*LIVE* How To Lead Your Team As A Business Owner

leadership is the most important thing when running a business and what I'm about to share with you in this video is is how I lead my team to make sure that we're all aligned on the goals for q1 starting off four months of work with a team of over 20 people let me know if everyone can see my screen yeah amazing all right everyone so welcome to our actual first meeting as a company um kicking off a quarter of the year and this first quarter is all about setting in the foundation for the coming years

by improving and streamlining our internal processes documentation responsibilities and systems while making the pivot into a Content powerered business now the goal of this meeting is to really set that Foundation as I said just now where we're going to start with a quick reflection on 2023 the vision and the mission of our company the company cultures and rules that we swear by the upcoming goals for q1 the adoption of content as a team and make sure that we align on responsibilities now I think 2023 um was really where we put and curated all of this

together where there's been a lot of fun moments as you can see me in my underwear at the airport and Ruben you know like nearly peeing his pens uh but it's been the year where we've really found our position in the market and stacking up on the best of the best talent to get us where we want to go and that's what I think is really the most beautiful thing about what we've been able to achieve in 2023 it's been a crazy year of of ups and downs and trying to figure it out we have

been able to figure it out which I'll shine more light on in the coming slides now what are we looking at we're looking at an environment for talent to thrive we work with the best of the best and the best possible partners with the best possible team and if you're reading this you're awesome and I'm not kidding because as I can as I literally wrote down trust me with stats for every person that we have here there's been at least like 20 applicants fighting for this position and we very carefully curate you on who you

are as a person the values you live by if you're a fun person to be with I mean you can be really good but if you're not fun like what's the point of you know like joining us as a company right so I really really appreciate all of you as individuals and I want you to know that out of all the people I meet I really value you and have you know us as a team have really decided you know to to adopt you into our our culture which is which is hard it's not easy

it's the one thing that we continuously fight for so what are the next steps so we've got to the point where we've really established proof of concept and we're experiencing growth us as a company we're now going through grow growth now what does that need like what are the next steps we need to improve our processes and systems we need better cash flow management we need to decrease our communication lines more ownership across the board of team members we need to measure in order to manage which I'll and again I'll break everything down we need

clear user Journeys for both Business Development as well as the actual user Journey a partner makes and align on responsibility and make sure that we start automating to maximize the output of the entire team collectively now what is our vision at blank Studio our vision is to build an Empire of global leading community-driven software companies and to translate this into tangible numbers a multi-billion dollar portfolio the y combinator or the McKenzie within the software space now now over the years we have been seeing a shift of how products are built blank Studio really Embraces building

and public leveraging communities to launch lean MVP towards uh an audience to get quick validation and feedback without having to go down the route of traditional race from Venture capitals praying to get Market fit sorry product Market fit so we do so by empowering the current generation of online entrepreneurs with the Knowledge and Skills to build products around their communities where we l leverage the biggest opportunity of Our Generation which is something like artificial intelligence that's what we as a company need to try and integrate more into the things that we do because there's really

going to be a g rush and especially within the SAS space we need to emphasize and make sure that we integrate this more so throughout this whole process blank Studio grows it its portfolio of software companies as well as their resources and knowledge around design development and marketing to have the entire P portfolio benefit as like a whole Collective Now what is our mission our mission is to really keep building and uh keep building these community-driven companies for our partners and have the results and data continuously Drive the refinement of the framework we follow to

actually build these companies while doing all of this we want to become Pioneers um in what I like to call a complete new paradigm which is Creator companies it's us as a team with our noses into the same direction creating comp uh content around the things that we do an opportunity for the team to grow their personal brand attract more Talent generate new leads and benefit from profit sharing incentives which really all comes down to us just doing it now the company culture and rules regardless of the size of the company one thing that I

will never try and lose control of is the quality of our company culture a fast-paced and open-minded environment for talent to thrive through real ownership and skin in the game and what I mean by skin in the game is that I want to make sure that everyone works their way to a position to own a part of this company to everything that we touch to have you have skin in the game to have you be part and eventually as I always like to say make sure that the team's kits would not have to worry a

