What are the benefits of having "No! People" - individuals who challenge ideas, provide constructive criticism, and ultimately contribute to more refined and well-thought-out decisions - in your entrepreneurial team?

Living Fast Forward - Building a Team that Challenges You

Living Fast Forward Takeaways

• Surround Yourself with Challengers: Build a team that isn't afraid to question and push back on your ideas.
• Create Safe Spaces: Foster an environment where employees feel safe to provide honest feedback without fear of repercussions.
• Focus on Execution: Avoid the trap of the "shiny object syndrome" by focusing on completing current projects before starting new ones.
• Consult Advisors: Make it a habit to consult your CPA and legal advisors early in the decision-making process to ensure sound strategies.
• Embrace Discomfort: Growth often comes from uncomfortable situations—get comfortable being uncomfortable.

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast, the fast forward edition, Living Life Fast Forward. I'm Glenn Harper.

Julie Smith.

What's going on, Julie?

You know, I think we've talked about this so many times and it's resonated and it's something that, like, if someone asks me for a piece of advice, it's something that I always go back to. And for me, it's something where, you know, Kenny Chesney did a Peloton workout. I don't know how many years ago now. I don't know if it was the 30 or 45 minute run, but I happened to choose it that morning. And, again, 30 or 45 minutes of him doing an interview, and there's only one thing I took away from it and I still have never forgotten it.

Please do tell.

It's, you know, you wanna surround yourself with no people. You don't necessarily want guest people around you. And I think he attributes that to a lot of his success and that just really resonated with me.

It's funny the you think you want people to be yes men around you because it stokes your ego, makes you feel good, you get to do all the things, and it's kinda like it's my way or the highway. But the reality is you're probably just shooting yourself in the foot.

Yeah. And I think that's, you know, what he alluded to is, like, you've gotta have a team around you that maybe will go toe to toe with you. Like, you you know what your vision, you know what your mission is. Everybody knows their core values whether or not they've written them out or not.

The brand?

The brand, what they're trying to achieve. And, you know, I hate to say it on you know, especially as we're being recorded, but I don't always have the best ideas.

True fact, factual statement. But

But I need someone who who can at least question them and get them back to where they need to be because maybe it is a great idea, just not in the correct formation. Or maybe I really have lost my mind on that one. Or maybe I hadn't thought it all the way through or I didn't think of a certain thing. But that's what I need is someone who is able to be like, you know, bring me back to to home base.

Well, remember that a trademark or a stereotype of entrepreneurs is they always have incredible entrepreneurial ideas about the next way to brand a product service, something that's gonna be a money making thing. They're gonna tweak something. These ideas pop in an entrepreneur's head a 1000 times a day and trying to you can't be good at everything, but you can be good at something. And so trying to rein that in, that's one of our challenges we have in our main line of business is trying to keep the eye on the ball for the entrepreneurs. Finish what you start, close the loop, then go to the next one.

What do you call it? The fancy or no, shiny object? Shiny objects in scroll.

Scroll? Because there's so many opportunities out there. If you could do nothing but chase and never execute, you're never gonna have anything. So the the no people around you will say, hey, time out. Let's go over here. They'll bait and switch you over here and get you back on track.

Lane, I think, is what they what they also say. So that's something that I think, you know, as entrepreneurs are out there and, you know, you're building your team. You have your team. You you're surrounding yourself with your people is to have enough awareness to say, like, do people question sometimes, you know, or disagree with my ideas? But I think take it the next step is allowing those people to have room to be able to have those conversations in a very productive manner.

Well, it's it's even it's the allowing is the part, but it's they have to know that if they disagree, they're not gonna get fired. They're not gonna be kicked off the a team. They're not gonna be laughed at or, you know, just ridiculed. It's gotta be, like, you have the reason you have a team is everybody's important. So even if somebody has the no person, at least everybody has a chance to pause and think. And, again, the conversation always solves everything. Isn't what we always say the communication is 99.9% of everything? So have the conversation, have somebody say no, reel it in, table the discussion for another day, right right time, wrong right time, wrong idea, wrong idea, right time, could be any of those things.

Right. But I even think just having the conversation is going to allow you to go, oh, I didn't think of that. Or maybe you thought of that and you have the perfect answer for it, but it's still allowing someone to get inside your brain to think through something instead of just pushing forward. You know? I think yeah.

We we see that a lot in what we do is big ideas are never they just people think that it's gonna work no matter what, but there's so many minor details that have to be worked out to ensure that that happens. Big picture people don't really think about those details. It's the team's job to figure out the details, but if you've got a good teammate that says, in that current format, it cannot work because this detail, we cannot go yes or no. It it's gonna always be a no that they can now change the question. And now, okay, we can get through the impasse. So you're having your team involved is very important because the big picture really is based on the little things.

Well, even if you just have someone that you, you know, respect, you know, entrepreneurship, we know is lonely. Right? Anyone that you have that you can just bounce ideas off of and you respect enough that they're going to give you some sort of honest answer in return, not necessarily what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.

And again, that's one of the as an entrepreneur, you have that and that's one of the burdens that generally to your attorney, your CPA advisor, they have to carry that burden because a lot of the things that ideas that entrepreneurs have and they're gonna execute, if they would just make the call to those other advisors, like the CPA to say, this is how you would do it to get the best tax result to make it or is it legal to make it so it's illegally protected, just tweak it a little bit, saves 100 of 1,000, 1,000,000 of dollars if you just do it right. So before you execute on plan, you know, Overlord, please go talk to the people important to you that are part of that decision making process to make sure you're doing it the right way.

So I think you're just, you know, if I could summarize, it's embrace the uncomfortable.

That's living fast forward is you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And if you're not, you you will never survive because you will consistently go to the safe place, which will never get you where you need to be. Never. You'll get somewhere, but you're never gonna get to where you wanna be.

So, you know, we're gonna embrace being uncomfortable, and we're gonna, you know, maybe put a couple people in our lives that are gonna tell us what we need to hear, not necessarily what we want to hear. And I think that is an ongoing thing in successful people is making sure that you surround yourself with those types of people.

I'm wearing polyester shirts instead of cotton, and I'm very uncomfortable. But you know what? You gotta look the part. So if you gotta look the part, you sometimes gotta wear those things. So if I can do it, anybody can do it.

Oh, I don't even I don't even have words for that.

That's drinking real coffee even. No. It that's one of the greatest things about being an entrepreneur is that you perceive this freedom to do what you wanna do, and it is there, but at the same time, you have to do with discretion and make sure you move with purpose, and you if you can't really afford to jump into something because it could affect your whole organization. So you need the people that can make sure that it's okay. Now, the cool thing about big business versus small business is you can generally move that decision making process very efficiently versus big company. Right? You gotta all those things you talk about in corporate America, the consensus to get the board involved. Here, as an entrepreneur, you can just get to p people, hash it out, and you're ready to go.

Yeah. No. I think it's another another great lesson.

Yeah. That it is. Well, there you have it. That's another edition of Living Fast Forward and the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. I'm Glenn Harper.

Julie Smith.