Episode 229: Fireside Chat - Recruiting A-Players, The Airport Test & What is Your Role?

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable?

That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers.

I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders. These podcasts are going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it.

Just get what you need and go.

So with that, let's get into today's episode.

Who knows? I might say something that's worth a damn. You know, we don't know. We don't know. The fireside chats are going to be off the, off the chain. So we'll just—

60/40. 60/40. 60/40, you say something good.

60% is on the good?

I think so.

That's really good, Micah. That's really good. I'm on the other side of 50/50. Okay, great. If we're 51/49, I'll take that. I'll take that. Okay, you're 80/20. See, I have high expectations for you.

Oh, that is not so good. You know, I was thinking about— I knew we were chatting today and I, I knew you'd enjoy this. Um, I feel like when you're building a team sometimes and you continue to have more and more people, you know, under you, I feel like sometimes because you get on calls with certain, you know, members of your team or certain leadership managers or whoever. And I feel like the team sometimes doesn't know what you do all day. You know, they kind of— well, wait, what do you do if you're telling me to do all this stuff? Like, what do you do? You know, uh, and not that they asked that, but, uh, what's up, David?

Hey, what's up, Micah? Hey, Bradley.

What's up, man?

Nice color today.

Yeah, you too.

I was just, I was just like, I was just telling Brad that I was like, sometimes I feel like the team, uh, like something came up today and it just reminded me of like something like I know Bradley and same with you, David, you would like resonate with you. Sometimes I feel like the team doesn't know like what we do, right? Like when you're in the position of like, you know, owning the firm or, you know, being at the top, leading the team, you know, and you put everybody in place and there's sometimes this sense of like, what do you do all day, right? Whether it's asked or not asked by the team. Um, and something came up today that was very much to me, I'm like, you know what, this is the type of stuff I do. Right. Something came up, uh, just totally left field. Um, we've got a company that is, uh, out there that is going by pretty much the same name as us, um, that is not doing what we do but is in the general finance sector, and in essence it's a scam.

Wow.

And so we've been getting calls into our office, um, saying, hey, you know, stop emailing me. These are from not, not current clients of ours, um, until recently. And some of them have been clients and people within our sector saying, you know, who is this guy like that, that's emailing me and leaving me voicemails? And like, I've, I've told you guys to stop calling me about this stuff. And we're saying You know, what are you talking about? It's scamming them on loans and ERTC, employee retention tax credits, small business loans. Hey, your Experian credit score qualifies you for X amount of loans. Call me right now, right, to get this. And we're like, holy cow, man, you're with us. And they're using like our name. And so they've picked up the phone and they say, hey, you know, this is Matt from Club Capital. How are you doing? Wow. What? Yeah. So—

Imitation's the best form of flattery. I'm just saying.

I mean, you know, so now, you know, I'm like forwarding that over to like our attorneys saying, you know, okay, how do we, How do we want to handle this? Not something I've had to deal with in the past. I do know, you know, I mean, we have a trademark on our name, you know, but again, it's not something I've dealt with before. So it was just an example of like, okay, you know, you think your day, you know, you got your day planned out with stuff you're going to do and then you get something like this, you're like, all right, I know this out. Like, and you know, this is the type of stuff I deal with sometimes.

Yeah, it's like Mike, the night before, laid out his planner and said, these are the things I'm going to get done, like in this perfect— like, uh, here's my evening ritual, my evening routine of all the things I'm going to do and get it out of my head because I know that that's best practice. Nowhere in there that you were thinking you're going to be dealing with that today. I mean, that's— welcome to owning a business, right?

Yeah, yeah, that was exactly what I told, like, our general manager. I was like, I was like, have you ever think You know, you're ever wondering what I'm doing, it's— it ends up being random projects like this.

Yeah, probably. I don't know if you've, you've had it, but, you know, I've had a couple aspirants come through now, and, and, uh, you know, we try to talk to them about owning a business and all this stuff, but, you know, by the 10th— by the end of it, they like— by the end of the 2-year process or 3-year process, they think they have it all figured out, right? Uh, and then they're like so excited to get into it, and they think my job's easy and all that stuff, right? And then usually about the first 3 months, I get a phone call like, holy shit, totally, I can't believe all the stuff I gotta do.

