Why Businesses Get Stuck (And How Great Leaders Fix It) | Josh Post

Why do so many businesses reach a point where growth slows down—even when the owner is working harder than ever?

According to business consultant and entrepreneur Josh Post, the problem usually isn't effort. It's clarity.

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael D. Morrison sits down with Josh to discuss why businesses become stuck, how leaders create meaningful change, and the four-step framework he uses to help organizations break through barriers and reach their full potential.

Drawing from decades of experience leading a family construction business and helping companies transform their culture, Josh shares practical strategies for improving financial clarity, strengthening leadership, building healthy company culture, hiring passionate employees, developing management teams, and creating businesses that continue growing instead of plateauing.

If your business feels stuck, your leadership team isn't aligned, or growth has become harder than it should be, this episode provides practical insights you can apply immediately.

In this episode:

• Why businesses get stuck after reaching early success

• The four-step framework for organizational change

• Financial clarity every business owner needs

• Building a healthy company culture

• Leadership habits that create lasting growth

• Hiring people for passion instead of skills

• Better onboarding and employee retention

• Delegation and getting your time back

• Family business lessons

• The difference between coaching, consulting, and fractional COO support

Transcript

Welcome And Josh’s Journey

SPEAKER_00 0:02

If you're a business owner feeling stuck, overwhelmed, and ready to grow, you're in the right place. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, where founders share insights, stories, and pivots that lead to sustainable growth. I'm your host, Michael D. Morrison, a business coach helping business owners get unstuck and grow. All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots where we have special guests from around the world. And if you've listened or watched the podcast before, you know that I feel like no one can introduce themselves or the business like the business owner. So Josh, I'm gonna let you have the floor to introduce yourself and maybe a little background about your business and maybe your upbringing so people kind of know your journey of how you got where you are today.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, Michael. Uh, appreciate the invite. And that's what I love about this podcast as well, is I love hearing uh the guests really speak about their journey and and in their words. So yeah, it's a pleasure to be a part of it. So yeah, I grew up in a family business. My dad started constructing a business back in 1974, back in the 70s. Yeah, I was the youngest of five kids. And by the age 16, I was swinging the hammer, whether I wanted to or not. Uh I was a crew. So yeah, framing. I mean swinging a hammer is generous. Probably the first couple years, I was cutting lumber, I was grinding concrete, I was doing the the crummy job. So I learned how to work by age 21. I was a business owner. So just for context, I'm the youngest of five. And by the time I was coming into the business, my dad was X in the business. My dad was already partnership with my three brothers, also a sister that's not involved in the business. And so I I essentially bought my dad out and became part of the business 21. And we created what I affectionately call the four-headed monster back back in 21 years of age. So I was, yeah, I was young. Like I didn't know what business ownership was. I I always say I didn't really feel like it became a business owner until 2019. But but yeah, so I from there, 10, I spent 10 years in operations. I managed people and projects. I think when I started, I thought those are different things. And over time I found out it's the same. You're managing people to get projects done. My titles kind of changed. Production manager, operations manager, it was really the same thing, managing people and projects. And then I went through a season, I would say, of where I was challenged. Uh 2018, 19, and 2020, I went through one of you know some pivots, I would say, in terms of where the business was at. And I found out that in order to change your business, I needed to change as well. So 2018 was probably a significant challenge in terms of we had a key supplier that went bankrupt on us. So I don't know if you know anything about construction emergence, but there's there's not a lot there. And so paying for materials once is is okay, but paying for it twice is a lot less fun. So it was a real challenge. We stayed behind, stood behind our work, we got the job done, but we didn't make a lot of money on that project, to put it mildly. So uh it instantly put our business into a state that we weren't uh expecting or or didn't had an experience before. In 2019, uh my brother Herman and I, so he's the oldest and the youngest of the bookends, uh, we brought our brothers out. So the four-headed monster became a two-headed monster. And business got a lot simpler then, uh just because we're both very aligned in terms of how we operate the business, how we think, where we wanted the business to go. But that was a significant change, and that's when suddenly when you own 50% of a business, suddenly payroll seems a lot bigger for some reason. So that was probably that number two. And number three, I think in that time period in 2020, my wife and I, more on a personal level, went through some season of loss. We lost our son, who would have been the youngest. And so just those three sort of events over that really two year span, I would say changed me fundamentally. Uh, I lost uh any sense of entitlement that I had. I always describe entitlement as sort of your expectation of what life owes you, right? Like, you know, I got to the point where it's like, you know what, my my profit and loss statement doesn't owe me money. My business doesn't owe me profits, people don't owe me hard work. Like, I need to go and create the world that I want to live in. I need to be really intentional. And so that sort of really shaped, I would say, my leadership going forward, although at the time I didn't didn't see it that way. So yeah, and over time, I think by 2022, that uh led me to to starting a consulting firm. So it's uh certainly been a journey, but um, yeah, that's the short version, I guess I would say.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Well, it uh sounds like many entrepreneurship journeys, right? We all have those peaks and valleys and learn as we go because there's really not a playbook, you know, for all the different cycles in a business and life. And I'm sorry to hear your loss and those other things. So are you still in the construction business now, or did you exit that?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Yeah, yeah. Still in a construction business, it's it's grown since then. We've added on some other business units as well. But yeah, it's still going strong and and still a key part of our portfolio businesses for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

So what I love about podcast is or the guest is when they actually have experience in what they're talking about and not just something that they learned from a book or a university or some type of school. And so you have real life experience. And so the consulting you do, can you kind of share what that is and how it works, how it helps people?

