Episode 292: Hiring, Training and Management with Steve Suggs

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 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.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hemner, your host. A repeat guest, Steve Suggs. Steve is all things around recruiting and talent development, but really around acquisition of A players on your team. I know you're going to get a ton of this. Last time we had Steve on was like, I think, September of 2020. And so, so much has changed and I really got a ton out of this. I love the way that Steve approaches certain things and just his philosophy, but then he also backs it with science and with research and with data. Can't wait for you to hear this episode with Mr. Steve Suggs.

Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee, or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm. Ambition is the first step towards success. It's time to level up your agency, and Coach P Consulting will help you do just that by using the same strategies he used to sell over 7 100 life insurance policies in 2021 alone. Now, this is not your regular one-and-done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching 2 days a week, every week of the month, and you'll get a live look behind the scenes of his team training and an office that's performing at the highest level. There's a reason Coach P Consulting is the fastest growing coaching company for insurance agency owners in the country. Coach P will train your team alongside his own and show you the exact steps they are taking to achieve Chairman Circle, Exotic Travel, and Multi-Line Presence Club and be one of the few agents to be selected to have a third office. So whether your goal is to be at the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, this training will give you the strategies and the tactics to get there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high-level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level, and his strategies work, and it's time to put them to work for you. Sign up at coachpconsulting.com and get your first full month for free when you mention the Club Capital leadership podcast.

Steve Suggs, welcome back to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to be back.

Excited to have you. We, before we hit record, we were talking about it. Can't believe it's been almost 2 and a half years since you come in. Whenever you last came in, it was September of 2020. We were just, what, 6 months into the, to the pandemic and so many other things that we talked about at this point. So we won't go back. We always usually start background into origin story. I encourage people to go back to, to that episode and hear a little bit around Steve's background, his origin story, and kind of how he got to where he is today. So I encourage you to do that. So we're just going to jump right into it if it's, if it's okay with you, Steve. I think that since that period of time, I mean, it was the case pre-COVID, pre-pandemic, but man, it seems to be far worse than it ever has been. From business owners, agency owners finding quality candidates. It's like it's under a pressure cooker that people are— they've always tried to find A-players, but man, they're having a hard time. What are you seeing? Why is that? Why has that been so hard over the last year and a half, 2 years? What's happened?

Well, the answer to that question is multidimensional. Let's talk about the cultural impact of the situation there. And then the way that agents go about searching is also a piece of that puzzle too. So as far as the culture goes, prior to the pandemic, we were in a cultural crisis. And the crisis around hiring good people is related to a drop in work ethic. It's related to a drop in a sense of responsibility. And that's multifaceted. Our school systems have gotten to the point where they've lowered their standards because everybody passes. Colleges have lowered their admission standards. Colleges work on a financial budget. They've got to have students coming through. They've got to have students taking out government loans and coming in and getting an education. And not only that, but they have to have freshmen who come back as sophomores. And if they're— and if you were to look at these statistics, colleges were having a tremendous problem with not just enrollment and getting people to come to college, but getting them to come back the second year. They were failing out. It was too hard. They didn't want to come back. So colleges have actually have lowered their standards. You'd be surprised at how many major universities do not use the SAT in the ACT anymore. It's not one of the measurements that they use. So when that happens, our education system is feeding into this, well, life is just hard. Don't make life harder for me. Parents are like, I don't want my kids to have to struggle the way I did. So, you know, it's an iPad at age 8, a car at age 15, and all of a sudden they don't learn work ethic. They don't learn a sense of responsibility. And then they get into the job market. And what all of this does is it causes people to have this sense of what is important to me is happiness and no stress. Mm-hmm. Because that's what has been provided in their life. The parents provide happiness and no stress with no problems. And when you don't have problems, you don't learn responsibility because unless you're willing, there's always a mountain to climb and life is full of problems and life is full of challenges. And until you can define meaning and purpose in your life, this is why I'm here, this is what I want, this is what I want to do, and then decide I'm going to pick up that load and I'm going to trudge up the mountain to get that. Well, we never get to that place where we decide, I'm going to be responsible, I'm going to pick up a load, I'm going to walk up the mountain, until we have problems. Until you're in a situation that you don't like, you don't have enough money, you don't have a career, you don't have an expertise, and all of a sudden now nature kicks in. I want a family. That's nature. If, if that wasn't nature, we couldn't procreate. So the desire to procreate causes everybody to start making these decisions of bringing other people into the world, and they create this immediate responsibility. Okay, I have these people that I need to take care of. Uh-oh, I didn't study the way I should have. I didn't learn a skill. So all of a sudden now they're faced with going out there and trying to get a job unprepared. They don't have a skill. They don't have work ethic. They don't have a sense of responsibility. And you get the crisis that we have today. A lot of people looking for a lot of jobs. They don't have a skill. They want a lot of pay. They don't have work ethic. They don't have a sense of responsibility. Now throw a worldwide pandemic into that.

