Adam Robinson's Blog, page 13

Building a Company on Love and Respect

Natural pet nutrition provider and creator of the pawBox, pawTree, was founded by Roger Morgan in 2014 and has been doubling every year since. Roger started pawTree with a high-growth mindset and built the team and operations he needed to quickly scale, but the company culture is what sets them apart: pawTree culture is one of love and respect. Listen to this episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast to find out how Roger Morgan has built his pet care company’s team and culture.

Listen to this episode on:

                  

iTunes                    Google Play            Soundcloud             Sticher

 

Follow pawTree on: Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin | Instagram | Youtube | Pinterest | GooglePlus | Snapchat

Connect with Roger on Linkedin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transcripts:

Adam Robinson:
Welcome to the Best Team Wins podcast where we feature entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible result. My name is Adam Robinson and for the next 25 minutes I’ll be your host as we explore how to build your business through better hiring. Today on the program Roger Morgan is the founder and CEO of Paw Tree based in the Dallas area. The company was founded in 2012, has raised around seven million dollars in funded, as 14 internal employees and as I understand it, Roger manages a network of close to 1,000 independent folks affiliated with the business that help you move your product. The best learning happens through the experiences that we share with fellow entrepreneurs or business leaders. Roger, we’re so excited today to learn from you. Thanks for being on the show.

 


Roger Morgan:
Oh, my pleasure Adam. Thanks for having me.

 


Adam Robinson:
We’re here today to focus on the people side of your business but before we jump in, set the stage for us. Give us 30 seconds on what you do.

 


Roger Morgan:
Sure. We are in the pet nutrition business. We have an offering, we call it customized nutrition for pets. As many of us know, many of your listeners I’m sure who have pets know, we really treat pets as members of our family. It’s amazing the difference we can make in the lives of pets when we give them good nutrition. A lot of issues that come with pets, bad breath, itchy skin, bad coats, bad gas, GI issues, all of those things many times can be addressed with nutrition and we have an amazing nutrition plan that includes pet food for both dogs and cats and really healthy treats and supplements. It’s all delivered right to your door and sold not through retail stores, but through an independent group called Pet Pros.

 



We’ve got, as you mentioned, over 1,000 Pet Pros all around the country in all 50 states. We share it through people. People go out and share the message of this great nutrition plan. When they share it with their friends and family and they purchase, those Pet Pros get paid a commission for sharing it. That’s the way our model works and we’re really excited. We’ve been making a difference in the lives of pets and people now for just about three and a half years. We launched in January of 2014 and it’s been really, really rewarding to see the difference we’re making.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s fantastic. If listeners want to learn more, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

 


Roger Morgan:
The easiest way, we put all of our information on our website, which is PawTree.Com, like a pet paw. PawTree.Com. There’s information there about our products. There’s information about how to join as a Pet Pro, if somebody would like to earn an income by sharing great nutrition and joining our amazing community of pet enthusiasts. Then of course there’s contact information there on the website as well, how to contact our support team here at the home office in the Dallas, Texas area.

 


Adam Robinson:
Well thank you for that. We’re so excited to learn more about the people side of your business. Let’s go all the way back to when you first got started. So many founders have the experience and remember hiring the first person. That first person in the door is just so critical to helping move it beyond yourself. Tell us about how you found and hired the first person that worked for you.

 


Roger Morgan:
That’s a great question. I’m a really big believer in setting the right foundation for, especially a business like this that scales very rapidly. We’ve been more than doubling every year since we launched and that was really the vision that I had when I set out to start this company was to build something that could really scale and really be something exciting that would be around for generations. With that in mind, hiring the right people and those first few people was really important. I mean, it is in any business, but I was really looking for something that we could find some people in the front end who could help build the right foundation and would be competent enough to scale with us and that we wouldn’t outgrow our first set of employees.

 



There were a few key hires I had right out of the gate. Most of those came from prior experience, I’d worked with in a prior company or knew through prior industry work. There was a great validation already there. We’d already had a good rapport, good chemistry, knew each other and trusted each other and so that made it very easy to make those first couple of hires. I will mention that one of the very first hires that we made was for our national sales director, who I didn’t know. I was very, very particular in the type of person who I wanted to take that role. I didn’t have a network of people who I thought could do that job and so I actually went to a recruiter who specialized in this method of selling. She introduced me to several people. I was very, very picky.

 



I think I probably went through, I don’t know, 15 or 20 candidates interviews before I found the right one. I’m so glad I did and that I didn’t compromise on that because it’s very easy, especially when you’re new as a company and young as a company and eager to get going to maybe move faster than you ought on some decisions like that. I was really patient and got the right person and she’s been fantastic, her name’s Melissa Davis, and just so thrilled that I took the time to find the right person there. Also, really thrilled that we had the right relationships and contacts to fill many of these positions without having to go through that type of process and having a good group of colleagues and friends I could draw on at the beginning as well.

 


Adam Robinson:
Let’s talk then about that process. You said you were pretty picky. Take us through it. What was your process? How did you engineer a good result there? It sounded like it worked out wonderfully.

 


Roger Morgan:
Yeah, it really has worked out great. I think it’s really important, and anytime that I’ve hired someone, not just at the beginning of this process but anytime, you’ve certainly got skills that you’re looking for and I had a list of skills that were important for that particular job and every job has its skillset that you know you need somebody who can do a certain set of things. Defining the skills certainly is important on the front end, which I did. More than that, usually it’s not that hard, in my experience I have found, it’s not that hard to find people who have the right skills.

 



The part that is much more difficult to find is the person who has the right culture and mindset and in our case having the right passion, which is not only a passion for pets but a passion for what we’re building as an organization. That cultural fit is, I have found, more important and more difficult to get right and the thing that I think it pays off to go slowly. Once we defined the right skillset, that’s why there were several qualified people who met those criteria, but the filtering through and identifying who really resonated with our vision, which our vision is to create a world filled with unconditional love where pets and their people thrive. Pets, those of us who have pets, know that pets give to us so willingly, so unconditionally.

 



They really do love their pet families and their pet parents just so naturally and what we’re doing through this amazing nutrition concept to help pets is we’re allowing pet parents to give back to their pets in ways that pets cannot give for themselves. Pets don’t have a choice what they eat. They eat whatever their pet parent puts down in front of them. That can either create a healthy and happy life or sometimes a miserable, difficult life depending on what they eat. It really is a story of unconditional love and so finding somebody that really resonates with that vision and it’s not just about selling pet food or a sales job.

 



It’s about really connecting with that vision and then embracing the values of the company, which I can speak to a bit later if you like. We’ve got some really specific values that really make up the fabric of our culture. Finding somebody who connected and fit with those values naturally is a really important part of finding that cultural fit as well.

 


Adam Robinson:
Let’s talk about that. Why don’t we go there? Describe the value system of the organization. What are the core values of the business and how do you make those real in daily life for people?

 


Roger Morgan:
Yes. We have just a handful of core values. I find that if you have too many values or too many priorities or too many of anything, you really have none of them. I’m a big believer in focus and identifying a short list of things that are important and that can be addressed and reinforced. The very first value that we ascribe to is that we love people, all people. I just think there’s something about this human family that we’re all part of that when we treat each other with love and respect it makes everything else work better. It doesn’t mean you can’t disagree with somebody, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a different opinion, it doesn’t mean that you can’t hold somebody accountable.

 



All those things are fine and good but if it’s all done on a basis of loving people, that’s a really important core value to begin with. It sets the tone. That’s the first one. We have five values. The second value is that we finish. What I mean by that is we follow through, we do what we say we’re going to do. When we accept an assignment, we get it to the finish line or if for any reason we can’t, we communicate about that and let the other person know, whoever we’ve made that commitment to. We’re finishers. That’s the second core value. The third value is that we live with integrity. I’ve had some great career experiences so far.

 



When I founded this company, I was at the point in my career where certainly building an exciting business and successful business and the financial rewards that come along with all of that for me and others was important, but far more important than that was these core values of living true to myself. I’ve lived enough of my life to know that when we live with integrity and we’re honest with ourselves and others, it brings peace and happiness, a harmony within that is not worth compromising. That’s our third value is to live with integrity. The fourth is what I call communicate proactively. This is something I’ve taught as a father, I’m a father of three daughters, and I’ve seen this in the home, in the business environment, in volunteer organizations, etc., as one of the things I think becomes potentially the downfall of groups and organizations is when they don’t do this.

 



Communicating proactively is something I really believe in and try to lead by example with. It basically just says if you need something, ask. If you’ve got a concern about something that’s bothering you, voice it. Voice it quickly and resolve it professionally. On the flip side, if you’ve got a compliment, share it. Give and receive feedback with positive intent and be proactive in that. It’s amazing how many little misunderstandings can be quickly resolved and not escalate into something bigger, which ends up detracting and distracting … Detracting from the culture and distracting people from their core jobs when we can just communicate proactively. That’s the fourth one. Then the fifth value is to live in humility.