Yeah, I mean, no, that's so true. I mean, because until you sit in that seat, until you sit in that seat, it's almost like trying to say, like, what's up, um, What's a band you listen to, David? Like, what do you— who do you like? Who do you like to listen to? This will be good. This is why we're putting this on the podcast, by the way.

Yeah, we're not putting all this audio.

I don't know for sure.

This is all going on. This is a fireside chat. This is all going on.

Well, you gotta tell me when we're starting. We didn't start yet.

So no, we did. We did. Mike and I did. You came in, you came in, you came in fashionably.

I just, I just cursed on here. I can't curse.

We'll just put an E next to it. Explicit.

Um, yeah, I don't have one particular band. I'm like top 40s. I just, I just, I knew he was gonna say that.

Come on, you gotta give me somebody. I'm trying to make a point.

Uh, Micah, give him a band. I don't know.

Oh my God. I already, I, you're, you're either top 40s or just, I mean, it's what you don't want to say. It's gonna be Taylor Swift, you know?

Yes. Okay. Awesome. This is such a good, this is good. This is perfect for my point is that the point is if, if you go to a Taylor Swift concert, and I got a story about that. To, by the way. We can wrap this in business. Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna come back to this point in a second. So, um, if you go to a Taylor Swift concert and then you come back and you're trying to get me to understand what it was like to be at the Taylor Swift concert, there's no amount of you talking to me is going to get me immersed into what the experience was actually like. And that's the same thing with somebody that works for you that wants to go on and step into entrepreneurship, you can spend 2 years trying to explain to them what it's like to sit in your seat, and they'll never fully know until they actually sit in that seat with their name on the door and they're signing the back of the checks, right? Or the front of the checks, excuse me. Isn't that right?

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah.

Okay.

I think I heard something like that the other day. It was like, uh, yeah, you You know, you want to start a business, yeah, get used to signing the front of the checks, right? That's what you're going to do for a while, right?

I mean, everybody has great ideas about what we should do. You're like, yeah, it ain't your money. It's not your money. You know, wait till it's your money. And everybody can spend, spend Micah's money. I mean, we'll spend Micah's money, there's no doubt about it. Or we'll spend Club Capital's money all day long. That's no big deal. You know, because it ain't— it's not my— it's not my decision to make. So hey, I do want to come back to though, because we'll go down too far. To your point initially, Micah, about that idea is I, I struggled with that myself and I literally created a document. I'm looking at it right now. I'll show it to you if you want me to. It says Bradley's job description. It's like, this is my role. Seriously, because I, I was— I kept having to explain Here's all the things I don't do, right? I mean, that's why, you know, okay, that's fairly understandable. But what are the things that I do do? And so, for instance, let's just say, let's just say, uh, there's a great book about this, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. Um, I've been in a couple masterminds with him. So if you let's say your hourly rate is $250 an hour. Okay. Let's say you made all in between your distributions and your salaries, whatever you made, $500,000. Okay. Somebody may listen to that and be like, wait, that's way too much. It doesn't matter the number. Let's say it's $125,000. You made $250,000 last year. Okay. And so your hourly rate is, is $125 an hour. Okay. Well, what are the things that are $125 an hour task? There's not many of them. Let's be real. There's not many of them. And so, but I think I needed to get out, well, what are those tasks? What are those things that are $125 an hour task? I mean, I can delegate a lot to like my EA Lauren or to Courtney or to somebody else on the team, but nobody else is speaking into the mic. You know, I mean, as an— as one example, I mean, that, that's just one thing. So I actually created a document to, to help with that. So like, here, Munson, like, what's a— what's a couple of the things that you feel like you do that are whatever dollar an hour rates for you? What do you think that that is?

