Poster for Mads Singers and Jason Barnard

Building a Team Rather Than Just a Group of Coworkers

In this episode, we will cover how to build a team effectively, that can work together to ensure the delivery of great results on a consistent basis.

Join Mads Singers and Jason Barnard for this week’s episode of Kalicube Tuesdays!

Scheduled for 27 December 2022 at 17 H CET (Paris)

The event is 100% free:

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Organised by Kalicube in partnership with Wordlift.

Part of the Kalicube Tuesdays series.

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Transcript:

Welcoming Mads Singers as Kalicube Tuesdays’ Last Guest for 2022

[00:00:00] Jason Barnard: Hi, everybody, and welcome to another Kalicube Tuesdays. This is the last Kalicube Tuesdays of 2022. And I have the honour of speaking to Mads Singers to ring out 2022 and ring in 2023 slightly early. Welcome, Mads. 

[00:00:16] Mads Singers: Thank you very much for having me, Jason. And I think the honour is all mine for being able to close out the year here in Kalicube.

Looking Back on the Previous Episode With Mads Singers and Introducing This Episode’s Topic About Building a Team

[00:00:23] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. Aren’t we both just incredibly charming? A quick hello and we’re good to go. Welcome to the show, Mads Singers. Now, Mads, this is your second time on the show. The first time was about how to manage a team, and I was doing it all wrong. I watched that episode again the other day and realised I’m doing it much more right now than I was, but I’m still not doing it a hundred percent right in terms of what we should have been doing. We’ve been adapting to that. Moving from tasks and processes to roles and responsibilities, we’ve made that leap. And it’s slightly scary, I think, for everybody including me. So, everyone on the team is slightly uneasy about it, but it’s going pretty well so far.

[00:01:05] Jason Barnard: And today, I wanted to a) look at that a little bit, but also look at building a team rather than just a group of coworkers, because I think we’ve started to become a team and we definitely have started to become a team. And up until maybe the last 3 or 4 months, it seemed to be just a group of coworkers. And I think that’s incredibly important because it’s shown me, at least, how much more fun it is working and how much more productive everybody is and how much happier everybody is. 

[00:01:31] Mads Singers: Yes, totally. 

[00:01:33] Jason Barnard: And that’s what you’re going to teach me. 

[00:01:35] Mads Singers: That sounds fantastic, Jason. Let’s get into it.

Starting Off With Mads Singers’ Brand SERP and Some Changes Google Made by Moving Google Maps to the Left Rail

[00:01:38] Jason Barnard: Right. Okay. We’ll start off with the Brand SERP. I always start off with the Brand SERP. And I looked up Mads Singers on Google, as is my want, and it comes up with Mads Singers Management Consulting. There was actually a screen before that when I looked at Mads Singers and it says, do you want to know about or see results about. And it comes here. 

[00:01:55] Jason Barnard: And I wanted to show this because Google Maps has now moved out of the Google Business Profile. And that looks much more like a Knowledge Panel on the right hand side, with the map on the left hand side. This is an experiment Google is currently running, and I think it looks great. I actually really like this. It makes much more sense to me because it makes the business appear to be more professional, and the map is a secondary option in the left hand rail. What do you think of that? 

[00:02:22] Mads Singers: Yeah. I think it looks good. I wish I was living in London, but besides that, no, I don’t actually.

[00:02:29] Jason Barnard: Is your company based in London?

[00:02:31] Mads Singers: Yeah. I probably have a location or something in Google Maps or who knows.

By Not Having a Physical Office, Google Has Taken the Liberty to Put Mads Singers’ Coaching Business Anywhere

[00:02:35] Jason Barnard: Oh, right, okay. I thought it was your main office, but you’re in Vietnam. 

[00:02:39] Mads Singers: I am all over the place. I don’t really have any offices with the coaching business, but Google will come to put me anywhere. 

[00:02:49] Jason Barnard: And it has it. It’s taking liberties. And you’ve got a conference there in a few months, in the end of February, beginning of March. 

[00:02:58] Mads Singers: Yeah, end of February, beginning of March. We are running the SEO Mastery Summit, which is the first conference for a long time here in Vietnam. So, we are bringing everything together and getting lots of people up from all around the world. So, Australia, Europe, US, everyone is coming here. We have lots of amazing speakers. We have Charles Floate, Matt Diggity, Kyle Roof, a lot of very great speakers, so a lot to learn for everyone. And I’m excited for that.

Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Will Be Personally Meeting His Team, an Idea Inspired by Mads Singers 

[00:03:31] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. I’m coming along on my way to the Philippines for a team meeting that you advised indirectly. You inspired me to think this is a good thing to do, and you’ve helped us out with the organisation. So, I’m going to go to Vietnam, then onto the Philippines to have a big team meeting on the beach. 

[00:03:49] Mads Singers: Perfect. 

[00:03:50] Jason Barnard: Is that a good idea for building teams on the beach? 

[00:03:53] Mads Singers: Yeah. That’s totally okay. I think the key thing, again, is depending on where you bring a team together and depending on the size and so on. You just need to find something that works for the team, so depending on where in the world. Sometimes people are comfortable with certain things, sometimes it’s different scenarios. So, in the US and Europe, you’re used to certain, let’s call it, luxuries. Whereas particularly when you have a team in Asia, you can often get by with doing things in a little bit simpler way.

[00:04:24] Mads Singers: So, one of the things that I’ve done to team buildings with my team, they love all getting together in a house and cooking together and doing things. They love the social activity of doing that, which you’re not going to get with 10 European coworkers together in a house and seeing them all standing there cooking and stuff. I’m not saying you couldn’t, but in most cases, that would not be the sort of thing people would find fun.

Jason Barnard’s Concerns About the Easiness of Physically Meeting His Team for the First Time

[00:04:50] Jason Barnard: I would. I’d definitely be up for a big cooking fest in a shared house with a team of people that I like. And that’s one of the problems with remote teams, and here I’m coming to the remote team aspect. We have a team of people, most of whom have never met each other. And that makes it slightly uncomfortable because it means everyone’s thinking, well, I’m not sure I’m actually going to like them when I meet them. What’s it going to be like? Am I going to feel uncomfortable? What are the solutions to that?

[00:05:17] Mads Singers: It probably won’t feel like that for the team.

[00:05:21] Jason Barnard: Oh, right, just me.

Some People Really Like Bonding Together, So Jason Barnard Should Not Worry Too Much About His Team

[00:05:22] Mads Singers: I think it’s just you, in this case. So, again, Filipinos are generally super kind and nice people and so on. And they like bonding together, and they enjoy that a lot. So, I’ll say you probably shouldn’t worry too much about the team because they’re the nicest people on the planet generally. So, from that point of view, it’s usually good. I know very few people who have had those kind of guests together in the Philippines or Asia somewhere and not have a good experience from that point of view. 

[00:06:00] Jason Barnard: Okay. So, it’s a very European standpoint to think, oh, everyone’s going to stand around looking embarrassed.

Doing anything social together is usually a great way to get things going.

– Mads Singers

[00:06:05] Mads Singers: Yeah. People will definitely be a bit shy initially and so on. But again, they love playing games, love cooking. Doing anything social together is usually a great way to get things going.

Delegating Responsibilities to People on Your Team and Letting Them Organise Events

[00:06:19] Jason Barnard: Right. Yeah. The playing games and activities aspect of it, as a European, I think I might feel a bit embarrassed or I might feel a bit out of place. And that doesn’t appear to be the case. Joan has said, I’ve got a whole set of games we can organise on the beach, which is brilliant. 

[00:06:34] Mads Singers: So, again, this is why delegation is great.

[00:06:37] Jason Barnard: Yeah. I don’t have to organise it, which is lucky. 

[00:06:38] Mads Singers: If people come up with ideas, they’ll just say it. If someone says, hey, let’s play some games, you say, hey, that sounds great. What about you organise it? You take care of it and so on. Yeah. That’s fantastic.

[00:06:51] Jason Barnard: Yeah, no, so I did that aspect right. Somebody says, I can organise some games. I’m saying, that’s great because I couldn’t do that. So, it’s delegating responsibilities in something that I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing in this particular case. And coming back to delegating responsibilities, we had a very task and process based system. And actually, for me, saying to somebody now you take it over completely and I don’t even want to look at it, I feel a little bit uneasy. And that’s normal. And you think, I can’t let it go wrong. But you can let it go wrong, can’t you?

Using the Time That You Are Not Spending Checking Up on Everything to Do More Important Tasks

[00:07:24] Mads Singers: Well, here is the thing. The time that you are not spending checking up on everything, what are you using that time on? 

[00:07:32] Jason Barnard: I’m going down to the beach and lazing around in the sun. No, actually, not at all. I’m writing FAQs and articles and courses and creating the content that describes what it is Kalicube does, which is Knowledge Panel management and Brand SERP optimisation, which is a new niche. So, it gives me time to actually create the content that explains this and research it. So, it’s brilliant. I’m super happy, but I’m still nervous.

