The Entreprenudist Podcast · 2026-03-16 · 1h 24m
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
42 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Doug Levy brings 25 years of management experience and a background from the University of Florida to this conversation on hiring discipline. Rather than relying on intuition and surface-level signals - like a candidate showing up in person or good interview chemistry - Levy advocates for structured hiring systems that pressure-test assumptions and evaluate soft skills like communication, performance under pressure, and ability to work with ambiguity. He emphasizes that robust cognitive and personality assessments, when chosen and deployed correctly for the specific role, provide actionable data and built-in reliability checks. Levy also stresses the importance of hiring people who are strong where the business owner is weak, rather than cloning oneself. This episode will benefit business owners and hiring managers struggling with turnover, retention, or frequent bad hires, as well as COOs and operational leaders looking to systematize talent acquisition.
Business owners make unchecked assumptions about candidates and confuse surface-level signals with actual job fit. A candidate showing up in person might indicate desperation rather than motivation, and good chemistry in an interview doesn't account for critical soft skills like working under pressure, written communication, or ability to thrive under ambiguity that only emerge over time in the role.
Soft skills include performance under pressure, communication ability, understanding instructions, and working well with ambiguity - qualities that don't appear on resumes and most hiring managers either don't consider or don't know how to test for, leading to costly mismatches.
Use cognitive and personality assessments as part of your structured hiring process; the assessments must be robust, role-appropriate, and include reliability checks (like detecting if someone rushed through answers or shows inflated self-perception) to give you actionable data beyond pattern recognition alone.
The tool must provide accurate measurements and actionable feedback; avoid shallow assessments that only test pattern recognition with 15 questions - look for something robust enough to capture the nuance relevant to your specific role.
No; hire people who are strong where you are weak and weak where you are strong, rather than cloning yourself, which fails to build a complementary team.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains some useful operational and hiring frameworks, particularly around soft skills assessment and the true cost of bad hires, but the substance is heavily diluted by 30-40 minutes of restaurant ordering, eating, casual conversation, and tangential storytelling about dictionary definitions. The core hiring insights - assumptions, soft skills gaps, turnover math - are real but not densely packed relative to total runtime.
the root of a lot of the hiring missteps that people make is assumptions. I think a lot of people just make assumptions and they don't pressure test those
if you hire somebody for $60,000 a year annual salary, and they don't work out after six months, I calculate that loss based on certain mathematical assumptions at about $55,000
The guest rehashes standard hiring best practices (hire for soft skills, avoid bias, use assessments, understand true cost of turnover) without substantially novel framings. The disciplined hiring framework is presented as proprietary but never deeply unpacked. The distinction between ego-driven hiring and structured hiring is competent but not fresh. The psychology digression is interesting but disconnected.
you have to do a cognitive and personality assessment as part of your hiring process
You don't want everybody to be like you
Doug Levy has legitimate operations experience - 25 years in management, led a 50-person company with 9-year average tenure and single-digit turnover, former COO, now consulting. This is credible practitioner-level experience. However, he's relatively new to the consulting model (started June, only ~8 months at time of recording), hasn't scaled a major consulting practice, and is still developing his frameworks. Solid mid-tier guest but not a standout operator.
I helped build a 50 person company with a 9 year average tenure and single digit turnover by implementing structured hiring and performance standards
I only been doing this since June. Like, I was working as a chief operating officer for years before that
The guest provides some concrete numbers (9-year tenure, single-digit turnover, $60k hire loss estimate at ~$55k) and mentions specific tool types but explicitly refuses to name brands. There are references to a 50-person company and client examples but minimal detail on actual outcomes, metrics, or named client results. The onboarding failure discussion lacks hard data. Much assertion without evidence.
if you hire somebody for $60,000 a year annual salary, and they don't work out after six months, I calculate that loss based on certain mathematical assumptions at about $55,000
I worked at a company with 45, 50 employees. We had turnover below 10% almost all the time. Average tenure of nine years
The host fails to follow up on key claims or press the guest on specifics. When Doug refuses to name assessment tools, the host moves on instead of asking what to look for. Critical questions go unanswered: what exactly is in the disciplined hiring system? How much does it cost? What are actual client results? The host allows long tangential stories (dictionary definitions, family dinner chicken story) to consume interview time. Good rapport but weak journalistic rigor.
Okay, so if we're not dropping names. Hopefully we can drop some gems in this episode
so in your opinion, which ones hit the Mark
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Watch The Video Here : G.E.T Together With The Entreprenudist Podcast In this episode of Greet, Eat, and Teach Together with The Entreprenudist Podcast, we sit down with Doug Levy, President of Lexington Rose Consulting, Inc., to discuss one of the biggest challenges facing small business owners: hiring the right employees. Why do smart business owners keep making bad hires? What does a bad hire really cost your business? And how can leaders move beyond hiring based on instinct and gut feeling? While enjoying a unique dining experience, Doug shares insights from years of working with organizations to help them build stronger teams and avoid the costly hiring traps many entrepreneurs fall into. Topics we cover in this episode: -The common hiring pitfalls small business owners face -The real cost of a bad hire -The most common hiring mistake business owners make -How to stop hiring based on vibes and gut feel -Practical ways to improve employee retention - About Doug Doug Levy is a business operator and former COO who has led and scaled small to mid-sized organizations with a focus on operational discipline, margin, and retention.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: You're the man.
Speaker B: Thank you.
Speaker A: That was good. Thank you so much.
Speaker C: Because all of the opinion of themselves.
Speaker B: Let's go.
Speaker A: Okay. Yes, please.
Speaker B: I got some water started for now.
Speaker C: Thank you.
Speaker A: I have, but I have not.
Speaker C: Thank you.
Speaker B: There are five different menus on here,
Speaker C: so I am known for eating dessert.
Speaker B: You're in the right place.
Speaker C: Awesome.
Speaker B: So we can do it toward the end, but the first one's going to be the dinner menu. The only change on there is going to be the auna one. If you're interested in that. I can go over that spiel later.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker B: And then the further you go, the two menus after this one, they're going to be our core menus. So appetizers, sandwiches, pizzas. Just things we do all day, every day. White wine, red wine following, and then cocktails all the way in the back.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker B: Other than that, our soup of the day is going to be a cheddar broccoli with the bacon marmalade. And then cordina is a white flaky fish you can put on the fish. Blt.
Speaker C: Okay, Very cool.
Speaker B: While we look over things and make decisions.
Speaker A: Yes. And I already know what. At least in the very beginning. So just to make sure I understand, this right here are, uh, the special appetizers.
Speaker B: So these are the ones we offer only during dinner time. 100%.
Speaker A: And these are the all day everyday ones. All right, so we want one of each. Yeah, so. But. So I'm assuming the table can't fit everything, but.
Speaker B: So make it work. Whatever you want.
Speaker A: All right, guys, what are we getting? One of each of all the appetizers, and then we go into the entra.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker A: Oh, yes, sir, this message.
Speaker B: You want one of each of the appetizers?
Speaker A: Yes. So. So even the spec.
Speaker B: And then one of all of the other ones as well.
Speaker A: Absolutely.
Speaker B: Okay, Sounds good. And water's okay for the moment.
Speaker A: Yeah. Or whip some lemon. And, uh, I know Doug likes to drink.
Speaker C: I'll do a paper plane.
Speaker A: What's a paper plane?
Speaker C: Rye aperol, amaro nino and lemon juice.
Speaker A: Hey, you see how I started a rumor about you already? I said Doug likes. So let me go ahead and do the introduction.
Speaker C: Okay, perfect.
Speaker A: Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of the Entrepreneur Podcast, A place to hear real entrepreneurs and business owners bear it all. M. I'm your host, Randolph Love, the third life strategist and retirement planner. And we do have, ah, a great entrepreneur on the show today. But before we bring them up, I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Sheer Wolf Strongholds, a wealth growth and protection company. When it comes to estate planning, when it comes to tax mitigation, when it comes to employee benefits, when it comes to life insurance, if your plan ain't Sheer Wolf, your plan ain't strong. If you are a business owner that wants you and your employees to retire higher than you would have prior, are your taxes at the max and you so stressed you can't relax? Make sure you visit shieldwolfstrong.com or call a text 1 904-822-4262. And now our guests. Doug Levy is a business operator and former COO who has led and scaled small and mid sized organizations with a focus on operational discipline, margin and retention. In one prior leadership role, he helped build a 50 person company with a 9 year average tenure and single digit turnover by implementing structured hiring and performance standards. Today Doug works with professionals and service based businesses to m reduce hiring risk, improve decision quality and protect revenue per employee. He developed the disciplined hiring framework to help business owners reduce urgency and gut feel with a clear reflection repeatable hiring system that holds up under real operating pressure. Doug, thank you man.
