Transcription
Like, let's start with what we know. Given GDP, we should have seen about a 6% increase in the staffing industry last year. Sia reported another down year for the industry. When we look at past data since 2022, the industry is down about 20%. It seems to me like the industry is sort of underachieving and underperforming, right? We can't close new orders; we're not necessarily recruiting at a high level; we're not increasing or decreasing, rather, our time to fill as it relates to hiring; and we're sort of passing the blame, right? So we're either blaming the market as an industry, or sales teams are blaming recruiters, recruiters are blaming the sales team. I want to get your thoughts on accountability in the staffing and recruiting industry. Why is there an accountability breakdown?
When we think about the staffing and recruiting industry, you know, it's an interesting question because, you know, we've had about 12 great years of GDP growth and, along with, you know, obviously COVID, you know, there's a hiccup there, and the staffing industry grew with it. And so, but one of the things that I really noticed was that really good business development efforts, really strong sales organizations are going out there, landing new clients or even the ability to penetrate new accounts and gain wallet share was a discipline that was atrophying over those 12 years. It just didn't have the same sense of urgency across the board. Uh, you know, they just weren't quite—it was just easier, I think. And so I think that's kind of natural, and when something like that happens, you can say as much as you want that what you're doing isn't enough, but if you're still growing, you're not going to listen. It's just—it's just the way it is. And so there is definitely a part where I think a really strong sales-oriented culture, really strong executives that focus on a sales strategy that that could be executed properly, because keep in mind, in 12 years, you have VP levels that have never seen a recession, right? And so when they see something like that, they've never seen it before; they've never been part of it before. And so it's—it's—it's new to so many layers within that organization; they don't know how to respond. So it does—the kind of the—does start with leadership because leadership has to learn the business in a different way; they have to learn new skills themselves; they have to learn how to hire differently; they need to train differently—all those things, right? There is—there's no question there are systemic issues, like, and in—in executive form, we talked about the fact that, look, you know, we're not growing—there's been a split between GDP growth and staffing growth, and there's a lot of talk about that—that a lot of it's government spending and that's why, versus private sector growth. But I think there's just—I think there's just a lot of things there; people are just waiting—a lot of uncertainty, and the market is waiting. But I'll tell you one thing: the firms that stayed aggressive and didn't get complacent for those 12 years did okay; they did fine; they went down a little bit, but they—they picked it back up again. And that—and and I can't stress enough, it all starts with that—the lifeblood of a staffing firm—the only way to—the only way to own your own future direction of the company it has to have is to have a great sales organization—that's it.
I had a call with a client just this past week who said, "You know, we don't know how to sell because we've been order takers for so long that we've never had to sell." Are you seeing that quite a bit too?
Oh, absolutely. Like, and—and like I don't—I don't blame them; I would probably be in the same situation, right? I mean, because you just kind of—the thing about sales, and one thing I tell people is that it's truly within the staffing—within staffing—it's truly the only proactive thing we do. If you're managing orders, you're responding to what's coming in, and you kind of get into that versus if you're a salesperson, you're creating opportunity out of a lot of times out of nothing that wasn't there before. And that's a whole different mentality; it's a whole different way of looking at things; a whole different way of, you know, getting ready for the day; a whole different way of getting—of dealing with rejection. Like, if you're taking needs coming in, like you're not getting rejected; you could always blame the recruiter if you got rejected. So it's like, but when you're out there as a salesperson, you're on your own; people are going to not want to talk to you—that's just the way it is. It is a whole different world.
You know, when we look at accountability, for example, we all have these management systems, and I believe in management systems, and I started—that's where I started this business—was—was balance scorecard management—that's how I started my consulting business. But it doesn't—it is—it is a tool; that's all it is. It's—it's simply a tool, and it's a guidepost; that's all it is. And the math of the business, how a desk needs to be run, the tools that people use, the approaches they take—all that at the desk level—that's all the stuff that has to—that has to change for real production to—to actually increase. So, uh, it's interesting times, and people don't know their math anymore. They used to know: I make this many calls; I can get eight to 10 meetings a week; I can get this many job orders; I can hit my goal—and you hit—you could check it. And now the math's completely broken. I can only get three meetings a week—all that kind of stuff. And so now the math doesn't work anymore; you have to re-rig the desk and figure out how to do it differently.
