You can only go far when you and your team work together. David Cowling of Sharper Process shares how to empower your work teams by building the right process.
Many times visionaries want to go fast themselves, but they get frustrated when they don't know how to develop and empower a team to go with them. David Cowling of Sharper Process helps visionaries and businesses empower their work teams by building the right processes. David talks in depth about the importance of purpose and process to grow your work team into becoming leaders which will help you achieve your vision. There's great danger if you don't have clear purpose or process in your business. Without process, your team will fail in the long-run. David helps visionaries identify gaps in business process, and he helps business leaders learn how to implement process in a business.
0:00 Intro
2:37 To Achieve Your Vision, You Need a Good Team Which Requires a Process
3:45 What happens when you don't have a process
4:45 How to cast vision in a business - Authenticity & Purpose
6:51 How to keep people engaged and focused to accomplish the vision - Measuring Success
9:45 How to empower a work team - The Right Systems in Place
11:33 How to build a process - The Definition of Process is What You Do
12:45 Process Maps help you figure out how to fix problems much easier
13:48 Mapping - How to empower your team and nurture them to become leaders
15:30 Process is What you do, Procedure is How to do it, Policy is when to do it
16:30 Systems and Process allow you to have good metrics which helps you accomplish goals
17:36 Metrics allow you to see in good numbers whether someone does a good job or not without micro-managing
18:57 How to Build Good Work Culture While Keeping Accountability - Resources with Training & Accountability with Wins
22:34 How to Keep Motivated with Hope as a Visionary - Has to Go Back to Purpose
25:47 How Visionaries Can Get Help to Clarify Their Process and Purpose
28:58 If you don't build your process now, you'll lose money and create more problems in the future
INDY INVESTOR PODCAST https://www.youtube.com/@IndyInvestor
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There's a popular African proverb that says, "If you want to go fast - Go Alone. If you want to go far - Go Together." Many times, visionaries want to go fast themselves, but they get frustrated when they don't know how to develop and empower a team to go with them.
David Cowling of Sharper Process helps visionaries and businesses empower their work teams by building the right processes. David talks in-depth about the importance of purpose and process to grow your work team into becoming leaders which will help you achieve your vision. There's great danger if you don't have a clear purpose or process in your business. Without process, your team will fail in the long run. David helps visionaries identify gaps in business processes, and he helps business leaders learn how to implement processes in a business.
0:00 Intro
2:37 To Achieve Your Vision, You Need a Good Team Which Requires a Process
3:45 What happens when you don't have a process
4:45 How to cast vision in a business - Authenticity & Purpose
6:51 How to keep people engaged and focused to accomplish the vision - Measuring Success
9:45 How to empower a work team - The Right Systems in Place
11:33 How to build a process - The Definition of Process Is What You Do
12:45 Process Maps help you figure out how to fix problems much easier
13:48 Mapping - How to empower your team and nurture them to become leaders
15:30 Process is What you do, Procedure is How to do it, Policy is When to do it
16:30 Systems and Process allow you to have good metrics which help you accomplish goals
17:36 Metrics allow you to see in good numbers whether someone does a good job or not without micro-managing
18:57 How to Build Good Work Culture While Keeping Accountability - Resources with Training & Accountability with Wins
22:34 How to Keep Motivated with Hope as a Visionary - Has to Go Back to Purpose
25:47 How Visionaries Can Get Help to Clarify Their Process and Purpose
28:58 If you don't build your process now, you'll lose money and create more problems in the future
INDY INVESTOR PODCAST IS BACK @IndyInvestor
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I got David Cowling on the show with me. What’s going on, David?
I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
I’m super excited for this particular episode. We’re going to talk to David about building and empowering a team. David is from the company Sharper Process. He’s a good friend of mine, Gary and Susan Harper. I’ve worked with Sharper Process for quite a few years. As I said, they’re very good friends. They know what they’re doing. They’re building out a business and processes with Sharper Process.