Speaker C: Appreciate it. Happy to be here.
Speaker A: Hey, thank you for coming. Of course. You were introduced to me by uh, who has become a good friend, Robert China. Now his name is C I N A P R Ian. So you know he's already given up on getting people to say it the right way. But I'm gonna say it the right way. Uh, Robert Chenop introduced us. Uh, first off, uh, it's very important, your network. How do you know Robert and, and how did he end up introducing you to me?
Speaker C: Yeah, so I met Robert through the Exit Advisors alliance which is a local networking group in Tri county area Florida, South Florida. In um, Broward Dade Palm Beach. And um, we had actually. Robert and I have actually never met in person.
Speaker B: Wow.
Speaker C: So, um, I'm a newer member to the Exit Advisors alliance and I went through the contact list and I reached out to about a dozen people who I thought I would have a good professional connection with based on what they do and based on what I do. And I reached out to him and said hey, let's set up a meeting and we met on Zoom, um, and hit it off and then by the end of that meeting he introduced me to you.
Speaker A: Oh yeah. And we deal with. We don't. We sell high ticket offers. Yeah. Right. So. And all of our customers are such. But since COVID I've discovered that more and more high ticket purchasers are willing to do business Site unseen. And what I mean by that, we've never met in person. Have you discovered the same thing?
Speaker C: Absolutely. Not necessarily. Some of the stuff that I do, I have to get on site and get in the weeds with their businesses. But in terms of. At the very least, in terms of starting that process and networking. Absolutely. I mean, the funny story with me and Rob was, um, he. When I initially reached out to him, it was right before the end of the year, and I said, why don't we, uh. I said, why don't we link up? He said, sure, why don't we go out for coffee or something? Because he was in Florida at the time. And I said, you know, I don't have two and a half hours to kill to drive up to Delray beach and do coffee. Why don't we do Zoom? And he said, I'm reserving my time in Florida for in person meetings, so why don't we schedule something for when I'm back in Canada? And this just works for both of us. And it was like a perfect example of that little dance of, like, of being respectful of my own time and other people's time and him doing the same. So we just connected on Zoom, and it was like we were sitting in front of each other.
Speaker A: Absolutely. So now we got the connection out of the way because same thing happened with, uh, Robert and I. I ended up meeting them in person, except I drove down from, uh, Jacksonville down to Boca. Yeah. Uh, and literally, he's Canadian, right? Yep. They've known for being ridiculously friendly. He invited me to stay at his place.
Speaker C: Phenomenal. Phenomenal.
Speaker A: We had just met, so. Great guy. All right, so. So check this out. So is there nothing that you know now that you wish you knew when you first started?
Speaker C: When I first started in my practice, my consulting practice in general.
Speaker A: Like, when you hear that, what. What do you think?
Speaker C: Something that I wish I knew back then was, um. It's funny, one of the things that I always say is I have a degree in management from the University of Florida, and having been in the business world for the last 25 years in management, I always say I wish I got a psychology degree instead, because working in, especially in small business, it's much more about people than it is about business. And I think I would have had an edge knowing more about how people think earlier in life than knowing about marketing and human resources and economics and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I am a constant studyer of human psychology. Right. And whether people. Because some. There are some people who believe that Learning psychology and implementing it is considered unethical. Right. And. And my retort to that is, so you're telling me that only. So, first off, my first question is, do you believe that the entire world is run off psychology? Uh, 10 out of 10, they say, yes, of course. And then I say, so it sounds like you're saying that only the bad people should know psychology. Is that what we're going with? Right.
Speaker C: And that's true for. That's true for a lot of different disciplines. Like when you look at sales, especially when you're teaching a new salesperson, you have to navigate a lot of psychology. And, uh, at first glance, some of it might feel a little icky, but you have to frame it. So I learned. I think it was, uh, a, uh, Tom Hopkins sales course. Tom Hopkins from back in, like, the 60s and 70s, he said that. That sales is helping somebody buy something that they need. So you're not just helping somebody. You're not just convincing somebody to buy something. You're helping them buy something that they need. You're helping them make a decision that's good for them. And when you frame it that way, it feels much better to help people overcome their own hesitations to do something that, you know that's good for them.
Speaker A: I was just having a conversation with somebody, actually, with my coo. Uh, and what it was was, you know, when you make that decision whether to allow the cookies or, uh, turn off the Internet cookies.
Speaker C: Yep.
Speaker A: Essentially what you're saying is, hey, I know I'm gonna get ass on my phone or on my computer.
Speaker C: Yep.
Speaker A: But due to these cookies, I know these ads are gonna be, for the most part, directly pertaining to me.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker A: So. So me, I'm like, you know, I'm not there yet, but I've almost reached the decision that, hey, let me cook it. Because if I'm gonna get bombarded by ads anyway.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: Then why not be ads that I want? And then her retort is, they're gonna make me buy stuff that I don't want to buy right now.
Speaker C: That's true. That's true. That's the problem.
Speaker A: I may need it, but I don't want to buy it right now.
Speaker C: Or they kind of the times when they get it wrong. Like, there's a meme about like, hey, Amazon, I bought one toilet seat because I need a toilet seat. I'm not a toilet seat collector. You start getting bombarded with ads for toilet seats and stuff.
Speaker A: So speaking of thinking, you know what you want. Right. There's a such thing as Human capital.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker A: What's the reason that business owners are routinely hiring the wrong people? And a lot of the times they say, well, I had a good gut feeling about it.
Speaker C: That's an easy question for me. You must have had that one. Um, and I was really thinking about it on the drive here just leading up to this conversation. And I think one of the common problems with that is that my paper plane. Oh, that's not. Oh, terrific. What did you get? Nice old fashioned.
Speaker A: You exist. Yeah. She's trying to decide if she should talk or not.
Speaker C: I break. I broke the fourth wall.
Speaker A: Samir. If you actually watch the episode that I did with Samir, he's a. He's a big time, um, mortgage person down your way. Okay, I'll introduce y' all if you want. But he kept breaking the wall. Oh, cool. So he, he set the standard.
Speaker C: So it's terrific. I knew it. There's mine in my coupe glass. Thank you very much.
Speaker A: Take.
Speaker C: Let's do a quick. Cheers. We're very well met.
Speaker A: Absolutely.
Speaker C: Fourth wall.
Speaker A: And thank you for being considerate of the framing. We just toast inside the frame.
Speaker C: There you go.
Speaker A: That's good.
Speaker C: So to answer your question, I think the root of a lot of the hiring missteps m. That people make that business owners make. All right. Yorkshire called popovers.
Speaker A: And this is our half portion of our Brussels.
Speaker C: Terrific. Thank you very much.
Speaker A: What's your name?
Speaker C: My name is Logan.
Speaker A: Thank you, Logan.
Speaker C: Thanks, Logan.
Speaker A: So.
Speaker C: Oh, they got popovers. Okay, cool. Grab one of those. Thank you.
Speaker A: I'm listening.
Speaker C: Assumptions. I think a lot of people just make assumptions and they don't pressure test those.
Speaker A: I'm sorry.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker A: They make assumptions. They don't pressure test, and they don't
Speaker C: pressure test those assumptions. So it stands to reason that if you have an interview with somebody and you hit it off with them and everything feels right, that it's probably a good fit, but that's not necessarily true. Um, and that happens over and over and over and over again. Another quick example is, oh, well, this person, they didn't just apply online. They showed up at my office and, um, asked to meet with me and show me and personally hand in their resume. That must mean that they're very motivated. I'll take some of that. And. But my response would be, what if it just means that they're desperate?
Speaker A: Ah, yeah.
Speaker C: So a lot of people, a lot of hiring behaviors, um, actually attract. Not to offend anybody, but they attract desperate candidates and not ones that are highly qualified. So I think a lot of it is rooted in making these assumptions. So where 99% of people might agree, oh yeah, they showed up at your office, that's like a good sign. But I see it as a red flag.
Speaker A: Are you saying that the motivation is more important than the action?
