Why a “Me Manual” is a Must-Have for Your Business

You know yourself better than anyone. And at some point, you’ve probably wished your team knew you like the back of their hand, too.

Well, there is a way for them to know how you operate, and it doesn’t require mind-reading abilities. Instead, this is where the “Me Manual” comes in.

What in the world is the “Me Manual”? It resembles something you’ve seen plenty of times. And in this first episode of the “Fire Yourself” series, I talk about what it is and illustrate why it’s such a game-changer

4:30 - An overview of what the “Me Manual” is and what it contains

7:25 - The most important aspect of the manual

8:37 - The importance of helping others in your business win with you

10:56 - Why include what you look like? (It’s not whatever you’re probably thinking right now)

16:35 - The secondary reason why you want to create a “Me Manual”

20:22 - What we know about the best business teams

Find me on Instagram or LinkedIn or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.

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Transcript for Why a “Me Manual” is a Must-Have for Your Business

Hey boss, I am Leslie Lyons, your embodied leadership and sales coach, and this is Pleasurable Profits. This podcast is ideal for owners and leaders of tattoo shops, permanent makeup studios, cannabis businesses, movement studios, sex toy shops, and other industries that are too often left out of the leadership conversation. If you’re looking for a woo meets strategy approach to defining your strengths and values, designing a business that supports you, and creating a soul-driven, and of course, pleasurable plan for profitability, then let’s get started.

Hey, party people, I'm recording this before today's episode, just to give you guys a heads-up that there might be some sound quality issues with this episode. I recorded these episodes, for those of you who don't know, I have 135-year-old two-year-old Rottweiler who got new toys today because he may or may not have a subscription toy box and he has been rolling these balls hitting the office door on and off, even though he's supposed to be with his dad. His dad is sitting in the living room, but he's letting him bounce his d*mn ball all over the house. I just wanted to give you guys a heads-up. These are really good episodes but I did want to let you know if you hear some bumping and thumping, that's why. Alright, onto today's episode.

Hey, party people. It’s Leslie, your embodied sales and leadership coach. How y'all doing? I'm doing amazing. Thank you for asking. I think I'm getting ready to start a series for the new year. Well, I know because I've planned, I'm not thinking. I'm going to start a series talking about how to get the most out of our team. Because this is one of the things as brick-and-mortar business owners, but more specifically for those of us who are nontraditional industries that can really be the bane of our existence. This could be the thing that makes you want to burn everything down and walk away.

Or it could be the thing that makes you get up out of bed where you hop out of bed excited to do your work. Your team makes all the difference. When you got a team of what I call rock stars or A-players, you are excited to do work, you're excited to collaborate, and you're excited for what you guys are building together, and that will push you further along in your business.

Whereas conversely, if you got a team of duts, that's the most polite way for me to say it, it can make running a business, especially a small business so hard. I want to talk a little bit about a tool. I run these little mini workshops and so people are always like what's the most cost-effective way you can work with me? It’s definitely through what I call my little pop-up workshops.

These workshops are designed to be about two hours and they are designed to be very actionable. They are very laser-focused on one particular topic though. Sometimes if you don't have the foundational work done, it may not be the best thing for you. But if you've got the foundational work in your business done, these little pop-up workshops are perfect for that. It allows you to work with me to get knowledge to help you build your business without a long-term commitment. Keep your eye out for this when I run it again.

In the series, I call it the Fire Yourself Series, there are three mini-workshops. The first is the Me Manual, which is what I'm going to talk about today, which is the Me Manual. Then the second is Team Meetings That Inspire, and the third is How To Handle Difficult Conversations Like A Boss. Those are the three mini-workshops.

The Me Manual, although you don't have to take them in a specific order, I would encourage people to take the Me Manual first. What is the Me Manual? I'm so glad you asked. The Me Manual is actually a document that you put together that is designed to help your closest staff member, like your right-hand person, the person, or maybe if you've got several direct reports, you can use it that way as well.

But when I came up with this concept, I really had an executive, a small business owner and your executive assistant in mind, your COO in mind, your studio manager in mind, somebody who works really closely with you, somebody you will consider your right hand when you're hiring this person.

Basically, the way that we have computer manuals or you got a new microphone or whatever and it comes with a little instruction manual, I know some of y'all don't read them. But just about anything electronic that we buy comes with some type of manual to tell you how to use it. The Me Manual follows the heartbeat of that except that as opposed to it being a manual on how your computer works, it’s really a manual on how you as the leader works.

This is an absolute game changer, especially when it comes to fostering open communication with your team. Inside of the Me Manual, you basically explore who you are, meaning your values and principles. I know every time I say the V word, y’all roll your eyes because I say it so much, but I will keep saying it because it truly makes all the difference in your business when you know what your values are and the principles that you stand on.

