Your Hiring Strategy Is Setting You Up to Fail Before Day One | Mike Matalone

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

The Home Service Expert Podcast
Host: Tommy Mello
Guest: Mike Matalone – Talent Strategy Expert, Founder of XP3 Talent Systems
Episode: Your Hiring Strategy Is Setting You Up to Fail Before Day One
Date: June 24, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into why most home service businesses fail at hiring and how a strategic, system-driven approach—rooted in behavioral science—can transform employees into high-performing, loyal teams. Tommy and Mike discuss actionable tactics for hiring, onboarding, retention, engagement, and leadership, grounded in Mike’s experience, including how he slashed turnover at Window Nation from 80% to 23% within six months.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Systems: The Backbone of Scaling and Success

• [02:17] Mike: Through his work at Vistage (coaching 45 CEOs monthly), Mike realized two things:
  • All scalable companies depend on systems and processes.
  • Most business problems are actually people problems in disguise.
• “I realized that most business problems are people problems in disguise… 80-90% of time it was a people problem.” [03:00, Mike]
• Most hiring/training systems are siloed. He created XP3 Talent Systems to provide an end-to-end employee life cycle system.

2. You Don’t Hire Great Teams—You Build Them

• [05:04] Mike: The biggest hiring mistake: thinking you can hire a great team.
  • Even A-players from competitors might fail in your culture.
  • At least 50% of high performance is driven by the manager, plus systems, tools, and fit.
• “Stop relying on hiring great people and realize that you have to train and build great teams.” [06:19, Mike]
• Example: At Window Nation, strong marketing and sales couldn’t fix 80% sales turnover until a systematic talent approach was implemented.

3. Smart, Coachable, Cultural Fit: The 3 Keys to Hiring

• [12:04] Mike:
  • Are they smart enough to learn?
  • Are they coachable (“Very different than being smart”)?
  • Are they a cultural fit?
• “If you don’t have an established culture, that’s where you need to start before you hire anybody.” [12:51, Mike]
• Applying these, Window Nation improved onboarding graduation rates from 50% to 94% and skyrocketed new team member success.

4. You Are in the Training & Coaching Business

• [14:10] Mike:
  • If you have more than 5–10 employees, you’re in the training business.
  • Most leaders treat training as a one-time event instead of a continuous practice.
• “Most people think training is something you do, not something they are.” [14:57, Tommy]

5. Employee Engagement and Discretionary Effort

• [16:29] Mike:
  • Gallup research: average employee operates at 40–60% potential (discretionary effort is the untapped portion).
  • You can’t demand it; you must inspire engagement.
  • Starts with meaningful mission, vision, and core values that are lived, not just stated.
• “You can’t demand discretionary effort, you can only inspire it through a psychological connection.” [17:12, Mike]

6. Mission, Vision, Core Values: Keep It Simple & Actionable

• [20:45] Mike:
  • Most core values are too complex to remember or use.
  • Human brains retain and apply “threes” most easily—core values, mission, and vision should be memorable and simple.
• Cites Patrick Lencioni’s “Hungry, Humble, and Smart” as a good example.

7. The Role of Behavioral Science & Assessments in Hiring

• [23:23] Mike:
  • Psychological connection to the job is linked to enjoying the behavioral requirements (not just tolerating them).
  • The best assessments pinpoint target behaviors for a role, then match candidates’ natural inclinations.
  • “There’s a huge difference between knowing how to do something, and actually enjoying doing it every day.” [26:12, Mike]
• [27:09] Recommends assessments like MPO (Managing Performance in Organizations), Predictive Index, and to use tools supporting custom job profiles.

8. Building Ultra-Competitive Teams

• [30:30] Tommy:
  • Top performers at A1 Garage Door Service are “ultra-competitive.”
  • Internal competition is most effective (“true competitiveness is internal” – [33:19, Mike]).
  • Interview for detailed knowledge of their own numbers/goals as a marker of competitiveness.

9. The Training Process Starts at Hiring

• [34:25] Mike:
  • Transform your mindset: hiring is the start of training.
  • Use hiring to identify skill gaps to immediately tailor onboarding.
• “Training begins during hiring if you’re doing it correctly.” [35:34, Mike]

10. Creating a ‘Wow’ Onboarding Experience

• [36:09] Mike:
  • Most companies just train for the job, not the company.
  • The first two days must be about mission, vision, values, the big picture, and building relationships.
• “You only get one chance to make a good first impression.” [36:50, Mike]
• Objective 1: Great experience
• Objective 2: Big picture journey
• Objective 3: Build relationships (key to retention)
• Eg: At Window Nation, cross-department introductions, marketing/production walkthroughs, and attention to each team member made new hires say, “I found my last job.”

11. Career Paths & 90-Day Milestones

• [48:44] Mike:
  • #1 reason for leaving: lack of visible advancement.
  • Create clear career ladders with 90-day paths and milestones; titles and raises can be segmented creatively for even tiny firms.
  • “If you say, ‘do a good job this year, we’ll talk about it next year’, people just can’t think that far out … but if you give them a short timeframe with immediate rewards, that’s when they’ll hold themselves accountable.” [51:10, Mike]

12. Make the “What’s In It For Me” Clear in Hiring

• [53:45] Mike:
  • Job ads should be marketing, not long descriptions.
  • Lead with “What’s in it for you?” with clear opportunities and benefits.

13. Founders Must Build for Delegation & Independence

• [66:30] Mike:
  • Your job as an entrepreneur: Remove yourself from day-to-day tasks. Delegate, automate, and build a business, not a job.
  • Use a “company diagnostic” across five pillars to continuously identify what can be improved or delegated.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I like to say, it’s like asking your employees to win a race but not telling them where the finish line is. Part of whether it’s hiring or existing employees, one of the first things to focus on is define success in their role.”
  – Mike, [00:00]

• “Great teams are built, not hired… Even if the person was an A player for your competitor, it doesn’t mean they’ll be an A player for you.”
  – Mike, [05:04]

• “If you have more than 5 or 10 employees, you are now in the training and coaching business.”
  – Mike, [14:00]

• “You can’t demand discretionary effort, you can only inspire it through a psychological connection.”
  – Mike, [17:12]

• “Internal competition… is true competitiveness.”
  – Mike, [33:19]

• “The number one reason people leave is they don’t believe they have a career with you. There’s no defined path.”
  – Mike, [48:44]

• “You need to focus on: How do I remove myself from these day-to-day activities?”
  – Mike, [66:45]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Defining Success & The System Problem — [00:00–04:00]
• Why Most Companies' Problems Are People Problems — [02:17–04:00]
• Biggest Mistake in Hiring Leaders — [05:04–06:19]
• Transforming Window Nation’s Turnover — [06:48–09:00]
• The Power of Internal, Not Just External, Competition — [30:30–34:12]
• Training Starts During Hiring — [34:25–35:34]
• Crafting a ‘Wow’ Onboarding Process — [36:09–45:12]
• Building Career Ladders in 90-Day Chunks — [48:44–52:25]
• What’s in it for Me? in Job Ads — [53:45–55:06]
• Delegating to Build Owner Independence — [66:30–69:07]

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Actionable Takeaways

• Build simple, lived mission/vision/values. Focus on three.
• Evaluate and hire for intelligence, coachability, and—above all—cultural fit.
• Start onboarding with culture, relationships, and the company journey—not just job-specific training.
• Craft clear, short-cycle (90-day) advancement paths for every role.
• Use behavioral science assessments (MPO, Predictive Index) correctly—match personality to job behaviors, not just resume.
• Ads and hiring should sell the opportunity: lead with “What’s in it for you?”
• Regularly structure your business and leadership for owner independence through delegation and benchmarking.

