Latest / The Perfect RIA / Hire or Fire?
Transcript
- 0:25Jamie Shilanski: Lessons were learned this week at Shilanski
- 0:29and Associates, our RIA up in Anchorage, Alaska. Welcome back
- 0:33TPR nation.
- 0:34This is Jamie Shilanski in an episode of Worlds to Conquer,
- 0:37and I am going to share with you today about the hard knock
- 0:40lessons that our CEO got to learn and chief operating
- 0:43capacity. So we, we use the EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating
- 0:47system, within most of the framework of what we do in the C
- 0:50suite, I always think of the integrator as the CEO. That's
- 0:53the chief operations officer, and it really, you know, the EOS
- 0:57suite likes to use that the integrator is the one that goes
- 1:00in and get things done. Well, so does the COO. So the CEO is
- 1:04normally the person that's responded with the brand, the
- 1:07image, the design, the plan of where we're going. They're the
- 1:10ones that come in and rally the troops. They get client
- 1:13contracts in place, you know, brand awareness. But at the end
- 1:17of the day, it's that Chief operation officer that really
- 1:20does the grunt of the work. And so in this last year, we've been
- 1:24training our COO to take over more of what I would have
- 1:27previously considered a lot of my responsibilities. So even as
- 1:30Co-CEO to our RIA up in Anchorage, Alaska, I was
- 1:33empowering. I'm trying to teach her and empower her to take over
- 1:36a lot of the roles and responsibilities that I have
- 1:39been doing in that capacity. And the reason that we're doing that
- 1:43is, you know, one of the combat roles under jocko's leadership
- 1:47program, and that's on the Echelon front, is to
- 1:49decentralize command, and that makes sure that you're not
- 1:52becoming the bottleneck of your organization. And so what we
- 1:56found my brother, my baby brother, Micah Shilanski and I
- 1:59is that a lot of things were hinging on our decision making.
- 2:02And so the team would get to a certain point, and then they
- 2:06would stop, because they would need Micah or I's input on what
- 2:09to do and how to get things done. And that really wasn't
- 2:12creating a strategy in which we can continue to empower grow our
- 2:16team. And by the way, as I've shared with you several times,
- 2:19we only want a level team members in our organization, and
- 2:23in order to have that, that means that we can't be the only
- 2:26ones calling the shots. We want a level team members that are
- 2:29empowered and capable of making decisions and executing the
- 2:33business plan, so that we can drive the company forward. And
- 2:36if that is 100% dependent on Micah and I being there in all
- 2:40capacities to answer every single question, then we weren't
- 2:43going to be able to scale. We're not going to be able to grow.
- 2:46And the reason that we are so gosh darn passionate about
- 2:50growing Shilanski and Associates is because we know there are
- 2:53three Shilanski advisors. There's Floyd, myself and Micah,
- 2:56and together, we can only impact so many heartbeats. Bill
- 2:59Bachrach back in the 1990s he used to talk about your top 100
- 3:03get to 100 ideal clients, and then you're done. Well, we
- 3:06couldn't help ourselves. We can't be done. We think our top
- 3:09book is really a little bit more than that. We think most
- 3:13financial advisors have capacity to meet with around 150 clients.
