How To Power-Up Your Team Each Week

Hey there, peeps. Today we have another inspiring lesson from Mogul Faculty Advisor and REI expert, Alex Pardo.

Most of you are familiar with Alex already from his previous lessons, but if you’re not, definitely check that stuff out. Super informative!

Today, Alex is gonna give us some killer tips on this audio lesson on the best way to communicate and handle weekly meetings with your team.

So friends, let’s get to it…

And just when you think we couldn’t be any more awesome, we’ve got a full transcript for you to read away to your heart’s delight…

Follow Along Here:

Hey! What's up? What's up? It's Alex Pardo. And another content video for you here, and it's all about what I've titled here, "The Weekly 'Huddle.'" Now, this is not something that I can take credit for, not anything that I came up or invented. I've actually...

There's books that talk about variations of what I'm going to discuss with you on this content video. One of them, which is on my list. I actually haven't had the opportunity to read it yet. But, I have it here. It's probably like third next on my list. It's the "Rockefeller Habits." And, a couple of friends and... You know, just entrepreneurs that I Mastermind with, have told me that in that book, they talk about basically a similar concept. And, "The Weekly 'Huddle'" is nothing more than getting together with your team on a daily or weekly basis, and going through a particular agenda, and then basically meeting for about 10 minutes to an hour. It could be a maximum of an hour and a half depending on the size of your team.

So this is actually something that... A couple of years ago when I started building the infrastructure of our team, I started with obviously... Well, I've had virtual assistants going back to the time I read "Ten Versus Four on a Work Week" back in 2009, I think. And then over the course of the last year and I have two years, I've brought on a lead manager, a couple of acquisition managers, transaction coordinators, sales manager. And what I've noticed is that, when you have a... When you build a team, especially if you run a business and you operate virtually, you have to have some level of connectivity.

And obviously, we use a CRM or we often contact with Skype, and through our phones. But since you don't have an office, especially if you don't have an office for your meeting, you definitely want to implement a weekly huddle or a daily huddle, where on a certain time, on a certain day of the week, you know that you guys are going to get together. And, it's going to be an opportunity for you guys not just to get a bird's eye view of what's going on in the business, but also a way to keep each other accountable based on certain goals that you've set for yourselves. Or, based on certain goals that every team member sets for themselves the previous week.

So let me just get into, kind of how I've broken up this video. The basics, I'm going to cover. The agenda, and then just some additional tips. And this is how we're currently doing our weekly huddle. I've been doing this for about a year and a half, and it's been working well. So, feel free to model this or just take what you think would work for you and your team.

Now, the first thing you might be thinking is, "Well Alex, you know, I'm just starting out. You know, I don't really have anyone on my team." Well, you can still do this by yourself on the enough. You know, in reading the Gerber's "E-Myth," you have to look at yourself as wearing certain hats. You know, are you wearing the technician hat? Are you wearing your manager hat? Or you, being the entrepreneur. So, there's times when you're working in your business, and then opposite, there should be times when you're working on your business. So, regardless if you're a one-man show right now, or if you have a team of 5, 10, 15, 20 people, you can do a variation of the

"The Weekly 'Huddle," even if it's just you or a couple of people. Like I said, right now, there's... including me, I have six internal team members. And, I started doing this back when it was basically just me and a virtual assistant in the Philippines. So, let's jump right into the basics here.

So, the first thing is "When?" So, I'm going to talk to about how we're doing the weekly huddle. But again, you can do this whatever you think's best. And, I definitely recommend you pick up the "Rockefeller Habits." Again, I haven't read it yet, but I've heard it's a great book, and it goes into some more depth here. We like to do our weekly huddles on Monday morning.

And right now, we're currently doing it at 11:00 am, but starting the New Year, we're going to be doing it at 9:00 in the morning. So, I would recommend as early as possible. You know, get your team set off on the right foot. Set your guys. You know, set your team up for success. And, really set the tone for how that day's going to go and the rest of the week.

Again, depending on the size of your team, it's going to be anywhere between 10 minutes, and we try to cap ours at 45 minutes. You know, which basically means that every person has about roughly 7 to 10 minutes to chat. And again, that's kind of on the... on the high side. We're typically at about 35 to 45 minutes that we... that we try to keep our calls.

You don't want to have, in my opinion, a weekly huddle. Or, when you huddle up, you don't want to have a call or a meeting that goes on for hours and hours. You know, it's just... If it's taking you that long to do that, you either, number one: have too many people on that weekly huddle call or meeting. I would recommend capping it at seven, maybe eight people max. Ideally, between four and six. So, break them up. If you have a team that size, break it up into multiple huddles.

And if not, you're just not being efficient, and you're screwing around. So, I would recommend between 10 and 45 minutes depending on how many you have on your team. The frequency, I like to do it weekly. When I first started, I was doing it daily, and what I found was that, it was just too much. You know, not much is going to change from one day to the next in terms of having to actually set a time in the day to meet up and talk about it.

So, I like to do it Monday mornings. You're going to be in contact with your team via Skype, email or phone, regardless. But, I find that doing it weekly allows the team to create their goals for that week. You know, two to three main goals that you want to accomplish, and they basically have 5-7 days in which to get that done. So, who attends the... your huddles? It's everyone on your team.

