Adam Robinson's Blog, page 9

New Podcast: Why Your People Team Needs a Seat at the Leadership Table

Lindsay Verstegen, SVP of People at ShopRunner, joins us on the podcast this week to discuss how she redefined the company’s mission, vision and values to build employee trust.

Connect with Lindsay on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Follow ShopRunner on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adam Robinson: Welcome to The Best Team Wins Podcast, where we feature entrepreneurs and business leaders, whose exceptional approach to the people’s 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.

Adam Robinson: Today on the program, Lindsay Verstegen is the SVP of People at ShopRunner, located in Chicago, founded in 2011 by serial entrepreneur, Sam Yagan. They have 135 employees, on their way to 150 by the end of the year, and are backed by some of the Who’s Who in Venture Capital. We are so excited, Lindsay, to have you on the program today. Welcome to the show.

Lindsay V.: Thanks.

Adam Robinson: We’re going to focus on the people side of ShopRunner today, but before we dive in, let’s set the stage. Give us 30 seconds on ShopRunner and what you guys are doing.

Lindsay V.: Sure, so we have millions of members that we offer free two-day shipping to. You can get that membership by way of paying $79 ala an Amazon Prime model, or lots of those members receive that membership for free through partners like American Express or PayPal or MasterCard. We consider ourselves complementary to Amazon versus in competition, because that would be really silly to think, “Oh, let’s take down Amazon.” It can be done, so to those out there who want to do it, go for it, but for us, we consider it complementary. We’re helping retailers fight their way to relevance in today’s shifting eCommerce landscape.

Adam Robinson: What are some ways for our listeners to better understand what you may offer to retailers, so that they can understand the context for the conversation today?

Lindsay V.: Yeah, so that’s something like we now offer the two-day shipping and then access to … We have over four million members. We have about 140 retailers. Those retailers are both department stores, like a Neiman, or brands, like a Kate Spade. If you think about basically what it is to find your way in the online/offline mix for those businesses, something like two-day shipping and/or thinking through how to get in front of those millions of members and, by the way, because of the strategic partnerships we have, those are members that you want to have. From a demographic perspective, they’re very enviable, a very enviable client base.

Lindsay V.: We are giving the access to those people, and then, what’s happened now … You mentioned Sam. Sam actually didn’t start ShopRunner, but took over ShopRunner in 2016, midway through, and so it’s been a bit of a reinvention of ShopRunner. Call it v. 2.0 or 3.0. I don’t know what “v” we’re on now. Really, where we’re going next is we describe ourselves as providing arms to people in the war. We are giving them options in terms of machine learning or other sorts of products we can build to make them relevant, as people expect more and more from what eCommerce can do for them and how convenient it can be.

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

Lindsay V.: Yeah, so they can go to shoprunner.com and check us out there. If you have AmEx card, you already can be a member, you just need to enroll, and similar with some of these other strategic partnerships we have.

Adam Robinson: All right, fantastic. Let’s dig in here on the people’s side of the business. You’ve been there since the beginning of 2017. Is that correct?

Lindsay V.: Yep, that’s right.

Adam Robinson: Taking over as the VP of People for an established business with a new leader with, as you and I know, a very specific way of doing things, give us the lay of the land of the organization, as you inherited it, and what the quick hit list was for you, after you had spent 90 days in the business.

Lindsay V.: Yeah, so I walked into a business that had an office in San Mateo, an office in the Philly area, Conshohocken to be specific, and then Sam took over the business with intention to make Chicago headquarters, but it was just [inaudible 00:04:27] and I, the CTO, his head of engineering, and the CFO in an office in 1871. And so this was purely aspirational and a lot of why he did hire me as I’ve had experience at fast growth companies with an emphasis on mission and vision and values. And so when he brought me on, there was this vision that eventually we would look a lot different, but we didn’t really know what that meant and because we were in the business of reiterating on what people knew shop runner to be. It also meant, yeah, we could look at historical context, but it was only helpful to a certain degree.

Lindsay V.: And at some point we needed to shake things up. So we made the decision relatively early on and we had about 70 people at that point, sort of half and half I would say between Philly area and San Mateo. We made the decision to close the San Mateo Office. That was something … Historically, I’ve overseen teams in the three areas you think every company probably is in at that scale, which is Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and so I had had exposure to those other markets and knowing what our mission was, I felt pretty confident that we could find the talent we needed in Chicago specifically. Um, and so we made the decision to close down that San Mateo Office. So that was a really intense start as you can imagine because we had little bit over 30 people there. And then we started what I learned, which was a culture sort of exploration that would culminate in an articulation of what the vision mission and the values would be that would then drive our hiring.

Lindsay V.: So at that point as well, I didn’t really have a team in place. So, I of course needed to find a team, but I also believe that you need to know who you are and what you’re looking for before you start to hire. Some people don’t take the time to do that. They just think, okay, I’ll figure it out as I go. I needed to know at least enough to feel confident I was signing them up for something they wanted and getting me the right person to take it across the finish line. And so once we had the vision, mission, values starting to take shape, I then started to add recruiters, talent partners as I call them, and then started to build up the business on the recruiting front with an eye on how do we then make the rest of the business from a benefits workplace culture standpoint, attract and retain the best talent once we found them.

