Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Solving Employee Turnover: Building Cultures That Bridge Generational Gaps with Cara Silletto

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Solving Employee Turnover: Building Cultures That Bridge Generational Gaps with Cara Silletto · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:04
  I found kind of this niche and a secret sauce that I had that other people couldn't latch onto that were older than me.
• 0:11
  Today's guest is Cara Saletto, an entrepreneur, author, and nationally recognized keynote speaker specializing in employee retention.
• 0:21
  Kara is the founder of a successful training company that helps organizations keep top talent and.
• 0:27
  And she's literally written the book on retention, staying power.
• 0:31
  From her one of a kind Partridge Family style upbringing to becoming a millennial consultant, bridging generational gaps in the workplace, Cara has guided hundreds of businesses to stronger cultures and better leadership.
• 0:45
  In this episode, Kara details the realities of workforce evolution.
• 0:50
  How companies can finally crack the code.
• 0:52
  On employee turnover and what really drives.
• 0:55
  Millennials and Gen Z and the messy, authentic truth of building a thriving business.
• 1:02
  If you want actionable strategies, leadership inspiration.
• 1:05
  And real talk on what it takes.
• 1:07
  To build and keep an epic team, this episode is for you.
• 1:12
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:17
  All right, Kara Saletto, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 1:20
  So glad to be here.
• 1:22
  Absolutely.
• 1:23
  We're glad you could take the time.
• 1:26
  So, Kara, you are an entrepreneur, an author, a keynote speaker, and you have a very successful training company, and you focus in the area of employee retention for businesses.
• 1:41
  Exactly.
• 1:43
  And I know you didn't just wake up one day and want to solve the massive turnover crisis.
• 1:49
  It was actually a journey.
• 1:51
  A journey.
• 1:52
  And how you got there.
• 1:53
  A very interesting journey, as you as you told me off camera.
• 1:55
  But I'd love it if you could just give our listeners some background as to how you got started and how you became an entrepreneur.
• 2:02
  Yeah.
• 2:03
  So I have a funny starting point, and that is that I grew up in a band, a family band like the Partridge Family, where we all sang with my mom, my dad, my sister.
• 2:14
  I was on stage my whole life.
• 2:16
  That led to a theater career early on with high school and college and shows like that.
• 2:23
  And so when I entered the work world, I got an event planning job and I was hiring keynote speakers at conferences.
• 2:31
  So I was running the conference and hiring these folks, and I thought, man, that would be a really cool career someday.
• 2:37
  But I was about 24 years old and didn't have any credibility or expertise in a certain area.
• 2:43
  So I just planted that seed for a while.
• 2:46
  I actually worked a couple other jobs.
• 2:48
  I got my MBA in entrepreneurship from the University of Louisville, and then I moved overseas for a while and just did all different things.
• 2:58
  When I came back from living in Germany, I realized I had all the tools that I needed to go out and be on my own as an entrepreneur.
• 3:06
  When I first started, I just wanted to help people and businesses grow.
• 3:11
  And I, I learned from the MBA program to listen to the market and not just follow my passion of what I want to teach, but say, what is the market complaining about what's keeping them up at night?
• 3:24
  And this was in 2013.
• 3:25
  I've been doing this for, for 13 years now.
• 3:29
  Everybody was complaining about millennials, and I happen to be a millennial.
• 3:33
  So I was born in 1981, and when I started my company at 31 years old, I was pretty young to get a lot of credibility as a consultant.
• 3:41
  And so I said, I am your millennial consultant.
• 3:45
  Nobody older than me is a millennial.
• 3:48
  So they could talk about millennials, but they are not a millennial.
• 3:50
  So I found kind of this niche and a secret sauce that I had that other people couldn't latch onto that were older than me.
• 3:58
  Let me tell you what actually happens with the knowledge that runs your business.
• 4:03
  Someone spends a week writing an sop.
• 4:06
  It goes in a binder.
• 4:07
  The binder goes on a shelf.