Speaker C: No, um, not necessarily. There is so much to it that if you bypass all of it, just an oversimplify it, kill it if you oversimplify it. Just to say this, oh, I hit it off in the interview and the resume looked good. You're missing a lot of nuance. And when you don't capture that nuance, when you get into a long term relationship with somebody, whether it's a working relationship or a personal relationship, that nuance is going to come out and you want to, you want to flesh that out a lot sooner than later to make sure that you're investing in the right, in the right place.
Speaker A: Okay, so what would you say is a nuance? That most business owners are the people in charge of hiring for the business.
Speaker C: Ms. M. Soft Skills.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker C: Soft skills. Um, they are either making an assumption about soft skills, about which soft skills are needed for a role, or they're ignoring them entirely. Um, soft skills being, um, things that you can't necessarily see on a resume. Whether somebody performs well under pressure, whether somebody is good at written communication, good at verbal communication, um, has the ability to understand and interpret instructions, can work well under ambiguity. For example, if, for example, this is a role where I need to be able to just kind of tell you a little bit about what I need and you need to take it and run with it. I'm not giving you a full roadmap to achieve the objective. Some people can't do that and some people can. But those things are either business owners either fail to consider them or they just don't even, they, they don't know how to test for them or anything like that because you can't ferret that out in a resume or an interview.
Speaker A: Okay, so that's the million dollar question. Because I was just about to say, because I agree with you, um, everybody can't do everything. And depending on the role.
Speaker B: Mhm.
Speaker A: That's what you need. How do you know in the very beginning if they can do those things? Before you invest too much time and
Speaker C: money, you have to do a cognitive and personality assessment as part of your hiring process.
Speaker A: Are those things accurate? Yes. Okay.
Speaker C: You get a good tool and you design it the right way and you, you can get ones that really do hit the mark.
Speaker A: Okay, so in your opinion, which ones hit the Mark,
Speaker C: it depends very, very, very much on the role. Um, so I'm hesitant to drop any brand names because I don't want to mislead anybody into thinking that there's one kind of end all. It has to be, you know, like any tool, it has to be used the correct way. So different types of roles require different tools. Certain technical roles, there's better tools than others. Certain jobs that are much more personality dependent, like hospitality, require different testing, um, tools. So there's, there's a variety of tools out there. And then you have to learn how the tool works and build it properly.
Speaker A: Okay, so if we're not dropping names.
Speaker C: Yep.
Speaker A: Hopefully we can drop some gems in this episode. Sure. But if we're not dropping specific brand names, what should they look for in the cognitive test?
Speaker C: It's got to be able to provide accurate measurements and it has to be able to provide actionable feedback. So a lot of them is really looking at the reports that they generate and seeing what those look like. So I've seen, for example, kind of shoddy assessments where it's. They ask you 15 questions and it's like, A, B, C, what comes next? D, 1, 2, 3. What comes next? 4. And it's like, well, all right. Thank you. And it's like, okay, well, that's kind of one sided because that's just, um, that's just pattern recognition. And pattern recognition isn't unimportant. But it's not the only thing out there. They tell me what that is. Do you know? I don't even care what it is.
Speaker A: Did they mention, did he mention what that was here?
Speaker B: I think these are.
Speaker A: The salmon won. The salmon won.
Speaker C: Phenomenal. These brussels sprouts are fantastic.
Speaker A: Very good. But wait till you. It's, it's some, it's some duck type stuff. Wait till, wait till you see it. Wait till you taste it. I should say so. Bread stuff.
Speaker C: It's like a. Stuff like a mozzarella stuffed bread situation. Oh, yeah, that's your stuffed mozzarella bruschetta. Heck yeah.
Speaker A: Okay. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: Heck yeah.
Speaker C: Salmon dip. Let's actually move this back over here for you. Thank you, sir. Set of fried green tomatoes right here for you as well. I love fried green tomatoes. Thank you very much. I heard in one of your episodes you refer to yourself as a human garbage disposal.
Speaker A: I'm trying to stop saying that. Yeah. But yes. Yeah, man, that's funny. I'm actually, I've made a commitment for this quarter to get my Weight down to a specific weight. Okay, very cool.
Speaker C: What are you doing to get there?
Speaker A: Uh, so far, so good so far.
Speaker C: Doing great so far. Thank you.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Uh, so what I'm doing is I'm, uh, you know, working out every morning and. But I'm actually putting it on my calendar.
Speaker C: Perfect.
Speaker A: Everything else was on my calendar except working out. So of course I'm setting myself up to not do what I'm supposed to do. So, uh, I started putting on my calendar, what else? But also I've been intermittent fasting.
Speaker B: Cool.
Speaker A: So, uh, I've been doing a little bit of that too. I may, I might eat, you know, once a day. This is good, by the way.
Speaker C: What is it?
Speaker A: Uh, yes, it's a type of crab cake. But I, you know, I don't even know. All right.
Speaker C: Does good tools and bad tools. Like you look at one tool and it's like, okay, it's got like 15 questions of pattern recognition. That's not enough to really figure it out. So you need something that's robust enough to really give you the data that you need, I think is really the number one quality that I would say.
Speaker A: So something that's robust enough to give you the data what you need. So what I would say, from what I've experienced with those, uh, those type of tests, they're very accurate.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker A: You know, if the person is being honest. Right. Yes.
Speaker C: Uh, a good test has different ways to indicate whether the results are reliable or not. So I use different tools that are able to say they're able to recognize certain patterns, certain behavioral patterns, like, oh, this person kind of whizzed through this section and we can't really determine if the results are reliable or it'll say this person is. There's one test that I use that says this person has a low self critical score or a high self critical score, which means they just think they're amazing and their answers will kind of reflect that. Now, that in and of itself isn't bad, but it's something that you need to be aware of when you're looking at it.
Speaker A: Absolutely. I remember it was just one test to where, you know, they were asking just normal test, I mean, normal questions. And they say, and it was like scenario questions and it says, he says, you're, you're sitting in your house. Oh, that's that duck stuff.
Speaker B: Whoa.
Speaker A: Let me just consolidate plates. Oh, yeah, right here.
Speaker C: Wow.
Speaker B: All right, we're just waiting on the Greek flattest Hummer.
Speaker C: Grab, um, one of those. Thank you.
Speaker A: Get some of that sauce.
Speaker C: Fine. Holy moly.
Speaker A: Rub it in there. Holy. Yeah.
Speaker C: Holy moly. Holy moly.
Speaker A: Yes, sir. Um, so, so what it was, was the scenario was you're in your house, okay. You look out the window. You're and your best friends, you can see your, your, your neighborhood friend's mother is undressing in the, in the, uh, window. Uh, across or across the way.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker A: Do you look away or do you keep looking? Right. That was it. It was a simple yes and no. But they weren't testing whether or not you say yes or no. They were testing how long you took to answer the question. Is that what you're talking about?
Speaker C: Exactly. That's exactly it. So different tests can figure out different things like that. And I've also found. Is that a good, A good test is one that you kind of don't know what it's trying to figure out when you answer the question, because then a test taker can kind of work it a little bit. Um, and you don't want it to be easily manipulated. So it's one component, but it's a very important component that people overlook.
Speaker A: Okay, so let's say the person, did you get some of the fried green tomatoes? You don't want any. So let's say the person finds a good test, right? It has all of the fail safes and the key features that you believe are great. Another thing that I've learned, and let me know if you agree or disagree with that. Uh, but what a lot of people do without considering the test, they hire people that are just like them.
Speaker C: Absolutely.
Speaker A: When really in trouble, truly, if you yourself as the business owner takes that same test, you should be hiring people who are strong where you weak and weak where you're strong.
Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah. And that, that brings up another kind of shortfall that a lot of not just business owners, but I don't want to call it a shortfall or shortcoming, but just kind of this like, thing that a lot of people have is you kind of accept, expect people to be like you. I'm good. You expect people to be like you, and that's not gonna build you a good team. You don't want everybody to be like you. And also, like, in a lot of cases, you're the owner, you're the entrepreneur, you're the person that a lot of times is, is the most successful person in many of the rooms you step into. I'm good on that for now. Why are you trying to hire a person for a different role that might be like an entry level Administrative role, that is trying to conquer the world, when that's not. That's just not the right fit to be looking for.
Speaker A: We'll consolidate. Thank you, sir. You're a scholar. So, all right, so you, uh, why are you hiring a person and.
