How to Retain Top Talent and Keep Your A-Players Engaged with Will Humphreys

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Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. I am so stoked to go over the five reasons why a players leave us and leave our teams. I was devastated in my company when my key people left. It was something that kept me up at night. And to be honest, if I'm being really honest with you guys, even in my current companies, I worry about this. I don't have this thing figured out to the nth degree, but I definitely have mastered the ability to retain people at such a higher level than I used to. And it starts with understanding why people leave and not people, I should say, because we don't care about some people leaving. I don't know if you've ever had anyone quit on you and you're like, thank gosh, I'm so glad. They just saved so much pain and like, difficult conversations that you knew were going to be lengthy, so they just do you the favor of quitting. Now we're talking about a players. You know, a players are different than everyone else. These aren't the people who make us feel like they're doing us a favor by showing up every day. These are not the people who are clock punchers who are coming and going, do an okay job. So we don't let them go. But at the same time, like, none of the patients really care if they get put on another person's schedule. We're talking about the individuals that touch our hearts. These are the men and women who are not only great healthcare providers, they're incredible organic leaders. They produce a lot and their patients remember them and want them. They want to stick on their schedules and or these are people who bleed our company culture, people who don't complain when we want to have an end of your party. They're the ones who help plan it. They're excited to create community. And so when these individuals leave, not only can be one of the most devastating experiences as a leader, it's almost like they cut a crater out of our heart, man. Isn't it invalidating? At least I took it that way. It was so invalidating to have an A player quit. It was me being fired. I don't think our employees get that. As leaders, we get fired more than any of them every single time. And it's so hard not to take that personally. For me, it was a reflection of what I didn't know. It was a reflection of me doing a poor job. And I, of course, would go down that woe is me trail. Right? But at the end of the day, it didn't even matter because now I had to work twice as hard. I had to go back into my business and somehow pull it together while I go find another replacement. And I knew, just like I know now, those A players are not easy to replace. They are few and far between those wonderful men and women that make the biggest difference. So let's talk about why they leave so that you can get in front of that. When I understood these five concepts, which just aren't my opinion, by the way. These are highly researched and clearly indicated reasons why A players go. Once I understood those those reasons, it helped me get in front of them. And as always, your time is so precious to me, Rockstar. Like, I get honestly choked up thinking about you sitting in a car or working out listening to me. But I want you to know that like, as much as I feel personally supported by it, and I love that it's such a reflection of you that you're taking that time to work on yourself to be the best leader you can be. And I am a reflection of dozens of coaches, hundreds of hours of coaching. Any leadership that I bring to the table came by doing what you're doing right now. By listening to people who've been where I've been and have gone where I want to go. So let's get right into it, guys. Rockstars. The number one reason this is not the number one meaning, the most important, this is the first reason why our A players leave us is that they're overworked. And you know this like I get it. I had A players finally could offload me. So there were times where I just kept giving them more and more to do because I didn't know how else to get free myself. I would just give them more and more to do. Or I knew that they had too much going on, but I had no idea how to balance it out for them. So it shows up like them feeling like they're underpaid. It definitely can feel and show up like they don't have a good home life balance. Usually my A players would start crying when they were finally able to share with me that they were burning out. Because these people don't like to tell us, right? Other employees, they can't stop telling us how they're doing. But the A players keep it quiet. They go take it home. So when they would finally tell me, I noticed a trend that they would start crying when they talked about how they didn't have time to take care of themselves. And man, my heart went out to them. But in the same token, I wasn't taking care of myself. Right. So overworking our A players, how do we get ahead of that? Well, we just got to connect with them. This doesn't take a lot of work. It just takes a lot of caring. So one of the techniques that I had was that I would just take them out to lunch every quarter. It wasn't scheduled to them, it was to me because I could, couldn't do anything unless it was on a calendar. I would take them to lunch and just check in with them personally. And I would ask them, yeah, so how's your homework balance going? That question alone, I learned kept so many A players to stick with me and believe in me through some very difficult times because they could see I was mindful of it. It's when they didn't know that I didn't know that they would leave. So the second reason why A players leave is because they don't feel appreciated. So oftentimes we don't even know that we're underappreciating our people or worse. This is true for me. I used to think I was appreciating my employees and they didn't think that they didn't feel appreciated. So a couple things on this one. Number one, when we get so busy that we don't even have time for ourselves, if we're not exercising, how can we possibly see if we're appreciating somebody else? If we don't appreciate ourselves as leaders, there's no way we're going to be able to have the clarity to see that someone else isn't being appreciated. So oftentimes I tell people the single most important thing is to start carving time out for ourselves. For some of you, that feels super difficult and impossible. And if that's the case, like, reach out, let's talk. We'll figure it out. Because I promise you, you can do