The Home Service Expert Podcast - Talent Acquisition Tactics to Recruit High-Performing Employees

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Jeremie Brecheisen is the Managing Director of Gallup's CHRO Roundtable, where he advises executives and senior leaders on their culture and performance. He is an experienced public speaker, having presented at many public conferences in the fields of HR, Technology, and FinTech, among others. Overall, he has served as a keynote speaker at international conventions with audiences of over 30,000 and live-streaming audiences of more than 10,000 people. In this episode, we talked about human resources, talent acquisition, leadership…

This is something where we have 34 different strengths that we're measuring. The chances that you have the same top five strengths in the same order as someone else is one in 33 million. I'm taking that test today. in the rest of the United States who, statistically speaking, have the same top five in the same order. Now, I am a nerd, and I calculated out what that would be to have all 34 in the same exact order. The chances of having all 34 in the same order is one in 295 undecillion. It's a real number. It has 36 zeros. Scientists have estimated that only about 108 billion people have ever lived on earth. So not even one undecillion. So what that means is nobody ever has been, nobody is now, and nobody ever will be like you. You're as unique as you ever thought you were, statistically speaking. What that also means is if you're not at your best, if you're not making your unique, if you're not making your

unique contribution today, there's no one to replace you. It's simply lost. And so when you focus on your strengths, when you help people focus on their strengths and you help people be at their best, you literally change the world a little to a lot every single day. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.

I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome to the Home Service Expert Podcast. Kind of randomly, I met Jeremy here. We were on a plane together headed from Minnesota to Milwaukee, I believe.

And because I've been on like a thousand flights in the last year. And Jeremy, I don't want to butcher your last name. Breckheisen. Breckheisen. A little bit of German there. He's an expert in management, public speaking, coaching. He's a managing director, but he just got a better role at Gallup. He's worked at King Gold Group Companies, True North Academy.

Jeremy is the Managing Director of the CHRO Roundtable, where he advises executives and senior leaderships on culture and performance. He is an expert public speaker, having presented in many public conferences in the fields of HR technology and fintech, among others. Overall, he has served as a keynote speaker at international conventions with audience of over 30,000 and live streaming audience of more than 10,000. Jeremy, you just recently got promoted. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, I'm now the managing partner at Gallup, which basically means I'm the regional leader for our EMEA region or

Europe, Middle East, and Africa. So all of our consultants, business development, all of the different people that work here in this area now report up to me. That is awesome. So Gallup has a couple thousand people, huge brand. And what was really interesting is I love learning about different parts of the business. And you've worked with, talk about some of the executives and some of the people that you have at these conferences. Yeah. So as you mentioned, I've been leading the Gallup CHRO roundtable. CHRO stands for Chief Human Resources Officer. And in that roundtable, we have around a thousand big companies. The average size of the company is about 70,000 employees in the roundtable. And so I work with the chief executives over HR from Microsoft, IBM, Coca-Cola, HSBC, Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, Google, Amazon, like all the big companies in most industries,

Texas Roadhouse, Brinker that owns Chili's. So all these different CHROs I work with and bring them together. When we met, I was going to visit the CHRO of Molson Coors and a bunch of other CHROs were flying in for the same. And we talk about pressing issues that they're facing and help them try to solve it with one another. You know, I love this conversation because can you kind of go down what, not a lot of people know what a CHRO is probably in the home service space. And our HR team is pretty robust at this point. And sometimes I got a love hate relationship with HR just because I hate performance improvement plans. Like if someone's not doing great,

I feel like at least we're in 19 states, all right to work. And I want to hear your viewpoint on a lot of stuff, but can you just walk through what a lot of these people are in charge of and what's the daily grind that they're dealing with? Yeah. So just to be transparent, I've never been in HR. I know a lot about them. I bring them together. I talk to them, but I'm not really an HR guy. I'm more of a business leader and a sales leader. But as I work with them, these executives are people who are leading kind of a couple of parts. There's kind of three parts to HR. Part one is the stuff you think of HR of old, payroll, employee relations, if you have complaints or you need help or something like that. All of the kinds of forms you have to fill out to

get your time off and all those kinds of things. That's like essentially what they call shared services. The second part is the operational part, which is where you hear about like the term HR business partner or HRBPs. These are usually people that are helping with the changes, supporting the leaders, helping them with strategy, helping them incorporate the people strategy into their business strategy. And then the third side is the centers of excellence. These are the people who are responsible for usually two camps. One camp is total rewards, thinking about benefits packages, thinking about well-being and those kinds of things.

The other camp is around talent acquisition. That's a big part of HR, right? Recruiting people, culture, like employee engagement surveys and things like that. It's diversity and inclusion. It's learning and development. All of these kinds of things are usually in that group. So they've got basically the shared services, run the business. They've got support the business with HRBPs, and they've got expertise that HR needs like learning and development, talent acquisition, and those things. Frankly, an HR leader is usually focused on about 30 people. And they're in the leadership team and they need to develop them because of the next level leaders. And very few of them, less than 10% say that the future leaders of the biggest companies in the

world are getting world-class development. So when you start thinking about the next generation of leaders, those who are actually responsible for developing them, tell me they're not being developed with world class at world class levels. That's a bit alarming. It is. And, you know, I had the CEO of Nexter in here and I told him my growth strategy over the next three years. And he said, you know, Tommy, there's no doubt in my mind, you're going to be one of the largest home service companies in North America. He goes, my problem that you're going to need to solve from my point of view is how do you develop leaders? Because right now you're going to need to be pulling them out from other categories. You're

not going to find them in home service. You're going to need to develop. You're going to need to find great people. And it's interesting, Jeremy, because I kind of went over this yesterday morning, some of the catalysts that grew A1. We're not enormous, 800 employees at this point, but we're probably going to be at 2,000 by the end of next year. And it's easier to go from 800 to 2,000 than it is to go from 10 to 20. I mean, you know how that goes, but the deal is for us, it's always been the great hire, the great leader that comes in from 2014 to 2017 to 2021. I look at the growth spurts and it's literally been getting talent. I mean, the president of our company is here. Without him, we wouldn't be where we are today. Same thing with my CTO, same thing with my CFO,

and obviously the HR team. I really do love my HR team here, but it is really, I look at it, there's a lot of functions they serve. There is. And I will tell you, it's important to get the leadership right. He's absolutely right. Most leaders are chosen for the wrong reasons. We surveyed a representative samples of managers and leaders in the United States and. So I was the best salesperson and I became the sales leader. I was the best engineer and I became the engineering leader. The problem with that is the best salesperson doesn't necessarily care about developing people. And it's just like you don't see Michael Jordan coaching a basketball team. You don't see the best basketball players becoming the coach because that's not the talent profile for a great coach. The second most common reason, they were the most experienced. In both of those cases, management is a reward.