In this episode, we’re going to talk about how to build a team and culture, empower your team, get them all in with your mission and your values, what you’re doing, how to build that family type of environment and keep people accountable as well. We’re going to talk to David about that. David, let’s talk about you for a second. Who is David Cowling?
First, I’d say I’m a Christian. I’m the husband to Brittany Cowling and father-to-be, coming up should be in July. We’re expecting our first and we are very excited about it.
That is cool. Congratulations.
Thanks.
That first time to add is so cool. You guys bought your first stand-alone house. They had a condo before that. That’s cool.
Life is moving quickly and we’re here for the ride. We’re loving it.
Doing all these big things at once is cool. People say those big things in life, having a child, moving, having their first child, and all that. Again, we’re going to be talking with David about building this team, empowering your team, building this culture, and building the process around that, which I’m not the best at. I’m going to raise my hand. I’m not the best at systems and processes.
I’m that visionary. I struggle honestly in this department. I can do things good one time but I struggle to build a system and that rhythm of the process to keep doing it again and again. David, let’s take it from the top. If we’re building a team, why is this important to even talk about building and empowering your team and building a process around it?
You said you’re a visionary. I can identify with that to some extent. There’s a lot of people out there like you. In order to get and achieve that vision that you have in your head, you’re going to need other people on the way. I know it’s become pretty popular, but it’s an African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I may have misquoted it, but it is something along those lines.
In order to achieve your vision, whatever it is that you feel called to do in the world, you’re going to need to bring people with you 99 times out of 100. How can we get there? We need to have a process for others to follow. As we go forward or as you start to figure it out, what you want to do is we want to go through what can be initially the pain of creating the process. I’m one of the weird people that enjoys it, but I understand not very many people are in that camp.
You have to build out that initial process in a couple of different ways. 1) You can build the process and the procedures for it or 2) You’re going to hire somebody and you’re going to stumble through it. We bring somebody on and it’s like, “Follow me around for a couple of days. You got it right? Don’t you?” They then figure it out.
If you’re not careful when that happens, either you’re going to find somebody who’s underperforming, not because they’re lazy or a bad worker, but because they’re not sure what your expectations are or you’re going to find somebody who’s a little bit like you and has that visionary quality. If you don’t cast the vision and present it properly to them, they’re going to create their own. Maybe it aligns with yours or it doesn’t. Maybe it’s an overlap, but not exactly, and then at that point, you’re going to lose control of the direction your company and organization is headed.
I want to talk a little bit about clearly casting the vision. That’s even a process in and of itself. If you don’t do that, someone else will. Someone is going to cast their own vision. I’ve been down both roads. I’ve cast a great vision and the business is going where I want it to go. I’ve let someone else cast their own vision and it went somewhere or maybe it went where I wanted to go. If you get a few degrees off, you end up somewhere you don’t want to be at all. Define that a little bit more. What’s a great way to cast a vision? How do you do that?
Casting a vision has to come from purpose. It has to be real and authentic. I know authenticity is a phrase that’s used a lot now. I don’t think that that’s necessarily a bad thing. We need to make sure we’re being authentic in the way that we present authenticity. It has to come from a real place. It’s something that, again, I feel very strongly. The businesses that we do need to have a purpose because we have such an opportunity to affect change in the world. If we’re not going to do it, who is?
I know the people that you’re involved with and the people that are tuning in are probably of a similar mindset. I’m preaching to the choir, but it has to come from that purpose. It’s okay to identify your purpose and to have the business work towards goals that align with that. At some point, not everywhere, but some businesses decide, “That’s what I want to do and this is what the business needs to do.”
The business is just for making money. The business should, in most cases, hopefully still make money, but that can be for a greater purpose. That greater purpose could be to start out with, “I got to feed my family. I got to provide for this and this and take care of these needs.” That’s fine but to cast the vision, it has to come from some real purpose. Ideally, it’s something you feel called to do in some aspect. From there, we want to put some measurements on that. Again, with visionaries, it sometimes seems ethereal. It’s out there somewhere and it’s going to be great. We’re going to be the best fill-in-the-blank company ever.
