Jen Casey (JC): For the people who are not at the team-building level yet or haven’t considered it because they’ve been stuck in the belief that they have to do it all themselves, I would love for us to break down, first and foremost, what is an integrator?

Theresa Loe (TL): The way I explain it to people is it’s kind of like your wing man or operational manager. When we’re starting to build up our business, we are managing the people working under us and there’s a LOT of projects happening. An operational manager or an integrator lets you step away and stay in your zone of genius. You stay in the visionary role. You only work on the things that only you can do and they execute on the vision.

In my TV producer job, we had a vision for the show. I had to run the production team out on the field to make sure that all the things were happening to make the show come to life. I wasn’t the one creating the vision, the producer was. It’s the same thing in our business. We have a vision of what we want. We want to have our customers to have a certain outcome or a certain transformation. We have ideas for how we’re going to run launches and we can map out the plan with our integrator who will execute it. It doesn’t mean that the integrator is the one doing all the things, because as your team grows, the integrator can have people under them. They’re managing the project and making sure everything happens. It’s not like they step in and take on all the overwhelm and do all the things. They actually can have people under them that they watch over to make sure everything gets done and all the boxes get checked.

JC: Why do people need one now? Some people will say, “Well, I don’t need a team yet…” Why do entrepreneurs need one sooner rather than later?

TL: There is some resistance to having someone step in because we think we can do it faster than we could teach someone else, but it’s actually costing you a lot.

It’s not only costing you money in that you are not spending your time making money, but it’s also uses up your mental space.

There is something called Decision Fatigue. It’s a real thing. If you are working on a project, there are so many decisions that have to be made that by 10:00, you’re burnt out. It’s very hard to be creative. It’s very hard to show up for your classes or workshops you might be teaching (or show up for your one-on-one clients!) if you’re so mentally fatigued. It’s using up your time, it’s wasting money because you could be making money instead of doing those tasks, but it also is a mental drain. What I tell people to do is just bring in a person for a few hours a week and then use that time for money-making activities, so that you can increase those hours with that person. You have more money coming in so they can take more off of your plate. You can start out slow. It doesn’t mean you have to hire someone full-time, right out of the gate.

JC: Absolutely. The burnout from decision making is so real and it’s actually something that I joke around with with my significant other. He’s like, “Jen, what do you want to eat for dinner!?” I’m like, “I am DONE making decision for the day! My brain can not make another decision.” There are those days where it has gotten to that point. The glucose is gone and there’s nothing left!

TL: Yes! I experienced that when we were redoing our website. I thought my head would explode. You don’t realize how tiring that is, but it’s a whole different type of way to use your brain. There’s only so much we have every day, so you don’t want to waste it.

JC: That’s also why some of the top CEOs will wear the same thing every single day because it’s one less decision. I actually don’t think that’s a terrible idea. I may I may start that soon! LOL ok, so how does somebody identify if someone is their integrator? What are the key qualities that make somebody great for that role?

TL: I recommend that people start by first assessing themselves because it can be very individual. What I mean by that is we all have a certain way that we tick. We all have a certain way that we approach problems and our business. The integrator has to mesh with the way we work or you’re going to clash so much that you can’t make progress. You don’t want someone exactly like you because it’s very hard to be a force in your business if you both are thinking exactly the same way. It’s actually better if you have someone who has some qualities that are a little bit opposite of you.

What I recommend people do first is core values on themselves. There’s lots of places you can go on the Internet to determine what you value most in an employee. Think of someone you may have worked with in the past or someone who is your dream of what you would want someone to be, and make a list of those characteristics. Typically, you want someone who’s very detailed oriented. You want someone who’s responsive and responsible. It’s really good if they think outside the box and are not afraid to step up and try something.

Have the person take a DISC test. The “C” is the compliance factor and is very important to look at for an integrator because if they are super high on compliance, it means that they can be a bit of a perfectionist, which you might not think is a bad thing, but actually, in an integrator, it is a bad thing because you don’t want them to be so afraid of making a mistake that they won’t make decisions on your behalf. If you have someone you think is the perfect person and they are super high on “C”, it doesn’t mean they can’t be your integrator, it just means you have to know that going in because you’re going to have to give them a lot more reassurance than you would someone else. You’re going to have to tell them, “It’s ok to make a mistake! I want you to make these decisions.” You’re going to have to hold their hand a little bit until they get comfortable.