People Learn From Their Mistakes; You Have to Give Your Team Ownership and Let Them Figure Stuff Out for Themselves

[00:07:55] Mads Singers: Right. That’s the thing. Even if people make mistakes, the whole point is that the other things you get the time to do, those things are more valuable than the things that they can potentially make a mistake in. So, the whole point is when people go wrong with delegation, they look at things and they’re like, oh no. If someone else is doing that, they might make a mistake. And here’s the thing, the way you learned it was making mistakes and then you figured stuff out, right? 

 [00:08:22] Jason Barnard: Right. 

[00:08:22] Mads Singers: But fundamentally, that’s how everyone learns. I always say the same thing about everyone in SEO who are successful today. No one became successful by being given a pile of processes and say, do this thing. No one who is making good money were trained that way. So, the way people are trained, often some processes, here’s how you do some things and stuff is great, but the fundamental is you need to make some mistakes, you need to have ownership, and you need to try and have to figure stuff out.

How Do You Deal With People Who Are Nervous About Taking Responsibilities and Making Mistakes?

[00:08:54] Jason Barnard: And how do I deal with people who are nervous about taking that responsibility that they think, oh, I might get this wrong and I’ll look foolish or I’ll be disliked or I might lose my job? How do I deal with that? 

[00:09:06] Mads Singers: Show them trust. Okay. So, again, a lot of the time when you communicate and when you’re talking with people, fundamentally, the way the company grows is for you to be able to do the things you’re doing now. It’s to do those higher value things that no one else can do than you, or no one else in the company right now have the capability to do because you can’t afford to hire someone with the right skillset or whichever.

Have Conversations With Your Team to Assure Them That You Trust Each Individual to Do Their Responsibilities and Be Better at Their Jobs

[00:09:34] Mads Singers: So, fundamentally, it’s a question for the business to grow, for the business to be successful, what’s required is that you have the time to do X, Y, Z. And therefore, the other things need to be managed by other people. So, again, having the conversations with them and being honest and straightforward and saying, I don’t have the time to do this stuff. 

[00:09:57] Mads Singers: We need to make sure that you understand and you learn how to do it over time. And I do realise that we’ll make some mistakes, there’ll be some issues, and stuff will happen. But in the end of the day, I trust you. You are good at doing whatever you’re doing, and I want you to be responsible for this. And over time, you will become better at this than I’ve ever been.

The Importance of Having One-on-One Meetings Regularly to Manage the People in Your Company

[00:10:20] Jason Barnard: Yeah. And that’s been happening now. Katrina has been significantly better now at building sales funnels and sales pages. And I look at it and go, I never would even come close to that, which is absolutely wonderful. And how do you deal with remote workers who feel isolated when nobody’s actually supporting them on a daily basis?

[00:10:41] Mads Singers: So, are you doing one-to-ones with your team? 

[00:10:47] Jason Barnard: Not very often, no. Oh, that’s a bad thing. I can tell from your tone of voice. That’s a terrible thing. I’ve made a big goof. Go ahead and explain. 

[00:10:59] Mads Singers: Right. So, those two key meetings you want to have, one of them is the one-to-one meetings and the other one is team meetings. So, the one-to-one meetings, again, in my training, I have a very in depth role, but I’ll go through the high level. Fundamentally, the one-to-one meetings are generally weekly and generally with anyone that reports directly to you. 

[00:11:24] Mads Singers: So, one of the key things when you are the CEO of a company, ideally within one business, you would not want to have more than 4, maybe 5 people reporting to you as the CEO. And one of the core reasons for that is the amount of time you have to spend with people. Obviously, the more people you are managing, the harder it is to spend a reasonable amount of time with each of those people.

There Are Different Kinds of Meetings Depending on the Purpose of the Conversation 

[00:11:52] Jason Barnard: Right. So, what I’ve been doing is having multiple people in a meeting about a specific set of roles, because I figured then everybody hears what’s going on and it makes more sense than having one-on-one meetings. Are you saying I shouldn’t have the multiple people in a group meeting or that I should do all three now? 

[00:12:11] Mads Singers: There’s different kinds of meetings. So, one-to-one meetings, very specifically, is about the employee. It’s about, one, you building a relationship with them so that they get to know you as the boss and you get to know them. You get to know who’s the family, who’s the dog, what do they care about, what’s important to them, getting to know the staff.

When Talking About the Performance of a Certain Individual, a One-to-One Meeting Is More Preferred Than a Team Meeting

 [00:12:37] Mads Singers: It’s talking about performance. So if you’re talking about someone not performing well, you don’t want to do that in a one-to-many meeting. You want to definitely do that on a one-to-one basis. The more you can talk about performance on a regular basis, the more you help your staff understand what’s important. 

