Attracting and retaining the best employees with Heenle Turner

Speaker 1:

It doesn’t matter what kind of an agency you run, traditional, digital, media buying, web dev, PR, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label IQ will show you how to make more money and keep more of what you made. Let us help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable, and if you want, down the road sellable, bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McClellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey, everybody. Drew McClellan here from Agency Management Institute. Thank you for joining us this week for the episode of Build a Better Agency. Happy to have you back. I am just fresh off the Summit. I am on a high in terms of just, it was just an amazing week of connection, sharing, learning, and so much hugging. It was good, good, good stuff. If you were with us, thanks for being with us. If you missed it, I sure hope you joined us for ’23, because honestly, it’s a blast.

Remarkable speakers, but the best part are the participants. These other agency owners that you get to hang out with, talk to, learn from, and teach, it really is spectacular. I’m on a high, so you might get a sense of that from my energy today, but I’m feeling good about the Summit, AMI, and all of you. I’m full of love today for everybody.

Before I let you know who we’re going to talk to in the topic, which is a really important one, I just want to remind you that we are getting ready to now release all of the workshops for 2023. They’ll be out very shortly. I know it seems like it’s only June, Drew, you’re crazy, but honestly that stuff catches up with us in a hurry. We are going to start doing the AE bootcamps and the advanced AE bootcamps twice a year, rather than once a year.

That’s, I think, good news for a lot of you who are like, “Yeah, I hired somebody. I don’t want to wait almost a year to send them to the bootcamps.” We’re going to do them in every six month increments. Every quarter they’ll be either be an AE bootcamp or an advanced AE bootcamp, but we’ve got some other good stuff coming for you. Watch for news about that in the newsletter and other places.

All right. Let me tell you a little bit about our guest. Heenle Turner is an HR expert. She believes, and I am going to dig into this, she believes that not only should we all have a five star employee, but that we should have all four and five star employees. She believes that is absolutely possible and critical to our business success. We’re going to find out, A, what a five star employee looks like, and B, how in the heck can we have an entire agency full of them?

I am really anxious to pick her brain and to find out from her how we can level up our employees, especially in this market, when honest to Pete it is so hard to find anybody to take a job, let alone a five star person to take the job. Don’t want to waste anymore time. I’ll jump right in, so let’s do it. Heenle, welcome to the podcast. I am excited to talk about this. If there is one topic that has come up every day when I’m talking to agency owners, it is hiring and retaining staff. You hold the golden ticket to everyone having a great rest of 2022. No pressure, but in this next 45 minutes, you’re going to deliver the goods.

Heenle Turner:

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Drew McLellan:

Give everybody a little sense of your background, how you came to have the expertise that you do in HR before I start picking your brain about how we can find, hire, and keep five star talent.

Heenle Turner:

Sure. Yeah. My background is primarily in the HR field. I started off working as an in-house HR manager for an organization and then for another organization. Then, I moved into a consultant to the consults arena. I’ve consulted with over 200-ish businesses and I’ve helped businesses from everything from hiring, retention, employer relations, managing their people. I moved from that consultant role into working with the all In company where we specialize in a perfect time, really, to help business owners and entrepreneurs learn how to recruit, hire, and retain their very own five star employees.

Drew McLellan:

Define what a five star employee looks like. How do I know if I have one?

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. It’s not your gut feeling. What it is, is your-

Drew McLellan:

Wait, wait, wait. HR is more than gut feelings?

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. It’s funny. That’s what I get every day. I had this gut feeling and I was like, look, if it’s not quantifiable, I don’t know that you should be using that to make a decision that’s so important, which is the people in your organization.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right.

Heenle Turner:

With five star employees, what’s unique about them is the five star employee has, surprisingly, five distinct qualities. One is that they share the core values of the business owner. That means what’s important to the business owner is important to every person, every five star employee in their organization. For me, my core values will differ maybe from yours, but my employees core values should align with mine.

Drew McLellan:

Yep. Makes sense.

Heenle Turner:

Mm-hmm (affirmative) Second, five star employees, all of them, they all score a 70% or higher on what we’ve outlined as the 11 universal qualities of all five star employees. Five star employees, they meet or exceed your role specific skills and aptitudes necessary for the job. Every job you have, every role you have in your organization, in your agency, has a specific skillset requirement. Your five star employees meet or exceed what your expectations and really what your agency needs are with those specific skill sets.