• 4:09
  And when a new hire has a question, they find the person who knows and they ask them.
• 4:15
  That's tribal knowledge.
• 4:16
  It's valuable, and it walks out the door every time someone leaves.
• 4:21
  With QuicklyDoc, you just film your experts doing the job.
• 4:25
  It takes five minutes.
• 4:27
  QuicklyDoc turns that into a professional, searchable documentation that your team can pull up right from their phone.
• 4:35
  So when someone searches, how do I reset the controller?
• 4:39
  There's the answer straight from the person who actually knows.
• 4:43
  Film it once, reference it forever.
• 4:46
  Go to QuicklyDoc.com beyond for your free pilot, and stop losing what your best people know.
• 4:53
  Anyway, so then a couple years into bridging generational gaps, I had a sales coach that I hired, and she said, look, nobody has a line item in their budget for bridging generational gaps.
• 5:04
  I mean, we all know it's an issue, but there's not necessarily a business case tied to it.
• 5:09
  And so we realized we were bridging generational gaps to reduce employee turnover.
• 5:14
  And this was, this conversation happened, I think, 2014, 2015.
• 5:18
  And we saw coming out of that previous recession in, it was getting harder to get and keep talent, especially the younger workers who were job hopping more.
• 5:27
  And the boomers and Xers didn't know how to deal with it.
• 5:31
  So what's really cool is I feel like, because we listened to the market, I got on the retention train way before the great resignation and way before everybody else.
• 5:41
  In fact, I wrote my book staying power in 2018, even before the pandemic hit, we were already specializing in why do people stay and why do people go.
• 5:52
  So that's where we are today.
• 5:53
  We.
• 5:54
  I built out a keynote speaking business, that portion of our company, and then I've also got a leadership development training series that focuses on retention and generations and, and how to be a better leader.
• 6:08
  Okay.
• 6:08
  Wow.
• 6:09
  So appreciate all that background and there's a whole lot to unpack there.
• 6:13
  Sure.
• 6:14
  So, yeah, like you said, you had a very interesting upbringing performing on stages, in theater and all that.
• 6:20
  And then as, as a young person in the work, tried a lot of different things.
• 6:24
  You planted that seed about potentially speaking one day you lived overseas, which gave you some.
• 6:30
  Some more great life experience.
• 6:32
  And you come back and you realize that you have all these tools and you can really offer value.
• 6:38
  And it sounds like you just went out and you did it and you started the company and you started basically trying to get clients and people to hire you.
• 6:46
  Is that how it happened?
• 6:47
  Oh, yeah.
• 6:48
  At first, I took any kind of work that would come in just to help businesses.
• 6:53
  I took some interim positions that people needed to fill.
• 6:56
  I helped write some grants and did project management, all kinds of things, until I really figured out that this generational message was the place that I wanted to focus in on.
• 7:08
  It took me, you know, within that first year to really realize that was where I wanted to go.
• 7:13
  And let me just ask you too, because we see at least I've heard from numerous people that are looking to start something where they want to have all the answers ahead of time.
• 7:23
  Right.
• 7:23
  And so often, like the success stories we see are the people that just get out and get started and they may fall on their face, they may have to do a quick 180 pivot, they may have to completely
• 7:35
  rethink their original idea.
• 7:37
  But so much of the success that I see are people that are more so action based and will just go out and try something and just adjust as they go.
• 7:45
  Is that, is that always how.
• 7:47
  How you've.
• 7:47
  Your.
• 7:48
  Your approach has been.
• 7:50
  Well, I would say it's a combination.
• 7:51
  I mean, there's a little bit of just see what sticks, you know, and trial and error.
• 7:57
  But I'm also really big on kind of the market research side because my MBA in entrepreneurship taught me that just because even if there's a need in the market and there's a gap as far as no one is
• 8:10
  filling that need, there may not be any money behind it.
• 8:14
  So just because you really want to speak to children about empowerment or you know you're passionate about some service that does not exist, that you want to fill the gap.