Lindsay V.: So it was sort of building the rocket ship as you’re flying into the air, metaphor happening for sure. And now at this point we are just under shy of 140 people. And I’d say it’s about two for one. So two people in Chicago for every one person now in Conshohocken, Philly area.

Adam Robinson: So let’s talk … There’s a lot there to dig into. I mean, it’s fascinating to me so that you and a CEO partner take over a business, get involved in leading a business that had history, lots of locations in a culture by default, perhaps not necessarily by intent and the first thing you set out to do is redefine who Shop Runners [inaudible 00:07:48] from a values and culture perspective. So tell us … Give us that map. How did you go about doing that?

Lindsay V.: So I think what you’re talking about with regard to the partnership Sam and I have is key because number one that he made a people pro be a direct line of reporting into him is meaningful. So I’m on top of that, I was actually pretty content where I was at. And so the compelling piece of this challenge was that Sam also wanted to start thinking about diversity and inclusion early. So I had been an organization historically that had their heart in the right place but weren’t necessarily making the actions to progress that evolution in the workforce, supporting women, people of color, et cetera. And so the fact that Sam came to me and that was part of what he’d been thinking about even early, was really compelling to me because I wish that was more common place. It’s not. And so I think that partnership and the fact that Sam and I do see it as a partnership is really key.

Lindsay V.: I think leaders that fail to make their people a part of that leadership team are missing a huge opportunity because it’s often folks in my seat, who have really unique perspective and a holistic perspective, I think that sometimes get shut out. In great organizations, it’s prevalent in this kind of like the voice of the customer, but the internal customer, right? Like, what are your employees saying about you? And so, we took that on and I think the other thing was, as you said, culture by default, that was 100 percent the case. And then I think specifically when you’re thinking about diversity and inclusion, there’s a lot of things that I discovered were implicit ways of operating that became things people expected but weren’t thinking critically about. So it wasn’t about like, is that actually the best way we should be doing it? It was more of, well, that’s the way it’s always been done.

Adam Robinson: Give us, give me an example of that. So what’s one of these things that you went after early?

Lindsay V.: Yeah. So I mean, you think about a leader like Sam and then if you look at my peer set, they’re all impressive in their own right. And so you might think, okay, that’s going to be a top down organization. The organization had been super, super, super top down in the past to the point where I think in the first several months we were challenging people to challenge us because it just wasn’t happening. So, and I think, you know, Sam’s a super smart guy. So part of that is of course you want to hear what he’s saying, but he doesn’t have the perspective someone sort of on the front lines does.

Lindsay V.: So a lot of what we did was one of the values we did articulate was candor. Because that was not necessarily the way things worked. People just kind of did what they were asked to do and sometimes in terms of building what I describe as a builder mentality, the foundation wasn’t there yet because historically the way I did hiring had worked was very, very, very top down. The way you hire has huge implications. I think Andy Dunn of Bonobos describes it the best when he says cultures who you hire, cultures who you’ll fire. I think about that a lot because I think, you know, you can be as aspirational as you want, but the proof is in the pudding in terms of the people actually out there doing the building for you. So we had a lot of work to do with regard to not letting people be stagnant and encouraging people to not wait for the answer to come from on high, you know, to sort of say, hey, you’re in as good a seat as anybody to determine where this business goes. And so that was a huge, huge endeavor we had from the get go,

Adam Robinson: For listeners who are leading an organization or a part of the leadership team and organization where they haven’t been there from the beginning or they’re charged with culture change, is there a philosophical takeaway or lesson learned from your experience that you think in anyone can and should be thinking about as a first step in this kind of thing?

Lindsay V.: Yeah, my take is you want to honor history, but you don’t want to be a slave to it. So, you don’t want to be fearful of operating outside of the parameters of what has been done historically, but you want to acknowledge it. And so what I did was initially start with the group of executives attempt that Sam had assembled. And really, part of it is when you assemble a whole new leadership team, we also are getting to know one another as we’re building our teams. And so I think taking the time to really ensure we were speaking the right language and I think collaborating in a way we felt really good about. So some of the questions initially I talked to the executives about was talk to me about the best team you’ve ever been a part of.

Lindsay V.: So, and the way that this team described it, it wasn’t about the sort of bells and whistles that get a lot of airplay today. It was about we didn’t think we were going to get to the finish line and we did and here’s how. It was about how people bridged together and really sort of set off to solve a problem together and did it successfully. So we started there. And then what happened from there was, as I said, paying homage to history. What I did was assembled three different cohorts of people within the business. Both who had been here for some duration and had seen that history and some people who were pretty new and really made it a diverse mix of people and went in with some specific questions sort of in the vein of what’s the best team you’ve ever been a part of, but also then asking how do things work around here and how do you feel about that?

Lindsay V.: And so it was a series of questions where I think the number one thing you can do is create a safe space where people feel they will be heard and that when you come back and you say, “Here’s what we heard and here’s who we are,” people believe it’s authentic and people believe it’s something they can kind of hitch their star two and move forward. So there may be a lot of uncertainty as you build things, but you’re going to know this sort of internal code of conduct and way that we expect each other to work. That will always be true. So those are the rails as you go down the track. And I think it’s super important to give that sort of psychological safety as well, and that’s where things like vision and mission and values can be so much more than aspirational. It can be just the thing that builds trust within your team.  

