Episode 15: Meetings That Don't Suck with Michael Kaplan

In this episode of The Huge Insider Podcast, Michael Kaplan breaks down how team meetings, when done right, can drive culture, mission alignment, communication, and motivation across an entire organization. Instead of boring status updates, great meetings reinforce your company’s purpose, deliver key information, cascade leadership messages, and celebrate success.

You'll walk away with actionable tips on how to plan your meetings with purpose, inject energy into the room (think "Black Betty" as a hype song), and engage your team so they leave energized and informed. If you want your team rowing in the same direction—toward growth and excellence—this episode gives you the blueprint.

Show Notes

Guest

• Michael Kaplan

  • Home service entrepreneur since 2006

  • Scaled a carpet cleaning business to over 150 employees and eight figures in revenue

Resources Mentioned

• Downloadable Action Guide

• The Huge Insider Newsletter Signup

• Foundations Platform Free Trial

• The Huge Mastermind Info Page

• Facebook Group

• Huge Convention Tickets

  • August 20–22, 2025, in Nashville, TN 

Transcript

Sid Graef: Welcome back to the Huge Insider Podcast. Hey, my friend, it's Sid Graef here, and the Huge Insider is the show for home service professionals that are striving to break the million-dollar revenue mark. And if that's you, you're in the right place. If you're already over a million dollars in revenue, you will get even more out of this show.

So we want to help you skip the BS and get real wisdom from experienced business builders. We've gathered wisdom and insight directly from seven- and eight-figure business owners, people who are running companies that do anywhere from 2 million a year to 40 million a year, and we're bringing you their best insights, all focused on one single topic each month.

And these are real owners. They're not armchair philosophers or fake gurus. These are the ones that are quietly building empires behind the scenes. They're not on social media looking for attention. They're in business actually making things happen.

So last month we focused on hiring A-players, and this month we answered the question, what do you do once you hire the right person? You've got onboarding, pay structure, training, safety, and much more. And today's topic is team meetings and the value of team meetings.

So you're about to hear from Michael Kaplan. Michael Kaplan built a strong eight-figure carpet cleaning business in the Midwest, and he knows about team meetings because they had over 150 employees and they had to get everyone on the same page week after week after week. So he goes into a lot of detail about what a good team meeting needs to be successful and why it's important.

You know, most businesses treat team meetings as an afterthought or skip them altogether and just assume that everybody knows what to do and where they need to be. Last thing before we dive in, we've got a downloadable action guide for you for this episode, and it's available at thehugeinsider.com.

So with that, let's dive into it.

Michael Kaplan: Hello, podcasters. My name's Michael Kaplan. I've been a home service entrepreneur since 2006, and I drew the short straw. So I get to talk to you about team meetings, and actually, I'm a bit of a team meeting nerd, so maybe it's not a super short straw. But most people groan and hate the prospect of having a team meeting because most meetings suck.

And no offense, your meetings probably suck. Mine have too, and I've got a couple of tips here to help you think through how to make your meetings suck less or maybe even accomplish a couple of goals.

So think about the tone of the meeting as much as the content of the meeting. How you deliver the message matters almost as much as the message. And similarly important, think really hard about how much you're trying to accomplish. Less is more, and the risk of overextending is real, and you'll dilute the message if you do overextend.

So you've got the full team there. How are you going to set the tone? I always think upbeat. Get people kind of rocking going into the meeting. Think, you know, Ram Jam, "Black Betty" — that's always been my go-to. Have a clear agenda and don't stuff it too full, but for me, a successful meeting's going to tick all these boxes:

• It's going to reinforce culture.

• It's going to cascade a message from the leadership team.

• It's going to reinforce the mission.

• It's going to transfer information.

• And it's going to celebrate success.

So let me unpack those real quick. On reinforcing culture: you are not in front of your whole team every day, at least not in this manner. So fill their buckets, remind them their why, why they show up, why they love each other, what's great about the company, what's special. Like it might be feedback from a customer that you're relaying. There are any number of ways to do it, but really think about what you guys stand for and how you can transfer that throughout the meeting.

