In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Brian Alexander to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover what can happen when you learn how to effectively hire and retain your employees.
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Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Brian Alexander to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover what can happen when you learn how to effectively hire and retain your employees.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
Subscribe to "Small Business, Big Moves" on Your Favorite Podcast Platform for more inspiring episodes on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
Welcome to Small Business Big Moves, the podcast where entrepreneurship meets innovation. I'm your Tom Bennett and we'll explore all things business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses. Welcome to the show. My guest today is Brian Alexander. Brian, I'm excited to have you on the show. If you could introduce yourself. Yeah, no, absolutely. So Brian Alexander talent optimization consultant. I basically help companies hire using scientifically validated behavioral assessments. So just injecting people data and adding objectivity to the otherwise crazy subjective hiring process. So that's what I focus on what I specialize in. And of course, a lot of leadership development comes from you. And developing leaders, not only yourself as a leader, but any other leader that you're bringing on as well. Absolutely. that's what today's topic is going to be on is hiring and how important that is to small businesses and entrepreneurs. Right. I know that's It's a big part of what you do. I actually came from the HR and payroll industry myself, doing sales over there. And now just really focus on small to mid-size businesses. And as I'm sure you hear it every day, hiring is a large piece of what's kind of holding a lot of businesses back. So I wanted you to jump into that a little bit. of shed some light on. Where you started and how you got it to what you're now in really realizing that you had some value to provide there. Yeah. So, you know, about 10 years ago now I was doing business coaching for other small businesses. And. Did about, you know, about 1000 phone calls, mentoring calls with these business owners, some of them repeats others, you know, unique individuals. But what we kept coming across was no matter how good the systems were, no matter how good the processes were and how buttoned up it was if you didn't have the right person in the right seat, it would all crumble, it would all fall apart. So that was really got me into thinking like, okay, there's something missing here. There's a puzzle piece that we have to figure out because we kept running into the same outcomes. And for me, like to do the same thing over and over again, making the same mistakes over and over again, but expecting different results was kind of crazy. So I began diving into really just self awareness and a lot of these assessments for myself so I can sort out my own problems in my own business. And I realized like, this is in fact, a missing piece when it comes to business, you know, we create business strategies and we use data points and it's all very important, but when it comes to hiring, we just like wing it, right? And we're rolling the dice. We're like, all right, I like this guy. I think he'll he'll, he'll be good. And you know, usually never fails that without getting the right person into the right seat. Sometimes it just doesn't end well, you become bitter as a business owner resentful a little bit and it really just affects everybody around you, including the person that you hired and put into the wrong seat. I appreciate sharing that. It's a, as we both know, it's a, it's a huge to a business. I know, obviously, you, you really are able to focus in on getting the right person in the right seat, right? That's a benefit to a lot of businesses. Have you seen cases where I'm if like I know businesses oftentimes say they, especially with the past few years, they Yeah. The talent pool so small that there may not be anyone out there. No one wants to work. Things like that that you probably hear all the time. Is there any any way that you're able to utilize how the value of one right person instead of looking for multiple different people that may not be a long term fit for the company? Yeah, I mean, turnover, right? The, the, the longer you can keep your existing team members happy, progressing, and moving up really ultimately engaged, the better. It's really. costly to lose somebody, period. It doesn't matter what position it is because not only do you lose that person, everybody has to kind of fill that void while that person's lost. You have to spend a lot of time and money on recruiting and then taking time out to interview, then onboard. And then train and then hope that they last again and it's just emotionally exhausting when you just have person after person leave after you've kind of poured your heart and soul into them. So this really just kind of helps you dial it in, measure twice, cut once, you know, really slow down. Let's talk about what the role actually needs and you know the behavioral stuff that we do with the assessments is just one piece. So you want to make sure they're wired for the role as you see the role needs it right so we might measure motivating drives, and then we can predict behaviors and needs. Once we know those drives when you can align the person with the job from a behavioral perspective. That's one checkbox. But then you still have to interview