Dan Lok

Why Aren’t You Delegating?

April 3, 2019 by Dan Lok Leave a Comment

(Stop Being a Control Freak in Business)

How comfortable would you feel about asking your friends and family to do a favour for you? How about asking a stranger on the street to help you with a task?

Now you might or might not feel comfortable with asking other people for help. But most entrepreneurs are very reluctant to delegate tasks. And it’s usually because of two reasons.

One possible reason is that you’re the type of entrepreneur who is a control freak. You don’t want to give up your authority. Another possible reason is you are afraid the person doing the task will make a mistake.

As a result, you become a one-person business doing all of the work yourself, working until exhaustion, with no time to reflect on how to move your business to the next level.

However, the sooner you start delegating, the sooner you can grow your business.

You don’t need to be a CEO or the boss of a couple of employees before you start delegating. Sharing the work will ease your workload and free up your time for other tasks, like planning out the direction of your business.

You can start delegating as soon as you’re ready. You don’t even have to wait until you’re rich.

Have a look at my business for example. People tell me because I’m rich, I can delegate. But the opposite is true. It’s because I delegate that I’m rich. It’s a chicken and egg thing.

So if you have your own business and you aren’t delegating, start now.

Here are some tips to motivate you to be less controlling and more at ease with delegating to other people.

Watch this video on why you should be delegating more for your business.

Start With The Right Mindset

If you don’t have the habit of delegating now, you won’t be making the money to maximize your time. And if you don’t have the habit of delegating now, you’re not likely to be delegating when you have more money.

One reason why you’re not delegating is because you’re thinking about saving. You want to wait until the future when you can afford to start paying other people to do tasks.

The opposite is true. You’ll start saving money when you can afford to put money aside. To make enough money to put some aside, you need to free up your time to work on generating more revenue. You can’t do that if you’re saving money by doing all the routine tasks yourself.

You need to start developing a millionaire mindset now.

Right now, for every dollar that comes in, you want to set aside ten cents. You’re cultivating a habit early on. Then when you have a hundred times more money, you’re already used to saving a bit of everything you earn.

So start the habit and delegate small tasks. Let your less important responsibilities go gradually and as you get some good experience working with others, keep delegating more from there. If you’re still reluctant, it might be because you have limiting beliefs.

Why You Aren’t Delegating

What’s holding people back from delegating? They can come up with enough reasons to last a lifetime.

For example, they think they can do the job better themselves. They don’t trust others to do it because the other person might make a mistake. Or the other person isn’t qualified to do it or they already have enough to do.

Or they believe they are the only person on this planet who can do it so they can’t ask anyone else to do it.

All of those reasons are nothing more than limiting beliefs. None of it is true, and having those beliefs doesn’t help your business. You don’t get anything done, and you stay on the hamster wheel.

There are some tasks that you can delegate to others.

Responding to emails
Responding to customer service
Scheduling business and personal appointments
Writing to new prospects
Bookkeeping, graphic design, website development
Travel arrangements

All of these tasks and more, you can delegate to other people. If you aren’t delegating, there are four big fears that are holding you back.

1. Fear Of Losing Control

You fear what could happen if you lose control. Maybe the other person will make a mistake and it will cost you time or money to fix.

You fear you could be rejected if you ask someone for help. You’re worried that this person will think you’re incompetent because you’re not doing the task yourself. Or you’re inadequate.

This is especially true of men. Women are more willing to ask for help. Men are taught to be strong and macho so if you don’t do something, you’re incompetent and you might lose your sense of honour.

Maybe you don’t fear losing control, and you’re not afraid to ask for help, but you like to watch every dollar you spend very carefully.

2. Fear Of The Cost

Sometimes entrepreneurs think the cost is too high and they can’t afford it. They want to save money. However, you need to think about how much your time is worth.

If you want to make a million bucks a year, your work has to be worth $1700 an hour. If you don’t delegate, then you’re losing $1700 an hour. Isn’t your time worth so much more?

Even if you think you can’t afford to delegate, start the habit and free up your time. You can’t be afraid of losing money, or having a bad experience.

3. Fear Of A Bad Experience

You may have tried to delegate in the past and it turned into delegation hell because the person you trusted and paid didn’t deliver as promised.

To avoid that, create a document. Provide your consultant or assistant with the information they need, the steps they need to take, and your expectations. They are less likely to make mistakes when expectations are clear.