Five star employees, they also, they’re successful. They meet your success metrics that you’ve outlined for that position. That means if you have a salesperson and that salesperson needs to close 10 sales a week, then your five star employee is meeting those or exceeding that metrics. They’re giving you that, lastly, the fifth star is that they’re giving you that three times or more better return on payroll because they’re elite performers. They’re generating money for you as they’re working for you as well.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. You mentioned the 11 characteristics of a five star employee. Can you tell us just a few of those?

Heenle Turner:

Sure. Five star employees, all of them have these 11, the shared universal 11 qualities. They are supportive. They are proactive, they’re flexible. Flexible a big, a big one. Someone who is not flexible, they’re more than likely not going to be a five star employee. Five star employees, they complete your tasks, they complete their task. They achieve the goals that you set out for them.

Going back to their value, they’re producing quantifiable results for you, results that you can tangibly see and really take back to something that’s going to impact your business positively. Another big one is that five star employees listen to fellow team members. It’s much more difficult to listen than it is to speak. A quality that we have that our five star employees have is they actively listen to each other.

Drew McLellan:

As I’m listening to you describe these magic employees and everybody listening probably has one or has had one and recognizes all of the qualities you said. I assume that there’s tricks to interviewing, to ferret out whether somebody has the capacity to be a five star employee before you hire them.

Heenle Turner:

Right. It kind of goes back to what is your interview process look like. Really, just to zoom out a little bit more is what does your recruitment process look like? What steps are you taking to make sure people who are not five star employees are filtered out in your own recruitment process? For instance, are you using assessments and to really test the skills of the people and the applicants before you bring them in for an interview? By using a filter such as that, you’re only going to be looking at candidates who you know have one of the stars because they’ve got the skillset that you’re looking for, for example. When you create this process, and it really needs to be an objective process.

When you create this process that’s going to bring somebody into an interview, then what are your interview questions? You really need to have a customized interview packet for each role. You can work with an expert. That’s going to be your best bet here, is to work with somebody who knows how to develop these questions for you, so that they can really be personalized to your organization. For example, we worked with a medical office and one of the qualities of the five star employees is that the person is supportive. We had a collaboration session with this member who’s in our community. We talked about really understanding what does supportive mean to you. By understanding what supportive means to the business owner, we’re able to design questions that drill down on that answer.

Drew McLellan:

Hmm. Makes sense. I find that for a lot of agency owners, the interview is basically the agency owner talking and kind of convincing the candidate that they want to work at the agency.

Heenle Turner:

Right. It’s funny because I don’t think your listeners are alone in that. I think most business owners and people who walk into an interview, this is the picture. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve got an interview in five minutes. Let me Google some questions and then I’m going to talk about my company.” Really, what you want to do is this needs to be, think of it as time where you’re learning about whether or not this person is qualified for your job and how are they going to fit into your organization and working with you.

I think the most difficult thing, and one of the best pieces of advice I can give an agency owner is you’ve got to get comfortable with the silence. If you can outline questions, what do you want to know? What’s going to help you assess whether this person is going to be successful with us? Outline the question that’s going to help you determine that and ask that question.

If someone doesn’t answer you right away, your job is not to fill in the gaps because you’re really not going to learn anything then. Be comfortable with that silence and force that person to respond. If that person is not responding, guess what? They probably are not a five star employee and you don’t want to settle for them anyway.

Drew McLellan:

Do you believe that a business can have all five star employees, everybody who works in my agency can and should be a five star employee?

Heenle Turner:

Yeah, I do. I do.

Drew McLellan:

I think that’s interesting because I was reading some of the stuff that you guys provided and I was on the website and it struck me that in most agencies, we think of, we have a couple superstars and then we have a lot of what I would call utility players. Like, they’re good. They’re a good B, B plus. Every once in a while they show up and they have a great game, but for the most part they’re just steady eddies. But, they’re probably never, I would never envision them as moving into a leadership role or something like that. I think we have the wrong standard.

