Next Level 280: How to Use Psycho Metrics to Maximize Your Revenue & Business with Matt White

We as leaders are writing payroll checks and I think of, let's just say this guy, I paid him $100,000 a year and he said, I'll be 60% productive if you just leave me alone. I'm like the value of that information to know that one. He's been on my team for a long time, but what if I know that about people that I'm bringing on?

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, NextLevelIncome. That's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. What if you could get more out of your team and your team could be happier by helping you grow your business. That's what we're going to talk about on today's podcast with Matt White. Matt is a trusted advisor and Culture index consultant to CEOs of fast growing companies across the country. His expertise centers around impacting top and bottom line results by helping CEOs, entrepreneurs, business leaders, build the right team around them to scale. He lives in Nashville and prioritizes time with his beautiful daughter and wife as a partner in an Inc. 5000 fitness startup. Matt used Culture Index program to scale aggressively. His entrepreneurial experience is rooted in opening several corporate locations and 35 franchise locations in under four years. He decided to exit the fitness business in 2017 to help CEOs and business leaders and entrepreneurs achieve their goals faster. Work with the Culture Index program. He finds great joy in helping difference makers scale and get what they want out of their businesses and teams. And we're gonna show you how in just seven minutes you can figure out the same metrics to help you and your team scale as well. Matt, I'm excited to have you on the show. How you doing, man?

I'm doing really well. Excited to be here. Always good to see you, man. It's been a while. So excited to be here.

I know, I know. We were catching up via email and, you know, for the audience. I got introduced to Matt at a mastermind and I took, I took what's called a culture index and I went through this and I end up sitting with Matt at lunch and he starts, he starts talking about me like he knew me and I was like, wow. I was like, how do you know all this stuff? He goes, I, I read your culture interdex and it was like he was looking right through me. And as a business owner, I was like, man, I can't wait, I can't wait to learn more about this. So when Matt and I, we're connecting, I said, how have you not been on the podcast? So I'm super excited, Matt, for you to share more about what you do and a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.

Well, than you know. And it was, it was a little bit of a tee up for me because you and I have almost the same culture index profile. So when I read yours back, you know, it's pretty easy for me to nail that one. So, yeah, you know, background, I was actually, a lot of people don't know this now, but I was actually in ministry for up until I was 31 and decided it was time to leave ministry. And I loved it, had a good run there. But honestly, for the past few years of that time there, I was just, I was just bored. I didn't have enough challenge. So I was like, all right, so I'm 31, I'm getting in the business world and I don't have any business experience, so I need a crash course. So there's this little company called Iron Tribe Fitness out of Birmingham, Alabama that had just started and I was a member and of the gym and had a talk with Forrest, the founder, and Jim Cavall who is, I am a partner at that time and, and we had been teammates in college together. So I knew him and joined with Iron Tribe and opened a couple of gyms. Then we began to franchise it and it was fantastic experience to learn how to build and grow a business and then also learn how to, how do you think about building a franchise model? You know, one thing to build a business here where you can control that, but how do you build that and how do you systematize it to be able to scale it where you're not there? And so great, great experience and still good friends with those guys and, but we got exposed to this program, became clients and then put it in our business. About a year later, exited Iron Tribe and started with this. And I would say I, I, I'm just leaving a workshop right now and I told the class morning, I said that, that I didn't know that this stuff existed prior to this, but it's just called psychometrics. It's psychology and statistics and probability. And when you get those two together, it, it's human analytics. And so For a lot of us, we're analytically minded. And, yeah, it just was. It felt like I got a cheat sheet on how to know how someone's wired up.

Yeah. What.

What their natural strengths are, what they're going to do when no one's watching, where do they fit in the business? And. And then really, like, how do you design a team to scale and be dependent and autonomous and drive revenue profitability without you having to be there? And it was kind of like magic.