If they still manage to make mistakes, then hire someone else. Or delegate to three people and see who does the job the best. Keep the good one and let go of the rest.

Another way to think about it is this: Have you ever had a bad meal in the past? Did that stop you from eating ever again?

For that same reason, don’t let a bad experience stop you from looking for the right person.

4. Fear Of Not Finding The Right Person

Hiring the right person is a numbers game that you won’t get right every time. In the big scheme of things, it’s not going to matter. Six months to a year from now, you’re not going to remember the minor errors. You just need to get better at filtering out the bad matches.

Here’s an example. One of my business partners had a business for 15 years. He wasn’t good at hiring or managing people.

One day, I asked him to fire everybody. He didn’t want to do such a thing because he considered his employees as friends.

The experience turned out to be a business lesson for him. All the people my business partner thought were his good friends tried to get to every last dime when they were fired. One even kept the iPad he had been given.

Employees are employees.

Hiring people is a skill. There are so many steps to choosing the right one, from filtering to coaching them to training them to develop new skills.

The way I hire people and run my company is a bit unusual because I run this virtual empire. I choose to work from home. I don’t want to commute or go to an office. When my mentees call me, I’m in my underwear, not my suit. I like to be at home.

I get up, do my morning routine, and get to work. It saves me a lot of time. But that’s a personal preference. It also means because I don’t see my team face-to-face most of the time, so I need to trust them to do their responsibilities. So when I hire, I choose people who can work independently.

Why You Need To Delegate Now

If you want your business to grow, you need to learn to get comfortable with delegating now, not in the future. Your time is valuable, so overcome your fears and start finding tasks you can ask other people to do for you. Most importantly, establish a hiring system so you create a team of people you can trust.

What tasks do you delegate to other people? Comment below.

Words of Wisdom From a Self-Made Billionaire

March 30, 2019 by Dan Lok Leave a Comment

A billionaire once said to me, “Dan, if your goal is to make a billion dollars, chances are, you’ll never make a billion dollars.”

Those were his words of wisdom, which were discouraging and confusing at the same time. What was he really trying to tell me? That I was going to fail?

I was hungry for answers from the local billionaire who was sitting next to me. He’d made a fortune in the real estate and financing business, and I wanted a role model. I was a young guy at the time and we were at the Vancouver Club. The people at this exclusive club are shareholder and families of generational wealth, so I didn’t feel like I belonged.

As one of the youngest members of the Vancouver Club, I found it was a fascinating place to meet a lot of powerful and influential leaders.

I met real estate developers, powerful politicians, tycoons, and tech entrepreneurs. The place was a gold mine of possible business mentors for someone like me who was still struggling to achieve my dreams.

I felt very privileged to have the chance to sit with this successful billionaire and learn from him. I asked him, “How does one become a billionaire like you? What advice do you have for a young man like me who is building my companies? If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?”

The advice he gave me wasn’t just about money or how to make it. Surprisingly, he told me that if I just focused on the money, I wasn’t going to get as far. Here is what he shared with me about how to reach his level of success in business and in life.

Watch this video for words of wisdom from a billionaire.

Don’t Set Out To Be A Millionaire Or Billionaire

Now before you start wondering if he was telling me to stop focusing on money, let me share what he said. It wasn’t what I expected.

He told me, “You know what, Dan, at first, that wasn’t my goal. I didn’t set out to be a billionaire and put that on my goal list or anything like that. Now when I was young, I had a wife and kids, and all I wanted to do was provide a nice environment for them. I wanted to provide a good education for my kids. I wanted a nice home for them to grow up in.”

He also wanted to become a millionaire. He worked hard at it and eventually, he hit a million dollars.

But he realized nothing changes that much. He still went to work. He still ate the same breakfast and he still provided for his wife and kids. The difference was, his house was now a nice house and he had a couple cars. Life was good.

But he realized that didn’t fulfil him. That old life didn’t get him excited anymore. He realized that being a millionaire wasn’t the end goal.

Grow Your Business One Step At A Time

At the time, he had good employees that he treated like family. He got to know their spouse, their kids, and before you knew it, they were a pretty big company with 100 employees. But to expand the business, he needed to acquire another company.

So that’s what he did – he expanded and then he had two companies. So I asked him how he managed all these different companies.

He said it was like having a baby – you just have one at a time. You acquire a company, and then you let it grow. Step by step, you help it, nurture it, and grow it. And then you have another company, and you nurture it and grow it.

