Jeremy: Good afternoon. Welcome back to Shift Happens. Jeremy Friedman here with Shaun Coe. We were texting earlier today
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: and I can't wait to hear about this bird were that you were saving.
Coe: yeah, I I spent five hours I didn't have trying to save a bird that I think I clipped with my with my lawnmower. So didn't cancel any client calls, but it was 30 minute endeavor that ended up turning into a quick five hours. So definitely a story for another time, but shift happens definitely happened to me today. And it's you know, a couple days from being a father, I think some of that nurturing instinct's kicking in. 'Cause my wife's like, What are you doing? I'm like driving a bird to the bird sanctuary. So I'll be back. But Definitely put me to a little bind, Jeremy. I'm glad I got back in time and thanks for rolling the punches with me. So if he if he becomes a pet, I'll name him Shift Happens or something, you know. So we'll keep you posted.
Jeremy: alright
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: folks. Last couple of episodes were kind of prelude to today's topic. And if you think back, we were talking about middle managers and how they're really not going to become obsolete. They're just gonna be purposed a little bit differently with the automations and the AIs coming into kind of the norm, if you will. And then And then the most recent episode, and thank you all for listening and tuning in, was really about hiring and reviewing resumes and and really understanding that hiring is a skill, right? So we've got the people who already work for us and what are we doing with them? And then we've got the people coming in. And so today, Shaun, I I really want to dive into kind of building the bench. So, how do we get people to that middle management levels that are already with us? What are the benefits? What are What are maybe some of the drawbacks? I have some statistical information that we'll dive into here in terms of like cost of attrition, cost of turnover, and cost of retention, more importantly, and looking into those. And I think those are pretty eye-opening for hiring managers out there and for operational managers out there that maybe aren't giving the adequate amount of time, or maybe they have not themselves been developed enough to develop people. to to build that retention. So we're gonna dive in straight away here, Shaun. but just wanted to open it up and kind of set set the table here.
Coe: Well, I mean, you in the last few episodes too, I think I've recanted a few of this. Like most of our clients we want to see at 70% internal promotes, 30% external. you know, and we've had a handful of conversations around our consulting clients, and some of the things that have saved the day, you know, throughout time have been the level of our bench strength. And you know, when Jeremy and I talk about building the bench, it's I want to say it's a no-brainer, but I really want to boil some of these down. You always have to be recruiting if you're in a hiring manager seat. There is never a time where you should not be looking for talent. if you are an engaged employee, and I tell hiring managers this all the time, I assume 100% of the people on my team are always looking for a better opportunity. And it is my responsibility to provide them with the best opportunity. so I just think as you know, as the world changes, Jeremy, and we've been kind of covering this over the last few episodes, nothing's really changed. I think it's a a lot of kind of getting back to some of the basics. I will add in some how automation, especially with HC Core, can help you really. Build that bench strength, right? Making sure we're having good merit increases, making sure that we're having great one on ones conversations for for promotions and all that. So so one of the things I really love about these kind of episodes, Jeremy, is you know as much as me and you you call me out all the time with my CEO brain, but I really like to talk in threes. And I like things to be a balloon. So when I say build the bench, I think it impacts all things on HR. Right. So if I'm building the bench, it's going to force me to have those one-on-ones like I talked about. It's going to force me to really know where my people are. It's going to force me to maybe know where Sally Sue wants to get promoted, maybe moving on. And I think like when you're really knocking out of the park and you got a good bench strength. you know it wasn't just them focusing on the bench strength, if that all makes sense. So I I love this one as a trigger statement to really make an a a new HR manager or maybe a struggling HR manager kind of revisit some of the basics.
Jeremy: And so I'm gonna ask you a question, Shaun, because you you you said for for those hiring managers, those operation managers, they should always be recruiting, they should always be looking for outstanding performers out there. I I'm I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I'm gonna I'm gonna offer a thought. When you say always recruiting, I think people always think externally outside of your business, but recruiting can be a re internal thing. It could be identifying, the those key players. And you talked about on the last episode that bartender Stephanie. I now
Coe: Yep.
Jeremy: that was an extreme. let's level set for a second here. Somebody going from bartender to GM is a little bit more of an extreme. Anybody who's run a restaurant before knows that there's a couple of layers in between there to get to that point.
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: ordinarily. so that was an extreme situation. but you know unpacking recruiting is not Only an external piece. Would you would you agree with that statement?
Coe: 100% agree, Jeremy. And I don't think we said this on one of the shows. I think we were talking in prep for this. You know, we we always talk about positive turnover, right? And I think you and I were, I think I was first calling you to see if you've heard that term because I know it's like I don't know if everyone uses it. When we talk about positive turnover, you're gonna lose probably 50 to 150 percent of your staff for any reasons. We like to talk about losing them into a promotion. So obviously, Jeremy, they're not going somewhere else. But I I think when when we are consistently growing. the next ring of supervision and even a leader. And to kind of give some notes on that Stephanie one, that that young girl at the time did have some manager experience, right? So she was just taking a kind of step back. But it's amazing as a way to build that bench strength too, right? The reason I had known that was taking the time to have some one on ones and really sitting down. So to really recant that conversation first, it was about 30 seconds of a full 360 workforce solution and about a one hour shift. You know, so sitting down, seeking to know, having a one on one, hey, I saw you really take care of your time. We have ads out, right? So I'm gonna go back to that story. We're looking for GMs. We know this guy's gonna quit. She had a little bit of experience, but if I had not done that 365 kind of look around of like, let's let's recap the day, let's sit down with a the key staff that was really keeping it together, you know, it and I don't know if this fleshes out to you, Jeremy, but but I often and when we're coaching any recruiting company or hiring manager. We don't just want to assume, and you and I have never really talked at depth of this, but I want to promote 70% internal, right? We said that when we started off. But if I'm not trying to have one on ones, that number is going to be closer to 5%. And I don't know if that kind of takes us off the track, but you know, to go back and answer your question, if you are consistently hitting your one on ones, if you are consistently having engaged conversations around merit increase and performance, I would I'm gonna say a bold statement. I don't think there's an organization out there in any industry that cannot grow to enterprise level by promoting from 70% within if you're actually having conversations, right? Cause I just like to go back in time, Jeremy. I really think people like to do a good job. I don't think the average or even a very, very small percentage of the population goes to work every day and says, Yeah, I'm gonna fuck up today. I'm gonna try to be a pain in the ass. I really think
Jeremy: Yeah.
Coe: 99% of the people come in, right? And just They're waiting for someone to motivate them. They're waiting for someone to kind of unpack that unseen skill. And I think the folks that listen to these kind of podcasts, it's it's kind of our responsibility to have that. So to give it back to Jeremy, yeah, we love that that positive turnover for promotions, but I think a lot of things got to be clicking. And hopefully we can unpack some of that today, Jeremy, on this episode of like, what are we looking for? And how do we build that bench strength? And, you know, how do I see those diamonds in the roughs where maybe Sally hasn't raised her hand yet that she's ready for the next step.
Jeremy: So you talked a little bit about how you gave some examples. I think what's really important as we as we dive into the details here, I did a little bit of research. and I'm gonna pivot this research into the why we wanna do this, why we wanna be recruiting, why we wanna be doing one-on-ones, why we wanna be developing people, finding those diamonds in the rough and and teaching them and developing them into elevation through those one-on-ones and through additional responsibilities and Before we go too far into the details that I'm going to share here in a second, when you add those additional responsibilities and they adopt them and they are producing, making sure that we are compensating because you don't want that person to walk across the street because they don't feel appreciated, they feel underappreciated. Because remember, money
Coe: Yes.
Jeremy: is valuable to everyone, but part of it is a scorecard. I do X, so I should earn Y, right? So so we should look at that. But but In some of my research in prepping for today, Shaun, a couple of kind of outstanding things to shout out here. Replacement costs range from 30 to 50% of annual salary for entry-level roles and 200 to 400% for executive positions. So let's
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: bring that down. This is coming from the Work Institute. Projects per departure cost You will reach by 2027 over $28,000 per turnover to your company. So think about that. Like you talked about on the last episode, you know, Bar Louis was having a $22,000 day. All of that
Coe: Yep.
Jeremy: is wiped out with one turnover. All of it is wiped out with
Coe: One turnover.
Jeremy: one turnover. Okay. So that's the first piece. Now, some of these are a little bit older data, you know, hasn't been updated from from SHERM. but a 2025 benchmark report from SHERM, the US average cost per hire $5,400 for non-executives and almost $36,000 for executive roles. Up 21% from 2022. Why does all of this matter? And and by the way, the average cost of a bad hire is almost $15,000. Why does all of this matter?
Coe: I mean, none of these ex those, I mean,
Jeremy: Go ahead.
Coe: I don't want to say obvious, I guess that it those costs are not correlated to a cost of doing business besides the actual personnel. So if you think about that, you're talking about one statistic. Let's say that the average company right now in the United States, Jeremy, I don't have the statistic in front of me, you might have an in SHRM Let's say most concepts are probably shooting an 80 to 120% turnover year to year post pandemic. At that case, if you're not having positive turnover at $26 $36,000 per candidate replacement at executive, you go out of business. Or it's just a needless expense that goes in the profitability margins and it takes key resources away from actually putting money back into the bucket. You know, so I've talked about this on both ends too, Jeremy. I really don't think most companies today, I know Instawork does, I know HC Core does, I know probably a handful of our greatest clients do as well. What is the true cost of turnover? What is the true cost of recruitment? You know, and I mean from from missed positions to open positions to the advertisements that are up to the advertisements that are forgotten to be up. God forbid you lose someone. But then you look at that transpose to a positive turnover, right? Jeremy, and you t you've talked at length about this in the last few episodes. If I am constantly hiring a new person at my lowest tier or the middle tier, and I'm growing to the executive. And I'm still hiring from 15% out so we don't become a group of kissing cousins. That that amount of dollar spent for recruitment and retention, Jeremy, drops by 80 to 90%. And the in the morale at the same time, Jeremy, and I I don't think this is spoken about enough. When you have a culture where the everyone that enters your organization knows that if you do XYZ, that that that circle of accountability, if I do X, I get Y. If I go above and hit T, I'm going to get a promotion. When that is common knowledge and as much as the wallpaper behind you, the grow you can't stop the growth in an organization, right? Then it becomes a challenge where can we focus enough on our key objective to get enough new revenue coming in to open a new unit to kind of facilitate this growth? And that's a great place to be, Jeremy. And I've been there with a few brands before I've owned this. And I gotta tell you, there's still some challenges, but I would take those challenges all day over the challenges of being understaffed.