• 8:24
  It doesn't mean that anybody out there has a budget for it or you know, can pay for that or is willing to, they would love to have it, but everybody wants it for free.
• 8:33
  So part of it is thinking ahead, listening to the market, figuring out what the need is, but also making sure that there's money for it and that that aligns with where your expertise is.
• 8:46
  You know, we also don't want a bunch of folks out there starting businesses that I see a need, but it's not really their expertise or they're not good at that side of the business.
• 8:55
  Right, Absolutely.
• 8:58
  Okay, so.
• 8:59
  And it sounds like about a year in is when you really had that aha moment that people aren't paying for bridging the generational gap, but they are paying to retain talent.
• 9:08
  Yeah.
• 9:10
  Is it?
• 9:10
  So what you, you make that, you have that light bulb moment, you make that switch and then what, what happened to your business then?
• 9:18
  Well, at that point things just started to, to take off.
• 9:22
  Because once we could tie that bridging generational gaps and making your leaders more effective in their positions could help with the bottom line of reducing turnover.
• 9:32
  We started to calculate turnover, so we quickly came up with a turnover calculation calculator of how much is it costing, whether it's a non degreed hourly worker position or whether it's a high paying degree position.
• 9:49
  We started to come up with these formulas of how much money are you losing?
• 9:53
  Because this talent is walking out the door.
• 9:56
  So that helped us close more deals because we could prove to them that hey, spending money on our training and speaking programs is nothing compared to what you're watching walk out the door with losing talent.
• 10:08
  And a lot of these companies, they, they would say, well we, we've had people working for us for 20 plus years.
• 10:14
  We know how to keep people.
• 10:16
  It's not our fault, we're not running them away.
• 10:18
  It's just these new hires, these young people don't want to work.
• 10:22
  And we kept hearing that over and over.
• 10:24
  But then when we talk to the young people and even my own friends and family that were job hopping, they said these companies suck.
• 10:31
  Like they don't care about their people, they don't us properly.
• 10:36
  It's a sink or swim mentality.
• 10:38
  They're not giving me any training.
• 10:39
  I don't have a mentor.
• 10:41
  I, I'm not given, you know, the tools to be successful in my job.
• 10:46
  And so we started to realize, wow, companies took advantage of if you recall back in the day, you know, Gen X was more of a latchkey generation.
• 10:56
  They were taught as, as young kids to just figure it out on their own.
• 11:00
  And so employers didn't have to train their people and they could just say, figure it out, sink or swim.
• 11:07
  And Gen X did that beautifully.
• 11:09
  But the millennials were raised very differently across our society.
• 11:13
  You know, we switched from the stay out until dark with the Gen Xers parenting model over to stranger danger, don't go anywhere, I can't see you.
• 11:22
  And so the millennials, we didn't get that experience to go learn other things.
• 11:28
  So it was a, it was a real culture shock for the business world when the millennials and now Gen Z came into the work world and they needed more handholding, more training, more mentoring.
• 11:40
  And so that piece has been a big aha moment for a lot of companies to realize the shift in the workforce and that they need to be better employers and better leaders.
• 11:52
  Okay, all right.
• 11:53
  Now the question too, because especially now, right?
• 11:58
  And I had a recent guest that kind of illustrated this is you see this almost melting pot of the generations where you could have at any given company, a Gen Z along with a Gen X along with a
• 12:12
  Millennial, all working on the same project per se, at the same time.
• 12:16
  And basically how, how are the, and the boom boomers too even.
• 12:20
  Right.
• 12:20
  And so how are these different generations interacting with each other and, and coexisting?
• 12:27
  Right?
• 12:27
  So I mean, how, how do like in terms of like your strategy and how you teach companies to basically retain that tap talent?
• 12:33
  What would your message be in terms of dealing with all these different generations that are in the, that parented differently, have different ways of working and, and pros and cons to their, their skill set.
• 12:47
  How would you, I guess, advise them to kind of deal with, with that reality?
