How To Boost Your Bottom Line Through Employee Empowerment | Capability Amplifier EP#138

At Mercury, we believe that people are the center of the company's solar system. So everything in a company revolves around its people. We also believe that every person in an organization has unique superpowers. And those superpowers often lie dormant until they're given the opportunity to shine.

You can work with someone with decades of experience, with hundreds of tactical multipliers at their fingertips. They can listen to practically any problem. You can sit down and pull out eight ideas. They're relatively easy and fast to implement, they're measurable, and they produce predictable results.

For me, employee engagement is top of mind. Employees that come to work and what do you hear? Happy employees make happy customers. Yeah, right.

Make happy owners and stockholders.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Everyone, welcome to Capability Amplifier. This is Mike Koenigs. This is my friend Brian Howard, and I'm super excited today because, first of all, you're going to love Brian, and he is a fellow tech nerd who has some really cool stuff to share. But first of all, there are 10 big things that can destroy a company or a brand. Lawsuits and compliance are two of them. And then there's employee turnover, poor hiring, bad managers, workplace conflict make up six. And my guest today is Brian Howard, founder of Mercury Performance Group. Now, he's worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Chase, Everbank, Wells Fargo, GE Aviation, Unison, Southeast staffing, and dozens more. And he's known as a fixer for his ability to quickly diagnose and solve any problem that comes his way. And when it comes to hr, performance retention, and anything else that makes or breaks a company, everyone needs a guy. He's a visionary who asks great questions, diagnoses problems, and solves them with ease. And today, he's going to share the M Factor toolkit and give you a diagnostic quiz that can help you identify how well you and your company are performing. As I mentioned, he's a fellow tech nerd. He's using some of the coolest new tech to build out his training systems and deliver his IP at record speeds. So, first of all, thank you for being here today. This is awesome.

Thank you for having me.

Awesome. Well, I know we're going to get into your backstory, how you started this business, and also just some of your really, really cool systems and strategies. But you've got this little story you often tell when you're on stage, the Inchworm story. So why don't you begin with that? Sure.

So the Inchworm effect, or the Inchworm story that I came up a long time ago, came up with a long Time ago, I noticed that inchworms move incredibly similarly to bell curves. And so I started thinking about the inchworm and watching videos and pulling up pictures and seeing those things. And what I noticed was an inchworm would flatten out and then build a peak in the middle and flatten out and build a peak in the middle. And I. And inchworms can cover an incredible amount of space in a very short period of time. So I started thinking about, how does that work for performance in a company? And it really works the same way. So if you think about the bell curve as the inchworm, the right side of the bell curve is where all of the great performers live. The left side of the bell curve is where the poorer performers live. And then everybody else in the middle is basically average. And the higher the average goes, the steeper the bell curve gets. So started thinking about how can we use this to improve performance in companies, and came up with the idea that you walk into a company, you figure out who the top 20 performers are in the company, those people that are on the right side of the bell curve or on the head of the inchworm, and find out what they do. Great. These are innovators. These are top performers. These are people that, no matter what you do to them, they find a way to improve performance and be the top performers. So we decided we would take the training and development approach and the Inchworm approach and take everything those top 20 people, or top 20% know and teach it to the rest of the organization. And what you end up with is a perpetual flattening and steepening of the bell curve. As the top performers innovate and learn and do new things, they move out front, and we teach everybody in the middle how to do those things, too, and everybody becomes a top performer. And that motivates the top performers to innovate again and learn and grow again. So basically, the bell curve moves to the right just like an inchworm moves across a leaf or a tree limb. And so that's what we've been using going forward. And I think it's a great analogy for how performance improves and how companies can continually improve by paying very close attention to their top performers.

Yeah. And as you were telling the story, you know, the first time you told me, I wasn't listening the way I'm listening right now, but I was imagining the inchworm climbing stairs. It's not just a linear relationship. This thing creates increasing momentum. And, you know, it's kind of like the rising tides raising all boats.

Yes.

Too. So. So thank you for that. That story meant more to me the second time I heard it than the first time. Now, before we get into starting Mercury, you have some non negotiable values, something you call the Mercury Manifesto. And I think I want to cover that before we get into your origin story. Just because again, as I listened to the interim story, I realized again, something I hadn't thought of before when we were talking about this. So once you give us the Mercury Manifesto, I think that's a good transition point to the. To the origin story.

Sure, absolutely. So at Mercury, we believe that people are the center of the company's solar system. So everything in a company revolves around its people. We also believe that every person in an organization has unique superpowers. And those superpowers often lie dormant until they're given the opportunity to shine. We also believe that alignment and engagement are the hinges that swing open the door of high performance.

