High-Performance Teams with Vicky Brown, founder of Idomeneo Enterprises, an HR consultancy that helps business owners develop strong, engaged teams.

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run and grow your small business.

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• Get Scalable: The Operating System Your Business Needs To Run and Scale Without You by Ryan Deiss

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Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:15):

Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. This is Henry Lopez, and my guest today is Vicki Brown. Vicki, welcome to the show.

Vicky Brown (00:23):

Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.

Henry Lopez (00:25):

Looking forward to it. We’re going to dive into the secrets of building and sustaining a high performance team. I’ve had a chance in my career and in life to be part of high performance teams, so I know what it feels like to be part of one. We’re going to get some insights from Vicki who’s an expert on this topic of how do we attract that, how do we build them? How do we keep high performance teams? Vicki is the founder, and let me see if I get this right, right off the bat. Idomeneo, which is the name of her business, an interesting name, we’re going to find out the story behind that name, but she leads IDOs, a leading HR consultancy business, helping people, business owners, develop strong and engaged teams. We’re also going to hear her very interesting entrepreneurial journey. So that’s what we’re going to explore on this episode.

Henry Lopez (01:16):

You can find all of the how business resources, including the show notes page for this episode. There’s going to be a link there to a special download that Vicky is offering. So be sure to go to the show notes page and also to learn more about my one-on-one and group coaching programs, just go to the how business.com. I also invite you to consider supporting the show on Patreon and subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don’t miss any future episodes. Let me tell you a little bit more about Vicki. Vicki Brown, her passion is for helping entrepreneurs and it’s rooted in her own entrepreneurial journey that we’re going to explore after two decades of leadership roles in the corporate world. Vicki founded her own HR consultancy, EO Enterprises in 2001, so she’s been at it for quite some time, very successfully. She’s faced with countless questions and challenges.

Henry Lopez (02:07):

Vicki is on realizing how valuable a step-by-step guide would be. That’s initially what she was faced with, and that was part of what led her to start her firm. And so from those experiences, she developed a vision to offer comprehensive, accessible HR guidance and educational resources for small and medium-sized business. And the educational programs specifically are designed to equip entrepreneurs and small business owners like us with the tools, the guidance, and the confidence to navigate the sometimes complex world of hr. She’s the host of her own show, more Human, more resources, HR for Entrepreneurs, great podcast, and the author of the book Sing with Your Opera Voice, my Journey from Solopreneur to Entrepreneur. So we’re going to explore that a bit as well. Fun fact, as she likes to share. She’s also a number one Bella selling offer and a former opera singer. So I just alluded to that. Vicki lives in West Hollywood. Everything is good right now with the fires, which is great. We’re just chatting about that, but we’ve started recording. So Vicki Brown, once again, welcome to the show.

Vicky Brown (03:19):

Thank you so much and thank you for that lovely introduction.

Henry Lopez (03:22):

My pleasure, my pleasure. Alright, let’s start with a brief summary of your early days. What did you study in university?

Vicky Brown (03:31):

I studied music, actually, figures I was going to sing. And of course my mother is like, you have to have a real job. So I studied music education, so I actually have a teaching credential as well.

Henry Lopez (03:41):

Wow. And this passion for opera, when do you recall that it developed for you?

Vicky Brown (03:48):

I think I was singing before I could speak, but as far as opera is concerned, weirdly, even though I studied it in college, I wasn’t particularly into opera until I actually auditioned and got into the opera company. So it came

Henry Lopez (04:05):

From the job. Were you a trained opera singer at that point in time?

Vicky Brown (04:09):

You were Okay? Yes, I was because in school we, that’s what we studied, but mostly I’m a lyric soprano, so even though I sound like a contralto, but I’m a lyric soprano, and so most of my music, kind of my sweet spot were liturgical music. So Mozart handle heden, things like that.

Henry Lopez (04:28):

Interesting. Very interesting. I know very little about opera, but I have a cousin, first cousin who was an opera singer for a while, lived in Italy for some time. He then retired as a school teacher as well. And then a very good friend of mine, his son is an opera and musical conductor.

Speaker 4 (04:48):

Oh, wonderful.

Henry Lopez (04:48):

I’ve been exposed to it that way. Then you ended up though going the corporate route. Anyway, what happened there? Why did you decide to go into the corporate world?

Vicky Brown (05:00):

Everything in my life has kind of been a little bit of an examination and overlapping. So when I was studying in school, I realized that teaching is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. And also being a music teacher and singing for a living, very difficult. You use your instrument all day long, so you’re demonstrating to the kids all day, you really can use up your instrument. And so while I was in school, I was actually working in the business world and continued to do that when I was done with school and I was an executive assistant. And from that I found my way to actually HBO in the very, very, very early days, we didn’t even making movies.

