This week, I'm delight to have Michel Falcon, Founder and CEO of Brasa Peruvian Kitchen | Author of People-First Culture.  We've based a number of previous episodes around the People First Culture theme and to speak to Michel himself about it is very exciting.

Partial Transcript:

Dave: I love that. Thank you very much for sharing that. and I completely agree with you. And in fact, talking about Apple, I just found a couple of weeks ago that you, go into one of their stores, and all the Apple, employees, working there, are required to do 40 minutes of customer, service sales training on a daily basis.

Michel: Doesn't surprise me.

Dave: It's just they're professional and they look after people, they ask the right questions. I'm, certain that's exactly what you do in your restaurants as well.

Michel: Well, think about it. If you wanted to be a healthy human being, you should have some sort of movement for 40 minutes a day. Walking, lifting weights, some sort of hit exercise or whatever. So if you want a healthy business, how can we not practice the same? It could be 30 minutes, it could be an hour, or whatever. As long as it's something that's habitual. You don't just host one customer experience seminar for your employees and not do it every month, or in this case, every day in some capacity. some companies see it as something on their to do list. They cross it off and be like, all right, we're done with this company culture stuff. It's got to be ingrained into the DNA of the company. It really does. It can't be hollow.

Find Michel on Linkedin HERE

and buy a copy of his book, People First Culture on amazon HERE

As ever, get in touch with me on [email protected]

This week, I'm so please to have Mike McCormack back on the show, concentrating on Whole Person Assessments and they can be used before and during the hiring process to help you make the right decisions

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Dave: Mike, you shared with me a story. It might be worthwhile tapping into this. It's not just about, attracting and bringing in of, the employees, the five star employees, but it's about also using, the profiles that you specifically use to elevate the individuals into leadership. That's correct, isn't it?

Mike: Yes. Depending on what level it's kind of, opening Pandora's box there. Dave, there are a lot of different assessments that can be used in different areas and for different purposes. How you started off our conversation is very, consistent with how most people think about assessments in that when they hear the word assessment, most people think about some type of four quadrant personality style tool. And the reality is, there's a lot more types and kinds of assessments than that. And it really helps if you just take a step back and think about, okay, what am I trying to do with this tool? Before trying to select the tool and then understand what all the choices are that are available to you.

Dave: Great. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate that. So we're going to dive into that.

Mike: Just now, think about the purpose. And for most business leaders, owners, managers, our end goal is to get the best people possible who can knock it out of the park. And the ones that are knocking it out of the park are usually not the ones who want to leave. So we want to find people who can do things well and want to stay. That's the end game for all of us who are in business. So, like you alluded to earlier, there are literally thousands of different types of tools out there, and the vast majority of them fall into that bucket called personality style test. just to expand on that a little bit before we maybe drill down into some details, but other types of assessments include cognitive assessments, skills and abilities. What can they actually do? it might be manually, what can they do? It might be mentally. What can they do? There's lots of different types of those assessments, and also, what kind of work are they interested in? So, getting back to your question, what we do is use information from all of those categories. in a client company, we will go in and assess their top performers and then show the owner, manager, leader, whoever we're working with. We'll show them what traits, characteristics, skills, interest, et cetera. Kind of the whole enchilada, if you will. We'll show them what their top performers have in common and how it's different from their middle or bottom performers.

Reach out to Mike either through the PeopleRight Website or on [email protected]

As ever, let us know your thoughts on [email protected]

This week, I have the pleasure of talking to Danielle Mulvey of the All In Company.

Partial Transcript:

