Episode 334: Finding A-Players with Kolby Goodman

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Colby Goodman. Now, we have talked about teams— how do you attract, how do you develop, how do you retain A-players— many times over the 4 years. But the reality is leadership is one of the hardest things. How do we find really great people? How do we make sure that they fit in our culture? How do we make sure that we retain some of our top talent? Well, those are all topics that we're discussing today with Colby Goodman. What if you could step out of the day-to-day and see your business from a whole new perspective? Welcome to Above the Business, where we empower you to rise above the daily grind and embrace a higher way of business ownership. It's time to build your business by design. Colby Goodman, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

Pumped to have you. Well, we always start with background and origin story. As a matter of fact, I was actually talking to our members today about the importance of origin story and just how that, that's an asset to us. We don't typically sometimes think that, but I love hearing the, uh, origin story of how people got to where they are. So why don't you take us back and bring us to present day?

Oh man. So, um, I think my story starts shortly after graduating, um, from college, from Seneca State University. Um, was unemployed for about 3 months, uh, wasting away on the couch, sending out applications and getting kind of nowhere. Um, somebody was lucky enough to take a chance on me and hired me on as an IT help desk representative. For the next handful of years. I was resetting passwords, setting up email inboxes, asking people to restart their computers. And throughout that time there, I really honed in my technical expertise. But what I really discovered about myself was my people acumen, which unfortunately, if any of us out there has dealt with any kind of technical support, we have found that the EQ of the people that we're working with sometimes is lacking. So that gave me an unfair advantage in my process, which allowed me to advocate for myself, to make connections and network within the organization to become a really good resource for C-level people when they were having trouble with other technologies. And that got me in a place where I was noticed and I was given more interesting and engaging projects. And it kind of slingshot on my trajectory into IT operations management. Did really good, you know, made a really good impact, but Towards— after about a decade doing the work, started to really fall hard out of love with it. Was working with people I didn't really like, um, on projects I didn't care about, making people I'd never met a bunch of money. And it was kind of a crisis where I said, is this the value I want to put into the world? And the answer was no. And so as I started to do some self-evaluation, to take and do a self-audit, what I realized is those things that helped me ascend relatively quickly in my career were things that were not natural to a lot of my peers and a lot of people that I knew. They didn't know how to self-advocate. They didn't know how to network and relationship build in a professional setting. They didn't know how to have those conversations about value add and impact to give themselves more career opportunity. And so what I said here is, okay, there's— I'm good at this. I don't know how or why, but let me explore this. And so through that, got certified, did some more introspection. And developed and launched a career coaching business, helping individuals who felt stuck, who felt underutilized, who were definitely underpaid in their careers, give themselves a leg up as they pursued more work. So that was my first entrepreneurial venture. Fast forward another decade, um, had helped over 5,000 individuals, given over 200 keynotes, been able to have and been blessed to impacted a lot of people's lives. And through that, helping these clients, helping these people present themselves as the rock stars that they were, had discovered that a lot of business owners and business leaders were what I'm hoping was subconsciously driving these rock stars away. Didn't know how to interview, didn't have a, a candidate experience ethos, um, and was actively doing their business a disservice because they weren't able to identify and retain Top talent. And I said, okay, let's bring everybody to the middle. As I was helping end, you know, candidates get better roles, I needed to help leaders who had maybe been promoted because they were good at the thing or had built a business, even though they didn't know how to, how to team lead or team build, and help everybody on both sides, especially leadership and management, go in and stop trying to seek out and hire qualified candidates who simply just check a bunch of boxes and go out there and present a job description, have an interview experience, present offers, and onboard in a way that identifies, attracts, and retains the top problem solvers out there who want to help you.

Hmm. What is a— I'm curious, you used a word that I have not heard before. What is the candidate experience ethos?

