If you have a team and the entire team is all like minded, then who fucking brings what to the table?
Nobody brings anything to the table, because everybody's like minded.
You need people who are semi-like minded is how I would define that. More importantly you need people that are going to...
*As we are in the process of adding and vetting out new team members; athletes, coaches and columnists I wanted to bring to attention what we feel a team really is.
Over the past 18 years there have only been under 150 Elitefts team members and that includes staff. There is not a lot of Elitefts team members, and there's a reason for that. I've always hated the word sponsored, because while we do compensate for being part of the team, we also VET the shit out of team members, because I guess I need to back up for a minute and explain what I think a team is, because it's not this fantasy camp.
People start talking about teams, if it's a team in business or a team in sport. There's a big difference in sport and a team in business, by the way. They all make it out to be this fucking unicorn that it's not. Not everybody gets along if it's a real team. There's people who like to use the words like minded, and culture and community, and Kum Ba Yah mother fucker, and all this other, that's not the real world. It's not how it works.
If you have a team, and the entire team is all like minded, then who fucking brings what to the table? Nobody brings anything to the table, because everybody's like minded. You need people who semi-like minded is how I would define that. More importantly you need people that are going to share in the aim of what the company is. Compare it to the NFL, the aim of the NFL, the aim of a team in the NFL is to win the Super Bowl. Everybody on the team has that same aim, that's what they're doing, that's the overall goal. That's the direction they're going to move, that's the decisions that are going to be made to try to move and get there.
Does that mean that the defensive backfield has to be best friends with the offensive line all the time? No. What it means is they all need to work together when it's time to work together, and push towards that aim. The aim of a Elitefts is to live, learn and pass on, and that has been the aim since day one. The people that we look for are the ones that live with training being one of the top four priorities in their life. They live it, and I don't want to misrepresent this by saying that live it and that's their whole entire life. They live it by it not becoming their whole entire life.
I don't want staff working 16, 20 hours a day, that's unrealistic, nothing's going to get done. You don't want lifters representing the company that all they can fucking talk about is lifting, and under the bar shit, and they don't know anything. You want to have people that know how to live, and have a passion for training. The learn part is you want people who want to consistently learn to become better at their craft, now Elitefts is not just power lifting, it never has been. The Q & A started with a strength coach, personal trainer, power lifter, it was the drive of the Q & A, and that's how the site started. We didn't even have a cart yet, it was just the Q & A.
The mission of putting this all together is when I was working as a trainer there was a lot of animosity between strength coaches, and trainers, and power lifters, and physical therapists. I was living in all these worlds, because I was seeing physical therapists cause I was fucked up a lot of the times. I was going with Louie to speak to strength coaches, so I was hearing them. I was going to seminars to learn how to become a better personal trainer. My degree was through Exercise Science and Nutrition, and I was training at West Side Barbell. I'm seeing all four of these worlds, and I'm thinking wow I'm learning something from all of them.
You don't have to just learn from this one discipline. You can learn from all of them, and if you bring them all together wow! Wow, there's a lot that can be obtained from that information. That's when I thought let's put these people together on a Q & A to answer questions. Are their answers all going to be the same, are they going to all agree? Hell no, not at all, that's not up for them to decide, that's for the reader to decide, based upon the question that they're asking. That learning became finding the physical therapist, finding the power lifter, finding the body builder, finding the strength coach, finding the trainer. Finding those people who were amongst the best at what they did, but continued to keep learning, and never stopped learning.
That's critical, it's never stop learning. We are an education site, that's why there's so much education on the site. Yeah, we screw off every now and again, and write articles about Oreos and Reese's Cups and things like that. That's to have fun, that's living. You can't always learn, you've got to live too. Then finally the pass on, and that is to give back, because we all got here because somebody took the time to help us.
We look for those people that are going to take the time to want to give back for what they've been given to get to where they are, the live, learn, pass on. When we look for team members that's what we're looking for are those attributes. It is this person semi-balanced to a certain extent, to live. Are they always trying to learn and become better, and do they pass on, do they pass on without expecting a return? They do it because it's the right fucking thing to do. They do it because they want to. They do it because when you give the return is the gift to you, that's what we look for. That's the basic DNA of what's going to represent a Team Elitefts member.
Have we made mistakes? Hell yeah. When you find them and begin to see the virus you need to get rid of it sooner than later. I've been told by many mentors throughout the years hire slow, fire fast. I've never really lived up to that, but in time you get better at it. It becomes faster, because people change, and priorities change, and they don't fit what that is. It's hurts the credibility of that whole vision.
Here's the thing with falling back on what I was saying about the team and the Super Bowl thing. If everybody is sharing that same vision, then they're so focused on trying to achieve that vision that all the little shit doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. There's no need for gossip, drama, all this other crap. That's my first indicator that I know things are getting fucked up, is if there's a lot of gossip, and there's a lot of drama. That's when I know, if there's gossip and there's drama, then people we are not moving towards our aim. Something has to change.
How do you become part of Team Elitefts? We have columnists, we have athletes, and we have coaches. We have three different disciplines. There's different branches, there's a sponsorship application, which is at the very bottom of our website. Long application, I call it a sponsorship application even though I hate the frickin' word sponsor, but that's what people relate to, and that's what they understand, so that's why it's there. We have close to 4,000 of those on file at this time.
We've learned, and I say we, because now there's a selection committee. Yes, there was a time that I just brought in people who were friends. I brought in people that were friends of friends, and most of the time that shit don't work. Things are a little bit more detailed right now, I'm not going to lay out or argue that process. It's taken a long time to get to the process that we use now, but we're looking for that live, learn, pass on, because that is what our aim is.
That aim is what is the best for the readers of the site, and our customers of the site, which are the most important people we serve. That's what it's all about is those people to be able to come to the site, to find education and products to be able to help them become better. We need and look for those people who can help that happen. If we find people that can't help that happen we don't bring them on, or we will part ways. That is the number one goal, live, learn, pass on.
How long can this take? I think the fastest member we've added the past few years took 6 months. Most take over a year. There are many great lifters and coaches out there but once again, we are an education and equipment company. You can be a great lifter but if you engage with a strength coach that maybe considering having elitefts outfit their weight room, can you talk the talk? You might have 3-4 years in the sport and even write programs for people but if you can't talk training with those who do it for a living then you are not an asset to elitefts - you're a liability. We've done a really good job adding credibility to our athletes name and from this many have gone onto do great things - the thing is there needs to be a general base to build on first. While at the same time we have had several great coaches add to our credibility and it is our responsibility to maintain and keep growing from that.
This is some of what we look for.
1 Comment