Danielle:  So what's interesting and Mike Michalowicz and I (Mike is the author of Profit First.) we're business partners, and sort of partners in crime and things. he'll do his keynote on Profit First, and then I'll follow behind him doing the workshop, actually teaching how to implement Profit First. And his books, have been sort of an evolution of the entrepreneur as their business grows and scales and such. And the next book that is coming out, is called All In how to Get Your Employees to Act Like Owners. And that is an evolution, really, from profit first, and seeing businesses become profitable, scale their business, but then sort of start struggling with their profitability at the point of, about ten employees and a million dollars or more in real revenue, then what happens is their biggest expense is payroll. And, that big expense, if it's not efficient, if it's loaded with one, two and three star employees, is starting to put a drain on the business and start to negatively impact the profitability of the business, because one, two and three star employees their average hom or worth. But the funny thing is, it takes two or three one, two, or three star employees to do the job of one five star employee. But you pay the five star employee the same that you pay a one, two or three star employee. So that is where you just start this spiral down in terms of losing some ground on profitability when your business has one, two and three star employees. The other thing about kind of that tipping point of ten or more employees, a million dollars or more in real revenue is that that business is scaling. That business started out with maybe, you know, two or three employees. And the interesting thing is, is maybe some of those employees that started with you, they were five stars when you were doing $300,000 a year. But as you grow the business, and as you get into new markets or require a new level of sophistication that five star employee who may be someone who started with you and was great, hasn't necessarily scaled with your operations of the business. So that person could become a one, two or three star employee as your business grows. And now they're sort of a liability, in terms of your profitability instead of an asset. And so it's really important for owners to continually be evaluating their employees. We like to use the five star employee rating system to keep leveling up the organization as it grows. And it's okay if someone isn't necessarily a fit for the organization after it reaches a certain point. I know for me, I was the bookkeeper I was the bookkeeper in our construction materials supply firm in 2010 when we started the company. That position quickly outgrew my skills and abilities, after about two years and such, so I moved on. I didn't hang on to doing that role, if that makes sense. And that happens in business. and so it's really important that as your companies grow as they scale, you've got the right people in the right role. Or as Jim Collins would say, on the right bus, in the right seat, and going in the right direction.

Find Danielle on Linkedin HERE

and on the website discussed:  https://theallincompany.com/neversettle/ where you can also download the How to Hire 5 Star Employees Guide.

Get in touch with us at [email protected]

This week, I welcome to the show Tara O'Brien, Recruitment Strategist!

Partial Transcript:

Dave: I'm loving this, by the way. This is absolutely brilliant. And thank, you very much for sharing because what I'd like to ask now is how would you I've got my own thoughts about how to do this. How would you build that platform? Because M, if you think about in business, we've got, when we sell anything, if somebody wants to buy a Tesla, if they want to buy an iPhone, if they want to buy whatever they want to buy, we all go through three stages. We go through awareness, consideration, and decision stage. So aware that we have a requirement for something, we then go out and consider something and we'll investigate. And then decision is based about okay, price, et cetera. So what would be the first steps to a company or organization? building a platform to attract their ideal clients, would you say?

Tara: Yeah. And the recruitment or the candidate journey, as we call it, tends to go through exactly the same cycle as that. But we tend to call it awareness, consideration, and application are the first three stages in the candidate journey. And it's a difficult question to give a definite answer to, because it really depends on the organization and whether they're an organization that's known in the area that they're based in, or if they have a brand name that people are aware of. But ultimately it's about building that employee brand, that brand that people talk about when they're down the pub and say, oh, I work for this company, they're a great organization to work for, this is what happens. I don't know, I get to work from home three days a week, or I get to go early on Friday afternoons, or whatever it is that they're talking about. And bearing in mind that most people don't leave an organization for financial reasons, obviously some do. and of course at the moment, there's a little bit more of that because of the financial current situation, where it's difficult for people to, cost of living is going up. but generally speaking, people leave because of their manager or because of the organization. And it's usually linked in with fairness somewhere along the line. They rarely leave just because of money. So if you've got somebody talking about an organization, the organization they work for being I don't know, really inclusive, really caring, really wanting M to look after their employees and nurture them, they're going to tell other people that. And that's how you start to spread your brand message. there's other ways you can spread your brand message. so tools like LinkedIn, if you're recruiting for people in the professional sector, LinkedIn tends to be a great tool. Getting people to follow your social media pages. LinkedIn obviously, but the Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever the platforms are on, that you're on at the moment. But also then putting out content that's going to be relevant to them. Where companies go wrong with these type of pages is they start to put out information about why they're brilliant. Nobody cares about that. You've got to focus on what's in it for the candidate. So you've got to put yourself in the candidate's shoes and think, what's in it for me from the candidate's perspective. So saying, we're an organization, we've got offices in, blah, blah, nobody cares. What they care about is how you're going to make them feel and what you're going to do to make them feel like they're the right employee for your organization. And so that content that you need to put out to really, build that, ah, brand needs to be all about what you're going to give to the candidates, not who you are.

You can find Tara on Linkedin here, and on her Website here.

As ever, please get in touch on [email protected]

This week, I'm so pleased to welcome Clayton Drotsky to the show, all the way from South Africa.

Partial Transcript:

Dave: So, how many years have you spent working within call centers there?

Clayton: 18 years.

Dave: 18 years. You must have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly when you've been working there.