• 12:52
  Yeah.
• 12:53
  So, gosh, this is like the, the perfect question, but it's, it's not a quick answer.
• 12:59
  Some of the things that are very basic, immediately actionable is first to listen to your people instead of taking the I'm the boss, I know how things are done.
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  Just do it the way I want it.
• 13:11
  Right?
• 13:12
  You have to listen to people.
• 13:14
  And today's new workforce, we, that's what we refer to it as with all the generations, more and more people want you as a boss and as a company to understand the whole person that you're hiring.
• 13:27
  You're not just hiring me from 9 to 5 or during my one shift.
• 13:31
  I do have a kid and there are snow days and sick days and I also have Hobb, and I like to vacation with my husband, and I have a dog that might also be sick or have a vet
• 13:44
  appointment and things like that.
• 13:45
  And, and a lot of companies, they just think, well, you need to make work your priority and be here when I tell you for your shift and things like that.
• 13:53
  And the new work world says, look, I mean, yes, work is a priority for me, but it's not my only priority.
• 14:01
  And I do want.
• 14:02
  I really hate that term work life balance, but that's the term that everybody knows as far as I do want to have that flex to take care of my other personal priorities and family priorities and things like that.
• 14:14
  So we absolutely have to get to know our people better and also understand that everybody was raised differently, whether it was someone older than you or younger than you.
• 14:26
  And so one easy strategy we teach is to communicate your expectations.
• 14:32
  If you have a certain definition or thought about professionalism, like one that I see all the time is punctuality.
• 14:41
  It used to be it was if you're not early, you're late, you got to be on time.
• 14:46
  Well, now we live in an era of does it really matter if I'm 5 minutes late or 10 minutes late?
• 14:52
  And for some jobs, it does.
• 14:53
  You know, in health care, manufacturing, one person has to replace the next worker if it's 24, 7 operation, so that matters.
• 15:02
  But if it's a work from home job or even just a desk information type job, what does it matter if somebody's five or ten minutes late because they already checked their email when they were in line at Starbucks,
• 15:14
  you know, waiting.
• 15:15
  They are, they've already read that report or, or emailed a few people and, and things like that.
• 15:20
  So I see today that we all just have to continue evolving with the workforce.
• 15:26
  We have to keep listening to the workforce.
• 15:28
  We have to recalibrate what professionalism looks like and then adjust our communication and our leadership style to better understand this new workforce.
• 15:38
  If, if we want to keep them, you know, if you don't mind the turnover, then you don't have to change.
• 15:44
  Okay.
• 15:45
  Yeah.
• 15:46
  All right.
• 15:46
  So when you got into this work and you really pivoted and things really started taking off for you is about a decade ago.
• 15:52
  So.
• 15:53
  And then you've gone on to, like you mentioned, you wrote a very successful book, which is called Staying Power.
• 15:59
  And you know, you wrote that before the Great Resignation too, which was really talking about the issue of employee retention, and then you give these keynotes for major corporations.
• 16:11
  We actually connected because I was at an event and saw you on stage, and I was like, I've got to talk to her.
• 16:17
  But so as you've been doing this this whole last decade, how have you seen the workforce evolve?
• 16:24
  I mean, relative to this message?
• 16:26
  Do you think companies are getting the message and it's getting better, or is it, Is the problem worse than ever?
• 16:32
  Yeah, I, I think that now companies can no longer put their head in the sand and say, just wake me up when this is over.
• 16:40
  You know, Wake me up when people want to work again.
• 16:44
  I think every generation has, has accused the next generation of they just don't want to work.
• 16:49
  Right?
• 16:50
  That, that's how every group has been coming into the work world.
• 16:53
  So now, you know, we, we see this evolution.
• 16:59
  We see that companies are understanding the financial impact of if they don't have the talent, then they can't deliver on their services.
• 17:08
  I mean, some of our clients, they, they have to turn down new clients because they don't have enough staff to service it or to produce what the new client wants.