That’s a goal that people can get excited about for a little while. Eventually, it’s like, “What does that mean? How do we know we’re the best? What if we’re the best now?” There’s no measurable. There’s no defined thing behind it that lets us know our progress. Sometimes, visionaries can keep that pace up even if they don’t see growth because it’s in their head, but most people can’t so we want to put some measurable numbers.
Here at Sharper, Gary’s purpose as the founder of the company is to do good work to support God’s work. He’s pretty open about that. If you’ve heard him speak in any group setting, even in a personal setting, you’ve probably, at some point, heard that Sharper’s goal is to give away $2.6 million in the year 2026. That’s a big goal. We’re working hard to achieve that. To be able to do that, it’s something that we think about constantly and it’s kept in front of us. Maybe we’ll talk about that in a little bit. That goal is important. It’s going to be great when we give away $2.6 million to God’s work. That’s huge and very motivating to us.
Also, that’s defined as we did it or we did not. That’s something that’s very important because again, it’s very easy, as you know, and as we live the Christian life. I’ll put it on myself. If I don’t say, “I’m going to do this and this in order to grow,” the odds of me doing those all successfully are very slim because I’ll be like, “I’m growing. I did this and that.” It’s either a very slow growth or it’s lying to myself. I’m not really getting anywhere.
The biggest thing is starting with your purpose and then having some measurable around it. Defining what is success. I’m from the sports world. Again, it’s easy to measure. You’re winning games but then you break it down into small details as well. Maybe your goal is to win the championship. That’s how you’ve won or defined your purpose.
You have to do the same thing in life and business, whatever your goals are. If you’re tuning in out there, you need to cast vision and start to break it down and define. It doesn’t always have to be business too. We talk a lot about personal life. What’s your vision for your faith, family, and business? Again, start with purpose and then, define it.
Let’s go back into the team. Number one, we start with the visionary. Visionary sometimes, it’s easier for them to cast vision, but then it’s very difficult for them to relay that vision to their team and people get confused. We talked about why it’s important to build a team because if you want to go someplace very significant, you go together.
Let’s talk about building a process. Maybe you’re hiring a new member and you want to bring someone in. How important it is to have that process? Maybe you can go into a little bit of detail about what this process of, “I’ve hired a new person. I’m bringing them in. Now, what?” even looks like instead of following them around, “You job shadow me for a couple of days.”
Let me throw in front an ideal scenario. You tell me as a visionary how this would work for you. If somebody was hired and they had very few questions, they’re required maybe 10% of the hands-on training you anticipate. They know what their expectations are and there’s a clear bar for them falling short or succeeding. How would you feel about that if you could put some system in place to achieve that as a visionary?
I’d feel great. That sounds good to me.
I know. I’m asking the bottom shelf questions. That’s what we want to get to. What I do and what we do at Sharper is we want to make sure that visionaries can achieve those goals because we believe in business owners. We believe that there are purposes out there that need to be fulfilled and we want to help you get there.
What we want to do and what we preach and hope that other people can take, whether you use us or not, I’m not trying to make a sales pitch at all, but the concept we try to deliver is we want to teach you how to build a process. What is that? A process is, at the lowest version, what you do. We’re going to need some high-level steps bullet-pointed. I’m happy to show you the software, but that’s probably not a podcast thing.
We want to put together process maps, which are a visual representation of what needs to be done. There are a few things that does. One, it actually defines it, especially from a visionary perspective. You think so fast. There’s this, this, and this and you figure out how to balance it all. In some cases, you’ve balanced it all by yourself for years. It’s natural. It’s like breathing. Trying to teach somebody else about that from your head is not going to go very well as I’m sure you and other people tuning in have experienced. It’s a very difficult thing to do. Once you put it out onto the screen or onto the paper, whatever it is, that’ll make huge waves of progress towards defining what needs to be done.
