Tammy was at her wit’s end. Not only was she trying to keep up with two jobs, but she also had to take care of two Labrador Retrievers.
In 2006, shortly after starting the Information Marketing Association, Bill Glazer and I had an idea: Let’s provide training for info-marketers’ staff. Because info-marketers are preoccupied with marketing, maybe if we trained their staff we could make sure the info-marketers received the benefit from the training in business systems and finance without them having to participate in the training themselves.
I arranged to attend a Dan Kennedy Platinum Mastermind meeting. Dan invited his Platinum members to bring staff members for a special day-long mastermind meeting that I led.
Eighteen staff members from around the country attended the mastermind session. The attendees represented a wide range of business sizes. One info-marketer brought two staff members out of the 31 who run his operation. Another brought his only staff person.
One thing really stood out: Each team was trying to figure out the same problems without the benefit of learning from everyone else’s experiences. Their problems would start when their info-marketer boss would come back from a meeting and say “I’ve got a great idea. This is going to be huge. I need you to implement this …” They’d patch together the notes the info-marketer had taken at a seminar, mastermind or coaching meeting. Often they didn’t have a clear vision of the goal, much less the most efficient way to implement the strategy.
Yet they had persevered and gotten the job done. As we went around the room, the group was able to find huge breakthroughs for each other. No matter the size of the team, there were so many different ways of solving the same problem that we were quickly able to identify efficiencies.
Have you ever heard of the word schadenfreude? It means taking pleasuring in the misery of others. There was a lot of schadenfreude going on that day.
One info-marketer, the one with 31 employees, had brought his manager. They had all sorts of organizational problems. No one was communicating, everyone worked in silos and there was competition for attention from their info-marketing boss. Others openly discussed their paychecks bouncing because their boss spent too much money in Las Vegas. Then it was Tammy’s turn. (I’m protecting Tammy’s identity by changing her name, even many years later.)
Tammy was completely flustered. She had worked for her boss in another business, a business they still operated. Then her boss created an info-marketing business she had to run as well. She had no experience with info-marketing, had never run merchant services before and knew nothing about this world. Yet she was on board and wanted to see her boss succeed. She was willing to do whatever it took to help him out—including walking his two Labrador Retrievers.
Tammy made everyone else in the room feel better. As bad as they thought their lives were, Tammy made them realize they had it pretty good. At least they weren’t picking up after dogs.
Because of the success of that first meeting, Bill Glazer and I expanded the staff training program into a half-day session at the 2007 Info-Summit. This expanded further to a full day at the 2008 Info-Summit.
The concept was simple; provide a baseline education and a vendors list for info-marketing staff. We kept the info-marketer bosses out; they were locked out of the room. This way the staff could talk and share freely. Plus, the info-marketers really need to stay focused on marketing and business development anyway.
Those staff training sessions were a huge success. I always intended to turn the recordings into a product, but it would require a lot of editing. In between my training sessions, there were a lot of interactive discussions. This was great for the people in the room but not useful or relevant to someone who would be listening to a recording. I got busy with other projects and didn’t get around to editing the recordings into a product.
Then, I had a coaching call with an info-marketer who had a good team but was having trouble training his staff on how to create systems. I had all of the materials and examples he needed at my fingertips, right within the handouts of my staff training program.
So, it finally happened. I had to turn my program into a product to make it available for you. Simple, I thought. I’d take the time to rerecord all the videos so they would be pure, good content. How hard could that be?
It was a huge task! I went through every slide and added a lot of content because laws have changed since I originally gave the presentations. It took me several weeks to get everything up-to-date. In spite of it all, I finally completed the project.
The work paid off. The finished product is a little under 4 hours long, and it’s arranged so your team members can quickly access the information they need, when they need it. If you need a new employee training program today, it’s there. If tomorrow you want a team member to be responsible for protecting your intellectual property, there is quick access to those resources.
Schadenfreude has its moments of voyeuristic interest, but it begins to get tedious, so I’ve removed all of that and given you the best of the best training, organized for easy access. I’m making it available to you for a special introductory price, for a limited time.
If you are looking for a resource to train your staff to create systems for your business, protect your work products and run your business more effectively, check out www.ReliefForStaff.com. There’s special pricing for this month, but only if you are one of the first 30 to grab your copy of the program. With it, you’ll have training for your staff. And, best of all, the dogs are optional.
Best wishes,
About Robert Skrob