Congratulations, you've been performing so well, you deserve this. Congratulations, you've been here so long, you've been so loyal. You deserve this. But management's not something you deserve. It's not a reward. It's a responsibility. I would never do that with any other role. Nobody would ever be like, Tommy, you've been so good at sales. We've decided to make you the head of HR or we've decided to make you an engineer. You're like, but I don't know how to program. You deserve this, Tommy. And maybe we even need more diversity. We need you to do this. All the wrong reasons for why people should go into these roles is what's guiding them there. And so if you want to make any shift, it's hiring people who have the talent to develop and challenge people rather than people who know

how to be good at the role that they're managing. Yeah, I think we've all made that mistake. We take our top sales guy and say, well, if I could get more of you, you know how to do it. You're the best performer. Can you do this with a couple of dozen people? And then you realize it's a whole different job. It's a whole different mindset. It's 100% developing others. And typically top performers don't play well with others. We've even learned that if you even want to understand why those top performers are successful, you cannot even ask them because they'll give you the wrong answers. They don't even know why they're successful because they don't know what everybody else is doing. So they don't have perspective of what they do different,

how they think different. So if they can't even tell you why they're successful, why do you think they could tell someone else? Yeah. I guarantee you there's nine out of 10 companies can say we've made that mistake. And when they're a large company, every one of them has made that mistake. And it's identifying that with 360 reviews and understanding you need team players that want to grow people. I was watching the news yesterday. And, you know, a lot of companies, they want to see a four year degree, not in blue collar industries, but they want to see that just because they want to know they can finish something. They want to know that they can stick to the grind and get an accomplishment, which is their diploma. But what I heard yesterday, and it's very interesting, is right now with AI, and I'm sure this is coming up a lot in your conversations, we were told we're going to go into development and coding, right? All these

kids are getting into whether it's.NET, PHP, different types of code. And now AI is coming for that. And it's like, we're not going to need dispatchers soon. We're not going to need call center people soon. We work with a very, very robust CRM. They're worth about $12 billion. And there's a meeting coming up in September. And I talked to the CTO last night. And he said, your mind is going to be blown with what we're building with AI. And he goes, you're only going to need technicians. That's all you're going to need in your company is guys to show up to the house and do the work. And I was thinking to myself, we kind of got a good job as technicians because I don't see a computer going out and

fixing garage doors or HVAC units or replacing roofs anytime soon. And you work with some of the largest companies on the globe. What do you think is going to happen over the next five years as these developments happen? Well, it's interesting because we have employee research. So we ask employees what they think and we ask leaders what they're planning. And there's a result of new technology, automation, robots, AI? And the percent that say very likely is 3%. The percent that say very unlikely is 58%. Not too likely, 27%. Almost everybody believes their job is not at risk from AI at all. When I asked the chief HR leaders, I said, do you see AI replacing jobs at your organization in the next 12 months, 16% said yes. I said, what about the next three years?

72% said yes. So it jumps from 16% saying, oh, we'll replace jobs in the next year to 72% of saying, yeah, we'll be replacing jobs with AI in the next three years for sure. So employees don't think their jobs are at risk at all, but leaders, AI is progressing so fast, people don't realize how fast it's going at all the tasks that are going to be replaced by AI in the next three years. And they're redoing all the job descriptions and changing up their whole workforce planning strategy for who they're going to hire based on this.

These companies are getting serious and robust about it. And they're going to be changing it. The other interesting one is we asked employees, how often are you using AI? And it wasn't very much. The answer they gave us, one in 10 said they used it weekly. Seven in 10 said never. But when I asked the HR leaders, how often are your employees using AI? The number one answer was, I don't know. I have no idea. So yeah, it's going to replace jobs, but I have no idea how much they're all using AI. There's so much nobody even knows. It's so new that I think there's going to be some surprises that come our way. By the way, humans are terrible at predicting the future.

I could go back 90 years and show you all the surveys from Gallup whenever we ask people to predict the future. They've gotten it wrong almost every single time. One of the most latest one, we asked people in 2002, will you ever buy a smartphone? 70% of us adults said never. So they were wrong. So I think sometimes we predict the future and we've just found humans are usually wrong. That's really interesting. You know, when it comes to bringing on great staff, I'm a big fan of personality profiles and I don't think there's necessarily a perfect answer. But I mean, back in 2000, I got a job as a busboy at Cheesecake Factory. And I had to take three different personality profiles back then. Now, I don't know if these things are getting more robust with AI,

but you would think that there's confidence intervals that are starting to become more and more and as they start learning about what makes success what are the attributes what are some of the now i can pull in different things from social media different comments and you know how long are you going to stay in this job is that something that you find that that you think is going to be people are going to dive in more to that? Or where do you think that's going with these assessments? Here's what I think it means for your industry. AI is going to make it more scalable and usable for smaller businesses. A lot of these big consulting firms have been designing these for big companies.