Henry Lopez (05:46):

Was that even before 24? Because I used to sell door to door HBO subscription before it was even 24 hours. So I’m

Vicky Brown (05:53):

Really, oh my goodness.

Henry Lopez (05:55):

Dating myself as well. Yeah.

Vicky Brown (05:55):

Yes, absolutely. We were involved at the same time and I was the executive assistant to the head of the LA office, and it was basically a sales only office. So when new people came in, corporate in New York said, California is weird. We have no idea how to handle it as far as HR is concerned. So you figure out you’re the executive assistant to the top guy, so when someone new starts, you’re in charge of the paperwork. And that is how I kind of found my way to HR, which is interesting. Everything is overlapping. They gave me the card of their labor attorney and said, figure it out.

Henry Lopez (06:32):

Go figure

Vicky Brown (06:32):

It out. Exactly. I called him and learned almost everything I know about HR at his knee. And to this day, he is the labor council for I am.

Henry Lopez (06:42):

Wow.

Vicky Brown (06:42):

And that was a thousand years ago.

Henry Lopez (06:45):

Amazing. That speaks to your ability to build and maintain relationships. What was it that then appealed to you about the arena of HR?

Vicky Brown (06:55):

It’s interesting because a lot of musicians end up doing things that are very detailed minded because music is math. So I love the detail, I love the compliance piece. Most of the time when people think about HR, they say, oh, you’re a people person and so you’re going to plan parties and things like that. But I was attracted to the science of hr. I certainly enjoy human beings as well, but I was attracted to really the science of HR and the detail and the specificity of it.

Henry Lopez (07:28):

So did that make you good? I suspect from an early days making sure you’ve had the systems in place, the tools, all of those types of things.

Vicky Brown (07:36):

Exactly. I am a systems wonk. If there’s anything going on, I’m going to put together a project management plan for it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Got

Henry Lopez (07:46):

It. Yeah. And then of course, growing up and doing this in California where there are a lot of specific laws and regulations that you have to be familiar with and you have to adhere to, so there’s a lot there to make sure you administer. So did you have aspirations early on to become your own boss?

Vicky Brown (08:04):

Zero. None whatsoever. I kind of worked my way up in corporate, became pretty much the head of the various departments of the companies I was working in HR and my last corporate gig was for a startup At that time, we actually ended up being about three years old, two years old when we had to close down, but it was a tech based financial services company and we got caught in the bubble in 2000.

Henry Lopez (08:34):

But it must have given you a little bit of a taste of what a startup feels like, right? Absolute. The good, bad, and the ugly. Absolutely.

Vicky Brown (08:40):

Absolutely. I was something like employee number 11 or something. So that whole creating it yourself from the very beginning, very appealing to me.

Henry Lopez (08:48):

I see

Vicky Brown (08:48):

The other jobs I had gone in and kind of reformatted everything from the ground up, but really set it with your vision. I love that part.

Henry Lopez (08:59):

So is that partly then what begins to trigger? I want to do my own thing

Vicky Brown (09:03):

Again. Absolutely not. Interesting. I was pressed into this, the head of the company when we closed 2001, actually we closed in Feb of 2001. He said to me, the president said, you should really think about having your own HR company. It’s great. It’ll be a great gig for you. You’re really good at it. You created something from nothing. That’s what an entrepreneur does. And I was like, that’s a great idea. Absolutely not. And he’s like, why not?

Henry Lopez (09:36):

Why? What was your fear?

Vicky Brown (09:38):

And I said, because I’m a great number two, my entire career I had been the one who sits on the shoulder of the CEO O and I hear their confessions and I whisper in their ear, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? We’re having a culture issue over here, that kind of thing. And it’s a really, really comfortable role for me. So being number one wasn’t even on my radar. So I said, thank you. It sounds really interesting, but no going to go get a job. See you.

Henry Lopez (10:05):

Interesting. Because I got to think though, as a singer, especially an opera singer, you’re very comfortable being number one in that arena. Is that fair?

Vicky Brown (10:14):

Absolutely. Oh yeah. Listen, I tell people I was born this way. I’m an only child. I’m a Leo, and I’m a soprano. You’re

Henry Lopez (10:23):

A diva. Or potential to be a diva anyway.

Vicky Brown (10:27):

Exactly. But in the business world, I really appreciated being that person, that confidant for the CEO. Now, this was many years ago, I still appreciate that role, but I have to say, doing this role is the best thing I’ve ever done.

Henry Lopez (10:41):

So what triggered it? What then made you overcome that resistance and decide to do it?