Clayton: Oh, yes, definitely. I've had people who are leaders who may have got all their leadership qualities from watching The Sopranos. I've had leaders like the one I've just explained, who have been unbelievable. And that's why leaders have such a massive impact. You add value, and you can inspire people to do and be better every single day, and you shouldn't do yourself an injustice. Having a great leader like I had had a massive impact on the rest of my career, but I could have been unlucky, and I could have had a really bad leader, and I could have had a negative impact on my life. So when you look at a toxic call center, it's because well, my feeling, at least, is because the people who are in the leadership roles are there for the wrong reasons. they're there to make money, which is obviously what everyone wants to do, but they forget that the people that are in the call center, if they enjoy what they do and they find satisfaction in what they do, they'll look forward to doing it, they'll enjoy doing it, and they'll accelerate it, too naturally. But that's what you want. You want that feeling.

Dave: So this is really, really fascinating to me because this podcast series was actually, inspired by a gentleman called, Michelle Falcon. It's a great book, actually. It's called People First culture. I really strongly recommend it. People First Culture build a lasting company by shifting your focus from profits to people. So what you're really saying is that's exactly, without even knowing about that book, basically that's what you've been doing for the last 18 years, correct?

Clayton: Yes. Yeah, exactly. And lucky that it happened to me, that I was able to understand what good leadership looked like and was able to implement it myself.

Dave: Well, I just find that that's fantastic. so when you look at toxic companies, what you mentioned obviously, about leaders that are just solely focused on, the money side of things. And obviously The Sopranos, that's their training guide. But, what else? Talk about toxicity. Talk about some of the lessons that you've learned. And that when you walk into a company now in your current role, that you can immediately spot what toxic elements are there.

Clayton: I've been to some companies where people compare busyness. They'll, make some of the remarks. Like they might make a remark when they come back from lunch, just come back from lunch, probably have 120 emails. Again, why would you say that? Why are we comparing busyness? Why are we putting our boundaries do we not want people to ask us things because we don't know how to do it? Is that why we pretending to be busy? Or why is busyness such an important thing to us to compete in? And that, I must admit, I've heard often, and that's kind of a sign for me, that the people are not there as a team. They're working individually. And when you start comparing busyness, there could be boundaries up. they are afraid of taking on challenges. They don't celebrate the victories of others. and it almost rolls into what a fixed mindset looks like.

Find Clayton here on Linkedin

or get him at https://growthcrew.co.uk/

Get in touch with Dave on [email protected]

An amazing episode this week with Paula Wingate of Influential Minds

Partial Transcript:

Paula: Everybody gets out of bed because the doctor gets to get out of bed to watch TV. They get out of bed to make a difference, to be that game changer serve. they want to feel amazing, they want to feel fulfilled. But yet most employees are trained to get out of bed to fill a nine to five slot. So don't matter if you're on Facebook, don't matter if it's on LinkedIn. It's between nine and five. Right? I've got to fill my time. Whereas if we flip it and go, Right, I tell you what, do your daily target today, and as soon as you finish, get yourself off home. If you finish at 01:00, get yourself off my bank the time. If you finish by 10:00, get yourself a phone. and teach these employees to be sharper, not to fill the time, but to actually how do I actually do my job in a high quality return? Hit my targets, let the business grow, and then by going, take a rest day, just like a footballer would do, if that makes sense.

Dave: Absolutely. But I think that's a lovely way of putting it, actually. And it's just, reflecting on that just now, if we can inspire people, particularly post COVID and what have you, or post lockdown, I should say.  But in terms of, performance, if we can excel in a shorter period of time, then the employees of the team are allowed to take time off. That's just such a wonderful way to help them go and spend more time with their family, but cram in as much work as possible that can optimize the performance of a company.

Paula: Yeah, it's an operating they're like, you know, like, I see this 95 or fill the 95 strategy and they don't hit the targets. And I go, Why are you here, then? How do you feel if you don't hit the targets? Where's your fulfillment? Where do you feel special? And they go, we don't. We just come here and do the job, paul and then they go and I'll go, okay, and how would you feel if we did it the other way, where you felt brilliant, you felt fulfilled and you learned, I'll take your daily target in the shortest piece of time, just like an athlete would do. So you same bolt has trained his body to hit that 100 meters target in the quickest time possible. Turn them much of the money as possible. And I'm thinking everybody is an athlete, whether you're a business, whether you're an employee, whether you are a footballer, everyone's an athlete. So why are we not training our, body to return or be stronger or be sharper to return these returns for whatever business or your family or your friends, and play this level of fairly messing about and fannying about getting straight to the point.

Get in touch with Paula at The Influential Minds Website or on Linkedin

As ever, reach out to us on [email protected]

Today I'm joined by the incredible Harlan Hammack, business coach.  Tune in to hear his story and more importantly, his experiences!

