Keeping the Team Moving: Why a Rapidly Growing Team Breaks You First

So I'll go into just, I had a couple of thoughts about duplication, then we'll transition over into some culture stuff. But so one thing that I want to point out to everybody is the way that we build here is essentially like the way we build, we are building a team, you know. So Dave and I, if you think about how things work, the reason why we're up here training and, you know, normally if you would go to a company, the owners would not be training. Right? Because they're not marketers, you know.

So the reason why we're training is because, you know, essentially we built the company from the two people that jumped in was how many, 60 people or something like that in the room that grew to 10,000 people the first month, right? That's now 40,000 people. Okay? So if you watch and just, all you got to do is look at what we're doing. Essentially, we're building it.

It is a team of 40,000 people. So what I want to do here for a couple... a couple of minutes and then we'll transition over into some culture stuff. I'll talk a little bit about that. You know, you can come back up.

We'll bring some people up because we want to get some different perspectives on that. Because I want to talk a little bit about just real quick what you can do. Actually, not only the psychology of having a big team and duplication, but also what you can do. Right? Because, I mean, everybody will admit that the majority of the room is...

has... the majority of the room has spent a lot of time... getting ready to get ready. I did when I first got started. Agree?

Yes or no? Yeah, right? Sorry. Guys, everybody wait. Just scream like at the top of your lungs.

All right. So, so let me, let me just give you like two perspectives here. One's going to be a perspective from a team with a couple of hundred people in it. Another is going to be a perspective for a team with thousands in it. Right?

Like we've got here. So, you know... One is in the hundreds, one is in the thousands, right? So, if you've got a team in the hundreds, and the reason why I want to give you this perspective is because, even though you are getting started, who in here plans to have a team at least in the hundreds? Whose hand didn't go up?

Oh, your hand didn't go up? No, that was a trick question. So, everybody has plans to have a team, right? If you don't have a team right now. So...

How many people remember Niamh's story yesterday? Everybody remember Niamh when she came up? She came up and she said, well, and where are you, Niamh? Are you in here? Oh, here you are.

Hey. So, what she did was she came up and she said, when I, you know, it took me a while, I was getting traction, right? And then all of a sudden, what did you do? You decided, right? You set an intention in Atlanta, and you decided that by San Diego, you were going to be up on stage, right?

You, right now, are like in the top 10. Or right, maybe 11 or 12 in the contest, right? And one thing that I want to point out to you, that's a powerful side note, is that she made an intention, a goal. She set something specific in Atlanta to be on stage in San Diego. Did anybody pay attention and see her on stage here in Costa Rica?

How powerful is that? Give her a hand. So, what she said was she had, she had, she didn't have a hundred, she didn't have hundreds. Right? She had about 75, and I don't know if that was duplicated at all, but you had about 75, either personally enrolled or team, it doesn't matter.

That's a small number, you know, compared to 40,000. It's a big number, right? But in comparison, right, to 40,000, and the reason why I say that is because she said that she started to get overwhelmed, right? It was like, you know, you had a Facebook group, I think, or, you know, something, and because you live in Ireland, you know, it was kind of a time change, and people would come on, and they would be like, we've got a question, we've got to wait for Niamh to get in here. So you would wake up, right, to what?

Overwhelmed. Yeah? So she would wake up to overwhelmed, forget having a thousand or 40,000. Just 75 people, just the questions, right? So, instead, what I want to tell you guys is that when you start to build a team, how can you systematize and automate even a small team?

You can't really do this for... This section right here, okay? So this doesn't really apply. I'll tell you what does apply, how you can use it over here in another way. But what you can do if you have a team over here that's in the hundreds or less than a hundred, even sometimes if you get above that, it can get too much.

I was talking about this with Rob the other day, and I think that... I can't remember who we got this idea from. I think it might have been Randy Gage or something like that, but it's brilliant. So... Instead of fielding calls and even having a Facebook group that you're kind of a slave to, right?

You do a conference call, a training call, okay? Maybe once a week, maybe twice a week, to where for an hour... And you have to set the expectations correct. For about an hour, you jump on the line and you field questions. So for an hour, they expect...

Hey, Niamh, is... I'm this... Hey, guys, shoot an email. Post a message in Facebook. This is Niamh.

For an hour on Tuesday and Thursday... Everybody should be writing this down. This is the tangible stuff that you can use right away. For an hour on Tuesday and Thursday, I'm going to be available to take questions. Now, if it starts to grow a little bit, what you can start doing is kind of model the system that you were just talking about, the Communicate system.