it. The other thing, which, which is easy to solve, which is that people oftentimes don't receive appreciation in the way that we are expressing it. Those goes back to the five love languages, right? I forget what they are. I think it's like words of affirmation, physical touch. Gotta be careful with that one, guys. Goes without saying. We wanna make sure there's gift giving, which would be like a bonus. There's acts of service that might just be jumping in and helping them fold towels. And then there's a fifth one out there, if you remember it, throw it in the comments. But oftentimes we think we're showing appreciation when we don't know that they're not receiving it like that. So let's make sure we ask them. Going back to those lunches where I would just ask them, hey Tom, do you want to go grab lunch? By the way, man, I sure appreciate all the great work you're doing, but how do you feel appreciated? Is that something you'd like for me to announce in front of the team? Is it something that you want me to, you know, through a bonus? Like what does that look like? You would think everyone wants a bonus and they might all to some degree agree with that. But it's really cool how your A players aren't about trying to nickel and dime us. Remember, these aren't your regular employees. They're going to tell you because they want to feel appreciated and they know they bring something special to the table. Hey there Rockstars. Are you sick and tired of hiring expensive front office staff who to spend months training them only to find out that they don't meet expectation or worse, to have them quit on you, leave you in the lurches only to repeat the cycle? Then welcome to Virtual Rockstar, the only service created by a private practice owner for private practice owners and leaders to help them build their dream teams. Let us hire your next virtual Rockstar for you overseas. These virtual assistants will blow your mind. Not only are they more talented and committed, but they're a lot more affordable and they can do all sorts of tasks from phone receptions, medical billing, patient scheduling, insurance, verification, marketing, payroll, and more. 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The next reason why they often leave us is because they don't understand our purpose, our vision, or our values. Now what's interesting about that Rockstar is that your purpose, vision and values is the foundation of your culture. Having those statements not just articulated clearly, but also lived through various ways that we could do another episode on that is your foundation. So if an A player is value aligned, why is it that they leave if they don't understand the purpose, vision and values? Well, it's because they don't know what it is that we're doing. So like a vision, for example, they don't know where we're going as a company. So how can they know if they fit into that future? It's essential to us as business owners and leaders to develop a clear message of our purpose, our vision and our values. Our purpose is why we exist. In my PT company, it used to be that we're the light and the hope in the lives of others. It's usually an emotionally drawing statement that doesn't have anything to do with physical therapy. Our values were the words that we use to describe how we make decisions. We used to use an acronym called page, which stood for professionalism, accountability, growth and empathy. So we would talk about those things in every team meeting every week. We would make decisions, we'd give raises, corrections, firing people based on those values. And then lastly, of course, it's vision. Where are we going and what do we want to create in the world? And so when we don't have those things balanced, oftentimes a players struggle in understanding the the purpose of the company feel disconnected. All it takes at that point is another company to do a better job than we do of expressing it for them to jump ship to go with the people who are just better at understanding how to message where they're going. Okay guys, last two. These are the single biggest reason why reasons why people leave our company. A players leave our companies. And these are totally proven through studies and statistics they've done through LinkedIn. Indeed, these are the two most common reasons why people leave us. So pay close attention. Number, number four, that employees don't see a future for themselves in the company. Which makes sense, right? But think about it like a players, they know that we're growing. Like everyone is trying to grow, but where are they growing? Like what is it that you want to create? Like, you could be a location that wants to grow by just becoming more valuable as a single location. Maybe you want to become the biggest PT practice in the world or in your state. There's so many different ways to grow. Maybe you want to diversify and instead of doing outpatient, you want to go into electrodiagnostics. Or maybe you want to add a wellness center. Like it doesn't, it almost doesn't even matter as long as you can clearly define where you're going and then talk to your key person, your A players about whether or not that aligns with them. But let me share with you a secret. And this is, this is one of the single most impactful things I used to do that got me from one location to five locations and then honestly working less than 20 hours a week in them. So pay close attention to this, this was big. I created something. This might be one of the few things I ever created on my own. Like everything else I did was R and D, not research and duplicated, ripped off, not illegally, but just learning from other people. Like, I'd ripp it off in the sense of like, hey, can I take that idea and take it back and apply it? So please take this idea is that I would create a vision meeting. And this vision meeting was me taking my A player again out to lunch. This was a little bit more organized though. I always like to do these things off site because it increased the personalization of the experience. But you don't have to do it that way. And I would just ask them a simple question, so what do you want over the next five years? Now you would think that get redundant every year, but people don't know what they want. Even a players don't know what they want. So this is an incredible barrier if that's also one of the key reasons why people leave. If you think about it, right, people leave a company because they don't see a future for themselves in it. But then they don't even know what they want for their own future.