Leaders are the key to unlocking the potential of people and teams. And one size just doesn't fit all. It's really about custom tailored solution to create sustainable results for employees and for employee performance and learning and evolving aren't really negotiable in a company. Some people think they are. But growth is really the only evidence for life in a company. If a company's not growing, it's dying. And then finally we believe that empowered people transform organizations.

It's good. Again, as I was thinking about this, listening to you the first time when you went through this with me.

You'Re a guy who's lived these values. It's clear in all of your products you've created in terms of how you packaged everything, that this is a reflection. I see the continuity in all the decades of your work. Which leads me to my next question. Is your origin story.

You spent decades in corporate America before you got that entrepreneurial bug and you had to move on and do what you're doing right now. So why don't you talk a little bit about the dominoes that led up to that and how that actually helped name and create essentially the relationship between the name of the company, what you're doing, and all these other pieces. I think then all these things are going to make a lot more sense to our listener and our viewer.

Sure. Like you said, I spent a lot of time in corporate America and my life is really two halves. The first half was trying to climb the corporate ladder, trying to do those things for everyone. So working to try to make myself better, but also being selfish and somewhat greedy. So I hate to say it but didn't really care a whole lot about who I stepped on on the way up. It was really just about being competitive and, and really growing as a person. And the cost didn't really matter. That caught up with me. I had a. A. A really bad marriage. I was a smoker. Two, two and a half packs a day, and, and working crazy hours, you know, 18, 20 hours a day. It was. It was really all about the grind more than anything else. And I did that for quite some time and one day ended up flat on my back in a hospital room after a triple bypass surgery. And so that'll teach you some lessons really quick.

Yeah, sure.

Well, so obviously something had to change. And so the first thing I had to change was the stress in my life. And happy to say that I met my wife Erica at this, at this point. And so she was a big part of the turning point in my life too, and is still my partner and best friend today, which is great. But the main thing was I learned that I needed other people, that I couldn't do this on my own, and that, you know, climbing that corporate ladder was really a fruitless endeavor in the end. And that what it's all about is helping other people and, and just realizing that you can't do things on your own. You need other people. And so I continue to work in corporate America. Corporate America. But I had a different approach at this time, and it was an approach of gratitude and generosity. And so all the corporate jobs I had after that, up until opening Mercury, I kept those things in mind. So we, my wife and I traveled to Italy and we were out visiting wines. I love wine. I know you do, too. Yeah, yeah. So we were out visiting wineries and doing wine tastings and. And I was thinking about, I, I want to do something. I don't know what it is, but I want to do something. And so we were thinking, and we went to a winery called Monte Mercurio is the winery. And it was great. I know that as I was sitting there thinking about the. The God Mercury that the winery. Winery is named after and the mount, the hill that it sits on is the mount of Mercury. And so I started thinking about that and thought, well, Mercury was a God of commerce, a God of communication, God of speed, of course, known for his speed. And so I started thinking about all of these things, and it started being basically the foundation of what I wanted to have as a company. And so we left the winery, we bought some wine, of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't imagine. I can't imagine that would happen in building. Right.

And. And we traveled back home, and as Erica and I talked about it a lot, we. We decided that Mercury was the right name, the right representation for our company. The other thing is, remember, I said, I can't do things alone. I did own a business in the past that I had for several years, and the. The hard issue sidelined that for me. So I basically lost it because I was the only person in the company. So I took all of the ideas from Mercury, and I also said, I don't want to do this by myself. I want to bring other people along. And so hence the name Mercury Performance Group. And that's what we're doing now is bringing other people into the fold and sharing our ideas and capabilities, but also being generous with the ownership of the company.

Yeah, it's smart. It's a great story. And it's also.

You know, it's clear you've gone through the humbling process, and it's made you a better man. I've watched you, your relationship with Erica, obviously, the way you treat everyone around you, and you're a guy on a mission who's completely run by core values. And that really leads us to. After spending decades in the industry behind the scenes, working with massive companies with tens of thousands of employees, you kind of been there, done that. And one of the things that I really admire is you've sat down and looked at like, what are those big core eight things that make or break an organization, make or break the teams, make or break reputation, and make people either want to work or run away from the organization. And that's what your toolkit is. So can you go through the eight components of the M Factor toolkit, what those are, and then we'll get into some of the diagnostics, because knowing how you do what you do and identifying them, fixing them, is obviously why we're here today.

Sure. So the eight pieces of the M Factor toolkit are related to performance.

Employee retention.

Employee engagement, customer engagement, reputation. And that can be employer brand, or company brand. Yep.

Interpretation, which is really about avoiding or fixing conflict and communication within. Excuse me, within an organization, and then also governance, which is really about compliance and protecting the company from lawsuits and. And other regulatory issues.

So the bottom line is there's certain people you never want showing up at your door.

Absolutely.

So preventing that from happening, it's also a fast way to get fired.