So candidate experience ethos, the way that I, that I kind of lay it out to my clients is, what do you want every person who applies to your role, what experience do you want them to have, even if they're not the one person chosen for? How are they dealt with? How are they, you know, communicated with? How are they shown respect? How are they— what questions are you asking them? Because especially in the last handful of years, as we've seen, you know, kind of the worker revolution, the, the great resignation, and unfortunately now with a lot of layoffs in a lot of high-profile organizations, I think the relationship between candidates and companies has been deteriorating pretty rapidly. And so if you're building a business, if you're expanding a business, if you're just trying to build a team that you trust and love and you don't have to worry about. Just because you don't hire somebody today doesn't mean they're not a good fit tomorrow. And so if you can treat everybody in the process with dignity, respect, and camaraderie that they deserve, you're building a relationship for the long term versus simply just churning and burning applications that unfortunately a lot of companies do.

I definitely would agree with you that If you look at big companies, Meta, Google, Apple, Uber, Twitter, X, whatever, I could keep going. Uh, your, your corporates that there, there is a, there's a eroding of that relationship. Yeah, you, I would agree. What do you think? And I shared this with you before, you know, our target listening audience is usually in the, you know, 5 to 25, maybe up to 50 team members, employees, something like that, you know, doing half a million revenue, maybe up to 5 million in revenue or so. And so they're dealing with a lot smaller teams. Do you think that that is true even in the smaller organizations and small business as it is across larger organizations?

I think it's more important than the larger, larger organizations, right? Because the Apples, Metas, you know, the FAANG companies out there, we're interacting with their products on a daily basis. So we as consumers have a relationship with the brand, and a lot of that relationship with our brand, which makes us want to have employee-employee relationships with them, right? But as a small business, you need to be making sure that you're actively promoting your brand and what it is to work at your company, especially as you're smaller and getting bigger, right? Because if you are going from, you know, 5 to 6, you're increasing your headcount 20, you know, 20%, right? And so making sure that that person that you bring on is bought in, not only can do the job but can solve the problems, is a personality and a professional fit. All that is even more imperative for the small business owner because the consequences of a bad hire are so much bigger because they represent such a bigger footprint of your headcount on a day-to-day basis.

What do you think that employees or potential future employees— I tend to use the term team members. So, but what do you think that people are looking for today? And before you answer that, let me give you kind of an example of where I really screwed up over the years. And it was simply using $100 bills to try to motivate instead of lead, and thinking that everything was going to be driven by, uh, financial compensation plans. If I can just, you know, throw more money at the, at it than I can get people to be able to respond. And boy, that was, that was a really tough lesson to, to, to learn. By the way, comp plans, obviously clearly important. You gotta compensate people well, et cetera. But boy, it began to be a lot more than that. That said, I don't want to pretend that I, in any way, have my pulse on kind of maybe macro things that are happening around what people are actually really looking for in their career choice, right? So what are some of the things that you've noticed that people are looking for so that when we're putting together our recruiting system, that we can make sure to embed those either questions or those identifiers into that to say, this is what we're looking for in people, and this is what they're looking for. So I know I need to make that a part of my recruiting system. I need to pay— make that a part of my, my compensation benefit structure. I need to make sure that we even articulate that aspect of it, uh, uh, that aspect of our culture in the recruiting process. Because, you know, you may have it, but if you don't tell somebody you know, who's possibly coming aboard, they're not going to know that that's part of what you do.

It's a great question, and I commend you for asking it. I don't think enough people out there are being that kind of introspective and meta in their own thinking and their process. Because if you simply just go out there and go on Indeed or go on LinkedIn and type in, you know, marketing manager, so you're looking at all those job descriptions. Look and read 95% the same. And so there's no differentiation in the marketplace. And so what you're asking for is people who are simply just clicking apply now, apply now, apply now, right? The best way to differentiate you, especially from the beginning, is again not what you want this person to do, what qualifications you need them to bring, what boxes you want them to check. Get extremely clear on what problems you want this person to solve? Because that then, by getting clear on that, you can communicate that way more effectively. Because good, hardworking, impactful rock stars who want to work for good leadership don't want to do a job. They don't want to be a cog in the machine. They do not want to be relegated to being robot. They want to be challenged positively with problems, issues, missed opportunities that allows them to engage with their problem-solving abilities, their creative thinking abilities, their expertise and their experience that they've built up through their career. But unfortunately, we're not communicating that way to the candidates. We're saying we need you to do these things and have these characteristics. But there's no indication of problem solved. And so if you want to bring in people who are excited by challenge, excited by a little bit of stress, who can exceed your expectations and who will be with you long term and be engaged, meet them in the middle by telling them how, how you want to challenge them with the projects that you have and the problems that you have and how you need them as much as maybe they think they need I'm gonna flip the coin and go kind of a different direction on you now.

