Join us as we dive into Joey Coleman's latest book, "Never Lose an Employee Again." In this episode, Joey shares essential strategies for law firm owners on how to recruit, onboard, and retain top talent. Learn the importance of creating remarkable employee experiences and practical tips you can implement today. 

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Joey Coleman: Every employee has a vision of what this new role is going to be like. And pro tip here, friends, it's not that they're hoping to accomplish a paycheck. Yes, the paycheck is important. I don't mean to diminish it, but that's not enough. They want to have personal growth.

They want to have professional growth. They want to have new skill sets. They learn, they want to have new responsibilities. They want to be a manager instead of a frontline person. They want to, you know, have their first job ever and get used to it. They want to transition to a different career and build a new profession, whatever it is they're trying to accomplish.

You as the employer need to know what that is and track their progress towards that goal and then celebrate with them when they accomplish the goal, because they're going to forget to celebrate.


Richard James: And I'm Richard James. MPS, do we have a special guest for them today? We've had this guest on before and that was with his book, Never Lose a Customer Again. And this time, we're bringing a whole new fresh look at this. Aren't we, Michael? 


MPS: Never Lose an Employee Again. And Rich, before we jump into it, just want to let everyone know that's listening, we appreciate you taking the time to be here. If you haven't already, make sure you hit that subscribe and follow button, depending on where you're listening and are watching. And go ahead and show Joey some love down in the comments. You're in for an excellent episode. 


Richard James: Mr. Joey Coleman, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here today. We're excited to dive into your book. The presentation you gave for the law firm owners at our partners club event was extremely well received. You don't get to see the survey notes, but just so you know, you got extraordinarily high marks. 


And we're asking ourselves through the lens of the 8 steps you gave us. Where should our focus be? How should we do this? So, thank you from us to you for being there and giving and inspiring us with great ideas. Thanks for being here today. 


Joey Coleman: Oh, Richard, it is my pleasure. Thanks to you. Thanks to MPS. Thanks to Blaine. Thanks to everybody who's listening in live, who's listening in a podcast scenario. I'm super excited to dive in and talk about a topic that I think at the end of the day is something that all of us, even if we're really good at it, struggle with. 


Which is, how do we recruit on board, train, hire, engage all of these people that are going to make our firms, make our businesses successful or not? It's a perennial question that has only been accelerated and augmented in difficulty in recent years, but super excited to dive into our conversation. 


Joey Coleman: That's a more than fair assessment, Richard. And the reality is we're talking about people, and we're talking about the portion of a person's life that is the greatest hours of their waking day. What they do for work? Respectfully, most of us spend more time at work than we spend with our spouses, with our children, with our parents, with our roommates. 


And so, this time period is more relevant and important to the human beings on our team than any other time of their day. It's certainly where they're logging the most hours. And what I have found through organizations on all seven continents is that, the people who are the leaders of the organization, this is but a piece of the puzzle on their agenda of things that they're thinking about, worrying about, wondering about working on. 


Richard James: Well said. MPS, what struggle or what question do you have as you're bringing on your new team member? Maybe that relates to what you're doing right now. I don't know where you want to pivot from here? 


MPS: I would say less a question and more giving a nod to your presentation at the event. One of the things I'm planning to have our team do, his first day is Tuesday, this coming week. And so, I plan to have everyone from the team pop on Zoom to his orientation and surprise him, welcome him into the team, and get everyone excited to have him there, and let him feel the love from his new work family, I'll call it. Just a nod to you there. But Rich, I see, we do have a couple of questions starting to come through the chat. 


They're from Mexico to Massachusetts to Colorado. And everywhere in between, because we've got some team members that are digital nomads, right? And so, here we have this diverse group of people that are wicked, intelligent, highly motivated, want to be on our team, but they're not in the same building. 


And so, how do we make them feel all of the 8 stages that you talk about? I don't know if you want to just address that overarching concept before it queues up Michael's next question. 


Joey Coleman: Yeah, why don't we do two things? If I may, Richard. Number one, let me address that specific question. And then maybe for folks that aren't remembering, we've mentioned it a couple of times now, these kind of 8 phases of the employee journey. 


Let me give a really fast overview of that. Just to contextualize for those that are hearing it for the first time, or for those that are hearing it again, to reacquaint you or refresh your recollection, as we might say, in the legal profession, to what those 8 phases are and why each one is important? 


So, I don't care if you came to this kicking and screaming, if you came to it as a front of the spear technologist, if you came to it as an early adopter who thought, I know I'm going to scale my business without a commercial real estate investment. I am agnostic as to how you got here, but let's just talk about the fact that we're all here, and we're all here together. 