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Yeah, and you know, I think, I mean, we've spoken about this. Mike and I have gone around the country speaking at different conferences on this, but I mean, certainly in, you know, in an insurance agency, or there, when you, when you're owning an insurance agency, there's, there's, there's only a few tasks that kind of fit that bill rate, right? Um, you know, one is recruiting team members, right? Because you can get leverage on that. Uh, yeah, they come in the door and they're producing, and they, you know, they're good, good attitude team member, they can— they're gonna, you know, certainly produce more than $125 an hour for you, right? Um, training your team, right? So, you know, if you have a team of, you know, whatever it is, 5 people, you know, 3 people, 10 people, uh, you know, if you're, you're able to, you you know, again, exert leverage where you tell them something once and they can use it over and over and over again. Uh, to me, that's going to make you more than $125 an hour. Um, marketing your business out in the community with somebody that can send you more than one customer, right? So your, your car dealerships, your loan officers, etc. Um, and then, uh, meeting with your big clients. So, you know, people that, that ultimately can, can you know, in our world where we do insurance and financial services that, you know, can bring in a bigger, you know, can be a bigger revenue per case, right? So, you know, for me, those are the 4 things that, you know, in that business that I focus on, right? But I think different businesses is, you know, different, different things too, right? So yeah, what is it?

What do you think, yours or Micah?

I think the two biggest areas for me, um, it's on the recruiting piece, um, uh, but especially for us, um, at Club Capital and like our kind of growth trajectory. I don't get involved with all of our recruiting, uh, anymore. Um, obviously I was at first, and, you know, I've seen that, you know, there's some some owners and founders that still like, you know, they're interviewing every single person that kind of comes in no matter what position. You know, I don't do that anymore. I put a lot of trust into my managers to hire the positions, you know, some of the positions under them that are in their purview, you know, with guidance and everything along the way and stuff. But You know, I really spend my time recruiting, you know, some more of the senior team members that we're going to bring in. So some of the managers or some of the new business ventures that we're getting into, finding leads for those positions. It's totally different amount of recruiting, amount of time you spend trying to find them. Trying to see the type of fit it's going to be for them. And it's much more custom when you're looking at stuff like that, right? Instead of just having, you know, one position where, you know, we know we're going to need 5, 10, 15 of this position and you already have it kind of designed and this is that comp plan and we go find somebody for it versus really like a custom fit of let's, let's— we know generally what we need. Let's go try and find that person that can fit that mold and then build, you know, maybe a comp plan and a system around them, like find a way to piece them in. That definitely ends up being a good amount of, you know, where I look at spending my time and especially with just the amount of stuff we're doing at Club Capital in different areas we're getting into. Um, that's one of the biggest areas, some of that, the more leadership and management side of recruiting.

So I got a question.

The first time you did that, like practically, the first time you really handed off that, I mean, what, what, what's an example? Because you've obviously, somebody hears that and says, my man, I want to get to that level. But I mean, you had to take some initial steps to do that and then trust and hand it off and You know, I'm sure it didn't go like perfect or whatever. Maybe it did.

I don't know.

But like, what was that process like for you to be able to get to that point to hand it off to somebody? Because that's a big thing to hand off.

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It is, but, uh, you know, ultimately you've got to have trust in the team that you've built under you. And so I didn't do it until I had managers in place. Right. So, you know, until those managers are in place, you are that manager, right? You're that person for whatever department you have. If you don't have a manager, it's you, right? Yeah. So until you get those people in place, you know, you do have to do it on your own. But we just set up a process internally once we did have managers of what does You know, what does it look like? And David does a good job of this, you know, in his agency of setting up a process around recruiting for, you know, what the interviews look like and then what the cadence is, right? So you meet with this person, which is really just kind of a qualification or culture check. And then you go, you know, into meeting with the team and then meeting with the manager, etc. And so we just looked and designed it. Um, uh, we're for certain roles. We also don't want it to be too many interviews, um, depending on the role, right? So some of it was like, okay, well, we got to cut one out here. Um, and it was a realization of at some point we could cut me out. Like, it was kind of like ending with me. And my thought was, well, if all of you have approved it at this point, like, I have to get to a point where I have to trust those under me to make the right call. And if they, if they made the right call to get it to me, then I'd probably approve anyway. And I'll just kind of step out of the way and trust them. And, you know, I think it does one, it frees up my time. Yeah. But it also shows, and I think it does a good job of showing to those managers that, you know, I have trust in them to make the right decision. And so I think it does, and I hope it does. You know, it makes them kind of realize, oh wow, there's a lot of stock going into my decision here. I better make a good decision.