Vicky Brown (10:47):

He tricked me into it. He said, I have a new gig and I have a team that’s in New York. I’m not moving from California, and I know that they need handbooks and things because you taught me that. So can you take care of that on

Henry Lopez (11:02):

A contract basis? In other words, you didn’t want to hire you. He wanted you to outsource that to you.

Vicky Brown (11:06):

Absolutely. And so I helped him out with a couple of things and a couple of things became four things and then became six things and then became eight things. And by August of 2001, my compliance gene kicked in and I called him and said, listen, I have access to confidential information for your employees. I need a corporate veil, you need a contract, we need to spell this out, all of that. And he’s like, okay. So I incorporated, they became our first client and they were a client for almost 10 years.

Henry Lopez (11:38):

Wow. One of your first seed clients, was it called IAM back then

Vicky Brown (11:44):

At the very beginning? Yep. IAM from the inception.

Henry Lopez (11:47):

So we were talking about it before we started recording, but tell us again, where does that name come from?

Vicky Brown (11:53):

It’s the name of an opera by Mozart. It has one of my favorite arias in it, but I actually picked it kind of by pulling it out of a hat. I was going to a conference, this was before I incorporated, I was going to a conference and they asked for your name and your company name. And I was like, Hmm,

Henry Lopez (12:14):

It happened. It just popped into your head.

Vicky Brown (12:15):

I saw the score, it was sitting in my practice room and I saw the score and I was like, okay, I love Greek mythology and I love opera. Okay, iam. And that’s actually how I chose it. Wow. And then I’m so stubborn about it that it’s difficult to say, it’s difficult to spell all of that. And in the early days, we used our entire name as our URL and our email, so was everybody was spelling ido enterprises.com over and over again. But marketing people say to me, so about that name, what do you think? And I’m like, Nope. I just say Adidas. And I keep going.

Henry Lopez (12:53):

Yep. You’ve built a brand around it now. Absolutely. And if nothing else, it’s a conversation point, right? It’s an icebreaker and there’s a story there. So I love that

Vicky Brown (13:03):

And it really helps me because when I, I’ve been singing for a long time and I was singing a long time into my business career as well, and there is something so refreshing about having left brain, right brain things happening. So if there’s a problem in the office and I’m sitting on stage waiting to sing, inevitably it kind of gets worked out in the background with my brain and vice versa. I can go to work when I’m stressing out about auditioning. So it really is a release valve on both sides.

Henry Lopez (13:39):

Very interesting. Do you still sing professionally or

Vicky Brown (13:42):

I Not for fun, I’m assuming. Yeah. I went on a one year hiatus about eight years ago, and it’s been eight

Henry Lopez (13:47):

Years.

Vicky Brown (13:48):

Yeah, yeah.

Henry Lopez (13:49):

Got it. A lot of times though, people who come from a creative background miss that, but I feel that business is a creative endeavor, but how do you look at it?

Vicky Brown (14:01):

I absolutely agree. When I was singing full time, and the reason I actually took a break, quote unquote, is because I just couldn’t run a company and grow it and be scheduled two years in advance, that’s not just what people would say, oh, can you attend this conference? I’m like, when is it? They’re like, oh, it’s not till next year. I’m like, oh, I’m booked. So you can’t really serve two masters. You have to really focus on one or the other. But it really is, I find that there’s a lot of creativity in it. What my team tells me now is I’m pouring all of that into our YouTube channel and our podcast and doing lots of writing and things like that. And my teaching background comes into play too. Your

Henry Lopez (14:46):

Teaching comes into play. Your performance abilities and background and confidence come into play, all of those things, right?

Vicky Brown (14:51):

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I see lots of synergy there.

Henry Lopez (14:54):

The book you wrote again titled, sing with Your Opera Boys, my Journey from Solopreneur to Entrepreneur, you made that shift obviously when you first started doing that HR consulting work for this gentleman you referring to, and then you had to turn that into a company. When you think back to that, what were some of the early challenges of transitioning from solopreneur to entrepreneur?

Vicky Brown (15:18):

Well, I had a lot of corporate experience, so I had the benefit of knowing what it takes to support a goodly sized endeavor. I knew what business structure looked like, I knew what budgets looked like. I knew all of those things. But when you’re starting out in your second bedroom, it’s really just you and your phone and your computer. And because I was again tricked into it, and I think everyone goes through this, no matter how committed you are, no matter how solid your vision is, you have a little bit of, and I think this is an overused phrase, but it applies here, imposter syndrome.

Henry Lopez (15:59):

Absolutely.