From Construction Ops To Consultant

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yeah, so to some degree I got into it somewhat accidentally, but uh I had a number of opportunities come up at the same time. And at the time I sort of done a lot of work in our construction business, uh, things were pretty stable. A lot of the work, you know, was getting more sort of day-to-day, which is not like I'm, you know, your typical ADHD guy. I love, I love challenges, I love problems. And I got starting to get bored. So it was a blessing in disguise. So I had an opportunity to work with a couple different business owners. And yeah, I guess that what I've found is a lot of folks have tried a lot of things and they can't figure out why their business isn't changing, or their organization is stuck. And so, bottom line, what I do is I help business owners sort of like guide them through the change or the transformation of their organization. My typical client is stuck. Doesn't mean they're like in distress always. It means that they're stuck. And what I often say is that businesses usually reach the first 80% of their potential pretty quickly. They're masters at the craft, they're usually good at what they do, they're recognizing the industry. Like we were all those things as well. Um the problem is that last 20% was elusive. They kept trying different ways, scaling back, scaling forward, hiring this person, hiring that person, trying this framework. Uh, they couldn't just seem to unlock the last 20%. But once you once you do, I found that's actually where 80% of the value is. So suddenly it's like, oh man, business got really easy, right? Because you're aligned, either people and a team. It doesn't, it's not magic, it doesn't change overnight. But when you start to unlock that last 20%, business becomes fun. Right. So I sort of guide sort of the the I would say the group through the process. By group, I mean it's usually internal and external parties. Uh internally, we're talking leadership team, we're talking the owner himself, we're talking the operator. Externally, we're often dealing with sort of shareholders or dealing with you know other related parties, whether somebody's just a spouse, often I have lots of meetings with spouses talking about where the business is going. And sometimes it's it's banks, it's lenders, it's you know, I've dealt with insurance and bonding, that sort of thing. So it's getting everybody on board to understand this is where we're taking the business, and let's all get our energy in the same in the same direction, right? So that's uh that's what I do. I help change businesses.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Well, I love your tagline on your website. It says great businesses aren't born, they're built. And I know for a lot of entrepreneurs, they just want to fix things, right? Real quick. And I love you kind of didn't say my quote word for word, but it was kind of in that same direction. I always say until I change, nothing around me changes, right? So can you kind of explain some of the different facets of business that you have found that are more critical than others that you might want to start looking here first? So kind of like what are some of those common challenges that a lot of business have that we can kind of pinpoint and give our listeners some insights?

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah.

Fixing The Numbers And Culture

SPEAKER_01 8:02

I would say the key structural challenge is usually financial. In the small business world, a lot of folks, you know, you can't afford to hire a $400,000 CFO. So we're usually just doing the best we can. We're bookkeeping at night. We don't want to give away our precious money to spend it on you know overhead, right? So a lot of business owners don't truly know how their business is doing, or even at a more granular level, how their you know projects are doing, right? So if you don't know how your projects are doing, if you don't clear numbers in front of you on a monthly basis, you're you're driving in the dark, right? Like it doesn't work. So that would probably be the key structural challenge. And most businesses, most business owners underestimate the amount of work it takes to clean it up to have good books. Uh so that's that's probably the key sort of technical uh challenge. The other you know, key challenge I would say is more like cultural. You know, what is culture? That's a million-dollar question. If you Google that, you find you know, 300 definitions on what culture is. I always define culture as how the environment sort of influences behaviors, right? So we what what I see is you know, you can take one person and they can walk into six different cultures in the same day, act six totally different ways, and they feel 100% aligned with their values, right? So how someone behaves, you know, at a funeral versus you know, at work versus you know, go on vacation with the family versus you know meeting the parents for the first time when you, you know, you guys parents for the first time, like how you behave in each situation is dramatically different, right? It's because there's sort of an expectation around how you behave. And each business has an expectation around how you behave. And usually some of those expectations are actually what has brought you to where you're at, right? So I think of the I think it's uh Sir Walter Demings who said, you know, your business is perfectly designed to get the results it's getting, right? So you are where you are because of what you've done. And so you have to really look underneath that and say, what are the key habits or behaviors that I'm doing as a business leader? And by the by extension, I'm allowing my team to do, I'm you know, accepting this behavior. What are those things that I'm doing that is really holding our business back? And most of us don't they call blind spots, right? We don't see those, uh, myself included. So we need people in our circle to tell us what those are. And until you destroy those, you're stuck, you know, going from framework to framework and consultant to consultant.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah, yeah. There's there's a lot of frameworks out there, aren't there? Yeah, there certainly are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

