How to Build a Successful Team With Alex Schlinsky

Atiba de Souza: Hey, welcome to Build Your Team. I am your host, Atiba. And today, I am joined by my new friend, Alex Schlinsky. Alex is the owner of Prospecting On The Man. And guys, just wait, just wait. Alex drops some serious knowledge today. He brings— I mean, I don't even know how to describe these three things that he talked about at the end of this video today, but it really encapsulates so much that we talk about here on the Build Your Team Show of how to decide who you should hire, what type of personality you're looking for and then how to make sure that they are a success once they get started with you. So buckle up, because Alex is about to share some major, major knowledge with you. And as always, we are brought to you by Client Attraction Pros. Your done-for-you solution for video repurposing and building thought leadership for your brand.

I've got a great guest today, he's one of my new friends. We just met, but man, this guy blew my mind when we met and I said, I need to have you on our show to share some of your knowledge. His name is Alex Schlinsky from ProspectingOnDemand.com. Alex, buddy. Welcome. Thank you for being here. 

Alex Schlinsky: Atiba, thanks so much for having me. Awesome to meet you. I prefer on the unedited version when you called me "Alice". So anyone else watching, feel free to call me Alice moving forward. I'm good with it. It's all good. We're in the pronoun stage of life here. We gotta be open to everyone's collective different and unique names.

So we're gonna go with it, but Atiba, joking aside, man. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Atiba de Souza: Well, thank you. And, and calling you, "Alice" will definitely make the reels for all of my bloopers.

Alex Schlinsky: Bloopers are great. I have so many bloopers of everything that I do at our events and on my podcast and shows, we don't cut our live show which we do in my Facebook group. And there's just so many times that, you know, just fumble over a word or curse accidentally or say something completely, you know, out of pocket.

So I've been there. It happens.

Atiba de Souza: It absolutely happens. And, you know, let's just dive in right there because, you know, as business owners, very often, especially as we're building teams, right? We get this sense that the pressure is on us because everyone is looking and things have to be perfect and just right. All the time.

Otherwise, our team is going to lose faith and confidence in the fact that we are actually human.

Alex Schlinsky: Oh yeah.

Atiba de Souza: Right?

Alex Schlinsky: I think that's such a great insight. You know, a lot of us have a burden of trying to be Superman. I use that specifically for those of you, obviously that follow this show, you know, Atiba's a big Superman-ic guy. The event that I met him at, he was wearing, an incredible, uh, like, I don't know how you say it's basically like a top hat.

Don't know what type of hat that is with a Superman, like, uh, bandana around it, essentially. So I knew this guy was someone I had to chat with. I have an ad that is out in the wild, me repping the Superman logo, kind of wearing the Clark Kent get up.

But I think the idea is a lot of people want to be perfect, right?

They wanna showcase their ability to lead their team. But the reality is we are all human beings, right? We're definitely not perfect. What I've found as being the most valuable way to lead your team is twofold, specific elements. One, having a very clear vision of your company, like what is a definitive win or not?

There's too much black and white or areas of lack of clarity, right? Like shades of gray for success in business. Especially when it comes to how your team determines success. Most people would just consider success as more money or growth, but it's not good enough because then we always feel that we're at arm's reach of success.

So we're always saying, "Well, we grew by 10%, but we could have done 15%." So your team kind of walks on eggshells, unaware of whether the time bomb's gonna go off and whether we're working successfully or not. So number one, clear vision, definitive understanding of what success is. And then number two, related to these mistakes that we're talking about is just transparency.

I think some people don't wanna like burden their team with the personal stuff they're going through or the feelings they have about X team member or Y team member, or they're unclear of what they're allowed to share or not. We have a pretty confident model in POD that's just strictly transparent.

Just transparency is what wins the day all the time, because that's what we know. We don't have to like, harken back to, "Do we tell this person that one thing" and, you know, it's like catching yourself ultimately in a lie. Not because you're lying by purposely saying something that's not truthful, it's rather the idea of leaving something out, right? Like lying by omission. And I think omitting things ultimately just feels the same way as a regular lie. Like, trying to catch yourself, "Did I say that one way or the other?" It's very challenging, right? And I think it's just easier to feel comfortable to just be transparent especially when you have clear, clear, clear goals that you're working towards, 'cause it makes it a lot easier. And last thing I'll note on the idea of like being perfect with your team and building the right team, your team can't possibly expect you to be Superman or being like a perfect individual, 'cause they can never live up to that anyways. We like to consider that like a kid's food plate, we can partition off like our personal life and our feelings and emotions and our responsibilities in business and team member one, two and three, it's like a plate with all these partitions for our, you know, our veggies and our meat and our whatever— the reality is, you know, I have a 16 month old son, the partitions on his plate don't matter.