After decades of doing that, he ended up with tens of thousands of employees and this group of companies.

Then I asked him, “How do I grow my business the way you did?”

He had grown his fortune one company at a time, but the key is he didn’t focus on the money. He didn’t focus on making a billion dollars. What he said was, “If your goal is to make a billion dollars, chances are, you’re not going to make a billion dollars.”

I asked him what he meant by that. Wasn’t the purpose of growing companies to make a billion dollars?

Love What You Do, Value Your Customers

He said, “If you love what you do, and you love your customers, your people, and your team, and you’re willing to make a difference and establish a reputation of being fair in business dealings and working with people…people will want to come back to you and do business with you.”

It’s easier to do business when people come to you, instead of you chasing them. You want people to come to you because you have a good reputation. You want to show them you care about them.

So people – your customers and your team – are what will get you to your goal of becoming a millionaire or billionaire. You can’t just focus on the money goal. You need to love the people who are your customers and your team so they will want to come back to you.

I took the advice of that billionaire and I’ve grown my organization to a global level. If a young guy were to sit down with me and ask the same questions I did as a young man, I would give him the same advice on how to become rich.

If you are interested in more advice from successful entrepreneurs, tune in to my podcast called The Dan Lok Show. Every single week, I interview successful entrepreneurs, heavy hitters, millionaires and billionaires, to bring you their wisdom and insights.

Jack Ma’s Top 9 Rules For Success | Why You Should Listen To Your Customers

March 26, 2019 by Dan Lok Leave a Comment

Photo credits: Frederic Legrand – COMEO / Shutterstock.com and feelphoto / Shutterstock.com

Remember the gut wrenching heartache you felt the moment you realized you gave up on your goal too soon? That if you’d persisted, you would have reached success?

I know the feeling. It’s like the analogy where you’ve been drilling for oil for several months. You’re tired and disappointed, so you give up. But if you had just kept going for one more hour, you would have struck it rich.

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and now billionaire, always believed that today is hard, but giving up is not the answer. “If you give up tomorrow, you will never see the sunshine.” Those are wise words that apply to life in general, but especially true in business if you want to be successful with your customers.

I don’t follow too many other entrepreneurs, but Jack Ma is definitely one of a handful that I look up to because of how much his wisdom resonates with me. I have probably read every single book written by or about Jack Ma.

Maybe it’s his poor, English teacher background – I’ve always found him to be very compelling and persuasive. He’s also a very articulate public speaker and visionary. As a global educator, I can relate to his teacher’s heart.

Success is not easy to achieve, and both Jack Ma and I have been down that road to prove it. We can’t make your journey any shorter or any less difficult, but we can share Jack Ma’s nine rules of success to give you an advantage in business and in life.

Watch this video about Jack Ma’s nine rules of success.

1. Think Outside The Box

Let’s start with how people like to perceive you. They like to label you. So if you don’t make sense to them, they think you’re crazy.

When I was younger, people thought I was crazy because of my outside-of-the-box thinking and teaching style. People thought of Jack the same way when he came up with Alipay, an online payment platform.

When you don’t make sense to others, you’re a lunatic, but when you’re successful, they give you a different name. They call you eccentric and innovative because when you’re successful, all your ideas are validated.

Jack believes that being crazy is good. Why? Because Jack says that, “If everyone agrees with me and if everybody believes in our idea is good – we will have no chance.”

You wouldn’t be the one standing out from the crowd. If everyone thought the same way, you would all blend in together and succeed and fail together.

So what can you do to stand out and be innovative and be a little crazy? Jack teaches us to “Focus on the user.” As long as you’re focusing on the customer and they love what you’re doing, that’s all that matters.

2. Seek Opportunities Before Anyone Else

When it comes to opportunities, I do believe they are everywhere.

As an entrepreneur, we create our own opportunities but to be a good entrepreneur and visionary, you must see the opportunities before anyone else. You don’t want your competitors to see your vision.

I’m talking about the Blue Ocean. In business, you’ve found a Blue Ocean when you don’t have competitors and you’re the only one offering what you offer in your market.

When Jack Ma’s company Taobao became a market leader in the Chinese market, eBay withdrew from China. EBay, the competition, was like the shark fighting and making the ocean red. When competitors are gone, there is no more fighting, no more red. When they are gone, the ocean is clear and blue.

For me, founding the High-Ticket Closing program was a Blue Ocean. I offered a premium prices sales program that was new to the marketplace.