[00:12:58] Mads Singers: So, talking about the personality, talking about all the personal stuff, talking about performance, and talking about development. What do they need to develop to perform in the job they have right now? And what are the development steps that they want to do for the future?

In Partnership With WordLift, Kalicube Offers Knowledge Panel and Brand SERP Services 

[00:13:15] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. From just that explanation, I can see exactly what relationship aspects are missing with certain people in the team, where I haven’t done that enough or sometimes not at all. So, that’s already rubbish on my part. We’re just going to go to the sponsors break, then we’re going to come back and talking about building a team, which was the topic of the day. Could we have the video, Anton, for this?

[00:13:38] Jason Barnard: As always, third year produced in partnership with WordLift, who were an amazing company based in Rome, with the artificial intelligence you need to grow your traffic. And we offer a Knowledge Panel service where you can get your Knowledge Panel. Anyone can have a Knowledge Panel, any company. We do the service for you.

Having a Team Leader Who Reports to the CEO, Wherein the Rest of the Team Reports to Him/Her, Is a Good Sign  

[00:13:56] Jason Barnard: That team is run by the wonderful Allyssa and her Kalicube Pro team. She reports to me, and the rest of the team don’t. And I was talking to her assistant Nell the other day, and we had nothing to say to each other because I’ve got no idea what he does on a day-to-day basis. That’s a good sign, isn’t it? 

[00:14:14] Mads Singers: Perfect.

[00:14:17] Jason Barnard: Give me one good reason why I should not delegate this to you. I delegated it to you yesterday. For the people on audio, Anton just put a cartoon on the screen and it’s actually pretty funny. So, come and watch the video version to see that. Now, Mads, tell me how I can turn my group of coworkers at Kalicube into a real team. I think we’ve got on the first round about that, but we haven’t got very far.

Turning a Group of Coworkers Into a Real Team: You Have to Handle the Right Amount of People to Manage Effectively 

[00:14:38] Mads Singers: So, how many staff did you say you have now? 

[00:14:42] Jason Barnard: 11. 

[00:14:42] Mads Singers: 11. Right.

[00:14:43] Jason Barnard: 11 in the Philippines, plus Anton, plus Veronique in the South of France, who are both part-time. There’s another question. How do you mix part and full-time people? Sorry, excuse me, I’m getting excited. One question at a time. Sorry, Mads.

[00:14:59] Mads Singers: Fundamentally, the key thing is you’re definitely managing too many people to effectively manage those individuals, so too many people. How many people are doing the same job, a.k.a. how many people are in roles where they’re basically doing the same work?

[00:15:19] Jason Barnard: Two groups of two. 

[00:15:21] Mads Singers: Two groups of two. 

[00:15:23] Jason Barnard: So, everyone’s got very different roles.

While Considering Multiple People Who Do the Same Work, You Have to Assign a Team Leader Who You Will Directly Handle 

[00:15:26] Mads Singers: Right. That’s good. So, the first thing, for me, my first thing I started looking at, and I attempted to do that early when I grow a business, is when you start having multiple people doing the same work, one of those become the team leader or the manager or whatever you call it. Because if you have two people that are doing the same work, you generally don’t want to have to tell everything to two people all the time. 

[00:15:48] Jason Barnard: Right. Okay. 

[00:15:50] Mads Singers: So, that’s the key. The good thing about that is when you start early, when you start when there’s only a couple of people, that teaches whoever you put into that role early on how to actually deal with someone else. Managing one person is easier than managing five. So if they start early on and they’re managing one or maybe two people or whatever, that’s significantly easier than managing more people.

You have to have a hierarchy, otherwise you simply can’t function. That idea of a flat organisation is impossible to maintain.

– Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)

[00:16:17] Jason Barnard: Right. Yeah. I’m getting pretty drowned at the moment, and I’m realising that I’m totally overwhelmed. And as you say, 11 is way too many. In fact, I told a lie. We’ve got three different groups of two people, but what I’m hoping I can do is build up that hierarchy, unfortunately. But I think you have to have a hierarchy, otherwise you simply can’t function. That idea of a flat organisation is impossible to maintain.

When Managing an Organisation, You Could Set Up Different Areas for Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Finance

[00:16:43] Mads Singers: Yeah. It’s not just about hierarchy for the sake of it, but it’s about, again, organisation, making sure things happen and so on. That’s key. So, fundamentally, what you want to do is you want to start looking at your people. And in all businesses, pretty much all businesses around the world, at least the Fortune 500, if you look at them, they’re all set up the same way. So, you have sales, marketing is sometimes separated, you have operations, and you have finance. That’s generally those three to four areas that are there. 