Speaker C: Yeah, why are you trying to. Not everybody needs to be ambitious. Not everybody needs to be, you know, super driven. Not everybody needs to want growth. Those are specific qualities that are necessary for certain jobs and not necessary for others. There's millions and millions and millions of jobs in this country and all around the world that are perfectly well suited for somebody that wants to come in to work at a specific time, do a great job and go home to their family. Doesn't want to work a minute, a minute more than they need. Doesn't want to work a minute more than they need to, you know, that kind of thing. And a lot of business owners kind of like, overlook those. I, uh, call them Steady Freddy's. You know, um, some of the best employees I've ever had were people that worked for the company for 20 years. And they were never team leads. They never took initiative on projects. They weren't like, super into. Some of the. More like, you know, hoity toity cultural stuff that we would do. But they just came in, did their job every single day to the best of their ability for years and years and years and were always happy and never wanted to leave. So a lot of times those people get overlooked when they really shouldn't.
Speaker A: All right, I'm gonna say my next question. Go for it a little bit. All right, this is what you're going to love. Okay.
Speaker C: That's like a duck ragu, right?
Speaker A: I know duck is in it, but it seems like you're familiar.
Speaker C: It's like the way it's prepared.
Speaker A: It's like a shredded duck is in it. So you culture with your fool.
Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
Speaker A: So what is the cost, the true cost of making a bad hire?
Speaker C: That's a great question. So there's direct costs and indirect costs, right? So direct costs are what is the money that comes out of my pocket from screwing this up, uh, call it, or from this not working out. And what are some of the other things that you need to consider that I would call a cost? So first of all, the impact statement that I make is that if you hire somebody for $60,000 a year annual salary, and they don't work out after six months, I calculate that loss based on certain mathematical assumptions at about $55,000. So almost their entire salary is a loss. Now, what does that look like, first of all, is ramp up time. When you hire somebody, they typically are not at full speed this, you know, their first day on the job.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: So some businesses or some, um, some roles have high ramp, like long ramp up time where somebody might not be like at a hundred percent for six months or a year or two years and sometimes it's maybe a few weeks if you're lucky, or three months or something like that. But if you hire somebody for 10 bucks an hour and they are only 50% up to speed over those first three months or six months, then the rest of that's just a loss. Right? And then when you look at a hire not working out, what do you typically see along with that? Management is spending time supporting that person instead of working on other strategic goals. That's payroll, that's going to the wrong place. Um, other members of your team are, instead of doing their work, are either picking up the slack or answering questions or helping somebody get up to speed, which is dozens and dozens of hours of their time that instead of spent moving the business forward, it's spent helping a drowning employee. You've got the uh, potential recruiter fees that you have to, or whatever, whatever the recruitment efforts are, where you got to put a job on a job ad board or something like that, or pay a recruiter. You've got those fees, you've got the time that that job is vacant if that person doesn't work out to the time that you have to rehire somebody else and have a reset where now you're bringing on another new hire at zero. So all of that math leads to really, really, really costly, um, problems in dollars because all of the hours that it takes to do those things is payroll that's being used not for the advancement of the company, but to try to support an employee that's not working out or trying to replace an employee or trying to train an employee. None of which are helping you meet your objectives. So those are the hard costs. The soft cost is the cultural damage that an organization experiences when those types of things happen. Right.
Speaker A: Why did you let this person stay on for so long?
Speaker C: Right. Why did you keep this guy? Why do we hire this clown? Your A players are always watching. They're always watching. And if they're called in to help or if they're slowed down because of a hiring, you know, a bad fit that you hired, they notice those things and if it's bad enough, they'll leave. Um, and then you just have this organization where when a new employee comes in their peers can't necessarily trust that they're the right person for the job, so they don't approach it with the same gusto or welcoming attitude or, or really being willing to train. Like, now all of their peers have to figure out if this person's a dud or not because the owner didn't, uh, or the hiring person didn't do their job. And those things, while you can't necessarily monetize what that looks like, they affect the culture of an organization. So if you've got two organizations side by side and one of them has bad hiring practices and high turnover and the staff is not excited about anybody new, and there's all sorts of drag that's created when somebody doesn't work out, and then you've got another organization where they've really got it right. And when somebody comes in, everybody that works there has a lot more trust that the managers or owners chose the right person instead of hiring somebody that just, like, blew smoke up the boss's. You know what, in an interview, it's. It changes the way that organization functions at a fundamental level.
Speaker A: Got it. So correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine it's impossible to have zero turnover. It is. Okay. So that said, what do you consider? And I imagine there are some people who, they. Great. Doing great.
Speaker C: Thank you.
Speaker A: I imagine there are some people who come to you and they, after you work with them, they wish they would have come sooner. What are the telltale signs that they have higher than average, um, turnover? Because in their minds, they're probably thinking, all right, this is just how it works. People come, people go. Yep. What are the telltale signs that they have higher than average?
Speaker C: So you don't really need it. To be honest, you don't really need to worry about telltale signs because the math is the math. It's, how many people are you? How many people are you hiring? How many people are leaving? Turnover is a mathematical calculation. And you compare it to industry average. And not every business has the same type of turnover. There's different businesses where people can be expected to stay for a long time, and there's different businesses like, um, hospitality, where, you know, people don't. People aren't servers at restaurants, typically for 10 years. You know, a lot of times there's people that just come to do it for three months or whatever. So every business has a different number or every role has a different number. But you can, you can look, you can look at industry benchmarks and just say, you know, figure out what's going on. You know, you go into a business that's been in business for 15 years, and all of their employees were hired in the last three years. That's kind of a telltale sign, like, hey, there's a problem. Why don't you have anybody that's been here for while. Why is everybody new when you've been in business for 15 years? That. That is kind of weird to me. There's a story behind it. There's a story for everything. Right? So. But that. That's where I start asking questions.
Speaker A: Okay, so does a person only learn what the industry benchmarks are by hiring somebody like you, or is there not, uh, a periodical or a journal or a census that they can go to to know what the benchmarks are?
Speaker C: Look it up. Very easy to look up. You know, what's. What is the average turnover for a, uh, medical assistant at a, you know, a, uh, high touch, you know, dermatology practice or dentist practice or whatever. It's very easy to do some cursory research and see kind of what chat GPT comes up with and stuff like that. And you don't need to get too scientific. You just need to see, like, all right, how far away am I from these indicators? And then you also kind of know, right? Like a business owner. If you go to a business owner and say, is turnover a problem for you? It's gonna be a yes or no answer. They're gonna know, you know what? I'm having trouble keeping people and. Or I'm not. Or people. People come here and they stay and they love it here, and they only leave when their husband in the military gets reassigned to a different base or this or that other thing and that kind of stuff. So you kind of know.
Speaker A: Okay, all right, so out of 10 engagements for you, how often is it the employee's fault and how often is it the business owner's fault?
Speaker C: Design.
Speaker A: I wouldn't be surprised if you say 10 out of 10. It's the employees. It's. It's the employer's fault. I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker C: It depends. I can answer the question a couple of different ways.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker C: If you're a business owner that's really looking to improve and looking to learn from your mistakes, you treat everything as if it's your fault. You take ownership.
Speaker A: That's a very political answer, but go ahead. That's a good answer. But that was a safe. That was a real safe answer.
Speaker C: You take ownership of it. Now, turnover problems can rear their heads in different ways where it's never it's almost never really obvious where it's just, I hired 10 people, and five of them quit and cursed me out on the way out the door type of thing, where it's just really obvious that there's a problem. Uh, but you'll notice over time, well, we hired this person and then they moved and took another job. Or we hired this person and she went back to work for a family business. And, like, you notice, like, you hire 10 people and five of them leave, but all for different reasons. You still have to kind of diagnose that to get to the source of the problem. You know, you think I was some sort of human resources guy, but I'm not. But these are things that I figured out in real, practical, just battlefield experience working with businesses.
Speaker A: Okay, so. Because, yeah, I'm gonna be honest. I was under the impression that you were a human resources consultant.
Speaker C: I'm not, but.
Speaker A: So how would you describe what you do and what's the. What's the. What's the real pain points that you saw? Because I know you got entry. Ways of entry. Yeah, but what's the real pain points that you solve? And how would you describe.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: Yourself.
Speaker C: So, uh, at my core, I mean, listen, I'll be whatever you want me to be. You know what I'm saying? But. But at my core, I am an operations consultant and fractional chief operating officer. So I'm an operations guy. I'm an operations guy.