 



I guess the flip side of that is that pride occurs when we compare ourselves or judge ourselves, judge others versus ourselves. I’m a big believer in being confident in who I am, in encouraging others to be confident in who they are and for us as a company to be confident in what we stand for and what we’re becoming without comparing ourselves to others. Anyway, those are our five values. Back to finding the right employees, it’s been really important for me.

 



I believe that those values can be taught and reinforced, but it’s also much more effective if you can find people who already live their life consistent with those values, or at least are aspiring to live their life consistent with those values, it’s a lot easier culturally than if you find somebody who isn’t living those and you try to bend them into living this way. That’s been a really exciting part of building our team is finding and fostering those people who have those five values.

 


Adam Robinson:
It’s such a crystal clear picture you’ve just painted on the kind of work environment you’re building and what it means to be a member of the team so thank you so much for taking us through that. What informed your philosophy on even knowing that core values were important or mattered? Who taught you how to do this or was this something you learned over a series of experiences?

 


Roger Morgan:
It’s a great question. I don’t know that it’s any one thing, but it probably, certainly in my case, started in my home and being taught by parents who had values. Certainly, I know, it was influenced by my church environment and church organization and colleagues and peers and leaders within that church environment. Certainly, it was also influenced by previous work experience and both positive and negative. When you see what’s working in other organizations, trying to take the things that are working and pattern after that, or when you see things that don’t work, the same thing, making note of that and identifying things that you don’t want to do and don’t want to replicate because you’ve seen them not work.

 



I think it’s probably a combination of all of those things. I guess also a school learning environment background as well, just being taught in an academic setting the importance of having some of these foundational tenets of a business. At the end of the day, you’ve got to take it from the academics and put it into practice, but I think having some of those frameworks that are taught in schools and that you can find articles and so forth written on, certainly there’s some good things to draw on there as well. Probably a combination of all those sources.

 


Adam Robinson:
Over the years of doing this, what is the biggest lesson you’ve learned the hard way through experience on managing the people side of your business?

 


Roger Morgan:
I think two-fold, it’s usually on the front end and the back end of hiring. I think in my experience, there’s a quote that my father-in-law shared with me when I asked him for his daughter’s hand in marriage, when I asked to marry his daughter. He encouraged me to measure twice and cut once. In other words, really make sure this is what you want to do and then commit to it, which I’ve done. My wife and I celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary this month.

 


Adam Robinson:
Congratulations.

 


Roger Morgan:
Thank you. I think it’s the same. On the front end of hiring, I think it’s that same philosophy of really making sure, doing all the diligence that you need to do on the front end to be comfortable and maybe going a little slower, hire slow, and making sure that you’ve done the right background checks, done the right reference checks, had enough time together, being transparent on the front end. I’m a really big believer of putting all the cards on the table at the beginning. If there’s something about our company, about our particular job, that’s got any negativity at all potentially surrounding it, I like to get it on the table and let that candidate know so that there’s no surprises.

 



It’s a two way street on the front end, but going slow enough that you can really make a good, informed decision and measure twice and cut once on the front end and then on the flip side, the other place I’ve probably had my biggest people mistakes is on the back end when things weren’t working well, waiting too long to make a decision to move on. I’ve heard that there’s a saying, I don’t know if it’s something … Hire slow and fire fast, or something like that.

 



I think that’s generally correct, that making a slow decision on the front end, but boy when things aren’t working and you know for whatever reason, I mean there are reasons that things stop working and then it’s not a good fit anymore for … Maybe it’s because you made a mistake on the front end, or maybe it’s just that things have changed in that person’s life or the company’s position and it’s time to move on. When you know that’s the time, having the courage and the honesty with yourself and with that other individual to make that decision and move on and not let it drag out. I think those are probably the two, front end and back end, of those decisions are really important to get right.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s great. To lighten things up here as we wrap up, what book is on your nightstand right now and would you recommend it to our audience?

 


Roger Morgan:
You know, it’s interesting I wish I were a better, more avid reader. I enjoy movies a lot more than I enjoy reading and so I don’t read a lot. The one source that I personally do read regularly are the scriptures. I mentioned that my church had a big influence on me in setting my values and so forth. I do think there’s a lot to be learned from history with, not just about God oriented beliefs, but honestly with leadership and relationships and values and there’s a lot there that I really personally get a lot out of. I would say that is the book that’s on my nightstand. I’ve got a long list of wishlist books I’d love to read from a business perspective and people send me and recommend all the time. I rarely get around to reading those books. That’s the honest answer. My daughter, who’s an avid reader, could list off probably 100 books that are fantastic books that she’s read. That’s my answer.

 


Adam Robinson:
No, thank you for sharing that with us. Final question here, if you were to come back on the show a year from now and report on the most critical thing in front of you as it relates to the people side of your business and whether or not you moved it forward in the way you wanted to, what would you be telling us?

 


Roger Morgan:
I think in our business it’s all about connecting. As we mentioned at the top of the show, we have over 1,000 Pet Pros, who are our sales reps all over the country. Helping each of those individuals connect personally to our mission and vision in a way, in a passionate way, that really allows them to go out and be motivated by their own, what we call their why. Why are they doing this business? Why did they sign up to be a Pet Pro? How do we connect their personal why to our company vision and mission in a way that creates passion, alignment, stickiness and really motivates somebody to get uncomfortable? Because that’s what often it requires, right?

 



We’re comfortable doing what we’ve always done and getting out of our comfort zone and going and doing something else, opening our mouth and going and sharing this message of Paw Tree with others, requires some change, some action. A year from now, if I were to look back and say we’ve accomplished one of the most important things that we could from a people perspective, it would be that we have really moved the needle on connecting individual Pet Pros whys, why they are doing this business, to our overall vision and mission and created this incredible energy that comes from people having a passionate reason to get up in the morning and go be an advocate for Paw Tree and all that we’re doing to change the lives of pets and people.

 


Adam Robinson:
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the final word. You’ve been learning today from Roger Morgan, founder and CEO of Paw Tree. Roger, thank you so much for being on the show today.

 


Roger Morgan:
Oh, you’re very welcome. Thanks for having me.

 


Adam Robinson:
All right. That’s a wrap for this episode of the Best Team Wins podcast where we’re featuring entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name is Adam Robinson, author of the book The Best Team Wins, which you can find online at www.TheBestTeamWins.Com. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next week.

 

The post Building a Company on Love and Respect appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

How Jason Graciano Built his Greenacres Nissan Team from Scratch

Jason Graciano built and managed one of the best sales teams in Honda history, smashing through global records and winning numerous awards. He’s taking his business savvy to a new venture as Managing Partner of the brand new Greenacres Nissan. Jason talks about how he builds and trains great teams and what it’s like to start a new store.

 

Listen to this episode on:

                       

iTunes                     Google Play           Soundcloud                 Stitcher

 

Follow Jason:  Twitter | Linkedin | Instagram | Facebook

Follow Greenacres Nissan : Facebook

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transcripts:

 

Adam Robinson:
Welcome to The Best Team Wins Podcast, where we feature entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name is Adam Robinson, and for the next 25 minutes, I’ll be your host as we explore how to build your business through better hiring.

 



Today on the program, Jason Graciano is the managing partner at the all-new, soon to be open, Green Acres Nissan in Green Acres, Florida. We’ll talk with Jason all about that experience, we’re so excited to have him on the show. Jason, the best learning happens through real experiences shared by our fellow entrepreneurs, and we’re just so glad you’re here with us today. Thanks for being here.

 


Jason Graciano:
Adam, thank you so much for having me on the show, I’m a huge fan of your podcast. Very informational. I’m able to get a lot of content that is actually usable in the workplace, so once again, thank you so much for having me as a guest on your show.

 


Adam Robinson:
You’re welcome. I very much appreciate that.

 



So, you are a managing partner at a brand new store opening up in Greenacres, Florida. This store is scheduled to open at the end of the month here, and you just described this to me before we went live that it’s like landing multiple planes at the same airport on the same runway at the same time trying to get a store open. Congratulations on this accomplishment, I know it’s a big deal. For our listeners that aren’t familiar with the car business, why don’t you give us a quick 30 seconds on what you’re up to down there, and give us a little bit of the business and what you’re all about?

 


Jason Graciano:
You’re welcome and thank you for acknowledging how difficult it is with your analogy of landing all those airplanes at one airport at the runway, and the logistics of it, and everything I’ve been going through in the last several months is quite difficult. But in the car business as a whole, the automotive industry as a whole, what we do is we provide a service. We assist customers in getting into either their dream car or just another car they’re trading in and getting into a new one. At the same time, we service those vehicles. Have maybe maintenance due, or some mechanical failures, or anything of that sort, we have a service department where we take care of that as well.