Adam Robinson: I can imagine, in my experience, that there are those tenured employees or team members that are highly resistant to the new regime and those that are thinking of themselves thank God finally. We’re doing this differently. What was your experience in deputizing folks with internal credibility who were bought into the new way of doing things?  Did you find you had hand raisers or did you have to search to pull that out given the struggle with top down historical communication flow?

Lindsay V.: Yeah, it was kind of a mixed bag. And I think part of it is I believe you have to be compassionate with regard to change. We’re just human beings. We’re animals ultimately that want to feel safe and that what we’re doing matters. And so I think in a couple of cases where there where people … There are people who’ve put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this business to get it to where it is today. And like I said, there is an acknowledging of that, but there’s also giving people space to absorb the change and to really hear it. And so in a couple of instances, we actually went out of our way to say, “Please take time,” whether it’s a long weekend or whatever. I think we encourage people to take time when it was like it didn’t matter what we were going to communicate. Change is hard. It’s just inherently difficult.

Lindsay V.: The other thing though, and this goes back to hiring is even if people were here, we circled back and we said, “Let’s articulate what your job is,” and it sounds so simple, but as you know, over time and in a fast growing business, the thing you were hired to isn’t necessarily what you’re doing anymore. And so, there was also a discipline brought that included job descriptions. And we even used scorecards with outcome related bullet points that helped keep people focused in the right ways and make it so clear … As clear as we could be about what we thought success looked like in the role they were in. So I think those couple of things helped sort of vet out whether it was, hey, change is really hard, this person is taking the time they need versus you’ve seen it, it’s okay to unsubscribe. And in a couple of cases people to do that and we respectfully parted ways. But only after we took the time to do some of the leg work that is involved. You can’t just say we’ll figure it out and be so ambiguous about what it is. So we really sought to clarify that where we could.

Adam Robinson: Excellent. So you mentioned a couple of sentences there on hiring process and outcome driven job descriptions and those kinds of mechanics for companies seeking to implement a hiring process for one didn’t exist before. What would you say was the biggest challenge you faced and how did you overcome breaking through to the manager ultimately are going to be doing the interviews and making the selections?

Lindsay V.: Yeah, I think a couple of things had to be true, so that means before I had a team, I was offering a level of support that was legitimate. I wasn’t saying again in the same way. I’m not saying, hey, figure it out. I’m saying here’s an example of a scorecard, or here’s an example of a job description or you come up with something and then we will collaborate on what it means and what will make it good and not good. And ultimately what the job description, you’re just ultimately looking to tell the most accurate story so that the right talent it feels, oh, I could do that or that you can put a recruiter on it, and eventually I did have a team of recruiters which was super, super helpful because I am but one person, and they could partner with the hiring managers to really get at what they wanted from it and find the right language to communicate that back out.

Lindsay V.: So not only that, but I think also we did a lot of work similarly. It’s sort of like figure it out as you go along. It’s so tempting because the world moves so fast, but it’s so important to build the space to be intentional and thoughtful. So, even things like even after you have sort of the nuts and bolts seen to, the job descriptions, scorecard, what have you, the things you find effective. Then what about who the panel going to be, what are their areas of focus? And again, it’s not rocket science. It just requires a level of intention and consistency. So you can set the plan, but then how do you execute the planet? Who holds you honest to it? My team plays that role time and time again. And if things change, then we all get on the same page and say, hey, things have changed.

Lindsay V.: We actually thought we wanted this thing, we want this other thing. So I think consistency and process consistency in sort of what are the things we need to engage with you as the talent team on your search. That was also another thing is I think too often, or I’ve seen in many other environments, this frustration between the hiring manager feeling like the recruiters and giving me what I need and the recruiter sitting there going, the hiring manager isn’t giving me what I need. We were super, super clear that in order to engage with you on a search, and we rarely use third parties. In fact, we really haven’t. We say to them, we will partner with you. We will fill this role. We need a job description and a scorecard before you start. And so it makes the hiring manager come to the table with clear expectations of what we need in order to feel like we’re going to do an effective job for them. And so I think just some of those … It’s just discipline I think and a clarity and again, clarity, knowing that you can recalibrate at any point along the way as needed.

Adam Robinson: Now you’re currently managing two office locations. You’ve got approximately 150 people who by the end of this year, which is the point at which most research shows is where the old system of communication starts to break down. It’s this theoretical dunbar number, as it’s referred to. Culture being so important, what tools or approaches or systems are you putting in place to promote a one company culture versus an office based location based culture?

Lindsay V.: Yeah. So what my team now are those recruiters I mentioned, the talent partners I mentioned. I also have a people experienced team. So those are folks thinking about manager training we should bring. Because your managers become the way those tenants either live on or don’t. And again, similarly, like when the business is moving fast, it’s easy to think of the manager. We’ll figure it out. That is true. They will figure it out if you’ve hired the right people, but hopefully we can give them some sense  of what good looks like in your organization. And then the third thing is office experience or the office team. So at the office team we often use this phrase called sisters, not twins, so there are things that in the [inaudible 00:21:35], tradition and again, because they’ve been together longer, we want to be beholden to those traditions.