[00:17:16] Jason Barnard: And the marketing comes under operations? 

[00:17:20] Mads Singers: No. Sales and marketing are occasionally together, often they’re separated. So, often you have a sales team and a marketing team. Operations, finance, and occasionally you have a CTO or tech team depending on what the type of company is. But that’s typically the four to five major departments that every business has.

The Management Challenge for Business Owners to Not Learn Everything and Then Teach It to Their People

[00:17:43] Mads Singers: So, the goal for you, at this point, with so many people, is probably starting to sit down and look at where does these people fit in, and who within the group are in a position where they can become a manager or they can be someone that helps lead the rest of the team. Again, leading a team doesn’t mean they have to know what to do.

[00:18:11] Jason Barnard: Really? 

[00:18:12] Mads Singers: Really. The biggest challenge, the biggest reason why most small businesses grow really, really slowly is because the business owner tries to figure out how to do everything and then teach people. And that is the opposite of management. That is basically a freelancer building themself a very qualified job.

[00:18:33] Jason Barnard: Yeah. Which is what I’ve been doing for years, and we’re finally getting out of it. We built a team page a few weeks ago. And I was writing my text about how I feel about my job and what I’m doing. And I wrote, the thing I’m most proud about is actually the Kalicube team. And that’s relatively recent in the sense that it’s an amazing bunch of people, team of people, who produce amazing work and do it incredibly effectively and efficiently, which I really respect, effective and efficient.

When Looking for a Team Leader, You Have to Look for the Person With the Best People Management Skills and Not Seniority

[00:19:09] Mads Singers: Yeah. So, fundamentally, you want to start looking at all these people you have and saying, what are the groups that make sense? So, again, for example, a lot of people, they maybe have some marketing staff. So, they might have one person running ads, one person writing content, one person doing something else. Now, one of those people might end up being the boss of the other two. So, you might turn whoever of those people is most qualified into the marketing manager. 

[00:19:41] Jason Barnard: And qualified in terms of team management or qualified in terms of the work they do? 

[00:19:46] Mads Singers: Team management. So, again, unfortunately, sometimes people promote the person who have been there the longest just because of seniority. That is generally not necessarily a great move. So, you want to generally promote the person with the best people management skills and the person who is in the best position to effectively manage the people around them.

What Are Some of the Team Management Skills That the People in Your Company May Need? 

[00:20:10] Jason Barnard: Right. What are the team management skills that you would identify? Because that, for me, isn’t something very obvious. I’m rubbish at it because I’m bad at delegating. My first one would be capacity and ability to delegate intelligently. 

[00:20:24] Mads Singers: Right. Number one is communication. 

[00:20:27] Jason Barnard: Ah, okay. I got that one wrong already.

Just because someone is great at doing something doesn’t necessarily mean they’re great at leading the team on doing something.

– Mads Singers

[00:20:30] Mads Singers: If someone communicates extremely well, that is very beneficial in a leadership and a management position. The number one thing, there’s a lot of really smart people who are really good at doing things by themselves. If you give them a task, they’ll sit down, they’ll figure it out, they’ll do it, and they’ll do it extremely well. The problem is that just because someone is great at doing something doesn’t necessarily mean they’re great at leading the team on doing something.

The Importance of Having Great Communication Skills, Especially for Developers

[00:20:59] Mads Singers: Now, it doesn’t mean they couldn’t become that person, because people can learn different skills. When you look at most developers, for example, they’re not exactly known for great communication skills. If you have ever been on the phone with a developer, well, you’ll never get on a phone with a developer. But if you ever tried to communicate to a developer, you will understand that. 

[00:21:22] Mads Singers: Now, again, some developers learn how to communicate, which makes them incredibly valuable because they’re one in a billion or something like that. If they are actually a great developer and they know how to communicate, which is key. So, for me, the key things I look at, number one is good communication.

Other Important Skills You Need to Look For: People Who Are Good at Nurturing, Goal-Driven, and Match Your Company Values 

[00:21:45] Mads Singers: The second thing is looking at what does the team need at this point in time. So, sometimes you have people that, for example, haven’t had so much support and care or maybe you want to bring someone in. You want to pick the person who is very good at nurturing other people and supporting other people and so on. Maybe people need a bit of asking sometimes, and you maybe want to pick someone who’s a little bit more assertive and goal driven. So, again, it’s good to look at what is it this group of people need at this point in time. So, that’s typically what I tend to look at. 