Jeremy: Well, and I think when hiring managers and ops leaders listening to us right now are being honest with themselves, anytime they have lost someone of value, s salarily or hourly, but let's use salary as the example here. So a middle manager who's making sixty thousand dollars a year, right? And that person leaves for a myriad of reasons, but chief of those is oftentimes, especially if they're a good performer. Is because they feel undervalued, right? They they say, you know what, somebody in my position, I've done some research, I should be making closer to 70 or 80,000. To retain that person, it costs you 10, 15, maybe $20,000 a year to retain them. But when you go out there and look
Coe: Glad you're touching on this.
Jeremy: for someone, when you first off, we've already said it. We said the hiring cost, we've already, we've already discussed it for executive roles. You know, so somewhere between that $5,400 for the hourly role and the $35,000 for the executive role, let's call it a clean $20,000. That same $20,000 you could have given to somebody who's already been trained, already effective, already productive, already knows your product, already knows how to operate, and the team already responds to them. Or you can bring someone in off the street, likely pay them what this person was originally asking for anyway, and they're not trained. They're not. You know, integrated, they're not loyal, their team is not loyal to them. And your productivity for a couple of months takes a dive because there's an
Coe: Takes a huge dive.
Jeremy: onboarding period. Okay. And so retention and building your bench, exactly what Shaun was saying, guys. Building your bench builds a reputation, it builds a loyalty, it builds a camaraderie, and it builds knowledge to know. That this company finds it important to invest in their own people. That doesn't mean that somebody's gonna be there in perpetuity. It doesn't mean they're gonna, you know, some of the best managers I've been able to develop in my life, I have told them straight out, my goal is for you to take my job. But I also am honest knowing that if I do my job really well in developing you, you're gonna leave here and go do something bigger for yourself. Those are two good wins, by the way. That's not a bad thing, but
Coe: Those are awesome. Yeah.
Jeremy: but if I'm able to develop that person and that Instead of leaving, or that positive turnover, as you say, because that's the definition of positive turnover, if they grow into the next role because of what you did. but
Coe: Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely.
Jeremy: what would be better is if they're in store A and that positive turnover is that you were able to open store B because of all of the success and be able to promote them to oversee that's a home run, right? That you if you promote
Coe: Yeah, home run, man.
Jeremy: them over store now, now you've elevated them and Everybody on that team, from the store clerk to the person doing the inventory and restocking the shelves to the server, to the host, to the dishwasher, to the chef, they all see that this is something that they themselves, if they apply themselves, can achieve.
Coe: And I know we're gonna talk about this in the next one, Jeremy, but you're you're talking about a high developed team, right? And when and when a workforce starts to become a team and we all see each other wearing the same colored jerseys, and sometimes we're gonna come in, and I don't care if it's finance guys, right? You can have the same setting with a group of engineers and an MSP because I've seen it. When we all see the same prize and the same struggles. We tend to bleed together a little bit. We tend to work a little bit harder. And I loved what Jeremy said too, because there is always a congruence too with the top performing companies that are promoting the most from internally, Jeremy, where a hundred percent of them have the same mentality where I don't see, we don't see people as possessions. We're well aware that you're gonna use us for what you need. One of those wins might be you getting promoted beyond even this endeavor, and that's gonna be great for both of us. And what that candidate or young you know employee may hear, it and it may be that there's a better opportunity than HC Core or or in store for them. And it may be that there's not, Jeremy. And usually what I see when there's an organization having those kind of performance conversations where hey, we're gonna grow you and we wanna grow you to as far as you can go, and it doesn't matter where you land with that, those people tend to have longer tenure. I don't know if you resonate with that as well, but I just feel when you focus on the bench strength, there's so many positive, unintended consequences of that, Jeremy, that I just think a lot of things start to fall into a win. You know, we're talking about the culture that it builds, we're talking about the observations that the team see. But I even think in some of the verbiage, when people walk in, like it's really exciting when you're working for a company that you know you can go as high as you want. And if you don't, you have to look in the mirror. It also, in a weird way, Jeremy. Filters out a little bit of the underperformers, right? So I've just seen this in great organizations. If we're always promoting from within and you have a great interview like that, like, hey man, you're coming in as an SDR, we're gonna love you, but we're hoping you don't want to stay as an SDR because we are a growing organization. You go from an SDR to a BDR right? And if you start to give that promotion kind of chain, and obviously they got hit KPIs, but even on the interview, you're you're gonna have people leaning in that wanna be grown, and you're gonna have people backing out that are like, I kind of wanted to slip between the cracks. So I I just think there's so much net benefit when we focus on building the strength, building the bench strength. And Jeremy, I know you've got a couple of really good ideas in here. And I I really think this is something, you know, you and I talk quite a bit offline. I I think you guys do a really good job of it. I've heard you talk about how you develop people. I think you do a phenomenal job of kind of identifying those folks. But but how do you go about in your organization now or maybe even some some previous endeavors, like I think you got the vibe of who's going to be the next person, but I w I wonder if you could just unpack some of that for us. Like how are you kind of working on that next sales professional for you? What are some key identifiers that you might look at? Like say if someone's been with you for only three weeks, you know, because I know sometimes we get in, like what are some things that Jeremy looks for or maybe Instawork to really identify th those folks that might want to build the bench with us?
Jeremy: So I'll go from a couple of different angles. you know, with with InstaWork currently, I'll talk a little bit about, you know, the guy who makes me successful. And that's my right hand guy, Bryan you know, he was actually at InstaWork before me. And he had the benefit of working in a couple of different roles when I met him. And he was on a pathway as someone who kind of became a bit of a Swiss Army knife. And, you know.
Coe: Okay.
Jeremy: For those of you who know my story with Instawork and kind of building out the hotel division, the company decided to give me a resource in Bryan and say, look, we're gonna give you this guy. He has this much experience, this much knowledge, and he's I I give him all the credit of the world. He's a damn savant when it comes to the back end of our system. and I attribute a lot of the success, but really the key things that I see in a gentleman like him. Is he's got no he's got no stop to him. He's got fire in his butt belly, he'll run through walls, and he's he's open to learn. He's open to fail but fail forward, try stuff and fall flat on his face and then get up and say, All right,
Coe: I love it.
Jeremy: well, that didn't work, and let's go and we'll figure something else out. more times than not, he's succeeding beyond that. And so so I'm really proud of what he's doing. But really, what I see in him is is He's loyal to the company, he's dedicated, he's fair, he builds rapport and relationship with his peers. He's he's a good 360 leader, so he's able to talk to anyone in the company effectively and and and impart ideas and and impart criticism. constructive criticism, of course, but say, you know what? I'm seeing this, this isn't really working. Perhaps can we do something like this? And he's not afraid to get his hands dirty, roll up his sleeves. And I think this is a key thing. I actually just posted something on LinkedIn. Today, one of the things that that we do is something called work a shift, which gives you the ability, it's a mandatory activity that we do in that once a year, you can do it as many times as you want to, but a minimum of once a year, every manager in the company has to go out and actually work a shift like an Instawork Pro. We have to clock in, clock out, we have to work the shift, we have to and
Coe: I love it. I love it, man.
Jeremy: here's the here's the the reason for it. The reason for it is. For you listeners out there, when was the last time you got into the mud with your team? When was the last time you knew what they were doing? And by the way, the reverse is equally as beneficial. I'm going to tell you guys a story, but the reverse is equally beneficial. You build loyalty by being around your troops, by being, you know, on the ground. This is why, you know, in in the military, you know, that that captain, that sergeant who's down in the trenches with their team. Are well loved, well respected, have very loyal troops. you know, I remember back in my restaurant days, Shaun, I used to do this at least once or twice a quarter. Where when I was running the restaurant, I would take a section and I would I would challenge my team and I'd be like, you know what? I think I can make more tips than you in my section today than you all can make. And the benefit is you get
Coe: I love this.
Jeremy: all my tips anyway, because I can't keep them in my role. But, but I get bragging rights if I get if I can beat all you guys today, right? So that includes upselling. So what does that do? That shows them that this work is not beneath the leader. It allows the leader to see what those individuals are doing on the floor, which allows this leader to develop those people who are either doing wonderful things that he wants to impart on everybody else in the in on the team, or identify other key individuals who are maybe. not hitting the mark and what do we need to do? And so you take someone, you say, all right, I'll take a section, you shadow me today. Let me show you what I'm doing. And and restaurants is a perfect example of this because it's so easy from a day to day to have someone shadow you. You can have them shadow today and not shadow tomorrow. But getting in the trenches to me is a really good way to build your bench. One, you get to see how people perform. So like for example in selling and I'm gonna hand it back to you here, Shaun. We would do boots on the ground, and Matthew taught me this when I started staffing with Matthew. Boots on the ground. We would go out into the field, we'd walk into hotel A, and Matthew, being the experienced person, would walk up to the front desk, get past the gatekeeper, get a leader to come out and talk to you with whatever way that he positioned the approach and and what he had to say. And then we'd go to the next hotel and he'd say, All right, now it's your turn. Then we get back in the car after it was my turn and we dissect it. While we had windshield time, dissect it. Development, train, try it again, development, train,
Coe: Great education. Yep.
Jeremy: try it again. All that did, it did a couple of things. One, it reinforced my capability in what I was there to do at that time in that individual, you know, individual contributor role. But it also taught me how to develop the people who will come behind me. Right? So it's it's hand in glove. You're learning both ways. So folks. And then I'm gonna hand it back to Shaun here. What I'm talking about here is you don't need to overthink the development of your people. If you make them great at what they do, and as Shaun started out at the beginning of this and have one-on-ones to ask them, I know this is crazy, have this crazy conversation that says, What do you want to do? What are your goals? What are your aspirations? Do you want to be here for the long haul, or is this a stop in your journey to earn money now and then you know, in the future. That's not a bad thing either. Knowing your team to know who's an individual contributor for the time being and has no aspirations to grow in this field. They're doing it because they're in school. This helps them pay their their their school tuition. And as soon as they graduate, they're done. that's good to know too, because then you're not you're not putting in too much time and effort into that individual who isn't going to be there a year or two from now, like this other person who's like, Yes, I'm here and I want to stay. So, you know, I went through a lot there, Shaun. Let me kick it back to you.