You know, there should be no one that's excluded. Even if it's a part-time virtual assistant that's only putting in 10, 15 hours a week for you, all the way up to a full-time commission-only person. It doesn't matter. Whoever's on your team should be part of the call. I would recommend you be the conductor, especially if you're just in the process of building your team, and you're setting the tone and the foundation for what kind of culture your business is going to carry.

Eventually, you could probably outsource this if you're going to have like a COO (Chief Operating Officer) or someone else. But, I would recommend that you conduct it at least at start. And then, again if you're... if you have the ability to meet in person, I think that would be best. We actually do it online. I have a... My lead manager works in Venezuela, and then I have a couple of virtual assistants in the Philippines. And then, my acquisitions team is here locally in Miami. So, we use GoToMeeting. So, that's just a quick overview of the basics.

Now wholly, let's get into the heart of the agenda which is kicking off the huddle. You know, you might think, "Well, what do I need to do to really start this thing off? How do I structure the huddle?" I... This is the way I do it. I always start off with some sort of motivational quote or video. Or, I shouldn't say always, but I like to start with a motivation quote or video. You know, I tend to really enjoy things that push me. It could be a quote from a movie, a scene from a movie. It could just be something I read in a book. If it resonates with me, I'm going to share it with my team, and hopefully that resonates with everyone else. You know, on your staff.

Praise and acknowledgements. If someone in your team or multiple people did something good, whether it's lock up a deal, whether it's implement a system, sell a property, produce a... you know, they were working on a new marketing campaign that had a high conversion rate... Whatever the case might be, I like to publicly, in front of everyone else, acknowledge them and praise them for the work that they did. And, I think that's very important.

And then, I also like to discuss any key takeaways that I got from the previous week or the previous month. Anything that's worth's sharing with the team, whether be something that I learned... It could be in a book, or it could be an experience. Anything that I think can be beneficial for the team, is where I take the opportunity to share that with them.

And then, last but not least is just any housekeeping items. Anything that's worth covering before you actually kickoff the call and open the lineup for everyone else to participate, which segues into participation. I don't recommend that you have a weekly huddle, so that your team members can hear you talk and talk and talk.

The purpose of this is for everyone to connect, everyone to share their thoughts, their opinions, what's going on, whether succeeding, whether having challenges. But, you want to make sure you do it in a structured way. So the way that we do it, is that everyone has up to 10 minutes to chat. And for the most part, I don't really have to monitor this too much. But we always have our team input their goals into an app inside of our CRM, which is Podio, which is due by the end of Tuesday each week.

And then, they basically want to focus on two to three main goals of that they're going to accomplish for that week. So, we have them start by talking about what they accomplish that previous week. Then, we get into the key metrics. So for example, my lead manager. One of the key metrics that he's responsible for reporting on is how many dials he made per day. You know, what was his average number of dials for the week? And when I say dials, I mean basically, calls. How many offers did he send?

So those are just some of the key metrics for that particular position. And then, the same thing with my acquisitions manager, how many appointments did they go on? How many contracts did they lock up? Key metrics are something that I don't think enough investors focus on. And, if you don't know your numbers, your business is probably all out of whack. So this is a highlight of our call, for sure.

Next is any challenges that they're having. And, I'm actually going to talk in the additional tips section about challenges and problems. I want to address those, but that's one of the things that we have them bring up. And then finally, you know, you want everyone on your team to feel as if they have a voice, not because that's the way I recommend doing, but they should have a voice. You know, these people are way successful. And, you need to hear them out because they have a lot of valuable input. And that's one of the things on my team.

I'm always encouraging this. If there's a better way to do this, if there's a new way that you guys want to approach something, and it makes sense, talk to me about it. And let's... I always encourage them to voice their opinion because again, they're a valuable part of your team, and their opinions should be heard. At the end of the day, most decisions are going to fall with you, or with whoever you put in that particular manager role. But again, you want to encourage everyone to have a voice and be heard.

So moving on here, finally. I don't want to make this video too long, but additional tips. You want to make sure that you get what's called "buy-in" from everyone in your team. And, I would probably recommend you start with the leaders of your organization. Make sure that you explain to them why you want to implement a weekly huddle. What are the benefits to them and to the company as a whole? So, make sure that you get "buy-in", because I think if you can get "buy-in" from the key leaders in your team, then it's just going to be easier to roll out on something that people are going to get in the habit of knowing that, "We're going to meet once a week, formally anyway." And, it's going to be... There's going to be a level of accountability in there.

There's going to be things that each person is going to be sharing and talking about. And then, I talked about what the agenda section is. Here's... You want to identify challenges on the weekly huddle as well as "bottle necks", but you don't want to use that time to really problem solve, unless it's a quick fix. And, that's just something that can be solved in less than a minute.

You want to take that offline and discuss with that person what the solutions are to their challenges. Otherwise, and this is something I've learned the hard way... What happens is that your calls end up just dragging, and dragging, and dragging. And at the end of the day, you kind of forgot what the purpose of the call was, and what the key take-aways are. And then finally, again, you know...

Hopefully, I've sold you on the benefits of doing a weekly huddle on something that you should implement, whether it's just you, or whether you have a... You know, no matter how big your team is, let's just do it! Because again, I really feel that it's going to set up a... It's going to set your team up for success. And, it's going to set their tone of how that day is going to go, and how that week is going to go. So again, I hope you enjoy this video. And, just go ahead and implement it. And, let me know when your results are coming up.

{Mogul Elite Members: Download your free, detailed mind map of Alex’s PowerPoint presentation from the Power Tool Pack section.}