Jeff Wanner - CEO of PairPEO

Jeff Wanner

CEO of PairPEO

Jeff Wanner began his PEO career at Insperity, where he quickly recognized that there was a more effective way to assist clients in finding the perfect PEO match for their unique needs. This insight inspired him to establish PairPEO in March 2019. Jeff's vision for PairPEO is rooted in his commitment to providing personalized and strategic collaborations with clients. Outside of his professional endeavors, Jeff is a devoted family man who cherishes the time spent with his growing family. He is also an avid Cleveland sports fan, passionately supporting his hometown teams.

PairPEO

PairPEO is a PEO brokerage and advisory firm dedicated to helping businesses simplify their HR operations. By providing transparent, expert guidance, PairPEO helps companies navigate the PEO landscape to find the best-fit provider for their payroll, benefits, and compliance needs. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., PairPEO serves as a trusted partner to businesses nationwide. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, welcome to another episode of CEOs You Should Know,
brought to you by iHeartMedia powered by Thompson. Today, we
have a special guests for me because it's a leader
that I've known for quite a few years here in
the local market here in Charlotte, and he's doing some
big things and he's young, but I'm learning a lot
from him, and I hope you know that. Jeff Wanner,

(00:21):
pair peo, How you doing, Jeff?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Great?

Speaker 3 (00:24):
A pronunciation? Did you have to focus on that? Come on, man,
come and people get it wrong every time.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm doing great.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Man, if I met you for the first time, it
would be a problem. But hopefully I know how.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
To pronounce your name. Yeah. I don't even correct people anymore,
so I wouldn't blame you.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Oh man, you got to correct people. Name. Names are
important and you should know that now that you're running
a business. You don't want people chopping up pair peo
to something else, right.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah, yeah, I get pair pot Yeah yeah. So you
have to use the logo to separate it to see
people understand there's a punctuation there.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
All right, interesting man, you know we're sitting in here
here in the iHeart Studios maybe there's an not we
guys to do some brand work here.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, yeah, we can get it done for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Well, welcome to Jeff. Good to see you.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Brother, You too, man. How's your summer going awesome? Way
too busy.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
I said yes to way too many things from the
wife and she's flying me all over the place.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
So I'm excited.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
We have one more trip I got my me and
my brothers take my dad on a trip every year.
So I'm going out to Utah to Bear Lake on Thursday,
and then I think until Thanksgiving I will be here
anchored to my desk and getting work done.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
So I'm excited for that. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
We've doubled our workforce in the last two months, so
it's it's been fun. You know, this business is taking
on a life of its own from what its initial
roots were. But I'm excited for the future and everything
we have going on.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Congratulations everything you're doing recently. Fast fifty Yeah, Trolo Business
Jourtle Fast fifty for the growth in a rapid period
of time. Well, let's just kind of get it right
into it. Let's start with your journey. We'll get into
Peo because a lot of people have no idea what
a peo is. I know that because I shopped for one,
used one for a while, I had no idea what

(02:01):
it was. And as I have conversations with people what
PEOs are if you're not using it, a lot of
people don't know what it is and the jurfits of it,
maybe some of the drawbacks. But right before we get
into that, let's talk about your leadership journey talk. So
you are, you know, CEO, founder peer Peo. How did
you get there? Uh?

Speaker 3 (02:22):
I think that you know, my journey is probably not
unlike many other entrepreneurs. You know, you you get stuffed
into corporate America and you have a couple of choices
you can make. You can put your enthusiastic hat on
and and keep climbing the ladder, or you can you know,
you can be honest with yourself about whether or not
what you're selling makes a lot of sense for the

(02:42):
audience that you're trying to sell it to. And so
you suck at your job, right, And so for me,
it was a it was a path for freedom to
be able to to be able to make recommendations for
folks that I would actually do myself.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
And when you got one bullet in the chamber. You
can only shoot that so many times before.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
You start realizing, you know, I'm shooting the wrong I'm
shooting the wrong target, and you get celebrated for it,
unfortunately in corporate America, which kind of precipitates the problem.
So initially it was a I'm about to get married,
I want to grow a family, and I want.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
To be able to be dad. Is what really what
I started the business.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Obviously, as the years go on, you start realizing that
you can do a heck of a lot more than
you thought you could do, and your capacity keeps on
shifting upwards, and you find ways and you find who's
inside of your organization to keep on stretching that. So
what it is today versus what it was when I
first started it our completely different things, still doing the
same mission and the same goal, but ultimately just a

(03:38):
lot more people that's putting those puzzle pieces together as
we kind of build to a bigger future.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Now, correct me if I'm wrong. You were actually working
in the PEO space and then saw this potential gap
or opportunity.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Correct, Yeah, I felt like, you know, as a direct
rep in the PEO space, you kind of have to
have a single tunnel vision mentality that I am selling
the Golden SWA which for every entrepreneur out there, and
this is going to make sense one hundred percent of
the time. And that's when I realized, you know, I
feel like I'm a little unique, and I do a
lot of networking with my competition, kind of hear about

(04:12):
what other people are doing with other organizations, and I
quickly learned that what other people were selling made a
lot more sense than what I was selling for a
lot of the audience I was going into. So that
kind of pivoted into about two years of working in
corporate America, where I was telling people not to work
with me. I just felt like it didn't make a
whole lot of sense. And we started rolling out these
programs for these third party brokers and stuff, and I'm like, well,

(04:36):
now I can start making sense for a much broader audience.
I don't need to be so commissioned determined and quota
determined as a corporate rep to be celebrated in that capacity,
and I can just be honest with people and it's
created a much better collaboration I get to have with
clients rather than one that is two agendas kind of

(04:57):
going away from each other. You know, classic sales rep
has to sell at the highest possible client wass to
buy at the lowest possible So you kind of have
that tension. Now I can eliminate that tension and just
help people make better purchasing decisions, which ultimately helps my
business grow and helps their business grow.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Love that. So you saw an opportunity and you said, hey,
there's a door. I'm going to walk through it and
see what happens. I think it's going to help position
me to help people in a different way, probably in
a better way for them. Yep, And you did that.
How long ago was that?

