Adam Robinson's Blog, page 19

“Constantly give people feedback.” – Chris Campbell, Founder and CEO of ReviewTrackers

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Adam Robinson:
Welcome to The Best Team Wins Podcast, where we’re featuring entrepreneurs 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 will be your host, as we explore how to build your business through better hiring. Today on the program, Chris Campbell is the founder and CEO of ReviewTrackers, based in Chicago. ReviewTrackers is a venture-backed company founded in 2012, currently with 50 employees, and, Chris, we are so excited to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.

 


Chris Campbell:
Adam, thank you so much. I’m excited to be here with you and your listeners and walk through a little bit through our company history and share some of our tidbits with the audience, so it should be a lot of fun.

 


Adam Robinson:
Yeah, so let’s do it. We know the best learning happens through real experiences shared by fellow entrepreneurs and, Chris, this will be a lot of fun, and so for listeners, I’ve known Chris for a long time. Chris, you and I met back when you had a previous business, so we will call you a serial entrepreneur, if that’s appropriate. Lakeshore Branding is how I know Chris, and you’ve been on the journey for a while, my friend.

 


Chris Campbell:
Yeah, 10 plus years self-employed, so it’s a fun journey, though. I can’t imagine doing anything else.

 

 


Adam Robinson:
Also known as unemployable.

 


Chris Campbell:
I’ll be honest, I do think entrepreneurs are terrible employees, but usually they’re good leaders.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s, I second that, 100% agree. Nobody needs to hire me for any job, so that is spot on. All right, so we have a tradition here on the podcast. We always start off on the right foot. That’s the best news that happened to you in the last week. Could be business or personal. We’ll both go. Chris, you first. What’s your right foot for last week?

 


Chris Campbell:
So my right foot for the last week, we actually were, had a big presence at South by Southwest, which is a big interactive marketing festival in Austin, Texas.

 


Adam Robinson:
I’ve heard of it.

 


Chris Campbell:
And we flew down 13 members from our team, we hosted a number of events. Great turnout, sellout at some of our events, and came home with literally hundreds of leads, so for us, that’s a great event, and every single year it turns out even better as we invest more into setting up appointments and all that, but our team just did a fantastic job, and I’m so proud of them. It’s come a long way from a few years ago when I had to run everything to like, I’m not in charge of anything anymore. It’s kind of a crazy process, so it was … For me, it was a lot of fun.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s awesome. Congratulations. I mean, at a conference that big, I mean, SXSW is just so massive, to stand out and have that be productive lead-wise is tough. Congratulations.

 


Chris Campbell:
Thank you. Yeah. I couldn’t do it without the team. They’re the ones that make it happen nowadays.

 


Adam Robinson:
Very cool. Very cool. Well, we’ll talk more about that. For me, on the business front, we, our leadership team just wrapped up our quarterly planning, and that’s a process that we follow. It’s fairly scripted, and I was just so impressed with the level of work that they got done, and as you said, you’ve transitioned to a role where people are doing more and you’re doing less. I certainly had that experience this week watching our leadership team dig in and do great work and solve tough problems, and I didn’t feel the need to shoehorn anything or force my ideas into the group, so that was great, so all around a good week on the delegation front, it sounds like.

 


Chris Campbell:
Well, that’s great, and from one leader to another, I’d love to see what kind of template you’re using, because that’s actually kind of interesting, is we’re implementing more rigor around our quarterly objectives and goals, so we’ll talk about that offline, unless you write a blog post or something about that.

 


Adam Robinson:
No, all good. We follow a program called EOS, which you can read about in a book called Traction, and more on that offline, Chris. Happy to talk to you about it. So 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 ReviewTrackers.

 


Chris Campbell:
Sure, so ReviewTrackers, we’re a software platform that powers enterprise brands to allow them to interact and engage with customers, so pulling in and sucking in all that customer feedback from sites like Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and others. We analyze it, we have workflow and tools to actually help solicit more feedback, and basically you could think of us as like, as a salesperson you live inside Salesforce, but for a marketer and someone who’s trying to manage all their customer feedback, we’re the platform you want to live in and the platform that makes it easier to manage and make sure every customer compliment or complaint is addressed.

 


Adam Robinson:
Fantastic, and if listeners want to know more about the business, where should they go?

 


Chris Campbell:
Sure. You can learn more at reviewtrackers.com.

 


Adam Robinson:
Okay. All right, so let’s jump in here. Start off with values, is typically how we lead things off here. Let’s talk about core values and whether or not that’s something that you’ve developed. Do you have specific, defined core values for ReviewTrackers?

 


Chris Campbell:
We do. Actually, that was a big initiative for us over the last year, as our company continued to expand and grow. We had something initially, but over the last year, we kind of revisited everything. We wrote it from scratch, and I’m really happy with how everything turned out.

 


Adam Robinson:
Right. Take us through them, if you don’t mind. Walk us through the core values and what they mean to the business.

 


Chris Campbell:
So, Adam, our values are kind of unique, but we’ve centered around aspirational and kind of what we think we are today, so there’s five core values. We call it the five-star values, if you will, since it’s kind of like our business, but …

 


Adam Robinson:
I like it.

 


Chris Campbell:
The first one being, “We seize the day”: hustle, figure it out, and make it happen. “We are scrappy”: proudly do more with less. Number three, “We set each other up for success,” that means communicate, collaborate, teach, challenge, and inspire each other. Four, “We honor our commitments”: we build and protect trust with one another and our customers. And we ask, “What if?”: innovate by taking risks, experiment, fail quickly and learn.

 


Adam Robinson:
So if this is, it’s a recent exercise for your business, how are you looking at making these real and implementable in the day-to-day of the company? What’s your vision for that?

 


Chris Campbell:
Yeah, so that’s definitely a process, but we started small, with the example of printing out cards, so everyone on their desk has the values, alongside our mission, vision, and culture statements, so step one. Step two, we give opportunities. We call it Cheers for Peers, where we’re actually calling out opportunities where someone lived our values, so we do that as a leadership team, inside team meetings and team huddles. We also do that through like a, we use a software called TINYpulse that helps us track that and actually note that, so like publicly everyone can see it, and then finally, we’ve, incorporating it, or we’re in the process of incorporating it into like our evaluation and one-on-one process, so saying, “What kind of values did you live this week?” Or kind of identifying those, positive or negative. “Hey, you didn’t live this value. What happened here?”

 



And we kind of use it as a guide for not only our existing employees, but also hiring, so like we revisited all our hiring questions, like how can we identify if people have these traits? So … We’re working through adding in all the different aspects of our project, our company, I should say, to make sure we live it every day.

 


Adam Robinson:
Let’s focus on the selection process up front. It sounds like you’ve modified what you’re looking for on the front end to make sure there’s a values match. Take us through some of the changes you’ve made to your recruiting process that helped you figure that out.

 


Chris Campbell:
The amount of times we’ve fine-tuned or improved our hiring process is, I think, now in the hundreds, it feels like, of constantly fine-tuning … I guess the biggest change from when we started was, we look at the recruiting process almost a little like how you look at the sales process, so we use software almost like a CRM where we identified all the different stages that a customer … Or, I’m sorry, a job seeker might be at, so from awareness, to applying, taking them down the funnel.

 



How we do outreach, so what that message is, how we communicate it, if we’re trying to prospect and pull someone into the funnel, if you will, to like get them engaged, but then actually, as they’re going through the process, we try really hard to structure it to be like a really good outcome. It’s not uncommon, even if we … We’ve interviewed so many people. I think last year we had, we looked at 6,000 different résumés.

 


Adam Robinson:
Wow.

 


Chris Campbell:
And we hired about 35 out of that, so that’s quite a funnel, which is great. We have so many candidates coming into the pipe, a lot that we’re reaching out to. The crazy thing is, we actually get a lot of referrals from people that we interview and don’t hire, because at the end of it, they feel like they have a good understanding of our company, what our core values are, and they also leave with a good feeling. Like things we do differently, we actually give everyone that comes in for an interview a goodie bag on the way out. It’s just like a few little trinkets, but … And like a water bottle, but it just seems like it goes a long way to end that experience on a positive note.

 


Adam Robinson:
What a fantastic idea. I’m appropriating that, sir. You’re getting that idea stolen. That’s awesome.

 


Chris Campbell:
Great. Yeah, and then so in terms of the actual hiring process, we have them meet different members of the team. I guess another example of this would be like, say we’re hiring for a new sales role. At the beginning of the process, before we even post it, we’re putting out a list of what are the key requirements of that person, like almost like a scorecard, if you will, and then we’re going through that scorecard with all the people that are going to be involved in the interview process, which is usually three to six team members, depending on the seniority of the role. And then the person actually comes in, they meet with all the different people. That scorecard that we came up with actually matches what’s in our candidate pipeline flow, so like we ask specific questions, “Do they have this trait, do they have this skill?” So that matches, so that’s what we’re scoring, and at the end, we do a simple thumbs up, thumbs down.

 



We try to make the interview process pretty seamless, so candidates don’t come in seven times. We try to do it one or two visits after the phone screens, and try to make a decision pretty fast. We actually look at the time to hire, from like when we open the job req to when we actually staff the position. I think right now we average like 45 days, and we’re trying to figure out how to get down to 30.

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s great.

 


Chris Campbell:
But those are the kind of the metrics that our recruiting team looks at. Like that’s how they’re measured, so …

 


Adam Robinson:
Fantastic. It sounds like you guys are managing that tightly, and the results you’ve had are indicative of a hiring process that works, and you guys have been on fire and growing pretty rapidly. And I’m sure the people side of the business has changed, from hiring one type of person to another, from generalists to specialists. Take us through the people model. That’s the business model that governs the people side of your business. What kind of people are you hiring? What’s your philosophy towards how you’re building your team right now?

 


Chris Campbell:
Yeah, so, obviously, we look to the values, and that’s still something that’s new, but the common traits that we found is, we try to identify through the interview process, we found that there’s a few common ones. So, for example, majority of our office speaks more than one language, and that just kind of happened naturally; but we found that people that speak more than one language kind of are like intellectually curious and tend to be a little bit emotionally intelligent a little bit higher, because they’re … I don’t know if it’s that awareness, or where that comes from, but that’s one thing. We try to find people that are passionate, curious. We do try to identify emotional intelligence in our interview process as well. We have a strong correlation of people that have high emotional intelligence, self-awareness, the ability to take feedback is like really strong indicators of them being successful.

 



In terms of our process, once someone actually gets hired, different from like a lot of large corporations, where they might do an annual review, we believe in constant feedback, and for some people, that can be really a jarring experience if they’re not used to that, where they’re used to … At the annual review, we’ll talk about the good and the bad and kind of go through it, but literally, we’re doing it every week with every employee. They should be having one-on-ones with their manager, getting feedback, good, bad and the ugly and … At the end of the day, it comes from a really good place, of we want people to do the … Which kind of relates to our culture statement of, “Do the best work of their careers.”

 



And we want to empower them to do that, and the only way I know how to do that is constantly give people feedback, is saying, “Here’s where the opportunity is, this is what I want you to learn, this is where you need to work,” and constantly trying to make them better. And it’s wild to me to see how much people progress just even in a year or two’s time, under that kind of leadership. Literally, people on our team are like, “I’ve never had a boss like this,” “This is the best boss,” “I’ve never gotten feedback in my career.” And that’s just crazy to me, that some of these people, younger in their career path, or even older, have those challenges where they’ve never gotten really constructive feedback, and for the first time they feel like they’re able to progress in their career and really go to that next milestone when we … They get the feedback and then we talk about, “This is what you need to do to get to your next career milestone,” so …

 


Adam Robinson:
Yeah, well, I, so … Let me ask you this. I mean, that starts at the top, so you’re driving that, and that’s well done, it sounds like. How are you pushing that down as you scale? How are you teaching your managers how to manage that way? Because as you said, so few companies get this right.

 


Chris Campbell:
So I’ve learned I’ve got to hire leadership that already gets it, or is very close to it. If people don’t come from that structure or kind of have those beliefs of … So many organizations, it’s like the manager just says, I’ll ask them how to motivate people, and they say, “I just … I throw a pizza party once a month.” I’m like, “Well, that’s not what motivates everyone.” Like, everyone is different, some people care about compensation, some people care about career growth, some care about working on different, cool projects. I could go on and on, but understanding what motivates and aligns people is super important as a leader, and also that ability to identify strengths and weaknesses and give that feedback.

 



So the short answer, Adam, is I try to hire really strong managers, and I’d argue I have an excellent leadership team, and man, they’re even better at this stuff than I am at this point, but I constantly try to work with them and coach them, and I know they appreciate the feedback from me, but having really strong leadership just makes all the world of difference, and I’m sure that’s something you can appreciate in your organization as well.

 


Adam Robinson:
Oh, absolutely. You bet. So, looking at the other side of the coin here, in terms of compensation and comp philosophy, well-run companies have a way they think about how they reward people for performance, and there are lots of levers you can pull: base salary, commissions, bonus, equity, things like that. Talk to us about your thoughts on the comp philosophy at ReviewTrackers and what you’re trying to accomplish through rewards and recognition.