And now you see McKinsey, you see Boston Consulting Group, you see Gallup. We're all trying to get in. We're working with smaller and smaller businesses. But that's not an easy service model. It has to be efficient. So the more we can automate these things, the better. And it's going to make it so that people in your industry who are smaller will have more of these two tools and options available to them. And they'll have a wider selection of quality tools versus maybe third tier providers trying to get in the industry and selling you their cheap, but not very effective tools. So I think you'll start getting more of the effective tools. It's absolutely highly predictive. The one thing is AI is being used in talent acquisition and recruiting more than any other part of HR or of the company, frankly, and a lot of companies.

Where they're being careful, though, is they don't like when it's being used to help you make a decision on who to hire. They don't like it when it's being used for interviewing tools. And states like New York and California are passing laws to make it illegal because they believe that the tools are racist. And so they're worried that racist humans have created racist tools. There is some evidence of it, but not a lot. Most of the research we've done with our tools shows that you actually get higher diversity when you use objective personality assessments to help you hire. So I think that this is why a lot of people still feel really confident and they're all trying to get into it and they're all trying

to pilot it. So it's coming. It's going to be more predictive than ever, and it's going to be easier to build custom solutions that are scalable to companies of your size and in your industry. One of the things that I've found is most of the companies I know, they tend to want to go to Indeed, Craigslist, ZipRecruiter, CareerBuilder, Monster. They go to these, you know, there's a couple dozen sites that are really well known and they go to recruit. And for me, you're kind of looking for people in the unemployment line versus you look at the top companies in the world and they go out and they find somebody that already has a great job because they could afford the best. And you looked at, I think Elon Musk recently came out and said, he's got the top 1% of engineers in the world working on his products.

And he's obviously paying up for that. And that's kind of stacking the deck. Andrew Carnegie said, you take away all my steel mills. You take away all my money, everything I own. Leave me with my core team and I'll have it all back in two and a half years. You know, what would you tell somebody that's really looking to build their business? I guess if you're looking for kind of frontline employees, you could go to Indeed. But what's the best way to recruit somebody that's going to take you to the next level?

Everybody asks me, how do you find a great integrator? How do you find a great CFO? Yeah, I think you're making a lot of great points. And it's important for you to be paying attention to your sources because they're more important than who you actually decide. Because if you are trying to decide who you want to hire and all you've got is the best person you got is the valedictorian of summer school, you're in a bit of trouble. And so you need to make sure that you're actually recruiting

the real valedictorians of the real school year. And they're often not looking. They're often getting paid top dollar at their organizations. And so a lot of companies, LinkedIn is good because they're not necessarily looking for a job and you can find them through that. So that can be a helpful tool. I found LinkedIn to be really helpful. But you'd be amazed. Most people find their jobs word of mouth still. Most people, when they think about the last five jobs that they've gotten, have all been because they knew someone. And so when you have your recruiters, one of the interesting things, I interviewed all of the talent acquisition officers and I asked about the recruiters. And only 10% of them said that the recruiters give them a competitive advantage in the markets they care most about. And one of the main reasons that they're not living up to the hype that they want them to is they're used to working for a big brand and just sitting

back and letting the big brand do the work. But that doesn't work anymore. People are looking for meaningful work, not for meaningful brands. And so you need recruiters that are more like salespeople and are hungry and are difficult to manage and are emotional, just like great salespeople. And they are hungry, and they want to go hunting. The percent of people who say they're being recruited actively, even though they weren't looking for a job, has gone up dramatically. It doubled in Germany. It's gone up dramatically in the United States.

And so the market's being recruited more heavily, more actively, and they're going after people who are not looking for the very reasons that you talked about that are logical. And so if you want to find great people, then you'll usually find that they flock together. Great people, birds of a feather flock together. You find a really good person and you say, who do you think was great at your last organization? Who was the best person at your last organization that they would be devastated if they lost them? And that's the person you need to go recruit. Just ask everybody at your own company that you've recruited in the last year, who is your last company? That company would be devastated if they lost that person and then go devastate them and take them.

It's like Ray Kroc said, when your enemies are drowning, stick to those in the water. It's exactly it. You know, I think you're onto something there and it's totally the team that gets you ahead. And then there's obviously the five dysfunctions of a team where I find that when you reach a certain size, the company starts to get siloed and the departments care more about the department's success than the whole of the company. And unwrapping that is a big, big task in itself. And having great leaders, there was a study that came, I just read about it this weekend, and it said, who do you think does better? The highest IQs and most talent or the best communication within the workforce? And by far the best communicators among the leadership team

outperform the most talented every day of the week. And I think HR plays a pivotal role in making sure that that's happening. And by the way, great communicators are both introverts and extroverts. Introverts say what they mean and mean what they say. And sometimes we think, oh, they're just good at chit chat. But keep in mind, there's a lot of different kinds of communicators that are great. But absolutely, I think that you're right on. And one of the problems is how we think about people. And one of the main ways that we think of people when we're leading them is how to fix them. We see people as broken, or we think, I have a lot to teach you. You're an empty vessel, and I'm going to take all I know and fill you up with knowledge. You're welcome.

And in reality, that's not who people are. They weren't born the day before you met them. They've got life experiences. They've got their own talents and capabilities. And so one of the things that Gallup, we've spent a lot of decades on is rather than fixating on what's wrong with people, we've been focusing on what's right with people and studying what's right with people. And we've identified how to see patterns in the way people think, the way people behave, the way people talk. And we've called those talents. And we're able to help identify your most dominant talents. And then what we want to do is help you develop those into strength. Because if you don't purposely develop them into strength, you might accidentally be developing them into weakness.

