Employee Retention Strategies Every CEO and Manager Needs

When a global company realized that half of their new hires were leaving within the first year, they called Joey Coleman. By redesigning the first hundred days of the employee experience, they cut turnover dramatically and turned retention into a growth that's Joey's specialty. He's a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Never Lose Customer Again and Never Lose Employee Again. And his first 100 day spring work has reshaped how businesses around the world keep the people who matter most. But Joey isn't your typical business author. He's worked inside the White House, defended clients in courtrooms, sung at the Kennedy center, and yes, he's even juggled in front of the Taj Mahal. His eclectic life experiences fuel his belief that remarkable moments, not perks or paychecks, are what keep customers and employees loyal. Today, Joey and I are breaking down the science and the art of building experiences that make people stay, share and become lifelong fans. Joey, Colin, welcome to Church with Jason.

Jason, thank you so much for the kind introduction. I am so excited to get a chance to connect with you as we've had the pleasure of not only being friends for a long time, but I've been a big fan of yours and it's an honor to be on the show. Thanks for having me.

I really appreciate you giving up your time. I know that you're getting back into the swing of things after a fairly lengthy vacation across across Europe, but hopefully you'll be able to bring some of your absolute wisdom and magic to today's episode. I'm sure you will. Really excited about how we can fuse both customer employee experience in today's chat, I'm wondering why does the first hundred days. You've written two books with this core concept of 100 days. Why does that first hundred days decide the future of every relationship, whether it's a customer or an employee?

I think there's the reasons that we might instinctually imagine and then there are the reasons that are scientifically proven. Let's look at the first, the instinctually imagining aspect. We know as human beings that the beginning of a relationship is the exciting part. That's when it's fun, it's interesting, it's dynamic. And if anyone doubts the validity of that statement, I ask you to just think about the difference in the energy when you just start dating someone as opposed to when you've been married for a decade. Now. I'm not against being married for a decade or but it seems to require a little more effort, energy and intentionality to keep it going long term than to keep it exciting in the beginning. So I think we're biologically hardwired to pay more attention in the beginning, to be more excited in the beginning, to be looking to make a difference, to stand out, to be unique, to be special in the beginning of the relationship. The research also shows that on either the customer side or, or the employee side, a significant percentage of people are gonna leave before the 100 day anniversary. When I was researching both of my books, we looked at businesses small, medium and large, online and offline. Those that operated domestically, internationally, globally, those that sold product, those that sold service, those that sold product and service. And what we found is on the customer side, somewhere between 20 and 70% of new customers were quit before the 100 day anniversary. On the employee side, depending on the type of employment or the type of position that you are hiring for, we saw a similar 20 to 70% of new hires quitting in the first three months. And what that tells me is that our instinct is matched by our reality in that if we don't create great experiences in the beginning, people vote with their feet, they leave. They don't want to be in relationship anymore, whether they're a customer or an employee.

And the thing that comes to mind as you're sharing the research with me is whether it's attracting a new customer or finding that broke hire, it's an expensive exercise and you don't want them to leave in the first hundred days because you won't have recouped in most cases, any amount of benefit to offset the cost of attracting that hire or that customer.

Exactly, Jason. Not even close. In the US I know the data for the United States, it's estimated to be just under a trillion dollars in annual cost for turnover across all companies globally. And depending on whose research you look at, to replace an employee who has left is going to cost you somewhere between 100 and 300% of the salary of the person you're trying to replace in lost productivity, rehiring, posting the job again, going through the interview process, doing all of these things. And so this isn't just a oh, my heart tells me it would be nice to keep them. My wallet tells me it would be nice to keep them as well.

Yeah, yeah. And I often hear those, Those big numbers, 100 million, a trillion dollars here, those numbers in their backflow research. But I'd always say to myself, even if they're wrong, even if it's only 50% of what they say, it's still worth paying attention to.

Staggering. Exactly.

That's.