day in their life that's how big we're aiming we're a professional sports team and this is something that I'd really like to address I would like to thinker like to see everyone in here and the way I value everyone as a family but the truth is we're not a family we're a professional sports team every single position including the one I am in is earned and everyone started with trust from someone who's worked his way to being able to give you this trust and one thing that I want to stress on everyone do never ever

disrespect the trust you've been given by someone both personal as well as business-wise now these are the eight rule of thumbs that I have put together for us as a company and I'll break down each and every single one just taking you guys through um and feel free of course to give feedback which is number seven which we'll get to all of that at the end of everything that I'm about to share with you now communication is everything both internal and external communication is the most important thing it's really what keeps us life as you

can see here it's better to have bad results with good communication than good results with bad communication and we want to make sure that we really make sure that we're on top of both of our internal and external communication majority of the companies fail to scale as their output decreases and the reason for this is because you have so much communication going on between individuals within a company as we week by week have more people involved we create we actually increase the lines of communication within our business and the goal is really to keep as

much of the communication clear and in all the public channels so the statistics have showed that out of our messages almost 43% is through direct messaging which is okay but we want to try and aim to get this number down and make sure that everything is discussed in the public channel so that everyone is up to date now when it comes to communication um I've put together this actual chart that shows you what is happening and how we need to go about communication so if we have a lot of value SL action that we take

but we do not communicate this we're in a very bad spot if we do not deliver any value do not deliver any action and we don't communicate we're in the same spot so as you can see communication is really the lever of making sure that everyone around us is Happy both internally and externally because if do if you do a lot of work and you don't tell anyone especially as a remote company no one is up to dat now if we deliver low value in action and we still give people Insight on what is happening

how we're doing this you're already in a much better spot now the real sweet spot is a lot of value with a lot of action and great communication so the key takeaways is always communicate if not overc communicate this is something that I cannot stress enough both internally and externally let's make sure that we always continue to communicate with each other the second thing is keep really clear documentation of meetings with things just as an AI notaker or of course your own work through linear which I'll shine more light on in um the coming few

slides and of course I mean as as excited as I am for a meeting like this you know in the end of the day it's not very productive because we we have a lot of people dialing in sitting behind their desk and listening so we want to always try and avoid meetings through just good commun communication in general and looms so that you know we don't end up wasting a lot of time sitting Allin one meeting now the second one is transparency and ownership and one thing that I want to stress as well is that

we really don't beat around the bush taking complete ownership of our responsibilities that's something that is a very strong rule within our company and the thing is it it comes down to that we're all human and we all make mistakes so we all need to have a very transparent approach on how we go about anything we do here while always taking ownership of your responsibilities which I will show later in this presentation how responsibilities are divided across the team and you can see this kind of like these two circles where what I think to my

definition is a real a player is having a balance between transparency and ownership where you reflect and have an honest like approach on on leaving room for improvement as well as just taking full responsibility of your of whatever you have on your plate and whatever is currently um that you manage and when you manage these things and you get feedback you need to be able to really take a look at this and see if there's actual room for improvement and when you do those two well that's what I call an a player now what does

that look like in actual practice so once you have um on the right you can see a very clear path that you have to take for having and achieving this actual balance which comes down to clear communication you always start anything with just setting expectations this is what I'm going to do this is when I'm going to do it and then you take the actual ownership which is managing the expectations so you make sure that you lip live up to what it is that you have you know set in terms of expectations then once you

actually deliver and follow up on doing all of this the next step is to really uh let me just put this one here the next step is to really just make sure that are these expectations met so you you reflect on the ownership that you've taken which can translate into feedback which is right here from the team to how can I improve this and that is a continuous cycle that you need to apply to everything that you do now what are the key takeaways we're all human when hit the fan we own it and we

fix it that's something incredibly important when things don't go well don't beat around the bush again we're all human we're all kind to each other we're selected out of you know a massive crowd of people people and I know everyone in here has their heart in the right place now the second thing is find a balance between ownership and awareness of the quality of work you are delivering which was this one to really make sure that you do have you know the approach of questioning everything now ownership comes with a lot of freedom as well