Yes.

So in terms of the order of these, you know, every organization has a different order of value and importance, but ultimately it comes down to, are you finding and hiring, motivating the right people? Can your, Is your brand capable of attracting them in the first place? If they search on Glassdoor and all they see is a bunch of hate, it's going to be a hard time. You're going to have a hard time getting them in. If the FBI showing up at your door every couple of years, that's not very good.

You have problems for sure.

Exactly. And then also, are your employees engaged? Are they living by the rules and the values? And are those even visible? Because, you know, I, the way I describe this is if someone asked me, do you know who the CEO of your cable provider is? It's like, nope. Do I care? Nope. Yeah. If I have another choice when I move in the second, Yep. I have zero loyalty to them. I never hear from them unless they're taking something from me or increasing the price. There's zero loyalty. But, you know, when you look at, what car do you drive? I've had Teslas for 12 years. And Elon's had his ups and downs in the media, but there isn't anyone else talking about flying to Mars and doing something about it. And he kind of beat NASA after doing what they're doing for 50 years, and he did it in less than 10. That's because something's going on there. There's some core values, some, the ways they, they find, they motivate, they train.

And the same is true with other, other companies. Again, pick the brand that you're loyal to, whether it's a car or a phone or a computer, and ask yourself those questions, why? And these are things that for you, you've broken it down into formulas and tools. Which leads us to the quiz. You've put together a diagnostic tool. This is the baby version because you do really, really deep stuff when you're actually engaged. But once you go through the 10 questions, that'll either make your, the back of the hair and your neck curl and your toenails curl too, or you can go, okay, we got past that one. So you want to walk us through?

Absolutely. So this, this quiz, this diagnostic, if you want to call it that, is a, is done on a one through or is actually a zero through ten scale where zero is absolutely not, it's a dumpster fire. And ten is we're perfect. We don't, we don't need any help. We're doing everything exactly right. So just keep that in mind as I go through the questions here. And, and, and for the people that are listening out here, obviously Score this yourself and we'll talk about that at the end. Yeah.

Either pull out a piece of paper, write these things down, score yourself 0 to 10 on all of them, and we'll add them up in the end and find out where you're at.

Absolutely. So first question is, is how good is your employer brand reputation? And we just made a joke about a dumpster fire. You mentioned Glassdoor a little while ago. So. So zero would be.

It'S a dumpster fire, but at least I got a 1 rating on Glassdoor. So. So that's how that. So that'd be a zero. The second question would be, how often do you feel overwhelmed, tired, and buried in the day to day, unable to see tomorrow? The third question on the quiz is how much of your team is rock stars?

The fourth is, how good is your employee retention? Okay.

And what would you say is awesome retention, other than people don't leave until they have a funeral or. I mean, like, how in your world right now, in the world of hundreds or thousands of employees or tens of thousands.

What'S the measuring stick for great retention versus sure.

So a great way to think about it is we just came through a period of time that everyone called the great Resignation. And so there's a lot of companies out there that lost a lot of people. Those people moved on for various reasons. Obviously, pay is one of those reasons that people moved on for. But people also moved on because they didn't believe in the vision or mission of the company. They didn't feel like they had a purpose. They. They had to just had a better offer of someplace that really excited them, someplace they wanted to go work. So retention is different in every industry. Some. Some people, if they could have turnover as low as 10%, would be very happy. And then in other industries like retail, turnover below 50% would be leading the industry by a lot. I can tell you that during the great resignation and, and really throughout my career, I've seen many companies that turn over their entire workforce every year. Well over 100% turnover. Yeah. And it's not just unbelievable, Mike. It is unbelievably expensive. Yeah. So all of the effort that goes into hiring and you get somebody in and you put them through the orientation, then you do new hire training, and then you get them on the job and you try to get them proficient in the job that you hired them for, and then they quit and go away and you have to do it all over again. So it's, it's very costly.

Yeah, that's. That's A. That's a brutal way to. To live, for sure. And.

So what's. What's next after employee retention?

Yeah. So next is, what does the world think about your company brand?

How happy are you with your current employee productivity scale of 0 to 10? How do you feel about your current level of compliance? We just talked about the FBI coming to the house, to the building. If a regulator has rented space in your office building, you're probably in trouble.

Yeah, that's on floor three. And then on floor two, who moved in.

Yes, exactly. So.

How well are your employees aligned with your company's mission and values?

Or do they even know what they are?

Or do they even know what they are? Life is so much more than a list of values that's on the company bulletin board, and nobody follows. How much conflict do your team members have? And it's not just your team members, but everybody in the organization. How much conflict is in the organization? And then finally, the last question on the quiz, and I think this one's really important for everybody listening, is how confident are you that you have the knowledge, tools and resources to fix these challenges? Mm.

