Beyond the Paycheck: Leadership, Retention, and Investing in the Whole Person

In this episode of Leadership Quotient, Lindsay Guzowski, CEO of The Crucible, speaks with Larry and Cheri Salazar of NestSTEPS about the connection between leadership, employee well-being, and retention.

Larry and Cheri share why they built NestSTEPS to turn homeownership into an employee benefit and how investing in employees beyond the workplace can strengthen loyalty, productivity, and financial well-being. The conversation explores why leaders need to see employees as whole people, what entrepreneurship has taught them about resilience and adaptability, and how passion, purpose, and accountability shape growing organizations.

They also discuss what founders should look for as they build out their leadership teams, why scaling requires both flexibility and process, the importance of productive disagreement, and why building a committed workforce requires understanding what actually drives people.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Leadership Quotient, a podcast by The Crucible, where we explore how leadership teams and investor-backed companies are built, aligned, and scaled for impact. I'm your host, Lindsay Gazowski, and in each episode, we'll talk with the people shaping value behind the scenes, from operating partners to investors to advisors to C-suite executives about what it really takes to drive performance through leadership. On today's episode of the Leadership Quotient Podcast, I speak with Larry and Sherry Salazar, co-founders at Nest Steps, about why the best employees push back, why employers need to care about what happens outside the walls of the business, and whether home ownership could become the next 401k. Larry, Sherry, welcome to Leadership Quotient. I'd love to have you guys describe a little bit about what Nest Steps, which is your business, is, does, and how you came to this place of understanding better ways to retain and reach employees through unique benefits.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Go for it. Okay. So I I think first and foremost, what Nesteps is. Nesteps basically transforms homeownership into an employee benefit program. It's as simple as that. You have 401ks, you have health insurance. What we do is we help the employer to provide a benefit in the form of assisting the employee to achieve homeownership, whether it's their first home, second home, or their next home, or for homeowners, current homeowners, to be able to help them pay off their mortgage a little bit faster. And in order to do that, what we want to do is help them to achieve financial uh well-being through improved behaviors, improved spending behaviors. That is critical. And for us, when we built this program, we realized that there are some programs out in the marketplace that, or I should say, some employers who try to do it on their own, where they just provide a contribution model to their employees. And they've been very successful. I mean, we're talking about reducing turnover rates by 50 to 65%. But the challenge with that is you can get them into a home, but you may not be able to keep them in the home, right? Without the healthy financial behaviors. And so we created a program that is more holistic where we provide technology to help them drive healthy behaviors and we provide education, ongoing professional guidance, as well as a contribution model. But we came to this not overnight. There was a series of experiences over 20 years where we were finding out different things about the importance of homeownership and um and its impact on employees. And ultimately, over time, we started building some competencies around real estate. Sherry actually owns a real estate brokerage, a very successful one. We also myself had uh experience in working as in product marketing specifically for uh health benefits and also for a fintech organization. And so looking back, at one point um we realized all these dots connected. And that's when we ultimately came up with this idea. Let's create a program specifically to help employers drive retention, drive productivity, and help employees achieve financial well-being through homeownership.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

And a core part of that sounds like it's really about some of the leaders in these organizations recognizing that value is created through people and how do you enable people to realize their own dreams, not just contribute back to the business. Talk to me a little bit about how your ethos and you know perspective as entrepreneurs contributed to that desire to build that kind of business.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Well, it's interesting if you think about our history and where we came from. Um, you know, homeownership was always a driver for us personally. That was something that was really important in our own personal lives and drove me into getting into real estate as a profession. So as an entrepreneur in that field, I saw a lot of, I saw a lot of needs, I saw a lot of desire that people wanted to buy homes, but the majority of people feel like we cannot get there. There's no way the dynamics have changed so much, and there's no way we'll ever achieve that. So I think that is what kind of drove us into this area. But what we've realized was that people need to be seen as a whole person and by their employers and by those that they work with, they need to be seen as a whole person, not just a fragmented person. You can look at people as, okay, there's their work personality, their home personality, their religious or spiritual side of things, they're maybe out in the public type person. You cannot segment and fragment people into all these little niche pockets. They have to be fit into, we have to look at them as a whole person and look at the perspective of who they are. And employers need to be able to see that. They need to be able to see what is going on in their lives, what are their desires, what are their needs, and how do we address those effectively? And really that is what has driven us to build this company and to make a change in the industry.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Yeah, and there's data that's clear as it can be that indicates why employees value home ownership as a benefit. I mean, if we just take a step back and look at it from a philosophical perspective, you you have you uh are you familiar with the Masl Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Yeah. So if you consider the bottom being the needs and then the top being aspirational, you you just put home ownership next to it. Most people will say, yes, it's a need, but most people will also say it's aspirational, right? The motivation is there. It's, I think it's 89% of Americans believe it is part of the American dream and it is part of their vision for success in their life. And so when you can tap into that motivation, you're able to drive retention and loyalty. And as a business leader, when you look at your workforce, like Sherry said, you have to address the whole person in order to build that loyalty. This is one of the great ways to do that. One of the great ways to show that you're investing in them, not just the employee. And like I said, there's case studies out there from when, you know, 20 years ago that where people were just offering, you know, contributions and they were driving retention uh uh, you know, off the charts. I mean, they were reducing turnover rates by 50 to 65 percent. And so we're just taking it to the next level and making a more scalable solution. And that's that's really our our focus right now, to help for the employer side, help them to achieve retention, drive loyalty, drive greater productivity to by by helping the employees uh achieve uh financial well-being.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