as responsibility and one thing that I stressed on earlier in this meeting as well is do not take the trust of ownership for granted because it really scars a partnership and the last point is life happens to all of us I want you guys to know that one of the things that I value above anything in life it's health and if there's anything that I understand is that life happens to all of us including to me and when there is things make sure that you communicate about them third Point avoid micromanagement and yeah as I

wrote down here I mean who likes to be micromanaged we want to lead with trust and clear structure to track the output now what does that mean for leaders this means setting really clear expectations and document these in linear and have deadlines to keep everyone accountable and make sure that you check in on these actual deadlines now as a team it's very important that you make sure that you understand that you track your progress in linear and that you communicate when you need help or whenever you're done the fourth point is create or follow documentation

and what I want us to do is to very meticulously ensure the consistency and Clarity for for all team members through the documentation that we create so as a startup you go through different faces that I've wrote down here for you where you have Micro which is just figuring out you have small where you're kind of like scratching your head and like we're on to something we need structure and you have medium how can I make sure that my team gets ahead of me how can I get people that you know are very specific and

focused and dialed in on one thing that can do that 10 times better than me to the point where you really just scale the influence and contribution and just make sure that you you know play a really good game at chess we're currently small we're we've passed a stage where we're figuring out and we need we know that we're onto something and we need structure now how do we create this structure and what is one of the things that I consider a massive lift for us as a team to collectively tackle this q1 it's creating

as much structure through documentation and automation as possible where I've listed a few things that we've already put in motion but I want to be able to take all of these off by the end of q1 which is automated proposal postal generation a clear start to end Journey for our customers clear Sops for whatever needs to be delegated meetings like these making sure that we can do these things on a regular and and and that everything we discuss is lived by or lived up to as well as business development funnel one thing that I really

really want to double down on is a very clear strategy on how we're going to do more lead generation and how content ties into it all we need to become an oiled machine that just fun functions without any effort so sentences like what's the next step how do I continue who can help me what do I need to ask will be forbidden if important things are unclear we've done a poor job at creating clarity through sop and supporting documents and I want us as a team to take complete ownership of when things like these happen

so we need to really start defining the user Journey um the partners take from ideation to the actual Handover of the product and this and this comes in these like four phases which is obviously a very zoomed out perspective but it all starts with defining the problem SL Direction which is happening in the actual company audit SL as we always call it pre- exploration phase where we move on to legal and payment which is really just kicking off the scope once we've aligned on everything then it's time to get done which is the actual deliverables

and then it's time to hand over the scope which is clear hand over and delivery of the things that we are building now the fifth uh pillar is lead through the structure so as here we really focus on creating this structure we want to make sure that we document this and follow this because documentation is half the job following it is the other half now these are the three pillars of structure it's very simple we use notion to store data for ourselves as well as for our partners which we selectively can share new Scopes and

things you have to do are planned and turned into actual set of task within linear with very clear deadlines and slack is where we touch based on anything using using the left two pillars to provide extra context and create as much clarity as possible now what do I mean by lead through structure is once all of this documentation is in place we need to follow it religiously no one should have to think twice what the next step for anything we touch is and we as a team need to make sure that this is created the

sixth pillar is measure to manage so what does that mean um this really applies to almost everything within our company and it's one thing that I think is the biggest obstacle for us as a company to move from micro to small to medium when we do this right we are able to move to medium very quickly now the responsibilities of who to track and keep accountable um is something that I'm going to cover later but I just quickly want to show you what that's going to translate to and of course suggestions are welcome to how

we want to do this we need to put numbers to everything because then we can measure how well things are going did we hit our deadlines how fasted we deliver as a team and mainly a specific person because obviously we need to make sure as I said we're a football team everyone needs to perform how much did you post because content is going to be a massive pillar on school on Twitter on LinkedIn and of course we can have the team which again I'll later on explain facilitate the actual distribution and repurposing how much did