You want to have a cascading message from the leadership team. I'm sure there are meetings that are happening behind the scenes where you're plotting your evil plan to take over the world, and this is your opportunity to peel back the curtain a little bit and let the minions and the people who aren't in those meetings understand more about what the big initiatives are, where the business is going, and to fire them up about it a little bit. Again, filling their buckets.

So you're also reinforcing the mission. You're doing the vision casting. What's the hill, and how are we going to take it? And how everyone plays a role in taking over the market, in providing better service, or whatever the elements of that mission are.

You're going to do quite literally a transfer of information. You've got an opportunity for the team to learn about the health of the company. You may or may not be a team that shows P&Ls or talks about those big milestones, but you want to pass information on so that the team leaves feeling more in the know about what's going on. And you've got to be sure and celebrate success.

This can take any number of forms. It could be goals and milestones hit. It can be awards won. It can be profits made. It could be big sales landed. Another good way to do it is to play off the culture and the mission-vision-values approach. I love having team members vote on who on the team best exemplifies different core values that you have. If you have your core values published and you're celebrating them throughout the year, I think it's great before the meeting to have people anonymously vote on who's doing a great job at really living each of the values. Then whoever wins, have one of the people who voted for them tell a story about Rick and why Rick exemplified core value ABC. Coming from the team to the team is cultural gold.

And then you can give a gift card and celebrate that success. I think team meetings don't have to be something you trudge through. They should be uplifting. And I think that success is going to feel like you had purposeful pacing, you transferred information, you highlighted and celebrated core values and culture, you celebrated success, you cast your vision, and everyone's walking away—or most people are walking away—with more clarity and a sense of community after the meeting.

So it's not rocket surgery, but it does take some purposeful planning to execute. And you've got to make sure that the fun police are not present. You've got to keep it upbeat, keep it moving, and give people an opportunity to be excitable in spite of the fact that they're sitting through a meeting. Hopefully this helped and you have some awesome meetings moving forward. Keep rocking.

Sid Graef: Okay, so what did you learn about team meetings? What did you learn about the value of team meetings and how to manage one properly to get people on the same page? Because really that's one of the key components of a great team meeting, is to have your team working together as a team to have unity, to have everyone rowing in the same direction.

So what's the next step? First of all, download the action guide. Everything we covered today is in the show notes, but the most important thing is download the free action guide about this episode. We put together a five-page action guide to help you execute this week's strategy and the tactics for better team meetings. And you can grab it at thehugeinsider.com.

And there are more ways for you to help level up your business. This podcast is just one way that we help you to grow, and here's what else you should be plugged into:

Number one is our free newsletter. It's called The Huge Insider. Cool name, right? The Huge Insider. We deliver weekly insights straight to your inbox.

Number two is our Facebook group and community. We've got a vibrant Facebook group where people are helping one another with questions, helping each other to grow.

Then every summer we get together at one big fine party. We call it The Huge Convention. The Huge Convention is the ultimate event for home service business owners like you. This year we're back in Nashville, Tennessee, August 20th through 22nd, and this is the last year that we're going to be in Nashville, at least for a while. Tickets are really dirt cheap right now, so make sure and grab yours before the prices go up. Tickets can be found at thehugeconvention.com, and prices are going up on June 1st.

This event, The Huge Convention, if you've never been, it really is the event where breakthroughs happen. It's the place for networking, for high-level, focused business education—like how to build a better business—and the biggest trade show for our industries in the country.

The next thing I want to tell you about, really the last thing I'm going to tell you about is The Huge Mastermind. I mentioned earlier in the intro that this is the show for people that are striving to break the million-dollar mark in revenue. And if you're already over the million-dollar mark, you get even more from this show.

But here's the thing: The Huge Mastermind is for business owners whose business is already over a million dollars of revenue. You've got more than five employees, and it is the fast track to a freedom business because you're going to learn and implement the Freedom Operating System to get to time and money freedom quickly and predictably.

So that's it for this week's episode. If you find value in this, share it, like it, give us a review, do all that jazz, you know that. And with that, that's it for this week. So don't just listen. Take action. I'm Sid Graef. This is The Huge Insider Podcast, and we want to help you win and prosper in the marketplace. I'll see you next time.