Why Your Best Employees Keep Leaving
In this 20‑minute talk, Mike Andes argues that the single most effective lever for retaining technicians and managers in home‑services businesses is a structured, monthly one‑on‑one meeting. He explains why turnover is rarely about pay and is almost always about the manager‑employee relationship, then walks through a repeatable process that turns a potentially awkward conversation into a relationship‑building ritual. Key components include: (1) breaking the ice with a "high‑low‑buffalo" icebreaker (share a recent win, a recent struggle, and a personal fact the other person doesn’t know); (2) using a walking format or a 45‑degree seated angle to reduce intimidation; (3) documenting takeaways and following up on personal and operational issues; (4) explicitly asking “What can I do to make your job better?” to surface complaints in a collaborative tone; (5) aligning each employee’s personal career stage with a clear progression chart (pay‑for‑performance, skill levels, titles) and co‑creating next‑step actions; and (6) consistently reviewing and acting on feedback (equipment problems, scheduling, communication style, yellow‑slip perception). Mike illustrates each step with real excerpts from a community member’s first‑month results, showing how regular one‑ons‑ones generated concrete improvements in morale, equipment maintenance, and process clarity, ultimately reducing churn. The talk concludes with a call to action: every manager must hold monthly one‑on‑ones with direct reports, document them, and cascade the practice down the hierarchy to keep the team engaged and the business scalable.
Chapters
Everyone wants to know the next marketing hack, how to get more leads, the next whiz-bang idea that is going to get their business to the next level. When it comes to home services, the reality is it's usually pretty boring in terms of what you need to do to be able to grow your business. And it usually comes down to creating an amazing team. And it's very hard to create an amazing team when there's a constantly, constantly revolving door of employees leaving your business. Managers don't stay. Great technicians don't stay. And one of the best tools to ensure you actually keep your team and maintain them and retain them is one-on-one meetings. And yes, that's boring. And we've heard it 1,000 times before. I want to walk through the steps today to be able to hopefully convince you that one-on-one meetings is the most impactful thing you can do in your business. Now, don't take it from me. I'm gonna read it from our community school group where one of the members made a phenomenal post after implementing the one-on-one system and having a one-on-one meeting with his employees and what it did to his business in the next— in the first 6 weeks. But I wanna first read one part of his quote or his post I thought was really, really good. It says, One-on-ones arguably have the highest rate of return or impact on the team and crew. Look, these first few one-on-ones might feel a little weird or awkward, but they are incredibly important. Think of it like a relationship. When you're trying to win someone over and get them to date you, you put in 100% effort. You do the grand gestures, you dress up, you listen intently, you constantly show up. That's the job interview. But once you get the girl and the relationship becomes official, a lot of people make the mistake of stopping all the things they did To win her over in the first place? They stop dating. They take the relationship for granted. These one-on-ones are us continuing to date our team. Now, let's be clear. Every HR team in the world doesn't like this line, and that is date your team. But the concept is true. All of us spend so much time finding great people, but very little time retaining them. Retaining them. And a lot of us conceptually know that people leave because of bad managers. We have heard that before. But we're not willing to do the work and get through the awkward phase of having a one-on-one meeting where you sit down knee to knee with someone and you're talking to them. Now, a couple hacks. This is awkward, talking to someone toe to toe, knee to knee, belly to belly about their performance, And personal stuff in their life can be a little awkward. It's awkward me making this video and talking to this random wall over here. One way to break this up is to stop sitting down and take your team for a walk. And so around the shop, down the street. If this is really hard for you to be able to do a one-on-one meeting, a great hack is start walking with the person. All right. So if you're walking with someone, Guess what they're doing? You're shoulder to shoulder and you're able to look away and it's not as awkward. Whereas if I'm belly to belly talking to someone and I'm sitting down, that can be intimidating for them and it can be awkward for you. By walking and talking like this, I can be looking away, it is not 100% fixed gaze on them. So that's the first hack is do your one-on-one meetings while you're walking if you're not yet comfortable. Now, that being said, sitting down is a universal sign