So for example, you talk a lot. You're a great communicator, but maybe you just developed that into talking too much. You don't know when to shut up. You don't know how to listen. And so you don't even know what your client's needs are because you were too busy talking. Or it means you know how to tell the right stories at the right time to influence people, to get them to make key decisions, to help them feel close to you, to help build relationships. And so how do you think about people? Well, you should look at them and you should see someone to grow, not someone to fix. When someone saw LeBron James or Steph Curry or Picasso or Beyonce, they didn't look at those people when they're kids and say, well, someone's got to fix that kid. They got excited and were like, oh, we need to give this person a coach. We need to grow them

and develop them. Nobody thought fixing at all. All they thought was grow this person. And when you find a talented person, all you want to do is grow them. But the terrible managers of the world just want to fix people and tell you you're not enough and pretend that you have to be well-rounded. And zero successful leaders are well-rounded. In fact, they are extremely, disappointingly sometimes, not perfect. You look at presidents of the United States, you look at any business leaders that they tell the story about, any documentary you go to about a famous singer, and it's like, and then they did all these drugs and they had all these problems. Success is not predicated on perfection. Thank goodness. And so stop trying to make everyone be perfect and fix them and make them well-rounded and just help them be more of who they are. We don't need you to be anything else. There's only one of you, so be you. And you can grow a whole lot more. The first study that was done on this by Gallup was done by a guy by the name Don Clifton. That's where our assessment is called the Clifton Strengths Assessment.

But he did this assessment of 10,000 10th graders in Nebraska of their speed reading. And the average kid could read around 90 words per minute. And then there was a smaller group of kids who could read faster than everyone else. One of them could read 350 words per minute. Now, this is back in the 1950s and 60s. So this wasn't swiping. This is turning actual pages, right? And so they gave all of them the same six-week speed reading program and then tested their speed after the program. The kids who read 90 words per minute, the average jumped to 150. So the program was actually effective. Tommy, I want you to guess, how much do you think the kid who read 350 words per minute, how much do you think he went up to? What's your guess? Well, you said 90 to 150. So if you took the 350, I'd have to say around 500. He went up to 2,900 words per minute.

Increased comprehension, increased memory. They found out he had what would be akin to a photographic memory. Now you might be thinking, well, that's why he's cheating. He's got a photographic memory. That's the point. Using your strengths is cheating, right? LeBron James is cheating with his talents. Beyonce is cheating with her talents, right? Like when we use our gifts and our talents, we can become a whole lot more of who we are. What could we go to 2,900 words per minute on in our lives if we stopped worrying about what's wrong with us and we started worrying more about what's right with us? And so when you think about what a great leader can do for you, it's how can he grow your people rather than waste time fixing people?

Do you know how many people are disorganized and go to a Stephen Covey planner training and lose the planner within two weeks. Like they're not, but the person who's super organized, do you know how much they're going to get out of going to that training? So much, so much great communicators going through communication training are going to get so much more out of it than a poor communicator. Someone getting basketball training, who's at basketball is going to get so much better at basketball than me. So we don't think like that in business. We think like that in sports. We need to think like that in business. Yeah, 100%. I always think about sports all the time just because sports, you got KPIs. You know how to play the game. You understand what out of

bounds is. You understand how much time you have. And you know, you want to win. And I think there's a competitive, at least for people in the field out selling. I think you want people that are passionate. What I look for, and I look at an Amazon guy, I look for a bus boy, a server. I look all around me at discount tire. I look for somebody that smiles and believes in themselves. They can make eye contact.

They tell a great story. There's somebody I'd want to just go have a beer with because those type of people are generally likable. But when I get somebody that's just really, I don't want to be around them. They're just stories stink. They don't listen well. They don't believe in themselves.

That's a really hard thing to get over. It's hard to train somebody to believe in themselves. And's a really hard thing to get over. It's hard to train somebody to believe in themselves. And what we do here at A1 is we say, listen, we're going to peel back the onion and really work on what your dreams are. And what do you want? Your bucket list. Do you want to own a house? Do you want to go on a vacation? Do you want to renew your vows in Hawaii with your wife? And really, people don't think about this stuff. They're like, I never really thought about that. Do you want to be in the best shape of your life? Are you religious?

What kind of relationship do you want with your kids? And when we figure that out and we really believe it's true and it's the right Simon Sinek, the right why, then we use that to motivate you because no one cares about the records of the company. They care about hitting their goals. What's in it for them? And if you could find the true motivation, but some people just, I'll give you an example as hourly people for the most part.

And I don't think you can put a general term on hourly people. I don't want to make too much of a blanket statement, but they really, they don't want to bet on themselves. They want security. They want to say, this is what I need to make versus they get a performance pay that says it's unlimited. And I'm willing to take that chance because I'm willing to bet on myself because I know I'm a performer.

And I find that hourly people, they need to make $45,000 or $60,000 a year, or even salary people, but they never really need to make much more. Before we continue this interview, I wanted to remind you about something important. We're a few weeks away from the event that could change your life. Do you have a clear plan for your business in 2024? Do you know who you need to get on board to achieve that plan? Do you have the connections to turn that plan into a reality? If not, the Freedom Event is your opportunity to change that forever. But every day that passes, this opportunity is fading away. And I don't want you to regret not being here because hundreds of

other business owners have already made up their minds and got their tickets. They've made a decision to step up and learn from the brightest minds in the home service industry. Not just learn, but also build a network to help them turn their notes and their notepads into actionable items. I'm talking about the opportunity to connect with the same people who helped me build my $200 million garage door repair and installation company. So which side of the fence do you want to be on? The one side looking from the outside or the one joining us in shaping the future of the industry. If you're ready to elevate your business, create more freedom for yourself and your family and make a bunch of money in

the process. I invite you to join us at the freedom event this November, go to Tommy mellow.com forward slash freedom and get your tickets today. That's Tommy mellow. T O M M Y M E L L O.com forward slash freedom and get your tickets today. That's Tom Mello, T-O-M-M-Y-M-E-L-L-O.com forward slash freedom. Don't sleep on it because tomorrow might be too late. Now let's get back to this awesome interview. somebody doing the kind of job you would want them to do, that's highly predictive. People can trick you in interviews. They can be your talking buddy in an interview and actually trick you. And here's how they trick you. What you never want to hire is someone who's a good customer service rep, but not a good salesperson, who has high service orientation and low influence orientation. You need somebody