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. You have to think of it too, as, I would say most organizations, most agencies, you’ve got to understand first what, starting with what your own core values are. Then, you’re going to be able to match yourself with the five star players. Again, if someone who’s a five star employee for me in doing what one thing is not going to be a five star employee in your organization doing something else. An organization can be really successful with a team of four and five star employees. It’s the one, two, and three star employees who you want to avoid. Oftentimes, two, three, one five star employee can do the work of two, three, four, one, two or three star employees.

Gosh, that’s a lot of numbers. Pretty much, you’re going to get more for your buck with a five star employee. One way I like to think about it is if I go to, because a lot of people are like, “Oh, well, it’s going to cost me so much more.” That’s another concern. It’s going to cost me so much more to find a five star employee. When really, I think the differential in market is maybe 10%.

Think about it like a cup of coffee. I can go to McDonald’s Starbucks, coffee being whatever it is where you live and a plain cup of coffee is going to cost a couple dollars wherever I go. They may taste just so much better to me. You’re not going to get there until you know exactly what you’re looking for. I think that’s where people struggle.

Drew McLellan:

Seems to me that in today’s market, when it’s really very employee driven, they are in the driver’s seat right now. They know that they’re scarce. They know that we’ll pay a premium for them. It kind of starts with actually being a place where they want to work. Are there characteristics of a workplace, a business, or a business owner that you think really attracts five star employees?

Heenle Turner:

Yeah, I think five star employees like the details. They want to be held accountable and celebrate those successes. A business owner needs to be really clear on what they’re looking for and what their expectations are. For instance, in something like a job posting, you want to include in your job posting exactly what that person is going to be expected to do. Then, that success metrics to identify what success looks like in the role. A five star candidate will look at that posting and be excited about the challenge and kind of, “Oh yeah, I can definitely do this.” Then, we’ll move forward and apply. Somebody who is a one, two, or three star or average employee will probably see that challenge and be turned off by it.

You want to be really clear in what you’re looking for. You also want to keep your focus on always building up your people and making sure that culture in your organization is always on point. When you have a team of five star employees, they want to work with like-minded people. They want to work with other superstars and it actually drags people, drags us down when you throw somebody in the mix who’s subpar is only, eh, okay.

That’s one of the big feedback we get from candidates is, “Oh, I was the only one pulling my weight. Nobody else on my team was accountable.” That tells you that the five star employees want to work with other five star employees. Just a step into retention really quick is you don’t want to lose a great five star employee because you stuck with somebody who is just meh.

Drew McLellan:

Well, and I think actually when I talk to agency owners and they try and talk themselves out of letting somebody go or whatever. That’s what I say to them is, “The greatest risk you have is that you keep the mediocre employee and your rockstar walks out the door because they’re tired of carrying somebody else’s weight.”

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. It is exhausting. It’s very exhausting when you don’t feel like everybody supports each other and you don’t feel like they’re listening, you don’t feel like they’re communicating their thoughts. Nobody wants to work somewhere where it’s uncomfortable. Especially, I think the agency owner as well. If you can take a second and think about the person who’s the stone in your shoe. Who makes you cringe when you walk into the door? I can guarantee you, if you email me, if you reach out to me and we do a quick assessment on who your five star employees are, I bet you that person won’t be one.

Drew McLellan:

Right. That’s right.

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. It’s so easy because as soon as you get rid of somebody who is… Oh gosh, that sounded harsh. As soon as you know-

Drew McLellan:

No, but you’re right.

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. As soon as that one, two, or three star employee leaves the organization, everybody else has this sense of relief.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think a couple things. Number one, I think we all know who that person is. What I say [inaudible 00:20:08] is I guarantee there’s somebody in your shop that you know you should have let go. Because they have a technical skill, or it’s hard to find someone else who has that skill or whatever, or you like their mother or whatever it is. You have a reason for not letting them go, but you know that you should. All the other employees are waiting and watching.

The day and the day you let them go, you’re going to start hearing the stories. They’re going to come in and go, “Oh my gosh, thank God you let Babette go. Did you know that she does this or she didn’t do this? The owners always call me and they go, “Two things. One, how did you know? And, two, why didn’t they tell me?” I’m like, “Because they think you know.”

Heenle Turner:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

If they see it, surely the boss must see it.