You're either in the, when now, or the, when is coming soon. So, here's my 35,000 foot takeaway for remote versus in person. And then we can dive deep later into like specific tactics. But the general thing you want to keep in mind with remote workers, and remote team members, and people who are connecting via screen instead of in the same room, is that as we move to more digital remote interactions, the importance of analog personal and emotional connection becomes greater. 


How do they create it? They think analog instead of digital. But before we get into that, briefly, let me give you a quick overview of the 8 phases. So 8 phases of the employee journey, from the first time that a prospective employee, even comes to be aware of the fact that you're an employer, and might have an open position, all the way to the 8th phase where they're a raving fan for your organization and a zealous advocate. 


8 phases, they all start with the letter A, the reason being, if you get all of these right, it's like getting straight A's from your team. They're scoring you high. They love working with you. They love being a part of your organization. The 1st Phase, The Assess Phase. In The Assess Phase of prospective employee is thinking about whether or not they want to come work with you. 


See, we think it's us assessing whether we want to hire them. Yes, it is. But it's equally them assessing whether or not they want to work with us. We then come to Phase 2, The Accept Phase. In The Accept Phase, we extend an offer to our desired candidate. And if we are lucky, they accept our offer. They formally transition from being a prospective employee or a prospect, to being an actual team member and employee. 


We then come to Phase 3, The Affirm Phase. Now, you've probably all heard of the phrase buyer's remorse. Allow me to introduce you to a phrase you may not be as familiar with, new hires remorse. The scientifically proven emotional state of a newly accepted job offer candidate saying, I shouldn't have accepted the offer. I should have negotiated for a better package, higher salary, more benefits, more vacation. 


That fear, doubt, and uncertainty. If as employers, we don't address it and counterbalance it, creates a Delta between our emotional high of, woof, we finally found someone, we're going to be able to get back on track again. And their experience of, I'm not really sure it's going to be everything that was promised to me during the interview process. 


We got to close the gap and affirm their choice to accept the job offer. We then come to Phase 4, which MPS alluded to earlier, which is The Activate Phase. The first official day on the job. Now, whether that's coming to an office or working remotely, the first official day of employment. Now what's fascinating for those of you keeping score at home, we've got 8 phases. 


The foundation is already being laid before they show up for the first day. But then when we get to that day, this is the only phase in the entire 8 phase process that is, but one day long, that first day on the job. And what do we know to be true? What we know, when that employee goes home that night, they're going to say to their spouse, their children, their loved one, their roommate, their parents, whoever's they've lived in, they're going to walk into the house, and that loved one is going to say to them, how was it? 


How was the first day? We know that question is going to be asked. And yet, so few employers spend even a modicum of time thinking about, how do I want this new member of my team to answer that question? If you do nothing from our conversation other than pause for 20 minutes to ask yourself, what do I want someone to say when their loved one asked them at the end of the day, how was your first day? 


We're all ready to number 5. Phase 5, The Acclimate Phase starts on day two on the job and last for weeks or even months. As this newly hired employee learns the 4 Rs, when you were a kid in school, they talked about read and write and arithmetic. There's a different 4 Rs when it comes to employment. 


First of all, the role. What is the actual role that they have within the organization? Number two, the requirements. What are the things they have to do? If they don't do this? We're all in trouble. The responsibilities, what are the things that we want them to do? Or else things fall awry and they need to take some personal ownership for it. 


And last but not least, the relationships, who are the other people within the organization that they're responsible for getting handoffs from handing handoffs to supporting each other's work, collaborating in each other's work, et cetera. Learning all four of these things doesn't happen in a day. 


When they originally decided to accept your job offer. Now, every employee has a vision of what this new role is going to be like. And pro tip here, friends, it's not that they're hoping to accomplish a paycheck. Yes, the paycheck is important. I don't mean to diminish it, but that's not enough. They want to have personal growth. 


They want to have professional growth. They want to have new skill sets. They learn, they want to have new responsibilities. They want to be a manager instead of a frontline person. They want to, you know, have their first job ever and get used to it. They want to transition to a different career and build a new profession, whatever it is they're trying to accomplish. 


They're committed. They're bought in. They're 100 percent part of our team. The biggest threat to all of you in the adopt phase, and frankly, a majority of your employees right now are probably in the adopt phase. Is that we take them for granted. We take our adopters for granted. Oh, Sally's been here for four years. 


Of course she's not gonna leave, you know. Alexandra has been here for seven years. She loves us. This is great. Yandy, man, he's totally bought in. He's been here since the beginning. That taking it for granted is the freight train that's coming for you when they walk into your office out of the blue one day and say, I'm giving my two weeks notice and forget the brain drain and the knowledge drain and the loss of productivity. 