 


Chris Campbell:
Yeah, so, at least for, on the financial side, for the people that work for us, we pay, I think, very fair market, almost a little above market, but there’s always someone that’s going to be willing to pay you a dollar more. That just exists in the tech market in Chicago. I mean, really …

 


Adam Robinson:
That exists everywhere.

 


Chris Campbell:
I mean, I’ve had people on our team actually forward me messages from recruiters, like with LOL, and it says, like, “Respond back with your salary, we will double it,” and they don’t respond. They just forward it to me and laugh, and I think it goes, compensation, yeah, it’s those levers of equity and pay and benefits, and all that kind of stuff, but I found that building like a great culture and team is way more important and more impactful. I want people that are fully engaged leaning in, and compensation is just one of those pieces. I want to pay people fair, I want to pay them well, but the reality is, we have limitations.

 



In terms of our company and size, we’re still not profitable and not everything is possible all the time, but it’s definitely an important part of the mix, and something that we constantly reevaluate. We’re working towards, actually, like a process where we reevaluate everyone’s commission, or like comp structure, like almost every six months, and maybe even quarterly for some people. It’s not fully implemented yet, but we think that’s one of the best practices we should be working towards, because people in different times of their career, that might be more relevant. So whether it’s that next stage or bump, or it’s the next title, can be really important for people.

 


Adam Robinson:
So, what I’m hearing is a philosophy that says, “Get close to market, pay people fairly,” but you’re really after people who are there for the culture and to do their best work, and so the reward is, you’re not … It’s not a top-dollar recruiting compensating for poor culture. The culture is creating a ton of value, it sounds like.

 


Chris Campbell:
I think it’s the CEO that’s … I have, like, three things that you can’t mess up, and culture is number one for me, so that’s what I focus on: Hiring the right people, getting the right people in the seats, and I think if you get the right people there, they’ll figure it out, solve the problems, because I can’t do it all. We need smart, intelligent people who can, and you got to empower them to be able to make the right decision, so that’s what we try to do.

 


Adam Robinson:
So I’m a prospective employee for ReviewTrackers. What’s your 30-second pitch to get me excited about the potential to work for you?

 


Chris Campbell:
So it depends, so I know you have a family, so I would talk about, it’s one of the things that’s really important to a lot of families, is that we cover 100% of benefits. Health, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, all baked into the existing comp structure. If you care about equity, because I know you’ve also done a few startups, then, “Hey, we have an equity option plan as well. Let’s talk about the growth and future of the organization.” If you talk about career advancement, I talk about the constant feedback that you get, the opportunity to grow inside an organization which is literally doubling their headcount every single year. So, going back to my original point earlier, of different things motivate different people, try to identify what’s important to them during the interview process, and distinguishing that is pretty important, because we’re not just judged …

 



It’s not uncommon for people to be like, “I got seven offers. What can you do for me?” And if they’re looking at just the comp, maybe we do compete, maybe we’re really close, but at the end of the day, it’s kind of … People don’t leave companies because, the product or what they’re working on. It’s because they have a good manager or not, so we talk a lot about the great leadership team that we have, and that really helps recruit. People talk about, at least in the Chicago market being a challenge to recruit talent, and what I found, the more that we recruit and retain these type of people, the easier it’s gotten to hire the next hire. Our recruiting engine’s only gotten easier, and … I think, but … I don’t know if my recruiting team agrees with that, but that’s how I feel.

 


Adam Robinson:
Sure. Well, you’ve been there for the whole run, so you know how hard it was back on day one.

 


Chris Campbell:
I mean, I remember our first office, people would literally open the door, and it was like above a soda machine shop in a neighborhood, in Wicker Park, and people would look around, and they were like … I could tell in their face, they were like, “Should I just turn around and walk out, or should I stay?” And so we’ve come quite a long way.

 


Adam Robinson:
I love it. I love it. Well, so what’s your favorite interview question? When you’re interviewing somebody, let’s say for a key role, the last interview you were in, what do you like to ask?

 


Chris Campbell:
That’s a great question. I have a couple staples that I like, but one of the ones that I always think is interesting is, “What do you have strong opinions about?” And a lot of times people will give, like we’ll call it easy answers, easy outs, and then I’ll ask the next follow-up question of, “What do you have strong opinions about, something that the majority of the population does not agree with?” And you really get interesting answers, and … I’m not trying to … Sometimes people say, “Religion,” or, “Politics,” and that’s fine, too, but sometimes, understanding what people think and also understanding what they’re passionate about can come out through that question, as an example. If we’re trying to close them, I like, “What’s your greatest fear about this opportunity?”

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s a great question.

 


Chris Campbell:
Identify the deal-breakers or things that they have concern at the end of the process. Yeah, I got a lot more, but those are probably the two that I use quite a bit.

 


Adam Robinson:
Very good. Very good. Yeah, I like the “greatest fear” question, because it does two things. It helps you trial, balloon whether or not they’re interested or not, that’s a pre-closing technique for sure, and second, you learn a lot about somebody, so I think that’s fantastic, so … Yeah, well done. What’s the biggest people-related question or, sorry, learning or lesson you’ve learned since launching the business?

 


Chris Campbell:
Well, when you’re growing this fast, culture, or hiring the right people, and communication is just so important. I feel like we over-communicate everything, and I’m constantly reminded it’s just not enough ever. When you, like … For example, half our team is new within the last seven months. It’s like, half the team started in the last seven months, and that’s kind of crazy to think that they don’t have all that historical knowledge, and as we continue to build up the process and documentation around things, that gets easier, but there’s a lot of tribal knowledge that needs to be shared, so I don’t know if I have a good answer for you other than it’s, over-communication is the thing that I’ve learned is one of the most important things, and making sure that we deal with personnel or people issues right away. Yeah.

 


Adam Robinson:
Ah, it’s a pretty big lesson, Chris. I mean, so many companies forget that you have to onboard people. I mean, the hiring process is the easy part, in many ways. You can’t just have people start and hope they work out. That’s doing it wrong, so that’s a lesson well learned. So if you were to come back on this show a year from now and tell us whether or not you accomplished the most important thing on your plate next year, what would you be reporting on?

 


Chris Campbell:
So our big objective this year is, revolves around a financial metric, and our goal is to grow two and a half X this year, and so far, we’re on plan to hit it, which is kind of exciting, so that’s what I hope to accomplish next year.

 


Adam Robinson:
Yeah, just some ho-hum two and a half X top-line growth. No big deal.

 


Chris Campbell:
Yeah, no big deal, just … It’s easy. When you’re in the millions, then it makes it easier, right, so …

 


Adam Robinson:
That’s right.

 


Chris Campbell:
I think that’s a … It’s compounding.

 


Adam Robinson:
So what you’re saying is, you’d take 50% growth in the billions. That’s cool.

 


Chris Campbell:
I will celebrate that day, that’s for sure.

 


Adam Robinson:
All right, a couple of lightning round questions here, just take your pulse on some things. Do you think the U.S. economy is going to get better or worse over the next 12 months?

 


Chris Campbell:
So, I mean, obviously, it’s a challenging time, with politics the way it is, but if I’m honest, I’m hoping that at least Trump is self-serving, and I think, hopefully, business and real estate improves with him in office, but it’s still too early to tell. It’s a rocky ship at …

 


Adam Robinson:
Okay.

 


Chris Campbell:
… this point, so …

 


Adam Robinson:
Do you think it’s getting easier or harder to find the people you need to grow your business this year?

 


Chris Campbell:
I think it gets easier as you scale. I don’t think it’s easier at the start.

 


Adam Robinson:
Okay, and what book are you reading right now, and would you recommend it to our audience?

 


Chris Campbell:
Yeah, lots of books, so one of the books I just picked up is called The Upstarts by Brad Stone. That’s pretty good. My favorite book that I read last year was Hard Thing About Hard Things.

 


Adam Robinson:
Tell us about Upstarts.

 


Chris Campbell:
Well, I’m only like a few pages in, so I don’t have much, but it was recommended to me as … It basically walks through how great companies, primarily in Silicon Valley, are built, and it just … A great business book on the, I guess, cultural and economic changes that are happening in business over the last decade.

 


Adam Robinson:
All right. That’s the final word. You’ve been learning from Chris Campbell, founder and CEO at ReviewTrackers. Chris, thank you for being on the program.

 


Chris Campbell:
Thank you, Adam, for your time. I appreciate it, and if anyone’s curious to learn more, or you’re looking for a new job, reviewtrackers.com/careers to learn more.

 


Adam Robinson:
All right. That’s a wrap for this episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast, where we feature entrepreneurs whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. I’m Adam Robinson, author of the book The Best Team Wins, which you can find online at www.thebestteamwins.com. All right, we’ll see you next week. Thanks for listening.

 

Guest Profile: Chris Campbell, Founder and CEO of Review Trackers

Chris Campbell joins us tomorrow on The Best Team Wins Podcast, until then, learn more about Chris and ReviewTrackers below.

What is your name?

Chris Campbell


What’s your title?

Founder & CEO


What is the name of your company?

ReviewTrackers


In 100 words or less, describe what your company does:

ReviewTrackers is the award-winning customer feedback software that helps businesses transform the customer experience. The platform collects review data from 84+ review sites to surface customer insights that enable brands to listen, comprehend and make data-driven decisions about what their customers truly need or want.Trusted by nearly 30,000 businesses, ReviewTrackers helps busy professionals save time, money and resources so they can focus on what matters most: their customers.  Trusted by nearly 30,000 businesses, ReviewTrackers helps busy professionals save time, money and resources so they can focus on what matters most: their customers.


Where is the company based?

Chicago


When was the company founded?

2012 (celebrating our 5th birthday in May!)


How many employees do you have?

50


How can we find ReviewTrackers on Social Media?

Twitter | Facebook / Chris on LinkedIn


Is your company bootstrapped, or have you raised equity financing (VCs, angels, etc)?

We’re VC backed by Amfam Ventures and CSA Partners.


What company accomplishment or milestone in the past 12 months are you most proud of?

Hitting 50 employees.


What’s the #1 company issue or area of focus for you right now?

Hiring and shipping product .


Press:


 ReviewTrackers chosen to be a part of Comcast & Technical.lys’ Tomorrow Tour (Technical.ly)


Winner of the Chicago Inno 50 on Fire (Chicago Inno)


ReviewTrackers; Finalist for the 2016 Moxie Awards (Built in Chicago)


ReviewTrackers New Space (Crain’s Chicago)


ReviewTrackers Brings in $4M (Chicago Tribune)


17 Biggest Tech Hires in Chicago In October (Built in Chicago)


ReviewTrackers Top Mid-Market Software (G2 Crowd)


73 Hottest Startups in Chicago (Symmetry50)


Top 20 Chicago Startup Founders Under 30 (Tech.co)


The 23 Fastest Growing Startups Going to SXSW 2016 (Mattermark)

Your CEO Doesn’t Care About Culture. Now What?

One of the most frequently-asked audience questions I receive is, “What can I do to build my team’s culture when my CEO doesn’t care, or doesn’t make positive culture-building a priority?”

In answering that question, I always start by reminding my audience that a CEO who cares little for building a positive workplace culture is actually creating the culture that they want.  It may be a toxic, or political, or distrustful, or work-life imbalanced culture – but it’s still a culture built on the actions (or lack thereof) of the Chief Executive Officer.  If the CEO wanted something different, they’d have created something different. It’s a simple but powerful truth.

Herein lies the essence of culture-building: it’s 100% on the CEO.  

The decision to build a specific company culture must start with the top. The CEO is the only person in the organization who can demand that the company’s focus, team and resources come together to produce a culture that he or she desires to create. True, any leader or manager within the organization can create “pockets of resistance” and build a distinct micro-culture, but that team will always face cultural headwinds that are tough to escape.  It likely won’t be enough.

Back to the question at hand – what should a progressive, culture-focused leader do if their CEO isn’t at all concerned with building a positive culture? If it’s important enough to them, they should probably seek employment elsewhere.  If a lack of leadership focus on culture is not a deal-breaker, they can dig in and do their best to shape their team’s culture as an outlier from the larger organization, knowing full well that they’re going to constantly battle negative pressure to abandon what they’ve built.  It’s a battle that will wear most managers out.

“Quit, and go work for someone who cares about building a positive culture.” My answer is often met with audible gasps from the crowd.  People will ask me if I’m giving them a serious answer. I assure them, I am – one-hundred-percent.  If a manager within a company buys into the growing body of research that correlates positive workplace cultures with faster revenue growth and more profitable companies, but works for a company whose CEO cares little for that line of thinking, then they have two choices: quit, or swim upstream for years.  

I know what I’d do.