I always say I'm framework agnostic. I'll work with anybody. And most of them I think are a lot of value, but yeah, they're not always the foundational aspects. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

So what as far as strategy or a plan, anything like that, what what do you see that business owners should be focusing on just from the challenges that you see? Because you mentioned something really interesting that I always say, and that's that business, the business challenges a business owner has either allowed or he created, right? And so a lot of times business owners, like you said, you were 21, you knew nothing about business, you just walked into it and you had what you had. So what are some of those strategies or plans that a business should have in place so they at least have a sense of direction?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yeah.

The Four-Step Reality Framework

SPEAKER_01 11:07

So I have a couple, I won't say frameworks, because the people that I deal with always have sort of PTSD around that. So um, but I often take folks through sort of like like all the you know the reality framework for lack of a better terminology. But there's four pieces to it. Number one, what is reality? Like in my situation, like what is real? And the question I often ask is how do you know if a line is it is is crooked or not? And the answer is, well, you need a straight line beside it, right? If you're always looking at the same line and you're standing in the middle of it, you can't tell that it's like you don't without a version of what healthy is, it's hard to just say, Am I healthy or unhealthy? Like, what are you measuring yourself against? And so that's sort of the number one is is is where are we? But also like as a group, as a team, as an organization, do we all see the same thing? And often, actually, I would say all the time, that is not the case. So your banker sees a business that might be failing, or has is you know, canary in the coal mine has some challenges in the future. You know, the business owner might be optimistic and says things are going the right direction, or if it's not going the right direction, you may be thinking this thing's failing, what do I do? But he's not telling his team that because you know they might just quit on him, right? So we're saying everything's fine, right? So you have this sort of you know, all these different realities playing out until we all agree, okay, this is where we're at. Step one, do we all agree this is where we're at? Um, that can be quite challenging. It requires transparency and it requires sort of a vulnerability that a lot of folks just aren't even willing to do. And number one, number two, now we agree on where we are. I think self-reflection is how do we get here? Right? What is and that requires ownership. Like we have to own how we got to where we got to, right? Until you own it, you ain't gonna change it, right? So that's step two, step three is okay, where we want to take this thing. And that can be challenging as well. Like sometimes we all have different visions of what we're trying to build, but we're we haven't we haven't agreed on that, right? So it's important that we all get on the same page. What are we trying to build here? Are we are we trying to grow this business? Are we are we trying to be like super professional? For example, a lot of businesses try to shift from being a sort of mom and pop, see your pants, do things on the fly to being a professional organization, but they don't really want to be a professional organization because that would mean persistence processes. It means you don't have the same latitude to make the same like do you want what you want comes with, right? So having the same vision, a very clear vision of where is this business going, and do we all agree with that? Step three, the last step I would say, and step four now is is is what are we willing to do? Right, what must be true for that vision to happen? And that's sort of habits commitment. So I often use the gym example, right? Like everybody wants a six-pack, but not everybody's in the gym.

unknown 13:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

So what you need to do is boil down what is the what is the going to the gym for you, right? So if you, for example, I I've had an organization where there's a lot of like infighting and toxicity and sort of a lot of like faking fine. We all hate each other, but we're not gonna say it out loud. Going to the gym for them was like being honest, like actually stop and say, This is how I'm feeling. Hey, you know, you hurt me, like sounds maybe not kind of goopy, but it is what it is, right? Like, what is the what is that pattern that you need to break? And and in that process, when you go through sort of those four steps, some people are like, Yeah, I'm okay with where you want to go, but I don't want to go there that way. And they leave and they say no, thank you, right? Or they say yes more commonly, they say yes, but their actions show that they're not going with you, right? So support as a business owner that, you know, for example, I do step one, I'm often saying this is where you're at, and sometimes they're fighting with me on that and saying, Well, I don't think so. Usually the business owner is like, Oh my, that's the first time someone's ever told me that. So once they have a grasp on where they currently are, then they have like then they can solve the problem, right? So no one solves the problem they don't see in the first place. So yeah, I think that's that's sort of a key element to sort of identify in reality and working that through. Uh the second thing I would say is just sort of like just a very tangible turnaround plan, right? So, and to me, a turnaround plan is like most people don't know how their business model works. Like, how do you make money? Do you know how you make money? What are the key levers? And if you can narrow it down to one, two, three key levers that define whether or not you're profitable, then you can just refocus on those three levers, right? And then you can take it to your team and boil it down to their language. And so I always just help help teams build a 90-day plan. In 90 days, where will you be? And it's it's gotta be it's gotta be doable, it's gotta be achievable, but it also has to be aggressive enough. Most most times if I make a fault or most people make a fault, it's not aggressive enough. We're not cutting deep enough, we're not restructuring enough, we're too nice, right? So I think I think building an actual tangible like business model plan, and it's not like a lot of folks do like, you know, I want to make you know go from a five million to a ten million dollar business. What I would do is say, okay, a year from now, what does October look like? Right? This this year is 1.1 million dollars, you did it with so many clients, and you work out your business model. What does October look like next month? Right, next year, sorry, right? So if you know how many, if you work all that out in detail, then it's a matter of saying, okay, how do you get from A to B, right? How do we increase your clients by 2% per month? How do we increase our rate? What are we selling differently? Those sort of you can start to have those tangible conversations, but until you can really define what does you know October look like in 2027, it's very difficult. You just you're just kind of throwing numbers around, put them on a spreadsheet, but nothing really changes on the ground floor.