 



That’s really over the top, on the surface, but what really has me in love with the automotive industry is what so many people don’t know, and what so many people don’t know is how much a dealership contributes to society, to the community, in terms of tax dollars/revenue, as far as jobs that are created, as far as impact on the community by sponsorship programs, whether it’s athletic teams or academics, or events that go on where your local concert might have been sponsored by a dealership, or an event that’s held for maybe a five-K race to raise funds might be sponsored by a local dealership as well.

 



Within the dealership, some of the things I’m most excited about is what we do with our employees and the opportunity that it offers. For example, myself, I started as a sales person trying to have a part-time job and pay for school when I was in college, and a decade later I’m the managing partner at my very own dealership. There’s not too many industries and not too many businesses where they offer that kind of opportunity.

 


Adam Robinson:
It’s an industry many people don’t consider as a career path, but you’ve proven that it can be a great one. Now, you’ve got your own store and you’re off and running. I think, for listeners, need to know that you have a high dose of humility. For 13 years you worked at the largest volume Honda stores in the United States, a top 1% operator. Brag about yourself a little bit. Tell us what led to your ability to go do what you’re doing right now.

 


Jason Graciano:
I’m not very good at bragging about myself, but for the sake of the show and the people that are not familiar with who I am … Real quick, my background, my parents immigrated from the Dominican Republic in the late 1970s with close to nothing, very humble, humble beginnings. I came from a school where if you wanted to move up in the world, if you wanted to be better, you just had to go to school and make sure you got a good education, and then the flip side of that was work really, really hard. My father was not fortunate to graduate even high school. We’ve come from low education to now a point where I’ve got a higher education, and I’m an avid reader, and I go to tons of seminars, workshops, and sessions where I’m able to interact with people and share ideas, learn and grow.

 



Because I have that mindset, I was able to I guess stand out head and shoulders from the rest of the people that I was, I don’t want to say competing with, but people that I was in business with, or colleagues, and when I started in the car business at the early age of 20, I started selling cars and I grew rather quickly. I became a sales manager in about a year or less. I’m just turning 22 years old, about to turn 22 years old, and here I am in charge of a group of people that responsible for their livelihoods that are in some cases twice my age. It was a … You have to real serious real fast. I took that opportunity seriously. I made sure that the people that I was working with got the best of me, and we started growing, growing, growing, and we ended up being the number one sales team at the Honda store, and then that Honda store became the number one Honda store in the country, and as far as retail units are concerned, we’re the number one Honda store in the world.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s unbelievable. Congratulations on that career trajectory. It’s pretty amazing.

 



What people also should know is you were named one of Automotive News’ 40 Under 40. I forget, it was a couple years ago.

 


Jason Graciano:
Yeah, it was a couple of years ago. I was 30 years old, so I made the cut 10 years early for Automotive News Top 40 Under 40 and I love that program and what they do, and it’s awesome that they give recognition to some of the people that are working day-in and day-out, and feel like there isn’t a spotlight or there isn’t a stage or a platform where they can interact with other business leaders in our industry, and share ideas and how they became successful, so for me that was a huge honor. I was extremely humbled, and it really, really helped me in my career. It made take things just a little bit more serious, and say, “Hey, I’m one of the Top 40 Under 40 in the United States. Am I having this conversation like one of those? Am I interviewing this person like one of those? Am I having the standards that a person from the Top 40 Under 40 would have that?”

 



So, it really made me hold my feet to the fire in terms of making sure that I kept true to that title.

 


Adam Robinson:
Well, I’m excited to dive in to the people side of the car business, and how you go about conducting your business in an industry that’s not, let’s be honest, known for being particularly good at culture-building and team-building. The latest Automobile Association industry report, NAD report, showed last year turnover in sales positions approaching 70%, female employees turning over at nearly 90% a year. It’s a tough business to be in, but for the right person it can be an exceptional career path. You’ve done such a great job with it, I want to have listeners, particularly those in industries where they may be thinking, hey this is a tough industry to recruit and retain people, and share some-

 






Adam Robinson:
Some tips on where you’ve got it right. So let’s dig in there. If you were to start with an overall philosophy about the people side of the business, and how you intend to manage that at your new store, walk us through that. What is your philosophy?

 


Jason Graciano:
Well, my philosophy is simple. A manager’s responsibility, or a coach’s responsibility, or boss’ responsibility is first and foremost to develop people. I have a really strong belief that if you take care of your people and you develop them, you’re going to have people that are going to want to stick by you for the long run. Number two is to have vision. It’s very difficult for a person to be boss or a leader if you don’t have a vision, and you don’t have the direction in which you are headed. You have to be able to provide that vision and energize those people and convince that this is where we’re going, and this is why you should come with me.

 



Going back to the first point, that development part. If I was not developed, if I didn’t focus on developing myself, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’ve gone through different management styles, and the one that works the best for me is when I actually care about the people that are working with me, and I care about where their career is headed, and I care about whether they’re doing good or doing badly. You have to take that responsibility onto yourself of where they’re headed. If they’re not headed on the right track, that’s your fault. If they do really, really good, that’s your fault, too. So you’ve got be able to accept responsibility for both of those.

 


Adam Robinson:
As you think about the opportunity that you have here to open your own store, which is a huge opportunity as you well know, you’ve thought about team building. I want to understand how you thought about the process of putting a team together. You had the opportunity to start from scratch. How did you approach that?

 


Jason Graciano:
This was the first time in my life that I needed to call up several people at the same time. I was vindicated when I received the opportunity to have an open-point Nissan store. The reason I said I was vindicated is it made me feel like everything I was doing in the last decade or so was correct, was right. When I called a few people to let them know about my next venture, and I was calling a few people that I had worked with in the past that I knew would be proud of me, and that were started off as entry-level sales people and have worked their way up in the business, and these are colleagues that I have high regard and I have a high level of respect for, that are top producers in their position at their company.

 



I made a couple phone calls, and literally 90% of the people that I called told me, “Tell me when and where I need to be, and I’ll be there.” So I’m blessed, I’m fortunate to be able to have a total of 12 people that are moving themselves, their families, their kids, they’re relocating, moving, transitioning from the position that they had at the previous store, and volunteering to come in and work with me to make sure this is a huge success.

 



Circling back, if I had to do this on my own, I think I’d be up for a crazy challenge. Now, knowing that I have the team around me, the people that not only believe in me, that believe in the process and believe in what I’m capable of, I know this is going to be a no brainer of ultimate success, that we’re going to blow the roof off this place, and we’re going to just do great, great business.

 


Adam Robinson:
Where did you learn how to hire people?

 


Jason Graciano:
I originally learned how to hire people from my mentor and my previous boss on what are some of the quick … In the car business, you get training. I learned how to hire people after I was already a manager and responsible for people. That’s usually how that works in the car business. It’s like ready, set, go. Once the bullets are flying, and then you learn you need to duck and fire back. I originally learned him, but then, since I was a really young manger, and I had people that were substantially older than me, I was intimidated. It gives you a feeling of insecure. What I did was, I did as much research as I could, read it up on books, attended classes to get that skillset and be comfortable in speaking to, recruiting, and hiring people.

 


Adam Robinson:
At your store, what’s your favorite interview question? What do you think tells you the most about what you need to know to make a decision?

 


Jason Graciano:
I have very casual, I guess you could call it informal, interviews. I don’t like the structured, sit down, this is a list of questions I’m going to go over, and you gotta have the answers. Right answers, wrong answers, and you’re going to get a strike or a check. I have a very personable conversation that’s organic, and I let it grow from what it is.

 



But one of my favorite questions, and it’s a three-part question, but one of my favorite question is, “Where do you see yourself in one year?” Then I follow up with, “Where do you see yourself in three years,” and “Where do you see yourself in five years?” That pretty much tells me everything I need to know about the person that’s going to be working with me.

 



The reason I say that is because I can tell whether that person has goals and if they have goals, which direction those goals are, what all their values are, what morals they have, what level of confidence they have and want to have, and you sort of segue that into the second part of the question, where … Well, what are some of the things that you’re good at now, that you want to get better at within a year, three years, and five years?

 



Similarly, the third part would be, what are some of the things that you might be struggling with, or you might have an area of opportunity where you could increase your skill sets. Where do you see yourself where you are now, and then in one year, three years, and five years?

 


Adam Robinson:
You’re looking for goals, you’re looking for an upward trajectory. What would be an example of an answer that, if you got it, it wouldn’t wow you? What do you hear when you think, “Ah, this is not the kind of person I want.”