He ends up mixing everything else up. So you got strawberries connected with the meat that you were like, I separated them on the plate, so it wasn't supposed to happen. It's the same thing in life and in business, you know, like you can't partition it off, you can't compartmentalize it. It's a fallacy that human beings think we can. Ultimately, you're gonna let some of your mess spill on to your clients and to on your team.

The best thing to do is be confident and be transparent with them. So, you know, like, "Hey, this is who I am", and you can move forward more successfully that way.

Atiba de Souza: That's awesome. And it leads me to— I'm gonna soft pitch two terms to you. Okay.

Alex Schlinsky: Cool.

Atiba de Souza: Y'all ready for this soft pitch? Two terms that I think from what I know about you mean a lot to you.

Alex Schlinsky: Cool.

Atiba de Souza: When it comes to transparency and getting stuff done, okay, and like you said, having clear goals and clear vision for what it means to be success, right? And here are two terms, focus and productivity.

Alex Schlinsky: Cool love that. So the feelings that I have about both those words, one is the book essentialism by Greg Macco. If you haven't read that book, I strongly strongly advise it. It's probably my favorite book I've ever read, business or not. Dune is maybe my favorite book ever, but it's not a book.

It's really good. And then they came out with a movie, which was amazing, but we don't have to get into all of that, but I do love—

Atiba de Souza: We'll do that for the next show. 

Alex Schlinsky: Yeah. Great book, if you haven't read it. Essentialism is all about the idea of focusing on what's most important in your life? The book's cover is a bunch of scratched notes that are all like a mess that look really busy.

 And basically what ends up happening is your life looks like that scratched up mess instead of just a straight line or a clear circle, because we're— like we just said, trying to compartmentalize things. And as you get older and you have more responsibilities, you have more kids, you have a bigger business, you got bigger team members, you got more things that are on your plate, more people to connect to, more friends and family life just becomes very challenging to deal with. There's things that are always gonna be dropped. No person is gonna magically just be productive and efficient at all times that would be ridiculous and totally a fallacy and not something to strive for.

But there is one thing in the book of Essentialism that I think is really valuable, which is the idea of where your focus lies is how you can get the best results possible. Obviously a lot of people talk about with focus or productivity, like the classic allegory of the tortoise versus the hare, and how the hare moves really fast and ends up losing the race.

And the tortoise goes really slow and ends up winning the race. And there's so much of value to this idea of this, you know, childlike, allegory for business where, yeah, you're not competing against the person running faster than you and the person running faster than you can identify the pitfalls ahead of you.

And then you can learn for that and sidestep those pitfalls, but there's also value in also being the hare. I'm pretty sure. I'm not— okay, I am. I'm wearing my Go Fast and Break Things shirt today. That's the antithesis of being a tortoise, right? That's being the hare. When you go fast and break things, sometimes you do fall into the pit, sometimes you're lacking your focus. There's a time to actually be both. I think the allegory for children in particular is always be the tortoise. I think in business, it's actually not to be both. It's to be the tortoise and the hare. And this is something that's really valuable to share, for those of you that don't know me. I had open heart surgery when I was 29 years old. I'm 30 now I'm almost two years removed from the surgery, October 15th will be, uh, two years, which is crazy. In business, when you run a marketing agency in particular, which is the majority of people I work with but if your business doesn't have really high stakes, and here's what I mean by really high stakes, being a pilot, right?

Being a surgeon, being a police officer, a firefighter, those are all extremely high stakes. You can't really have the attitude of go fast and break things, if you're a surgeon, right? I can't have my surgeon make a mistake because metaphorically, he was being the hare and not the tortoise, cut one of my veins and then I'm dead and never got to do this podcast with Atiba, let alone all the other things, right? But in business it's okay to be the hare because the stakes are really low. Okay. What ends up happening? Let's talk about a worst case scenario. You get a client, the client doesn't work out well. They want to charge back. You lose some time and you lose some money. Okay. Yeah, it sucks then. But like, probably people that have listened to this podcast that they probably have already dealt with that before.