who has high influence orientation and high service orientation. That's what you want, right? It's not one or the other. If it was low service orientation, you've got a jerk. You need both, right? So they can trick you in an interview and make you think that they're good at talking to you because they could talk to you all day long. They'll never sell you anything. They'll never go for the sale. And so one question I like to ask when I'm interviewing salespeople is, tell me about the thing you're most proud of from your last role. Tell me about your best day at work. I want to hear all about it. That's not leading at all. They don't know what I'm looking for, but what I'm looking for is them to talk about a moment that they sold something,

a moment they influenced. But if they start talking about servicing, I get nervous. It's not the only thing I make the decision on, but I want to know, do they love servicing or do they love influencing? Because I need courageous people selling. Now that's for the sales role. I'll look for something completely different if I'm hiring for a customer service role or if I'm hiring for a technical role, right? But you've got to be able to figure out, do they actually have the thing you're looking for? And some of your engineers will be very difficult to talk to in interviews. They won't be easy, right? So it's like thinking about for that role, what do I want?

If I have someone going out there door to door, man, I need someone who thrives on that and loves it and kind of loves chaos and ambiguity and all of those things. Right now, there's a lot going on in the world. I mean, a lot of companies are talking about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. And you mentioned California, New York, and even like Chicago and Washington's headed this way, the unions. And it's very hard to operate from a business standpoint when the government gets involved. And I think there's two sides to it. I believe in unions existed for a reason, and I'm not going to go too far down this, but

it could be difficult. There's a mass exodus. You look at Texas, Florida government interference. You guys work on a global setting. Is that happening? I see this happening in Europe. I see this happening in other places where there's just more government or interference with private companies. Is that where we're headed? Yeah, I think government is trying to get more and more into, and both parties in the United States do this. The government's gotten bigger under Republican and Democratic presidents, one after the other. The government just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then they get into your business more and more and more.

Now, there are some benefits to it. Like in Europe, women actually get a real maternity leave and don't have as much of a disadvantage. My little sister who lived in Alabama, her boss told her she didn't come back to her job after two weeks after having her baby, she would be fired. Let me ask you this, Jeremy, would you fill the whole place? There's an average age of a woman getting pregnant, especially if she's married. If you knew they were going to leave for two months, then this is a fair question. I mean, Jordan Peterson talks about this all the time. So you're going to have a two-month absence for all of your top people as a company you're trying to grow. And you got to produce your

responsibility to your shareholders or to your company and to your clients. And I'm not saying, listen, I don't have kids yet. I want my wife to take two months off. I want to take a lot of time off. That's the most important decision we're going to make. It's the most important thing we're going to do. And I'm not against that. I'm just asking from a business standpoint, as a CEO of a large company, is it wise to fill up with things that you're going to take? I think it depends. I think it depends on the business culture you're in. So in Europe, in that business culture, you better do it or no one's going to want to work for you. And then you

don't get the top employees and people are going to find out how you treat women and then they're not going to want to be your customer. So if you're in Texas, maybe they won't care as much. Maybe it's not as big deal and maybe it's a disadvantage. So I think it kind of depends on where you're at and how it can create a competitive differentiation for you. You look at Bud Light and what they did on social media and how much business it's lost for them. Billions and billions and billions. But if they'd been a European company, they wouldn't have lost anything. In fact, if they hadn't taken a stance, maybe they would have. And so this is the difference, right? Realize the culture that you're in, realize the advantages and competitive advantages that you

have. Now, back to your question about unions, unionization is fully here in Europe. And when they're not happy, they take it to the streets. So they take it to the streets a lot out here. And what unionization leads to in a phenomenon we've seen is lower engagement, but less likely to leave. So you've got people who are more loyal to you, but when they're disengaged, they just stick around and talk to your customers with their disengagement, which that's a whole new problem, right? And one of the things that we've seen as well in the United States, in quarter one of this year, 60% of CHROs told me when I gave them the choice, is your company more likely to explore or avoid taking public stances on current events? 60% said avoid. Quarter two comes around.

Last month, I did the survey again, or two months ago, and the Bud Light thing had happened. Now 78% of CHROs say they're more likely to avoid. So I think in the United States, there's a lot less people who want to do a public announcement of their thinking on things. The anti-woke movement in Republicans has scared a lot of companies. They'll still do the ESG report, but they're not going to do a public release on it. They'll just silently put it on their site

because they've got investors who are demanding it. So they'll just make them happy by putting it there, but they're not going to go about doing the same thing. So I think you're seeing kind of a back step in the United States, whereas in Europe, the chairman of the board for BP, one of the biggest oil and gas companies based out of the UK, he lowered their carbon emissions goal for 2030. And now he's getting voted out of his seat by all of the big retirement funds who are shareholders here in Europe, who want high, really difficult to achieve environmental goals. So based on where you are, that's it. Now in

Singapore, in China and other places, they think these are Western inventions to use human rights as a political tool against them. So they naturally are hesitant. And one CHRO in Singapore told me he thought all of the CHROs in the United States and Europe and Australia were wasting their time trying to count how many Black people they had or how many LGBTQ plus people they had because they said it's just leading to more segregation. And so over there, they've got a culture of thinking that this is a Western tool and that really it's an ironic approach that creates segregation instead of inclusion. Now, I'm not saying he's right or wrong. I'm just saying that that's definitely a minority view in the Western world, but that's how they kind of view it. So it does vary across the world. And it's not just

a given fact that the right thing to do is what we do in America or what we do in Europe or what we do in Singapore. It's different everywhere. Yeah, it's very interesting. Last thing I'll say on that, Tommy, is that most CHROs in the United States and Europe think their employees feel more included than employees actually feel. And, for example, even 65% of CHROs said that my company cares about the overall well-being of our employees. But when I ask an employee, does your company care about your overall well-being? Only 24% say yes. 65% 24%. Something got lost in the translation there. And so most of these leaders,

there's two parts of business acumen. And this is critical for you as a small business person in small business owner, when you're in your industry, there's knowing how the business is being run and there's knowing how the business is being managed. Most leaders know how the business is being managed because they're the ones doing it, but they have no idea how it's being run. You think about the show Undercover Boss, you know, where the CEO comes in and pretends to be a brand new employee

and gets told they're an idiot and all those things. That show shows hilarious, not because CEOs are so well-known for knowing what's actually going on in their business. It's hilarious because they're well-known for not knowing what's going on, for being detached. And so you might know how your business is being managed, but if you lose touch of how it's actually being run, that's the thing I get nervous for you, Tommy, as you grow. Don't lose touch of how it's actually being run. That's the thing I get nervous for you, Tommy, as you grow. Don't lose touch of how the business is actually running because surveys are not going to help you know that. You have to go and actually spend time with your customers.

