Never Lose an Employee Again w/ Joey Coleman

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Today's episode is all aboutretaining your employees.

David Millay (00:08):
From EngageMint, I'm David Millay, and this is
Flip The Switch.
Y'all welcome back to anotherepisode of Flip the Switch,
where we sit down with leadersin customer experience and
employee experience, and we tryto figure out what are the

(00:30):
trends that they're payingattention to?
What are the experiments thatthey're running?
What are the principles thathave driven them to success
throughout their career?
Then we take all those thingsand we apply them to the world
of sports and entertainment.
God, it felt good to say that ithas been a long time, maybe
three or four months since I'vesaid that.
And if you're a loyal listenerto this show, thank you for
listening to this episode, cuzthis is like the first episode

(00:52):
that we've done in three or fourmonths.
Not to elaborate too much, butif you're watching this on
YouTube, which I highly suggestyou do, that's what we're
putting a lot of focus goingforward.
I got married, I'm showing offmy ring.
And it's been a really busy lastthree to four months where we've
made a lot of changes in ourbusiness.
We've really focused on the corebusiness of engagement.
For those of you that don'tknow, we do training and

(01:14):
workshops on customer experienceand employee experience fandom.
And the podcast is just a partof that.
The podcast is really adiscovery tool for people to
listen in and hear what we'redoing and get some ideas around
customer experience and employeeexperience.
So we'll talk all about whatI've been up to in later
episodes.
I don't want to distract fromtoday's episode, which is all

(01:36):
about how to never lose anemployee again.
My friend Joey Coleman, hisbrand new book just dropped.
We had him on the show.
Maybe a year ago, two years agoand he really talked about his
first book on that, which wasall about how to never lose a
customer again.
But it was so successful that hegot a ton of messages from

(01:57):
readers saying, Hey, this isgreat for how to teach me to
never lose a customer again.
Can these be applied to how tonever lose an employee again?
So we dropped a new book.
It's out today.
We recorded this again threemonths ago, maybe back in March.
Today is June 27th, so maybeit's been like four months.
I don't know.

(02:17):
But the episode is incredible.
Joey goes into so many detailsand frameworks around how to
retain your top employees, whichis so key for everyone listening
today.
It doesn't matter what type ofbusiness you have, big or small,
your employees are.
Looking at their options anddeciding, is this a place where
my values align?
Is this a place where I want tostay for another year, for

(02:38):
another two years, for anotherfive years?
And as a leader, it's your jobto create an environment that
encourages them to want to stay.
Joey's gonna give you all thetools that you need in this new
book, which you should go get onAmazon.
Today.
It's called Never Lose aCustomer Again by Joey Coleman.
And go check out the book.
We're gonna unpack some of theinsights here.
If you really like it, listen tothe episode, dig deep and then

(03:01):
go check out the bookafterwards.
Let's jump in with my friendJoey Coleman into how to never
lose a customer again.
Joey, welcome back to the show.
Excited to have you

Joey Coleman (03:14):
David, I am absolutely thrilled to be here.
Thanks so much for inviting meback.
Thanks to everybody who'slistening in for round two,
another conversation, soappreciate it.

Alright, let's jump in.
Joey, catch us up on what theheck you've been up to since the
last time we talked.
Obviously you've got anincredible book here where we're
talking about never losing acustomer again.
But I want to talk about whatyou've been up to now, because
you're not only focusing oncustomers, now we're talking
about employees

I am David.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I about, I don't know, four orfive months after my first book,
never Lose a Customer again,came out, I got an email from a
reader and the email just saidthis, dear Joey, if you wrote a
book called Never Lose anEmployee Again, I would buy it.
And then it was signed by theirname.
I thought that's interesting,okay.

(04:02):
Woo-hoo.
Pre-orders on a book I haven'teven written.
This is interesting, but I, tobe candid, I didn't think a
whole lot about it, and I didn'tthink a lot about it for two
reasons.
Number one, I'd been so deeplyimmersed in customer experience
for so long that I understoodthe power and the importance of
employee experience, but I sawthem as two important things,
but maybe separate things.
Number two, I was deep in themix of the first book coming out

(04:24):
and was all focused on that.
Over the course of the nextyear, I received almost a dozen
emails that were exactly thesame.
One sentence email.
Dear Joey, if you wrote a bookcalled Never Lose an Employee
Again, I would buy it now.
David, as my wife will happilyattest, I am not the smartest
crayon in the box or thebrightest crayon in the box, as

(04:46):
it may be.
And the practical reality is ittook several interactions for me
to say.
The market is asking forsomething that I maybe am not as
personally attached to.
Because in the interest of fulldisclosure, it's been about 20
years since I've had more thanone or two employees.
I've been running really leanfor a while, but I decided to
start investigating and divingdeeper into the conversation.

(05:09):
And I quickly realized that thisis a huge pain point for
organizations of all sizesglobally.
And by the way, this was preCovid and then Covid came along
and it's suddenly like everyone,regardless of what industry,
regardless of where you live,was suddenly like, oh my gosh,
we can't find talent.
We can't keep talent, we can'tengage our talent.
Our talent wants more than wehave.

(05:30):
Our talent doesn't do the thingswe need them to do.
Whatever it may be.
And I just got really curiousand dove into it.
And what I realized is that allalong customer experience and
employee experience are twosides of the same coin.
As you polish one, the otherside necessarily gets brighter
as one side goes down, the otherside necessarily goes down with

(05:51):
it.
And this led me to open up awhole new area of research, a
whole new area of research anddiscussion and exploration, and
super excited that it's evolvedits way into a new book and
keynote.

And today's episode, we are going to dive
into kind of the framework forthat book and tactics and case
studies and stories thatlisteners can apply to their
business.
But I think you're spot on withit being two sides of the same
coin.
Back when I worked at Disney andDisney Institute, one of our key
things that we always would comeback to is this insight of the

(06:24):
extent to which you genuinelycare for your employees is the
extent to which they're going tocare for your customers.
And that was a huge thingbecause people would always come
to us saying, help us withcustomer experience.
Help us with customerexperience, train my employees
to be nicer, train my employeesto help them treat customers
better.
And I'm like, I can do that.

(06:45):
But the reality is, if you arenot focusing on employee
experience first, the trainingonly goes so far.
And that is where oftentimeswhat would start as a customer
experience, change managementprocess would end up being an
employee experience, changemanagement process.
And only until we nailed thatfoundational part, could we then

(07:06):
start to tackle the customerside of things.

David, I so agree.
in, in fact, I, if I may, one ofthe things that I came to
realize, and I've, this has beenan evolving awareness over time,
is that you can't ask youremployees to.
You can't ask your employees todeliver a remarkable customer
experience if they don't knowwhat one is.

(07:30):
And at the end of the day, youremployees are customers of your
business.
They are your most importantcustomers.
They're there, they're with youall day, every day.
This is where they, come in themorning.
This is where they leave in theevening.
This is where their focus is.
And if we dive deep intoenhancing the employee
experience, they now have acontext for delivering a

(07:52):
customer experience that is alsoremarkable.

Yeah.
And again, before we jump intothe framework, to me it is
really similar to I look like Ilook at a brand like a
Lululemon, right?
It's a retail store that offersclothing and experiences those
employees should be wearing andLululemon outside of work all
the time.
Because not only do they have adiscount, but they love the

(08:16):
brand, right?
And they do because they'vecreated an experience where
their employees are evangelists.
For the biggest evangelists forthe brand are the people that
work in it and live it 24 7.
If the people that work, if thepeople that work in it and live
in it 24 7 aren't gonna go beevangelist for the brand, who
the hell is.

Exactly.
And David, I'm gonna, I'll leaninto this further, and in the
interest of full disclosure, Idon't know what Lululemon's
policy is on discounts orclothing for their employees, so
I'm not familiar with that.
But here's the thing, if youhave a brand and you offer your
employees a discounted price onwhatever it is you offer, so

(08:55):
you're a restaurant and youoffer'em a discounted meal on
their dinner for your wait staffor your retail store, and you
offer'em a discounted price onyour clothing, my question is,
why do they have to payanything?
Why are you making'em payanything?
Could that be a loss leader?
Could you just say, Hey, we'regonna take zero income from our
employees to give them apractical, personal experience

(09:18):
of using our product, of being acustomer of our service.
So when they interact with ouractual prospects and customers,
they are speaking from a placeof contextual relevance.
They are speaking from a placeof personal experience.
I think it would be reallyrevolutionary for a company to
come in and say, Hey, if youwork for us, you get whatever
that is that we sell free periodfor as long as you are an

(09:43):
employee of us.
I think it would flip thescript.