Speaker A: Fourth wall.
Speaker C: There's somebody over there that you can't see. So I'm an operations guy. I am a systems and processes and workflows and repeatability and like that. My. That's. My core competency, is to go into a business and say, why are you writing that down on a sticky note and putting it in another pile of sticky notes? Why. Why are we using paper? Why are we putting paper in a binder that we just scanned into the computer system? Why is that being kept and maintained? You tell us how you think we're doing.
Speaker B: Uh, pretty good. I'm really proud.
Speaker C: Did some damage. Right.
Speaker B: Favorites, like, top three.
Speaker A: Always love the duck stuff. What do you call it?
Speaker B: Duck. Won Napoleon.
Speaker A: I always love the duck. The duck.
Speaker C: The fried green tomatoes. Sleeper sleeper hit. Sleeper hit.
Speaker A: The meatballs.
Speaker C: The Brussels sprouts.
Speaker B: O. Okay.
Speaker A: Oh, the Brussels sprouts.
Speaker C: The walnuts and the Brussels sprouts.
Speaker B: They are really good. It's a nice, like, top five mix right there.
Speaker A: There you go.
Speaker B: Absolutely.
Speaker A: Yep.
Speaker C: Absolutely.
Speaker A: And even though we didn't murder these, I still want them to go. And we Also need. We're doing entrees too. Okay.
Speaker C: And dessert, apparently. I'm so nervous.
Speaker A: Let me make sure. Do you want to. I'm good.
Speaker C: I'm good.
Speaker A: Yes. And then get ready for these. Train.
Speaker C: It's a marathon, not a sprint, right?
Speaker A: Oh, shoot. See? She's efficient.
Speaker C: Where did that come from?
Speaker A: I thought she had took them.
Speaker C: Oh, thank you.
Speaker A: She was just complaining that she don't have systems friends. I don't know anyone that does what I do.
Speaker C: Is that what you do?
Speaker B: Nice.
Speaker A: I don't know anyone else.
Speaker C: Why?
Speaker B: There you go.
Speaker A: Hard to find. You meet a lot of business owners
Speaker C: that may be working in their business,
Speaker A: but they don't have a second in command.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: So it's hard.
Speaker C: That's. That's why I do what I do.
Speaker A: Doug and I are friends. There you go.
Speaker C: I love how you just, like, declared that that was. That was. And, like, it's inarguable.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it's done.
Speaker C: You can't get out. Right. There's a lot of people that kind of say they do what I do, but they don't do what I do. And I'm not trying to be cocky about it. It's just one of the things that I've noticed. I've only been doing this since June. Like, I was working as a chief operating officer for years before that. So I've only been consulting since June. And I've already noticed that my special. Special sauce is how deep into the weeds that I get. Uh, where most people. Most people stop at theory or maybe go a little bit past theory and coaching. Not that there's anything wrong with coaching. There's a need for coaching. I just explained to people I am not a coach. I'm in it with you. I'm in the trenches. I'm not the general back at the Pentagon telling you what to do. I'm in it with you. And there's not a lot of people that go as deep as I do.
Speaker A: So it sounds like friend and mentor. There you go.
Speaker C: There we go. There we go. I, um, can't even imagine what else I'm gonna eat.
Speaker A: Whatever you're. Do you have a fridge at your hotel?
Speaker C: I do.
Speaker A: Whatever you're okay with taking home.
Speaker B: There you go.
Speaker C: I've never met a ribeye I didn't like.
Speaker A: Well, there you go.
Speaker C: It's done.
Speaker A: Seem like you should make your appointment now.
Speaker C: I gotta figure out a glass of wine. I'm an operations guy, so I can come into a business and look at the way everything flows all the Way down to the granular. And I ask all sorts of weird questions, I make all sorts of weird observations and I can go look at a business and say if you fix this, this, this and this, you can get things moving along better. Through my consulting work, I noticed a trend with this hiring stuff and it's something that I was very successful in in my previous role that you mentioned in my bio, which is I worked at a company with 45, 50 employees. We had turnover below 10% almost all the time. Average tenure of nine years, which in 2025, 2026 is just unheard of. Um, and looking back, I realized that I figured out what I was doing right. And I'm looking at some, some of my clients and what they're behind.
Speaker A: You see behind the curtain.
Speaker C: Yeah. What they're kind of not doing right. And, and I, and I dove in head first on that. So I basically, and, and in my desire to scale my business because I don't want to be Doug Levy Consulting for the rest of my life, I'm looking to go grow something meaningful. I've got my consulting work and then I built this disciplined hiring system to be able to roll out as a modular little thing that I can, that I can offer to small businesses where maybe they can't afford the high ticket, you know, six month engagement consulting, but they can afford to spend uh, a few bucks on really optimizing their hiring practices for forever. Uh, so those are kind of my two, my two branches. So this hiring thing is my, it's my hot take right now. And it's, it's a big part of the future of my, my, my firm.
Speaker A: Absolutely, man. It seems very, because uh, even, even in my five year plan, uh, I only see myself at the most hiring three more people.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: But now with the onset of this AI, I don't even know if I'm going to hire those three people. I'll be honest.
Speaker C: You need people, you need.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker C: There's, there's work that people, there's work that AI can't do. Somebody's got to feed the machine, you know what I'm saying? Like I hired, when I was building this disciplined hiring system, um, which I've done over the last two months, I did a lot of ideation, but I didn't have the time to build the resources themselves. So I actually hired a uh, human assistant and said, here's the game plan. You go use ChatGPT to help write all this stuff and then you and I'll kind of polish it up. So even that saved me, you know, um, 30, 40, 50 hours that I could spend elsewhere. So there's still a need. You definitely don't need as many people, but you still need people. But the funny thing is, I didn't mean to cut you off. But the funny thing is that when you look at how expensive it is to not hire. Well, I was talking to somebody about this discipline hiring system yesterday and they said, oh, it sounds like this is a, uh, good thing for people that are like doing a lot of hiring. And I said, no, there's value in it as an insurance policy if you're hiring one person. Because if you're a small business and you're hiring one individual, how much do you have riding on that individual? A lot more than a business that's got 40 people hiring its 41st person. So I would argue that the stakes are even higher for a small business that is hiring its first, second or third employee than a larger. Larger than a larger business.
Speaker A: Ah. Uh, yeah, it's. To me it's kind of like. So, uh, I've been in the insurance industry going on two decades now. Started in, uh, property and casualty sales, uh, transition into claim handling. Right.
Speaker C: Yep. Now that's why you got that haircut.
Speaker A: There you go. 25 years in property and casualty insurance, all that stress. Actually it's a, it's a sign of intelligence is what I heard.
Speaker C: I'll take it, I'll take it, I'll take it.
Speaker A: All right. So. So one thing that's very ironic is the smaller claims, the residential properties, where there's a Delta of maybe 15, 20,000.
Speaker C: Yep.
Speaker A: It's way more important to that property owner. And when I say important, potentially detrimental than that multi million dollar commercial claim. Absolutely. It sounds like what you're saying is all that truth is parallel when it comes whether you hiring 100 people or one person. Right. Uh, that disciplined hiring system is valuable.
Speaker C: Absolutely. Because the cost is so high. You spend a couple thousand dollars a year to insure a forty thousand dollar car, don't you? Why, at least in South Florida we do with the prices and stuff like that. But so that's kind of the point is that you don't look at it as a function of doing great.
Speaker B: Thank you.
Speaker A: Y' all ready for your entrees?
Speaker C: I'm ready.
Speaker A: All right, let's go.
Speaker C: Yeah, you will. I'll have the ribeye and I'll uh, I'll take that medium with, uh, with the wine that's suggested on the menu. The Annabella.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: Thank you.
Speaker B: May I Take that menu out your way.
Speaker C: Yes, please. Thank
Speaker B: you.
Speaker A: How long have you worked here?
Speaker B: Since the end of October. So four years, four or five months, something like that.
Speaker A: So not the most it could be. But what is your favorite? Not because it's the most expensive, but it's your favorite, favorite entre. Okay, let's do it.
Speaker C: I'm a meat girl, too.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: And you like seafood? I really like the black and redness. Just because it's a very creamy spinach sauce. It's like, the perfect mix of sauce, and I like spinach, and I'm very particular with seafood, but for some reason, it all just complements very well.