- 3:16If you have more than 150 clients, I bet if you took a
- 3:19real long, hard look in the mirror, you're going to find
- 3:23that you're only servicing about 75 to 100 of those. You're not
- 3:26fully servicing all of them. Instead, it's as needed. You're
- 3:29not having regular appointments. You're not doing regular
- 3:33financial planning with them. What you're doing is you're
- 3:36saying, hey, if they have a question, if they've got a
- 3:39concern, of course they can call into my office and I'll meet
- 3:42with them, and I'll go over whatever. So we know that
- 3:45ashalan skis, we can only impact so many heartbeats, and then
- 3:49we're capped out where we are at the capacity point that we want
- 3:52to be, that we choose to be at as a family, because our family
- 3:56unity is so important to us. So what we love to do is we love to
- 4:00bring on other financial advisors. We are actively,
- 4:02constantly recruiting for the right type of advisor to join
- 4:06our practice. And in order to join our practice, you got to be
- 4:09committed to the intensity. You got to want to change those
- 4:13lives of the heartbeats the clients that we service. But we
- 4:16also have to empower team members that are able to believe
- 4:19that mission so it lives on long beyond us. My legacy is not the
- 4:23name Shilanski, though I'm often very proud of it. Rather, it is
- 4:27the ability to believe in people to achieve what they thought
- 4:30previously was impossible to achieve. That is what I want to
- 4:33do. That is the legend I want to leave behind. And I believe that
- 4:37when you hire a team members and you bring them onto the
- 4:40organization, and they buy into the intensity of what you're
- 4:44doing, you're going to be able to perpetuate that type of
- 4:47legacy. And that is what motivates me. That's what makes
- 4:50me spring out of bed every single morning ready to freaking
- 4:53conquer the world. So when I talk to my team members, and I
- 4:57find that decisions hinge on me constantly, then I know I'm not
- 5:00doing a good job empowering people, and so I've always made
- 5:04the hiring and firing decisions for the firm. And you know, we
- 5:07go through a group interview process. I of course want to get
- 5:10everyone's buy in, because we are a small firm. We have 15
- 5:14employees, but that's a small firm compared to other companies
- 5:17that I work with, and having the wrong person can cost you the
- 5:21good employees. And so I really, really careful about doing so,
- 5:24and that means I've always made the hiring and firing decisions.
- 5:28But if I always have to make the hiring and firing decisions,
- 5:31guess what? Then I have to hand select every single team member.
- 5:35So I've got to start training my coo to come up into this
- 5:38capacity and be able to do this. So this last year, we've been
- 5:42looking for, we call it, a relationship manager. This is
- 5:45the receptionist, and it's not just a receptionist, because you
- 5:48may be answering the phone, you may be greeting the door, but
- 5:52make no mistake, that is the person that makes the first and
- 5:55last impression with your firm. And oftentimes what I see
- 5:58businesses do and they fail in this over and over and over
- 6:02again. Think about every practice you've ever been in.
- 6:05Think about a medical office. Think about a Walgreens cashier.
- 6:08Think about going up to get your truck serviced. Think about
- 6:12anything in a retail client, customer capacity, and that
- 6:15receptionist, that person that's answering the phone. They are
- 6:18oftentimes the lowest person on the totem pole, and the lowest
- 6:22person that earns an income in that capacity, in that job
- 6:25environment. And when that happens, what you're getting is
- 6:28someone's minimum and they're looking to stay in that role for
- 6:32a year or two so they can gain office experiences, and then
- 6:35they can bounce off to something else. I think that receptionist
- 6:39is critical. I think they make or break the client experience.
- 6:42And, you know, we have an office in downtown Anchorage, and if a
- 6:46client comes in and they're super, super frustrated, they
- 6:49couldn't find parking, but that reception is that relationship
- 6:53manager has the ability to turn that around. They're not
- 6:56disgruntled and upset by the time I get there, or they
- 6:59continue to inflate that experience. And so the client
- 7:02continues agitated. When we get in this conference room, we got
- 7:05to talk about tough financial matters, then they're already
- 7:09coming in agitated. And so they really can make or break a
- 7:12company, and it is the one that we give the least amount of
- 7:15dedication financial resources towards. So Shilanski and
- 7:19Associates, we do that bit differently. I'm not looking for
- 7:22somebody that can just smile and answer the phone and answer the
- 7:26door. I want somebody that can really foster and build
- 7:29relationships that is a very specific type of person. And so
- 7:32we use the DISC profile. There's Colby, there's all these
- 7:35different ones out there. And what I'm really looking for when
- 7:39I use discs, so you have D, I S, C, so you have drivers. Those
- 7:42are, be bold, be brief, be gone. If you couldn't tell I'm a
- 7:46driver, I'm definitely a driver. The I stands for influential.
- 7:49These are a lot of your real estate people. These are people
- 7:52that sell houses, oftentimes, because they have never entered
- 7:56an elevator and exited without friends, they strike up a
- 7:59conversation with absolutely everyone. And then you have your
- 8:02steady people, the ones that don't like disruption. They
- 8:06don't like change. Oftentimes they have a poker face. Can't
- 8:09really tell what's going on. They might have a lot of
- 8:12personal things that they're contending with, and it won't
- 8:15come out until later, till they have a massive breakdown. And
- 8:19you have a C as a very highly compliance person. And those are
- 8:22great operational people, because they check their they
- 8:25grammar proof all of your material. They make sure that
- 8:28everything is done down to the penny. If I call a highly
- 8:32compliant person, I see and I say, Hey, you owe us about $100
- 8:35and it was 9076 guess what they're going to tell me. The
- 8:38difference was they're going to say, actually, what I show is
- 8:42that I owe you blah, blah, blah, and that's my appointment.