Lindsay V.: We want to do those traditions because they’re meaningful. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to start doing them if it’s not meaningful for this office, but I think the ways that we connect the dots are we have an HRIS with a social recognition functionality, meaning I can give Kudos to whoever and whatever office and I will be around a specific way someone went above and beyond and just having public evidence to what is being celebrated in hearing about specific ways people are delivering. It is super powerful. I mean, again, we’re human beings. We love to hear stories, so I think finding ways to create a narrative internally is really important. And then the other thing is for each all hands we have, or I should say once a quarter, we do what we call the big cash awards. So we did our values exercise and came up with seven values and then realized at the end, that we can make them spell big cash, which was not intentional but a hilarious byproduct and the only thing now I take the time to say, hey, we didn’t do that on purpose because that could communicate something very weird that like, okay, we want it to spell big cash, but that wasn’t actually what played out.

Lindsay V.: So now we have the big cash awards where someone can actually nominate someone from wherever and hold up one of those values and say this person has grit and here’s how I’ve seen them have grit or this person has hustle, here’s how they have hustle. And then we celebrate that publicly and then give them a little token of our appreciation as well. So I think finding consistent ways to celebrate wins is hugely important because again, stories live on as opposed to talking about it once or hearing about it a lot in your interview and then you never hear about it again.

Adam Robinson: Fantastic. So as we wrap up here, a year from now, if you were to come back on this show and talk to us about whether or not you accomplished the most important or impactful program or change facing your part of the business today, what would you be telling us happened in 12 months?

Lindsay V.: So I would be telling you that our managers are feeling embolden to be super effective managers. I think what happens after you’ve assembled so much of your team and in so quick a time as you’re all trying to recalibrate. And especially for managers, you’re trying to recalibrate as you’re building a team. So I would say that you would in a year be able to talk to anyone who manages at Shop Runner and say I’m doing the best work of my life. I feel like I’m doing the right things for the people on my team. And here are all the tools that my people team provides to me that makes me feel like they got me. And so I think that’s going to look like a lot of different things and I have ideas for what specifically it looks like, but that would be my goal.

Adam Robinson: Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the final word you’ve been learning today from Lindsey Verstegen, SVP of People at ShopRunner based in Chicago. Lindsay, thank you so much for being with us on the program today.

Lindsay V.: You Bet.

Adam Robinson: And that’s a wrap for this week’s episode of the best team wins podcast where we’re featuring entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name is Adam Robinson, author of the book The Best Team Wins, which you can find online at www.thebestteamwins.com. Thank you, as always, for tuning in. We’ll see you next week.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the best team wins podcast with Adam Robinson. You can find out more information about Adam and his book, The Best Team Wins: Building Your Business Through Predictive Hiring, at thebestteamwins.com. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next week.

 

The Best This Week for June 15

If you’re reading this newsletter, chances are you’re already well aware of the insanely tight labor market that exists in the United States. The latest Department of Labor unemployment report piles on with data showing unemployment at an 18 year low.  It was the 92nd consecutive month of job creation. (NYT)

As expected, the Fed raised rates a quarter point this week. What caught my attention was the upgrade that the Fed gave to the U.S. economy in it’s policy statement. Things are looking pretty darn good right now.

What are you seeing out there? Does it feel like 2007 to anyone? Stay focused, be sharp and enjoy this week’s content.

Encore Podcast Episode: Anytime Fitness Co-Founder and CEO Chuck Runyon

This week’s episode is an encore performance of one of my very favorite TBTW episodes. Chuck Runyon is a legend in both franchising and in the fitness industry. He’s helped to create an exceptional culture that’s been a source of competitive advantage for Anytime Fitness since the beginning.

Listen to Chuck’s philosophy on managing the people side of this business – and take notes. It’s 25 minutes of lessons learned from inside the trenches of building a powerhouse global fitness brand.

 

Stream and subscribe in your favorite apps:

                      

iTunes                   Google Play             Soundcloud                Stitcher

 

Show notes:

0:26 – About Chuck Runyon and Self Esteem Brands

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

20:15 – What is “play at work”?

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

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

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

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

 

Connect with Chuck:

Twitter | Linkedin

Connect with Anytime Fitness:

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

 

Get your copy of Love Work here!

Recommended Reading – Ideas, Influence and Income by Tanya Hall

This week’s book recommendation is Ideas, Influence and Income: Write a Book, Build Your Brand, and Lead Your Industry by Tanya Hall, CEO of Greenleaf Publishing. Greenleaf is the publisher for my book, The Best Team Wins, and the lessons I learned from their team made all the difference in terms of impact and reach.

Now, Tanya has encapsulated these lessons into a highly accessible how-to guide for becoming a thought-leader in your industry. If you’re thinking about writing a book but aren’t sure where to start, reading this book is a great first step.

My Latest Inc. Column – 50% of Leadership Transitions Fail

In this week’s Inc. column, I explore fascinating analysis from McKinsey outlining five critical focus areas for maximizing the chance of success for a newly hired executive.  Making senior leadership hires is one of the toughest things that an entrepreneur has to do, and the first 90 days can make or break their success.

If you’ve ever found yourself struggling to integrate a new leader onto your team, this column is for you.

 

The Best This Week for June 8

Strong positive action in the financial markets this week resulted from continued acceleration of job and wage growth here in the US.  Unemployment claims dropped unexpectedly, proving what most business owners already know: the labor market is insanely tight.