Vicky Brown (16:00):

You’re stepping into an environment that you know less about than you would like to, and you’re going to be faced with challenges that you maybe haven’t faced before. I faced challenges that I hadn’t faced directly. I had seen them in the businesses that I’d been in, but they weren’t my challenges. I was in the HR department and entrepreneurs, you’re the first salesperson that that was a completely different jacket for me to put on. I’d never done sales before. So you really have to, and that’s the whole thing about singing with your opera voice. The kind of very brief background of that title is that I had a voice teacher and sometimes I would do a great job and sometimes I would not do a great job. And every once in a while when she would hear exactly what she wanted to hear, she would go, what did you just do? We need to make you do that over and over again. And inevitably it was a mind game for me. It was me thinking, oh, I’m going to sing with my interpretation of what an opera singer sings like

Speaker 4 (17:04):

I

Vicky Brown (17:05):

See. And by doing that, my entire body, the breath and the control and all of that would click in because the mind is really so strong. And so that’s what it is about entrepreneurship. You have to step into the leadership role. You have to step into the business owner role and take it on fully, learn what you need to learn, be open to new ideas, be open to new input. Get help, get support. Get people around you who’ve been there, done that so that they can support you and give you guidance. But you’ve got to know that you can do this thing and you can, it’s a mind over matter. Agreed. And so that’s what the whole kind of the book is about.

Henry Lopez (17:50):

Yeah. That’s wonderful. Beautifully said. I couldn’t agree with you more. When you think back to now when you thought there’s no way I’m a number two, what was really the fear that was holding you back? Was it that fear of I’ve never done this before, I don’t know that I can do it. Thinking back though, what was it that you think was holding you back for real?

Vicky Brown (18:11):

Yeah. I think it was because it was something I had never considered. So it was a huge unknown to me, and I really

Henry Lopez (18:20):

And were you afraid to fail in that unknown?

Vicky Brown (18:23):

I just didn’t know if I wanted to do it. I didn’t know if I wanted to have that level of accountability and responsibility. I feel a really strong responsibility for the families that this business supports. And so I didn’t know, and I’ve been exposed to that in other startup environments. I didn’t know if I wanted to take all of that on. I didn’t know if I could. And so yes, there certainly would be. There’s some fear of failure actually. There’s still some fear of failure. Sure.

Henry Lopez (18:51):

There always is. Yeah. You talked about the impostor syndrome. I feel it periodically. Everybody does. I think it’s one of those things that we all go through, but like you expressed it very well said as to how it’s very much a mindset. Alright, leading to that, shifting to becoming an entrepreneur, of course is about building a team. And specifically you want to get your insights on high performance teams. I thought we’d start with your definition of a high performance team. What does that mean

Vicky Brown (19:19):

To me, a high performance team is, it’s all the things that you think of when you think of the leader of the organization being able to lead and not be in the weeds. So you have people who are self-motivated, you have people who have a clear idea of what the vision is, and they have a aligned behind the vision and the steps that it takes to complete that vision. They have a strong personal affinity for developing their career and their knowledge and their expertise and for infusing that back into the organization. So a high performance team for me is a third the team, a third the leader, and a third, the environment that you as the leader help create because you can have high performing individuals in the wrong environment and you will not have a high performance team.

Henry Lopez (20:14):

And is in the environment what we’re doing, the product or the service that we’re offering, is that part of environment or is that a separate thing?

Vicky Brown (20:23):

To me, it’s a bit of a separate thing because the environment is, and I think I tell people that if you don’t focus on culture unquote, you’ll still have a culture. Every environment has a culture. So just because you haven’t labeled it that or you haven’t paid attention to it, doesn’t mean that you don’t have one. And it’s the same thing. The culture is part of the environment. And that’s kind of the same thing to me. If you don’t actively create and shape that environment as the leader, create an environment where people aren’t afraid to fail because it’s going to make sure that they know it’s a learning opportunity. Make sure I’m kind of getting into the weeds here, but make sure that you are recognizing high performance and you’re supporting folks who are struggling. Make sure that people who are non-performers, you can’t have non-performers on a high performance team for years on end. It will inevitably affect the rest of the team.

Henry Lopez (21:27):

Absolutely.

Vicky Brown (21:27):

So all of people being able to give you feedback freely, you supporting them as fully fledged human beings, not just their work life. And I’m not saying get involved in your team’s personal life, but I’m saying understand and give them, if someone is having some childcare problems or whatever the case may be, figure out how you can support them now, yes, you need people to work. You need them to accomplish the goals, you need them to do the job, but you also have to understand that there may be other stressors that are happening outside of the workplace that impacts their ability to be at their best. So if you can put, and you don’t have to do this on a one-off basis, you can put various programs in place and now very much sounding like an HR person, but you can put various programs in place that can support individuals. Something as simple as volunteering, vacation time. So if someone is really struggling with a healthcare crisis and they need additional time off, the team can support them by volunteering their vacation time. Now doing that is a very specific thing. There are taxing ramifications here, but those kinds of programs,

Henry Lopez (23:55):

In my opinion, a high performance team can be the entire company. Everybody in the company, in my business, especially when it’s smaller, I’ll ask you a follow up question on that. But also of course, it can be a group that’s performing something like for example, I had the privilege of being, when I was in the corporate world, being part of a very high performance team in the sales team that I was in and a particular office in Dallas. And we were responsible for a region and for a period of two years or so, we had a very high performing team within the company at large. So I’m assuming it can apply at all levels. It can be the entire company or it could be a subset or a group that’s a high performance team. Correct?