It was really crappy at that moment. But now it's time in the past. You've moved on. Life is fine. Everything's good. It doesn't really matter. Right? The idea of going fast and breaking things, being focused, being productive, being more clear on essentialism is understanding where you stand in that allegory.

Not just being a tortoise, but finding where you can be a tortoise and where to be a hare. The idea for me, of being a tortoise is specifically based on focusing on one thing at a time. And this I think is the easiest thing most people can take away from this podcast. The idea of a tortoise is to go one path specific towards a specific goal, right?

Not 50 different paths. Most people end up struggling because they're trying to do 10 different things at the same time. And so they make 10% energy moves towards those 10 things. Instead of one thing, with a hundred percent energy focused on it, that's how you can grow. It's hard to identify what those things are.

I think in theory, and even Greg says it in his book, it's really easy to say, "Oh yeah, I totally get that. I'm working on 10 things, giving 10% of my energy. If I focus on one thing, giving a hundred percent of my energy, I'd make more progress." That's a lot easier said than it has done because as we already laid out, there's a lot going on in life and in business and it's pretty much impossible I think to focus on just one thing. Now, the value of having a team is that they can focus on the other things. So you don't have to focus on multiple things. But what I've kind of cheated on and I hope this is okay, and I wonder if I met Greg and said this to him, if you'd ever be upset at me, but I think it's unfair to go from 10 things to one thing and think it's just gonna work.

What I've found is being a good mix is go from 10 things. To three things. Sure. You're not gonna get a hundred percent effort from three things who get 33% effort, but 33% is a lot better than 10%. And, and here's the reality, for most people it's not 10 things, 10%, it's like a hundred things. 1%. That's really what it actually is.

So if we can get three important things in your business, To 33%. Let's just name a couple of them, prospecting and sales, focusing on it at 33%, which is your funnels and your team and your management of generating new clients retention, which is building out your offers and your frameworks to make sure your clients are successful and loving working with you and your client success management's good at 33%. And then lastly, your own personal stuff that you have to deal with, which is spending time with your children and enjoying, you know, getting into yoga and doing that different thing about on your house that you wanna work on, that 33%. I'm not saying those have to be the ones that you do, but my wife and I always try to focus on, "Hey, we like have three big things that we're working on so we can give appropriate attention to it."

That's what I've found is being effective for productivity, and focus rather than the idea of "focus on one thing" I think that's really hard. In theory, it's really great, but it's the same theory as the tortoise and the hare. Like you can't really just be the tortoise all the time. Right. It's really impossible to do that.

But the allegory still makes sense, even though it's not completely black or white. So hopefully that made sense for y'all.

Atiba de Souza: You know, so you're talking about focus and number one, I 100% agree with you. I haven't read the book and I— give me Greg's last name again?

Alex Schlinsky: McKeown. Which is McKeown.

Atiba de Souza: McKeown. So I haven't read Essentialism yet. However,

Alex Schlinsky: Such a good book.

Atiba de Souza: I have read The One Thing.

Alex Schlinsky: Also great book. By Gary Keller, right?

Atiba de Souza: Yes. And The One Thing talks about the exact same thing from the point of view of focusing getting down. And one of the things that I actually picked up from a friend of ours in common, Ryan Deiss, is the full focus journal. This thing has, I don't know if you can see this on screen or not, but it gives me my big three for the day.

Alex Schlinsky: Yeah, I love it. It's a very common idea. This big three. I'm definitely not stating that, like, I made it up. I think if you got Greg McKeown and, um, The One Thing author, uh, that I just forgot off the top of my head, um, even though I said it and I was correct on it, Gary Keller. If you got Gary and Greg in the room, I think they would agree that the pursuit of just one single thing is very challenging, but the theory is really valuable, so that you can get closer, you know, it's like, a 100% Superman is an unachievable outcome for most people, but getting 90% there is pretty fucking good. So, um that's one of the things that I've been working on for a long time. One thing we didn't know about building team, and I think this is valuable to kind of incorporate this, is a team is like a really strong puzzle, right?