 


Jason Graciano:
Well, something that I would here that’s not the kind of person I want is, regardless of the position that I’m interviewing for, the person says, “In one year, hopefully, I can maintain the job, and keep everything the same, and in three years I want to grow the business,” but if they give me some small numbers of what they’re looking to grow, it sort of says something about them, and in five years if they haven’t had massive growth in their personal lives and in their business lives, that’s just not the kind of person that I want to associate myself with. Because if I, personally, I’m looking for massive growth in five years, and to be able to double or triple what it is that I’m doing in two, three, or five years. I need to align myself with people that are operating at that frequency. People that I have that type of vision. Not for me, not to be aligned with my vision, but for people to have that vision for themselves.

 



So if I have a group of people, I have 10 people, 20 people, 100 people in a company, and my vision is to, let’s say for example, in five years triple the business that I’m doing. The hundred people collectively need to be able to think and have goals of tripling their business in five years. Even if they have those, and I don’t, my business is still going to triple, because we’re aligned in our thinking, we’re aligned with what our goals are.

 


Adam Robinson:
So you’ve talked to somebody, you feel like they’re goal oriented, you’ve heard what you wanted to hear and you feel good about them. Let’s say they’ve started working for you or for a manager on your team. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Give us your approach to praising superior performance, and then on the flip side, what happens when somebody’s not meeting expectations? How do you handle that?

 


Jason Graciano:
Well, in our business people tend to wear different hats. By that I mean they have different responsibilities or different levels of responsibilities, and there are people that are going to be good in certain areas, and people that are going to be not so good in certain areas. Where I think I’m able to really thrive and get the best out of people is when I have them focused in the areas or the categories that they’re actually good at. Not, “Hey, you’re a 2/10 in this category, so I’m gonna keep making you do this until you become a 10,” versus me filtering out and putting them into the position that I feel that they’re going to maximize their output, maximize their productivity.

 



Now, there are some cases where if a person is in a position, and I’ve had situations in my career where a person is not the right fit, but the person’s a good person, a good worker, fits most of the criteria but they’re not producing what they need to produce. Before you say goodbye to that person, I like to repurpose or transition people into other positions. There are many times, and I’ve witnessed many times where a person is struggling at a position, and you just switch him out, put him in a different job title, a different role with different responsibilities, and now this person is thriving. This person is doing amazing.

 



Not only that, the loyalty level increases through the roof, because they feel like they could have put me out to pasture, they could have put me out on the sidewalk, but what they did was they gave me another opportunity to excel in a different area.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s great. So when that happens, that’s fantastic. Give me the talk. I’m not working out. How do you hold someone accountable for results in a way that respects them as an individual but also moves them on if they’re taking up a spot?

 


Jason Graciano:
Well, that conversation can’t happen only at the end. I’m really good at being transparent up front. Prior to the job being done, prior to us identifying that they are not fitting the role, that they are not excelling in that role, there is a … Prior to your beginning, there is an absolute layout of what an example of a good job is, a bad job is, and an outstanding job is. The person is not surprised. I think in many businesses, especially in the car business, they tend to shoot from the hip. A person’s not doing so well, they were never told what they were expected to do. A person not doing well, and it’s like, “Hey, listen, you know what. You’re not working out for us. It’s gonna be time for you to either get better or get out.” I don’t like that. I think if a person knows going in what is expected of them, and if they are not meeting those expectations, the conversation becomes so much easier, because not only you know where they are at, they also know where they are at.

 



The conversation is, “Remember when we sat down and we went over what is expected as far results or as far as productivity from your position or from your role? We have been there for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, however long it is. We’re going to have to make some adjustments. The adjustments include you. They don’t exclude you, they include you. I feel like we will be able to try something different, where you can help out yourself and the company. What do you think about that?”

 



And then have the person respond, and then ask them for their feedback. “Where do you think you’d be able to do a better job within the company?” If you come off honestly and sincerely that you want to keep them in the company, and you want to find the right fit for them, they’ll come up with solutions for you.

 


Adam Robinson:
What’s one thing you think you could do better as it relates to the people side of what you do?

 


Jason Graciano:
One thing I can always do better is: increase the level of training. I am very, very, very avid into training. I spend a lot of time on training and developing my people, and even still, I feel like I could do a better job. I have really good relationships with the people that I work with, and that has helped me and hurt me. So not necessarily I could do better, but maybe I could be a little bit more cautious. When I say cautious, I mean of myself. Not let myself be turned off by having a relationship with someone because I had a bad experience with somebody a year ago, two years ago.

 



So backtracking a little bit. If I have a close relationship with someone, and that person turns around and leaves and goes to the competitor, or is no longer employed at the company, it’s easy for me at some point to feel like, “Oh, no. Everybody might do that to me, so let me distance myself.” I need to be able to separate those two, because I know that having a stronger bond and a better relationship, although there are business leaders that are totally against it, I feel like that’s why I’ve been able to get the maximum squeeze, or maximum effort out of people.

 


Adam Robinson:
Now, in addition to being the new owner of Green Acres Nissan and opening the store from scratch, which I know is so easy, you have all this free time. It looks like you also contributed to a book that’s coming out in a couple of months called The Choice. Tell us about that.

 


Jason Graciano:
Well, yeah. I am opening a brand new store, and I have no time. Because I figured … I’m native from New York, born and raised in New York. I was with Honda for close to 14 years. Now I’m in Florida, Palm Beach, so it’s a new state. Now I’m going from Honda to Nissan, which is a new brand, so I figured on top of all that, might as well just start adding some new stuff. I said, I feel like right now, all the choices that I’m making, being able to leave a very comfortable position where people work 20/25 years and hopes to be able to get to the level that I was at, and I made the choice to leave that for more opportunity, and to be able to go in a different direction. I feel like those choices that I was making, the choices that I’m making, and the interview and the hiring process. The choices that I’m making as far as the culture of the store, the vision of the store, the values of the store. All those choices, people can learn from.

 



I am where I am today because my mindset is a mindset of abundance, a mindset of being able to give, give, give, so that later in life I can start receiving. I’m not the type of person that wants to take. I’m going through some incredible broke times, to make it sound nice. But right now I’m stressed, I’m under a ton of pressure, I have a ton of choices and decisions that I need to make. I’m operating at a level that I never thought I was capable of operating at. I feel like people on a large scale can benefit from my story. So The Choice is about 10 others sharing choices that they had to make, difficult choices that they had to make in their life, and each story walks you through where they were, the choice they made, and where they are now.

 



For me, I have the unique opportunity of all amongst all the authors that I’m right in transition. I have a follow-up book coming out in about, I would like to say, six to nine months, but I know writing a book takes a little time, and publishing and making it available to the masses takes time, but I really do want to follow up and let everybody know this is what I did, and now here is where I am. I want to provide the results of the choices that I’ve been making in the last six to nine months.

 


Adam Robinson:
So The Choice is available when?

 


Jason Graciano:
The Choice should be available at the end of November.

 


Adam Robinson:
Is there a way that listeners can check that out ahead of time?

 


Jason Graciano:
Yeah, they can check that out ahead of time. I am beginning to start to post up on any of my social platforms. I’m very active on Facebook, very active on Instagram, very active on Twitter as well as LinkedIn. I have not crossed over to the Snapchat world, but I am active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and they can find me on all platforms under Jason Graciano. I’ll start posting up, and I’m going to start posting up snippets so that people can actually get some interest and see if it’s going to be their style of book.

 


Adam Robinson:
Very good. Well, in addition to all of that, what book are you reading right now, and would you recommend it to our audience?

 


Jason Graciano:
I’m in between two books. I’m reading one book for the first time, which is Extreme Ownership, and Extreme Ownership is by some military that had served, Navy Seals, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.

 



And I’m rereading, probably for the fourth time, Relentless. Relentless is a book that has completely revolutionized my thinking. It was written by … The other is Tim Grover, who used to be Michael Jordan’s personal trainer, and he then moved on to be Kobe Bryant’s personal trainer, and then he moved on to be Dwayne Wade’s personal trainer, and that relentless book just gets you in the right mindset, especially for the time that I’m at right now.

 


Adam Robinson:
Jason, if you were to come back on the show a year from now and tell us whether or not you were able to tackle the single biggest people related issue or opportunity that you have in front of you, what would you be telling us?

 


Jason Graciano:
First, the biggest opportunity or challenge that I have right now is I have a brand new store, and although I have 12 people that are relocated and moving because I know them, the total staff is going to be anywhere between 60 to 70 people, and I’ve been interviewing individually everybody, so my biggest challenge is taking all these different personalities that I’ve never seen work together, and putting them all in one box and hoping that they play nice. For me, it’s a matter making sure I find the right culture, the right frequency, and the right vibe within the store. So hopefully in a year from now, I’m telling you that everybody that I started with, 100% of the people that started with me are still with me, and that I’ve grown. That would be an ultimate goal for me.

 


Adam Robinson:
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the final word. You’ve been learning from Jason Graciano, car industry veteran and managing partner of the brand new and soon to be open Green Acres Nissan. Jason, thank you very much for being with us on the program.