What do we do to keep our best talent, to retain our top talent? Because just like in with customers, it's just as valuable to keep a customer as it is to get a new one. But, and, and so certainly that becomes very true when it comes to our, our, our, our team. And there's nothing you're going to be able to do, um, to be able to always keep everybody there. There's going to be— they're going to move, they're going to have opportunities that you're just not able to provide, etc. Okay, so we know that, uh, turnover— and we're going to talk about turnover in just a second. I'm not even specifically talking about turnover. I'm talking about the things we proactively do to say, man, Colby is an A player. I'm going to do everything in my power to try to keep him or her, if it's she, on the team.

I think it's about getting clear on both sides of the conversation. What are the expectations of everybody down the line? Yes, you to an employee. This is what I need you to do, so I need you to accomplish. And I— and communicating, this is what it's going to do for the company. This is— your work is going to impact your co-workers. This is going to impact me. And so that it goes beyond being a paper pusher, devolving into a point where you just feel like you're going through the motions. And then also to ask a question in return. Hey, what What are your expectations of us as an employer? Somebody who is, you know, not only writing your checks but supporting your livelihood, allowing you to live the life that you want to live, right? Do you, you know, do you feel like you're paid well? Why or why not? Do you feel like, you know, do you feel like you have the flexibility? Are you working on the problems that give you energy? Are we, you know, Are we working harder in aspects where you think we can work smarter? How and why? And having those ongoing open conversations. I think one thing that has definitely been phased out, still prominent in massive corporate America, but I think in small business can be phased out for the better, is the hierarchy of, you know, C-level, VP, manager, frontline employee, right?

You—

if you look at your employees less as working down the chain from you and more as experts working alongside you, taking on the problems, the tasks, the issues that you're not really good at, you don't get energy from, you don't like doing, it makes it more of a collaborative process. And people want to buy into that when they feel like they have ownership. And not maybe monetarily ownership, but, uh, of work ownership, of pride ownership of what they do and the impact that they have, you will greatly get better buy-in. It will be easier for you to find your next hire because those people around you will brag to their friends about how great it is working with and for you. And your customer is going to be happier.

It just—

it's this thing that flows down the line to every part of your business that I think a lot of people, understandably in small business, just don't take the time to do because they don't feel like there's time. So making time to have those conversations on a regular basis and asking those, those questions and coming to the table and meeting in the middle on a regular basis is super important for to drive higher engagement with your team.

What term do you use for top talent?

I call them ideal problem solvers. Ideal That's who you should be hiring. People who are, have an expertise and an ability to solve your problems, to meet and exceed your expectations.

That's interesting. I, I'm curious around something. Okay. Yeah. Do you mind if I kind of challenge you on something?

Please.

I'm curious and I want to do this in a very respectful way because I think this is interesting. I've never heard it said and I've never thought about a team member as only solving problems. Now, I want to be very clear. I fundamentally believe every business solves a problem. Every business solves a problem. Your business solves a problem. The businesses that I have, they solve a specific problem. That's a whole nother discussion for another podcast. Okay. On the business end. And I would agree with you that when I think about like the next move, the move we just made or a move we're going to make, I see it as, okay, yeah, we're going to expand past. And so we're going to run into these issues or these problems. And so we're going to need, you know, we're going to need somebody to to do that. So I, I, I get that, but I feel like that if they're only— if it's only couched as like, you're just going to come in and solve all these problems, that it can feel like in my, in my mind, which is why I'm throwing this to you to kind of like, hey, readjust me here, is that I'm just going to say it like the, the way I— the way it's in my head. I don't want to just come in and take all your crap, okay? I, yeah, sure. I understand that there's things that we're going to be able to improve and, you know, there's problems in the business to be able to solve, but I also don't want to just be a problem solver all the time is how I'm kind of putting myself. So help me with that.