I love it. Yeah. And it's my first. My first experience with this world was with my wife. And we were actually. You don't know this story, but we were in a. Like a business coaching program together. Cause she was going out on her own as an architect, and we were working together in our real estate business. So we got introduced to this coach, and he had us go through. I forget the exact testing it was. And he said to me, matt, he goes, well, this is interesting. He goes, I find that there are, as couples that are business partners, there's two that do really well. Those that are very similar and those that are different, like opposites. And he go, and I already knew. He goes, you and your wife are opposite. He goes, but, you know, Chris and Jessica. He goes, I've never seen this before. And he put the scores up and you. Out of 100 on each. On each level. He said he overlaid our scores. He goes, you. You guys almost have a perfect score combined on every area. He goes, you guys are like perfect complements to each other. He goes, but you communicate in very different ways. So we're going to work on your communication and allowing each of you to work on the right part of the business. And we went on to, you know, do very well together. And one of our. I. I think our biggest comp. Accomplishment was we built the house that I'm. My studio's in right now. And it was great because she did what she was good at. I did what I was good at, you know, picking out the land, putting the vision together, and letting her focus on, you know, the details and the tasks. But the whole time, we worked really hard. And as you and I were chatting before the podcast here today, and we continually work on our communication, which has helped strengthen us as partners in marriage, but also as business partners. So if you're listening today, even if you don't have a business, this is something that can really help in every aspect of your life, in my opinion. So, Matt, let's dive a little deeper. You know it. So I'm Sorry, psychometrics or psychoanalytics is the term.

Yeah, but it's psychometrics. But then I also refer to it as human analytics.

Human analytics. Got it, got it. Yeah. So where did like, where did this come from? Like what was the genesis of this concept?

Well, I mean if we talk about personality traits that goes back to like the desert fathers way back when with like melancholy and sanguine and that, and then you can fast forward through. You know, a lot of people have heard of disc or you know like a four quad.

That was a disc trainer.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean disc is, I think it was by William Moulton Marston in like the 30s or something like that. Or maybe he's the grandfather, something like that. But you know, people have been studying psych psychology and personality for a long time. Yeah, Our particular business started in 99. Took them about five and a half years to build this seven minute survey and so.

Five, five years for a seven minute survey. There you go. And by the way, if you're listening, we're going to give you a link in the show notes here. You can take a look here so you can get that survey yourself.

Yeah, happy to interpret those results. So yeah, it took a while to build this thing and a lot of money and. But then went live in 2004 and probably 60 or 70 independent licensees like me around the country and I don't know how many clients totally there there are. I just, you know, have my practice here in Nashville and around the country and so.

Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah. So who, who are your main clients? Matt? Obviously I talked about, you know, my wife and I, you know, using, using something similar here to help out, you know, in our marriage. Are you working with individuals? Are you working with business owners? Are you working with, you know, employees of big companies? Who are your main clients?

Yeah, well, I'd say it's changed over time. You know, when I first started and bootstrapped this and had no income, I would sign up anybody that had a pulse that pay me business. So it's gotten a little bit more selective since then. Yeah, but it's industry agnostic because we're not looking. This is built around. Our instrument is built around understanding how a person is naturally wired up with their superpower, how they're going to communicate, measuring risk tolerance, how they make decisions and things like that. And then we're looking at that and then what do we need out of specific roles in our company? Yeah, and overlaying that. So then when we get person, someone who's really wired up for that role. You know, we say, yeah, they're going to work well in there, but you know, we help our clients on the front end of this selection process. But I'd say probably only 20 to 25% of my time it's helping the clients around. Okay, what are we looking for in this role? The bulk of what we're doing is, you know, you had kind of mentioned this at the beginning of like working with people. So study 19 patterns in our specific program. And what we're really trying to do is like, you know, like I mentioned, I was able to read yours to you because we have the same profile.

Right.

But out in business, very rarely are you working with someone who is just like you. But yet we. I was actually in North Carolina last week at a client.

Yeah.