There's a couple, there's a couple things there. First, I mean, just the, you know, obviously gives those managers ownership too, right? So, you know, if every employee becomes my decision, then, you know, my picks are not doing well, right? But all of a sudden, if it's their picks, they're defending them, they want the succeed more, right? So there's a level of like, hey, I said yes on this person versus you said yes on this person, and they're picking the team, and they're living and dying with their team versus me picking it, right? I think Micah hit it on the head there too. It's like, you know, there's recruiting that's always occurring with the business, but then what Micah's doing, and you mentioned it, What I'm doing to some degree is looking for the superstars, looking for the A players that like, maybe we don't have a position and we're not advertising that position, but they're gonna come in and they're gonna change the business and we're gonna make a position because of this person. Right. And those are the type of people that can change the trajectory of, of the business. So, you know, we're always recruiting and yes, some of that's delegated to the team, but you're, you always kind of have your head on a swivel for people that are like, rock stars in their position or rock stars of their current company. And, you know, okay, can, can we, can they come over here? Can we put them in a better position where they can grow, uh, have better development for themselves and ultimately the company too? Right.

All right. So check this out. This is cool. This is hot off the press. I mean, I'm talking about within 2 hours. So mastermind I'm a part of, uh, Mike, my mentor, we had a small group this morning and at 8 Central he had a speaker come in. She owns a recruiting agency. I think it's actually called—

what is it called?

The A-Player Agency. That's the name. That's the name of her recruiting agency. And so she was a disciple of Jeff Smart, who wrote Top Grading and Who, right? Like the seminal books on recruiting. And if people haven't read that one, read those. Top Grading, super long. Really kind of executive level, but Who, Who's an awesome book anyway. So she built her whole agency. She's interviewed personally over 5,000 people. And so she was summarizing some of the, the best parts of the recruiting. So anyway, you want me to share this? This was good. She had some really good points.

It was awesome.

I shared this already with a couple other people. So this is like fireside chat, hot off the press.

Okay.

So she asked all everybody on the call, what's, what's the goal of an interview? And I was like, hmm, I've never been asked that question before. What is the goal of the interview? And so everybody answered, you know, skill, culture fit, fit to role, those kinds of things, right? I mean, pretty standard. And she said, well, we define the goal of an interview is the ability to accurately predict a candidate's performance in a role. I was like, well, okay, well, that's interesting. I've never actually had a definition of what the, like, the goal is of the interview. So that was one thing. Well, she goes on and she went over 3 specific questions. And the question was, one, what were you hired to do? It's part of the, the WHOOP process. And so you go through like each one of their jobs that they had. And you ask them, what were you hired to do? But here's what— it's, it's not about the power of the questions that was really that big of a deal. More so how she defined how an A-player would answer that question versus how B and C players answer that question. So this was interesting to me. She said A-players will always talk about results and outcomes. B and C players will talk generally about events, people, but they never get into results and outcomes at all. That was really interesting to me to be aware that an A player is going to give you, well, we did this, we did that, you know, there's the results we had, this the money we made, this is the, you know, whatever that may be. But a B and C player would just kind of talk round in circles. And she said, if I can't follow their answer, then I know I've got a B or C player. To me, that was really interesting. So that was point number 1, or point number 2. Point number 3, she said, is in question 3, she'll say, what were the low points of that job? And she said a lot of people would be really hesitant to give you kind of the negative on something. And she's— I won't let people off the hook with this. And the reason is, is because I'll lean into them and push on them really hard, because an A-player will always see it as a learning experience. In other words, she had this great quote. She said, A-players will have a pattern of extracting success out of the jaws of defeat, I know that I have an A player there versus a B and C player will never tell you anything bad that ever happened in a job or position or a project because they're insecure. They're insecure that they were never able to pull the success or their learnings from it. She goes, listen, people make mistakes personally, professionally. but the A players can learn from it and be able to improve in the future. To me, that was amazing and helps me frame anytime I'm ever going to talk to somebody in the future. What do you guys think about that?