 


Jason Graciano:
Thank you again for having me, I appreciate you, and I appreciate your time.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s a wrap for the Best Team Wins Podcast, where we’re featuring entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name Adam Robinson, author of the book The Best Team Wins, which you can find on Amazon at www.thebestteamwins.com.

 



Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you next week.

 

The post How Jason Graciano Built his Greenacres Nissan Team from Scratch appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

Great Company Culture is a Differentiator

 

At Bateman Group, they know their company culture is a business strategy that helps them win clients. When Founder and CEO Fred Bateman founded the company in 2003, he set out to start a different kind of PR company, one where employees want to stick around and build a career, not just use the job as a rung on the ladder to something better.  You know that they’re doing it differently because the first thing you see when you go to their website is the following statement:

HIRE GREAT PEOPLE (AND EXCEPTIONAL WORK WILL FOLLOW).

On this episode, Fred shares his many years of experience in hiring and retaining great teams, building an outstanding company culture, and how all of this helps Bateman Group win against its competitors.

Listen to this episode on:

                     

iTunes                    Google Play             Soundcloud             Stitcher

 

Follow Bateman Group on Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin

Connect with Fred on Twitter | Linkedin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transcripts:

Adam Robinson:
Welcome to The Best Team Wins podcast where we feature entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name is Adam Robinson and for the next 25 minutes, I’ll be your host as we explore how to build your business through better hiring.

 



Today on the program, Fred Bateman the CEO and founder of Bateman Group, at bootstrap strategic communications and content marketing agency based in San Francisco and New York City. Fred founded Bateman Group in 2003 and the firm currently has 60 employees. Fred Bateman, we are excited to learn today from you, welcome to the show.

 


Fred Bateman:
Thanks for having me. My pleasure.

 


Adam Robinson:
In the last 12 months, Bateman Group has broken through record annual revenues and you’ve won all kinds of awards. 2017 North American Saber Award for tech agency of the year from Holmes Report. You’ve been on the Ink best cultures list now. You’ve made the entrepreneur awards list, you’ve been profiled all over the place. Your employment brand is awesome. You guys ooze great place to work all over and it’s so great to have you on the program.

 


Fred Bateman:
Thank you. I always joke that it took 10 years to become an overnight success. Like in any industry, the last few years have been tremendous in terms of industry recognition and business momentum. It certainly didn’t happen overnight, it took a long time to get there.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s great. Clearly, humility is a factor in that, I can tell already. We’re here today to focus on the people side of your business but before we dive in, let’s set the stage. Give us 30 seconds on Bateman Group and what you’re all about.

 


Fred Bateman:
Sure, my pleasure. Bateman Group is as you mentioned, we’re a PR firm but we like to go a little broader than that because we do more than public relations. We do also in addition to what people traditionally think of public relations being media relations, we also have a content marketing arm, the landscape in PR has broadened a lot over the last few years and we’ve tried to be responsive to that by formalizing practice areas around content creation and research campaigns and data campaigns. We like to say we take what we call a content led, data driven approach to strategic communications for our clients. Which helps set us apart and distinguishes us from the competition because many of them just really do media relations for their clients and have a hard time integrating in the other practice areas as well as we do.

 



I think that’s what our clients look to is look to us for, is leadership in terms of taking an integrative approach to the way that they do strategic communications and looking for a partner to help guide them in terms of how to integrate in these newer elements that are at play.

 


Adam Robinson:
And if our listeners want to learn more about what you do, what’s the best way for them to do that?

 


Fred Bateman:
There’s always our website at www.bateman-group.com or just Googling us. It’ll come up. We’ve offices in San Francisco and in Brooklyn ,New York. I always like to joke that we were Brooklyn before it was cool. There about seven years. We’re a national firm and our clients are, they range from globally known companies like Google, LinkedIn, Betterment, Atlassian to some of today’s hottest startups. VC funded startups that are tomorrow’s technology leaders.

 


Adam Robinson:
Quite the client roster and had to chuckle when you named that list and say some of today’s hottest startups. Those were the hardest startups of the last 10 years and you guys have a who’s who client roster, pretty impressive. Pretty impressive.

 


Fred Bateman:
We try to be, curate a client roster. We’re pretty selective in terms of who we decide to take on and that’s, while we could be probably twice the size, I feel like we don’t ever want to have quantity over quality when it comes to the clients that we work with. We’ve really been focused on selectivity from the very beginning and not just growth for growth’s sake.

 


Adam Robinson:
Sitting above the fold on the homepage of your website is the phrase, hire great people and exceptional work will follow. You have put hiring the best team front and center in how you market yourself to your prospects and sell yourself to your customers. And digging into the website, and I would encourage listeners to do that, it’s everything somebody would want to know about working for you, down to the benefits you offer, what’s in it for them, all about your vision. It’s just an exceptional employment brand and I have to ask you, how in the world did you learn to do that? Did somebody tell you do it this way? Was this intuitive? How did you figure out how to do all of this? ‘Cause it’s really exceptional particularly for the size firm you are. You just don’t see it.

 


Fred Bateman:
In our business, people are buying, our customers are buying the people at the firm. I’ve been in this industry since I was in college, actually starting as an intern when I was at Boston College and working in the Boston market before moving to San Francisco and there’s always, it’s always been apparent to me that turnover has been something that plagued our industry for decades and it’s still a major issue in terms of something that inhibits business growth for public relations agencies. For years there was a unspoken rule or understanding among people who worked at PR firms that you were marking time until that corporate job came around that you would grab and then that’s where you would finally begin to make the real money and see your career really start to take off and that the agency world was providing you with the training to that.

 



I really wanted to break the mold on that one when starting Bateman Group and create a place where people could spend their entire careers and feel like they could reinvent themselves, be constantly challenged and have opportunities constantly coming up with a transom that were exciting to them in that they could evolve and that this workplace could be someplace where they could spend their entire careers if they chose to. Because I love the agency side, I think it’s much more exciting, I love the variety, the corporate side, if you find the right company, is great, but a lot of times companies get acquired, there’s a lot of change, there’s a lot of unpredictability, agencies stay around forever but the corporate side’s constantly changing as the marketplace moves so rapidly particularly in technology.

 



I wanted to create a culture that was sticky. In that people felt like they could spend their careers at and be able to constantly expand their skillset. I realized in order to do that we needed to redesign how the agency culture is structured. And do so in a way that would be also appealing to customers at the same time. That wasn’t completely internally focused but something we could market externally as a benefit to our customers too.

 


Adam Robinson:
So culture is a differentiator. That’s a business strategy for you.

 


Fred Bateman:
Absolutely. One of the areas where we often find ourselves winning against our most formidable competitors is a lot of times clients come to us because they’ve had so much turnover on their teams at some of our competing agencies that we come up against. They grew tired of having to retrain new people time and time again because our competitors can’t hold onto their staff as long as we can. Generally we have relations with our clients that last four, five, six, seven years and they have almost the same team in place the entire time which is really unusual. It becomes a differentiator for us against the competition because we can almost guarantee that the team’s going to look very similar from the onset of a relationship all the way through the lifecycle three or four or five years later. That’s very unusual in our industry.

 


Adam Robinson:
Powerful stuff. Describe the way everyone else does culture and how you do it and why you’re winning with your culture.

 


Fred Bateman:
I don’t think any of competitors set out to have bad cultures. Nobody does that, they all have the best of intentions. Then for whatever reason it becomes deprioritized over time. You have to have it woven into your DNA from very early on that you prioritize your people first and your clients second. And that’s not easy because we’re in a client service business, where we have very demanding clients, it’s not an easy business to be in, clients are demanding, sometimes unreasonably so and it can be very hard to remember that your people have to come first I’ve wanted to create an agency where I prioritize my personal relationships ahead of business success.

 



I never really wanted to ever have anybody work here who felt like I, if a client went away, that their job would be at risk or that their reputation at the firm would be jeopardized because we didn’t have their backs. One of the things that’s different about us is that, and this starts with me, but I’ve built a team that really truly believes in this, is that our personal relationships or the people that work here are much more important and have to be prioritized over our client relationships. And as a result, our clients get the attention and the commitment of people that feel truly trusted and supported and they end up, it becomes indirect to us from a business perspective. We invest in our people first and the clients follow, rather than focusing only on our clients’ service offering or attracting leads and then making people prioritization second.

 


Adam Robinson:
What’s so ironic about this, I read a profile posted on your company’s site that you did on interviews and you make this statement that you actually don’t think you’re very good at interviewing people at all. You said that it’s something you’ve always struggled with and so I find it fascinating that for someone who’s self admittedly struggles with this to have built such a world class culture. How did you go from the struggle to being so good at this?