And when you think about the companies you're working with and helping, what kind of traits and uh orientations do the leaders that are adopting this kind of model most exemplify?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Um, I I would say that the people who are uh seeing that they haven't actually made any difference, made any changes in the uh the benefit space for 20 years, right? Those people who are looking for some innovation, because in part they're looking for something that moves the needle. In fact, that's actually something that one of the senior uh uh HR uh executives said to me, we haven't really found anything that truly moves the needle. And this moves the needle, right? And so that's that's the type of personalities we're finding right now, right? The personalities who are looking at this and say, this is a this is a very uh uh valuable tool for us because we have tried everything else, right? And we're not seeing the significant impact that we need to see from investing thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars. And so they're looking for something that actually works. We have the proof and we have a model that actually shows exactly how impactful it can be for any employer organization. And this is an important piece. It's not just about cutting costs, right? They're not looking necessarily about turnovers. They all know, all the ones that we've contracted with, all understand the same thing. If you want to grow, you have to have a steady workforce. And that's what they're looking at. They're not looking at it as a cost uh uh cutting uh effort. They're looking at it as a as a means to facilitate growth for their organization.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

And I would add to that as well, I think that a personality trait that we're seeing too is that these people really care about their employees. They don't see them as a commodity, they see them as a partner in their business. They're looking at ways to make sure they can improve their lives and give them opportunities for growth and for achievement. So it it plays hand in hand with that um that whole person perspective. We have to see people as um somebody who's benefiting our company, somebody who's helping and supporting and lifting, and that we can't do this job without them. And I think those are the type of people that have really jumped into this and accepted it.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Fantastic. So as entrepreneurship isn't easy. Um what have you guys learned about yourselves in building this business in terms of the type of leader you thought you were, the type of leader you're becoming? Talk to me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Um, I think honestly, we're learning who we are. We're learning who we are um as business leaders, as people, as I mean entrepreneurship is something you get into and you go, go, go, go, go. You have to wort your tail off to get to where you want to be. And it's a constant grind, it's constant. I'm doing everything, you know. We between the two of us, we are when we started the company, we're doing everything for it, you know, and it takes time to grow and to get to the point where you can bring others in to assist you. So we've learned how to do pretty much everything there is to do in business. We've learned how to be leaders, we've learned how to be followers, we've learned how to adapt quickly, we've learned how to grow quickly, how to change things when they're not working. Um, there it's just a totally different world than being an employee.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

I would like to add, I think for me, as we think about you know, the constant grind, I think the common thread in getting through day-to-day is passion. If you don't have passion, it's easy to just turn around and say, Yeah, I'm going back to work for a company, right? If you have passion, you're gonna stick it out. You know, at the end of the day, or I should say at the start of the day, you could be at 30,000 foot level thinking about strategy. By the end of the day, you're on ground level, you know, working and executing. And frankly, to be honest, in an eight, 10, 12 hour period, you're bouncing up and down all the time, depending on who you're speaking with or what you're specifically doing. That's incredibly taxing on you. It's stressful, it's a lot of work. But if you have passion for this, if you really truly believe in what you're doing, it's it's hard to turn away from that because you have passion and you have hope and optimism, then things will ultimately turn around in the right direction for you. That's what we're learning. That we're more resilient than what we thought we might be, you know, uh, you know, in working for other companies.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Yeah, it's one of the things that we measure when we're looking at executives, um, as tested by the crucible, we're looking as to the level of passion because we see a lot of it in entrepreneurs. It's your business, it's your baby. It's why you are gonna put in the 12, 14, 16-hour days every day. But it's when you're looking at other executives and building out that team, it's a question of what drives them. And not everyone can be driven necessarily by the passion for that business component. It might be a sense of drive or ambition or you know, intensity, or simply a desire to explore their intellectual curiosities in ways that can combine with strong urgency. So how do you guys think about as you're building out the team evaluating what skill sets are you're gonna have to put around yourselves?

