MC32 – Community Culture – Why Your Team Stays Together and Grows Together

So you had a couple of things that you wanted to go, and I wanted you to talk about these things because Tracy is somebody who keeps things super simple. And here's what I want to just, I want to give you this perspective before I turn it over and let her talk about her team culture, is that the rabbit hole in my head goes deep. It just does. But that doesn't mean that I have to always go out and show and prove to everybody everything every day and confuse the hell out of them, right? But what I want you guys to understand is some of the concepts that are behind some of this stuff and why we do some of the things that we do.

Tracy, we tell people to get to a day, focus on the core steps, get to the event, get their team to the event, and then get to a day again for a reason, even though we could get super complicated and we could confuse the hell out of everybody. But we don't do that because it works. So here's what I want you guys to really focus on, is you're getting a lot, a lot, a lot of information this weekend. That's not particularly so you can go out and throw up all over somebody and say, you're not going to believe what I just learned this week, you're just going to take an hour, you just need to sit down. It's just so you can understand how this stuff works, right?

And if you understand how it works, it will reinforce, strengthen more the eight core steps, get to a day, get into the event, and then get your team to the event. And you have a very, very unique team culture. I want you to talk about that just here for a second, about what you kind of do and just some thoughts on that. Well, the thing that started it all really was I relate a lot of things to sports. I played sports growing up.

I played volleyball. I was on the swim team. In addition to that, I have a corporate background, just naturally. So in any business I've ever gotten into, I've understood the value of having other people in a huddle, in a sense. So that was kind of the deal.

So starting in network marketing, I've always done that. I mean, Dagan can attest to it. When I was with him in a company, when I first got started, I created a little team site, and he was amazed, and we did a webinar about it. We did a video about it, right? We did an interview, and he talked about, I think everybody should have this site, right, if you remember.

And I've done it in every business I've been in. This isn't the first time I've done it. I've done it in every business. The difference this time, though, is all the mechanics behind what I could create in terms of a culture worked without me having to teach it. And every other opportunity, I had to not just create the culture, but I had to teach every single component.

So here, I didn't have to worry about teaching. I didn't have to worry about teaching HTML. I didn't have to worry about installing WordPress. I didn't have to worry about setting up Aweber. I didn't have to worry about any of the marketing, the funnels, the conversions, the autoresponders.

I didn't have to worry about any of that. I could just very easily grab a group of people and say, look, here's the message, here is the method, here's the core structure of what we're doing in Power Hour Call, which has been very efficient and very consistent from day one, as well as the ACOR commitments. We had a few changes in there. But for the most part, it's been very consistent. So I felt good relying on the message so that I could voice that and then I could convey that to a group of people and just encourage them to follow that same thing.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's fascinating. And you also have something else because you talk about — now, Tracy, she does have a — it's hard for me to get out here real quick. Hold on a second. Hold on a second.

I'm trying to get this out. I can't. It's hard. A team site. She does have a team site.

Why is it hard for me to get out in front of this room? Because you guys take — because everyone, okay? We tend to take things pretty literal, right? So if Tracy says I have a team site, I got the secret. Tracy's got a team site.

Yeah, yeah. I'll see you guys in six months. I'm going to go set up my team site. That's what I need. So you have a team site, but you've had a team site for a long time.

Right? Yeah. Back before, like, things like Facebook groups existed and stuff. Right. Right.

Which is actually, unfortunately, because we got the apps now, they're very efficient. They're super effective. Yes. But inside of your team, the culture that you create — now, you have this phenomenal feminine energy. And it, you know, you kind of — and you and I have a lot of the same style, right?

Because you make people feel like they're the same. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it was very interesting knowing that a lot of people do things like make gratitude lists, which I love. Yeah.

Yeah. By the way, because I've been, throughout my four and a half years of being clean, getting clean, all that, there's been a lot of bitching and moaning that I've done just because I, you know, didn't kind of know how to make a gratitude list, so I was constantly reminded, hey, Dave, sounds like — hey, Dave — I come to, like, throw up all my problems. Yeah. And the response was always similar to Eric Worre, what he said to you. Have you called your grandma yet?

You know? It was Dave, have you made a gratitude list? Yep. You've also got a couple of other things. Okay, yeah.

