As you know I’ve had a few meetings as of recent with members of our team whom I had never met before. One of the meetings was with our designer, we spent an entire day in the office - honestly, most of it we just goofed off.

There was not a single thing we discussed regarding business that we could not have just as easily done via the net, but as you remember, “business talk” was not the point of the meeting. The point was to meet face to face and get to know each other better…in that case, mission accomplished

The meeting with the designer turned out to be exactly what I had expected it to, an entrepreneurial session with tons of great ideas. He has actually created some very interesting technology that backs a very smart business that he gave us a live demo of. And as good of a sales person as he is, he may have just sold the office here on using it

In the end, it was a great meeting, tons of fun and we all got to know each other better.

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My next meeting I had to actually fly out. The manager of that office I have met before, however, I had never visited the office. This meeting went amazingly well. We only spent little time in the office itself, but still had adequate time to meet all the team members and get a chance to see what they were working on.

On a personal level, I got to do some great sight-seeing there and just overall had a blast (I did get a bit sick though - have been pushing pretty hard with all the travel).

Before I left, the manager of that office asked me to make an “inspirational speech” to the group - this 100% caught me off guard! It’s not that I’m not used to public speaking, but all of a sudden to be put on the spot and asked to “motivate the group so they never leave the company” - that’s quite a bit of pressure!

I did fight it a bit, but in the end, I realized that if you think about it - motivating and inspiring your team is pretty much one of the main roles of a CEO. So, I took it as a personal challenge and sprang in-front of everyone.

I think I did OK, definitely have some areas I need to work on. Our CTO was with us and he made some great suggestions afterwards of what to say the next time I need to do this…I’ll write a full review tomorrow of how to make inspirational “CEO” level speeches tomorrow…

For now, I have yet again proven to myself that “face to face” relationships are critical.

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First of all, sorry I haven’t blogged in the last few days. I first got invited to porsche driving school (AMAZING) and then I had to run down to a trade show for a few days.

For today’s post, I wanna talk about “the power of the team.” Here’s the thing though, today’s post probably does not directly apply to a $100 Million CEO. At that point a team is a given, but you can’t get to $100 Million without going the stages…

The Power of The Team…

This past weekend our company launched our biggest product in the last 3 years the day before the biggest trade show in our industry (where we hosted our own live event as well). The response has actually been OVERWHELMING. For the first time, I almost felt like a pseudo celebrity with people chasing our team members down just to say “THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!”

(( They’re thanking us for the free live event we put on, not the product yet ;))

A lot of people gave ME a lot of credit for the success of the live event and the success of the new product we’ve launched. Here’s the thing though - I had almost nothing to do with either one.

The live event was planned, set-up, hosted and managed entirely by my team. I simply flew in a few hours before it, grabbed a microphone and MC’d it.

The product we launched…the team has been working on it for months - not just 1 person, but multiple people each taking responsibility. All I’ve ever seen are the updates they give me and the few times they ask for my opinion or suggestions (which is rare).

As our business grows, this is the absolute first time our company has ever launched a product and I did not have a lick of stress by it (and it went smooth as can be). The even more amazing part is that the entire time I’m quietly working away on another project that we can launch soon, so you can see that things are getting better not only in terms of quality but even quantity now.

With team comes the ability to scale, grow and get your sanity back. If you’re doing everything yourself, you’re crazy and you’ll never be a $100 Million CEO.

Do this exercise:

Step 1: Make a list of everything you do during your day.
Step 2: Categorize everything (ex/ administrative, marketing, financials, support, etc…)
Step 3: Which list is the biggest?
Step 4: Time to add someone to the team to take over that category

Simple, eh?

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