Very good. So this is your time, everyone, to tally up your scores. Where are you? Are you. Are you in the 0 to 30? And then are you in the 31 to 60? 60 to 80? Are you way past 80%? Probably not. That'll determine a lot of what we do next and how this is going to affect you, which I think is going to lead us to, you know, our audience here. We've got a variety of people. We've got founders who are running organizations that are anywhere from single digits all the way up to 50 to 100. And then we've got hundreds. You've worked in the world of tens of thousands. Like, out of all the companies that you've consulted for, with, or been a part of, who had the most employees? What was the highest employee count that you can think of?

Probably Chase. Somewhere around the 350,000 employee mark.

Unbelievable. So basically a decent sized town. You know, that's basically New Orleans.

It is.

That's that the. Imagine all of New Orleans working for Chase. Based on some of the experience I've had with them in the past, there may be some people. Anyway, I want. I won't go any further. But, you know, it's hard. It's hard to have a company with a lot of employees.

Yes, it is.

So what I wanted to do, let's do some case studies, because the best way to learn, no matter what size you are, is to break down. And what I'm looking for from you is let's find one of the companies that you've worked with that had big problems. What were the big problems? How did you go about diagnosing them? How did you use your M factor system? You know, like which of the tools did you drop in? Either you took the, you white labeled and licensed or you implemented. And then what were the results and how long did they take? What kind of financial impact did they have? But I love case studies.

Sure.

Are you ready?

Absolutely.

All right, let's hit it.

So I, we'll go first. First case study, mid size bank.

Okay, so the mid size to you just again relative for the audience, how many employees is it typically the less.

About employees and more about, more about revenue and assets. Mid sized bank. Somewhere in the 30, 30 billion dollar mark.

Okay.

We, we had the opportunity to work with them and the issue that we had at the time, the problem was that the net promoter score that they had at the time, net promoter being the survey that goes out and only people who rate a 9 or a 10. So net promoter score is the percentage of people that rate a 9 or a 10 on the survey. So their score was, their score was in the 30s. So it was low. Yeah, and not just low for the, for that organization, but also low across the industry as well. In addition to that there was a new brand. So they were rebranding and the executives didn't necessarily agree on the rebrand and on how to talk about that rebrand.

With the employees, which basically translates into arguments about messaging. One guy would say this, another woman would say that. No consistency amongst training. So which leads to all sorts of confusion and mess ups, I would imagine.

Yes, absolutely. And then there wasn't even consensus on whether or not the brand should change. So there was some of that as well. And as you can imagine with net promoter scores in the 30s, there was a really high complaint volume as well. So we knew what the problem was. We went in and we did some analysis first, which is how we always start is really just let's look at the situation and see what's happening, see where the problems are, where the gaps are and starts to give us an idea of how we can develop solutions to, to fix the problem. So for, for this bank we did client and employee surveys. So we use the net promoter score surveys. Some of those had, some of those had what they call verbatims or written responses. And we also looked at employee surveys, engagement surveys and otherwise. We looked at their existing training programs. We looked at the company's mission, vision, values. We looked at their brand promise, the old brand promise, and the new brand promise, and looked at their procedures, processes, policies, all of the things they were using. And that included scripting, because the, the target audience for us was the call center. So it's the people that are actually answering the phone and accepting all the complaints and talking to clients. So we looked at all of that stuff and determined that brand training to launch the brand would typically be, here's what our new company colors are, here's our new logo, here's the language you should use when you talk on the phone. And that would be typical branding that you would get from a marketing. The marketing division would put these things out, usually in a brand book of some sort, and train the employees. But we knew we needed to go further than that because we weren't just launching a brand. We were solving for a ton of employee complaints. And we were also solving for this net promoter score issue that they had too. So we decided in the end to talk to the executives, get them on the same page. So we used the M Interpret tool for that, where we actually brought those people together and basically just hashed it out until there was agreement between everyone on the path forward, which was to deliver client experience training that included the new brand. So they got brand training, but it was not the sole focus, it was part of it. And so we selected that training strategy and then we talk, taught the employees how to actually own the brand. And we didn't just talk at the employees. The training didn't happen to the employees. It happened with the employees. So during that, we asked people, based on certain criteria, how do you bring the brand to life with your own natural language? How do you talk to customers using this brand? What does it mean to you? Did a lot of role playing, did role playing between them, did a lot of coaching, and then the training was finished. It took us from the time we started until the time the last person was trained. It took 10 weeks. And the 30 days that followed that, the net promoter score in the company doubled. So I went from the 30s to the low 80s, so more than doubled at that point. And of course, that was a big win for the company. It was a big win for the clients. And to me, most importantly, it was a big win for the employees because as I said in my manifesto, empowered employees create great organizations. And those employees felt empowered. Yeah.