Once it’s out there, it allows you to fix things much easier. If you say, “Our numbers have been down this quarter. What should we do?” That is such a broad statement. “Where do I even start? That’s difficult.” What we want to do with the process is as we start to break it down and get into more and more detail, I know the visionaries listening are cringing every time the word detail is brought up, what that allows you to do is to make pinpoint switches. It’s adjustments here, adjustments there, instead of having to come back. Everything is broken. Nothing is working and we have to burn it all to the ground and start again.
That’s a common theme. There are a lot of people out there who work very hard, but they haven’t figured out this part of it. They build something. It goes up and then it all blows up and then they go do it again because they have something they want to accomplish. They have that purpose, but they don’t know how to fulfill it.
Having this mapping, you talk about this again. I cringe a little bit. I know you use Lucidchart and draw out maps. We’ve had some people. Your company has helped us do that by drawing out this map of, “First, you go here,” and this step-by-step process. There are so many different processes within our company.
We get the acquisitions process when we get a lead that comes in. We begin the onboarding process when we get a new team member comes in or maybe there’s a process when the team member transitions on. There’s a process when we get a deal and we have to go through the transactional sort of thing. Again, we’re talking about the team here and how to empower your team. Our goal is to have them, raise our team up, and have them be able to know what to do so you don’t have to micromanage or hold their hand so much. It’s important to have this process of bringing on a team member.
Let’s talk about the continuous nurturing of the team members because you brought them on. Now they’re trained up. They’re in their role and starting to build some experience and traction with their particular role. What are some processes and things to help them continue to empower them, to help them even become a leader in their role, and to possibly lead other members of their team? Can you take us into that nurturing of the team member?
Yes, absolutely. After you build out those initial processes, obviously, that’s a continual thing. You keep wanting to refine them and make those adjustments. What are the next steps? There are two paths. They both need to happen, but they can’t happen without each other. The first one is you need to document your procedures and policies. A process is what you do. A procedure is how to do it. The policy is when to do it.
What that does is it gives your team members the training necessary to complete the job that you hired them for and that you have some expectations for. That’s what the policy is. The policy is, “This is my expectation for your position.” That clears it up. I’m fortunate to not have been around. I don’t think any of them. I’m sure they’re out there, but there are very few people who want to come in and do a bad job. There are very few out there.
Most people want to succeed. One of the biggest problems we see is that they don’t know what success looks like. When you document the process and then the procedure and policy, that lets them know, “This is what winning is.” I was big into sports growing up as well so I can resonate with that a lot. This is a win. This is a loss. If you tell me, I might lose sometimes. That’s life, but I know then what I need to do.
The other thing that we do after we document those processes is that from our processes, we can actually pull our metrics. The key performance and the key process indicator both come directly from your process maps. What this allows to do is then that’s the target. Every week, that does a couple of things. One, again, it ties into the policies and it lets your team know this is what you’re expecting, but it also gives you the security to take your hands off.
They always say there are two types of people. In this case, there are two types of people. One is the person who gives up way too soon without proper training. They’re the people who keep blowing up and then they get more and more frustrated because, “No one else can do this. I can’t trust anybody. They’re all bad at their job. Fire everybody. Do it all over again.” It’s that vicious cycle.
The other kind and this is where I typically fall into a little more is they don’t ever let go. They keep doing it. It’s like, “They can’t do it as good as I can,” or whatever the excuse is. What the metrics do is allow you to see in real numbers, “This person does a really good job.” For me, it allows me to take my hands off and let them succeed. Allow them to grow. Give them a good environment, where they don’t feel me breathing down their neck all the time.
For the opposite side or for the people who tend to let go all the time, instead of them coming back in arbitrarily, getting frustrated, and seeing things not exactly how they want them. What it does is when we have those metrics, it gives you the dashboard and then, “We got a little warning light over here. Time for me to step back in, not as the visionary, but as the innovator. Now I see a problem, I’m going to go in. I’m going to fix it because that’s what I’m good at and then I’m going to leave again because I still have my metrics in place and can trust my team to do a good job.”