Last but not least phase eight, the advocate phase, the Holy grail Nirvana. When our employees, our team members become raving fans. Singing our praises far and wide. They're going on Glassdoor and writing reviews, the kind of reviews we like to see on Glassdoor. We have a new position open. They're saying, hey, let me come to you. 


And I've got three friends that I used to work with throughout my career that would be a great fit for this open role we have at the firm or at the organization. They become active recruiters. They are active. Advocates for the type of work you're doing. And I know that was a fire hose of the eight phases, and we can dive deep into any of those you want to MPS, but that at least hopefully gives people a context for the fact that this topic of employee experience is not a once and done experience. 


Richard James: Well, Joey, I got to tell you, this is Richard James, I just want to say that, like, I heard your presence, I read the book, then I heard the presentation at the event and then I got all fired up in both occasions and I came back. 


And I was ready to rock and roll. And I, I, I, I, I, and I, and on the heel of that, I start listening to McAllister's book about dreams and everything else, and I'm putting this whole thing together and I'm going, Oh my gosh, I've got all this information. I want to do it and I want to launch. And I have been come so busy that. 


It's not a question. It's just me. Hi, my name is Richard James and I have this problem too, right? So If any of you are feeling like, Oh my gosh, how am I going to do all this? Just know that this is normal. Having your attention on it is really, really important. So let me actually come back to one of the questions we have from the audience, Alex, I don't know if you're still with me, but you had a question here, you said, if we have a short training program, where would you recommend that we start with revising the training experience? 


What did you mean by that? Do you want to give some context? 


Atty. Alexandra Jackson: Yeah. So we know that we need to improve. As Joe Jepson noted, the, the teaching process for new hires and we've identified that as kind of our current weakness and the thing we'd like to work on, where, where do we start? 


Joey Coleman: Great question, Alex. And do you prefer Alex or Alexandra? 


Atty. Alexandra Jackson: Alex, Alex. 


Atty. Alexandra Jackson: We are actively hiring new people. Oh, a lot of new people. 


Joey Coleman: Okay, fabulous. Now the reason just for those of you playing along, the reason I asked that question of most organizations are in one of two places, they're kind of full up and they're good to go with those organizations. I recommend you focus on the adopt phase first because you've already got the team members on there. 


If you have open positions or are going to have open position soon, I want you to focus on the assess phase first. Why? I want to stop the bleeding. I want to get it that new people coming on have a better experience than anyone who's already here. Now that creates pain. potentially some conflict of, well, nobody did this one. 


I would be looking for you at those first four phases. The assess, accept, affirm, and activate phase. What I mean by that is what do our job descriptions look like? What is our interview hiring process look like? What do our job offers look like? How do we celebrate? the acceptance of a job offer and reaffirm it in that affirmed stage. 


And what are we doing to make the first day on the job remarkable? So now what we've done is we've taken this big amorphous thing. We've broken it down into much more manageable, tactical things. This is what you were speaking to Richard earlier. The shift that I think we need to make as leaders is when it comes to employee experience or team member experience, it is not a task. 


Never Lose An Employee Again - Book Club with Joey Coleman: I 


Joey Coleman: don't really want to deal with this. Fine. It doesn't have to be you, but someone on your team in a senior role needs to wake up every morning. 


And while they're looking in the mirror, brushing their teeth, getting ready for work, they're looking in that mirror thinking, how can I make this the best place to work? Now, I'm not saying you have to be thinking that every day, but somebody that should be their job responsibility. So, Alex, I'd start at the beginning. 


Does the character of your culture come through in the listing? Or is it something like we're looking for a junior associate with three years of experience with a law school grade of this? Hopefully they were on law review, blah, blah, blah, robot, robot, robot, as opposed to the. There are a lot of law firms in the world that you could go work for. 


Here's why you want to work at ours. Not only do we do amazing work in the courtroom, not only do we have clients that love us, but we all actually like hanging out together. We have an annual summer creek. Now, some of this may be true. Some of it may not be true, adjust it to fit your culture and your brand. 


But what are the things that make working with you and your team, the kind of things that are going to keep me there long term I promise you it's not the billable hours. 


This, this portion of where they're learning to do their job before they accomplish it. I assume Alex, the training that you're alluding to is helping them both acclimate and accomplish their goals. Is that correct, Alex? 


Atty. Alexandra Jackson: Yeah, that's correct. 


Richard James: Okay. So when you ask about where you should start, do you mean, should you start by revising it? 