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Further Resources

• Mike’s Book: "Hire Train Retain" (Second Edition) — Amazon
• XP3 Talent Systems, 90 Day Talent Mastery Program: xp3talent.com
• Recommended Reading: "The Ideal Team Player" by Patrick Lencioni, "Build a Business, Not a Job" by David Finkel

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Final Thoughts

This episode tackles the foundational elements most entrepreneurs overlook: systems, people strategy, and the true role of leaders in building (not just hiring) great teams. It’s packed with tactical advice and real-life examples for owners wanting to build a resilient, scalable, and people-driven home service business.

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Transcript

[A]

I like to say it's like asking your employees to win a race but not telling them where the finish line is. Part of whether it's hiring or existing employees, one of the first things to focus on is define success in their role. Salespeople, we usually do a pretty good job with home improvement, right? Because we give them specific goals daily, weekly. But are you doing that for every other employee?

[B]

CSRs, dispatchers, managers. Yeah. Welcome back to Home Service Expert. I am working in Atlanta today and I got Mike Madelone here. He's an expert in talent strategy, hiring systems, employee engagement, behavioral science, onboarding, retention and leadership development. Award winning speaker, Amazon bestselling author, former Vistage chair and speaker. 20 plus years coaching CEOs and business owners on people strategy. Over 500 keynotes and workshops across the United States, Canada, the UK Former Chief Talent Officer at Window Nation, the third largest window replacement contractor in the US recently started a premium deck building company to prove his own system work and home services startup based in Bumpus, Va. XP3 Talent Systems, specifically validating people operating system that helps companies hire, train and retain high performing teams. Offers a 90 day talent mastery program backed by 100% guaranteed results. Primary services, construction trades and service businesses. Clients include Window Nation, Outback Deck Contract Exteriors, Jerry's Roofing and Siding. Also authored Hire Train Retain second edition best selling book forwarded by Brian Gottlieb who sold for 150 million. As it's 2026, XP3 is transitioning out of direct recruiting services to focus entirely on training, service and coaching. Partnering with recruiters instead of doing it themselves. I'm excited. This episode is all about from hiring with behavioral science to making new hires productive in 30 days, to the exact playbook that took Window nations turnover from 80% to down to 23% in six months. Mike, it's a pleasure to have you on.

[A]

Thank you Tommy. It's good to be here.

[B]

Let's just talk a little bit. Let's get started on. You started out at vistage chair coaching CEOs. What kept coming up over and over that made you say I need to build a system for this?

[A]

Yeah. So I spent five years with Vistage running three different groups. So every month I had three meetings with about 45 different members bringing their issues and challenges to the group. So actually through that experience I learned two key things that led to creating the XP3 talent system. One, as you know, is you got to have a system and a process for everything in order to scale effectively, consistently and profitably. Right. So that was Lesson number one, number two is I kind of realized that most business problems are people problems in disguise. Meaning that, you know, the members would bring a challenge, say, oh, I have cash flow problems or I have a marketing problem or sales problem. And when we drill down and ask the clarifying questions to find out, you know, the root of the cause, and probably 80, 90% of the time it was a people problem, meaning like you have that problem because you don't have the people who know how to avoid it, solve it, you know, move past it. And the proof of that was that was the purpose of the Vistage group right there. They were there to kind of help each other, you know, solve their problems. And, and with 12 or 15 members in each group, you know, two or three people probably had already been there, done it. So they were speaking from direct experience on how to solve it. But even if nobody had ever did it, you put 12, 15 smart people in a room together, you could usually come up with two or three potential solutions. So, so those two lessons is what led me to create the XP3 talent system. Because I started looking around at all the different systems that were available and there were hiring systems on the people side and training systems, but I never found an end to end system that took the employee through the full life cycle and made them the focus of the business. So that's when I decided to create the XP3 talent system, which is that full life cycle system.

[B]

I love it. No, I love systems. I say all the time, there's either no system, the wrong system, or the system's not being followed. Those are the three main reasons. And people are like, well, you know, it's usually a people problem like you said. I said, what's the system that picks the people? And so now we have systems on just the way we hire and pick people and the orientation and onboarding. What do you think is the most critical thing when you hire somebody? Like what are some of the things you've done? This a lot? Well, I guess I did it for a long time, but I mostly made mistakes. So when it comes to leadership, right,

[A]

we learn from our mistakes.

[B]

We do.

[A]

As, as long as you're learning from them, that's a good thing, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So. So I'm sorry, your question again was,

[B]

you know, when you're, when you're picking leaders, what are some, what are some of the big no nos and what are some of the things you have to do?

[A]

Yeah, so. So from the hiring standpoint, right, I think the biggest mistake that most people make is that they think they can hire a great team. Right. And you can't. Great teams are built, they're not hired. So meaning even if the person was an A player from your competitor down the road doing the same exact job, same product, services, that does not automatically, you know, indicate that they're going to be an A player for you. So you have to look at what made them an A player. Was it the culture, the environment they were in? Was it the manager they were reporting to? And we know for a fact the manager has about 50% impact on that. A player, right? How they're trained, managed, coached. Right. Was it the tools, resources and systems we were just talking about? Right. So if you can't duplicate that, then you know, their probability of continuing to be an A player, you know, goes down significantly. So, so it goes back to when I was a Window Nation, right? They, they hired me to fix their problem and I said I can fix the problem, but I got to use the systems, processes and methodology that I know how to use. If you want me to come in and learn yours, you know, I could learn it, but I can't guarantee the same results until I get in there, play with it a little bit, which means I'm probably going to make mistakes and you know, while I'm trying to figure it out. And that could take a year or so or longer. So, so that's some of the key things is stop relying on hiring great people and realize that you have to train and build great teams. I love that, no matter how good.

[B]

So you know, it's kind of funny, you know, when were you involved with Window Nation?

[A]

2016 and 17. So I met with them in June of 2016. The two owners, Harley and Aaron, and, and the problem was they had over 80% turnover. The good news, they'd been in business nine years at that point were doing about 63 million in four different markets. Right. They probably had 130, 140 or so salespeople at the time who had a company closing average of 57%. So they had the marketing, you know, lead gen and sales process down to a science. But what they didn't understand is how to actually keep those people and make them stick around and keep producing. So they were at a revolving door of constantly replacing people and training and onboarding new people. So that's when I met with them, that's when we started. I told them I was just going to spend a year with them to implement the talent system, build them a high performing leadership team who could then Duplicate that effort going forward.

[B]

So, yeah, that's what mattered. I know those guys pretty well. They got involved with Cortek, who I'm involved with. Yeah.

[A]

Yep. Now they're opening restaurants and car dealerships or whatever.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting. I want to stay in my industry for as long as I possibly can. I think I'll be in the garage door industry for at least another decade. My biggest issue of, you know, we run just shy of 30,000 leads a month. So we're in almost 30,000 homes a month, and why not take that power and continue to grow it rather than start over? I just. I got a buddy, Paul Kelly, out of Phoenix, that's rolled equity five times in his company, Parker and Sons. To me, it just makes sense to continue to roll, because to rebuild a team from scratch, I mean, there's so much camaraderie, like you said, it takes. Here's something that I kind of realized, Mike, is all the skills I've learned, unlike Elon Musk and unlike Jeff Bezos, they don't like. Even when I hired my complete staff for my house, my chef, my driver, I didn't use the skills I took from A one I didn't like. I made all the same mistakes, and it just pisses me off because I'm like, I know better than this. But, you know, it's like I started back over, and I just made so many mistakes. I didn't put their calendar together. I didn't had them try out. I didn't do all the things I should have done that I always do at A one.