Vicky Brown (24:35):

Absolutely. And if you’re very lucky, it’s the whole company. But most of the time, if

Henry Lopez (24:40):

It’s

Vicky Brown (24:40):

Not, yeah, most of the time it is a smaller

Henry Lopez (24:42):

Subset when we’re small, you’ve been in a startup. I’ve been in a startup usually, especially if you’ve got a good leader, which it sounds like it did, you did. Despite the failure. I suspect at that point when you’re under a hundred employees, you’re trying to build, everybody’s a high performer. But in my experience, I’m curious to see yours just go off on a tangent for a moment that that’s one of the challenges that larger corporations have is at some point there’s no way you have everybody on a high performance team. So you have to have these individual groups that are high performing teams. Is that fair?

Vicky Brown (25:17):

Absolutely.

Henry Lopez (25:18):

Absolutely. Used to call it back even before us, the skunk works, right? So they would take a group of people and work on a special project or the Manhattan project or whatever, those kind of things. Okay, so we’ve got an understanding. You’ve shared the foundational elements. Again, like you said, third team, a third of it is the leader, A third of it is the environment. Those are some of the key things. If we think about it now, from the life cycle of an employee, what are some of the things you see that work well to attract high performers to join your team?

Vicky Brown (25:50):

And I do have an answer for that, but before I get to that, I do want to just, this may be an unpopular opinion. I think that just as it’s critically important to have high performers on your team, it is also critically important to have less sparkle solid performers. Sometimes you will have someone who does their job, they come in every day, they do it, they do it well, you can count on them. They’re detailed, they do a very good job, but they’re not a superstar. Everybody can’t be LeBron James.

Henry Lopez (26:31):

But they’re consistent and they’re part of, you’re saying you’re arguing that those people are a part of a high performance team.

Vicky Brown (26:39):

That’s exactly right. I think they’re a valuable part because there is value in folks who just look straight ahead and get the job done,

Henry Lopez (26:51):

Get the work done. Is it partly because as a high performer comes with it, all kinds of things, including an ego, including wanting what’s next, including I have found that high performance teams don’t last forever. They have a life to them. And part of it is because if we analogize it to sports, we just had the Super Bowl, the coaches have already starting to get job offers to go to other high performing teams. The players will get offered big contracts elsewhere. So you have these forces that apply to high performance team has been my experience. And so high performance teams come and go and you keep building them over and over. Do you agree with that, that that’s the way it works?

Vicky Brown (27:37):

I absolutely do. And I think that the complexion of the performance team, of the high performance team changes. People come, people go their motivation, they may stay, but their motivation changes or their stage of life changes, all sorts of things can impact that.

Henry Lopez (27:55):

Exactly.

Vicky Brown (27:56):

So it’s fluid. It’s fluid,

Henry Lopez (27:59):

That’s the way to put it. Yeah,

Vicky Brown (28:00):

Exactly. So when you’re talking about having a high performance team, you certainly want a high performance organization, what the individual components of that look like will change. And so as leaders, we need to understand that and be ready for that and be able to adapt to that.

Henry Lopez (28:17):

But your point is that an organization or a team made up of exclusively a level high performers, that doesn’t always work very well. You need stabilizers. People who are going to get the work done are more consistent, are probably going to be there a little longer term. Is that what I’m understanding?

Vicky Brown (28:36):

Exactly. Exactly. Because one of the hallmarks of high performance individuals is that we, and I will say we, because entrepreneurs tend to be high performers, we are always reaching for the next thing. We are always expanding our horizons. We’re visionaries, we’re looking 14 steps ahead. That is fantastic. But you need people who are looking at today and focused on, I got to get that report done this afternoon. And yes, sometimes oftentimes their egos involved. High performers do have a strong sense of self typically. And so that can come into play as well. But all of that can be managed, but it’s not going to be a situation of stasis. It’s definitely going to be fluid. It’s definitely going to morph. And that’s part of what makes our jobs as leaders so dynamic, we have to understand that, be ready for it and be able to engage however the change shows up.

Henry Lopez (29:36):

Yeah, makes sense. Alright, so let’s go back into how do I attract high performers?