People tell me it's 100 to 300%. Even if you take the low end of the estimate, you're going to spend 100% of their annual salary just to get a new person in the job. That's before you start paying that salary again. So these numbers are absolutely staggering. And I think anyone who's been an employer or a manager for any appreciable amount of time knows that the financial cost of losing an employee is only a piece of the story. There's the morale cost, there's the institutional knowledge cost, there's the rippling effect into the customer relationship cost of, oh, you just lost the person that was your point of contact. And now we have to re message not only who your new point of contact is going to be, but why the last one left. And we all do the, oh, they left for personal reasons or oh, they got a unique opportunity elsewhere. But everybody thinks, thinks, oh, they left because it's horrible there. And what do they know that I don't know that I should be cautious about or governing myself about going forward? And this is not a recipe for success for either the employers or the employees.

Yeah, makes perfect sense to me. Now, I set up in the intro that you've defended criminals, you worked in the White House.

Alleged criminals. Alleged criminals.

Sorry, Alleged criminals, yes. And you juggle the Tanish Mahal. You've just been on this epic vacation with your family. You really have traveled the globe. How has all those experiences, whether it be personal travel or through the various works of your past, how has that shaped your approach to designing experiences for customers and employees today?

You're absolutely right, Jason. I've had the incredible good fortune and privilege to, to travel to all seven continents at last count, 59 countries and counting. And I, by the way, I don't count a layover in an airport as having been to the country. I have to actually spend the night in the country and experience the people. And while I absolutely believe that different cultures, different perspectives, different experiences are all unique and valuable and important for us to take into consideration, the thing that I have learned in my time and in my travels is that the similarities across our species are much greater than the differences. Almost every employee on the planet wants to do an honest day's work for an honest day's wage. Almost every employee on the planet wants to have more responsibility and more compensation in their role two years from now than they do today. Almost every employee is trying to balance their career, their work, their contribution to the business or to society externally with their life, their family, their relationships. Internally that are part of the smaller network that makes their personal connections. And so I think when we realize these similarities and these patterns within the species and it makes it easier to design experiences that can cut across borders, that can cut across generations, that can impact people of a variety of ages, walks of life, cultures, creeds in a way that becomes more exciting to play with and more impactful in its results.

Yeah, it's a great point you make around we're actually more similar than we are different. Regardless of the language, regardless of where we live, we all want to achieve and contribute. I'm thinking what's the number one mistake companies make in the first hundred days that almost guarantees that they're going to either lose a customer or lose their employee?

Yeah, it's slightly different depending on whether we're talking about customers or employees. Customers. The number one mistake they make is a whole lot of focus and attention during the marketing and sales process. Process and very little effort and attention after the sale is made. Customers as a general rule, feel neglected after the sale. On the employee side, it's a little different. While there's certainly a lot of attention before and there's attention after on the employee side, what I would say the biggest challenge is we have a tendency to fire hose our employees on their first week on the job. I'm working with a consulting client right now and we were looking through their first 30 days agenda. What they wanted to onboard their new hires were across the entire organization, different roles, different responsibilities. And they sent me the day one agenda. And I have to confess, when they sent it, it was in a spreadsheet and it was, the layout was a little confusing. I thought it was the first week's agenda, not the first day. The first day involved getting the new employee set up to speed and familiar with seven different software platforms. Now when I say different, I don't mean our basic, oh, we have Gmail, we have a common calendar stuff. No, I'm talking about industry specific hyper focused customized software solutions that the average new hire hadn't even heard of, let alone used. And it was their thought that this would be a great way to spend the first day. And I thought to myself, if I were a new hire, I'd want to quit by lunch. And so I think what often happens is we are so desirous as employers to get our employees up to speed, to make them productive, to get them contributing. Because often when we're hiring someone we, we're not hiring because we're building depth in our organization. We're hiring because we're filling a hole. Someone quit, someone left, someone was fired. We grew too fast. We're trying to shore up a need instantly. And so we come with an energy of I've got to get you on the phones as quick as possible. I've got to get you dealing with customers as quick as possible without stopping to recognize that the learning curve is incredibly steep. The desire to perform well is incredibly high. And when we match those things with a new hire and the emotions they're naturally going with and an HR team that focuses more on compliance than culture, we create a recipe for disaster.

Yeah, it's easy to understand how that could lead to a challenge, to say the least. The one thing that I was surprised by was you didn't say that they had to also sit in front of a prerecorded video for two or three hours to understand the 55,000 rules and policies that they're expected to follow. From 1.