When you can create a Blue Ocean opportunity, you will have found something ahead of your competitors. To do that, identify what it is that no one else is offering and take advantage of it before anyone else.

3. Hire Women

Jack Ma’s secret to making a company excellent is to hire women. Almost 47% of the employees at his company are female. I strongly agree with this secret to success.

All of the bad business partnerships I’ve had in the past were all with men. All the ones where I’ve been successful were all with women. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my wife Jennie.

Really, it’s women who have all the major buying power. If a man wants to buy a new house, he has to talk to the wife. If he wants to buy a new car, he has to talk to the wife. Even if the husband is the one bringing in the money, it’s the wife that makes the buying decision.

In closing, in sales, I teach my students to sell to the wife. If the husband can’t move forward, he needs the wife to say yes. If the wife says yes, then it’s a done deal.

4. Think Bigger And Create An Ecosystem

Jack Ma believes that when you have a couple million dollars, that money belongs to you. But when you have one billion dollars, that money doesn’t belong to you anymore. When you have that much wealth, you have a social responsibility to other people.

He believed that when you have that much wealth, you can create a global economy, one ecosystem where people can buy and sell, make payments, and travel using one global system. We could create an economy that would generate 100,000,000 jobs in the world.

His way of thinking inspired how I set my own business goals. I started small, and kept dreaming bigger and bigger.

At the beginning of my career, I started my business because I wanted to support my mom. Once I had enough income coming in, I was able to support my mom, my family, and myself. At the next stage, I improved my lifestyle with a better car and a better house.

Once I accomplished that, I went on to larger goals. I started solving bigger problems while building my organization and my team. Then it wasn’t just Dan Lok organization, it became the students that benefited from my programs and services.

Over time, I was building an ecosystem where I was helping not just myself but the people around me to create opportunities, a better lifestyle, and more abundance for others.

Like Jack Ma, I was learning to think bigger, beyond my own needs and my own family’s needs. I was thinking at a global level.

Apple has created an ecosystem with its products. The information from our lives is integrated with the cloud.

5. Business Is A Team Sport

Business is not a sport that you play on your own. It doesn’t matter how talented you are.

As a leader, it’s not about you doing all the work. It’s about you having the vision, figuring out what the are most important critical drivers within your business, and then finding the team members that can execute your vision and turn that into reality.

Choosing the right team member is critical to your success. Jack Ma said that you should choose the right person for the job. If you don’t know technology, hire the best technician. If you don’t know finance, hire the expert.

6. Work With Small Businesses

Just like a business isn’t something you can build on your own, success isn’t something you can reach on your own. If you help others, then you will also rise up.

Jack Ma says, “I believe small is beautiful. We can use the internet to help the small guys. If you can help others to be successful, then you will be successful.”

I’ve approached building my business in that way. I’ve made most of my money serving small businesses, clients, and my students. Only a small percentage of my wealth is from big companies. The majority of my wealth is from small businesses.

As Jack Ma said, “In this world, if you want to win in the 21st century, you have to be making sure that you are making other people become powerful, empower others; making sure the other people are better than you are, then you will be successful.”

7. Traditional Education Is Important But Not Everything

Jack Ma advises us, “Don’t hire people because of which school they are from. Hire because of their learning spirit.”

I absolutely agree with this approach because within my company, we never hire based on resumes. Actually no one has ever submitted a resume! We look at your attitude, your culture fit, and what talents you can bring to the table.

Skills are something we can develop and train, but attitude and company culture are number one. It doesn’t matter if they have an MBA. I never went to university.

What matters is your learning spirit, the fighting spirit, the hunger. Any skill, if someone wants it badly enough, they can develop, but I cannot teach them culture. I cannot teach them to share the same values and beliefs that my company has. I cannot teach them the desire to succeed.

8. Focus On Value, Mission, And Value Training

Jack Ma taught values, the mission, and professionalism. After that, his company got more managers and leaders than other startups. With that change, his company started to do better because he believes it’s about creating value for others.

Technology might change. Your product might change. Your service might change. But if you have the right people, the right culture, you can work together as a team, and you can innovate. So it’s definitely people driven and customer centered.

When you are focused on the customer, on the people, and your team, that’s what makes the company grow. That’s what makes the company stay and sustain the growth.

9. Follow The Customer To Business Model

Of all of Jack Ma’s rules for success, is the most important tip of all.