[A]

Yep. Yep. So we always go back to the basics of what we learned. Right. Follow that system.

[B]

Follow the system.

[A]

So. And then, Tommy, that's why I started the deck business. Right. It's not that I needed something else to do at this point in my life. You know, I'm 64. I'm trying to slow down a little bit, enjoy life. But the. The thing I love about the home improvement industry is there's already so many proven, successful systems that if you just follow it right, you almost can't not be successful. And that's why I started this little deck business, Just to prove that I could get this company up and running and successful within a couple of years, and then my goal is to flip it.

[B]

So what is your goal to get to as far as ebitda?

[A]

I'm sorry, say again?

[B]

What would you like to do as far as EBITDA within a couple few years?

[A]

Oh, at least 500 at minimum within two years.

[B]

Yeah, that's great. And then that business

[A]

where I'm on a little lake in the middle of Virginia, we're like an hour from any major city. So we're also very limited in our growth because we want to just stay within like a 30, you know, minute footprint of the lake where it's like. So we're if, you know, Virginia, we're like an hour from Richmond, an hour from Charlottesville, almost an hour from Fredericksburg. So if I would go into those markets, I could grow it a lot bigger. But again, that's not my goal. It's not big. It's to do it right and put in the systems that someone else can step in in two years and take it to whatever extremes they want to bring it to.

[B]

You know, one of the biggest epiphanies that you said that I think one of the really important takeaways from this podcast. We got a lot more to do here. But I've. I've taken some of the best of the best from companies that you've worked with. I've taken the best of the best from people like Russell Brunson and Mr. Beast. And they don't translate. Just because they worked with somebody doesn't mean they're going to come in. And a lot of them, they start charging the prices, like they're going to bring all this stuff, and then they never last because they should just come in and learn the culture. But you get a big name next to you, and they just turn over very quickly. They think they deserve it. It's amazing. And by the way, Mike, a lot of my people think if I was to leave A1, I could probably double my salary and get equity. But the problem is the new founder is going to go, man, you better come in and build what you built at A1. But it's a team that built it. I mean, there's a lot of us that were involved. I don't pretend to say that I have all the answers.

[A]

Yeah. And that kind of brings me back to, like, the hiring piece. Right. So if we realize that, you know, even if they were an A player somewhere else, you still got to turn them into an A player for you in your world. Right? So key things that people need to focus on when they're hiring for three things we focus on is, number one, are they smart enough to learn what you're going to teach them? Right. Because I don't care how much they knew before they got to learn your systems, your processes, your product services, whatever your methodologies so they still have to learn that. So are they smart enough to learn? And number two is, are they coachable? Right. Which as you know is very different than being smart. You can be the smartest guy in the world, but if you're a know it all, we can't teach anything thing. So you focus your hiring on, on intelligence to learn coachability. And then the third one is the cultural fit. Because as you know, like if, if you have an established culture, which is key, and if you don't, then that's where you need to start before you hire anybody. And we'll talk more about that in a minute. But, but making sure they're a fit to that culture, I don't care, you know, if they were the best of whatever they do, if they're not a fit with your culture, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when it's going to fall apart. So in hiring that's what we teach. Focus on those three elements and then that's where you'll see the results. So example, at Window Nation, you know, they put their sales reps through the two week boot camp, teaching them product knowledge and a ten step call. Close. Well, prior to us working with them, they run about four of the boot camps a year, but they'd only graduate maybe 50% of a class. Right. So just by focusing on the cultural fit, are they smart enough and coachable? The very first class we did, we hired 17 reps and graduated 16 of them. And then those 16 reps went on to sell a million and a half in windows in their first month in the field or first six weeks on the job. And one year later, you know, 15 of them were still around with the company producing at that level. And again, we didn't do anything with teaching them how to sell or product knowledge. We taught them how to hire, we taught them better and then how to train better. So, and that goes back to BG stuff, right? So when you talk to Brian, right, He tells everybody, yeah, when I first got in the construction business, people say, what do you do? I'm a contractor. Then he said, like Window Nation, a lot of other companies said, oh no, we're really a sales and marketing company that just happens to sell construction services. But Brian said, you know, it wasn't until I realized we're in the training and coaching business and that's when my real growth changes started to happen. So that's the key message I try to deliver to people is recognize if you've got more than Five or ten employees, you are now in the training and coaching business. Otherwise you're, you're basically just building yourself a job and doing all the work by yourself.

[B]

It's very powerful. And I think most people, they think training is something you do, not something they are. And it's, they think it's something that happens in the beginning of when you're onboarding and then you're done with it. But I like to compare us to like a pro NFL team, that we're going to practice a lot more than we're going to play. And it's hard to do that because most people look at that as an expense instead of an investment.

[A]

Yeah. Well, and the other one too is the constant we hear all the time, as you're probably familiar with this. Well, you know, this sounds great, but we're too busy right now to do that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's like, well, when are you not going to be busy? Well, the answer to that is when your business isn't succeeding. Right. And then you can't afford to do the things at that point. So being busy is a terrible excuse for not focusing on training and development. And we go back to the systems, right. All those other great systems that are out there for sales, marketing, finance, production, those systems only operate as well as the people that are operating those systems. So that means they will work much more effectively if your people are trained at a level to make sure that they're, you know, operating at peak 110%.

[B]

And, you know, that's something I wanted to ask you about. You talk about employees only operating at 40 to 60% of their potential, and I think it's actually less than that. Where is the other 40 to 60% going? What is the discretionary effort? And why can't you just demand it from the, the people?

[A]

Right. Yeah. So first, little background. So the Gallup organization, if people are familiar with them, they do all the polls out of D.C. most people aren't familiar. They're also a management consulting firm to Fortune 100s around the world. But they conduct obviously extensive studies and for years they've been focused on employee engagement, recognizing that engaged employees have the ability to accomplish a whole lot more. And from that came the identification of what they call discretionary effort. And the studies. And by the way, now they're probably every two years they're doing the State of the World Workplace survey. The last one just came out last month. They usually study about 50,000 companies around the world, all different sizes industries, and they have determined through their research that the average employee is only putting in 40 to 60%. Like you said, it may be even less in some cases, which means they have that additional up to 60% that they choose whether or not they're going to put that in. Right? And you can't demand it, you can't make them do it, but you can create it and lead them to the path to help them do that. And think about that too, right? Even if at 50%, what would happen to your company if you could double the productivity out of the existing employees that you have today? Right. So, so that's what discretionary effort is. That's why it's so critically important to be able to focus and tap on that. So, so the how part, right, Tommy, it's, it's first understanding that engagement means a psychological connection to your organization and to the actual work that the person's doing. And this is where the psychology or science comes into play. So first you have to have them engaged towards the company, which goes back to what I said earlier about the culture. And what that means is your mission statement has to inspire them and excite them to want to come to work every day because they love what they're doing to serve your clients, whatever that mission happens to be for the company. And then your vision, right, has to excite them about the future and not just the future for the company and the owner's growth and success, but what that growth means in return for them. Right? So, so, so your vision statement has to accomplish that. And then of course, your core values, they have to be in alignment because with them, because that's what drives your day to day behavior and decisions. So that's the other thing. When I said in the hiring process, you focus on finding out are they, you know, excited by your mission or you know, enthusiastic about the, and in alignment with the core values. And then if they're smart enough to learn and coachable, we can train them to do everything else. That doesn't mean too that you don't bring people in with the experience. But like I said, even if they have that, you still got to teach them your stuff. So that's how you focus on creating that psychological connection. But again, it doesn't happen with just having a mission statement on the wall or on your website. You got to be utilizing them when you're hiring in your ads, on your website during the first couple of days of training, that is the first thing that you focus and train them on. And getting them to commit and memorize it, that's creating that psychological connection to your organization. And if you think about it from an owner standpoint, Tommy, right. You know, for your company, you know, it's your mission, so you believe in it. Right. And you look forward to accomplishing that every day. It's your vision. Therefore, you're willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that. And they're your core values that you operate on. So. Right. So. So you're going to make decisions based on that, which means you, as the owner, are already psychologically connected to your culture. While you can train your people to have. To have that same belief system and to have that psychological connection, it's very powerful.