Yeah, that's, uh, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing, first off. Um, but, uh, yeah, I think I've heard something to the effect of that as well, or like, uh, you know, people that actually solve the problems in their previous company can speak really well and in detail about those problems.

Yes.

And the ones that, that, you know, you know, give me a problem that you had at your old company and they, they can't tell you details about that. You know that that's not the person that was solving that problem, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about that, Micah?

No, I, I mean, I totally agree. I think like If someone doesn't give you finite numbers, it means that, I mean, they don't have them, right? I mean, like, you know, I mean, they just don't have them, or they don't think like that, which just tells you a lot about it, about them to begin with, right? Um, that being said though, with depending on the role that like you interview for You know, I think, I think we do a good job at Club Capital of like finding really good culture fits. And that's both for internal culture, but also like client culture, right? Yeah. Because so many of our roles, not all of them, but so many of our roles are very much like client relationship roles. Um, you know, in that interviewing for that is not about, you know, stats sometimes, right? So like there's going to be an interview or part of the interview that you have that's about stats, right? And you know, what did you do? And you know, do you have that A-player, right? But you know, there's not as many necessary stats besides, I mean, you can relate things down to like NPS or like how they, how good their portfolio retention was in a previous role or something like that, right? But But like getting to, you know, relationship and culture and like how they build that with clients is, you know, something that we try and, you know, really interview for. And it's been something like specifically for me, the way I've, when I am involved in interviews, you know, with some of our, you know, like direct client relationship staff, like by the time it gets to me, I would ex— like, I don't focus as much on. I guess what you would call some of their like accolades of previous work, because I would expect that that's already been taken care of, right? Because the process we have internally is by the time it gets to me, they should already be that player, right? That person that's excelled in the past, right, has kind of checks the box because our other team through initial screening and through the two manager You know, interviews that they go through, like we should already screen that out at that point.

Right.

But then I've always taken the approach of being, and I kind of learned this early on from some initial, uh, um, bosses and mentors that I had, um, is being like, by, by the time it got to them, it was like, is this a good culture fit for us? Right. Um, because from the sense of like, we get the good news is that we get hundreds of applicants, like You know, for everything that we put out there, right? So there's a, a good, you know, there's a lot of, you know, weeding out we gotta do, but there's also a lot of smart people too. And of those smart people, who do we want to work with? Right?

Yeah.

It's almost like skills for us.

Like you can, you can evaluate the skills pretty quickly, right? Like we know, you know, the skills that you need, you need in those jobs and you can look at the resume and see. They probably have the requisite skills, right? But then I think what's interesting, I'd never really thought about, I mean, cultural fit. Like every company has a culture, period. It just depends on what the culture is. But you saying also external clients, almost like the culture that the clients have. I'd never actually considered that. That, that, that's pretty interesting. I gotta chew on that one.

Think about it. I know I think about it, we think about it quite a bit, right? Like, you know, we have our own internal culture, you know, but also, you know, what are our clients like? What will our clients like? You know, we have so much about what our roles are, client-facing roles. You know, we do, you know, account management, financial reviews, right? CFO services, tax. Um, outside of everything that I just mentioned, so much about what we do is build relationships with clients.

Yeah, yeah, right.