Coe: No, it was golden, Jeremy. If I may, I just want to ask a couple questions about that. Cause like you know I'm very hands-on too, and and as a CEO, there's times where I have to be hands-off, but I I find again the organizations that are some of the best are not afraid to get their hands muddy. question when you are working side by side. Do you get a different perspective or maybe perception is a better way to say it of like when you're actually working side by side with a person than when you're in your normal supervisor role? And I'll give you some context because I've noticed this quite a bit, more in retail, more in probably management, ops management, and and hospitality. But I'll have a director, sometimes even a VP. And if they really get into a very comfortable role, Of hating multiple units, right? So I don't care if it's retail, it can even be healthcare. If I go to a unit, I'm not auditing, but let's say I'm a multi-unit supervisor, right? Many, many roles like that. It's not that those guys and gals get lazy, but at times I think they don't they start to miss stuff, right? And they can be really good because they got promoted to that role. But what I often find when I challenge someone at that level. To get their hands dirty a little bit, they'll usually come back to me and say, Man, I saw so much more on this shift than I've ever seen. Because if I'm going and supervising, right, and it's different with the sales team, but you might be checking on KPIs, it might be remote. But if you're going for a day and you're doing side by side, kind of what Jeremy said with Matt, of hey, I'm gonna watch you do some sales today. I'm gonna observe. We're gonna coach. So you're gonna, we're gonna watch you do three, you're gonna watch me do three, we're gonna unpack. I tend to pick up on a lot of opportunities that even though it's the same Shaun, if I didn't get on that same level, I just would not have seen. And I don't know if that correlates in your position as much, but I just kinda wanted to ask that. So when you're side by side with them, do you see do you kind of see more level set and you get a better reading on the actual situation?
Jeremy: Say it's line of sight. So when you're sitting in your CEO
Coe: There you go.
Jeremy: chair or your VP chair, your focus, your your dynamic focus, you're you know, you're you're kicking out the distractions. So so if I'm running a restaurant on the GM, that's different than I'm the AGM or the kitchen manager, right? Where the AGM, the kitchen manager, AGM has to be on the floor in the front, kitchen managers in the back, making sure things are going. You're seeing what's going on in the weeds, whereas the GM may be in the office, you know, filing invoices, counting money, updating the PL, whatever the case may be. It's a line of sight issue. And so
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: I think there's a couple of different ways the leaders out there can approach this. You can be reactive when something's gone wrong and say, all right, now I need to get in the weeds and go figure out what happened with this person.
Coe: Now I got Yeah w
Jeremy: And then because if they're doing it once, if they're doing it twice, if they're doing it three times, they're doing it a lot more than that, right? so you're gonna
Coe: Yep. Yep.
Jeremy: be able to see that, and then you're gonna be able to decide whether you want to coach that out of them or coach them out of the of the the unit, the business, whatever the case. and that also is positive attrition because if you're taking someone out that that's not a good fit. That's a positive. addition by subtraction.
Coe: Yep. Yeah.
Jeremy: And so so you have that. So I think it's a line of sight thing. The other side of it is I want to see it from my customer side. So like I just
Coe: I love that too.
Jeremy: I just told you when we got on when we were logging in here to to record, I just spent the last couple of days in San Diego. If I'm out in the field and I've got someone with me, whether it be Bryan or an account manager, an account executive who's out there boots on the ground visiting clients with me, one, I'm able to see how they interact with the partner and identify things that they could have said. I can step in and say those things and grab a revenue opportunity that way or a corrective action that needs to be taken, you know, by one of our pros that are out there in the field, whatever. You get to see it. The other thing they get to see is that that that I don't like using the word subordinate, but that subordinate, that account manager, the account executive, whatever, get to see you interact and how you've built relationship and rapport, right? Because we all got to where we were by building relationships in our world, Shaun, before these other people, our employees, entered our world, we were building these relationships. And so getting them to see how comfortable. I am walking into hotel A and just having a conversation or walking through the kitchen or just identifying and finding where these people are. And then going through the details of the things that I'm curious about, what's going on with them, asking what's on the forecast, what's ahead of them, what can we be preparing for? That is developing that person who's coming along with me. It's an opportunity for me to change my line of sight from emails and Slack and text messages
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: and And looking at a dashboard and seeing what the performance is from a passive, you know, from a passive perspective, to seeing it from a very active perspective, because I'm seeing what's happening right now. The third thing it does for me, is it gives me an opportunity and to get in the field and bump into some of our pros on the ground who oftentimes don't get to meet a manager from InstaWork, certainly not somebody from a corporate level. And so getting to see them and say, How is it going? How do you enjoy working in this building? What you know, what's working for you? Is there anything you want me to take back to the management? And so that does a couple of things. One for the pro. They're like, my God, somebody wants
Coe: No, it's huge for Yeah, that
Jeremy: to hear what I have to say. And then hell, if I fix something or something impacts them positively, now they're now they're loyal to Instawork forever and they're looking for ways to grow.
Coe: I mean, yeah, it's it it really is.
Jeremy: Right. And they maybe they're thinking to themselves, how do I get one of these account manager roles or account executive roles or SDR roles or whatever? in the future. For the account manager who's who's shadowing or coming along with me, we're able to diagnose things again, that windshield time after the meeting to say, all right, what's our follow-up? What are we doing next? How can we say thank you for all of the business they're giving us? you know, all of those kinds of things. So it's really Again, going back to what I said, it's a line of sight thing. I am literally actively changing my line of sight by getting in in the trenches.
Coe: I agree with that, Jeremy. I appreciate you sharing that, man. It's and I can just see the kids' eyes, you know, light up when they're having that kind of conversation and just the buy it is so instantaneous. You know, you know, I've had we we we talk relatively similarly, but I I would kind of echo those sentiments. I I think for me it's perspective, and then I talk to a lot to any of my, you know, my account leads, usually those folks are at director or vice president levels, just about being present where you are. You know what I mean? Like Especially in today's age, like it's so easy to report the news and read the news. I'm using hospitality kind of language, right? Where if I'm in the office or if I'm just reading toast reports, I'm not really impacting the news though. And when you get to spend time with the team, it's one of those times where you're impacting the news in the present today, but you're impacting tomorrow's newspaper as well. I promise you that. And and the chance that you of what you get to learn from the folks when you're developing, and you know, I don't know if Jeremy said this, but I'll speak from my own side. When I am coaching someone. I always get better at what I'm doing. And this is the one thing Jeremy and I have talked off call. I would consider myself more of a coach than a CEO than a founder. I'm kind of a coach everywhere I go. And when push comes to shove or things are tough, like and I'm recalibrating someone that's a subordinate to me or maybe to one of my clients, the level of, you know, buy buy-level buy-in I get from that person. And then I'll speak it for the hiring managers that maybe don't do this for myself. It constantly reignites that fire and flame inside of me. I mean, and Jeremy, you and I know each other personally. So I mean for for me, everything that I always do is to see the growth in others, right? I mean, that's truly why I own the company that I do. I really get a kick out of that. But for the folks that are listening, maybe struggling in a hiring role or or a supervisor role, put some of this stuff to practice, guys, and shift will not happen as much. I mean this. If you really empower the team, and Jeremy and I use a lot of hourly examples. But this goes all the way up to vice presidents This goes all the way up to C levels. I mean, I can tell you some C level promotions that have gone from, let's say, you know, a a a senior mid to high level manager to the C suite that have really, really struggled. And then seeing some of the same thing like peer to peer from that C suite have kind of c come in and just get them up to speed is really is really impactful. a couple of the things I just like to add to this too, Jeremy. We talked about the cost of turnover, we talked about the cost of retention. There's no cost in conversations though, which you and I just talked about. There is literally no cost to the organization. There's no additional labor, there's no additional constraints on either of those parties when you're doing some of this. But to build a bed strength, you have to know your team. If you don't know your team, you have to get some of those endeavors going. If you're in an organization right now that doesn't have 30, 60, 90 days, mushroom it up, manage it up, have a conversation, or don't even wait. Start to have 30, 60, 90 with your direct department. No one above you is gonna yell at you for talking to your team. the takeaways that I see quite a bit, Jeremy, and all the clients that we represent today for folks that are trying to do good. I do think we are still, as much as the world's changed, is paralysis by analysis sometimes. And I think that's what impacts people from getting to the one-on-ones or getting to the folks. So I can at least tell. My clients. So what I tell my clients and and some of my team to do is I never want you to be behind on your admin, but you can't be behind on your on your HR conversations, especially if you're in your leader. If you want to be a leader for one of my teams, you do not forget about your people. And there is never an excuse to do a freaking Excel list over missing a one-on-one. So I'm just gonna echo that quite a bit throughout this show today, Jeremy. you gotta know your people. I know Jeremy said that. And then I see some good things here too, Jeremy. Are are you guys doing anything? I know we're getting close in time, but talk to me about some like bench audits. What what are you guys doing for you know, you talked about the one guy you have, but obviously we know folks out there need more than one. So I mean, do you guys have any good practices for what you're doing to kind of audit the bench strength or kind of know where you're at? Or or maybe sometimes we have two people that are almost ready for that one position and and how do you handle those?
Jeremy: Well, so so there's a couple of ways that I'll go about this. And and before I dig into kind of comparing a couple of high performers that are both maybe eligible for promotion or more responsibility, I think again, going back to the idea of the line of sight and what Shaun was talking about with one on ones and kind of getting in there and and hearing, you know, we mentioned on the last two episodes a term called scope creep. And that that scope creep meaning What is it that these people are doing? And is it directly correlated to the success of their role and their role and how it impacts the business? Right? If it's not, then they shouldn't be doing it. and if that scope creep is given to them by a direct supervisor and they're not being compensated, that's a really key way to drive burnout and turnover. Because again, you're overloading your people. So again, we I don't want to get away from this topic today. When we're talking about the positives of building bench strengths, the negative side is if you don't follow the right pathway, if you don't have the one on one conversations, if you don't talk to them, if you don't coach them effectively and consistently, okay, and doing that, but you just keep piling on because you've got this yes person who is very capable.