• 17:18
  And so that's money right off the table.
• 17:20
  That's.
• 17:21
  That's going away.
• 17:22
  You also see, come on, as consumers, we are out there all the time at retail food service.
• 17:28
  Everywhere else that we have customer service needs.
• 17:31
  Nobody can answer your questions anymore.
• 17:33
  They're all new.
• 17:34
  They don't know the answers to, does this food have gluten in it?
• 17:39
  Or, you know, the.
• 17:41
  Anything in the retail world that we're out shopping.
• 17:44
  Like, I had a person recently that their system went down or they couldn't figure out how to, how to do something on the cash register.
• 17:52
  And I ended up just walking away because the person was like, I'm sorry, I don't know how to purchase that thing.
• 17:58
  That's not in my system.
• 17:59
  And then they lost my sale.
• 18:01
  Not.
• 18:02
  I wasn't being rude.
• 18:03
  It was just.
• 18:03
  She couldn't figure it out and no one was there to help her.
• 18:05
  So it was like, okay, well, then I gotta, I gotta go somewhere else and get this.
• 18:09
  So it, it impacts the bottom line when we have all these new people out there, it impacts your reputation, your brand, your customer service, your reviews, all of those things.
• 18:22
  So, yes, I do think that now businesses are realizing they have to make culture and retention and leadership development a priority and even put a line item in the budget for those conversations, because otherwise it's going to be
• 18:36
  really hard to get and keep the talent.
• 18:38
  We need to have a good brand and good reputation and good services and good products with no defects, things like that.
• 18:47
  Okay, all right, so, so along your journey too, as you're doing like the speaking and you're, you're working with companies specifically to help them outline a strategy or to kind of implement all this stuff.
• 19:01
  I mean, what's been the most surprising thing that you've seen along your journey?
• 19:06
  As an entrepreneur?
• 19:09
  You know, just as an entrepreneur myself, not talking about retention, I'm surprised at how many businesses and entrepreneurs run their company without systems, without a budget, without, you know, checklists and processes and software that they need.
• 19:31
  And so I often have friends and colleagues who run speaking and training businesses when they find out how operationalized I am, that I've got a system and a software and a checklist for everything I do.
• 19:43
  And that helps me so I don't have to work nights and weekends, which is great.
• 19:47
  I work nine to five and that's it unless I'm on the road.
• 19:52
  But I'm increasingly shocked at how many companies are just winging it.
• 19:58
  And if they've got money in the bank, then they'll invest in something, but if they're running tight, then they don't invest.
• 20:04
  And I have a budget every single year.
• 20:07
  I know what my investments are going to be this year, and they may change a little bit if we're above or below our numbers.
• 20:13
  But I know what my strategy is for the year.
• 20:16
  I have my annual goals, I've got my quarterly rocks.
• 20:19
  You know, we run the entrepreneurial operating system eos, kind of not the whole system, but we use portions of that strategy to stay in line.
• 20:29
  And I just love it because it tells me where to focus my energy.
• 20:33
  It helps me from getting distracted by shiny opportunities, which I love.
• 20:38
  And so my focus areas keep me focused on the special projects, the development, the sales, marketing, whatever I'm supposed to be working on that day, that week, that month, that quarter.
• 20:49
  All of my systems keep me in line and tell me where I need to be, when.
• 20:54
  And I'm just increasingly kind of shocked when I talk to businesses that are even well over a million doll and they're, they're still winging it as far as processes and systems and finances and forecasts and things like that.
• 21:07
  So, yeah, that, that would keep me up at night too much.
• 21:11
  I like to have my systems and I like to know exactly where we are.
• 21:15
  We run on a ton of metrics so that we know both lagging metrics of our past and leading metrics of where our future quarters are headed and what, what next month is going to look like.
• 21:27
  I like to have that a little bit more certainty in this Entrepreneurial space.
• 21:32
  Okay, yeah.
• 21:33
  Certainty and predictability sounds like.
• 21:36
  Did you set that up specifically right when you started?