Jason, you make an excellent point. Yes, I would say what is shocking to me is for as many organizations that are talking about, how can we effectively use AI to maximize our impact, the number of first day experiences that are based on sitting in a conference room by yourself watching old videos is staggering.

Yeah. So let's flip it. What's the single most overlooked a leader can take in the first hundred days of a new hire that will help keep them long term?

I would say the fastest way to create a remarkable experience in the shortest amount of time is what happens on the first day on the job. Now, what we know to be true, Jason, regardless of whether we're hiring a frontline employee or a senior executive, someone who's just entering the market market, or somebody who's been in the job market for decades, is that when they get home that night, their loved one, their significant other, their children, their parents, their best friend, their roommate, someone is going to say to them, how was it? How was the first day? We know that's going to happen with almost 100% certitude. And yet when I speak to organizations, when I consult with organizations, and I say, we know that question is going to be asked, how is your new hire going to answer? I get blank stares. I get it depends on the role. And it depends on. No, it doesn't. You've never thought about this question before right now, and that's a problem. So I think a great place for any organization to start with new hires is what stories do we want them to tell at the dinner table that night with their loved ones when their loved One says, how was it? There's a country music singer, Bonnie Raitt, who says in one of her most famous songs, let's give them something to talk about. And that's the music I want playing in the background for managers, for leaders, for anybody who has folks that work for them. When you're thinking about the first day on the job, I want to give you something to talk about later in a positive way. With most organizations, they've got something to talk about, all right. And it's about the crappy video they watch, the ridiculous paperwork they filled out, the fact that nobody knew it was their first day, the fact that they spent the whole day trying to get their printer connected to their computer. Like, it's just staggering to me that we put all of this time, effort and money into vetting and recruiting and background checking and interviewing and. And then the first day for most organizations is anything but remarkable.

Yeah. I've always wondered why so many companies fail to understand that the journey can be different. And that doesn't mean that it's going to cost you more. It doesn't mean that it's going to take you more time. It's just a journey that's with intentionality. And I love the question. I don't want the audience to miss it. I love the question that you posed. How is the employee going to answer at the end of their first day? How was it? I think so often, and I'd love to hear from you, Joey, whether you've seen this through your work. So often, organizations get focused on what has to happen versus the intention around what they're trying to achieve.

100%. Jason, what we often find when looking at onboarding plans or onboarding strategies is that they read like checklist. They read like a to do, they read like a syllabus for a course of. You need to have this knowledge by the time you're done with your two weeks of onboarding, instead of having anything in either the documented or just the discussed conversation of how are you going to feel? What stories are you going to tell? What are you going to know to be true about these people you work with and this organization you work at, not what are you going to know about how to open a document and upload it and save it and email it to someone else. And I think the fact that we try to spend so much time teaching them how to do the job instead of spending time teaching them why we do things the way we do is a huge oversight. The most successful organizations in the world, if I go in and I meet with anyone in their organization, they can answer a series of three questions. How does this organization make money? How does this organization spend money? How does this organization lose money? Those are basic fundamental questions that every employee of every business should be able to answer and yet they can't. That doesn't even get us into the why do we do what we do? Who do we do it for? What works well about that? What doesn't work well? I don't even get to the more emotion filled, complex questions if you can't even tell me how do we make money? How do we spend money? How do we lose money? And some people might be going, Joey, spend money and lose money. Those might be the same things. They might, but hopefully they're not. Hopefully if we're spending money, it's to help us make money, not spending money to lose money. I think there is an opportunity for every leader to slow down a little bit and to say what do I want new hires to feel, what do I want them to experience? Then what do I want them to know and then what do I want them to do? In that order as opposed to just immediately jumping to what do I want you to do tomorrow? Here's your to do list.

You know some leaders out there organized, they've already got the hundred tasks that the new employee needs to have done in the first week. Talk about throwing people into the dpad. Joey, imagine you're explaining your first hundred days framework to a 10 year old, but just by using what's in their lunchbox. What would you say?

How would I explain the first hundred days principle to a 10 year old as it relates to employee onboarding, but using their lunchbox as the analogy.

Yeah, whatever's in their lunchbox.

Okay.

And you're packing the lunchbox so you can be as creative as you want.