Do you start in which stage did you start in? Are you asking like, which should you, how should you start like rolling out the new training? What are you thinking? 


Atty. Alexandra Jackson: How do you kind of assess the deficiencies of what exists? And just make the process better. 


Joey Coleman: Love, love that additional clarification, Alex. Let me ask this question. 


Do you talk about the training and the job description? 


Atty. Alexandra Jackson: Oh I don't think we do. 


Oh, you should have learned this in law school, folks. I went to law school. You don't learn a lot in law school about how to actually do the law. You learn about the. Theory of the law and the philosophy, but you don't learn how to treat clients, how to handle situations, how to talk to judges. These are not things that happen in most law school settings. 


So what I would do is I would be talking about your training in your job description and in your job posting. Now, what's that going to do? What's going to force you to get clear on what are the highlights of your training? And you might look at it and say, well, Joe, you know, and Joe, I appreciated your pointing this out. 


I want to be taught. I want to acquire skills and knowledge and capability. So instead of having a training program, I would say you have a teaching experience. What is the teaching experience? Well, the teaching experience is not only teaching you how we operate, but teaching you how this area of the law works, teaching you how to be a professional. 


What does it actually mean to be a professional? Whether that's an attorney, a paralegal, or a support team member. What are we doing to teach you so that what you learn here will serve you for the rest of your career is one of the things that if if I had a suggestion for what to emulate for every leader, it would be to start to think of yourselves as a division one college coach. 


Is this person going to be a good fit for the team? Are they going to be able to perform? They've got a limited pool. You've got a limited pool. They're competing against a lot of other folks who are offering more money, more opportunity, more spotlight. Just like you. What are we going to do to convince that person to come? 


And then when they do show up, college coaches don't expect that player to be there for 10 years. They expect them to be there at the most six years and if that's if there's injuries and if they're really good three years before they leave and they go pro. So when we stop thinking about how do I have this new hire join my firm for the next decade and start thinking about what am I going to do to make these three years the best three years of their career. 


This is the first place that seems to care about me as a human. Every other place seemed to care about me as a cog in the wheel to get stuff done. These people care about my career. They care about my future. So I might look at it like that. 


Richard James: That's awesome. Alex, thanks for the question, Joey. Thanks for the answer. 


Joe Jepson, I, you have a question and then you have some answers that you gave behind it. So I don't know if you answered your own question with your answer, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to ask this question about how do you do things on a more affordable basis when you're not the large company and be able to give, you know, two, three weeks. 


paid vacation right up from the start. Joe, did you want to expand on that? Or do you feel like you've answered it? Or do you want to talk about that at all? 


But I'm wondering if there's a good example of ways to continue showing appreciation without feeling like I'm spoiling them and spending all my time buying gifts and bribing them and all that stuff. So a lot of the examples are the big flashy things, the motorcycles and the two weeks before you start and all that. 


What are some things that smaller firms you know, the, you know, division two schools here can do to keep those employees without the big bucks? 


Joey Coleman: I love it. I love it, Joe. So a couple thoughts, and I say this respectfully, and for those that don't know, Joe and I've had a chance to connect personally, so, and I know Joe can handle it. 


I typed and deleted that like four times in the chat. Totally fine, buddy. Totally fine. But here's the interesting thing. The first step we have to do is think, how do I feel about the level of care I'm providing to my team? Do I feel that I'm providing a lot? I don't know how many of you are married. I've been married for 14 years. 


And I've learned very few things about marriage or about how to be a good husband. But one thing I have learned is it doesn't matter how strong my intention is. If I'm not communicating in the way that my spouse receives it, your team's the same way. We often have a tendency to think about, well, what would motivate me? 


Let me give you some small examples. Okay. Small firm, easy to adopt tactical examples. One of the businesses I worked with had a group of young employees who happened to love reading. These employees loved reading. I don't know about you. If I can find an employee who loves reading, that's an employee worth moving through the interview process. 


Cause it means I've got somebody who actually likes to consume. Knowledge as opposed to likes and tiktoks and reels. Okay. So I'm excited about that. They like their knowledge. What they did is they said, we're going to do a 25 Amazon gift card every month. Now, why did they do a 25? Cause that's about enough to buy one, maybe two books. 


It's acknowledging for them or add another company that came along and they said, hey, we've got a rule that anytime you want a book, You tell us and we'll buy it for you and give it to you. And they've got a bunch of growth and mining individuals who are like, Can I, can I tell you three books? I'm like, Oh yeah, you can tell me three books. 