• 21:40
  Oh no.
• 21:41
  I mean I've always been like a spreadsheet person so I started making spreadsheets from day one.
• 21:47
  But I really got serious about the system side.
• 21:52
  I guess it was probably 2021 I think was when I, I really hunkered down and started reading about EOS and those systems.
• 22:01
  I mean I've been using different soft systems before that for project management, but we really came up with company wide processes and templates and I mean I have an SOP for everything we do for finance, accounting, marketing, the
• 22:17
  delivery of our training programs.
• 22:19
  We have everything documented and part of it was also it came it, some of it came from.
• 22:25
  I had several maternity leave periods on my team that my staff kept having babies and so we kept saying, okay, well you got to document at what you do so we can do it while you're gone.
• 22:38
  And then that also helped us to create our bigger company wide sops.
• 22:45
  And, and it was so helpful because every time somebody took a three month maternity leave then we were still a well oiled machine.
• 22:53
  We could jump in and do exactly what they did and there was very little disruption to the business, if any, during that time.
• 23:01
  So we, we had some maternity leaves we were trying to cover and then we realized, wow, this works so well.
• 23:07
  Let's just do it holistically.
• 23:09
  Let's, let's have these operational procedures across the whole company and let's document what everybody does and it's been extraordinarily helpful.
• 23:20
  Okay.
• 23:21
  All right.
• 23:21
  And in terms of scaling out your team, right, because when you started this it was just you, you know, you pivoted quickly and things took off.
• 23:31
  When you adjusted your messaging jing, how did you know the right time to really add people and invest those resources as you're scaling, you know, a new company?
• 23:42
  Yeah, so, so what I see a lot of other companies do is they think they have to reach a certain point of revenue or a certain point of production, that, that then they'll hire somebody.
• 23:55
  You know, when I reach this number, then I'll hire somebody.
• 23:57
  And I'm kind of the opposite.
• 23:59
  I say in order to reach a number I'm going to need more hands and, and I do it more proactively.
• 24:05
  So, but, but a key to that is I do not hire full time folks because I wanted to keep my company small, but I wanted to create multiple jobs for sales and marketing and accounting and training and you
• 24:18
  know, all that type of stuff.
• 24:21
  So what I have done is I have hired part time people.
• 24:26
  You know, about every year I added a, a part time or two part time people every single year of the business as we grew.
• 24:35
  And I had kind of a secret weapon was I was looking primarily for stay at home moms and dads who wanted to still work.
• 24:46
  A lot of them have MBAs and advanced degrees, you know, really talented, amazing people or they had a lot of business experience, you know, and, but they didn't want that 60 hour a week rat race of corporate America
• 24:58
  anymore.
• 24:59
  So I started asking around of, hey, who would like to come work for me for 15 hours a week, 20 to 25 hours a week.
• 25:08
  And I would get people, you know, left and right saying, are you serious?
• 25:12
  You would hire me at that level?
• 25:14
  You know, like my chief operating officer is 25 hours a week and it's hard to get to that level of pay and strategy and everything and still have a part time job.
• 25:23
  So my chief operating officer, he takes her kids to school every morning, logs on at 9:30, she leaves at 2:30 and goes and gets her kids again from school.
• 25:33
  And she's great, she runs my business.
• 25:36
  She's brilliant and amazing and, and all my team has been over the years, but they only work their, their certain hours.
• 25:45
  And so that has worked for me.
• 25:47
  Now I know a lot of other companies, they want people who will be workaholics and give it their all.
• 25:53
  But I kind of took advantage of this new workforce, the one that wants the work life balance.
• 26:00
  And I said, how can I get really talented people who don't want to work the 40 plus hours a week and I can get them to focus on, on the job.
• 26:09
  So the cool thing is too, if I've got somebody clocking 25 hours a week, I get 25 fully productive hours out of that person.
• 26:18
  They're not chit chatting at the water cooler and you know, doing other things.
• 26:23
  They are clocking their as productive hours.