So that's the challenge, but it's also the opportunity. And here's why this is an opportunity. It's because you have the gift and the ability to coach them, to helping them know what it is that they want to create for themselves. One of my favorite experiences was I had an employee who was my medical biller, let's call her Katie, because her name was Katie. And so Katie was this a player, team leader of my billing department. We had five locations and she was just running them like so well. Like she ran it in a way to where if she ever got hit by a bus, she could be replaced, which is unheard of, right? And so I was working with her and I had this vision meeting. I said, katie, what is it that you want long term? Of course, she had no idea. So I said, listen, let's talk about things that you might want to have like for yourself. Do you want a sports car? Do you want to travel the world? And she goes, I don't know, I haven't really thought about it. I said, I want you to think about it. I said, what do you want long term for yourself? Do you want to own your own business? Do you want to work in somebody else's business? And on and on I went. But the truth of the matter was, guys, rock stars. I was super curious about what it was that she wanted. And man, that talk about feeling appreciated. She told me later that meeting probably did more in terms of showing my commitment to her long term success than anything else. So it took a few years of us meeting like this, and then finally one year, she goes, I know what I want. I said, what's that? She goes, I want a cabin in North Carolina, which was so left field. We're in Arizona, right? I was like, that's crazy cool. But like, who'd have thought, right? So we talked about how what she wanted in life could align with what she was doing for me. And it was clear that as she was working for me, there was no way in the near future she was going to be able to own a cabin in the woods. So we talked about what it was that she wanted to do professionally, and it came out that she either wanted to be the leader of a much bigger company or own her own company. So fast forward, I ended up selling my company in 2018. I meet with her years later just at a Starbucks. We were just catching up. I just said, so what have you been up to? And she goes like, well, I was waiting for you so we can start a company together because I want that cabin in the woods. And we did. In 2020, we started a medical building company. And she just now, right now, as we're recording this, we're in 2024, she just closed on her cabin two weeks ago. No kidding. And now we have this multimillion dollar billing company together and she's running it and she's the CEO and I'm. I'm on the sidelines helping her. Right. It's just, it's unbelievable what we get back from our people when we overcome this thing that makes them leave called not knowing what they want in the future. So remember, don't feel overwhelmed by the fact that you don't know what they want for themselves, because they don't know either. This is your chance to be with them and to really connect and understand what it is they want. I recommend that you could do this with all of your employees, but ultimately, if you do it with your key people and then start building your company around, if it works for you, around what you and they want collectively, the company will grow based on who, not how, which is another great book by Dan Sullivan. You can tell I'm a huge fan of his. I just started a strategic coach actually last week. I should tell you guys, been foundational in my development. I've had over 20 coaches and this has been a phenomenal experience. So let's get to the number one reason. What is the number one reason why eight players leave? The number one reason is because we don't let go of C players. So listen, let's clarify what a C player is. There's a whole description of A, B, C and D that I have on my YouTube channel. You can go down there and check it out. It's one of my most watched videos. And there's a free assessment you can download to really measure what a player is on your team, if they're A, B, C or D. But C players are the cancer. The C stands for cancer. These are people who are oftentimes highly productive and very low in terms of value alignment. So these are the people who are at work who are working enough and like they're carrying enough of the load to where it makes it really hard to let them go, you know, because if you had someone who was not producing well and had very poor value alignment, you. You get rid of those people very quickly or they self eliminate. But when it comes to C players, man, they are so confusing. For me, at least they were and they still can be. Gosh, I never want to take the posture that I've got this thing all figured out, but I've just done it so many times that I, I'm getting quicker at it though, guys. Like, I really am. So I see someone who's producing well. They're the ones who talk crap behind the scenes and that oftentimes we don't see, but we can kind of feel it. You can feel the energy of the room of a C player when you walk in because they've kind of pooped on everything. You know, not like directly, sometimes very indirectly and very subtly. Like, man, Wilshire seems like he's super busy. I don't know if he really has thought a lot about like, you know, compensation and like student loan debt. You know, just little things like that that start to like splinter into the hearts of our employees. A players don't buy into that crap by the way. They know what it is. But they're also depending on their role, they may not be in a position to tell you about it. They just are looking to you as a leader to do something about it. Because it's painfully obvious to them they would never act that way. And so when we tolerate those C players, guys, that's the number one reason why those A players leave. Because they, no matter what they feel for us personally, no matter how committed they are to our future, the proof is in the pudding. If we are going to take action for what we believe we're going to. We are not going to tolerate those people. I've said this before, we're only as great as we tolerate. So those are the five reasons when it comes to how to identify and get rid of a C player. Let me know in the show notes if you want to hear an episode on that, because I do tons of training on how to identify C players, but the main thing I wanted you to focus on in this short podcast, guys, is to just be aware that if you know what those five things are, it's so easy to get in front of them and you can start retaining your talent better. Yes, there's compensation strategies and there's a whole slew of other things we can talk about. But in the end, truly, no matter what you think, I promise you, the main reasons why people leave aren't as money driven as it may appear. So guys, thank you for tuning into today's episode. I hope you guys were able to see those five reasons. Thank you so much for the time you spent with me. Whether it was in the car or at the gym or wherever else. Please, please keep going. Remember, the only way we fail is by giving up. And I promise you the difference you're making is not small. I just know that you don't see it as a leader. You're at the top. You're not going to see the impact that you make, but I promise you're making it. So thank you guys again for listening. Until next time, guys, thank you for taking time to listen to today's episode. If you found today's information information to be useful, could you take a minute and help me? I would love it if you could leave a podcast review in your app so that other people who are looking for this information can find it. Plus, my dream is to have the largest network of medical entrepreneurs and leaders in the world so that together we can change healthcare to make it better for all. So in addition, if you can think of anyone that you could send this to, not only would that mean a lot to me personally, but it would build this network so that we can make healthcare the way that we want it.