Intro (00:01):
Pixie Dust & Profits is a podcast for small business owners who love Disney and want to sprinkle some of that magic onto their own businesses. Join your host, Nicole Boucher and Yasmine Spencer. As they explore the mouse’s $12.6 billion operation and break down exactly how you can apply these big scale concepts to your own business.
Nicole (00:26):
Hey, everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of pixie dust and profits. This week, we’re talking about team building and it’s really relevant because we’ve been doing a lot of this with our clients lately. And I think this is just something that happens in the course of businesses at the beginning of the year, you have all of your plans for the year, but then you need to evaluate, okay, what team members do I have, who can actually do this work and what team members do I need to bring on to get it all done. And so we’ve been having this conversation with a lot of our clients lately, and we’re excited to bring it to you. Some of the terms you’re going to hear today might be a little cringy. And that’s because it’s from our MBA days and our corporate days, and we’re going to modernize them up with a little bit of pixie dust as we do. So really what we’re focusing on here are the three types of people that you need in your business, on your teams. And they’re called the finders minders and grinders, and Yasmin’s going to go over how we’re pixie, testifying those terms.
Yasmine (01:28):
Yeah. So you’ve actually probably heard some of the terms that we’re going to use in our industry right now. So the finder is the person who sort of seeks out the opportunities who identify sort of like where to kind of steer the ship, right? Like they’re finding the path that you’re going on and you might know them as a visionary. Again, they’re the ideas person. They’re the ones who sort of see the big picture, but what they need is someone to help them bring it all together. And that’s a minder or an integrator is another term that we hear a lot. In fact we, we just prefer to call ourselves like operations specialists. But yeah, I think consultants, yeah. It’s someone who can manage all those big ideas and actually bring them to life. So it’s overseeing the internal team it’s overseeing you know, the project plan and really looking at what the objective is and making sure that everything makes sense.
Yasmine (02:24):
And you’re not just like doing something for the sake of doing something, because again, we love her finders that we work with. AKA are visionaries, but they have a lot of big ideas and it’s our job to take those big ideas, identify which ones make sense for the business. Again, we only have so many resources, right. We want to make sure we’re moving forward with what is strategically like probable possible for the business, with what we want to achieve and we make it happen. And then the thing is, is like, you can’t make things happen without grinders, which this is a term I, because it just like, sounds like you expect someone to like give everything that they have for their job and
Nicole (03:05):
You’re turning. Yeah, no,
Yasmine (03:09):
No. And we think that there’s so much more to, again, life than just the work that you do and that you treat your team members really well. We have several episodes on this that we’ll link in our show notes below, but these are the doers. These are the people in your team who actually help you get stuff done because you know, it’s great to have all these ideas and it’s great to want to do it all yourself, but sometimes that ain’t possible. So you bring on people who are really great at their job they’re specialists at what they do, they’re subject matter experts and they can help you get your project from point a to point B or C D and beyond. So we like to work with visionaries, which are often like the CEOs or the owners of the business, the integrators, which is sort of like where we come in and where other management roles on teams also come into play here. And the doers AKA the grinders. These are the people who will actually help you get things across the finish line. And we see these trends over at Disney too. I mean, yes, Disney is like a massive corporation with tons of different levels, but you can kind of, you know, segment the broader corporation into these three categories too. Right? Nicole. So obviously at the very top you have like your Walt Disney’s you’re Bob Uyghurs now you’re Bob Champex. They are the finders, AKA the visionaries. They are the ones who are the ones
Nicole (04:31):
That are like looking for opportunities or, you know, just making magic out of nothing and making closing deals that didn’t seem possible like Disney with Pixar and apple and Marvel and star wars, like things that a visionary can see as, you know, the biggest thing ever. And it needs to happen. And the, the minders, the managers, the integrators, you know, our brains don’t work that way. We might not have ever explored that as a potential, but as soon as our visionary brings it to us, we say, oh, okay, these are the steps to get there. So we might not have ever seen the dream, but we know how to get from where we are to the dream. And so this is exactly why you need all of these different types of roles on your team. Right? You’ve got the visionary who can see just the big picture and the, the sensation, right?