Speaker A: Does the ribeye come with, like, uh, any, like, sides or anything?
Speaker B: It comes with asparagus and then potato.
Speaker C: Love it.
Speaker A: I take the ribeye medium rare.
Speaker B: Okay, Sounds good.
Speaker C: Thank you. So, yeah, so I started just pulling on the thread with this hiring stuff and figured out some really interesting things. Really interesting things.
Speaker A: And it's working out.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: It's got legs.
Speaker A: All right.
Speaker C: That's what I like to say. It's got legs.
Speaker A: So what would you say? If we haven't already said it is the most common hiring mistake.
Speaker C: Thank you. I wouldn't appreciate it. I wouldn't say that. M. There's a most common mistake. Kind of like I said at the beginning, I think there's a root cause, which is just making an assumption that you haven't actually thought about. Like, hey, is this a good idea or not? Or am I. Am I on the right track? When was the last time you questioned, hey, is hiring somebody that I get along with really well in an interview, Is that, like, the right way to evaluate somebody in an interview or not? Most people just don't question that. They just kind of operate that way because they're running a business. They're so busy doing all these other things. But when you laser focus on that piece of it, the answer is not always yes. So I think the root cause is making assumptions that feel right but are objectively and in practice, not the best way to go about things.
Speaker A: So take. All right. So, I mean, I think for a business owner, one that's. That's been, I say, rewarded for going with how they feel, going against the grain. It sounds like you're saying there comes a time to. Where you have to eliminate the spontaneity.
Speaker C: Yes. Nailed it. You nailed it. A lot of people. A lot of people. You can get lucky. You know, you can do it that way and hire somebody who's great and you've Got this rock star on your team where you're like, I just did it the way I always do it and I hired the this person or these three people and they're fantastic. But it's a numbers game, it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. So yes, you can, you can not hire in what I would consider like a optimally, you know, an optimized way. Being the operations nerd that I am, you can do that and you can be successful at it. But over the next 20 years, are you going to bleed hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of operational drag by getting it wrong seven or eight times when you could have maybe only gotten it wrong three times by going about it in a little bit of a better way? So it's more of a big picture thing. So I think a lot of people are like, oh well I did this and it worked. Um, but that's not the long haul approach.
Speaker A: Got it. So of course hiring is the thread that you're to going, pulling on because you were so successful at it and it's uh, allowed you to retain employees on average of 9 plus years, single digit, uh, turnover.
Speaker B: Yep.
Speaker A: So tell me about that other path. Right. This is, this is, this, this is the lead generator. Sounds like.
Speaker C: Well, it's actually could be the whole thing. It could end up being the whole thing because it's so valuable and it's so, it's so impactful and it's so accessible and not everybody needs or wants uh, a long term engagement, um, out of this type of thing. So this thing could have legs all by itself, to be completely honest. Um, especially when I pair it with some other modules because I'm noticing some other trends. So for example, I'll give you a little teaser and the audience a little teaser. What comes after hiring, training, onboarding and training. Would you say that it's normal in a business, that a small business especially that a lot of business owners, uh, rely on their new hires to figure a lot of things out on their own?
Speaker A: I would say yes. Uh, it almost becomes. Which even from even, even from the very beginning, I, I just assume that a lot of stuff that said on a resume isn't true or at the very least exaggerated. Right, sure. Uh, but I think a lot of people think that everything that they see on that resume as the gospel truth. So yes, it does come across as, ah, man, you said you knew how to do this. Sure, sure.
Speaker C: And not just that, but a lot of businesses like you don't. They don't necessarily have all of these built out processes and procedures and training manuals and all this kind of stuff. And what they do in lieu of developing those types of materials is they say this person, in order to hack it here, they're going to need to be able to figure it out. So if they can't figure it out, they're not a good employee and they
Speaker A: potentially just lost a good employee.
Speaker C: But here's the thing. There's a lot of jobs out there where you're just supposed to do kind of, for lack of better phrasing, you're kind of supposed to just do what you're told or follow the instructions. Right? Like if you're working at a call center, you're supposed to follow the, the script and escalate when they say certain words like I want to cancel my subscription or whatever. So there's like a decision tree. There's a lot of jobs where you're not required to be able to figure things out because you're just supposed to follow the. Follow the roadmap. Yes. If your job doesn't require the skill of figuring it out, why does your onboarding need to require the skill. Skill of figuring it out? So if I hire somebody that could be amazing at their future state job, but can't figure it out in the beginning because I don't have the proper materials to just point them in the right direction, is that fair? I don't think so. So there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of, for lack of a better term, kind of lazy onboarding and training where a small business owner who also might just be too damn busy might just say, you know what? This person needs to figure it out on their own or they can't hack it here. But you can lose talent that way because there's a lot of good talent out there that figuring it out is not part of the rest of their job. So why does it need to be a part of their training if that's just not a soft skill that they have? Or they're too, uh, they don't want to do anything wrong or they don't want to do. They don't want to, they don't want to make a mistake or something like that. Like this is a person who could be great in their seat for the next 20 years, but you're relying on them to figure out the first six months and that's not always the key to success. So my next module is going to be handling onboarding and training in a much more deliberate and laser focused manner. So that the onboarding and training is reflective of the skills that this person needs to be successful over the long term. So we're not just depending on them to figure it out when they don't need to.
Speaker A: Got it. Because I like how you put that. Because some job descriptions require thinking on your feet and figuring it out. However, if that job that you hired for doesn't require that and you're forcing them to try to figure it out in the very beginning, you could lose that good employee.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: Or.
Speaker C: Or they're, or they're just not going to be successful and you're grading them on the wrong scale. You're grading them on a figure it out scale. When they're, when they're. The role you hired them for is an execute these instructions consistently role. You know what I mean?
Speaker A: So, and I like what you said there. Uh, because of course, uh, my company, we have core values.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: One of those core values is we have intuition. Right. And what we do is because even though we have intuition, our goal is to take the intuitive process out of everything.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker A: So what I love that. So what that means is as soon as we run into an issue, and I think that you should have had intuition.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: We immediately stop, we evaluate, and then we put it in our SOPs.
Speaker C: I love that. I love that. And that is a level of discipline that is commendable. And not a lot of small businesses have that because they may just listen. Businesses that make these, you know, mistakes. It's not because they're bad people. It's these people don't have, uh. Sometimes people don't just don't have the bandwidth or don't have the skill set. There's a lot of people that start businesses because they're good at what the business does and they're not good at those other things. But I love that approach of saying, wait a second, we just hit a problem. Instead of, like, resolving the problem and just moving forward, let's spend, uh, a little bit of time to figure out what caused that problem and how we can avoid it in the future. And I said the word spend, but what I really meant is the word invest, because what's the difference? An investment has a return.
Speaker B: Return.
Speaker C: And what's the return on that investment of stopping and spending the hour it takes to troubleshoot why that happened and write some stuff down to make sure it doesn't happen again. That'll save you countless hours in the future.
Speaker A: That's powerful, man. Yeah. All right, so how do people, how do people end up in Your funnel. And, and who is your ideal customer? Sure.
Speaker C: So being that I just recently started this, I'm working off of a lot of referrals, which is phenomenal because my reputation is preceding me, I'm doing something right, and I'm, I'm being introduced to people. Um, I got introduced to me, man. Exactly. Exactly. I got, um, I actually just got. I booked a discovery call with somebody because, because I'm in a Facebook user group for a specialized software that one of my other clients uses. And somebody in that Facebook user group said, hey, I need help with something that I'm good at. And I was like, hey, I've done this for one of your peers. Let me help you out. Um, uh, but I'm also, for example, like I said, the way I met you is I'm networking with, um, the Exit Advisors Alliance. One of the reasons that I got into this work is because my company that I worked for was sold and I was a part of that whole process. And I also realized the value of what I do in helping a business prepare for an exit. Whether it's five years ahead or 90 days ahead, there's things that I can do to help, um, improve an operation for a transaction. Um, so I'm networking with those types of folks. My ideal client is a business that realistically has, um, at least a million dollars in revenue and is running profitably. Where they're not.
Speaker A: Yeah, that's not always the same.
