Fully Utilize Or Else

One of the most difficult things we do as team members is create the infrastructure of people and process around us as we need it on an on-demand basis so that we are eliminating the bottlenecks in our business, growing the infrastructure, and growing our company. The challenge is if you hire people too soon and they're not fully utilized, they can become dangerous.

I'm Alex [Charfen 00:00:25] and this is The Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny; we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how.

While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we're the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future, and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

Growing a business is one of the most spiritually rewarding things we can do in our lifetimes. It's also by far one of the most difficult. You've heard me say this before. The numbers don't lie. Out of 29 million businesses in the United States, 22 million of them are under $100,000 in revenue. A lot of people expect me to say $1 million in revenue. No. $100,000 in revenue. In fact when you go up to a million dollars in revenue, it's nearly 25 and a half million are under $1 million in revenue out of 29 million. That should give you perspective on how few businesses in the United States and in the world are truly successful.

One of the biggest issues that we have in growing a business is hiring the right people at the right time for the right positions, but here's one of the biggest challenges we have that a lot of us don't realize when we're hiring. When you hire someone, if they're not fully utilized, if they don't have a full-time job and the some, they can become one of the most dangerous people in the business. In fact when a team member's not fully utilized, they can cause you more problems than anybody else. Let's look at it. There's many reasons why, but I want you to understand why and I also ...

As I'm talking, I want you to think through the roster of people you have working with you and think to yourself do they really have a full-time job and then some. Are they fully utilized? Are they doing as much as they can for the company? Because here's what happens as you're building a company and it's happened to all of us. It happens to me. In fact, I have to watch for it happening right now. There's really no way around it. We feel a pain in our business. We're growing the company. As you know if listened to my update yesterday, we're at about $2.5 million a year right now, a little bit under that. So we're in that place where I'm hiring the team to do what I do well. We've built the processes. Now, I'm hiring the team to execute what I do well.

If you look at what I've been doing in our business, I've been doing almost all the sales. I've been doing all the coaching calls. I've been creating most of our content. So there's a ton that I've been doing. So we've been needing for a while and now we're actively replacing what I do with people in the business, but here's one of the challenges that may happen. Let's say you offload sales to somebody. Well I haven't been ... For me, I haven't been spending 100% of my time doing sales. So bringing in a salesperson, I end up with somebody taking over a position that is taking me a percentage of my time but not all of my time. Now, it's going to take them longer to do what I do, but here's what's happened to me so many times in the past and what I'm so actively trying to avoid right now.

In the past, I've gone out and I've brought in a salesperson or I've brought in a coach or I've brought in someone to do something that I've been doing and they're not fully utilized. They're not actually working a full-time job and then some. They don't have 100% productivity throughout the day. Here's the challenge with somebody who's not fully productive in your business. They will become dangerous. In fact, if you want to create a mutineer in your business, it won't happen every time, but hire someone, give them less than a full-time job, and you will quickly see that you have accidentally created a mutineer in so many different ways.

Let's look at why. So first and foremost, it's simple. When somebody doesn't have a full-time job, they're going to question your ability to lead because they're sitting there thinking "I'm getting a full-time salary. Why am I not fully utilized?" You have an obligation and a need to make sure every single person is fully utilized so don't worry about having somebody multitask. We might bring in a salesperson that helps us with other things. We might bring in a coach that helps us with sales. We might bring in a coach and we are actually looking at using one of our coaches right now to help us with curriculum development because she has a teaching background. So we do everything we can to make sure someone is fully utilized because I don't want anyone on my team thinking "Why is he paying me a full-time salary for less than full-time work?" They will start to question your judgment and your leadership ability just from that.

However, there's a lot more to it. I'm not saying that any of this purposeful. In some cases, it is, but in a lot of cases if you bring somebody in and they're not fully utilized, they become the person that questions things in the business. They don't have a focus. They don't have an outcome. They don't have something they're driving towards and they're not in a place where they're focused on getting things done. So what they have time to do is to question.

Here's what you do not want as a CEO. You don't want somebody questioning your judgment. You don't want somebody questioning the outcomes and meanings. You don't want somebody questioning what you're doing as a company. When people are utilized, when they have outcomes, when they're driving in a direction, when they know their clear outcome, when they know what they're accountable to and when they have a scoreboard that tells them whether they're making progress or not, they will be in momentum. People in momentum look forward, drive forward, and make things happen. They don't question side to side. They just get their work done and they stay in momentum.