There’s not a “perfect” workplace culture. There are plenty of high-growth, high-profit companies out there who grind people to a pulp.  There are lots of no-growth, low-profit companies with feel-good employment practices. My point is that it’s the CEO who gets to decide the outcomes for which they are optimizing.  If you’re working for a company whose CEO is optimizing for growth at the expense of employee well-being, then you have a decision to make.  

It’s that simple.

Interview with Kathy Steele, Founder and CEO of Red Caffeine Marketing + Technology

Listen to this episode on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. You can also download directly the episode by clicking here.

Adam:
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, we have Kathy Steele as our guest. She is the CEO and founder of Red Caffeine Marketing + Technology out of Lombard, Illinois. The bootstrap company was founded in 2013 and currently has 24 employees. The best learning happens through real experiences shared by fellow entrepreneurs and Kathy, we are so excited to learn from you today. Welcome to the show.

 


Kathy:
Thank you. I’m really excited to be here.

 


Adam:
I was excited to see you were recently named 2017 an Enterprising Woman of the Year. Tell me more about that. Congratulations, by the way.

 


Kathy:
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. I was nominated in a category for this honor and it’s really in part recognizing businesses or female leaders in an array of organizations running businesses that are $1 million in revenue through over $100 million in revenue. There’s going to be a great group of women going to Florida in a few weeks to really share ideas. I’m really excited about the honor and thrilled to be able to get to know some of these other female leaders in our country as well as there’s some women that are being recognized outside of the United States as well. Pretty cool.

 


Adam:
Very cool. Congratulations again.

 


Kathy:
Thanks.

 


Adam:
We’ll have to cover more on that topic a little bit later. We have a tradition here on The Best Team Wins Podcast. We always start off on the right foot. That’s the best news going on with you, business or personal, that happened in the last seven days. Why don’t you kick us off, Kathy, with your right foot for the last week?

 


Kathy:
Sure. Well I can never just say one thing. I’m going to say that on the business side, we are really excited to welcome two new team members. We’re actually a 25 head count.

 


Adam:
Congratulations.

 


Kathy:
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Really one of the first times we’ve had two people onboarding at one time. Then on the personal side, I am planning a really cool trip to Croatia with my husband and a group of friends this summer. I’m trying to bookend two other European destinations in front of this and at the end of this trip because you can’t fly directly to Croatia. I always like to get a little more bang with my buck. I am really excited to be planning that adventure.

 


Adam:
Very cool. That’s exciting and it’s a logistically challenging trip to take. That’ll be fun.

 


Kathy:
Definitely.

 


Adam:
Good. On this front, I’m excited. This marks T minus four days until the launch of the book, The Best Team Wins, which as you know is … It’s spending a lot of time over the last couple of years putting that together and getting that ready for publication. We have a publication date of March 21st next week. That for me has been the culmination of a lot of hard work for lots and lots of people. I’m just glad that that date has arrived. That’s the best for me on the business front. Personally, we are due with child number four in a month. I have spent the last couple of weekends starting to prepare for going through that again. We’re bunkering down and getting ready, getting the house ready for a newborn. That’s been fun.

 


Kathy:
That’s awesome. Two new babies at one time.

 


Adam:
That’s exactly right.

 


Kathy:
That’s exciting. Congratulations on both fronts. Writing a book is on my bucket list. I have to pick your brains when I get started.

 


Adam:
Please do. It was an amazing process and I learned a lot about the book business. We could talk for hours about it sometime. We’re here today to focus on the people side of your business, but before we dive into that, let’s set the stage and give listeners some context. Give us 30 seconds on Red Caffeine and what you do at that company.

 


Kathy:
Sure. Okay, so at Red Caffeine, we really believe we’ve cracked the code on a better way to do business. We’re committed to helping our clients really outperform their market when it comes to aligning marketing plus technology with strategic growth. The way we do this is we really provide our clients with a dedicated team of people – strategists and technologists and content designers – who really deeply understand their business offering. They know their customers. They know their competitors and their employees. Then we’re able to create a brand position that helps exploit their uniqueness. Then at the culmination of that, we build and execute a plan to help them stay focused on reaching their business goals. A lot of fun working with our clients and our teams.

 


Adam:
If listeners want to learn more, what’s the best way to do that?

 


Kathy:
Sure. Our website, redcaffeine.com. A lot of people spell ‘caffeine’ wrong, but they can certainly also reach out to me on LinkedIn. I do like to know my network, so I’ll probably ask you to talk to me a little bit about why you want to connect, but I’m always open to meet new people.

 


Adam:
For the record, ‘caffeine’ is C-A-F-F-E-I-N-E, I believe.

 


Kathy:
Yes.

 


Adam:
Okay. All right. Just in case, I hope everybody go that. Red Caffeine was named 2016 Best Place to Work in Illinois. Very cool. You’re doing lots of things right. For people that want to learn more about Kathy’s business or Kathy, you can check out our guest profile, which is at The Best Team Wins on the blog to find out more. Let’s jump into the people side of your business. Let’s start with core values. Does Red Caffeine have specific defined core values for the company?

 


Kathy:
Yes. There’s actually a little bit of a backstory to our values. Simply put, I was in a business partnership for 10 years. We really didn’t share the same value set. I never thought it was going to be a deal breaker, but in the end, it was one of the key reasons our business split. Now I’m so deeply invested in having core values that we really truly live and it really established a baseline for our team. We use them throughout hiring, our recognition and review process. We’re really living our values every day.

 


Adam:
Take a few minutes and walk us through the actual values and what they mean to you.

 


Kathy:
Sure. We have 11, so I probably won’t go in excruciating detail about each one, but one of the most critical things is we’ve got some that are really internally-focused and then some that are a little more externally-focused. We embrace transparency. We are an open book. We’re transparent with clients. Our team knows how we’re performing from a financial standpoint and we really have an open door policy. That means that we are expecting and open to all the team coming up with ideas and really feeling like they can lend their voice to what we’re doing on our client effort or what we’re doing as an organization.

 



We also believe in hugs. We are always working on highly creative projects. We’ve got a lot of strong personalities and there’s a lot of great thinking going on. Sometimes that thinking leads to a little contentious situations. We just have this philosophy that we want people to get in and dig in hard and come up with the best ideas. At the end of those types of experiences, you’ve just got to hug it out and move on. There’s other hugging scenarios, but we play to win and win together. We’re client advocates. We believe in intentional relationships and we believe in work life balance.

 



Then one of the other things that we believe in is really a culture of learning. I love learning and I think that in our space and really in any business, if you’re not continually learning to improve as a person or in your role-specific subject matter or expertise, you just become stagnant. The last one I’d want to share is really we believe in giving it back and paying it forward. We truly believe that small gestures can make a big impact. We’re trying to give back both financially and with our services, but also sharing our subject matter expertise or really getting involved in the industries that we’re working in in a powerful way to help move different missions forward.

 


Adam:
Thank you for sharing those with me, but how do you communicate and promote those values and make them real to your team on a day to day basis?

 


Kathy:
Well I think I might have mentioned that we use them in hiring. They’re ingrained in our hiring process. We really believe that one bad hire can really create a toxic environment. We’re really specific about weaving in vales into the questions that we’re asking new candidates. We also use it in real time situations. In terms of employee recognition, we call them snaps. That’s in our moment recognition process, where we’re just giving somebody a shout out. A lot of times we’re trying to tie those compliments to a value. Then we recently created a more official, legitimized recognition program. We weaved values into that. They’re part of our review process. We like to call out how somebody is performing aligned with our values in performance reviews as well. Ultimately it’s truly a work in progress.

 



I think that everybody starts at a point when they start to … I guess we started at a point where it was we agreed that these were going to be our values. Then it’s evolved over the years as we’ve grown in team size  and really just making sure they’re checking in and really living up to what we say we’re doing in terms of our values.

 


Adam:
These values were created from the jump right at the beginning?

 


Kathy:
They were. There was a core founding team that went through the business divorce with me. That was some of the things that we worked on pre-startup of the new company was that we knew that we had to change. Agreeing on our values was one of the pivotal points of setting up the foundation of the new business and how we were going to be different, that we did actually go through an exercise because we tripled in size in the last three years. We went through an exercise last year and did a check in. It was good to get some new input from newer team members, if we were living what we said we were living in terms of values. We only made one change. We tweaked that a little bit, but it was a great check in and I was really thrilled that there wasn’t a lot of debate. We felt we were where we needed to be in terms of really truly being true to our core values.

 


Adam:
It’s great when everybody feels that you’re on the same page with that, it certainly makes it a lot easier moving forward. You talk about a divorce with your business partner and you had some team with you. Let’s talk a little bit about the structure of your leadership team. Walk us through the senior roles in the company that are sitting around the table with you, helping you run the business.

 


Kathy:
Yeah.

 


Adam:
What are the titles, broadly speaking? Who do you have at your side?

 


Kathy:
Sure. I’ve got a fairly sizable leadership team, but they really … We deliver a lot, so they represent the different areas of the business. You’ve got our vice president. She’s our chief relationship manager. She makes a lot of connections. She is truly our brand ambassador. She’s out there making connections, helping us win new opportunities with clients. A recent member of the team is our director of client services. Our business model is really focused on client retention. We have a whole slew of new clients all the time. We’re really looking to go deeper and be better partners with our existing clientele. Our direct of client services is really in charge of creating those exceptional client experiences, so people are seeing value in working with us.

 



We’ve got a strategy and digital lead. He really is the genius behind bringing business strategy into a game plan and a lot of things that we deliver are digital. Those two go hand in hand. Our art director and content director really own establishing the brand’s position, both in how a brand looks, but also how we tell that brand’s story. Then our technical lead and developer leads our development team. Then lastly but probably most important is our operation’s manager. She really leads the fundamental department on HR, but she also owns the finance piece of the business.

 


Adam:
Our listeners love to hear about the people model for the business, so that’s what I’m referring to is the business model that governs the people side of your business. Are you hiring specialists? Are you hiring generalists? Are you training people who are early career or are you hiring folks mid to late career? In general, what’s the approach to doing what you do? What kind of people fit into your business model?

 


Kathy:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think what I recognize as our most important asset, we don’t make anything. Our team is our most critical business asset. Employee engagement is one of our three key areas of strategic focus. We’re looking at both. We’re looking at bringing in people that are specialists. We’ve added a lot more … I’m not going to use the word ‘seasoned’ because somebody thought I meant an 80-year-old woman last time I described somebody as seasoned, but we’re bringing in people with more industry experience. We’re in a youthful space. We’re teaming them up with younger people that bring that new thinking and the millennial generation thinking to our business as well. We have a philosophy about T-shaped learning opportunities, where we’re trying to have an overarching training focus on both being really good at honing a skillset, but also having some additional training that allows them to grow their soft skills or have an opportunity to learn a different discipline if they want to grow in a different capacity. A couple of different learning and training tracks, but we’re new at this.

 



This is something that we really started to get our arms around last year. Last year we launched what we call RC University. It’s a combination of training. We bring in marketplace experts, but we’re really looking to expand this to more specific role training and a certification process long-term. That’s our people model. Did I answer that question?

 


Adam:
You did. Yeah. As you indicated, for most businesses that changes over time. What you need and how you pay people and the way you attract and retain that talent changes as the business changes. Thank you for sharing that. Let’s talk about your compensation philosophy at the company. Most comp plans have a base salary component or an hourly rate. They may have a bonus component or commission. Take us through your philosophy on how you structure pay to get the desired results you’re trying to achieve in the organization.

 


Kathy:
Well most recently, I guess as you said, things do change. In the past, I didn’t have a great idea of how to look at comp. Last year, we wanted to map our growth plan with a staffing plan. We did a deep-dive into the marketplace and looked at the salary ranges for the different roles that we have on our team currently or maybe something that we might be looking to add in and levels set, where we were in the marketplace. In some areas, we were really, really competitive even against some larger organizations. Then some areas, we thought we were a little bit behind. This year, we’re trying to reset that using more industry benchmarks to give us the landscape of comp overall. In terms of how we typically compensate people, it’s more … Most people are salaried here, but depending on the role, there’s a couple of variable comp plans for our account management team as well as more on the business development side. We’re Great Game of Business practitioners, so I don’t know if you’ve heard of The Great Game of Business or are familiar with the methodology.

 


Adam:
I have heard of it. I have not used it, but you’re talking about the Jack Stack Great Game of Business. Is that the same?

 


Kathy:
Exactly.

 


Adam:
Okay. Tell us about that.

 


Kathy:
We really teach our team to think like owners. Know how their job impacts our success. We really have leveraged the Great Game to do an overall bonusing plan. When the company is hitting certain milestones from a financial standpoint, we use that as an overall bonusing pool for the team. The whole team gets opportunities to win when the company is winning and everybody is really a part of it and really understands and even more so now than ever understands how they can help us win.

 


Adam:
Let’s dig in a little bit there. Great Game, the premise is the more people know about the way the company runs and how it’s really working and what the numbers are, the theory holds the better they’re going to be, the more effective they’re going to be in helping you drive the business for it. Have you found that to be the case?