Speaker C: Yeah, they're not hand to mouth because my services cost money. And if you don't have the money to pay for it, there's not a whole lot I can do. So a business that's making at least a million dollars in revenue and has some room for optimization where you've got somebody that kind of knows that they don't have all of the puzzle pieces together, um, and it goes up to probably businesses. I wouldn't say that there's a revenue ceiling, but I would say that there's typically an employee count ceiling. So once you get to businesses that have anywhere from 50 to 75 employees or more than 50 to 75 employees, they typically have a very small, strong operator in place in their hierarchy. So I'm not necessarily there to supplement what an existing, uh, chief operating officer is doing. I'm there to help a business, um, that doesn't have an operations manager or chief operating officer get their things in order so that they can grow to the point where they need one.
Speaker A: And I forget there's a specific type of employee benefits that once you hit 50 employees that you must, you must engage in.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: Are you familiar with that?
Speaker C: That I believe there's, there's certain compliance issues that happen at 50 employees, like family Medical Leave act and, and offering benefits and stuff like that. But that's not tech. That's not technically related to the type of work that I do.
Speaker A: But the reason why I asked. Yeah, it's. It seems like whatever documentation that they have to file, that could be a,
Speaker C: uh, they probably don't have it. Yeah.
Speaker A: It could be a trigger.
Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Speaker A: Because, you know, the way a lot of these data companies, uh, work, you can literally say, uh, give me, ah, only companies that have 45 employees.
Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, 45 to 49.
Speaker A: Yep. And then, boom, there it is. Because they are hitting these compliance things that they know. Oh, yeah.
Speaker C: And that's part of it. If you're not, if you're not operationally sound, you don't have the, you don't have that stuff. But a lot of, A lot of the businesses that I work with, um, they, they typically take a couple of different forms. So number one is the, the owner is in the weeds and experiencing pains that they know that somebody else could probably help them get out of. Number two, ah, a lot of them have hit like a, A revenue seal, like, I can't seem to get past $2 million in revenue no matter what I do type of deal. Um, and something needs to, they need to kind of break down, to break through. Um, but I think one of the most common, and I remember this from one of your previous episodes, is, uh, you were talking to Rob about it. I think that for somebody to reach out to me, they typically have to have, um, sense of humility that I don't know everything. And I want to bring in an expert that can help me with the things that I'm not good at so that I can learn them or implement them or somebody that's got time that I don't have and focus that I don't have. So typically, um, I'm not hearing from people that know what they're doing or are fine without me. I'm hearing from people that have acknowledged that there's something that they want to accomplish that they can't seem to get done by themselves and they want to bring in some firepower for it.
Speaker A: Absolutely. It's one thing that I've shared on multiple podcasts, uh, and some of the speaking engagements that I've done, uh, because it's so profound. My Granddaddy, uh, he's 90. He's 93.
Speaker C: Oh, God bless him.
Speaker A: And he still is driving. He's still.
Speaker C: Oh, God bless the rest of us.
Speaker A: Right? They say God bless the rest of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So he was one of those people, you know that when the. Because back then they used to have door to door. Dictionary salesman.
Speaker C: Yeah, Encyclopedias.
Speaker A: Yeah. So he was that guy that actually bought the dictionaries. He bought the encyclopedias. And he still has that, those collections at his house. Uh, and a lot of my collection comes from his collection. I mean, books from the 1950s, the 1960s. Right. Very great, profound books. Before all of these things, you know, they had their own distractions back then.
Speaker C: Oh yeah.
Speaker A: Uh, before so many distractions and, and so much knowledge was put into those words. Right. So, uh, when I look up the word idiot in that dictionary and my granddaddy, he told me this, he said, you know, an idiot is someone with the mental capacity of 0 to 3 years old. Uh, and an imbecile is someone with the mental capacity of three to seven years.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: And he actually, he showed me in the Webster's dictionary from the 1960s. Ah. That was the definition. And then when you look it up today, both those words are used interchangeably. Uh, it simply means a stupid person.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: So what I did was I said, I wonder what it meant in the very beginning. Most people, if I were to give them a million dollars in all the time they had in the world, they couldn't tell me what the original definition of idiot was. And if I were to ask you without searching it, what's the original definition of the word idiot?
Speaker C: I. I don't know. If I had the hazard a guess, I would say somebody who thinks they know things but doesn't.
Speaker A: Okay, that's a good guess.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker A: The original definition of the word idiot is a private person. Strange. Right? Now they mean a private.
Speaker C: I see the jump.
Speaker A: Yeah. So, so what they're saying is they're referring to a private person as the opposite of somebody that was in the government, a public citizen.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker A: So the people in the government call the rest of the people idiots.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker A: So. And it just transferred to these people are. Are stupid.
Speaker C: Interesting.
Speaker A: So when I saw that, I said, wow, that's very interesting. So if, if idiot and imbecile were used consecutively back in the the 60s and they're used, they use interchangeably today. I wonder what the original definition of the word imbecile was. Do you want to take a.
Speaker C: Uh, no, I don't.
Speaker A: Tell them, tell me the original definition of the word imbecile is a person without a supporting staff. Now, when they say staff, they're referring to, uh, like the long stick.
Speaker C: Oh, like a stick.
Speaker A: So. But think about it. It. Let's think about this. Yeah, you're gimpy. Yeah. But not even that. You know, all the. The prophets and the. Yeah.
Speaker C: Moses.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker C: How are you gonna part the Red Sea without that thing?
Speaker A: You need a staff. And so. So just like a staff you can walk with, you can reach for something, you can defend yourself the same as a human staff. Sure. A human staff helps you walk.
Speaker C: Sure. Oh, I love that.
Speaker A: I love that a human staff helps you defend yourself. So I reached the conclusion. Absolutely.
Speaker C: Thank you, dear.
Speaker B: Thank you.
Speaker A: I've reached the conclusion that if you are a business owner that's keeping everything private and you refuse to hire a supporting staff, you're an idiot, and you're an imbecile. And I'm not even insulting.
Speaker C: I'm gonna start calling people that.
Speaker A: I'm not even.
Speaker C: No, it makes sense.
Speaker A: I'm just calling them the original definition of the word. And it sounds like what you were encountering. By the time people get to you, they realize.
Speaker C: Are you trying to get me to say that the people that call me are idiots and imbeciles?
Speaker A: Well, just off the original definition, but by the time they call you, they actually.
Speaker C: I don't know if that's gonna fly in my marketing m. Materials, but actually, are you an idiot? Are you an imbecile? Call me.
Speaker A: But by the time they call you, they've actually transcended. Yeah, they, they. They. They're not going to. So be. Oh.
Speaker C: So I just gotta say, do you want to not be?
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker C: No, you're right. It's somebody who can. Who can say, you know what? There's. It's. It goes back to that saying, there's got to be a better way. And there's some people that. That can get there on their own, and there's some people that can't, and there's some people that can get there faster. One of my clients is somebody who I've known for a few years from before I got into this work, and she said, you've already done what I want to do, so I'm gonna pay you for the shortcut so that I don't have to experience the pains and make the mistakes that you had to make to figure this out over the course of 20 years. I want you to help me get there in five. And that's. That's a Perfect way of looking at it. And they've been adaptable to change and stuff like that. So, um, there's definitely got to be. You know, there's a lot of ego in owning a business. There's a lot of ego in being an entrepreneur. And ego gets you a long way. That confidence gets you really, really, really far. Like walking into a room and being that authority. It really does get you far. Thank you.
Speaker A: Getting the utensils right.
Speaker C: But, um. But knowing what you don't know is what separates the winners from everybody else.
Speaker B: Ah.
Speaker A: Uh, and I'm glad you say that, because the more I know, the more I know, the more I don't need you.
Speaker C: Absolutely.
Speaker A: Yeah. All right.
Speaker C: So to quote one of my favorite songs, all I know is that I don't know nothing.
Speaker A: There you go. I like it. So let me ask you. What books should people be reading and why?
Speaker C: I'll be completely honest with you. I'm not a big business book guy. I've read 7 Habits. I've read how to Make Friends and Influence people. I've. I'm aware of all of these books that people kind of drop in these conversations. But I'll be completely honest that I have not read.
Speaker A: Um. That was nice. Thank you.
Speaker C: Oh, uh, this looks beautiful.
Speaker B: It should.