Speaker 2 (05:26):
That was seven and a half years ago. That was
three babies ago. Yeah, yeah, zero babies on day one,
three babies.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah right.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
You know at twenty nine when I started the company,
and you know, my wife, bless Her was very encouraging
to kicking me out of corporate Americans, saying, just go
do this. You can always fall back and do a
corporate sales job. It'll give you a little bit of
a horsepower to be more empathetic with the people you're
trying to serve. Anyway, and it certainly has accomplished that,
but it's also one of those doors that shuts that

(05:55):
you realize you never want to walk back through. I
tell people all the time, aspiring entrepreneur, because I love
everybody to kind of be carving their own path as
much as they feel comfortable in doing so. Is the
scariest first step you take is actually leaping away from
that W two addiction.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
And once you're sitting, you're sitting in the two addiction, And.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Once you're sitting in this seat, the scariest step you
ever think you ever have to make again is ever
going back into that that worker B category. So it's
been it's been rewarding to see how much we've evolved
as the years have gone on, and the people that
we've been able to bring into the organization. So I
never imagined i'd have, you know, now, ten families kind

(06:34):
of relying on UH on my mission. But it's exciting
and scary at the same time.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
But we're all there for it.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Heavy is the head that wears the crown, my friend? Yeah, yeah,
And as you grow it gets heavier, right.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yep, yeap. Do you ever think that we were addicted
addicted to the W two? Man?

Speaker 4 (06:51):
I love that saying addicted to the W two. You
know what's great, I'm definitely addicted. The uppies coming up, though,
are avoiding it. Like there's so many eighteen nineteen year
olds that are building their businesses right from the ground up,
never had the opportunity to get that dopamine drip from
having a little bit of.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Beer, money and stuff on the weekend.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
So yeah, it's one of those things that can be
challenging to unravel if you get yourself too far up
the ladder. Because if I had accelerated my career as
a direct rep and was making too much money to
walk away from, I'm sure I would be sitting right
there right now with a same farce smile on my face,
pretending I was loving what I was doing.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, I mean, I love that so much in so
many different ways. I want to go back to something
you said. You know, you were really referring to peer
PEO and the evolution over the last seventy years. What
we were and what we are two different things. You know,
a little bit of my story at Thompson nine and
a half years and what we were nine and a
half years ago. Even though we're celebrating one hundred and

(07:52):
forty years this year is not what we are today,
It's not what we've ever today is not what we've
ever been. But I also think my journey, my leadership
has had to evolve and change. So as the organization
evolves and changes, my leadership and my growth has it
had to evolve and change, or really the growth outpaces

(08:13):
my ability to lead it. So how has that impacted
you in your leadership of you know, now I'm responsible
for not ten families right right.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
I'd say that what I've found has been the most
freeing for me is finding great leaders underneath me so
that you don't have to lead everything, every business or
every piece of the business holistically. I've got great who's
across the organization. We raised a little bit of money
in Q one. That's kind of been a bit of
a flip switch to the caliber of the folks that

(08:44):
were bringing into the organization. Frankly, I feel like I
was running miles around my team for a long time,
and now I feel like my team's running way faster
than I am, which is awesome to see how much
these different pieces of the puzzle are kind of accelerating.
How fast I need to be to be able to
accommodate their pace. So that's been a fun evolution in

(09:05):
my number two, Brock, who I think you've met a
couple of times. Brock has been in Brock's my cousin.
We grew up right next door to each other, went
to college together, lived together for like ten years. We
have a wonderful yin yang relationship. He's extremely effective at
the things that I'm weak at, and he's also he
has evolved so much as a leader. I put him

(09:26):
in vistage about two years ago, and the firmness of
Brock over the years has been very rewarding for me
because he used to just be everybody get a long guy,
and now he's like, kick everybody in the ass when
he needs two kind of guys. So I've been able
to delegate pieces of the puzzle that I don't find
rewarding to me to him, and he knows where those

(09:46):
are without me having to verbalize it, which has been
a wonderful working outcome for families working together, which is
a really scary thing when you start bringing your cousin,
your best friend into the organization, and it's just proven
out to be a wonderful decision. And a real keystone
higher that's transformed how we're scaling forward.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
That's awesome, just you know, definitely would agree on getting
the right who's. And then I would also say, and
you're probably get in this as you'll even go continue
to scale, is that once you get the right who's,
then figure out the right seats for those whos, because
sometimes the seats that ran are not the right seats
for them. Have you found that yet?

Speaker 2 (10:25):
I'd say that the reality of.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
This size organ because obviously when you came to Thompson,
it's dramatically changed over the last nine and a half years.
It's probably been a bit of the industrial revolution of
Thompson since you.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Were all addicted to W two.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah, which is which is fine, And and for me,
like what's interesting is that I because you think about
what the OR chart's going to look like in five years,
and five years ago the or chart was me, you know,
and so like what it's going to be in five
years and the amount of upward mobility that all of
my current team has to lead segments of the business
is very exciting. I'd say that in the short term,

(10:59):
like what I found is that we are still evolving
in a state where we don't know exactly. Like, even
looking at office space right now, I'm like, are we
gonna outgrow that in six months? Are we gonna Are
we gonna be fine for six years in this space?
Like a lot of those things that feel like rather
trivial and tactical end up kind of weighing on me.
So I'm like, this company really is way bigger than

(11:21):
I ever thought it was going to be, and I
feel like we're not even close to scratching the service
of what we're going to be, which is which is
super exciting, and ultimately, something that we are very intentional
about with the people we bring.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
In is that here's where we need you right now.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
And ultimately what this is gonna what we're gonna be
asking of you in two years, is largely gonna be
dictating on what you're doing well and what the company
is requiring at that time. And right now, it's impossible
to actually model that forward with.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Any kind of certainty.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
So they have to be pretty fluid and dynamic and
excited about about the future, even though the future is
a little opaque as to how big it's going to be.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
But that's okay because as the leader of the organization.
You have to be vision, so I always say, and
sometimes I get bogged down into leading in the day,
leading in the week. But reality of it is, I
need to be leading five years down. So that kind of.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Ambiguity that will make you whatever that is.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
I have to be looking at what's five years I
gotta be working on five years down right now, right,
you know, So when you're thinking about office space growth,
how's that impacting how you approach your work?