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Yeah, the data that we saw recently is that it takes 17 to 20 touches for an individual to fundamentally know a company exists. So whether you're selling T-shirts or you're selling staffing services, 17 to 20 touches just for you to know that a company exists—not to get the order, not to get the ask for an order—just to know Brad's widget company is on this planet. And the same data, Mike, that I saw is that 90% of sales reps give up at the fourth attempt. Yeah, so mathematically, we know it takes 17 to 20 touches for someone to know your company exists, but 90% of us are giving up at the fourth attempt because of—and why I think is because of rejection—because of hearing no so consistently. We're human at the end of the day, and if you don't have thick skin in staffing and selling staffing services, it can really eat at you quickly.
Well, I'll tell you, like I started this business as a recruiter, right? And I hit the ground running; I hit the ground running; it was doing great because it was lucky, basically. But when you're—when you're doing the—when you're actually being successful, you don't sit back and think about how lucky you are; you think you're good—"I'm good at this," right? And so this—then, of course, that stops because luck runs out, and then you have to make—then you're at this crossroads decision, and the crossroads is: am I willing to really understand—I had to take a—I had to take a step back; I have to look back at what I'm currently doing and go in a different direction or not? And that's a really hard thing to do, and that's why I think like early success a lot of times is an indicator of a lack of resiliency in the future. Um, and so a lot of these folks, like you said, never had that before, and so they feel like for rejection is almost insurmountable, uh, because it—that doesn't line up with their past experience versus somebody who's brand new. Like if you—that's why so many people hire college grads because they're coming in like, you know, they have no idea; they're getting—it's just normal to them. And that's why you could put them through that ringer and get them ready for that, but it's hard for sales—for—to have so much success to have to go back and rebuild. Man, it's—it's one of the hard—I respect—I've seen salespeople do it, and I respect the daylights out of them. I think it's one of the hardest things to do in this industry.
Who owns that accountability in terms of training a sales team how to deal with that resiliency? Does that come from top-down leadership? Is that a sales manager? Is that self-driven? Who owns that accountability?
I mean, I think the understanding of the reset does start with—with the line level—with the—with the chief executive officer, I should say, and that there has to be a reality check, you know, among the team, also understanding that, you know, when—when a chief executive officer—it's okay to communicate that, "Look, I have to do my job differently, so you're going to see me doing things differently as well. So we all have to change." And that cascade, you know, of change goes downward to the VP and that director level and that line-level manager. You know, I did a session with Jeff Bowling of old Delta companies; he's great with accountability, and, you know, the weekly reviews with the line-level manager and things like that, but he also really stressed that level above the line-level manager to be highly accountable to the desk as well, and that when somebody is really struggling, you don't sit there and look at the—the numbers only tell you somebody is struggling, so you can see that they're struggling, but you have to get into the desk, and you have to figure out what they're doing. Maybe you have to listen to their calls; maybe you have to make some calls for them; maybe you have to put a submission together; maybe you need to call a client for them; maybe you need to go on a join sales calls—like you have to get in the trenches because it doesn't matter what the ratios say, and whether it's in a pie chart or a bar graph—or that's fine—but in the end, it's like, how do you take that data and implement improvements and coach your people up? That's the part that I think is really missing.
I had a call the other day that stopped me in my tracks. Um, it was actually the same call where somebody had said that their team doesn't know how to sell, right? They don't have a sales system; they've been order takers. And they said, "But we do have one sales rep who is absolutely crushing it in their market." And I said on the call, "Well, what are they doing?" And the person said, "I don't know." I said, "What—what—what do you mean? You have a whole sales team over here, and you're saying that you're struggling right now, and somebody's doing really, really well? No one has thought to grab a cup of coffee with this person and figure out what they're doing?" Yeah, and it—it—it was so shocking and so astonishing. Yeah, that they should at least know, like how they're managing their desk, what they're doing different, how they're organizing their day, you know, what are they—you know, what are they saying, you know, things like that—that kind of the tactics, you know, what kind—how are they landing the meeting, right? Once they get that person on the phone, how are they actually translating that to a meeting or translating that to an order? I would be—yeah, I would be all over that to try to—to try to learn the tactics of what that person is doing, right? But what's—what's funny about it—that what—to tell you is that there is something called talent, right? Like I had—I had a great salesperson in Greenville, South Carolina. She had this great Southern accent, and she was on the phones constantly, but man, she could tell anybody anything, and they loved her for it because she was so—her demeanor was so great—was so professional; she connected personally so quickly with people that if I tried to do half the things that she did or use half—to try to, you know, try to connect the way—it would fail miserably. So there are some people that just naturally can connect with somebody, and then people want to work with them, and that's—that's just called talent. But you're right in the—in the sense of like, yeah, at least understand, okay, well, how many calls are you making, or, you know, what kind of outreach are you doing, and, you know, what are you saying to get meetings, and, you know, that type of thing. Or absolutely—you don't—you certainly—you certainly don't just look at it in wonder and just talk about it. Yeah, for sure. That's nice for that person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike, when you think about accountability and top-down accountability, how often should senior-level leadership be meeting with individuals throughout the organization?
