In the third of a six-part series of blogs about the growth of The Little Potato Company (LPC), and the leadership CEO/co-founder Angela Santiago, we talk about how she built a team of empowered A-Players who teach, guide and enable her to succeed.
Angela Santiago has a superpower. She finds amazing people to join her team.
Her success is usually grounded in two principles:
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- Find people who have been where you are going
- Start with fractional roles.
This approach enables her to build the company she wants to have, in the future, and satisfies her insatiable appetite to learn from others. She epitomizes the qualities of what Jim Collins calls a Level 5 leader: someone who taps into the brilliance of others.
“This is my one kick at the can.
I don’t plan to start another business, so this is it.
It’s go big or go home.”
“I give space for more experienced people and get a lot by sitting in a room with people who know more than me,” she says. “I give room for people to lead and actually lead me in certain areas. I think that’s an empowering feeling for people…because they can build their own great organization within the organization. I find that quite exhilarating.”
Not a Chief Problem Solver
Many leaders have to learn how not to be a Chief Problem Solver (Chapter 12 of Your Oxygen Mask First) for their team. Angela comes by it naturally, intentionally hiring capable people. And she gives them room to thrive, freeing her time to focus on the strategic leadership of her company.
Hire Before You’re Ready
One of the stories in my upcoming book (coming out later in 2025) is about how Angela brought on her head of sales.
She realized early on that if she wanted to grow LPC, she needed someone to lead sales. Instead of holding back, like many small business leaders who assume they can’t afford top talent yet, Angela took a smart, fractional approach. She found a top-tier sales executive who worked part-time with a handful of other clients. His flexible arrangement allowed her to start scaling the business right away, and eventually, he joined her team full-time.
Discover what Angela looks for when recruiting and how she gets top talent on board in the full story. In this clip, Angela talks about recruiting executives.
These people recognize the rare opportunity to “put their fingerprints on the company”.
“It’s about being OK that I don’t know how to get to the next $100 million but that person does. So how do I get them on my team?”
Listen to Angela’s passion about the opportunities she can offer to people on her team and how she gives other people room to lead.
And she’s done this to build amazing teams in finance, HR, marketing and sales.
Such a simple and powerful strategy.
For more, here are links to our recent LPC Case Study and watch the full interview with Angela below.
Other Blogs
- Types of A Players
- Hidden Cost of Not Having a Team of A Players
- 91% A Players. What’s Your Number?
- Foolproof Hiring: Double Your Recruiting Success
Older Podcasts
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