Speaker 3 (12:27):
I'd say that there are times where I get stuck
in the day to day much more than I would
prefer now. Obviously, whenever you do as much travel as
I've done in the last sixty days, that's all self induced,
self inflicted wounds.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
And that's just part.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
That's part of what I'm saying yes to my wife too,
in order to what I'm saying no to my company
for at the same time. And so, like i'd say, like,
the interesting thing about looking five years at the future
in this business specifically is challenging because of the history
is so it just it doesn't the history doesn't give
us enough anecdotes to be able to look five years

(13:03):
into the future. Now, I know, you challenge that, and
you'd say, Jeff, you should be looking further into the future,
but right right now, I'd say, like twenty four months
is really there's like some really critical things happening with
the business right now that are either going to open
up an abundance amount of opportunity that our whole team
can capitalize on, or they're going to take longer than.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
What we're expecting.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
Part of its around tech builds, part of it's around
what we're doing on our GTM funnel to kind of
get ourselves into a more broadened approach. To date, hair
Peo has largely been a referred in by happy clients model.
It's a forty five loop revenue model for the most part.
And so as we start getting more ambitious about touching
new markets and what the type of people we're going

(13:45):
to need to have in those markets and what type
of marketing spend that we need to have in those
markets to actually activate them, all becomes extremely exciting. But
it's all kind of foreign for how the company got
to this point.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, no doubt. You know, let's get into PEO in
just one second. But there's one thing I learned from
you a long time ago, and just sat with me,
and I really appreciate this about you, by the way,
I think you just I think you have a calmness
as that a CEO and a business leader and a
business owner should have to be successful. You know, you're

(14:18):
not You're not You're not you're you're not high and low.
You know, pretty pretty calm and even just kudos to
you for having that. And you you talk, you know,
just like I told I've learned from things from you
and I really appreciate that. And you said to me
once it's like, hey, I'm not I'm not chasing the
business right unpacked.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
That for me a little bit.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
In this industry, like you have to be motivated to
make a wholesale platform, change the way that you pay
your people, the way that you ensure your people, the
way that you measure your people. And if somebody is
resistant to that at all, it means that I'm spending
time on something that they don't want to do right,

(14:59):
and people but don't want to change at all. I mean,
at the end of the day, I think everyone would
love Hey, if my cost stayed the same year over year,
I would stay the course and never change anything, because
ultimately change is painful for a number of variables. So
that's why in my mind, like, if someone's not walking
towards me because of something I'm trying to accomplish for them,
then realistically they're not going to say yes to what
I'm putting in front of them anyway. So there's not

(15:21):
a lot of warrant for me to chase after business.
And frankly, like I'd say that because of this purview
I've been able to sit inside of for the last
seven and a half years, there's always somebody walking towards me.
So I need to focus on the folks that are
really in a change mindset. Otherwise I'll just burn up
a bunch of rubber on I call it artificial pipeline.

(15:43):
Things that sound sexy and appealing and you're excited about
But if you're excited about it.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
And they're not, it doesn't really matter.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, there's so much value in that mindset, Jeff. I
think you obviously know because we've talked about it for
years now, But so many other people keep chasing knocking,
knock and knock and knock and knock in you know,
and then there is a sense of you know, I
think on the sales of things. Some people say, you're
not going to buy into your touch something eight times
there's this data there. But to your point, there's a

(16:10):
difference between spinning your wheels burning rubber. As you said,
I love that that phrase. I'm spinning your wheels on
something that's just not gonna bear fruit.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
You gotta. I always say, I'd prefer a quick no
right right, Yeah, you.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Know, sometimes you have to. You have to determine, that's
the know. And it seems like you've kind of developed
either that sixth sense or that understanding is I'm gonna
I'm gonna give you my best. I'm gonna give it
to you one time, and if you're not ready to go,
call us.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
We'll call you right right right.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Are you don't call it? You know, don't We're not
gonna call you.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
You call us right And.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
I can put my I can put my marketing team
automation behind it, so like if it's not right now,
like and I try. And the hardest thing about scaling
is scaling that mindset right because my team will work
on stuff that they want to see happening, and whether
or not the client wants to see it happen. It's
like when I'm running conversations with clients in general, I
am an off ramp machine, Like every quarter mile, like

(17:05):
should we stop now?

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Should we stop now?

Speaker 3 (17:07):
Like basically giving them every reason to walk away, because
that basically validates that they're walking towards me. They're saying, yes,
go work on this because I want to say yes
to's something and something I know I can achieve, And
that ultimately is what keeps my pipeline very genuine when
it comes to the.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Stuff that I'm actually working on myself.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Now hopefully I'm not working on deals myself in perpetuity,
but it does that conviction that I can convey to people,
and the willingness to walk away is usually what creates
a walking towards each other engagement, which ultimately holds both
sides accountable to be able to see it through in
a way that actually creates movement for the client and

(17:44):
momentum for us.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Love that. Love that. Let's get into what is what
is a PEO? Who's your target customer? Just unpack that
a little bit. We don't need to hang out there,
but I think it's important.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Do you want me to tell you what I think
a p or what POS think?

Speaker 1 (18:01):
POS are you know, we don't want to We're not
here to take anybody.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
No, no, will you tell me both? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (18:07):
We go there.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
I look at PO and again I think POS in general,
the professional employee organizations you end up jumping on their
EI in for taxes, compliance, benefits, workers, comp payroll. That's
the most rudimentary sense of what a PEO is. Now,
why do people talk to me and why should they
talk to me in general? Is because we drive significant

(18:31):
reductions in healthcare premiums. These PEOs are co employing a
whole bunch of small companies. They have hundreds of thousands
of people of buying power as it relates to their
medical coverage. I tell all of my clients the simplest
reason that you're going to talk to me is understanding
how big your bills are right now and what my
outcome is going to look like. Call it thirty to
forty percent reductions off that premium. If I don't have

(18:52):
enough there for that to actually be a change moment
that I would actually pursue myself as an entrepreneur, then
usually I'm off ramping it for the client. But that's
how we've kept ourselves very healthy in this in this
kind of you know, payroll conversion model is because we
really just focus on is there a mathematical reason for
us to keep talking. We just talked to them for

(19:13):
ten minutes.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
We'll know.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Okay, here's how many people you have, Here's how big
your bills are. I'm gonna save you have fifty sixty K.
Is that enough to make a payroll transition for me?
I don't think it is like I wouldn't make a
payroll transition for that right now, even with eight employees.
But you know, some groups that are ultimately, you know,
obviously more cost conscious, and ultimately that's their directive as
to whether or not that number makes sense for them.