Hmm.

And what's the solution to the worldwide pandemic? Well, let's just give everybody money not to work. Let's just give all these businesses that are losing money, let's just give them money. Let's feed this sense of lack of responsibility with a solution of don't give you any responsibility. And so we're kind of right back to where we've always been. Um, agents who are trying to build a team, the number one thing that's needed for a person to survive in a State Farm office is That is a very responsible job. I'm taking on the responsibility of giving financial advice. I'm taking on helping ensure someone's assets, their livelihood, their ability to earn money, and it's my job as a risk advisor to do a good job for them. That's a job with a lot of responsibility. And not only, not only that, but I want to hire you as a salesperson. By the way, I want you to go to find enough strangers every day who will allow you to be their risk advisor. Hmm. So it's the hardest job in the world because of that responsibility of helping that agent build a clientele. And it's also very difficult because it's a responsible job. I was talking to an agent today and he was describing this candidate. This guy really loves music. And I asked him more questions, more questions, and he— and finally I said, okay, this is a 28-year-old whose passion is performing in bars and he lives at home with his mother. Okay, you want a risk advisor? You want him to sell 35 raw new apps, 5 of those life insurance? He said yes. This guy has no responsibility. You want him to come into the most responsible job? And so he said, well, now that you put it that way. So we have to learn how to measure all of that, but we also have to to know, to learn to be realistic about what the job is. And the reason it's hard to find people is because the crisis that we have in America and because of the type of job this is. Now, your question was, why is it hard? Okay.

Yeah.

Answers to that.

That's the answer to that. I think everybody is like, preach, preach. Steve, everybody agrees with you 100%. I think that absolutely you summed up the pressure cooker that we're under. And so the question then is, well, now what? Well, now what do we do? Okay, because I mean, we, like, we as a small business owner, I can't go out and change society, right? I mean, I'm not going to be as much as I would like to. I'm not going to be able to do that. So what do we do?

Yeah, I don't want to be that guy that just gave you bad news and not give you a solution. Okay, you'll turn the podcast off. Okay, I already knew that, Steve. So step 1, admit that that's the situation. Admit, okay, that's what I'm dealing with. So let's work the problem. Let's not wallow in it. Let's work the problem. Realize that the job that you are recruiting people into is one of the hardest jobs in America. It doesn't matter if it's sales, it doesn't matter if it's service. That service, the service people have got to be able to pivot and bring in some revenue, bring in some additional revenue. You are building a sales organization, not a service organization, a sales organization, the hardest sales job in America. So you have to realize that. That's what I'm recruiting into. And yes, the bar is high. It's not because you set the bar high. The situation sets the bar. You just have to live in the reality of that situation. Yeah. So when that bar is set and we have to realize, okay, most of the people who are going to apply to this job, they're wanting safety and security. They're wanting happiness and free time, and they don't want any stress because of what we just talked about. And there's another reason. If your company has done a really good job at branding your company, your company has name recognition, and that's great for making sales, but it's, it's a detriment when it comes to the reason people are applying for the job. Because see, they see your company name and your branding as safety and security. You need to have your insurance here. They've done a good job with that branding. Well, this is not a safe and secure job. This is pay for performance. I need you to be willing to accept a lower pay and earn the rest of that pay. And that's the reality of the market in which they are applying. This is an industry that's pay for performance. It's an industry where it lacks safety and security. Most of your candidates are seeking safety and security. So get ready to say no a lot. And so it's— and to be able to say no a lot, you need two things. One, You need a lot of a variety of sources of where you're finding people. And number 2 is you need a good system and process that teaches you, first of all, what do I need to measure? And then how do I measure that? What tools do I need to measure that? And what skills do I need to measure that? So would you like me to talk about this finding candidates topic for a second?

Yeah, absolutely. And before we get into sources, because I definitely know people struggle with that, is they say, okay, this makes a lot of sense. And they even do the hard work of understanding. They buy into the philosophy, the mindset. They do the hard work of putting together a system, a process that's repeatable. But then they say, okay, Well, now I've got to be top of the funnel. How do I get more candidates into the top of the funnel? Because I— everybody seems to be hiring everywhere I go. It's now hiring. And the pay, by the way, continues to go up. I don't know if in Tennessee you guys have a Buc-ee's, but I've shared this with some business owners recently. I took a picture of Buc-ee's gas station in Athens about 45 minutes away from here. They just opened up and starting pay is $17 an hour to work at a gas station. Yeah, the assistant managers make $125. The general manager makes $250 plus bonuses. Now, granted, I understand that's, you know, those are the biggest gas stations. But the— but my point in telling you this is that a pizza franchise owner in the area, he owns currently 16, will own close to 40 by the end of this year. It's Marco Pizza franchises. Said that that gas station coming in the radius, that has really put a tremendous amount of wage pressure on his drivers and what he has to pay because people are looking at that even if they don't go to work there. Now, what does this have to do for us? I think it has everything to do because there's wage pressure of like, not only do I have to find great candidates, but also how am I going to be able to afford them? So I've got to be able to source this from different places. I don't even know really where to begin. And I think that's a great next place for us to be able to go is like, what, what are the variety of sources I find people, Steve?