Six or seven or something like that, things that you do with your team. Yeah. And I actually — you guys know normally I don't have something that I read from when I speak, because I think that you should speak about what you know about, and it just — you can convey the message better. But with Dave and Dave, you don't always know what you're going to speak about. And so I had an idea that it was going to be about the culture and the team, but to be honest with you, I never really sat down and thought about strategically what it was that I was doing consistently over the years.

If you know how to do something, it's kind of, you just know how to do it, right? Until somebody asks you, well, exactly how do you do it. If you've never broken it down, you've never thought about it. And this is like a breakthrough for me, because I guess it's a skill that I have that I never even considered as being valuable. So people, know that you have skills right now that you probably just haven't even broken down enough to realize that it's a value to other people.

So I kind of took a trip down memory lane and kind of broke down what I've created inside of our team, and I'll give you a couple of prerequisites first. It will only work if, number one, as the leader, you're focused. If you are distracted by the next great thing, it won't work, because the culture that you thought you were creating will disintegrate right before your eyes, because you'll lose trust like that. So you absolutely have to be sure about what you're doing. And when I joined Empower, I was absolutely sure, absolutely sure. I don't know why, I just was. And because I was, then I could move forward.

The second thing was expectation. And Dave talked about that — he spoke with me yesterday actually — and one of the questions she asked me, she said, well, how do you handle it when people come to you and they want help and you just feel like you're not meeting their expectation? And I said, well, that's just it, because it's not about me meeting their expectation, that's not my deal. My deal is you need to meet my expectation, you've got to have the shift. And so it's not really about, well, can you help me, can you help me, can you help me, more than it's about, this is how you're going to follow our system. Either you're going to do it or you're not. If you're not, that's cool, but if you are, then I work with you. And that's what I loved about Dave and Dave, they set that expectation for me, and that's why I joined Empower. Don't be a wussy from the jump. Made my job very easy.

Who likes to hear Tracy Walker say don't be a wussy? Make some noise for Tracy Walker saying don't be a wussy. I didn't mean to interrupt, I'm sorry, go ahead. I just wanted to cut in, say don't be a wussy. Dave Wood talked about that email that he sent out, I can't remember exactly what the subject line was, but it was something about — but yeah it works, but it sucks balls, right? Who likes to hear Tracy Walker say it works but it sucks balls? Make some noise.

I had a little bit of a hard time with that. I looked at it for a minute and I thought about it. I'm not about the way that I speak, I'm not about the way I communicate, and I said, well, I wonder if people would act a certain way if I said it sucks balls. And then I said, I don't know, let's see, and I hit submit, and people loved it. You know, because the idea is that you're always growing, you're always doing those types of things, you're stepping outside of your comfort zone. And the reality is that we were, you know, be who you are.

So those two things, the expectation has to be set by you, realize you absolutely must be focused. Does everybody understand that? Because the team site doesn't have to be a hard thing, but if you stray from your own position of being focused and setting expectations, it will not work.

All right, so here are the things that I figured out I did. I won't write them down, I just kind of talk about them. Number one, I'll call it creating a home base. Creating a home base, and I kind of put together in terms of a military position — I've never been in the military, but it kind of seems to flow good, so I'll roll with it. All right, creating a home base. And you think about what a home base is. I mean, as a kid or whatever it is, you go to school, you go to dance class, you go to football, basketball, whatever, but you always come back home. You could go all over the world, you could travel, you could go to boarding school, you could go to the military, you could do whatever, but you always end up back at — even after college, sometimes what happens, you end up back at home.

So it's something about being at home that makes you feel comfortable, and when you're comfortable, you seem to be able to be more creative and to think, and people encourage you to do better when you're at home. When you're out there in the world, as we talked about before, a lot of times the negative marketing message, they do affect us, but we have a community where we have more positive marketing messages. And so this home base I created — and you could, I don't do it right now — okay, I have a team, I have a team in the thousands, okay.

Another thing is, I knew I was going to go hard at this from the jump. I knew I was going to go hard, so I knew there was going to be a lot of productivity, and if I were going to bring in one or two people a day from the very beginning, which is what I've done, then I'm going to need a way to keep all these people together. You guys understand, if you're going to bring in two people a month, then you don't need to worry about keeping the two people together on the side, okay. So if you're going to go hard and you're going to sponsor 30, 40, 50, 60 people in a month, then, you know, get the first 25 or 30 in that month and then think about getting this going. That makes sense.

