The playbooks that built successful staffing firms over the last decade aren’t landing the same way. Buyers want more value at lower price points. Cold calls and emails get less traction. And leaders are coming home from conferences fired up, then dumping a week’s worth of ideas on teams that weren’t in the room.
Dan Mori has watched this pattern play out with the firms he coaches through Staffing Dashboard. As the organizer of Staffing Sales Summit — a deliberately capped, 120-person event built around the promise that everything is implementable by Monday morning — Dan has a front-row seat to where growth breaks down and what separates the firms that push through from the ones that stall.
We caught up with Dan on the last day of the summit to talk about what’s actually happening in the room, what the data shows about leaders who invest in learning versus those who don’t, and why the first step toward growth might be slowing down.
Q. You built this event, you picked the speakers, and you’ve been watching everything come together. What’s the conversation that keeps coming up that you didn’t expect?
Dan Mori: The very first comment I’ve gotten from every single person I’ve talked to about this event is that they had no idea how actionable it was really going to be. They said, “We heard you say you want everything to be implemented by Monday morning, so we thought that was just marketing stuff. But the speakers are literally teaching us things we can implement today.”
And everyone’s saying, “I wish my team was here.” That’s the affirmation that we’re doing the right thing.
Q. You capped this event at 120 and said you wanted the top 1% who are committed to growth. Now that they’re here, what’s the common constraint you’re hearing, even among the high performers in the room?
DM: The most common constraint is a buyer-seller mismatch. The playbooks we’ve used, the training that’s been successful in getting clients, expanding clients, building relationships — they’re just not landing the same way they used to. At the same time, new technology is being introduced, and we’re trying to figure out how to use it to solve those problems.
And then there’s an environmental factor we have to account for: buyers have higher expectations. They want more value, more quality, and a lower price point. Those things don’t coexist. So we have to figure out how to re-educate buyers, reintroduce our value, and differentiate — all things we’ve always had to do, but in a new world.
Q. Are you seeing a split between what owners and operators are wrestling with versus what producers are dealing with?
DM: Producers feel the micro-level of it. They’re dealing with the frustration of cold calls being less effective, emails getting less response, and getting a lot of different tools thrown at them by leadership with very little support or direction. They’re trying to figure it out in chaos. They have a lot of anxiety, but they also have a genuine desire to get better, and I love that about them.
Leaders are facing the macro challenges: revenue declining, companies that have been flat or taken a step back over the past couple of years. They’re trying to figure out really big problems like, “How do buyers buy? How do I develop my team?”
Both sides are feeling the pressure, but they’re looking for different solutions, and there’s not much cohesion between the two yet.
Q. Are you seeing anybody solve that in a meaningful way?
DM: The companies getting out in front of it are taking a slower, more methodical approach. They’re saying, “Let’s not try to do everything at once. What’s the most important thing we need to address right now?” Then, collectively as a team, they identify the best tactic and define what success looks like. They’re doing it one big rock at a time.
It’s almost counterintuitive, but that’s actually creating more traction and momentum. They’re slowing down, taking a breath, being more thoughtful. And it’s working. They’re growing.
Q. Have you seen any moments in the sessions where something a speaker said clearly shifted the room?
DM: There were a few that really hit:
- Casey Jacox’s three-tap framework around slowing down and not asking two or three questions at once — I’m so guilty of that myself.
- Claudette Cunitz’s line: “When you think you’re clear, you’re not.” So true.
- Kendra Cato delivered a masterclass on building influence. When she vulnerably shared her own mission statement — that her true goal isn’t to sell, it’s to leave people a little better off than when she found them — it was palpable in the room. You just felt that shift.
And I had an incredible conversation last night with a couple who are great operators. They’ve had a lot of success but things have been turbulent lately, and they’re just like, “This is amazing. We want to grow, but we’re not sure what the next steps are.” These are really good people with a genuine desire to grow, but there’s uncertainty.
I feel like collectively, as a group, we’re figuring that out and building a community where it feels safe to take the next step together.
Q. Is there anything you wish you’d put on the agenda?
DM: I’m going to go the other way; I might have put too much on it.