We’ve talked a lot about metrics, accountability, and how to know if they’re doing a good or bad job. Building out the scoreboard is what I call it. It’s your KPIs, nurturing that team member, and helping them stay accountable, helps keep you accountable. They know if they’re winning. They know if we’re losing and drawing that out.
Let’s dive into culture. A lot of times, we have this one company. They’re hard-nosed and keeping people accountable. People know if they’re winning or losing, but then sometimes they miss the company culture or there are other companies and I probably fall more into this particular category. We celebrate. We have a lot of fun. People love being here, but we’re less accountable. It’s like, “It’s okay. Good job. We’ll do better next time.” How do we shift into the company culture and still keep people accountable, but then build that culture as well?
Once people have been trained, that’s what gives you the authority to enforce metrics. If your people aren’t properly trained, it is not fair to hold them to some arbitrary standard because they don’t know how to meet that. You haven’t given them the resources. Once you have given them the resources, accountability is something that needs to happen with those metrics.
What I like to emphasize every time is in business, we expect growth. That’s the way the economy runs. What we do is we start to neglect wins. If you had whatever sport, let’s say basketball because the playoffs are on. If you had a team that went from winning 40 games a year to 45, 50, 55, 60, you’re getting up to some impressive territory. Since it’s slow growth, we do this in business, it’s like, “That’s what we’re supposed to do.”
There’s no celebration of the wins and that goes at a company level all the way down to an individual level. When we find out that we have a lead manager, this lead manager is absolutely killing it. They’re so good at their job. They come, work hard, and have a higher-than-average conversion rate. They set good appointments, do all the things they’re supposed to do, and do them well. That person often gets overlooked because there’s no red light.
What I like to do with key process indicators, and we don’t have to get into that now, but I like to set everything where good is yellow. If you’re going to use the stoplight version of things, with red, yellow, and green, I would say that good should be yellow. A red indicator is obviously necessary, but I want to have a green indicator. I can see that, “This person, it’s not that they did bad three times this week. They did awesome three times this week. Let’s celebrate that. How can I inspire this person to do more? How can I find out what they’re doing and share that with my whole team because then everyone gets better?”
When we start to foster that desire for growth and reward people, that affects the culture. It brings people up. People start to get excited depending on your team members. It’s like, “I’m very motivated by competition. I like that.” Obviously, friendly and all. It’s not necessarily cutthroat and all that type of thing. Again, it depends on your culture, but that can be a good thing, like, “He edged me out this week. What can I do? I got to step it up. I’m going to hit a few extra calls. I’m going to do whatever it is to improve.” Something that’s so often missed is that we have the stick ready. If something is going to go wrong people usually are ready, but we don’t ever give them the carrot. It’s always dangling out in front and never used and rewarded. That is very demotivating over time.
We’re in the real estate business so there are a lot of real estate tuning in right now. A lot of them honestly are struggling in this season. We’ve had this rocky ride. Some of them have some hope and coming out of it. Me, personally, our business has had a bumpy ride the last few months. Sometimes, we can get a little bit more negative like, “When are we going to get through this storm? I see hope, but this storm keeps getting a little bit bigger.”
What would you recommend to the audience out there or that visionary that they’re going through that bumpy right now? I talked to one of my friends and he’s in the same boat. He had to let a few people go. Now the team is a lot smaller. People are leaning out. What would you say and feedback to ramp up the existing team now to continue to push forward?