Vicky Brown (29:41):

So to attract high performers, the thing that I say all the time is recruiting is a marketing exercise. And if you don’t understand, it’s a marketing exercise, you’re doing it wrong. You are, yes, you want high performers to be attracted to you. You want folks who, not who you’re looking for to self-select out, but in order to do that, you have to make yourself attractive. So a job posting is not a job description. Two completely different documents. They have two completely different purposes. A job description is something that a person like me absolutely loves because if you get in any legal hot water, you’ll be able to whip out your job description. These are the primary responsibilities of the job. These are the critical functions. This is, she can’t do this according to the doctor’s report. So we put her in this job at all of those kinds of things.

Vicky Brown (30:36):

So that’s what a job description is. And it also helps in performance reviews and things like that to have a lot of clarity around the expectations of the job. A job posting is really an advertisement. You are saying, we are wonderful and we want people who are wonderful and we will make you more wonderful. We will give you opportunities to grow and develop and meet other wonderful people and you’ll do wonderful projects and it’ll be wonderful. That’s what you’re doing. So in order to do that, if you’re just throwing a job description in a posting, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Henry Lopez (31:12):

And nowadays with the more limited pool, the constraints that are there, just because there aren’t as many people available to work, there are not enough workers. That’s the only way you’re going to attract the high performers is that’s what they’re looking for.

Vicky Brown (31:29):

That’s exactly right.

Henry Lopez (31:31):

And that’s a shift for an old guy like me. That was a shift that I had to learn. It’s really been five, 10 years now, but it used to be that you did just post, here are the duties and you’re going to prove to me that you are a fit. It has shifted. We have to show each other what the value is. Now I have to sell you on why this is a great place for you to bring your talents. And now of course I’m going to validate that you have the skills and the experience I’m looking for. But that is such a big thing and I really think, tell me what you think that it’s a mindset shift, especially for older business owners like myself who come from that mentality as you prove to me why I should hire you. That has shifted for all kinds of good reasons, by the way,

Vicky Brown (32:13):

I’m right there with you. And that is the mindset change that I had to embrace because I come from the land of if you’re very lucky, you get the job, you get hazed in the job for the first four years because everybody gets hazed in the job. And if you make it through, then you haze the next person that comes along. That’s right. You pass it on. Right, exactly. And you said something critically important there. You said that we have to prove to each other, and that’s the right perspective. It’s not that you have to prove to me that you’re the right person for the job, or I have to prove to you that this is the right job for you. We actually are entering into a conversation and we have to support one another as the employer and the candidate to say, this is what is possible. This is what I bring to the table. Does that have resonance for you? And that’s a different kind of environment and mindset. Certainly for me, I’m a proud baby boomers. I’ll absolutely say that. That’s the kind of thing that just was not the world that I entered into when I first started working.

Vicky Brown (33:25):

So that certainly is a mindset shift. But that’s what goes back to the whole marketing piece. Think of it as the same way you market your business to a potential client. You’re going to be marketing it to candidates, and you want candidates who have resonance with what you’re talking about to self-select in and the ones who don’t to self-select out. So some of the specific techniques that I look at, you want your posting to stand out, you want your opportunity to stand out from the sea of opportunities that are on Indeed and LinkedIn and Career Builder, on and on and on. And so why not talk about things like, yes, you want to put the skills in there that you’re looking for, you want to put down the critical functions of what you need in the job, but how about putting in a little day in the life, this is what your little storytelling, this is what the job is going to look like. I’m a big fan of video. If you can do a

Speaker 4 (34:23):

Link

Vicky Brown (34:24):

To the hiring a video of the hiring manager saying, this is what I look for in my department, and this is the example of some successful team members that we’ve had. There is nothing better than a candidate being able to actually see and hear the hiring manager and getting a flavor for who they are and how they communicate and what they’re looking for. And the same with other team members. Why not have team testimonials? You get clients by testimonials. Why not get candidates by testimonials? So again, if your career page doesn’t have anything on it or your posting doesn’t lead to somewhere where there is a testimonial from a team member or a few team members, this is what is great about my job, this is why I love this company, that kind of thing. It goes a long way.

Henry Lopez (35:15):

Somebody and I would argue, well, nobody’s reading it anyway. Nobody will spend the time, but the right person will. And the right person will connect with that and say, ah, that’s the kind of environment I want to go work for.

Vicky Brown (35:27):

Exactly. And if you’re

Henry Lopez (35:29):

How I attract them,

Vicky Brown (35:30):

Absolutely. And if you’re doing good out there in the world, say so. Don’t hide your shine. If you are contributing to nonprofit organizations or you have Habitat for Humanity day every year or whatever the case may be, make sure that you’re trumpeting that. Maybe it’s not in every posting, but your career page is your calling card. So that should really give a flavor of how you look at your team members, what you feel is valuable for them, how you support them. And then of course, there’s the whole development thing, but that’s after they actually get in the door.