And other core values on the wall was we treat other people the way you want to be treated. And I, I stopped at shop and said, we probably need to take this down because that's actually a terrible strategy based. Based off. Yeah, our data and understandings that there's. There's 19 patterns, then roughly 5% of the world has your pattern. And so why we have communication problems, why we have so many unmet expectations when we. Somebody in this role is, if I treat you the way I want to be treated, statistically, I'm going to miss it. 95% of the people aren't like me. What we're really trying to do is equip leaders and business owners with like, hey, here, here's what you need to do to lead, to manage, to motivate, to communicate more effectively. The other 18 animals in the zoo, so you don't run them off. Right. And so you asked about the specific businesses and things like that. I mean, we're working. We had initially started out with the business owner, the CEO, and talked to them about what the business goals are. And I would say that this, this program is really designed for organizations that are trying to scale aggressively. So we don't do a lot of like, individuals, not like career coaching thing like that, but we're able to come inside those CEOs and they say, I'll just to give you an example, I was on the phone with a guy yesterday out of Toronto, just bought private equity. And he said they're going to help us. And they hadn't had a sales team but. But done really well. And he said, they've already told us they want us to 5x revenue in the next three years. And then there's another exit. And so we're what we love when we chomp. We chomp at a bit on that kind of opportunity where, okay, so we're going to take here in five ecstasy in three years. We know what kind of horsepower you have to have in a sales team. And we also know why this salesperson might be very good at salesperson, but not. Not might not be a sales leader.

Right, right.

Because you might need more people skill in a sales role, but more strategy in a sales leader role, you know. And so we're able to like, help companies design teams to scale revenue and profitability. So industry agnostic. I mean, yeah, we're from manufacturing to health care to, I mean, you name it. I've got clients all over the. All over the board.

Yeah, yeah. What struck me when we were having lunch that day is, and maybe it was in the classroom, but you said to me, you know, Chris, you're unemployable. And I was like, what? I was like, unemployable. I'm like, wait a minute, like, I have my own business. And, you know, you came to say, yeah, Chris, you're, you know, you like to lead and, you know, come up with your own concepts and do that. But what it dawned on me is it reminded me of one of the leaders I worked with when I was moving from sales into leadership. And he said, chris, he goes, you got some work to do before you move into management. He goes, you, I wish, you know, I wish I had a hundred of you, but I only got like maybe 10 of you on my sales team. He goes in, as a manager, you can't just work with people that are like you. You've got to learn to work with the other 90% that you're not like, very similar to what you said. And I spent 18 months a wonderful leader because he said to me, and Chris, I'm going to help you get there by building the skill set and the understanding of how to work with other people. And I think we did disc in that training and ultimately went on to teach discovery with my sales teams, which was definitely helpful. But Matt, one of the things that was cool is you compared some of the other psychometric analysis systems that are out there and the specific system that use with Culture Index, if you don't mind sharing the predictability of success and how this is different than some of the other systems that are out there.

Yeah, yeah. So you're talking about just the reliability of the reliability.

Yeah.

Reliability, yeah. And so ours is a 91% statistically reliable. And, you know, a lot of different instruments vary based off the construction or the design of the instrument.

Yeah.

And our particularly is a free choice checklist. And so it's not like, hey, click the word that describes you most or least. It's just click words that describe you. And, you know, it's, it's kind of like magic. I, I still don't know how it produces such scary, accurate results, but by just clicking this word list. 174 adjectives.

Yeah.

And we know very precisely, like, how much, you know, I mentioned you and you talked about the, you know, unemployable and that construct.

Yeah.

When you know that that trade is during an inner directed ecosystem and you have more of it than 98 or 95 of the people on the planet. I know you want to decide your future. And so we just, we don't have to. I think that's what I like about it. And sometimes it can come across as like, kind of arrogant, like how you're really confident in this. I'd say I'm only confident in it because I've just seen the accuracy and the reliability of so much. But when you can lean in, when you know this is accurate and you've got more trade or less of this trade than 98% of the people on the planet doesn't lie. And it's. And you can, you can bank on it.

Yeah. And the cool thing, the way you guys apply it is you don't say, hey, this is how you are. Good luck. You say, hey, you match it to the roles that require those traits and tailor to people's natural talents and natural drivers. Where we were, as you mentioned, like, where your genius is, you know, what, what feels good, what's, you know, you know, and everybody can sit here and close your eyes. It's listening and think, like, what do I love? What I hate about my job? And it's like, well, if you could, if you could do what you love to do every day, you're going to be happier, you're going to be more successful, you're going to be more energetic.