You may have heard of B2C and B2B, but Jack Ma believes the future of ecommerce is C2B, consumer to business, because we have a large number of consumers. The focus won’t be on businesses to customers (B2C) or business to business (B2B), but the power of the customer.

They can ask for things to be tailor made on a large scale, and businesses will need to addresses their demands because consumers are now more demanding than ever.

They want to consume content exactly how they want, where they want, from whatever technology that they want. For example, they may want to watch a show without interruption. Or they want the option to watch a show from their iPad, their iPhone, not just their TV.

They want to buy and consume on their own terms and organizations need to be able to fulfill that need.

The model of “this is what we have and you should buy some” won’t work anymore.

Even Coca Cola has personalized bottles with people’s first names as one of their campaigns. Consumers made demands, and the largest companies are listening. They are custom tailoring to the needs of their customers.

Summary: Jack Ma’s Top 9 Rules For Success

If you want to be successful, never get too comfortable. Always be thinking outside the box, looking for new opportunities that will keep you in a Blue Ocean. Business is a team sport, one that you cannot play on your own. So work with small businesses and focus on creating value. And most importantly, listen to your customers and their needs. It’s your responsibility.

Which of Jack Ma’s rules for success do you like the most? Comment below.

How To Systematize Your Business If It Isn’t Working

March 20, 2019 by Dan Lok Leave a Comment

Remember when you first started your business and you measured time from one deadline to the next, one task to the next?

One of the biggest challenges you’ll have when you start a business is the number of tasks that you’re taking on.

You’re the expert at everything. You wear the suit and make executive decisions and chat with clients. You roll up your sleeves to make the coffee and fix the photocopier when it breaks down.

The business becomes a part of you so you are living and breathing and dreaming it from morning until night.

At this point, your friends and family are probably wondering where you’ve gone, if you can be separated from your business the way employees can be separated from their jobs. Clearly, you need to make some changes to your professional life so you can have more of a personal life. But how?

The good news is, it’s possible to systematize your business if it isn’t working. It starts with a closer look at all the roles in your company, and then deciding how you can delegate responsibilities to other people.

Watch this video on how to systematize your business so you’re working on it, not in it.

1. Decide What All The Aspects Of Your Business Are

In a typical internet business, for example, you have so many aspects to manage. You have content, copywriting, list building, getting traffic, having offers, technology, and finance. These are some key areas you have to focus on.

Right now, you may be working on all of the areas shown below.

You could be working on all of these areas of your business.

In each of these seven aspects, you may also be working on any or all of these tasks.

You could be completing all of these tasks.

Maybe you’ve done most of these tasks before, maybe you don’t know how to even begin doing some of these things, like a teleseminar or RSS feed.

As you expand your business, you will need some help with any of these seven areas. At this moment, let’s pause and take a look at the org chart of your business to see where you need help.

2. Draw Out An Org Chart And Decide On Roles In Your Organization

An organizational chart, or org chart, shows all the roles in your business, from you, the CEO, to everyone else in management and those with the least amount of responsibility.

This is what an org chart looks like for a typical business with one person. Now you can see why entrepreneurs seem to have split personalities. You have to do all the roles and handle all of the tasks.

No wonder you’re overwhelmed! You’re the only one in your org chart.

You can also see that this format cannot work over time. You cannot sustain it.

If you aren’t feeling the exhaustion already, you will. You can’t just stick your head in the sand and hope the problem will go away.

Now instead of just putting your name on all of the roles and responsibilities, like you did in the org chart above, diagram it out more clearly by role. You have several responsibilities but they all contribute to the same end objective.

As the CEO, your objective is to work on the mission. You are the leader, the conductor of the team. To turn your dreams into reality, you need to figure out what roles contribute to your mission.

Every business has four core functions: operations, finance, marketing, and people. Each function includes different responsibilities. When you’ve figured out the functions of your business, you can start clarifying expectations for each role.

Decide on roles and describe each role.

3. Assign Names That Clarify Your Expectations For Each Role

Define and name each position in your business but give careful consideration to each name. For example, there is an assumption of seniority when you call someone the Director versus calling someone the Sales Manager.

The way you create a title also makes a huge difference. For each position, assign a name that shows your expectations for each.

If you called someone a Marketing Manager, what do you think that person’s job would be? What if you called that same person the Chief of Revenue Generation instead? Notice how the purpose for that person changes depending on the role you assign them.

4. Systematizing Your Business Requires A Clear Plan

You are not your business. You are you. You create value in the marketplace and you create wealth for your family.