Every session is so good that you want to go further, but in the spirit of essentialism, the answer isn’t to add more. It’s to do a little bit less, but better. As far as the topics themselves, I think we’ve covered all the bases.
Q. You told me in our last conversation that you’re not going to close this event by just talking about metrics — you’re going to tell people exactly what to do on Monday. What actually happens when a leader goes home from a conference like this? Where do things break down?
DM: They break down because these are high-energy events. The endorphins are rushing. You feel like you can do all of it. So you try to wrap your head around literally everything, and you end up with a whole lot of half-baked ideas. Then you word vomit them out to your team: “We’re going to do this, and this, and this.” But your team wasn’t in the room. They don’t have the context or clarity to understand what you’re saying. It comes across as a foreign language.
Because there’s no thoughtful, actionable plan to back it up, the whole thing fails. It turns into what I’ll call a soup sandwich.
That’s why I want my closing session to be exactly what to do next. Because that’s the number one question. You have to pick one thing. What is the biggest problem you’re facing right now, and if you solved it, what would have the biggest impact? Then, what’s the one thing you learned here that best addresses that problem? Just do that one thing.
I’m also giving away an AI tool that walks people through that process — no ambiguity, no excuse. I don’t want this event to be an expense for anyone. I want every dollar spent, every minute of time here, to yield ROI.
Q. You told me you used to be the leader who came home and bombed his team with every idea from a conference. What had to change for you personally to slow down?
DM: Someone finally challenged me directly. They said, “Dan, we’re not Baskin-Robbins. We don’t need the new flavor of the month. You always dump everything on us after a conference, you expect us to execute on it, and we don’t fully understand what you’re talking about because you never take time to explain these things. We get that you’re excited. We don’t want to be disrespectful, but we have jobs to do. When you come back and dump all these ideas on us, it’s actually more disruptive than good.”
That was a gut punch. So we unpacked it together, and they said, “Why don’t you just ask us what our biggest challenge is? Then think about everything you learned and tell us which one thing you think would best help us address it. We’ll work through it together, one at a time.”
That’s just logical. You have to temper your enthusiasm and pick the one thing that will have the biggest impact. Work at it until you see results, then move to the next one.
Q. When you look at the firms you work with through Staffing Dashboard, can you actually see a difference in the data between leaders who attend events like this and implement what they learn versus the ones who don’t?
DM: It’s like a light switch: it’s on or off. Leaders who invest in learning and use data tools like Staffing Dashboard know their numbers. More importantly, they know the inputs that move those numbers.
My favorite metric is average weekly value of headcount — the combination of average hours per week and average gross margin per hour. A leader who’s operating at this level knows exactly which lever to pull. If the number is off, they can diagnose whether it’s a markup issue, a workers’ comp compression issue, low redeployment rates, high UI rates — they know where to look, and they know how to address it. Leaders who don’t invest this way are just guessing. The difference is enormous.
Q. You’re the event organizer, the closing speaker, and a coach to many of the people in the room. How do you separate those roles?
DM: I don’t create separation. I try to show up as my most transparent self, tell people where I think the industry is, and coach from that same place. I put this event on to bring in speakers who address the exact problems I see every day. I think people show up because they see the world the same way, they’re facing the same problems, and they believe these speakers can help them solve it. I just use a different platform — same challenges, different format.
Q. For the staffing leaders who are committed to getting on a growth trajectory in 2026, what’s the one thing you’d tell them to focus on first?
DM: There are actually two parts, and they go hand in hand.
First, before you decide to grow, assess whether you actually have the foundation to support growth. A lot of people are trying to grow right now without a solid foundation. Do you have the right people? Are they trained and equipped properly? Are your systems, processes, and workflows sound? Is your technology cohesive and supporting your workflows end to end?
If your foundation is strong and you’re ready to grow, then identify the single biggest constraint holding you back. Most people already know what it is, and the reason it still exists is because they’re afraid to make the hard decision to address it. As my friend Tom Erb says, they’re tiptoeing around the elephant in the room.
Make the hard call. Remove that constraint. Unlock growth.
Secure your foundation, identify your constraint, address it head-on, and get going.
