How We Doubled Our Business in Two Years: 3 Steps to Creating a Great Company

Do you feel like you suck at your job?

Eight out of 10 people suffer from imposter syndrome. There are days I’m definitely one of those eight.

There have been some dark mornings when I’ve convinced myself that I’m not good enough. I, too, have cried in the shower as I raged in the general direction of the shampoo bottle. Sometimes I feel like I have no clue what I’m doing. Sometimes I feel like I’m not enough.

But the truth is that every leader has moments of doubt — or at least 80% do. The great Ben Horowitz (check out his books for a little light “what have I been doing my whole life?” reading material) once said, “The only way to become a CEO is to be a CEO.”

I’ve learned the hard way that your track record in business isn’t always as shiny as you want it to be. The combination of ambition and fear (fear of looking stupid, fear of failure) can be heady. You have responsibility to your clients, maybe your stockholders, certainly to your employees.

So, how can you turn mistakes into a new mission? How do you turn around a flailing business or build a new one from scratch that’s actually successful? And how do you do it all when you’re not even sure you’re the right person for the job?

There are three main things that have helped me double Crowd Content’s business in two years. I’ve been lucky enough to come across great mentors over the years, and one of them introduced me to this formula — and boy has that lesson paid off.

But there’s a catch. This system is so simple it’s almost obvious, but most people don’t apply it. It’s so tempting to get to the action before getting the fundamentals down first. But remember, just because a system is simple doesn’t mean it’s easy — you still have to follow it in order for it to work.

Still interested?

I thought you might be.

Turn off the TV, press pause on your self-doubt, and soak up these three things that can make your business boom.

The formula is simple: People > Systems > Activities……. in that order

1. People

Everything starts with people. You can have the best ideas and strategies in the world, but until you have the right people to power those ideas, everything is just theoretical. That’s because people take care of the systems and the systems will take care of the activities (more about those systems and activities later…).

So, do you hire the people with the best resumes?

Do you poach people from your competitors and put them in the first open position you can find?

Sure… but only if you revel in chaos (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Hiring should be strategic:

• To pick the right people, you need a clear hiring process. You also need a well-defined culture that will set the roadmap for the type of people you want to hire and keep.
• You need to put the right people in the right seats, meaning you can onboard killer talent, but if that talent is shoehorned into the wrong role, you’re setting them (and your company) up for failure
• Make sure you have the right people for the right phase. The employees you have filling seats during the startup phase may not be the same people who are brainstorming over Zoom when you’re a $100 million company with 1,000+ employees on the roster.
• Pay your people well, because you literally can’t afford not to. Don’t cheap out on your people. Would you try to go with the bargain Neurosurgeon or would you go with the best option? In the same way, you shouldn’t go for the lowest cost when hiring people for key roles.

Tools like the People Analyzer from EOS can help you along the way, but there’s still art and skill to interpreting and acting on the information those tools produce.

The Inarguable Importance of Company Culture

At Crowd Content, we have a few core values that form the main filter as we hire, fire, and promote from within:

• We’re voracious but generous learners
• We’re relentless problem solvers
• We aim higher
• We serve with genuine enthusiasm
• We carry our weight — and a little bit more

That’s our company culture. What’s yours?

If you’re not sure, that’s okay. It can be surprisingly difficult to boil down everything your company stands for into a couple lines of pithy text. But maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way around.

Instead of trying to capture what you want your company to be, focus on what it already is.

Still struggling? There’s an even easier way from A to What the Heck is Carlos Talking About.

Identify your top employee. If you cloned them, what four or five qualities would you be hoping to replicate? Those qualities are already a major part of your business. Your top employee is a living, breathing embodiment of your company culture.

Managing Out the Wrong People

Okay, that’s just a fancy way of saying you’re going to need to do some firing.

It would be wonderful if every hire worked out perfectly. It would also be wonderful if I never forgot to unmute my microphone during a Zoom meeting and if someone would invent a never-ending cup of really good coffee, but alas, life is imperfect.

“Managing out the wrong players” means identifying the people who don’t fit with your company and your culture and offering them a few paths forward.

People either have the right values or they don’t. You can’t fix not having the right values. You can fix skills, you can fix training, you can even fix some bad habits… but never values.

“But Carlos,” you say, “I just know I’ll regret firing Axel from accounting. Sure, he has his problems, but when he’s on, he’s really on.” But what is Axel’s impact on the rest of your team when he is so very much off?

One of the best things you can do for morale isn’t bringing ping pong tables into the break room or establishing Bring Your Dog to Work Day, it’s getting rid of the people who are toxic, underperforming, or otherwise dragging everybody down.

My first fire at Crowd Content happened pretty quickly after I came on board. This person was described as “our biggest asset and our biggest liability.” The good doesn’t cancel out the bad. The fact is, the moment you think you need to fire someone is the moment you should realize that you’re probably already a bit too late.

They went out the door, and any potential regrets I had went with them.

To recap:

• People are paramount
• Pay your people well
• Figure out your culture and hire people who’ll fit in
• Fire people who are the human equivalent of a case of the Mondays

2. Systems

Your system is the process and/or metrics that help you run your business. If people are the who, then your system is the how.