All right, so — I talked about that in Atlanta, that's the site. It's like a Facebook, but you can create your own subdomain for it, and you can call it whatever you wanted it to be, you know, yourteam.me.com, right? There's no HTML necessary, there's no access, and there's no — I don't know that stuff, I really don't, not to the point where I could design a site. So name.com is creating the home base.

Now this home base, you got to think about the culture that you want for it, and I didn't want to be a mother hen, I'm not a micromanager, I've never been a micromanager. And so for me, the intent of the site was purely a place to be a source of information located in a central location, so that people wouldn't be all over the internet if it happened not to be in the Empower Network back office. Does that make sense? So for example, if people don't know how to set up Aweber, then there's a little section in there that says, you know, need to set up Aweber, contact Aweber, right? I'm not telling them how to set up Aweber, but when they ask that question, how do I set up Aweber, and I say, go see the site, and then it says, hey, you want to set up Aweber, contact Aweber. And they say, oh yeah, I'll just contact Aweber, and they never ask you again about Aweber. Does that make sense? It doesn't have to be complicated.

All right, so that's number one, step one, creating a home base. Step number two is establishing the front line. Now, I did this very early on, and experience taught me this, that if you plan to build a large team, you're going to need people helping you, you're going to need people helping you. And how do you help people help you? Well, by giving them things. For example, Dave and Dave did it with Empower Network, right? They say, how do we get more people — I don't know if you strategically, well you probably did, but I'll just — I think you did it this way — how do we get more people engaged in what we're doing in Empower Network? Well, we'll pretty much set it up where we'll give away the profits, in a sense, we'll share our profits, right? So if I make you part owner in a sense, right, or you feel like you have the same type of money that you could make as the owners of the company, well, there's a different relationship between what you think your role is in that company.

And so that's kind of the thing with the front line. So the front line is — I kind of wanted to, I have a corporate background, right, you guys, I have an MBA, I have a master's in marketing, so I understand that every company has a board of directors, does it not, right? The CEO — maybe the CEO — but really, couldn't the board fire the CEO, okay? So the CEO isn't the head honcho really, who's the head honcho, the board, okay? So the idea — and starting off, I didn't know who was the best, the quote-unquote best. I didn't care who was the best. I cared who was going to be the most committed. It was the beginning.

And so as people began to enroll into my group, I would see who was producing just at a basic level. And I reached out and I contacted about nine people over about two or three weeks. And they all had different skills. I knew I needed different skills. I didn't want everybody to have the same skill.

So one person I knew had great graphic ability, could play with Photoshop and all that stuff. Why? Because I knew at some point I would win a logo. You with me? Okay.

I wanted someone who had financial background. Why? As a licensed professional. Why? Wouldn't it be nice to know what your options are in terms of some things you could do with that?

Well, I wanted a financial person. I wanted a person that was more inspirational. I have a minister. That's part of our — I call it the leadership council. I have a person that is purely a, if I say do it, they do it.

They don't ask me any questions. I have a person like that. Not a do person, but this is a person that's learning that if I give them direction, they follow that direction. That's very important. You guys have seen that video, right?

Where you've got the guy dancing in the middle of the festival and then a second person joins the first person, and it's that second person that creates the momentum for everybody else. Well, I understand that. So I know that if I could help a second person get results, I could leverage the second person, right? And some other positions, but that leadership council, that front line, is what you're going to need, because you can't do this by yourself. It's kind of like when Dave and Dave started Empower, they reached out to a few people that they knew, leaders, right?

Lawrence knew about it. I didn't know about Empower until the secret meeting, right? But they reached out to a few people and said, hey, listen, could you help us with this? That's kind of like the front line concept. Everybody understand the front line?

You got to understand you cannot do this by yourself. If you are an egomaniac, it's not going to work. Any egomaniacs out there? Egomaniacs. Okay.

Step number three is you need a basic plan of action. A basic plan of action. What does a basic plan of action mean? It means that when someone signs up, it's not a training, so to speak. It's when someone signs up, what do I do first?

What do I do second? What do I do third? The first thing that I like people to do is know how to log in. It's extremely important. Because sometimes people miss the email that when they signed up, they didn't get the email.

And they don't know how to log in. Nobody knows their login link. So I want you to log in. The second thing that I have people do initially was to join the Dave and Dave Facebook group, right? But now behind that, I just have — it's temporarily disabled.