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: can produce and do this over and over and over again. And then all of a sudden they look up three months from now and they say, Well, they haven't replaced that AGM that left. I've basically been doing the job, but I'm still making sixteen ninety an hour. And that AGM left and they were making sixty thousand dollars a year. so you have to be organized and those one on ones can be a signal to you as a leader. to gather. What does your day look like? What are you doing? And Shaun, you and I have talked about this God in a past episode a while ago. But it's like, you know, back in my days working with chefs, if if I saw things not getting done, and a chef taught, one of my old chefs taught me this, we were seeing things not get done. And he went to his cooks and he said, okay, I give you a prep list and I give you this every day. I want you to write down every single task. For a full week, you're going to write down every single task when you started it, when you finished it, how much time it took. And we got rid of so much of that scope creep, so much of that extra nonsense, and some of the social aspect at work where where they're not doing jobs, they're not being productive and figuring those things out. So I say all that to say there's a 360 focus on this. And being a leader who gets in the in into the trenches and has those one-on-ones and is consistent with it will identify those distractions. And we'll identify those high performers who can handle it and deserve some kind of promotion, both economically and title-wise. Now, getting to the question you asked me about if I've got a couple of people, yeah, you see that all the time. I mean, if you're very fortunate and you're developing people, you're gonna constantly, if you're developing everybody and investing time into those people who want to grow, you're definitely gonna run into situations where two people are kind of neck and neck for the next next thing.
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: That's a really good problem to have. Right. And if if you've got a couple of shop, what's that? Right. Well, if you've got a couple of right,
Coe: Best problem to have. Still a problem, but it's a good problem. Yeah. I said it's still a problem, but it's the best problem to have. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy: but if you got a couple of stores, then maybe you're able to promote one in the inside this box and move the other one to the other box. And you can ask them who's willing to who's willing to go over. Or, you know, you know, like what we used to do in my hotel days is you would find that. And if I didn't have something in my direct outlet. If I had six other outlets on the property or four other outlets on the property, again, just like having a store that's three miles away, I have something on the other side of the lobby, you know, you're you're next in line for this. So when this opens, it's yours, kind of thing, if you want it. And and so, yeah, I think that that happens. Now, working for companies like HC Core, working for companies like Instawork that are a little bit more wide than tall, if you will. oftentimes you get people who are able to be promoted vertically,
Coe: Yeah, vertically or horizontally, yeah, yeah.
Jeremy: horizontally. And by the way, horizontal promotions can be really good too. And you can explain that to these people you're developing. Right now you're a front desk agent. The next thing I need you to do is go work in the restaurant so you learn that piece. If your goal is to ultimately be a GM of a hotel, You need to do all of these things as you move yourself up. You guys can't see me on screen here, but I'm moving back and forth and rising. You've gotta, you've gotta, you've gotta start from the bottom and work your way up. I was talking to a hotel manager this week of a of a luxury property, and then we were talking about exactly this. Well, we both got our start, it was in the school of hard knocks, Shaun. We I started as a dishwasher, right, man?
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: And I and I got browbeat by chefs and I got, you know, and I got beat up a little bit. and you work your way
Coe: I still have scars.
Jeremy: up, but right, exactly. But you work your
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: way up into and develop. Now, the other thing that I want our listeners thinking about also. Just because you see something in someone, and we touched on this a little bit, just because you see something in someone, if talking to them, they don't desire that, it's not a good use of your time to continue to work on that, right? Like
Coe: Yeah, don't sell someone.
Jeremy: Like
Coe: Yeah, we're not saying sell, Jeremy, for sure. Not to interrupt you, but we I I that's a good point to say 'cause you and I get passionate. But at no point in time are Jeremy and I saying sell the future to someone. Not to interrupt you, brother, but I I'm glad that you said that. I'll keep talking 'cause I saw you taking a drink there. Yeah.
Jeremy: Well, and you said it on the last episode when we were talking about you said it on the last episode when we were talking about interviews. You see a resume, you get super excited about it, and you find yourself sitting in the interview chair, and you're trying to convince them
Coe: yeah.
Jeremy: to come to you because you're so excited and you're doing most of the talking, right? It's the same
Coe: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy: thing. We want, we want to identify those key players that want the growth. And they're willing to grow. sideways and vertically and and and into different roles and positions. And again, going back and giving kudos to Bryan, he's done that. He he has moved around into product ops and he's been an account manager and he's done these things and this thing. And and he's invested his own time and resources into learning to be the best that he can be. And that's where you want to build your bench, right? You want those people who are like, and I'm sure you've seen it, Shaun, you know, going back into the restaurants,
Coe: He's gonna kill her.
Jeremy: You know, again, we talk about we talked about Stephanie and the kind of that that meteor meteoric rise. now you mentioned on today's show that she had been a manager before. I didn't know that on the last episode. But that meteoric, it seemed like right. Well, but it seemed like
Coe: Yeah. Well I'm I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid. You know, sorry.
Jeremy: a meteoric rise. But but like tell us, you know, w just in the last couple of minutes here, tell us just a quick story of like someone with a more A more controlled step that you that you saw to kind of wrap this up.
Coe: I mean, we're we're kind of doing it right now, and I got a good example, but I I want to go back and just touch on two quick things and I know I'll wrap it up. But you said you said a lot of great things. number one, thank you for talking about the scope creep, because i if you're having a conversation without specifics, specifics meaning a designated program or a conversation, remember set and setting is real, so one-on-ones can happen like Jeremy and are now. But if you're promoting someone, a set and setting is a different setting. It's a sit-down looking across, usually written documented. Without that kind of conversation, you're just a douchebag putting more on someone and they're going to end up building resentment really, really, really quick. So I'm glad that you talked about it, Jeremy. And I'm sure you and I have both been there in the past when we're younger for the best intentions. Without that conversation, it goes sideways. Jeremy talks really quick about situation A and B before about if we have two people, right? And they're both ready. Situation A that we talked about, two people ready, forces an ownership group to grow. Situation B forces an ownership group to slow. Both are kind of painful. One is really fucking fun. One is very scary. So, so choose your pain, right? And this is just the way I talk to a lot of hiring managers. There's going to be opportunities where we wouldn't have a job. To talk about a very chronological growth pattern, I'm going to talk about a colleague that's in my organization. And I'm going to talk about her before she was with me because I was also in the same program. We were both in a DO designate program in a former concept. Where we were categorically at two tiers below, being taught two tiers above over the course of six to nine months. We were given a direct supervisor as a peer that had no supervision over us, but maybe in a market that we would report to in the next year. We had weekly breakouts. So we would have conversations around the profit and loss statements for the organizations that we were currently running. We'd have market recaps of the markets that we were potentially being promoted to. That was the better part of six to nine months. In that group of humans at the time, I think the oldest person was probably me at 29. there was 15 of us. everyone besides one is an executive today, right? To just kind of tell that played out. The company went from 25 units to 150 units in six years. It was the fastest growing concept in the United States for six years. It's phenomenal. but Jeremy, when I say everything was designated, we had a designated program set. If you were the next up, Because this is how fast it was growing. We had a year, Jeremy, where we had to pull off 15 openings because we couldn't grow fast enough. And that was the last time it happened. So everything that Jeremy and I have regurgitated a little bit today are something that I've actually practiced, where we had designates for HR department, marketing department operations in the field, field service marketing. We allowed horizontal. And I've taken that same practice with my own company. And Jeremy, I'll use myself as an example because I don't want you guys to think this ends. You know this behind the scenes more than most. I had to take it very categorically transitioned with myself to get more engineer. Now I don't have to become an engineer, but I followed the same pattern that was taught to me in Sun Capital. We've deployed that same pattern for a lot of hiring the best for our clients, but it's systemized, guys. And what I mean by this, when I say have a program, we literally had an uncapped personnel that if you're promotable, You're gonna go into this program. So the program was for multi-units and above, but then we also created one, Jeremy, for the hour lease to management. That that's how good the program went. So if you fast forward for that first day, you know, and I'll tell you in reverse, we went into an end of the year conversation where we wanted to open 15 units and we had to pull back solely because of personnel, not because of capital, right? We just and it was a culture that you kind of had to grow from within Jeremy a little bit, you know. So it You could hire someone from the outside, but it took six to nine months just to get them cultured. So so I think when you're hitting all the segments, right, there's one-on-ones, there's conversations, there's mirror increases. None of us were paid more for that endeavor, Jeremy. And not all of us made it at the same time. But because of that fact, what you talked about scope creep, without that program, all of us probably would have been burned out and quit. Cause I think for myself, Jeremy, shoot, I was probably in that program for nine and a half months. And I remember there was like three people that got promoted before me. And I was like, man, I really hope this is gonna happen. But right as I was having that thought, my peer was calling me and saying, Hey man, don't worry. You know, this is what's happening. So so they were so organized. And I didn't see it at the time, Jeremy. But I'm sorry for using that as an example. But every single person in there became a director, VP of new store openings, right? And and it took some of us to the point. It took that total group. I think three to four years before all of us were promoted that next ring. But we were all getting merit increases, happy and and we stayed in that organization. I think this was two thousand thirteen. And I think I left in two thousand sixteen or seventeen, you know. So so phenomenal results that they got out of that. And very structured.
Jeremy: Well, I would I mean, that was a very intentional bench building process. So
Coe: Yes.
Jeremy: kudos to that leadership. It was incredibly intentional. It was well thought out. You probably had different people who were giving their insights. So, you know, good episode here, Shaun. Good discussion. Probably could go on for another hour if we wanted to about this exact topic. But folks, thanks again for listening in. Yeah,
Coe: I love bench strength.
Jeremy: I like me too. Don't forget to hit like, share, subscribe. continue to follow us. more, more certainly coming. And listening in the future. Talk to you soon.