This might be:

• How you produce content
• How you sell products
• How you advertise and provide services

Sound complicated? It sure can be.

But the good news is that it’s not on you to design systems from top to bottom. The right people (aka those awesome culture kings and queens you hired up in step one) will put the right processes in place. BTW, that’s why you need to figure out the People part first before figuring out the Systems.?

What Makes a System Great?

Every business has some kind of system in place. So, what separates the Apples from the tech companies that never get traction? Why do some start-ups launch into the stratosphere faster than the cancel culture wipes out a loud-mouthed celebrity while other entrepreneurs can’t get their idea off the ground?

A great system is:

• Developed Thoughtfully: There’s been thought put into it and that thought is far deeper than just surface level, throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall guesses. You’ve approached the idea with intention and nurtured each kernel of your creation until it makes sense — and not only to you, but to your team and through the lens of your actual business.
• Well documented: A great system will be written down in detail. Think of it like a recipe. At Crowd Content, we know exactly how a piece of content will be produced every single time, and that process is written down for the entire team to follow. Systems only work if your people know how to work it.
• Known: Secrets secrets are no fun, secret systems help no one. Elementary rhymes aside, your system is only valuable if everyone knows about it and views it as a requirement, not simply an option.
• Followed by all: Again, the system is not just an option. It’s a universal requirement. The someone special from department A doesn’t just get to do his own thing because he believes in himself. I mean, go him, right? But not in this scenario. Systems only work if everyone buys in — but that’s okay, because you hired people who innately align with your company culture, so it’s all systems go (pun definitely intended).

But winning systems are also never written in stone.

Dialing In Your System… Again, and Again, and Again

So, you’ve got a developed, well documented, known system that’s used by all. Done and dusted, right?

Not so fast, Elon.

There is no such thing as a perfect system because the right system is agile and constantly adapting to changes in your business, the economy, consumer behavior, and so on.

You should constantly test your system, and this testing is way more complex and dynamic then simply poking at your handbook and seeing if it barks back.

At Crowd Content, we’ve put together a testing and tweaking process that’s super dialed in and we continue to fine tune every single day. That’s how our clients know they can expect consistency.

Here’s what our plan looks like:

• Annual game planning, with top execs and department heads coming together to create a blueprint for the coming year
• Quarterly revisions, where department heads come back to the table with metrics, team feedback, and suggestions on what’s working, what isn’t, and where we need to go next
• Trickle-down weekly meetings where everything we discuss at the top is discussed a granular level with the people who are hands on with content, freelancers and clients

Every single person on the CC team has at least one scorecard number to track performance. They also have quarterly rocks or projects that tie in to our overarching goals.

If this sounds really strict… well, it is, and it’s designed to be, because all that rigidity means that our planning and tweaking and refining has become an organization-wide reflex. There’s still plenty of room for open discussion, but it exists within that super strategic framework.

3. Activities

Finally, we’ve reached the part where your people generate and act on ideas. These are the activities that your people do every day. It’s what makes up their calendars and their to-do lists.?

But who decides what those activities are?

It all comes back to the system: If you have the right people and right system in place, you can trust that your teams will be executing on the right activities. And your system will help filter out the bad ideas and execute on the good ones.

You also have your people to help you avoid grasping at shiny objects and keep you honest.

I can’t count the number of times I think I have an industry-altering idea, but either my people or our system prove that the concept just won’t bear fruit.

Still:

• It’s crucial to give ideas time to flourish — not everything works right out of the gate
• Trust the system to guide, refine, and weed out ideas as needed
• Test ideas on a small scale (manually) before creating code and blowing them up
• Be prepared to kill your darlings and fall in love with someone else’s (aka, sometimes your ideas will suck and somebody else’s ideas will show you up big time… which is exactly how it’s supposed to be)

How Do You Know You’ve Made It?

How do you know you’ve got the right people, system, and ideas in the pipeline?

First, you’ll know you’re on the right path because you’ve followed all the essential steps in the specific order given. That’s that recipe we talked about — the steps necessary to produce an optimal final product.

Then you’ll start hitting your metrics and objectives. You’ll get FOMO when you go on vacation, not because you don’t trust your team but because you’re so excited to see what they’re doing. And, most importantly, people will tell you you’re a rockstar. Your clients, your vendors, and your employees won’t be quiet about it? — success is loud.

That’s what happened at Crowd Content. We doubled our business. Our team acquired a laundry list of incredible clients. We’re profitable. We have very low attrition.

All this as I was battling imposter syndrome and holding conversations with hair products.

I know that failure happens and it can be wounding.

But the scars you walk away with aren’t merely decorative.

You take them with you when you get that second, third, or fifth chance, and those bumps and bruises are reminders of the chances you took that didn’t quite pan out — and of the leaps you made that might not have had such a clean landing, but still pushed progress.

Three steps to building a successful and scalable business: People, Systems, and Activities. I did it, and I’m absolutely confident you can too.