This is great. I will tell you I. I should be semi adept at answering this question since I have a 9 year old who takes lunch to school every day. But I will tell you there is a stark difference between when dad helps pack the lunch and when mom helps pack the lunch as to the quality of the lunch. But I'll do my best to channel the best version of both here. So here's what I would say is the analogy that allows the 10 year old to understand over the course of the meal, in this case the meal being your time getting onboarded, we're going to want you to try and consume all of the food in this lunchbox. Now you have some choices. You can choose to Eat all of the carrots and then eat the apple and then eat the hummus, then eat the sandwich. Or you can take a bite of each and slowly work them all the way down. You can choose to eat all of one on day one and some of the others later in the day for your snack, so to speak. But these are the things that are important for you to do. Now let me explain why each of these items is in the lunchbox. Now that you understand what we're trying to do. Eat everything in the lunchbox. Let me explain why the things are in the lunchbox and then getting specific about, we eat this because it does X, Y and Z. We eat this because it helps us to better understand this. We eat this because it gives energy. We eat less of this and more of this because if we eat too much of this, it causes big problems in the long run. But we can eat as much of this as we want and it'll just help keep us going. I think when people have a context for the big picture, an understanding of how the elements interact and work with each other, and then are given the freedom to choose their own adventure a little bit, right? Choose the sequencing a little bit, it gives them a feeling of agency while also giving them a level of understanding that gets us to the end goal that we're trying to accomplish.

So if a 10 year old can get it, why are so many leaders still challenged by this concept that the hundred days matter?

Because most, in this analogy, most 10 year olds are showing up at a desk sitting down and the lunch is in front of them and no one's saying why it's there, what to do with it, if it's even theirs. And so I think what happens is the people in most organizations who are responsible for finding, interviewing, hiring are not the people who you're going to be working with when you show up. And that's a fundamental problem in how most organizations are structured. I want to be very clear, that is not me taking a shot or a dig at HR or Human Resources or the People department or talent team or whatever you call it in your organization. But at least here in the United States, where I live, in the last 40 years, HR departments have become more about compliance than about culture. They become more about, we need to have this paperwork filled out. We need these elections for your retirement account. We need this type of signatures. We need you to sign up for this plan. You need to sign that. You've watched these three trainings on discrimination and harassment as opposed to saying when you showed up for the first day, was there somebody who was going to take you to lunch? Was there somebody who was taking you to lunch that knew a little bit about you, that knew in advance they were taking you to lunch instead of being told five minutes before, oh, you've got to take this person with you. Was there someone there who met you and welcomed you, or did you walk in to the front desk and say, I, I'm a new hire, I'm supposed to be starting today? What is the level of intentionality that is put into the onboarding experience your first day on the job? More importantly, your second day on the job? Because there's some organizations, Jason, that do the first day quite well. There's orientation, there's onboarding, there's excitement. When they get home, there is something to talk about. And then they show up on day two and they're like, now what? Now your manager is responsible for you. And the manager's, oh, finally you're here. We've been down a person three months. Get coding. I'm sorry, get coding. What? Log in. Did they show you how to do logins yesterday? Log in, get on your account, get going. We're behind. Look at the board. And there's no hand holding, there's no explaining. There's very little time. I think the, one of the biggest problems in the world of work today is that we have a very warped sense of how much time something could take, should take, will take, and has been allocated for it to take. We can do better. We can get further by slowing down. We can get further by being more intentional.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. When I was preparing to catch up with you today for this episode, I was thinking about my experiences through my work. And as both a consultant keynote speaker and an employee, and quite often sitting at the boardroom table, there's a conversation where the leaders will say something like, maybe we need to be a little bit more like Company X because they've got ping pong tables, they're free lunches, they've got these perks. But I don't think that works because I've been in companies where the culture and the performance is high and they don't have those things. And I've been in companies that have those things and it's a revolving door. Everyone wants to leave. So what do you say to a leader who thinks that retention is actually all about the perks?