It's brilliant, right? Have everybody submit their question. Just, hey, email it to... Niamh... Questions for Niamh...

At gmail.com or whatever, right? And then you go through those questions and what's the chance that somebody... That multiple people are going to have the same question? What's the chance of that? They always do, right?

There's usually about five to ten questions. Maybe even less than that. The majority of the people have like three questions that they're just a little bit unsure of. So if the team starts to grow a little bit, then you can just take those questions. You cover it.

Maybe you don't even have to open up the lines, okay? So... We'll just put conference call. Now, just real quick, just to give credit where credit's due, the original place I heard this was Randy Gage and the idea of doing calls. And the reason is because he didn't like three-way calls because of what we were talking about because the more they work, the worse they get, and then the more people are calling you.

So what he did was he did like 50-way calls to where he had a voicemail that said, if you've got questions, dial into this number, you know, Tuesdays at 4 o'clock. Yeah. And then he answered them all at once and had his phone off. So just wanted to toss that out there. Yeah.

And, you know, I never even did that because, you know, when I, before, I got a bad taste in my mouth about network marketing a couple of years ago because I had two companies go under on me. You know, we were talking about this the other day. You know, I had one company that went under on me and then another one did it almost six months behind that. So, you know, just side note, I vouched to myself. I was just super frustrated with the industry that I was never going to get involved.

It was something unless I knew that the owners not particularly perfect or had like 50 years of experience just that they were not going to stop fighting, right, for the company to survive. So that's just a side note. But when I, my last team was, we grew to about 2,000 back a couple of years ago and I was just getting hammered. You know what I'm saying? I mean, not only did I, back then I was super grinding.

I was funneling people into a capture page. I was collecting their phone number. I remember like we talked about yesterday, I'd give them bonuses, right? So I was positioning myself with authority and as a leader and then I was calling people. But after I got done calling people, and Justin, you can probably relate to this, right?

After I got done calling people to get them into the business, they sat around and they waited for me like we've been talking about all weekend to tell them what to do to get started, okay? So now let's talk about how do you deal with a team in the thousands? And I'm going to give you my personal experience because Dave and I, and with our affiliate program, we have a lot of people in our team. We have an affiliate position. We've personally sponsored, actually, I think it's right over 2,500 people.

So we've just got a front line, right? Of about 2,500 people. So imagine doing a conference call just with the front line and people are hammering us with questions all, I mean, that conference call would go on until Christmas. It'd be like one of Chris Daugherty's videos. You know what I'm saying?

So what we do, we do a couple of different things. And let me just give you the psychology of this, okay? There's one word. It's called expectation. How are you setting expectations for your people when they come in?

So what we've done, and I want you to notice this for a second, okay? The way that we set expectations for people when they come in, and we can talk about this when we talk about the cult building and culture, is that we set the psychology initially right when somebody comes in that no wussy is allowed, right? A lot of people think that's a fun phrase. It is pretty fun. Agree?

It's like, I mean, it feels, it just rolls off the tongue. It's like, yeah, God, something, you know, wussy, right? But really, it's got kind of a deep psychology, doesn't it? Because what we do is we set the tone for people unlike most network marketing companies. Most network marketing companies, it's, hey, you know, what'd you like best about the video?

And then after that, I'm going to sit around and we're going to do a fast start training together. And we're going to make sure that you have what you need to get started, you know? And there's nothing wrong with that. What do the majority of people do when you set that tone? Well, they wait for you to go through the fast start video with them, and then they continue to do the same thing over and over again.

I want you to write down a phrase. To whom much is given, much is expected. Okay? To whom much is given, much is expected. So the psychology behind the way that we've built the team, and this was something that kind of picked up and we really dialed in.

A couple of months in, the phrase kind of, it was in our first sales video, remember? My daughter, she was looking up at me. Then we kind of reframed it for Dave's wife, but my daughter, Bailey, was looking up at me. And it was kind of an NLP thing because instead of telling the person, quit being a wussy, one great way to frame that is to have somebody telling me, quit being a wussy, but I'm still telling you in the sales video, quit being a wussy, right? And it just kind of caught.

It was hilarious. I can remember when we put it in. It was like, dad? Dad? Quit being a wussy.

Right? And the video converted like gangbusters. But that picked up and it became kind of like a mantra. So I want you to think about something. We recently got slapped off of Facebook.