It comes together like a strong puzzle rather than pieces being forced to fit in, or it doesn't clear up. My wife and I made both of our companies from scratch, which is Sky Social Media, our marketing agency for attorneys and Prospecting On Demand, our mentorship community for marketing agencies.

And with her help, essentially, we had the visionary and integrator format, which was, I was the visionary, and she was the integrator and her big skill is the ability to be very organized. She's a very organized person, a very efficient person, and making sure everything is done right. That is something that you have to make sure you have support with in your teams.

If you don't, if you already know that you're someone that has easily distracted, constantly struggling with organization, lack of clarity all the time, notes are all over the place. You don't have like one specific format of how you do your work, you're not using a calendar. Having an executive assistant who is very particularly an organized person will really help you.

Will it change overnight? Definitely not. It's like switching over your operating system, right? Switching your operating system is not just a download on your phone. It takes time. This operating system is important. So it doesn't matter if you are capable enough yourself. If you are not, you have to bring on a team member.

Otherwise, the stuff that a team and I are talking about right now, you'll never get good at, and you'll consistently limit yourself by doing probably, you know, a thousand things at once.

Atiba de Souza: Yeah. You know, that's such a great point. And I had a conversation, Victoria Caldwell, I don't know if you know her or not. But Victoria and I were talking very similarly about this topic as well, and she helps CEOs figure out what are the different types of people they need around them in order to maximize the team and their productivity and so on and so forth, right? And it was a really interesting conversation because I had to look back in my own history and realize how I learned those lessons. And now you had it with your wife, I had it with mine too.

Okay. I think we are probably living the same lives with our wives in that sense. Right. But in terms of the rest of your team, how did you start to learn that lesson of what, not just, what did I need them to do, but what was the personality type that I needed to bring in, in order for this team to be the whole puzzle that it needs to be?

Alex Schlinsky: That's such a good question. And I appreciate you asking that. There's a couple things that we did. One was the five questions to clarity. So the first thing that I identified from team was just understanding, like, you know, Scaling Up from Verne Harnish. And there was another book that I can't remember off the top my head, which I apologize for, but basically like the idea of creating a team was something that was a little bit foreign to me.

I'll give you an example. So, metaphorically, I'm a Wolf, right? Atiba saw me at an event speak on sales, which is definitely the topic that I, you know, probably cover the most. And the thing I'm probably most comfortable with and enjoy talking about the most, and being a salesperson, the best metaphor, like as an animal would be a Wolf.

Like I go hunt, I gather, I kill, I get it done. Right? It doesn't need to be a negative. I think some people think that's a negative. It's not a negative. It's just, that's what it is. Now, when I was a Wolf though, I was a single Wolf. And sometimes when you're a single Wolf, you feel like you don't need any other wolfs except for your Wolfette, which is my wife, right? I don't need anyone else. It's just me and my Wolfette, I think I'll I coin that term, I think. So that's all I need. Right? I don't need anyone else, but eventually you start realizing that either you can't hunt and gather everything yourself, or there's some other skill sets that you don't have, like namely losing clients, because you're just focused on hunter and gathering and slowly but surely realize I need to be a Wolf Pack.

Right? I need a Wolf How do I get a Wolf pack? So what I identified was focusing on things first that were not a good use of my time that I was currently doing. And then things I didn't want to do, which were two really valuable, consistent thought processes, that would allow me to move forward and be more successful.

And the way we came up with this was basically the five questions to clarity, which ours follows. What took my energy today? What non my role activities did I do? Normally that role would be what non CEO activities did I do? What tasks can be delegated? What systems do I need? And what can I stop doing? Now, the five are in a row for a specific reason.

Let's go through each of them. The reason that you want to clarify what took my energy is a brain dump of all the things that were there for you today that you had to do, right? Now, this doesn't mean an a brain dump of all the to-dos you did is just the things that really took energy from you that made you drained, frustrated, unfulfilled, et cetera.

Those are really important. Okay. Now some people have pointed back to me. Some of the things that take energy are positive energy. Like they did a client call and it was really good, but it did take a lot of their energy. You ultimately have choice of what you wanna delegate or not. That's what entrepreneurship is, so just keep that in mind. Number two is, of the things that took my energy, which of those things were not within my role? That's really important to identify because once you do this for 5, 6, 7, 10, 15 days in a row, you'll start to realize a pattern of things you're not considering that you're consistently doing over and over that are not within your role.