And what I really hear.

And you've deconstructed a bunch of these in our earlier discussions, that when you Walk in. It's not uncommon to dig through materials that have been created, training materials, all sorts of stuff that's been around maybe decades. It conflicts with each other or there's overlap or someone who's supposed to be going up in the ranks and being recruited to their next job, they're actually taking the same training. It's all redundant. So the amount of stuff that you weed out and then, you know, one of the reasons why you've mentioned why people quit is they don't feel like there's anywhere for them to go.

Yeah.

You know, and I've lived through that in my own organizations as well, my own companies. It's like, yeah, I started my own company because there's nothing else for me to, to do or go to, or I didn't feel like there was hope. And, you know, you're going to stick behind when you have an opportunity to create with, you're going to have a loyalty to that brand. You're going to feel like you actually participated and you're going to have an interest in it surviving.

Absolutely.

So, again, it doesn't matter if you've got three employees or 300,000. These. These are just universal rules.

So at the end, were there any other big takeaways, results that were absolutely measurable when you integrated all these tools together?

Yeah. So I can't talk about the specifics, obviously.

So.

Yeah, but. But what I can say is. Bank. Yes.

No, more.

Exactly. Mid size. Bank.

Yeah, mid size.

But. But what I can say is that retention went up, so less turnover. We talked about that a moment ago, and that wasn't one of the tools we applied, but it was a fringe benefit of empowering employees. They all felt better. And call centers, notoriously, have some of the highest turnovers in the, in the world. And so we were able to increase retention for that team that we put through that and remember, as a really specific call center team, so we will. We were able to look at that. Performance scores went up and then, you know, the most important one to CEOs that are listening here or the CFO in some cases, is profitability improved, too? When you have a net promoter score that's in the low 80s, you have a lot of satisfied customers and satisfied customers spend money.

Yeah, that's great. It's. Good story. Good story. All right.

So I'm going to give you some time to think about this. I'll throw out a couple. You've done massive retail organizations.

You'Ve also done training companies. I think we'll save this for Last, you've got a great story about a college project you worked on that had a massive effect on how you think about this in terms of community building. But what's another case study you'd like to share?

I think let's talk about recruiting a little bit and not so much recruiting itself. And I don't want to go down that path. But. But recruiting is a department in many organizations, and we worked with organization recruiting departments to help them become more efficient, more profitable. And so I have a good example of this in a retail organization that we did.

And can you describe again, when you say a retail organization, this is like one of the big, big players.

Big player? Yeah. Retail sales and marketing at the time, roughly 35,000 employees, recruiting team of about 175 all in. Wow. So big, big recruiting team, hiring 30,000 people a year.

Unbelievable.

So big lot of churn, a lot of turnover in the retail industry. And so a lot of hiring happening and a lot of talented recruiters on the team. And so the problem that we had was that recruiting was too expensive, it was too slow, and we needed to get people into the company faster. And I just said the turnover a moment ago.

It's a high turnover industry. So we really wanted to get people in quicker. So when we started the project, our goal was to reduce the cost of recruiting and increase the time.

Increase the speed that we got people into the job.

Yep.

And so we started by doing employee interviews. So we talked to the recruiters, we talked to employees that dealt with the recruiters. We talked to people who had just been hired, we talked to candidates that did not get hired. They're a very important source of information as well. We interviewed leaders, we did surveys, we examined the org structure for the recruiting department to determine if that was good. We looked at total rewards. So we looked at compensation that the recruiters get, how are they paid, what are their benefits, and what's the turnover look like? We looked at a lot of things across the organization, and what we found is that some of the processes were broken, some of the technology was less than efficient, put it that way. And the other thing that we found fit really well with my manifesto, which was every employee has greatness in them. They just need someone to help them unlock. So we had a lot of great employees in this recruiting group. We just needed to help them learn how to do it better, faster. And then more than anything else, we needed them to believe that it could be done better and faster. So we put a training program in place, we updated the technology, we Went through with a fine tooth comb. Every process in the recruiting department, we cut out all the fat. We made it a good experience for the recruiter, a good experience for the candidate, a good experience for the new hires as well. And in that, in this particular case, we cut the cost of recruiting by 25%.

Okay. And you have some really super clever ways you did that. So I kind of want to get into some of the technical stuff you did. And that's really creative. I think it's applicable to anyone because it's easy to get lost in the. Oh, my God, there's so many details here. And in any organization, how frustrated you feel. Working in an organization. You don't think for a second that anything you can do can actually make a difference. You're not going to get heard that the norm is to be. Become part of the grind and be the grind and just, you can't wait to get out of there.

Right.

