Hiring for Grit and Drive with Jeffrey Bowling and Eric Gregg

How do leaders stay ahead in a rapidly evolving industry while preparing for the future of work? During this episode, we sit down with Jeffrey Bowling, Co-Founder and Partner at Four Piers, and Eric Gregg, Founder and CXS at ClearlyRated. First, we discuss key market trends, how AI is changing the recruitment industry, and some of the tools that leaders can leverage to navigate turbulent times effectively. Predicting how the hiring landscape may change in the next three to five years, we explore growth strategies and ways to measure performance to ensure organizational success. We examine the critical role of creativity in overcoming challenges and why it can be pivotal to bring everyone in the organization into your problem-solving process. We also get into what it looks like to prioritize progress during difficult periods through leadership and discuss what attributes to look for in new hires: grit and drive. Join us today to hear all this and more.

[0:01:15] DF: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of The Staffing Show. Today, I am super excited to be joined by Jeff Bowling, who is the Co-Founder and Partner of the Four Piers. And Eric Gregg, who is the Founder and CXS of ClearlyRated. Jeff and Eric, super excited to have you guys here today. I’m going to be digging in some cool conversations. Talking about market trends, leadership and turbulent times, some growth strategies, and also touching on how you can measure performance.

To kick things off, Jeff, could you give us a little bit of your background and tell us how you got in the staffing industry and a little bit about what you’re doing today?

[0:01:51] JB: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, David. Glad to be here. Yeah, so I was originally a college baseball coach. Eric’s probably heard this story more times that he cares to remember. I was originally a college baseball coach. I thought that’s what I wanted to do and not ever have to have a real job. And found myself working way too hard scouting and giving extra lessons and whatnot to youth, to one of these select teams. And got fed up finally with the hours and the lack of pay. And a physician whose son I had recruited to the college that I was coaching at suggested I get into physician staffing and recruiting.

And so, I looked into it. Long story short, 30 days later, I was done with baseball and went to work at Merritt Hawkins and Associates, which is now [inaudible 0:02:30]. I’m coaching this youth team for extra money. I get out of baseball. I go to work for Merritt Hawkins. And a year later, one of the dads of that team calls me and says, “Hey, you got to come back and coach the team. It’s gone to pot. And we won’t take no for an answer.” Essentially, he became the angel investor. What became the Delta Companies.

And so, I’m not an entrepreneur. I don’t think I have an entrepreneur spirit really. Delta Companies was created back in ’97 solely so that I could coach this really rich guy’s son’s baseball team. That was it, right? So I can make my schedule flexible enough to be available to coach his team. And that’s how I got into recruiting and then staffing. And I was really fortunate to hire on some really, really superstar people early on at the Delta Companies and evolved. Obviously grew that business and sold it in 2014. I stepped down as CEO at the end of ’16. Ended up on a few boards, one of those being ClearlyRated, and made some investments in the staffing industry.

Went back and did a turnaround for Doximity for three years. And then that’s been almost two years ago that I stepped down from that role. That’s the long-winded version. I hope that was okay. But just my background.

[0:03:39] DF: It’s great and it’s such a fun story. And also, really impressive what you’ve done with Delta and all of the accomplishments within the company. Eric, why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about who you are and your background? You’re a second-time guest? Maybe third-time. I don’t remember exactly. But I know we’ve had a few things together. So, excited to have you here.

[0:03:55] EG: Yeah, absolutely. I always enjoy our conversations, David. As Jeff kind of alluded to, he didn’t tell the full story. They were our first net promoter score customer at the Delta Companies. Also, the first outside investment we ever took at ClearlyRated was Four Piers, led by Jeff through multiple stages of getting that deal done. And he led our board through the successful acquisition by Software Growth Partners, the private equity firm that we’re working with now, which kind of was the encapsulation of what has been about 16 years in the staffing space.

For me, we started doing surveys, client satisfaction, talent satisfaction, and internal employee satisfaction surveys about 16 years ago and continue to grow. We launched Best of Staffing, which a lot of people know, in 2009, as a response to all the negative economic pressures of 2008. We thought we needed something to celebrate. And so, we wanted to shine the light on the firms that were doing a really good job on service. And it kind of took off from there. Really proud of what we’ve done there. My lead was the founder along with my co-founder, Nathan Goff. And we led the company until the private equity exit. And then I stepped into the role of CXS, which sounds like an INXS cover band, but really is CX strategist or customer experience strategist. And both you guys know, the stuff I like geeking out about is the data and sort of evangelizing the impact that that experience can have on a firm’s growth. And so, this just gives me more time to do that and really kind of follow my passion, which has been really great.

[0:05:30] DF: Awesome, well, just to say it again, I’m excited to have both of you guys here. I think, Eric, I’m always listening to what’s going on in the market from you. And Jeff, some of your leadership thoughts that you’ve shared on LinkedIn over the years have been impactful for me. And excited to have the conversation about where things are at in the industry and provide some insights to the audience as well.

To kick things off, Eric, let’s talk about where market trends. What’s going on in the staffing industry today? What are some of the significant things that you see happening right now?

[0:05:58] EG: I think there’s some obvious really impactful trends going on. And you have to overlay the fact that we’re in the midst still in December 2024. We’re in the midst of the longest, not the deepest, but the longest recession that the industry has ever been in. We’re at about 26 straight months of negative year-over-year growth in the industry in terms of revenue and employment. And it’s never really been that long.

And so, as you look at that, I think there’s a number of things that are impacting that that I think are good lessons for us as we look at 2025 and beyond. The latest data from ASA is expecting it to be pretty flat, maybe even down slightly in Q1 and Q2 of 2025. And then up, but not up dramatically in Q3 and Q4. And so, I know we’re gonna talk a lot about this. And as we were preparing for this, both you and Jeff I thought had some really good thoughts and strategies on ways to grow when the rest of the industries may be flat or choppy. And I think we’ll hit that.

But the other thing that I wanna kind of drive home on this that I think is a really important trend to watch is that we’re getting more pressure as an industry from non-traditional competitors than we ever have before. It used to be that, look, we’re kind of competing with other staffing firms for the business. But now as there’s more and more tools, we’re competing to people trying to do this on their own in-house. We’re competing with people doing more SOW and services-type work. As the inflation drove up the cost of labor, we’re seeing more people offshore or automate components that maybe didn’t make economic sense when you were paying somebody 14 an hour, but they do if you have to pay them 22 an hour.

I think we have a lot of things that are really beaten against our traditional value proposition, and I think it’s now more than ever, we’ve got to stay really, really close to our customers and evolve as their needs are evolving, as opposed to trying to sell the same suite of services into a wider and wider audience.

[0:08:03] JB: Not to mention, Eric, just the online platforms, right? And not only the Upworks, but even Ubers of the world who continue to tap in.

[0:08:13] EG: Well, Jeff, you make a good point. And it’s kind of a fill in the blank. The time that I’ve been in the industry, when I first came in, it was like, “Okay, our VMS is going to replace the need for recruiters.” Right? Because we don’t get direct contact. And then it was, “Are the online platforms going to replace this?” And then it was, “Are sort of the job boards, as they get more progressive, going to replace the recruiter?” And now is AI going to replace the recruiter?

And I think the answer each time in all of those has been fill in the blank is going to replace the bad recruiter, the mediocre recruiter, right? The recruiter that can provide context, that can provide relationships that can really guide people, that recruiter is gonna do really well and I think will continue to do well. But we’re certainly under attack to prove the value that we’re creating. Not just to create that value, but to prove it.