Okay. Right. In order to identify, what's not within your role, how do you delegate that? Well, then you have to identify, these are the things that can be delegated from the things that aren't in my role. Okay. In order to delegate anything, what systems do I need in order to delegate those things? 'Cause you can't bring anyone on, if you don't have any systems or processes.

And then lastly, what can I stop doing altogether? Now, these five questions, ultimately open up your eyes to who you should hire and why you should hire them. But one other element to consider is my four step process to hiring. And it's really easy. It's very ethereal. It's not super deliberate, but it really does make an easy framework for you to consider that the role of hiring anyone for any job is as follows.

Number one, you do the job. Number two, you build an SOP for that job. Number three, you hire someone to implement the SOP to do the job. And then number four, you allow them to fail. Now, I use that word very particularly "allow them to fail". The idea that anyone's gonna come into the role and automatically forever be successful is pretty unlikely.

The reality is majority of people that join any role, especially entrepreneurial businesses, not like corporate America that has 75 people that have already been through this role are 75,000 people that have already been through this role. The likelihood is one person has filled the role that you're about to fill that one person is probably you.

Maybe you're advanced. Maybe you've been running your business for 10 years. Okay, cool. Five people have filled the role. It's a very small number of people that have filled this role total in this business that you've created. So the reality is there's a likelihood that they will fail at something in the beginning, not cataclysmically fail, right?

The go fast and break things type of fail we're talking about. Again, not heart surgery fail, or shooting someone fail, or not saving someone from a fire, or killing someone by giving them the wrong medication. Just simple fails. Like I didn't send the calendar invite correctly or I forgot to send the reporting email or I didn't charge the client on time, or I overcharged the client.

These things happen, failures happen.

And it's part of it. And when you allow them to fail, it ultimately allows you to identify what piece was missing in your SOP. And this is how we make sure that we don't blame people over process. So those are some of the questions that answers to your question. The last one I wanted to answer was the idea of like the type of personality they have to be.

You know, and I think in the hiring space, it's like really like popular to do this framework of like, uh, the personality quizzes. There's one of them off the top of my head, Enneagram I think it's called? And then like the DISC method, I think of the other one, I don't know. I'm not really into that, to be honest. It doesn't mean it's not valuable, just for clarity. It just means I have not done it. Which is totally fine, right? You don't have to do it, but I do wanna share with you what we do in our company that I think will make a difference for some people to consider. And ultimately it's not just an attitude that we expect from them.

It's essentially a framework of being so that they are consistently following through with what we want from them based on our vision of our company. So again, POD is a mentorship community for agency owners. So our goal to our clients is to always be a champ. And the champ framework is pretty simple, right?

It is being caring. It is being helpful. It is being available. It is being motivating and it is being proactive. Those are the core tenants of what we want from our clients. Once again, being a champ is being caring, it is being helpful, it is being available, it is being motivating and it is being proactive.

Those things are what we care about more so, does some people have different type of energy and opinions on this and our clients and do they have different Enneagram or DISC methods? Sure. But like, I actually don't care about that. I'm okay with them having variability on their kind of attitudes and formats, as long as they're a champ all the time.

If they're a champ to our clients, then I'm good. And it's an easy thing to follow through and implement. So that's what we do.

Atiba de Souza: Yeah. I think, well, first off, wow, that was, that was awesome. You covered so much in such a short space of time. That was absolutely wonderful. I'm go backwards a little bit that the champ framework, you know, I completely agree with you. We call it our core values. We have five core values and we run through and you've gotta fit those.

Right. And that's how we know you're going to fit in. And we talk about that here on the channel too, just that, you know, you've gotta have that thing because I agree with you wholeheartedly, a test is good, but it's only a test and it doesn't cover everything. It doesn't tell you everything. It's just a data point.

Alex Schlinsky: One thing on data points that I love Atiba that a coach told me one time is, you can't paint the Mona Lisa from one data point. And I love that line. Every time someone says data point, I always think of it. I always wanna share that piece of advice. It just is so valuable to have, because a lot of times in business, we let one data point change so much instead of like really gathering all the info.