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. It’s interesting that you say that because that’s exactly what I’ve heard time and time again. The reality is your agency owners, you’re the mom. You’re the mom. You’ve got to suck it up. You’ve got to recognize when someone’s out of line and parent your kids, parent your organization. If somebody is out of line, it does suck. No one-

Drew McLellan:

Nobody’s excited about doing it.

Heenle Turner:

No one’s excited but someone’s got to do it and it’s got to be you.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right. I agreed. Okay. I want to take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit about in this environment, it feels like we have to hire faster because the candidates have five job offers in a heartbeat. I want to talk a little bit about the hiring process, but then I want to talk about what should we be doing to protect and retain the five star employees that we already have. Let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and start with the hiring process and then go to retention. Okay?

Heenle Turner:

Sure.

Drew McLellan:

Awesome. Hey, there just a quick interruption. I want to make sure that you are aware that you are cordially invited, not just invited, but cordially invited to join our Facebook group, our private Facebook group. All you have to do is go to Facebook and search for Build a Better Agency and you’ll find the Facebook group. You have to answer three quick questions. You have to put in the agency URL. You have to talk about what you want to learn from the group, you have to promise to behave yourself, and that’s it.

Then, we’ll let you in and you can jump into the conversation with over 1,000 other agency owners and leaders. There’s a robust conversation happening every day. People are sharing resources, best practices and discussing everything from work from home policies to maternity and paternity policies to biz dev strategies. Come join us and jump into the conversation. Speaking of conversations, let’s head back.

All right, we’re back and we are talking all things hiring, finding, and keeping those five star employees. I hope what one of the messages you got from the front half of the show is that we actually could and probably should have all underline the word all four and five star employees. I know for a fact that you do not have that today. I want to talk a little bit about hiring and then we’re going to talk about retaining the good ones that you have. All right. The job market right now is insane. It feels like only three people on the planet are looking for work. They all want $3 million plus a signing bonus.

Everyone’s in panic mode to try and hire. Business is good for a lot of agencies. They have lots of opportunities. Not only are they replacing mediocre employees, but they’re filling new positions as well. They’re struggling to find good candidates or they find a candidate and by the time they get them through their 12 step process, the candidates taken themselves out of the mix, because they’ve already accepted a job. In this environment, how should we be hiring? What does the process look like?

Heenle Turner:

Yeah, that’s a great question. You’re absolutely right. It’s the employees who are choosing. It’s the workforce out there that is choosing where they want to work. Yeah. What I’m even finding, and I don’t know if, and I’m sure I guarantee that some of your agency owners here have had this happen is they find a candidate and, “Okay, let’s schedule an interview.” They don’t even, the candidate doesn’t show up. I’ve had people share candidates not showing up to interviews, either the Zoom, the phone call, in person. I’ve had people who are successfully hired and then they still don’t even show up for the first day after completing.

Drew McLellan:

Or they’re there three days and then they give notice because they got a better offer.

Heenle Turner:

Yep.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, it’s crazy.

Heenle Turner:

Yeah, right. Speed is certainly an element there. The only way that you can efficiently and quickly work through candidates is if you have a clear process on hiring and onboarding. That process is going to include automation. I’m finding a lot more people, a lot more business owners, a lot more are finding success with using some sort of system that’s going to generate the job post and submit and provide the application and go ahead and schedule an interview, send out your assessment. That way, from a time standpoint, by the time you get you as the agency owner get the candidate’s information, you’re already a couple pages in. You’ve already got so much information that you’re just going to review it and then decide whether or not you’re going to move forward into your next step.

I’m also finding people are expecting, job seekers are expecting that information quickly. Again, by having a process and having as much as you can automated, you’ll be able to work through your gauntlet and your process so that you’re still making an effective hiring decision. If you rush this too much, If you go with the gut, if you counter very quickly because you decide, “Oh my gosh, this person is just the only one out there.” Let me tell you that’s never true. Then, you’re going to find that this person leaves and you’re going to be back and you’re going to be recruiting forever and ever. First is you need to outline what this process looks like and you need to stick to that process. One other thing that you want to do is because you mentioned that some people will give notice after, not even give notice, they’ll just leave after working two or three days.