them. You got to make sure that they align with your values, your culture. The problem with that is people can kind of. Lie and say all the right things in an interview when it comes to culture and values and all of that. And you're going to look at their resume and experience. Unfortunately, they can also lie about that. So out of these two subjective areas, both a culture and core value fit and experience and resume, those are two areas that you're not quite certain. That they're even telling you the truth on and it's maybe not like a malevolent thing. I think everybody just wants to rise to the occasion. And you know, if they see a good opportunity sometimes they sell themselves into it or their way into the role, not a bad thing. But what I like to do is just add that layer of data onto it. So we can say, are you even wired for the role? Because what I like to do is when I teach this. Our natural behaviors are how we're naturally wired. It's kind of like a rubber band in its natural state. So, you know, on this predictive index assessment that we give, it gives you a profile and your profile is kind of like who you are. It's your DNA. It's how you're hardwired. Really? It's stable over time. That's why we do use it for hiring now. We can do and be anything right. We can stretch in any way, shape or form, but that's going to be under constant tension, energy and effort. And then once you kind of let off of that effort, you always revert back to how you're naturally wired. So we kind of call that like the day 91 syndrome, where the person you interviewed shows up on day 91. And you're like, what happened? Like, I thought, I thought this was a good one. What, what in the world happened? And sometimes it's, you know, they're performing poorly. Sometimes they're performing well, but they're completely burned out and becoming resentful and bitter and toxic. So that's why that, that, that'll behavioral job match or job fit for the role makes all the difference. It's a a multiplier on your success of getting it right. Which avoids the turnover which ultimately allows you to do more of what you're supposed to be doing and what everybody else should be doing. Well, I appreciate that. And I love the the rubber band analogy to it's a thing that we see all the time, right? In the interview processes. Easy for anyone to come, come in, act out of integrity and just kind of show who the job wants them to be instead of being who they actually want to be. Right? I mean, it's you go to an interview. it can be hard to tell if someone's actually. Who they say they are, right? So I love that you take it a step further those assessments as well. And then, like you said, with the core values, right? It's in day 91, where it's if you, you pretend to align with those core values and align with that culture, but it's just a matter of time, obviously, until the company realizes that this is Not who you actually are. Like you said, whether that's day 91 or maybe even earlier. So yeah, I love what you get going on and able to help businesses kind of catch that early on. It's exciting stuff. Yeah, no, absolutely we talked about it too prior to getting on here, just wanted to kind of take a step aside and jump into this a little more. But I know I know you've wrote a book on this and become a published author, right? That's a that's a thing that not many people can say. So I want to just kind of shed a spotlight on that. I'm going to let you jump into that, what you were able to cover and what that's been able to do for you. Yeah, absolutely. So it's how to succeed in spite of yourself. You know, it's all about leadership through self awareness. You can't lead anybody until you can first kind of lead yourself. And I really don't think you can lead yourself until you understand who you are. You know, take that long, hard look in the mirror, be honest with yourself, get uncomfortable. We're all really good at certain things. But unfortunately, as a result of being really good at certain things, We're going to be less than stellar at other things and I kind of equated to like starting line up for a basketball team right we have a point guard shooting guard small forward power forward and center, and they all have their unique attributes that allow them to play their position well. But what happens if you take them off the court and you put the point guard at power forward and you put the shooting guard at center, and you throw them back into the court. They're all going to be playing basketball and, you know, argue, arguably, they're going to be playing the game that they love, but they're going to be going to work every day, feeling beat up, feeling ineffective. The fans are going to be upset. The coach is going to be upset. And really, it's just, you know, a bad position to be in when you're a point guard, you're designed to play point guard, but somebody got you playing power forward every day. It's exhausting. And you can do it. But you're not going to do it well and you're not going to do it well for a long period of time or not sustainable. So the book really is kind of all about everything we're talking about now that's one of the examples. What I do is I just kind of tell it in a nice fun story format it's actually about a young boy playing the wrong position on a basketball team and his father is a director of sales and we kind of like. Embed a lot of these leadership lessons just into the story. It's not like a tactical guide. It's more of a get you to think a little bit differently about leadership, about self awareness, about playing the right position and about making sure