I, I think with a brand like Lulu, like if you, if
I worked at Lululemon, I gotstuff for free, my wardrobe
would purely be Lululemon and Iwould definitely be working
there on the side right now.
So I don't know that they couldalways give us stuff for free,
but certainly come to work thereand here's a free fit.
And it's the same thing withDisney, right?
Like when I worked at Disney, wegot to go into the parks for
free and I could let threepeople in for free every single

(10:08):
day.
And my family would come,friends, family, everybody would
come to visit and we'd go let'emin after a while, gets annoying.
Cuz they know you have the perkand they're coming down just
because you have the perk.
But nonetheless, we were thebiggest proponents of the parks
and we were the best guidesbecause we went there all the
time.
We experienced it.
And to your point, there is away that you can definitely do
that depending on what yourbrand, product service is.

(10:32):
I

I love it.

Alright, let's get into it.
Obviously you've been travelingthe world now and you're
starting to talk about employeeexperiences.
It's a pretty similar frameworkto the customer experience side
of thing, right?
Walk us

similar.
Yeah.

walk us through that tie.

So David, here's the interesting thing.
Some people so if you'relistening and you already read,
never Lose a Customer again.
Let me give you the quick tensecond overview of Never Lose an
Employee again.
The new book Everywhere in thebook, the first book where I
mentioned the word customer, doa find and replace in your mind
and insert the word employeeta-da.

(11:10):
Second book, ready to go.
Because here's the thing.
Humans are humans, whetherthey're our customers, whether
they're our employees, whetherit's our spouse, our children,
humans are humans.
And what I realized when Istarted to dive into this is as
many organizations are horribleat customer onboarding, There

(11:30):
are just as many that arehorrible at employee onboarding
and the practical reality is anemployee goes through the same
emotional rollercoaster that anew customer goes through in
that, in the beginning they'resuper excited, but then they
begin to doubt the feeling theyjust had, and then we show up on
the first day and we're like,oh, another little quick hit
maybe of positive experience, ormaybe it's a negative

(11:52):
experience.
It either affirms or denies thefeeling we already had going
into it, and then we're usuallyjust thrown to the wolves and
said, fend for yourself andfigure this out until later.
If you stay around long enough,we might actually promote you or
we might do something more withyou.
When I realized that the overlapof the two was so similar and
when I realized how manyorganizations were missing the

(12:14):
opportunity to use the sixcommunication tools that deepen
a relationship with a customerto deepen that same relationship
with the employee, I thought,wait a second.
Number one, this is gonna beeasier for me to remember on
stage.
Okay?
So let's have a practicalconversation there.
But number two, if we can embedthis type of philosophy in how
we treat our customers and embedthis type of philosophy in how

(12:37):
we treat our employees, theywill feed on each other.
And to that point earlier, bothsides of the coin will be
polished.

I love it.
All right, so let's recap theeight phases then of never lose
a customer and how we'veslightly adapted that to be
never lose an employee again.

Absolutely.
So here's what I'd like to do.
Each of the eight phases startswith the letter A.
Alright?
And the idea behind this is it'slike getting straight A's on
your report card.
If you're delivering on each ofthe phases, your people love
you, whether those are yourcustomers or whether those are
your employees.
Maybe if it makes sense, I'llgive a quick overview of how it
shows up in the customersetting, and then we'll speed

(13:17):
over and do a quick overview ofhow it shows up in the employee
setting, and we can see how theyoverlap.
So this is the customer journeyin eight phases.
The first phase is the assessphase.
When a prospective customer isconsidering whether or not they
wanna do business with you,checking out your marketing
materials, having salesconversations, et cetera, they
then move to phase two.
The admit phase where they admitthat they have a problem or a

(13:38):
need they believe you can helpthem with.
They sign on the dotted line,they hand over their hard earned
cash.
They then go to phase three, theAffirm phase.
Where they begin to doubt thedecision they just made.
In common parlance, we call thisbuyer's remorse.
Okay, what are we gonna do toreaffirm their decision?
We then come to phase four, theactivate stage, the first real
moment of truth where theyreceive your product, they start

(13:58):
getting the service, whatever itmay be.
What are we doing to energizethe relationship and kick it
off?
Now most businesses do a prettygood job on that, which is
ironic because the next phasefive is where all the wheels
fall off.
The acclimate phase where youhave to get your customer used
to your way of doing business sothat hopefully they reach phase
six, the accomplished phase whenthey achieve the goal they had
when they originally decided todo business with you.

(14:19):
And if and only if they've donethat, you have the right, the
privilege to move them to phaseseven, the adopt phase where
they become loyal to you andonly you.
And if they're an adopter, itmeans it might be possible for
them to reach phase eight.
And turn into an advocate wherethey're referring new business
to you.
They become your raving fanssinging praises far and wide.
So that's the customer journey.

(14:40):
And we could spend days, and Iknow in our last conversation we
did diving into any of thoseeight phases, but how does this
apply in the employee world?
I will tell you, same eightphases all start with the letter
A with one minor exception,first phase, the assess phase
where a prospective employee isconsidering whether or not they
wanna work for you.

(15:01):
They're looking at your jobdescription.
They might be talking to otherpeople that you work with.
They're going through yourhiring and interviewing process.
They're getting a feel, which bythe way, you're hiring an
interviewing process is likesales calls, right?
It's very similar.
We're identifying objections.
We're figuring out if it's agood fit.
We're trying to express ourvalue.
We're trying to see what valuewe might get out of the
interaction with them.

(15:22):
That's the assess phase.
We then come to phase two, andthis is the only one that the
name changed.
But what happens in the phasedidn't change at all.
The second phase in the employeeexperience is the accept phase
as opposed to the admit phase.
In the accept phase, you make ajob offer and hopefully that

(15:42):
candidate accepts your offer.
We then go to phase three.
The Affirm phase, before werefer to it as buyer's remorse,
I refer to it as new hire's,remorse.
The research is the same.
It shows that a new hire beginsto doubt the decision they just
made to accept your job offer.
They think, oh, should I havenegotiated for more?
Or, oh, I accepted this joboffer, but I ha I was

(16:04):
interviewing with a couple ofcompanies and I hadn't heard
from this other one.
What if I should have waited forthat one?
If we don't get in and addressthe emotional fear, doubt, and
uncertainty that they have, theyare showing up on their first
day in the hole.
Even though we're excitedthinking this is the beginning
of a new journey, they'reshowing up on the first day
thinking, ah, did I make theright call?

(16:26):
Which brings us to phase four,the activate phase, the first
day on the job, it's the one dayin this journey that literally
lasts only one day.
And the question I often askCEOs is when your employee,
after their first day on the jobgoes home and they talk to their
spouse, their kids, theirsignificant other, their
roommate, whoever it is thatlives with them, or they're on
their way home, they live bythemselves, and they call mom

(16:48):
and dad, or they call thesignificant other, they call
their friend and they're asked,how was your first day on the
job?
Are they ready to tell aremarkable story?
Or instead, are they gonna tella story?
Something along the lines of Ishowed up my manager actually
was on vacation, so they didn'treally seem to know that it was
my day there.
I was met by somebody from HRwho took me into a boardroom and

(17:09):
said, we wanna watch, sit downand have you watch these videos
that were filmed in the 1970sthat are all about sexual
harassment in the workplace.
After you've watched a bunch ofthose fill out this paperwork
about your withholding on your401k, what you're gonna do for
your taxes, which of the dentalplans you wanna opt into, et
cetera, et cetera.
And then I'll be back to collectyou in about two hours to have
you go to lunch with someonethat just found out an hour ago

(17:32):
that they're taking you tolunch, which they're excited
about the fact that they don'thave to pay for lunch, but they
have no idea who you are andyou're never gonna see them
again.
And then after lunch, we'll comeback here, we'll take you to a
desk, which by the way, yourcomputer isn't set up yet, nor
your phone.
Nor do we have business cardsfor you, and you can just fumble
around on Google and or ourwebsite until it's time to go
home.

(17:52):
That's how most businessesstart.
The first day when you get homeand you get asked, how was your
first day on the job?
It is not activated or engagedyou in any way, shape or form.
We then come to phase five, theacclimate phase.
This is the getting used to thejob phase.
In the typical job, this isgonna be two months, three
months.
You're learning the ropes,you're figuring out who people
are.
So hopefully you reach stagesix, the accomplished stage.

(18:15):
When you achieve the goal youhad as an employee when you
originally decided to accept thejob offer For every employee,
this is different.
For some it might be apromotion.
For some, it might be a feelingof appreciation.
For some it might feel a senseof completion on a project or a
different type of thing.
We gotta track that for eachemployee cuz if we do and we do
a good job and we help themaccomplish, they moves to phase
seven, the adopt phase wherethey become loyal to us and only

(18:38):
us, they're not gonna take thecall from the recruiter.
They're committed.
And last but not least, again,phase eight, that advocate
phase, the Holy Grail nirvana,where they become a referral
source, bringing all the great,amazing people they've ever
known or worked with to come bepart of our team as well because
they get that we're buildingsomething different.