It just doesn't matter what position. And even you talk to C suite people and they feel the same way, they get lost. So sometimes these little tactical things are the things that lighten you up and you're like, yeah, you know, it feels like you're playing a game instead of going in for the grind. So what were some of the cool technical things you did?

My favorite thing that we did in this project was the recruiting department. I told you, it was a pretty large recruiting department at the time. And so all those people are responsible for recruiting, for recruiting, but.

Companies are responsible for recruiting. Everyone in the company is responsible for recruiting. And I used the phrase earlier that we like things to happen with our employees and not to our employees. So when we were doing the interviews with employees, we asked them, how would you. How would you like to get people into the company? If we asked you, how can you recruit better for the company? What can we do to help you? And we already had a referral program. It was, you know, it was being used somewhat, but not a lot. And, and most people, it was like a second thought. So we started talking to them and they told us, hey, if we had something to give people that we could give them and they could apply using that, that it would help the conversation. It won't feel awkward, and it gives us something to talk with. And so we talked to them. We talked to the people in recruiting, we talked to the people in marketing, and we actually came up with business cards that explained what the. What the company was doing, who they were hiring, had a QR code on it. And it also had a place for people to write their names. We also created postcards that had the same information on it that employees could write their name on it and then tack it on bulletin boards and put it up with their church or a laundromat or wherever they thought employees might be. And then we said, if somebody applies via this link and gives us your name, whether you know them or not, whether they're a friend or a family member or just somebody that was doing laundry, after you put it up, we'll pay you a referral fee for it. And so it got the employees amped, and then the employee started going out and doing recruiting for us. And it was really amazing. We were able to track how many referrals came through that because of the QR code, obviously. So we tracked the number of employees that came through. We ended up hiring about 40% of those referrals and closed our staffing gap. Not completely, but made a lot of progress. The most fun thing we mentioned Glassdoor at the beginning of this, it's a. It's a great barometer of how employees feel about the company. And one of the things that we thought was the most neat about it was would recommend to a friend as one of the metrics in Glassdoor. And that actually increased 8% in the months after we started using the postcards.

Yeah, well. And obviously what I like about this, what's clever about it, is would recommend to a friend, not only could you measure it in Glassdoor, but more importantly, you saw the result.

Absolutely.

And the notion that, again, just in talking to you, getting to know you, you've got decades of experience, you've pretty much been there, seen it, done it, there's going to be. A lot of people will be like, yeah, but XYZ won't work for me. And I always like to say to people, look, you're a special person, but your problems aren't, and your business isn't different. There are universal principles that always work for all businesses. And anytime you can work with someone with decades of experience, with hundreds of tactical multipliers at their fingertips, they can listen to practical. Any problem, you can sit down and pull out eight ideas. Most of them are going to work. They're relatively easy and fast to implement, they're measurable, and they produce predictable results. And.

The. Even though some of the core problems, you know, your 8M factors are all isolated, there's bleed, meaning you know, when you fix performance or you fix retention, you also change engagement dramatically. Right. So there's crossover in all of these. And, yeah, There's a science to it and then there's just as much an art to it. And sometimes the most challenging, boring problems in any business can have fun, exciting, gamifiable solutions to them. Any comments?

Yes. For me, employee engagement is top of mind. Employees that come to work and what do you hear? Happy employees make happy customers. Yeah, right.

Make happy owners and stockholders.

Absolutely. Absolutely. The other thing I would say too is that just back to what you said a moment ago about but I'm special and people are special and take that away from anybody. But these are problems that we solve over and over and over again. And just to illustrate that a little bit, the, the story that I just told you about the case study that produced a pretty large savings, 2.67 million for, for that over a 12 month period, we did another project that was for a bank that was a retail organization. We did another project for a bank that had a very similar problem set. At the beginning, we employed similar tactics, although not the postcards and business cards. That was, that was new to the other engagement, but we did the same thing for them. We lowered cost, the cost of hire by 40%, save the company $1.55 million. Different industry, different set of circumstances, different recruiting team. Lots of differences. You know, you could list in bullet points, but really the problem was the same and the solution was remarkably similar and the results were too.

It's great. So one of the stories that you told me a while ago was a college story. And again, one of the things that I really like about you is you know how to roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, and.

Just get in there and innovate. And you've been innovating for decades. So early on, before there were bulletin boards and Facebook, you figured out a really cool way to gamify training and teaching. So why don't you share that story? Because I think it's representative of how you think and also how you've been able to consistently bring that mindset everywhere you go.

So I went to University of Florida. And so for all the Gators that are listening right now, go Gators. I will say this though, is I also went to Florida State University. I've been a Florida State fan my whole life. So go Seminoles.

So who's gonna fight, who's gonna win a big fight there if they, if one of them had to get into a serious fist fight?

Go Knowles. Go Knowles.

Okay, all right, all right. Okay.