that you're not making others play the wrong position. Cause ultimately, if we can put everybody in the right positions we're all going to thrive and succeed. And you can always find adversities. So it's not about like shying away from adversity. You can find plenty of adversity within your own strengths. It's a matter of just making sure you're in the right lane. If I'm a point guard, you know, show me that I'm a point guard. Give me all the skills and drills to become the best point guard I can be. And let me, let me, you know, do the best job I can do as a point guard. And at the end of the day, I think. After you've read the book, just in the story format, it really does kind of hit home the fact that, you know, more often than not as a business owner. We're wearing multiple hats you begin to realize that you're playing a lot of the wrong positions. And if you were just to play the right position and delegate accordingly you can actually build a self running, self managing business. But until you have that foresight to be able to do that, and that big vision of looking at the, the board from the top down, it's very difficult. Definitely. No, I'm glad you shared that, right? It's, it's a huge problem we see all the time, right? With small business owners and entrepreneurs, they have so much on their plate just doing everything they can to get that business to the next level. And then, like we talked about, once they start hiring or bringing in a couple hires, that, I see, tends to pass down to the employees as well. I mean, like you said, they have a point guard that's playing 1 through 4, right? You got a point guard that's that's making power power forward actions and tasks and it it really starts to take a toll on the business. So I'm sure you're seeing that all the time as well. Is that typically a conversation that you have to have with the with the owner leadership that that that's really the purpose of. Hiring and delegating is get this person to really focus on. That 1 thing that they specialize in, if you have. X, Y, and Z that needs to be filled. And that's a completely different role or how do you, how do you handle that conversation? Yeah. I mean, many ways to kind of approach it, but ultimately with a business owner, I'll, we'll just talk about what all do you do on a daily basis? What all has to be done period. But then from your perspective, a very easy way. To kind of figure out what you should be doing the most of. I use like the analogy of heaven, hell, and purgatory. Like heaven's the stuff that you light up while doing. You wake up and you can do that 12 hours a day. Hell is the stuff that you loathe doing. The stuff that drains your energy. The stuff that you're really not that good at. And then purgatory is kind of like the stuff that you're indifferent about. But proficient at, and it's all about just getting it all out. It's kind of, you know downloaded out of the owners, the business owners mind written down, organized and sorted and then realizing, okay, well, it looks like there's quite a bit that I should not be doing. And it's holding me back from doing the, the, the key tasks that are my highest and best use. So let's create a role for something that could fill a gap, usually. Business owner, for example, is like a visionary, right? Great with ideas, not as good with execution. So they'd have to find whether, whether it's a GM or a an integrator some kind of secondary leader who fills their gaps. So we just kind of connect the dot and say, okay, well, what does that role behaviorally need? And then how do I hire against that using people data? Because sometimes what happens is the business owner does all the hard work of figuring out what they have to delegate, but they don't, they don't trust the people they're delegating to, to do it well. Or better than they could. So then they get they get, they're guilty of kind of getting in the weeds and micromanaging them and trying to kind of manipulate and control everything. And some of that's just a byproduct of them not trusting they did put the right person into the right seat. So the data kind of helps them realize like okay, the person that I hired is wired 100 percent for that type of work. And they're going to do it as good or better than I could ever do it, especially given the amount of time and bandwidth that I might have to be able to do it. You know, it's a point or it's a power forward playing power forward all day long. It's not this point guard trying to teach power forward how to do it. There's a really good book called who not how I'm not sure if you read that. But it ultimately it's if you hire the right who. You don't have to worry about like the what and the how they're going to figure it out because you're hiring incredibly smart people who are wired for the role that you should not be doing anyway. You know, that's great. Extremely valuable. I know you kind of gave the background on how you got into this to begin with and I love that story right you know you were You were looking into it for yourself and then realize, Hey, there's actually a huge need for this and have been able to help other businesses handle that issue as well. Is throughout the whole journey, is there been anything that really comes to mind that's helped you be able to move faster or kind of take this to the level you've got it to today? You know, it's, it's. Really simple. It all comes down to freeing people up to do what they do best and making sure that they're not self sabotaging. So when I work with, you know, business owners, again, it's usually like a visionary business owner, not