(19:36):
But I could be talking to a group like yours
that I might save a half a million dollars for
and that's a massive change to manage. You're gonna feel
like I spent more money changing than I did capture
on recouping benefit cost reductions.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, level of effort is super critical. It's not as
easy as reducing the cost. There's time and effort that
goes into those things. Right, if it's a wash to
your point and.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
This heartburn especially right, maybe they're making you know, a
carrier change that impacts ten percent of their population. Honestly,
if it impacts one percent of their population, they may
regret making this decision. So like, there's things that clients
need to understand when they're making any of these changes,
and what that ripple effect could be, where the heartburn
moments are. And if you don't convey that on the

(20:18):
front end, all you're leading to is angry clients, dissatisfact
or buyer's remorse clients that ultimately they're not referring you
if they're walking into a relationship that they're not excited about.
So creating an excited outcome is what creates the referral
to the next you know, several opportunities that will come thereafter.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Bringing the back target audience up and coming entrepreneurs, smaller companies,
all way up to.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
Mid size, biggest clients got five thousand employees.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Small but yeah, but no, but.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
I mean like that's those aren't those aren't everyday occurrence?

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Right? Like I love serving my peers.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Honestly, I get juiced up more by, say, you know,
solving a twenty person problem by an entrepreneur that is
a peer of mine. Right, And when it's all more upmarket.
Obviously it's more it's more race at the bottom. It's
trying to really cut things down to something their lowest
common denominator. But realistically, what I tell people that are
referring as business is that it has to be a

(21:13):
relatively competitive workforce, right you have, because usually the more
competitive workforce, the more turnover hurts. The more the benefit
package is going to be enhanced, which means the bills
will be bigger, which means my impact will be bigger.
So I need I need decent enrollment on coverage. I
need lower part time employee bases like the more full time.
And you know you're talking tech. Tech space is obviously

(21:34):
hyper competitive. You know, engineering space very competitive. Professional service
is very competitive. So all of those industries end up
being kind of sweet spots for us. But the bigger
the organization, the less the industry matters, because the industry,
my industry, will make a compelling offering the bigger the
organization is, and then ultimately they will trim up their

(21:54):
their admin fees and stuff to make the math meaningful
for a fine.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah and again again is you know, as somebody who's
purchased and worked with a PO for years you know,
I think there's a there's a time in place for
an an organization to look at it. It could be
a time to get into it and a time not
to be in it anymore. For us, we you know,
as you may or may not know, we were you know,

(22:18):
two hundred full time employees, not we were getting ready
to scale and we were starting to see some pain
points in the infrastructure of our people OPS operation. In
addition to it, insurance premiums were starting to go up
because the health of the employee base.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
We weren't even looking for a PEO.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
We list. We were looking for potentially outsourced HR services
to give us more efficiency and effectiveness. And we're introduced
to a PEO. So us being the not for profit
so we are. We compared the apples to the oranges
and decided to go with the oranges, which is a PEO.
And you know, for a while there it was a

(22:57):
big part of our skill story, you know, kudos to
that or organization.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
And then the pandemic came and then all of our
issues became talent issues, right, you know, the world of work,
you know, you know, you know this as well as
I there's less people in the workforce between eighteen and
sixty five in the last five years than there ever
has been. There's more jobs and people, and we had
a big need for really focusing on Talent Act Talent Act,

(23:24):
Talent Act and it was time. You know, now we're
five hundred and six hundred employees, it's time now to
move away from the PEO and more visibility into our data, right,
and those type of things. But there was a period
of time where they're that partnership with that PEO helped
us scale right, you know. And again it's if you
if you're you're looking at those options or you're not

(23:45):
sure what a PEO is or how it can potentially
help your organization, pair PO is a great option to you.
And and I think when we met you you you
may have still been the only employeer or maybe you
and Broad At the time.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
It was just me. It was just me.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
I came up to Will a lifetime fitness and he
was on a board meeting.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Uh, yeah, you're gonna get me in trouble.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Hey, Hey, I'm gonna board getting getting two birds stoned
at once, getting this, getting his pumping and uh and
moving moving mountains and the board meetings it was yeah,
man again, Like when I tell people that by this,
whenever people make a a determination that they've outgrown PEO,
it's usually because they haven't. You think about my model,

(24:30):
I'm beholden to my clients and not beholden to the PEOs,
Like I'm negotiating clients renewals every year and trying to
keep those costs down. And if I create a thirty
to forty percent buffer against the open market rates and
I continue to maintain that, That's why PEOs in this
broker capacity makes sense for a much longer journey than
just kind of a set of forget it model where
ultimately you're gonna take the renewals from your incumbent and

(24:50):
eventually those are.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Going to stack up to where the open markets are.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Is making more sense, especially when AB and fees are
going right alongside that.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
So can you tell how smart he is, Bou? I'm
just blown away. I'm sitting down, Okay, I got to
research everything.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
Listen to this interview back and you know, translate it
and do some AI research.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
It's taking us to school.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
It's amazing the stuff you see and the things that
you see that people said yes to in this industry
because a lot of what I do is kind of
rehab work. I'd say, like, where people have said yes
to this industry, they've said it, they forgot it.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
They've forgotten it.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
They don't know how to understand their invoices, they don't
know how to model that against what the rest of
the market looks like, and you'll see things that are
three or four times what they should be. And so
I think that's where this industry it's still only like
a fifteen percent market share industry after being around for
forty years, and largely I find it to be mostly
because the folks that do it well generally are doing

(25:41):
it for one or two PEOs and they're only touching,
you know, ten to fifteen opportunities a year. And in
this broker capacity, like this broker model is multiplying, which
I love. I think a lot more happy clients in
the space will be will be birth from this agnostic
buyer side model. But it's still in its infancy, know,
and it's exciting for me because at the end of

(26:02):
the day, we're on the tipping point of a very
new way to buy a very old industry that's creating
a nice ripple effect and we can, we can collaborate,
we can work together.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
We're all in slack channels together.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
So it's a lot of fun to kind of information
share and see kind of the things that are going
on in the market and be able to make sure
that one person's mistake is it multiplied across the whole ecosystem,
which is a ton of fun.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah. Yeah, As you know, in our organization, everything is
centered around the children and family and the communities work.
That's a primary customer of Thompson, right, we have this
deep seated why to impact them or buy great service
to them, do whatever we can to get them what
they need. I'm picking up Jeff that you have a
similar passion for your customer.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Is that because that's that breath that's good business or
is there something else there? Because it just seems like
even how you identified the opportunity to step into this
window and door, if you will, it was like, Hey,
I'm not doing the best for my customer, and here's
a different way. Where's that coming from?