we grow as a team did you have fun and how much came out of it now as blank Studio itself more on the atmin side how much revenue did we do how much profit margin did we have what are the budgets how much room is there to expend and how much leads did we close how fast did we give back to these leads and how many leads did we get a month those are all things that we need to start measuring and that we will share and that we actually will put kpis to where all

of these pillars will accelerate kind of you know all these different pillars in some sort of a flywheel structure to make sure that we can manage and basically just turn the buttons of of you know getting things done on a bigger scale because if for example we find out that by posting that much content we have that many leads we know how much content we need to post to increase the actual inbound now number eth is stay involved I want to I want to cultivate a culture that is is really around continuous feedback and engaging

us as a team now assume nothing question everything what do I mean by that is feedback goes hand inand with ownership and transparency and if we as a team with our noses pointed into the same direction and question everything with the goal to improve we will move mountains where we deliver work we communicate this internally to our partners We Gather this feedback and we figure out how we can continuously improve SL implement the actual feedback to just continuously as a whole improve the entire start to end processes that we have from anything we touch within

our company now feedback is something that I want to touch on as well um because every now and then it can be it can be difficult to get you know Fe feedback or give feedback and I want you guys to know that we're all human and no one likes to do things wrong but the truth is that we all do things wrong I do things wrong all the time um and it all starts with no one can really do anything wrong I think that's the right approach because I know that everyone here is doing everything

out of a right place and I understand as I said that life happens to all of us there's a lot of different circumstances that happen but when giving feedback it's very good to go about like the way you go about giving feedback is how you would like to be treated so instead of you know pointing fingers and being like this is that is it's always good to start things with like I think this could be better how about we do with this and make your point clear and make sure that it can be turned into

an actual actionable item to improve whatever it is that you're giving feedback on now how do you receive feedback and this is really leaning into the transparent part of being an a player where this feedback that you get how valid is this feedback and this really relates back to this thing that I I wrote down here is assume nothing and question everything because once you start questioning everything and knowing your team members feedback will always come out of a good place try and reflect and Implement where possible and every now and then um we need

a healthy slep on the wrist and that is also something that I do acknowledge which is very normal in a company it's very common for someone to every now and then lose the fire and the awareness of what we're doing and where we're headed it's incredibly important for us to understand that what I mention men in the beginning of this meeting every position in our company is earned and everyone started with a trust from someone who's worked this way to being able to give you this trust and you always need to respect this trust you've

been given and this also ties into good communication because when expectations are managed and when you make sure that you are doing your thing and let's say you have a bad month it happens to all of us but it's so important that you understand that we're here to win the race not watch the race so yeah last part prioritize content content this is the area of Creator companies uh this is something that I'm very excited for and it's I think if we do this right we can really set a new trend for majority of the

companies out there I don't see a lot of companies do this and I think if we do this right we really really put ourselves on the map um every single person here on this call is here because I created content and that blows my mind if that does not show you what putting your vision putting what you stand for who you are out in the world is able to achieve is nuts and I need you all to really understand that the magnitude of creating content of what this can do for you and I want us

be I want us to become one of the first companies that is really embracing content creation as a team as it's truly fundamental of who we are as a company it's really one of the values that we live by that's how we've attracted so much talent that's how we've you know got to the point where now we're having like a full house and and a q1 meeting about the goals for these coming four months and regardless of of of what is going to happen this is truly going to be an asset that you will carry

with you for the rest of your life the opportunity that you're looking at is you're able to build a brand online leveraging the unique opportunity you have in front of you while being able to earn money work your way to towards receiving options in the portfolio while documenting the companies we are building and having to share this towards an audience that's already there while you're building your personal brand and if you really want my opinion that's nuts I don't know any company out there that is doing this the way we are doing this so the

expectations that I have in terms of creating content is to have fun hit your numbers engage with each other and stay consistent we're going to set very clear kpis that need to be hit and we need to track growth now what are our q1 goals um and when we kick off our Q2 meeting I want all all of these ticked off and we as a team are responsible we want to start with automating and creating structure we want to automate the entire onboarding flow where we can get to a deliverable of an actual proposal in