I still have it there because I believe maybe something needs to get worked out, I don't know. But it's temporarily disabled, it's us versus them. And then the third thing that I have people do — that I eventually changed — was I had them contact their sponsor and get their sponsor's Skype ID for the Skype chat.

And the Skype chat was for support. Those were the top three things you had to do first. And I would know if someone was following the system purely by them becoming a member of the Dave and Dave group, joining a Skype chat, and knowing how to log in. If someone said to me, well, how do I join the Skype group? I know you haven't even done step one, right?

And you're already not following the directions, and that's going to be a problem, I can nip it right then. Do you guys see the power of just that? The power of just that. All right, and then I go into some other things about, okay, now you need to set up your Aweber, now you need to do the coaching webinar, now you need to do this and do that. And a series of things I created, ten steps — these ten steps, all right — and that, you can call it a fast start guide, a fast track, whatever you want to call it, but for the sake of this, is the basic plan of action.

All right, number four is supporting the troops. And supporting the troops really started with us, as I said, as Skype, but we outgrew Skype. We could not add more members of our team into Skype without deleting other members, so that became a challenge, if you could imagine. So we switched to Facebook. And so then that — having a community — and I've pounced on everyone and said, listen, do not call me, do not call your sponsor. Like, I look out for my people that I've recruited and their well-being too. So it's don't call me, but then don't call them either, it's go to the support group. And you might find the answer to your question if you just take a moment to review the information, or if you post your question, that means that someone who has knowledge in that area can support you, and it doesn't have to be your sponsor, it doesn't have to be anybody that you even know. It doesn't matter who gets it, you just want the answer, right? So I created a more leveraged environment for people to post questions and all that stuff, so my phone doesn't ring too much with support. And if it does, I know they didn't do step one, and then I can send them, looks like you missed step one, I mean, you go back to the site and do step one, and then we're off the phone.

So the Facebook group, accountability partners — when we weren't in Atlanta, Dave and Dave set the intention, or set the stage essentially, for accountability partners. I took that seriously, I took that very seriously. And we created an accountability type of deal where now almost everyone on my team has an accountability partner. They know who their partner is, we have a list, and I can see who each person belongs to, in a sense. And then we had an accountability webinar, which basically went over some of the things that were taught in Atlanta, because there were some people that joined that didn't make it to Atlanta. So we kind of taught people what to do with their accountability partner, how to have their person call their members and get them upsold into Inner Circle, upsold into 50K in Costa Rica, and make sure they watch the coaching webinar. That takes the pressure off of you as the leader, because now they're not looking to you for help, they're happy to call their partner every day. You guys understand that, it's a shift in mindset.

And then I have a midday call. Now the midday call, because — well, a couple things — we were growing so fast at the very beginning, it was a startup phase, and as someone who — I knew I had a name on the internet, people wanted to really hear whether I believed in Empower or not, okay. And because of that, I leveraged the midday call. Every day I ran this call, Monday through Friday, I was the person delivering the information for 15, 20 minutes where I just pretty much talked about inspiration and motivation as to why you need to stay in this business, why are you staying in this business.

The merchant account situation happened, and that call saved my team. That call saved my team. Because it wasn't about, you need to stay in Empower Network, it just so happened that we were all in Empower Network, but the message was that you need to stick where you've planted your flag, and the only reason you should leave is if it crashes and burns. And if it doesn't crash and burn, then you need to be a leader and you need to stand up and blog every day. It didn't matter whether you could process payments, it didn't matter whether you could do any of that stuff. What mattered is that if you don't know how to blog, it doesn't matter about you processing payments, because you aren't signing anybody up anyway. Isn't that the truth of the matter — you're worried about processing payments, you haven't signed anybody up, you don't even have any leads. So the core message is blog daily.

So the assignment really was, every day that this merchant account is down, I want you to create a piece of content. There's to be no discussion, there's to be no debating, there's to be nothing, I want you to create content. It's for your own good, kind of like your mom, right, with taking Robitussin or something. So that became what that was. And what happened was that I believed so strongly that we would come out of that valley, I should say, that I conveyed that to my team, that they began to blog daily, and they would blog about the merchant account, even people weren't happy, and they would hear Dave and Dave talk about it, gave them confidence to talk about it, and it gave them something to feel good about.