If you hear any background noises, it's actually because I'm on a walk. I had to get out of my office for a little bit, get outside, get some bilateral stimulation going, doing a little [primal 00:06:38] walk, but I wanted to check in with you at the same time. So first and foremost, you don't want the person that you brought onto your team questioning your judgment and questioning why they're working full-time, why they're getting paid full-time if they're not actually working full-time or even if somebody's part-time and you're not utilizing all the hours you're paying them for, they're going to start to question you. They're going to bring up questions, and that's going to make people possibly question your leadership and question your judgment. You don't need that.

One of the facts of business that I share with entrepreneurs all the time is that the most vulnerable person in any business is the person in charge because any issue, any challenge, any problem with the business is that person's responsibility. So if you're the person running the business, any issue in the business is your issue and so you don't want to create any appearance of not knowing what you're doing. You don't want to create any appearance of not having thought through what you're doing. So if somebody's not fully utilized, you're going to create that appearance and increase the vulnerability of what's going on. If that person starts questioning you, it's only going to make you more vulnerable in your business. Whether they're doing it on purpose consciously or less than consciously, it's still going to bring you challenges.

Now, let's say you bring somebody in and at the beginning, they're not utilized. They don't have enough to do. Well what happens if they get used to the position being easy and not being that pressure-filled and not having to do that much? When you start to transition that person to doing more, when the position actually starts to take over, when they start feeling the pressure, there's a high likelihood that you start seeing challenges with that person. In fact, you take somebody who could have been successful if they came in and expectations were set correctly and they were fully utilized from the beginning and you actually set them up as a massive challenge in the business because, as you try to move them from partial productivity to total productivity, you can experience tons of challenges with them.

Again, this can cause people to question your judgment on the team. This can cause them to question your judgment on the team. This can cause them to have other people on your team questioning your judgment. I don't want to see that happen. When people are fully utilized, they focus at a much, much higher level. Now, this used to happen to me all the time in business. When I was younger, I didn't really understand how to hire people in the right way so that they were fully utilized. I didn't understand how to sit down and create a [four R 00:09:00] document where I spelled out the role, responsibilities, results, and requirements for an individual and then I could go over it and say "Is this is a full-time job?" If it's not, I add more to it.

When I first started, I would feel pain like I feel pain in sales. So I'd go out and hire a salesperson. Well that person was ... I was handling the sales up to that point, and I'd bring in a salesperson. They'd be a working a fraction of their time, and all of these challenges would ensue. Here's the reality. When somebody's fully utilized, there is a very small, minuscule, almost nonexistent chance that person will get into momentum. In fact, it's the opposite. When somebody's not fully utilized, they will be out of momentum. They will be judgmental. They will usually be frustrated. They won't feel as excited as the other members of the team. Energetically, they will feel like they're unimportant and unproductive.

That is a dangerous person to have on your team because when you put ... You take a great person, you make them feel unimportant, not utilized, and unproductive, and they will start to cause and create challenges for you and they will start to have challenges themselves. You can take the best team member you possibly could have and put them in a situation. There's a high ... In that situation, there's a high likelihood you start to have challenges with them. So as I go through this, I want you to think through the roster of people you have working with you. Are they all fully utilized? Do they have a full-time job and then a little bit extra? Do they all have clear outcomes, clear accountability for what they're doing, and a scoreboard that shows them if they're making progress? Is every member of your team in momentum and moving forward? Because if anyone is partially utilized or doesn't have a full-time job or doesn't have enough to do, that is always going to be one of the most dangerous members of your team.

If you're ready to start fully utilizing your entire team, if you're ready to start building the team around you that not only gets them into momentum and is in momentum, that puts you into a much higher level of momentum, if you're ready to finally build the team and the organization that's going to help you go out and make a massive dent in the universe, then connect with us. Go to billionairecode.com and fill out a short application so that you can get on the phone with me or a member of my team and let us explain to you the coaching programs we have where we can show you how to strategically plan so that you know exactly where you're going and you're no longer the biggest bottleneck.

We'll show you how to communicate with your team in a way that everyone knows what's going on and they all know how to move forward and you stop having communication issues, and we'll show you how to systematically build the infrastructure of people and process around you so your business can scale as fast as the opportunity you've created. Go to billionairecode.com, fill out our application, and we look forward to connecting with you.