Building A Network Of Talent For Your Business With Dean DeLisle [Episode 72]

This episode Dean DeLisle, author of First: The Street Guide to Digital Business Influence, teaches us how to build a network or team of people that are going to help us get to that next level.

With a background in coaching senior executives, spearheading insanely successful team projects, launching an online university, and so much more – this guy knows his stuff…

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First of all, how do you start identifying who you want to be in your circle of influence?

• What’s our main purpose, or main initial reason to start building a bunch of people around us in a physical sort of way? What I’ve found is we are all heading somewhere, we all have a specific destination. Even if you're going nowhere that’s a destination. 
• A lot of times we hang with the buds that we have or the people who got us to this very moment. But we don’t look at how as we look at our career moves or business moves.
• Then we don’t change our circle of influence or the people who can help impact that. We just stay with the same people and many times we just get stuck. This is human nature, it’s getting in the comfort zone.

If we spend the most time with ourselves, then we are going to be the average version of ourselves, right?

• From a comfort perspective, we might take people quite like ourselves to help us to feel good about ourselves and not challenge and get that sort of contrast person we want in ourselves to really help challenge us and take us to that next level.
• Are you a leader or are you a follower, and sometimes we’re just a follower of ourselves and that’s how we got stuck in this rut.

What are the other triggers? What else is going to make me think I should reach out and build this network of people around me?

• A lot of times we wait for that time where something happens like a life event or business event or lack of.
• Many of us have built a business or this flagship on that mistake we have all heard about. Making a single client or customer more than 80% of your business and then you lose that business and then you get the wake-up call. 
• Rather than wait, instead of million this year you're going to do 1.5. Are the current people around me going to help to get to 1.5 or did it take most of me and some of them to get me to where I’m at? Then you know you need some new players in this game to help go to that next level.

Is that a replacement thing or usually an in addition to thing?

• Absolutely a replacement thing.
• Build the social team that will help you get to your goals.
• Start with goals and objectives with everything you do. 
• Sometimes we make the wrong selection. Pick your head up and draft new people onto your team.
• Get rid of toxic or bad players from the team and bring some good ones on. 
• We don’t just need to change strategy we need to re-advertise, we need to take me applications, we need to do it all over again even though we have been advertising and interviewing for weeks on end 
• A lot of us makes this choice because we want to get back to doing our stuff and this is where we get caught but the idea is we need to stop and to pay attention what our original agenda is here or whatever we decided at the beginning of the year is going to be our goal, is that person going to allow us to get there? 
• That’s the question that everyone has to ask with their current team as well as with any new people you're looking to bring on.

Are you focused on other business owners you can mastermind with or are you talking employees team members, or both?

• Both. But technical not tactical is not going to help me get to 1.5.
• My CFO has a much higher ranking because he has value in helping me strategically making sure I’m staying on track, I’m hiring the right people, I’m not costing too much to acquire customers, etc. 
• People will automatically list their attorney or this person or that person. Well it may be your advisory board but it’s really not your social team or these people are all in together to drive that business to the next level or it can be a combination thereof. 
• The real success comes when you start looking at people like allies that you have that are great referral partners or maybe these two people run organizations that contain all the next customers you could ever want.
• I like people who sit on boards, people that run or are advisory to membership organizations that have a cluster of members that are ideal targets for us. 
• Those are the people I put on because they have a network that’s going to help me and I have a network that’s going to help them and there is mutuality with that.

We’ve all made bad hires for our teams. What kind of criteria do you put in place in order to make sure people on team ‘you’ are fabulous?