 


Kathy:
Absolutely. It’s absolutely incredible. I think it taps into this human desire to win, Great Game does. It’s not just about financials. We use game playing in other areas of the business in terms of trying to improve a process and those kinds of things as well. Overall, it really starts with financial training because I think many businesses have really smart people and they’ve got a pulse on things that as you’re the owner or the president or the C-suite, they’re just not going to see things in the same way that people that have their hands on something are going to be able to look at something. I absolutely believe that giving people the financial training and the tools to help you help improve the business and then also giving them a reward for when things are successful is just an unmatchable business strategy. I don’t know why everybody is not doing it.

 


Adam:
Yeah. We’re a lot of the same way here at Hireology. We share everything. It’s down to the profit number. Everybody knows everything. I’ve found the exact same result. People trust the management of the organization more when they have transparency into what happens. With trust comes buy in. Then the rest is just execution. If you have the trust, you have the buy in, those are the hard things. Execution is just a right person, right seat question. That’s a much easier question than solving one where the team doesn’t trust the leadership.

 


Kathy:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that we’ve had our tough times too when we rebooted the business. We had a little bit of an uphill climb. That’s when I opened the books. It allowed people to ask questions and I was able to get in front of things whereas if people are just assuming things are good or assuming things are really bad, they’re probably assuming things are way better than they are or way worse than they are. It really headed off potential. People exiting the company because they thought things were not going well. It allowed me to have conversations and really educate the team. Then on the converse side, it’s pretty exciting when things are going well.

 


Adam:
Yeah, I can imagine. Let’s switch here with the few minutes we have and talk about the recruiting side of the business. You mentioned hiring process. You align it to core values, but what’s the most important thing you do at the company in your hiring process to ensure you’re hiring the right people?

 


Kathy:
Well I think it’s sticking to our process. When we’ve veered off and not done things in the order that has been successful for us, I think that’s when we’ve had some challenges. Ultimately it starts with how we’re recruiting. We really look at the staff and determine what our true needs are, so we can set up our interviewing process and our candidate search to bring in the types of candidates that we’re looking to hire. We leverage, like most people, an array of tools and resources to find candidates. We love getting employee referrals or friend referrals because I think a lot of people, when they know us, they know who might be a right fit candidate. Typical things like the phone screening and then having the team that is the team lead that’s going to be the department head on the role alongside some of the key team members that will be working with the new candidate. Then lastly, we really have my VP and myself get involved in the interview process. I’m probably the worst interviewer.

 


Adam:
Okay.

 


Kathy:
I love everyone and I always see the upside and never any downside. Our VP always asks amazing questions and so I really spend a lot of time listening. I’m trying to be less about hiring more mini-me’s and looking at really what the needs of the business are and making some good decisions when we come together and choose a new candidate.

 


Adam:
Sure. That optimism that makes you a great CEO makes it very challenging to say no to people you like, but whom you might know aren’t great for the role. That’s tough. I’ve been there. Well what is the biggest people-related lesson you’ve learned since launching this new phase of the business?

 


Kathy:
Well I guess it’s probably that people really do want to do great work. They want to do meaningful work. If you can provide that atmosphere, that opportunity for them to have their voice and be heard or try something new and potentially be successful or potentially not fail, they’re going to just bring their best to work every day. Like you said, having that transparency and allowing people to jump in. For me I’ve seen just amazing, amazing results and really high engagement and retention levels with my staff.

 


Adam:
It certainly sounds like it. The proof is there. The culture accolades, the success you guys have had. It’s a result of the things that you’ve been sharing with us today, so thank you very much for that. We’re going to jump to some final lightning round questions here. Just take your barometer on a couple of big picture items. Do you think the U.S. economy is getting better or worse for your business over the next 12 months?

 


Kathy:
I’d say better.

 


Adam:
What do you think is driving that?

 


Kathy:
I just think that there’s just a lot of economic indicators that, specially in the verticals that we’re working in, that provide us a lot of opportunity. I’m very highly optimistic.

 


Adam:
Excellent. Do you think it’s getting harder or easier this year to find the people you need?

 


Kathy:
I think it’s always getting harder. I think that as we’re growing, it’s challenging to always retain that atmosphere and culture that we work so hard to have. It’s just challenging to continue that. I think it’s going to be harder.

 


Adam:
What’s the book that’s on your nightstand right now and would you recommend it to our audience?

 


Kathy:
Yeah. I just started Growth Hacker Marketing. We just started a book club here at the company.

 


Adam:
Excellent.

 


Kathy:
We really wanted to spend time reading about our industry and thought leadership in our own space. We’ve spent a lot of time on staff skills development last year, so it’s exciting to have the team bring ideas to the table and forum to discuss what’s going on in marketing and technology.

 


Adam:
Growth Hacker Marketing. Who is the author?

 


Kathy:
Oh, darn. I don’t know.

 


Adam:
We’ll have to look it up. We’ll make sure we get that posted in the newsletter this week, so listeners have an opportunity to check that out. All right. Closing question: If you were to come back on the show a year from now and report on whether or not you accomplished the one most important thing on your plate right now, what is that thing?

 


Kathy:
Wow. From a business standpoint, I guess I would have to say we really worked hard on a five-year strategic plan. It’s going to be that we’ve met or exceeded some of the goals that we put in place for this year. Then I’m incubating another company right now. Really getting this number two company to a revenue stage would be pretty cool too.

 


Adam:
Yeah, I would say so. Well congratulations. I wish you luck with the new venture. You are of no shortage of stuff going on right now.

 


Kathy:
Yeah. No, you too. It sounds like you’ve got a lot of things going on as well.

 


Adam:
Yeah. Opportunities abound. It’s fun to be pursuing things that are both fun, challenging and add value. Best of luck to you, Kathy Steele. That’s the final word. You’ve been learning from Kathy Steele, CEO and Founder of Red Caffeine Marketing + Technology. Kathy, thank you for being with us today.

 


Kathy:
Thank you so much, Adam. It was a pleasure.

 


Adam:
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 the business has led to incredible results. I’m Adam Robinson, author of the book, “The Best Team Wins,” which you can find online at www.thebestteamwins.com. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.

 

Guest Profile: Kathy Steele, Founder and CEO of Red Caffeine Marketing + Technology

Tomorrow, we have Kathy Steele on the podcast. Learn more about Kathy and her company, Red Caffeine, below!

What is your name?

Kathy Steele


What’s your title?

CEO and Founder


What is the name of your company?

Red Caffeine Marketing + Technology


What city is the company based in?

Lombard, IL


When was the company founded?

November of 2013


How many employees do you have?

25


How can we find you and Red Caffeine on social media?
Red Caffeine:  Twitter | Facebook 
Kathy on LinkedIn


Is your company bootstrapped, or have you raised equity financing (VCs, angels, etc)?

Bootstrapped, baby! 


In 100 words or less, describe what your company does:

We believe our clients’ stories deserve to be heard, told and loved! Red Caffeine is the marketing + technology agency that partners with visionary organizations that need to reimagine their brand. We provide the strategy and the implementation plan to launch a new product or service, the leads, tools, and analytics to equip their sales teams, and the brand essence to help them recruit and retain top talent.


What company accomplishment or milestone in the past 12 months are you most proud of?

It is challenging to pick one. The achievement that stands out the most is our attendance and graduation from the Junto Institute. We had experienced a toxic business divorce followed by some explosive growth. It had been a crazy ride, and I knew we needed to do something to help us gel. It was a huge time and financial commitment, but our team was “all in” and it was an incredible and powerful learning experience. 


What’s the #1 company issue or area of focus for you right now?

Our number one area of focus is growth. Our strategic plan has three key growth areas of focus, each lead by one of my leadership team and everyone in the company takes part. The areas are:

1) Employee Engagement and Growth – Our team is the most important asset we have. We intend to support their growth experiences, so we keep engagement and retention high and become a sought after employer.

2) Exceptional Client Experiences – We want our customers to feel that working with Red Caffeine is the best part of their day. 

3) Company Visibility and Revenue Growth – We are building to last. Our high-touch managed services programs are positioned to retain customers for life. 


Press:

2017 Enterprising Women of the Year Award Winner 

Recent Article: Wake Up! How to Create a More Engaged Workplace Culture


2016 Entrepreneurial Excellence Award 


2016 Best Places to Work – Illinois


 2016 James Tyree Semi-Finalist

Book Launch: The Best Team Wins

Today, in honor of the launch of my new book, The Best Team Wins: Build your Business Through Predictive Hiring, I’d like to share an excerpt of the book with you all. Enjoy!

Why are most companies so bad at hiring?

This question has been on my mind for the better part of two decades, starting with my first job as a recruiter in the staffing industry and continuing through my journey as a technology entrepreneur. People are almost always the single largest expense in a company’s budget, yet most companies have a better process for buying office supplies than they do for hiring great talent. Why?

The answer to this question is amazingly straightforward: Most companies are bad at hiring because most companies don’t teach their managers how to do it. Think about the last time you received formal training on hiring. I won’t hold my breath waiting for an answer, because more than 90 percent of companies lack any kind of structured hiring process. It’s no wonder that the average hiring success rate for companies is less than 50 percent.

The good news here is that companies can dramatically improve their hiring results by implementing a structured hiring process and teaching their managers how to follow it. As the cofounder and CEO of Hireology, a talent technology company that I began in 2010, I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to work with thousands of entrepreneurs, CEOs, and managers every year to address the specific hiring challenges that they face. When we launched Hireology, our vision for the company was straightforward and personal: empower business owners to succeed by helping them build their best possible team. We’d been there as business owners, and we’d made all of the typical hiring mistakes. Nobody had ever taught us how to “do it right,” and we had the battle scars to prove it. We knew there had to be a better way.

Six years later, we’re incredibly humbled that over 5,000 businesses are using Hireology’s platform to source, screen, hire, and onboard their teams. Along the way, we’ve created a process that, when followed, leads to higher quality hires, lower administrative costs, a lower cost-per-hire, and significantly reduced twelve-month turnover. These results aren’t attainable only by big corporations—we’ve remained steadfast in our focus on delivering value to the entrepreneur: the family-owned automotive group; the franchisee; the business services provider; the high-tech start-up; the Main Street retailer—men and women who, like you, risk their personal capital every day to compete in some of the toughest markets.

I’ve written this book to share with you the processes, tricks, and tools that I’ve developed over the last twenty years to turn hiring from a liability into a source of sustainable competitive advantage for your business. You don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company to succeed in the hiring game. You do, however, need to implement a consistent, repeatable process and measure the right things. But rest assured—you can do this.

This book isn’t theory; it’s a blueprint that will take you step-by-step through the hiring process, from writing the job profile and sourcing candidates all the way through to specific interview questions and testing approaches. Throughout the book, you’ll hear from real entrepreneurs and business leaders who have experienced the same struggles that you have:

• You’ll meet franchise industry veteran David Barr, whose company, PMTD Restaurants, owns twenty-three restaurants across several states. David credits his company’s focus on people (the initials stand for “People Make the Difference,” after all) for the success he’s achieved.

• You’ll hear from Tim Heitmann, founder and CEO of Popcorn Palace, whose company has made the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies an unprecedented ten years in a row.

• You’ll listen to Joe Turchyn, a veteran of the retail automotive industry and director of corporate strategy and development at Burns Buick GMC in New Jersey, share how small but important changes to his dealerships’ hiring model has his stores humming.

• You’ll learn from technology entrepreneur Ajay Goel, founder and CEO of JangoMail, as he talks about the mistakes he made—and the lessons he learned—as he grew his start-up from bootstrapped concept to a successful acquisition.

• You’ll hear from Michael Krasman, founder of several high growth businesses, about the challenges of finding the right fit for your company culture.

• You’ll find out how Cathi Trippe, a senior leader at Phil Long Dealerships, rewired the organization’s approach to hiring and risk management after the 2008 recession—and how these moves generated game-changing results.

• You’ll learn from the perspective of human capital strategist Candice Crane, and learn why employment brand and onboarding is critical for the success of your business.

• You’ll understand from serial entrepreneur Jeff Ellman that sometimes the best candidate has zero experience in your industry.

• You’ll find out from VP of HR at SAVO Tracy McCarthy that paying more for a candidate with more experience doesn’t pay equal dividends for your company.

• And you’ll learn from nationally renowned restaurant operator, author, and speaker Nick Sarillo how businesses of any size and makeup can find and retain great talent.

Can you imagine the impact that getting your hiring decisions right seven, even eight times out of ten would have on the growth and profitability of your business? My hope is that by reading this book and implementing these ideas, you’ll unlock the amazing potential in your business. I’m here to tell you that you can do this.

Read on, and turn your company’s hiring process into a source of sustainable competitive advantage that will pay dividends for years to come.

 

Ready to learn how to build your best team? Click here to buy the book and get started today!

Sharing lessons in leadership, hiring, and stand-up comedy

Listen to this episode on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. You can also download this episode directly by clicking here.

