all. Um, her team is, was, it was not showing [00:15:00] up.

I offered my monthly CEO huddle call to her, and out of the 41 people on her team, one showed up. One showed up because she's been disempowering them this whole time without even realizing it and burning herself out in the process. Her team didn't show up. Her team is not showing up, which caused her to be a little resentful and that's normal.

I feel like those are normal feelings that anyone would have ' cause she was feeling like she was building their business for them and they should be thankful and all these things. Right, but that's the trap. When you try to be everything for everyone, you end up being nothing for yourself and your team.

They don't actually allow you to grow at that point because they never learned how to do it on their own. So again, teach your team how to fish, And here's the thing that kind of pisses me off about this industry, because this industry, network marketing, direct sales, social selling, affiliate marketing.

Name me a company out there that doesn't have some type of referral program, affiliate [00:16:00] program, anything like that. It, they're becoming very, very, very few and far between. This is where we are going in terms of consumerism. This is where we're going in terms of being able to create an income online. It is 2025 now.

Soon to be 2026, The internet is a great equalizer. We now have leverage that we did not have in past decades. We can reach billions of people in seconds. And also, I'm gonna say this, if you're not using the internet to make you money, you will. You will absolutely be left behind. 

You'll be stuck in the matrix. Okay? So thing that pisses me off about this beautiful industry is the fact that. And I'm guilty of this too. I used to do this is we don't give people realistic expectations. And that's why people are out there calling network marketing, direct sales, all these things, pyramid schemes and scams and things that are not true.

That if that person was actually educated in what this is and what it can do, they would have a completely different [00:17:00] belief system around this industry. I've seen this industry be able to change lives. Go from living in friends' basements because they can never afford a place of their own to moving into a brand new luxury apartment out of their friend's basement.

and they were coming from working 24 hour shifts as firefighters, like I've seen this industry, this business model, be able to do. Incredible things in Yes, a short amount of time. And it's not the income post or anything like that, the stories that are being shared online, because I do that, right?

Like I post those too. And I think it's incredibly important to show what's possible for this industry, for people who do commit to transformation and commit to actually building a business. Not just having like this side hobby, bullshit. That's why I hate the term. Side biz, like I fucking hate it.

 Like I just really do. Are you trying to have a hobby that takes up more of your time? Or are you actually trying to [00:18:00] build a fucking lifestyle that you love and you don't need a break from? So I'm not about this like side business thing. Now, if you wanna just make a couple hundred dollars extra a month fat, like that's your own prerogative.

But if you wanna change your life, like this is where realistic expectations come in. you gotta know what you want and what's required to get that. And I love the success, success stories. I love the income post. I love all of that when it's done with integrity and you're not out there lying, like I see people right now online doing I see results.

I, I see lack of results. And I also see people out there that are saying that they got results and they made this amount of sales and. I can see the receipts that they have not, that is not integrity. That is not okay. but I believe in income post. I believe women should be talking about money.

I believe that we should be sharing success stories because proof of concept matters. Seeing someone else actually [00:19:00] do the thing. That's what opens up belief. But at the same time, here's where it goes sideways, because people will see those posts. The, I made six figures in six months moments, and that's what I built my brand around actually.

But they don't have a coach who's also giving them realistic expectations based on their life. And I had a conversation with one of my new business partners today. Who, you know, someone asked her how long she's been in the business and instantly like she kind of got defensive of saying like, oh my gosh, I don't have any credibility.

I don't have any, like, I don't have any of this. So like, who's gonna wanna partner with me? And I'm like, baby girl, you are going to be in this phase of your business and your life one time, and this is a beautiful place to be because you are like a sponge right now. You are absorbing so much information and knowledge and perspectives and growth all these things.

Don't think that you should be farther along than you are. Do not fall into [00:20:00] that trap. I started with zero. Everyone that you admire and look up to right now started at $0, zero followers, zero all the things. Don't shy away from the fact that you are brand new. Share that that's relatable. Share that with your friend.

Like I just started this three weeks ago. Girly like. No, I haven't made a million dollars yet. Like that's D Lulu, and you know, I'm all for being wildly delusional, but we also have to have realistic expectations. At the same time, be wildly d lulu for our futures, and then work every single day for that D Lulu reality, because that d Lulu reality will absolutely come.

If you put your head down and you do the unsexy shit and you work, you will get that Now where I have a problem is that you have these people out there making false income claims to use as a recruiting, marketing technique versus operating out of full integrity and honesty and providing a safe space and realistic expectations for that person.