of doing business. When you go to sign documents, when you go to do an important meeting, you have a boardroom, people sit down. Again, this is Western culture we're talking about here. I believe that sitting down in the long run, you're going to get more accomplished. You're probably going to have better note-taking. You're probably going to be able to document things better by having a computer, being able to take some notes, etc., or at least recording it. That being said, I would rather you do a one-on-one meeting walking than do no meeting at all because it feels awkward or it feels strange or it feels different. But what this community member mentioned inside the school community is so incredibly true. We try so hard to get them hired. We do walkthroughs of the shop space. We text them. We send automations. We make sure they go through a hiring sequence. We might even do a great onboarding and training. Some of us don't do that, but like, Even if we do a great job training and getting them onboarded, we don't do a great job of retaining them. And building a bigger business when you have a revolving door of employees leaving is building business on hard mode. It's so difficult, especially when you have mid-level managers and you start getting above $1 million, $2 million in revenue. It is so hard to build a business if you have a revolving door of people leaving. And if you ask people why they leave, it's very rarely because of money. A lot of times it has to do with their manager. And for a lot of the people watching, you are the manager to your technicians or to the managers that are managing your technicians. So how do we have a great one-on-one meeting? I'm gonna go through this very briefly. There's another video I had that went into deep detail of every step of a one-on-one meeting. At the end of the day, I need to break the ice and then I want to be able to make sure that they get to the next stage of their career. They improve. And I'm not gonna frame this from the perspective of a performance review. This is an audit of your performance. We're gonna improve you up. No, this is all about helping them get closer to their goals. Most business owners don't even talk about their goals, let alone most team members or technicians or people that are just starting their career. Very few of them have very detailed structure around goal setting. And so it's awkward for them too. So, okay, you're awkward because you don't really want to have a discussion about someone's performance. They're awkward because they've never even talked about their goals. They've never even thought about their goals. So this is why most people don't do one-on-ones, because it's awkward for everybody. So what can we do to make sure that is alleviated, that that is reduced? First off, I'm trying to break the ice. Okay? Whether you're walking shoulder to shoulder or whether you're sitting down belly to belly across a table, ideally I'm not 90 degrees with them. If you're going to sit down near someone, do a 45-degree angle, at least less confrontational. If I'm like this, all right, what are we doing today? You need to improve at this. This is confrontational, typically shoulder to shoulder. All right, I'm going to flip it 45 degrees. And now I can have a conversation with you and not— you don't feel as intimidated. I don't feel like I'm about to threaten you. All right. Little tiny hacks if you feel awkward on your one-on-one. When I open up, I am not jumping into your efficiency scores. And I'm not talking about how you do a horrible job and you're making mistakes. I'm not talking about that. I'm going to talk about the things that you care about to break the ice. So first off, I'm going to be asking, what's a win recently in your personal life? What's a win in your professional life? So at work, and then also like, what's a low? Like, what's going not so great personally and not so great at work? So we call this the high-low buffalo strategy, which is share a high, share a low, and then share something that you don't know about the other person. And I'm gonna do this as a manager. So I'm not just gonna be like, all right, tell me what's going well at work. Okay, tell me what's going well at home. Okay, tell me what you're struggling with at home. Tell me what you're struggling with at work. That doesn't work. Do you want to make this a conversation? This is why it feels awkward if you don't use this system, is because it's like this one-way street of like you testing them or you like marking them like a teacher. Who likes a teacher grading your performance? It's not fun. I want this to be a conversation. So high, high, low, low, buffalo, meaning they're going to share a high. I'm going to share a high. For example, they could be like, well, I finished my first project the other day completely solo and it went well and the customer is super happy. That's a win for me professionally. Like, let's go. All right. Win for me. For the first time last month, we were able to break 20% profit margin. Again, I'm sharing a professional win. Okay. What about personally? What do you— I benched 225 pounds for the