[0:09:08] JB: Yeah. I mean, even going back to the dot-com age, we were all gonna be replaced initially with the web in general, the internet. All the industry’s done is, I’m pretty sure, doubled if not tripled since then. I like to think about a difference – just a slightly different way, and that is what we’re doing each time one of these disruptors, and I’ll use my quote fingers, disruptors is introduced, whether it’s the internet itself, whether it’s VMS product, now it’s AI, is we’ve just made recruiters much more efficient. A volume of work that recruiters are able to crank out today is massive as compared to what they were doing 25 years ago. You have to be on the forefront of that. You can’t ignore it. You do need fewer recruiters, Eric, today than you did certainly a few years back. And that’ll continue to be the case as AI pushes through as well.

[0:09:54] DF: I kind of see parallels between this. And I’ve talked about this in compared to the travel agency world and the travel industry as a whole. There are still travel agents, but the roles of those travel agents have changed dramatically, as will, I think, recruiters. And I think that’s something we’re seeing with online platforms that are moving forward and then the software that supports them along with that as well.

Do you guys feel like the roles will change, but do you feel like the growth projections, the trajectory for the staffing industry will get back on track? I think SIA typically is forecasting that. We’re kind of returning to the new normal. I’ve heard somebody say, “If you take 2019 to now out, just take the whole COVID era out, draw a straight line, you almost end up where you should have been all along. But I’m wondering where you guys see the next three to five years of staffing. Do you see it coming back around? Or do you think there is a more significant disruption at play?

[0:10:49] EG: I’ll start on that and preface this by saying that I’ve been wrong pretty consistently for almost a few years. And anybody that tells you that they haven’t been is lying to you because we haven’t been able to predict. Look at the Wall Street Journal economists and their projections versus the actual jobs data. On average, I ran this since 2022, they have missed by an average of 27%. Mostly they’ve missed [inaudible 0:11:14] low and it’s been higher than that on overall employment. But like you miss – I mean, if I missed that level in almost any job, I wouldn’t have a job, right? And these are the best and the brightest. And so, I think it’s really hard to predict.

I do worry that some aspect of this problem solving that people went through, whether it was perceived or real, rates being too high, or whether it was perceived or real opportunity to do some of these things on their own or with some of these enhanced tools or the online platforms, I feel like there’s a wider swath of things that ways that people can get the same work done than there were before. And I think that as we look at that, for us to get back on that same trajectory, we’re gonna have to redouble our efforts to get credit for the value we are creating and to ensure that we’re actually creating the value we think we’re creating.

[0:12:08] JB: It’s going to be better than it has been the last couple of years for the staffing industry at large. If you look at where the job creation is, it just hasn’t been in spaces that we typically are around. Almost half of the jobs that have come available to be filled over the last couple of years are at government. It just makes it a little bit more challenging to fill those jobs, depending on which segments you sort of service.

At the end of the day, if you’re a multi-billion-dollar company, yeah, you may face some continued headwinds. Maybe the growth rate isn’t quite what it has been the last 10 years. For most of those companies that are $20, $50, even $100 million in revenue, there’s so much market share you can steal. Who cares if the industry grows or not? You got to go out there and take it away. And there’s plenty of bad providers who aren’t, by the way, keeping up with the latest tools to keep their recruiters the most efficient and will continue to lose out. There’s plenty of market share to go when, even if the industry isn’t creating a whole lot more over the next few years.

[0:13:04] DF: That kind of takes us to the next point of this, which is Jeff, you’ve had some exceptionally good thoughts, especially even for me when I’ve heard it last year on your webinar, about how to – during challenging times. And I’d love to know what some of your recommendations are. And there are niches right now that are doing well, but there’s a lot of the staffing industry that is dealing with a more challenging market than usual. And how would you recommend staffing agencies approach this?

[0:13:28] JB: Your market is defined as the geographies you service, also the niches and sort of modalities of people that you place. And so, it’s such a subjective thing to say that the market’s down. Because if you’re in locums in the Dallas, Fort Worth area doing anesthesia right now, you’re incredibly happy.

On the whole though, if we realize that the industry is flat to maybe down as much as 10%, just on average, what can you do to combat that? I’d start with this. Those that are winning, beating the market are still growing, perhaps, where some sectors of the industry are contracting. They did probably three or four things right prior to this downturn. One, they were super-nitched. They weren’t trying to be everything to everybody. And when you’re a subject matter expert in a particular market, not only do you get a lot of efficiencies internally, but you kind of solidify your place in a down market. It’s a little bit counterintuitive to think that, in a down market, you need to be more restrictive on what kind of orders you’re filling. But it’s true. And if you had that discipline prior, you’re just a whole lot further ahead than you are today. That’s one thing being super niche.

I think two, hiring gritty and resilient people. I mean, making the gritty factor part of your hiring profile is going to help. And you would only do that if you, as the leader, were probably gritty. That certainly helps. That’s a big deal, right? Is having gritty folks to get through what are tough times.

Third, I’ve said this 100 times, I think salesmanship is a lost art. And those that didn’t strengthen that sales muscle in the good times are super weak right now. Those nursing companies that relied solely on MSPs to get their orders are struggling. I mean, they’re going out of business. They’re selling for pennies on the dollar. And salesmanship in this context is the – let’s just think about it is the ability to persuade people to do something that they might not otherwise do.

And you could say that this is true of both recruiters, those that are recruiting people or talking them into going and working on assignments. And you can say it’s true on obviously on the business development, the client side of the equation. But without automation on the recruitment side, this mainly impacts the BD side of the equation. And there’s just a lot of folks that aren’t very good at it.

And then finally, I’ll say just the competition inside the organization. Peer pressure is probably a leader’s best friend, a strong motivator and really reduces the need for a lot of management. I guess what I’m really telling you though is the opposite of what you asked, David. Sorry. Right? These are challenging things to do in a down market. So maybe that was advice for what to do in the next up market, right? When times are good.

[0:16:06] DF: Well, I think it’s helpful. And I think that understanding even the term that I think we all talked about briefly yesterday. I’ve just heard it for my first time this year as well, was the riches and the niches. I think it’s one of the nice way to remember that. It’s so true. I think that, Eric, you had some comments about how people tend to go broad.

[0:16:23] EG: Yeah. Yeah. We see it so often, right? People are like, “Okay, this isn’t working. So I’m putting this much in the top of the funnel and I’m getting less out than I thought I would. So that must mean that I need to put more in the top of the funnel.” Instead of trying to sort of fatten that funnel a little bit and make yourself stickier in there.

I’ll just add to what Jeff’s saying, the sales side of it, when you look at the turnover, we turn over 30% to 40% of our account managers and our recruiters every year in this industry. And so that means that for some organizations, appreciably everybody that is with them today has not actually been here during any kind of a need to sell kind of environment, right? They just started – if they started during the pandemic or early post-pandemic, they never had to sell in this industry. And they don’t really have a good idea of how this industry feels.

On the flip side, if you started in late 2022, you’re going, “What was I ever thinking getting into this industry? This is really hard.” It’s hard and rewarding usually. And it’s been hard but less rewarding for a lot of people on this one. I do think that you have to lead with that razor’s edge of empathy towards the fact that I get, team, that you’re working 30% harder for 20% less. And trying to encourage them that, “Look, this will come. You’re doing the right input things. The output things will come.” While also not allowing it to become a distraction or an excuse on that.

And then the other thing I wanted to add that I think is a big piece of that, we sort of ignore sales enablement as an industry. And what I mean by that is we spend a lot on marketing. And then the industries – of all the industries that we are close to, this industry staffing just dances circles around everybody else in terms of the sales, professionalism, and kind of rigor and performance. And yet we don’t really do much to actually give our recruiters, our account managers a leg up when they’re in front of a candidate, when they’re in front of a hiring manager.