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Honestly, it's just more fun this way, Okay. I mean like, well, yeah,
imagine that's crazy.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
It's it's one of those things where if you're sitting
in a W two version of what I'm doing. You
are serving your employer, right, and that's that's your that's
your job, that's what they're paying you to do in
this world like we are battling corporate America for small companies,
that's our job every day. It's fun like it's it's
an enjoyable exercise that we get to go on this

(27:32):
journey with every client we're serving. And so like I'd
say that that's what really juices me up, is that
we're seeing the validation from the client side that leads
to the next client, the next prospect. And so when
you see that happening for seven and a half years,
you get your your gas tank. It's really full of
energy that you realize what I'm doing is smart for
this client, and here's how I'm going to serve them,
and ultimately that that feedback loop you get with that

(27:54):
next referral is generally the juice that I continue to see.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah, happy customers actually a thing, right, right, Yeah, it
feels good. You don't good for them, You don't good
for yourself. Don't lose that, don't don't don't lose that.
Somebody's a little older than you. Yeah, the gray and
the belly and all that, but like, don't lose that.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Hey, that's why I didn't go That's why I didn't
go the VC route for raising some money. Man, I
don't I didn't want to get into a soul sucking
version of myself and I wasn't willing to compromise. What
this business has really done for me is that I
still get to be dad at three point thirty every day,
I get to be home with my kids, and at
the end of the day, like, are you a prisoner

(28:32):
to your phone at moments? Absolutely you are. And I've
hired reps out in Colorado. So now at this point,
you know, my hours have kind of shifted out when
I might be needed.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
That's when you got to activate Brockman. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah Rock.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
You know Brock hasn't started his baby yeah once. Once
his baby journey starts, I won't be able to lay
all that on his plate as much as I do
right now. But he Brock has been my easy button
for Hey, something needs addressed.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
I needs addressed right now. I'm on a walk.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
I'm on a walk with my kid kids, like, can
you take care of this? And Brock always knows uh not.
He knows that he doesn't ever have to ask a
follow up question.

Speaker 5 (29:06):
Love.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
I brought him from outside the industry for two years.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
He annoyed the ship out of me, Like, I'm like,
this guy is never gonna get it.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
He's never gonna get past diapers.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
And now he you know, and they started crawling a
little bit and he stood up and he started walking
and was like, Okay, now I can start going on
vacations again. And uh, and now he sprints man. Brock
is a Brock is our whip in the company. Like
the things that I don't love to do. Uh, Brock
understands that he has got to be that guy for
the company. And it's been a it's been a fun

(29:35):
ride watching him kind of mature along the way and
become a very critical piece of what we're ultimately become.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Well, you had talked a little bit about, you know,
being there for for your wife, being there at home
for the kids yours are younger. You know, for me,
as a CEO, a leader at your level, health is
super important.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
It's critical.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
I think it's part of the job. Apparently at this
point in time, Mike Mike career to not just physical health,
mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, you name it. It
enables me to show up better for my family, for
the communities I serve, for the people I lead, or
at least I try to lead.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
But health is super critical.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
How important that is that to you and your leadership?

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Drum, It's how I start my day. Man. I don't
ever show up to work foggy.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
I don't ever show up to work without having a
sweat ahead of it. And it wasn't an easy transformation
for me. That was really a a conscious decision that
I realized that afternoon workouts were taking time away from
my kids. So when the kids, when the kids are
in the equation at this young they love everything you

(30:44):
do unconditionally, and they won't be forever, but right now
it's wonderful. That's what triggered me into getting up at
five am and doing the morning workouts and feeling like, Okay,
I can walk into my office already all well aware
of what I need to do for the day, not
just aware of it, but abundantly capable of accomplishing it,
because that that physical sweat in the morning is just

(31:05):
it's It's better than any kind of coffee you're gonna
put in your system and it's going to give you
a head start on the day. And plus, if you
do it first, you can't you can't bail on it.
Things can't pop up, my wife can't hit me with
my my son needs to be run to the emergency
room in the middle of the day. And now all
of a sudden, I'm abandoning the gym for a couple
of days. It's always the first thing I do, and uh,

(31:26):
and I find it just became a great habit. And
I encourage everybody that's starting their family journey because most
people that start their families, they really don't understand what
that means until they actually arrive. When the when the
babies are here. Even when your wife's, you know, nine
months pregnant, you still it doesn't feel real until they're here.
And until you can build those habits to keep your

(31:47):
health strong, they will you'll start sacrificing those as soon
as that baby comes because it's gonna it's gonna it's
gonna change you a lot.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Well, it's it's impacting your ability to lead in your home,
but it's also really impacting your ability to leading your business.
And I don't think leaders understand that they can't find
the time right. I would question if you're really leading
if you can't lead yourself to find the time to
do what's super important right. And I know you're modeling
that because I ran into somebody that you recently hired

(32:17):
and the person said to me, and I'm not going
to go into the details around, was like, yeah, I
think I'm gonna get encouraged to start working out. Yeah.
I was like, good for you, brother, there you you
got to get in there.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
Man, is this my Normy? I wasn't going there, Man,
I wasn't going Yeah. No, I love norm man. He's
He's a wonderful, wonderful human being. I've been trying to
find a spot for him inside of the company for
a couple of years, just seeing the light in his
eyes diminished as the years have kind of gone on
inside of the W two world, and he's he's uh,

(32:48):
he's a committed to UH fitness guy. He's obviously the
issue with fitness in general. I think the longer you
put it off, the harder it is to pick it
up and see meaningful results that end up keeping you going.
So I'm excited that he's uh, he's in the office
right now, and because of him being in the atmosphere

(33:08):
of people that are trying to keep that in check,
I think it will only enhance his ability to accomplish
it and.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Stick with it.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yeah. I had somebody tell me recently again, you know
this is convicting to you. I apologize in advance. I
did not say this, but I heard it and the
person said, hey, I don't want to work out. I
don't want to work for anybody that's not in good condition.
And I said, huh, that's pretty interesting, and I don't
know if it's appropriate when the person said it, and
he goes, honestly, here's my viewpoint, and he broke it down.

(33:35):
He literally had all these reasons. I don't remember them all,
but it was basically like, hey, if that person can't
take care of themselves, how are they going to take
care of me?