- 8:45That's the kind of person I want involved in the movement of
- 8:48money within my firm. But that is not the kind of person I want
- 8:52answering the door or the phone or having 1000 out of the day.
- 8:55They will become really, really annoyed. So what I look for when
- 8:59I'm hiring relationship manager, there's, I'm looking to somebody
- 9:03that has a really strong ask, because I need them to be
- 9:06steady. I need them to be focused. I need them to track.
- 9:09And then right behind that, I'm looking for the I the
- 9:12influential, the charismatic part of them. Now you may be
- 9:15thinking, but Jamie, this is a person that's going to have so
- 9:19many conversations with clients when they come in. Don't you
- 9:22want it? I first and I don't, and this is why, typically, high
- 9:26I people lack any type of detail. They're not nitty
- 9:28gritty, they're not going to follow the process, but they're
- 9:32good at troubleshooting and but they fizz out really, really
- 9:35quick, so they bring high intensity to something. So think
- 9:39about real estate agents. They love showing you the house, but
- 9:42once it gets into the weeds of actually like going through the
- 9:46process, they run off to somebody else because the fun
- 9:49part is done. So if I have a really strong, high, really
- 9:52influential person that normally doesn't mean that they're going
- 9:55to follow the processes we have in place in order for that to be
- 9:59a successful experience for everyone in the office, in the
- 10:02organization, and they're also really disruptive. They are
- 10:06almost never at their desk. They are always somebody else's desk,
- 10:09because they get energy from other people. So I'm looking
- 10:12somebody that has a really high s, and just below it, I mean
- 10:16below it, a really high I as well. Now on this D, i, s, c, we
- 10:19have all of those components inside of us. We have all those
- 10:23characteristics inside of us, but we lead with one. We have a
- 10:26close second, and we have the ones that we least like. Now we
- 10:30can also have a natural style and an adapted style. A natural
- 10:33style is who you are on Sunday morning with the people you love
- 10:37the most, and the adapted is who you show up Monday morning,
- 10:40because that's the role you've been put in and that you think
- 10:43you have to be. So I really want to make sure that their natural
- 10:47and adaptive style are still those strong s and a strong I in
- 10:50that capacity. So as I'm training my coo to come up,
- 10:53anyone that's ever hired, anyone knows that
- 10:56it is a nightmare to post a job and go through that experience.
- 11:00And you would think technology has made this easier. I make the
- 11:04argument that technology say far worse experience, and the reason
- 11:09why, and I didn't realize this until my good friend Stephen
- 11:12Jarvis over at retirement tax services, he told me one day he
- 11:14said, Jamie, I hate looking at indeed resumes, because I don't
- 11:18know who's really looking for a job and who's marking the box
- 11:21for unemployment so they can show that they applied to a job.