So I went to, so I went to University of Florida. I actually went to, to college Late in life, very late in life. I actually dropped out of high school in the 10th grade, got my GED. So I went to work immediately. And I already described where that landed me. So I decided I wanted to get some formal education and went back to school late. Not that long ago actually. And so I graduated from uf. But while I was there, University of Florida was a pioneer in online learning. They were one of the first schools to put a completely online degree program out there for students. And I was fortunate enough to be one of the students that registered for it. It was a Bachelor of Science in business administration, 100% done online with videotaped lectures. So we would log into your computer at night or during the day or whenever you, you wanted to learn and watch the lecture, the same lecture that the students on campus watched in the classroom. You were responsible for watching it online. And then there were a lot of online activities that you had to do in their learning management system. And quizzes were proctored, so you had to go to a facility and they watched you take the quiz. So the degree program would be good. And we've come a long way since then, but this is what it was. So students really didn't have a way to talk to each other. They didn't really have a way to communicate outside of the academic discussion board that was meant for write a, write a two paragraph post about such and such. So we recognized a gap. A friend of mine, Rick, we recognized a gap, we talked about it quite a bit and I met him in the program and we formed a, the Gator online Student association called GOSA is the nickname for it. And we put it out there as just a discussion board. We thought we're going to build a discussion board where students can go and talk to students the way they want to without being under the thumb of the university or being in the lms. And, and you know, obviously you can say some things that you couldn't say on a, on a school sponsored discussion board. So it really gave people an opportunity to build a community. And we figured we would get a few people that would be. Turned out to be so much more than that. And thousands of people registered for this online community. So we started offering tutoring as well. And it was all free. We didn't charge anybody for any of this. It was, it was an experiment for me to see if what, how do you build a community? How do you use the technology that, that was available at the time to further learning? And so the, the whole idea was just to put it together and have it there for us. And it ended up being thousands of things. The University of Florida actually invited me and my partners in that to go around the country and speak at academic conferences and talk about how we were able to build a community in a school at the time when online learning was fledgling. And this is something that every school was struggling with. So it went really well and I say it went really well because I met my wife at University of Florida and she was a member of gosa. And so we, we got to talk to each other for a while and then met at a GOSA event, an in person event and, and then eventually got married and ended up on Mount Mercurio where we formed Mercury. So nice. It's, it was a great, a great thing. Real funny thing real quick is we, I graduated, Rick graduated, Erica graduated. We. We left GOSA up and running. There were still people registering, hundreds of people were registering per semester. And so we thought we'd keep it up. And then we basically said we need to shut this down. It's. It's cost, it costs a lot of money to keep it up. And so we posted a note on our Facebook, we have a Facebook group. So we posted not on our Facebook group. So we're going to shut down gosa. And the people on the Facebook group started to go fund me and actually sent us money to keep GOSA open. So we kept it open for three years after that. And then finally it started, the technology started getting more difficult and spam and those kinds of things. So we had to shut it down. But, but what a great experience it was. And I learned so much. And I apply all of that learning every day in what I'm doing here with Mercury where gamification and elearning and the tenets of building a community among teams and employees.

It's great. It's. It. I think it's a great story. And again, it just goes to show how important it is to build communities, build rewards and awards and all that in. In two. So now we've got some great giveaways I'm going to tell folks really quick. I've got one more big question for you, but if you go to mercurypg.com free, Brian and his team have some really cool giveaways for you. A guide and a video. The quiz that you took earlier, there's a manifesto guide, there's an implementation video that shows how his, their team actually works and also an opportunity to speak with Brian or someone on his team and schedule a strategy session. And that's@mercurypg.com free so here's my last question for you, Brian. That is you've been using some advanced technology to take what you have, which means you've got white labeled solutions that you can basically bring in and apply to any business type.

You've got all these resources and tools, the M factor resources, but you're also using some of the latest in artificial intelligence to accelerate what you're doing. I'd like you to talk a little bit about that because this is for sure the trend. Businesses that aren't implementing and using AI and some of the new advanced technologies are going to be left behind for sure. So talk a little bit about how you've embraced this. You've been using it now for quite some time. But what's a typical use case for AI and the advanced technology for training and improving businesses?