[B]

And I think the one. How do you. How do you bring that culture, mission, vision, core values to life? Like, how do you reinforce them?

[A]

Right. Well, the first thing you got to do is evaluate your current mission, vision, and core values. Most of them are too complex. They're too hard. So the. The test is if your leadership team and even your employees, if you can't have, you know, the people that have been around for a month or so, if they can't tell you what your mission statement is off the top of their head, or what your core values are, what the vision is, well, then there's your first problem. And part of that challenge is they're too complex, which means they need to be simplified, which kind of goes back to the three in our name, XP3. So three represents the science of human behavior, meaning that the average human being can learn, retain, and apply three things easily. When you go above three things, it becomes much more difficult for us to learn and retain and apply it. So we try to do everything in threes. And similarly, you know, your mission statement shouldn't be more than a short sentence. Same with your vision statement, even shorter. And then your core values ideally are 3 or 4. Have you read the ideal team player,

[B]

Patrick Lencioni's book, Hungry, Humble and Smart?

[A]

Yeah, there you go. And that's it. Three of them that capture everything that you need. So. So a lot of times we try to get companies to adopt those or variations of them and simplify it. But that. That's the way that you first start to embrace it and cultivate it, is to simplify it. And that's part of what we do in our talent mastery program is help the clients do that if it's needed or just if they already have good ones, then how do you reinforce those and apply them to the hiring? And then you're training, and then you're on go day to day.

[B]

That's Very powerful. And these are the things that we probably talk about every other podcast. And I still think it's just words on a wall for most companies. And I got to tell you, some of my notes, I'm taking this. A lot of this is consulting for me. Just there's so many things to do and this is the root of a business. This should be the most important thing. I believe this, along with building the right brand, and some of that's optics too, is what does the brand represent? What is the logo? You know, I'm a big fan of kick charge and I do think the mission, vision and core value value should be part of the brand. The walls, even though the brand will not make the other things come true, it needs to all tie together.

[A]

Yep, agreed.

[B]

How does behavioral science.

[A]

Go ahead if you want to. Let's segue to the psychological connection that people need to understand to the work. Because remember I said it's a psychological connection of the organization, the culture.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then to the work. So. So, and this is where again, more science where personality assessments come into play that most people don't use correctly. It, you know, there's a lot of them out there. There's some really good tools. But like anything, those tools are only as good as the people using them and how, how much they understand. So the correct way to use them in creating a psychological connection to the work is you have to figure out what are the target behaviors of the job. You know, so if it's things like a project manager, attention to detail, that's 70% of their average day is taking care of all the details. Right. Having a sense of urgency to get things done on time and keep things moving quickly. Being assertive and self confident. Right. To be able to take charge and lead everything. So you need to figure out. So whatever assessment tool you're using, you need to have a tool in there that helps you determine what are those behaviors that define success in that role. Then when you have the candidate or your existing employees take the personality assessment, what you're doing is you're matching it to that target. The closer you can match it, the more psychologically connected to the work that they will have. So for example, that, that attention to detail with the pm. Right. I don't know about you, Tommy, but I, I am not a naturally a detailed thinker. It's something I had to learn how to do. You know, like most entrepreneurs, I'm more big picture closest good enough. You know, if it doesn't work, we'll find a plan B. However, I learned the hard way, making a lot of mistakes that sometimes you don't have a plan B. Like if you're going to the bank for a credit line, right. Banks don't go by close is good enough. Right. They want every penny accounted for. So. So you learn how to do the details. But there's a huge difference between learning how to do it and actually enjoying doing it. And a psychological connection to the behaviors means that you enjoy it. And that's what personality assessments are actually doing. They are identifying the intrinsic motivational needs of the individual. So if you, you want a great PM who's going to consistently produce and continually get better, you got to make sure that they know how to do the details. The knowledge and skill side. And then, and again, whether they bring it and. Or you train it, but then you have to make sure they actually enjoy doing detailed work. Right. So. So for me, I could do the details, but I couldn't do it. 70% of every day that I go to work, I'm good for like an hour or two with the details. But then my brain starts getting fuzzy, I start getting frustrated and I gotta just move away from that stuff. Therefore, you could teach me to be a great pm, but I would not be a consistently good PM because I lack that intrinsic motivation to do that detail work.

[B]

Make sense 100%. Yeah. Find people like, I couldn't be a CFO or even a bookkeeper. That's just not my. I don't enjoy it. A lot of the people in the company that we place in these roles, they really enjoy their work and they enjoy coming in and they enjoy working as long as they have to to get their job done. What personality tests? And I'm sure it's different depending on. I've probably tried 10 of them and they all shed some insight. But I know people could beat those tests if they're not honest. So which ones do you find work the best?

[A]

Yeah. Well, first I will correct something there. They're not tests. Right. There's no right or wrong answers. Right. So you have to recognize they're purely just an assessment. And while it's a science, it's a close is good enough science. It's not a. Not a precise accurate. So that, that being said, you know, there's a bunch of them that are good that are out there. The one that we've adopted and utilize is a tool called the mpo, which stands for managing performance in organizations. It's by a company out of Montreal, Canada called Ngenio N G E N I O but people can find it. Go to mpo solutions.com it's it's been around about 16 years now. It I, I believe it's one of the greater, you know, tools out there because they not only provide you the tools, they provide the training and they constantly provide more tools. They're always adding to it. That being said, there's plenty others that are good too. The Predictive Index is a really good tool and one of the things you want to find out is does it have a target job profile, the tool that helps you to figure out what those target behaviors are and then a means to be able to match up the candidate or the employee's personality assessment against it. So what I like so Predictive Index has that disc that most people are familiar with. Well, what most people don't know is the guy that created the disc back in the 40s didn't take out any intellectual property on it. So if you wanted to create your own personality assessment, you could and call it a disk and you could do that. Which means there's a lot of really cheap disk tools out there that are not scientifically validated.

[B]

Right.

[A]

On the other hand, there's a handful that are really good validated disk tools. But the one thing I don't like about disk is they provide templates to say, oh well, here's a great PM profile or here's a great salesperson profile, right? Or CFO profile. But they're kind of generic, but it's better than nothing, so at least use that. But better is having a tool where you can customize it because you might have some particular behaviors for your sales rep, your cfo, pm, whatever that are different than another company based on your culture, how you operate. So the closer you can pinpoint that, the better chance you're going to have at succeeding of getting a candidate employee to match up to it. So what the MPO does, it actually takes those traits and puts it into a graph and then the candidates report also comes in a graph and it just overlays it and then it so you can see visually the matchup. And then on a five point scale it'll tell you how close they are in the match. But then the best part of the tool, why I like the MPO is then it also gives you the interview question. So if there's gaps in the match it'll say, you know, here are three behavioral based interview questions around attention to detail or compliance or you know, self confidence or whatever those things are that you're looking for. So it helps you to be able to utilize those tools more effectively. But. But yeah, there's. There's a bunch. I mean, there's probably hundreds of assessment tools out there that you're aware of. But again, even the best tools are only as good as the people who understand how to utilize.