What you want to challenge your agency owners to think about is, one, why are people leaving? What can you do to be more clear on the front end? Either in the job posting in a preliminary interview to really set that stage correctly so that people understand what is it that they’re getting into. That means, I’m a proponent of including salary information on your job posting. Just be clear. If someone is not interested and if that doesn’t work for them, that’s going to eliminate that.

Drew McLellan:

Why interview them?

Heenle Turner:

Why interview them? Why waste anyone’s time?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. In terms of, because you’re right, the candidates are in the power seat right now. They’re choosing where they want to work. What are they looking for from us? What are they looking for? What’s a five star employer to a five star employee?

Heenle Turner:

Great. I think so a five star employer is certainly going to be something, someone, or some agency, that the job seeker, one, is going to meet their basic needs. Every person’s going to have basic needs in terms of food, shelter, water. You’re going to need to, it goes without saying, is they’re going to meet their needs from a financial standpoint. They also are looking for that connection. I think they’re looking more to work, to spend their time doing things that they enjoy. That might mean a specific task. It might mean working with good people. I think it really is going to boil down to your company culture and what joy are you bringing into their day?

I think another thing now people are open to flexibility. As a business owner, you have to think about, “Well, do I really need a full-time person or can I get through with 20 or 30 hours a week? Do I need to?” We need to work from home. You need to be in the office. Well, do you really need to be in the office? Let’s talk about that a little. I think they’re also looking from a benefit standpoint, is how are you going to, how is this going to fold into my family and supporting my family and my kids.

I feel like with COVID, a lot of people were, everybody was forced to be home. I think a subset of those people enjoyed being with their kids all day. That means, you know what, I can’t go back to work full time, but I can do something part-time and I’m just going to rock it. You kind of have to be a little bit more open to providing the sort of the workforce, what they’re looking for.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. I think that’s been a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of business owners. Their sort of used to being able to call the shots and this whole people just walk into my office and say, “Oh, by the way, I’m moving to Texas, but it’s fine. I can work from there.” That just is blowing people’s minds that the employees are sort of that emboldened about their position, so confident that you can’t afford to let them go, that they can pretty much do what they want to do.

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. It’s definitely a different market, but you also, you have to think so much about, well, who are your rock stars? Who are your five star employees and how do you keep them engaged? What are you doing as the owner, as the agency owner to lift them up? Are you managing the culture correctly? Are you making sure that the one, two, or three star employees aren’t hijacking the organization? Are you providing recognition when it’s necessary? Are you communicating effectively? Are you being clear with what you need, what the organization needs, what’s working and what’s not? Five star employees really appreciate that.

Drew McLellan:

What else are they looking for from us? Let’s say I’ve got a rock star and I want to make sure that I keep her. Do I ask her what it’s going to take to make her happy? I’m assuming that everybody doesn’t want the same things. How do I approach and have a strategy around keeping my rockstar?

Heenle Turner:

One thing I would encourage your agency owners to do is really maybe deploy engagement surveys. Maybe recreate a simple questionnaire where you’re asking questions about if the person feels supported, if they feel that they can have an honest conversation with their manager, ask questions about, is there is the company providing you what you’re looking for? Do you plan on staying with the company in the next three years?

Asking this question through a survey and then analyzing that information and building a plan on how to address whatever information you’ve learned. You certainly will need to ask people and your team consistently how to identify whether they’re engaged with you or whether they’re just kind of there.

Drew McLellan:

Right? The question do you plan on staying, kind of bold.

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. I think it’s definitely bold, no arguments there. You might find, and this is kind of what happened with some of our community members with us at the all in company. These business owners were really surprised by the positive results. It’s a little nerveracking to put the question out there. You don’t need to have five questions. You can dial it down, ask two or three questions. What you need to do is plan for the answers. Plan a worst case, a best case. You actually want to be able to do something with that and take action. That’s a pitfall of engagement surveys is folks ask the questions and then they don’t do anything with the information. The people who are there just get pissed.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Why did I bother being honest? You didn’t do anything. Right. Yeah. I think one of the places that a lot of folks are struggling is because the salary demands really have skyrocketed in the last couple years and certainly in the last year. People want to keep their people. A lot of agents, a lot of people listening, they own small businesses at 10, 15 employees. It’s not like everybody can get a ginormous raise and a promotion every year because there just isn’t enough room in the organization for that to happen. How else are people rewarding five star employees that makes them a sticky employer?