But it starts with that. What are your values? It also talks a little bit about your vision and your story as well. Because I think sometimes when people come, I remember again when I worked in traditional corporate, during orientation, we would sit through these long history videos that showed you the building when the first building they were ever in and now look at us today kind of a thing. This is similar to that, but not as boring.

But it does give you a chance to put your origin story in front of that person. Like, “Why did I start this business? What was in my heart? What was I trying to solve? Who was I trying to serve? What problem was I trying to solve? Who was I trying to serve?” All of those things. “What was the impetus behind me stepping out on faith and opening this business?”

Because I do truly believe that a lot of our stories as nontraditional business owners are a lot more interesting than some of these Fortune 500 startup stories. It definitely has that in there. But more importantly, it talks about your personality and what a person can expect from you in terms of how you lead which is so powerful.

You tell people, “If you want to get the most out of me, meaning you want to get the most support out of me, you want us to have the best relationships, this is my communication style. This is how I process big decisions. This is how I think through things. This is how I go about setting policies. This is the lens that I look at when we're going to introduce a new product or service in the market. This is how I process.”

It gives your right-hand person an insight into your brain and how you think. Isn't that what we all wish that we had like employees who could just read our minds and we wouldn’t need to tell them anything? The Me Manual gives you something close to that. We'll never get to mind reading and you won't have to if you're able to clearly communicate with someone the best way to work with you.

It also talks about how to win with me. If you want to know, I think most employees who come and work for us, they want to do a good job. They want to win. I talk about “This is how you win with me.” For an example, I love honesty and all the containers that I hold, I hold space for radical honesty, I just am not a fan of faking it till you make it or a fan of people who don't want to communicate because they feel like that's personal so I'm not talking about pushing people's boundaries, but I am talking about telling the truth when I ask you a question.

It's really important for my EA to know, “Give me information. Tell me the truth and tell it to me quickly,” because that's the other thing. I don't like when people beat around the bush with information. I don't like when people only give me part of the story. I like to know the entire story and I like to know it as quickly and succinctly as possible. That's super helpful for her to know.

When she's thinking about how to bring something to me if there's a customer issue, or if there's something going on in the studio space or whatever, she knows I better tell her the whole truth like, “I better do some research and get all the information that I can and I need to get to the point. Don't dance around, pussyfoot around with this. Let me get to her directly.”

You can see how that would be important for someone to know, especially if their communication style is not to be direct. My admin is more soft-spoken and she's not a very direct person. She's more flowery. She's softer and she likes to engage in story and talk. When it comes to business things I'm like, “What do we need to do?” because that's different than her style, it lets her know that if she's going to win with me, and feel good about what she's doing, she might need to compromise her communication style when it comes to communicating with me.

Then it also talks about what I look like, and this is the part that leaders go, “Eek! I don't know if I want my employees to know this,” that's why I didn't say you don't send this to everybody in your organization, but it is important for your right-hand person to know this. Because if you don't tell them, they don't experience it anyway. When they experienced it, this could be the reason they quit. That is basically “What do I look like when I'm under pressure?” Meaning, “What do I look like when I'm stressed out? How do I respond? What do I do? How do I show up when I'm under pressure?” Super important for people to know.

I know that this has opened up conversation and also given my right-hand person permission to check me, to remind me to get my emotions back under control because yes, I'm a leader but I'm also a person. When I'm a person, that means I have emotions. That means sometimes I make great decisions and sometimes I don't.

This is a way of empowering my assistant too to let me know, “Danger, Will Robinson, you're definitely getting off track.” She has full permission to call me back into alignment. For example, when I am under stress, I get really short. I mean super short. Super direct, short sentences direct stern tone. I don't take in feedback very well. Because my personality style, which is why again, guys, this is so important for you as a leader to be self-aware, my personality style when I'm under stress, I'm trying to figure out how to alleviate this problem, how to fix this, how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

That's happening so quickly in my mind and I don't like to take in a lot of input when I'm in that mode. I don't like a lot of feedback when I'm in that mode. I will be short with people. I will cut them off. I will tell them not now. I will be aggressive. In the past, before I started communicating with people that this is how I show up when I'm stressed, it made for terrible work relations, especially with my direct reports. Because it made them like walking on eggshells because one minute, I'm all jovial, laughing, joking, loud, gregarious, and now something stressful has happened the next day and I barely want to talk to you.

Not the best in terms of my own emotional regulation. That is your job, leader, to manage your own emotions, it's not your assistant's job. However, sometimes we're too close to the fire to even realize that we slipped into these unhealthy communication habits. For me, number one is letting them know that this is not personal. I am not angry. I am not mad at you. I am just trying to figure out what we need to do quickly to turn the situation around.