I, I think you bring up a great point there, Bradley, and I appreciate you challenging me on this. And I think it's, it's about how you communicate it. Because it's just not about what I don't want to do as like, if we use me as a business owner, I don't hire based on what I simply don't want to do. It's based on what I'm not. The best at doing, right? Like, I— and I'm looking for people who want to take that on. Hey, like, I, I'm not good at accounting. I don't want to deal with the numbers. I, you know, hate Excel. Maybe somebody out there loves it, is a nerd for, you know, VLOOKUP and pivot tables, right? Who is excited with the problems, the opportunities, the puzzles that need to be solved to help the business move forward.

Yeah.

And so it's not about, hey, I want to throw you all the stuff that I don't want to do. It's about, hey, let me give you the thing that I know is in your zone of expertise.

Mm-hmm.

Right. I don't, you know, some of that might have to do, may encounter, you know, regular necessary tasks. But by couching it in a way of solving problems. What we get away from is work for work's sake, right? Which I think a lot of people get understandably disconnected with. You know, I'm sure anybody who's lived in— who's spent even a cup of coffee in corporate America knows that one of the most popular phrases is, because we've always done it that Mm-hmm. And, and that when you get to that point where you're something to, to do things for the sake of doing things and you don't allow them to problem solve, you don't allow them to iterate and improve, you don't allow them to engage in that core of expertise, that's when you get disconnection. That's when you get people leaving in droves. That's when you maybe worse, somebody who is in that role simply running out the clock and cashing that paycheck even though they're not living up to expectations because their just heart and head isn't into it anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. I can see that.

Yeah. Does that distinction make sense to you?

Yeah, it does. It does. It does. Yeah. I appreciate you letting me challenge you on that just a little bit. Okay. So here's why I, I, I, we went down that path, but I wanted to come back. Reason why. So I tend to use the word A-players. I tend to use the word A-players. Okay. I mean, uh, top talent, 5-star, 5-star recruits, whatever you want to call it.

Right.

I tend to use the word. A players. All right. So I think this came from the book Who from Jeff Smart. I think, I think it came from, and I really liked this idea and the, and the kind of work we're going backwards now to recruiting and that is, um, knockout factors, knockout factors. And so, um, and, and I can't remember exactly how he structured it, but it is this thing to where in the recruiting. System that you have and all of the interviews that you do and then the processes that you have, if you don't see something you're looking for or you see something that's a big red flag, those are knockout factors, right?

Yep.

Can you talk about, you may call it something else, but just the value of you getting clear before I ever talk to the person, anybody, because, you know, you start making, you start getting emotionally connected to people, right? And so, um, to, to basically put all of those things down, this is what I'm looking for. If I don't see these things, I'm knocking Colby out. But if I do see some of these things, these are going to be big red flags and they're going to be knocked out. Like, I'll give you one for us. I'm really big on structure, process. And so like, if you are just, unless you're in a sales role, if you are not, uh, detail-oriented. And organized by nature, it's just not going to work. It's not going to work. Okay. That's a, that's a big, that's a big red flag, especially on the operations side of the business. Right. Talk to, to your thoughts around just knockout factors, what you're looking for, getting clear on what, what you're looking for and also maybe what you're not.