Heenle Turner:

Some other things that we’ve seen that have been really successful is creating what people want. What people want is they want a community. They want a place and they want people that they connect with. Are you having fun events? Are you having retreats? Are you having outings? Are you having recognition dinners? Are you making your people feel as important as they truly are?

Drew McLellan:

Are you letting them participate in decision making? Yeah.

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. Are you collaborating with them in different stages of your business to really engage them? So people who are not engaged in their workplace, those are the people who are likely to leave. I always struggle a little bit and I’ve never really used a counter, but more and more businesses are doing that today where somebody gives notice because somebody else is offering them more money. Then, that business is like, “Okay, I need to counter and offer them 5,000, $10,000 more.” Really, I don’t know that how effective that is really going to be. It’s another, because people, it’s harder. It’s still harder for people to leave a good set of coworkers, a good manager, a good leader.

And, flexibility. I’ve heard it time and time again, where people are evaluating, “Well, I have this much time in my day and I like that I have the flexibility to be able to pick up my kids. Yes. Am I going to leave for $10,000 more and never be able to pick up my kids?” Probably not. You’ve got to really understand what is it that your employees value. It starts from the beginning. It starts with when you hire them, making it a big deal, celebrating them, taking them to lunch, giving them a branded welcome kit because it’s a great torque for you. You want to make that person feel important. Really understand, too, that mistakes happen. We just move forward from the mistakes. But, that only works with five star employees.

Drew McLellan:

That’s right. That’s right. Our business is so people driven. We don’t have machinery, we don’t make widgets. Everything we do is born of the people that work for us. It just feels like getting this right is so critical to both our short, but particularly our long term success. I think agencies have always done a great job of being a cool fun, place to work. We have lots of flexibility about how we show up at work and how people dress and when they come in and all the things that make somebody feel like they fit in and it feels right to them.

I think this recent dearth of potential employees has really rocked everybody in terms of their in such panic mode to find a body, a breathing body who can do the job that I think we’re taking all kinds of shortcuts and we’re actually bringing more two and three star employees into our organization out of this sense of desperation, which is counter to everything we’re trying to do in terms of keeping our five star employees and continuing to produce great work.

What would you say to people? I guess what I’m looking for is your, you people need to chill the hell out speech. How do you help people understand that? Like you said earlier, there is not only one person for the job. Give them some perspective so that they can go into this a little more even keeled and just not freaking out the way they are. Listeners, not you, but other people like you. I know you’re not freaking out, but other people are freaking out. That’s really what I’m asking. It’s not for you.

Heenle Turner:

Of course. Of course.

Drew McLellan:

No, right.

Heenle Turner:

Yeah. Tell your friend.

Drew McLellan:

That’s right. That’s right.

Heenle Turner:

I would say time is, think about it. Think about time as the only humanity that you’re never going to get back. You don’t want to spend your life, you don’t want to spend your time in your business. You don’t want to be sitting there writing copy and making edits and doing the work. You want to spend your time on growing your business. You want to work on your business. You want to have strategic conversations with your clients, with potential clients. The only way you can do that is by having the right people in place. If you can dedicate some time to outlining what you’re looking for and challenging yourself not to settle, then you know you can spend the time that you know is, we can’t get it back once we use it.

Once we are spending time on one area, you want to spend your time on doing other things and the right people can help you do that. That’s really going to allow you to grow your business and move forward. You really just have to take that leap and commit to creating a process and sticking to it. It will provide you so much more success than you can even imagine.

We had someone who went through our program and she implemented just implemented a process to really hire her, to hire people. She had two or three people leave a month or two later. She was able to fill those spots in a matter of 10 days. This was two months ago. It’s possible. You’ve got to just be a little bit uncomfortable and then you’ll see that it’s possible.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Okay. Great advice. My last question, is there a magic potion or a clue or a like, because again, you, we started this conversation by saying people hired by their gut. Well, I like them. What they’re really saying is, “Either I could make them laugh or they remind me of me.” We’re oftentimes hiring people that are kind of like us. Because, of course we like them because we like ourselves. Is there something tangible or intangible that as I’m interviewing and my gut is saying whatever it’s saying that I should rely on more than my gut? You listed the items, but is there an energy or do you have a magic question that always gets a great answer or is there something that gives me a sense of this might be a good one?