This week on the podcast we opened up the floor to Hireology to ask Adam anything, check out the results below. If you’d like to ask Adam something, he’ll be answering questions on Facebook Live at 4:30PM CST on 3/21/2017 for one hour on this page.

Max:
Okay, hello and welcome to The Best Team Wins podcast. My name is Max Lowenbaum, not Adam Robinson. I am the Vice President of Sales here at Hireology and I’m joined by Adam for a very special additional podcast. Today, we are doing Ask Me Anything with Adam Robinson. We have reached out to the 115 employees that we have here at Hireology and asked them for burning questions that they have for Adam, everything about his experience at the company to his philosophy on leadership, hiring and retaining the best people and some fun questions sprinkled in. Adam, are you ready?

 


Adam:
I’m ready. Tables have been turned, so excited to see how this turns out. Hopefully, I’m a good guest on my own show here today.

 


Max:
I think you’re going to do just fine. Okay, Adam. We’re going to start with a tough one. How many people have you hired in your lifetime?

 


Adam:
On behalf of other companies, upwards of 3,000 at least. I would say for my own companies, somewhere between 500 and 600 people.

 


Max:
Wow, and I’m sure you’ve learned a lot, which is where a lot of these other questions will go. If you could kind of define your philosophy for managing people, how do you define it?

 


Adam:
When I think about the people side of any business, what I’ve developed as a philosophy is number one, that you have to hire great people. You have to hire the best person for the role and let the role go unfilled until you find that one best person and then when you do find that person, you need to let them do their job, and so I would describe that as hire great people and get the heck out of their way.

 


Max:
Yeah, and there are a lot of questions here about what you’ve learned. I assume you learned that lesson the hard way.

 


Adam:
Nobody wants to, few high performing individuals want to be hired into a role and then be told exactly what to do by prescription, and you run into this issue in so many founder-led organizations where they’re not relinquishing control over the important things that they used to need relinquish control over and that’s how businesses stall. I’ve paid close attention to make sure it didn’t happen. I’ve made that mistake in the past.

 


Max:
It’s a great lesson. Here’s a really interesting question. How much of who you are is what you do at work?

 


Adam:
So I’ll interpret that question to be what percentage of my own self reflection or self worth do I attribute to what I do professionally?

 


Max:
Yup.

 


Adam:
There’s this notion of work and life balance and work-life and just personal life and I don’t subscribe to that way of thinking. I think it’s just life and what I do during the hours I’m working, I’m the same person that I am outside the office. I mean I don’t put on a game face to come into the office. I’m pretty much who I am when I’m around this place. If the company exploded tomorrow and there was nothing left of it and I had to start over, I would be the exact same person I am now. There’s no difference. I don’t subscribe to worth equals how big the business is or if financial success of it or any of that. I mean it just happens to be what I’m doing today. That’s how I feel about it.

 


Max:
Do you feel like you have to draw a line or do you bring things from home to work? How do you sort of separate the two?

 


Adam:
Well, life, I just believe it’s integrated. In today’s workforce, you’ve got to have an understanding that lives are complicated and they move quick and especially if you’re like us, we’re raising a family, as an example. Today, I spent the better part of the morning sitting in a room full of 4 year olds at my son’s class doing a parent observation of the classroom, and then made it downtown Chicago to finish the day and I’ll do what I need to do today and tonight to make that happen, but I didn’t really think about work versus personal life. It was just the day I was going to have. I need to get some things done today. One of those things that I needed to do was spend time with our son Alex in his classroom, which he’s really excited about.

 



For me, it comes down to planning the day and what you want to get out of everyday and sometimes, personal things are the majority and sometimes, they’re not.

 


Max:
Yeah, it’s interesting, I made the transition to come into Hireology. I think I noticed that right away that our culture is really intentional about not drawing a hard line between life and work and instead having our leadership team, many of which have families, take time and spend time at both work and life and be really intentional at how they spend their time but kind of go full force at both, and so I think that has a really nice trickle down effect on our culture.

 


Adam:
Sure, and if we want that culture, the leadership team has to live that culture and I can’t say it’s okay to do it and then not do it and secretly feel, frown upon if I see other people taking 10 to 2 to go do something with their kids. We just don’t try to even think about it here.

 


Max:
Okay, here’s a question I’m really looking forward to hearing the answer to. What is the most awkward interview you’ve ever conducted?

 


Adam:
As we said before we started rolling, I had to think about that. I had an interview early in my career when I was in the IT staffing business where one of our candidates was interviewing with Director of IT at one of the large companies here in Chicago in the suburbs, suburban Chicago, and that company, they would encourage us to sit it on interviews if we could, like bring the candidate in and kind of babysit the interview, and we’re in the middle of this interview and I think at this point, I’m 23 years old. It’s my first job out of college and bring in a Cobalt DB2 programmer in for some Y2K project at some mega company, it’s ’98 or ’99 and I’m sitting in this room and the interview’s not going well. I mean the guy’s a little off and we get a knock on the door and a security guy comes in and he says, “Excuse me, are you so and so?”, and our candidate says yes. He said, “Do you have a dog tied to the bumper of your car in our parking lot?” The guy said, “Yeah, I do.” I immediately, like okay, not getting hired.

 


Max:
Yeah, interview’s over.

 


Adam:
Here goes the commission and he has to excuse himself to go untie his dog that apparently, I respect it. He didn’t want to keep the dog in the hot car and so he took the dog out of the car in the middle of a corporate parking lot and tied this dog to the bumper, which was trying to bite because he parked in the visitor’s space right up front, literally trying to kill everybody who walked past this dog, and you could hear the dog barking as we walked out to the lobby and it was just, you don’t see that often. I think it maybe speaks to judgment but that was weird.

 


Max:
Oh man.

 


Adam:
That was weird. You go back in after the candidate’s excused himself and you call your hiring manager and you say, “Well that was awkward. I’m taking this is a no, that I’m wrong with our guy.” It was bizarre.

 


Max:
You didn’t spend that commission check.

 


Adam:
Nope, that was weird.

 


Max:
That’s great. Well, a lot of questions about your interview style. What’s your favorite interview question?

 


Adam:
My favorite interview question is what is the biggest misperception that people have of you? I like that question because you can’t prepare for that and you can’t help but give an honest answer to that question and what it shows are a couple of things. Number one, I want to see self awareness and I want to see confidence. If you have the confidence to explain the thing that you know other people think of you that’s not true, there’s a thought process. You can’t wing that one. That’s going to be an authentic answer, and it’s also, it turns out that the thing that the candidate says is almost always the impression that I’ve got in the back of my mind that they’re going to verify or not, and what I found is if someone says, I’ll give a real life example and I have Erin’s permission to do this. Erin Borgerson, who’s been with us darn since the beginning, is one of our first 10 employees, so I asked her the question in the interview, what’s the biggest misperception people have of you and the answer she gave me was people think that as happy I am, they think it’s an act. People think that this whole cheerful demeanor is a put on, it’s an act, but it’s not. I really am this happy. This is how I am. I act this way.

 



I had this thought. I was thinking in the back of my mind.

 


Max:
You were asking yourself that question?

 


Adam:
I have never seen someone sitting before me in an interview with a bigger smile on their face, more excited about talking about a job and I was thinking-

 


Max:
Erin’s one of the pillars of our marketing team. She’s responsible for the message we put out.

 


Adam:
Yeah, yeah.

 


Max:
You hired the most positive person you can find.

 


Adam:
She said it and she nailed it. I thought okay. That’s why I liked the question.

 


Max:
I like that and I really like your explanation of like how to interpret their answer as well. We have that in our Hireology database and now I know how to ask it correctly.

 


Adam:
Yeah, exactly.

 


Max:
Talk about some leaders who inspire you. Who are some of your favorite leaders?

 


Adam:
There are leaders that you think about you never had experience with and there are lots of names there but as I think about the leaders that I’ve had direct experience with that they’ve just been inspirational in the way that I’ve watched them grow their companies. Jeff Lawson is the CEO of Twilio. He’s actually a friend of my co-founders and was an advisor to the company in the early days actually. I think what Jeff, so back in 2010 when he was working with us in 2011, Twilio was still in its infancy and it’s gone on to be the most successful IPO the last 12 months and the company’s just amazingly well run and he’s got a philosophy about how to run a business that’s very intentional and it’s accountable and it’s transparent and it’s really culture focused and I just think he’s doing a great job running the business. To go from founder to public company CEO and execute at that level is just — not everybody can do that. That is very tough.

 


Max:
Not an easy road.

 


Adam:
Admirable, and I would say another leader I greatly admire from the Chicago technology community is Jai Shekhawat, who is the founder and CEO of a company called Fieldglass that was acquired by SAP and one of Chicago’s tech success stories and he, over the course of 15-plus years, built that business, took it through the first dot-com tech bust and through a couple other cycles and had just a great exit and he thinks so clearly about the problems that he’s trying to solve that when I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with him and I asked what I perceived to be a pretty tough question, what I find is, he’s a McKinsey guy, and so he can distill it down to an essential question. He’ll just ask me the question and damned if every time I don’t walk away with the most important insight I’ve ever gained in the last six months will come out of the conversation I’ve had with him where he just asked me the question or say the one thing and I’ll go, “Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Wow, thank you very much.”

 



He gives back to the community and it’s about helping others and the next generation, and I admire that greatly.

 


Max:
That’s really interesting because I know you named two leaders that have had really successful exits, either selling or IPO but I’m sure both of them have also had a lot of failure.

 


Adam:
Correct.

 


Max:
Talk a little bit, one of the questions that came up was talk about some things you learned and some mistakes that you’ve made over your time at Hireology and elsewhere, building businesses and hiring folks.

 


Adam:
Yeah, on the business front, the mistake I have made in the past is waiting too long to course correct. I think in the past, I have held on too long, waiting for something to happen that I expected to happen that just isn’t going to happen and so in its simplest form, it’s staying too heavy on a team when you don’t need the staffing level that you’ve got because the productivity’s not there and taken to the extreme, it’s waiting too long on a business model such that you get yourself back into a corner and it’s really hard to dig out of. I’ve had experience with both of those things in a prior business. What it has taught me is that facts are the facts. Your interpretation of them is what really matters, and so you’ve got to be honest with yourself about what the facts are telling you and act quickly and be deliberate, be careful, but act.

 


Max:
Have a bias for action.

 


Adam:
That’s correct, yeah that’s correct.

 


Max:
This goes into a little bit of how we run our business but talk about the integrator role in our business and what it’s like having a true integrator on our team.

 


Adam:
We follow an operating, management operating system called EOS or Entrepreneurs Operating System. We’ve had Dan Heuertz on this show. He’s an EOS implementer. Thousands of high growth companies use this system built by a guy named Gino Wickman out of Detroit. It’s a step by step process really for strategic planning all the way through what you’re focused on today and it’s a great system. One of the core tenets of Traction or EOS is this notion that there are really two people at the top of the organization. There’s the CEO and the COO but we don’t talk about in those terms. It’s the concept of the visionary and the integrator, the big idea person, the evangelist, big relationship development, the keeper of the culture, big R&D projects, where we’re headed five years from now, and this notion of the integrator, which is process driven, okay sounds good but here’s the reality. How do we make that happen? Identify the gaps. Lock everything down and actually let’s have a plan and see if this is reasonable.

 



If you’ve got a founder-led business, often the visionary role and the integrator role are the same role. It’s combined and that’s the way it was in Hireology for a good five years, and you get to a point right around I would say between $5 million and $10 million of run rate where you really have to pick as the founder which are you. Are you the idea person or are you the execution person? Because you can’t really do both. I would say when I’ve asked Gino this question, about 15% of CEOs can be CEO and the integrator and do it well, because it’s just, you’re not wired for both. Most people are not wired to be both things. I am not wired to build operating processes that I then manage every single day. That’s not the best use of my skillset, and for great integrators, the best use of their skillset’s not putting them out on the road, building brand recognition and inspiring the market with whatever your idea is.

 



For me personally, having somebody in that role has unlocked my ability to scale and invest that. That’s the best value to the business is for me to do what I’m best at. The more I can do what I’m best at and the less I can do what somebody else is best at, that’s going to provide shareholder value and customer value and that’s what I need to be doing.

 


Max:
Did you get the feedback from which seat you should be in from other business leaders or did you know that internally?

 


Adam:
I knew that. I mean I think anybody at least you need to think about yourself in those terms. Am I a better visionary or am I a better integrator? You’re going to know. You’re going to know. When somebody brings an idea to you, if your first response immediately is okay, based on what resources and people we have, how can I build a plan to make that happen? That’s an integrator mindset. It just is, if you’re sitting around dreaming up ideas that are long on vision and short on planning, you’re probably more of a visionary than an integrator. That’s okay, understanding what you are is pretty good.

 


Max:
Then having somebody who can round out your skillset can really help your business.

 


Adam:
Sure. I mean that’s a partnership that when it works, unlocks some pretty incredible growth.