Coe: Thanks, guys.
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: and I can't wait to hear about this bird were that you were saving.
Coe: yeah, I I spent five hours I didn't have trying to save a bird that I think I clipped with my with my lawnmower. So didn't cancel any client calls, but it was 30 minute endeavor that ended up turning into a quick five hours. So definitely a story for another time, but shift happens definitely happened to me today. And it's you know, a couple days from being a father, I think some of that nurturing instinct's kicking in. 'Cause my wife's like, What are you doing? I'm like driving a bird to the bird sanctuary. So I'll be back. But Definitely put me to a little bind, Jeremy. I'm glad I got back in time and thanks for rolling the punches with me. So if he if he becomes a pet, I'll name him Shift Happens or something, you know. So we'll keep you posted.
Jeremy: alright
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: folks. Last couple of episodes were kind of prelude to today's topic. And if you think back, we were talking about middle managers and how they're really not going to become obsolete. They're just gonna be purposed a little bit differently with the automations and the AIs coming into kind of the norm, if you will. And then And then the most recent episode, and thank you all for listening and tuning in, was really about hiring and reviewing resumes and and really understanding that hiring is a skill, right? So we've got the people who already work for us and what are we doing with them? And then we've got the people coming in. And so today, Shaun, I I really want to dive into kind of building the bench. So, how do we get people to that middle management levels that are already with us? What are the benefits? What are What are maybe some of the drawbacks? I have some statistical information that we'll dive into here in terms of like cost of attrition, cost of turnover, and cost of retention, more importantly, and looking into those. And I think those are pretty eye-opening for hiring managers out there and for operational managers out there that maybe aren't giving the adequate amount of time, or maybe they have not themselves been developed enough to develop people. to to build that retention. So we're gonna dive in straight away here, Shaun. but just wanted to open it up and kind of set set the table here.
Coe: Well, I mean, you in the last few episodes too, I think I've recanted a few of this. Like most of our clients we want to see at 70% internal promotes, 30% external. you know, and we've had a handful of conversations around our consulting clients, and some of the things that have saved the day, you know, throughout time have been the level of our bench strength. And you know, when Jeremy and I talk about building the bench, it's I want to say it's a no-brainer, but I really want to boil some of these down. You always have to be recruiting if you're in a hiring manager seat. There is never a time where you should not be looking for talent. if you are an engaged employee, and I tell hiring managers this all the time, I assume 100% of the people on my team are always looking for a better opportunity. And it is my responsibility to provide them with the best opportunity. so I just think as you know, as the world changes, Jeremy, and we've been kind of covering this over the last few episodes, nothing's really changed. I think it's a a lot of kind of getting back to some of the basics. I will add in some how automation, especially with HC Core, can help you really. Build that bench strength, right? Making sure we're having good merit increases, making sure that we're having great one on ones conversations for for promotions and all that. So so one of the things I really love about these kind of episodes, Jeremy, is you know as much as me and you you call me out all the time with my CEO brain, but I really like to talk in threes. And I like things to be a balloon. So when I say build the bench, I think it impacts all things on HR. Right. So if I'm building the bench, it's going to force me to have those one-on-ones like I talked about. It's going to force me to really know where my people are. It's going to force me to maybe know where Sally Sue wants to get promoted, maybe moving on. And I think like when you're really knocking out of the park and you got a good bench strength. you know it wasn't just them focusing on the bench strength, if that all makes sense. So I I love this one as a trigger statement to really make an a a new HR manager or maybe a struggling HR manager kind of revisit some of the basics.
Jeremy: And so I'm gonna ask you a question, Shaun, because you you you said for for those hiring managers, those operation managers, they should always be recruiting, they should always be looking for outstanding performers out there. I I'm I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I'm gonna I'm gonna offer a thought. When you say always recruiting, I think people always think externally outside of your business, but recruiting can be a re internal thing. It could be identifying, the those key players. And you talked about on the last episode that bartender Stephanie. I now
Coe: Yep.
Jeremy: that was an extreme. let's level set for a second here. Somebody going from bartender to GM is a little bit more of an extreme. Anybody who's run a restaurant before knows that there's a couple of layers in between there to get to that point.
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: ordinarily. so that was an extreme situation. but you know unpacking recruiting is not Only an external piece. Would you would you agree with that statement?
Coe: 100% agree, Jeremy. And I don't think we said this on one of the shows. I think we were talking in prep for this. You know, we we always talk about positive turnover, right? And I think you and I were, I think I was first calling you to see if you've heard that term because I know it's like I don't know if everyone uses it. When we talk about positive turnover, you're gonna lose probably 50 to 150 percent of your staff for any reasons. We like to talk about losing them into a promotion. So obviously, Jeremy, they're not going somewhere else. But I I think when when we are consistently growing. the next ring of supervision and even a leader. And to kind of give some notes on that Stephanie one, that that young girl at the time did have some manager experience, right? So she was just taking a kind of step back. But it's amazing as a way to build that bench strength too, right? The reason I had known that was taking the time to have some one on ones and really sitting down. So to really recant that conversation first, it was about 30 seconds of a full 360 workforce solution and about a one hour shift. You know, so sitting down, seeking to know, having a one on one, hey, I saw you really take care of your time. We have ads out, right? So I'm gonna go back to that story. We're looking for GMs. We know this guy's gonna quit. She had a little bit of experience, but if I had not done that 365 kind of look around of like, let's let's recap the day, let's sit down with a the key staff that was really keeping it together, you know, it and I don't know if this fleshes out to you, Jeremy, but but I often and when we're coaching any recruiting company or hiring manager. We don't just want to assume, and you and I have never really talked at depth of this, but I want to promote 70% internal, right? We said that when we started off. But if I'm not trying to have one on ones, that number is going to be closer to 5%. And I don't know if that kind of takes us off the track, but you know, to go back and answer your question, if you are consistently hitting your one on ones, if you are consistently having engaged conversations around merit increase and performance, I would I'm gonna say a bold statement. I don't think there's an organization out there in any industry that cannot grow to enterprise level by promoting from 70% within if you're actually having conversations, right? Cause I just like to go back in time, Jeremy. I really think people like to do a good job. I don't think the average or even a very, very small percentage of the population goes to work every day and says, Yeah, I'm gonna fuck up today. I'm gonna try to be a pain in the ass. I really think
Jeremy: Yeah.
Coe: 99% of the people come in, right? And just They're waiting for someone to motivate them. They're waiting for someone to kind of unpack that unseen skill. And I think the folks that listen to these kind of podcasts, it's it's kind of our responsibility to have that. So to give it back to Jeremy, yeah, we love that that positive turnover for promotions, but I think a lot of things got to be clicking. And hopefully we can unpack some of that today, Jeremy, on this episode of like, what are we looking for? And how do we build that bench strength? And, you know, how do I see those diamonds in the roughs where maybe Sally hasn't raised her hand yet that she's ready for the next step.
Jeremy: So you talked a little bit about how you gave some examples. I think what's really important as we as we dive into the details here, I did a little bit of research. and I'm gonna pivot this research into the why we wanna do this, why we wanna be recruiting, why we wanna be doing one-on-ones, why we wanna be developing people, finding those diamonds in the rough and and teaching them and developing them into elevation through those one-on-ones and through additional responsibilities and Before we go too far into the details that I'm going to share here in a second, when you add those additional responsibilities and they adopt them and they are producing, making sure that we are compensating because you don't want that person to walk across the street because they don't feel appreciated, they feel underappreciated. Because remember, money
Coe: Yes.
Jeremy: is valuable to everyone, but part of it is a scorecard. I do X, so I should earn Y, right? So so we should look at that. But but In some of my research in prepping for today, Shaun, a couple of kind of outstanding things to shout out here. Replacement costs range from 30 to 50% of annual salary for entry-level roles and 200 to 400% for executive positions. So let's
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: bring that down. This is coming from the Work Institute. Projects per departure cost You will reach by 2027 over $28,000 per turnover to your company. So think about that. Like you talked about on the last episode, you know, Bar Louis was having a $22,000 day. All of that
Coe: Yep.
Jeremy: is wiped out with one turnover. All of it is wiped out with
Coe: One turnover.
Jeremy: one turnover. Okay. So that's the first piece. Now, some of these are a little bit older data, you know, hasn't been updated from from SHERM. but a 2025 benchmark report from SHERM, the US average cost per hire $5,400 for non-executives and almost $36,000 for executive roles. Up 21% from 2022. Why does all of this matter? And and by the way, the average cost of a bad hire is almost $15,000. Why does all of this matter?
Coe: I mean, none of these ex those, I mean,
Jeremy: Go ahead.
Coe: I don't want to say obvious, I guess that it those costs are not correlated to a cost of doing business besides the actual personnel. So if you think about that, you're talking about one statistic. Let's say that the average company right now in the United States, Jeremy, I don't have the statistic in front of me, you might have an in SHRM Let's say most concepts are probably shooting an 80 to 120% turnover year to year post pandemic. At that case, if you're not having positive turnover at $26 $36,000 per candidate replacement at executive, you go out of business. Or it's just a needless expense that goes in the profitability margins and it takes key resources away from actually putting money back into the bucket. You know, so I've talked about this on both ends too, Jeremy. I really don't think most companies today, I know Instawork does, I know HC Core does, I know probably a handful of our greatest clients do as well. What is the true cost of turnover? What is the true cost of recruitment? You know, and I mean from from missed positions to open positions to the advertisements that are up to the advertisements that are forgotten to be up. God forbid you lose someone. But then you look at that transpose to a positive turnover, right? Jeremy, and you t you've talked at length about this in the last few episodes. If I am constantly hiring a new person at my lowest tier or the middle tier, and I'm growing to the executive. And I'm still hiring from 15% out so we don't become a group of kissing cousins. That that amount of dollar spent for recruitment and retention, Jeremy, drops by 80 to 90%. And the in the morale at the same time, Jeremy, and I I don't think this is spoken about enough. When you have a culture where the everyone that enters your organization knows that if you do XYZ, that that that circle of accountability, if I do X, I get Y. If I go above and hit T, I'm going to get a promotion. When that is common knowledge and as much as the wallpaper behind you, the grow you can't stop the growth in an organization, right? Then it becomes a challenge where can we focus enough on our key objective to get enough new revenue coming in to open a new unit to kind of facilitate this growth? And that's a great place to be, Jeremy. And I've been there with a few brands before I've owned this. And I gotta tell you, there's still some challenges, but I would take those challenges all day over the challenges of being understaffed.