[00:22:19] Mads Singers: But generally, when you look at your company overall, when you recruit people, when you promote people, you want to focus a lot on attitude, morale, the values the person hold. Do they match your values? Because you want to promote people for the right reasons. So, you have a lot of companies where you sometimes have people that perform extremely well but, to put it politely, are pain in the ass or they’re not concerned with the people around them. They’re just not the people whose values you want to promote in the business. So, those are the things that I generally look for when I’m looking to promote someone internally.

You’d be looking at the team leads and saying, these people represent the attitude and the values that I feel is right for my company.

– Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)

[00:23:05] Jason Barnard: So, you’d be looking at the team leads and saying, these people represent the attitude and the values that I feel is right for my company.

Promoting Someone Who’s Performing to Send the Correct Signals to the Rest of the People in Your Company

[00:23:13] Mads Singers: Yep. Because fundamentally, here’s the thing. If someone manage other people, you’re stamping their performance, you’re stamping their behaviour. Because if someone gets promoted into a leadership or management role, what happens is fundamentally you’re saying this is what I want to see. So, you want to generally promote someone who’s performing. 

[00:23:34] Mads Singers: You don’t want to promote someone who’s horrible at their job because that doesn’t really send the right signal to the rest of the people. It’s like, oh, if I just do really bad, I’ll get promoted. So, you generally want to look for all these things, but fundamentally you want to look for people who are performing well.

While Considering a Hierarchical Structure in Your Company, How Do You Build That Into a Team?

[00:23:51] Jason Barnard: And with the hierarchy system, great point, I’ve taken it all in, I’ll watch this again, but how about building that into a team? Because with these I report to somebody above me who reports to Jason, doesn’t that create a situation where it’s not a team, so much as a structure of hierarchy? 

[00:24:12] Mads Singers: The teams happen within the hierarchies. So if you, for example, have one person who manage operations and that person is managing four or five people, they are a team. If you have someone managing marketing and they’re three or four people, they are a team. So, every business, fundamentally, when it grows, becomes a unit of multiple teams. If you have a business of a hundred people, that’s not one team. That is multiple teams.

[00:24:42] Jason Barnard: I was looking at it wrong. So, we end up with, you said, the three or four different hierarchical silos, let’s call them, of sales and marketing, finance, potentially IT. And what was the other one? Operations. 

[00:24:57] Mads Singers: Operations. Yeah.

The Process of Bringing Together All the Teams, Each of Which Has a Head, to Form One Overall Organisational Team

[00:24:59] Jason Barnard: And those are the four different teams, each of which has a head and each of them is a small team. And the head is responsible for making sure the team makes sense as a team. And then how do you bring the teams together as one overall organisational team? 

[00:25:17] Mads Singers: Fundamentally, that’s about communication. So, when you’re communicating from the top down to an organisation, that’s all about, one, making sure that the people you have managing the team knows how to communicate. So, when you are communicating with the people that reports to you, they can communicate down the way, in the way they feel is correct. 

[00:25:37] Mads Singers: So, it’s not about parroting what you say. But if you have a meeting with four or five people and you say a bunch of things and you share a bunch of stuff and you agree on certain things, like priorities or deadlines or whatever, it’s the team leader’s responsibility to share the things or the manager’s responsibility to share the things that he or she feels makes sense for the team and help understand, translate into the team what does this mean for us.

The Importance of Setting a Goal and Making a Plan for Your Team to Be Able to Reach the Target

[00:26:07] Jason Barnard: Right. So, what I hear here is I need to delegate communication. 

[00:26:15] Mads Singers: It’s not about delegate communication, but let’s say for example, you say, okay, let’s say you have a team meeting with your marketing, operations, everything. You have a team meeting with them all. And you say, okay, we are launching a new feature. From a marketing standpoint, we want to promote this stuff. This is the new features. This is the new stuff. This is going to be fantastic. 

[00:26:36] Mads Singers: You then give the marketing lead the responsibility of going away and figuring out how we going to promote this thing. What are the things we are going to do to promote it? Are we going to run ads? Are we going to do email marketing? What are we doing to promote this thing? So, you set the objective, you set the goal and say, we have this new feature that needs to be pushed out. It’s going to change the world or it’s going to be great.

Given Their Responsibilities and Their Area of Expertise, Each Team Should Have a Goal in Mind

[00:27:00] Mads Singers: The goal is that we either sign up a lot of new clients or we get all our existing clients to use it or whatever the goals of the particular feature is. And then you want them to go away and come back with a plan of saying, okay, this is what we are doing to roll this out. This is what we are doing to launch this. And then you basically say, sounds great. 