We have got to be able to do that, and that's in, in our space, in our industry, you know, that can be hard to do, um, with the content matter that we go over. So like, we are really looking for people that can do that. And so the, the The rule I've always had that's like in the back of my head when I go into interviews with people, and this is what I learned from like one of my first managers, he called it, and this by no means, I don't think in any recruiting book, but he called it the airport test. And so we, we did a lot of consulting. I was a consultant before and traveled kind of all over the place. And so we would literally be in airports a lot, right? So he would call his interview style like the airport test. He goes, man, if I'm gonna be stuck in an airport with this guy for like 6 hours, our flight gets delayed. Am I gonna, am I gonna like this guy, right? Or, or woman, right? If we get stuck together, am I gonna be able to actually, you know, shoot the shit, you know, have a good time? With this person, which says a lot about just, you know, them as well as probably will they be able to get along and be able to like have good conversation with our clients as well, like outside of the meeting, right, of delivering what we're doing. You know, do you want to chat with this person?

Oh yeah. No, I think that's awesome. And you're going to be stuck in the airport and they're going to have to— do I want to go have a beer with them or do I just want them to leave me alone and put my headphones on? You do your thing. I do my— I'll hang out with David. Okay, me and David have beer. Micah, you, you go on.

Yeah, he's gonna work on that PowerPoint. Yeah.

No, hey, I do want to say this. This is kind of crazy though, like a saying that I've adopted, which is kind of what you're saying, is environment dictates performance. Like, I am such a believer in that. Like, it's kind of become such a thing that I say all the time. In fact, I was we'd put it on one of my pitch decks because I think it's just so critical. So I heard this story, and hang with me because this, this may get a little wonky at first, okay? And I may not repeat this story exactly right, but I think people will get the general idea. So apparently in the Vietnam War— well, let me back up.

All right, we're going apparently—

all right, like way back. Yeah, yeah. So, so again, please don't nobody write me in and say like, you didn't get that story right. It's like Look, I'm trying to get directionally correct here. Okay. So apparently heroin is the most addictive drug there is. Okay. What a way to start. Okay. But just hang with me. So, and it's the hardest to get off. Well, apparently in Vietnam War, the number of like the percentage of soldiers that tried heroin while over there is astronomical. I don't know what the percentage was, but I think it was like 40% or something like a lot.

All right.

Coming back, 90% of them got off of it. 90% stopped. Yet it's the most addictive drug possible. Conversely, the success rate, or I guess lack thereof, of apparently drug rehab facilities, if somebody is on heroin, is 90% relapse when they leave that facility. Okay, again, I'm not— those are not stats. That's directionally correct. Okay. And you have to ask why. How can the drug itself is still addictive? And the, the summary that people said, well, environment. Now they don't say environment dictates performance, but the idea was that the environment that they were in over there was more conducive for them to try it, experiment with it. But when they came back to the United States, they didn't. Does that make sense? And so, like, and I'm not trying to take something that is serious as that, but I think that there's this idea that they were not going to do that whenever they got back to the United States. 90% of them stopped whenever so many of them tried it, yet it's one of the most addictive drugs. To me, that was fascinating representation of how important the environment, who we surround ourselves with. Who we are around, et cetera, is in life, but also in business too.

Yeah. It's interesting. It's almost like they're, uh, in, in this case, obviously generating, uh, you know, you, you, we kind of generate our self-image based on the people that are around us a little bit. Right. So I don't know if you get this, but you're, you start hanging around your family a little bit more and you start like going back almost to childhood.

Right.

Yeah. Um, so, you know, it's kind of like, yeah, you, you know, you kind of jump into those, that role. Right. So in, in this case, it seems like obviously they were probably off by themselves in a different country, right? Uh, yeah. You know, when they came back, they were in a different scenario, right? Where they were surrounding themselves with different people. So it was a different, different scenario. That's the way I, you know, just like—

Oh, I mean, exactly. I mean, probably, I, I don't know, maybe a little peer pressure. One of them tries it. Of course, at the time, they probably didn't realize how dangerous it was. And so, like, they were basically like, you know, they're by themselves out in the jungles, apparently, and they— and some— somebody gets their hands on it and they're like, I'm going to try it. You want to try it? And the person is like, well, sure. And then you see what I'm saying? Like, you can see how that goes versus if they're back home with their family, they're not going to be like, hey, let's just, you know, want to try this heroin thing. Like, it doesn't make sense. And so the context matters. So again, I think people can kind of get the idea that at the end of the day, that's— that to me, that's a different way of kind of looking at culture. But like when we put them in that environment, the environment of the Club Capital culture, the Munson culture, like what is that going to be like? And how does that actually shape their performance? To me, I think it's fascinating.