[00:21:00] That's where the industry gets a bad rap, and that's what I cannot fucking stand. Because if people understood what this industry could do online social selling, and they had realistic expectations and they had the ability to be wildly delusional and borrow belief from people who have done it, there'd be a lot more female millionaires out there, I'll tell you that much, because they wouldn't quit on themselves before they actually got.

 the level of success that they wanted. Now, when I say realistic expectations, if you're working a 40 hour work week and you wanna start building something on the side, low ticket, a high ticket affiliate marketing, like whatever, it doesn't matter. You are realistically not going to be able to put a hundred percent of your effort into that business in the beginning, and that's okay, but, and eventually you will, but not right now.

And if nobody is telling you that you're gonna be beating yourself up for not hitting goals, not making the amount of income that you thought was possible in 30 days or [00:22:00] whatever, you're gonna be beating yourself up for things that were never realistic in the first place. So yeah, like I'm gonna keep posting my wins.

I'm gonna keep showing you what's possible. I'm gonna be talking about money and income and wealth and all the things. But I'm also gonna tell you the truth at the same time, and we need more people out there on the internet doing that. You don't see the daily content I had to create for weeks to possibly months before anything ever actually clicked and converted.

You typically don't see the ups that went nowhere. You don't see all the mindset and the trauma work, the therapy, the books I read that I, I had to do to not quit. The rejection that I had to metabolize over the years, the months of planting seeds before anything grew. The identity work required to actually hold the success that I have now when it came, and that's why, one, I wanted to create this podcast.

Two, I am a super [00:23:00] advocate about doing that with social media, like showing the behind the scenes, not the highlight rule. And I'm so glad that Instagram and TikTok and all these social media platforms are finally catching up. Because perfection is not relatable. The highlight reel not relatable.

But those things are important too because those transfer belief, the income is real. The freedom is real. The highlight reel is real. Like the trips, all the things are real, but the path to get there, that's where most people check out. And as a leader, you gotta know this. And I'm gonna go back to my friend that stayed with me this week. I was looking at the conversation she was having she was actually attracting broke buyers who didn't wanna work because she was saying, it's so easy, it's done for you. It's all these different types of language she was using, was not attracting the level of business partner that she actually wanted.

And she had no idea that her language. And her posture, [00:24:00] or slightly lack thereof, she's gonna listen to this she's gonna know I'm talking about her was doing that You have to grow, you have to increase your lid If you wanna attract high level affluent buyers to your business.

Now when people check out because they haven't made a million dollars in a week, It's because they weren't willing to do the unsexy shit that creates results. Or because they expected it to happen faster than their current capacity allows for you have to become her in order to have and hold the level of success, wealth, income, responsibility, team, whatever it is, you have to become her first.

You don't get that, and then you become her. It doesn't work that way. So realistic expectations, and that's not failure on them, that they, didn't create results quickly. It is just a mismatch between expectation and reality. So how do you create [00:25:00] duplication? Okay. The simplest, most powerful way to create duplication is this lead by example.

That's it. Everybody wants to over complicate it. Everybody wants a hack and all these things, but that's it. Lead by example. Not team challenges, not extra bonuses, not doing the work for them. You show up, you do the work, you stay consistent. You model what's possible, and the people who are ready will follow in your footsteps.

And the people who aren't, they won't let them and let you. And it's okay that they don't in that moment. That's not to say that they won't in the future, but again, let them discover their own journey, their own path, like they have to do that work. And if they're not ready yet, it doesn't necessarily mean that they won't be in the future.

But the people who are ready, they will follow. And the people who [00:26:00] aren't, they won't. And that's okay. Your job is not to convince people. Your job is to be the evidence. That it does work. Now, you know, I'm gonna get a little nerdy, so I wanna talk about what happens within your nervous system when this is going on.

So when you're feeling guilty, when you're carrying that emotional weight of other people's businesses, results, failures, lack thereof, all the things when you take on their guilt and their shame and their lack of action. Wild. Your nervous system will actually be going into overdrive because you start operating from a place of, I have to fix this, I have to save them.

If they fail, I failed. I failed them. And that is not leadership. That is what a lot of people get. So confused with codependency, and I wanna talk about why you're doing this in the first place. So that you can really understand your power within this and move [00:27:00] past it to your next level of influence.

 when you are having these feelings and you are thinking that if they failed, then I failed them when they're coming to you for help. You feel really needed, and that feels really good when you're able to solve their problems when you come to rescue them. When that happens, your brain is releasing chemicals, oxytocin, and dopamine.

They're flooding through your system and what those chemicals do on a biological, physiological, nervous system level. Is make you feel when the Oxytocin's released, it makes you feel more connected to that person, to your mission, to your higher purpose, to your leadership, makes you feel more important, makes you feel more valuable, and then the dopamine makes you feel good like you did something right.