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Right right? And you know that.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Sums it up? And you were that was eye opening. Yeah, yeah,
that's when you saw me at three o'clock the next time.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
And I'm sure, Yeah, but you know, my health journey's
like everybody.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Else is up and down right. Yeah. Yeah, the older
I get, the more focus and dial done. I get
because you know, I think now for me in my
mid fifties, it's more about longevity. I want to show up. Well,
that's important. Clarity is super important, but like there's a
bigger life out here outside of work. I want to
be a good husband for.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Many, many decades to come right.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
And I want to be healthy for my wife, my kids,
my grandkids, And that's important to me.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, absolutely, I think it should be important for everybody.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
But again, it is one of those things that gets
back burnered more often than not, especially in your thirties.
And I say most of the time, it feels like
when you start your family is when you either start
doing what I did and you shift up your life
to make sure that you're here.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah yeah, yeah. You either tweak the schedule.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Or you don't, and then you start falling behind for
a decade, and then that next decade is so challenging
to find find a groove again that you can commit
to and build a habit that is very hard to
build once you've kind of fallen off the wagon the bed.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Well, I'll take you one step forward, you know, from
me and my leadership, and it sounds like you and yours,
it's so important for me to model that for people
around me, the whole nine to five, eight to five
o'clock watching where you at. Obviously a lot of that's
changed in the pandemic, but even before then, I would
be out of my office at three in the gym.
Back then, I could barely barely stay.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Awake at three.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Now because I'm up at four thirty five, get getting
getting after it. But it's so important for people to understand, like, hey,
you can go get a workout, prioritize your health. And
in my mind, it's part of the job description.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
It just is.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
And if you make it part of the job description,
they understand that they can actually flex to do those things.
And if they see that you do it and encourage it,
there's a bilne to do it, you know, after a
long day, if you're trying to do it at seven
o'clock at night, it's really hard, especially if you have
kids and family and obligations, you know, But it's interesting. Nobody,

(35:50):
very seldom do you see that people want to do
what other people are doing to get to where they're going.
They are right, you say, it's easy for you to
tell the story, hard for the people to do it.
Well and do what you're doing, including kind of getting
away from that W two addiction.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
That's a hard thing, yeah, and it's and it's it's
something I found not outside of the fitness stuff, but
like the the soon to be brokers, they see like
where I'm at in my journey right now, and they
think that this is just an easy button, like I'm
gona foot the switch, and this is going to be
a get rich quick thing.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
This industry is not a get rich quick thing.

Speaker 3 (36:26):
It's a it's a long, steady, organic, do it the
right way, and eventually it will turn into something that's
worth something type of business. But I find out a
lot of the folks that are sitting in a W
two seat right now that that consult with me. They'll
ask me questions about this journey, and I'll tell them, like,
look what you're making right now, you're probably going to
make more money doing that for the next two or
three years as you're kind of building up this this business.

(36:48):
But if the freedom doesn't excite you more than the
fear of having to just your spending down, like I
was living off my wife's teacher salary for almost two
years when I started this company before I start actually, yeah, yeah,
that we had a seven hundred dollars mortgage.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah yeah, we.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
We went we honeymooned in Hawaii with mostly wedding gifts
and just trying to make it work.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Did it on a budget.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
We'll go back one day when my kids are old
enough to handle a twelve hour travel day. But but
like the problem is that most people to see the
outcome and they think that, you know, that's that's the sprint.
I'm going to get to that as quickly as possible,
and it just it just takes time. And ultimately, being
realistic with those we'll keep you more committed to seeing

(37:36):
it through to my seven and a half, like where
I am right now, but thinking it's going to happen instantaneously,
we'll just lead you right back to corporate America because
it's going to be too hard to see that that
income go down and watch that bank account start dwindling
as you're building it up.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
I think that exists in every industry, you know. I
think if if you come in as a residential individual,
residential care working shift work hourly. In our end sty
as an example, I mean, you know, we employ everything
from high school to a high school graduate to a
doctor Thompson, and we're blessed to be able to do
so many different things. But you know a lot of
people will see me and just say, oh, he just

(38:12):
got there. And the reality of it is I started
in the same role that they're in, right for seven
dollars and seven cents an hour, working three to eleven,
five days a week, including the entire weekends, engaged to
be married at the time, getting ready to have Then
I got married, had my first child twenty nine year
old daughter.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Now.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
But and it's like, no, that's not You don't just
get here without sacrifice, commitment, hard work, going through those
pipelines of leadership, individual contributor, mastering your craft, being of value,
showing up.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Well, nobody just shows up and make it right. And
unfortunately people kind of see that and they're like, man,
they're lucky, right, And I'm like, okay, hard.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Work and sacrifice you equals luck. Then I'm lucky.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
They don't see that. They don't see the chapters of
your past.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
All they see is your current chapter and that and that,
and then I think that right now, obviously we're an
instantaneous gratification cycle of human existence and so the shortcut
mindset and the get rich quick type of stuff, and
that why does he have this and not me type
of thing.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
No one ever.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
Really wants to look back at the the journey that
it took to get to that outcome, or if they
saw that journey, would they even want to go through it?

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Right?

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Well, it's funny because from a Jeff I'll say, hey,
what are you reading?

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Well, I don't have time to read. What do you
watch on Netflix?

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Let me tell you about this? Okay, there's there's a
little bit of a priority issue.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, yeah, So don't get you know, what's your look
in the mirror? What's your book of the month? Right now?
What do you what do you?

Speaker 1 (39:43):
What am I reading right now?

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (39:45):
Man?

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Interesting?

Speaker 1 (39:47):
I get well sometimes I read, you know, I'm reading
about a book a week, and some of them are great.
To be honest with you, yeah, I'm trying to.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
You've been added like that for a long time.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
So you've got a commitment I made after the pandemic too,
self development. Leadership development became again part of the job
for me because I felt like I needed to continue
to get better. And I still believe that, you know,
I'm getting I'll tell you what I'm getting ready to read.

