Mike Bruno, my co-host on The Profit By Design Podcast, and owner of Stone Creek Builders focuses on not just finding qualified team members but exceptional ones. Mike formed Stone Creek Builders in 2004, having managed home improvement projects around his neighborhood since 1992. After growing his business to nearly thirty team members, he was forced to cut back significantly when the economy turned south. Now Mike uses the metaphor of “runny eggs” to explain why it is not a good idea to spend time and money on team members who are marginal to poor.
My next book in the How to Hire the Best series is about to launch! This time, I'm focused solely on the construction industry. How to Hire the Best: The Contractor's Ultimate Guide to Attracting Top Performing Employees will be available for presale soon! Stay Tuned. In the meantime, I'm sure many of you, despite your industry, can relate to Mike.
The Cost of Runny Eggs
“After learning these Hire the Best™ strategies for the first time in my career, I’m looking to fill those positions only if the person is right. In the past, it’s always been, ‘We need this person. Who cares? We have to get them on the job because that’s what we need to do.’ If you have twenty guys running around like maniacs, and you hire another, even if he’s an A-Player, you mix him with a bunch of C-or B-Players, the whole thing’s a mess.The reality is, if you go out for breakfast with your family, and all the eggs come out runny, and everything’s a disaster, you’re not going to go back the next time.Yet, how many employers continue to write a paycheck every single week to a team member who is not performing to the standards? They’re getting runny eggs every single day, and they’re doing that because they feel like they can’t eliminate that person and they need the body there.That’s also a very difficult thing to do, because traditionally, I was always a very emotional business owner in terms of, ‘I hired this person. I feel bad. I don’t want to let them go,’ that kind of thing.I’ve contracted the size of the business, and I’m willing for it to take the time that it takes. The way that I look at it at this point is that paying team members is no different than any other experience that I’m paying for.”
How close are you to having a highly profitable, great place to work?
Could you to take a 4 Week Vacation™?
Take our 10 minute assessment to discover which foundational pieces you have firmly in place, and what to work on next to transform your business into a highly profitable, great place to work that allows to take a 4 Week Vacation™.
Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist™ and author of the How to Hire the Best series is the founder of Tap the Potential. Tap the Potential specializes in transforming small businesses into highly profitable, Great Places to Work, then sending business owners on a 4 Week Vacation to celebrate that accomplishment.
Never one to accept the status quo or back down from a challenge, Dr. Sabrina’s How to Hire the Best series grew from her desire to solve the toughest hiring challenges interfering with her clients’ growth and profitability. What sprang from her experience working with entrepreneurs in rural areas catapulted her into becoming the world’s leading expert in attracting top talent in small businesses — no matter what hiring challenges those businesses are facing — and earned Tap the Potential’s reputation as the go-to resource for entrepreneurs committed to creating great places to work with thriving coaching cultures and highly engaged team members working from strengths.
With her background in psychology, and years of driving profit in small business, Dr. Starling knows what it takes to find, keep and get exceptional performance out of your biggest investment — your team members.