So every time you come in and you, you swoop in, you do the work for someone on your team, your [00:28:00] brain is literally rewarding you for it. And up until now, you might not have known that that's a thing, that your biology is tricking you to keep doing this. And it feels good to be needed. It really does. If you grow up in an environment where your, your value was tied to how much you could do for other people as a child.

This pattern is going to run very deep inside of your subconscious. Your nervous system learned early on that being needed equaled being safe, that was one of the hardest things that I had to unlearn as a growing leader where people depended on me. so now if, if you're doing this, I hope that that gave you some.

power. when someone on your team isn't showing up, it's just your nervous system that's panicking they don't need you anymore. What's your value? That's your identity work right there. You gotta know that inside of you, that you don't need to be, needed to be [00:29:00] valuable and impactful and helpful.

Real leadership isn't about making yourself indispensable, it's about making yourself unnecessary. And that's what I tell people all the time, sometimes they have a little empty nest syndrome. 'cause when we work together I really get you to a place of being self-sufficient. Now, in the beginning.

You know you're gonna need me, you're gonna lean on me, right? But my job as a coach, as a mentor is to get you to a place of me being unnecessary. It's about teaching people how to stand on their own two feet so that they don't need you. They don't need me to hold them up anymore. And I know that feels scary because for all of my high functioning women out there, we find safety in control.

 when someone doesn't need you anymore, we have no control, right? So I know that feels scary, but today that gets to be your old story. Your new story is this, is that your [00:30:00] value comes when you who you are, not what you do for others. Your leadership comes from your example not your ability to rescue or.

Your knowledge or anything like that. And as you're working through this as a leader, uh, you're gonna, you're gonna have some fallbacks, you're gonna have some slip ups. That's okay. That's normal. You're rewiring different neural connections in your brain, and that takes time. So, when you're going through this, I want you to ask yourself, am I doing this because it genuinely serves them, or because I need to feel needed.

So an example of that would be, you know, when I'm coaching my team, if it is something that they can Google or they can YouTube or they can ask Chad GBT, they need to do that first. It's not because I don't love them, but it's because if they need me for everything, they're not developing critical thinking skills.

And that's what I'm helping them do. that's a really great temperature check [00:31:00] to ask yourself, am I doing this? Because it genuinely serves them And like I have, like they actually do need me for this, right? Like if they need me for a sales call or to help a conversation and the dms like, yes, they need me for that.

You can't go to Chad, GBT, you can't go to Google, YouTube, or anything like that for that. That's where I'm gonna come in and help develop their skillset, But not if it's just a random question, like, how do I post a reel? How do I make a reel? How do I create a piece of content? No, you don't need me for that question.

And if anyone on my team is listening to that, you're gonna, you're probably gonna know that I've said that to you a couple times. Now, your leadership, again, is in your example, not in you rescuing them. It is safe for you to let people figure out on their own as they should because you believe in them.

Real leadership is holding the boundary and you saying that, I will teach you. I will support you, but I will not do it for you because that's a disservice to you. When you do that, when you have those conversations, when [00:32:00] you fully embody that, that is what is going to keep your nervous system regulated and keep you in your power and you holding your boundaries so that you don't burn out, and you don't sit there and cry yourself to sleep because you're worried about your team not duplicating, and you just feel like you gotta do it all for them.

You are not responsible for other people's results. You are responsible for your own growth, your own example, your own integrity as a leader. And that is it. That is it my friends. When you release the need to control other people's success, you are going to free up so much energy to focus on your own expansion and scalability.

And ironically, that's when duplication starts to happen. people don't follow the perfect leaders. They follow the real ones that are doing the shit. I will not ever ask anyone on my team to do something that I have not done myself or am not willing to do. You need to be that leader right there.

So if you are building a team and it feels hard right now, you're in that [00:33:00] season where your leadership is. Maybe at the ceiling right now, and you wanna make that ceiling the floor. I want you to know that you are not doing it wrong. You're not behind, you're right on track. As a leader, we all go through these phases.

Um, and this is just the biggest area of opportunity for growth in your leadership and your influence right now. You are learning what real leadership looks like, and it's not about getting everyone to do what you want them to do. It's about becoming someone worth following and letting the right people find you and come with you and build with you and the rest that's not your job.

period. You go out there, you model the behavior, you inspire them through your actions.

You do the boring, unsexy shit over and over and over again. You get back to the basics, and I promise you. Over this next 12 months, watch your income skyrocket. Watch your leadership 10 x. Watch your team find belief in themselves that they never had [00:34:00] before because you stopped doing things for them.

So if your team isn't duplicating, it's not your fault, but it is. Your biggest area of opportunity right now. I'll see you on the next episode, friends.