I’m a big Ray Dalio fan; this entrepreneur started runs Bridgewater Associates, now the largest hedge fund in the world. He’s worth an estimated $17.4 billion dollars. And he’s a pretty awesome human being. His advice this week: “Sell your expensive stocks and party.“

My latest Inc. Column – What Drives Employee Engagement?

In this week’s Inc. column, I dig into Aon’s 2018 Trends In Global Employee Engagement report, and talk about the single, most important thing that employers can do to drive employee engagement. Hint: it’s not pay, and it’s not benefits. (It’s the reason I’ve hand-written anniversary notes to our team members for years!)

I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Sound off on Twitter with tweet to @adrobins.

Recommended Reading – The Lessons of History

The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant

The husband-and-wife team of Will and Ariel Durant wrote 11 volumes on Western history published from 1935-75, ending with the Napoleonic era only because they died weeks apart from the other. They won a Pulitzer Prize for the 10th volume of that series.

What are the lessons one can learn from a full analysis of all of human history? This book is  amazing for its simplicity and its brevity (it’s just over 100 pages), and it’s worth your time. Enjoy!

 

New Podcast: This One Mistake Can Be the Secret Killer of Your Bottom Line

My podcast guest this week is Glenn Pasch, CEO of PCG companies in New Jersey.  This former actor turned entrepreneur dropped in to talk with me about his learnings from his ten years at the helm of this 40-employee firm. Listen in to learn about what Glenn calls “the secret killer of your bottom line.”

Connect with Glenn on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Follow PCG Companies on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transcripts:

Adam Robinson: Welcome to The Best Team Wins podcast where we feature entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name is Adam Robinson, and for the next 25 minutes, I’ll be your host as we explore how to build your business through better hiring. Today on the program, Glenn Pasch is the CEO of PCG Companies, located in New Jersey, founded in 2005. Glenn and his brother, Brian, have founded a company that now has 40 employees. The best learning happens through the experiences shared by our fellow entrepreneurs, and Glenn, we are so excited to have you on the show today to learn from you. Welcome.

Glenn Pasch: I appreciate it. Thanks very much, Adam.

Adam Robinson: So we’re focusing on the people side of your business, but before we dive in, set the stage for us. Give us 30 seconds on PCG and what you do.

Glenn Pasch: Great. We are a marketing agency. We focus on digital marketing. We help small to medium size businesses increase their visibility online handling their marketing. The other piece to it and what makes our clients want to work with us is we help educate them. We understand that digital marketing can be confusing, especially for entrepreneurs trying to build their business. So we make sure they understand what we’re doing. We’ve created online classes for them to also take, so we help not only generate traffic, but then we also can help them internally with their processes to deliver great customer experience and maximize those marketing dollars and create more opportunity for them to sell their products or services. So that’s in a nutshell.

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

Glenn Pasch: They can go to our website which is www.PCGCompanies, plural, Companies.com. Or you can also just reach out to me at Glenn, G-L-E-N-N, @PCGCompanies.com as well.

Adam Robinson: Excellent. All right, let’s talk about the people side of PCG and the customers you serve. Take us all the way back to 2005. You and your brother starting this business. Give us a little bit of the origin and what it was like moving forward hiring your very first employee.

Glenn Pasch: So interesting, my brother actually started it. I joined a few years after. So he saw the movement of digital marketing moving from traditional to digital, and he started a company by himself, basically out of his house, focusing on search engine optimization and, as always, with new businesses and you go to your friends and families. So he went to people like his eye doctor, or somewhere where he bought a car, and also a yearbook company, or a friend who had a company and said, “Well, you need search engine optimization.” And back then, no one really knew what it was. But he started to build the company and he started … He brought on I think when I joined him he had four other people there.

And I actually joined or came to his company because I was starting my own company. I had been … I left a company that I was with for about 12 years, so I was building up my own consulting firm. So he was teaching me how to market. The problem was is that I saw that he didn’t have processes underneath to be able to scale his business. He could just hire people, but it would crumble, so we traded services until his employees said, “Can Glenn stay here because he knows how to build a company. You have a great idea for a company. But you need that combination.” So I’ve been with him for about 10, 12 years and we’ve built our company together. I tend more to deal with the hiring, building the processes, all of that, where he’s out there leading the charge and coming up with the great ideas to put our company in position to be successful.

Adam Robinson: So tell me about the first person then you hired.

Glenn Pasch: Yeah, the first person I hired we were looking for entry level. We had somebody to help with the technical side. We had someone who was an account manager. And what we were looking for were content writers and the new account manager. So we put out ads through different places. Back then it was either Craigslist or you put it out on Monster or you put it out just through LinkedIn, posting, “Hey, we’re looking for some people.” And we got our responses and we started to vet them. And at that time I think I hired two content writers and one account manager in the span of about six weeks.

Adam Robinson: Wow. Okay. And what … You mentioned process earlier. Did you follow a particular process at this point?