Yeah. So I think where a lot of people tend to default when it comes to interview conversations, interview questions, The behavioral question has obviously been very popular for the last umpteenth amount of years, right? Tell me about a time when we hear that all the time, right? And what happens normally in a, you know, average interviewer's head, not an average candidate, but simply somebody who is having trouble interviewing, they may be a great A-player, impactful problem solver, rock star, whatever you wanna call them, but maybe they just able to communicate in this understandably hyper situation, the default to telling you the plot of the story they want to share. A happened, then B happened, then C happened, then D happened. And what you're missing from that conversation is ultimately the thing that you are buying as a business owner. You're not buying past performance, you are buying current thought process, current logic. And so if somebody is unable to share with you how they think, what, you know, how they problem solve, what's happening between their ears, even after some prodding, some clarity, then that person is not self-cognitive enough to be a productive member of your team. I think that's the biggest red flag knockout thing for me. And One way you can do this without simply asking any questions is what I call the reverse interview, saying, hey, you know, thank you for coming in for this interview with me, you know, Bradley, you know, we're excited to have talked to you more about, you know, this sales role. Over the next half an hour, I'm an open book and I want you to ask me any and all questions you have for me that would help you best understand how you can add the most value if given the opportunity in the role. And leave it at that. The— I think one of the great ways to get to understand somebody's thought process is to look at what are the questions they are asking, what are they curious about, about how are they digging, whether it's sales, administrative, accounting, you know, marketing, delivery, what— it doesn't matter because you want that person to come in with an attitude of, if I can probe you and ask you for your problems, if I can understand what isn't working well and why, then maybe I can come in and provide the solution. But if that person is— all they're going to give you is boilerplate, you know, Googleable questions for the job that you're hiring for, if they come empty-handed, if they're not— if they're looking to simply regurgitate stories that they've practiced for hours on end, that's a pretty big red flag that they're not going to be able to think the way that you need them to if given the opportunity.

Mm-hmm. That's good. I think that's a good example of even just the detail that you gave that question versus a not as good of a question. Yet it's still saying the same thing, but it's not as good of a question as what questions you got for me.

Yeah.

And so it's like, it's directionally correct. Yes. But like being able to give the detail that you gave, of course, I'm not going to try to repeat exactly how you said it, but I think that your listeners could just rewind. That's it. Just go back and rerun that and put that in your recruiting system. All right. I got a question, um, around turnover. I said I would come back to this. And so I want to make sure I hit this. So somebody listening to this may be dealing with, uh, uh, turmoil, um, turmoil turnover. They're, they're dealing with just a lot of turnover. They've just seemingly had one thing after another after another after another. So I, I guess I want to ask that around, um, tips that you have in, in dealing with that. And then depending on the answer, we may go a different direction, but I'm curious.

Yeah, I think, you know, the, the quick and obvious response is, well, you need to get feedback on their way out. But if they're leaving due to some kind of strife, right? Like versus, hey, I got this opportunity that I just can't say no to. It's not my dream company giving me a dream salary. Like, that's fine. If it's they're moving up across the country, you know, maybe you'll get some of that. But in order for you to really get down deep into the conversation, you have to understand what are the disconnects. And I think, again, we talked about before, having those conversations, opening that door, having, you know, a bilateral meeting of the minds on a regular basis. And to ask for feedback and to solicit things that could be better for your employees before it's too late is going to help you plug the hole or, you know, stop the, you know, the revolving door that is your employees. One thing I do for my clients is to do third-party exit interviews, which is really helpful. Because they're talking to somebody who is not affiliated with the company. There's no— there's little risk of blowback or blackmailing. I'm just there to say, hey, like, I was hired by Acme Corporation to talk to you about your experience there, you know, why you're leaving, and give us an opportunity to maybe improve so that, you know, the next person doesn't leave, or maybe to have you back at a later time. And that conversation tends to be much more open and honest than if the person that you hate, that you're escaping, your boss, is talking to you, asking you why you're leaving to your face.

Yeah, so this may be, this may be outside the context of this conversation. Turnover. Lose another person. Lose another person. Lose another person. I've got this concept called smashing Rolexes, which I've shared on the podcast before. But, you know, just keep having turnover every 90 days and you're smashing a $15,000 Rolex, but you don't necessarily recognize it. Okay, how do you— what, what if the problem— what if the problem's not my recruiting system? What if the problem is not even the people? They're great. I'm the problem.