So it's a really good question, and I think it—there, as with anything, it probably does depend a little bit on how much change is actually going through the organization. So if there's a lot of change, either structurally or the strategy or something like that, that a monthly—and when you say senior, I'm talking about the CEO level—like, you know, CEO-level communication on a monthly perspective makes a lot of sense because, you know, the—there's a lot of change going on; you want to update those people on the change, and you want to make sure that, you know, you're staying—you're staying connected. And even with fast-growing companies, sometimes it's appropriate too, because the other thing that's happening in fast-growing firms is that your legacy employees, because you're growing, are actually feeling further and further removed from the chief executive just because it's a larger company, and they're not able to go out to lunch with the CEO and things like that. So even in fast-growing situations, having those types of consistent communications, I think, make sense. You can certainly get away—in a more stable environment, you know, you can get away with quarterly, um, and—and that's—and that's fine as well.
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When we think about then going from across departments, should there be an accountability from team—it's a team member—should those check-ins be happening as well?
Yeah, so obviously, like there's, you know, the best type of accountability is pure accountability that happens on a day—the day-to-day. Like if you kind of look at it maybe in a, you know, this way, it's like day-to-day accountability—the optimal view of day-to-day accountability is peer-to-peer accountability; that's the best type of accountability. If you're looking at weekly—week-over-week accountability where you're looking at performance over a period of time, then manager-to-employee accountability works best. You're not going to have a peer go look at somebody's numbers for the week and say, "Hey, you missed your submit numbers by two last week." That's not going to happen, right? Right. What they are going to say is like, "Hey, why didn't you cover—why didn't you cover my job? You said you were going to cover it," right? So—so that—so that weekly type of accountability is really kind of line level to—to uh—to employee accountability, but it's all incredibly important. And I would argue the most powerful—the real accountability that really drives performance is peer-to-peer accountability. Like if you're going to ask me like which is the—what—what—what one of the strongest—would—no question be peer-to-peer.
Mean that's the sign of the healthiest culture you could possibly have.
Why is that?
Um, well, mainly because it really—it drives the culture of the organization. Um, when you look at uh—like the way I look at culture, it's kind of the definition I kind of go with or lens I look through is the unwritten rules that drive behavior with one another. So if—if I'm holding—if I'm holding people accountable, that becomes the rule set—how we work together. And so we're more likely to pay closer attention to detail; we're more likely to live up to our obligations; we're more likely to put those extra 10 calls in; we're more likely to take that call list back home with us; we're more likely to ask those additional questions to those candidates. You're not going to get from a—from a management accountability; that's never going to happen. Those are cultural expectations, right? Where you don't want to let people down—when you want to live up to the standards that you hold each other to. And that is like—that is the foundation—that's everything. That's why when you have a—a performer, let's say, even if they're a top—if somebody's a top performer, if they are a tumor on the culture—if they're just cancerous on the culture—you can't keep them because trust begins to break down with that team, and you lose that entire dynamic of mutual accountability, and the culture of performance just atrophies and falls—and falls apart. And I'm telling you, there is nothing harder than fixing a culture in a company; it's the hardest thing that I do.
Where do you start? So if someone's listening right now, they think they have one of those team members who is sort of that poison pill in the culture, but they're a high performer—where do you even get started there?