- 11:25And I was like, Oh, my goodness, I never even thought of that. Of
- 11:28course, they're doing that. So I look at a date, and you're going
- 11:32to get, you know, hundreds of applicants flood in for a job,
- 11:36but you're going to get a handful that are actually
- 11:39looking for a job and haven't bounced around 1000 times and
- 11:44might be good fits for you, and the algorithms are showing your
- 11:47job to who they think is appropriate. So it used to be
- 11:50back in the 90s, early 2000s when you posted a job, it was
- 11:54posted, it was open to everyone in the world, and your human
- 11:58resources or front desk would be flooded with resumes as they
- 12:01came in from different individuals, but now the
- 12:05algorithms tell you which one of those candidates might be the
- 12:09most appropriate for you, and you think you have some control
- 12:12in the matter, but I'm going to make a strong argument you don't
- 12:15have as much as you think you do, and so it doesn't matter how
- 12:18much money you give, indeed, to run An advertisement and to
- 12:21highlight your ad and to do all the boosting and the posting for
- 12:24it, it's not going to get in front of everyone. It's going to
- 12:27get in front of who indeed thinks is appropriate to see
- 12:31your job. And you can monster zip recruiter. I mean, you can
- 12:34use 1000 different programs. They're all using algorithms,
- 12:37and they're all doing this process, so it's really hard to
- 12:40get the resumes that would have come in in the 90s and the 2000s
- 12:45into your office today. Instead, they're being filtered by the
- 12:48machine, by the algorithms. So you know, it is, it is labor
- 12:53some to try to find someone, but it's also the most important
- 12:56task you will undergo. And so I'm going to share with you an
- 13:00epic fail that we had at Shilanski and Associates. And I
- 13:03hope, as I do so, you're going to derive why it failed and why
- 13:07it cannot fail in the future. So as I'm instructing, my CEO, and
- 13:11she's been with us, you know, 30 years in the organization, so
- 13:15there's not one aspect of the job she doesn't know inside out,
- 13:19because you don't stay around that long and not see all parts
- 13:22of it. And so when she started, you know, posting the job, and
- 13:26she said, You know, I'm getting all of these candidates, and I'm
- 13:29just overwhelmed because I can have one of our team members
- 13:32begin to screen them. And I said, Yeah, I think that's a
- 13:34great idea. And she said, so the way that that was going to look
- 13:37like was that they were going to pull out the resumes that they
- 13:39thought were best suited. They were going to get them on the
- 13:41phone, make sure they had a pleasant phone voice, right? You
- 13:44don't want to call somebody that submitted a resume and they
- 13:46answer who this. So she wanted to call them, screen them, ask
- 13:50them a couple of questions, and then the next stage in our
- 13:54process is to schedule an in person interview with ever who
- 13:58the interviewee is. And then that gives us the ability to
- 14:01see, did the person show up on time? Did they find parking, or
- 14:04did they make that our problem? How was their dress appearance?
- 14:07How was their mannerisms? Were they too polished? If somebody
- 14:11interviews really well, guess what? They've been on a lot of
- 14:13interviews. I don't like to hire people that interview super
- 14:16well. In fact, I want you to be a little bit nervous. I want you
- 14:20me to be able to say, Hey, I know interviews can be really
- 14:23intimidating. I don't want that experience for you. Let's just
- 14:25have a conversation, because that means that you're really
- 14:28caring about what's happening. So what I learned after this had
- 14:32happened, I was having her hire the front desk person the
- 14:35reception, and so she had the person screening was the person
- 14:39that had given their their notice, so they were on their
- 14:41way out of the firm. They were beautiful person. They
- 14:44absolutely loved our mission. We wish we could have kept working
- 14:47with her longer. She was called by Christ to lead her church in
- 14:50a more permanent capacity, and so felt, you know, that that was
- 14:53where she needed to go. Totally fine. So the CEO said, hey, you
- 14:57know what this job is. We're replacing your role. Why don't
- 15:00you screen all the candidates? And here's where it went wrong.
- 15:04So she goes through and she screens the candidate. And what
- 15:07is she probably looking for? She's looking for a replica of
- 15:11herself, potentially, and that's really hard. And what our CEO,
- 15:15the first mistake that she did is she never asked the question,
- 15:18Hey, have you ever been responsible for hiring by firing
- 15:20someone, hiring and firing someone, both of those are
- 15:25important, and this individual has zero experience in it, so
- 15:28she strike number one, failed to ask that question, have you ever
- 15:31hired and fired someone? All right? Two, you didn't sit down
- 15:35and given the parameters of what you're looking for, what
- 15:37questions should you ask? What questions can you not ask in an
- 15:40interview which are equally important, what are the
- 15:43appropriate answers? What are we really trying to gage here? So
- 15:46we didn't have those type of screen questions. And then what
- 15:49I found out later, only after the event, was that the
- 15:53candidate that ended up getting hired needed to reschedule their
- 15:57interview because they had a conflict, and it was on a day
- 16:00that the COO wasn't going to be in the office. And so the CEO
- 16:04said, You know what? That's fine to the person leading the
- 16:07organization. Why don't you just have the interview and let me
- 16:09know if you want to, if you would hire her or not? Red flag
- 16:13galore. And so the gal comes in for the interview with a
- 16:18candidate, and she does a wonderful job. She's really,
- 16:20she's super nice. And they decide, hey, this is this a good
- 16:24person. So it got up to me. Said, Hey, we made our decision.