• 26:27
  And so I, I very much get my money's worth with that as well.
• 26:31
  So I kind of built my company off of multiple part time people in their sweet spot roles of sales, marketing, operations, et cetera.
• 26:39
  And it's worked beautifully for our team.
• 26:42
  Wow, interesting.
• 26:43
  That's certainly a way to almost arbitrage your expertise and how these different generations operate in the workforce and then use that to your advantage.
• 26:54
  Right.
• 26:54
  Like you said, to really get a bargain.
• 26:57
  Okay, all right.
• 26:58
  So Kara, we know not every entrepreneurial journey is, you know, highlight reels and, and Instagram worthy content.
• 27:07
  I mean, can you Talk about some of the messy parts of the journey in terms of scaling this company out.
• 27:13
  Oh yeah.
• 27:13
  Oh yeah.
• 27:15
  Well, I've had a few what I call blips, you know, in time.
• 27:19
  I had a health crisis years ago, almost 10 years ago that took me down for three to six months off the road.
• 27:27
  And as an entrepreneur, you know, you, you have to be prepared for that.
• 27:30
  Part of it is, can your company operate without you and how do you get your momentum back after, you know, mine was a health crisis, but other people have different issues that they have to deal with.
• 27:42
  Of course, we all dealt with 2020, which was a complete halt of business for us.
• 27:47
  We did not close was any new business for six months in 2020 when the pandemic hit and still had to figure out how to operate.
• 27:56
  Now what we did is we actually, instead of letting staff go in 2020, I put every staff member on a special project.
• 28:03
  So we built a studio for, for virtual training.
• 28:06
  We got woman owned certified, we built an online course.
• 28:10
  We did all these projects in 2020.
• 28:12
  And then in 2021 we actually doubled our 2019 revenue because we had built out all of this stuff while we had the downtime to come out, you know, better on the other end.
• 28:25
  So we kind of hockey sticked in 2021 came out much better.
• 28:30
  And then in 2025, I, I have had, over the past few years, I've been having panic attacks on airplanes.
• 28:38
  And that's not good for a person who flies the country to go keynote at conferences, you know, that is, that does not go well together.
• 28:46
  And so I decided that I had to make a.
• 28:50
  And now this, this past year we've been shifting more of our business, you know, still take national clients if they come to us.
• 28:57
  But as far as our outreach and our marketing, we are focusing that on the Midwest and about a six hour driving circle around Louisville, Kentucky, which is where I'm at.
• 29:07
  And that way I don't have to get on a plane, you know, and, and with this strategic change, I did decide to shrink my team down a bit.
• 29:16
  I had never really done any kind of downsizing before, but I made that strateg strategic decision and we are streamlining some of our positions and roles.
• 29:26
  And then I made sure, because I'm so focused on my team and, and retention and culture and your reputation, I made sure that every one of my team members that I had to let go, I connected them to
• 29:38
  other opportunities.
• 29:40
  You know, they're all great folks.
• 29:42
  And luckily we got everybody placed at other companies or a couple of them decided to stay home with their kids.
• 29:48
  That, that was their decision and, and change their priorities as well.
• 29:52
  So I did kind of shift the business this year.
• 29:55
  We had a bit of a blip because of my panic attacks.
• 29:59
  And also, I mean, we've had a lot of economic uncertainty this year, and that has hit training and development companies for sure.
• 30:06
  So, so it was kind of a lot of stars aligned this fall that made it a clear business decision for me moving forward to, to just be a smaller operation.
• 30:16
  And I, I, I love most of them.
• 30:20
  I mean, I, I miss all of them, but, but, I mean, I miss them dearly.
• 30:26
  However, I, I'm, I'm really glad that we did what we did because otherwise I would be carrying a huge burden of too much payroll going into 2026 here and, and being worried about hitting our numbers and be worried
• 30:42
  about having enough work for everyone and things like that.
• 30:45
  So, so I feel like I made a good strategic decision there, and I'm really glad everybody landed on their feet and is still happy.