The fact that you've asked that question, and if you've hypothetically identified that, is half the battle. And then you go, you know, I think it's introspection, I think it's self-discovery. It may include some professional therapeutic help, um, it may— it's also going to include having open and honest conversations. Um, one book I'd highly recommend is called Nonviolent Communication. It's a great way to structure, honest conversation, especially asking for feedback in a way where you're kind of doing a bit of a mea culpa to the people that you've wronged before. Um, and I also think too, so beyond that, it's also about expect— like, what are your expectations, right? Are they well beyond what's capable? Are they not aligned with what somebody's really good at doing? Are you selecting people on the— are you intaking people? Are you onboarding people who you simply like but you haven't established a professional respect for or understanding? You mentioned it a little bit earlier, Bradley. It's like, you know, you may fall in love with somebody's personality, but they don't have the technical acumen, business acumen, the personal acumen to do the job, and you don't have the bandwidth to train them. To get to that point, you need them, you're doing everybody a disservice. Yeah.

You know, one of my personal benefits, and I still struggle with this, and so I try, even now I'm doing it, to, on the Monday interviews, is not to talk too much. And this podcast, over a little over 4 years now, has helped me so much in learning to try to ask better questions. I hope that Some of you have shared with me you've listened to the podcast, you know, for years. And my hope is, is that you have seen me hopefully turn pro as a podcaster to be better. And so I will listen to— I actually don't particularly love Joe Rogan's podcast, or some people like that. Or I do like Stephen Bartlett's podcast. I like, uh, Chris Williamson's podcast. But specifically, I'm more paying attention to them because I see them as like they are pros at what they do. Um, and so I've attempted to do that. Here's the reason I'm giving this analogy. And again, I understand I'm talking more than I normally would. Okay. But I'm attempting to illustrate something. And that is early in my career, number one, nobody ever showed me, told me, gave me anything about how to interview. Nobody ever told me. I was never taught that. I didn't go to small business school and sit in a class that said, here's how you actually recruit people at this this is the process you follow, this is how you build a system, this is how you do all that. I didn't know any of that, so I was completely winging it. I was winging all of it. And here's, here's the bigger point: I talked too much in the interviews, all of them. Phone interview. In fact, Colby, I was a really— I was a pretty good sales guy, so I could sell you the wrong candidate on a position And I did 95% of the talking. You did 5%. And so can you speak to that fact as entrepreneurs, as founder owners, if we're involved in that process, that it can be, we have to consciously have an interview, you know, questions and actually have something we're following, or we're going to do like I just did for the last 2 minutes and talk too much.

It's a— it is such a great point because as business owners, I think there is a— there is a large portion of our personality that is sales-driven. Hard to have a business when nobody wants to pay you to do the business. And so we have that intrinsically. Like you said, as you bring in people to help you, there's pride, there's excitement, there's just talk and shop that we cannot help but engage with. And so I think, you know, one simple trick is simply write the word listen on the top of your notepad, on the top of their resume, write the word listen. That way, subconsciously, and, and, and you can offline the remembering of the, the habit to that piece of paper. And it's about ensuring that you are giving space to share. I think you can add things in, I think you can give tidbits, um, but you want to make sure that you are hitting that ping-pong ball of conversation back to everybody else. And so if you can listen more and engage, and I think ultimately leading in that conversation with curiosity— I'm here to understand how this person can help me as much as possible. And if you are, and I think it's a big problem, I think either people talk way too much in interviews or people don't talk enough, right? Because either they like, like you and I, I think go into is like, we wanna talk, we wanna engage, like we don't wanna give away the farm, but we don't want it to be this awkward, you know, like I said earlier, like you're on the witness stand, right?

Mm-hmm.

But then also people who say, well, I don't wanna give away anything. This person has to prove to me with little or no direction that they're the one. And that's not a great place to come with anyway. So it is trying to find a happier medium. And so if you are on the more boisterous side like I am, I completely agree with you, write the word listen, right? And really be present. Practice presence. Don't simply wait for something to talk, actually listen and respond. And if you're on the other side where you talk too little, where you there's palpable awkwardness and silence in the conversation, get to a point and write the word curious, or get the right— the word questions, or simply ask the word why. Or I think a great, you know, little phrase and a hack is tell me more. Somebody gives you a question, you're like, oh, it's interesting, can you tell me more about that? And get them talking. Um, that way you give them the You give them the platform to talk. You're not having to constantly get up and back down from your soapbox. And I think also you're not turning off people who want to conversate, because if you were talking the whole time, you walk out like, I just wouldn't shut up. I can't work with that guy for 40+ hours a week. So maybe you are pushing away A-players, rock stars, impactful problem solvers, because you're not giving a space the conversation.

