Two-Brain Radio: The Golden Goose With Jeff Burlingame

In this episode of Two-Brain Radio, we're treating you to another prime talk from the 2019 Two-Brain Summit.

Jeff Burlingame is a senior Two-Brain Business mentor and the owner of Friction CrossFit in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A couple years ago, Jeff took a 30-day break from running his gym—and he never came back. How was that possible? He'd found his golden goose (or in this case, geese). After trusting the wrong person with his business and nearly losing everything, Jeff learned to put the right people in the right seats to grow his business without him.

In this talk, he'll teach you how to spot people with the potential to become golden geese, how to determine which roles they might perform well, how to slowly expand those roles and how to evaluate them. He'll also tell you what you can do to keep your golden geese happy and provide opportunities for growth so they don't fly the coop.

Links:

https://frictioncrossfit.com/
https://fortimedesign.com/

Contact:

[email protected]

Timeline:

4:55 – What’s a golden goose?

6:50 – Golden geese aren’t born; they’re made.

7:47 – Trust, faith and responsibility.

9:16 – Identify their likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses.

11:08 – A lesson in what not to do.

13:13 – In hindsight: Mentorship might have prevented disaster.

15:22 – Grow them into responsibility; don’t begin with everything at once.

17:45 – Take a 30-day test run and then evaluate: objectively and subjectively.

19:48 – You might have the right person but the wrong seat. So change seats.

24:28 – Over-communicate: Find out what your staff wants.

26:18 – To get the right people in the right seats, you need to mentor them. 

28:10 – What do you need to do to meet their needs?

29:53 – An example of gradual role progression.

33:22 – Part of progressing your staff means stepping out of roles you don’t love.

35:22 – The vacation test: Does your business grow when you’re not there?

37:11 – Homework: Identify your golden-goose candidates, discover their goals and ambitions and identify which roles they could take on.

38:36 – Pay structures and meta-roles.

40:13 – What does it mean to have an abundance mindset?

41:43 – How to keep a golden goose in the coop: Show potential.

45:32 – Take staff progression step by step.