Partial Transcript:

Harlan: There are a lot of places that I've, I've worked that the culture was toxic. And and mainly because you had people set up, to where they were competing, or they felt they were competing against their colleagues, competing for raises, competing for recognition, whatever it happened to be. Those people, they keep knowledge to themselves. They don't share, they don't help. If they see somebody struggling, you know, they they point the finger at them. Look, they're struggling, but I'm not. So they can keep that spotlight on them. That's very toxic. I work for one company that was the exact opposite. We had people it was a big project, big software implementation project. And when somebody got done with their work, they went around all the cubicles, knocking on the cubicles, asking, what can I do to help you? How can I help? And they would do almost anything right to try to get things done, because that was the way that their company was set up, is that we live or die as a team. We survive, we grow, we thrive as a team. And so everything was focused on teamwork. And if somebody was struggling and you didn't at least offer to help, you had a conversation, right? You took a little walk outside the building, to have a conversation about that, because that was what was so important. And that's what I try to get in with my clients, is that you want to try to build a team that isn't out for individual recognition. They're trying to do whatever it is they can to make the company as successful as possible. Because if the company grows, everybody grows, everybody benefits, right? So with the business leaders, the business owners, I try to teach them, take care of your employees. If you take care of your employees, your employees will take care of your customers, your customers will take care of your business, and your business will ultimately take care of you. And that's really what you want to do, is try to get that thriving kind of, culture going in your business.

Dave: Wise words. Just fantastic, actually. I really appreciate that and a couple of things going on in here. So if a business owner comes to you and you go in and you spot some deficiencies in culture.  What would be the first area that you might work on? So if you take a, company through a process, until I'm using the consultative language here, but taking a company through a process of changing culture. What would be the kind of ABC of success that you would take people through?

Harlan: What I try to do is start with, the core values, right? Everybody has, a, set of core values. Whether you acknowledge it or not, every decision you make is based on your personal core values. Well, same thing in business. You set up the core values of the business. What are we in business for? What are we trying to accomplish? Why are we doing what we do? I help the company set up their core values and then teach everybody in the company, these are our core values. So every decision the employees make are based on those core values. If they aren't making them on the core values, who knows what they're using as their foundation, right, for their decisions? one client that I'm working with, Michael we're doing that. We put his core values in place slowly teaching everybody. At every Monday morning meeting, they go through the core values again to let people know, this is exactly what this means to us.

Find Harlan on LINKEDIN and at https://www.ib4e-coaching.com/

Get in touch on [email protected]

Join me in conversation with Emma Marriott (Emma Marriott Consulting, and recruitment expert) as we discuss good hires, bad hires, company culture, and more!

Partial Transcript:

Dave: What you're sharing here is absolutely fascinating, because when when I think about, recruitment consultants, many don't have the the experience you've got. Many do it in a very poor way. But your experience of actually growing a business all the way up to managing director, dealing with the internal clients, ie. Your own teams as well as the external clients, I find it absolutely fascinating because that must be part of what you've done, part of your experience in learning how to create a culture of growth, for example. And right here today, particularly in post pandemic situation, I think it's really, really relevant because I'm hearing time after time after time, oh, I can't find people, there's nobody in my sector, there's nobody good enough, et cetera, et cetera. Is that just like a time old record?

Emma: No, I think we're in quite a unique situation, actually, just now. in the 20 odd years I worked in recruitment consultancy World, there was definitely trends where you would go up and down following the curve of a recession. Unfortunately, my stand out time would be 2006 seven was an actual boom time, where there was more job of mortal vacancies than there was people similar to now. But you could see that that was just a good, wealthy, strong economy. Then also went to 2007. The world seemed to fall apart till 2008 nine, where we get more of a balance of quite a number of jobs. One recovery point, good number of people. But then also we got that branding because there was a lot, an awful lot of people not entering construction, you know, in the 2007 time. They don't see it as a career of choice. And then it comes to 2015, and you can't find the people you're actually looking for because they've never entered the marker at that point in time. So we get the difficulties of the push pool. But now I think we've not got a particularly buoyant economy at the moment, for a whole host of reasons, but yet we've still got a massive dearth of job roles are open that we can't fill. And, yes, the employment rate is high. I think there's been information out today that wage increases have been at a record level than they have ever before. But there is definitely the candidates and employees in the market are probably have more demands and more expectations than they ever have before. And I think we are not necessarily as employers going out to find the right people, where they're hanging out and giving them the type of culture platform environments where people will thrive.

Reach out to Emma at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmamarriott/

and find me on [email protected]

We're so excited to be joined by HR and 5 star employee specialist, Heenle Turner of The All In Company!