Family Business Dynamics And Alignment

SPEAKER_00 16:15

You mentioned toxic environments and things. And so when I hear that word, I think of family-owned businesses. And you mentioned the four-headed monster. So I know that we have some family-owned businesses on here, and I know some of them are not enjoying that partnership. What is some advice, if you learned any at all, that you could share that kind of helped you get through those tough times when you had four heads butting or you know, kind of wanting to go different directions?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah.

unknown 16:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

I mean from my experience, it wasn't so much that we were butting heads all the time. It was, it was just more that when you have more, like the more people you have at the table, the more of the less radical uh vision you have, you kind of get to get the messy middle. You never go, never get too specific or too radical with with your vision. It's you become very mediocre, right? You just become the average, all your decisions are average. So yeah, I could write a book on on failing businesses. I mean someday I'll do that. But I think uh I often compare it to a play. Like when you and I'm not a movie producer by any means, the imagination, but uh, if you start a play, normally you write the script, you define you know what what kind of story I'm trying to tell, and then you go out and find the characters. A family business has characters and they build the script around the characters, right? And and that's that's often the challenge. I think it's just really important to have business be business and home be home. And some people can't can do that distinction very well, and some can't, right? So I think it's at some point you have to, I mean, goes back to my reality conversation, but sometimes you you just have to identify reality, right? Like uh if one family member wants to do something else, like let them, that's fine, right? Like often there's all these, yeah, culturally just sort of unintended expectations around business, right? Like, you know, I I got into the business because it was sent a duty, like it's just it's just what you do. You grow up in the business, you expect that, you know, you have to do that. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't entrepreneurial by nature, I don't think. It just sort of was like, you have to do that, right? So and over time had to make a decision, is this something that I'm all in on and is this this what I'm doing? And this thing's for my partners, right? So I think, yeah, it's so challenging. And then there's also the like the entitlement piece is is big in every business, but in family business, I think more so. Yeah, you really have to make sure that everybody's working, you know, as hard as they can on in the air in their area of genius. And it becomes challenging when when you're different, you know, you're not in the wrong spot in the bus. Yeah, it just uh there's a there's a lot there, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:48

So yeah.

Getting Time Back With Delegation

SPEAKER_00 18:49

So the one of the common challenges I hear from business owners is I don't have time. And the the industry response is, well, you just gotta find time. Well, that sounds easy, right? But when you're in the heat of the battle as a business owner and you've got an employee quitting, and you've got a customer angry, and you've got bills that have to be paid, and all these things going on, finding time is not really a reality. So how do you help business owners find that time to be able to focus on their business so they can turn it around? Because it these these aren't just little quick, you do this, this, and this, and all of a sudden your business is often, you know, making a lot of money, all the problems are solved. So any time management insights or tips you got there? You're listening to Small Business Pivots with Michael D. Morrison. If you're ready to get your business unstuck and grow, let's chat. Schedule your free session at michael dmorrison.com. Now back to the show. Any time management insights or tips you got there?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah, that's that's probably the first problem I help business owners solve is this time, right? One of my mentors, I signed up for CO Alliance with a guy named Cameron Harold. And what he only the first thing I remember him telling me was this is a group call, so sometimes we're best friends. But I remember him saying, you know, if you don't have an executive assistant, you are one. And I'm like, I'm running a small little family business. Like, do I need an executive assistant to help me like, you know, do administrative work? Like, but you know, I'm like, you know what, I'm all in on this thing, so I'm gonna try it. So I hired my first executive assistant. It didn't work at all, so I hired my second one, and and she's with me today. She's all she's she's actually grown into a much more significant role in the business. But I think what I often do look at is is what's the highest value work you do? Right? I was coaching a guy last uh last month before my holidays, and I took his total sales uh that he generates and I divided by the amount of time he spends in front of clients, which is about seven hours a week. So just so you know, like, you know, this we're talking thousands of dollars, this is how much you're generating per hour in front of client. Now I get that you may not have enough phone calls, like I know it's not perfectly linear, but I do know that if I change that and I double it and it becomes 14 hours a week, the odds of sales going up is fairly high. Right? So suddenly, if you're making, you know, eight thousand dollars per hour, which sounds crazy, suddenly paying someone 25 bucks an hour to do bookkeeping or submit your receipts seems like it makes a lot of sense, right? So really getting getting crisp on you know what's super high value for me. Some things are really high value and not delegatable, and that's okay. Just make sure that they're yours and you're doing them in a timely, efficient, top of your pile kind of way. And the stuff that that you can delegate, and and and often we're delegating, like you're delegating to someone that's doing to it slower and worse than us, and that's is what it is what it is. But there's still value because we're not doing it, right? So that's I think that's the biggest challenge identifying what you're really good at.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Well, you mentioned slower and not as good as, but I also think they're more consistent. Like an executive assistant, they actually get it done versus business owners, we get pulled away in the middle of trying to get something done and then it never gets done.