Henry Lopez (36:11):

Alright, we’ll wrap up at this section here with this question. What’s one or two things succinctly that turns off high performers that causes them to leave and look for something else? What are some of those top things that you see? Mistakes that we make as small business owners in particular, that causes us to lose our high performers.

Vicky Brown (36:34):

Not delegating and micromanaging

Henry Lopez (36:37):

Because those things, what they say to a high performer is, I don’t trust you. I don’t believe in your skills. I don’t value you. I’m not willing to empower you to do what you are capable of doing.

Vicky Brown (36:48):

That’s exactly

Henry Lopez (36:49):

Right. A high performer takes that as an insult. Not to mention that I’m not going to keep growing here.

Vicky Brown (36:55):

Sure. They’re not going to keep growing. And I think of the two things, the micromanaging is actually the worst of the two

Speaker 4 (37:02):

Because

Vicky Brown (37:04):

The micromanaging really does say, I’ve given you this task, I’ve given you this project, but I don’t trust that you have the skills or the intuition or the judgment or the abilities to carry it out. So I’m going to be sitting on your head every step of the way that drives high performers. Insane.

Henry Lopez (37:26):

Insane. Yeah. It’s what drives a lot of high performers to start their own business, but it comes from that mentality. I think in part, having been guilty of it myself at times, thinking that the only way it can be done right is if I do it my way. What you find once you embrace this and realize that if you hired the right person, they may not do it exactly the right way, but what’ll surprise you is they might actually figure out a better way to do it.

Vicky Brown (37:51):

That’s exactly right. And that goes directly into the delegation thing because the reason we don’t delegate is because, well, there are lots of reasons we don’t delegate, but one of the prime reasons is because, well, you did it, but that’s not the way I do it. Now, you may have a perfectly good reason for doing it the way you do it, and if that’s so, communicate that because that’s another thing about high performers, the more information they have, they need to understand just giving an instruction and saying, because I said so that does not work with high performers. It actually doesn’t work with good solid team members. Period.

Speaker 4 (38:28):

Explain

Vicky Brown (38:28):

Yourself. Explain the why. Because again, they may come up with a better mousetrap. They may come up with a idea and knowing the why behind why you’re doing something the way that you’re doing, it helps them as they’re thinking about, okay, well we can do it that way, but why not add this particular bell or that particular whistle. So you really have to be, and it takes time to be clear like that, but that’s one of the hallmarks of a good leader.

Henry Lopez (38:58):

And I think this is one of the keys to transitioning from solopreneur to entrepreneur.

Vicky Brown (39:03):

Absolutely. It’s a painful key, but yes, it’s,

Henry Lopez (39:06):

Yeah, painful key. Yeah. Alright, let’s talk more about, we’ve touched on it, but give us the highlights of the services that IEO provides. What do you provide for your client now? And also tell us what’s an ideal client look like for you?

Vicky Brown (39:22):

Sure. Well, and thank you for asking. So the services that we provide, we’re basically an HR department for our client. We are their HR department. We just don’t sit in their offices. So we do everything in the employee life cycle from onboarding, new hire people, going on pregnancy leaves, promotions, all of that. Benefits administration, payroll administration, training and development. So we do all of that. We work very closely with our clients. Our goal, kind of our underlying core principle is that we want to develop managers. That’s really what we’re focused on because the impression that your employee has of your company is almost a hundred percent tied up in their impression of their manager. That’s who they’re dealing with every day. That’s the person that’s giving them the company. The company policy is this, or we’re going to do that, or we’re going to do it this way.

Vicky Brown (40:25):

All of that comes from the manager and managers most often are promoted into a managerial role because they were very, very good at the job, which is terrific. But managing is a different job. It’s a different muscle. It’s different. If you take a marathon runner and you tell them, I want you to do some heavy lifting, those two things don’t go together. So they have to train. Both of those disciplines require training. So training a manager to be able to, your job no longer is to do the job, do the task. Your job is to motivate others to excel at the task. That’s a different set of muscles. So giving them the growth opportunity and the support and the development to become better managers. That’s really where we’re focused. And then by the same token, we then do that with the business owner and the CEO and CFO, et cetera, help them become better leaders in addition to all of the administrivia. So yes, we will process the payroll and we will process the benefits enrollment and we will do all of those things.

Henry Lopez (41:29):

Got it. And I believe you’ve got a free download for our listeners. Tell us about that if you would.