Right? Boo. Okay. We won't go into too much of that because this is being recorded. We'll talk about it after.

But most of the time, people would be like, I can't get a hold of my upline. I can't get a hold of my sponsor. I'm just going to stop producing. I'm going to wait for them to come back online. If I call my sponsor's number and he's picked up for the last 10 months every time that I've called, and then all of a sudden one day I call and the number says it's disconnected, what's the person going to do?

Most likely I'm going to say, oh shit. I'll just wait, you know. I'll scramble to go try to find him instead of trying to go find somebody to get in the business. Right? So we got slapped.

And our production, the cool thing about the way that we duplicate, because of some of the things that Dave talked about with the copy and paste stuff and the way that we do conference calls, right? The way that we do conference calls is we do them a little bit differently. We do them on Monday. And not only do we use that as a way to get out updates and announcements, but also inspiration and people can use it at the recruiting call. Right?

So psychology of team building and team maintenance and duplication is something that's as important as the mechanics. It's the difference between the dynamics and the mechanics of how to build a team and keep a team around. Right? The same thing applies, and I didn't even realize this because I never had so many employees working for me. Right?

But the same thing applies in the real world. What we do at Empower, and you know, I'm happy to announce this because it was important for us to create the same culture, internally as externally. When we brought somebody in for a specific position, we'd give them ten reasons right off the bat that the job wasn't for them. You ever had somebody that came in and maybe you interviewed them or maybe you even said this, you know, my last job, you know, my manager, he just didn't give me the support that I needed. And we've heard it almost in network marketing.

It's like my last sponsor, you know, I'm thinking about changing companies because I can't get a hold of my sponsor and, you know, he's always out on the beach and, you know. They never answer back. He never picks up his phone and, you know, I call him and he directs me to customer support. I don't know what to do. I'm just not feeling supported, you know.

So the same thing applies to, you know, regular companies and corporations. We did the same thing and it's unbelievable. All these people report to us but they never report to us. Right? Because we've set expectations correctly from the beginning.

We've told people, hey, look, if you're not independent, if you're not a self-starter, if you're not somebody, if you're somebody who needs us to hold your hand, then this is not the job for you. Psychologically, what does that also do to somebody? It makes them want it more. So we've let a couple of people go and they've literally begged for their job because we framed it. And, of course, we sell the job too a little bit, you know.

We get up there and we like do it like a home meeting, you know, whiteboard and stuff, tell stories. It's amazing if you've ever done like a home meeting presentation to a bunch of people who are like going for a job, they're ready to get in basically, you know, which is what we did with a couple of group interviews. It was pretty funny. So does that make sense to everybody? Does that make sense?

Is that something that you guys can use and understand a little bit better about, make it a little more clear about what we do and why we do what we do? So here's what I want to do is I want to go in right into talking about culture and then we'll bring some people up, bring Dave back up, and we'll take a break here in 45 minutes or so. So one thing that's super, just absolutely crazy different about what we do is that we understand on a really deep level why people do the things that they do. And it's not because we're, you know, I'm not saying that I'm a doctor or I have any sort of education on this. It's just from experience.

You know, me personally, I dealt with a lot of different personalities just from my background. So I was forced into having to understand how people worked and how they, you know, what motivated them. I was on the streets for a long time. And after about 10 years, I left home when I was 13 actually and then had my daughter when I was 16. By the time I had my daughter, I felt like I had a full education on how human beings, what made them tick because I had to watch my back.

I had to survive. My survival skills kicked in, all that good jazz. So Dave, you know, he also understands that on deep. So do our leaders, right? Because we've been around.

We've got the experience. This industry really helps you understand what makes people tick. But one thing that I can tell you is that our culture is kind of a mixture between Amway and AA. Would anybody agree? Okay.

So Dave obviously has got the Amway background, and I've got the 12-step background, okay? And so, you know, it's probably two of the best cultures. And I want to just kind of break this down for you real quick so you can understand a little bit about why our people do what they do. Now, you might think it's because of 100% commissions or it's because of, you know, because they love Dave's hair. You know, they think that my eyes are pretty.

But it's not that at all. It's because people move and are motivated by a feeling that they have inside. And I can tell you that our income disclaimer, which is available for everybody to see at income.php, empowernetwork.com forward slash income.php, and our numbers are super high, right? They're very high. But the fact of the matter is the industry statistics are still what they are even though ours are really high.