Jeremy: Well, and I think when hiring managers and ops leaders listening to us right now are being honest with themselves, anytime they have lost someone of value, s salarily or hourly, but let's use salary as the example here. So a middle manager who's making sixty thousand dollars a year, right? And that person leaves for a myriad of reasons, but chief of those is oftentimes, especially if they're a good performer. Is because they feel undervalued, right? They they say, you know what, somebody in my position, I've done some research, I should be making closer to 70 or 80,000. To retain that person, it costs you 10, 15, maybe $20,000 a year to retain them. But when you go out there and look
Coe: Glad you're touching on this.
Jeremy: for someone, when you first off, we've already said it. We said the hiring cost, we've already, we've already discussed it for executive roles. You know, so somewhere between that $5,400 for the hourly role and the $35,000 for the executive role, let's call it a clean $20,000. That same $20,000 you could have given to somebody who's already been trained, already effective, already productive, already knows your product, already knows how to operate, and the team already responds to them. Or you can bring someone in off the street, likely pay them what this person was originally asking for anyway, and they're not trained. They're not. You know, integrated, they're not loyal, their team is not loyal to them. And your productivity for a couple of months takes a dive because there's an
Coe: Takes a huge dive.
Jeremy: onboarding period. Okay. And so retention and building your bench, exactly what Shaun was saying, guys. Building your bench builds a reputation, it builds a loyalty, it builds a camaraderie, and it builds knowledge to know. That this company finds it important to invest in their own people. That doesn't mean that somebody's gonna be there in perpetuity. It doesn't mean they're gonna, you know, some of the best managers I've been able to develop in my life, I have told them straight out, my goal is for you to take my job. But I also am honest knowing that if I do my job really well in developing you, you're gonna leave here and go do something bigger for yourself. Those are two good wins, by the way. That's not a bad thing, but
Coe: Those are awesome. Yeah.
Jeremy: but if I'm able to develop that person and that Instead of leaving, or that positive turnover, as you say, because that's the definition of positive turnover, if they grow into the next role because of what you did. but
Coe: Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely.
Jeremy: what would be better is if they're in store A and that positive turnover is that you were able to open store B because of all of the success and be able to promote them to oversee that's a home run, right? That you if you promote
Coe: Yeah, home run, man.
Jeremy: them over store now, now you've elevated them and Everybody on that team, from the store clerk to the person doing the inventory and restocking the shelves to the server, to the host, to the dishwasher, to the chef, they all see that this is something that they themselves, if they apply themselves, can achieve.
Coe: And I know we're gonna talk about this in the next one, Jeremy, but you're you're talking about a high developed team, right? And when and when a workforce starts to become a team and we all see each other wearing the same colored jerseys, and sometimes we're gonna come in, and I don't care if it's finance guys, right? You can have the same setting with a group of engineers and an MSP because I've seen it. When we all see the same prize and the same struggles. We tend to bleed together a little bit. We tend to work a little bit harder. And I loved what Jeremy said too, because there is always a congruence too with the top performing companies that are promoting the most from internally, Jeremy, where a hundred percent of them have the same mentality where I don't see, we don't see people as possessions. We're well aware that you're gonna use us for what you need. One of those wins might be you getting promoted beyond even this endeavor, and that's gonna be great for both of us. And what that candidate or young you know employee may hear, it and it may be that there's a better opportunity than HC Core or or in store for them. And it may be that there's not, Jeremy. And usually what I see when there's an organization having those kind of performance conversations where hey, we're gonna grow you and we wanna grow you to as far as you can go, and it doesn't matter where you land with that, those people tend to have longer tenure. I don't know if you resonate with that as well, but I just feel when you focus on the bench strength, there's so many positive, unintended consequences of that, Jeremy, that I just think a lot of things start to fall into a win. You know, we're talking about the culture that it builds, we're talking about the observations that the team see. But I even think in some of the verbiage, when people walk in, like it's really exciting when you're working for a company that you know you can go as high as you want. And if you don't, you have to look in the mirror. It also, in a weird way, Jeremy. Filters out a little bit of the underperformers, right? So I've just seen this in great organizations. If we're always promoting from within and you have a great interview like that, like, hey man, you're coming in as an SDR, we're gonna love you, but we're hoping you don't want to stay as an SDR because we are a growing organization. You go from an SDR to a BDR right? And if you start to give that promotion kind of chain, and obviously they got hit KPIs, but even on the interview, you're you're gonna have people leaning in that wanna be grown, and you're gonna have people backing out that are like, I kind of wanted to slip between the cracks. So I I just think there's so much net benefit when we focus on building the strength, building the bench strength. And Jeremy, I know you've got a couple of really good ideas in here. And I I really think this is something, you know, you and I talk quite a bit offline. I I think you guys do a really good job of it. I've heard you talk about how you develop people. I think you do a phenomenal job of kind of identifying those folks. But but how do you go about in your organization now or maybe even some some previous endeavors, like I think you got the vibe of who's going to be the next person, but I w I wonder if you could just unpack some of that for us. Like how are you kind of working on that next sales professional for you? What are some key identifiers that you might look at? Like say if someone's been with you for only three weeks, you know, because I know sometimes we get in, like what are some things that Jeremy looks for or maybe Instawork to really identify th those folks that might want to build the bench with us?
Jeremy: So I'll go from a couple of different angles. you know, with with InstaWork currently, I'll talk a little bit about, you know, the guy who makes me successful. And that's my right hand guy, Bryan you know, he was actually at InstaWork before me. And he had the benefit of working in a couple of different roles when I met him. And he was on a pathway as someone who kind of became a bit of a Swiss Army knife. And, you know.
Coe: Okay.
Jeremy: For those of you who know my story with Instawork and kind of building out the hotel division, the company decided to give me a resource in Bryan and say, look, we're gonna give you this guy. He has this much experience, this much knowledge, and he's I I give him all the credit of the world. He's a damn savant when it comes to the back end of our system. and I attribute a lot of the success, but really the key things that I see in a gentleman like him. Is he's got no he's got no stop to him. He's got fire in his butt belly, he'll run through walls, and he's he's open to learn. He's open to fail but fail forward, try stuff and fall flat on his face and then get up and say, All right,
Coe: I love it.
Jeremy: well, that didn't work, and let's go and we'll figure something else out. more times than not, he's succeeding beyond that. And so so I'm really proud of what he's doing. But really, what I see in him is is He's loyal to the company, he's dedicated, he's fair, he builds rapport and relationship with his peers. He's he's a good 360 leader, so he's able to talk to anyone in the company effectively and and and impart ideas and and impart criticism. constructive criticism, of course, but say, you know what? I'm seeing this, this isn't really working. Perhaps can we do something like this? And he's not afraid to get his hands dirty, roll up his sleeves. And I think this is a key thing. I actually just posted something on LinkedIn. Today, one of the things that that we do is something called work a shift, which gives you the ability, it's a mandatory activity that we do in that once a year, you can do it as many times as you want to, but a minimum of once a year, every manager in the company has to go out and actually work a shift like an Instawork Pro. We have to clock in, clock out, we have to work the shift, we have to and
Coe: I love it. I love it, man.
Jeremy: here's the here's the the reason for it. The reason for it is. For you listeners out there, when was the last time you got into the mud with your team? When was the last time you knew what they were doing? And by the way, the reverse is equally as beneficial. I'm going to tell you guys a story, but the reverse is equally beneficial. You build loyalty by being around your troops, by being, you know, on the ground. This is why, you know, in in the military, you know, that that captain, that sergeant who's down in the trenches with their team. Are well loved, well respected, have very loyal troops. you know, I remember back in my restaurant days, Shaun, I used to do this at least once or twice a quarter. Where when I was running the restaurant, I would take a section and I would I would challenge my team and I'd be like, you know what? I think I can make more tips than you in my section today than you all can make. And the benefit is you get
Coe: I love this.
Jeremy: all my tips anyway, because I can't keep them in my role. But, but I get bragging rights if I get if I can beat all you guys today, right? So that includes upselling. So what does that do? That shows them that this work is not beneath the leader. It allows the leader to see what those individuals are doing on the floor, which allows this leader to develop those people who are either doing wonderful things that he wants to impart on everybody else in the in on the team, or identify other key individuals who are maybe. not hitting the mark and what do we need to do? And so you take someone, you say, all right, I'll take a section, you shadow me today. Let me show you what I'm doing. And and restaurants is a perfect example of this because it's so easy from a day to day to have someone shadow you. You can have them shadow today and not shadow tomorrow. But getting in the trenches to me is a really good way to build your bench. One, you get to see how people perform. So like for example in selling and I'm gonna hand it back to you here, Shaun. We would do boots on the ground, and Matthew taught me this when I started staffing with Matthew. Boots on the ground. We would go out into the field, we'd walk into hotel A, and Matthew, being the experienced person, would walk up to the front desk, get past the gatekeeper, get a leader to come out and talk to you with whatever way that he positioned the approach and and what he had to say. And then we'd go to the next hotel and he'd say, All right, now it's your turn. Then we get back in the car after it was my turn and we dissect it. While we had windshield time, dissect it. Development, train, try it again, development, train,
Coe: Great education. Yep.
Jeremy: try it again. All that did, it did a couple of things. One, it reinforced my capability in what I was there to do at that time in that individual, you know, individual contributor role. But it also taught me how to develop the people who will come behind me. Right? So it's it's hand in glove. You're learning both ways. So folks. And then I'm gonna hand it back to Shaun here. What I'm talking about here is you don't need to overthink the development of your people. If you make them great at what they do, and as Shaun started out at the beginning of this and have one-on-ones to ask them, I know this is crazy, have this crazy conversation that says, What do you want to do? What are your goals? What are your aspirations? Do you want to be here for the long haul, or is this a stop in your journey to earn money now and then you know, in the future. That's not a bad thing either. Knowing your team to know who's an individual contributor for the time being and has no aspirations to grow in this field. They're doing it because they're in school. This helps them pay their their their school tuition. And as soon as they graduate, they're done. that's good to know too, because then you're not you're not putting in too much time and effort into that individual who isn't going to be there a year or two from now, like this other person who's like, Yes, I'm here and I want to stay. So, you know, I went through a lot there, Shaun. Let me kick it back to you.