to say all business owners and entrepreneurs are visionaries. There's plenty of integrators, but it's helping them get out of their own way. And because I am a visionary myself, I've made all the same mistakes. I'm wired Almost exactly like them. And there's a reason why we are visionary leaders. So it's like when I'm coaching people, I'm coaching a past version of myself that's already made those mistakes, or I've seen it in, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of other entrepreneurs. And it's predictable. It's unbelievable how Predictable it is. So it's fun to be able to do that because I know what's coming. I know not only what they're thinking, but kind of like the backbone of why they're thinking it so I can kind of stay ahead of them. And it's it's just a fun time to watch people grow as leaders and individuals and recognize like it's not about working harder. Any 80 hours a week, right? But you have to apologize things. You have to be intelligent to be able to put in 40 or 50 hours a week and get 80 hours a week of output. Now, if you can work 80 hours a week and you're efficient, even better. I love work life balance, if that's even a thing, but I have a family. I have two daughters, beautiful wife, we homeschool. And I'm all about designing your life in a way that you can do it for forever, essentially. Right? Yeah, that's great. And extremely powerful, right? It's a step further, like you said, kind of being able to look at that as a previous version of yourself, right? And then be able to see where these businesses are now. And then just the the advancement that you see when they're able to implement these strategies and really take that business to the next level. I think we've talked about it from the beginning, but a lot of these businesses you see Staying stagnant or just really been in the same spots. It's been in the wheels for year after year. And I think a lot of times that does stem from a hiring issue, right? They may try to delegate, they may try to outsource and then like we talked about the cost of a bad hire. And then next thing you know, they're they're back in the same spot. So, yeah, I think just the power of. Making the right, how, making the right hires and really being able to to get that life that that a lot of these business owners want and don't even realize is possible. So I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, absolutely. Kind of operate on like two, two key tenants. It's all business problems are people problems. And then performance problems are predictable. And then if we can predict them, we can prevent them. And, you know, if I can sum up everything that I do, it's, it's those two sentences. I love that. No, and it's spot on, right? I mean, you see it every day. We, we all hear about it, but that really is where everything stems from. I know, obviously, like we talked about with just where, the industries or different industries have gone with the the landscape has been over the past few years and what that's done for hiring, You obviously having to put new strategies into effect. What are you doing to continuously learn or stay on top of the direction that things might be going? Yeah, I mean, you know, some companies aren't hiring but you always have leaders that need to be developed. So, whether it's yourself or if it's, you know, if you're a business owner and you have leaders that are working with and for you those people, need to be developed. They need tools to be able to better understand their people and how to best deal with them. So, you know, it's always kind of like, depending on the economy, we're either heavy on hiring or we're heavy on talent development and leadership development using all of the same tools. It's, it's the same predictive index behavioral assessment. It's five minutes. But with that data, we have so many different tools that we can use to basically you know, leverage it across the whole organization. It could even be designing a winning team based on a strategy that you might be pursuing. So it's really just diving as deep as I can with the company and making sure that they're maximizing the investment that they've met made with this software and the assessment tool. And there's so many things that you can do with it. It's almost infinite. That, that's great. Yeah, no, absolutely. That, that makes sense. And it's, I, I figured that that was kind of in line with what you were doing. And the other thing I want to cover too is kind of take a couple minutes to cover this, but I know obviously we see all over social media, right? We're always seeing the winds that are happening in people's lives, in their business. We see all the all the good things, but very few people are out there kind of sharing the, side of things and maybe some of the struggles or failures that they had to go through. Throughout this journey for you, is there anything that comes to mind as far as setbacks or any, any bumps in the road that you may have had to overcome throughout this? Yeah, you know, the genesis of Really how I got into the, the assessment behavioral talent optimization piece stemmed from within my own business back in 2014, I put the, the wrong person into the wrong role. And I, I kind of bet the house on this person, right? I thought the person was going to be great that that person would rise to the occasion. If I gave them the opportunity, they said all of the right things. And that opportunity completely almost took me out from a financial perspective. And, you know, I was a business coach. I just, it kind of like shocked me awake and I'm like, Oh my God, like