You cannot paint the Mona Lisa from one data point. And that's exactly what Atiba is saying, you can't just take the disc or the Enneagram and be like, okay, "Well, that's it! That's who they are." It's not, it's not enough.

Atiba de Souza: It's not, it's not at all. There's so much more, right? And then your process, you know, we talk about this process that when you're gonna hire somebody, you've gotta do it. You have to have processes, you have to have those SOPs. There's no point of bringing somebody in and not having an SOP because then you won't know why they failed.

Even if you gave them the space to fail. If you don't have the process, you don't know if it's because they did the wrong thing because you gave them the wrong instruction or they just weren't competent. You would have no clue, right? And I love the "allow to fail". I may have to steal that one from you.

Okay. Cause I love that. Yes, give them the space to fail. It's such a great way of looking at it. And also preparing yourself cause that's one of the things, and I'm sure you've experienced this as business owners. When you bring someone in and they fail again, we allow one data point to paint the Mona Lisa, right?

They made one mistake and all of a sudden it's a horrible hire. Doesn't even make sense, makes no sense whatsoever. And this framework will help so many people really start to understand that. And then lastly, those five points that you made, man, those five questions, the clarity band, but those that was just genius. Like seriously guys, if you're watching this, go back, go back and listen to those five points.

Again, 'cause that was just genius in terms of figuring out who you need to hire and organizing and prioritizing your thought about what you're doing, what you need to delegate, what's taking your time, what you need to stop doing. And that's a big one, right? That's a big one. So man, Alex, that was amazing. Dude, that was— geez, that was genius. So, I've gotta ask you this now, 'cause we're coming near to the end of our time together. So one, I want to dive more into this stuff. So we gotta do this again. Okay, we gotta figure out some time that we can come back and do this again. But what I'd love for you to do is tell us just really briefly. So, you know, we've heard about POD a little bit. We know you work with marketing agencies, so on and so forth, but, but tell me, what is it that you're working on now? Where are you going now? And how can people reach out to you?

Alex Schlinsky: Love that. So, yeah. Prospecting On Demand, the entire purpose of this is a boutique mastermind and mentorship community. We're the antithesis of other communities in the space that are trying to have 250 or 300 people. When you have that many people, it kind of feels like you're just a drop of sand in the desert.

Our goal in our community is to be very high touch, like a great community of good people that want to help each other and grow together. So we purposely do not work with more than 60 people at a time 60 agencies at a time. There's a lot more than 60 people 'cause it ends up being, you know, several people per agency but, but in general, 60 agencies so that everyone can know each other, they come to our events consistently.

They give as much as they take. It's super valuable to have something like that. So our mission and goal in Prospecting On Demand is help people build better businesses, businesses that facilitate their life instead of building another, basically, job. Entrepreneurs are the only people that will trade a 40 hour work week job for an 80 hour work week business.

That really isn't a business at all. So, that's our mission statement in POD. The big thing we're working on right now is our next event. We do four events a year. The third one is always the biggest, which is POD live in September, which I'm really excited about. In terms of finding out more about POD and what we do in our mentorship and mastermind community, you can always reach out to us at prospectingondemand.com. If the website works on the programs tab, that means we do have availability. If the program tab doesn't work, that means we're capped out. We're usually pretty not capped out. We're usually around like 55. So on average, every once in a while, we'll go to an event and a bunch of people will join and then we have to close.

But it doesn't happen that too often. So should be fine if you do want to. Reach out to us and chat with us. Ultimately our goal is to help you make more money and build a better business. So you can achieve the things you want in life by having clarity, which is the entire first portion of this conversation we had, really being able to attain success versus, you know, this amoeba, nebulous, "I want to be more successful". And more is forever running on a treadmill. You just get nowhere. So that's our mindset.

Atiba de Souza: Yes, Alex. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here, guys. Again, he dropped some serious knowledge. Yes. The first half was of our conversation was great, but man, these three points that he made here in the second half, go back and listen to those again, write 'em down. We'll put 'em in the description down below for you too, but you've gotta have these because he dropped some serious knowledge on how you can figure out exactly what positions you need to hire for based on what you're doing right now and where it's going to be the most effective for you and then how do you actually help this person once they start be successful on your team? Alex, thank you so much.

Alex Schlinsky: Thanks for having me.

Atiba de Souza: I'll see you soon.