Yeah. Well, if you're, if you're working 2,000 hours a year, which is about the average, that's $34,000 a year.

Yep.

And if your base pay for a salesperson is $34,000 a year, that's what you're competing with. So you got to find people who are not looking for safety and security, they're looking for an opportunity. Okay, so when you think about sourcing, it's, it's important to think about what the job is and what might attract someone to that job. Let's talk about sales first. The right personality for sales, and we've done years of research on this, 45 years of research, and it always comes out the same. You need extroverts. Well, that's obvious. You need people who work faster than that impatient analyst. Yeah, well, that seems obvious.

And it—

but it's true. You need people who aren't going to get paralyzed by details. You need people who are relational and positive. Okay, those are hardwired personality traits. 45 years of research behind that. Okay, well, those same people who have that personality, because of the nature of their personality, they're not looking for safety and security. So if you realize that, then all of a sudden this $34,000 base is not as big of a challenge. They're not looking— they're— you're not competing competing with Bucky's for that person. What you're competing with is your willingness to stop doing the easy thing to go find those people. You're competing with yourself. The agents that I talk to who keep saying, I can't find people, I can't find people, I can't find people, they're using CareerPlug only. I said, well, keep using CareerPlug and you're going to get about the same number of quality candidates you're always getting. You know, you have about as great a chance of finding an agent aspirant on CareerPlug as you do at winning the lottery. Now, I'm not saying don't use CareerPlug. You have to use it. But you have to begin to use a proactive approach. And the proactive approach that we teach is that you're looking for that very entrepreneurial, fast-moving extrovert. Enterprise Rent-A-Car has the strongest recruiting program out there. I sat down with the head of their recruiting. I learned about what they do and how they do it. It is robust. It is not as selective as it used to be, but they, they try to be selective. They're They're recruiting people into their manager training program. Automated Data Processing, they are, they're such a large company and they sell, they're a B2B sales company and they sell payroll to organizations. They're such a large company, ADP is the information that the government uses to calculate unemployment data. That's how big they are. And they provide a lot of the data that where all of our economic forecasts are being made. And then their biggest competitor is Paychex. You can go on LinkedIn and find everybody who works at Paychex, who works at ADP, who works at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. That's step one. You can do that, go on there and try to get in contact with those people and tell them, I have a sales manager training program that will eventually teach you and train you to own your own business. You're not going to attract the person looking for safety and security with those words and that message. You're going to attract that person who is sick and tired of getting up every day and going into, uh, office and, um, having to vacuum out cars in their necktie and sell somebody $5 extra for, for their damage waiver and thinking, well, maybe in about 18 months or 24 months I might be able to own to manage another enterprise rent-a-car where I have to compete with $17 an hour with Bucky's down the street. And so I'm having to get the worst people in here. I'm having to work twice as hard. They're having the same challenges. You just got to get the message to them about your opportunity. And you can do that with LinkedIn. You can go to LinkedIn and pretend— all you have to do is click on the Jobs tab on LinkedIn. Every single company in your town who is using LinkedIn to post jobs is gonna— and to find salespeople is gonna be there. Mm-hmm. So why do you wanna find companies who are posting sales jobs in your town? They have salespeople. And if those salespeople are on LinkedIn, then you do the search. You search for everybody who works at that company who's advertising for a sales job, and their salespeople who have a LinkedIn account will be there. You reach out to them. I have a sales manager training program. I'll teach you to eventually own your own business. If you're entrepreneurial and you want unlimited income, please get in contact with me. So you can find every company in your town who has, uh, who's hiring salespeople using LinkedIn, and there will be dozens and dozens of them. And if you don't have time to do that, you know, hire a team member to spend 1 hour a day doing that. And I've got this written out in details. I have word tracks written out And all you have to do is email me at stevesuggs@mack.com and tell me that you want the LinkedIn strategy. I'll email it to you.

Man, I love that. All right, well, we just lost everybody. That's all you need. Mic drop. Steve, just— everybody jumped off the podcast, Steve, and went to LinkedIn and started doing this right now. That is awesome. That is so good. I love— taking a concept from kind of a high level down to an eye level and actually giving some specifics. I think that is so good. Now, let's give some credence, by the way, to if somebody says, okay, Steve, get this, this is great. I do also, my business is growing. We've invested, we've been able to get some sales team members. We do need some account managers or customer service, et cetera. I need to find good people there, right? I need to be able to keep the customers I got and give them a great experience. And so I'm also looking for somebody there. What are some of the tips and best practices for, for looking for that position?