(40:19):
We we were interviewing the CEO of Morris Jenkins a
week week and a half ago, and that was such
a compelling and interesting conversation. And actually the founder of
that company wrote a book. I learned so much in
that one hour, Like I am with you here that
I'm gonna I'm getting ready to I'm getting to that book.
That's my book for next week. And sometimes I have

(40:41):
a hard time just filling in the in the holes,
like here's a book, here's a book. Yeah, you know,
you know that kind of tells you it's whatever it is,
it's not that great because I can't even remember the title. Unfortunately,
some days I can, some days I can't.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
How many chapters you give it before you abandon. I
go all the way through, no matter what, once you
start your yeah you know again.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
I mean I'm chasing them.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yeah, I gotta, I gotta learn from you. I just
got to be a nugget in here somewhere. Yeah. Yeah,
I just I just I grind.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
I just get it done.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
I got the I picked up the power of moments
on my flight to Denver, no kids. On the flight
out there, I had had baby girl with me and
wife for the backlog back and we had five delays
and got home at two am on Sunday, well on
Monday morning. And so I can't read the way that

(41:30):
I used to when the kids. I used to love
travel reading and be able to get the audible and
get the book and I would highlight away. So the
power of moments is the one I was able to
pick up and be able to get through. I'd say
about seventy five percent of it on the flight out here.
So I got a flight out on Thursday, so I'll
be able to knock that one out and I'll be
able to pick up another one.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, I think unfortunately, I just think books are too long.
You know, I gotta get you caught. I wrote a
book called on Learn Most of what I learned about
leadership was wrong. It's about one hundred and twenty pages.
Oh perfect, and people that get into it, maybe that
have read it, will tell me, man that it's just
so full. It's it gets right to the point. I
just want to get right to it. I'm not trying
to fluff it up. I don't need four I'm not

(42:09):
trying to make a lot of money it was just
me kind of memorializing some thoughts that I had.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah, and push it out a little bit and make.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
It a movie instead of an HBO series that goes
for three seasons too long.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
I know, I know, I know, but you know. But
to that point, though, it's really for me, it's about
less about what I'm reading or what it's that I'm
reading right that I'm learning. And it sounds like for
you and your leadership, it's important that you're learning right,
you know, whether it's you know, reading, listening, whatever that is,
it's the learning that has to be part of the
journey of your leadership, right, because the leader you are

(42:42):
now will have to evolve and change, just like it
does for me, right, and it has for me.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Depending on where pair goes yep.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Right, So I've always been a little worried that the like.
So we've scaled twenty percent year every year for almost
nine years. Yeah, I mean, I think it's over seventy
million this year. We're in five states, hopefully soon to
be six. And I don't say that to brag. I
just say that to say this is what it is.
But what scares me the most is that we're outgrowing

(43:12):
my ability to lead, So I try to keep up
with that, right, right, I want to stay ahead.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Is that super uncommon in the nonprofit space? I'm assuming
twenty percent year over year.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
It's pretty it is pretty uncommon.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
It's just a year scale.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Well, I think in the non for profit, you know,
not for profit as a tax status, I think it's
very uncommon to scale like that year of a year.
Then you have health and human services, which is really
the category we're in, which is you know, government for
profit non for profit you know, in even twenty percent
year of a year as well, is not the norm, right,
and it's not an anomaly there, but it's not the norm.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
I think.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
I would say for a non for profit it's anomaly
because most most not for profits are actually stepped their
other running in place. I would say, they're running in place,
or they're walking backwards. Right, most not for profits and
not scaling at all.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Right.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
On my next book, actually we'll talk about non for
profit scaling. So and I'm almost done with that. Of
course you won't need that because you're you're scaling a
for profit and you could just contribute to my work.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
Yeah, there you go, perfect, perfect, Yeah, no, I It's
funny because you're you're comming around these chapters of the
company and what leadership means. You know, for three years,
I was basically leading myself, right, and so then when
you start bringing on new people and you start understanding
that this, uh this business is taking on a life
of its own, and where I fit and where I

(44:33):
need and where's my highest and best use time, like
who needs me the most inside the organization to kind
of level them up is adjusting on the fly. And
again with the last two months being double in the workforce,
and I'm guessing in the next two months will probably
end up adding on their four or five people's awesome,
So uh yeah, it'll be a fun uh ping I'll
be a bit of a ping pong ball for a
bit until I can figure out ultimately where am I

(44:55):
creating the biggest impact and ripple effect for the organization.
But it's it's been fun and rewarding to to watch
the people blossoming around me and uh and and most
of these are coming from out of the industry, you
know largely, and so like they're learning about this stuff
for the first time, which has been That's what another
thing that Brock is really great at because as I'm
talking on here, like everything feels like common sense.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
In this stupid industry now, like.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
Like there's nothing I say that it feels like it's
it's new novel or that people need me to unpack it.
Brock immediately understands that person doesn't know what the hell
you're talking about. Man, Like, let me just let me
crawl this back to let me put my diaper back on,
and show them how how this works and make this
consumable to people that aren't living and breathing this every day.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
And I think that's pretty normal too. And you know,
I think one of the key thing that you said
earlier is like, and I would say, maybe you're doing
this right now. I know I'm doing this right now,
and I really want other leaders to do this right now.
But it's like, hey, so for three years I was
just leading myself. If you can master leading yourself, then
you could actually begin to lead others.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Right.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
The problem is is a lot of people that have
the responsibility from leading others for leading others aren't.

Speaker 5 (46:05):
Leading themselves well, right, So they're busy but not productive.
The meeting after meeting after meeting with no agenda, no outcomes,
why do we meet, you know, And and that's a
real problem that I'm seeing, and quite frankly, not at Thompson,
just in the world. The busyness is a real, a

(46:27):
real problem for you or the common like, well, I
know you're busy and people around No, no, I'm not busy.
It's not I'm productive, but i don't need eight hours
to be productive. And I'm not just gonna be busy
to be busy. I'm gonna do what I'm supposed to
be doing in my role. Every role in our company,
every leadership role, has function, has responsibility, and it's not

(46:49):
everything in the company.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
It can't be at long term. In the moment, when
you're building something, you have to do that. But once
you've started to build it, now you've got to, like
you're doing, bringing the right people, the right who's and
allow them to do the building right. And the busyness evaporates.
Right You're you're busy thinking, busy, vision casting, busy looking

(47:13):
at five years down the line for you, twenty four
months down the line, ring relationships with leaders in the communities.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
That's what you're busy doing.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
You're never so busy that you can't make time for somebody, right,
I don't ever want to be that busy again. I
can't make time for somebody when.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
They need me, right, absolutely, and if they're willing to ask.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Oh and if they're willing to ask, which is another
big issue.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Yeah, yeah, No, there's a lot of I got it,
and a lot of that that ends up taking it.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, what do you think that is? So you know,
it's funny. I was going to say, what's the leadership challenge?
Business is one of them, right, but that's one biggie, right,
So what do you think that is? Where leaders are
people in general don't want to ask.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
I think I think ego is a general what's the
word fallback that you would that you would point to?
And and I'm not young, like you know, I'm in
my I'm in my late thirties, but like I'm leading
people in their fifties, right, So I think that there's
a bit of that reluctance to ask for help from