I will happily buy you three books. So think about what matters to them, not what matters to you. What about this one? I, I, I don't think we talked about this when we were together in person. One of the companies that was run by a good friend of mine does free reimbursable babysitting. So here's how it works. 


Because if your home life is happy, I can guarantee your work life is going to be a lot happier, and we're going to pay for it. Now, notice they didn't give them 100 towards babysitting. They didn't say you got to use this babysitting service. They said you pick the sitter. You pick how many times you want to do date night every week. 


Like finding the sitter, getting the sitter, negotiating what the fee is going to be with the sitter, paying for the sitter, all like that's before we even decide whether we're going to dinner or movie or whether we're going to just go find a parking lot to fall asleep and nap in because we're so exhausted from being parents, you fill in the blank and whatever works for you, right? 


Moral of the story is we're only limited by our own bounds as to the creativity of ideas and gifts and rewards and bonuses and benefits that we can bring to our team. 


Richard James: You know, Joey, I was going to I was going to point out that we have a room full of attorneys that are listening to this conversation and they tend to go to outliers. 


And I was wondering how many of them were cynics and thought about all the bad ways that could go wrong. Right. And, and I, what I, what I want to admit freely is I was the first one to come up with the 10 different things that could go wrong because like, I don't know, maybe I've been working with attorneys for so long. 


They might never use it, but just because it's there, right? That's the thing. 


Joey Coleman: Exactly. Richard, you, I so appreciate you pointing that out. The fact that it's available is 95 percent of the awesomeness of this idea, not actually taking advantage of it. It's the fact that I know it's there. And here's the thing. 


If your fear is, what about the outliers who abuse? Why are they even on your team if you already know they're outliers and abusers? Don't, don't have them on your team. Or is it that you don't actually trust yourself in these type of scenarios? Not to potentially take advantage of it. Or you've got some past experience from your career where you were generous to someone and they didn't take it and they took advantage of it. 


And now you've decided that all humans take advantage. It's like. Part of this could be resolved by laying on a therapist couch as well. But the moral of the story here is don't let your fear for what could go wrong. Limit your chance to do something remarkable. And I use the word remarkable intentionally that it is an outlier worthy of talking about. 


As often as I can get them on the calendar, we get to go and it's fully paid for. Wait, where do you work? Are you hiring? That's how those conversations go. And now your benefit becomes 


Richard James: your recruiting tool. Talk about one just awesome idea. 


Our next question comes from somebody that would probably require a 25 gift card every other day for the amount of books that he reads or listens to on a regular basis. It's our in house book club captain. He's leaving on vacation for a moment. He was kind enough to show up. I hope he's still here can ask his question because you had a question about you want to be able to teach your team to call you out when you screw up, but nobody wants to criticize the boss. 


You want to address that? Is he still with us? 


Never Lose An Employee Again - Book Club with Joey Coleman: He's on, but he might be in the 


Joey Coleman: Love this question. 


The way you do this is you go first. You acknowledge your own mistakes openly and freely in front of your people. You acknowledge why you made the mistake. I do this with my team all the time. I try to be as human as I can write with my people. And what I'll do is I'll say, you know, Hey, by the way. I need to tell you about something that's going on in my personal life that just affected how I showed up in this meeting. 


It is a train wreck when that happens. Now, by the way, that's happened three times in the last week with someone on my team. The reason it's happened is because. We've been going to doctor appointments with my wife. Now, I don't know that I would necessarily volunteer that publicly, but in this scenario, I was like, this employee is going to be thinking that they did something wrong. 


This employee is going to be thinking, Joey doesn't care about me. And what I said is I need to tell you something and confide in you something that is going on in my personal life. That is distracting me. That is requiring my time, requiring my effort. Hey, I'm so sorry. Is not about you. Let's Make it happen. 


Is it because you're not aware of when you are screwing up and you want them to bring it to your attention? Is it because you want to spark more questioning and more ideas and more challenging of ways of doing it? I'd be very curious if you were on the call, what I'd want to be exploring with you is what specifically are you trying to set up? 


Effective feedback, some great books on this radical candor, right? Talks about a whole framework and a methodology for how to do this nonviolent communication, tough labeling, but really effective practice, right? Some people hear the name and they're like, Oh, who said violence, Joey? It's just the name of the process. 


I didn't name it, but there are tools and techniques that you can avail yourself of. That will allow you to build these type of dynamics within your organization. And we've got to be able to bring it back to first principles, which is we all have the same goal. We're moving towards the same goal. We're all going to slip and make mistakes and we need to be able to effectively and efficiently call out when that's happening and make it better. 


Whether that's me making the mistake, you making the mistake, et cetera, et cetera, and create the space for it. 