Amazing.
I'll give you a second to takesome water after that.

I know.

I

Appreciate it.

But it's great cuz it gives a, an overarching view
of how the two concepts.
Are very similar and the sameintentionality that you approach
your customer experience.
You can easily take a lot ofthose things and apply it to
your employee experience.
Context is slightly different,but a lot of the core principles
behind it remain the same.

(19:24):
So let's let's jump into this.
Maybe one of the best ways to doit is to just go step by step
and we can go into kind of someof the stories.
Cuz one of the things I loveabout your book, and you always
do this, is you are filled withcase studies and practical
applications of insights.
I'd love for us to go throughkind of step by step, give some
stories and maybe some ideastarters.

(19:45):
I don't like the idea of likebest practices, but I like idea
starters because it might, whatworks for one organization might
not work for another, but itmight give you an idea to go try
something.
Does that work for you?

David not only does it work for me, you have
hit onto with that question twokey things.
Number one, how I approach everyspeech I've ever given, every
book I've ever written, which ishumans love stories and the
stories aren't designed to haveyou copy them.
Exactly.
You can, you're not prohibitedfrom doing that.
The story is designed to shiftyour thinking, to shift your

(20:19):
perspective that hopefully willcompel you to shift your action
into a different way ofinteracting with your employees.

Huge.
All right, let's hit it.
Let's start with accept.
I will probably share somethings from our worlds as well,
from some of what we've seenfrom the sports and
entertainment space.
But let's go and let's talkabout accepting first, right?

love it.
Do we wanna go to accepting ordo we want to pit stop

oh sorry.
Let's start with start

I'm excited that you're ready to hire'em already,
David, but let's decide if it'sthe right person in the
interview first.
I

start with, let's start with

Totally cool.
All right, so one of my favoritestories from the assess part of
the conversation leads into thatidea of the interview.
So many folks when they'rethinking about finding the right
talent are like, oh my gosh,what do we do in the interview?
How do we ask questions?
What are the type of things?
Cuz let's be honest, interviewsare a lot like first dates.

(21:12):
Everyone's showing up,pretending to be the best
version of themself, not thetrue version of themself, right?
Everybody's cleaned up, they'vedone a little extra work they're
got an idea of what they wannatalk about.
And what our job is asprospective employers is to try
to quickly get into theconversations that are gonna
allow us to discern what thishuman is like as a person.

(21:36):
I'm not a big fan of hiring forskillset.
I'm not a big fan for hiring.
For What experience have youhad?
I'm a big fan of looking andsaying, are you the kind of
person that I wanna spend themajority of my day with every
day for the next year, twoyears, five years, 10 years?
Okay.
So what do we do in the assessphase?
And the example I wanna give youis from Antarctica.
One of my goals in writing thebook was to have case studies

(21:59):
from all seven continents.
And we achieved it all sevencontinents, including
Antarctica.
So there's this guy namedShackleton, right?
You may have heard of him.
Shackleton has this ship, theendurance that goes to
Antarctica.
It gets stuck in the ice for twoyears and they finally find
their way back to civilization.

(22:19):
Get out.
What's fascinating is howShackleton decided who should
come on the trip.
Now, this is an important thingto figure out.
you're gonna be in the hostileenvironment of Antarctica.
It's cold.
We're only able to bring acertain amount of food with us.
We're gonna have to figure outother ways to get food while we
go.
We might get stuck in the ice.
They thought they might getstuck in the ice for a couple

(22:40):
days, maybe a couple of weeks.
It was two years, folks, twoyears stuck in the ice to the
point where the ship broke apartand sunk and they had to live on
the ice and then hike their wayout.
Absolutely.
Insane story.
Amazing story.
But where it relates tobusinesses is there a question
you can ask in the interviewprocess?
A single question that will giveyou the insight you need that

(23:01):
based on a single answer, whatit'll be like to work with that
person.
So here's what would happen.
Shack with him would have histeam do the interviews, and then
he'd come in for the finalinterview and he'd sit down and
he'd say, I have just onequestion.
Do you sing?
And the person he wasinterviewing, whether a semen or
a scientist or a sailor would belike, what do I sing?

(23:21):
What does that have to do withanything?
Is what they would think.
And Shackleton would say, no, Idon't mean any of that opera
Caruso stuff.
I just mean if you're sittingaround the campfire with the
boys, are you willing to hummatune?
What Shackleton had learned inhis previous voyages is in the
cold inhospitable, darkAntarctic night.
The ability to sit around a fireand sing a song is what allowed

(23:44):
his men to keep fighting foranother day.
That allowed his men to survive.
It kept morale high.
In fact, when the ship wassinking into the ice, he said to
his team, we gotta decide whatwe're gonna get off the ship to
keep, we're gonna have toabandon a lot of stuff.
And one of his folks said, yeahwe're gonna leave the banjo on
the ship.
And he's no.

(24:04):
I'd rather leave food.
Then leave the banjo becausethat's gonna help us sing around
the fire at night.
So the question becomes toemployers listening.
Is there a question you couldask, a single question that
would give you insight as to thetype of person you're about to
invite into your organization?

I I love that.
Part of that to me alsohighlights on the question was
built around the darkest times,and I think it is, there are a
lot of employees who, in peacetime, let's call it, when things
are going well.
They're good.
But there are a lot moreemployees that are like that
than like, when things arereally hitting the fan, who's

(24:44):
who can, what are the skillsetsneeded to pull you out of there?
And then how do you ask aquestion to identify that
skillset?
Is that part of the lesson aswell?
or is that something I just madeup on that

O on only a hundred percent.
Only a hundred percent.
Is that part of it as well?
Yeah, and here's the thing.
I'm a recover.
I'm a recovering attorney.
The first steps admitting youhave a problem.
There are 11 steps after that.
But when I was working in thelegal field, one of the things
people talk about is summerassociate programs where between
your second and third year oflaw school, they invite law
students to come work at the lawfirm.

(25:15):
They pay'em a boatload of money,they take'em to ball games, they
have lobster and steak dinners.
They're doing all these fancythings.
You accept the job offer, andthen you show up for the first
day of work and they're like,great.
You're gonna sit in this room inthe basement for the next four
months reviewing printouts ofemails from one of our clients
that's going through anantitrust merger to see if the
word blue diamond appears in anyof the emails.

(25:38):
And if it does, you take thatpiece of paper and put it in
this box instead of in theoriginal box it was in.
I'm not making this up.
This happens.
All the time.
The point of the story here isthe courting, the dating, the
experience of what you were heldto believe it would be like was,
to your point, a peacetimeexperience.

(25:58):
Here's the best of all worlds.
But then you show up for the joband you immediately get thrown
into one of the worst of allworlds scenarios.
I'm not saying that you want tohave your people run a gauntlet
as part of the interviewprocess.
What I am saying is, if you arebringing people on, the more you
can give them an accuraterepresentation of what the best
day on the job and what theworst day on the job is gonna

(26:21):
look and feel like, the betteryou will be served should they
decide to accept your offer.

Yeah, it's interesting too, not to go too
deep on this topic, cuz I knowwe got a bunch but I think like
activity based hiring as well.
I don't know if you guys gotinto this like for me, we're, we
were looking at podcast clipeditors, right?
I.
Could, could our team, couldKatie and I go through and edit
podcast clips?
Yes.
Does that bring us joy?
Not really.
Does it take us, does it take usmore time than we need to?

(26:49):
That takes away from ourclients.
Yes.
So can we outsource that?
And so what I did was we tooksix people.
I hired'em all for the sametask, gave'em all the same
assignment, and said, Hey, yourjob is to go through and edit
the same clip.
So I had six different, sixversions of the same clip.
And then we cut, and I toldthem, I said, Hey, six other
people are gonna have the sametask.
And then we're gonna go, that'sgonna cut down to three people,

(27:11):
and then we're gonna pick oneout of that.
And because for me it's likespeed and the ability to hit a
deadline and turn those clipsaround quickly was the one
thing, the primary thing I wasmeasuring.
And everybody can tell you, ohyeah, I can hit deadlines.
But until you see them inaction, in part of that, I
realized that one person that Ireally liked in the interview

(27:32):
process and I thought was gonnabe the front runner, just
couldn't hit the deadline.
Got it to me like four dayslate.
I'm like, that's not gonna workfor me.
so anyway I think

David.
I love

that you could go in this,

Yeah, I love that.
And I wanna call out twobeautiful things you did there.
Number one, you were clear aboutwhat your criteria, your driving
criteria for the hire was.
Speed.
How can you turn this aroundquickly?
And me deadline right speed andliving up to deadlines.
And you made that very clear tothe people.
You didn't hide the ball, youdidn't say actually this was a

(28:03):
test on speed and deadlines.
No, you said at the outset, Hey,I'm gonna be very clear.
I'm gonna be a grownup.
Tell you the metrics you'rebeing measured on, and that's
what you're being evaluated on.
But more importantly, you didsomething which so many
businesses failed to do.
You actually hired and paid thepeople.
So many businesses are like,Hey, we're going to, this was

(28:23):
like a spec assignment to see ifyou can do it and do.
And it's like that.
I wanna take a shower after thatconversation, let alone after
that project.
It just doesn't even feel fun ifyou are going to value your
people.
And if you're going to claim onyour website, in your marketing
materials, in your interviewsthat you value, your people,
value them from the beginning.