 


Fred Bateman:
I’m just not good at interviewing candidates in a way that rigorously shakes them down for their strengths and weaknesses. I just try to sell them on the firm and get them to like me. I consider it a weakness because I don’t, I never really good at walking out of these conversations with a sense of whether the person is any good at what we do. I just know whether there’s chemistry and I definitely come at it from a more of a place of humility. I’m always surprised and honored and flattered that anybody wants to work here. With every client win, I’m always so surprised and still honored and flattered that people want to work with Bateman Group or with our brand. It’s important to remain humble and people feel that. Even if we don’t decide to hire a certain candidate, the experience that they had coming through here and the interviewing process is one of total respect and total humility.

 



It’s an important attribute both for me personally and for the company because some of our best advocates are people that we haven’t hired or clients that haven’t hired us. Or employees that have come through here and maybe it didn’t work out. I feel like people can either, your former employees can either help or hinder, particularly in the age of social media with Glassdoor and websites like that anybody that comes through our ranks can hurt or help you. If you treat them with respect and humility, more than likely when they move on they’re going to continue to talk positively about your company and your brand.

 


Adam Robinson:
Do you have, I know you feel like you’re winging it and you just want people, you want to sell on the firm and get them to like you as you say, do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask? Is there a standby that gives you what you need? Surely there’s veto situations where you go, you know, this person as sharp as they are, is just not going to work out here.

 


Fred Bateman:
There’s a couple things I try to uncover which PR agencies are very team oriented environments, I have found that, and this is a sweeping generalization, I’ll probably get in trouble for even saying, I find that people who are only children or maybe never participated in a team activity like sports or theater or whatever, they sometimes have a hard time adjusting to the team orientation that you have to have at a PR agency. Which is putting your own personal ego aside and your own professional goals for the good of the team and recognizing that you’ll be rewarded later. And generously so. But there’s often, there’s a patience that’s inherent in that that not everybody has. So I try to uncover whether people were involved in team activities in their prior lives and if that’s an indication of whether they’ll do well here in the team environment.

 



I also look for people that I think come from a more working class background like myself sometimes. Not that we don’t have people that come from families of significant means, they’re extremely hard working and devoted to the company and committed to their clients and their careers but I find there’s a hunger among people who come from families of maybe lesser means who either maybe helped put themselves through college or get scholarships that can’t be matched. I always find that that’s something that really drove me was growing in a family, a single parent household in wrong side of the tracks Boston. I wanted to get out and it was, there was a desire for me to succeed that was driven by something just not wanting to be working class anymore. I think there’s something to be said for that.

 


Adam Robinson:
Sure. It’s a formula that’s clearly yielded results for you. Is your leadership team a reflection of that focus in the hiring process?

 


Fred Bateman:
One of things I’ve tried to do is build a leadership team that’s very diverse. And so I have to say that we all have the same values and we’re very much aligned on those in terms of putting people first, in terms of working with clients that are of the highest quality and not necessarily looking for rapid business growth for the sake of rapid business growth. The focus that we have here on mentoring is really, really strong so the people that are in leadership positions here spend a lot of time mentoring junior and middle level staff on developing their skills. But we come in very different packages. I wouldn’t want a leadership team of clones of me at all. That would be a really bad thing because I’m very much aware of my shortcomings and my weaknesses and so I’ve tried to fill in those gaps with people who are good at those things.

 



We tend to, we have a very diverse leadership team of men and mostly women and of all different sizes and shapes and races and sexual orientations and I’m really proud of that and because of the diversity that we have that’s built in, it’s a really powerful thing because people on the staff always can find someone that they self-identify with and that’s so important when you’re building a company is that the people at the middle and junior levels see somebody on the leadership team that they can identify with. Whether it’s somebody that has built, gotten married and had kids and built their family on this platform and that’s what path they want to go. Or seeing really powerful woman who is built an incredible career in is still single and thriving. Or had a child on their own because they had the means to do so and didn’t necessarily feel they had to wait to be married to have that life experience. I feel like we have an incredible leadership team but we’re all so different looking. That it’s been a powerful selling tool in terms of recruitment.

 


Adam Robinson:
You mentioned something in the comments there about mentoring junior folks. Do you have a formal mentorship program in place at the firm?

 


Fred Bateman:
We do. I have two co-owners, Bill Bourdon here in San Francisco and Tyler Perry, a woman, who runs my New York office and Tyler was my first employee and she formalized our mentorship program very early on in our history. And yes, it’s very formalized. Everything that we do has a process when it comes to either recruiting or our culture or our vibe, there’s always a backbone to it. It’s important that you don’t just, it’s not just words on paper but there’s actually a process for doing everything. Our mentorship program is a strong one and the process is once somebody’s onboard about three months, they hand select their own mentor they’re not assigned one. ‘Cause they might be assigned their manager so they often pick a mentor that’s not somebody’s they report to directly but somebody that they self-identify with. As I mentioned, that sense of self-identification is really important.

 



They can choose their own mentor and they meet monthly and we subsidize mentor lunches or mentor dinners. Somebody that’s not their direct manager to turn to for guidance in terms of how to navigate our culture, how to navigate the industry and talk to about how to further their careers.

 


Adam Robinson:
As somebody on your leadership team, what would you tell me are the most, let’s say I’m a new member of management or leadership organization, what are you going to tell me are the most important characteristics that I can have? Or behaviors I can exhibit that will make me successful at your company?

 


Fred Bateman:
Well I’d say that humility is one for sure. A sense of humor is another. We don’t take ourselves that seriously and everybody at the firm realizes that it’s a PR not ER is an old cliché expression that we like to use. Those are attributes that go a long way. There’s a intellectual curiosity as well that’s inherent among all of us. Even when we’re very, very small we viewed ourselves as superior to our competitors in terms of our approach and our abilities and with that comes a high standard in terms of intellect and in terms of knowledge. Not just of trends in communications or technology but in economics, macroeconomic trends overall. There comes, people that do well here are people who are intellectually curious and always reading and learning and inquiring about what’s going on in the broader industry and not just in PR specifically. With that, ups the caliber of our ability to provide strategic council because we have really, really smart people that are encouraging learning and growing across the board.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s fantastic. Not everybody that you think is going to work out always works out or performs to expectations. What’s your philosophy around feedback or if necessary, coaching people onto better fits for them?

 


Fred Bateman:
That’s a good question. Our performance review, if you look at our Glassdoor reviews, our performance review process is pretty rigorous. Everybody is reviewed at usually three months, six months and annually and then generally every six months after that in their second year. It’s important to recognize that not everybody is the best fit for agency life or for this industry. Making sure that they’re treated with a real lot of respect and that’s there some counseling in terms of, sometimes people reach of point where the amount of multitasking you have to do on the agency side is just too much for them and they would benefit by having a singular focus of a corporate site position where there’s just one technology to learn, one industry, one product line or what have you. The agency side you’ve got to get really smart and be able to speak knowledgeably to a variety of technology sub markets that really keeps you on your toes and some people thrive on that and love that, other people are overwhelmed by that.

 



We often find that some people get to a stage it doesn’t make sense to coach them to the corporate side and then they end up hiring us as their agency, which is great because the respect that we treat people with throughout the process is really appreciated by the person on the receiving end. And it helps your brand because when they go on into the industry overall, they still look fondly on their time at Bateman Group and tend to recommend us, refer us or even hire us.

 


Adam Robinson:
The ultimate compliment is for a terminated employee to hire you as their agency of record. That’s pretty impressive.

 


Fred Bateman:
I’ve always made it a priority to try and stay in touch with people who have come through our ranks. I certainly have my network and former clients are a part of that. But I’d say more so are our former employees and we’ve had some really exceptional people, it’s been tough to let them to go sometimes because they’ve added so much to this whole journey of mine and the other people that have been here for a long time. We really do make an effort to stay in close contact with them, it’s a small industry, even though it’s grown tremendously since I’ve been in it. And our paths cross all the time so it’s really important to never burn a bridge and to remember, as I said earlier, former employees can either really be an advocate or particularly with things like Glassdoor, other forms of social media, really hurt your brand is you don’t treat them with the right modicum of respect and decency.

 


Adam Robinson:
We talked about respect and counseling folks out of the firm, how do you reward great performance?

 


Fred Bateman:
The first is moving, people who are talented should be promoted at a cycle. It doesn’t have to be necessarily a waiting game or waiting in line for a certain time. If they’re ready to move up the ranks quickly and we tend to hire people usually a level lower than they usually want to be hired in at or think they should be hired in at, if they come from another agency. So they can really exceed expectations. In doing that we have to make sure that we do move them along quickly or they’ll get bored and they’ll want to leave. Recognizing talent and moving them quickly along our promotion path is important.

 



I also think public recognition is something that we’re really good at. We monthly all-hands or even just over email on a daily basis. Calling out successes publicly to the whole company. I had employees both former and current tell me that they never felt more appreciated or more recognized for their good work than they have at Bateman Group and that just brings a tear to my eye.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s great. You’ve been in business now approaching 15 years. What has changed from a recruiting and retention standpoint as the owner? What have you seen the major shift be? What’s different now then what was different at the, in the early 2000s?