So, I and I think a lot of attorneys and business owners feel similarly so attorneys by nature have proven themselves to be relatively intelligent human beings. As a consultant to attorneys, I've found that I have a relative amount of intelligence. Okay, so let's go there arrogantly, whatever. The point is, I feel like sometimes my team thinks I have all of the answers, and what I'm looking for is for them to dispute my answers that are, that are possibly wrong, and I know I'm not always right. 


I don't know. But I've struggled that my whole career getting my, my, My team to, to give me their opinion or tell me why my opinion might not be accurate. Now, my team now has actually gotten much better at this. I've worked at it through the years, but, but I would tell you that seems to be a problem. I see a lot of attorneys struggle with. 


Joey Coleman: Yeah, I totally agree. And it's a problem that a lot of leaders struggle with regardless of whether they're attorneys or not. Here's the things that I would get curious about. I'd get curious about of when I do get feedback or criticism, how do I respond? Yeah. What I always love is the conversations where somebody's like, I'm totally open to any blind spots I have. 


Wow. Thanks, Richard. That I got to admit, I'm a little embarrassed to say I never really thought of it that way. I really appreciate you bringing that up. You know, forgive me for a minute. I'm going to make a note. This is something that I want to spend some time thinking about. And are you cool if I come back to you tomorrow with my thoughts? 


Cause I actually want to take the time to process what you just said. Instead of react to it in the moment. And you see what I did there? I just slowed it down. I let the person know, Hey, I valued what you said. It's going to make me think I'm going to dedicate time and I'm going to come back to close the loop. 


You do that three or four times with someone and you don't have to go through all those steps of describing it because now they know, Oh, this is your MO. This is how you operate. This is going to be okay. 


So there you go. 


Joey Coleman: But I think we're all guilty of that. We're all guilty of that, especially leaders who, let's be honest, skew a little more towards type a, a little more type of happy to grab the microphone a little more towards. I got this. Don't you worry. You, you are entrepreneur, you're, you're lawyers, but you're entrepreneurs, right? 


Most lawyers aren't entrepreneurs. They're just not. And that's not criticism, that's a fact. You all, this group, skews more entrepreneurial. The challenge most entrepreneurs have is we have been rewarded throughout our careers for having the answer, figuring out as we go, or pushing ahead when everybody else said it couldn't be done. 


There's no way you can build a remote practice. There's no way you can do, you know, a million dollars per employee. All the naysayers that we all push through our employees are not entrepreneurs. They don't have a context. If they were, they wouldn't work for us. They'd go start their own ventures. So they are not hardwired the same way as we are with thicker skin, with the ability to push through, with the ability to take criticism. 


And one of the main reasons why many employees don't want to offer criticism of you as a leader is because they don't want criticism of them as an employee. And that's another opportunity for us lead as leaders to say, how can I give you feedback in the way that it is best heard? This is one of my favorite questions to ask in an interview, by the way, bringing it back to that assess phase. 


And then zippy the lippy don't talk. Just listen to what they say. And if they're like, well, like, what do you do with everyone else? Respectfully, I appreciate that answer. And I'm happy to share some thoughts about ways we do it with other people, if that's useful to you after you share with me. What initially came up with you in how you would like to receive feedback that may not be positive. 


Some people like to be criticized in public. And praised in private, doesn't mean they're wrong, doesn't mean they're bad. It means that we can't think that there is a model that we can apply to every single member on the team. Every member of your team is a different human being, different wants, different needs, different hopes, different desires, different ways to receive feedback, different ways to give feedback. 


And I get that this can become exhausting because some of you are like, Joey, when do I get to practice law? When do we actually get to deal with clients? This is a full time job. Yes. It is a full time job, but there are a handful of things you can do to target in that make the job easier. 


MPS: Joe, you've already dropped a tremendous amount of value. 


Yeah. The 


Joey Coleman: best way to start is to open your calendar for the week and allocate one hour for your people. Go to your calendar and find one hour next week and just label the appointment with yourself. People and the entire focus of that hour is what am I doing to build personal and emotional connection with my team? 


That could be a phone call that could be taking someone to lunch that could be shooting them a little video that could be looking at our hiring process and saying, Oh my gosh, we need to do a better job in our job descriptions. It could be looking at the fact and saying, you know, Jessica's three year anniversary of being here is coming up next month. 


I so appreciate the honesty. He called me up one day. He's like, Joey got a, I got a crisis situation. Can you take a call? I said, yeah, we jump on the call. He said, I'm walking through the hall. He's in the medical professional. One of it's a medical professional owns a practice. One of his doctors walks by and said, Hey doc, guess what today is. 