 


Max:
A question here, as I know you know, there’s been some controversy at Uber recently because of their treatment of some female engineers. How do you recommend that companies make sure they’re hiring and keeping their best employees while avoiding issues that may be cultural and can be poisonous in situations like this?

 


Adam:
Unfortunately, the early stage and growth stage technology scene has developed a reputation, I think deservedly so, for being a tough culture for diversity. It’s unfortunate and certainly I’ve read the material, a blog post and it sounds like a lot of things went the wrong way. That kind of stuff, that starts at the top. You as the CEO of the business have to decide what’s acceptable culturally, and would you fire your best engineer, your best salesperson or producer, your top manager for violating a core value? If the answer is no, okay, you’re making that choice. You’ve decided that the result’s more important than equitable treatment or diversity. That’s just a fact. Leaders have to decide what they stand for. Any time I read anything like that, that’s not a reflection of HR. It’s not a reflection of middle management, it’s not a reflection of the person alleging the situation or complaint. That’s on the CEO and it’s your job very publicly, internally and externally in a high profile company like that especially, to let everyone know what you stand for.

 



I don’t know their CEO personally, but performance probably is a higher priority than inclusion. I think everybody can see that, not that that’s, I don’t want to judge good or bad, that’s just not for me.

 


Max:
Yeah, so you mentioned core values. How do you choose core values and then once you’ve chosen them, how do you really make them more than just words in the handbook or something you put on the wall but something really actionable and as you mentioned, that the business is built upon?

 


Adam:
Core values are the blueprint for the business. I mean I think for Hireology, the first thing we did was sit down the three of us and decide what they were. We’ve all been a part of starting businesses or growing businesses where the core values weren’t authentic or weren’t even defined and we just decided this time we were going to start there and we worked on it for weeks to get down to what do we think, what do we stand for, what do we believe in, what’s the kind of company we want to be a part of, and for us, we came up with our five core values, which for us, it’s pathological optimism, eager to improve, own the result, create wow moments and we have a no assholes core value and that is for employees and customers and vendors, frankly. Those things, how do you make those real, you have to manage it. You have to measure it. What we do here is evaluate every six months folks along measurements and core values adherence. Do they do it all the time? Sometimes or rarely?

 



We put people on performance plans based on core values violations. Every week in our all company standup on Tuesday morning, we’re letting people peer to peer nominate each other for core value shout outs, name the core value and what the person did that exemplified that. You’ve got to make that a part of the fabric of how you manage the business, and I think I haven’t always done that. In this business, we’ve done it from day one.

 


Max:
You were in comedy, many people may not know this but you had a standing comedy and talk about how that’s helped you in public speaking and in business development and in running a company.

 


Adam:
Thankfully, I was in standup before YouTube, so nobody will find evidence of this ever. It exists on 8 millimeter tape I’m sure somewhere, but it can’t get any worse than bombing on stage in a standup set in a room full of hundreds of people.

 


Max:
Yeah, Adam set the stage because this wasn’t like you went to do an open mic or two. You were serious about comedy and you were traveling and you were doing a lot of shows for a while.

 


Adam:
Yeah, you know it’s funny, I end up inevitably trying to start and organize and grow something great, so we started off doing open mic nights, which turned into meeting a couple of people I thought were good and then I quickly realized I was a better emcee opener and organizer than I was a featured comic. I was just never going to be that. We started, contact the local drinking establishment and say, “Hey, you give me Tuesday night every week, I’ll fill the room. Give me 50% of the door. We’ll sell some beer and blah blah.” We did. We end up with the Four Thieves Comedy Showcase Tuesdays at Hog Head McDunna’s in Chicago, and had a couple of big shows at a place called Joe’s on Weed Street in a room with hundreds of people. What was great was we got to work with some Chicago up and comers like TJ Miller and Kumail Nanjiani, who’s on Silicon Valley, it’s fun to watch those guys, or Pete Holmes, who has a show on TBS.

 



Those are all guys on the standup scene in Chicago in the early 2000s doing my open mic night at Hog Head McDunna’s. It was a lot of fun but you got to warm the room up and yeah, you go out there and you think your stuff is good.

 


Max:
You’ve worked on it, you practice.

 


Adam:
Let’s say you do 10 shows, and nine times it kills and one time, the temperature’s a little too warm. The seating is just a little too spaced. Some dynamic in the room changes and it’s just not funny and it’s crickets. You can get in front of the most important sales meeting of my life and I would never be more nervous than I would be going up to a microphone and trying to open a comedy show because it’s just you. It’s like be funny, Max. Go be funny. Is this guy funny? It’s hard.

 


Max:
It’s really tough and you’re on your own and you have to wing it.

 


Adam:
It’s fun though. It’s great. It’s the best, what I mean, of course, speaking training and situational awareness and communication training you can put yourself through. It’s Navy SEAL training for public speaking is go try standup comedy.

 


Max:
All right, Adam. We’ve got one more question. It’s kind of a broad one but what is the greatest people lesson you’ve learned since starting Hireology?

 


Adam:
I think back to some advice I got back around the time of, it was a famous HBS article which turned into a book called The Founder’s Dilemma and the question is do you want to be rich or do you want to be king? As the founder of the business, do you want to be the center of attention or do you want to actually scale something? What the research shows and experience bears out almost every time is that you’re not going to scale something if you need to maintain control and be the most important person in that organization. The most important lesson I’ve learned is the more I can set the direction and then get out of the way, the better we do, the better I do. I’m a better manager if people are doing more. The less I do, the better off we are. I need to be living five years into the future and I can’t do that if I need everybody to come in here and ask me for my approval on every little thing.

 



That ship has sailed. So many companies including previous companies that I’ve led, I sat there and I needed a hold on everything because I don’t, I either don’t trust the person in the role or I don’t trust myself to give it up or whatever it is so what I now know is that I either need to change the person or change my approach and I can identify when one of those two things is happening now. That has helped us grow here. I mean it’s the only reason we’ve grown really and we’re better off with that philosophy.

 


Max:
The lesson there is delegate to others, know when to get out of the way, take a partner, bring other people in to the business.

 


Adam:
All of the above, whatever the situation is. I guess recognize your strengths and know when you are responsible for holding your business back by doing too much.

 


Max:
All right, and this has been great Adam. I’m not going to ask you to close with a joke but we may get some requests for you to do some standup here on the podcast but thank you so much, Adam for all of your insights and for answering the questions of Hireologists everywhere. For The Best Team Wins podcast, this is Max Lowenbaum here with Adam Robinson. Have a great week and we will talk to you soon.

 

How to Use a 90 Day Plan as the Last Step of the Interview Process

When new employee onboarding is done correctly, it leads to higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment, decreased turnover, better performance levels, career complementing, and lowered stress.  What’s constitutes “done correctly,” however, is largely in the eye of the beholder.

One of the most effective techniques that a hiring manager can use to improve their onboarding process is to utilize what I call the “30-60-90 Day Plan” at the final stage of the recruiting process.  By this point, the manager has completed all steps of the interviewing process, reviewed the results of the requisite skills tests and job fit assessment, and have check the candidate’s prior manager references.  The decision has all but been made, but this one extra step can produce a fantastic lift in the onboarding process (and catch a few mis-hires, as well!).

What is a 30-60-90 day plan?

A 30-60-90 day plan is a brief (2-3 page) document that summarizes the specific, measurable and actionable outcomes that this candidate will commit to achieving at thirty, sixty and ninety days on the job.  It’s the blueprint that the new employee will use to navigate the first three months on the job.

 

Why use a 30-60-90 day plan?

There are three reasons to use a 30-60-90 day plan as part of the hiring process.  First, it allows to you observe the candidate’s approach to creating a plan for themselves.  Second, it gives the candidate very clear goals for their first three months in the role.  Third, it gives the hiring manager a blueprint for onboarding the new employee over the first three months.

 

When do you ask the candidate to build a 30-60-90 day plan?

The ideal time to ask for the candidate to create a plan for their first three months is immediately following your final interview step.  When contacting them after the interview here’s what you’ll want to say:

“[Candidate name], I really enjoyed our discussion.  Based on what we covered, I’d like to move forward with the final step of our process; that final step is for you to build a plan for your first three months on the job.  The reason that we want you to take a crack at this plan is 1) so you have an opportunity to think through how you’re going to accomplish the goals that we discussed throughout the interview process, and 2) so that we’ll have a roadmap to make sure we’re on track for your first quarter in the role.”

 

What do you ask the candidate to deliver when they build a 30-60-90 day plan?

You’ll email your candidate a template of the plan to get them started (after all, you’re looking to gain insight into their planning and goal-setting process, not their ability to create forms from scratch!).  You’ll instruct them as follows:

“Based on the specific outcomes we discussed for your first year in this role, I’d like for you to think about the first ninety days on the job and what things you’ll need to accomplish during that time to make measurable progress and generate momentum towards the yearly goal.  Please write down the specific, measurable and actionable outcomes that you’ll accomplish at thirty, sixty and ninety days on the job.  When you’re done, save the file and email it back to me, and we’ll set up a time to walk through your plan.”

 

How do you review the 30-60-90 day plan with the candidate?

The most important dynamic in this discussion is that the candidate is the one doing the talking.  This is your opportunity to listen, observe, and coach with targeted questions.  Let the candidate take you through the details of their plan, and withhold your desire to interrupt with feedback.  At the conclusion of their presentation, ask questions to vet their assumptions.  If they’ve made incorrect assumptions about the tools or resources that they’ll have at their disposal – and they inevitably will – let them know exactly where they missed the mark, and ask them what if anything they’ll want to do differently given this new information.  Add any ideas or thoughts as you deem appropriate, but remember that this approach works only if the candidate comes away feeling like it’s their plan.

 

How do you utilize the 30-60-90 day plan to onboard a new employee?

The payoff from this effort comes into plan on day one of the new employee’s tenure on the team.  On the first day, sit down with your new team member and let them know that you’re going to review the plan they created.  Reconfirm the thirty, sixty and ninety day outcomes to which they have committed. Ask them if there’s anything in the plan that they’d like to discuss or change before they commit to moving forward.  Modify as appropriate.

 

What happens is the new hire misses the goals that they’ve established?

Through this process, you’ve obtained your new hire’s commitment to achieving outcomes and a plan that they themselves created.  If they don’t deliver, it’s on them.  It’s their plan, and it’s their commitment.  This approach takes the emotion out of giving performance-related feedback to a new hire who’s struggling to meet goals.

If the candidate misses their thirty, sixty or ninety day goals, the coaching conversation is fairly simple and straightforward:

“Help me understand what led to your being unable to achieve the goal and plan you set for yourself.  Was it resources?  Was my direction clear?  Was there an unforeseen obstacle?”
“What are you going to do differently to get back on track for the next thirty days?”
“How are you feeling about the plan you’ve created?”

 

Parting thoughts

The 30-60-90 day plan is a simple and powerful tool. It aids in employee selection, and it’s the roadmap for the new hire’s onboarding program.  When using this approach, it’s nearly impossible for your new hire to be surprised by your expectations of them.  More importantly, a failure to achieve the desired outcomes falls on their shoulders, not yours.

For a free, downloadable 30-60-90 day template, click here.

 

Quiz: How’s my hiring process?

 

Take our “How’s my hiring process?” quiz to find out how your hiring process stacks up against best-in-class companies. Not only will you get your score, but you’ll be given countless resources and tips on how to make your hiring process even better.

 

“Treat your employees how they want to be treated.” – Jo Dickstein, Co-Founder of Flowers for Dreams

Listen to this episode on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher. You can also download this episode by clicking here. 

Adam:
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 lead 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, Jo Dickstein is the co-founder of Flowers for Dreams, based in Chicago, Illinois. The company was founded in 2012 by Jo and his co-founder Steven Dyme. They currently have 31 employees and were bootstrapping until 2014, and have had a few seed rounds since then.

 



The best learning happens through real experiences shared by our fellow entrepreneurs, and Jo, we are excited today to learn from you. Welcome to the show.

 


Jo:
Thanks for having me. I got excited when you guys reached out to me, because for one, I do a lot of these, and they’re always … People are fascinated by our story, our history, and no one ever asked what makes the company the company, and that’s the people, so I’m excited to talk about that, and two, of course, congratulations. You guys, year after year, have the most amazing … One of the most amazing cultures in the country.

 


Adam:
Thank you.

 


Jo:
And so I wanted to hop in here and see what all the fuss is about.

 


Adam:
Cool.

 


Jo:
If you see me walking around the cubicles later, you’ll know why.

 


Adam:
Do it. You know, we live all the stuff we talk about here, so I’m glad you’re here. I heard that you guys just expanded to offering service in Milwaukee.

 


Jo:
Yeah, we did. Exciting step for us. We’ve always wanted to, and still plan to expand our business and our offering throughout the Midwest, and hopefully throughout the country. Milwaukee made the most sense for us, because we’re able to leverage everything we have here in Chicago without all the financial and human infrastructure, in which would we start a new city with space and people. We’re able to leverage the delivery drivers, the designers, and the space we have here in Chicago, operate it all here, and then deliver to Milwaukee on a daily basis. Once that top line- excuse me- is great enough, it will warrant an actual space and be able to provide local stems, local couriers, local jobs to the city of Milwaukee.