 


Fred Bateman:
A couple of factors have come into play. Our reputation has grown and we have become one of two or three or four leaders in our segment of communications and technology PR and we do have a, and our culture, the reputation that our culture’s gotten has made it a little easier to attract talent than we started out. It’s much easier to get higher quality resumes than it was in the 2000s when our reputation wasn’t as well known. At the same time the economy has continued it’s uptick and we’re in a sustained period of an upmarket, the longest we’ve ever experienced without a recession, knock wood and holding onto talent is harder and harder because there’s more, especially in San Francisco and New York where we have offices, more competition for that talent. And we know that are people are constantly getting hit up on LinkedIn by recruiters and for other positions and so we have to work twice as hard as say we did in 08 or 09 when there was a recession to keep people stimulated and compensated in a way that they don’t go other places.

 



While we think the leap flow in terms of candidates is easier now than in our early days, it’s harder to, we have to pay very, very competitively because this is the most expensive city in the country, San Francisco, New York is a close second now, it’s interesting how that has flip flopped. We have our offices in the two most expensive markets in the world, or at least in the US, I guess the world is inaccurate if you look at Geneva or places like that. Certainly in the United States we have to constantly be making our packages more and more appealing when it comes to compensation and benefits. We’re always evaluating what we offer from a health benefits and professional development packages for our employees in trying to up the ante. I can say confidently that our benefits package and our perks for employees are the best in the industry and I always want to make sure that we’re offering that. It certainly it affect our margins but that’s something that we live because we feel like the upside to our business is worth the sacrifice in the profit margins.

 


Adam Robinson:
Is it safe to say that your profit margin would be worse impacted if the turnover was higher?

 


Fred Bateman:
I think so. I’ve never, I don’t know because I haven’t run a business that was like that before. Or has a lot of turnover afflicting it. Be interesting to compare the two or contrast. But we’ve always been, we’ve always had this model and always enjoyed or have had our success driven by our employer retention so I don’t know. That’s a good question but I think so. I think it would be riskier to have 50% turnover like some of our competitors and constantly be trying to replace those candidates. We would see a lot less top line revenue growth because our clients would leave more frequently. And in the impact on the culture and learning and our ability to provide a high-quality service offering would be so impacted by the turnover I can’t even, I can’t imagine how we would compete. I don’t know how some of our competitors keep the doors open when they suffer from that kind of turnover. It’s amazing to me that they don’t take, do more to try and hold onto their people.

 


Adam Robinson:
You’re doing so many things right. What is one thing, as it relates to the people side of Bateman Group that you think that you could be doing a better job at?

 


Fred Bateman:
As we scale it gets harder. Now that we’re up to 60 plus people and with an open headcount for five more, probably before the end of the year, it gets harder to make sure everybody gets that kind of individualized attention. We’re always trying to improve on, making sure that this model scales and that as we get bigger we don’t lose the attributes that made us such an incredible place to work and a valuable partner to our clients. That’s really tough because there’s only so many of us and I often worry that at 70 or 80 or 90 people, we won’t be able to continue giving people the kind of experience that they have now.

 


Adam Robinson:
Fantastic. Little lighter side question here. What book is on the nightstand and would you recommend it to our audience?

 


Fred Bateman:
Funny but it’s, I just got it from Amazon too and I want to say the right title, but it’s, something about living with anxiety.

 


Adam Robinson:
Okay, all right, tell me more.

 


Fred Bateman:
I’ve always suffered from, I’ve always been high strung but I’ve definitely, that’s kind of morphed into I have an issue managing my own anxiety and I’m always looking for tips for keeping it something under control and also taking my anxiety and turning that adrenaline to positive as opposed to negative energy. And so this book has a lot of tips in terms of recognizing what things in life can cause anxiety. I always tell people I would rather have anxiety rather than depression ’cause at least it gets you out of bed in the morning.

 


Adam Robinson:
Well said.

 


Fred Bateman:
It’s not like, there are times when it becomes overwhelming and I can’t control it, that’s a very personal note. Certainly I don’t mind talking about it as someone who suffers from anxiety disorder, I think it’s important to be public about it and let others know that you can still have a fruitful life and be successful and keep it managed without it taking over.

 


Adam Robinson:
Well thank you for sharing that with us. Final question here as we wrap up, if you were to come back on the program a year from now and tell us whether or not you successfully executed against the one most important thing as it relates to your team, what would that be?

 


Fred Bateman:
Maintaining our eight to 10% employee retention. I’m sorry, let me invert that, I might have to restate that. Our 90 to 92% employee retention. Our attrition is generally only eight to 10%. That’s a barometer that we look at very closely. But we also have a happiness barometer that we just, we’re doing right now, we’re in the process of doing. And we try to maintain a score of around eight or higher out of 10 in terms of employee happiness. We look at that very closely. I think last year we were at 7.9, so we want to get it up over eight and the questionnaire is very in depth. So I’d love next year to be able to report back that we’ve maintained, kept our attrition to eight or 7% or even lowered that amount, while gotten our happiness barometer up over eight or 8.1.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s great. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the final word. You’ve been learning from Fred Bateman, CEO and founder of Bateman Group. Fred just chalked full of great experience based information on how you’ve been so successful the people side of your business. Thank you so much for being here today.

 


Fred Bateman:
Thanks Adam, that was great talking to you.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s a wrap for this episode of The Best Team Wins podcast where we’re featuring entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name is Adam Robinson, author of the book, The Best Team Wins, which you can find online at www.thebestteamwins.com. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week.

 

The post Great Company Culture is a Differentiator appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

Get the Right Person in the Right Seat

In two years, Smashtech has grown from zero to forty employees, all while being a bootstrapped company. Not only have they had incredible growth, but they’ve maintained a winning culture along the way. Co-founders, CEOs, and brothers, Omar Imani and Anwar Husain, say that it’s harder to scale people than it is to scale profits, so they are always getting the right person in the right seat.

Smashtech is a vertically integrated digital marketing company based in San Diego that creates and markets its health and wellness e-commerce brands. They’ve been listed as an Inc Magazine Top 50 Best Workplace and one of the best places to work by the San Diego Business Journal. Find out what these two entrepreneurs have learned about hiring and retaining the best team during their fast-paced growth on this episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast.

 

Listen to this episode on:

                         

iTunes                     Google Play             SoundCloud                Stitcher

 

Follow Smashtech: Facebook |  Instagram

The post Get the Right Person in the Right Seat appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

The Lowest-Cost Employee Engagement Program

Employee recognition lets workers know that their contributions are appreciated and valued, and they are because after all, great employees could be working for someone else. Think about the last time you praised an employee.

Can you remember?

Lack of recognition remains one of the top reasons employees quit. Praising and thanking employees for a job well done has been proven to engage employees, and better employee engagement drives better business results. Fortunately, if you think this might be an issue for your company, employee recognition is an easy and low-cost problem to solve.

One way you can do this is to make employee praise and recognition part of your weekly routine. We’ve done this at Hireology and it’s surprisingly simple: we’ve built the infrastructure on our intranet using Google Sites and Google Forms to collect  “Core Value Shout-Outs”. The shout-outs are gathered anonymously and we announce them in front of the team in our weekly company all-hands. I’ve pulled some examples from our meeting this week:

Core Value
Name
What’s the reason for the shout-out?


Create Wow Moments
Jorie
Our customer gave Jorie rave reviews during a product feedback call. They couldn’t say enough good things about her customer service and positive attitude. Way to delight the customer!


Eager to Improve
Isaac
Isaac identified and deleted seven thousand lines of old, unused code from our account management interfaces!

With this simple tactic, we’ve created a culture of recognition at Hireology and in addition, this exercise helps makes our company core values real for our team — they are not just words on a wall. This is an easy, no-cost, impactful way to recognize employees and everyone in your company can participate.

However, who the recognition comes from is also important, often that means it should come from a manager or senior leader. Here are a few tips for managers to recognize employees effectively:

Praise early and often. Don’t wait to recognize an employee until the end of the day, quarter, year; praise means the most when it’s received soon after a job well done. And of course, there is no limit to employee recognition, but make sure you know how your employee prefers to be recognized so that it’s personally meaningful to them. Does that mean you write them a thank you note or thank them publically in front of the company? If you’re not sure what they’d prefer, just ask.

Be specific. Generic thank yous and compliments are nice, but you’ll get the best results by giving specific, individualized recognition about what your employee did well. You’ll reinforce the effort if you can tell them exactly how they impressed you.

Be democratic. Often, your top performers will continue to be top performers, but you might just push an employee to new heights when you praise someone who really needs the boost. Additionally, every good employee deserves praise, be sure you’re recognizing each team member’s contributions on an individual level.