When you, when I hear that, I hear it a lot. My first question is, to what degree do you need them to be able to pivot? Will it upset you greatly and you feel like you're paying them too much if they can't pivot at all? That's number 1. Number 2 is, do you want them to pivot and pass it off to somebody else? Or number 3, is it you only want them to be able to pivot and close? You need the hybrid, the sales service person. That's the first thing you have to determine. What do you need right now? If you're sitting in your office by yourself, pivoting is not important, right? So that's a different answer to the question. You know, you call me about a candidate, you say, I need this service, this person to be in service. I go through that questionnaire. What's your immediate need? Okay, so let's take them one at a time. My immediate need is I'm in my office by myself. I need help.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, we're going to go through the process here and we're going to administer the CTS. The main thing that we're going to be interested in here is their pace of work. Because if they can't keep up with the pace of work, they're going to be stressed and they're going to quit. So we're going to measure, does this person have the wiring in the brain that causes them to be able to multitask? And that involves several personality traits. Are they extroverted enough? Not extroverted enough to close a sale, but to have a conversation with a customer at the level that you need. Are they relational enough? And are they positive and coachable? So we can measure that. And also, are they intelligent enough? And then we're going to— and we can measure the intelligence piece with an assessment and look at their education level and look at their work history and get a good idea there. We can use the CTS as a personality test to see about that pace of work and positivity and coachability. And then you're going to have to interview for work ethic, sense of responsibility. Are they looking for happiness or are they looking for somewhere to land where they can do a great job and earn every penny you're going to be paying them? So we, we know what the parameters are. So if you need that person to pivot and pass, they need to be a little bit more assertive, an extrovert. If you need them to pivot and close, they're going to have to work just a little bit faster, because if they can't get that service transaction taken care fast enough, the person's got to get back to work. They don't have time to pivot. So pivot and close is work a little faster, have the energy level and the extroversion to be able to close the sale.

That's so good. That's so good. I love the way that you break that down into something that people can really— somebody is hearing that and saying, all right, let me think about what do I actually need? Because don't you think that— I'm curious, actually, I don't want to lead that question. So let me ask it this way. What do you typically see? I'm sure initially maybe some people, whenever you talk to them, they say, I just don't really know. I don't know. I just know I need to get somebody in. What is the breakdown, maybe percentage-wise, if you're able to break it down that way, of what you typically see whenever you ask, is it one of these three?

Well, there are, um, the answer to that question is, is this There are two different situations, okay? Once somebody calls me up and says, Steve, I'm not using your system, I haven't been through your training, I've just been kind of winging it, okay? So that's a long answer to that question if that's the situation that person is in. And if that is the situation that they're in, I'll say, well, here's how I can help you. I'm going to train you on what to look for. I'm going to give you the tools on how to measure that. And you can schedule telephone calls with me, and I'm going to continue to train you and consult with you while you make this decision. So now we're into the situation where they're watching videos, they're reading information in the book, they're having conversations with me, and they call me. And here's how it goes a lot. Um, see, I really like this person. Okay, why do you like them? Okay, well, they took the assessment. Okay, so you like them because they took the assessment. Okay, we're off to a good start here. Okay, why else do you like them? Um, well, I did the interview and they were very enthusiastic. Okay, which interview question did you use? Well, I've put some questions together. Or did you use the one on page 16 through 19 in the field manual that we discussed before in our last phone call? Well, no, I haven't done that yet. Okay, so you've, you've asked them some questions that you put together. What do your questions measure? Well, I'm not sure. Well, that's what we call an unstructured interview. You got some information and you reacted emotionally to that information because you really need somebody. So we've got to back up, we've got to, we've got to take the emotion out of this. We've got to engage the logical side of your brain. Okay, turn to page 11, 12, and 13 in the field manual, and there I have listed the things that you're trying to measure, and there's a scorecard on a scale of 1 to 10. By the time you make this decision, you want to have spent enough time with them in the interview using these structured interview questionnaires where you're going to learn about their work ethic, their honesty, their sense of responsibility, their passion for for the job? Do they treat people well? Are they coachable? And are they money motivated? And how fast they work? Can they take rejection? Can they handle the pace of work? And this scorecard, you're just going to simply look— are they honest, 1 to 10? Are they hardworking, 1 to 10? Are they responsible, 1 to 10? You're going to follow a system that'll help you score them out. Now you're making a decision with enough information so you measure your risk. Nobody's perfect. You want to know what is the risk of me giving this person $3,000 a month and my time and training and disrupting my team. And so that's the training process that we go through. But most of the conversations start out with Why do you like this person? Well, they keep calling me. Their deadline motivation is 5. Their analytical is 95. Okay, do you, will you like them if they do 3 quotes a day instead of 8? Well, no, but they keep calling me back. I said, okay, let's review this again. I'm serious. My job when people call me is to coach them to look at the truth. Them calling you back doesn't mean they can sell.