unknown 22:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah, exactly. So so on the business owners, what at what level are they ready for a service like yours, a coaching, a consultant?

Coaching Vs Fractional COO Support

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Are you a coach or a consultant? Do you do both? What's the difference?

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Yeah, so uh change management is all about pace, managing pace and managing energy. Uh it takes a lot of energy for organization to change. So what I guess what I'm saying is on the one end, if you want to go really fast, then you need to give me control. I need to jump right in, bring my team in, I need to help you out, probably. Uh the other end is more slow, like, hey, I'll just we'll just chat for half an hour a week and I'll coach you through it, right? So the question is how fast do you want to go? And sometimes that's dictated by the size of the problem you're dealing with, right? So there's a couple ways I sort of work with clients on the on the on the high end, on the on the fast, sort of the fast lane, I would need more control. So that's either either I'm sort of a fractional COO where I'm coming in, I'm making decisions on behalf of your organization. Um, usually it's I'm rarely making anything like just rubber stamp sort of thing. I'm I'm it's very conversational. I'm sitting down with parties, I'm getting everybody on board, I'm coaching, messaging. It still is quite slow, but I'm there, I've got a desk in the office, that kind of thing. And that's helpful, especially if you're navigating change and sort of, you know, speaking to a banker, that sort of thing, because it's a very visual role. And and what they're looking for in terms of uh confidence is to see that I actually have ability to do the things I'm promising, right? Coaching and advisory is more like, hey, I'm writing a shotgun with the business owner, uh, the operator, I should say, not always the owner, the operator, and I'm coaching them through the problems, challenges, helping them see the next steps, but then helping him sometimes make those steps well, right? So what's interesting is a lot of times business owners know what the next step is, right? They know they need to hire a salesperson. The problem is they don't always hire the right salesperson. Well, they hire them too late, right? And so I often will help them sort of refine that decision and make sure it's right. I mean, sort of that's sort of the high value piece that you get because I you know I've experienced doing it wrong, frankly, right? So I've done a bunch of mistakes in my lifetime, imagine that, and uh and I can help others avoid the same mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

So yeah. So what size of a business is this good for coaching? Because some of them have resources more than others, some have more financial resources, some of them have more of a team. When we get deep diving into something like what you offer, do they need to have a C suite with them, or do you just work with the business owner? Like what size of business is this applicable for?

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yeah. I would say my ideal client has a management team because then I can sort of coach the HR person or the salesperson or there's someone sort of involved or owning each each discipline in the organization and they're actually like good at it. Whereas when you're dealing with a single owner, they often are good at some things and not good at other things, right? So I'm coaching someone that doesn't know finance how to do finance, it's not worth my time. It's just not it just doesn't pay out, right? So I would say right now I work with everyone from like a three million is probably my smallest up to about the biggest is about 40-ish. That's what the highest I've been. Once you get past that, you almost need to just bring in a full-time COO, right? That's it's almost too big. I need to be there more than three days a week. Like it's it's a lot, right? You need someone to really lead the cultural change, and it's hard to do that fractionally. So that's it's a pretty big span. Uh my ideal client, like I said, has a has a management team and has a leader that that wants to change and and wants to own the change, right? I'm not looking to to replace the leader, I'm not looking to take all the credit. I'm actually looking just to be in the background and help them succeed without them giving their entire business away to some guy, right? So that's trying to sort of walk that fine line.