As a lack of employee recognition is the number one reason people leave jobs, you can’t afford to not to praise your employees. The good news: it’s the lowest-cost program of any employee engagement effort and can be implemented easily. Use these steps and tactics to see employee engagement skyrocket, lower your employee attrition, and improve your team’s results.

So, how will you recognize an employee today?

 

The post The Lowest-Cost Employee Engagement Program appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

How High-Performing Managers Handle Hiring Mistakes

This episode features real-world examples from podcast guests on how to handle hiring mistakes.

Listen to this episode on:

                             

iTunes                      Google Play                Soundcloud                Stitcher

 

We want to know: how do you handle hiring mistakes? Email us at info@thebestteamwins.com to share your best practices.

 

 

 

The post How High-Performing Managers Handle Hiring Mistakes appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

Five Steps to Delivering a Micro-Review

I’m a believer in formal annual reviews. They’re a crucial tool in a manager’s leadership and organizational development toolbox. Companies that toss them out in the name of “the new generation” are losing a major opportunity to shape team members’ professional trajectory.

Day-to-day, an employee may not meet your expectations on particular job tasks and will require feedback. It’s between these more formal performance discussions that the “micro-review” finds its place. What’s a micro-review?

A micro-review is a timely, informal discussion between a manager and their team member that focuses on a review of a specific event or events,
 and where actionable, constructive feedback is provided.

Let’s examine this definition in more detail:

Timely. Micro-reviews are an opportunity to let your team member know how to get better immediately after there was a misstep. Never wait longer than a couple of days to have the discussion and if possible, let your team member know in the moment when they can do better. Don’t wait months to tally up all of the issues you need to address when you can help employees improve performance immediately.

Informal discussion.  Your goal is to have a relaxed but focused tone and to keep the agenda light and flexible.  Scheduling these discussions in advance adds unnecessary formality and pressure and takes away from the discussion.

Between a manager and team member.  Micro-reviews are a two person affair. When giving constructive feedback, the only two people who should be in the room are the manager and the team member with whom they are speaking. Avoid the temptation to try to put additional team members in the room; you lose trust when you criticize an employee in public.

Focuses on a review of a specific event or events.  The micro-review must remain focused on a single issue or event.  If the manager feels the need to discuss the team member’s job at a higher level, the micro-review isn’t the right format.  A well-delivered micro-review will cover a specific instance where the team member’s actions or decisions produced a result that led to sub par results.

And where actionable, constructive feedback is provided.  It’s not enough to tell the team member what you think. When discussing a negative situation, you must provide them with a concrete path to a better way of performing and what you expect in the future. Make sure you’re prepared with constructive feedback for the team member when you enter the conversation.

Employee micro-reviews are a great tool at your disposal when utilized properly. Leverage these five steps to deliver them at a high level of quality and efficacy.

 

Next week, I’ll share with you best practices for praising employees.

The post Five Steps to Delivering a Micro-Review appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

Love Work: an Interview with Chuck Runyon, Anytime Fitness Co-Founder and CEO

Chuck Runyon and his business partner founded Anytime Fitness in 2002 and since then the franchise has grown to over 3000 locations in over 30 countries. Anytime Fitness is one of the largest and fastest growing franchises in history and Chuck shares the secret to their success: it’s all about the people. In this episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast, Chuck discusses his book, Love Work, and how he’s scaled the people side and culture of Anytime Fitness.

 

 

Listen to this episode via:

                      

iTunes                   Google Play             Soundcloud                Stitcher

 

Show notes:

0:26 – About Chuck Runyon and Self Esteem Brands

1:45 – We’re hopping into the way-back machine to when Chuck and his business partner started Anytime Fitness

3:55 – “Do you believe in the idea? Are you willing to work your butt off? Are you willing to do almost anything?”

6:16 – Scaling Anytime Fitness on the people side of the business

8:50 – Chuck’s lessons learned on people and culture at Anytime Fitness

12:30 – Franchising, how to grow the business, and great leadership

15:25 – Discussing Anytime Fitness’ digital differentiation strategy and being the first fitness franchise in China

18:00 – How do you unwind the wrong choice?

20:15 – What is “play at work”?

22:08 – What can Anytime Fitness do better on the people side of the business?

23:18 – “Leaders are readers” –Chuck Runyon discusses what he’s reading

24:23 – What does Anytime Fitness look like next year?

25:48 – Instead of a golden ticket, look for the purple ticket in the first 5000 copies of Love Work

 

Connect with Chuck:

Twitter | Linkedin

Connect with Anytime Fitness:

Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin | Pinterest | Google Plus | Youtube

 

Get your copy of Love Work here!

The post Love Work: an Interview with Chuck Runyon, Anytime Fitness Co-Founder and CEO appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

Performance Reviews Are Still Relevant

Much has been written recently about the evolution of the performance review.  To judge from the past several years’ discussion on the topic, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that performance reviews are a relic of the past, ready to be mothballed.

I disagree with the notion that performance reviews are antiquated, and I realize that I’m an outlier on this topic, but my take on formal performance reviews is that they’re both necessary and valuable.  There are three reasons why I believe that performance reviews, done correctly, remain extremely relevant in today’s business environment.

Performance reviews focus on the big picture.  Much has been written on the concept of “micro-reviews” — short, frequent conversations between a manager and their team member. The driving force behind the micro-review movement has been survey results and research on workplace attitudes exhibited by Millennials showing that this emerging workforce demographic wants frequent feedback, a fair process, and managers who have their best interests in mind.

Here’s the thing: micro-reviews are great. Immediately providing constructive feedback to your team member when it’s needed is absolutely the way to go. But relegating reviews to a weekly cadence of staccato micro-review sessions loses track of the big picture.  Is your team member tracking to long term goals? Do they see and understand how their role fits into the overall organization? Annual, formalized performance review conversations are a critical tool to use to accomplish these objectives.

Performance reviews are the cornerstone of professional development.  Professional development is a process that begins with the end in mind. If you don’t know where your team member wants to go, then you cannot be intentional about their professional development.

Formal performance reviews provide the manager and the team member each with an opportunity to describe the future.  Where does your team member want to be in three, five, and ten years? What role do they see themselves in?  What critical skills and competencies must they develop in order to get there?  It’s the answers to these questions that will provide the clarity required to make micro-reviews effective over the long run.

Performance reviews provide critical data.  Businesses are developing an amazing capacity to create actionable organizational development strategy from performance data gathered across the enterprise. Performance reviews are a major source of the data that enables this type of organizational development work to take place.

For these formal reviews to be effective, managers must invest the time to prepare, create and deliver a meaningful review for each member of their team. Gone are the days where managers can get away with going through the motions with an annual review process; leadership should be actively championing (and monitoring) the review creation and delivery process so that the content is relevant, specific, accurate and actionable.  The result is a treasure trove of data that can be used to improve the business.

Companies that kill their annual review process do so at the risk of losing a big picture perspective, hampering organizational development efforts and eliminating critical data sets than can impact the business.

The post Performance Reviews Are Still Relevant appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

“We don’t work with people who suck.” – Autumn Berrang, President and Co-Founder of Adjective & Co.

The team at Adjective & Co.

Recently named one of the Top 50 Best Workplaces in America by Inc. Magazine, Adjective & Co. is a boutique branding agency that has one major guiding principle: we don’t work with people who suck -and that goes for employees and clients. Autumn Berrang is at the helm as President and Co-Founder and she shares the story of building her awesome team and company culture in this episode. Keep scrolling to find show notes and more about Autumn and her business.

 

 

Listen to this episode on:

              

iTunes            Google Play             SoundCloud            Stitcher

 

Show Notes:

1:04 – “Happy employees do really great work” and more on being named a Top 50 Best Workplace by Inc. Magazine

3:02- About Adjective & Co., (you can follow them on Instagram and Twitter)

4:09 – Fun fact about Autumn! It involves gambling.

5:31 – Autumn’s first hire at Adjective & Co. and borrowing employees

7:06 – Scaling the business and the team

8:30 – Learning how not to hire and getting to know candidates as people instead of just a resume

10:27 – What does karaoke have to do with hiring?

12:45 – The leadership team at Adjective & Co.

14:24 – How Autumn resolves issues with her super close team

18:08 – “We don’t work with people who suck.”

19:45 – The new client quiz and how Adjective & Co. determines whether or not a client will be a good fit

20:57 – Difficult choices as a leader regarding new business and employee happiness

22:42 – Autumn’s management style: directness in all things

23:06 – Maintaining a rewarding work environment

24:51 – “Usually people at their core don’t really change…”

26:09 – One thing that keeps Autumn up at night

27:26 – Autumn is currently reading Radical Candor by Kim Scott and she highly recommends it

 

 

 

The post “We don’t work with people who suck.” – Autumn Berrang, President and Co-Founder of Adjective & Co. appeared first on The Best Team Wins.