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Well, first of all, I think I believe I I think our belief in um who we're bringing in, they have to meet our passion for what we're doing. I think that we have our mission, we have our vision, we have our purpose that for the reasons that we're driving this, and they have to believe in those things too. Because if they don't, then they're just collecting a paycheck. And that's not really what it's all about. It's about driving real change and real results and making a difference for people. And if we're not all on the same page, then we can't grow that together. So I think number one, that would be my answer is that they have to have the desired or the same uh perspective on it as we do.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

And I think also to your point, Lindsay, there they may be just passionate about marketing, maybe passionate about sales, right? Those skills are are going to be important for us to view, right? We don't want to just bring people who are just here to collect a paycheck. We want people who are passionate about their craft, even, right? They that they want to be great at something. Now, beyond the passion, I think you also have to have processes. It's impossible to achieve scalability if you don't have processes and if you don't have a method by which you're approaching things. The challenge with what we're doing right now is because, as any startup owner will probably tell you, you have to pivot a lot, right? And so the flexibility in uh in the individual has to be there. But once we defined the right process, they have to be able to follow that process and continue to build on that process. Those are characteristics that we look for at when we're uh you know scaling. But I think those are key pieces. Um, and and I know that there's some people, you know, I I have colleagues who feel the same way that they say, well, you know, I don't necessarily need passionate people. I just need people who can follow processes and so forth. That's fine. Some people can go forward with that. We feel that you know the energy that comes from the passion helps them to go beyond what they're capable of, or at least what they think they're capable of.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

So you guys have some angel investors that are a part of you know the ability to grow your business. How is having those outside resources and outside insights helped you guys become better, better business leaders, better entrepreneurs?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Well, I think first of all, first of all, we wouldn't be here without their support, right? That's we we we wouldn't wouldn't be entrepreneurs without their support. That's number one. Uh number two, I I think that that investment adds accountability. We're not just accountable to ourselves, but we're accountable to our investors. And that really helps to further motivate our actions and our ongoing effort, right? And and I think that's what really helps us to stay uh stay focused on our work. There's gonna there are gonna be storms all around us, right? There are gonna be days where you're thinking, why did I leave my job, right? But then you realize, you know, as long as the other you're accountable to yourself and you're accountable to your investors and other people who are around you, you just stick it out until you get to the results that you were looking for. That's motivating. That's what helps us keep our head above water.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yeah. I think one thing I see is that we've been very lucky in our angel investors that they have the same drive and they see they um they see the vision that we're trying to create and they love it, they support it, and they encourage it. So having them backing us and saying, this is awesome, love what you're doing, keep doing it, keep growing this. You we want you to be successful, having that drive behind us as well, and knowing that they believe in us is extremely helpful.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

If I could just add one more thing to what we're just talking about here, Lindsay, I think is really important. We want people who share a vision, we want people who share the passion and stuff like that, but we don't necessarily want people who will just look at it and say, yes, yes, yes, yes. We don't want that. If they're passionate about something, they will voice their opinions about it and they will share their input. We need that because again, in the startup phases, we're still trying to, we're still trying to perfect, right? And even when you get to perfection, there's still going to be changes. And so you have to remain flexible and that input from other people is going to be um invaluable uh as we grow bigger and bigger.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Yeah, that productive disagreement where a better idea can emerge from people bringing insights to the table is incredibly important at this stage.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yep. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

So where are you guys headed from here? Is there an exit plan in the horizon? Is there a world domination plan of everyone owning houses all over the world? I talk to me a little bit about where where you're headed.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Well, I I think, and Sherry, chime in as you feel uh need to, but I think that homeownership as an employee benefit will become the next 401k. Truly believe that this is the next big, next key cornerstone in benefits. I mean, you have health insurance, you have 401k retirement planning. We think home ownership as an employee benefit is next. Having said that, um we see tremendous amount of growth in a very short amount of time. Um, now I think it would go even faster if there were federal and state regulations around taxes, right? That will accelerate it dramatically. But we are seeing rapid interest, rapidly growing interest on the market, not just from the employers, but also the the brokers, the benefit brokerages, uh, as well as PEOs who work with small businesses. There's an enormous amount of demand for this. And so we we see the acceleration organic, but again, any regulatory benefits would be helpful in in the process of even further accelerating. Now, do we have a dream to um to dominate the market? Any any you know, honest um start uh entrepreneur will want to say the same thing, which is we want to be great at what we do. We want to be able to proliferate throughout the market. Do we have an exit plan? Of course we have an exit plan. We think that you know we'll be able to exit uh if we if we so choose to, and in and you know, under you know, somewhere around seven years if we choose to. But the reality is there's going to be an enormous amount of growth in a very short amount of time since we started. We started seeing uh competitors pop up. Now, they're not 100% direct competitors, but they have popped up in the short amount of time that we launched. So other people are starting to recognize that this is the next big thing.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Yeah, and it's a matter of how you do it. So any good business is going to have a business plan and strategy. To first of all get into the market, scale through the market, and then have the exit strategy. So we've definitely thought through all of that ahead of time and have a plan for it all. Um, but ultimately it's how do we make sure we can get market share? Because we truly believe that our product is superior and more holistic than anything out there on the market today.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

What percent of companies offer some kind of homeowner benefit at the present?