Hiring And Onboarding People Who Fit

SPEAKER_00 25:54

So one of the common commonalities here that we've talked about is people, right? We've talked cultures, we've talked management team, operations, those all kind of require people. So that's one of the biggest challenges that I continue to hear from the contractor space, the building space, manufacturing, all that. So do you have any like best practices on how to get those right people? Because you even mentioned before, you know, you hired an executive assistant, the wrong assistant, but now you have a great one. So, what are some lessons that you've learned that you can share with people rather than just hiring on gut, because that's what most of them do, right? Oh, I liked her. She was nice, she feels like a fit. And then three weeks later it's like, I can't, how did she get in this building? You know, any tips on that? Because that seems to be a big challenge of finding the right people and then retaining those people.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting you mentioned gut because I would say it's important to hire not for skill, but for passion. And that that might sound fuzzy, but what I mean is people that are skilled don't but don't always like it. They're all they're not always on mission for what you're doing or how you're going about it. Um, any variants, even if they're like 80% aligned with you, over time it's it's gonna probably grow in the opposite direction. What I do is so the first thing I do when I'm hiring is I create a package. And so we have a it's a 20-page package, and we're very specific about the person we're looking for. We're specific about the role, what they're doing, of course. You know, that's important role description. Uh, we're very specific about the top three sort of personalities or or qualities that they might have, right? And what I'm thinking about is what are the things, what's the thing that if they don't have it, it's not gonna be a fit, right? Like if we're hire receptionists and they don't love being talking, they're not highly extroverted, they're not a peel person, like it ain't gonna work. They might fake it for three weeks, right? Um, so what's the thing that is not gonna work? They're gonna quit or I'm gonna fire them. What are those three hills they're gonna die on? And just tell them up front, like, listen, you need to be really detail-oriented because there's a lot of detail here. If you make one mistake, someone's yelling at you. Well, if you're if you're detail-oriented, sorry, if you're not detail-oriented, you see that, you're like, yeah, I'm gonna pass on that one, right? So want to be very clear about the type of person you're looking for. The the kiss of death in recruitment is when people say, I'm gonna cast a wide net and see what happens. Like that just means that the best person you know to interview gets a job, which might be good for sales because you want that, but it's not always good for 85% roles, right? So um, so yeah, getting very specific, we put a package together. I do personally do a video for every single uh recruitment I do, and I just explain the job and I just talk about how the job intersects, how the role intersects with where we're going as a company, like why it adds value. Why it would be awesome to have you on our team and talk about the values and who we are as a company, so values, mission, how we behave, and then ask you for a response. And I think what I'm asking for is tell me what about this packet is exciting to you, what gets you wired up, and then say, listen, send me an email, send me a video preferred. If you want 100% to be seen, send a video, and then immediately weeds it down to people that are passionate enough to actually spend time on it. Anything that's chat GPT or cloed or something like that gets chucked in the garbage because you can't, you know, actually read an email in 2026. That's tough, and tell them up front I don't do AI as far as as far as that goes. So and then I'm I'm it instantly narrows you down to like sometimes like 10 candidates out of 200 or 300. Um, but all of them have essentially given you an interview, they're giving you a three to four minute video, they've and then you go through and then look at scale and say, okay, who's the best fit here? Median person interview, and then then we're after the races, right? But in the old days, I used to hire for scale, and then I what I had was I had a gut feeling and I would override it with my head. So I would like, oh, it doesn't seem like a perfect fit. They're like, well, but he has this and he has this, and I'm thinking about all the tangible technical things. Uh now I've learned that my gut's usually right. What I do is take time to think, okay, what is my gut telling me? Not words, but what is my gut seeing that I'm not seeing? Because a whole bunch of yellow flags do make up red flags, right? So but yeah, it's a short answer. It's all about passion. You want someone that's fired up, and I'd rather train somebody, the skills, and give them a little bit of runaway, which uh I would say is a critical piece of on is onboarding. Like people do not onboard staff well. It's like, hey, you're the perfect fit. Good luck. And they're like working their butt off, but they're going a different direction than you want them to. Uh we're all confused and dazed when it doesn't work out. So yeah, get the exact right fit and and invest in them.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Well, you you kind of that was a segue into our next part, and that is onboarding, because they come in and then now what do I do? And then we get frustrated because they're not doing what we want them to do. What are some tips since you had such great hiring tips for onboarding, and then of course, following the retention? Because as a COO, I think you I would think that would be the important puzzle first is do we have the right people on the right bus and the right seat going the right direction? Right. So now that we've found that person, what are some onboarding tips and then retention tips to keep them there?