The biggest thing you talked about, the silos that happen, is because companies start operating on corporate values when they should be operating on customer values. All other decisions should be based on how are we easy to do business with, not how can we cut costs and finance. They should be based on how do we help people be more successful in their lives, not how can we get them to recommend us. How can we help them improve financial well-being, not how can we get them to recommend our bank? Everything is so corporate focused and not customer focused in everything they do. And that's how they lose their way. Yeah. There's a book, Simon Sinek came out. It's like the game

of business or the game of life. I forget what it's called, but he said the companies that make long-term decisions on strategy, sometimes to take a loss that year. If you look at Jeff Bezos, he's like, I'm not worried about our stock today. He goes, I'm worried about it in three years. He goes, I'm never looking for the short-term gains. It's always long-term. He goes, we want to be around in a decade. And sometimes the decisions we make are looking out for that long-term decision. Now they're flush with money and they could afford to take a lot of chances. He wrote in a book, he said in business, unlike a grand slam, you hit four runs. You hit the right home run in business, you could hit 10,000 home runs.

And I think that play the long game and understand and that customer facing centric facing with the company is so important and it's very hard because especially when you got private equity and you've got a board because what do the shareholders want they want they want they want it now they want it as soon as possible. And that's why there's so much short-termism. It's a responsibility to them. And then you even got the employees that are stockholders with stock options. So it's hard to be a leader in a torn environment where you're like, okay, I got to make the right decisions for the environment. I got to make the right, as we talked about here, the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, but I also got to figure out a way to make a profit. One of the things that you'll be, I'm writing an article on this right now. The problem with the role of the DNI officer is that it was created as a moral case and not as a business case. Every other role is created as a business case. And so if you're going to have that role, if you're going to have that, you've got to

create it based on a business case. And there is a business case. But what's interesting is I brought together the heads of diversity and inclusion from all these big companies. And I asked them the week before, send me an email with the questions you have for each other. The most common question is, how do we make the business case for D&I? When I asked

it to that group, several of them got offended. One of them said, if my leaders asked me that question, I would quit and leave. That was not all of them. It was a small number of them. But still, that would never happen if I brought together the learning and development people. Nobody would be like, if they asked me to make a business case on training, I would leave. No, they wouldn't. If they asked me to make a business case on recruiting, I would leave. Nobody would say that. Nobody would say that about any other part of HR or the business if someone asks them to make a business case, only that role. And it's because it was created as a moral case. Now, that doesn't mean that's wrong, but if it's absent the business case. Now, to be fair, in the next session of D&I Leaders, they were all excited about it, and some of them were really good at it and said they loved making the business case. So I think there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. But the reason you see kind of a downturn in the DNI officer role is because they created it for the wrong reason. You should go after diversity because it helps your business,

not because you just want more diversity. Yeah. Well, not because you have to have a certain threshold to stay above board with the government. I mean, look, I don't care. Black, white, Cuban, Asian, male, female, old, young. It doesn't matter. If you come in here and you're going to fit into our culture, we'll hire you all day long. And it's one of those things where I feel like HR has to keep track of it to make sure we're above board. But it's like, you know, I wish I could hire more female technicians. We've hired about a dozen. And we really went after and tried to do it. And unfortunately, I do think, and I don't want to say there's male jobs and female jobs, but they did a poll. And they went out in New York and they asked people, what would you rather do? And they asked about, I don't know exactly how many women and how many men. They said, you could have a comfortable job in an office making $65,000. You can work from

home one day a week making $65,000, or you can make $120,000. It's manual labor and you're picking up garbage. The large majority of the men said $120,000 all day. The women said, I'll take the 65 grand. I'm not picking up garbage all day. And I've never seen anybody make the case more than Jordan Peterson. And men and women are different, I think. But there's a lot of jobs we could both do. And I don't think there's one role that just fits one gender. Or it's very hard to hire an 80-year-old person for this job because you've got to get up and down a ladder and you've got to lift heavy stuff. And you've got to be willing to spend time in 120 degrees in a garage. And that's a stroke waiting to happen.

We did an interesting study with Google of young girls in STEM interest, interest in science, technology, engineering, and all those things. And at the age of, I think it was around 12, boys and girls had the same level of interest in STEM, math, and all those kinds of things. But literally two to three years later, the percent of girls who were interested in it dropped to a third of percent of boys who were interested in those things. Something's happening. Nature versus nurture. So there's something happening between the age of 12 and 15 that in our society, because it was only done in America, so I don't know if it's a global phenomenon, but there's something that we've discovered that happens in that age for young girls where they stop being interested in some of those things. of both going on. And our research has shown that if you have diverse teams and they're engaged,

they're higher performing teams than less diverse teams in terms of gender diversity. And so I think that there is something to it. There's a business case for it. Problem is, for example, one company that owns a large veterinary hospital chain couldn't find enough men veterinarians, male veterinarians. There just weren't a lot of men who were becoming veterinarians compared to women. And so they work really hard to try to have that right level of diversity, but there's just not enough men becoming vets. And so when you don't have a diverse candidate to pull from, it's going to be very difficult for you to have the level of diversity you want.

