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0:30 I was speaking at a conference in Brazil with Richard Branson. When I was speaking with him, it was just him and I at this conference called VTEX. He said something quite interesting to me. I don’t know him well. I’m not his friend or anything like that, just a quick conversation. But he said something that was interesting to me. He built his company with an amazing team. Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Elon Musk. It’s not one person or the entrepreneur or the founder that builds the company. It’s your team.
1:00 You can’t ever forget that. Take care of the people who help you get to where you are today. Without them, you wouldn’t have everything that you have right now. If you’re just starting off, keep in mind, you need to recruit amazing people. These people need to be smarter than you. They don’t have to be smarter than you in everything that you’re doing, but whatever their specializing in, they have to know it more than you and better than you. For that reason, you wanna make sure you take care of em. You may not be able to pay em what they’re worth and that’s OK.
1:30 Over time, you can increase their wages. You could take care of em in other ways, showing them little gestures such as gifts or taking out them and their spouse for dinner. Little things showing em that you care goes a long way. Telling people how they’re doing a good job goes a long way. It doesn’t have to just be money. Overall, you need to take care of the people that work for you. And don’t look at them as employees. I look at them as team members because even if you own 100% of the company, they should have a say. You don’t always know what’s best for your business.
2:00 Listen to other people. When they give you feedback, they tell you what to do, I’m not saying you have to take their feedback and take action on it. I’m just saying you need to listen to it because if multiple people are telling you something, the chances are, they know something you don’t and you probably should take action especially if the feedback that they’re giving you is in a space that they’re expert in. For example, if a doctor gave you advice on how to prevent hack attacks or security attacks on your company, probably don’t need to listen to the doctor but if a doctor gives you health advice, you should listen to him ’cause they’re expert in it.
2:30 So when your team members are giving you advice on something that they’re expert in and multiple people are, they’re giving you that same exact advice, you should consider listening to em. And again, take care of em. I can’t emphasize that enough. It’s never you who’s gonna build a successful company. It’s your team.