Train them like yourself
Lesson 28 of 31 in the course “Million Dollar Sales Course”. Free, with animations and a quiz.
Teach them or throw them in
Last lesson Misha found a helper for subtitles. Now the big question: how to train them. In Cold Email Manifesto, Alex Berman describes two types of managers. The first is like a caring parent at the pool: teaches swimming slowly, step by step. That’s how his co-founder Robert Indries works, guiding people through feedback and looking after them like clients. The second throws a person straight into the deep end, and if they don’t make it, finds someone else. Berman openly admits he’s the second type and that their turnover was very high. Both approaches work, he says. But only someone with lots of candidates and money to search can afford the deep end. Hormozi puts it plainly in $100M Leads: for entry-level jobs, who you pick matters less than how you train them. Misha has one helper and little money, so the parent’s path fits him. Next, let’s break training down step by step.
Three steps: document, demonstrate, duplicate
Hormozi trains people with a three-step model he calls the 3Ds. Step one: document. You already know how to do the job, so you write the steps down exactly the way you do them. That gives you a checklist, a list of steps in order that someone can follow without making anything up. Step two: demonstrate. You do the job in front of your helper and walk through the checklist out loud, step by step. Hormozi compares it to how your parents taught you to tie your shoes. Step three: duplicate. Now the helper does the job in front of you using the same checklist, and you just watch. Why this way: at every step you’re testing the instructions, not the person. If the instructions are right, the helper gets the same result you do. If there’s a gap, you’ll see it right away, not a month later.
A checklist that works without you
How do you write a job down without losing anything? Hormozi suggests recording yourself on video, several times and in different situations. Then you watch yourself from the outside and write the steps down, instead of breaking your flow mid-task to take notes. You can also ask someone you trust to watch you and note what you do. Next time, do the job strictly by the checklist and add nothing of your own. Did you nail it? Then you have your first draft. Hormozi gives a simple test: if you vanished tomorrow, could a stranger get your results just by following the list? That’s the level of clarity to aim for. The picture shows Misha’s subtitle checklist. Each step is one action you can do and check: no “make it look nice.”
If they got confused, we confused them
A checklist rarely comes out right the first time, and that’s fine. When you demonstrate and the helper asks you to stop or explain a step, fix the checklist. That’s draft two. When they do it themselves and slip somewhere, fix it again until the result matches yours. Hormozi suggests looking at mistakes this way: if someone got it wrong or got confused, then we got it wrong or made it confusing. If a step needs explaining, it’s too complicated. More often, several steps got glued into one. For example, “style the subtitles nicely” is really three steps: font from the template, no more than two lines, bottom of the frame but not over the face. One more warning from Hormozi: you can force a bad checklist to work while you train people yourself. But it turns into a nightmare once somebody else takes over training.
Knowing vs doing: slow, smooth, fast
Say your helper knows every step and does them right, but very slowly. Hormozi explains this as the difference between competence and performance. Someone can know exactly what to do and not be good at it yet. That means your instructions are fine and they just need practice. Hormozi borrows a comparison from fitness: slow, then smooth, then fast. Nothing needs rewriting, they just need more reps. Another key tip: during training, watch first of all whether the person follows the directions, not just the result. Why: if they follow the steps exactly and get a bad result, then the problem is the directions. And you control those, unlike someone else’s habits. For Misha, this means: if the helper follows the checklist and it still comes out wrong, Misha fixes the checklist, not the person.
How to give feedback
Feedback is what you tell someone about their work: what went well and what to fix. Hormozi has a few rules for training. Every time the helper does a step right, tell them so. If they respond to praise, praise them. If they slip up, don’t take the work over: pause, step back and let them try again. The shorter the loop of “do it, hear feedback, repeat,” the faster people learn. If they followed the steps exactly and the result is still bad, praise them anyway for following the directions, and fix the checklist on the spot. No penalties or punishment during training: learning a new skill is punishing enough, Hormozi says. Give one piece of feedback at a time and work through one step at a time. And if normal results suddenly drop a lot, retrain: most likely people stopped doing an important step because they didn’t know it mattered.
Don’t restrict, enable
Training is half the job. The other half: don’t get in the way of someone’s growth. Alex Berman calls this a manager’s obligation to the employee and tells a story. One of their salespeople, Jacob, ran his own YouTube channel and made videos about how their sales process works. Many companies, Berman says, would get suspicious right away: ask him to stop or even fire him. Instead, they talked to Jacob and found out he made the videos because he loved their training content. So they gave him an editor and offered him a percentage of sponsorship revenue from their main channel. The result, according to Berman: Jacob became even more driven at work. His takeaway: don’t restrict, enable. For Misha, this means: if his subtitle helper wants to start their own editing channel, there’s no need to fear it. Help instead, and they’ll stick with the team.
Do it yourself: your helper’s training plan
Take the task you chose to hand off in the last lesson. Record yourself doing it two or three times and write down the steps from the recording. Each step is one action you can check. Do the job yourself strictly by the list: if it came out great, draft one is ready. Show the job to your helper and say the steps out loud. Wherever they stopped you or asked again, fix the checklist. Then have them do it in front of you while you watch quietly. Praise every correct step, give one piece of feedback at a time, don’t take over and don’t penalize. Fix the list after every attempt. At the end, run Hormozi’s test: give the checklist to a friend who has never seen this job. If they get the same result as you, the list is ready. Next lesson: which numbers show your team is doing well, and what else a leader’s job includes.
Check yourself
- What should Misha do?
Correct answer: Praise them for following the steps and fix the checklist right away. The helper followed the list exactly, so the mistake is in the list itself: it has no step about where subtitles go. Hormozi advises praising people for following the directions and fixing the checklist on the spot. - What’s going on?
Correct answer: They know the steps but haven’t built the skill yet: they need practice. The steps are right and so is the result, only speed is missing. Hormozi calls this the difference between competence and performance: slow, then smooth, then fast. It takes reps, not changes. - How do you check the checklist is ready?
Correct answer: Give it to someone who’s never seen the job and look at the result. That’s Hormozi’s test: if you vanished, could a stranger get your results from the list alone? It checks actions, not words. - How should Misha give feedback?
Correct answer: Start with one step, practice it, and only then move to the next. Hormozi advises one piece of feedback at a time and one step at a time: it’s hard for a newcomer to fix several things at once. And be sure to praise what went right.