To separate yourself from your business, start delegating others for the other roles in the organizational chart. It may not happen overnight. You will still be in many of the roles when you start.

Over time, you will find someone to be your Chief of Revenue Generation. That is their role. Their responsibilities will be to generate revenue for the company, and that may include different aspects of marketing.

But to systematize your business, you must first decide on all the roles and responsibilities in your company, starting with you as the CEO. Over time, you will find people to take on those responsibilities as you delegate more tasks to other people, while you continue to oversee the mission.

This method is the first step to take so you’re working on your business, not in it.

Are you working on your business, or in it? Comment below.

How to Hire the Right People: Lessons From A Future Billionaire

March 17, 2019 by Dan Lok Leave a Comment

How do you hire the right person so you can build a highly successful organization?

The choices you make are critical. Like a great marriage or a bitter divorce, hiring or firing an employee affects everyone. If the new person is the right fit – harmony for you and the team. If it’s a bad fit, like a bad divorce, not only do you lose time and money, it affects the morale of your team.

So how do you know if a person is the right fit for your company? And if they seem like a good candidate, but lacking in skills, how much should you spend training them if they still need to develop their skills?

Before you answer those questions, understand the marketplace. The best people are trying to decide amongst several opportunities at once. If you want to get their attention, you have to cut past all the noise of all the recruiters and ads.

When it comes to building a company and organization, having the right people in place is most important. In business, the best team wins because they will find a solution no matter what happens to the market or the economy. The right team and right culture will be resourceful and will always be able to solve problems.

My hiring philosophy and my leadership style are very different from most CEOs and business owners. Most companies hire based on resumes. My company does not. Not a single person on my team has ever submitted a resume. Even though we are a rapidly growing global organization, no one on my team has done a traditional kind of approach.

Watch this video about how we hire the best talent.

Do you want to hire the right people? Click here to talk to one of the leaders on my team who’s an expert in this area.

Hire For Attitude And Train For Skills

There’s a saying, “Hire for attitude and train for skills.” Even for the leadership positions within my organization, not every single person was “qualified” for the job. None of them “have the training” for their particular position.

They might join the team to do a certain task and from there when I see they’ve got potential, I give them more and more responsibilities. They rise up the ranks depending on their attitude, their skills, their capabilities, their desires, and their loyalties.

I don’t believe in resumes because anybody can write a good resume. A candidate can give a very good interview but when you actually hire them, they’re terrible. The reason they are good at giving interviews is because that’s what they do. When it comes to getting the work done, they cannot do it.

So I like to make people jump through a lot of hoops. Not the traditional hoops in which you submit a resume and go to multiple interviews and take personality tests or complete certain tasks to see how you perform. Talk is cheap.

The people who apply to my organization send me a video resume. I get a better sense of their personality on video. After they send me a clip, I give them a series of projects to see how they perform. I watch their attitude and I always give them different opportunities and chances to excel. Then I ask for feedback from my team.

If the candidate does well, then I give them more and more responsibilities. I always look at a person, not their skill set because skill set and knowledge can be acquired later.

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, also looks beyond the resume. A question he likes to ask during the hiring process is “What didn’t make it onto your resume?” Candidates can talk about their personal accomplishments… anything that would show their resolve, empathy toward others, or ingenuity.

Hire People For Your Company Environment

Everyone is different. Some people thrive in a more quiet and calm environment. Some people thrive in chaos while others work better when everything is very systematic.

My organization moves so fast that when something doesn’t work, we change direction immediately. So if a new hire is not used to that kind of environment, they might crack under pressure. We are very nimble, flexible and quick.

If there’s something I want to implement, we just do it. If there’s something we need to change, then we change direction like the flick of a switch. It’s very very fast. Most people are not used to that kind of environment.

The people we bring in like the challenge and this kind of pace. They are at home. Others may find this speed way too stressful. Then they will leave because it’s not a good fit. Or they quit because they don’t have the right energy with other team members and they don’t get along with the team culture. It’s an organic process.

Hire Young People To Keep Up With Trends

People have asked me why there are so many young people in my organization. They ask, “Why is a kid responsible for millions of dollars of marketing budget?”

They think I should hire someone with 10 years of experience. But I don’t believe in that because at the end of the day, my team is in the online education business where things move incredibly fast.