What I would say to that leader is we probably need to have a number of conversations about your belief process because it seems to be quite absolute and not based on reality. So let's dive in there. Right. But I think here's the thing. Do perks matter once the basics are done? The ping pong table, the free lunch, where there's no consideration for the fact that you are working seven days a week, 20 hours a day. I don't care that you have a ping pong table because I never get to play with it. Right. We need to see what is the balance. And I think at the end of the day, when we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs about what humans really need, once we get the basics covered, which by the way, is not an obvious foregone conclusion, there are plenty of employers that are paying wages that don't allow their employees to cover the basics of food, clothing, shelter. Like here in the United States, we have a number of very large employers who pay very low salaries and have employees that are on government assistance. And, and I'm looking at it going, so let me get this right. The company gets to make more profit, the executives get to make more profit, the shareholders get to make more profit. And as a taxpayer, I get to pay more taxes to cover the cost of paying for your employees who you're not paying a living wage. Did I miss something? So I think we got to do the basics right. We got to get the wage right. And on top of that, we've got to get a sense of purpose right now. This is one that I think gets muddled right, because people think, oh, my work needs to be saving the planet. It needs to be denting the universe. That was great for Steve Jobs, that's great for some organizations. But at the very least, when I come to work, I need to feel like the contributions I'm making are seen, heard, and appreciated. And if those basic things aren't happening, I don't feel like I have value. And if I don't have value, why am I staying here? So I think many of these things are base level considerations that every human being on the planet has that very few leaders are stopping to say, what about the base level needs? Because it's easier to approve a line item to get three ping pong tables than to say, does Jen in accounting really like her job? Does Francois, who answers the phone at the front desk, feel like he's valued? These are the type of questions that require more thought, more insight, and more attention. And as a result, often get pushed to the side by leaders who say, let's just up the perks, knowing that.

The realities are some businesses can't just spend Money, even in. Even fixing someone's salary can take way too long. Really? But it's the reality in some organizations.

Sure.

What are five retention hacks that leaders can try this week without a huge budget? Let's take it as a given. There's some basic things that have to get right, but let's assume they've got those things right. What are five things that leaders can start doing to help improve retention?