- 16:27This is who I want to hire. And I said, Okay, great. And I said,
- 16:30Well, have you met with her before? Yep, I've met with her.
- 16:32It's, you know, she presented herself nice, etc. So my CEO did
- 16:36meet with her, but she met with her over zoom. She didn't meet
- 16:39with her in person. And so the first day that the girl arrives
- 16:42in person, my CEO is at the office and is like, I don't know
- 16:46if this is who I would have hired. And I said, Okay, well,
- 16:50she's in that role now. So what are you going to do about it?
- 16:54And when the gal started, she had a really legitimate reason
- 16:58why to miss her third day of work, and she was trying to hold
- 17:02it together. They had an unfortunate thing happen, and
- 17:05she said, Hey, I'm going to need to take this time off. I
- 17:07understand, you know, if that means you guys can't keep me.
- 17:11And my CEO was like, no, no, she's really sweet. She's just
- 17:14had a really tragic thing happen, so we're going to have,
- 17:17we're going to give her this one day off. And so because the
- 17:19intensity of what had happened. I told my CEO. I said, Hey, this
- 17:23is not a one day request. And if they think it is a one day
- 17:26request, they are grossly underestimating the recovery
- 17:29that this person is going to need, and the hands on of
- 17:32shuffling around to different appointments, being able to take
- 17:35care of themselves, the cognitive skills that have to
- 17:38come back, all of these different motor functions. And I
- 17:41said, this will be more day. How do you want to handle it? And
- 17:43she's like, No, no, they have a big support system. They've
- 17:45already thought through a lot of this. It's going to be okay. And
- 17:48I said, All right, so in six weeks, the gal called out nine
- 17:52different times, nine different times in a six week period. And
- 17:57so when I was sitting there with my CEO, I said, Hey, I don't
- 18:01think after the third week, she'd already been missed three
- 18:04days of work. I said, I don't think this is the right person.
- 18:07They don't understand the intensity of what we're doing.
- 18:10And she advocated and said, No, no, I
- 18:11think she is really good, because when she was doing work,
- 18:15the work product was good. And here's what my coo was really
- 18:20solving for. My CEO was really solving for. I hate
- 18:24interviewing. I need somebody up front, and here's a person
- 18:29that's willing to be in that role. That is what they were
- 18:32solving for. And one of the lessons that I learned early,
- 18:35early on from my mom, who always sat in the practice management
- 18:40role or organization, or I her, my dad started the company back
- 18:43in 1981 and she was the CEO. She ran all the operational aspects
- 18:48of the company. And as I began to come up, and she began to
- 18:52train me, she said, making the right hiring decision is the
- 18:56most important task you have, because firing the wrong person
- 19:02is demoralizing. It sucks. It takes the life right out of you.
- 19:07That is why it is so important to get it right the first time.
- 19:10So this candidate, we were in our mini surge. So our mini
- 19:14surge happens once a month, for a week, we all end up going
- 19:18through all the advisors. We have five advisors in her
- 19:20office. We all go through and have appointments outside of our
- 19:23big surges. Our big surges are in March and April and October,
- 19:26November. And so during this mini surge, she got a phone call
- 19:30she felt it was an emergency. Said, I have to step out. We've
- 19:33got clients coming in and out. And here's what she did. She
- 19:36left her team members and she asked permission. She got
- 19:40permission, but she left her team members, and then the next
- 19:43day, she called out because she was still way too distraught.
- 19:46Had too much stuff personally going on to contend with that.
- 19:49Now, did she have real things going on? Yep, sure. Did 100%
- 19:53guess who else had real things going on? Everybody else,
- 19:58everybody else had real things going on, and when she decided
- 20:02to leave a mini surge in the middle of the day and then not
- 20:05show up the next day, what she showed me was that she did team.
- 20:09She didn't care about her team, and second of all, she didn't
- 20:12care about the clients. The Job did not seem so important that
- 20:16she needed to compartmentalize whatever she was going through
- 20:19and protect her team, and protecting the team is one of
- 20:23the most paramount virtues I must have in every single one of
- 20:30my team members, because there is no pyramid at our
- 20:33organization. It is a circle, and we are all interdependent.