Nicole (05:26):
And then you’ve got the, the integrator can help you bring it to life, but they can’t do the work. They’re, they’re busy managing your dreams and the action plan and all of the resources. And so that’s where the doers come in to help you get it done. So I really want you to look at this on your team. Like if you have a team or even if you’re a team of one, you can look at your business and say, okay, where is it? Who’s my visionaries here, who are my integrators, who are my doers? And you could list yourself under all three of those categories, but I want you to think about which one is your zone of genius and which one, maybe you’re, you’re not so great at. And think about that when you’re making your first hire on your team or your sixth hire on your team.
Nicole (06:16):
Yasmine and I are fortunate enough to work with a lot of clients, some of them together, some of them independently, but we could very easily be each other’s competition and step all over each other in the roles that we have, because we are both the integrator manager type. And instead we work together to say, okay, you’re the marketing and promotion side. I am the operations procedures, customer service side. And while we can do each other’s jobs, which is great for taking vacations and coverage we do it that way. So we don’t step on each other’s toes. And I have definitely run into situations on teams where there are way too many visionaries or way too many integrators or way too many doers without anyone leading the way. And so that’s why you actually need one, at least one of each of these people, these types of people and workers on your team. Because if you get too many visionaries in a room, there’s a lot of ideas, but who knows, what’s going to get implemented. If you get too many managers in a room, there’s going to be a lot of project plans and not a lot of dreaming. We
Yasmine (07:22):
Have too many doers in the room. What ends up happening is you’re the one who’s managing them on top of like ideating things, which can, you know, lead to a bit of burnout in some cases, depending on how much is going on, or your doers are sort of do sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
Yasmine (07:43):
Thinking about like strategy as they’re doing things, because they’re just like checking off a task and you know, they’re doing what they’re told, but they need a little bit more guidance in terms of how to do it as part of the bigger picture. So make sure that again, as you’re growing your business, or if you already have a business with a team in place that these roles are checked off and like before we kind of like wrap things up, I want to talk about my favorite doers at Disney and their cast members, because they are the people on the ground who are making the magic actually happen. Like, yes, there’s strategy and big plans that happen behind the scenes, but they’re the ones who are having the most impact in your business and you know, have direct contact with the customer. So it’s really, really, really important to treat your doers well, right? Because it reflects on your business. This is why I hate the term grinders, because it just has such negative connotations. And that is not what you want out of the people who are making the magic happen on day-to-day basis on your behalf. So absolutely you want to use viewers
Nicole (08:44):
Powered. You want them to know what your vision is. You want them to know what their task is. You want them empowered to be happy and, you know, serve your customer as well, and, you know, get their job done with the least amount of roadblocks possible. So, you know, they really are some of the most important people on the team. Otherwise, some things would never get out the door. So yeah, take a moment to think about these three roles consider, you know, what exists on your team right now, what you’d love to see exist, what holes you’d love to see filled. And I think you’ll really see team growth when you bring some diversity in how people think and how people work onto your
Yasmine (09:24):
Team. All right. Thanks again for joining us for another episode of Pixie Dust & Profits. Again, if you are not following us on Instagram, please do so @pixiedustandprofits. And we want to know what’s the next hire you’re thinking of making on your team. Are you looking for a vision? Well, you could be the visionary, but you might want a visionary. Sometimes visionaries hire like coaches and consultants to come in and help them with like the big ideas too. Are you looking for integrator or are you looking for more amazing doers that can help bring the magic to life? Let us know on Instagram, if you’re not on our mailing list, join us magic.pixiedustandprofits.com. That’s where we share a lot of fun tips and let you know about any cool events we have coming up. Thanks again guys. And we’ll see you real soon. Wow.
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