On the “C” scale, if they are so low, they might go off like a squirrel in different directions and not follow some protocol. I recommend that you have someone who is somewhat in the middle on the “C” range. They can be mid-high or mid-low, but you don’t want super-high or super-low. Beyond that, what’s most important is that they have some of the qualities you find most important in an employee, like being responsive, resourceful, and committed. Being courageous is another great skill for them to have. It is very personalized, so for the people I work, I have them work through some worksheets to determine and pull out what’s most important to them. 

JC: Totally. I have taken a DISC test on Tony Robbins’ website. Is that the main site to take it on? When I took it, it was very eye opening for me and it really gave me a lot of clarity on why I had some work conflicts and internal conflicts and things that just weren’t feeling aligned. It gave me a good picture of what was really going on and allowed me to step into how I want to work with other people and work through my own stuff in a way that feels aligned.

TL: Should you go to the Tony Robbins’ site? Absolutely. That’s actually where I recommend people go because it’s free and you can always just unsubscribe so that Tony isn’t sending you a bunch of emails. Just google Tony Robbins DISC, take it for free, and they’ll email you the results. You’ve probably talked on your podcast before about Myers Briggs. That’s another assessment you can do. Myers Briggs is kind of like what kind of car you drive and DISC is how you drive the car. In other words, what kind of fuel do you put in the car? Are you really driven? Are you a perfectionist? Do you have your pedal to the metal the whole time? Or are you very cautious and taking the turns and putting on your turn signals? That is the difference between a Myers Briggs and a DISC and they’re both great for looking at how you might want to position someone in your business.

Each one of those letters stands for something different. The two letters that are important to being a CEO or a visionary are the first two, D and I. That is, how driven are you and how are you with interpersonal skills. The “I” is the interpersonal. Some people might be very persuasive while other people may be more cautious. Looking at that and knowing how you are will help you in finding an integrator, and if they are a little opposite of you, that’s a great combo to have! If you’re very driven, very high “D”, and your integrator is very high “I”, you can make a great team together because those two letters really can help you run your business.

There’s a lot to this and we’re just scratching the surface, but you can get a lot of insight about the person before you get to the interview stage, or if it’s someone on your team, having them take this test can show you how they tick and where you might have some issues in handing things over to them. It doesn’t mean that they can’t do it, but it will help you in guiding them so that they gain more confidence in what they’re doing.

JC: I’m OBSESSED with all of the Myers Briggs and DISC and using these amazing tools as a way to  identify who that right person is. Learning a lot about this over the last year and a half has been really powerful, especially with hiring and finding those right people. One of the big things within bringing on team members that I’ve seen happen for myself and so many peers, is that they’ll bring on independent contractors and then end up becoming the managers of tasks and not getting a whole lot of time back. So I would love for you to speak to the transition between managing yourself and actually stepping into that visionary role and leading a team. How does someone make that transition? Are there steps or is it just kind of something that you step into?

TL: I think a lot of it is mindset, which is right up your alley, but you’re absolutely right. We start off bringing on people, and very quickly, you can end up managing all the people and not even getting to your work. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is handing out tasks, rather than handing out responsibilities. You never want it to be that you hand them a task and then they come back and go, “Did that. What’s next?” You can spend all your time figuring out what their work is going to be for the week, and then as they’re coming back and finishing those different tasks, you’re dealing with that and you never get to your own work.

What you want to create is a self-managed team. There’s a lot of parts to that, but one of the biggest things is handing out responsibilities.