And yet, in almost every one of those meetings, they probably have more expertise. Certainly, the firm has more expertise hiring than any of the hiring managers that they’re working with. And so, we don’t really translate that that well. That’s bringing data, thought leadership examples. And the only way you can really make that impactful is if those examples are really specific to the industry. Like Jeff’s saying, got to go deeper. Because if you can’t really stand out as being one of the top two or three in a particular space – and that might be a combination of region and job description and industry as a part of it. If you can’t be the top two or three in that space, it’s gonna be really hard to break through there.

I’ll just leave with one additional data point that I found is really fascinating. Google did this research where they found that 81% of buyers of B2B services have what they call a day-one list. And that means that when they’re going out to find a firm, they have at least a couple of companies in mind that they think could be able to do that. And I thought that was fascinating, right? Four out of five have that day-one list.

What was even more fascinating is that for those that have a day-one list, 92% of the time, who they ultimately selected was from that day-one list. We ran this just for the staffing industry and we found that 64% have a day-one list. Still pretty high number, two-thirds. 93% actually ended up picking a staffing firm that was already on their day-one list. And so, that really that really speaks to – for those of us going back to marketing 101 where it was problem recognition, and then it was awareness, and then it was consideration set, and then the rest of that buying journey. If we’re not in that consideration set, in that awareness and that consideration set, it’s really an uphill battle to get in there. And it’s going to be hard to crack new logos into account.

[0:20:22] JB: Wouldn’t that be a function of marketing to make sure that firm was originally top of mind to be on that list, that initial list?

[0:20:30] EG: There’s a lot there marketing-wise, Jeff. I think because the unique way that our industry works, you’re gonna have the opportunity – if you’re taking kind of a long play on the sales process, you’re gonna have an opportunity for sales to influence that as well. If you’re adding value – for example, let’s say that David’s trying to sell me, and he’s just dialing and smiling. And, “Hey, just wanted to check in. See if you needed anything. Hey, just wanted to let you know, I would do anything.” Well, that’s not gonna break through much for me.

But let’s say that you’re selling to me and you’re calling up and you’re saying, “Hey, I just wanted to you check in with you. I know it’s been really busy in the locum space here in Dallas. And we’re doing a lot in this area. If there’s ever anything I could do, even if it’s not the right time to partner, if you just want to bounce an about an idea or if you just want to get my perspective.” I see a lot of these, “I’d be happy to help.”

And then the next time you call, you say, “Hey, we just did a little study and actually looking at the things that locums are searching for, if they’re gonna take an assignment, and the top three things are X, Y, and Z. I just love to kind of get your perspectives. Is that what you’re seeing as well?” Most of my clients are really – that really resonates with them. They’re seeing a lot more emphasis on flexibility than they have in the past. And now you’re bringing yourself in and adding that expertise. And when it does come the right time, it’s not just the marketing, but now it’s the marketing alongside of that relationship building on the sales that’s done it.

[0:21:54] JB: David, if I could, I’ll go back and answer your original question now. It’s a long way to get there. And I’ll start – the question was, I think, what tactics can staffing firms employ to generate growth or at least win and beat the competition in a down market. I go back to one that Eric brought up that is brilliant, and that is word empathy. And when you think about it, empathy is somewhere in between apathy and sympathy. You don’t want to over-index on either one.

And just literally defined, empathy means wholly understanding someone’s situation, but being completely removed from it as well. And so, what happens is we get sympathetic, we start over identifying with these headwinds, with this “down market”. We start actually feeling the pain. And it’s really hard to remove ourselves. We become emotional. And when you become emotional, you’re less logical. We got to not over-index one way or the other and especially right now in that sympathy side.

Maybe said another way, leaders have to keep the goals front and center while at the same time understanding that there are difficulties. And that leaders got to stay a little bit stubborn to winning. I can fully understand and I’m willing to try to help. But at the end of the day, we have goals to go ahead. And we’ve got some stuff we want to get done. So it’s a balancing act and very difficult. But I think that word empathy is spot-on.

[0:23:20] DF: Before we go to the next one, we got to have Jeff talk about – because one of the things that I think matters a lot is how you hold to goals and how long-term or short-term those goals are. And Jeff, you and I have talked a lot about this. You helped us implement the trailing 13. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the value of trailing 13 and shortening your goal windows. Because that was absolutely critical for us and us having success at ClearlyRated going through the pandemic and then really emerging pretty strong out of the pandemic.

[0:23:53] JB: Yeah, with KPIs, what are the right KPIs would be the first thing, right? They change over time for different people at different levels, even within the same role, perhaps. I think the best KPIs are empirical in nature. Not subjective. And they have to have a linear relationship with your end result, which is really right probably profitability but at a minimum gross profit dollars.

To your point on the T-13, if you think submissions is the right – submission of a candidate to a client for clarity. If you think submissions is the right KPI – and I like that one for a lot of reasons. One, the recruiter can control it. They can have an impact on it this week. Whereas, if you’re measuring people on just gross profit that’s going to happen weeks and maybe months for now, that’s not an indicator by definition. That would be very rearview mirror kind of stuff.

And so, the submissions works. To get to your point on the T-13. What we said was, “Look, people are going to have good weeks and they’re going to have bad weeks.” To say that you’re in good standing this week, but last week you were in bad standing and the week before that you were in good. What we did is we used a trailing 13 weeks. And I say we did. I still use this in a lot of the companies that I advise today or invest in today. What this does is it removes the excuses from people.

If I now look back over a 13-week time frame and see where you’re at in the aggregate. If it’s 10 a week, then, in the aggregate, you need 130 over those 13 weeks. Any one week, it shouldn’t vary a whole lot. And what you do is you’re taking the excuses of a vacation. Or I’m going to a conference. Or I need to be out with my kids. Or whatever the thing is that happens. Whatever part of life interrupts, and it always does, you kind of take that excuse out of it. And it’s just a more smooth way to look at the world.

Yeah, it’s just more linear. It makes life so much easier. You could probably be more specific about the benefits of it. But conceptually, people will say, “Wait a minute, you’re taking a weekly metric and you’re turning it into a quarterly metric.” No, no, no, no. It’s still a weekly metric. Because we’re rolling these 13 weeks. Yeah, but it’s been highly effective in every instance I’ve applied.

[0:26:01] DF: If you can just walk through an example of how you guys implemented this for the audience. Say like, “Here’s what it looked like. Here’s how we got the math for it.” I mean, I’m thinking about that with our – you’re talking about this. I’m like, “Is this something I should be putting in place for my sales team?” Maybe?

[0:26:16] JB: I can give an example from ClearlyRated, Jeff. Because to your point, we have a before and after there in recent memory. But we started to put it into place, David. And we did it on meetings set. We know pretty reliably that if we’re getting demos of our product, that up 20% to 25% of those will turn into business within about 30 to 45 days.

And so, what we were doing is we did that trailing 13 on meetings completed. If you take that and you take it down to an average, worked best for us. Let’s say that we needed to have an average of four meetings completed. Well, let’s say that somebody’s averaging three meetings completed, your goal is always just to be above that trailing 13-week average. If you’re always above, if every single week is above, even if it’s above by 3.2 or 3.0. But if you can be above that average trailing 13, then your productivity is improving and you’re improving on that side. And that part was the part that was really crystallizing for us is that then you can – let’s say that I’ve got two AEs. I’ve got one of them that is consistently hitting four and another one that’s struggling to hit three, they have their own metric to get on that piece. And assuming that I’m okay with where they’re at on that, my goal can actually be the same for each of them, which is to improve on that trailing 13. Stay at or above that trailing 13, and it really simplifies it.