So I think Bradley, I think I was talking with Mike about this earlier and it's, I always forget this too, but it's, it's, I think it's really hard to make that call, but whenever you have a low performer or now, and then you say a low former, a bad cultural fit. Yeah, team, right?

They do.

Yeah, it's better to like remove them from the culture and everybody else steps up their level immediately. Um, yeah, yeah, and I think that's sometimes hard as a small business owner, right? You always feel like you need more people or you need more people to get the job done, right? Um, you know, sometimes when you remove that bad apple Everybody else's performance steps up. They thank you for making that decision and the whole, yeah, improves.

Let's, let's not, you know, some people are, are, you know, better at it than others, but, you know, I, I think is one of those things in business that, um, I know is, is kind of a, I, I guess I'd call it a weak area for me. You know, is, you know, making that call to, you know, dismiss somebody, right, from the team and, you know, have to do that. I mean, it's definitely not, I mean, it's not, I don't think what anyone likes, right? I mean, not to say anyone like likes doing that. I think there are, you know, some that are better at it than others. You know, I'm one that, you know, I, I can be, as much as I am, you know, business season related and love pushing forward all the time, you know, I can be soft a little bit on the personal side, you know, and just, you know, try and like give, you know, second, third chances type of thing, right? And try and see, try and meet them, you know, where they want to be. Because it's hard. I think it's harder than people kind of make it out to be. And even the people You know, I feel like so many people are like, oh no, you just, you know, you hear it all the time. They're not doing good, you cut them, right? And like, yeah, you know, of course we all say yes to that and agree to that, but you know, it's, it's, it's harder to do in the airport for 6 hours, right? Yeah.

Well, if you were dropping them in the airport, it's easier, but Um, so I have to—

okay, well, speaking of, this is actually good. Have you guys seen the movie Up in the Air with George Clooney?

Right, but he's a consultant. Does he just— isn't his job fires people?

Pretty much what he fires people. That's what he does. That's what he does. So come on, Micah, you, you're that guy. You're that guy. We'll just bring Micah in. Hey, Micah. We got some layoffs we have to make. No, I'm just kidding. You're such— you're a softie at heart for sure.

In our consulting, when we did consulting, that's like why people hire consulting firms, you know, because they're like, well, the consulting firm came in and said, you should leave, you know, because we would assess like departments and be like, you're way inefficient, you know. And then they'd be like, well, you see, it's not our decision. It's theirs.

So his character in that movie is, I think, Ryan Bingham, and he is the corporate— traveling corporate downsizer. That's what he is. He's a corporate downsizer. So they bring him in and he's just so stoic. Have you seen that movie, Micah? I think David looks like you have.

Yeah.

Oh, you got to watch it. Just watch it. It's actually a really good movie. And, and, and, you know, he, he's like in hotels and airlines and he's got, you know, platinum American Airlines flights and every pilot knows him and just all of these kind of things, you know, and they, he just comes in and he's just like, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. And so there's all these stories, but anyway, then there's like a romantic love relationship that happens in it. Anyway, it, it really is a good movie, so it's worth, worth watching. But every time I think about somebody who's like, So stoic, just let them go. I think back, back to that movie. But no, I mean, I think that actually if we didn't have a heart and you were that way to where it was like, oh, it's no big deal, I think that that would come across in the way that you treat your— the rest of your team all along the way too. I think people would pick up on that. And I hope that I never, ever get to a point to where I'm so hardened to not realizing there's people's lives at stake. They have a family, they have a mortgage, they have rent, they have, you know, they have food that they've got to put on the table. I hope we never get to that point to where, you know, it's easy for me to let somebody go, even if they're not the right performer, even if they're toxic, even if it's not the right culture fit. At the end of the day, that's still a person, and they may not be the right fit for your office or for your business, but they may be an A-player in somebody else's business. And that's one thing I try to, I try to think about.