Pretend like you don’t know who may already be on your team, if you have a team. Just come with a blank slate, not thinking about where this person is going to go, and instead write down all the different projects that you have in your business. For example, you may have a podcast that has to be managed. You may have launches that have to be managed. You have things like customer service. You map it all out and see the different projects in your business. Then, look at who you have and based on what you know about them, if they’ve already been working for you or based on their Myers Briggs, where could you place them in this chart? It’s kind of like creating an org chart, but it’s really called a responsibility chart or an accountability chart. Having this different mindset of not creating an org chart, but creating a responsibility chart, is key. For instance, if they are your podcast manager, that doesn’t mean that you figure out what their tasks are each week. It means that they are fully in charge and take ownership of that podcast and are responsible not only for it going out the door, but for whatever metrics you decide they need to be working on. Maybe it’s more downloads or more exposure on social media. Whatever it is, every week when you have your team meetings, that’s what the focus is on: their metrics, what is coming up for them, and any roadblocks in producing the show. You’re really no longer in the picture just giving them task after task. That mental shift for me was huge.

I started with my podcast because my podcast was award-winning and it was doing super well, but I was so fully into it that even when I handed off bits of it, I was still managing it. I set up an entire process and I handed that off to someone. Yeah, there were the little bumps in the road as they learned, but they were really committed because of the type of person that they were. Now, I just show up for the interviews. It’s so much easier and I no longer even have a concern about that. You can do that with every single process in your business so that you’re no longer handing off tasks, you’re handing off responsibilities, and they are taking full ownership of those responsibilities.

JC: That is such an essential piece and something that has been a big conversation over the last couple of months. The team feels more excited when they can take full ownership over a social media platform or a project. They get excited because they can set their own goals and they feel a little bit more of that ownership over, “Wow, I made this happen.”

TL: Yes! The other thing that I teach my CEOs is that it’s so important that we share our vision with our team. That’s something a lot of people don’t do. They think they don’t care and just want to do their job, but they really do want to be part of the overall mission and a vision that you have set.

If we sit down and create our vision for the year, it’s imperative that we share it with the team because that makes them self-manage. If they understand how their project fits into this bigger picture and how their metrics are taking everybody one step closer to whatever that vision is, they are SO much more involved and invested. 

Instead of asking if the button should be blue or green, they know it doesn’t matter because they understand where what they’re working on is fitting into the big picture. They won’t worry so much about those type of things because they understand that in the big scheme of things, what matters is their metric, and if they make the button blue and it doesn’t work, they can make the decision on themselves to change it to green to see it that bumps up their metric because they take ownership of it. It’s really up to us to share that with them.

There’s something that I shared at the mastermind that really brought this home for me. It was a speech that Simon Sinek did. He was talking about where they would bring people into an empty room and tell them that they have to walk in a straight line to a far corner. The person would start walking and they would put a chair in front of them, and every single time, the person would walk around the chair and keep going in a straight line. They understood where their destination was, they understood the vision, and they understood that even though they did have to make some turns, their goal was to get to that corner.

When they brought in someone else and told them to walk in a straight line without making any turns, but they didn’t tell them where to go, the person started walking and, if a chair was put in front of them, they would just stop because all they knew was that they were supposed to walk straight. They didn’t have a destination so they would stop, rather than go around the chair. It happened every single time. Simon was talking about how the vision was so important for those people. If they knew that if they had to get to the corner, they would take it upon themselves to take those steps around even though it was not in a straight line. That’s why it’s so important to share our vision with our team so that they can make those decisions when they get roadblocks put in front of them.

JC: When you shared that with the mastermind, it was such a powerful visual to help sink in why it’s important to have that crystal clear vision. To piggyback on what you’re saying, it’s also about handing over that trust to your team. I’m sure you’d agree that one of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to micromanage their team and not trust them. How does someone get to that place where they know that they can trust their team?

TL: It’s actually a four step process for someone to get confidence and it’s the same process that we go through. I’ll walk through the four steps and how we, as a CEO, can facilitate that. The person has to get very capable and confident in what they’re doing, and when they get to that point, we will have trust in what they’re doing. The very first step is commitment. It’s very important that our team member be committed to the project or responsibility that they’re going to be taking on. It’s up to us to sell them on the idea. What that means for us is that they need to fully understand how the project they’re going to be responsible for fits into the bigger vision. That’s how we sell it to them and that gets them committed.