[00:27:24] Mads Singers: And then sometimes there’s a goal. Sometimes you could say, we have spent 10 grand developing this new feature that needs to be life changing. We need to bring in X amount of new customers to justify what we have just done. So, the goal over the next three months is, from a marketing or sales perspective, to bring in 50 new customers or whatever makes sense.

To Reach a Certain Goal, You Have to Make a Plan, Make Estimates, and Execute the Tasks

[00:27:48] Jason Barnard: Right. Okay. And then with the idea of, for example, a goal, and you say we need to sell X by, let’s say, the time we all meet up in the Philippines. What happens if we don’t reach that goal, other than the business collapses in a big heap?

A goal is not just a goal. A goal is a goal with a number and a plan attached to it.

– Mads Singers

[00:28:04] Mads Singers: First step is you want to set that a goal is not just a goal. A goal is a goal with a number and a plan attached to it. So, the first thing is the person needs to go away and say, how are we going to deliver these 50 sales? So, we are going to spend X amount on ads, and we expect that to bring in X. We’re going to send out an email to all existing customers. We expect that to bring in Y. We are going to do a new content marketing campaign or be on a lot of podcasts or whatever. We expect that to bring in C.

[00:28:37] Mads Singers: And you make these estimates. Sometimes it goes really well, sometimes it goes not so well. But the whole point is that as soon as you start executing on the tasks, and if you are at some point not seeing the return that you expect, you need to look at what else can we do? What else do we need to do to achieve this goal?

If You Missed a Goal, You Also Have to Consider Other Options to Make Up for What You Have Not Achieved 

[00:28:55] Mads Singers: So, the whole point is the goal is not just measured at the end of it and saying that we get the yes or no and then realise you fail. Again, with a plan, you’re making the plan throughout it. And you’re basically making the steps and saying, first step, a week from now, we need to be here. Two weeks from now, we need to be here. A month from now, we need to be here, et cetera. 

[00:29:17] Mads Singers: So, you make the plan that gets you to the goal, and you can follow the plan along the way. Now, occasionally you do miss a goal, which happens. The question is then, again, when you get to the deadline and saying, we missed a goal, there’s still a future, but how are we going to make up what we have not achieved?

As the Head of His Company, Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Should Be the One to Set the Goals

[00:29:35] Jason Barnard: Right. Okay. So, what I realised from that is a) I don’t plan very well, b) I tend not to set goals. I just think we’ll see how it works out. And so, I need my team to actually encourage me to set goals and to attach plans to them rather than just say, let’s move forward step by step and see what happens.

[00:29:53] Mads Singers: So, here’s the key thing. The problem is today you are the one that have to do all the planning because you are the Jason that does everything. So, what needs to happen is you need to learn to set some goals or work with the team to set some goals. But you need to be the goals guy because you are the boss, which means you have to set the goals. They need to come up with a plan. So, they need to figure out if someone’s responsible for marketing, that challenge is here’s what we want to achieve. How are we going to do it? What are the steps we’re going to take to get to the goal?

Understanding Ownership and Responsibility: The Boss Sets the Goals and the Team Helps to Make the Plan 

[00:30:29] Jason Barnard: Okay. New plan for 2023 is I need to set the goals and let the team members define the plan or the team leads define the plan to get there.

[00:30:40] Mads Singers: And this is exactly what ownership and responsibility is. This is exactly what ownership and responsibility is. Because the problem is today when you launch a new feature, you’re telling the marketing people, okay, you’d write an email, you write this ad, you do this, you do this. And if it’s great, great. If it’s bad, bad. But it all comes back to. 

[00:31:05] Mads Singers: The whole point with delegating responsibility and ownership to individuals is the fact that they are the ones figuring stuff out. Because here’s the thing, you’re not an expert at operations, marketing, sales, finance, IT, everything. And even if you were, you couldn’t be the expert at all of those things at the same time.

More About Sales: Hiring a Great Sales Person Depending on the Company’s Financial Capacity

[00:31:26] Jason Barnard: Right, no, a hundred percent. I’ve definitely got a lot to be getting on with. One of which is making sure that I’ve got these well defined teams and working in that system and properly delegating roles and responsibilities and not getting involved in absolutely everything that’s going on in the company. I’m also actually just talking to David Bain, who was saying to me I need to become a salesman for the company. It’s my company. If I want sales to come through, I really need to accept that responsibility. Would that seem fair to you? I think he’s right. 