(28:45):
I sat in on a call recently withone of my consulting clients
where they were doing the firstday training for some new hires
and about an hour into the eighthour Zoom virtual training
session.
So just let that sink in for asecond, folks.
Okay.
Some of you just threw up.
I'm sorry for not warning you inadvance.
You know that the Obama inducingscenario was approaching, one of

(29:07):
the new hires said, just outtacuriosity, are we being paid for
today?

Great

The fact that person didn't know.
Told me everything I needed toknow about the hiring process.
They've been asked to come to aneight hour Zoom training
session, and they're not sure ifthey're getting paid.
Oh my goodness.
What other things have fallenthrough the cracks?

yeah, that's a great point.
We could go a hundred percentdeeper.
We could do a whole podcast juston, on each one of these topics,
but for the sake of time let'skeep rolling.
Let's talk about accept the jobacceptance process and what that
looks like.

Yeah, so accept has two aspects, the offer that
you make, and hopefully theacceptance that they give when
they transition from being aprospective employee to an
actual employee.
I'd love to talk about weddinginvitations.
Okay, so here's the interestingthing.
When you get a weddinginvitation, think as you're
listening, David, and you mighthave one that comes to mind,

(30:07):
think about the greatest weddinginvitation you ever received.
It probably came in an oversizedenvelope.
Maybe it had a wax seal.
It had calligraphy writing onthe front.
It was beautiful printed paper.
You opened it up inside wasanother envelope.
You were like, oh my gosh.
There's another envelope thatmaybe had your name and a
significant other's name orchildren's name on it.
You flipped that over.

(30:27):
You opened it up, and the insidewere lots of little inserts.
There might have even been crepepaper.
It was raised in.
It was beautiful.
There was a design.
It had a whole aesthetic feel.
It previewed not only theexperience of attending the
wedding, but it brought to thelevel of the interaction a
solemnity, a significance andimportance that marked this

(30:50):
invitation to come join for aspecial moment that would begin,
ideally, a lifelong journey,counterbalance that experience
to the typical job offer letter.
That usually reads somethinglike this.
Dear David, we are pleased tooffer you the position of Chief

(31:11):
Marketing Officer.
You will be an at-will employeein the state of Florida.
That means we can fire you forany reason that we want at any
time.
Your salary will be$62,738, andwe will be withholding tax,
which means you, that will notbe your take home money.
You'll also be entitled to anyof our benefits and packages
offers we want.

(31:31):
If you are willing to acceptthis offer, sign here and mail
this back to us.
Now, let's just juxtapose thosetwo emotional feelings.
One is an experience, one is apathetic transaction.
How are you inviting people into your vision, your journey,

(31:53):
their future?
What happens when we think ofour job offer letters as being
invitations to join us on thisepic journey.
We're about to start.

So much more powerful, obviously.
One, one thing I have a questionon as it relates to this and
this comes from actually some ofour work with Notre Dame and

Oh boy.
We just got excited there.
David.
Just trigger folks, for those ofyou that can't see me or you're
just listening in, you just sawa whole different level of
experience here cuz we're aboutto talk about the Notre Dame
fighting Irish.

With both of us being Notre Dame alums, this
project is near and dear to myheart.
I worked on working with NotreDame for 10 years and finally
last year, one of my friends,Tim Wise, made it happen.
And so one of the things we wereworking on with them is, The
project overall was aroundmaking game days better,
specifically focusing on theirlegendary usher staff and how
can we, how might we help thatgroup continue to get better and

(32:51):
stay at this legendary positionthat they're known around the
world for?
And one of the things that welooked at was job descriptions,
right?
So I would say that's probablymore in the assess phase, but I
think what you described aroundthe acceptance piece is really
interesting because we wrote, werewrote all the job descriptions
and we made them much morewelcoming and inviting and like

(33:12):
descriptive of what the NotreDame Usher position would do,
the importance of the role, theemotional connection you're
gonna be able to have withcustomers, and how that's gonna
make the team play better.
And some of the initial pushbackthat came back was around,
That's great.
We do think that's gonna help,but there are compliance things
that we've gotta get in here.
So when you think about a jobacceptance thing, it's great to

(33:35):
be able to do this fun, awesomething, but there are some
compliance things in there.
So how do you make it anemotional experience while still
getting the things that we needto have legally from a
compliance perspective.

David, I love this question, and as a recovering
attorney, let me be clear, I'mnot offering legal advice, but
this is his advice from someonewho spent three years in law
school practiced for five, andcheck with your local lawyer in
jurisdiction to make sure thatthis works for you.
But let me give you somebusiness advice from somebody
with a legal hat for many yearsthat he wore.
Just because it needs to meetlegal requirements doesn't mean

(34:12):
it needs to feel like it waswritten by a lawyer.
I say that with respect to thelawyers out there, okay?
I understand you were taught inlaw school and in your job as a
lawyer, how to write things in away that were binding, that
protected everyone that madesure everything was good.
But in the process, you werealso taught to suck the humanity

(34:33):
out of the words you use to makeit about.
Blocking and tackling andstopping people from being able
to actually have an experience.
I have seen plenty of documentswritten by lawyers.
I've been proud to create someof these documents for myself
that cover the key points thatneed to be covered, but do it in

(34:55):
a fun and playful way.
There's even parts of my bookwhere I actually say, by the
way, we're gonna need you to doX, Y, Z, and if you do this, the
lawyers will be so much happier.
Thanks for helping me to maketheir miserable lives feel
better.
Okay, here's the thing.
You can have fun with it.
You can be playful with it.
Everyone understands that thereare compliance and legal aspects
of what need to be done.

(35:16):
It doesn't mean that you need touse boilerplate language with 78
subparts on a three pagedocument, that you're halfway
into the first paragraph andyou're lost and don't understand
what's happening.

I love it.
It's, there's a way to make itfun and introduce the humanity
back into it.
And if you don't, thatacceptance process is gonna be a
lot tougher.
You're gonna lose them.
Let's talk about the next stage.
Affirm, right?
We wanna overcome hire's,remorse, very similar to buyer's
remorse.
W what do you consider like thebare minimum that employers
should do to affirm anemployee's decision that yes,

(35:53):
you made the right decision byaccepting this job offer?

I love that you ask about the bare minimum,
David, because the bare minimumof acknowledging that your newly
accepted.
Candidate is doubting thedecision they just made is by
far a huge step in the rightdirection.
Most businesses don't even thinkabout a concept like new hire's,

(36:16):
remorse.
They've never heard of it,they've never even considered
it.
So even just being aware thatyour new clients are going
through that, or feeling that isoften enough to shift the
feeling and shift theconversation.
I think one of the best andeasiest things we can do in the
Affirm stage is to let theperson know who's just accepted

(36:37):
the job offer, how excited weare that they accepted it.
Lots of times when a job offergoes out, there's some
negotiation back and forth onsalary, on benefits, et cetera.
And what's interesting is itstarts the relationship out in
this little bit of anadversarial feeling of, oh, I
gotta, I had to fight for moremoney, I had to fight for more
benefits.

(36:57):
Oh and it leaves everyone in theinteraction with a little bit of
a sour taste in their mouth,right?
The employer was like, oh, whyare you fighting me so much?
In the beginning, the employee'sI'm doing everything that every
website ever told me to do, notaccept the first offer.
This is the one that blows mymind.
How often do we train oursalespeople not to accept the
first, no.
And yet when our candidates forthe same company that trains

(37:19):
their sales team to do that,when our candidates don't accept
the first job offer, we're like,Ugh, high maintenance
millennials.
Here we go.
What are we into now?
It's stop.
They are doing the thing thatyou would do, that you probably
did do, but before you acceptedyour job.
Why don't we just see that aspart of the natural part of the
evolution and conversation?
So how do we counter this?
In the Affirm stage, it's theopportunity to kinda reset the

(37:42):
deck a little and to let'em knowthat, Hey, the fact that you're
part of our team now, wecouldn't be happier.
We are thrilled.
We are excited.
So the question becomes, whatare you sending to your people
between the time they accept theoffer and their first day on the
job?