[0:27:46] JB: Yeah. And a key part of that that you just said too is if the end goal is the same for two people or 200 people, it doesn’t matter. If the end goal is the same, and I believe it largely should be the same, then how many submissions it takes to get to some level of placements and subsequent gross profit? That submission level is not the same. It’s based on their skill set. It’s based on their ability to convert.

If it takes somebody 10 submissions to get a placement, sorry, you’re going to have to stay late and work on the weekends. If it takes somebody two, congratulations, you’re really proficient. That’s not going to make me raise your goal next year. It’s just going to make your workload a lot more digestible. Right?

Of course, that all comes with this idea that, “No, not two people have the –” I believe everybody has the same goal per a level of tenure, right? Somebody that starts their first day doesn’t have the same goal. But people that have been there more than a couple of years, at any company that’s doing sales, my philosophy is they should have the same goal. Because here’s the alternative, and this is disgusting, the alternative is somebody has a breakout year and does twice what anybody else has ever done. And then what does the leader do? They come back to that person and they go, “Hey, could you do 10% more next year, please?” And what if they can’t? That’s like Phil Jackson having gone to Michael Jordan and went, “Hey, you scored 86 last night. Congratulations. We’re gonna need 88 tonight.”

[0:29:07] EG: Yeah, we bugged you to do 86 for you.

[0:29:10] JB: Yeah, right. It’s just silly. It’s just silly.

[0:29:12] EG: Do you feel you could do it now?

[0:29:14] DF: Congrats on the success. It’s harder for you now.

[0:29:17] EG: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a really good point. And then the other thing that I think comes with that too is that like the choppier the economic headwinds are, the choppier the results are for your firm, the more you need to celebrate daily, weekly, input level goals. Because one thing, Jeff, you said that is really true is there’s a lot of variables that lead into us closing a new account or you getting a new placement on the staffing side of it. And we can’t always control all those things, right? Timing changes, the client changes, our talent flakes out or takes another job or whatever. But you can control certain inputs. And we know that if we have enough of those inputs, that eventually the dam is going to break and we’re going to start to be able to reap what we sow.

[0:30:07] JB: Yeah. Yeah, I think that was one of the things I had written down as a way to win in a down market is celebrating. Giving people a reason to be positive. Find those wins no matter how small. And really do a good job using a megaphone to get those out to everybody else. The other thing that happens there is you find best practices. If George over here had some success doing things this way, we should not only celebrate that success. We should dig into how so that other people can figure out that same pathway perhaps to being successful.

I mean, if you want people to believe it’s possible, give them those real-world examples internally that happened. But what happens so many times is if you have a staff of – I’m making this up. If you have 10 recruiters and six of them are doing well but four of them are not, you end up really myopic on those four that are not and you’re demotivating the six that are, right? And one of your jobs as a leader is to not demotivate. Does that make sense? Is that a double negative, Eric? I don’t know.

[0:31:06] EG: Yeah.

[0:31:08] JB: You got to find a way to put those five or six people, right? Or even if it’s four people that are winning, put them on a pedestal. Don’t let them be poisoned by not only the Debbie Downers over there, but by you kind of – your frustration level as a leader. Keep the winners winning and keep them out of harm’s way. That’s a very basic requirement of leadership.

And then for those that are off-track, don’t get mad. Don’t take it so personal, right? It’s sort of a selfish position. And it doesn’t motivate a soul. And I use soul as an S-O-U-L, not S-O-L-E. . It doesn’t motivate. So instead, what leaders I think need to do in times like this is they get curious. Just keep asking why. Why is this happening? Why is that happening? And help add value to solving these problems, which really are these headwinds.

[0:31:57] DF: With implementing this, the trailing 13 week, which I think is amazing, probably going to go back and do that at my business. And I heard about it for the first time from you yesterday. I was already talking to my team about it. What type of operating rhythm do you have with your sales teams or your org to make sure that you are celebrating the wins? To make sure that you’re getting them on board and moving things forward?

[0:32:17] JB: I would suggest – depends on how large the organization is. In general, I would say you need to have a Monday – first thing every Monday morning is what I call the accountability meeting. You call it whatever you want, but it’s an accountability meeting, which really it’s very simple. We go around to the team of eight, ten, twelve people, whatever, and we say, “What were your commitments to the team last week? How did we do?” And maybe you dig into one or two of those. And then the second part of the meeting is, “Okay, what are our commitments for this week?” That meeting is critical.

In addition to that, you have a one-on-one, every other week with your sales reps. Then you have maybe a monthly business review meeting. Here’s the key. Whatever your rhythm, your meeting cadence is, when you’re underperforming, cut it in half. If you used to do like an all-hands once a month, in tough times, it may make sense to do an all-hands every other week or maybe even every week, right? Any time you have a rep that’s underperforming, one of the first things you do is the accountability period. The period in between maybe those one-on-ones gets reduced and it goes to daily. Maybe it goes to, “I’m going to meet with you before lunch and at the end of every day.”

The worst people or a person is performing, you continue to cut that meeting cadence and get more frequent updates. Because people have suggested just by the sheer fact they’re not executing that they can’t handle that much time. And so, it’s our responsibility as leaders to get in there and help them by cutting those accountability periods down in half.

[0:33:48] DF: I think that’s great. That’s great advice and something I’m probably going to be rolling out as well. One of the things that I know – and you were talking about celebrating wins and getting that into kind of a faster rhythm as well. Any recommendations for team morale? And I know we’re talking about the market as a challenging thing. There’s a lot of wins, a lot of things to be optimistic for. But I think it’s important for the people that are maybe not hitting the goals that they want to hit to dig into this and give some insights on it. But any thoughts around what you can do to keep morale up and to make sure that – and this goes back to the empathy and accountability thing as well. But how do you push and make sure people are feeling good about the push?

[0:34:26] JB: I’ve got some thoughts, Eric. You want to go?

[0:34:28] EG: Yeah. I’ll start with just a couple of things on there that the first of which is I think that’s when authenticity as a leader is really put to the test. The second that feels like you’re not being honest with them, they know, right? Jeff, you and I talked about this when we were at Staffing World, and you talked about as being one of the mistakes. You tried to shield too much from the team, as opposed to saying, “Hey, here’s where we are. Let’s collectively climb out of this.”

And I think that anything that starts to sniff as like, “I’m not getting the full picture, or I’m not–” or they’re pretending that this isn’t hard, that’s a real turnoff to employees. I think you have to acknowledge that piece. And then you just celebrate the wins. You celebrate everything that you can and paint a picture to the outside.

I was just talking about this the other day, Jeff, with someone. One of the things that we found when we were doing the internal employee surveys at Delta, and we’ve now kind of implemented across there, is that employee net promoter score. How likely they are to recommend ABC staffing company is a great place to work? That is a moderate predictor of their likelihood to churn. And what that means, it makes sense, right? If I rate a four, it makes sense that I’m more likely to leave.

But what we found – we also asked another question, which is “Overall, are you optimistic about your next year at ClearlyRated? Yes? No?” Simple yes, no. And what we found is if you combine the two of those together, you get a much stronger predictor of turnover. And so, if somebody was a detractor, they weren’t necessarily likely to leave, as long as they still were optimistic about the year ahead. It was when you actually got somebody that was frustrated in the present and also did not see how that frustration was gonna abate in the future, it was going to be a part of that.

I think, also, we have to be authentic. But we also have to – as leaders, we don’t want to lead through the muck the entire time. We have to have some vision as to a better tomorrow, no matter whether we’re doing great and we can do even better, or we’re struggling and we’re trying to get to good. And so, we have to paint that picture in a way that resonates with them so that they can feel like they’re in a tough part of the journey, but that the journey is going to get better, not easier. Because it doesn’t get easier. To quote, I think it’s the Duke women’s basketball coach, “We handle hard better.” And I think that’s a really important lesson.