• I’ve studied the scouting and drafting process for major sports. I was thinking it was based on pure skill. But scouts look way beyond that. They look at a character, who this person is, it’s not just based off your talent, they look at their families, things that can come up, they look at the mental state, they make sure it’s synergistic, that is works together.
• So we need to do that for ourselves as well as our organizations. Are we on the same journey, or is that person just as much of a go-getter? 
• A lot of times we treat our business or ourselves like that, I’m just going to run with this same group because it’s comfortable and I’ve known them for a while, yeah I trust them, they’ve helped me through thick and thin. However, they may be okay where they are at in their journey and are you okay at in your journey or are you still committed to going to that next level and are these next-level players that are willing to help take you there? 
• You need to also be all in for your team members. Not only are they serving you but your serving them where you are both going for this championship together and it doesn’t mean you work in the same company.

Where do you sit in on the idea of being sort of part of a paid mastermind group where one person choreographs it and you all pay them and they sort of facilitate it or being in a mastermind group as part of this team?

• They can overlap. You're always scouting. The idea is it’s not this static team. We don’t want to get stale or static. 
• We want to be conscious that potentially there is a better player. Not paid teams but structured.
• The top 5 people on your team are starters. Those are the people that jump you out of the gate and make sure that you're going to get a good lead, that you're going to get a good start to the game. 
• Structure with your top 5 starters and there are usually a top player or two in those starters. 
• From this moment forward you are constantly scouting for people at that top starter rank, so compare them to your very best player.
• Instead of scouting for criteria once you have the criteria and the best starters that you know of at this moment you are constantly seeing people differently so you can scout those next best players when you get a top 5 going and then get a bench going often after those 5 you are rocking. 
• People are at their peak performance with just 15 people in their network. Another group of 25, we call the practice squad, make up a team of 40 all in all, but it’s never static. 
• The goal is to build relationships, so rather than pay each other, develop relationships. We have a unique relationship scoring system.

What is the criteria with scoring them?

• It’s the level of relationship. We have an option to now explore and take things further in that criteria.
• It could do with the alignment of vision and destination. So are we on the same path, is the relationship at that level where we are truly being honest with one another or are we just saying these things the other person wants to hear?
• Are we being authentic and genuine, are we really being transparent and are they being transparent with us? The power of authenticity.

How formal is this agreement?

• Depends on the type of person, it depends on the social traits of the person.
• Recommend to tell people because you want to teach your team how to build their team and you want to be a part of that team so you can keep things going. It creates a cluster or power hub together. 
• Five people operating at this peak performance and everybody is building their team and scouting, there not just scouting for themselves, they are scouting for each other and you create this power network or hub together. 
• This is where we have seen big powerful groups build just out of this individual process. But the idea is we are helping each other out and we tell our students and clients to really let people know you are on my team and this is what that looks like. 
• Your asking about frequency, we are asking about literally touch two team members a day, five days a week. It could be a text or on social media engaging with their content and helping them out, a phone call. Two touches with intent to increase the relationship score.
• The power of asking and the intentionality of asking. So if you need new clients or funding or promotion you get into the power of asking. When you have a relationship score with a level 3 and above now you can go direct.

What’s your view on commercial interaction between them? What have you found in terms of your studies of teams is the best way to deal with commercial relationships within that?

• We love commercial relationships because there is a commitment to actually taking care of somebody the right way and expecting fair money and returns.
• I have clients that I’m on their team and they're on my team as well. 
• These are the ones where when you get to that level of authenticity your going to find out really what you need to fit within your organization. You're going to get that honest feedback rather than having a client that is not at that level of relationship with you and now all of a sudden they are like hey this isn’t working out we are going to leave.

How do you remove somebody from your team?

• A lot of times this happens naturally. There is an agreement that things aren’t working out and there is a departure or separation.
• There are reasons for everything whenever there is a separation, or if things don’t work.
• Is there something that I could have done better? What can I improve on? Personal responsibility.

A book that you would recommend…
Marketing Rebellion by Mark Schaefer.

What is your top success habit?
Meditation and journaling.

Who do you look up to?
Tony Robbins.

What are your favourite apps right now?
TikTok.

Here’s the big one… who do you like more, Rob or Kennedy?
It's gotta be Kennedy.

Finally, where can folks go to find out more about you?
My website is deandelisle.com or you can find the book over on Amazon.