(38:02):
Now, in the typical business,that's a good two week gap.
For some executives, it might bea six month gap.
The typical business isn'tsending anything.
They're not sending any gifts,they're not even having any
communications.
One of the tools I love to usein this phase is a video cuz it
doesn't take that much time tocreate and it's hugely

(38:24):
impactful.
And it can be as simple as aselfie video.
Doesn't need to be highproduction value.
Something that Trish shows, Hey,I heard you accepted the offer.
I am thrilled.
It was amazing meeting you inthe interview process.
I loved your answer.
X, Y, Z.
And you refer to something thatreally stood out that made them
the candidate that got the gig.
Cuz lots of times we get theoffer and we're like, was it

(38:46):
because the other people youinterviewed were idiots?
Or did you actually like me?
Where are we at you?
You relay back to them the partsof their personality, their
skillset, their experience thatyou valued the most, and you
memorialize that in a digitalartifact that I promise you they
will save.
And they will save it and theywill play it again.

(39:07):
When times are tough or whenthey're in the kind of war or
difficult times that youmentioned earlier, David, they
will know that you actually wereexcited to bring them on the
team and they will have proofthat you actually felt that way.

A, as a, I'm gonna go off on a slight tangent here,
but for the sake of time, notgonna make it too deep.
Little video, things like that.
Selfie videos are so easy and sopowerful that, I remember this
is like back in September and Istill talk about this, where our
mutual friend Jesse Coledropped, just sent me a video
message just out of the bluesaying Thank you for all we're

(39:43):
doing on the podcast and in thesports industry.
And I still talk about that.
And it wasn't even part of thisemployee process, but it took
him literally three minutes, thelength of the video, he was
clearly riffing.
And it takes nothing, it doesn'tneed to be a high production
value thing to show youremployees that you value them
and you're excited for them tojoin the team.
It can be something as powerfulas a little selfie video.

(40:05):
I don't know why people don'tuse that pla that, that more
often

Yeah.
Two thoughts on that.
David.
Number one, Jesse Cole, rockstarhuman being owns and leads the
Savannah Bananas.
If you're not familiar with theSavannah Bananas, I don't know
what rock you've been hidingunder the Savannah Bananas, have
more followers on TikTok, thenthe top eight major league
baseball teams have on TikTokcombined.

(40:28):
Okay.
This is a team that you know,is, they're the Harlem
Globetrotters of baseball,right?
As Jesse describes it, you go toa baseball game and it's are
going to a baseball game, isn'tgoing to a baseball game.
It's like going to a circus anda baseball game breaks out.
they're actually a case study inthe book,

As they should be.

to Oh, as they should be.
They're just rock stars acrossthe board.
But the other thing I'll sayabout videos is we are at a
unique time in human history.
Most of the videos you receivevia text message, Come from
siblings.
Parents, kids, grandkids,college roommates, your best
friend.
They're joking, they're little,they're playful messages.

(41:06):
They're, someone singing HappyBirthday to you and sending the
video.
I don't understand why morebusinesses that claim that their
customers are family don't usethe mode of communication.
That right now is primarilybeing used by families.
Short, little, quick, thoughtfulvideos.
It doesn't require that mucheffort.
And for all of you that arelike, oh, Joey, but I don't have

(41:27):
a studio and I don't have theproper lighting and sound,
doesn't matter.
The research actually shows in asales context that a video that
is sent as a selfie videoconverts higher than a full
production studio video.
The same applies to ouremotional feeling by it.
An off-the-cuff, random,unscripted, two minute 32nd
video is going to do more thanwhatever your grand marketing

(41:50):
strategy of going into thisstudio to create custom videos
for all your customers.
No, pull out your phone andstart shooting them.

One, one of the best spots to do it, honestly.
And you can, the way you cantvalidate this is just go on
TikTok.
The amount of people that takethose videos from their car,
from the front seat of theircar, cuz you actually, and when
you're in your car, you getgreat lighting cuz it's coming
in from all, it's all naturallighting, but it also shows
that, hey, This is not, this isauthentic.
This is who I am.
I'm in my car.

(42:17):
I'm not showing you all theglitz and glamor, like I'm
giving you the real anyway, wecould go off on tangents on all
this stuff for forever.
Why don't we move into the nextphase, activate.
So let's talk a little bit aboutactivating.
How do we, once somebody'sthere, they've accepted it
they're past, that hire'sremorse.
Now they're actually starting towork, and we got one shot to

(42:37):
activate them in the right way.
Let's talk about this phase alittle bit.

So the activate phase, coming back to it just as
a refresh, is that first day onthe job, it's only that first
day on the job.
And what are you doing to createthe kind of story that at the
end of that first day on thejob, they've got a powerful
story to tell.
So David, I'm gonna give you achoice here cuz they're 50 plus
case studies in the book fromall seven continents.
I love all of them.
Do you want the Canadian sportsexample or the Canadian tech

(43:04):
example?
We're going to Canada, we'regoing north of the border.
Sports are tech.
Which one are you feeling?

let you know what we just got done with another
podcast where we talked aboutoutside of industry and taking
inspiration from outside ofindustry.
So I'm gonna go Canadian tech,gimme that example.

Canadian Tech.
Okay.
This company is calledHootsuite.
You may have heard of'em.
They create a platform thatallows you to manage all of your
social media interactions in asingle platform.
Hootsuite hires a number ofsoftware developers and coders.
And the interesting thing abouta software developer and coders
when they come onto the job, andthe thing that all software
developers and coders wonder is,when will I actually get the

(43:41):
chance to push code?
What that means is change thecode in the software that
operates our whole business.
When will they trust me enoughto do that?
Hootsuite decided day one.
Every Hootsuite employee pushescode on day one of their job.

(44:02):
Now, a couple people that are inthe tech space right now
listening in probably just fellover.
I'll give you a second to hopback up.
But here's the thing.
Hootsuite decided if we trustyou enough to hire you, we
should trust you enough to pushcode on day one.
And because this is such a thingthat is pervasive across all
developers and coders, they willwant to tell their friends that
they pushed code on day one andgreat software developers, no

(44:25):
other great software developers.
And this is a great way, rightout of the blocks to say, we
trust you, you value, youmatter.
So what does the pushing codelook like?
There is a section of theHootsuite website that if you
get into the source code, Yousee the names of all the
engineers who work forHootsuite, that's not something

(44:46):
on a main webpage.
You have to know how to do this.
And I am not a technical personby nature, okay?
But in the book, I give you thelink where you can go and find
it, but you dive into this codeand it's like seeing your name
in lights because you see yourname.
It's like in the credit scene ofa movie, right?
So as part of your first day onthe job, in the afternoon, they
have you push code to put yourname in lights on the website.

(45:10):
And when you do that, twointeresting things happen.
Number one, all the peoplearound you in the office start
clapping and cheering the momentit goes live.
So you get that physicalkinesthetic experience of the
applause.
Number two, a message goes outon their internal communication
device.
Why did we just clap?
And they introduce the newemployee and they say, this new

(45:33):
employee just pushed code forthe first time.
Now, David asked you to thinkback to what I said earlier,
when that person gets home.
That night and their kids say,mommy, what did you do at work
today?
You know what Mommy's going todo?
Mommy's gonna call up theHootsuite website and do View
Source and say, mommy changedtheir website today, and be able

(45:57):
to show proof that theycontributed from day one.

That is so cool in such a way to get emotional
buy-in.
We were talking about the IKEAeffect in another podcast of
co-creating and like act, thepower of somebody creating
something with you.
How mu how much more powerfulthat is to emotionally connect
with somebody.
And so being able to have themcreate on day one, have an
impact and not just go throughthe HR hoopla is incredibly

(46:25):
powerful for getting that buy-inand moving them to the next
lever.
Before we go to the next leverthough I think there are a lot
of things.
Traditionally I think of this, Ithink back to my Disney days and
like one of the things we woulddo is obviously your first day
is traditions where you're goingthrough and you're meeting
Mickey Mouse and you're doingall the things.
But even going into your nowlocal area, you go to your
cubicle, let's call it, one ofthe things we would do ahead of

(46:47):
time is we would fill out A formthat was called we're All ears.
And you would mark things like,what are your favorite foods?
What are your favorite, all thethings so that your manager got
a better idea of knowing you.
And one of them was what wasyour favorite Disney character?
And so upon your first day,you'd get there and there'd be a
poster with your favorite Disneycharacter saying, welcome to the
team David.
And it was a way to personalizethat experience and make that

(47:10):
first day memorable.
And you got to take that homewith you.
So to your point, go home withyour family, say, look what they
made for me.
It's so cool.
Can't wait to work for thisincredible company.
I think it's now a little bitmore difficult to do things like
that if people are hybrid orremote.
So I'm curious as to, if you'renot a team of engineers pushing
code, how can we really makethis activate phase relevant and

(47:35):
important and stand out forpeople that are remote or
hybrid?

