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Stop for a moment and consider that possibility. What could you do if you had a team that cared as much about your company—its mission, customers, growth, future—as you do? The truth is, it's not a pipe dream. It's a necessity. You can't drive profitability, manage disruption, or scale your company if your team doesn't care about your business.

When I scratched out my first business plan at the tender-and-clueless age of twenty-three, I couldn't have imagined a team like that. Heck, I didn't even know I needed one. I figured I'd hire people who were qualified to do the work, they'd show up, and we'd all do our best to deliver good service to our customers. Wrong! Cue the annoying game show buzzer. To find and keep great employees, I tried all the (wrong) things, and then more (wrong) things, and then I invented some wacky things and tried them too. But I kept coming back to the same challenges. Regardless of my efforts, I felt paralyzed, disheartened, and helpless. Recruiting people, retaining people, let alone "raising the bar," was a constant life of frustration and feeling overwhelmed.

Having a team that cares as much about our company as we do seems unobtainable, doesn't it? And it sounds like a myth, as difficult as finding the Holy Grail. The great news is, it's not.

I used to believe that 10 percent of the population (or some other small rando number) were great workers and everyone else sucked. That all the good people were already employed, and that anyone seeking a job wasn't employed because they weren't employable. I thought I was an A-player and no one else could measure up.

After years of struggling to build a team that could not only handle the work but could help grow my company, I started to think differently about my role in that struggle. I had always thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I applied business strategy to get more top clients, to achieve and maintain profitability, to refine my business so that it would run without me, and to market my business in a way that got my ideal prospects' attention. And yet when I tried to apply "business strategy" to team building, it would always crumble. I tried to build a better team by building a better business, when in reality I needed to become a better leader. Not just a decent leader, or even a good leader. A great leader.

If I wanted my employees to be all in, I needed to be all in on my employees. Let me repeat that with a slight rephrase, since repetition is the mother of mastery:

If you want your employees to be all in, you need to be all in on your employees.

And that's what I did. I went all in. More specifically, I learned how to go all in and then practiced it. I figured out that everyone feels like an A-player—me, you, all of us. And the truth I discovered is we are all A-players. Yes, everyone is an A-player. Some are just A-players in waiting. That's called potential.

Through trial, error, and a whole lot of humble pie, I identified a formula that would create the right conditions to find and nurture that potential. I trusted the process, stuck with it, and now I have a team packed with top performers. Business leaders now come to take a tour of our tiny, eight-person office, meet the team, and see how we do it. And the thing is, we just do the best of what you don't see at most other companies. We took ideas from sports teams, universities, religious practices, and, most important, psychological/behavioral research. And voilà, our team is curating art—not a single Sharpie face in the place.

I made it my mission to study the companies that had figured out how to build remarkable teams. In my research, and in interviewing, arguably interrogating, business leaders who did it right, I hoped to find the missing link, the one key difference they all applied to their organizations. Instead, I found four. And those four strategies became a leadership formula I applied to my own companies. And it worked.

I have tried to learn from great leaders, and I have implemented their ideas—sometimes clumsily. I am far from perfect, but I have found that even implementing bits and pieces has had a significant positive impact on our company. Our team continues to surprise and delight me as we work together to grow our organization.

You don't have to amplify your leadership abilities by 100 percent tomorrow—or ever. You don't have to be perfect as you try to implement new ideas. And you don't need to do all that you learn here. All that matters is you get started and commit to continuous improvement.

You can lead an extraordinary team that is all in for your company. In fact, it will happen because you are all in for them.