Which is why you see a lot of companies like IBM starting to accept skill from gender and race, but electrical specialists who didn't have degrees, who all of a sudden knew more than the silly kids coming out of college about that job and could do a whole lot more. So I do think there is something to think about diversity, but we should think about it more broadly. Diversity is just about differences, and differences are things that we all have. And so where can we find those differences that will make the difference for us? Yeah, I think you're right. I think getting a broad perspective on different things is so important because it's those companies that really don't have diversity, that they make the same decisions and what got them here won't get them here. Especially in this day of change,

the way that technology is growing, I'm investing a lot in technology, a lot in our CTO, a lot in AI. And we're accepting these and a lot of companies aren't. They're saying, yeah, this is just a phase. That's like saying the internet was just a phase. Google was just a phase. But we've seen very little yellow book anymore. I mean, the yellow pages used to be the only way to find companies. And it's those companies willing to accept change and build a culture of change and just say, we're going to adopt new things. This is an ever changing.

And so many businesses, especially with the baby boomers, they're going, I'm not ready to change everything. We're not set up for this. And that's why I think you're going to see a huge mass exodus. You're going to see the big companies get very big because there's aggregation going on right now like I've never seen. Private equity is in everything. As a public traded company, you've got to consume companies. So the big companies are getting big and the winners are getting real big winners. Because how do you keep up? Well, most new jobs come from small businesses

because what these big companies are doing is they buy up companies and then they get rid of half the employees and keep the technology. And so the job of a big company is to clean up the inefficiencies in the market. The job of a small company is to create jobs and growth and innovation. The reason a small company will beat out a big company is because they're focused and the big companies become distracted. They've got so many things going on. They're distracted. Whereas a small company, it's 50 people waking up every day thinking about one product, one thing, and we're going to be better at it than anyone else. Whereas at a big company, there's like 50,000 people waking up doing a lot of different things, wearing a lot of different hats, and of becoming a jack of all trades, master of none in some cases. So it's the companies that remember who they are and focus on their strengths rather than

trying to become too much that win. You know, my president of our company calls me very entrepreneurial. He says, you like to move so fast and he's very corporate minded and we do, we work well together, but I'm like, I like to make so fast. And he's very corporate minded. And we work well together. But I'm like, I like to make split decisions and just go with it. Sometimes we fall down, but we get back up. And, you know, he came from an environment where his company got bought out and they didn't do anything with it for six months.

It just kind of sat there. They just bought him out to buy out a competitor. And it's crazy. Like they paid $100 million, but it was a fart in the wind for them. They're like, yeah, I'll just get them out of the way. And you're right. There's no necessity. There's no like, we got to make a decision. We got to move forward. They lose that grit. And sometimes that makes sense because there's all kinds of things that I've learned about corporations. You get the net operating losses. There's all kinds of tax strategy

involved. And they look at it like it's a line on the balance sheet that just deducts some of the net operating losses. Those companies can lose money and their executives still get paid bonuses. It's amazing what they can pull off. It's kind of scary. Or as if you're a small company, you can't do that. So you got all these studies and took in all these polls. What do you if you're a small company? You can't do that. So you got all these studies and all these polls. What do you think some of the most significant things are when it comes to getting the right people on board, getting the diversity, hiring the right people, and growing your business? So I think you should think about it like an employee life cycle. You should think about who you attract.

Where are your sources? Are you just attracting the unemployed? Or are you actually working to attract people who are top level? Figure out how to devastate your competitors by stealing their best talent. So I think that's a big piece of it. Then you come to the hiring and choosing the right person. And you need to make sure you're not getting tricked and hiring somebody because they deserve it.

They've been a great performer and now you're going to give them a manager role. Make sure management's a responsibility and not a reward. And make sure when you're hiring people that they have the level of courage you need, the level of service you need, or whatever role you're hiring for. And then you come to the onboarding phase. And this is often treated as a two-week program when in reality, it's a three-year experience. And you need to make sure that you are thinking about their experience and how you're building things into that experience. Adult learning theory says people care about

things when they matter. And you're trying to teach them everything in the first two weeks when it doesn't matter. So get them up to speed, but realize what are the key things they need to learn in month 11, month 15, month 20. And make sure you're designing something that you're bringing them along. And that will help you really nurture these people. Most people lose, the highest turnover rate is in your first year employees. That's where you're losing most of them. And a lot of them you'll lose in the first 90 days. You over-promised and you're under-delivering because all you have is a two-week training. You don't actually have an onboarding experience.

The next part is really about engaging them in their jobs. And that's where the manager makes a huge difference. They control about 70% of the factors that drive engagement and performance, which is the next phase. But if you can create engagement by helping them get involved and feel ownership, that's critical. Gallup has a Q12 survey that anybody can run. It's 12 questions. You can look it up and you can run that survey with your teams and you can figure out how engaged they really are. But that is something that's critical. When people are engaged, they perform at higher levels and they'll be less likely to leave for a higher salary offer. The salary offer has to be at least

34% higher for your most engaged employees. For the rest, for not engaged, it just has to be around 20% higher. And so that's critical. I think that getting the significant other involved, getting them to get accountability at home, understanding what they're doing, why they're doing it. I think that's the blue collar industries. Some people say, why is my significant other working so late? Why are they picking up weekends? And if they don't understand the why behind it, of what they're really going for, and a lot of people, there's a statistic, this is years ago, it said 83% of people will not leave their company because they have best friends that work with them, which happened outside of work. It's a family now. And I think a lot of companies don't spend the time to do the

bowling events and getting the families together and doing the team building. And when they're actually spending time and they built relationships there, because nobody wants to leave where they feel comfortable and they're wanted. And it's hard to build that atmosphere, but once you build it, it's easy to keep people. By the way, that best friend question is one of the Gallup Q12 items. That's Gallup research. We find that if you have a best friend at work, the chances you leave are one in 12. If you don't, it's one in two. And so it's critical. A lot of managers and parents think that if I'm too close to my employees or I'm too close to my kids, then I can't be a parent or a manager. There's zero research to support that. Zero. In fact,