I need to be on the pulse of what’s happening day to day, hour to hour. I hire millennials so that I know what they’re thinking, even if they make me feel old. They always bring in new ideas about what’s hip and what’s trending. If I want to know what young people are thinking, I need to have young people in my organization.

Hire a Team of High Achievers

I love the Russian Doll Principle. When it comes to hiring, a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs and CEOs hire people who are smaller or worse than they are.

A CEO who is hiring a manager will look for someone who is less skilled, and then that manager will hire a team leader who is less skilled than the manager. Then what you will have is a company made of dwarves.

On the other hand, if that CEO hired a manager who has better skills, and the manager hires a team lead with better skills than the manager… you end up with a company of giants.

The CEO or manager hires people that are smaller than them because of their insecurities. They are afraid that if they hire someone with better skills, they can’t manage them or get their respect. If they hire someone less skilled, then they can more easily control them. This type of superior/inferior thinking is common in Asia.

The problem is when you hire less skilled people, the organization doesn’t grow. Hiring people that are better than you will get you that company of high achievers.

Russian Doll Principle: Hire the Right People

Hire a Team of Specialists

As the leader and CEO of my company, my job is not to make sure that directors, department heads and executives can’t do their roles better than I can. That’s not what a CEO does.

Each person in the company has their own area of expertise. As the visionary, my job is to come up with the strategic plan for each of them to execute. My job isn’t to outperform them at certain tasks.

Think about the book, The Art of War. In military terms, the general is not necessarily the best horseman or archer, or even the best soldier. The general is the one that sees the big picture, such as how to mobilize the troops and where to allocate resources. Similarly, the big picture is the CEO’s job.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, wanted a team that liked to create and explore. He didn’t want people who were only skilled in management, so he devised a test as part of the interview process. Those who asked questions and showed excitement and showed promise that they were A players made the cut.

So, to hire a team of specialists, find people who are experts at what they do. They should also be creative A players who are very motivated.

Hire Motivated People, Then Get Out of Their Way

I think it’s very difficult to motivate people. The better solution is to find people who are already motivated.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” That means, instead of trying to motivate people with motivational quotes and all that stuff, find people who already have the fire and desire within them. When you find good people who are already motivated, then all you need to do is create the culture, and give them responsibility, authority and power. Then get the hell out of their way and let them do their thing.

Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox, says that one way to find out a person’s motivation level is to ask them about who they admire. You will quickly find out who is there for the paycheck and who really cares about their work depending on their answer.

Motivated people will make stuff happen. They will want to help you grow, not because it’s an obligation, but because they have that desire.

Myself, I’m a very motivated person. I don’t need people to motivate me or pump me up. I am motivated. I’m driven. So I want people with the same desire in my organization.

If you spend so much time trying to motivate your people, then you’re not spending enough time getting work done or moving forward. So find motivated people and get the hell out of their way.

Hire People Who Will Pay for Their Own Training

In this very competitive business, the key to thriving in any economy is constant learning. It doesn’t matter how much success you had in the past. What matters is where you’re going in the future and what you’re doing now.

As the leader of a global education organization, I believe constant learning is extremely critical. I invest hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in my own education and I expect my members to do the same. My training policy is very different from most organizations because I don’t pay my team to attend workshops. My team members invest in their own education.

They pay for their own flight, their own hotel, their own workshops and courses. I don’t want them to do it because it’s an obligation or it’s required for their promotion. If I invest in my own education, they should do the same. When they upgrade their skills and perform better, they will get compensated.

The other reason is if they invest in their own education, they will pay more attention and get more out of the training. I lead by example. I’m always learning, reading, and attending workshops. When it comes to education, I don’t take shortcuts. I’m a good leader because I’m a dedicated student, and that’s the culture a successful company should have.

If you want to hire the right people, you must hire people with a desire to work hard and excel at what they do. It does not matter if they are more talented than you, or younger than you. When you have a team of high achievers, you will have a powerful team.

Do you want to hire the right people? Click here to talk to one of the leaders on my team who’s an expert in this area.

The Best Strategy To Get Clients Fast

March 13, 2019 by Dan Lok Leave a Comment

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you want to grow your business fast. But if you want high-paying clients, then you must be willing to go against conventional wisdom.

Not everyone can be your client. If you say, “Anyone is my client,” then you’re in trouble.

Many new entrepreneurs think everyone and anyone with money is a potential lead. But for you, you must be more selective.