[00:31:58] Mads Singers: At some point, particularly in smaller companies, that makes a lot of sense. Now, again, I’m not a sales guy. I don’t do much sales. I have many companies, and I hire people who are great at it because they’re better at it than I am. So, to some degree, again, for a lot of businesses, that’s not you should do this. It’s a question of you need to look at what is the financial capacity you have.

[00:32:28] Mads Singers: If you have a company, one of my friends, making a hundred grand profit a month, he can easily afford to go out and hire a great sales guy. Now, if you’re making three grand profit a month, you probably can afford to go out and hire a top notch sales guy. So, everything is depending on where the company is, the complexity of what you’re doing. For example, I just worked with a client a couple hours ago. I had a call with them, and they were hiring a sales guy for a link building company.

Sales May Be Done by the Business Owners, But You Can Eventually Find the Right People, Give Them Ownership, and Build Things Up 

[00:32:55] Mads Singers: Now, there’s a lot of people who know what links are. There’s a lot of people who are capable of selling links. That doesn’t mean that they don’t necessarily have to do it themselves. Now, in the beginning, sales is often done by the business owner, but it doesn’t mean that that is how it always have to be. But obviously, you need to find the right people. You need to give them the right ownership. You need to build up things. 

[00:33:16] Mads Singers: But a lot of the times, particularly in small companies, people often mistake sales and marketing. It’s not the same thing. And a lot of small business owners, they make sales by networking and by talking to people and all this sort of stuff all the time. When you’re looking at typical sales, you’re either doing the cold way, which is often harder. But more effectively is if you actually have lead generation systems in your marketing funnels that generate leads that someone needs to talk to, then it’s significantly easier being a sales guy.

Kalicube Needs to Have a Big Fat Button Where Their Audience Can Directly Contact Them for Their Services 

 [00:33:57] Jason Barnard: That just made me think of something to do with the fact that we were looking at. The kind of people who are visiting the kalicube.com website are actually our exact perfect clients a lot of the time. And what we don’t have is a way to reach out to them and start talking to them. We are relying on the website for them to think, looking at the website, oh, I need to work with Kalicube and then contact us. And that doesn’t necessarily happen. 

[00:34:20] Mads Singers: Do you have a big fat button saying call us here or arrange a call here? 

[00:34:26] Jason Barnard: Tell you what, we don’t, no. So, yeah, absolutely. Message to everybody on the team: we need a big fat button that says, call us, so that we can work together. 

[00:34:39] Mads Singers: Again, I don’t know if that makes sense. Sometimes if people are selling $5 SaaS tools, that might not be feasible to actually speak to every customer, but yeah.

A Summary of Kalicube’s Offers, Services, and Courses All About Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels 

[00:34:50] Jason Barnard: No. It does make total sense. We’ve got a contact us page, we’ve got some contact forms, but there’s no area actually where we’ve got this big button that says, contact us if you want to work with us. We’ve got an agency offer, we’ve got a done-for-you service offer for Knowledge Panels and Brand SERPs, and we’ve got a consultancy offer. And then the courses, which should sell themselves, i.e. we don’t need to talk to them.

[00:35:09] Jason Barnard: But the other three, it’s all about talking to the potential clients, so that big fat button is needed. The team is actually multiple teams that come together to make a hierarchical system of a company with multiple teams, who are all going to get together on the beach in Cebu in 3 or 4 months time. Thanks to Mads Singers. Thank you so much for that. That was absolutely brilliant.

Passing the Baton to the Next Guest, Tatiana Bonneau, and Ending Kalicube Tuesdays for This Year 

[00:35:30] Jason Barnard: We’re going to pass the baton now to next year’s guest as opposed to next week’s guest. And it’s Tatiana Bonneau, Domain Names as Brand Assets. And she likes the quote from Philip Kotler, if you are not a brand, you are a commodity. And the reason we’ve got her on first off in 2023 is we’re going to change the focus slightly of the podcast to become much more about branding and branding on Google Search. And she’s going to be the perfect person to kick that off in 2023. Please pass the baton, Mads, from year to year. 

[00:36:06] Mads Singers: Yeah. I’ll hand it over from 2022 to 2023 to Tatiana, and I’m excited to see her input as well.

[00:36:17] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you everyone for watching. Thank you, Mads. Thank you, Anton, for your support during the entire year, week in, week out, always being there. Thank you to WordLift for your support for the last 3 years, including this year. In fact, Anton has been here for all the 3 years as well, to give him credit where credit is due. Thank you everyone for watching. See you in 2023. Goodbye. 

[00:36:40] Mads Singers: Goodbye.

[00:36:42] Jason Barnard: Kalicube. It’s all about your Brand SERP.

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