Yeah I think there's a number of ways that we
can do that.
One of which and happy to giveanother story from this, and in
fact if I may, let me tell astory about the acclimate phase,
which is the next phase, whichrelates to this hybrid question.
So there's a company calledBudai Media.
What's interesting about BudaiMedia is they have about 30

(47:59):
employees.
In 17 different countries.
So I'm gonna stop and let you dothe math there.
30 employees spread across 17different companies.
They cover, I think, 15different time zones globally.
They are the ultimate, when youthink about fully remote, fully
distributed.
And one of the things they thinkabout is how do we get people
bought into the business earlyon and how do we get them to

(48:21):
connect with their peers whothey're not going into an office
where they have the water coolerin the first day, lunch, they're
sitting on a computer, andthey're probably not gonna meet
that person for months, if not ayear, if ever.
So how do they do this?
Budai Media did an interestingthing.
They put together a littlepackage and they sent it to all

(48:43):
of their employees, and it comesnot on their first day.
It comes a couple days later asthey're getting ready for, and
the package just says, do notopen until the all team meeting.
They're like, oh, okay, here'sthe interesting thing.
I got this package do.
And then they get on the allteam meeting and everybody's
there and they're meeting theirpeers and they're connecting
with everybody.

(49:03):
And they say, okay, go ahead andopen the package.
And the person who's the newhire opens the package on screen
with everybody else in the teammeeting watching virtually, and
it's a mug.
Now, it's not a mug with theBudai Media logo on it, which is
what most companies do when theygive you a mug.
It instead has photos ofeveryone on the team, including

(49:29):
the new hire.
So two interesting things havehappened.
Number one, they physically feellike they're part of the team.
Number two, one of the thingsthey've done is they'll say,
let's all raise a glass toDavid, our new hire, and all the
other employees bring onto thescreen their mug with the
picture of the new hire on it.

(49:52):
And they all do a little toastto each other.
So what I love about this is,number one, it's a present, it's
a physical artifact.
It's a reminder of theconnection.
Number two, it includes thephotos of the people.
So it really is about connectingthe team.
It's more the important aboutthe people than what we do.
And number three, they'vecreated something similar to the
poster you shared with theDisney story, that every time

(50:13):
the employee sees that in thenext week, the next month, the
next year, they are gonna anchorback to the first time they were
toasted to by their peers.
The first time that they had aninteraction with their
colleagues that left themfeeling like I'm part of this
team, even though I might beoperating remotely.

I love it.
Such a good way to do it, whereeven if your team is spread
apart, there are ways you cancreate that connection and have,
create some core memories, ifyou will to help people
acclimate.
Do you wanna go a little bitdeeper into acclimate, or should
we move to the next piece?

I think it's up to you.
Here's what I'll say aboutacclimate.
David.
Acclimate is a long phase.
The phase before it activate oneday acclimate.
You gotta think less about daysand more about weeks or maybe
even months.
So what are you doing to buildit over time?
There's some fun examples in thebook about larger companies that
have like universities wherethey train you on all the

(51:11):
different aspects of thebusiness.
There's examples of smallercompanies that are training you
on the SOPs and the differentway we can do that.
There's different ways aboutshadowing senior managers.
There's different ways aboutteaching folks stuff.
But one example, I'll tell aquick story is a company called
abt Fine Cleaners, and Tailors,now it's a dry cleaning company

(51:32):
in Santa Barbara, California.
Okay.
Family owned business.
They've got about 40 employees.
Most people would look at thisand say, Joey, A dry cleaning
business.
What am I gonna learn from a drycleaning business?
What Applet does, and the c e othere Sasha is so brilliant at,
is she realized that her staffneeded to understand the game of
business so that they couldparticipate in the success and

(51:57):
growth of the business.
The practical reality is most ofyour employees, especially those
who are maybe notentrepreneurial or not senior
executives, or maybe haven'tbeen in business for that long
or haven't built a career, maybeyou're younger folks or folks
that are transitioning fromanother industry, they don't
actually know how you makemoney.

(52:17):
How rare is it that a new hiregets sat down and said, okay,
here's how we make money andhere's how we lose money.
In a dry cleaning business.
Oh my gosh, it's hugely rare andin a dry cleaning business.
Margins as a general rule are sothin that if you don't pay
attention to every littleoperational detail, you can lose

(52:39):
your shirt, no pun intended,very quickly.
Okay.
So what Applet does is theyteach their people the game of
business.
They teach them how to read aprofit loss statement.
They teach them the differencein profitability of different
types of cleaning jobs anddifferent types of clients.
They teach them the logistics ofhow do we take in a pair of

(53:03):
pants, clean it, press it, andget it back to the same person
without losing it, withoutdamaging it in a quick fashion
that maximizes not only thevalue we've created, but the
profitability we've been able toextract.
What I love about this story isin talking with the C E O Sasha,
she shared how many of heremployees are women?

(53:25):
Who also run the finances oftheir home, right?
In many homes, not saying in allthe woman in the home is paying
attention to the familyexpenses, they're paying
attention to the family cost andbasically the p and l of the
household.
Okay?
Not saying, again, there's nostereotype or judgment in this.
I'm just saying thatstatistically that happens more

(53:47):
often than it doesn't.
What she said she has found isthat the number of employees who
have come back to her and said,I'm able to operate my house
more profitably.
I'm able to stretch our dollarsat home further because what
I've learned here has allowedher to do something, which I
think if I were to boil theentire book down to a single

(54:10):
sentence of what I hope peoplewill get out of this book, it
would be as follows, the topemployers in the world.
Care as much, if not more aboutwhat happens to their employees
lives between 5:00 PM and 9:00AM as they do about what happens
between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM Whatis happening to your employees

(54:32):
when they're not at work?
And whatever you can do toenhance their life outside of
the office is going to make themwant to work longer for you.
Be more engaged in how they workfor you.
Invite all of their friends tocome work with you.
Be more committed to you.
All we have to do to get ouremployees to care about our
business is show them that wecare about them personally.

no question.
No question.
And that goes back to the thingI said at the very beginning,
which is right.
The extent to which we care forour employees, genuinely care
for our employees is the extentto which they're gonna care for
our business, for our customers,and for each other at the end of
the day.
I love it.
All right, let's talk a littlebit about accomplish this next a
in the framework.
This one seems really simple tome, right?

(55:16):
Like, why don't we celebrate thewins more often?
Somebody gets a first sale, abig sale a marketing pitch
worked.
They fixed a big bug in the ITsystem, like, why do we not
celebrate these things moreoften?

I think we don't celebrate them more often for a
couple reasons.
David.
Number one, I think it's ageneral rule.
Founders, owners, entrepreneurs,the people that are usually
running the company are horribleat celebrating their own
successes and their ownaccomplishments.
So they don't have a, so theydon't have a context for it, and
they're like I don't need it, somy employees probably don't need

(55:49):
it either.
It's folks, the reason they'reemployees not entrepreneurs is
because they are hardwireddifferently than you.
If they were hardwired the sameway as you, they wouldn't work
for you.
They'd go start their owncompany.
So I think part of it is wedon't connect to it personally
as leaders or managers in thesame type of way.
Number two, I think we are sodriven by the next goal.

(56:13):
That we don't stop to celebratethe progress we've already made.
All human beings want proof ofprogress.
There is a reason why the bestselling issue of Architectural
Digest Magazine every year isthe before and after issue where
they show you pictures of thehouse before the remodel and
pictures after.
Why?
Because most humans are horribleat envisioning what success

(56:37):
looks like.
And then when success actuallyhappens, they quickly move the
finish line.
How many times have we been in asales situation where you hit
your sales goal and they go,great.
Now next quarter, here's whatwe're gonna do.
And you're like, do we evencelebrate and acknowledge what I
just did?
Or are you just focused oncracking the whip and driving me
further?
I think there's a hugeopportunity to recognize that a

(56:59):
meaningful celebration of amicro victory is something that
we can build on.
Let me give you an example ofwhat that looks like from my own
life.
I share this story in the book,but this is one I experienced
personally.
I worked in sales for a companycalled the Corporate Executive
Board.
My job was to travel around thecountry talking to senior vice
presidents of sales and chiefinformation officers, trying to

(57:21):
get them to buy into basically a$30,000 annual membership.
Okay?
Really interesting job.
Really interesting organization.
But as you might imagine, atough gig.
You had to get the appointment,you had to go meet with these
folks.
These were very busy folks thatdidn't have a lot of time.
Were asking them to invest in athing that would require them to
attend events and be part of acommunity.
So we're gonna take even moretime.

(57:42):
Wasn't in inconsequentialinvestment, especially in the
late nineties when I was askingfor this.
After a couple weeks on the job,I made my first sale.
And happens in manyorganizations.
My internal team, my fellowsalespeople, my sales manager
were like, oh my gosh.
I was in the office.
It came through, bells werebeing rung, people were throwing
stuff in the air, and they'relike, we're going to happy hour.