The next thing they have to do is step into courage. It’s the same as when we are afraid to do something for the first time… we have to step up into courage and step out to do it. I think sometimes, as CEOs, we forget that they may have never done some of these things before and they’re going to have to have a little bit of courage to do them. The way we can facilitate that is to, first, give them a little bit of a push, but secondly, to let them know that it’s ok if they make a mistake. We don’t want them to be so afraid that they won’t step out or come back and ask a ton of questions because that’s not helpful to us. We want them to step into courage and actually take the steps to do it.

The third phase is to step into capability. Once they start doing the thing, they will realize they’re starting to become more and more capable. The way we help with that is by making sure that they have the tools and resources (or maybe training if they’re stepping into something completely foreign to them) so that they can become more and more capable. Once they’ve reached that stage, they become confident and we become very trusting in what they’re doing. The way we can facilitate that confidence even more is to give them praise for what they’ve done. That’s another thing that so many CEOs forget about. When someone’s working for you, they want to feel respected, they want to feel part of the team and community, and they also just want to know that what they’re doing is contributing. If they’re rocking it and we never say ‘good job’, they’re not going to be with us for very long. It’s really important that we recognize them when they do rock it out of the park and give them lots of praise so that the cycle can start again when they’re starting something else they’ve never done. 

It’s really exciting because the team is growing, we are growing as a CEO, and all we have to do is facilitate the environment for that to happen. We can have a stellar team growing right alongside of us.

JC: I love how you broke it down in such a simple way. It really does create those easy stages and areas that, as CEOs, we can look at to identify where we may be falling a little bit short and not showing up as the best possible leader. What you were saying earlier about how you handed off your homegrown business to your team to run pretty much independently, I think that is sooo incredible. A part of it is this idea of having a business that is process dependent versus being solely people dependent. I would love for you to talk a little bit about that distinction and why that is so powerful when scaling.

TL: Every business is a little bit different, but what I tell my CEOs to do is to imagine that they are preparing for a major vacation where they will be shut off from the world and may not have cell service. If they were to plan for that, what do they need in place so that the team can run without them? And if you do that, they will run without you and you only need to be there for minimal input. What that looks like is having systems, having processes, and having the team working together.

For example, on my podcast, I bring on cookbook authors that we interview. There’s a whole process that we have to go through to get permission from the publisher, create recipes they’ve mentioned, and the download. The whole process is documented. My team documented it from me recording myself doing it ONE TIME. I did it once, recorded it, they created the processes, and we’ve made sure that everyone on the team has run through it, so if someone who normally does it is out sick, anyone can step in!

Plan everything as if you will be gone temporarily and unavailable, and think about what they would need to know and how they would handle this or handle that. It’s not instantaneous and it takes a little bit of time, but once you do that, holy cow! It just opens up your world. You can take vacation and time off and someone can be sick and the whole world doesn’t fall apart. It’s very, very different than if you were the only one that knows how to do something. I mean, think about that. You could get sick. You could have a family emergency and you have to step out. You don’t want to be the only one that knows how to do something in your business. You really want to have processes and systems in place.

JC: This is such a powerful mindset shift for so many people who are in that space where they’ve been growing their businesses by themselves and hustling as a solo entrepreneur. Is there a certain belief that you’ve been able to develop yourself, or help some of these 7-figure CEOs develop, that have allowed them to step into this new leadership role? 

TL: Gosh, that’s such a good question. I think there’s a couple pieces to it, but what’s most important is if we’ve truly taken the time to map out our vision, we simply can not do it alone. It can actually be so much more fun to have a team going along with you. There’s times in your business where things get rocky, but then you’re not alone at your computer in your room trying to figure it all out. You have a team behind you who will help you brainstorm and will step up to help you overcome some of those things, so you are no longer all by yourself.

To me, what’s most important is that you’re working toward your vision and you’re doing it as a team. It’s bigger than yourself now. It’s not just you against the world, it’s you and the team fighting for something that can make a real impact on other people. It’s about thinking bigger and having a bigger vision for yourself, and the sooner you can start setting that up, the faster you get to that impact stage.