That’s the theme of Sharper. We’re coming with the rise up. That’s something we’ve been pushing a lot because, as you said, you put your finger on it perfectly. That’s something that a lot of people are feeling, especially in real estate right now. It has to go back to purpose. Why are you doing what you’re doing? If you don’t have a good answer to that, then why does it matter? You can do something else or something safer. You can go work for somebody else or whatever it is. If there’s no why behind it, no purpose that’s driving you forward, then again, why does it matter? I’m guessing that’s not the case. There’s a reason that you’re doing what you’re doing. Maybe you need to discover what it is a little bit deeper. If you already know that, that’s got to be the motivation.
Again, I’m going to be very Christian in my beliefs, but I believe we’re each called to do something and something specific. It’s not just being a good person. It can be different flavors for each of us, but there’s something we are supposed to do. How can we achieve that and take another step closer every day? If you do have a purpose, once you can discover that and define that, we have to refocus and that’s what’s going to make it worth getting through the tougher time right now. There are people coming out of it. As you’ve said, there are people who figured out how to navigate in real-time. Some of that is because they were dialed in into their metrics and they had a real close pulse. They saw the market shift as it happened so they didn’t get hurt as badly as other people.
That would’ve been great to discover a year ago or so. At this point, if your purpose still works, if that’s something that’s still worth chasing, then double down on it. Present that to the team. Frankly, you don’t want somebody on your team who’s not dialed into that purpose. Not that they’re bad people, not that everyone has to have the same thing, but if that’s what the company is for. There are plenty of companies out there. If they have another one that’s going to align with them better, that’s going to be better for them, better for you, better for the new company they find. Double down on that purpose. Why are you doing what you’re doing? If it’s worth it, then you got to continue. There’s no other option.
David, this is my last question of this show. A lot of people are getting convicted right now, I believe. They’re tuning into this and they’re convicted. They’re like, “I don’t know if my purpose is super clear. I don’t know if I’m relaying that to the team.” They’re cringing and they know, “I have to do something.” They’re going through all these details, laying it all out, making the Lucidchart, and all that. They’re cringing at that too. They’re like, “I don’t know if I have the skillset to do that or the patience to do that.”
A lot of visionaries are tuning into this and they don’t have that person on the team who can help draw this out. I know that’s what your organization helps with, but give us some feedback on that company or this visionary. They’re tuning in and know they have to do something, but they don’t have the organization that can help draw out these processes.
Again, I don’t want to pitch but I’m happy to give away. We have some free resources. We can give you some training on, “This is how you can do it yourself.” Obviously, this is what we do. We’re more than happy to help and do a lot of that for you. It is something that is going to have to be done at some point. You can do it now.
I’m going to take a leap of faith. I’m going to believe in most of the people tuning into this. I’ll believe and put some faith in you that you’re going to figure it out and that you’re going to grow and start to achieve your potential. You can do it now and you can start to put some of those systems in place or you can do it a few years from now when there’s a lot more system and process that needs to happen. There’s frankly going to be a lot of efficiencies and money lost along the way without these processes that could have been used for something great.
Again, it’s not that you have to do it this second, but you can choose. There are people that have made it decently far without this stuff and that’s great. If you can do that, more power to you. If you want to make the most, and in my opinion, be a good steward of what you’re supposed to do, you don’t have to use me or anybody else, but find a way to document those processes. Find a way to empower that team. Give them the framework to succeed.
If you’re a visionary and you have this business, probably you think and you’re probably right. If you sat in every seat, not every seat is going to be great, but it’d be a profitable company. You’d make something work. Imagine if we could lay out what it looks like in each seat and then find people who do all those things you hate doing. You can only do that once we build out the roles or can set expectations. You then get to help and bring so many people along the way with you and achieve that purpose together. To me, that’s an extremely motivating concept. That’s why I’m excited to work with Sharper.
I love that answer. Do it now or do it before you have to do it. It’s no fun when you have to do it and then you’re doing it. It’s better to prepare. David, thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate you, Sharper Process, and all the people at Sharper Process. Gary and Susan, if you guys are tuning into this, thank you so much for everything you do for our company and everybody there. Thank you, guys, so much. This is a wrap. Thanks, David.
Thank you so much.