Yeah. Like I just said, I was leaving this workshop. I had a guy in there and we're measuring. One of the constructs we measure is how much confidence one gets from social acceptance in people. And yes, he has less of that need than 98% of the people on the planet. And I joked about him. Thank you for coming out of your cave with us today. I said, but speaking of that, I said, how much more productive would you be if you could come to work for two hours in the first two hours of the day. You don't have to talk to anybody. You don't have to ask or any dumb questions. And he smiled and he said a lot to put a percentage on it. He said 60%.

Wow.

And so think about if we, as leaders are writing payroll checks. And I think of. Let's just say this guy, I paid him $100,000 a year, and he said, I'll be 60% productive if you just leave me alone. I'm like, the value of that information to know that one. He's been on my team for a long time, but what if I'd know that about people that I'm bringing on? So when we're trying to scale, you know, a lot of times you get entrepreneurs and they're hiring their friends and families and people that they know really well. That strategy for building a team runs that it doesn't work anymore when you run out of your contacts. So then it's like we're bringing on new people, and we're having to take a real risk. This is giving us data on. This is what this person's going to be doing in 90 days. And I don't have to wait 90 days to figure out what's going to happen here.

Yeah, no, I love that. And it also. It also makes me think of Moneyball. I love that book. Actually, Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors. I read. I've read all of his books, just about all of them. There's probably one or two I've missed here, so I won't say I read all of them. After this podcast, I'm going to go look and see what I've missed. But, yeah, I love that book, love the movie. And, you know, it reminded me. It's like you got a bunch of nerds in a back room, and they're just looking at players and their statistical likelihood to do well in their position. And they don't have to be the superstars that are out there hitting home runs, you know, yeah, that. That drives, you know, viewership, but what also drives viewership wins. And as a. As a, you know, as an entrepreneur and as an investor, you know, we want to hit consistent singles and doubles, maybe the odd triple, but we want to get runs on the board. You don't have to hit home runs every time. You just need the right people in the right spot playing the right position. And as a team, you can win. And that's what I love about that story with Moneyball, I Mean, Brad Pitt's cool. That's, I think, why my wife watched the movie. But I'm more of a Jonah. Was it Jonah Hill? Is that. Or Jonah? Yeah, yeah. Fan. I'm more. I'm probably more of a Jo. I think that guy's hilarious.

But yeah, I mean, so that's. So that's cybermetric or saber metrics and then you. Psycho.

Yeah.

Right. And so it's. It's kind of the same principle, you know, and they talk about it. It's like they drafted and built that team where they were. They were finding players not built around hype or how they showed up, time in the combine or whatever it is, but it was like off of the statistics. And that's really what we're doing with business owners, is we're coming in and saying, okay, well, let's look, you know, because like, again, we talked about this today. We talked some about interviewing. It's like, what do you, what do you see in a person when they're interviewing? It's not who they are.

Right.

That's why we typically. I stole this out of Vistage, I think it was, but I heard it and I was like, man, this is so true. And they said we typically hire people for what they know and then fire them for who they are.

Interesting.

That is, that aligns with my experience.

Yeah.

And. And it's like, if. What if we can find out who is that and not. Just not, not from a character and values standpoint, because we don't measure that, but like, what are the motivational drives, meaning this person going to do effortlessly? Well, if I can find that out. And let's say, for example, let's boil it down. Let's say this person just really plays offense very well. Well, if I can find out and I put them in an offensive role instead of playing defense, chances are we're going to win a lot more in that role.