Glenn Pasch: Yeah. My time, my history, so to speak, going backwards for me. I came up through the hospitality industry for … In my 20s I was an actor in New York City, so that meant you work in restaurants and I grew up working in restaurants. That was where I worked, so I took a lot of my processes, and more importantly, how you trained and looked for quality people from what I learned in the restaurant industry. So many times I tried new things or I trusted different things outside of my process, and sometimes they worked, sometimes they failed. But ultimately, it’s always been an ongoing refinement of a process. But it really always comes down to a few core things that we look for for our company now, and it’s always served me well to follow those core things that I look for in individuals.

Adam Robinson: So let’s talk about that. What are those core components of a successful candidate for your organization?

Glenn Pasch: There’s couple things that we look for. We’ve narrowed it down to sort of what we have in PCG as our core values. But they’re really things that we try to look for and try to understand during the interview process, which is not always easy because everyone’s on their best behavior during an interview. But I’m looking for things where someone is, or I can see examples of are you self-motivated? Meaning that either I look sometimes I see if someone was an athlete, they were part of a team, maybe they were in the military, they achieve things individually that I could see that they understood how to set goals and achieve them.

We also look for self-motivation right? So self-education, self-motivation. I look for in the interview when I ask certain questions, I look for them to be willing to, as much as they can, to be themselves versus the canned answers that everybody’s taught to tell. And then ultimately, I want to see if I connect with them on a, I call it a voice. Meaning are they willing to ask me questions? Are they comfortable in their own skin? Are they nervous? Because ultimately, I’m looking for someone who when they join our team, they’re willing to raise their hand and say, “I have a question,” or, “I think we should do it this way.” They want to be that collaborative type of a person.

So those are the things I look for because I can ultimately teach people skills. I learned all about digital marketing. So I had to. So skills I can teach. Can’t teach work ethic. I can’t teach that you’re going to educate yourself. I can’t teach that you’re willing to put in the work. That I can’t teach. I can hold you accountable, but I don’t really want to do all of that all the time.

Adam Robinson: You mentioned core values and that you have them. Can you share those with us?

Glenn Pasch: Yeah. We narrowed it down. We have our mission statement, but ultimately our core values are the collaborative. Our team is collaborative. Our team is self-motivated. Our team is self-educated. Our team is they take accountability, self-accountability. And then ultimately, they have a voice, meaning that they are able to communicate with each other, challenge each other in a positive way without making it feel that it’s personal. And ultimately, our one main core value is that our clients are … That is our focus. We make sure the clients, one, are clear on what we’re doing, we’re partnering with them, they understand what we’re doing. They see the value of what we’re doing. And we can explain results in common language, not mumbo jumbo and metrics. So the core values of that collaboration, self-education, those took awhile to narrow down and bucket so to speak so that everybody understands them.

Adam Robinson: Let’s talk about how you lead and manage the organization. And so in the company of the 40 team members, how many of them would you say are managers versus individual contributors?

Glenn Pasch: Well, everybody contributes, meaning that we do have our controller who handles all the finances and billings and numbers and tax, all of that. So she doesn’t have anyone really under her, but that’s her own. I have someone who heads up the operations. But they still have a couple accounts because they moved up through the company and they were an account manager, so they still have one or two accounts that they manage and oversee and collaborate, but they run the day to day operations. Then you sort of have team leads who oversee someone who oversees the content team, someone who oversees the account managers, someone who oversees the technical aspects of the websites that we monitor or our own. And we have someone over marketing.

But it really is, because in a company this small, you definitely still have, even at that level, you’re watching a few different things. So it isn’t just, “I can only … I’m only looking at this.” So I would say there’s probably on my leadership team probably about seven people that sit at the table, help make those decisions, direction of the company, address issues that we need to address. So I would say probably seven then.

Adam Robinson: Okay. And you recently led a session at a large industry conference that … NADA, Auto Dealers Association national conference that we were both at. And the title of your session was interesting. I found it really interesting. It was called Manager Employee Conflict: Secret Killer of Your Bottom Line. Tell me what you meant by that.

Glenn Pasch: Well, what I see often, I’ve seen it in my own company, and I’ve seen it when I’m brought in to consult or advice other organizations, what I find sometimes is conflict, not … When the word conflict comes out, sometimes people think it’s knock down, drag out, screaming and that type of. And I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about conflict internally, not understanding what I’m supposed to be doing, so I’m doing something and then there’s a conflict of, “Well, why aren’t you doing what you’re supposed to be? Or what I think you should be doing?” So if I’m a manager and you’re working on my team, there could be a conflict in the fact of what you think you should be doing and what I think you should be doing. So that’s number one conflict, because we’re not clear.

Number two is maybe my training wasn’t done correctly, so again, I do more telling than training. So there’s a conflict of expectations. And then same thing with accountability, it comes around to when I’m talking about accountability, I could be sitting here going, “Well, Adam, you never trained me.” I may not vocalize that, but I have my guard up. Or there’s conflict of managing a group of people where someone’s perception of you’re giving Adam, you’re giving that person special treatment, or you’re holding me accountable to different rules than that person, and so again, there’s this conflict that lies underneath the surface that a lot of times is never voiced, but it impacts performance because if I start seeing special treatment given by you, Adam, to someone else, well then maybe I go back and say, “Well, I’m never going to get that. I’m never going to get rewarded that way.”