I love it. So keep me honest on the count on five. Jason, I'm going to just riff off on a couple and you keep me honest. All right, let's start at the first one. So the first one is, let's make this really simple. Almost everybody listening or watching at some point in their life has written a handwritten thank you note. Here's the assignment. Go write another one tomorrow, but this time make it a thank you note to one of your team members, specifically thanking them for two or three things that they bring to the team uniquely. Call them out. Specifically, write it by hand, put it in the post and mail it to their home. Do not give it to them at work. Send it to the house. Why? Because now it will be opened outside of the context of work. It will be experienced outside of the context of work. And if they have anyone else that lives in their home, often a spouse or significant other who normally hears their venting about how much work sucks, there will now be an artifact in the home that is countering that perspective, that is advocating for the fact that there is someone at work who sees you and appreciates you. So number one, the thank you note. Number two, the thinking of you video. Now this one's going to make some people nervous, but the first one was so easy. The second one I got to stretch you a little bit on pull out yourself phone, open the camera, switch it to selfie mode, click over to video, and you're going to film a 30 to 45 second video. The video is going to be real simple. Hey, I was listening to this chats with Jason podcast all about experience the other day and they had this crazy speaker and he said, think of your favorite employee and I immediately thought of you. Here's why you're my favorite and give two or three reasons why they're your favorite. By the way, some of you are freaking out right now. Joey, what if somebody else on the team sees this? Maybe you could film one for everyone on the team over the course of the next month and everyone would feel their favorites. It's okay to have more than one favorite. I know the Grammarians are freaking out right now that there can only be one favorite. I'm telling you, this is a place where you can break the rules, but give them digital proof that they matter. Because here's what the research shows. Not only are they going to watch that video, in fact, the research shows they will watch that video within 90 seconds of receipt. Within 90 seconds of receipt. They will watch the video, but then they're going to save the video. And the research shows they'll watch it again. And what they will have in that video is your face, your voice, your tonality, speaking openly and honestly with no opportunity for misunderstanding. That, by the way, we can sometimes get in the written thank you note, sometimes people can misunderstand our tone in writing. Hard to misunderstand someone's tone when they're speaking. They will have more digital proof that they matter. Number three, be a colleague, not a co worker. What do I mean by that? A co worker. When they walk into the office on Monday and they see their employee, they say, jason, how was your weekend? A colleague says, did you and Pooh have fun at the farmer's market? The difference is that the colleague asked the question on Friday. Hey, what are you doing this weekend? When the employee told them, they made a mental note of it. And when they came back on Monday, they asked them specifically about the thing that already been shared. The message that transmits is that I care about you as a human as much as I care about you as my employee. I care about your life outside of work. Which brings us to item number four. Make a list of the five things that are most important to every one of your employees that occur in their life between the hours of 6pm and 8am I. E. When they're not at the office. What are the five things that are most important to them? It might be their dog. It might be their favorite sports team. It might be the band that they love going to listen to. It might be the video game that they love playing, the musician they love listening to. I don't actually care what the thing is. I just care that you know what it is. And by the way, there's more than one, which is why I asked you to list five. There's actually dozens, but I just want you to start with the top five. And I want you to actually write them down so that in the future, if you want to do a special perk or a special gift or bonus them, you don't just give them cash. You don't just give them an atta boy, atta girl. Pat on the back. You give them something that is targeted towards something that matters to them, a thoughtful gift, a meaningful experience, something that is unique, something that is special, something that is going to let them know that you were paying attention when they were talking, you were listening when they were explaining what lights them up. So that gets us to four. The fifth and final thing that I would recommend that somebody do to tomorrow start creating remarkable experiences for employees is to lead by example with the behavior that you want. I talk to many employers, especially in high performing organizations that say, we have a problem here. No one will take vacation. People are constantly working. They're on there responding to their emails. At 10 o' clock at night we tell them they don't have to, but they still do it. We're dealing with burnout, we're dealing with turnover. Joey, what are we doing? And I'll say to that leader, when was the last time you took a vacation? I took off at Christmas. How long? Christmas day. The whole day? Well, I did a couple of emails in the afternoon. Okay. You are a horrible role model for the behavior you're seeking to have from your team. If you want your team to practice self care, practice it yourself. If you want your team to care more about your customers, care more about your team. If you want your team to use their vacation days, use yours. If you want your team to not be checking their email on vacation, don't check email when you're on vacation. Be the example that you want to be in the world in how you don't work. A lot of leaders are really good examples in how they do work. I'm prepared for the meeting. I showed up early. I read through the agenda. I'm prepared to answer. I came with some ideas. Great. Have you modeled how not to work? Have you modeled how to talk about your weekend instead of just saying, oh, how was your weekend, Jason? You tell me. Oh, how was yours? Mine was fine. Let's get to the reports. What model? The behavior you want to see. I made that one number five. Because you can start doing that tomorrow, but it's going to take a while for that to fully kick in. But I wanted to give some examples of things you could do immediately that required little to no effort, little to no money, but will really start to move the dial.

Yeah, yeah. I love every single one of those. There is no barrier to actually doing it except for your own belief that it's going to work or not work. So I would challenge anyone listening today. Just pick one of the five and start doing it. That would be a great start. Now, I've had the privilege of seeing Joey present to audiences of all sizes. He's a phenomenal speaker. And we know that in the art of business and life that communicating is such an important skill. So I couldn't have someone with Joey's strength and abilities in this space of communication without asking a question around his hints and tips, if you like, on storytelling. So, Joey, what are the three storytelling techniques that you use on stage or in meetings that any leader could steal from you today?