(48:09):
somebody that might be a generation or two behind you.
Would That's what I kind of would use from my
own examples, is just that I think that people one
don't want to admit that they don't know something, and two
they don't want to ask for help when they feel
like they should be the one.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Offering to help, right.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
So that's that's something I got to work out of
anybody that we bring into the organizations. At the end
of the day, we can't all know all things at
all times, and we have to be willing to and
raise a hand whenever we need help and support to
get things moving in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, you know, and I would say that happens in
every level in every organization I see it. I've been
talking about it a little bit with my coach and
some different things with my team internally and inherently what
ends up happening, there's this principle that bad news never
gets better with time. And then you have a leader
over here sees a problem when it's a small problem,

(49:01):
doesn't want to bring invite people into the problem to
solve it at a small level, and then it starts
a bubble. Yep, still doesn't invite people in to help
solve the problem because now they don't. Now it's starting
to bubble, and then it pops, and then when it pops,

(49:22):
it's almost beyond reparation short term. Now, all of a sudden,
the data or the dashboard maybe identifies it. They've never
asked anybody to help solve it at the lowest level,
and then you're like, now it's on them instead of
on all of us, because at a lower level you
brought me into that issue and said, hey, here's the
potential problem. Can you help me solve this. Well, the

(49:45):
moment you invite me into that boat to solve it,
I'm in the boat with you.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
I have to help you solve it, right, Yeah, I'm
accountable to the outcome at that way, and it's you know.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
For us, we do a lot of work around five
dysfunctions of a team. Patrick Lencioni's book and concept around
on that, and pure accountability is a big part of that, right, right,
how do you hold each other accountable?

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Yeah, that's the equivalent of the petty the petty marriage
fight that bubbles up and you.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Don't have as much Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
We ignore everything for a long time, and then six
months later you're getting smashed at the face like, wait
a minute, this is a lot of left field, But
it's been festering for six months and it's something that
ends up bubbling over and eventually becomes a much bigger
outcome than ultimately would have happened if it was addressed
right when it when it happened.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
And I think they even they you'll you'll see it,
you Brian already have seen it like I see it
with customers, like you know, let's solve it when it's early. Yeah,
if there's an issue, a culture issue, a disagreement, discontent,
you know, because we have customers. Yes, the client is
the child and family, but we have people paying for
the services, which is generally state and local governments. So

(50:51):
if there's issues with that, we need to understand what
those are so we can solve them, just like your
customer will come to you and you'll see their problem. Yeah,
and we have to solution them as fast as possible.
But you know, bad news never gets better with time.
It's kind of a principle, yeah, that I use. And
then another one is what do I know who needs
to know it?

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Right? And have I told them?

Speaker 1 (51:11):
You'd be surprised how many times I have to coach
people in those three simple questions right, because they know
they know who needs to know it, they just don't
tell them.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Brought calls that biting the frog, yeah, which frogs do
we need to bite today, because at the end of
the day, like when you're in the industry like we are,
that's touching payroll and benefits, touching how people are paid
and how people are cared for. Generally, there's going to
be frogs to bite that. We need to go rectify,
we need to escalate, We need to step in where
we need to step in. And at the end of
the day, if we let the clients kind of self

(51:42):
serve themselves in that capacity, they're going to frustration loop
it because they're dealing with corporate America. At the end
of the day, they don't have us fighting battles for them.
They will run out of energy to fight them altogether.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Quick pivot as we close here, you know, because I
think it's important you know that Fast fifty. I got
an opportunity to kind of talk to the award he's
at Fast fifty. We actually scrub the Fast fifty list.
These are fifty of the fastest growing I would say
small to medium sized organism companies in the Charlotte market.
About twenty percent of that those awardees are actually doing

(52:14):
something in community, you know, And I don't know if
you remember or not. But I talked about the benefit
to business by being part of the broader community. You've
really embraced that. I know you partner with us on
some things. I think that's a big miss by companies,
even as they start out. You don't need to go deep,
but you should understand how that impacts your your broader

(52:37):
mission if you will. Why is that important to you
as a leader of peer you.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
Guys specifically is interesting because I come from a big
family of adoption and my wife, she says she's done
having babies, but she's very open minded to going down
the fostering route. And I said, well, baby, if we
go fostering, we're gonna end up adopting babies. But that's
exactly what my family did, and we have two sisters. Now,

(53:04):
you know, I think that And honestly, like my previous
employer was very instilled on that, and I think they
did a great job of building a great heartbeat inside
their inside of their employee base. Then I carried forward
for me, like the things I learned in corporate America
have been largely what has created the outcome of what
we are here seven and a half years later. It's

(53:26):
around doing the right thing. It's around building great networks,
great community, great people around you to kind of help
lift your own tides together. And those principles have been
really the main catalyst for growth with our organization, and
predictable growth and not just transactional growth. You know, it's
great to get deals done and stuff that end up
turning into revenue, fantastic, But if those relationships are very

(53:49):
much just a transactional you're solving a problem band aid model.
Eventually that band aid's going to get ripped off and
you're basically starting back trying to fill those buckets up.
So I found it to be the most sustainable way
to create a very what's the word, just a very
good feeling environment around us. And I think the more

(54:10):
people that we can create good outcomes for whether it's
good outcomes for us financially or if it's good outcomes
for them, that doesn't really matter. As long as we're
creating good ripple effects. That's what ends up bringing things
back in our direction whenever it makes sense for us
to address them. So that's where i'd say that the
focus started and has only grown as the team has grown,
where we actually have people that can be a part

(54:31):
of something bigger. And I think that internally for cultures
of organizations. If you can if you can do feel
good things together and support the community in which you're
all benefiting from, you're only creating a better culture for
your own internal team anyway. And when you're taking money
off that you're not you're not trying to focus on
quotas and stuff like that, and you can take that

(54:52):
lens off for an afternoon. It's it's really impactful to
the to the health of an organization.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
I love that, and I love you're you're comment about
ripple effects and and my friend, you are having plenty
of rebel effects. I appreciate you. Thanks for coming on,
Thank you for your leadership, Thanks for your friendship, your partnership.
Peer Peo has been a supporter of our mission, our work,
and you know, as somebody a little older than you,
I'm learning a lot from you, Jeff and your leadership,

(55:20):
and I appreciate you for that. But just thank you
so much for being here.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
All Right, well, we're gonna wrap up this episode of CEOs.
You should know Jeff Wanner with peer Peo. We are
brought to you by iHeartMedia powered by Thompson. Thanks everybody,