[B]

Let me ask you a question. So the first word that I think of of top performers in A one garage door service is they're ultra competitive. They like to compete. They like to know what the numbers are, they like to see who's at the top, they like to get recognition, and they like to learn and practice what's a good way. You know, obviously they were in sports or even if they played an instrument that they had to practice every day and get better if they were a fisherman. And they said, I fished every single day. And continue to win against competition. But what do you find? Because competition people are like, oh, yeah, we're competitive too. I'm like, you don't even show your numbers. You don't have meetings. How can you be competitive when. What are you comparing to? What do you compete against? Internal competition is what we have. But is there anything that you found? Because I'd say if you were to look at us versus anybody else, people are like, man, you guys are ultra competitive.

[A]

So, so your question, I guess the

[B]

question is, is there anything that you found? I guess I want to check out mpo, but is there questions that you have found to find that answer in the interview if the person is ultra competitive?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, there, there. Well, first I. I'll give you the shortcut answer. In today's world, right, if people aren't using AI, they need to start, right? Because what you can do is go into chat, GPT or whatever AI tool you're using while you're in the interview and say, give me, you know, interview questions for home improvement sales rep on competitiveness to identify how competitive they are. It will. If you haven't done it, test it, try it out, and you'll be amazed. It'll give you probably a dozen questions. But even better, it says, look for these answers. You know, this is what a good answer is. And this is part of just interview skills in general. You know, it's one thing to know what questions to ask, but do you know what answer that you're looking for is good? And from a hiring standpoint, that's one of the things that you should do prior to interviewing is if you got a team of you, you know, that are interviewing people, you all need to Be in alignment. Well, what are the answers we're looking for, you know, to. To whatever questions we're asking? So a. AI is a great shortcut to that to help you do it. But again, there's other resources, like the MPO will give you one around competitiveness, too. But what I like to do beyond that is for sales reps, since you brought that up, is I ask them, tell me about your past success, and I want to know the specifics with the numbers. Right. So what. What goals or KPIs were you held accountable to? Right. And whether they're daily, weekly, monthly, or annually, then I want to know exactly what are your results against those. Those metrics? Right. So one. One of the first things we look for is just, does that rep know their numbers? Competitive people know their numbers. They keep track of that stuff. Right. And again, it may not even be, you know, competing against my teammates. True competitiveness is internal. Yeah, Right. So it's what it. Here's what I did last year, last month, last week, and I need to beat that. That, to me is true competitiveness is internal. External competitiveness against other people helps, but in my experience, it's not near as effective as that internal competition.

[B]

Super powerful. I'm really enjoying this podcast. What are most companies getting wrong in the hiring process right now?

[A]

Well, as I said, you know, hoping to find, you know, those A players instead of realizing that you need to create those A players. So that. That's one, two is just winging it, you know, not being prepared, going into it, you know, using your gut, you know, hey, I like this person, but I don't get you could love the person. That doesn't mean they can do the job. Right. So having a structured hiring process that all your team is aligned with, making it as objective as possible, adding new technology, science, analytics, to be able to pinpoint where a candidate is strong against your requirements, and then maybe where there are gaps, and then how big are those gaps? Right. So what I'm talking about here, Tommy, is that your training program begins while you're hiring, if you're hiring correctly. So you're not just identifying, do we hire this person or not? But if I do hire this person, where do I need to focus on their training, you know, initially, to get them up to speed quickly?

[B]

I love this.

[A]

So expand the. The thought process around what you know, just from just making a hire to beginning your training process during the hiring. So those are probably some key things.

[B]

What is a wow? It's great. What is. What is a wow? Onboarding process, what would you do or what do you see done to just make it just over the top? It just where you know, the people are going to stay on longer because people make that decision within the first week if this is their career or this is just a job.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So. So most people, you know, if, if they're doing any training at all right now. Now fortunately in the home improvement industry that, you know, it's a very heavily trained training and coaching mentality. But the mistake I see them make is that they just train them for the job you hired them on. So I hired you as a sales rep. I'm going to teach our products, teach our sales process. Right. Well, before that happens, and this goes to the wow thing, what you need to do is go back to what I said about the cultural connection, the psychological connection to the, to the culture, the mission, vision and values. So, so the first thing that you're doing it to create a wow experience is to make sure that they just have a experience through the learning process and particularly the first couple of days on the job. So think of the old. You only get one chance to make a good first impression. Have you ever started a job, Tommy, where the first day you're thinking, oh shit, what did I get myself into? Right. They were disorganized, you know, that, you know, people were yelling at each other or rude to each other or even to you? Right. I had a job one time. I went into the reported the first day, the receptionist didn't even look up at me. She was in her phone for like five minutes and then I had to interrupt her. And then she. And she, she was just rude as could be and said, I'm busy, just sit tight, I'll get with you in a minute. I'm thinking, wow, that's how you greet people right away, right. And it just went downhill from there. So the point is, if they don't have a great first experience with your organization, they will. Their minds will shut down and your ability to train them effectively, anything else after that is going to diminish, you know, significantly. However, if they have a great experience, which are things of be organized, have a structured training plan, make sure everybody is aware that these people, new people are coming in and to be on their best behavior, make them feel welcome, part of the team that they're so appreciative of them being there. So other little things too, like, you know, go back to the organization, have a detailed training plan, even if it's for the first two or three days that's structured. So all those little things you could even like, like we have all the tchotchke stuff, right? So if you're not already doing it, put it all to find out what shirt they wear, what size shirt they wear before they get there and have a package with a couple of shirts, the hat, the cups, the pens, have it sitting there waiting for them. Little things like that just go a long way to creating a good experience. But having a great experience is the number one thing to focus on when you're onboarding people in the first couple of days. Number two, they have to understand the big picture of the company or what we like now call the project journey. Right. So how does the company work? Meaning, you know, one of. I'll go back to Window Nation, right? One of the things we did is, you know, we, we taught them. And by the way, when I say we and this actually I saw fast track, third objective, right? So first objective, great experience. Objective two, big picture. Objective three is build relationships with as many other people on the team as possible in the first week on the job. That has been proven. Lots of research around it, shrm Society human resource managers have shown that the more relationships that your employees have with each other and the deeper those relationships go, the higher your retention. And that is also one of the keys to tapping into that discretionary effort. Because people who have people friends on the team that they like, value, appreciate, they don't want to let their friends down. So they will work harder to be able to not let their friends down. So now with those three objectives, I'll go back to what I was going to tell you. Window Nation. We brought the marketing team in on day one and had them explain, hey, this is what I do. This is my job. In fact, we had like, I think three or four different marketing people. And so they each explained their job. By the way, before that they did introductions. Hey, this is who you know. My name's Mike. I've been, I'm the marketing manager. I've been here for, you know, five years. You know, here's why I love working at this company. Here's a little bit about me personally. I'm married, got a couple kids, go to church on Sunday, like to go boat and fishing, whatever. You got to get to know them on a personal level. So you have to have an introduction, outline that leads to the relationships and it leads to collaboration. Think about it that way. Nobody's going to collaborate with people they don't know, right? So then we had them explain, here's what I do. To generate those leads for you. Right? And then the VP of marketing came in and closed it up and said, look, we spend, you know, it was five, $600 a lead was their average spend right at that time they said, so we spend the same amount in every lead. We put the same effort into every lead. We realize some leads are better than others, but recognize that the same effort and your teammates are working hard to support you guys. Right? We did the same thing with production. We took them out in the field, let them go on some job sites and learn from the PMs about or the installers how things are done, right? We took them to the call center, let the call center staff, hey, we book your appointments. Here's what we do. And we had them listen in how they do it so they could see it was consistent. It was the same approach every time. They now had a greater appreciation for what their teammates did to support them. One of the things we learned in that first year at Window Nation is the complaints about the shitty leads completely went away. Right? And by the way, I just heard something recently, someone said that I thought was brilliant. They goes, we teach our reps that all the leads are shit. It's up to you as the rep to turn them into a great lead. And I thought that's brilliant. But it's that mentality and helping them to understand then the big picture going back to that. So here's, here's what happens to bring in the leads. Here's what salespeople do to close the leads. Here's what production does. Right? Here's what finance does. Again, you're not teaching them how to do those things. It's just like a general overview. It can be done in an hour if you're structured and organized to give them a general appreciation of how things work. And that leads to that collaboration and higher retention rates as well as tapping into the discretionary effort. So, so what we're really doing from those three objectives, Tommy, is we are transforming our new hires into collaborative, productive company advocates. People who love this organization and would die on the cross for it. So I'll close it with this. One of our clients, when we first started doing this after Window Nation, we hired a project manager, a lead carpenter, a sales rep and a full time estimator. They all started the same day. We put them through the first two day structured training program. We teach to cover those three objectives. At the end of each day, we always ask those new hires two questions, tell us what we did well so we can continue Doing that, which shows that you value and appreciate their opinions, which goes to creating that experience. And then tell us from your perspective, where could we have done better? And sometimes you got to give them ideas because new employees don't want to critique. So it's not critiquing it. It's really important to point that out. Let us know, like on the session, on the project journey or on marketing, on sales. Could have been longer, could have been shorter. Could we use some visuals? Right. Could have the instructor who taught that been more organized, whatever, anything, give us that feedback so we can make the improvement? Well, when we asked those four people, the first person to speak up, Tommy, was the lead carpenter. And he said. He goes, look at me. And he was pointing out how he was dressed. He was in his work boots and jeans. He goes, I've been a carpenter 25 years. I was expecting the same thing to happen here. That's happened at my other half a dozen jobs I've been at, which is come in, fill out the HR paperwork, get shuffled off into the field of my job, right? He goes, I never knew anything about those companies except for my job and the people I worked with in the field. Didn't even know who, other than HR person, who other people were. He goes, the fact that you've kept me here all day today, because this is the end of the first day and you're going to bring me back tomorrow, I've already learned so much about how this company operates. Everybody has been welcoming and friendly. I've met so many great people. He goes, I already called my wife at lunch and told her I found my last job. I love that that's what you're trying to accomplish in the first two days. But again, the first two days shouldn't have anything to do with training them for the job you hired them for. It's the big picture. It's the company stuff that you're helping them understand now.