Speaker C: Thank you very much. So I have nothing against those books at all, but I have relied a lot on my experience and knowledge to kind of guide what I do. And I found it very, very, very, um, rewarding over the last probably five to six years to read books about literally any random subject that interests me. So I've devoted a lot of my time to reading. Um, and I do audiobooks because I. When I'm in the car, it's just easier for me to do. I've read books on dinosaurs and how electricity works and biographies of important people. Um, Washington, Franklin. Um, I've got one for Frederick Douglass, Teed up Simon Bolivar from South America. Um, books about astronomy and how stars work. So I've actually. To pivot away from all the kind of typical answers. I've enjoyed this. Um, I've read books about Buddhism and Taoism and in Islam. Um, I read the old. The Hebrew Bible start to finish. I read the New Testament start to finish. Um, I read commentaries on both of them. I read a book about how the Bible was written and by whom it was written. And I've focused on becoming the most worldly and relatable person that I can become by learning about things that interest me and being able to share that knowledge with anybody. That cares or whatever, you know. So it's kind of a different take on, on the reading.
Speaker A: That's very powerful. What you said very relatively recently. Because all I, all I read are not, Are, uh, non fiction books. Okay, cool. That's all I read. But relatively recently, somebody broke that down to me just the way you just broke it down. They said do not. Because, uh, now a lot of the stuff you mentioned were still nonfiction. Yeah.
Speaker C: All of it's nonfiction.
Speaker A: But they, but they said do not discount fiction books as well. Sure. And the way they described it was. It puts you in the mindset of how other people think. Yeah. And with, with the, with the kaleidoscope of, uh, topics that you're reading on. Um, one thing that I truly believe is all truths of parallel. What's typically. Oh, sure, I love that one facet of life is true and workable in another. And it sounds like what you've taken in all this, this mosaic of knowledge, it's making you better by, uh, when you apply and articulate what you want to do and what people should do.
Speaker C: Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. And it's just, it's, it's, it's fun to read about things that you find fascinating. I think that people kind of like, like I haven't read Traction, and I'm not afraid to admit it.
Speaker A: Oh, I love Traction.
Speaker C: Everybody does. I'll get around to it. But I'm also not afraid to admit that I haven't read it because I'm still doing what I do. And, um, I'm reading other things. I'm in the middle of an audiobook. Um, I also like the, uh, great courses on audible. Um, I'm in the middle of one on conservatism or conservative conservativism. Conservatism. So I'm, I'm in different parts of the political spectrum on different subjects, but I'm gaining a better understanding about what conservatism really means and what it is and stuff like that and getting rid of labels and so it's, I'm just. I read interesting stuff that's interesting to me. Sometimes I read a book about the, the oyster harvesting history of Manhattan.
Speaker B: Wow.
Speaker C: Just random crap. But it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a hell of a lot more fun than reading 7 Habits.
Speaker A: I love that answer. I really do. I'm, um, glad. Matter of fact, it's a good book that I, that if you haven't checked it out, I would Love for you to check out. It's called the Greatest Salesman in the World by Rock Mandino.
Speaker C: Okay, I haven't checked that one out.
Speaker A: It's a mixture of facts with storytelling.
Speaker C: Oh, cool. Yeah, I like that.
Speaker A: Okay. Is there a question that I did not ask you that I should have.
Speaker C: All right, thank you. Is there a question that you do. You didn't ask me that you should have asked me. Give me a minute to think about that one.
Speaker A: Go ahead, take your time.
Speaker C: I would say that if I were to give you a question, another question to ask me that I think is kind of relevant into the conversation. It's what are most business owners having trouble with in operations these days?
Speaker A: What would you say?
Speaker C: And the answer, I think, would surprise a lot of people. I think a lot of people think that when I. When I say that I do, you know, process optimization and things like that, that I'm coming in with all sorts of AI and saying, oh, you need to use this to make automated calls to your clients, and you need to use Zapier to connect this software to this software, to this software, to this software so you can get these things out and not have to have anybody touch it. But the reality is, it's the fundamentals. It's the fundamentals because so many people, uh, for better and for worse, so many business owners are so focused on serving their clients. And I work with a lot of people in the medical field, like, you know, focusing on patient care and customer service and stuff like that, that they don't have time to think about why we're still scanning this document into our computer system. Excuse me, into our computer system, and then saving it into a binder that we have to maintain for no reason at all. So when somebody hires me, a lot of the stuff that I come in and do is that kind of stuff just because nobody's looking at it. It's not AI. There's some AI, for sure, but a lot of it is just slow down, looking at everything you're doing and asking, why. Why are you doing it that way? And if there's not a good reason, then we need to think about whether we need to change it or do something different if it's holding us back. And I see you can walk into any business and there's a hundred of those things sitting in plain sight if you look for them.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah, because that fundamental M question, why? And, uh, one thing that I've learned in every language, the word why makes people get defensive. So. Because I've learned that and I sincerely ask, what's the reason? Because sometimes I. If I were to just ask why, and they. They automatically trigger their defensive mechanism.
Speaker C: Yep.
Speaker A: Um, but I. But if I instead ask, what's the reason? Sometimes I learn something. So it sounds like what you're saying
Speaker C: is, oh, I love that.
Speaker A: I love that you don't go in to trick defensive mechanisms. You go in because you are truly curious. Yes.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: And I get a lot of what I have to do. Going back to the thing about psychology is a lot of what I have to do. Uh, uh.
Speaker A: And that was psychology.
Speaker C: Yeah. A huge part of my job is. Or one of the things that makes me successful is getting the buy in from the business owner and their staff and say, hey, I'm not here to. Not here to judge you. The fact that I'm here shows me that you. You guys have made a commitment to making things better, and that's what I'm here to help you do. So when I ask why. And now I'm gonna start asking what's the reason? It's just to have an understanding. And I need you to be honest with me what the answer is. So one of my clients, the answer is because we've just always done it that way, and that's a perfectly acceptable answer, and it means that there's room for further consideration.
Speaker A: I know it was this one story. You probably heard this story before, but it was this guy, he was, uh, he was in the house when it's with his wife, and they were preparing for a big family dinner. And what she did was she took the. The chicken and she cut off the bottom half of the chicken and put it in the pot. And he said, well, what's the. It was a whole chicken. He said, well, what's the reason you just cut off the bottom half? He said that. Said, that's just the way we've always done it. And he's like, well, what's the reason? And then the. The mother of his wife comes in and. And he asked her, he said, well, what's the reason that every time y'.
Speaker B: All.
Speaker A: Y' all make a whole chicken, you cut off the bottom half of it. What's. And. And.
Speaker C: And.
Speaker A: And the mother of the girl said, well, that's just the way we've always done it. Then finally, the grandmother, the mother of the mother comes to the house, and he says, what's the reason that y' all always cut off the. The bottom of the chicken? And the mother of the mother, the grandmother says, well, when. When. When we were coming up, we were poor and we didn't have a big enough pot. So. So now, three generations later, they're cutting off perfectly good chicken for a problem that they don't have anymore. And it sounds like when you come in and you ask the why or the what's the reason, or however you choose to do it, either way, it forces them to reconsider things that they thought were normal but aren't normal, and
Speaker C: they're things that aren't working. So if I look at something that's working, I'm probably not asking any questions about it because it's, it's, uh, just straight old, good old if it ain't broke, don't fix it mentality in a lot of cases, because a lot of times the first thing we have to do is fix what's broken before we can focus on true optimization. You want to turn bad into good before you turn good into great, because a lot of times the bad things are really screwing things up. So, yeah, the why is just like you said. Is it because grandma told you and just nobody's questioned it the last 50 years, or is it because something broke a little while ago and this was the workaround and we just never turned the work around into, like, a real process or whatever?
Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, I'm glad I thought to ask you that last question. I love it. Very great.
Speaker C: I love it.
Speaker A: Please, one more time, let everybody know who you are, what do you do, and how they can get in touch.
Speaker C: I am Doug Levy with Lexington Rose Consulting. I'm business operations consultant, Fractional COO and creator of the disciplined Hiring System to help you avoid a lot of the common, expensive missteps of hiring people. And you can find me at www.LexingtonRoseConsulting.com, email DougExingtonRoseConsulting.com or 954-232-3952.
Speaker A: And this has been another exciting and inviting, informative episode of the entrepreneur's podcast. The place to hear real entrepreneurs and business owners bear it all. I'm your host, life strategism, retirement planner Randolph Love iii. And until next time, don't play with it. Stay with it until you make pay with it. This is Entrepreneurs Podcast signing off.
Speaker C: Love it, man. Uh, that was fun. That was a blast. That was an absolute blast.
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