Vicky Brown (41:34):

Absolutely. It’s a quick overview, quick checklist, because we’re also about doing things quickly because this all came out of my brain and the one thing I don’t have is time building a company. No business owner has tons of free time, so we want to make sure that you get exactly what you need exactly in the moment that you need it. So this is a quick overview of what kinds of things to look for when you’re putting together an onboarding process. If you’re unfortunately terminating someone, what are the high points that you need to be aware of, things like that. So we have a little booklet that hopefully will be helpful.

Henry Lopez (42:12):

And where do I find that?

Vicky Brown (42:14):

And you can find [email protected] slash podcast gift.

Henry Lopez (42:21):

Excellent. And if you’re not where you can write that down, I’ll have that link in the show notes page for this episode. So just search for Vicki Brown at the how web business.com, and you can find that link as well to get that free download. Alright, excellent book. We’ve mentioned your book. We’ve been chatting about some of the content in that book. Again, that book that Vicki Brown wrote is Sing it with your Opera Voice, my Journey from Solopreneur to Entrepreneur. And is there another book that comes to mind or you’ve read it recently or are reading that you would recommend?

Vicky Brown (42:55):

I’m currently reading and implementing actually Ryan DE’s Scaling, and I love that book, and so I highly recommend it to others because again, as we said, I love process, I love organization, and it really is a wonderful guide to help you set up a process for running your business.

Henry Lopez (43:19):

Wonderful. Thanks for that recommendation. Alright, let’s wrap it up. Vicki. What’s one thing you want us to take away from the conversation that we’ve had about high performance teams, building them, maintaining them, attracting them? What would be one key thing you would have us take away from this conversation on high performance teams?

Vicky Brown (43:38):

My key would be to the entrepreneurs and the business owners out there. Sometimes it feels like when you say things like Don’t micromanage and you have to delegate and things of that nature, it feels like, okay, this is something I have to learn to do. It’s not an easy thing. It doesn’t come naturally to me, but I have to alter my behavior to get there. And that is not necessarily untrue. But there is another way to think of it. If I’m having a bad day, surprising, but it does happen. If I’m having a bad day, when I go into the office and I just hear the team members collaborating with one another, working with clients, working on projects, it gives me such a feeling of joy. I stand on their shoulders. The whole company would not exist if it weren’t for them. The joy, I keep using the word joy, but the joy that comes from that, that’s what you will get if you bring in high performers, solid performers, give them the tools.

Vicky Brown (44:47):

I think my job is to give them the tools that they need to do their jobs, to expand their jobs and to grow their careers. That’s my job. If you do that as a business owner, you will get tremendous, tremendous valuable feedback and valuable support from that team. And I can’t really describe it, but it puts a smile on my face, makes me feel immeasurably better. Certainly makes me feel proud of every single one of them. I feel like the mama hen really. And so understand that there are things, there are pieces in there that will bring you great joy. It’s not all about just altering who you are and what your natural proclivities are. It really is. If you do it and you do it consistently and you do the best you can, you don’t have to be perfect. Just do the best you can. You will grow a team and an environment that will not only grow the business, but will grow you as an individual.

Henry Lopez (45:46):

Well said, well said. Couldn’t agree with you more. And I understand the feeling that you’re describing, and the opposite of it is getting to a 0.5 years into your business, 10 years into your business, and you dread going in every day or dealing with it. And that’s usually because you haven’t allowed anybody else to help you. You have to make all the decisions. You have to be the one that makes the big decisions. You have to do it or it can’t be done right. All of those things will wear you down. And then all you’ve got is a lower paying job that you’re miserable with than when you left. Perhaps instead of being an entrepreneur and leading others to work collaboratively to build something, that is the key difference. So thanks for sharing that perspective. Tell us where you’d like to go, like us to go again to learn more about you and about your business.

Vicky Brown (46:40):

All Roads lead from Vicki Brown hr.com, so you can do that and it’ll have links certainly to other services and the other things that we provide. But figured Vicki Brown HR was probably easier than making everybody spell Domino.

Henry Lopez (46:57):

Exactly. Great story and a great brand, but you want to provide access and people will be able to find you online. So perfect. We’ll have a link to that as well, like I said before, and the link to download the free download at the show notes page for this episode. Vicki, great conversation. Thanks so much for sharing your incredible and inspiring entrepreneurial journey and your thoughts on high performance team. Thanks for being with me today.

Vicky Brown (47:24):

Thank you so much. I had a great time.

Henry Lopez (47:26):

This is Henry Lopez and thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode of the How A Business. My guest today again is Vicki Brown. I release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find a show anywhere you listen to podcasts, including on my YouTube channel, the How a business.com, the How of Business YouTube channel rather. And on my website, you can also listen there at the how of business.com. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 (47:52):

Thank you for listening to the How of Business. For more information about our coaching programs, online courses, show notes, pages, links, and other resources, please visit the how of business.com.