Most advice out there recommends that you talk to everyone you know, get involved in local business communities, optimize your website, and get into as many social media platforms as possible. But what happens if you try to catch a fish with a tiny net in an enormous sea?

You’re lucky to catch a fish or two! So if you’re patient enough to grow your business slowly, if you want to talk to dozens of people to get your first client, then follow those conventional strategies that require a high degree of time and effort. Eventually, you will find your first client. But your troubles don’t end there.

You’re new and no one has heard of you, so your first client doesn’t want to pay you hundreds or thousands of dollars. You might even have to offer some advice or service for free, just to get your first testimonial. Meanwhile, your rent and your phone and electricity bills are waiting to be paid. So what can you do to cut through this slow and painful growth stage? Is there a way to fast forward this process?

Back when I was running my one-man advertising agency as a copywriter, I was trying to get clients from all over the place. I would do the work for anyone who would hire me. As long as the client breathed, they were good enough for me. Everyone was my customer.

However, over time and with more experience, I realized that to grow my business, I had to use one powerful strategy which I’m going to teach you today to get that ideal high-paying client fast.

Watch this video to learn how to grow your business faster.

The Kingpin Strategy to Get Clients

Here’s the problem. If everyone is your customer, then nobody is your customer. What I needed was that one account that would improve the quality of my clientele. I didn’t need dozens of clients paying me a few hundred each for my services.

I just needed a couple of high-ticket clients paying me thousands for the same service. My goal was to make the same income with fewer clients. So what I had to do was find the kind of client I would attract when I had more experience… and attract that client now.

When I was struggling as a copywriter, I came across a book called Guerilla Marketing. It’s a very famous book series on small business and marketing written by Jay Conrad Levinson. Now Jay has sold over 20 million books worldwide for the Guerrilla Marketing series. He was one of the most well-known educators and marketing gurus of our time before he passed away. So I approached Jay.

At the time, Jay was marketing a Guerilla Marketing Association membership. I went to his website and saw what he did so I rewrote the entire page. I sent it to the Guerrilla Marketing Association and got a reply from Jay personally. He thanked me because I had delivered value before asking for anything in return.

“Wow, you know what, young man, that’s very nice of you,” he said. He actually used the material and it helped him to generate more sales. Afterwards, I asked him, “Hey, Jay, since you’re getting value, is it okay if you give me some kind of recommendation and endorsement?” He said he was more than happy to do that. And he did.

That was my first Kingpin client.

By getting Jay Conrad Levinson, a well-known marketing guru with credibility and authority for so many small business owners, I could approach potential clients differently. I could say, “I have an endorsement from Jay Levinson who wrote Guerilla Marketing, who sold 20 million books.” That reference impressed my next client.

At the beginning of your career, when you’re establishing credibility and reputation, don’t chase everybody. Decide on the one person or company that will launch your career and serve them.

For example, in the tech world if you could work with Google or Amazon or Microsoft you could get then get other high quality clients. Everybody else will look at that account and say, “If you’re good enough for them, you’re good enough for me.”

You skip that learning curve and grow your business much faster. You can also use this technique to draw in more customers at one time.

The Kingpin Strategy To Get Clients Fast

Let me give you another example of the Kingpin Strategy from a different perspective. In the United States, they have these huge events. The Learning Annex back then was doing massive conferences with 5,000 to 25,000 people using this Kingpin Strategy.

They would bring in “Kingpin speakers,” such as Donald Trump before he was president, Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, and Bill Clinton to draw people in.

They paid them a huge speaking fee to have them show up at the event. At the same time, platform speakers or platform closers who aren’t paid to be there will offer their programs or products. They would make a 60-minute or 90-minute pitch on stage to draw in the crowd.

These events don’t make money from 5 to 20 thousand people’s tickets.They make money from these platform closers. The event organizer would do a split with anything that the closers sell. Imagine if someone is speaking to 10,000 people and he is selling a $1,000 package.

If he sells 500 of them a day, a multi-day event would generate millions of dollars. The platform closures would get a 30 to 50 percent commission because the organizers are the ones spending all the money. The organizers made millions upon millions of dollars from these conferences going around North America, even the U.K. That’s how the business model works.

That’s the Kingpin Strategy from a different perspective. So ask yourself the question. Who is that one company, that one organization you could get that would change everything. From then on, you leverage that one person’s name or that organization’s name for the rest of your career. Before you know it, you go from a nobody to a somebody.

How will you apply the Kingpin Strategy to get new clients? Comment below.