Yes.

Okay. They're better than the other 3 candidates doesn't mean they can sell. They're a slow-moving, insecure introvert. Well, they've been working at T-Mobile for 3 years. Well, this is not T-Mobile. How many customers get in their car, park in front of your office, and come in and say, I'm ready to buy automobile insurance on that car I just bought? Hmm. That's T-Mobile. I need a phone. I'm here. Hook me up.

Totally different.

Totally different.

So is it— I think about this from a business owner's perspective about just making any decisions in the business, about working to not make decisions when you're emotional and removing the emotions from it and being able to see it for what it is. And this is just one example of that. Somebody goes to a conference, they go to a meeting with others, they get around high performers, and they're just fired up. I'm gonna go hire 5 people, and I'm doing it all at once, you know, because they're on an emotional high. Conversely, you just lost 2 people, they quit, uh, over the last 2 weeks, and no, so now you're scrambling, right? And I think that ultimately you're just advocating being able to have a systematic approach that allows you to be able to see it for what it is and not selling yourself or convincing yourself that someone is a fantastic candidate when the facts are staring you right in the face. It says, this is just— they may be a great person, but they're just not the best candidate for you at this point.

Is that fair? I want to add something to that. Okay, agents became agents if they came through the system where they had to, they had to prove something before they could get an agency. Many of them had to prove they could sell. Selling is a skill. Needs-based selling is a skill. If you don't learn that skill then you're not going to hit the parameters of, uh, 50 apps a month and 10 of those life insurance that will get the eyes of a sales leader who needs an agent in their territory. So you got to learn a skill to become an agent. Well, the number one skill that you need as an agent is the skill of building a team. You've got to get good at selecting people. It's a skill. It involves knowledge, it involves tools, it involves practice, but you've got to get good at it. And some agents decide, okay, I'm going to get good at that. I work with a lot of agents who say, this person in my office, I'm going to make them good at that. Yeah, I talked to a lot of office managers. They're doing a better job than the agent because they're not emotional. You know what they care about? I'm going to be seeing this person every day. I'm going to be working with them. I want to make a good decision here. I don't care how bad you need somebody. You know, and then there's, there's, there's some other resources out there where you can maybe hire consultants to help you out. You can get us to help you out. But the key here is there's a certain level of skill that you've got to acquire, or you're never going to get really— you're never going to get good at finding— I mean, selecting people. Another thing you've got to get good at, you got to get good at coaching. Now, if you look at the big agents, You know, out of 19,000 agents, you know, there, there are probably just a small handful of those individuals. All they are is the CEO of a big organization. They've got other people coaching, they've got other people hiring. But that's not most of the people who are watching this video. You're an agent with somewhere between 3 and 10 team members, and it's your responsibility to coach, it's your responsibility to hire. Those are two skills you've got to get, coaching skills and hiring skills. And you've got to get good at it.

It's fair to say, I think that I just want to add that you're using skills very purposefully, meaning nobody that you maybe look up to that is in your peer group or somebody you aspire to be just was born with that. They have acquired those skills either through somebody mentored them or they were in an organization that somebody like showed them the way to be able to do it. But it's a skill that everybody can acquire if they take the time and they're diligent about actually wanting to get better at it, get better and acquire those skills. Is that fair?

Because they're actually born with the antithesis of those skills. The antithesis is, I want to like you, and if I like you, I can coach you to do this because I can do it. I can do it. It can't be that hard. I can coach you to do it. See, that's the antithesis. We're born with that. These agents are entrepreneurs. They're winners. They're, go-getters. I can teach anybody to do this. No, you can't. It takes skill to do this. And, and in today's world, it's, it's— you have to come to this, this crisis point in your life where you say, okay, I'm not good at this, I'm going to get good at it. How do I get good at it? We'll train you to do it. We'll consult with you while you do it. Because it's not easy to get good at it because you get good at it. You have a strong team, you don't do it for a year, then you get bad at it again. Yeah.

No, I mean, I mean, I've said a lot, you know, look, there's a reason 96% of small businesses don't see their 10th birthday. Business is really hard. And as you mentioned earlier, actually saying that, that, hey, this job is hard. Is better than making it, oh, it's going to be rosy, it's going to be an easy path. I mean, the most challenging times in my business is when I've learned the most. The most challenging times in my life have been when I've learned the most about who I am and my purpose and the mistakes I've been able to make. And so therefore, like, ultimately, if things are not where you want them to be, you can develop these skills of building a team. You can develop the skills of coaching, but it is going to be hard work. I mean, you have to get yourself around the right environment of other people, and you have to do the work. You can't just say, I want to do the work and then wonder why I don't have a team full of A players.

Easy doesn't pay much.