I'll tell you that um—it's really hard. Everybody—I've had to do it, uh, and everybody that I talked to when I wrote Breaking Through had to do it, and it was all kind of a crossroads event for every—for every single one of them—is—is that you—you have to be willing to make that decision first. You have to be willing to have the difficult conversations and stop compromising and trying to compromise around this individual and create—it can't be done; it's just—there's no manager is smart enough or good enough to be able to manage around a terminally cancerous employee; it's a—it just can't be done. So unless that employee is willing to change the behavior, then that person—which you can—look, do it, try it; I'm not saying not to try—but you have to be willing to—to—to let go. And I'll tell you something: you will be better off. You're going to imagine all these terrible things that are going to happen; you're going to imagine—you're going to lose all this gross profit; you're—I'm telling you right now, it never happens that way; it is never as bad as you imagine—it never is. And then what happens is like this relief comes throughout the organization, and the only thing that you're going to hear from people is not like, "I can't believe you did that." What you're going to hear is, "What took you so long?" And it's going to make you feel worse because that—what made me feel worse because that's what happened to me. It's like, "What took you so long?" It's like, you know, you can't play defense as a manager; just can't—it doesn't work. It's a good thought; you need to be on the offensive side of things; you need to constantly be thinking about what's next, thinking about how to grow, and, and most importantly, how to keep the strength of the team intact, right? Right. Exactly. And the thing is like—this is the thing—like the values—with the—like the—the mission, vision, values, and the kind of the—the tri—the—the three-legged stool—you kind of talk about it—people talk about like, you know, whatever—it's kind of cheesy, you know—what is—I'm telling you, the stuff's incredibly important, and if you're—and if you have values within an organization, and they're stated values, and you as a chief executive say these are the values, and you are willing to have a price tag on those values—"Hey, these values only count if you make under $700,000 of gross profit"—they're not values at that point; there's nothing transcendent anymore; then everything is up for negotiation, and your people are watching you—like, don't think they're not.
Watching you like when you're a when you're a leader, you are a fishbowl, and they're watching your body language; they're watching you, how you handle things, and they're talking about it and they're diagnosing it. All that stuff's happening. And so when you're not willing to make difficult decisions, what are they talking about? The fact that you're not willing to make difficult decisions, and it undermines undermines you as a leader.
It's a great point, Mike. Mike, you've had the opportunity to coach hundreds of staffing firms throughout your time in the industry. What are some of the biggest red flags you've seen when walking into a new organization thinking, "This industry—I'm sorry, this company—is in trouble"?
You know, it's I think that um I think that probably the earliest indicators, you know, when I'm talking to people, is that they talk in terms; they talk defensively, and they're talking in terms of trying to position themselves in the best light, like they're almost on a sinking ship. So they're trying they're trying to protect their own reputation and things like that. But I think that that also goes up to the CEO level, right? And that's where it's terminal when the CEO is like they're they don't realize that the company is a reflection of them; it is a reflection. And so when they start talking about the company as a third party, or if they start like talking about the company like I talk about the company as a consultant, right, that's a problem. Because the co—especially in Staffing—the company and the CEO are intricately linked. That's why like when when when CEO they try to sell the company, they they so many of it the last minute back off because it's like selling a member of their family; it's like it's that personal, right? Right. And when you have that kind of disassociation, that means they're disassociated from the employees, and the employees can't really feed off that manager; they can't connect with that CEO. And it's Staffing; that connection is incredibly important.
The other thing is like when you walk into an office—maybe it's maybe it's different nowadays because it's, you know—but I know when I started, and there's more electronic communication nowadays, like if it's if you could like uh if it's like a library and you walk in and nobody's talking, there's no energy, you know, uh that's that's the other death nail. The other part is like if people—this is the other thing—like if you sit in on a on a morning meeting, the morning meeting—what's the purpose of a morning meeting? A morning meeting is to get people focused on what they need to focus on and fired up to do it; that's the that's two things; that's it. If they're sitting there and they're in the ATS, they're going in, they're talking about that, and whether this is the right or that's right, and they're spending like 30 minutes talking about the data and not talking about closing deals, you got a problem, because they're thinking bureaucratically; they're not thinking entrepreneurially, right? They're not thinking about closing deals; they're just thinking about the data, and that's the other sign that it's just things have gone sideways.