 


Adam:
Fantastic. Well, we have a tradition here on the Best Team Wins Podcast. We always start off on the right foot. That’s the best news, business or personal, that happened to each of us in the last seven days. What’s your good news and right foot for the last week?

 


Jo:
Personally, I’m looking for a new place of living. As of last night, I was looking around different spaces, so that’s exciting. Professionally, the one kind of divide we have in our company right now in terms of like personnel and responsibilities is weddings and events, and daily delivery. There’s a daily side of our business, and weddings and events. We’ve kind of like broke that bridge internally, and now all people, responsibilities, and focus is kind of like Flowers for Dreams as a whole. The designers are working for everything daily and weddings. Our couriers are working for everything daily and weddings. From a financial perspective, and operational kind of like structure perspective, and a company culture perspective, it’s really exciting for us. That happened Tuesday, the whole team has known about and we’re all working this week to make sure we’re ready, and we launch on Monday kind of operating them in the same foot. That’s really exciting for us. That is my right foot. What about you, Adam?

 


Adam:
Okay, yeah. Congratulations. Yesterday marked our seven year anniversary, so Hireology was founded in 2010, and we worked two years using customer revenue from custom service engagements to build the first version of the product, so we took a little while to get off the ground, but did it with customer revenue and launched the product in 2012, but we’re seven years old as of yesterday, which is pretty cool.

 


Jo:
That is amazing stuff.

 


Adam:
So we had a little bit of a party in here, cupcakes, and bought everybody Lucky Seven scratch-off cards.

 


Jo:
Any big winners?

 


Adam:
That’s right. We had a couple of $20 winners in here, you know? Some Happy Hour money. We had some fun.

 



All right. We’re here today to focus on the people side of your business, Flowers for Dreams. Before we dive in, let’s set the stage. Give us 30 seconds on your business.

 


Jo:
I started a flower business when I was 19 years old, with my co-founder Steven, which I’m glad you brought up because I’m sure I’ll mention him. He’s been around the journey with me on this for the last seven … No, the last six years, almost. After that seasonal business, when I was 19, after college, we wanted to start, after becoming more and more knowledgeable in the flower industry, an accessible, inspiring, exciting alternative to the existing flower options. That’s a lot of buzzwords there, but right now like the Flowers.com of the world are just thrown in 400 different flower bouquets, and you know, a 1990 catalog with constant bombardments of add-ons and uninspiring, pretty gross-looking bouquets, and we thought that we could kind of associate ourselves more than, to like the millennial generation. Create local stems, local jobs, with like organic bouquets, without growing with, you know, pesticides or different sprays, and for an accessible price. It’s $35, free delivery, and it’s all online, and you could get it same day up until two, and we guarantee delivery before five.

 



That’s where the business started, that bread and butter, the $35 flower bouquet, and it’s launched now into weddings and events. We don’t have minimums, very similarly to our delivery business, which is an accessible price point. We do weddings starting at $100, and then all the way up to …

 


Adam:
No kidding.

 


Jo:
… you know, the $10,000 or $15,000. The $100 is like one bridal bouquet, for the picture. We do it all. We do it all, and weddings and events has seen, of course, because it’s just brought on a little bit later than the daily delivery, has seen the most growth in the last 18 months. That’s a really exciting portion of our business, and we’re growing out our space because of that. We’re providing a service, and to provide that service, we need people, and to have the people, we need space. We’re just grown into another space behind us. We were able to take on that lease, and then we’re getting the space even behind that, which we’ll really control like a whole corner, to have close to like 15,000 square feet in total space for us to hold our fleet, do our deliveries out of, our design, and then our administrative work. All exciting stuff. That’s a little bit about Flowers for Dreams.

 


Adam:
All good stuff happening. Congratulations. If listeners want to learn more about the business, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

 


Jo:
You could always reach me personally. I always give out my email. It’s Joseph@FlowersforDreams.com. You could always go to our website: FlowersforDreams.com, or just look us up on Google or our various social media. We believe in like, radical transparency. We’re always doing Snapchat stories and Instagram stories, so follow us there and you could be along for the fun.

 


Adam:
Cool. Well, folks in our office love your company.

 


Jo:
Thanks. Do you see our bouquets around?

 


Adam:
Absolutely love it. I actually … I think I have seen a couple of them for … We had a couple of relationship anniversaries get delivered by you guys, I think, because I pulled them from the front desk to the back if I’m not mistaken. You guys have the burlap banquets, burlap bouquets rather?

 


Jo:
Yeah. We have the burlap wrap, yeah.

 


Adam:
Something else I want our listeners to know, a portion of every bouquet profits a local charity. Tell us about that program.

 


Jo:
Most certainly. We donate a quarter of our profits to a different charity each month. In terms of a company perspective, it’s really unique the way that we pick those charities each month. In October, we sent out an application, and this year we had over 300 applicants from various local non-profits. We have the company choose. We feel that the best way for us to choose is for our company to be the spokesperson of it, and if our company is going to be the spokesperson of that charity, then they should have the say in what charity that is. We have a lot of fun, different nights in which everyone gets to rank 12 through one, 12 being the highest, 12 being you get 12 points for that charity, and the one you want the twelfth most, you get one point. We tally up all those at the end of the day, and those are the 12 charities.

 



Today we’ve donated $200,000 to various local charities in just five years of being in business. The other years I’ve mentioned earlier is my seasonal business I had before this in flowers, but $200,000 to local charities in something I’m probably most excited about that we’ve been able to do as a company. We feel it’s kind of … Or at least I feel, maybe it’s in my MO, that it’s really kind of an act of doing business. When we started, it was just like, “If we’re going to be able to bring in profit, we’ve got to be able to give some of it back.” We’re able to do that, and we thank all of our customers to be able to give us the business to be able to do that for sure.

 


Adam:
Very cool.

 


Jo:
Yeah.

 


Adam:
Very cool. All right. Let’s talk about the people side of your business. At Flowers for Dreams, do you have specific defined core values for your company?

 


Jo:
Yeah. In our handbook, we have five. It’s not written on the walls, but we have five, and I think it makes up who we are. The first one is, “Do good.” We just went over that, but we quote Martin Luther King. We say, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'” Second one is, “Take risks.” “Whoever dares, wins” is our quote there. The third one is, “Challenge yourself.” We say that every artist was first an amateur, so get outside …

 


Adam:
I like that.

 


Jo:
Yeah.

 


Adam:
That’s cool.

 


Jo:
Fourth one is, “Act fast.” We actually quote Herb over at Southwest Airlines. He says, “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.” I like that one as well. The fifth one is, “Make it beautiful.” We say, “Design is a behavior. It’s not a department.” For our business specifically, of course, we have to be design-oriented in everything we do, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s our e-commerce platform, certainly whether it’s our bouquets, our design aesthetic in weddings. We have to make it beautiful, so that’s really important. Those are the five.

 


Adam:
All right. With defined values, it sounds like they’re in the handbook, and people have access to them. How do you make those real every day and communicate them into the business?

 


Jo:
You know, it’s not really pushed on them every day. We have a really flat culture, rather than like a top-down. We don’t believe in like, micromanaging. When it’s really just … You said 31 employees, and it is. It’s 21 full time employees, and about 10 part time. Those 10 part time are designers. Those 21 full time individuals make up all of Flowers for Dreams. That is Flowers for Dreams. For 21 people to consume everything that is Flowers for Dreams, of course they have a lot on their plate, so they’re constantly empowered every day to challenge themselves, to make their own decisions, because there was no one that did this before us. Certainly myself, I didn’t get into the business because I had an affinity for floral. I kind of saw the opportunity, so I’m learning from all of these experts as well. I think these five, when giving them the, as I said again, the empowerment to be able to make their own decisions, I think those five kind of roll after that.

 


Adam:
You mentioned flat organization. Let’s talk about the structure of your leadership team. Take us through when you’re sitting around the table making decisions. Who’s sitting there with you?

 


Jo:
That’s a good one. It’s most certainly a table. We have two long tables right now, in the current structure of the 3500 square foot space. We have two long tables. I’m currently sitting next to the development intern, web development intern, who’s only been here for about three weeks. Thinking about that now, it’s probably pretty scary for him, but …

 


Adam:
It’s a hell of an experience, though.

 


Jo:
Yeah, and I’m able to talk to him every day, and he’s able to bounce off me. Steven, myself, and everyone else on the leadership team, we work right next to whether it’s a part time or full time, and every other department in between. The structure is kind of broken down into various different departments. One is marketing, so that marketing manager works with everyone then, and social, and digital. We have a business development director. That business development director really works with everyone, but most specifically the wedding designers, which are kind of looked at more of like sales reps, because they’re the one working hand in hand …

 


Adam:
Big channel for you.

 


Jo:
Yeah, big channel. They’re working like hand in hand with those brides, the grooms, the wedding planners, so they’re very much sales reps 50%, and then design experts and designing those products the other 50%. We have a logistics manager. These are kind of everyone under Steven and I. Logistics manager works with everyone in the warehouse, the couriers, the designers, making sure that the products get from point A to point B. We have a development director who does everything tech for us. He works with two individuals under him to make sure everything looks snazzy on our website. We have a proprietary technology on our back end that runs our just in time inventory as we get stems, and as we put them in bouquets. A lot of different roles, a lot of different departments. That’s about it. Those are like the four major ones. Dev, marketing, design, logistics, business development. Five.

 


Adam:
Very cool. All right. Let’s dive a little deeper there. Our listeners love to hear about the people model, right? That’s your business model for talent, and so a good example of the people model might be, “We hire utility players right out of college or high school, and put them through the hard knocks program.” Or, you know, another one might be, “We hire seasoned specialists. We pay more. It’s all about retention and care and feeding.” Talk about how you’re looking at the people side.

 


Jo:
Interesting. Yeah, so when we started the business, we were bootstrapped, as you said, for two years. What we needed during those two years, in which I call them, because I’m a sports geek, is “all-purpose backs.” We needed … That’s what I’ll call them, is we need someone to be able to run, and pass, and catch, in terms of sports. Here, we needed someone to be able to design, to market, to go out and make a sale. We needed … If we were just going to get two or three or four people, we didn’t have necessarily specialists or departments yet. Everyone kind of did everything. The two models back then, the values were actually, and I was looking at this the other day, funny enough. It’s always good to see where you came from.

 


Adam:
Yeah, sure.

 


Jo:
Was “versatility is a virtue,” and “embrace the chaos.” Those were the two in our first year. The answer is, the first few years, yes. We needed those all-purpose backs to do everything. Now we hire very much specialists. Not as much out of college at all. Five-plus years experience. We’re at a point in our business where they could focus on specific responsibilities. Of course, with specific responsibilities and experience comes with maybe additional compensation and things like that, but we are very much focused now on hiring specialists within each department.

 


Adam:
We were talking before we went on the air about, in many ways, hiring is the easy part. I mean, it’s not but it is, because once you hire them, you have to make sure there’s clarity of purpose and defined outcomes and those types of things. Talk about your learning there, and when you’re hiring specialists, who they’re there to do a very specific job, that’s their expertise, how do you make sure people know what they’re supposed to be doing every day?

 


Jo:
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it goes back to what I said originally, is that I don’t … I of course like to give them structure, but I want to give them not so much structure where they think that, again, they’re being micromanaged. I want them to run the department in the way that we think that they have the experience enough to be able to lead that department. That’s what specialists do. After that hiring process, I spend two hours with them where I go over the history of the company. I think it’s important to, again, know where we all came from, and to learn from me and ask me any questions. Then they meet with every single department manager to ask them specific questions about their department, to learn about customer experience, to learn about design, to learn about operations, so they could better do their job.

 



That takes up the most of the rest of that day. Then the second day, I work one-on-one with some of the projects that we see at least over the next quarter, some of the problems and some of the things that we want to achieve. They go out to lunch– this is kind of standard — they go out to lunch then with their team. They come back. They meet with me the rest of the day. After day two, day three, they’re basically on their own. I have a weekly meeting with each department manager. Kind of the situation we’re in with 21 full time employees and 10 part time, I’m still able to do that, and I still want to do that. That’s a 30-minute meeting and they kind of catch me up on everything that they’ve done, and what the next then week looks like, what they’re about to accomplish, and that’s how that works.

 


Adam:
On the recruiting side, you’ve got some part time that you hire for, and you’ve got specialists. What would you say are the best source for you of finding the right people?

 


Jo:
Social media for us, we have a pretty … Should I say cult following on social media?

 


Adam:
Yeah, you do. You absolutely do.

 


Jo:
Social media for us has been huge.

 


Adam:
You say through social, “We’re hiring X, Y, and Z.”

 


Jo:
Every time.

 


Adam:
And you just probably get bombarded.

 


Jo:
Every time. “Tag your friends.” “Tag your friends who would be great for this role.” The friends reach out and apply through our website.