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Yeah. Uh I would say for especially for high-level hires like Suite C Suite management team managers, I often encourage them not to add value early on. Like they often try to come in, they're gonna save you, right? They're gonna, I gotta find that one $20,000 from the CRA that you haven't seen before. They're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna, right? And it's like just just calm down, like the business not on fire. So you're not gonna find some magical, and if you do, cool. I mean, I'll love you for it. Uh but you'll still find it on on month three, probably, right? So just get to know the business, get to know the systems, just sniff around, right? Make lists, make notes, spoke some time, that kind of thing. Just just breathe, take time. You're not gonna get fired on on week three because you haven't found a silver bullet that's gonna, you know, make that some millionaire. So just especially at C-suite, like just calm down, understand the business first. And then I often like just the questions they're asking are super critical. Like do they understand if they understand the business well, they're asking the right questions, they're digging in the right spots. Those are the things that tell you that you've got the right hire uh on board. But then I think training ideally is sort of you know cross-reference as much as possible, right? So like sitting down with other people in the organization, not just sitting down with one person, your manager, and getting trained to everything, not like you know, here's the manual, but more like understanding the why, this is what how we do it, this is why it's important to me, you know, those sorts of things, helping them understand sort of the you know, the methodology of the organization top to bottom, I think is is is is really critical. A lot of people are doing stuff, but they don't really understand why they're doing it or how critical it is, right? Like, you know, if you're if you're for example, if you're a financial CFO and you're onboarding with me, it's like, okay, I need to see multi reports by the 15th. And if I don't see them by the 15th, you and I are not gonna be best friends. Like that's that's a big deal for me, right? So, and often they're like trying to do these other 45 things, but they're missing the one thing that's the hill I'm ready to die on, right? So I think being really, really critical, like or sure specific around the critical elements uh of their role because they will often see it differently than you do as an as a as a manager, right? So uh I think that yeah, that's sort of the training piece. Retention, yeah, every business is different, I would say. Like some businesses do lots of parties and get togethers, some, you know, and those things are all helpful and and cute. Like I'm not I don't want to, you know, say those things don't add value. Uh I think I think people are striving for connection in the world. They need to be connected with each other and with their manager. And so I I think a critical piece is one-on-ones. Healthy businesses have a regular cadence of one-on-ones with their manager. Their manager, like if you think about it, your manager is the person that has the most impact on your life at work. You spend a lot of your time of your life at work, right? So I think it's really critical. You know, I think the ideal one-on-one, you're having it, you're not sure why.

unknown 33:45

Right?

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Like you're getting together, like, I don't know what he's got on his topic. Like the person you're meeting with, like the manager should not hold the agenda, the other person should. Direct report should come and say, hey, here's what's on the list, here's questions for you. If you're having the meeting because they have questions, because they have concerns, it's too late. They sat on them for six months, they ruminated, they talked with their friends, they made lists about it. The chat GPT didn't Googled it, right? And now they're telling you now that they've got a whole plan together, right? So I think it's really critical just to have a regular cadence of just sitting down and being human, talking about how it's going. Hey, how can I help you? It should be the question that comes at every manager's mouth at least once a month, if not once a week, right? How can I help you? What do you have to? What's what's pissing you off right now? And how can I help you, right?

Leadership Development And One Simple Move

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

So that sounds more leadership. So, what type of leadership training do you suggest for a business to get started in? Because a lot of there's a lot of books out there. There's a lot of training, there's a lot of coaching. But leadership, like you said, your example is let them come with questions. You don't read that everywhere. So, what are some basic leadership traits that a leader should be learning about or acquiring?

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Yeah, I think the number one trait look for in a leader is the it's gonna sound weird, but the ability to collaborate. A lot of people really struggle to collaborate. So they're either like pushing ideas on other people and then everyone's kind of scared and like, yeah, that's that's a great idea. Let's do that. And they undermine it after. Or they have a great idea and they sit on it, or they're too scared to go to their boss and say, hey, I have a great idea. I think this is a bad idea. Like just the ability to sort of just mess around with ideas and say, Hey, is there a way to make this thing better? Is there a way to make the decision better? And so I often look look for that. One of the questions I ask myself when I'm hiring is what does this person look like mad? You can tell. Sometimes you're talking to someone, like, I bet you this person's like my best friend. If you go golfing together, we could do this, but then think to myself, what do they look like mad? I'm like, oh, yeah, I could see that not being fun. Yeah, I don't I don't know how to describe it. Like, there's no like I'm not sure what the official trait is of strengths finder is. After that, I just like my gut tells me they're not a lot, not a lot of fun to cross, right? Yeah, I think I think that's kind of important. I think I think a lot of you know, there's I forget how the saying goes, but it's something to the effect of it should scare us more. We shouldn't be asking ourselves, like, you know, what happens if I invest in this person and he and he leaves. We should ask ourselves what happens if we don't invest in this person and he stays, right? That's that's that's a good challenge. So I think uh I think I think a lot of people don't invest nearly enough in technical or or sort of you know leadership training. Like a lot of folks come off the floor, get thrown in the desk, they don't know how to run an outlook calendar, right? They've never seen can't read an Excel sheet, they don't have and now like AI can cover some of those things. So we look like we're intelligent and competent, but but you know the fundamental sort of understanding of of how a business functions and runs, it's not always is passed on. And I think that's why cross-functional training is super important, right? So being able to do more than one job uh in an organization, especially when folks go on holidays, that kind of thing, it doesn't just help your team get through you know busy times, it also helps sort of give people a better perspective of your organization and and learn what it means to be in different seats, right? So yeah, there's there's lots of programs out there. I can name a bunch of them if you wanted to, but I think I think a lot of them like I actually love some of the ones that are more like either like packages where you buy it online and you sort of go through it at your own pace because when you're forced to sit down and listen to someone talk on Zoom, it's it's it's less than fun. I hate that, right? Finding finding something that gives them the skill and the talent and the ability so that they can learn the information and then go offline, say with the management team and say, hey, let's talk about what we learned and apply it to your business. Like these both pieces. You need to content the information, but you also need to say, you know, how does how do we make this real in the organization today?