Heenle Turner:

I think it’s going to kind of go back to you hire someone maybe who you like, but really you need to hire people who act like owners. What you need to do is look inside and create your ideal avatar of your ideal employees. With our five star rating system, you’re able to quantify and then be objective in your hiring process. By dedicating time to really understand what your core values are, to understand what success look like in the role, to understand what the 11 qualities mean to you.

Then, you’re able to review and rate people on these areas and make that objective hiring decision. By trusting your gut or by going by a feeling I’m afraid you’ll find yourself going full circle and you’ll get ready to be uncomfortable with the person who just didn’t work out because you did a favor for somebody or because they’re a referral or what have you. You’ll be right back at the beginning.

Drew McLellan:

Sadly, I think that is very true. Hey, this has been a great conversation. Thank you for all of your insights. This is such a critical issue for us in our industry to get this right. I’m super appreciative of you sharing your expertise. If folks want to learn more about you, if they want to learn more about the company, if they want to get access to your content, what’s the best way for them to connect with you and to learn more about what you do?

Heenle Turner:

Sure. You can definitely check out our site and it’s 5staremployees.com. 5staremployees.com. You can also email me and you can do it at [email protected] or [email protected]. We can just include that in the description.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. We can put that in the description.

Heenle Turner:

For sure. Yeah. I don’t know anyone’s going to know how to spell my name.

Drew McLellan:

We will make sure they do.

Heenle Turner:

Okay. Great. I’d love to hear from your listeners.

Drew McLellan:

Thank you for being here. It was really helpful.

Heenle Turner:

Great. Thank you for having me.

Drew McLellan:

You bet. All right guys. I try and get guests who really help you build your business and help you do it better. I’m not sure there is a topic right now that is more important. Honestly, I think it’s always been one of the most important topics, but right now it feels like it’s of such importance. This idea of building a strong team around you with a bunch of four and five star employees, taking care of the ones that you already have, and being brave enough to not tolerate mediocre employees. Hey, this is a conversation I have with you again, not you, but other people like you.

This is a conversation I have with you guys every single day that you tolerate such bad behavior and such misalignment of values amongst your employees. You always have a reason why you’re willing to tolerate it, but I promise you the price that you pay short and long term is so much more significant than whatever that person brings you.

You’ve just got to have. It’s like I said, it’s like a little like being a parent. Nobody wants to give their kid a time out or punish them because they came in late for curfew, but it’s our job. It’s our job to run the house and have everyone follow the rules. Everyone follows the family credo or whatever that is, it’s the same thing in our business. I think you’re making some bad choices because you’re afraid and because you’re afraid and you have this sense of scarcity. It’s hurting the agency.

Hear her loud and clear, make some different choices, make some better choices. Let’s stop interviewing and hiring from our gut and really put a system in process in place that allows us to match the right person or the right candidate with the job or decide that they are not the right candidate and let them go find their great place, because I’m sure there is a right place for them, but it just may not be our place.

With that, I just want to say don’t just listen to this and dismiss it. Put some of this stuff into action. Before I let you go, of course I want to thank our friends at White Label IQ. They are the presenting sponsor of the podcast. They make it possible for me to hang out with you every week. I’m just coming off of the summit, the big conference that we do every year. For those of you that were there, it was great to see you. Thanks for being there. We open up the tickets for next year’s summit starting next week. If you want to join us, you sure can. My biggest takeaway from those three days was the power of coming together and investing time in each other. I know that you’re super busy and I know that you’re on multitasking while we’re talking.

I know you’re on the treadmill. I’m walking the dog with you. Somebody said that I’m putting on their makeup with them in the morning. I don’t care what we’re doing, but I’m super grateful that we get to hang out together every week. Thanks for coming back. Thanks for listening. I’ll see you next week. All right. See you then.

Thanks for spending some time with us. Visit our website to learn about our workshops, owner peer groups, and download our salary and benefit survey. Be sure you also sign up for our free podcast giveaways at agencymanagementinstitute.com/podcastgiveaway.