So I love that. And say that again. We hire people for what they know. We hire people for who they are. Yeah, I love that. I love that. That's. That's terrific. And is this, is this similar. You know, I was just talking to another person and I was like, hey, how did you, you know, how did you meet your. Meet your wife? And they said, oh, it was on a. On one of these dating apps. Very successful business owner, never been married before. He's similar age as me, in his late 40s meets his. Meets his now wife, and they go out on this date and it was just, he's like, you know, it was, like, amazing because we were just so aligned and we were already talking about our future and all this. And, you know, I had a friend of my wife's about 10, 15 years ago, and she's like, well, how. Like, what would you do, Chris, if you were, you know, dating today? I go, I would probably go on, like, match.com. and she goes, seriously? Because it had a stigma back then, 15, 20 years ago. Had a stigma. It's like, oh, you know, it's like, it is kind of lame. It's like, wait, you can't meet somebody. Like, you know, you can't just go meet somebody going out and doing these things. But if you're. If you're like, you know, my friend who's same age as me, and, you know, you're working a tremendous amount and you, you want to find a partner, hey, you can go and you can take a similar test. Is that. Is that the same thing matters? How is that different, you know, for people that are.

Oh, yeah, I can't speak into the dating world around this. And with our program, we don't really do love, you know.

Yeah, we talk.

I joke about this with, with clients in our, in our workshop when we do talk hiring. And I say, well, like, if you think about it, like, what influences how you. How historically, how you've made decisions about who to hire. And it usually comes back with, like, I got a good feeling about them and I like them.

Yeah.

Like, okay, that's not wrong.

Right.

But in my experience, because I, I did that. Oh, I liked them. But, you know, about 90 or 120 days later, when they sucked at that job, I stopped liking them.

Yeah. Your relationship devolves and. Absolutely. Yeah.

Whether or not I like somebody doesn't mean that they're actually going to be good at the job.

Yeah, yeah. And that's, and that's what we need. We need effective people in the job. That makes them happy. That makes us happy as business owners, you know, whether we're out there as a leader in the business or whether we're out there running our own business. And we need. We need to put these people in place. And yeah, the. This information is super valuable. And again, you know, we were teaching metrics to our sales rep so that they could interact with all these different surgeon, you know, personalities that they're going out for. And simple thing. Like, I think if you're listening today and you're like, okay, I'm going to check out, you know, I'm going to check out this survey at the end of the podcast and do this and see how it can relate to my business. That's great. I think one of the easy things you can do, I always talk to my, whenever I get into a new role mat I'd say to my sales leader and I'd also say to my employees, I'd say like, well, how do you want to be communicated to? And their eyes would light up. Because I hate it when people would leave me like voice messages and I'm like, why are you leaving me a three minute voice message? Like just, you know, send me a text or send me an email and doing that. And everybody's eyes would light up and it just, it made it so much easier. Communication was always, was always so much better. Any tips that you can give the listeners to today, outside of, of the survey, to how to better communicate with their teams if they're, if they're in a team today, if they're working with people today, that you've learned through this.

Experience and that I've got one thing, and here's why is because, you know, with the nature of what we do, we, the data that the analytics that we click collect are like very precise. So for example, you know, we, you and I are the same pattern, but if we were to shift one of the traits by, you know, a standard deviation, it changes the way you communicate. Here's what I would see because I get this with consulting with my CEOs and owners. They'll call me up and they'll be like, they'll want to talk about somebody who's just underperforming. What I've seen is there is a, there is a gap or a disparity in most cases. Because when I'll talk to that owner and they'll tell me what's happening and then I'll stop on and say, okay, from scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate Chris right now? And they'd be like five, six, whatever. I said, okay. I went to Chris and I asked Chris, Chris, how do you think you're doing in your job? What would he say? Almost always my clients will be like, they probably say like an eight, you know, or there's a gap there. So the gap is this is what I see in terms of communication.

Yeah.

Because there's all kinds of nuances about communication from, based on our motional drives. You voice mail, it's like, not, I don't want to scroll. You send me an email and I got to scroll on that thing. I don't respond to it.

Right.

That's my commute. But anyway, what I see in, in for business owners is if there, there's a miscommunication but between how you see your player doing and how they see themselves doing. And it's like if we can, if we can get level up and on the same playing field of them, right where, where they are in your eyes is a, then you can really address the problem because a lot of times they don't know that. You know. Patrick Lencioni wrote a book called Three Signs of a Miserable Job.

Yep. Met Patrick. Yeah.