as quick as 1 to two days we want to structure our start to end part journey and clearly State all deliverable with templates to improve the speed and quality of our service the second thing I I want to get blank templates off the ground grow the community to A th000 Plus members which should be easy that's double the size of what we have now with not much effort we want to post on a daily basis share the things we're up to which could be one of the team members which could be you know we just

need to make sure that we post I want to start generating the First Cash with blank templates which is the revenue you share incentive for the entire team and then we also want to do the merchandise drop which is going to be a fun little thing on the side just to make sure that everyone looks very swaggy when we have our Q2 meeting um now third part is overd deliver on Partners we have a lot in the pipeline right now and I want to push the extra mile in terms of speed and quality push the

extra mile this is something that has got me so far in life always overd deliver and I want to make sure that we have that within our company culture always push the extra mile I want to you know say that we're a Creator company I want to live the new um the new vision I have for this company which is a Creator company and the team has to hit and stick to their kpis and it really just comes down to starting with creating content and as as difficult as it seems um the good thing is

that there's a million ways to create content you know I'm not expecting you to become the next Mr Beast I'm not expecting you to become um whatever I don't know any famous writers but whatever famous writer I'm just expecting you to share what we're up to in the way that you're comfortable and if we do that and at some point you're going to get comfortable doing this I'm telling you you're going to reap the benefits we all will collectively as a team the fifth goal for this q1 is I want to have a very very

solid Business Development system in place where we have mapped out the entire system where we take everything into consideration from the community to potential uh whatever like paid media strategies to the content that we put out everything needs to be mapped out with a very clear funnel on how to go about this where we also will build out our actual sales team because now we are able to have an automated onboarding flow where we can get these deliverables and proposals to people very quickly now the last thing I also want to make sure that we

improve the blank Studio website because it literally looks like um I made this uh while I was drunk now what is a chain of responsibility uh the initial responsibility is given because of me trusting you and we're reaching a point within our company where this responsibility transcends down to others turning you into the person responsible and I think that's very important to understand that we're now getting to the point where you're ultimately responsible for someone else who's responsible for someone else because if you don't do your thing right they're going to get and that person

will have to you know like do a lot of Crisis manag blah blah blah so it's really important to understand that we're creating layers of responsibility now and those cannot be taken for granted and most importantly guys and girls have fun I think that's really what to me this is all about I've been really enjoying building this company having all of you around and you know having met some of you in Crazy places in the world having taken some of you in Crazy places of the world and I will continue to do so um and

we just got to make sure that we have fun because we have such a unique opportunity in front of us where there's so much The Leverage for us considering the time and age we have and and the passion we have as a team and and the way we found each other by simply just resonating with who we are what we stand for getting along and and just have fun that's like the probably the most important message that I really want to give to you today have fun and follow these follow follow everything that I like

wrote down here um thank you from the bottom of my heart because I truly couldn't have been where we are right now as a company with without any of you and I really cannot wait where we are going together as a team this year wrote down the date you know in case uh you know within a few years we hit this like massive billion dollar portfolio and we can like w this is a q1 meeting so yeah cool all right everyone thank you for attending um I hope you enjoyed my presentation I hope you um

yeah really really see where we're heading I hope you see how it's really special for me to have all of you here to have all of you be part of this and uh I'm truly Beyond excited for what's to come so um I don't really know how to go about getting feedback on this because I don't think it's going to be very efficient to be very honest and transparent with you guys but I think it's best uh if anyone wants to share anything obviously feel free to do so but I think it's best that we

just like resync in um in slack itself GA some feedback um but yeah I hope you guys found is useful I hope this has really aligned us on where we're going I hope this really has set the foundation of how we want to tackle q1 I'll make sure to send this presentation I'll make sure to send this recording we're actually going to post this on YouTube um because I just want to share with the world how we structure this and how we do this um just going to make sure that we you know like lead

by example Creator company uh so yeah that said I wish everyone to those in Asia to those in Europe um I don't know where everyone is at the moment I I lose track um but yeah I wish you a lovely day a very productive day and and once again thank you I'm really really glad you're here and I'm super excited for what's to come