SPEAKER_00 22:38

So here's that's an interesting question because we know that from a survey, I believe I'm not quite sure what the source was, whether it's Sherm or PwC, but the there's like 27% are looking, and employers are looking for it. 27% are looking for it. Except when we did our workforce survey in May, only 1.1% of the thousand people who who are employed across the country said that their organization, their company currently offers any type of uh such benefits. But you hear about BNY Mellon that announced in April that they were going to offer contribution towards home purchase. You hear about Cleveland Clinic, you hear about a host of other, especially in the healthcare space where they're offering similar type of contribution-only benefits. And you realize that there are more and more large organizations who are seeing the benefit of thereof, they just don't have a scalable solution. And that's where we come in. That's where we try to help them make that happen.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

Yeah, and they have to do it the right way, honestly, because when we're looking at the solutions that are out there, throwing money at somebody is not going to be the solution to fix the problems that they're trying to fix. The reason being because if you just throw money at people and you're not helping them to learn how to manage that and to scale it, we see too many people who jump into the market in to jump into the real estate market who buy a home, but because somebody gave them a benefit to do so, they are not prepared for that homeownership properly. And they end up having short sales or foreclosures expedited in those scenarios. So whether it be the government grants, employee grants, um, anything that they're getting that is giving them money for their first home needs to be done in a way that's structured for them to keep them in that home.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of people forget when they're buying property is that it's not just the purchase price, it's your insurance and your taxes and repairs and everything else, just even as pure outlays, let alone what happens if I no longer have the same level of income, or there's other scenarios. I know that there were a lot of stories coming out on how Gen Z already struggles with housing affordability. And so um, it sounds like you guys are looking to address that, not just from a monetary benefit standpoint, but an educational standpoint as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Absolutely. It's educational and through technology to help and build the right behaviors. But but Lindsay, here's the thing. If if if let's say, for instance, they get into a home, okay, they remove some of the stress that they're throwing money away in rent. That's great. But the financial stress will remain if they can't manage to pay the bills. And what happens after that to retention? It doesn't change retention because of that. And so you need to couple that. You need to couple getting them into home with healthy financial behaviors to keep them in the home. And that's that's a really critical piece that a lot of people don't take into consideration.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

That's a piece that only we are offering in this space.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

So if you had advice for groups that are looking to figure out ways to be an employer of choice, a place where employees want to come and stay. What's the advice that that you're giving? Not just, you know, bring on nest steps, um, but what's the the more holistic advice on how to be a great employer?

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Well, I think first of all, bring on nest steps, don't um sorry, I had to say it. Of course. But I think people need, as I was saying before, they need to see the whole person and they need to address their needs. They need to address their concerns, they need to see them as an asset to their company. And how are they going to treat those people? What are they doing to really help them, to support them, to get them feeling like they are part of a community in that company versus just a silo? And you can add to that, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Well, I mean, we we see a lot of employers who are trying to figure out how to entice the employee to stay, right? They offer uh ping pong tables, right? They they they offer stock kitchens. I actually worked for a company at one point where they had six kitchens in the building, and each kitchen had a fridge, a really tall fridge, completely stocked with draft beer, locally brewed draft beer. Nobody ever touched that beer. And when you go to the floor where they have the ping pong tables, nobody ever played ping pong table at ping pong unless there's some kind of a tournament, right? Nobody touches that stuff. And that's because most people are at work because they're trying to get things done. They don't want to take it home to you know, continue to work. So you want to be able to provide benefits that ultimately, like Sherry said, help the whole person. That is the reason why retirement planning, health insurance are the anchors of employee benefits because they are universally viewed as valuable, indispensable. Home ownership has that same power. That's what I would say. Look for the whole person. Don't think about just think, you know, providing great work experience. Go beyond that. You can provide great work experience, but don't stop there.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

And that wraps up today's episode of Leadership Quotient. I'm grateful to Sherry and Larry for sharing what they've learned and how they think about these issues. To our listeners, if you found this conversation valuable, be sure to subscribe to Leadership Quotient wherever you get your podcasts. You can also learn more about The Crucible and how we're helping investor-backed companies align leadership teams for scale at thecrucible.com. We'll see you next time for more real conversations on leadership, talent, and value creation.