Let's flip that. So again, you've worked with hundreds of companies in the industry. What are some of the best indicators that a company is poised for growth and success that you—
Oh, this is great. So uh I had—I tell the story once in a while—years ago, it's probably 10 years ago, I was at—everyone—Mike's got a story for us. Well, and so you know, there are people that will come in and come to me and say, "Hey, can you talk," or whatever, and you know, I can get a pretty good indicate what's going on. And Mark Eldridge approaches me from ALU, and Mark had been growing, obviously, um at that point, and but he wanted to talk to me about whether or not I could help them, right, if grow faster. So we go outside, sit down, and he brings in about his top four people, basically, and I sat down with them, and I could—you could feel it—you could feel that this team was just connected and focused and ready to go. Like there was—I could get a sense—where sitting down with the team and whether there's a gap or what's going on—and this was the this was probably the most aligned team I had experienced sitting down. And um and it was because it was with Mark, but it's also those your key employees, those people that are right underneath the CEO, and the closer they are and the tighter they are and in terms of—not just in terms of the personal relationship, but their desire to build—like they all had this desire to build and just to grow and all those type of things. And I met with them for about an hour, and I looked at Mark; I said, "I don't think I can help; I think you're doing great," because the thing is about what what I do is disruptive, right? And so and I'm I'm a I'm a son of a physician; my dad always had that had this wooden statue on his desk, and it was in German, but it it said like uh it was something around uh you know, "First, do no harm," the kind of the the HP part of the Hippocratic Oath, right? And I was like, and I've always kind of taken that because like in Staffing, you could screw things up really fast if you don't know what you're doing, you know, really fast. And uh and so when that was the case, I was like, "Man, I am not—you guys are great; don't you know, just keep doing what you're doing; you'll be fine."
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It's interesting how well you can feel a functioning team and a high-performing team as opposed to a dysfunctional team, right? So we're based in Buffalo, New York, over here. You look at a team like the Buffalo Bills; the team culture is very very strong. You look at a team like the Buffalo Sabres, who probably couldn't beat a JV hockey team right now; you think it's a completely dysfunctional locker room, right? You can you can feel that—I don't know the team; I'm not working around the locker room—but you can feel that because of the because of the product that they're putting out on the ice or on the field. And a lot of—way—please—
No, well, look what happened in Miami Heat; same thing happened; like they trade Jimmy Butler, and the culture just falls apart. It's sorry—inter—but yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, and I think we look at that a lot in sports, or we see bands fall apart because the frontman or whoever it is has some sort of ego-driven whatever it might be, and the band falls apart because of the culture, or we see that in sports because of, again, the locker room culture, but we don't often tie that to our businesses, and we don't tie that to—well, why are we not succeeding? Because of the locker room, because of what's going on right here within four walls.
Yeah, yeah, which—which to me is the only reason, you know, there's something about this business, right, that it it it gets its closet of people, and they don't leave; they just they—it's a tough business. Like if you look at—it's like what are we doing to ourselves? Like it's a really really hard business, but I think it's because first of all, there's a lot of fun people in this business; the service that we provide is really amazing, but I think that these the cultures that kind of get generated within these companies and things like like that are are really, you know, can be really great and provide a lot of satisfaction, you know, so um yeah, just reminded of a book—go ahead, please.
Yeah, no, no, no, you go ahead; it's all good. I was gonna say I was just reminded of a book, and I was trying to look it up quickly because I haven't read it in a while, uh by John Gordon, *You Win in the Locker Room First*, and it is the seven C's to build a winning team in business, sports, and life. And as we're now talking about building this high-performing team versus a fully dysfunctional team that is falling apart, um I was called back to that book as you were talking, and we were talking about sort of that dynamic that you see in the locker room, but in a lot of ways, we have to paint that analogy to Staffing and recruiting firms, because we do win in the locker room first; we win as a team before we can have the product on the court, on the field, on the ice.
