You might have a values problem

Hey everyone, um, I was listening to a podcast today, Business Made Simple with Don Miller, and he was interviewing John Maxwell. And there's something John Maxwell said that I wanted to talk about today, and I promise it relates to profitability. He said he doesn't think there's a law problem in our country right now. He thinks there's a problem with values, because they can set up the best laws possible, but if people don't have values, they will continue to find a way around the laws. Now, I'm not going to get into politics. I just wanted to share that, but I certainly agree with him. I think I don't care which side of the aisle you're from, the party you support probably doesn't have the values that they should. But I was thinking about this in context as an employer. So you as the owner, if your coaches or your team members don't have the same values that you have, it doesn't matter how good your standard operating procedures are and how good everything, all other elements of your business are. If they don't share the same values, they're gonna find a way to get around the stuff that you think is important that maybe they don't. I lived this experience when we first, when I first bought into the gym and we had coaches. Like some of them were technically good, but definitely didn't share the same values. And it was palpable how negative— the negativity that they brought into the gym. I also think about this from the standpoint of Insight Tax, our firm here. If you don't hire the person with the right values, which I've made that mistake before, the training costs to replace somebody— because first you have costs. In getting a new person up to speed to where you want. But if then at the end of the day you've trained them in all the ways you want to, but they don't share the same values, they will eventually stop doing the things you want the way you want them done. That's really costly. Having high turnover with your team members is an expense that can be avoided. Now I'm not saying it can be eliminated completely. People can be good at getting through interviews. But if you can hire for values, that's really important. Now, I'm not going to say only hire for values. Look, I get— I've heard the mantra, and maybe for some businesses it makes sense, where they say, hey, hire for culture first, and then you can train them on everything else. Well, the truth is, for our business as a tax firm, I can't train them on everything else, at least not at the pace I want to get them to be a contributing member of the team. So we do— when I'm hiring an accountant, they need to have some sort of accounting background. With coaching, uh, even if you're thinking about the CrossFit L1 certification, like, there's potentially an element of some sort of fitness knowledge they need to come in with. Um, even like, I've heard nurses make some of the best nutrition coaches. But they have a background that in medical that can kind of relate. So I don't want to say, hey, just hire for culture only and then the rest will take care of itself. I don't believe in that. So I'm also not saying just hire for values and you'll be fine. I'm not saying that. Make sure all the important components of what you're offering or what you want your coaches to be able to offer, that you're interviewing every aspect of that. So what I wanted to share with you briefly as I end here is how we do that with our tax firm, and maybe there's something here you can pull out that may allow you to find ways to figure out value. So we've identified our values. One of, one of the first interviews we do, which is after a screening process, is we bring them in and we do a resume interview. And this is following Topgrading. If you've never heard of the book, it's a really great hiring book, Topgrading. Well, we do a resume interview and we ask the same question over the last, you know, 5 places of employment, and hopefully the ones that are most relevant. We ask, what did you do in the job? What would your supervisor say you were really good at? What would your supervisor say you could improve on? And why did you leave? We ask the same 4 questions for every single job. I mean, if they have a ton, we usually look at the relevant ones over the last 5 years. By doing that, we can rep— we can identify patterns, which often help us see what kind of values the candidate has. Then if they pass that interview, we bring them back for a competency interview, a key competency interview. And TopGrading has a whole process here. They've identified a lot of competencies, and with those competencies, there's questions that they suggest you can ask to help you determine like a rating on— for the competency of the specific thing. So I mean, it could be drive, energy, work ethic. For us, continuous improvement, learning. But so you identify these competencies, and now with the position that you want, the competencies that you want the coach to have, you ask these questions. Now it is a longer interview for sure. Usually on the short end it's 45 minutes, but for someone you're hiring to like a leadership position, it easily could be an hour and a half to 2 hours. But it's super thorough, and I feel like we definitely walk out with a much clearer picture than we have had in the past. We've been doing this now for more than a year, and I'm thinking about how good I thought my hiring process was before when we didn't ask these questions. And it's just much more thorough because the truth is you are making a critical decision for your business. with limited information. So I found this top grading process, the resume interview plus the key competency interview, to help us get as much information in an effective way as possible so that we can make that decision. Do we believe this person has the values? And look, we've met some really great people, but ultimately, you know, we said, you know what, we don't think they can keep up with the pace that we require in our firm. And you'll probably be able to find that with your coaches. Like, you might be able to find like, hey, you know, they seem really technical but maybe not super approachable, or hey, they're really approachable but maybe in a lackadaisical way, which you don't want. Maybe, or maybe you do, I don't know. Anyways, I just wanted to throw that out there. Again, it came from inspiration from what John Maxwell was telling Don Miller on his podcast. It's not necessarily a law problem. It's a problem that people don't have values anymore. And from a standpoint of us as owners, it might not be a process problem. It could be a value problem of your team members. And again, if you can fix that and hone it in, you are now saving yourself money because you don't have the turnover of training coaches and have to replace them and all that stuff. So hope this helps. Remember, profitability is a choice. Have the courage and wisdom to choose it.