[B]

This is powerful stuff.

[A]

So that's create a wow experience.

[B]

Oh, it's very, very good stuff, man. I got so many notes of things we need to do better. I used to have this passport that we did where you'd have to go meet the leader of every department, but it wasn't as organized and you'd have to get their signature. So you got to meet the different departments. But what I really think is important is showing. I had a guy from Australia that basically broke down. If you were. You had two employees in your own truck and you were still out in the field. And this. He explains how much the yellow page cost, how much a pager cost? I mean this was really old, but back then I think it showed you need to charge at least $400 an hour to break even. I mean that was the break even cost. By the time you pay for workers comp insurance, the air conditioner, the copy machine, the water, the H vac at your building, you know, you've got all these ancillary costs just to run a small. Then you got vacation days. One of the things we started paying attention to, Mike, is how often are our guys in the garage. And that's capacity planning. And right now as a company, 52% of the time we're in the garage and we're trying to say how do we get to 60? Because we know there's drive time, there's meetings, there's, you got to load out parts you got to do. There's, you know, no matter what, you're never going to get, you're never going to probably get past 70% and that's running super lean. But you also want to do things outside of work and you know, nice fun things for the people.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So clients kept asking you to can you just do the hiring for us? And you got pulled into recruiting. It's funny. What were the expectations? Did they think that you were just going to come in and if you set up the right hires, that was going to solve all the issues?

[A]

Yeah, and that's why I said that's a big mistake that people make. They just assume if we hire an A player, you know, then everything will work out. But, but we saw, and still to this day see, even those A players that, you know, they're not succeeding like they did in the past unless you can create a similar type of environment. So, so that, that's probably the key thing there.

[B]

I, I just was reading this book on the plane yesterday. It's great. CEOs are lazy and what is it called? It's called Great CEOs Are Lazy. And it's kind of what I've started to do, the old Michael Gerber work on the business. So every note I've made has nothing to do with me doing more work. In fact, every note I have is almost all delegated except for when I do my three hour orientation. And I'm always wondering like, what could I do to bring it livelier? What could I do to make it more fun? What could I do to make it more interactive? What could I pass out and have the people fill out and talk to each other other because I just go for three and a half, usually straight hours. No bathroom breaks. I mean, they take bathroom breaks, but it's one of my favorite days. But I think I could do a much better job. I think I'm going to change a lot of the things just based on this conversation. The biggest thing is probably explaining what each and every role does, what the opportunities are to move up. I think the coolest thing about our company is there's about six, six, maybe eight positions the technicians and installers could move out to, to get out of the truck. And very few companies have a path for you to get out of the truck.

[A]

Right.

[B]

What haven't I asked you that I should be asking?

[A]

Well, you just, you just actually touched on it. So the number one reason we've discovered that people leave companies is they don't believe they have a career with you. There's no path, defined path of how do I get from where I am to the next level and beyond. Right. And what most companies do is, hey, Tommy, do a great job and you know, next year we'll talk about what's next for you. Right. Well, they might as well have just said, you know, you know, good luck to you because that conversation may never actually happen. So when we're, we always ask every candidate, and this is another thing you're hiring, if you're not already, find out why they left the last three jobs. Look for patterns. Right. But the number one response we get is they just didn't feel there was a career path for it. So part of the success is you have to have a very specific career path for everybody. So for example, even you could start off as a laborer, right?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But if you're just hiring laborers to, you know, a $20 an hour person, then that is what you're going to get. Right. So, but if you say no, that we're, you're starting as a laborer, but that's the entry point to get a foot in the door. We're going to teach you how to become an installer. Right. So, and then you have a detailed path and say, look, you could accomplish that in maybe three or six months or nine months or a year. That's up to you. We're going to give you the path, we're going to teach you. Right. But if, but it's up to you to actually do the work. But again, the important thing that we've done again is go back to, it should be done in 90 day cycles, not a year, because employees can't think that far out but if you say, hey, here's your detailed plan for the first 90 days, then when they accomplish that, here's the next 90 and the next 90, and there should always be an advancement level. So it could even. And that means you got to get creative. So, like, you could start off as a laborer, but then your next promotion after 90 days is a laborer 2. Right. And maybe a laborer 3 or senior laborer, or same thing with installers, installer 1, 2, 3. Because a lot of companies say, look, we only have 10 employees. There are. We don't have those positions. Well, that's okay. Just get creative with the titles and just say, look, I'm going to start you off, you know, as a laborer one, you know, at 20 bucks an hour. But as soon as you can demonstrate that you can do these 10 things I need you to do, then I'm going to promote you to laborer two and bump you to 22 an hour. Right after that, you know, you're going to work towards Labor 3 or Installer 1. Here's what you got to do to accomplish that. When you give them that clarity and that short time frame, people are going to be much more focused. And by the way, this is another key to tapping into that discretionary effort. They know exactly where they're at and what they're doing well, and the handful of things they have to do to improve over the next 90 days, people will hold themselves accountable to it because they know there's an immediate reward for them. But if you say, well, you know, do a good job this year, we'll talk about it next year, people just can't think that far out. It's not concrete, and they think they have a lot of extra time. Well, I don't have to work that hard this month because I've got a year to focus on those things. So that. That is the one thing we didn't talk about, that you need to have defined career paths and a skill assessment in order to evaluate where people are and how they get to that next step. It's one of the other keys to retention and tapping into discretionary effort.