Yeah, true. I got to ask a question, you and I, before we hit record. You mentioned something, I said I wanted to bring this up. So, um, uh, I was talking to business owner Mark the other day and he was sharing with me that he was, you know, he had his process laid out. So kudos to him for even having a system in place. And so he's going through the system and his team comes to him and says, hey, we think that people are just getting frustrated because it's taking too long. Now, he shared with me how long it was taking. I don't think it was taking too long at all. I think he was actually being pretty methodical. And so because of that, you know, the team could speed him up, right? And so in sports, you know, you and I are big sports fans, and so you know whenever a team is like, oh, that other team is purposely speeding that team up and getting them to play in a way that they don't want to. Talk about this idea that Sometimes the candidates, they just don't want to go through the process. And so therefore the business owner starts to make shortcuts, starts to shortcut their own process that they said that they put into place.

I want to start by saying this. I've heard successful agents say that if you are a very successful agent, where you're paying tax on $600,000 to $1 million a year of income, you don't notice how much it's costing you when you make a bad hire as much as that agent who has 3 team members and they make a bad hire and payroll, every payroll day is a huge challenge to them. So I will say this, most of the people that I have heard say that They're big agents who don't know how much it costs to hire one person. So speed up your process. Well, first thing is, when you say speed it up, my question is speed up what? Do you actually have a process? So if you're going to speed up, you're going to just speed up doing the wrong thing. You're just going to do the wrong thing faster. Yeah. So let's assume for a second you have a process. Do you need to speed up that process? Well, here's how you can speed up. Stop doing so many first interviews. You know, you're— somebody sends you a resume and you give them the CareerPlug assessments, which if you look into the validity of those assessments, you need to— try to convince yourself that they're actually valid assessments. We've done the checking on that, and the personality assessment on CareerPlug is not valid. If you want me to show you why it's not, please contact me. I'll be glad to do that. The math-verbal is okay. So what your process is, you give them those assessments and then you interview them. And you spend 30 minutes interviewing, and you decide, oh, I'm not going to hire them. And you do that again, and you do that again. So you spent 3 hours today, 5 days a week, 15 hours this week interviewing people. Well, if you want to speed up the process, let's have them do an assessment that number one, that really truly measures their intelligence. And number two, will tell you, do they have some of— do they even come close to having some of those traits? That you're looking for, and you can bounce that off of the, the resume and their education level, and we can begin to get some insight here. Should I even pick up the phone and call this person and have a 30-minute interview with them? Hmm. And, and so the objection that I get there, well, how long does it take to do the assessment? Well, 45 to 60 minutes. I have a hard time getting people to do that. Okay, when you hire them, what are you going to ask them to do first thing? What do you do? Get a license, right? How long is that going to take? How many modules does it take for an agent to go through before you're comfortable with them discussing your products with them? Do you know the answer to that question? How many modules? There's a lot. It's hours. So before they're even productive, they got to get licensed, they got to go through the modules. You got to spend a lot of time training them. Okay, bounce all of that and the money you're paying them. Let's say that it takes them 2 months, you're paying them $3,000, that's $6,000. You, or you 3 months, you're going to pay them $9,000 while they're training before they're even productive for you. Okay, 45 to 60 minutes, really? They won't take 45 to 60 minutes and you're about to ask them to go get licensed and do all those modules. That's the perspective from which you should look at what you're asking them to do on the front end. If they won't do that, then, you know, it's really difficult to create an efficient process. And the reason this is frustrating you so much is because you don't have any other sourcing methods. Your only sourcing method is this one method. And for most people who apply have a high school education and 3 retail jobs, they're slow-moving, insecure introverts who have never done anything very difficult in their life. They're looking for safety and security, and they sound good on the phone, and you're spending 30 minutes interviewing that person before you ask them to do anything. That's why you're frustrated. So to relieve the frustration— there's no simple answer to relieving the frustration, and that's this question You need to speed it. Should I speed up my process? That falls into the category of how do I make this easier? There's no simple answer to this problem. It's a very complex problem. There's no simple answer to it. Speeding it up is not a, it's not a simple answer that works. Selling somebody on the career, really getting them excited. Now they're excited, so you're excited. It's a simple, easy answer. Hire people who are athletes. I hear that all the time. All athletes are competitive. No, they're not. We try to look for a simple answer to a complex problem. The answer is you got to have a system. You got to get good at it. That's a hard answer. But easy doesn't pay much.

How many business owners do you think you've talked to over the last 10 years?

10 years? If you look at what I do on a weekly basis, I have phone calls with somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 to 14 business owners a day. And I've been doing this for 22 years. And prior to that, I built a successful Northwestern Mutual business and was a sales leader there. So it's— the numbers are big. And I don't just talk to agents. The largest Verizon dealer in America is a client of ours. They have 6,000 salespeople. They use our system. Renewal by Andersen, the largest dealer in America, they hire in-home salespeople. They use our system. I had a conversation yesterday with an individual who was working for a nonprofit that needed to hire a fundraiser. Last week I had a conversation with a business owner who remodels restaurants. And they come in and so that they can decrease your downtime. They have this very efficient process of gutting and rebuilding very, very quickly. This is a well-oiled machine. They need project managers who are expert project managers and have the personality that'll fit in with the existing team. So it's a variety of conversations.