One of those signs was immeasurement. And he said when people come to work, they weren't clear on what they were being measured on, you know, and I see that a lot in business owners of like, especially entrepreneurs, self sufficient, self starters, independent people, they expect everybody else to be like them, you know, but. And a lot of times they gather people around who are really good at taking orders. Because if you're an entrepreneur, typically you're like decisive. I don't want to do this and I just need somebody to help me take some stuff on my plate. And so what makes somebody a good person who can take orders is the opposite of what makes someone a really good entrepreneur, right?

Absolutely.

And then it's like, and then they get frustrated because they're expecting their person that really helped them do all these tasks to then become autonomous and independent. And it's like it doesn't work. But anyway, back to your communication piece. I'll just say this. It's like if I'm a business owner listening to this and when, when somebody comes to mind of this person's on the struggle bus, you ought to be able to look in the mirror and say, okay, what would I rate them and will they tell me that same rating? Chances are they don't. If that's the case, then that's communication. That is your problem because you have failed to communicate clearly about where they, where they are, what they're doing, you know, And I actually picked this up. Time in ministry, we'd always focus about this because we were all about people development. And I remember one mentor, he always said, man, there's three questions that you need to know how to answer as a leader. Where are we now? Where are we going and what's the next step? And I apply it. I applied that into coaching my, my CEOs when they're talking about somebody, okay, where is Chris now? He's a six. We want to take him to an eight. So what needs to change? What's the next step, then that's what you and Chris need to talk about.

Yeah, I love that, and I love what you were saying. And I always like to say, what's measured matters. And if something. Something didn't. Didn't mat it didn't seem like one of my team members was performing, I'd say, well, am I. Am I actually measuring this? Am I sharing with them that I'm. I'm measuring this? And are we communicating about it? About it? Because that's what they would focus on. And, you know, it's hard when you're in sales because there's so many different components that are out there. And, you know, you got the. You know, the company that's saying, oh, you got to. You know, you got to. You know, you got to be measuring this. And it's like, well, what do you really care as long as we're hitting the revenue number? But it's like, well, I guess we got to focus on that, too. And, you know, sales guys are good at selling. They're not always good at logistics and, you know, inventory management and keeping costs down. Right. Because they're just focused on the top line. So I love that, you know, what's measured matters. I love that. Where are we now? Where are we going and what's the next step? So, Matt, for those leaders, for those entrepreneurs, for those of us that are in business, that are out there, and they said, well, I know where I want to go, I know where I am today, and I'm ready to take the next step. What's the best way to get a hold of you?

Well, that the survey link will be in the notes.

Yep. Right down below here.

You take that survey link, and either me or one of my colleagues will give you 15 minutes. It only takes about seven minutes. Give you 15 or 20 minutes, and we'll just read the data just like I did with you. And then normally, a lot of business owners will say, can I look at this on my executive team? And we say, let's go a step further. Let's collect the data on your executive team. Eight to 10 top performers, and then eight to 10 people that are really struggling. Because it's one thing to, like, read like, oh, wow, that's true. That's who I am. It's another thing when we could say, hey, here's Chris. Here's his potential. He's got more potential to drive revenue and growth in your organization than 95% of the people on the planet. And right now, in his job, he's leaving 50% of that on the table. So it's a huge opportunity. We need to look into why that is. And so when we do a demo, we kind of like, you know, pull the hood up and look at really what's on the. What's. What's. What's under the hood.

Yeah. I love that people are number one resource in business and you help the leaders that are out there tune the engines of their employees and get the most out of them. Matt. So thank you so much.

Like, we're measuring potential. Yeah. And to what degree are we optimizing that potential? Like, if I've got a 400 horsepower sales engine, we, we can tell are you running at 250 power? And here's how you get more out of that engine.

I love it. I love it. So if you want to get more out of your engine, if you want to get more out of your team's engine, reach out to Matt. We got the link in the show notes here down below. Matt, it's always good to see you, my friend. Thanks for sharing your. Your knowledge with the audience here today.

You bet. Thanks for the invite. It's good to see you.

Hey, Chris here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to give to you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook, and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple podcasts.