So my production goes instead of that I’m supposed to produce eight, I’m at six and a half now. It’s still within the reason of, “Oh, Glenn’s having a bad month.” Or, “Glenn’ll get better.” Or I don’t even notice it. But the mere fact that I’ve given up, that’s what I’m talking about conflict is that you don’t see it all the time, but there’s hidden angst, or hidden things that are going on that are impacting your production, and you may never see it. So we talked about how you fix that, how you clean that up, and I have them some things that they could take back to do.

Adam Robinson: Excellent. And in your work, what would you say is the single most common or most impactful thing that managers aren’t doing but should be doing to get better output from their team?

Glenn Pasch: Communication, communication, communication. Everything boils down to communication. And it can be verbal, it can be written. I am working on a new project, and it’s this concept of these pillars in any business. And I believe there’s three things that if any one of these sort of legs of the tripod is wobbly or out of whack, it’s going to hurt your business. But it all comes down to communication. And it starts with your structure of your company. I mean, you have your organization. I’m sure there’s … You would say if someone came in from the outside and sat with you and said, “Are all of the job descriptions written out? Does everybody know exactly what they’re supposed to do? Have they been shown, written down, told, whatever, here’s what you have to do.” And is everyone clear on that’s the way we do things?

So is there one way of doing what we need to do? And then are they trained and are they trained correctly? Where I find a lot of problems in an organization is the trainers who are supposed to be training people, or the managers who are supposed to be training never were taught how to train. Right? So they’re just trying to mimic and tell people what they did or just tell people what to do. That doesn’t mean you understand how to really coach and develop a team or develop individuals.

And then the last piece is accountability. What really is accountability, how do you do it? So any of those pillars, it all comes down to communication. So if I communicate what you should be doing for me, Adam, and you’re clear, and if I communicate how to do it and train you properly, and then I communicate again how to hold you accountable, giving you feedback on when you’re doing well, when you’re not doing well, we win. Most of the time, I find one of those structures is out of place because we either didn’t communicate, we don’t know how to communicate, or we communicate incorrectly and we don’t get the results that we want.

Adam Robinson: So one of the things I often find is that, at least in terms of management, when you ask managers, “How did you get this job?” Often times, the manager of the team was the best sales person, or the best doer, which in many cases, makes them not the best manager of others. I know you run into this frequently. How do you coach a manger who was an exceptional individual performer, but may not be exceptional at watching other people share that spotlight?

Glenn Pasch: Well, I try to get the word manager out of the equation. Because when most people, at least when I do, when I think of the word manager, I have a picture of someone behind a desk. Most teams, when you’re leading a team, be it a sales team, be it a client service team, any group of people that you’re leading, I tend to push the word coach. Because when we sit and we say to individuals, “Was there a coach who was really impactful?” They always go to somebody. And I say, “Okay, great. Well where were they during game time?” “Well, they were on the sidelines.” “What did they do?” “Oh, they were at practice.” “Where were they at practice?” “They were right with me. They showed me what to do.”

And that’s the keyword, “They showed me what to do. They just didn’t tell me. They showed me.” So your example is one of my biggest pet peeves. The best performer is not always the best, and probably 9 times out of 10, not the right person to lead because they don’t know what they do. They just do it. It comes natural to them. Number two is the biggest thing they lack is patience. They get frustrated because people don’t pick it up as quickly as they do. So that’s the frustration that they have. So if I was going to coach, and I have coached top performers and helped them to become good coaches, the biggest one is patience.

You really have to get them to slow down and show them what they have to do, not tell them what to do. Show them what to do then watch them do it and tweak it. And if you get into a top performer’s head that you’re coaching someone, it seems to click a little bit better because they go back to what a coach did, which is, “Let me show you.” Think of it, you have young children, think of it same way. Like when I had to teach my son to throw a baseball, I didn’t tell him how to do it, I showed him. I showed him, “Heres how you hold the ball. Here’s how you put your arm. Here’s how you throw it.” And then he would do it and then you’d readjust and you’d … But you never got frustrated.

The more that you can get an individual to slow down and think more of a coach, they can be successful. A lot of top performers can’t do it because they’re not patient. They get frustrated. They don’t know how to do it and they don’t want to be held accountable for someone else’s performance that won’t either work as hard as they did, doesn’t catch on as quick enough. But it is really getting them to understand that they’re going to take this on, patience, and willingness to put in the effort to show people what they do.

Adam Robinson: One of the most critical components of getting the behavior or activity you want in a particular position is the comp plan. I want to ask two questions about this. One for PCG and one for the customers that you work with. What’s your philosophy around compensation at your company? Is it base pay for what you do and bonuses? Is there some kind of incentive program? Just talk to us about how you’ve learned over the last 13 years of being in business how pay plans impact performance for you. And then, share with us what you see out there on the market and how things may be changing.

Glenn Pasch: Well, we continue to try to develop and revise what we do. In the past, you hire someone in at a base salary. We would always have an annual … Two pieces. We’d have a performance review, which was separate from any salary increase, and then we would look at a salary increase. Now, we have in the past felt that we should give everyone something. We have changed that to say, “Well, that’s not fair to everyone.” If someone is just coming in and fulfilling the job that you’re paying them for, and not exceeding at any level of goals that we’ve set for them, well why does that merit any increase?