100%. That's one of the reasons why there's 22,000 staffing firms in the US is because grit can get you somewhere in this business, and a great culture can get you somewhere in this business. You can outmaneuver the big companies; you can do what you can do, you know, so but a of that is built on on culture; it's it is the it is like this; it is the lynchpin that holds that holds everything together. And you have a culture, whether it's intentional or not, and you have to decide, you know, what is it like—what is my culture? And it's it's really uh and I will tell you like so when I get brought into these situations and the cultural situations, it's, you know, they're tough, right? The best the best framework, in my opinion, is Patrick Lencioni's five behaviors, um it comes from the five dysfunctions of a team, which is a book he wrote a while back, but the five behaviors, which is I think it's like trust, conflict, accountability, commitment, and results, and the framework that he has around that, it's great, and it's when and it's it's it brings people down to the very basic levels of what it means to have a good professional relationship that's based on accountability and trust; it's it's fantastic. But before I let you go, I asked the same question to Barry as on the last show on Take the Stage, and I want to get your thoughts on this: this in 2025 and going forward, can the small-to-midsize Staffing firm keep up with the Goliaths in the room?
Yeah, I think they can. I think the um I—it's okay; my take on it is this is that I look at I look at staffing firms and kind of these different buckets, right? You have the kind of the transactional staffing firms, which focus on the VMS business, and that's a very data-driven business; you have to handle you have to be able to manage a lot of job orders; you have to get a lot of candidates out there; you have to do it fast, right? And then you go to more the consultative business, which is more based on relationship and customer intimacy, and then you have the niche-based Staffing firm, which is, "Look, I'm gonna focus on a niche that's so hard to find; you're gonna knock down my door trying to work with me," right? Those type of companies—that's how Mark Eldridge started his business, right? I think the latter two will be able to survive; I think the transactional firms are going to probably be in the inside for the most disruption. So if I was starting as a staffing firm, I'd focus more on the value-added side than on the TR than on the transactional side, because I've always viewed this—ever since the VMS came out—it's like there's this like there's this dichotomy of data and relationships, right? In terms of how we manage our business, how we approach our business—are we a relationship-oriented business, or are we a data-oriented business? The data-oriented businesses are the ones that are most vulnerable to automation, to AI, to those things; the relationship-driven businesses are still vulnerable, but less so. So I do think there's a space for it; you just got to pick a really good niche and be really disciplined in the Strat—
Mike, before I I get you to our rapid fire around, I want to give you the floor to tell everyone a little bit about yourself and Charted Path.
Yeah, so I've been in Staffing since '94. I worked at a company called MDI Group; uh we grew to about $65 million; I was president when I left there in 2009. Then I started doing management consulting, which is what I'm doing today. And so when I started doing management consulting, it was primarily on Management systems and things like that, but now I focus primarily on everything that to drive growth within the organization from a both from a strategy standpoint um or and organizational structure standpoint. I work boards; I'm I chair boards—quite a bit of boards—I work with Chief Executives on scaling their operations; I work with their line-level managers on on on Management systems and things like that to scale. So my whole focus is on growth. On the flip side, I also manage SI Growth Advisory Board, which is like a peer Advisory Group; we have about 28 companies in that right now, ranging sizes from about 10 to about 200 million, and we meet twice a month, and we just process issues and just could you know, Dy anything that's kind of these be to growth. And so that's that's basically it; I guess you can call me a growth consultant, I guess—that's what you—growth coach, something like that—that's what I do.
Excellent. All right, Mike, rapid fire around for you. One book that has fundamentally changed your life.
Well, it's funny, like the uh there's no question that Kaplan's book—and this is sound—this is gonna be so—it's gonna sound stale, but I'm gonna try to try to give you some some color with it. So Kaplan's book on the Balanced Scorecard completely changed how I view the completely changed how I do the business and how to manage the business and things like that operationally and how to scale and how to manage people and the role of Mission, Vision, and Values as a system in place. Um and so that's how I started my Consulting business was trying to implement those things, right, within organizations. However, it is about 25% of the storing. And so when I when I got into it, it it made me want to—and I was president of the company when I allowed to do Consulting—and I was so passionate about this management system; I was like, "You know what, I'm going to take this to Staffing." But the fact of the matter is is that there's not a—the issue is that if you lead with a system, then what you do is you try to cram people into your system; doesn't work. So like I I take it into account now, and I look back at it, and I kind of smile about like how I guess naive I was in terms of the approach, um but it did make me look at you know what what I was really passionate about and what I really wanted to do and really want to help companies grow and really help people develop, because like to me, a growing company means growing people. So it's like that's what I want, right? I want people to grow; I want them uncomfortable; I want them to get a little bit better; I want them to be able to buy a house and do all these different things and have a great culture and all that kind of stuff. And so uh yeah, so that's that's why I got into what I did. So it opened that door, but it took me—it didn't take me very long to realize how limited limiting it was in terms of a solution and trying to work with different uh you know, different Executives and different staffing firms. It has a place, but it's not it's not everything.