So that midday call is something that I still do now, however, I've shifted the way that it kind of works, in terms of, I don't do it every day. The leadership council is responsible for the call, and each one of us does the call one time every two weeks essentially, because there's nine of us, right, so there's ten workdays. We turn Fridays into a testimonial call, which means that essentially there's eight days — I have one lady on the leadership council that works, and she can't speak while she's at work, she can listen but she can't be responsible for hosting a call. So I do the call on Thursdays, and Fridays is a testimonial day call, and the other days is run by another leader on the council. That does a couple things. Number one, people get her to sponsor people because they want their teams to hear them speak. Do you understand that? When you have a team, your team needs to understand that you are important to this organization, and I wanted to create that environment for anybody that was on my leadership council, that this is the group that I'm working with the most, and I need to push you out there. You need to be on the calls so that your team can hear that you're a leader, and you can talk about whatever you want, just not politics so much, not religion so much, and sometimes I like to talk about sports.

Give her a hand, guys. Wait, no, thanks, let me hurry up, better finish. I'm learning. Dang. Okay, hurry up. Number five, marking the territory.

Marking the territory was really at the point right before Atlanta where we decided that we would pretty much have a logo and all that type of stuff. So we created a logo and had a team name, and they found out how to do shirts. I didn't have anything to do with that process. There were shirts, there were mugs, there were caps, there were all types of things that I had nothing to do with. I just encouraged everybody to go buy them so that in Atlanta we could have the biggest team with the biggest presence.

I created a sense of culture just by let's just do that. Number six is developing your core identity. That would be things like the gratitude log. What is your team about? Why would someone want to stick around even if they're having challenges in their life?

Well, I created a page on that site called the gratitude log. Every day, instead of complaining about what's not working, I want to see a post of what you are grateful for in your life. It could be that you have windows at your job, because I know people that work in plants that don't have windows at work and they're miserable. I know people whose spouses don't support them. I know people who want to paint their house and they finally got a chance to do it.

They're grateful for the paint. They're grateful for the blinds. Whatever. Be grateful for something. And then the last thing — I talked about setting expectations already.

Another important thing in developing your core identity is that in these groups, like in the Facebook group, I'm not compelled to be the bearer of all information. If someone gives an answer to a question and it suffices, it suffices. I don't have to let it be known that Tracy Walker agrees. They don't even have to know that I'm even there. I just let people be, and then they become more comfortable with being and helping and supporting, where I could literally be in Costa Rica and the whole team is running without me.

The seventh thing is expanding beyond measure. And that's essentially what I'm sharing with you guys. It's just that process. But it's a very distinct thing that I share with my team. And it's real.

That's what I've said. Then now we can start diverting some of the focus into team building, because there is a little bit of stuff that goes into it. A little bit of energy in the beginning to get the ball up and running. And until you get that done, if you're still struggling with two a day, I just don't think the team site is where you need to be. Because you're not going to have enough people to even sustain the team site.

And then you're going to waste a lot of time. So those are the seven things that I kind of came up with in terms of what I do. It's working. I'll continue to keep doing it. And does that give what you want me to give?

Can I tell them to give you a hand now? Okay. So give her a standing O. There you go. Standing O.

Give her a standing O. That's what I'm talking about. She deserves it. So here's what I notice. And I don't.

I don't know if you guys noticed this as well. But it was a consistent message that's consistent with our message. Right? It was similar stuff. Just with Tracy's kind of just, you know, she threw her little style in onto it.

Right? So that's the power of a consistent message. It was very similar to even what I talked about. Right? But it was just — you ever had, and I don't think you have kids, but I have a 12-year-old.

And, of course, I did this also when I was a kid. You know, my mom would tell me something. You know, I mean, still sometimes she, you know, she's like, kind of like how you just did with me. She's like, Dave. You know what I'm saying?

She just — don't cut me off, Dave. Exactly. So, and then, so she tells me something for like 20 years. Right.

And it's like one, in one ear and out the other. And then I go and I hear it from Dagan. And then I come back and I'm like, Mom, you're not going to believe what I just heard. And she's like, dumbass, I've been telling you that for 20 years. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. The power of a consistent message is somebody might not get it from Dave. They might not get it from me. But they might hear it from Tracy.

So keep it simple and keep it consistent. And keep it feel good, which is what I love about you. Give her another hand, guys. I'm going to give it to Aaron.