[0:36:51] JB: Yeah, that’s well said. The authenticity, you’re right, is so critical. Another way of thinking about this, if you as a leader bury your head in the sand and not communicating why these headwinds exist and what they do to impact our business, then, one, you either don’t know. Or two, you think people are stupid or not worthy. You got to talk about those things. The authenticity part comes in when we say, “Well, I’m not sure exactly what to do about this.” But if you get people involved in the problem, they’ll help you solve it. And that’s the mistake that I made one time that Eric referred to. You got to let people know not only this is where we’re at, this is where the industry is, this is where the economy is, whatever. You’ve also got to say, “Here’s what we’re going to do about it.” And again, and use them to help make that plan.

Then you got to get really specific. All right, when would there be another cut? It has to happen for us to avoid laying off more people. If you really want people to care and be involved and get on the solution side, they have to know. And that’s our responsibility. I think asking their opinions is, again, huge in all of this.

As Eric said, and I’ll tell the story, I’ll try to be brief. But in ’09, due to the credit markets and what was happening, we had a cash flow crunch at Delta. And I knew we would get out of it. I was very confident in that. The thing is, I just kept it from people because I didn’t want them to worry. But the truth leaks. And in a vacuum, the truth becomes really more grotesque than it is. It becomes a much darker story than what exists. And that happened. And I lost a lot of trust.

In hindsight, if I had gone to the company and said, “Hey, here’s where we’re at. Here’s our plan to get out of it,” if I increase the frequency of those meetings and any time to get together, celebrated the small wins along the way, I know we would have gotten out of it a lot, lot sooner just by being more authentic and truly transparent about the situation.

[0:38:39] DF: And so, you alluded to even letting people know, “Hey, here’s where we’re at from a cash perspective. Yep, we’ve got six months. Here’s the numbers we need to hit to make it so that we’re not having to experience the pain that we know comes with that.” And do you share that leaders-only, company-wide? What kind of level does that transparency come through?

[0:39:00] JB: I’m a fan of company-wide. And we did that. We showed EBITDA. But here’s the thing. If you’re in a down market and you’re trying to show people a plan and you need to talk about profitability, and they’ve never seen or have any concept of what profitability is before, it probably isn’t the right time to introduce the concept.

Again, going back to the real leaders, do the heavy lifting and good times to prepare, we always were transparent about our EBITDA goals and where we were against those. And then through that, you educate people over time into the things that impact your profitability. As a result, then when down markets, they understand it. I’d be a little cautious if you’ve never introduced this concept to people of just sort of dumping it on them and expecting they’re going to get it because you’re in a down market.

[0:39:43] EG: One of my favorite books is The Great Game of Business. And one of the leaders, Jack Stack. Have you read that book, Jeff?

[0:39:49] JB: Yeah, of course. Yeah. It’s great.

[0:39:51] EG: Yeah. The story, and I may butcher the actual numbers, but I believe that it took over a manufacturing facility that did a lot of the OEM manufacturing for, I believe, General Motors in the automotive space. They’re 89-to-1 debt to equity ratio. They tried to get additional funding. I think they got turned down from like 70 straight banks. And were just on this really tight rope, just about to run out of money. And they were kind of desperate. And they ultimately just opened up and told the entire company what was going on. And then they realized like, “Oh, we can really understand this because we’ve not done a good job of building proficiency around what these metrics are. How the individuals can impact them?”

But long story short, they really put together kind of an entry-level college business and financial reporting class, and they had ideas coming from everywhere that were able to cut costs and make things significantly more efficient and was really key to their success and then ultimately led to them writing the book. Just a great illustration of the power that can come if you’re willing to engage the entire organization in the challenges you’re trying to overcome.

[0:41:01] JB: Yeah, it’s a great example of a leader putting pride to the side and being authentic, being transparent. And when you do that, people are so motivated to help. They’re so dedicated and engaged in solving the problems. I don’t know why more leaders don’t do it. I think it’s a pride thing. Or maybe they just don’t really like people. I don’t know.

[0:41:25] DF: It’s actually really interesting. I think most layoffs I hear about seem to come as a surprise to most of the organization, which is the entire organization team is frequently caught off guard. And it’s like, to your point, could people have helped if they knew and if they understood the situation? And what would have changed had they been able to be aware that this was coming?

[0:41:45] JB: And then everybody else in the organization is puckered up and probably looking for another job.

[0:41:48] EG: Yeah.

[0:41:49] DF: Yeah.

[0:41:50] EG: Well, and I think a lot of it comes from shame and insecurity as a leader, right? Because when we’ve gone through challenging times, I’ve certainly battled this and I’ve gotten to the place where I was really transparent with pretty much the whole organization. It was hard to do because I felt like I had failed them. There’s a part of that, that even if you believe that it’s the right thing to do, you have to really remind yourself of the importance of that. Because some of it can be ego but some of it can honestly just be feeling of shame that you’ve let people down.

[0:42:20] JB: It’s a great point. Great point.

[0:42:22] DF: That’s great guidance. Now we’re going to jump over to a few more ideas around generating growth. I want to talk to you guys about the importance of innovation during challenging times. What role does that play in helping people come out of the market conditions?

[0:42:35] JB: I call it creativity, not innovation, and maybe semantics. But when I think about innovation, I think about a product development or something new. Maybe innovation requires some downtime and some budget, which we don’t have in a market like we’re in. When old methods don’t work, you got to get creative. And so, I think of the word creative.

And you got to be creative not necessarily in what you do, but how you go about doing it. How you sell? How you market? Maybe it’s who you’re selling to specifically. The pace of closing. You’ve just got to be incredibly creative and open to change. One of my favorite quotes by Ed Deming is, “Change isn’t necessary. Survival is an option.” Right?

And so, in these markets, it’s like, “Man, if you can’t figure out a more creative way to get to the decision makers, to get the decision makers to say yes, to get the orders, then – wow. That old saying that – what is it? Necessity is the mother of invention?

[0:43:32] DF: Yeah.

[0:43:33] JB: If that’s true, then what’s really required of us as leaders is to make it necessary, right? To paint a compelling reason that this is where we’re at. This is the plan to get ahead. And with that comes the necessity of them getting creative and finding new ways to get shit done. For me, it’s all about that. It’s about that creativity.

[0:43:53] EG: Yeah, you bring up a really good point, Jeff, too, because I don’t know if you remember. We talked about this with ClearlyRated. And as we were coming out, we’re getting really catching a strong upcycle with the business coming out of COVID. After we’d gotten through the sort of scariest times from a business standpoint of COVID, we were doing really well. And some of the things that we were taking away, one of the things that I was trying to make sure that we were able to keep going that we didn’t lose as we came out of that was two things. The first of which was that sort of weekly commitment to winning and winning the week, as opposed to sort of a monthly goal or a quarterly goal.

And then the second piece of that I really wanted to hold on to is we’d gotten in the habit of we would come up with a new idea or something that we could try. And we had a really great tenure – the downside to really great tenure is that everybody has been there long enough to think of the last time you tried something like that. And because it didn’t work six years ago, we’re certain it’s not gonna work now.

And during COVID, we started with the posture of we’ve got to make it work. Instead of saying that won’t work because of this or this, we would say, “Okay, I don’t know if that’ll work. But what if we did this and this.” Right? And so, we would build on that creativity instead of shutting it down. And I do think that that’s important.