(58:03):
And then we went to happy hourand had some drinks and had some
happy, and everybody was feelingexcited.
And that was important and thatwas valuable and I greatly
appreciated that.
But before I went home, I wentback to the office and I'm
dating myself a little bit withthis story, but I mentioned it
was in the late nineties.
Okay.
And there's a phone on my deskand there's a little light
blinking.
And that light blinking meantthat I had voicemail on our

(58:26):
inner office communicationsystem.
And it's the, it's dark.
It's 9 30, 10 o'clock at night.
We'd had a great celebration onmy first sale.
And I'm sitting there and I'mready to go home.
I'm like, how am I just listento this call.
So I dial into the voicemailit's the chairman of the board
of the company.
This is a publicly tradedcompany that I worked for.

(58:46):
It's the chairman of the boardand the message went something
like this, Hey Joey, I heardthat you had your first sale
today.
Congratulations, blah, blah,blah.
And he said The name of thecompany is gonna be a great
asset to our membership.
We are so proud of you.
We know this is only the sign ofgreat things to come.

(59:06):
I know we haven't had the chanceto meet in person, but I look
forward to celebrating in personnext time I'm in the office.
Congratulations.
Oh my gosh, David, even tellingthe story today, I can feel the
emotion I felt that night,right?
I can feel the valued.
I felt appreciated.
I felt significant.
And while this may be anovershare, I'll share it anyway,

(59:27):
I actually played it again onspeaker and I had one of those
little Dictaphone tape machines.
This is before everybody hadcell phone recorders and all
that.
And I recorded the voicemailonto a little cassette tape, and
then whenever I lost a sale, Orwhenever I was on the road for,
I don't know, two or three weeksstraight meeting client after

(59:48):
client, not sure what city I wasin, let alone who I was meeting
with the next day, I would playthis recording as a reminder
that the chairman of the boardof a publicly traded company
thought I had value, thought Ihad worth, thought that I was a
contributor.

(01:00:11):
little messages that we give toour employees that take us
seconds to create as leaders, asmanagers, impact them to a much
greater degree in magnitude thanwe will ever know.
If nothing else, stop beingselfish with what you think
about people by keeping itinside and start expressing the

(01:00:34):
gratitude you have for the teammembers that make it possible
for your organization to exist.

David Millay (01:00:42):
Yeah.
That's incredible.
And I do think that oftentimesyou hit on this earlier of why
we don't do it more often iswe're quick to move to the next
thing.
We've got other pressures,deadlines, and so I, I know I'm
guilty of this where I will givea genuine thank you right off
the bat, but it's rare that itis more than that.

Joey Coleman (01:01:03):
I appreciate the honesty of that, David.
Yeah, and

it's just the reality cuz I'm focused on all
these other things and.

Of course.
And here's the deal.
Some people might look at thisand see my book and these
stories as an indictment ofleadership and how leaders are
failing to create remarkableexperiences for their employees.
I've got a lot of empathy forthe leaders of organization.
Here's the kicker.
The typical employee doesn'tfully understand or appreciate

(01:01:29):
how much their leader actuallycares for them.
I know enough CEOs, I knowenough leaders who lay awake at
night terrified that they mightnot make payroll, who find
themselves jumping from meetingto meeting in the back of their
head.
They're wondering, God, am Idoing a good job?
Am I showing my people that theycare?
Am I, are we grooming thisperson?

(01:01:50):
God, we got this person who's arising star.
I wanna make the pathway for'em,but I don't have enough time to
do it today.
I've got six people I'mmentoring.
I wish I was mentoring 30.
How do I do?
There's an opportunity for us tojust do these little things.
The little voicemail, the littlehandwritten note, the little
stop in the hallway.
Hey, I so appreciate what youjust said in that meeting.

(01:02:14):
I know it took a lot of guts tovoice something in opposition to
what the head of marketing wassaying, but I really valued that
perspective.
Keep it up.
I'm in your corner.
Those little things will.
Oh my God.
That is fuel for the typicalemployee to power their internal
engine for weeks, months, maybeeven years.

(01:02:35):
And it's something we can dothat by the way, as leaders, the
more we do that, the more itallows us to feel like we're
winning and we are succeedingand we're doing the things to
live up to our vision of what agreat leader or manager could or
should be.

Humongous.
Alright, we've got two more astill we're an hour in.
I hope we still have time.
The.

I've, I'm good on David.
I so appreciate it.
And I'm sorry cuz I love thesestories and oh my

Oh, they're great.

stuff we can play with.

They're great.
I think they help people adaptthe principles and apply them to
their own organization.
So I'm fine with it.
I'm okay on time right now, solet's keep rolling.
Adopt.
How can we jump to this nextphase?
Moving from celebrating wins toreally helping people align
their personal goals andorganizational goals and really
a adopt that organization's why?

Love it, David.
To talk about adopt, I'd like todo two things.
Number one, give the moststartling statistic I found in
doing the research for the book.
And number two, share the storyof a company with less than a
dozen employees that solved forthis problem that plagues the
majority of organizationsglobally.
So it's easily applied toorganizations in any industry of

(01:03:46):
any size.
Here's the research I found.
If you were to ask the typicalemployer, why are people
leaving?
The most common answer isthey're gonna get paid more
money elsewhere.
At our competitor, they jump toour competitor for a bigger
paycheck.
They're getting more a biggertitle.
Do I get it?
That's fair.
The typical research that hasbeen done on Why employees leave

(01:04:07):
is based on a sample set of 300to 500 interviews.
They interview about 300 to 500people and they say, why did you
leave?
They write down all the resultsand they say, statistically,
this percentage of people leave.
I'm not a math person, butthat's a small sample set.
I found a study that did 234,000exit interviews, and I thought,

(01:04:30):
what did they find?
And what they found is 9% ofpeople leave for more money.
9%.
Now for some say peoplelistening, they're like, see
Joey, I was right.
Fine, that's fair.
But I'm more interested in the91% who left for a reason other
than more money.
Cuz the more money thing, it'san escalating cause.

(01:04:51):
It's mutually assureddestruction we all lose at the
end.
Okay.

absolutely.

The majority of people who left 23%, the biggest
chunk of people who gave areason for why they left was
they couldn't see a clear pathforward for their career at that
company.
They didn't know what the nextjob was gonna be.
So lemme tell you aboutwell-oiled operations, less than
a dozen people based inWisconsin.

(01:05:15):
They had an experience wherethey had an employee put in
their two weeks notice, who wassomebody that the CEO had
already flagged, was a futureleader in the organization.
And she was hurt.
She was stunned.
Many of you listening, you'vehad this experience, somebody
leaves on the team, you're like,oh my God, this one, my A
players, why isn't a playerleaving?
What happened?
And they realized that theyhadn't effectively communicated

(01:05:36):
with that person about thevision that they saw for them at
the organization, and the personcouldn't see it themselves.
So they came up with somethingcalled the future or chart.
The future org chart is anorganizational chart.
It's a sketch that is created bythe C E O every year and every

(01:05:57):
year it is presented to theentire team.
And the org chart shows what thebusiness is planned to look like
three years from now,

That's pretty cool.

and they present it to everyone and they're like,
Hey, here's what's possible.
Because what often happens is anemployee is sitting in the job
going, I want my boss's job, butmy boss just got this job two
years ago and the last personthat held this job was in this
position for 28 years.
I do not wanna wait around 28years to have my turn to lead
this job.
But what they don't know is thatthe company is planning to

(01:06:28):
create three more divisions overthe next five years that will
also need somebody to run thosedivisions.
We cannot overemphasize oroverexplain to our teams the
future opportunities at ourorganization.
We've gotta show them the path.

so I've never thought of that exercise as,
creating your future org chart.
Cause I think a future org chartdoes a couple things.
I do think companies do a goodjob o occasionally of saying,
Hey, here's the vision for thecompany.
Here are the areas we're gonnaexplore.
Here's how we're gonna grow ourrevenue 10%.
But what's missing is what's init for me.

(01:07:08):
As an employee, I understandthis vision, but you haven't
explained how my day-to-day isgonna get changed.
And so where an org chart isinteresting is it says all of
that in one document.
It says, here's where we'regonna expand as a company, or
here's how we're gonna contract,and here is your role that is
gonna be in the bigger show.

(01:07:28):
I love that exercise.

Yeah.
And what's interesting, David,is when they do it, they
actually say to the team, and ifyou see something on this future
org chart that is interesting toyou, please let us know because
we'd love to start talking withyou about the skills you're
gonna need, the experienceyou're gonna need, the things
you're gonna be able need to beable to do if you want this
position, so we can start doingit now.