So what do you do to prevent people from quitting when you know that they're going to quit? We've done some things that are like fear of loss stuff. Like what? Dave was talking about with the content. And if somebody quits, then the content rolls up, right?

Which I actually heard a lot of people kind of go, oh, like they didn't even know that was something. How many people didn't know that? Did anybody not know that the content rolled up? So one of the reasons that you want your team blogging in Empower Network, and of course, this is just what we did, right? To create, this is kind of culture, but it's also just more marketing fear of loss, is you want them blogging because, what, psychologically, people are less likely to walk away from something that they personally created.

Does that make sense? So if you put your hard work into writing a blog post, you have a personal attachment to that. So that's how we created fear of loss with that particular element. But again, the bottom line is regardless of how much we're doing in sales and commissions, everybody's not going to make money. We all know that, right?

Everybody's not going to make money, okay? So what do we do and how do we keep people engaged and involved if everybody's not going to make money? And we don't talk about this out in the open and on conference calls, but because you guys are here or buying the course, then I want to break this down for you because then you can start to apply this stuff to your business and your marketing and maybe even your life, okay? For years, the principles that I'm going to talk about have existed. This is not something that we just made up.

We just identified it and applied it to Empower. Here's the key, ready? So people want to feel good about what they're doing. And on a deeper level, everybody wants to be a part of something, okay? People want to feel good about what they're doing and everybody wants to be a part of something.

So I want to take you back 100 years or 200 or even 1,000 years and look at religion for a second. You've got one of the biggest myths. You've got one of the biggest movements of people in the human existence, right? And why is that? Well, belief, of course.

Everybody wants to believe in something. So why is network marketing one of the best places to find inspiration? You've got some of the best people that can stand in front of the masses and just inspire them because in network marketing, you have to have that element. You have to have the belief element. But also on a deeper level, what religion is so brilliant at, and this is just an observation, right?

What religion is so brilliant at is giving people a place that they can, what, fellowship, right? Feel a part of. They can feel good about what they're doing. Let's look at nonprofits for a second. Anybody own a nonprofit in here?

Okay, you own a nonprofit. So a nonprofit is a great way to get people engaged with something, right? Because there's no ulterior motives. It's not for profit. It's nonprofit, right?

And most of the time, most of the time, not all the time, they do have a pretty good peer motivation. Everybody loves to be a part of a nonprofit, okay? Everybody loves to give to charity. Why? Because on a very deep level, we all have a need inside to feel good about what we're doing.

We do. We have a need. And I've seen guys personally been face to face with some of the meanest, biggest monsters in this entire world. You know, whether it, you know, I'm also like Lisa, a convicted felon. And I've been, you know, I've got a past.

I've got a history. And I've been face to face with people who you don't want to meet in a dark alley. You just don't. And what I saw in those people was something that was unique. That they don't show people on the outside because they have the tough facade.

Which is they want to feel good about what they're doing. They want to help somebody at some point. Not all the time, right? Because we have the outer shell. And a lot of us, men and even women, too, have egos.

But on a deep level, everybody needs that. So, one thing that I picked up. And I was actually talking to my friend Dave Schwinn. Dave's friend also. Both of good buddies.

Erin knows him. I was out in California. And, you know, we were just talking through some stuff. And what came up in conversation was that in this industry, the majority of people don't come into this industry because life is great. They come into this industry because life sucks.

They're broke. They hate their job. Right? Maybe even they're having relationship issues. And they want to do something different to change the direction of where their life's going.

And what I see so often. Is I see people beating people down in their marketing. Right? Are you tired of doing stupid shit that doesn't work in your marketing and being a dumbass? Seriously.

I've seen this in marketing. Right? And what does that do to somebody? On a deep level. It doesn't make them feel good about what they're doing.

Right? So, what are we good at? We're good at in every message. In every word. In every piece of communication.

It's inspiration. It's we believe in you. And we're going to continue to believe in you until you can believe in yourself. That's all we talk about. Dave didn't need a recovery background.

He's just got it automatically. And I learned that in 12 step programs. That's where I learned it at. And John, my buddy there, knows. So, I want you guys to.

I want you guys to remember that. That even though we're running, for the most part, internet businesses. You can still connect with people. Justin, you do that real well. Okay?

A lot of you do. You know, you have a great message. Lawrence of, you know, just kind of wanting to help people. And you've even. I've seen you do some.