And this is the time that you guys stay really, really close to your customers. I had the privilege of interviewing Janette Marx from AirSwift, Jeff, who you know well from the ASA board. And David, I think you maybe know as well. And I was asking her kind of how they approach sort of this economic cycle and downsize and she said, “To be honest, we just do more of what we’ve always done, which is instead of having a suite of services that we sell into a customer and prospect pool, we have a suite of customers that we go and build the services that they need.” That was kind of ground-shaking to me, this idea. But what she was really saying is like we’re going to start with the customer and what the customer needs. And then anything that is within our area of expertise that we could do that adds value to the customer and that they’re willing to pay for, we’re going to sort of build that for them. And it’s just a hyper-customer-centric view that I think does really, really well in a down economy. It’s all part of what we started with, Jeff, of going more narrow and deep, instead of trying to increase your universe.

[0:46:17] JB: And that is a next-level leader to say the least.

[0:46:20] EG: She’s fantastic. Fantastic.

[0:46:21] JB: She’s honestly really unbelievable. And speaking of unbelievable leaders, Eric, I’m gonna give you some props here. Going back to experimenting and being creative and trying things at ClearlyRated when there were some significant headwinds, I give you credit because you were a leader who really allowed that and permitted that creativity to happen. There’s a balance that has to occur. You as a leader have to provide some guardrails on what’s permissible and what’s not in sales activity with anything within the organization. But in this context, the sales activity. But you’ve got to balance that with, “Let’s go try some stuff. See what works.” And then build upon it.

There is going to be some non-negotiables. If we’re in the business of placing IT developers, we’re not going to go take job orders for positions. Right? There are some guardrails that have to be in place. But how they go and source that business, how they feel it? You’ve got to allow some entrepreneurship and some creativity as a leader. And this is an art, by the way, right? This balancing is an art. But without it, to expect people to suddenly get creative in a down market is a little bit more difficult.

[0:47:24] DF: That’s great advice. And kind of tagging along with that a little bit and understanding your clients, understanding your customers, understanding your candidates. Making sure that you’re attuned with people that actually drive your business. Eric, could you talk a little bit about kind of like how do you do that? How do you make sure that you have a clear understanding of what your customers need and also tying that back to the talent side as well?

[0:47:44] EG: I was actually talking to Andrea Brenholz, who’s one of the new ASA board members earlier today. She runs an IT staffing firm and they’ve done a really good job with their rehire rate, which, for the industry, is one of the most challenging things. And I was kind of digging into that a little bit with her. Is it that they focus more on it? Is it this?

And what it kind of distilled out of that conversation was where most staffing firms are managing an order from the order start to the order end, and the journey is that order and the arc of that order, her firm is actually managing the experience of their consultants. And so, they’re viewing the arc of that journey far beyond a single placement. And so, they’re managing that piece of it and then sort of matching up the job orders that fit the skill set and the interests as a part of it.

And it’s kind of a nuanced difference. I think maybe when people hear that, they might go, “Well, I think we do that too.” I don’t know that that’s really true. I think that if we really kind of look in the mirror, most of us are managing a job order. And as that job order ends, then we look at, “Okay, now what do we do with the person on the job order? And what do we do to get the next job order?” When in reality, if we were looking at that consultant, that job order would just be a milestone in the greater journey.

And so, I really liked the way that she was thinking about that. And I do think that that journey-based approach is really critical. And the reality is, is that one of the reasons why I’m not bullish on a 10%, 15%, 20% year-over-year recovery for us coming out of this is, even if the supply dramatically increased, and I do think the supply will increase year-over-year this next year – I’m sorry. The demand. The supply is still really tight. People aren’t quitting jobs right now. We went through the great resignation. Now we’re back to quitting at a level that’s less than pre-pandemic level. We’ve got really low unemployment. We don’t have a lot of layoffs. And so, there’s just not a tremendous amount of movement.

When you look at kind of taking off after the other recessions, we had this pool of talent that was just waiting for the demand to get back there. And that pool of talent is still really, really tight. When we have somebody that’s a good employee that we can place on assignment and we’re not doing everything we can to, A, keep them on that assignment as long as possible, and B, manage them throughout the life cycle beyond a single assignment, we’re doing that at our own detriment on growth.

And then take the customer side, one of the biggest things that we’re seeing is like we’re kind of getting a little bit myopic in how we look at the customers. It’s either like they’re there or they’re not there. And we’re not thinking about it from the growth standpoint and identifying new opportunities within those existing accounts, which are almost always the biggest opportunities for growth way bigger than a brand-new logo as a part of that. Those are kind of some of the areas that we see people really – we’re encouraging people and we’re seeing some people really dive in terms of trying to navigate the course of a somewhat choppy macroeconomic environment.

[0:50:58] DF: A couple of things on that is like, one – I mean, I think you’re talking about measuring the solution. How well are you doing in terms of delivering the solution you’re supposed to solve? And I think a lot of times when I talk to staffing agency owners, it feels so transactional. And so, “Hey, we got a placement. We’re good. Move on to the next placement.” And the reality is if the quality of the hire isn’t right, if you’re not getting into a spot where the company feels good about working with you for a longer period and managing that journey to see did the outcome actually happen, you’re not going to have that longer-term relationship. It’s an element of it.

[0:51:30] EG: And you’d see that, David, right? I mean, look at the work that you guys do on the referral side. The number one most important thing on the referral side is to provide an experience that’s worth referring. And then you guys do a great job of, if that’s in place – of amplifying the impact that you can have with a really well-designed, well-architected, well-executed referral program. But at the core end of it, if you’re not actually ensuring that that experience itself is one that’s worth talking about in a positive way, none of the rest of it really matters.

[0:52:05] DF: It is funny when you think about those people are – we talk about referrals a lot and then somebody is like, “Oh, we want to launch a referral program.” It’s like, “Well, if you don’t have a solid platform and a solid experience, you’re not delivering the referrable moments and you have measured your experience effectively, might not be the right time.” If your Google reviews show that everybody hates you, don’t go focus on your referral program. That’s not the right move.

[0:52:27] JB: If everybody hates you, you better be dang good at business development. And as we said earlier, that’s just not a muscle a lot of people tend to exercise. Yeah.

[0:52:37] DF: Jeff, yesterday, one of the things that we think I heard you say is the idea of calling yourself a staffing firm and maybe shifting to more of – I don’t know if you were alluding to more of a shifting to a solution sale. I think that’s something I’ve seen a lot of lately is companies going in and they’re like, “Hey, we’re not just staffing. We are actually here to help with more of the solution side of that.”

[0:52:55] JB: Yeah.

[0:52:56] EG: Yeah. I have a little bit of a counter view on that because we’ll hear people be like, “Oh, you know, we’re trying to distance ourselves from staffing.”

[0:53:02] DF: Yeah. I’ve heard that a few times.

[0:53:04] EG: And I’m like it’s not like people hiring managers sitting around, wondering whether or not what all falls under the staffing umbrella. The reality is, is that a brand is what you make of it and the value that you add and the problems that you solve are either valuable or they’re not. And if they’re valuable, then it doesn’t really matter sort of where you sit. Is it solutions? Is it staffing? As long as it’s not confusing to the end user, I think the brand that you build in the market matters more than kind of how you position yourself under one of those umbrellas.

[0:53:42] JB: Yeah, positioning is a big deal with all the petition. The industry’s gotten so big over the last decade. And there’s a lot more alternatives, as we mentioned earlier, whether it’s the online platforms or some technology that’s made the end user customer a little bit more proficient in recruiting themselves. Whatever it is, it’s made it just a little bit more difficult to win new business. You better find a unique proposition, right? It’s always been that way. But I think more than ever, it’s important that you have some unique way to get people’s attention so that you can win them over and eventually win their business and get some job offers from them. Better be unique in your approach.