And he's like Tuesday. And he said, in the moment, Joey, I watched her face drop and she quickly recovered. And she said, today's my seven year anniversary of being here. And he's like, What do I do now? And I said, well, you pretend that you just forgot your seven year wedding anniversary. You bring the thunder, you bring the thunder, you acknowledge that you screwed up, you acknowledge that you forgot, you do something epic and wonderful and amazing for this person. 


We, we need to take more leadership. And I'm a big fan of begin by using your calendar. 


Richard James: I'm shrinking. If you can see me, I'm trying to get smaller so that anybody on my team doesn't see me. I like you have just touched on this really exposed nerve for me that like, I, I've just decided that I don't like anniversaries. 


And, and I couldn't tell you the day they were hired. I, and I don't mean that disrespectfully. No, 


Joey Coleman: no. Yeah, Richard. And number one, I so appreciate the honesty and the vulnerability and admitting that and brother, you are not alone. This is the challenge that most entrepreneurs have. Let me pull this up to the 35, 000 foot level. 


Most entrepreneurs are horrible at celebrating. Horrible. We don't celebrate our own birthdays, our own anniversaries. We close the big deal and we're like, great, what's the next deal? We write the book and we're like, what's the next book? We are not normal. I include myself in this categorization, but the people we employ are not entrepreneurs. 


There is someone in your organization that's hardwired this way. There's someone in your organization that says, Oh my gosh, I got a cake because it's today's Ted's wedding anniversary. And you're like Ted's. Spouse doesn't even work here. They're like, I know, but it's the wedding anniversary. And you're like, how the hell did you know? 


Really? You're like, yes, a whole hundred dollars and you spend it however you want to make that person's day that milestone that moment special. You all have somebody working in your firm who's hardwired this way already. You just gotta find them. 


Guest: And that person just told you what matters to them, so don't forget their anniversary. 


Yes! 100%! 


Richard James: 100%! When we had a physical office, I was so bad that like, you know, birthdays, so somebody was in charge of that. We have a member of the team who actually kind of dug it and so we, we did what you said and, and then it just got to be like, Okay. Do you like cake or do you like pie? And what's your favorite flavor? 


Okay. Well, let's do one birthday, a quarter. And we'll celebrate everybody's birthday for the quarter. It just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And because my natural inclination is exactly, I don't, and you know what? The funny thing is one of our core values was celebrate. Now what's interesting is, and this is, this is, this just tells you how I'm wired and why I got to work to overcome my wiring. 


Like I will celebrate. Like if we have a really, really back in the day when we had an office and we had a really, really, really bad day, I believed we need to celebrate the bad days as much as we need to celebrate the good days because that's business. Right? So we would literally go out to the movies and have a pizza party for a bad day. 


Like we'd have a bad day the day before we'd come in the office. I'm like, all right, everybody, we're going to the movies. We're having pizza. I'm like, what? I'm like, yep. We're celebrating yesterday. But to celebrate somebody's birthday, like. I couldn't even imagine it, right? Because it just didn't seem to make difference for me or the business. 


And so, you know, I don't know what everybody else took out of this call, but it was for me personally satisfying that This just like it hit me between the eyes with a sledgehammer here, Joey. So thank you for that. 


Joey Coleman: Yeah. My pleasure, Richard. And I'm going to chime in because William glad he made it through TSA, brother. 


it would be understandable. I'm not saying that's what you did, but it would be understandable if that's what you did. What's fascinating is then we see somebody chime in same, like the same thing happened to someone else. Okay. So here's the thing, just because our effort to be special or to celebrate. Or to honor someone doesn't hit with the desired impact we want doesn't mean we shouldn't do it in the future for other people. 


I call this the don't give the gift for the thank you note behavior. Don't give a gift. If your whole desire is to get a thank you note for the gift, if that's your desire, stop and ask yourself, wait a second, why am I even giving this gift? Right? Instead say to yourself, okay, what is my intention now? 


But I also want to come back to something Joe said earlier very briefly, which is, you know, he was saying, well, Joey, there's, there's the difference between the things that are expensive and the things that are inexpensive. This isn't about the dollars. It's about the thoughtfulness of the gesture. If I were to ask all of you, in fact, we can do this. 


Let's drop it into the chat. Think of the best gift you ever received. Think of the favorite gift you ever got, maybe even the top two or three and go ahead and drop them in the chat. Just write what that gift was. Oh, this is the gift I got. This is what I got. No pressure. We're just a little experiment here. 