So anyway, yeah, that's good. It's something that, you know, I think about a lot, Bradley. Maybe, you know, maybe you have as well, reading business books, etc. But, uh, and Mike and I talk about it too, you know. I'm a big sports guy, so just then, and thinking about soccer and, and, uh, these, these professional soccer teams that have to run at a high level especially the top clubs, they run at a high level, uh, and the standard needs to be high. Uh, you know, right now I think the average, uh, average tenure for a head soccer coach in the European leagues is like, it's like under a year and a half.

Wow.

Right, so you know, you got these like clubs that are super high performance, have to have a high culture. Um, turnover is part of it.

Right.

So how do you think about this in terms of establishing a culture and managing to that? It just makes you think the similarities between business and sport and kind of how that—

Oh yeah.

So I feel like Bradley could go off for like an hour.

I could talk.

I was just trying to see—

You'd be going 100 football.

Yeah.

I couldn't talk specifically about soccer, although I was really into the World Cup. The World Cup was amazing. Like, that final was, was, was incredible. It made me want to get into soccer, but that lasted about a week, and then I was like, nah, never mind. My kids just don't do it. I know you guys are amazing. I just, I, uh, like, I'm a basketball guy. I'm basketball and golf. That, that's my, that's my two, and, and I guess college football too, but college football.

So I'm trying to get more into golf. I've been, I've been practicing, trying to get better and better. I was at the World Cup So that was awesome. So I—

Wait, you went to the World Cup?

Yeah.

What in the world? Why did I not know this? This is unbelievable. Well, what was that like? Okay, we're about to end the podcast. We have to— you can't leave us on a cliffhanger. What was that like?

Yeah, that was incredible for a couple of reasons. Mike and I have a good friend that we went to college with that was part of the coaching staff the US men's national team. So I was able to go over there with my father as friends and family. So not only was it cool to see the games, we saw 3 games, 2 US games, but we were also staying with the friends and family of the players. So it was like, you know, we're sitting in the stands with, you know, the mom and dad of the center midfielder, right? So it was just a—

Oh man, royalty. Holy smokes. Goodness gracious. If you're going to go to the World Cup, anybody wants to go to the World Cup, email David Munson. David, I was kidding. That's awesome. You didn't drink a beer, so you didn't go to jail. So that's good.

Yeah, you got to find the right spots for that over there. Yeah, it was unique because obviously World Cup, but also unique to see that environment and see kind of behind the scenes. Of, of, yeah, kind of some of the family, you know, family life, etc., that, that happens there too. It's different if your kid's playing the World Cup, right? You know, most of the players are, you know, the oldest player on the team I think was 35, but, you know, most of the rest of them are 20, 21, 22, right? So, yeah, really pretty young out there.

They're just kids.

Yeah, man.

You know, I was talking to somebody like, um, um, I mean, I watch the NBA regular season. I keep up with it. My son's a— Coop's a big, uh, a big Bucks fan. Um, I'm a Lakers guy. And so, you know, you watch those guys and they're so good during the regular season, but it's 82 games. And, and, but man, it— they step up multiple levels of competitiveness in the playoffs. I mean, the last night's two games, it is high-level sports. I mean, it, it is— Jimmy Butler goes for 56 last night. I mean, just just pretty incredible stuff. Anyway, you— it's cool to see people who truly are at the top of their game at that level, you know. So, and the kind of the parallel to business, Micah, you saw the asset, I showed you the asset yesterday that, you know, we had created the little offers.pdf, you know, Well, you know, there's skills to design, you know, and so there's people that can just take certain things and just go to a different level. And then, and it's just cool to see people in business and in sports who can— I don't know, to me it's inspiring whenever people can perform at that type of level whenever it matters the most. Anyway, that's cool. So yeah. All right, guys, well, we didn't get to anything I was going to talk about today, but that's good. We'll use them for future fireside chats. Micah, you good?

Yeah, sounds good to me.

All right, till next time, guys.