(01:07:52):
So if you look at it and you'relike, oh, there's a director of
photography for our productwebsite.
We don't even have a productwebsite right now, but I love
photography.
Oh my God, you just opened up awhole new opportunity for me.
And what we can maybe do is say,great, we don't have the whole
product section of the websitenow, but you know what?
We do need headshots foreveryone.
So let's have you take someheadshots of everybody so we can

(01:08:14):
update our existing website cuzmost of the headshots on your
existing website are horrible ifyou even have them.
By the way, pro tip, everyonelistening, every employee of
your company should be able togo to your website and see a
picture of themself.
Now some of your employees arelike, Joey, I don't like having
my picture on the website.
I get it.
Give them the opportunity to optin and if they don't like it,
hire a caricature artist to dosomething fun and playful.

(01:08:37):
Or they can have a picture oftheir dog or their cat or
something else, or theirfavorite place to vacation.
It doesn't matter.
But again, think about that.
When they go home, can they sayto their significant other,
their roommate, their spouse,their kids, their parents, look,
I'm part of this organizationand they're proud enough to have
me part of the organization thatthey share that publicly.

Yeah, I love that.
Now I will say slight danger infuture casting and talking about
like some of this stuff, right?
A

There is

there.
You gotta have constantcommunication cuz things will
change and you don't wantemployees building up resentment
saying, oh, I thought we wereopening this department, why
have we not done that yet?

totally, but here's the thing, David, this
comes back to that sameconversation that we were
talking about with the drycleaning company, about the game
of business.
You have to be talking to youremployees about this is the
vision, and by the way, this isthe vision for three years from
now, and you know what we'regonna do next year at this time.
We're gonna check in on thissame vision.
That's now two years away, andthen a year from now after that,

(01:09:36):
we're gonna check in on thevision that's now a year away.
And then when it's actually thatyear, we're gonna check in and
see if we've actually achievedthat goal.
Because you and I know asleaders, what often happens in a
business is you have a threeyear goal that seems completely
impossible until about two yearsand seven months into the goal.
And then suddenly you're like,holy cow, we're actually gonna

(01:09:57):
achieve it.

Yep.

up until then, there's a boatload of doubt and
uncertainty.
You're right.
As a leader, it's our job to bemessaging with our people and
reminding them, Hey, we're stillon the path, or The path has
changed, but we're willing toadopt and morph this with you
because in the same way we'regrowing the company, we're
growing our people.
And something that you might nothave been interested in three
years ago, but you're interestedin today, that's okay too.

(01:10:20):
We will find a space for thebest people on our team.

yeah, no question.
Just I'll share one story.
We definitely had one of my,probably arguably my favorite
leader that I've ever worked forat Disney.
One of the things he did a goodjob of was future casting and
helping people understand whattheir role in the future could
be.
And what people didn'tunderstand is to your point
around helping PE employeesunderstand the bigger business,
they didn't understand that,Hey, I'm on the operations team

(01:10:45):
and I'm supposed to be, he'sbeen promising me a.
A promotion in the next year.
They didn't ex, they wasn'trelayed to them that, hey, the
sales team isn't meeting theirnumbers and in order for you to
get there, the sales team neededto hit their numbers.
We can't promote you if thesales team doesn't hit their
numbers.
anyway alright, let's bring ithome here.
Advocate our last phase how wecan turn employees into

(01:11:06):
evangelists and get themadvocating for our company.
Let's talk about this one tobring us home.

Yeah.
So the, one of the examples thatI love as a case study story in
the book about the advocatephase is so often we will say to
our employees, Hey, if you knowanybody else who would be a good
fit for our company, let'em knowthat this position is open.
That kind of half-heartedlackluster approach usually
produces the half-hearted,lackluster results of people not

(01:11:36):
sharing job postings with theirfriends.
There's a company called BrasaPeruvian Kitchen.
It's a fast casual restaurant,okay?
And what Brasa does brilliantlyis every week while people are
at work, they get paid time ontheir shift.
These are hourly employees toscroll through their social

(01:11:57):
media feeds and their contactlist in their phone to identify
people that they know that theythink should work at Prosa
Peruvian Kitchen.

Interesting.

In the same way, David, that you talked at the
beginning of our conversationabout paying people to do the
work.
Brassa pays people to thinkabout referrals.
This is a completely differentapproach to how you might
encourage, motivate, suggestthat your employees identify

(01:12:30):
other folks that could work foryour organization.
And what they have found isanytime they have an open
position, they have a hugenumber of pre-vetted, super
qualified candidates cuz theirpeople are always making
referrals.
And the fact of the matter is,if you think about the quick
service restaurant industry,most people that work in that

(01:12:50):
industry have friends eitherfrom previous jobs or in their
social networks that also workat Quicks serve restaurants.
In other chains or otherdifferent locations.
So they know the target market,they know who's out there and
this allows them to dramaticallyincrease their talent.

(01:13:11):
What I will tell you is, and wejust got some research back from
them that regrettably didn'tmake the book cuz we had to lock
the book, but they basicallywent, they had one store that
went 18 months with zeroturnover.
Now if you know anything aboutthe quick serve restaurant
industry, their turnover rate, Ithink annually across the

(01:13:33):
industry is like 130% orsomething like that.
Which literally means not onlydoes everybody who is here on
January 1st leave, but a thirdof the people that we bring in
after January 1st to replacethose people also leave before
the end of the year.
It's insane.
Zero turnover for 18 months.
Why?
Because the people felt valued.
They felt like they were part ofthe team.
They felt like they were part ofthe story going forward.

Incredible.
I know we could go a lot deeperon this topic too, but I want to
give us a chance to wrap uphere.
A advocating or turning yourhelp, helping your employees
become advocates is huge.
And there's so many differentcomponents to it.
I love it.
Joey, the book is coming out.
When is it coming out?

The book officially comes out June 27th,
right?
It's available now if you're onAmazon, if you're on Barnes and
Noble, if you're at yourfavorite indie bookstore, you
can get it now.
I will share, if I can put in alittle plug, one of the things
that was really important to meis that the book is available in
the format that works for you.
What do I mean by that?
There's a hardcover version ifyou wanna have it on your desk

(01:14:31):
to refer to as a resource goingforward, or it's a big book,
it's 300 plus pages.
You can use it as a doorstopafter you've done reading it or
to prop up your camera.
Number two, there's an ebookversion.
If you're one of those folksthat likes to Kindle, highlight
and be ready and be able toreview your notes afterwards.
Great.
We're all set up.
And number three, there's anaudiobook version that I
narrate.
So if you've enjoyed thisconversation, if you've liked

(01:14:53):
the way I tell a story, you getto hear me tell all 50 in the
audiobook.
So my ask my request is, if youhave found any interesting ideas
that you liked from this, if youthink this is an area that you
might be able to improve on, ifyou think this is an area that
you think other businesses thatyou interact with or other folks
you know might be able toimprove on, get the book in the

(01:15:14):
format that works best for youand let me know what you think.

Huge Joey.
Other than buying the book,where can people follow along
your journey?
I know LinkedIn, you always dropsome good stuff on there.
Where can people reach you?

I appreciate that, David.
Yeah, my best social mediaplatform and really my only
social media platform isLinkedIn.
So come find me over onLinkedIn.
The other place is on mywebsite, joey coleman.com.
That's j o e y, like a five-yearold, or a baby.
Kangaroo Coleman, c o l e m a n,like the camping equipment, but
no relation.
Joey coleman.com.

(01:15:46):
There'll be all kinds of bookbonuses up there things that you
can get if you wanna pre-orderthe book, which I so appreciate.
And lots of opportunities tocontinue the story and continue
the conversation.

Incredible.
Joey, thank you so much forcoming on.
Thank you for all this extratime.
We're gonna have to split thisepisode into two and no I just
really appreciate you and allthe work that you're doing out
there in the world.

Oh, David, it is my pleasure.
Thank you so much for themeaningful and thoughtful
questions and the conversations,and hey, anytime I get to hang
out with a fellow Notre Damegrad and alum fan, it's a great
day for me.
So thanks to everybody else whois kind enough to listen into
the conversation and for stayingwith us for the marathon episode
of Flip The Switch with JoeyGoldman.

Thanks everybody for listening.
We'll see you next week.
Hey guys, before you head out,just wanted to say thank you so
much for listening to the show.
If you enjoyed it, head over toiTunes to subscribe, rate, and
leave a review.

(01:16:45):
That helps more of your peersfind the show as they search for
ways to get better in their ownroles.
But this podcast is just a smallpart of what we do at Engagement
In our normal day in the office,we're crazy focused on helping
athletic departments and sportsand entertainment companies
generate more revenue bybecoming more customer-centric.
To see how we might be able tohelp your organization, visit

(01:17:06):
Engagement partners.com to learnmore.
Download a free guide, check outour blogs and case studies or
schedule a call with us if youwanna see how we can help with
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Our goal is to help you createdeeper connections with fans and
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