Coe: No, it was golden, Jeremy. If I may, I just want to ask a couple questions about that. Cause like you know I'm very hands-on too, and and as a CEO, there's times where I have to be hands-off, but I I find again the organizations that are some of the best are not afraid to get their hands muddy. question when you are working side by side. Do you get a different perspective or maybe perception is a better way to say it of like when you're actually working side by side with a person than when you're in your normal supervisor role? And I'll give you some context because I've noticed this quite a bit, more in retail, more in probably management, ops management, and and hospitality. But I'll have a director, sometimes even a VP. And if they really get into a very comfortable role, Of hating multiple units, right? So I don't care if it's retail, it can even be healthcare. If I go to a unit, I'm not auditing, but let's say I'm a multi-unit supervisor, right? Many, many roles like that. It's not that those guys and gals get lazy, but at times I think they don't they start to miss stuff, right? And they can be really good because they got promoted to that role. But what I often find when I challenge someone at that level. To get their hands dirty a little bit, they'll usually come back to me and say, Man, I saw so much more on this shift than I've ever seen. Because if I'm going and supervising, right, and it's different with the sales team, but you might be checking on KPIs, it might be remote. But if you're going for a day and you're doing side by side, kind of what Jeremy said with Matt, of hey, I'm gonna watch you do some sales today. I'm gonna observe. We're gonna coach. So you're gonna, we're gonna watch you do three, you're gonna watch me do three, we're gonna unpack. I tend to pick up on a lot of opportunities that even though it's the same Shaun, if I didn't get on that same level, I just would not have seen. And I don't know if that correlates in your position as much, but I just kinda wanted to ask that. So when you're side by side with them, do you see do you kind of see more level set and you get a better reading on the actual situation?
Jeremy: Say it's line of sight. So when you're sitting in your CEO
Coe: There you go.
Jeremy: chair or your VP chair, your focus, your your dynamic focus, you're you know, you're you're kicking out the distractions. So so if I'm running a restaurant on the GM, that's different than I'm the AGM or the kitchen manager, right? Where the AGM, the kitchen manager, AGM has to be on the floor in the front, kitchen managers in the back, making sure things are going. You're seeing what's going on in the weeds, whereas the GM may be in the office, you know, filing invoices, counting money, updating the PL, whatever the case may be. It's a line of sight issue. And so
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: I think there's a couple of different ways the leaders out there can approach this. You can be reactive when something's gone wrong and say, all right, now I need to get in the weeds and go figure out what happened with this person.
Coe: Now I got Yeah w
Jeremy: And then because if they're doing it once, if they're doing it twice, if they're doing it three times, they're doing it a lot more than that, right? so you're gonna
Coe: Yep. Yep.
Jeremy: be able to see that, and then you're gonna be able to decide whether you want to coach that out of them or coach them out of the of the the unit, the business, whatever the case. and that also is positive attrition because if you're taking someone out that that's not a good fit. That's a positive. addition by subtraction.
Coe: Yep. Yeah.
Jeremy: And so so you have that. So I think it's a line of sight thing. The other side of it is I want to see it from my customer side. So like I just
Coe: I love that too.
Jeremy: I just told you when we got on when we were logging in here to to record, I just spent the last couple of days in San Diego. If I'm out in the field and I've got someone with me, whether it be Bryan or an account manager, an account executive who's out there boots on the ground visiting clients with me, one, I'm able to see how they interact with the partner and identify things that they could have said. I can step in and say those things and grab a revenue opportunity that way or a corrective action that needs to be taken, you know, by one of our pros that are out there in the field, whatever. You get to see it. The other thing they get to see is that that that I don't like using the word subordinate, but that subordinate, that account manager, the account executive, whatever, get to see you interact and how you've built relationship and rapport, right? Because we all got to where we were by building relationships in our world, Shaun, before these other people, our employees, entered our world, we were building these relationships. And so getting them to see how comfortable. I am walking into hotel A and just having a conversation or walking through the kitchen or just identifying and finding where these people are. And then going through the details of the things that I'm curious about, what's going on with them, asking what's on the forecast, what's ahead of them, what can we be preparing for? That is developing that person who's coming along with me. It's an opportunity for me to change my line of sight from emails and Slack and text messages
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: and And looking at a dashboard and seeing what the performance is from a passive, you know, from a passive perspective, to seeing it from a very active perspective, because I'm seeing what's happening right now. The third thing it does for me, is it gives me an opportunity and to get in the field and bump into some of our pros on the ground who oftentimes don't get to meet a manager from InstaWork, certainly not somebody from a corporate level. And so getting to see them and say, How is it going? How do you enjoy working in this building? What you know, what's working for you? Is there anything you want me to take back to the management? And so that does a couple of things. One for the pro. They're like, my God, somebody wants
Coe: No, it's huge for Yeah, that
Jeremy: to hear what I have to say. And then hell, if I fix something or something impacts them positively, now they're now they're loyal to Instawork forever and they're looking for ways to grow.
Coe: I mean, yeah, it's it it really is.
Jeremy: Right. And they maybe they're thinking to themselves, how do I get one of these account manager roles or account executive roles or SDR roles or whatever? in the future. For the account manager who's who's shadowing or coming along with me, we're able to diagnose things again, that windshield time after the meeting to say, all right, what's our follow-up? What are we doing next? How can we say thank you for all of the business they're giving us? you know, all of those kinds of things. So it's really Again, going back to what I said, it's a line of sight thing. I am literally actively changing my line of sight by getting in in the trenches.
Coe: I agree with that, Jeremy. I appreciate you sharing that, man. It's and I can just see the kids' eyes, you know, light up when they're having that kind of conversation and just the buy it is so instantaneous. You know, you know, I've had we we we talk relatively similarly, but I I would kind of echo those sentiments. I I think for me it's perspective, and then I talk to a lot to any of my, you know, my account leads, usually those folks are at director or vice president levels, just about being present where you are. You know what I mean? Like Especially in today's age, like it's so easy to report the news and read the news. I'm using hospitality kind of language, right? Where if I'm in the office or if I'm just reading toast reports, I'm not really impacting the news though. And when you get to spend time with the team, it's one of those times where you're impacting the news in the present today, but you're impacting tomorrow's newspaper as well. I promise you that. And and the chance that you of what you get to learn from the folks when you're developing, and you know, I don't know if Jeremy said this, but I'll speak from my own side. When I am coaching someone. I always get better at what I'm doing. And this is the one thing Jeremy and I have talked off call. I would consider myself more of a coach than a CEO than a founder. I'm kind of a coach everywhere I go. And when push comes to shove or things are tough, like and I'm recalibrating someone that's a subordinate to me or maybe to one of my clients, the level of, you know, buy buy-level buy-in I get from that person. And then I'll speak it for the hiring managers that maybe don't do this for myself. It constantly reignites that fire and flame inside of me. I mean, and Jeremy, you and I know each other personally. So I mean for for me, everything that I always do is to see the growth in others, right? I mean, that's truly why I own the company that I do. I really get a kick out of that. But for the folks that are listening, maybe struggling in a hiring role or or a supervisor role, put some of this stuff to practice, guys, and shift will not happen as much. I mean this. If you really empower the team, and Jeremy and I use a lot of hourly examples. But this goes all the way up to vice presidents This goes all the way up to C levels. I mean, I can tell you some C level promotions that have gone from, let's say, you know, a a a senior mid to high level manager to the C suite that have really, really struggled. And then seeing some of the same thing like peer to peer from that C suite have kind of c come in and just get them up to speed is really is really impactful. a couple of the things I just like to add to this too, Jeremy. We talked about the cost of turnover, we talked about the cost of retention. There's no cost in conversations though, which you and I just talked about. There is literally no cost to the organization. There's no additional labor, there's no additional constraints on either of those parties when you're doing some of this. But to build a bed strength, you have to know your team. If you don't know your team, you have to get some of those endeavors going. If you're in an organization right now that doesn't have 30, 60, 90 days, mushroom it up, manage it up, have a conversation, or don't even wait. Start to have 30, 60, 90 with your direct department. No one above you is gonna yell at you for talking to your team. the takeaways that I see quite a bit, Jeremy, and all the clients that we represent today for folks that are trying to do good. I do think we are still, as much as the world's changed, is paralysis by analysis sometimes. And I think that's what impacts people from getting to the one-on-ones or getting to the folks. So I can at least tell. My clients. So what I tell my clients and and some of my team to do is I never want you to be behind on your admin, but you can't be behind on your on your HR conversations, especially if you're in your leader. If you want to be a leader for one of my teams, you do not forget about your people. And there is never an excuse to do a freaking Excel list over missing a one-on-one. So I'm just gonna echo that quite a bit throughout this show today, Jeremy. you gotta know your people. I know Jeremy said that. And then I see some good things here too, Jeremy. Are are you guys doing anything? I know we're getting close in time, but talk to me about some like bench audits. What what are you guys doing for you know, you talked about the one guy you have, but obviously we know folks out there need more than one. So I mean, do you guys have any good practices for what you're doing to kind of audit the bench strength or kind of know where you're at? Or or maybe sometimes we have two people that are almost ready for that one position and and how do you handle those?
Jeremy: Well, so so there's a couple of ways that I'll go about this. And and before I dig into kind of comparing a couple of high performers that are both maybe eligible for promotion or more responsibility, I think again, going back to the idea of the line of sight and what Shaun was talking about with one on ones and kind of getting in there and and hearing, you know, we mentioned on the last two episodes a term called scope creep. And that that scope creep meaning What is it that these people are doing? And is it directly correlated to the success of their role and their role and how it impacts the business? Right? If it's not, then they shouldn't be doing it. and if that scope creep is given to them by a direct supervisor and they're not being compensated, that's a really key way to drive burnout and turnover. Because again, you're overloading your people. So again, we I don't want to get away from this topic today. When we're talking about the positives of building bench strengths, the negative side is if you don't follow the right pathway, if you don't have the one on one conversations, if you don't talk to them, if you don't coach them effectively and consistently, okay, and doing that, but you just keep piling on because you've got this yes person who is very capable.