Partial Transcript:

Heenle: To answer your question, first and foremost, it's so important to understand what a five star employee is. And that goes with in all facets because you're never going to find a five star employee if you don't know what you're looking for. So our general theme around five star employees is that five star employees crave that transparency, they crave results, they crave accountability. So five star employee, um, meets all five stars of the five star criteria. First, the five star employees core values align with that of the business owners. Five star employees score seven or higher on the eleven universal qualities of five star employees. So the eleven universal qualities of five star employees is kind of that same DNA that runs through all five star employees. Things like they listen, they're limber, um, and they produce quantifiable results for you. And there's eleven different, um, qualities in total.

Dave: On that point, Heinle just, ah, sorry to interject here, but ah, it's a spreadsheet exercise, isn't it? The person is yes or no or a number, or thereby it's not, oh, this person might be a good person sometime in 2004 or whatever. It's yes or no, isn't it?

Heenle: It is, yeah. So we always look for, in our process, we're looking for an objective application of the five star rating system, um, against your employees as well as applicants who are coming into your pipeline. So you run through the eleven qualities exercise and identify first with your existing employees. Well, does this person have this quality or do they not? So with your existing team, for instance, you can do the Quick M Litmus test, right? You can tell yourself, well, does this person listen? Does this person produce results for me? Does this person have, uh, the skill set, which is that third star, um, for the role. So, um, a very process based system to evaluate your five star employees and five star candidates.

Dave: Outstanding. So that's two of the stars there, is that correct?

Heenle: Correct. Yeah. So you've got first is the core values. The second is they have to score a seven or higher on the eleven universal qualities of a five star employee. The third is that they have to meet or exceed your scorecard and expectations for the role specific aptitude and skills. So a big difference between saying it and actually doing it is what a skill is and aptitudes. Right. Every role has a different set of requirements in terms of what that person needs to bring to the table. So, um, it's your responsibility as, uh, the business owner to understand what those aptitudes might be and what, um, your minimum expectations are for that. So we guide our clients through this step by step process to customize this five star rating system for their organization and the role, and then they're ready to go to make that assessment, um, in their recruitment process.

Get in touch with Heenle to find out more on [email protected]

and at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heenleturner

As ever, please get in touch on [email protected]

Welcome to this brand new series of the Wealthy Wednesday podcast. With me, Dave Drimmie, which we are calling People First Culture. 

Partial Transcript:

It's the culture in a company that provides fertile ground for people to grow and develop into amazing colleagues. One of the biggest challenges to building wealth in a company is the lack of talent in the sector. In fact, since COVID hit, and especially in 2022, I kept hearing phrases like, there's no talent left in our industry. It seemed to be a common complaint across the globe in multiple sectors when I was speaking to people. So in the summer of 2022, I conducted a quiz to uncover the biggest challenges that owners of companies in the construction sector were experiencing. Because that's the sector I specialize in. Now. There were five core, uh, challenges that appeared. One, no roadmap for strategic growth. Two, they had poor sales processes. Three, unreliable cash flow. Four, difficulty in hiring amazing employees, and five, lack of work life balance. In fact, uh, 2022 left most business owners highly stressed out and in need of time off at Christmas. It was horrible. Some of the things I was hearing, really, really horrible. For both the individuals I was speaking to and the families, it was just awful. The quiz highlighted that 39% of people who owned a company had huge difficulty in finding, hiring, and then retaining amazing people. Now, with work life balance coming next at 27%, and the remaining three sitting roughly level with each other, it, uh, really was apparent that I wanted to focus on the aspect of hiring amazing people. Okay, so discussing this with business owners in other industry sectors, talent acquisition was also their own major challenge. So it wasn't just construction alone. It was across multiple, multiple sectors. So our intention with this podcast series to unpack why this is the case and invite experts and guests on the show who really know how to hire amazing talent, how to retain them, and how to build culture that creates a fertile environment for them to grow and thrive. Because ultimately, when it comes down to it, the longer we can have employees working with us, and the more experienced they are, the better our business can perform. Because when we hire five star employees well, put it another way, if we don't hire five star employees, if we've just got poor quality employees in the business, the business doesn't perform as well as it possibly can. There's no way we can grow and scale that company unless it's some form of slick, automated sales machine. So that is really what we're looking to do in this podcast series. It's really just to help you to uncover how to hire, retain, and build culture in your company.

Link to Michel Falcon's Book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-First-Culture-Lasting-Company-Shifting-ebook/dp/B07JBDBTZ8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3VSTHAP8ACZFO&keywords=people+first+culture&qid=1673378502&sprefix=people+first+culture%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1

As ever, please do get in touch on [email protected]