- 20:37So when the receptionist steps out, what I have is an
- 20:41operations person needing to come up and greet clients. That
- 20:44operations person then can't transfer money for clients. They
- 20:48can't do trade, can't fill out paperwork for appointments. They
- 20:52can't do all the rest of their job. Rather, they're covering
- 20:55two positions. No job in our organization is small or
- 21:00insignificant, because if it was, it wouldn't be a job. We
- 21:04would just get rid of that position. It's not fun for me to
- 21:07allocate money towards payroll. If I didn't depend and need on
- 21:11you for your role, then you are obsolete and must go. You must
- 21:17go. And so what I had was a cardinal sin in my rules of
- 21:22running an organization. And so then I went to my COO and I
- 21:27said, Hey, I suggested that you get rid of this person. You
- 21:32advocated for the reasons that they should stay. Now I'm
- 21:35telling you, let them go. And she had to go in, and she said,
- 21:40Okay, well, can I let them go until we find a new person?
- 21:42Nope, sure, can't. Sure, can't. Why? Because if you keep the
- 21:47wrong people in your organization, you keep those B
- 21:51and C team members because you have so much going on that you
- 21:55don't have time or want to dedicate time to replacing that
- 21:59person. Guess what's going to happen? You're going to lose the
- 22:03wrong person. You're going to lose the wrong person. You're
- 22:07going to lose the a team member that you really didn't want to
- 22:10go anywhere because at members don't want to work with B and C
- 22:15team members. It makes them feel taken advantage of. And so what
- 22:19happens by keeping the wrong person in that role is you lose
- 22:24all of the right ones, and I get it guys.
- 22:27I'm struggling right now because I know I've got team members
- 22:31I've got to replace in different organizations. But guess what
- 22:35that means? I've got to go through that interview process.
- 22:39I've got to get more hands on because clearly there was a
- 22:43massive, failure in my leadership when I handed over of
- 22:46hiring the front desk person, I don't articulate enough the
- 22:50importance of making that decision. And so guess what I
- 22:53had to do? I had to put my CEO in the position of and I asked
- 22:57her, I said, Hey, you know it's my name on the door. Do you want
- 23:01me to come in and do this? Are you going to let her go? And she
- 23:05said, Nope, I'm going to take care of it. I'll let her go. And
- 23:09this is not the first person fired. It's not but here was the
- 23:13difference, before, when she let people go, she let them go for
- 23:17cause, and when you fire someone for cause, you don't lose a wink
- 23:21of sleep at night, because you know that they were an absolute
- 23:25tool to your organization, and they were hurting everyone else,
- 23:29and they needed to go. But when you fire a good person who's
- 23:33going through some stuff and is down on their luck, it sucks,
- 23:37and the day it stops hurting you, the day it feels good, the
- 23:41day you're okay with it, you shouldn't be leading people,
- 23:44because then you forgot what we're in this for in the first
- 23:48place. Now, when she got done with it, and I told her to get
- 23:52rid of her immediately, because I can't afford to lose my good
- 23:56team members, and to me, she violated that cardinal sin of
- 23:59not protecting her team and and I kept her, I feel strongly. I
- 24:03could have lost a team member. Maybe they would have stayed.
- 24:07Maybe they wouldn't have they really wasn't on the line. I
- 24:11wasn't given an ultimatum, but it was my integrity that was on
- 24:15the line. It was How dare I preach how important every
- 24:18single person's role is, and then allow someone to dump on
- 24:22someone else allow that to happen. And I'm not talking
- 24:25about pinching in because somebody's going through
- 24:29something that's not at all the conversation, the conversation
- 24:32is that it shouldn't have happened so many times,
- 24:36repetitively, and she didn't care about the team. When she
- 24:39decided to walk out, what she cared about was what she was
- 24:43personally going through. She didn't care about the clients.