very first time. That's their win. For me. Oh man, that's great. Actually, yesterday, for the very first time, I was able to do 7 days straight of working out in the gym. That was the first time I've ever done that. Win for myself. Okay. What about from a— what's the hard part? What's not going well? Okay, well, actually, right now, the equipment's breaking a lot and it's extremely frustrating. It feels like all the time we're coming back to the shop. You're like, oh man, okay, heard. Thank you very much. I'm taking note of that. All right, for a low for me side, on my end, honestly, our close rate's been lower and I haven't been able to close as many jobs. So I'm trying to do like upsell calls and I'm trying to follow up with people, but our close rate's lower than it usually is this time of year. So now I'm sharing a low professionally. And you do this cadence of high, low, and buffalo. And the buffalo part is sharing something with them that they don't know about you. And I'm gonna do that first. So I'm gonna say, well, One thing you might not know about me is that I actually hate drinking water. Don't worry, that's not true. I hate drinking water. I can drink sparkling water, I can drink stevia, I can drink anything besides water. I just hate it. And that's something I'm sharing personal about myself that they might not know. And then I ask them to do the same thing, and they might share something that in their personal life means a lot to them, or something they've accomplished, or something that is kind of an idiosyncrasy or something they did in the past that no one would know about. This is the type of way to break the ice. And now what's cool is I have so many data points to be able to use with that person throughout the next month, 'cause I'm doing these one-on-ones every single month. But now I know something that they might be struggling with in their personal life, in their professional life. I know something that they feel very proud about in their personal life and in their professional life. And I know something that That I didn't know about them before. These are now 5 touchpoints, 5 things that I can use over the next month when they're loading up the truck, when I see them in the office. I might only see them, especially you grow a business, you might see them once a month or twice a month just in passing at the shop. But now I can be like, hey, by the way, I know you benched 225. Have you gone any higher? I can be like, hey, by the way, I did mention to the shop manager about X, Y, and Z with the equipment that's breaking. Has that improved? I wanted to check in. These little touchpoints are now spread out throughout the next month. You have direct connection, personal connection. They don't look to you as a boss overlording them. They see you taking action on the things that they mentioned. You check in with them as a human being about the things that they're struggling with or the goals that they have in life. And it's a great icebreaker. Now, the second half of the one-on-one, I am trying to determine several things. Number one, What can I do to make working here better for you? A lot of times, this is the exact same thing as saying, tell me all your complaints. But now you're doing it in a positive way, a way that's much more constructive and that we're on the same team fighting these problems together. What can I do as your manager to make sure that working here is better? What can I do to make your job better? This is when a lot of things will come up. I'll read a couple of the ones that This community member mentioned that was coming up in his one-on-ones. These were some of his takeaways. Team meetings in the morning seem to be only about the negatives. Can we have some positivity? That is a great takeaway to know as a manager. Second takeaway or thing that they— crew was bottling up that came out during his one-on-ones in his first month. I don't like working with this certain person. They make me weed eat. They're on a mowing crew. Everything all day long. Okay, good to know. Can we cross-train this person? Can we do some sort of system to make sure that there's some— you go from mower back to weed whack, going back and forth if you're on a crew? Third takeaway he had, or from the employees, I feel like you mentioned things in public that should be private, and it feels disrespectful in how you say it. That is a phenomenal takeaway that I can guarantee you, if you don't create a safe place for an employee to say that, They will hardly ever give you that feedback. When was the last time you heard a technician be able to tell their direct manager, the owner of the business, that level of constructive criticism? But if you do the one-on-one in a correct— in the correct fashion, and it's not a, I'm up here, you're down there, it's much more of a collaborative approach to making their life better and getting them closer to their goals, they'll bring these things up because you've made it safe and you're not in this combative, audit type of a relationship. That's phenomenal, like such a phenomenal takeaway. Like, for most people, they would need to hire a