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: can produce and do this over and over and over again. And then all of a sudden they look up three months from now and they say, Well, they haven't replaced that AGM that left. I've basically been doing the job, but I'm still making sixteen ninety an hour. And that AGM left and they were making sixty thousand dollars a year. so you have to be organized and those one on ones can be a signal to you as a leader. to gather. What does your day look like? What are you doing? And Shaun, you and I have talked about this God in a past episode a while ago. But it's like, you know, back in my days working with chefs, if if I saw things not getting done, and a chef taught, one of my old chefs taught me this, we were seeing things not get done. And he went to his cooks and he said, okay, I give you a prep list and I give you this every day. I want you to write down every single task. For a full week, you're going to write down every single task when you started it, when you finished it, how much time it took. And we got rid of so much of that scope creep, so much of that extra nonsense, and some of the social aspect at work where where they're not doing jobs, they're not being productive and figuring those things out. So I say all that to say there's a 360 focus on this. And being a leader who gets in the in into the trenches and has those one-on-ones and is consistent with it will identify those distractions. And we'll identify those high performers who can handle it and deserve some kind of promotion, both economically and title-wise. Now, getting to the question you asked me about if I've got a couple of people, yeah, you see that all the time. I mean, if you're very fortunate and you're developing people, you're gonna constantly, if you're developing everybody and investing time into those people who want to grow, you're definitely gonna run into situations where two people are kind of neck and neck for the next next thing.
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: That's a really good problem to have. Right. And if if you've got a couple of shop, what's that? Right. Well, if you've got a couple of right,
Coe: Best problem to have. Still a problem, but it's a good problem. Yeah. I said it's still a problem, but it's the best problem to have. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy: but if you got a couple of stores, then maybe you're able to promote one in the inside this box and move the other one to the other box. And you can ask them who's willing to who's willing to go over. Or, you know, you know, like what we used to do in my hotel days is you would find that. And if I didn't have something in my direct outlet. If I had six other outlets on the property or four other outlets on the property, again, just like having a store that's three miles away, I have something on the other side of the lobby, you know, you're you're next in line for this. So when this opens, it's yours, kind of thing, if you want it. And and so, yeah, I think that that happens. Now, working for companies like HC Core, working for companies like Instawork that are a little bit more wide than tall, if you will. oftentimes you get people who are able to be promoted vertically,
Coe: Yeah, vertically or horizontally, yeah, yeah.
Jeremy: horizontally. And by the way, horizontal promotions can be really good too. And you can explain that to these people you're developing. Right now you're a front desk agent. The next thing I need you to do is go work in the restaurant so you learn that piece. If your goal is to ultimately be a GM of a hotel, You need to do all of these things as you move yourself up. You guys can't see me on screen here, but I'm moving back and forth and rising. You've gotta, you've gotta, you've gotta start from the bottom and work your way up. I was talking to a hotel manager this week of a of a luxury property, and then we were talking about exactly this. Well, we both got our start, it was in the school of hard knocks, Shaun. We I started as a dishwasher, right, man?
Coe: Mm-hmm.
Jeremy: And I and I got browbeat by chefs and I got, you know, and I got beat up a little bit. and you work your way
Coe: I still have scars.
Jeremy: up, but right, exactly. But you work your
Coe: Yeah.
Jeremy: way up into and develop. Now, the other thing that I want our listeners thinking about also. Just because you see something in someone, and we touched on this a little bit, just because you see something in someone, if talking to them, they don't desire that, it's not a good use of your time to continue to work on that, right? Like
Coe: Yeah, don't sell someone.
Jeremy: Like
Coe: Yeah, we're not saying sell, Jeremy, for sure. Not to interrupt you, but we I I that's a good point to say 'cause you and I get passionate. But at no point in time are Jeremy and I saying sell the future to someone. Not to interrupt you, brother, but I I'm glad that you said that. I'll keep talking 'cause I saw you taking a drink there. Yeah.
Jeremy: Well, and you said it on the last episode when we were talking about you said it on the last episode when we were talking about interviews. You see a resume, you get super excited about it, and you find yourself sitting in the interview chair, and you're trying to convince them
Coe: yeah.
Jeremy: to come to you because you're so excited and you're doing most of the talking, right? It's the same
Coe: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy: thing. We want, we want to identify those key players that want the growth. And they're willing to grow. sideways and vertically and and and into different roles and positions. And again, going back and giving kudos to Bryan, he's done that. He he has moved around into product ops and he's been an account manager and he's done these things and this thing. And and he's invested his own time and resources into learning to be the best that he can be. And that's where you want to build your bench, right? You want those people who are like, and I'm sure you've seen it, Shaun, you know, going back into the restaurants,
Coe: He's gonna kill her.
Jeremy: You know, again, we talk about we talked about Stephanie and the kind of that that meteor meteoric rise. now you mentioned on today's show that she had been a manager before. I didn't know that on the last episode. But that meteoric, it seemed like right. Well, but it seemed like
Coe: Yeah. Well I'm I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid. You know, sorry.
Jeremy: a meteoric rise. But but like tell us, you know, w just in the last couple of minutes here, tell us just a quick story of like someone with a more A more controlled step that you that you saw to kind of wrap this up.
Coe: I mean, we're we're kind of doing it right now, and I got a good example, but I I want to go back and just touch on two quick things and I know I'll wrap it up. But you said you said a lot of great things. number one, thank you for talking about the scope creep, because i if you're having a conversation without specifics, specifics meaning a designated program or a conversation, remember set and setting is real, so one-on-ones can happen like Jeremy and are now. But if you're promoting someone, a set and setting is a different setting. It's a sit-down looking across, usually written documented. Without that kind of conversation, you're just a douchebag putting more on someone and they're going to end up building resentment really, really, really quick. So I'm glad that you talked about it, Jeremy. And I'm sure you and I have both been there in the past when we're younger for the best intentions. Without that conversation, it goes sideways. Jeremy talks really quick about situation A and B before about if we have two people, right? And they're both ready. Situation A that we talked about, two people ready, forces an ownership group to grow. Situation B forces an ownership group to slow. Both are kind of painful. One is really fucking fun. One is very scary. So, so choose your pain, right? And this is just the way I talk to a lot of hiring managers. There's going to be opportunities where we wouldn't have a job. To talk about a very chronological growth pattern, I'm going to talk about a colleague that's in my organization. And I'm going to talk about her before she was with me because I was also in the same program. We were both in a DO designate program in a former concept. Where we were categorically at two tiers below, being taught two tiers above over the course of six to nine months. We were given a direct supervisor as a peer that had no supervision over us, but maybe in a market that we would report to in the next year. We had weekly breakouts. So we would have conversations around the profit and loss statements for the organizations that we were currently running. We'd have market recaps of the markets that we were potentially being promoted to. That was the better part of six to nine months. In that group of humans at the time, I think the oldest person was probably me at 29. there was 15 of us. everyone besides one is an executive today, right? To just kind of tell that played out. The company went from 25 units to 150 units in six years. It was the fastest growing concept in the United States for six years. It's phenomenal. but Jeremy, when I say everything was designated, we had a designated program set. If you were the next up, Because this is how fast it was growing. We had a year, Jeremy, where we had to pull off 15 openings because we couldn't grow fast enough. And that was the last time it happened. So everything that Jeremy and I have regurgitated a little bit today are something that I've actually practiced, where we had designates for HR department, marketing department operations in the field, field service marketing. We allowed horizontal. And I've taken that same practice with my own company. And Jeremy, I'll use myself as an example because I don't want you guys to think this ends. You know this behind the scenes more than most. I had to take it very categorically transitioned with myself to get more engineer. Now I don't have to become an engineer, but I followed the same pattern that was taught to me in Sun Capital. We've deployed that same pattern for a lot of hiring the best for our clients, but it's systemized, guys. And what I mean by this, when I say have a program, we literally had an uncapped personnel that if you're promotable, You're gonna go into this program. So the program was for multi-units and above, but then we also created one, Jeremy, for the hour lease to management. That that's how good the program went. So if you fast forward for that first day, you know, and I'll tell you in reverse, we went into an end of the year conversation where we wanted to open 15 units and we had to pull back solely because of personnel, not because of capital, right? We just and it was a culture that you kind of had to grow from within Jeremy a little bit, you know. So it You could hire someone from the outside, but it took six to nine months just to get them cultured. So so I think when you're hitting all the segments, right, there's one-on-ones, there's conversations, there's mirror increases. None of us were paid more for that endeavor, Jeremy. And not all of us made it at the same time. But because of that fact, what you talked about scope creep, without that program, all of us probably would have been burned out and quit. Cause I think for myself, Jeremy, shoot, I was probably in that program for nine and a half months. And I remember there was like three people that got promoted before me. And I was like, man, I really hope this is gonna happen. But right as I was having that thought, my peer was calling me and saying, Hey man, don't worry. You know, this is what's happening. So so they were so organized. And I didn't see it at the time, Jeremy. But I'm sorry for using that as an example. But every single person in there became a director, VP of new store openings, right? And and it took some of us to the point. It took that total group. I think three to four years before all of us were promoted that next ring. But we were all getting merit increases, happy and and we stayed in that organization. I think this was two thousand thirteen. And I think I left in two thousand sixteen or seventeen, you know. So so phenomenal results that they got out of that. And very structured.
Jeremy: Well, I would I mean, that was a very intentional bench building process. So
Coe: Yes.
Jeremy: kudos to that leadership. It was incredibly intentional. It was well thought out. You probably had different people who were giving their insights. So, you know, good episode here, Shaun. Good discussion. Probably could go on for another hour if we wanted to about this exact topic. But folks, thanks again for listening in. Yeah,
Coe: I love bench strength.
Jeremy: I like me too. Don't forget to hit like, share, subscribe. continue to follow us. more, more certainly coming. And listening in the future. Talk to you soon.
Coe: Thanks, guys.