 


Adam:
It’s a luxury.

 


Jo:
It’s a luxury.

 


Adam:
That’s awesome.

 


Jo:
Social has really grown our business, our brand. I give a lot of it to Instagram and Facebook and everything between. Social is big for us. Friends of friends are big for us. Reaching out direct through LinkedIn. We do a lot of that as well, because we … Like floral designers specifically are harder. They’re maybe not actively searching for their next professional opportunity. They’re floral designers. They love floral design. Finding floral designers is a little bit different than the common maybe white collar. We are actively looking for designers through LinkedIn, then we do a lot of other various channels of companies to outsource it to as well.

 


Adam:
Not job boards?

 


Jo:
Not as much job boards. We fiddle around with like Indeed and stuff, but then that’s more for like temp courier positions, temp Mothers Day, Valentine’s Day positions. There’s some amazing applications that you could find that will staff … I mean, staffing agencies, but it will staff now with, like, the on-demand hype. We’ll staff within 90 minutes and we’ll have someone there to fill responsibilities. It’s really amazing stuff. We do it all, really.

 


Adam:
On the hiring process, you’ve got folks into the top of the funnel. That sounds like the easy part for you, which is great. Take us through your hiring process. What’s the experience like if you’re considering me for working at Flowers for Dreams?

 


Jo:
We’d love to have you. If so, if you already …

 


Adam:
Great. Put me on a bike.

 


Jo:
Great. Yeah, right. It depends on the department, again, but it’s pretty standard in this way. One, I’m very much, if I already haven’t made it clear, involved in all of the hiring process. I’ve told everyone and I’ve made it clear to myself that I want to be, no matter how big we get, I think as you’re in a similar boat, people are everything. I want to be able to do the last round interview, whether it’s a Skype across the country. I need to be able to at least see them and feel them.

 


Adam:
I do the same thing here. As a matter of fact, before you came, I interviewed a friend, an engineer we’re going to make an offer to. I don’t ever want to manage a company- we’re about 120 employees now- where I don’t know something about everybody when they start.

 


Jo:
I’m with you.

 


Adam:
I’m not going to let that go.

 


Jo:
I’m with you. The manager of that department sorts through the resumes. We find, you know, some are five, some are six, some are three that we really like. We have me and the manager of that department, have a phone conversation with them. Usually we bring it down to like three or four, in which we bring in for an in-person interview. That in-person interview is with myself and with the manager. Then there’s a second in-person interview in which they meet with everyone at the company. I should say everyone, someone in each department, very similar to when they start. When they start obviously it’s a little bit more structured, but this is just for them to ask questions, learn about what their experience is like, learn about the obstacles that they face. Then they come back to me and Steven for the last kind of round-up after that. After a phone conversation and two in-persons, usually we’re ready to make a decision.

 


Adam:
Through that process, what’s the most important thing you and the team are doing to make sure you’ve got the right person?

 


Jo:
I think that there’s two things in there. One is that Steven and I are completely embedded to making sure that we hire the right people. Now and into the future we’ll always be a part of the process. I think the second is team. I don’t want them to be jaded by what I said or what Steven said, or what their one or two phone conversations was like. I want them to talk to our couriers. I want them to be able to talk to people that are receiving our flowers in our back garage. I want them to learn about everything that has to do with Flowers for Dreams so there isn’t any over-promising, and there isn’t any, again, kind of like thought that’s a little bit jaded. I want them to know every single part of the business that they have questions on, so when they’re ready to accept, they know exactly what to expect.

 


Adam:
No surprises. No surprises. Have you ever had an experience where a new hire comes to you two or three days later and says, “This isn’t for me. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

 


Jo:
No. It hasn’t been that dramatic after two or three days, but I could certainly look over across the table after maybe a week or two and be like, “Hmm.”

 


Adam:
Not liking it.

 


Jo:
Yeah. “This person is struggling for sure.”

 


Adam:
Sure. Do you have a favorite interview question?

 


Jo:
I have two. I think the most generic question which people say all the time, but I put enormous amount of value in it, is, “What’s your three to five year plan?” The reason why I put enormous value in it is because, this is going to sound cliché, but I think that success comes from a plan. Imagine if you were just here, Adam, fly-by-night with the company, and had no direction, no plan, no care for what the company was in a month, or 12 months, or two years, right?

 


Adam:
Have you been talking to somebody here about how I manage?

 


Jo:
No.

 


Adam:
Just kidding. That’s totally how we do it here.

 


Jo:
I think that’s just being a leader 101, so I think that’s the same thing with your life. Like, if you don’t … It could be as small as something of, “I want to get a dog, and I want to be able to run a marathon,” but like, give me something. If you have a plan, you will of course put maybe smaller steps to get to that plan, and that’s where success comes from, is some sort of plan. The thing that I hate, everyone, if you’re listening and about to go into a job interview with me, I don’t like when someone says, “Oh, I hate that question.” Or, “Oh, I really don’t have one.” Not for me.

 



Number two is, it’s a unique one, and we say this. I think it’s fun to see how people respond, is, “Do you consider yourself lucky?” A lot of people say, “Yeah, I found a $20 bill on the ground today.” Or say, “No, I don’t have luck, because everything I do, I put in the work for it.” Or, “Yeah, I’m lucky because I’m able to interview for this job.” I think it’s interesting to see people’s perspective on that question.

 


Adam:
Is there a right answer you’re looking for?

 


Jo:
No. I always say, “There’s never a right answer, but I’m curious on how you’re going to respond.”

 


Adam:
You know what’s interesting? There actually is a right answer to that question.

 


Jo:
Yeah? Give it to me.

 


Adam:
We have in our … It’s funny you should say that. In the interview guides we make, question number one on the phone screen is, “20 years from now, what do you see yourself doing? Okay, now a year from now, what does that look like?” We’re trying to connect some dots, for all the reasons you mentioned. Second, there’s a question in one of our interview guides that says, “On a scale of one to 10, how lucky would you say you are?” What we’ve found in regression testing the answers is that people who answer less than eight tend to be lower performers than those that answer eight or better. It has less to do with luck than it does with workplace attitude, and this notion of, “I have a positive disposition toward the work I’m doing.” What our data and what the research can show is that this notion of, “I’m lucky,” translates directly to, “I’m in a good mood most days.” People with positive mental approach to their day tend to be better performers.

 


Jo:
That’s a great perspective on it. I agree with you. I want people to say yes. I want them to have a positive attitude. Those ones in which to say that there’s no right or wrong answer, and they say, “No, I’m not lucky. My life kind of stinks.” Then probably not going to have a good attitude, not going to have high performance then in the job, in the workplace.

 


Adam:
Yeah, and won’t be much fun to work with. That’s for sure.

 


Jo:
Certainly.

 


Adam:
What’s the biggest people-related lesson you’ve learned since launching the company?

 


Jo:
My mom and maybe your mom, and I’ll speak for my mom, when growing up- I think maybe this is common- would always say, “Treat your neighbor the way that you’d want to be treated.” I think in work it’s the complete opposite. I think you treat your employees the way that they want to be treated. What we do, we do a lot of different things there. What we do is, and we just finished one up, but every four months we have listening sessions. Steven and I sit down, we take two days, and we have back to back to back to back meetings for 20 minutes, and we do everything but talk. We just listen. They come and there’s no structure. If they don’t have much to say, then maybe we’ll pin a few personal questions at them, social questions and things we want to learn more about them. But we take probably like 10%, those common threads that everyone is talking about, whether it’s a person, whether it’s responsibility, whether it’s poor heating. I have no clue what they’re going to say, but we take those and we change it.

 



I think that’s really important, because what we’ve learned, and just for a few examples here, of treating the employees the way that they want to be treated, one, if I were to treat them all the way I’d want to be treated, tomorrow we’d probably have massive burnout, or just a mass exodus. We learned that there was a lot of student debt, and so we brought on the Chicago-based company Peanut Butter, to help out with it.

 


Adam:
Yeah, we use them too.

 


Jo:
Oh, awesome.

 


Adam:
Yeah. Free plug, Peanut Butter. Check them out.

 


Jo:
We also learned that travel is really important to our employees, so now for our three-year anniversary, for three years with the company, we give them round trip airfare and pay for a three-week vacation.

 


Adam:
That’s awesome.

 


Jo:
Really awesome.

 


Adam:
Okay.

 


Jo:
Yeah. Where’s my three-year anniversary? I need one.

 


Adam:
That’s pretty cool. I like it.

 


Jo:
We learn things like that, and so I think that’s the most common lesson that I’ve learned myself, is to treat employees the way that they want to be treated, not the way that you want to be treated.

 


Adam:
All right. Final question, then, to boil it all down. Do you have a personal philosophy toward managing the people side of your company?

 


Jo:
That would probably be it, is, “Treat them the way that they want to be treated.” I like that philosophy.

 


Adam:
I like that. I like it. Okay, a couple of quick hit questions here. Lightning round to end us up.

 


Jo:
Oh god.

 


Adam:
As you look at the year in just broader, in the economy, you sell to consumers. Based on what you’re seeing right now, do you feel like things are getting better, or things are getting tougher for people?

 


Jo:
Through all the craziness, I actually do see some good, but I have a lack of excitement of leadership, a lack of … Then so I’m unfortunately just going to have to say “pass” on that one.

 


Adam:
Sure. Sure, okay. Do you think it’s going to get harder or easier for your company to find the people you’re looking for?

 


Jo:
The pool of people is getting smaller, and for that it’s making it more difficult. I think the ways of getting that small pool is becoming easier, and so I think overwhelmingly enough, it’s becoming easier. I was talking to you earlier about it, what we use, an app for some of our temp work for Valentine’s Day and Mothers Day where we scale it from 10 to 15 drivers to 100 plus drivers that are able to staff temp workers within 90 minutes and have that person into your space in 90 minutes.

 


Adam:
Through an app.

 


Jo:
Through an app, through a click of a button.

 


Adam:
That’s pretty awesome.

 


Jo:
Thinking about where we came from, or maybe not where me or you came from, but long ago, you’d post jobs in the newspaper and hope someone would come to the door the next day or something. Little bit different now. It’s much easier to be able to find the people, but the pool is small.

 


Adam:
Yeah. All right. Yeah, I remember starting in the staffing industry in 1998 as my first job. Someone called in an open job, or a rec as we called it. You could do same-day by miracle, but it was next-day, two days. I mean, you had to call people, bring them in, talk to them, do the paperwork, like all the stuff. All right. What book are you reading right now, and would you recommend it?

 


Jo:
I just bought it. It’s on my nightstand. The Laws of Success by Napoleon Hill, and so … Do you have it? Get the hell out.

 


Adam:
Okay, so here, you can’t see this if you’re listening. It’s Napoleon Hill, Success Through Positive Mental Attitude. I have to tell you this crazy story. There is a barbershop in the pedway in this building called Spa Di La Fronza, and it’s run by a man named Frank La Fronza. Frank’s been there for 40 years in the pedway here, under the Aon Center here in Chicago, and is just the most awesome human being to hang out with. He gives good haircuts, but he’s also a fascinating guy. He cut Harry Cary’s hair for 35 years. I’m holding a copy here of Success Through Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill, and W. Clement Stone, and so Frank gave me this book this morning. Literally, funny you bring it up. Now check this out, and what I’m doing, I’m opening it up. It is autographed. An autographed copy by W. Clement Stone. For anybody who knows W. Clement Stone, you know that W. Clement Stone and Pat Ryan Senior combined businesses and that’s where Aon Insurance came from. He cut W. Clement Stone’s hair for years. I mean, this guy is …

 


Jo:
All right, well now I know where I’m getting my next haircut.

 


Adam:
You gotta go down there and see the guy.

 


Jo:
I’m all about the barbershop feel. I need conversation during it.

 


Adam:
He’ll pour you a scotch if you go after four. He’ll pour you a Macallan, cut your hair, and tell you stories from the old country. This guy is awesome. You gotta go.

 


Jo:
I’ll let you know how my experience is.

 


Adam:
Spa Di La Fronza. Okay. If you were coming back on this show a year from now and were telling us whether or not you accomplished the most important thing on your plate right now, what is that thing?

 


Jo:
Scale. We want to scale this company through other cities just besides Milwaukee, and we want to put in scalable solutions to be … Well, not based around as much the people, but in infrastructure and technology that anyone could come in and operate on. We have an amazing blessing of an incredible amount of money on the top line. We’ve got to put in some even better systems to be able to help us scale, so I’ll see you in 12 months. I’ll let you know how that goes.

 


Adam:
All right. That’s the final word. You’ve been learning from Jo Dickstein, co-founder at Flowers for Dreams. Jo, thanks for being with us on the program.

 


Jo:
It was a pleasure. Thank you.

 


Adam:
All right. That’s a wrap for this episode of 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. I’m Adam Robinson, author of the book The Best Team Wins, which you can find online at www.TheBestTeamWins.com. We’ll see you next week.