• 30:53
  Wow.
• 30:53
  And just having the, just caring enough to make sure everyone got placed too.
• 30:59
  Right.
• 30:59
  You don't hear that often in today's world in terms of, especially when tough decisions need to be made relative to employees.
• 31:08
  Yeah.
• 31:08
  And if you wait until, you know, I've had this conversation a lot these past few months, if you wait until times are desperate and you make that decision to downsize, then you're out of cash, you've run out of
• 31:19
  your cushion.
• 31:20
  But because I could see the uncertainty continuing in 2026 and had some other issues, like some of the, some of the industries that we serve are being hit by other economic factors that are happening right now.
• 31:33
  And so they don't have the buying power they used to.
• 31:35
  And so if you look ahead, I saw a lot of these things aligning.
• 31:39
  Like I said, kind of the stars aligned.
• 31:41
  And I realized if I let my, my, some of my folks go now, I have my financial cushion.
• 31:47
  So I gave them a working Runway to close down their departments and help me document and transition things.
• 31:54
  And I gave everybody severance packages to give them a longer Runway to find new jobs.
• 32:00
  And most of the folks had new jobs before they even got to their severance, which was great because then they get to, you know, double dip a little bit.
• 32:08
  But I wasn't certain that they were going to find jobs that quickly.
• 32:11
  And so I think taking care of your people just says a lot of, about what kind of business you're running.
• 32:17
  And, and luckily, one of my goals with the, with the downsizing was I don't want anybody to hate me, you know, and I.
• 32:25
  I want them to understand the business case behind this and the.
• 32:29
  The strategic shift that's happening.
• 32:32
  And.
• 32:32
  And I was very glad that, you know, there was certainly some upset folks and hurt feelings and confusion at first, but now everybody's on board and understands where we're headed and why.
• 32:43
  And.
• 32:43
  And then it wasn't personal at all to make those changes.
• 32:46
  Changes.
• 32:48
  Okay.
• 32:49
  All right.
• 32:49
  And, Carrie, given the way your journey's unfolded and.
• 32:52
  And where the.
• 32:54
  Your career has taken you and where you're at now, what's been the best part of this whole entrepreneurial experience for you?
• 33:01
  Oh, man, what a question.
• 33:05
  You know, I just.
• 33:07
  I absolutely love changing lives, love helping people and businesses grow.
• 33:14
  That's kind of a personal motto for me.
• 33:17
  And so starting my own business, we were able to create these jobs.
• 33:21
  We do a hundred plus speaking and training engagements every year.
• 33:26
  We have helped over a hundred thousand leaders be better and bridge generational gaps and reduce turnover.
• 33:34
  And so just that kind of ripple effect of what I get up and do every day, whether it's writing that article or being on a podcast or keynoting and training, things like that, it ripples out to create better
• 33:47
  places to work and better leaders.
• 33:48
  And so I just love that ripple effect over the last 13 years of how many people we have impacted, not just those leaders, but all the people who work for those leaders would be hundreds and hundreds of thousands
• 34:00
  of people that have had a better day, hopefully, because of what we teach.
• 34:06
  Love that.
• 34:06
  Okay.
• 34:07
  And Kara, if.
• 34:08
  If people are out there hearing this and they have a retention problem they want to address or they just want to.
• 34:13
  Want to learn more about you, your speaking, your training, and everything else you do, what's the best way that people can reach out to you online?
• 34:20
  Sure.
• 34:20
  So I'm the only Cara Stiletto out there.
• 34:22
  It's Carol with a C and I'm on LinkedIn.
• 34:25
  Or you can go to magnetculture.com and check out our programs and send me a form through the website.
• 34:31
  Okay.
• 34:32
  All right.
• 34:32
  We will link all that in the show.
• 34:34
  Notes for everyone also.
• 34:35
  Great.
• 34:36
  Well, Kara, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this valuable wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 34:41
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 34:43
  Thanks for the invite.