I think it's good. I, I, I think that there's a give and a take, you know. I'm, I'm in the Southwest, you know, college football, and so there's, you know, recruiting of, of college athletes and, and in football and basketball, whatever. And, and of course that's anywhere but across the country, but it's certainly big in the, in the Southeastern Conference. And there's got to be this thing of that the coaches are evaluating, right? They're trying to see, do we, do we actually want this safety Or do we want that safety? And so they say, identify, they're going to, okay, we're going to go after this person. And they're really trying to bring and sell that person on why they should come. And so I think the, the, the, uh, what's kind of been a helpful frame for me is that, yes, I'm evaluating you too, but I don't want to get to the point to where it's like, okay, now I've decided you're going to come on board with the team. And I've not built any goodwill for where you're actually excited about coming on board too. It's got to be kind of a give and take.

Absolutely. I think it needs to be a relationship. I think for too long we've looked at hire— we've looked at the hiring process, the recruiting and the interview process as transaction.

Yeah. Yep.

Right. And it needs to be— you, you brought up a very good point earlier here, uh, Bradley. You know, we— if you can start treating your current and future employees like you do your clients, you're gonna see a heck of a lot more goodwill brought back your way. Hmm. You don't wanna serve the wrong clients. You don't wanna overpromise and underdeliver. You definitely don't wanna lose the good, and you should always be prospecting for the new one. And so using it as a frame of reference to how to build and maintain a team that will make your life easier, that will take off the burden of you need to do the work, who you can trust, to solve problems, to work autonomously, that can allow you to go on vacation and be home with your family and be present and just disconnect without the fear and anxiety of the sky falling. That is, I think, should be the, you know, in my opinion, is the dream of being a small business owner is to develop a team who will lead themselves.

That's good. Colby, how can you help How can people connect with you, you yourself and your organization? Yeah.

So my company is called Best First Now. Hire the best, hire them first, hire them now. You can find me at bestfirstnow.com. I work with small and medium businesses tackling all the problems we talked about today. Struggles with recruitment, getting candidates who are ghosting them. Offers that are rejected, high turnover post-hire, I would say between, you know, 6 and 18 months. If you have a revolving door, if you're smashing a Rolex, you know, every 3 months, as you said, Bradley, there's something we can fix. Please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. That's where I find the majority of my time and my socialness online. Just search Kolby Goodman, K-O-L-B-Y Goodman. Let me know you heard me here and I'd be happy to connect.

Awesome. Colby, appreciate you coming on.

Absolutely. Thanks so much, Bradley. I appreciate it.