[B]

One of the things we do is we give you a schedule and we got to do a better job of this as well. But we show you, okay, here's how much stage you'll probably take off. Let's go through and set some goals and put it. It's a simple math equation that shows you exactly how to make Pinnacle. Pinnacle. You get a $200,000 equity check into the company. And I like it when people go through and they say, all right, here's the days I'm going to work, here's my vacation time. I had a guy call me, he's a top performer and said he figured out the full year exactly how many jobs he needed to ran, exactly his conversion rate, average ticket, how many reviews he was going to get. Just super detailed and said, based on this math, here's exactly what I'm going to make. And you know, I think that's what, what's in it for them? Like we always talk about, how much did you sell? But that's very, that's very, you know, owner or business centric is what if you started asking how much you're going to make? What are you going to do with this money? And I talk about my six Fs, but what are you going to do as far, are you going to buy a first house? Are you going to do this? Are you going to do this? Are you going to do this? And I think it's more powerful when they say, here's my plan for me, what's in it for them type of thing. You know what I mean?

[A]

Exactly. Well, and on that note, your job ads, right? Here's another mistake people make when they're hiring. You post the whole job description, right? And that's mistake number one. Because the job ad, it should be exactly that. It's a marketing piece. And it's the only intent of your ads is to get people interested in wanting to learn more, right? So, and in order to get people to want to learn more, so you might say, hey, we're hiring installers, right? Or laborers or salespeople, whatever it is, you know, maybe it's a sentence or two about your company, right? And then we actually title it what's in it for you? And, and then you say opportunity to earn this much full benefit package, flex schedules or training growth opportunities. So you just list all those bullet points that potentially could intrigue this person. But the fact that you started off with what's in it for them? Kind of goes back to what I said. That first two days opens their minds up to learning. Well, now you just open their mind up to reading the rest of your ad, but you still don't want the whole job description. You just say, hey, now here, here's what we need you to do. Here's some of our must have requirements. If that sounds intriguing, you know, apply and let's talk.

[B]

Yeah, I mean I was just, I was talking to my trainer. He went to go visit Alex Hormozi. And I talked to Alex two weekends ago, and the biggest takeaway was Alex is by far the best hiring person he ever met. Because Alex has no direct reports, because when you walk in there, you just feel different, because he hires very, very well. But obviously it's all tied to culture, mission, vision, core values. And he just, he probably read, you know, Patrick Leicione and really put it like, you're not going to apply there unless you're a top achiever. Like, he doesn't have the time for that. And he's done a great job. And I think owners miss this. You know, between doing podcasts and social media and speaking on stages, I get a lot of people that reach out and say, I want to work for you. I've got choices, I've already got a job. I'm willing to do whatever it takes and start at the bottom because I know what the opportunities are and I follow you. And I think a lot of founders, they miss that piece because people don't want to work for a company. They want to work for people. I mean, people don't quit their job, they quit their manager. And I think that's a big takeaway too, for some of the listeners out there is, why would somebody work for you? What are you putting out there in the ecosystem? What have you done? Who have you highlighted that actually bought a house and bought their dream car and took their family on a dream vacation? And I don't think enough people are working on these things.

[A]

Yeah, well, it kind of comes back to people say, well, I can't find good people. How many times have you heard that? Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or maybe said it and it's like, well, recognize that if your strategy is on finding people, you're already setting yourself up for failure. Right. Recognize you have to create great people because you can control, you know the other one, just finding people. You're on a hope strategy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like I said, even if you're lucky enough to find one of those people, and by the way, we know from our research that only about 20% or less of the working population are those natural A players. The over 50, 60% are those B players, what we call high potential performers. So you're more likely to have success with that 50, 60%, recognizing I've got to turn them into players and follow the process we were talking about. You can accomplish that in the first 30 days on the job. Right. But if, again, if you're hoping you're going to hire one of those A players and Then hoping that they just do what they need to do to succeed again. You're setting yourself up from failure from the get go.

[B]

Yeah. My mentor, Al Levy calls it finding. What does he call it? Something in a bottle, like magic in a bottle. And he says genie in a bottle. Not a genie in a bottle. But like you do, every once in a while you'll get a sales rep that just triples everything. And, and I just wrote about this in a new book coming out about. It's called the Mellow Method. It's all about a one. And that's what I'm putting out there in the ecosystem like this is all about. And it's all written by employees and I comment on a lot of stuff, but I said a lot of people hate systems and they think the system is what stops them from the magic. Magic in a bottle. And when you find these people, they do a great job, but it's not consistent and it's not trainable and no one will ever learn it because there's no predictive outcome. And that's the problem is that's the hard part of probably working with a company like yours is they say, hey, I want to change all this stuff, but leave five guys alone because they're already killing it. And then all of a sudden these guys are out there training, they're out there saying, don't do it like that. And it's hard to get a system going when you say, hey, don't break this because then I won't make payroll. And it's almost like you got to dive in head first.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And that's what we tell people say, look, you know, because everyone's always focused bringing in new people, but it's like, wait a minute, before you bring in anybody new, you gotta make sure the team you have in place right now is already engaged and, you know, putting in that discretionary effort and willing to do what it takes to help the company succeed. Because if those people aren't in alignment with that, your ability to bring in anyone else and get them to do it goes down with each person that's not on board with the whole plan with the company. And by the way, that kind of leads me to another mistake that people make too. Tommy, is, is managers are typically very bad at defining success for their employees. Right. They want you, want everyone to succeed. But. But if you can't define what success looks like in each role, how are you going to even know if you're. You got that person sitting in front of you, right? Or Then once they're your employees and they don't have defined success measures. Right. How do they know if they're being successful? And I like to say it's like asking your employees to win a race but not telling them where the finish line is. Right. So part of whether it's hiring or existing employees, one of the first things to focus on is define success in their role. Salespeople, we usually do a pretty good job with in home improvement. Right. Because we give them specific goals, daily, weekly, close ratios, et cetera. But, but, you know, are you doing that for every other employee?

[B]

CSRs, dispatchers, managers?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And there's measures for everything. But even like bringing on a new employee, you know, we say, hey, here's our mission, vision and values are. We talked about it in the interview process how important that is. Here's day one. We're teaching you what they are. By the way, you need to learn these. Commit them to memory. By the end of your first week, I'm gonna come out and ask you, hey, what's our mission statement? Or what's our core values? Right. You need to know those by the end of your first week. But again, they're only going to know it if they're simple. So if they're too complicated, that's an unrealistic expectation. But, but then, then it's like, you know, in the first month you got to learn these things. In the first 90 days you got to accomplish these things. Every 90 days you're going to accomplish these things. The more clear that a manager can make what success looks like for their employees, their ability to achieve it goes up by 50%. The other 50% is the grit and willingness that they're willing to put in to work hard to make it happen.

[B]

Super powerful in your book, hire, train, retain. And it's so funny because Al has the same framework that he talks about is he adds orientation. So, and then recruit in the beginning. But you just came out the second edition with Brian, who should be reading this book and what is the takeaway they should be looking for?