- 24:47She cared about what was happening in her world. And
- 24:50that's okay. That's just not a part of my organization. It
- 24:54can't be. After the work day was done, she calls me up and she
- 24:58says, Hey, I'm just, you know, I can't do anything tonight. I'm
- 25:02just totally wiped emotionally from this event, because it is
- 25:06an ordeal. It does hurt. It does make you feel something for that
- 25:10other person. And so when she got done, you know, I said, Hey,
- 25:14listen, I know this is a really sucky thing to go through, but
- 25:18there's some really great takeaways from this. There's
- 25:21some really good lessons. And the first lesson is, you have to
- 25:25be so, so selective in that hiring decision, so that you're
- 25:29never put in this position again. That is a lesson that my
- 25:32mother taught me, and a lesson I want to impart to you. It
- 25:36doesn't feel good to fire good people, and if you want to avoid
- 25:40that, then you've got to make sure that those people are the
- 25:44right ones for that right position at the right time. Now,
- 25:48a couple of other things that we learned from this. One was the
- 25:52handoff on the hiring. Clearly, before she began the interview
- 25:56process, I should have been stressing over and over and over
- 25:59again the importance of making the right decision, and just
- 26:03because we had an immediate need and she felt the pressure of the
- 26:07former employees last day coming up, doesn't mean we should have
- 26:11acted hastily, because we act hastily, we put the wrong people
- 26:15in the roles. And that's what happened here. We took somebody
- 26:19that that we needed to fill position. It was the best of
- 26:23what we had to look at at the time he put them in there. And
- 26:26to make it even worse, you didn't even physically interview
- 26:30that person. Rather, you outsource that. You delegated it
- 26:34to somebody else that may not have been qualified to make
- 26:37those decisions, and certainly didn't have the instructions in
- 26:41front of her, and gone through the scrutiny you would have,
- 26:45because after 30 years of being in your organization, you know
- 26:49what you're looking for. You know who you're looking for. And
- 26:53so we did a lot of things wrong there, and unfortunately it cost
- 26:57somebody their job. Now I can sleep at night because I also
- 27:01know that person played a role in that. They played a role in
- 27:05deciding not to come to work. They played a role in calling
- 27:08out so often. They played a role in choosing to go home versus
- 27:12looking at the day, and by the way, we're not talking about
- 27:16they went home because, you know, somebody had severed their
- 27:20leg and they're bleeding all over the kitchen. They chose to
- 27:24go home because they emotionally distraught and they couldn't
- 27:28handle that. And that ended up meaning that everything got
- 27:31dumped on another team member. Now, at that particular time, we
- 27:35had people out of the office, and we had all the advisors in
- 27:39the office. You know, we had something on their honeymoon,
- 27:43someone on vacation. We had work, remote employees. We had
- 27:46different things. And so you consciously made a decision
- 27:50during that time period to leave your other team members high and
- 27:54dry. And that's what you did. It wasn't a big deal to you. So you
- 27:58made it a really big deal to them, and it cost her her job,
- 28:02and I think she played a role in that. Now I think we did things
- 28:06wrong, starting top down, starting with me, but we
- 28:09certainly didn't help the situation, nor did she, and all
- 28:13we can do from this moment forward is to get better. We can
- 28:17get better. And so instead of thinking about these lessons,
- 28:20we're going to go back and we're going to revisit our hiring
- 28:24ethos. We're going to go back to those procedures, and we're
- 28:28going to put down why each one of these is important. We're
- 28:32going to go over the rules of when somebody starts their
- 28:35employment. And one of the things I told me CEO, I said,
- 28:39Hey, listen, what starts in the beginning lasts until the end.
- 28:43And when you hire somebody during those first 90 days, they
- 28:47should be showing up in their absolute best. They should be so
- 28:50excited about that job. They should be so nervous about not
- 28:54being able to keep that job that they are going above and beyond.
- 28:58And when you don't have somebody doing that, when you have
- 29:02somebody immediately showing that job as a second priority to
- 29:06them, or not very important to them at all, then you've got to
- 29:10immediately address it with them, and you've got to set an
- 29:14example so that the rest of your team members know that for them,
- 29:18yet alone, we haven't even tapped into the client
- 29:21experience of seeing multiple people change in and out of your
- 29:25office, and what that does to your social reputation. Because
- 29:29there is a cost. We pay a price for everything, and so when that
- 29:33happens, our clients are seeing a new phase around says all of
- 29:37the time. That's not the right the right decision. We need to
- 29:40be very, very selective about who we put in that particular
- 29:44role. It is one of the most important roles within our
- 29:48office, TPR nation. This is Jamie Shilanski, an episode of
- 29:51Worlds to Conquer. Go find people who share your values and
- 29:55change the world.