I can't afford to make that kind of mistake again. And I rebounded, I recovered and it was good, but it really did spark the. Urgency for me to figure things out. So I didn't make that same mistake. And it's really kind of the fire behind, you know, everything that I do today. It's, it's, it's that important. Now that might not happen to every entrepreneur, but if it happens to one, it could ruin their entire life. And it might not be as easy to come back from, right? I mean, if you lose everything hopefully They'll they'll be in the right mindset in the right psychological state to be able to come back. But we do know entrepreneurship is lonely. And you know, a lot of entrepreneurs don't have people to talk to. So, you know, it could end up badly, right? And we've heard of entrepreneurs taking their own life, thinking they're, you know, they can't come back from this setback. So, you know, using my story, it's just, you could almost lose everything and you can always come back. It's never the end. You know, yeah. You're the asset. Essentially, whatever you have and whatever you've built is nice. But if you keep developing yourself, keep learning and growing and you learn more through failure than you ever will through reading a book or doing a course or joining a program, that's real world. And that failure stings so bad that that lesson sticks with you forever. So, you know, I think Just talking about failure more, I think is really important, especially in entrepreneurship because you're right. We see all the wins. Nobody posts their failures and you begin to kind of a stack rate yourself against people and place your value on how well you're doing. And it's just not healthy. We all run in entrepreneur circles. So, you know, you get sucked in that little whirlwind of sorts and I see it. I'm in a bunch of them as well. And I'm never resentful or bitter for what people are accomplishing. I love it. But I also do know that behind the scenes, they might not all. Be as happy as they, as they appear, or even as successful as they appear in in real life. 100%. I, I couldn't agree more on that. Right. Obviously we, we love seeing that, that, that is a great thing about social media, right? We get, we get to see all these business owners and entrepreneurs winning and doing great things. Like I said, very rarely do you see the the ups and downs and especially the failures that we all know for every business owner is going through. Or has gone through. So that's why I like to kind of hear about everyone's perspective on what they've been through. And yeah, I definitely appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Anything specific to that I that I may have left out or that we didn't cover today. I know we through Do some good value at them as far as hiring and some of the benefits that that can do for businesses, but anything else that you wanted to leave the audience with today? You know, whether you're a business owner, you're a director, you're a mom, a dad, whatever you are, you're a leader. And it's imperative that you begin to kind of look in the mirror and understand who you are and how you're wired. Because I think that's how you can bring the most value to the world. And once you kind of recognize that your own strengths and superpowers, I think it's kind of like a bridge of empathy and compassion to others because you recognize like, wow I'm wired in this specific way and this is what I do well. And I want others to recognize me for what I do well in my strengths. But that also means I have to do that for others. Sometimes we're kind of like, we, we, we tend to like the people that are most like us, right? But some of the most fruitful relationships, whether it's work or otherwise are actually with people who are wired exactly opposite of us because we can learn the most from them. And not necessarily like, you're going to have to make a concession and do things the way they do it. But You get to learn how they do things. You might be able to look at things from a different angle or lens, but ultimately it's about meeting people where they're at and not trying to change who they are recognizing them for what they do well giving them recognition for that. Really kind of just, you know, allowing them to know, like, Hey, I really appreciate that you do X, Y, and Z because I can never do that. And more often than not, they'll say, well, wow, I can never do a, B and C. So it's, it's a good thing we have you. And it just brings people together. I think ultimately, whether you have kids, I mean, we have little assessments that I do for my children self awareness I think is, it's like your. Your life compass, right? It helps you find your true north and every time you get a little lost, you can go right back to that true north and kind of readjust and reset yourself to make sure you're going in the right direction. I love that. that's powerful too, right? having that true north and being able to go back to that main point, like you just mentioned is huge. And I love that you do that for the kids as well. And I mean, it just shows that you really, Really practice what you preach, right? You live, you live and breathe this and it's it's powerful what you've been able to do. So I appreciate you sharing all that. that's going to be a wrap for this episode of small business, big moves. If you enjoyed this episode, what would really help us is if you shared this podcast with someone you think would get value out of it, you can also hit me up all over social media at Thomas Bennett. And in the meantime, we look forward to seeing you all in the next episode.