what the research shows, the better your relationship, the better your ability to manage and tell them the truth, the better your ability to parent and get them to be obedient. It's all about relationships. We had one school bring us in one time. They had already done a study because they had this problem. And when they looked at their teachers, they discovered the biggest problem was the teachers were not good at disciplining the kids. And so they brought in a trainer and they did this whole training on discipline, which by the way, they were terrible at. So now they're going to do more of that

and it turns into a disaster. They brought Gallup in and we came and we studied their best teachers, the ones who were doing it right, a strengths-based approach, and found the best teachers had the best relationships with their students. So we started teaching all the teachers how to build better relationships with their students and they didn't need to discipline anymore. The problem went away. I love that. There's a key takeaway there is building the relationships and the relationships don't happen necessarily on one-on-ones. They can, but that was with spending time with people, getting to know their families and really reaching beyond the surface level. And I think that that's what a great leader does, is they care. You look at the best coaches in the world. They care about what's going on

outside of the game. They care about, are you being a good husband, a good father, for an NFL football player? And I think that that's so important, and that's a great takeaway. We're running out of time here, Jeremy. I can keep you for hours, but I want to ask you a few closing questions. I didn't hit most of the questions on here. This is amazing stuff. This is the kind of stuff I love having on the podcast. We don't talk enough about this kind of stuff, but you want to grow your business.

It's all about talent acquisition and building a culture, period. And obviously diversity among the workforce. Is there a book that really changed your life that you read it and it was like pow, it just changed your perspective? It doesn't need to be about HR or Gallup. It could be anything. It could be any type of book. I think the book Getting to Yes was pretty pivotal in my success in sales. The one thing I remember from it that I loved, I think it was published by Harvard,

was it said that people defend positions and explore interests. So if someone says, I don't want to purchase your product because of this, and you try to convince them otherwise, you are just attacking a fortified wall and they would just defend that position. But if you level up and say, tell me more, tell me what you're really interested in. What is it that you really want? You've been saying this about your employees, figure out what they really want. When you figure out what people are interested in? What is it that you really want? You've been saying this about your employees, right? Figure out what they really want. When you figure out what people are interested in, you can help them see there are a thousand different positions they could have taken to achieve that interest. So they will explore interests and they will defend positions.

I do this in negotiations all the time. We had a CEO who stepped into the negotiations and said, I'll get us a lower rate with Gallup. And the team came to me for advice and they said, hey, he's going to want to negotiate with us. I'm like, that's cool. That's great. This is a good sign, guys. This is buying signs. And I said, what is it that he wants? What do you think he wants? Just a lower price? He said, great. What do we have with them? We have a three-year deal with them. Well, what if we did a five- year deal? And I'll give you a lower rate if you do five years with us. And they're like, oh, that's a good idea. But I said, but don't just go there. Ask him what this is about. Ask him, is this a budget issue or a value issue?

And see what's there. And he said, oh, this is a budget issue. So great. You believe in the value of what we offer then. Oh, absolutely. Then you wouldn't mind committing to five years if we help you meet your budget. No, not at all. The deal went up by one and a half times for that salesperson and they got paid a whole bunch bigger commission because they got into what that CEO was really interested in and whether or not we were going to have an argument about whether or not they got their way or not. This is true for all relationships. I loved it when I read that and learned that. So if someone wants to reach out to you, Jeremy, what's the best way to get ahold of you? LinkedIn or?

Yeah. LinkedIn is a great way to get ahold of me. I have lots of connections there, but you can message me anytime. You can also email me at jb at gallup.co.uk. I'm in the UK, so we got the docom.co.uk. If you didcom it still forwards to me so it's all good but jb for jeremy breckheisen jb at gallup.com or.co.uk but linkedin's great too listen if you can't find us there you just go to gallup.com and say i need to talk to jeremy breckheisen on one of their chats and they'll get you connected with me as well so this is fantastic listen the way i end the podcast is we talked about a lot of stuff and i want want to have you on again. I think you're an amazing guy. I love what you're doing. I love just the research that goes into what you guys do, and by not paying attention to this stuff, you're doing yourself a disservice. But I'll let you kind of close us out on anything that we didn't discuss or any last ideas that you want to share with the audience. Okay. By the way, Tommy, I came home from our plane. After our plane trip, I flew back home to the UK and I was telling my family about how you wanted to have me on your podcast.

And my 18-year-old daughter said, I know exactly who he is. I've watched his podcast before. You definitely are speaking to more than just your industry. You're speaking to a lot of people and influencing a lot of people. One last thought. The best way for you to discover your strengths is with Gallup's Clifton Strengths Assessment. If you go to gallup.com, you can find it there. It's very easy and cheap. It's like 50 bucks and you can discover your strengths.

But this is something where we have 34 different strengths that we're measuring. The chances that you have the same top five strengths in the same order as someone else is one in 33 million. I'm taking that test today. That means there's probably only 10 people in the rest of the United States who, statistically speaking, have the same top five in the same order. Now, I am a nerd, and I calculated out what that would be to have all 34 in the same exact order. The chances of having all 34 in the same order is one in 295 undecillion. It's a real number.

It has 36 zeros. Scientists have estimated that only about 108 billion people have ever lived on earth. So not even one undecillion. So what that means is nobody ever has been, nobody is now, and nobody ever will be like you. You're as unique as you ever thought you were, statistically speaking. What that also means is if you're not at your best, if you're not making your unique contribution today, there's no one to replace you. It's simply lost. And so when you focus on your strengths, when you help people focus on their strengths and you help people be at their best, you literally change the world a

little to a lot every single day. Thanks for having me, Tommy. Wow. That's incredible. Thanks for being here. I appreciate it. Next time you're in Phoenix, you make sure you give me a buzz. And I'll definitely keep a hold of you.

Okay. Thanks, Tommy. Thanks, Jeremy. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in

over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevate and win.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Thanks again for listening. And we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.