You know what I think it is? I think it's, um, I think that oftentimes we can get in our bubble and we think that we've seen a lot or had a lot of candidates and spoke to a lot of people. But I think at the end of the day, whenever you realize your company, but you, you yourself, but then your company the number of people that you all have put through your system, it begins— it, it's hard to not—

you—

it's hard to not, uh, trust the data, right? It's, it's not about gut. I've just got this gut feel. It's like, well, we've got the data on thousands, thousands of this, millions of people.

This assessment has been around 45 years. It's millions. Wow.

I mean, are we going to, you know, it's like, am I going to, am I going to go off of my gut whenever I've talked to 6 people and I've ran through, you know, I've had 12 conversations and I'm exhausted. I'm like, I don't know, let's just can't find anybody good because I've talked to 12 people. You know, sometimes it's probably not even 12, right? It's like 2 versus— no, this is a huge hire. I did a, I did a solo episode, Steve, uh, called Smashing Rolexes, and it's on this, on that exact concept of how much if you've got a— and I did it on an example of a $50,000 employee, but I mean, really the math works out even if you're paying them $3,000 to $4,000 a month. I mean, in, in 90 days, all in cost, right, from all the things you do, you mean you're somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000? Well, I can tell you that's the cost of a new Rolex Submariner, whether you're into, whether you're into watches or not. The point is, is that people can understand like, yeah, this cost of a new Rolex. Well, if that person flakes out because you made an emotional decision, you just went to the jewelry store bought a Rolex with your company money and then 90 days later took it out back and smashed it and then you just do it again. Well, nobody would ever in their right mind do that. But you're so right, is that we don't see the cost that way because it's getting ran through payroll. And yet it's really— I mean, I mean, it's— I would hate to know how many Rolexes I've smashed over the years because I didn't follow a process. I was emotional in my decision making. Uh, sped up the process. I didn't go through the right steps. I didn't ask the right questions. I didn't assess them using the right things. I just made all the mistakes in the book. So Steve, you're a wealth of knowledge. I've learned so much today. Every time I talk to you, I pick up notes that I learned along the way, and I've talked to you a number of times.

So I've got one thought. Do you mind if I mention this one thought? I think I'd like to close with this, if that's okay.

Absolutely.

The word is competence. You've got to become competent at recruiting. Okay, we live in a hierarchy. The world is built on hierarchies. When I, when I'm talking about a hierarchy, somebody that's at the top of the hierarchy, I'm not talking about Vladimir Putin, who's at the top of a hierarchy because he got there by killing people. I'm not talking about those kind of hierarchies. I'm talking about hierarchies that are built by people who are successful because they're honest, they treat people well, and they've built a great business because of their character and who they are. Well, there's one thing that caused them to get to the top of that hierarchy. It's competence. We live in a world of competence hierarchies. It's well studied. It's not power hierarchies, it's competence hierarchies. So the people that are at the top of those hierarchies, they've done it because they have an incredible skill and have gotten really, really good at solving the problems of their business. And below that competence, they treat people well. And then below that, you know, they have the natural innate personalities that kind of match up with that because it means they can do that very well without a lot of stress. And they're very, very honest. So it's competence, it's conscientiousness. And so my closing comment here is it's critical to become competent at solving the problem of building and coaching a team.

I love it. That's so good.

Well, people are going to want to reach out to you.

How can they connect with you? You obviously shared they're going to want to pick up the LinkedIn playbook. How can they do that? How can they connect with you and the team and learn about— I mean, they want that coaching, they want that consulting, they want to be able to find out about the assessment to use. How can they do that?

stevesuggs@mac.com. Easy email address to remember. Just send them an email. We'll get connected there. If you want to jump on my calendar without even sending me an email, Go to salesmanage.com/contact/steve. You can put that on the screen later and you will see my calendar out there and you can pick a time and I'll be glad to talk with you and visit with you. Awesome.

Steve, appreciate you. Hope to have you. We will have you back on in the future. Got so many other things. I'll ask you about, but I'll, uh, I'll save it for our next conversation. Appreciate you.

My pleasure. Thank you very much. Take care.