[0:54:17] DF: Do you have any favorite examples of either how to create that unique value proposition or of unique value propositions where you felt like the staffing firm really dialed in and excelled because they stood out?

[0:54:30] JB: I do, but we don’t have their permission to be –

[0:54:34] DF: Yeah. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot to call out a company. But just curious.

[0:54:37] JB: Yeah, I could probably think of one. But Eric maybe knows of one just – he deals with so many different companies.

[0:54:42] EG: There’s actually a firm out here. And I’ll leave their name out as well. It’s not important for this portion of it. But they’ve got an entire campaign, the website, everything is around sort of shining the light and making the star of the light industrial employer. And as opposed to it just being a job title, it is a career and it is aspirational. And they shine the light on all of the great work that gets done by blue-collar employees in trade jobs. They’ve got an alumni program on it. It’s a point of pride to get placed into a light industrial job by this regional staffing firm that’s out here on the West Coast. I’ve not seen that. I’ve not seen anybody else really be able to brand that community in that way. I was very impressed with that.

I’ll go one step further and just give a rubric that somebody shared with me a while back that I thought was really valuable, is you can make claims in how you position your firm. And those claims can, should, have to. And the way that you would look at that is you can use ABC staffing firm to find talent. You should use ABC staffing firm because they have a great reputation. Their service levels are high and they’re award-winning in multiple ways.

You have to use ABC staffing firm if you want access to the hiring guide for the positions that we hire for. If you want to work with the leading firm in our region. And obviously, the further down you go on those, the more valuable that proposition is. And if you find yourself – if you kind of look at all the ways that you’re kind of positioning yourself and they all kind of fall in this can, or maybe can and some should, it’s not strong enough. You haven’t tailored your offering specifically enough to be able to do that.

[0:56:48] DF: That’s excellent advice. I haven’t heard that. And that’s great. I feel like I’ve always come away with so many tips from the conversations with you guys. The next stuff here is I wanted to jump into the measuring performance side of things and then we’ll wrap up after that. Any advice on how agencies should be looking at measuring the performance of their firm effectively?

[0:57:08] JB: Measuring the performance of their firm. Well, we talked a little bit about the KPIs. Finding that metric that is actionable, that they can control and what they can get done this week. And I think that’s key. Having a good meeting rhythm and meeting cadence, I think sometimes I say that and people just sort of gloss over, like, “No more meetings.” There needs to be a reason and a rhyme for how you go about that. There has to be a time and an end date for those metrics to be counted at the end of the day, right? That’s what the meetings are really there for.

I think it’s important, too, just to talk about – when you talk about performance, right? If people can’t hit a prescribed goal of submissions, using that as an example again, in a week, there’s two reasons why. One would be that they lack the motivation. Or two, they lack the skill set. And both of those are the responsibility of the leader. If you find somebody that lacks the motivation, likely you either had a bad hire and you didn’t hire for drive, which is I think – we talked about hiring for grit earlier. Those are two really key attributes that I would look for in a new hire is grit and then drive.

Maybe your lack of motivation comes from a bad hire. Or maybe you’re doing things as a leader to demotivate. You got to get in there and sort of diagnose that. If it’s a lack of skill, it really is on the leader, right? Because we need to be transferring skill, spending time with people. Getting them up to speed.

To answer your more broad question though about sort of what are the metrics that you would look for? What are the key indicators you would look for? Obviously, I’m a big fan of net promoter score. I was Eric’s first net promoter client years and years ago. And we used that. Having the score there is one thing. Doing something about it is totally different. The metrics are important, but it’s kind of like what you do with that information that really matters. And I was really proud of the way we went about using those metrics to really shape our business.

[0:58:55] EG: Yeah, I tell people all the time, “You can get a lot of things wrong with how you measure the employee experience. How you measure the experience of the talent that you place on assignments. How you measure the customer experience.” You can get a lot wrong with how you measure that and overcome that and still improve it as long as you’re getting that information to the frontline people that are impacting that experience. You’re making them care about it.

And making them care about it is not really in a punitive way. It’s largely making them care about it because they’re proud of it, right? And because they want to deliver. The vast majority of people want to deliver good service. Some people have trouble sleeping at night if a customer is upset with them. Those are great people to have in a lot of ways on the service side of it because they’re going to go that extra mile and especially if they think that you’re paying attention to it as a leader. And so, those are the places.

I think when you’re looking at performance, especially if maybe the financial piece isn’t there. And as a leader, part of it is continuing to get your team primed. So when the market is ready for you to instead of going up a little to go up a lot, you’ve got the business in there that can support that. And that means having KPIs. They’re leading indicators like the net promoter score, like submissions.

[1:00:12] JB: Sorry to interrupt you, Eric. I think the most underutilized metric is the internal net promoter.

[1:00:18] EG: Yes.

[1:00:20] JB: When you came out with this as a product, I was jumping up and down, right? I was straight away – it makes such a big difference. If you really want to know what’s going on inside of your organization, just ask. You guys built a tool that was just amazing at providing a feedback, so you knew what it was you needed to go adjust along the way. That to me is the most underutilized metric, I think, is people don’t measure their engagement. Just crazy to me.

[1:00:46] EG: We just accept 30% to 40% turnover of our frontline employees. And I don’t think there’s anything that we do that is more damaging to our brand and the consistency of our growth than that. Full stop.

[1:01:03] JB: It’s so expensive. It’s so expensive. The old adage, you gotta shut the backdoor in order to allow people in the front door. That’s how you grow. It’s just crazy to me that people aren’t more – yeah, just more obsessed or even paranoid about this. They get lulled to sleep. We get lulled to sleep that, “Oh, well, it’s going to be 30%.” What a bunch of BS we tell ourselves. What a bunch of lies we tell ourselves that it has to be that way.

[1:01:25] EG: Yeah, we’ve done enough with that data. We know that the typical firm is in that 30% to 40%. One in five firms are down below 20%. Imagine what a lead that is. That’s like running the 100-yard dash and starting at 25 yards in ahead of everyone.

[1:01:42] JB: Say those metrics again.

[1:01:44] EG: The typical firm is turning over 30% to 40% of their recruiters and their account managers. 20% of the firms are turning over less than 20%. Basically, half of that number is their turnover. And so for those firms, it’s a massive advantage, right? And we ran this back of the envelope before, I think, Jeff, with you, where we were saying, “Okay, let’s say you’ve got a recruiter. They’re generating just, let’s say, 20,000 a month in gross margin and they leave. It’s going to sit empty for three or four months. The new recruiter’s going to take three or four months to get up to speed.”

[1:02:22] JB: Oh, my God.

[1:02:23] EG: I mean, we just have basically taken – picked the luxury car of your dreams and we’ve driven two of them off a cliff.

[1:02:31] JB: I think it’s closer to 10 of them. You never get that time back. You never get that time back.

[1:02:36] DF: I’ve heard the turnover of an employee is a half of their annual salary. That’s the cost to your business. It’s like if you lose –

[1:02:42] JB: No, it’s 10 times that, David. Like I’m telling you, it’s massive. You can’t get that time back. [inaudible 1:02:49] for six months. You finally run them off or they finally quit and then you start over. You can’t –

[1:02:56] DF: Opportunity cost, yeah.

[1:02:57] JB: Oh, my gosh.

[1:02:58] EG: Well, and the way that everybody calculates it is the cost, right? And what we’re talking about is the impact on growth. Because when you look at the opportunities that get lost in this industry especially, it’s not that that just then gets distributed amongst everybody else. It doesn’t, right? There’s such an individualized contributor role in this industry that if somebody’s gone, that is just lost growth. Whatever you grew, you grew less on that side.