You know, I, when I look back on my notes from that podcast, I picked up a lot of overarching kind of philosophical things, but also picked up some things that are very practical. I mean, even just writing down at the very top of somebody's resume whenever you're interviewing them to, to listen, or if you're going to be on a Zoom call, reminding yourself to listen and ask better questions. Of course, I I did a kind of a poor job of talking too much to try to make that point in that example. But I really have made an effort to try to ask better questions in whether it's on this podcast or even especially in interviews to make sure that I'm making the right decision. But also, I think it's a give and take. And I thought whenever I said that and he said, you know, it's a relationship, um, that makes sense. I mean, you're going to spend a lot of time with this person, even if that person's going to be remote, they're going to be on your team. And I appreciated him allowing me to kind of push back on him about, you know, that they're there to solve a problem. And I was like, I was kind of wrestling with that. And again, I always want to be respectful to our guests. There are times that I've had guests on, I can reflect back over the years, that what they've said actually falls— flies in the face of maybe what I personally believe. But the reality is, you're not listening to this podcast just specifically for what I believe. That's why we have these guests on, because I love hearing from different angles. I love having— my mind has been changed over the years for different things. I'll give you a very specific example. I remember 5 years ago, somebody was talking about starting a business and they were immediately going to give equity away. And I said, uh, that's the worst thing that you can do is to give equity away. That's the thing you want to hold on to the most. Um, and my mind has really changed around that. In fact, I kind of always saw it as holding 100% of the company's equity, no matter what. And now actually I think about it. How can I begin to build a business where people have actual equity into the business? Now, that doesn't mean I'm freely just throwing equity around every which way, by no stretch of the imagination, but my mind has changed and evolved, uh, and I've grown, uh, over that because I've been exposed to other people. My coaches in particular have been able to show me that there's a different way. And so I love having people on that come at it from a slightly different perspective. It makes me kind of sit back, reflect, and think about You know, they've offered a different perspective here. How does that change my opinion? Maybe in some cases it's solidified something that I already believed. And so hopefully that was the case for you as well, listening to Colby. Make sure you connect with him with Best First Now. Connect with him on LinkedIn. Now, of course, it's a natural segue with our partners Autopilot Recruiting. When you're thinking about your recruiting system and the process you go through to post the job, you know, come up with the job description, post it online, get it on all the different interwebs that are out there, and then start getting resumes that are coming in. And then, you know, you got to review those and you put it on your to-do list and you try to carve out the time to do it and you kind of scrub through them and then you start reaching out to people and start start having some initial conversations, and then you, uh, you keep going. You see where I'm going with this, right? It's a lot of that initial first step. Look, is that a good use of your time as the founder? I don't think so. If you think about your hourly rate, um, your time is going to be better suited architecting all of that to happen. Yes, you can build that system and you can build those, the parts of that process and put it inside that system and have your admin assistant or somebody else on your team to that, or you can work with somebody who is an expert in that area. It's exactly where Autopilot Recruiting shines. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Alex and their team know that space, especially if you're in the insurance space, incredibly well, and they're able to start delivering to you some really quality candidates, maybe even some A-players to bring on your team. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. .com. One of the greatest investments that I've made myself is in my own personal development. It's where I've spent the most money. As a matter of fact, a week— less than a week from now, I'm going to be traveling across the country to go in my own personal development. I'm going to be doing what I've shared with all of you, which is I've paid money and more importantly invested my time to be in the room and at the table of people that I want to I personally learned from. And so I'm going to Las Vegas for a workshop here in less than a week from the time that I'm recording this. And why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because for either you or also your team, especially investing in their development is also one of the best, highest returns on investment that you can get. Well, you can do that whenever you work with Coach P. Go to Coach P Consulting. .com. Let him know that you listen to the Above the Business podcast. You've heard Bradley yap about David for a really long time and you've decided, hey, I'll give it a shot. See what all the buzz is about. coachpconsulting.com. Somebody the other day said that, you know, Bradley, you're really techie. And I don't think I'm actually that technologically savvy. I've learned more about computers in the last couple of weeks than I ever thought I would and upgrading my MacBook. And we've got some big time upgrades coming from the, on the podcast. Is going to even make this experience better over the next, uh, 3 months or so. So really excited about that. Hopefully all of you will notice a difference as those things come down the pipe. But, you know, I think the software that I use, whether it's Notion— I'm a big Notion power user. Now, many know, many of you have, you know, jumped on that bandwagon. I used to be an Evernote person. And so I really care about the software itself. Like, is it, is it easy to use? Is it beautiful? Is it Is it complete? Like, is it something that can start fitting into my system? Well, when you work with Today app and you go to Today app Pro, you can get away from— look, I love a good spreadsheet, but if you really want to have a comprehensive place for your bonus and your compensation plans, that's where Today app Pro shines. Go to todayapppro.com. Yes, I got my degree in Finance from Auburn University, and hopefully this doesn't knock on Auburn, but I really didn't know what I was doing when it comes to my financials. And so if you're in a similar boat, book a no-obligation demo with Club Capital, and they work with people who have— like, one of my, uh, uh, Blueprint members literally is a former CPA, and he's probably listening. He knows who he is. And so he has really an incredible skill set that he brought into business. But that wasn't my journey. Maybe it's not yours either, but that's okay. Club Capital can help you. Go to club.capital. All right, everyone, this is a great episode. Till next time, lead well.