Oh, this is a fun question, Jason. I like it. Three things that I try to do when storytelling. Don't start the story without being very clear yourself as to what the key takeaway or moral of the story is. So often leaders start telling a story or start getting into an anecdote, and they had a vision of what it was going to be when they started. And that is not the vision they alight on in the end. And as a result, the team is. Wait, was he just ranting? Was he just telling us what he did? What's the intent? Be intentional with your stories. Number two, don't be afraid to tell the same story more than once. So many leaders believe. Oh, we've got, you know, we've got the all hands coming up. I got to come up with new stories and new examples. No, you don't. You can actually tell the exact same stories. I had the chance years ago to see the band U2 in concert, and I show up at the U2 concert, and they start playing songs, and I know the songs, and I'm singing along in the crowd singing along, and it's great and things are going well. And all of a sudden we got into the show and they said, now we'd like to play a song you've never heard before. And they played it, and it was nice and it was well performed and it was musically interesting. But the energy in the stadium drained quickly because they lost the familiarity. There's something to be said for telling the same story more than once, because you can actually bring different energy to the same story or point out different elements of the same story when you are going through the story more than once. And the best storytellers, the best keynote speakers, and I've had the pleasure of seeing you on stage, they know that the more you tell the story, the more you find things in the story that you might have missed the first couple times. Which brings me to my third recommendation around storytelling. I am embarrassed to say that it wasn't until recent years that I Started actively reading into genres that I had no prior experience with. And I did that very intentionally. Reading into genres and to authors to increase my perspective on the different ways to tell a story. One need to only go to Instagram or TikTok to see post about romantasy. 4th Wing, Thorn of Glass, Thorn of Roses. There's always some type of complex name. I've read a number of those books in the last few years and I'm willing to admit that publicly, even though some people might say, really, Joey, you fourth wing, what's going on? It's a fun book, it's an entertaining book. But the reason I read it was to have a perspective on all the people who are loving that series and reading that series, most of whom are women I'm not, most of whom are younger than me, most of whom are having a very different life experience than I'm having. And by reading what they're reading, I'm getting that perspective. I've been really trying to increase the number of authors I read that are not based in the United States. Why? Because I want that global perspective in how they tell stories. And different cultures tell stories in different ways. And if you want to increase your ability to tell stories, expose yourself to more diverse, unique ways that stories can be told. And by almost as osmosis, you will naturally pick up on new techniques, new ideas, etc. We see this in film all the time. Quentin Tarantino was and is famous for starting his movies in the middle of the action, where the scene opens and you're like, what is going on? You're in it instantly. Now, his type of movie, to be candid, is not generally the type of movie I like. I like a movie that starts out and it builds. That's. There's that character, then there's this character. Oh, how are they? Oh, they're actually friends. No, wait, they're enemies. And it builds an arc towards the peak of the interaction and then hopefully the resolution, the denouement, then we. Oh, we understand how it all worked. That's one way to tell a story. But if I'm not exposing myself to other ways to tell the story, I'm always going to tell a story with the same narrative arc, with the same approach. So those are three things I'd focus on.

Fantastic. Joey, as always, you bought the energy, the wisdom, and the practical ideas that people can implement today to improve how they attract, retain and celebrate customers and employees in their lives. But before I let you go, I have one last question for you. You've built a career on keeping relationships alive. What's the single most important relationship lesson you've learned in business or in life that you wish everyone knew?

There's so many things when it comes to relationships. There's so many different types of relationships. Relationships are complex, they're messy. Here's something that I don't know that it qualifies as something that I've learned, meaning I'm fully there. But I like to think I continue to learn more about every day. And to me, that's what I'm trying to put my effort into. It is highly unlikely that any relationship you are in will ever be a relationship that is 5050 at any given point. Years ago, my parents grew up in a large family in the Midwest in the US and we got an assignment to go home and interview our parents on the definition of a successful marriage. And I'll use this analogy, but it applies to all relationships, not just marital relationships. And I asked my parents, what's the secret to a successful marriage? At the time, they'd probably been married 20 plus years. Now they've been married 50 plus years. And my dad said, the secret to marriage is realizing that it's not 50 50, it's 90 10. And I thought, that's interesting. And before I could say anything, my mom said, and it just depends on which day who's giving the 90. And what's interesting is if both people give 90, the relationship is at 180%. If both people give 10%, the relationship is only at 20%. So stop striving for 5050 and try to find people that want to be in relationships that are going to give more than 50% but are also going to be okay giving less than 50% because they know you're going to make up the difference to make sure you're always at more than 100%.

What a great way to wrap the show up. Huge thanks to Joey Coleman for showing us that the future of every relationship, whether it was a customer, an employee, or just a friend, is shaped in those crucial early moments. Here's my challenge to you. Don't wait until day 101. Redesign one welcome moment, one touch point, or one conversation this week and see the difference that it makes. If this episode sparked an idea, share it with the leader in your company who's struggling with turnover, or tag the person who made your first hundred days unforgettable. Follow the show, leave a review, and send me your number one takeaway. I read every message. I'm Jason S. Breadshaw reminding you that when you transform the experience. You transform your business and the world around you.