TL: Part of that is our ego, right? We think no one can do it is as good as we can. Well, as much as I am an integrator-type person, my integrator has come in and made changes to our processes and set things up where I’m like, “I never thought of that!” She sees it from a different viewpoint and she’s actually been making it better, and I thought it was so stellar! You know, my own ego thought it was the most stellar process ever. I realized I’m not the best at every single thing. You can have other input and creative ideas and building that together makes everything that you do so much better.

JC: Yes! You don’t need to be the best at everything. I’m so glad that you said that. I think for a lot of people, they feel the overwhelm early on in entrepreneurship that they have to LEARN and DO and BE all the things. If you guys get nothing else from today’s episode, which would be crazy if you didn’t, please take away that you don’t need to be and do all the things. Are there any big mistakes you’re seeing people make that are creating resistance to getting to that next level?

TL: Oh, yeah! One of the biggest ones I see people make when they first start is hiring people based on their skills, rather than their characteristics. In our space, the tools are always changing. The things we’re using to make our business work can change in an instant. People will get hung up on going out and looking for the perfect person who knows exactly how to do WordPress for their blog, and really, that’s not the most important thing you should be looking at. You need to look at the characteristics, like we talked about at the beginning.

Hire someone who has the characteristics of an A-list team player. Someone that you can tell is going to rock it and work on something that’s bigger than themselves, rather than the person who has 20 years experience doing that one thing.

Tomorrow, that tool could change and that person won’t be able to fit into the next role. Another mistake people make is that they don’t slow down long enough to get the team and their systems in place. It’s kind of like they’re bicycling along and their pedals are going as fast as they can and they’re yelling, “I CAN’T STOP LONG ENOUGH TO SET UP MY SYSTEM!”

But if they stop, get off that bicycle, and hop into the race car that’s sitting right there with their team, they can take off so much faster. You have to stop even if it’s just to record yourself and hand it off to someone. For me, I didn’t want to let go of control because I had this ego that I’d do it best, so I can’t possibly hand it off because I know I could do it better. It comes to the point where you can’t do everything, so you have to let go of that control.

JC: Yeah! Where are the best places to find great people?

TL: You know, where I learned to find the best people is from our mentor James Wedmore, and that is on CraigsList! That is how I hired every one, but one, of the best people on my team. It gives you a place where you have a large pool of people who don’t necessarily understand our world. I start by hiring them as an assistant and then I have them work into the position that works best for them.

JC: And what’s great about that is that you don’t end up hiring people who just want to pick your brain, steal your systems, and go run their own thing. I recently put out an ad with some qualifying questions and I got some great people, but you could quickly identify the people that (nothing personal against them) were not going to be long term people because they were looking to also build their own businesses.

TL: My integrator came from working as a school counselor at a middle school for 10 years. I interviewed her several times and the one thing that really resonated with me was that she could handle anything. She’s very good at being able to handle many things because she was a school counselor, so she knows how to handle people.

JC: Wow. The people you least suspect! They don’t necessarily need online experience, they just need the right qualities. It’s all figureoutable, you can teach the steps, you can buy your team courses and programs to get them up to speed, and you don’t need to be the expert in everything. This was so freaking amazing. I’m so excited for people to hear this episode and start putting some of these pieces in place. Where can people go and learn more about you?

TL: The best place I could send them is to my website, teamuproadmap.com. There is a free assessment where they can see if they are ready just to hire a team member, or if they are ready for a higher-level, integrator-type person. They can self-assess themselves to see where they might need to get somebody in their business.

JC: Oh, I love that! That’s so cool. I’m going to go do it right now! I will link that up for you guys so you can go check that out. Theresa, do you have any last words of wisdom?

TL: Yes! If you are thinking you don’t have the money or time to hire a team member, know that you can start out with just a few hours a week and those few hours, when you get them back, use that time to make money. You can start out very slowly. It doesn’t mean you have to hire someone full time. You can do this step by step, but you absolutely need help. Don’t try to do it alone, you’re just going to make yourself burnt out, crazy-tired, and unable to serve your customers the way you want.