There—speaking my language there. I often say my favorite book is *The Slight Edge*, and all about getting 1% better in key areas of your life every single day. And if you can compound 1% better every single day, and you string together a pretty good year, and you string together a pretty good life—
Absolutely. Yeah, that's that's great. Isn't the uh oh gosh, *Atomic Habits* is kind of a similar type?
Correct. Um yeah, it's that's definitely that's definitely the case. I I you know, I always think that uh *To Sell Is Human* is also a great book, by the way. I don't know if you've read that book. That's an excellent book because it breaks the stereotypes of what it means to be a great salesperson um in terms of the introvert and extrovert. But I think that the idea—and this is what I'm trying to get across to my to my kids as well—is like when you're you should always be uncomfortable, because if you're uncomfortable, it means you're learning; you're learning something. And um and complacency is like the—that's when you should be worried, you know. And maybe that's just this paranoia that I have, but I always feel like I have to be uncomfortable; I have to feel like I'm doing something I wouldn't normally do. And uh I think that's really important as well.
Yeah, and I will say just one more book for you and the listener, because everyone I say it on the show every single time, as much as I'm helping you grow your library, I really am just growing mine over here, and I get to sit down with people like Mike every single episode and build out my library over here. I've been working through *4000 Weeks* by Oliver Burkeman, which is a framework of—if you think about the average life expectancy, we only get about 4,000 weeks—and it's really sort of shifted every single week; I have to try to put the best foot forward because 4,000 weeks is really not that many time or not that much time; it's really not, right? And and the problem is too, man, is that as you get older, time goes faster; objectively goes faster.
You know, it's funny you say that because I have a three-year-old and a six-month-old, and I was just talking to some coworkers actually on the drive here as we were about to record this episode, uh one of our, you know, a friend of mine uh coworker here at Haley, his son is 18 now, uh and he was commenting about how fast time has flown by and that he remembers, you know, when his kid was my son's age at three. I was like, "Buddy, I know how fast three years is gone; I can only imagine how much faster it's going to compound on itself."
It does; it does. And me—you just think back when you're a kid how long summers lasted now, and now it's like it's seems like a short vacation, you know? And it's it's it's it's uh so yeah, absolutely be very very protective over your time, and as you get older, time becomes more and more valuable than money in a lot of ways, too, right? So you look at money a little bit differently as well.
Exactly right. Yeah. One question for you, my friend. One piece of advice that you would give to somebody just starting in Staffing and recruiting. So are they starting a business or just starting—just are they starting their own business or just getting into the business? Like as a recruiter or salesperson, let's say for sake of this question, they are just getting into Staffing and recruiting; just getting into it. So they're not starting a business; just getting into the industry. So what I will tell you is that Staffing is an Staffing is an amazing business in that is that you're going to learn so much about yourself—both your strengths and your weaknesses—and I always tell people it's like you if you have a chink in the armor somewhere, it's going to be exposed in this business; that there's no hiding. So you got to be authentic, and you got to realize you're not going to about a thousand; don't build up any pretenses because they're going to be they're going to be torn down. But if you're able to do those things, you're gonna have a great ride; it's a lot of fun, and you're gonna get a lot of satisfaction out of it, but you're gonna have really really hard days, but you're also going to have amazing days. So just get just get ready for it; that's why people know like within the first six months whether their life is or not, honestly, you know? And that's and that's the that's the great that's the great thing about it, um but yeah, it's it is it's it's the other part of it, too; it's like it's you're got to get training; you're got to get those things, but you really are running your own little business in a lot of ways, and you got—
To kind of have that level of accountability, to think that way, you know, as well, and not think like, "Well, why am I not getting this, that, or the other?" It's like, no, think about solutions. Think about how to improve things. Think about getting better. Don't think about what you don't have available to you. Think about—I always call it—I call it the attitude of abundance. Just have that attitude of abundance.
He's Mike Celand, the founder of Charted Path. Mike, can't thank you enough for coming on, taking the stage, and sharing all your insights with us, my friend.
No, I enjoy it. You have a great weekend.
You too.