I know that you're involved in non-profits or, you know, churches and stuff like that. And I'll tell you what. On a deeper level. It just. It makes me.

And I know that this is not your motivation. You're not using it. But it's like, damn. You know? Dude's like.

I don't mind giving this guy $500. Because I know he's going to be a good servant with the money. You know? Does that make sense to you guys? Does that change a little bit of the perspective when you see things not working?

Right? When you come to our events. It's a different feel. Right? The reason why is.

Because we've been on the other side of the tracks. We've been with companies to where you go to an event in what, Tony? You go to an event. I mean, honestly. Just.

You know. You've been to enough events. Just. What is the. What is the usual.

You've got to press a little button. I don't think it's on there. Go green. So, the. So, the usual kind of atmosphere at an event is what?

With a company. When you're going either to a bigger event or even sometimes a smaller, higher priced event. The personality. The feel. Right?

A little bit. Maybe. Kind of. It's all buttoned down. And it's neckties.

And it's high heels. And there's these velvet ropes. And the. And the ivory tower. You know.

You don't actually get to. Get any face time. You guys have done this. Right? Have we all been to those events?

Where it's like. You feel like there's this little click you can't get into. Yeah. And you're just always. You feel like a wallflower.

You're on the fringes all the time. Yeah. So, on a deeper level. What we've done. Is.

We've not only in our culture used the things that I've talked about here for the last 15 minutes. But we've also played out what you were talking about, Dagan. What really makes people feel a part of something? It's the underdog concept. It's the us versus them concept.

So, what have we been, guys? What have we been up until we still are this? The Facebook slap. The energy kind of changed. Because we use that.

We use that with the us versus them concept. But what we've been with Empower, our business, for the first 10 months. We've been kind of the underdogs. We've been the company in the group of people who everybody kind of doubted. They looked at us.

They kind of scoffed. They made fun of. Right? And what were we really, really good at? Using that as fuel in our marketing.

And what did that do for our members? It gave them just that energy. Everybody wants that. They love that. Guys, I'm telling you.

The reason why I personally come to events and just want to chill is because I don't get off on being up in what you were just talking about. I don't even know what that's called. Just being stuffy and walking around. It's really not fun. It wears off.

You don't feel good about yourself. Right? So, what we've done is we've got an entire membership. Like 40,000 members. 40,000 people who just are super pumped up because who do you usually root for in a football game if one's like the team that's won the Super Bowl for the last four years and then you've got the underdogs?

You know? So, what we did when Facebook... And we did it with the merchant accounts. Remember that? So, the merchant accounts shut us down.

And it was the what concept? The us versus... Yeah. Yeah. And what our opinion was or what we said was, I mean, without kind of saying they were douchebags, we kind of said they were douchebags.

And everybody was like, yeah, the banks, yeah, they sunk. And it kind of created this us versus them thing. We did the same thing with Facebook. We practiced it. We did it.

We got through it. We looked back at it. We were like, that worked really well and it because life tires you down, does it not? Just the daily grind of like kids and, you know, family, you know. I mean, who's got a perfect family here?

Okay, my boy's got a perfect family. Okay, I'll get with you after. I need some pointers. So, family wears us down, right? All of these things.

What we did was we identified these things. We identified these things is what we did. That's the bottom line. With the Facebook thing, it came up. We already had gotten through one huge kind of catastrophe.

You know what I'm saying? With the banks. So, then what did people do when Facebook slapped us? What did all the naysayers and the bankers do? All the naysayers in the peanut gallery do.

They did the same thing. We became the underdog again and had, you know, big enough cojones to think that we could. Well, we do. We're in the process right now. I'm talking about it.

It's not, we didn't get through this yet. This is an example that you can look at and see right now that we're dealing with. And what are we doing? Dave, Dave, you know, I couldn't have done it better myself. He went from the guru slayer to the Facebook slayer.

Right? You know, we're thinking about, you know, coming up. I'm coming up with a new idea every day. He's coming up with ideas of how we can kind of create that. It's okay.

Division is okay if you use it right. We need to stay unified because unity is, I mean, that's everything, especially in this industry. But if you want to motivate people, you got to look for those opportunities to create those, just that fuel. Right? We need fuel.

We need fuel. Okay? We need fuel. So there's a couple of people here who've got, a lot of leaders actually got really good culture. You know, Aaron, Tony, Tracy.

Tracy, would you pop up here just for a second and let's talk about, pull Tracy up here real quick. Give her a hand.