Runny Eggs

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.”
 
If you are looking for more relatable stories and want to find out the BEST hiring (and retention) strategies, be sure to check out the How to Hire the Best Book Series on Amazon!
 

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About The Author

Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist and international best-selling author of the How to Hire the Best series and The 4 Week Vacation™, is the founder of Tap the Potential and host of the Profit by Design podcast. At Tap the Potential, we work to free business owners from the constant demands of a growing business.

We believe work supports life, not the other way around. Clients in our Better Business, Better Life coaching program have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank account than they’ve ever had. Next, we send them off on a 4 Week Vacation™ to celebrate their hard-earned journey to take their life back!

Dr. Sabrina and her team at Tap the Potential are on a mission to change the story of entrepreneurship from one of long hours, grinding it out, to one of sustainably profitable businesses that support and enhance life. The Tap the Potential Solution™ and our Tap the Potential Family of Business Owners are disrupting small business as usual. We are on our way to making the Tap the Potential Solution™ the mainstream model for growing business.

By 2023, 150 Tap the Potential clients will have taken 4 Week Vacations. These are the trailblazers, role modeling what’s possible for entrepreneurs. In many entrepreneurial circles, it is becoming more and more common for one entrepreneur to ask another, “Have you taken a 4 Week Vacation™?” (as opposed to asking “How many employees do you have?” or “What is your annual revenue?”). Taking a fully unplugged 4 Week Vacation is rapidly becoming the recognized symbol of entrepreneurial success.

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.

As The Business Psychologist, and with her years of driving profit in small businesses, Dr. Sabrina knows what it takes to find, keep, and motivate exceptional performance out of your biggest investment—team members.