communication coach, record their calls that they have with their team, and send them to someone very expensive to get that kind of feedback about the fact that you're saying things in public that should be held private. And that's a phenomenal way to then fix that problem as a manager, and then make sure I don't get— I don't have team members leaving over My personality issue, the thing that I thought was just the way to communicate and I was being blunt or I was being honest, but in reality, it's hurting my team. I didn't know that. Okay, I can adjust. All right, number 4, you always fix things, but I wish my equipment would get fixed sooner or we had more backup equipment. Okay, good feedback. Again, you can't take action on every single one of these things, but these are the type of common things as they start bubbling up, I need to address as a manager to make the life of my technicians, my managers better. Number 5, I feel like a yellow slip means I'm going to lose my job. The yellow slip is where you have to go back to the property. Okay, is it that I'm coming across like this is a negative thing? Or could I somehow rephrase yellow slips or callbacks as a way for us to learn to serve the customer better? Can I reframe what a yellow slip is? Excellent feedback. Number 6, I always get the job done, but I go home beat down every day. I feel like I have too many budget hours. And this came from an older member of the team. These are all phenomenal takeaways that he was able to get in one month. Now, we talked about breaking the ice, we talked about making sure we're trying to understand from a collaborative approach how we can make their job better. And then the last part that we've talked about before is we want to ensure that we are helping them get to their goals. Now, I'm going to assume that we have done the harder work of aligning the goals of the employee with the business already. We have pay for performance, we have stages of success that they're trying to move up into. By formalizing some sort of stages of moving up as a technician, moving up inside the company, if you formalize that, even if it's just a matter of gaining new skills, having a new title, getting new comp, whatever it might be, if there's some sort of progression inside the organization, you can now look at that chart, you can look at that, those levels and say, okay, you're at stage 4. To get to stage 5, you need to do these things. What can I do to help you get to the next stage of your career? Like, that is the exact same thing as saying, you need to do this better, you need to do that better. I would like to see you improve this. You need to add this skill. I saw this the other day, I didn't like it. That is the exact same thing But said in a very constructive manner, which is, hey, I want to see you get to this level. What can I do to help you get there? And now they've got to be reflective, like, well, I kind of need to learn this skill. I haven't been doing so great in this area, and that's why I keep getting yellow slips. So like, I'd like to— I need to do better in this one area. I can get— show up a little more on time so I can get my profit sharing. My P4P is down because I haven't been showing up to work with my lunch. I've been stopping a few times at the gas station so I could kind of shore that up a little bit. Now you're collaborating on the exact same feedback that could come across as, you need to stop stopping every single day at the gas stations. You need to show up on time so that way you can get profit share. Like, same exact thing said just in a different manner, a different way. So that's my takeaway for you all today. Have a one-on-one meeting with every technician, every manager, any direct report. As you grow the business, you'll be having one-on-ones with the people that are having one-on-ones that are the people that are having one-on-ones. If you can grow a big enough business. But your direct reports, the 8, 10 people that you might have reporting directly to you, I've gotta have a one-on-one meeting with them. And then I'm making sure that my managers are having a one-on-one meeting with their team every single month. And then I'm documenting, taking notes of what's said, what I can do to improve, what I can do to improve the workplace. And if you do that, the likelihood of you keeping your team is a lot higher. And I wish that for every person. I've been extremely blessed to have a phenomenal leadership team that has stuck with me for a long time. And I wish this for every entrepreneur and small business owner because I know what it's like to have huge churn and it is so hard to grow a business. You're constantly training new people. The best ones leave. You don't know why. You're frustrated. It's hard to ever plan or make initiatives because you don't know if your team's going to be around. You're constantly wondering if you're gonna be drawn back into a fire. I wish for every entrepreneur that they're able to keep their team. And the best way to keep your team is to care for your team. And the best way to show that you care is to have a one-on-one meeting every month.