[A]

So definitely owners. But, but any, any manager in an organization. So anybody who's either responsible for hiring and training or if you're in a support role for those people that are hiring and training, that's who the book was intended for. And I wrote the second edition to be more like a workshop manual. So our talent Mastery program, we have, by the way, it's a 90 day program. Like everything we do is 90 days. So it's designed to help implement the talent, the XP3 talent system in 90 days to give your company teach them how to hire better things. We were talking about how to onboard and achieve that, that wow experience in the first couple days and then how do you tap into the discretionary effort and keep those people producing at a higher level, the retention piece. So I wrote the second book as a workshop manual. So what we did is we created a whole learning management system that has maybe, I think there are 17, 18 videos that are five to 10 minutes each. They're short. So it might be like how to conduct a great interview. So we'll say, hey, watch this seven minute video on how to conduct great interviews. Read these couple of pages in the book and then we do a live zoom video workshop to help them apply it and or practice it. Right? So that our goal is at the end of the 90 days that the whole system will be put in place that the company can operate with a people operating system to make all their other systems work better. But again, they're not going to be experts on that first 90 days. Right. They're just putting the foundation and then it's up to you guys to just keep building on that after. So if they need that support, we're there. But most of the time in that first 90 days we can put the process in place where they can take it on their own and just use the tools that we give them to execute on all those things we're teaching you.

[B]

So where do they go? Where do the listeners go to find out more about the 90 day talent mastery program.

[A]

Yep. The, our website, xp3talent.com and it's the number three in there and right on our homepage. It'll explain everything clearly. What, what we do, how we do it. They can reach out to me directly if they want to book a call. Obviously. My email is mikep3talent.com those are probably the, the two quick ones, but the book's available on Amazon. The book will give them a lot of good intel as well. So, you know, one of the things I get people tell me too is that when they read the book they go, okay, it confirms these are the things we're doing really well. And then it's like here are the other things we can do to take it to that next level.

[B]

Fascinating.

[A]

Brian, Brian's forward, you know, he started his forward off, he said, he said 500,000 in five years, right? And then he said, yep. He goes, that's my best estimate, what I would have saved if I had this book back when I First started building our company before I had to spend years figuring it all out on our own. Right. And Brian says, you know, the ceiling of your business is dictated by the capabilities of your people. So if you want your company to blossom, you focus your. Your, your on developing the people that you have.

[B]

Law of the lid, baby. I get it. Mike, close this out, man. I really enjoyed the podcast. I, you know, I always walk away with notes, but this I had. I had five pages of questions, and I've got five pages of notes on the back of just things that I need to make sure I get to. And I've got a project manager, and what I did is next to every single thing. I wrote down the meeting I need to have with who. Some of it's hr, some of it's onboarding, some of it's recruiting, and that falls under hr. Some of it is the scorecard, some of it's my cto. It's crazy of what I need to get done just from this little podcast. And that's why I love doing these is it's great to learn about new things, but it's also just reminders of what needs to get done. And the thing is about it, Mike, is I will meet my EA in the next hour and have a meeting for every one of these things and put a deadline on it. And one of the biggest things I'm gonna do, Mike, is try to remove myself as much as possible from having to do the meetings and make the videos and do the stuff. Although there's certain things I'm gonna have to do, and I realize that, but if I could eliminate some things, automate some things, and delegate the rest, that's what I'm gonna do with this.

[A]

Yeah. Well, that kind of reminds me of, actually a colleague of mine, David Finkel. He wrote a book called Build a Business, Not a Job, if you ever heard of that book. It's a great little book, but it talks about it particularly. You know, most entrepreneurs build themselves a busy job.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

You're working six 70 hours a week. You may not even be making more money, which was probably one of your first intents. But even if you are making the extra money, you don't have any time to enjoy it and enjoy your life. And as long as you're doing all those things right, you're limited in what. What's you can put into a day. So. But recognizing that when you build a powerful team around you and delegate. So. Right. So to your point, Tommy, it's. You need to focus on how Do I remove myself from these day to day activities? That should be your primary focus as an entrepreneur. And that means building a team you can delegate things to. And one of the simplest ones, I would say for a lot of our home improvement owners with small companies, having a virtual assistant to, you know, take care of your email, your scheduling, your calendar, the little things that people don't realize, we spend either hours a day dealing with or we just ignore it and then miss stuff because we were too busy to get to it. Right. And, and if you're a fifty hundred dollar an hour, you know, owner, or $200 hour owner, whatever it is, you know, why are you doing, you know, $20 an hour tasks? So, so that delegation and freeing yourself is the perfect thing. And that's one of the things we do in our system. We have a, we start our engagements off what we call a company diagnostic. So it's a five pillar analysis that goes through like the people things are, how are we at hiring, how do we have the right people in the right roles? How clearly does everyone understand their responsibilities? And what you do is the leadership team will rank the company on each of these elements on a 10 point scale. That kind of sets the benchmark for where we're doing well, maybe where there are gaps we need to focus on and then it helps us figure out over that next 90 days where we're going to focus. But every one of those pillars, Tommy, ends with owner independence. Right. If something were to happen to you that rendered you unable to help, or you just wanted to take a vacation and go enjoy life, how well can your company operate in this pillar without you? And the goal is to constantly be removing yourself as the owner. So but a lot of times when we start working, well, who's going to do this? I'll do it. Well, who's going to do that? I'll do it. It's like, I know you can do it, but that's not the best path to growing your company.

[B]

So, you know, I've done a good job of that, Mike, but I just made it a note, how do I remove my coo? Because, you know, I've worked a little bit with Cameron Herald and he goes, I used to work with CEOs and founders and then I realized all the founder and CEOs do is they take their notes and they hand it to the COO and say, make this happen. I'm not in the day to day. I mean, I look at stuff, but it's kind of funny, Mike. I said hey to my cfo. I said, give me this whole department, what they're doing. Monthly compensations were. And I asked for three departments actually. And then I went to my CEO and I said, we've got a big hole here. And I said, so I brought that to light. And he changed the compensation structure. That's going to save. It's still. They're going to make into multiple six. Like they're going to make at least 200 grand. But I said let's get rid of the hourly. Like we're giving them 25 bucks an hour, 1,000 bucks a week on top of the performance pay. When this wasn't supposed to be the head role. Like there's still another advancement to go. And I just ask questions, I look and that's my job now, is to ask the lead question asker and just wondering, well, what about this? Well, what about this? Can we do this better? Can we make this better? And there are things I need to do, like orientation I have to do. And I like running the sales meetings and I like showing up and I like reaching out to people, winning. But this was really, really powerful stuff, Mike. I'm really happy we got a chance to do this. And if you're ever in Phoenix, come hang out. Brian lives there too. At least part of the year so

[A]

that I'm actually from Tucson. I grew up in Tucson. Oh, cool. So my 92 year old mother, who's probably as healthy as me and you together, she lives there. My nieces, nephews. My brother's a custom home builder. He built mostly Tucson, but Scottsdale, he does.

[B]

Oh, that's great.

[A]

So I get out there quite a bit. So. Yeah, but not in the summertime.

[B]

No, no, no. It's not the time

[A]

not to hit Arizona in the summer, but yeah, definitely come the fall, winter I'll be out there. So look forward to doing that. And if you're ever in Virginia.

[B]

Absolutely, I will. I'll meet you in person when we come off here. Let me make sure I get your cell phone. So hey ladies and gentlemen, thanks for listening. Hopefully you got a lot of notes and you've got some takeaways. Mike, I really appreciate the opportunity and let's go ahead and call that a wrap.