Number two, if I've hurt your feelings, if I've said something, know that that was not my intention. I was just deep into stress. It makes it not personal, and because you have the permission to bring it to my attention, it also gives them some authority to be like, “Man, you must be stressed out, how can I help you?” Now she knows when those things show up, “How can I help you?” Super helpful, super helpful. You're telling them, “Here's how you win with me. This is how I like to be communicated to. This is what I look like when I'm under stress. These are my preferred communication vehicles."

Here's another example that's in my Me Manual: Don't text me. Do not text me no important stuff. Don't Slack me. Don't telegram me. You call me. Don't email me. You call me. If there's something going on that needs my attention, get on my calendar. Call me. Whereas you as a leader might be the opposite, you might be like, “No, text me, Slack, me, Telegram me, email me, whatever.” Your style might be different. But it's important to let them know because again, your assistant might be someone who's used to documenting everything.

They want to send something to you in writing and you are like, “No, I'm not going to read that. I'm never going to read an email. Or I'll get to it,” and it might be three days later and you needed an answer three days ago. How do you like to be communicated with? Again, because that will make your right-hand person's job easier because if you send me an email, I might not respond to you till next week. But now I have someone who manages my inbox so I'm a little bit better. Patting myself on the back.

But seriously, you send me an email, you may never hear from me, because I just don't play around in my email box. Call me. It's that sort of stuff. Again, all these things, and hopefully this is helping you to understand why this Me Manual can be so powerful for communication. It's going through all of these different ways of what it looks like ultimately to work for you.

That's the primary reason that we do it. But then the secondary reason is when you come into a conversation, using this as a conversation piece with your new hire, it also gives them an opportunity to give you the same type of information about themselves. Oftentimes, people will go through my Me Manual workshop and then they will take it back to their right-hand person and give them the format, the outline for the manual and ask them to complete one on themselves.

Just like you want them to know how to win with you, what you look like under stress, what's the best way to communicate with you, how to get things expedited with you, all of those things, you want to know that about your right-hand person too. It's really cool to be able to get that back from them. There are other things like how do you want to be celebrated if something were to come up, I'm actually pulling up the manual to give you a question off of the manual that might be beneficial for you to know about your person.

My favorite one is if we ever have to have a tough conversation, what's the best way to approach that dialogue? Yeah. Now, some of you might be thinking, “Well, that's a stupid question. Most people don't want to have tough conversations, how are they going to tell you how to approach them? That's your job as the leader.” Yes, it is your job as the leader but you always want to reprimand people with dignity.

For me, again, going back to the example, if the shoe were on the other foot and I were being reprimanded or having a tough conversation, I would like for my manager, my leader to get to the point. I don't like the sh*t sandwich. Are you guys familiar with the sh*t sandwich? I actually learned this when I was working for Mary Kay. Yes, the multilevel marketing company. Yes, the pink Cadillac stars with the gaudy Bumblebee. That was my very first sales job. I sat down with Mary Kay.

My sales director told me some advice that I've seen passed down in all types of leadership conversations around difficult conversation. Basically you start off with a compliment, you address the sh*t in the middle, and you end with a compliment. You buffer the tough conversation with compliments on both sides. Me, I feel like you're patronizing me. I feel like when you start off with compliments, and you really want to reprimand me about something, I don't like that. If I've done something, let's just get to it. Don't flatter me. I hate flattery. I hate it.

Someone else might be like, “I would like for you to come to me right away. I hoped that you would do it when you're calm.” Some people can't take direct words, I guess just give them an opportunity just to express how they like it handled. Don't mean you don't handle it that way. No, I'm kidding. I'm serious, but at least it gives you some insight into how they process difficult conversations and things that might be a little bit touchy.

It's just a great way to start open communication because what we know is this: the best teams are the teams that communicate with one another. The best teams have open-door policies. The best teams have a regular cadence of conversation because when you do that, everybody's clear. We're all moving in one direction. When we're all moving in one direction, it makes the work environment great for all of us and as equally important, happy employees give happy service to our clients. When your team is happy, you're happy, your clients are happy, that is how multimillion-dollar companies are made.

Alright, my loves. If you are interested in doing that, keep your eyes out. I run these workshops every quarter. I just finished them up. I finished up the Me Manual in January. That'll be back in March. Keep your eye out for that. Then next week I'm going to tell you about the next one, which is Team Meetings That Inspire, and I'll give you some examples just like I did here, so whether you take the workshop or not, prayerfully you got some value, even if you just ask that one question about tough conversations and what's the best way to approach that dialogue if you just take that, if you just put together something about, “This is what I look like when I'm under stress. Here's how you win with me.”

Those sorts of things. The Me Manual is more comprehensive than that. But even if you just did those couple of things, I know you will see some impact. I know that you would start to have better conversations with your team. That's my goal. Alright, my loves. Until next week, y'all stay well. I'm trying to think if there was something else. I feel like there's something else I should be telling you, guys, about. But I can't think of it. Until next week, y'all be well, grace and peace.