And so many good things from that episode with Steve. So what were some of the key takeaways for me? I think number one, whenever you talked about being able to get it from a variety of sources, casting a wide net, which by the way, hey, that's what Autopilot Recruiting is able to help you to do. Steve and Autopilot Recruiting certainly know each other. Very well, and then have a system and a process. Again, is what I love about recruiting, helps you to be able to do, but having a system process, not only on the part that they do, but you having a system of the process for the questions that you're going to ask. Be very intentional with that. Did you pick that up from Steve? Is this not just winging it? You may say, okay, I'm going to do a 15-minute phone interview, and then I'm going to do a 30-minute Zoom interview, and then I'm going to do a 1-hour in-person, and I'm going to bring them in for a A day, a shadow day, and then I'm gonna do one more final interview. I'm gonna do, uh, references. Okay, whatever. I just rattled off some sort of a process that you may have. Okay, point is, great, awesome. You've got that, you got the structure in place. What is the question? What are the questions you're going to ask? Are you being intentional with the questions versus are you winging it? Now look, I, I prepare for these podcasts, but a lot of the times I'm not winging it. I don't want to give off that impression, but I'm definitely wanting to try to be engaged so I'm not too overprepared. But in the interview setting, it's really easy because you're so good at talking to people, and so many of you are good at sales. It's so easy to just, well, I can just sell them on the job. Or maybe you're selling the wrong person on the wrong job. Maybe they're not the right fit versus, you know, they're— I, this is Bradley speaking. I think there's a time and a place that the— it does flip, that, that there's like, in your mind, you get to a place that says, this is who I, I'm, I'm bringing this person on, I'm hiring this person. And so now it almost comes into recruitment, uh, to where you're, you're really recruiting them to come be on your team. Um, but I think initially you're, you're trying to figure out, is this person gonna really be the right fit culture for us, etc. And then again, that's not Steve, that's Bradley saying that, that I think that there's a a moment where you have kind of done all the things you need to do to check all the boxes. You've not skipped steps, you've done— followed the system and the process, you've sourced from a variety of, uh, of different places, you've casted a wide net, you've gotten a lot of different people that you've spoken to and you said, this is the person that I'm not going to smash some Rolexes on, this is an A-player I want on the team. Now you got to go about actually recruiting them, which, you know, honestly, all of you can really do that. You do that really well, is selling people on the vision that you have here for your, uh, for your company. Loved having Steve on. So many great big takeaways. I mean, that was just one of them. Um, another one was his LinkedIn playbook, just the things that he talked about right there about, um, reaching out to companies or finding people on LinkedIn that, uh, has a company that's recruiting salespeople. They have salespeople. Sounds so obvious, uh, to hear that, but You know, it's like, oh man, I never thought about that. So that was obviously a really good idea. And then certainly whenever you talk about enterprise, et cetera. So if you want to get in touch with him, go to Sales Manage Solutions. If you want to email him and get that LinkedIn playbook, go to stevesuggs@mac.com. Loved having Steve on. Hope to have him back on in the future. Pretty obvious as we were talking about casting a wide net, it's exactly where Autopilot Recruiting really comes into play. And as I said, Steve and Alex and the team definitely know Steve, and they, they do, um, maybe think about a few little things here and there, but they're absolutely directionally, uh, directionally aligned. And so you can fit the, the CTS profile in the process that you have set up with the team at Autopilot Recruiting. So go to autopilotrecruiting.com and let them know, hey, I'm ready to hire some A-players. I want to, I want to be committed to this process and do it the right way. And they can help you to be able to do that. Autopilotrecruiting.com. Well, then I'll just take the step— next steps. And once we get them on board, once we get them on campus, we got to take those 5-star recruits and we got to continue to develop them. We're not going to just go and throw them out there and say, good luck to you. No, they need to be trained and developed and they need to be pushed and, and, and worked out and they got to go through the whole onboarding system. Well, maybe you don't know where to start with an onboarding system, but if you're working with Coach P. Consulting, he'll be able to share with you exactly how he onboards team members. How do you— how fast can you get them up to speed? And what does that look like? Is that 30 days, 60 days, 90 days? Those type of things are the things you're going to learn when working with David at Coach P Consulting. CoachPConsulting.com. Let David know, he'll give you the entire first month off if you mention that you heard about him on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Just recorded an episode actually today, and the discussion came up around identity. You can adopt the identity of being the CFO of your business. I look— I already, I already know that you have a lot of hats to have to wear. You have to be CEO, COO, CSO, CMO, CFO. I mean, there's so many different C-suites that you're wearing all of those hats and it can be a lot. But you can learn how to wear the hat of CFO, knowing your revenue, your profit margins, what the percentage you're investing in on a monthly basis. In team, in marketing spend, in business development, in your building, et cetera, and knowing kind of where the top agents are investing their, uh, money on a monthly basis to get the highest return. That's what Club Capital helps you to be able to do. And the one of the second really biggest investments that you're going to make is on marketing and knowing my direct response spend versus my branding spend, et cetera. Well, that's what DirectClicks is able to help you. Go to directclicksinc. Com. They can help you with your SEO. They can help you even with your social media now. They can help you with your Google pay-per-click campaigns. DirectClicksInc.com. Great episode with Steve. Till next episode, everyone, lead well.