So we’ve got to a little bit of definitely some compensation if people sell products, or upsell the current clients, they definitely get compensation in terms of a commission base, a small commission. But for the most part it’s yearly, unless they change positions. If they move to a different position that merits a different salary, we move them up to that new salary level. But no, this year and last year, we have really gotten to more of a meritocracy type of a position where if you just show up to work and do your job, even if you do it well, well that’s what you’re being compensated for. It does not merit more money unless you’ve hit certain goals. And we’ve gotten much better setting clear goals for them at one thing and saying, “Okay, by next year, if you achieve these goals, well now you qualify for that.” So I think that, for us, has gotten better.

It’s just the problem is salaries and the qualifications and trying to find good talent at certain levels, especially in New Jersey. It’s very competitive, so what you could get an entry level employee for two years ago, it’s probably about 10 to 15% more just as an entry level because you’re just not getting qualified people now. So then that also influxes where someone said, “Well, I started here and now new person comes and they’re at here.” And they don’t sit on our side of the table to understand, “Well, I had to pay that to get that qualification.”

So that’s what we do now. In terms of out there, we work with a variety of different clients. Some are built like we are from an agency standpoint or a small business where annual reviews. We’ve worked with sales organizations which is commission based. But what we do find for some, we do have some clients in automotive where they have not … I still fight them on this because I think they’re compensation model is incorrect, 100% commission works for very small amount of people. And that concept of a draw, which means that I will give you money but you have to sell a certain amount. And so if I give you $300, that equates to X number of sales at the end of the month.

If you don’t hit that, well then you owe me money. That concept just doesn’t work with individual now, so I’ve seen more successful automotive dealers going to a hourly wage or a base salary for their sales people, and then commissions on top. Now, the amount of commissions may have changed because you have the base, or at what level do commissions trigger may have changed. But that allow the sales people to not worry about money on a weekly basis, where if they had a bad week and didn’t sell anything, that doesn’t … In the other system of full commissions, maybe you don’t get a paycheck. That just doesn’t sort of sit well with individuals today.

Adam Robinson: Yeah, absolutely. So Glenn, as we answer the final couple minutes here, what would you say is the greatest lesson you’ve learned about managing the people side of your business?

Glenn Pasch: I think the best lesson I’ve learned through my whole career is I am part of the team. I am not above the team.

Adam Robinson: Tell me what you mean by that.

Glenn Pasch: Well, I strive … It’s hard because people still will go, “Well you’re the boss.” And I understand that as much as I say I have an open door and I try to be part of the team, again, they still look at me as the owner and there’s still that little divide. But the majority of my team understands that I do just a different role than they do. My role is not more important. I go out and deal with clients. I go out and sell. Or I set things up so that we all have a framework to create the business. But at the end of the day, if my account managers don’t do a good job and we lose business, or the content writers aren’t writing good content, or the pay per click people are not doing their job, it doesn’t matter how great I am. The team’s not there.

Or vice versa. They could be great, but if I don’t do my part, well then it doesn’t work. So I look at me as saying, “I’m no better than you. I just have a different role than you do.” And I think the more that you can be part of the team I think the better off you are. The minute you separate yourself or distance yourself and it really becomes, “This is my company.” And me and I instead of we and us, I think that has always served me very well. Especially growing up in hospitality, working in kitchens. Doesn’t matter, we all got to get through the day and make sure we serve people. So I think that is the lesson has always served me to building a good team.

Adam Robinson: Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the final word. You’ve been learning from Glenn Pasch, CEO at PCG Companies. Glenn, thank you for being with us on the show today.

Glenn Pasch: My pleasure, thank you so much for having me, Adam.

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

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to The Best Team Wins podcast with Adam Robinson. You can find out more information about Adam and his book, The Best Team Wins: Building Your Business Through Predictive Hiring at TheBestTeamWins.com. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next week.

 

The Best This Week for June 1

Welcome to Summer, 2018 Edition!

Summer finally arrived, and here in Chicago it was nice to see the mercury pass 80 degrees for once. We’re wrapping up the rainiest May in years, and I’m ready for good stuff. Here’s to 94 days of amazing summer for you and yours!

New Podcast Episode: Mary Ann O’Connell, CEO of FranWise

My guest this week is Mary Ann O’Connell, Founder and President of FranWise. She’s spent the last 30 years helping emerging brands operationalize all aspects of their business, and stopped by to share a few critical team insights with us on the podcast. What’s the biggest mistake that new franchisors make when it comes to the people side of their business? Mary Ann tells us, and shares how to avoid similar mistakes.

Stream the conversation below or find us listed in Apple Podcasts or Google Play.

New Inc. Column: The Most Important Employee Benefit for Gen X

So much is written about Millennials that Gen Xers might feel under-loved. But this generation is not stepping into senior-level roles en force, and my generations cares about one thing more than anything else when it comes to benefits. Read my column to find out what that is.

Book Recommendation

Julie Rodgers, Hireology’s COO, recommended this book to me a few weeks back and I’m loving it. This classic business book put the term Emotional Intelligence on the map, and it’s just been re-released in an updated 10th Anniversary edition. If you manage people, you should to read it.

Get it here: Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence

ICMYI

It’s as difficult as it’s ever been to find qualified talent. Jobless claims remain near historic lows – CNBC.com

Solid negotiating tactic, or potential wet blanket for the U.S. economy? Trump attacks NAFTA partners with tariffs – New York Times