[1:03:26] DF: Do you have any data that shows what that actually – the correlation between the reduction in turnover and growth? Is that something that exists?

[1:03:34] EG: Yeah. Well, you know what? I don’t think we have the full data picture on that yet. I’m sure it exists. We know that we did do a study a while back where we looked at tenure was positively correlated with growth. And then we know, for example, that customers that are promoters are about 60% less likely to churn than detractors are. We’ve got some of that data. But in the terms of the internal turnover, there’s more of that story to be told there.

[1:04:03] JB: It’s not only about growth. I would argue that it would be impossible to account for all of the drag on growth. Because when 40% of your staff is turning over every year, there’s an aura or an ethos of, “Wow. What’s wrong with this place?” even for those that are there, right? That in and of itself is damning.

On top of the growth, it’s the profitability. I don’t know how anybody has 40% turnover and is able to gen-out the level of profitability that they – that’s so expensive. It’s just massive, right? Hiring the right people, having the right systems for them to really flourish and execute to a high degree. Keeping them there is just paramount to growth and profitability.

[1:04:47] DF: And Jeff, one last part I wanted to kind of touch on is you brought up a couple of times the importance of grit and motivation in the hiring process. Any tips on how you identify that for those people that are going out there and looking for their next new hires?

[1:04:59] JB: Yes. At Curative, the last company that I was running, what we did was we got together and we came up with four, maybe five attributes. And my input was grit and drive, self-motivated were a few of them. And the group came up with the other two or three. Then we said, “All right, with grit, what would be a – in a group setting, in a couple of different settings, a couple of different times, how would we know? What would a candidate say? Sitting across from us interviewing. What would they say or what could we look at on their resume, right? Or on their LinkedIn or whatever. What could we identify? And we came up with 20 questions for each of those four or five attributes that would help us flesh out whether they were gritty or not.

[1:05:44] DF: That’s great.

[1:05:45] JB: I don’t remember the exact question. Maybe the next time you have me on, we could go through those. I’ll figure out who they are. It’s just about what is it that you’re trying to flesh out and really understand. And then one of the questions that are going to get us to go through that? Then the key for us was having multiple people ask those questions at multiple interviews. Compiling those results and seeing if in fact they were really gritty or not. It’s not bulletproof. But it was as close to bulletproof as we could get.

[1:06:13] EG: Well, and sometimes just ask them to tell a time when they displayed grit. We’ve asked that question before. We’ve also asked the question of, “Explain a time when you got wow, exceptional service.” If those two stories come back and you’re like, “That’s just doing your job. That’s not gritty.” Or you should have expected that. That’s like mildly above average.

[1:06:34] JB: Right. I showed up for work on time two weeks in a row.

[1:06:39] EG: Yeah, exactly. I didn’t miss the entire day unplanned. Great. That’s your job. That’s what you should be doing. That’s not grit. That’s basic attendance. And so, if they can articulate what great service looks like, that’s one of the questions we ask. Or what an example where they felt like they displayed grit, then they probably don’t have it.

[1:07:00] JB: Yeah. Behavioral-based interview questions are key. I agree.

[1:07:04] DF: Yeah. I love it. Last two questions I’ve got for you guys. The speed questions and then we’ll wrap it up.

[1:07:08] EG: I don’t think we’ve done anything speedy so far, Jeff. So this is a good time to –

[1:07:12] DF: What advice do you wish you were given before entering the staffing industry?

[1:07:18] JB: Before entering the staffing industry. Maybe it’s just top of mind. We just talked about it. If I could go back and do it all again – can I ask my own question? Can I just trump your question and ask my own question? I would have just been incredibly disciplined to that sort of ICP as it pertains to the internal hire. That ideal candidate profile. I want people with grit. I want people with drive and pick other things. And I would have just hired so much better, so much sooner, and could have had, yeah, so much more success than we did have. That was the thing that took me forever to figure out.

[1:07:51] DF: That’s great. Yeah.

[1:07:52] EG: The advice I would give is always growing. Obviously, as a company that opens a lot more doors than a static company. But just in your professional, be seeking out opportunities to network with people that are doing interesting things, to learn new skills. Nobody is going to care about your professional development as much as you do. And so, really take ownership in that.

[1:08:15] DF: I love it. And what book or books have you given most as a gift or have been most influential to you? I know we already talked about The Great Game of Business. We got that one as a checkbox.

[1:08:24] EG: Yeah. There’s two that I really like. And they kind of go hand-in-hand with one another. I like Malcolm Gladwell’s books. I think The Tipping Point is a really interesting thought exercise. And then there’s an author who – actually, brothers, who wrote a book called Made to Stick, which is to me like the handbook that goes along with The Tipping Point. And then I’ll add one other one to that, which is the Malcolm Gladwell – Speaking with Strangers, I think it’s called, is a really eye-opening book about sort of how we get into assumptions and when they’re not appropriate.

[1:09:01] JB: To answer your question directly, the two books that I’ve given away most as gifts. Without a doubt, one is What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. I think that is just an incredible book for people trying to mature as leaders, trying to really grow their stature as leaders. And the other one is called Primal Leadership. What’s the author’s name? He’s the emotional intelligence guru.

[1:09:22] DF: I know who you’re talking about.

[1:09:23] JB: I can see his face anyways. But it’s called Primal Leadership. The first third of that book, maybe half, changed me as a leader for the better, I hope. Really had a profound impact on me.

[1:09:33] EG: Daniel Goleman.

[1:09:34] JB: Yeah, Goleman. Thank you. Daniel Goleman. That book had a profound impact. So I give those two books as gifts as much as anything. I mean, more than any other book for sure, yeah.

[1:09:42] DF: I love it. I really appreciate having you guys on today. The conversation was lively, insightful. Yeah, it was just great.

[1:09:48] JB: Hey, what about you? What about your books? What are your books?

[1:09:53] DF: My book? Influence by Cialdini. That’s number one. He has another one pre-Influence. Pretty much all of his stuff. Oh gosh. Big on Audible. And I go through them so fast. I don’t even remember the names half the time now. A new one that I’ve just been getting into and I’m drawing a blank. But Influence is one. I think every person should read it, not just for business, but for the sake of understanding how we are influenced to do things. It’s a great story of a psychology professor who goes out and understands what makes a car salesman sale. And why do we – I think, a foundational sales book. But also, just for understanding how and why we operate the way we do.

[1:10:28] JB: That’s Influence?

[1:10:29] EG: Influence, yep.

[1:10:30] JB: That’s great. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve just not found incredible books the last few years, it seems like. I’ve searched it. I’m grateful for that, David. I’m gonna go look that one up.

[1:10:41] DF: Software as a Science. Another thumbs up. That’s probably pretty specific, but it’s a good one. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you guys being on. Any closing comments for the audience?

[1:10:54] JB: Glad to be here. Hope we added some value. And always enjoy the conversation when you guys are involved.

[1:10:58] DF: Yeah. Same here.

[1:11:00] EG: I would agree with that. I would just say it’s been a tough road. There’s better days ahead for the industry. I really believe that. But there’s not – I don’t see high tide rising all boats scenario, which means that we just have to outexecute. There’s multiple strategies that will work, but the execution of that getting to consistently remarkable outcomes is going to be critical.

[1:11:24] JB: Yeah. That’s well said, right? There are going to be some winners. There are going to be some losers. And that’s a choice. Period.

[1:11:31] EG: Yes.

[1:11:32] DF: I love it. Awesome. Well, thank you, guys. Have a great day.

[1:11:35] JB: Yep. Thank you.

[1:11:36] EG: Yeah. Thanks, David.