Sure. So I will admit that I thought the AI thing was just a fad that was going to go away. I wasn't really spending much time looking at it or experimenting with it. And we've been doing elearning for years and we have set up similar to what we're talking about in here where we have mixers and we have mics and sound rooms and all of those things and we record voiceovers for elearning. So if you've ever taken an E learning and the voice is talking at you, it's someone like me on the other end that's doing the recording. And I stumbled across AI called well Said Labs and this was really my first deep dive into AI. And if you haven't used well Said Labs before, it is a voice generator with many avatars to choose from and we use it for just that purpose. So instead of spending hours and hours and hours recording audio and doing take after take to make sure we get it just right. Something that used to take me three or four hours I can literally do in 10 minutes with well Said Labs. So now I write the script, I choose an appropriate avatar, or in many cases avatars, and upload it, hit the button, it spits out the voiceover for me and then I use my E learning technology to build that into the learning. It's fun too because with wellsaid Labs we can actually use multiple avatars to have conversations with each other in the E learning, which gives it a real engaging feel to the person that's taking the learning, just not the flat, you know, listen, click next. Listen, click next. It's got some gamification to it, a lot of which by the way, I learned from The GOSA experience. But since then, we've been using Jasper AI, we've been using Mid Journey, we've been using Chat GPT, and, and we've used that a lot here to give us ideas, to help us build outlines, to help us build YouTube videos. And I just think the sky is the limit for where AI is going. And I have to tell you, every day a new tool comes out and, and every day my wife Erica looks at me and says, what tool are you playing with today? Yeah, because I guarantee you I'm spending a few minutes playing with it. If you text me and say, hey, Brian, this just came out, check it out. Yeah, that'll be the first thing I do that day. So it's really the future of building businesses and helping employees become the best they can be.

All right, well, I've got a little challenge for you, which is what if we tack on the end of this episode an AI generated piece that you create using some of the new technologies that you're using. That way people can witness and experience some of the stuff that you've been doing.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's great. Synthesia is going to be terrific for this.

Yes.

So we'll do the closing of this with a. With an AI avatar.

Okay.

Written with Chat GPT.

All right, awesome.

I'm.

I'm super excited. Super excited. So let's go through some of the goodies one more time. I'm going to just tell people where to go and what it is, and then you can, you can do your final ask. Is that cool?

Sure.

All right, so for you people at home, my friends, you can head over to mercurypg.com free and I asked Brian to put together some really good resources and tools that you can use right now. You can start implementing, see more examples, case studies, and also really understand how Brian and his team think. I think that's really what's super valuable here. If you're like me, the deeper you go in the rabbit hole, the more interesting this becomes. You're going to get the M Factor Mercury Toolkit Guide and video. The M Factor quiz. So we did it orally or visually. Today you can actually take it as a digital quiz. You get the Success Manifesto Guide, which really goes into the core principles and values that Brian and his organization live by the day in the Life Implementation Video. That just basically means you get a greater depth of understanding how Brian and his team actually works with organizations. It's going to give you a bunch of ideas and then finally an opportunity to schedule a strategy session. There's a description of who Brian's right fit clients are that he works with. If you're one of them, I can't recommend this enough. You're going to find, like I have that. First of all, Brian's a deep thinker. He's a big giver. He really has a big grasp, a solid grasp of many, many different ways to implement this stuff. You'll see that at the end of this production. But you'll really enjoy having a conversation with him. He's a good man. So Brian, how would you like to end this with your big ask?

So visit mercurypg.com free take the diagnostic and just know if you're listening this and listening to this and you're an HR person and you're taking this diagnostic, don't feel bad about your answers. I've been there. I was an HR leader as well. Been in the executive ranks in HR for a long time. Be honest with yourself about where you are. Take the quiz, use the free resources that are available to you, and let's have a chat. Awesome.

All right, well, we'll finish this off. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. If you've enjoyed this again, head on over to mercurypg.com you can always also share this with some friends who might benefit from it. And make sure you like and share this on YouTube or give us a nice five star review on itunes. So thank you so much for listening and watching and we'll see you in the next episode.

Bye bye Bye bye.

Thank you for watching. The Capability Amplifier Podcast at the end of the podcast, Mike challenged Brian to use artificial intelligence to close out the podcast. To do this, I'm going to talk for a moment about how AI is improving the world of instructions. Instructional Design Instructional design is the process of creating effective learning experiences that help people develop new skills and knowledge. With the advent of AI, this process has become more efficient, more effective, and less expensive.

AI algorithms can process large amounts of data, analyze it, and provide insights that help instructional designers create better content. For example, AI can analyze learners behavior, identify areas where they struggle, and suggest ways to improve the content.

AI powered virtual assistants can also improve the learning experience by providing instant feedback, answering questions, and offering personalized recommendations. At Mercury Performance Group, we understand the importance of effective training and development. By leveraging AI and our M Factor toolkit, we can help our clients achieve greater learning results in less time and for less money. If you want to learn more about how Mercury and AI can help your employees improve their performance, visit our website at www.mercuryperformancegroup.com free there you'll find valuable resources and information, as well as the opportunity to book a strategy call with Brian, so don't wait any longer. Take advantage of the power of AI to transform employee performance at your company. Visit www.mercuryperformancegroup.com free and book that strategy call with Brian today. Thank you for watching.

Sam.