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Good morning, good evening, good night, whatever time you're watching this, hello. I'm Norris
A. Rowley, Jr. Today, I'm going to show you the next chapter of Paddy Moogan's book. And
the chapter I'll be sharing with you today is how... building of a building team.
So me, as a market research manager, I have very little knowledge about how link building's
conducted or what have you. However, I know what link building is. You see the results,
and we see it on the back end. So what we're going to walk through today is actually how
to get this A-Team of link builders. How are you going to find your SWAT team link builders.
And Patty is grateful enough to just give us some insight of how this is actually done,
and the right way to do it, and just some kind of little tips on how to go about doing
it.
So you want to ask a couple questions before you start building a team, like, "Do you ever
need a link building team?" Is it something you need? Do you have the workload to accommodate
a team just solely to build links? That's something you need to ask before you say,
"You know what? We have a fluctuating links coming in this month. Let's get a new team."
But the next month, that doesn't transpire. So you want to make sure you have work coming
in on a steady basis, where a link team you built out just for building links is needed.
Another question you want to ask yourself: "Do I need full-time people or a freelancer?"
Very good question. Because, yes, you might have an influx of work, and bring in a new
team, you're going to try to get more work to build out that team, to make sure the team
has work to do. But do you just need a freelancer to come in every so often and just, like,
push links out for you, and have them go about their way? How do you actually want to conduct
that? And that's something you need to ask yourself, and see how the organization is
actually doing on a whole, before you start, you know, etching out that whole new team
plan.
Another question: "Do I have additional resources to support them?" Well, do you? Do you have
the additional resources to support these link builders? Do you have the people that
they're going to be working with? Do you have anything to help them build links? And this
is something that you just need to make sure you keep in mind when you actually build out
your team.
Another question: "How are my existing team members coping with link building?" If you
have a team right now that's happy building links, kudos to you. That is something they
should be proud of. That's something you want to encourage. And a way you don't encourage
that is by pulling that away from them. So you want to measure exactly how they're dealing
with it. How they're coping with it. And if it's something they don't like doing, it's
something they're doing and it's like a forceful, tedious task for them, maybe bringing on a
new team is something you want to look at. But if it's something they're enjoying, they're
thriving at, maybe hold off on that.
One of the last questions: "How would my existing team feel about handing over client work to
someone else?" That is something that a lot of people have to deal with on a whole, not
just within building links. In an organization on a whole. When you're actually doing something,
you're good at it, and you feel like you're embedded in it, how do you feel now when somebody
says, "You know what? You're really good at it, but we're going to give it to somebody
else."
You want to make sure that your team's on the same page as you. You want to say, "You
know what? You're really good at it, but your talent's going to be used elsewhere. We want
to bring another person to do this." Or you say, "You know what? You're really good at
it. Let's train somebody else to bring up on your level." So you want to make sure your
team's on the same page as you. You don't want to be the god-like entity saying, "You're
good, but we don't need you anymore." You want to make sure the team's always on the
same page that you are, and they have the same kind of insight you have.
So when you're going through this process, you're saying, "Okay, you know what? Paddy,
Norris, raise some good points. Let's go build a team." You want to ask yourself a couple
of interview questions. You want to make sure you bring on board somebody that fits your
organization. You want to make sure they have all the key traits, the know-how, the intel,
and not just, like, on the sell side, but they actually know technology, they know SEO.
They know what they're doing.
So you want to make sure they're fleshed out overall, across the board. You want to present
to them real situations that you're going through with a client, and you want to give
them some high-level, pie in the sky situations, like, "If you had any tool, what would you
use it for?" Or, "What would you want to have?" You want to gauge exactly how their mind works.
How they are. And just to get a feel of how they'd be in your organization.
So you've got these questions. Bow, questions are done. Boom. Okay, so what are we looking
for in ours? Well, Paddy said: thick-skinned, determined, sensitive, organized, empathetic,
hustle, and sales experience. In a sense, you want a person with a combination like
Jay-Z, the Dos Equis guy, and Obama. You want somebody who fits all that. You want somebody
who is in the middle, but not so in the middle that they feel like, you know, they have the
same kind of common knowledge as the person. You want somebody to be thoughtful, but simple.
You want somebody to be educated, but simple. You want somebody who can sell ice to a penguin,
you know? You want somebody who can get experience, who feels like, you know what? They're empowered.
They can speak to anybody, be competent in SEO, and never have an issue at all.
So you want a great, well-rounded person, but you want somebody who's very experienced
in sales. You want somebody who can sell, sell, sell, but not at the same time seem
like it's overly forceful, but they are still selling you. So it could be a simple, gentle
tactic, where they say, you know, "Hey, Mr. Penguin, I had a couple ice cubes." "Well,
I live in snow." "Well, these ice cubes are really cold." "Oh, that makes sense." Somebody
gently pushing you down that alley.
So you want somebody experienced, but who has the drive, and is also sympathetic, empathetic.
So you want somebody who's emotionally driven, but not so much they're so cold-hearted that
they don't understand the facts behind it. You want somebody that's like, "You know what?
All right. I can relate to you. I can see what you're going through. This is how I can
help you. This is how I can make it better. And this is what I can do for you." You want
somebody who's just overall good at just being a personal person.
And last but not least, you have this team of... you have this A-Team of people, great
people. They have everything that Paddy mentioned. They have all these skill sets. They have
everything you want. How do you keep them now focused? How do you keep them in the game?
A couple of things you could do. Ownership. People love owning things. Not just material
things. Not physical things. They like owning things. People want to know, like, you know
what? That's my work. They want to feel proud of it. They want something they can put their
stamp on and say, "I did that." So you want to make sure people have ownership of whatever
they're doing.
Next are incentives. Everybody likes something. You know, I like something. If I work hard,
you want a little, "Hey, here's a little pat on the back." It doesn't have to be money,
per se. It can be a pat on the back. Like, you know, "Good job." It can be points until
you get money. So almost gamify the system, if you need to. But incentives... on the whole,
people like to be rewarded for what they're doing, especially when they're doing a really
good job.
Training. No matter how good anybody is, everybody could be trained on anything. There's always
room for improvement. Regardless of who you are, what you do, there's always room to grow
and improve. And everybody needs to be improved once in a while. So training, conducting training,
having people just evolve. That is something you want to keep in mind when you have this
team, and you want to make sure they're growing with you.
Recognition. It goes along with incentives. People want a... they want that pat on the
back, but at the same time, if you don't have something physically to give them, or cash,
so you know what? Type up some email. "This person did an awesome job today. They've been
doing awesome for the last month. They feel they're making the company better." Just like,
you know what, saying, "Hey, you know what? You're doing a good job. You need to be recognized
for it."
And feedback. One of the biggest things, I feel, when something is going good, nobody
says anything. When something is going bad, you know, everybody comes out. Feedback is
good for both sense. You want to hear the bad, but you still want to hear the good.
What you're doing good, what's not going good. You want to hear both sides of it. You just
want to hear, like, "Oh, it's bad, bad, bad," but when the good happens, everybody's quiet.
Feedback on the whole part is very important. You want to get a sense of what the team feels,
what everybody's going through, and you want to make sure, you know what? We're all happy.
We're one big happy family.
So that's all I have today. Thanks, Paddy. Thanks, iAcquire. I'm Norris A. Rowley, Jr.
See you next time. Peace and hair grease.
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