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Yeah, and it kind of goes to your tagline on your website. I just my personal opinion, I do think some people are born with the swag, right, to be a leader, but you have great businesses. Great businesses aren't born, they're built. And I feel the same way about leaders. I feel like even if you are someone that people look up to, you can still be better. Like you can still learn more. And so that's kind of what you're talking about is those programs where you kind of go at your own pace, right? You're it's not forced, it's it's uh it's a transformation.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Yep. Yeah, and if one of your team members doesn't take it and doesn't do it, that's often the complaint people have, well, I give it to my team, but they don't they don't actually do it. I'm like, well, behaviors are language, they're telling you they don't want to grow. Yeah, so that's a conversation you need to have. Now you know that it's on the table. Would you rather they just faked it and slept through 10 sessions and then wonder why your business doesn't change, right? So what you're doing is putting reality on the table and saying this is what's currently you know true or real in this situation, and it forces you as a leader to deal with it. Are you going to accept it or celebrate it, right? Or ignore it.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Yeah, no, that's that's good. I haven't heard someone say that. So where are some places people can follow you, connect with you, podcast, YouTube channels, social media channels? What's the best place to learn more?

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Yeah, I'm usually hanging out on LinkedIn. That's my that's a primary social media uh avenue. Josh Post is pretty pretty easy to find. My website is josh-post.com, and and for the purpose of this podcast, backslash small business pivots, and we'll get you some specific tailored content for your for your audience. Short version, the best way to connect with me if you're if you're stuck, if your business is stuck at 80%, and it feels like a lot of things are going really well, but you just can't unlock that last 20% that's driving me crazy. Hop on a call. My process is pretty simple. I don't charge for initial calls or anything. Usually my first step is diagnosis. I sit down with your team, sit down with humans. I'll give you my assessment on where your culture is at, how it's holding your business back. And then if if you think I'm right, I think we have the problem diagnosed, then uh yeah, we just we can just custom tailor a plan to go fix it and go from there. So yeah, feel free to connect with me that way. Otherwise, yeah, DM me uh or shoot me an email, josh at joshdash.com. Pretty uh pretty straightforward.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

So I end the show with a question. And so today's question with you being a coach and consultant, what is something a business owner could do now that you don't really read in books? There's a lot of things and a lot of these business books that you know, culture building and this, this, this, and this. But what's one thing that a business owner could do this week to start moving that needle to prepare for next steps? That you don't read often.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Yeah. Well, what's a good question? I think one of the things I've learned is that business is is actually quite simple. It's not easy, but it it's it's actually quite simple. So if I had to challenge a business owner right now, I would say, you know, what's the what's the number one thing you want to change? Like, do you want to move you know 18 wages out of your out of your facility versus 15 you're doing now? Like what's the thing you want to change? Get the people in the room who have the most impact on that number and just ask them. Say, hey guys, I want you guys to move from 15 to 18 and see what they say. And I bet you dollars a donuts that they probably have a solution for you. Now, I might say, Hey, here are three problems you need to fix so I can do this for you. But yeah, take the biggest problem you have, sit down with the people who have the most impact on it, and just ask them. How can we get from here to here? So you, as leader, providing a vision, and then you're just inviting your team into it and say, Hey, I I don't have all the answers. That's why I hired you. Yeah, help me, help me, let's do this together. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Yeah, no, that that's great advice. And I love the part about just ask them. And that right there could be for anything. If you're having troubles, just ask them. If you if you don't know what to market to your customers, ask them. Ask prospects, right? You can just ask because I know a lot of business owners, we try to figure things out ourselves because we're problem solvers. And so sometimes we don't ask for help and we don't just simply ask, you know, how to do that. And we try to solve it. And and sometimes that's not always the right way.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Yeah, and that's the maturity, right? Of that's growth, right? Like babies scream when they need food. Uh, at some point they start using words and say, hey, can I when I get older and the teenagers, they just go in your fridge and get the food. So it's it's a it's a growth journey, using words. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

Absolutely. Well, Josh, you've been a blessing to many today. I appreciate your time and your insights, and I wish you continued success.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

Yeah, thanks for having me on, Michael. It's been great to connect.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

My pleasure.

Closing Links And Free Calls

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Thanks for listening to Small Business Pivots. If you're ready to get unstuck and grow, schedule your free coaching session at michaeldmorrison.com. On social media, you can find and connect with me using the handle Michael D.Morrison OKC. And if today's episode helped you, subscribe and share it with other business owners. Until next week, keep pivoting.