Engrave, engrave, cut, go knives. Oh, more thousand is a dollars on knives. Are you kidding me? Way to stuffed animals. Wait, cufflinks with a map of where my wife and I went on our honeymoon. A Lord title from Scotland for 50. Joe Jepson, you could never lose an employee again. Copy of Joey's book. You're too kind. 


I'm willing to bet that the framed photo of the last first pitch at Stacy at Shea Stadium, Joe. Made you connect because you're a big fan of Shea Stadium and the Mets, right? It wasn't about the picture. It was that they knew who you were. The customized charcuterie board wasn't because it was a board. It was because they knew you were into charcuterie. 


The cufflinks with a map of where your wife and you honeymooned. It wasn't because it was cufflinks, it was because it connected to one of the greatest memories of your life, the honeymoon, the stuffed animal, same thing, the customized photo my son made for me, the get a pill case that my grandmother bought with her own money at the dollar store. 


Quick story. One quick story. Cause I know we're, we're coming up into the final half hour of our time together. Years ago, I was on a podcast. And somebody was talking, I happened to mention in the podcast that I used to love G. I. Joe characters. I don't know if any of you liked G. I. Joe when you were a kid growing up. 


I love G. I. Joe characters. And on the thing I loved about the G. I. Joe characters, maybe this just shows how weird I am is on the back of the package. It had a little dossier where it said the name of the character and their code name and where they were from. And they're training and that kind of thing. 


And I used to cut these out of the box and put them in a little three by five card so I could build missions like who was going to go and I'd think about it. And as I was going through and I was looking through this, it dawned on me one day about 40 or 50 G. I. Joe guys. And I was a G. I. Joe addict that none of these characters had been born in Iowa, which is where I was growing up. 


And I listed out all the characters, like a little kid would, you know, pages of character names. None of them have been born in Iowa. Duke did look like it was from Iowa, William. I get it, right? None of them are from Iowa, let alone this little town where I live in Iowa called Fort Dodge. And I sent the letter, and I never heard back, never heard back from Hasbro. 


Fast forward about two years. I'm still into GI Joe. I'm in the toy store and they've got all the new GI Joe figures that have come out and they've got one here. And it's this Paratrooper called Crazy Legs. And I pull the thing over. And of course, the first thing I do is I flip over the thing to look at the dossier. 


Didn't think anything of it. I was trying to prove the point of personalization and how you can make a customer's day. I've been a fan of GI Joe ever before, ever since huge fan. And now I felt like they really listened to me as a customer. About a month after the podcast was over, I got a package in the mail. 


It's on display in the house, not in my office. It's like everybody gets to see crazy legs, right? But here's the point I'm trying to make. I have to imagine that cost less than 50 bucks on eBay. Took some effort to track it down, some intentionality to find one that was still in the package. But it wasn't like the top character. 


And most of you, even the GI Joe fans had never heard of that character. It was not that big of a deal, but what it proved is the person was listening when I was talking and it made me a fan. Alrighty. What other questions do we have? That's all you got to do. Just listen to your people and they'll tell you how to celebrate. 


Richard James: All the by the way, I always got upset with the GI Joe that I would get them and they didn't come with all the scenes set up that they had on the commercial. And so I did, I thought, where's all these cool zip lines and everything. Oh, totally. Oh, I've got to create that. Oh, okay. So there's a great question in here. 


Joey Coleman: Absolutely. So there's, there's a couple, and these can be, as you might imagine, as complex or as simple as you want to make them. 


Never Lose An Employee Again - Book Club with Joey Coleman: Given 


The first one I would look at is the first a hundred days, right? What is happening in the first a hundred days? All the research shows that the first 100 days is the most dispositive time in the entire employee journey about whether they will stay for the long term. If an employee loves working for you, if they feel connected on day one, 101, the typical employee will stay with you for a minimum of five years. 


Okay. So what are we doing in the first hundred days? So the KPI would put on top of that is I would have regular conversations on a scale of one to 10. How do you feel? How, how much of the team do you feel like you're part of? You know what I mean? How much do you feel you understand your role, your responsibility, the requirements, et cetera, et cetera, 


Richard James: you know, and backwards from that hundred days and try to strategically add in. 


Joey Coleman: Exactly, exactly. My favorite type of question to ask employees is stop, start, continue. And you, any of you familiar with this model? 


Okay. Here's how the stop, start, continue model works. You sit down with the team member. You can do this at the end of week one, their first week on the job and say, Hey, you've been here a whole week. Hopefully it's been a great week. We've loved having you here. Hopefully you're feeling like you're starting to a little bit, get up to speed based on what you've observed thus far. 


And by the way, I'm going to ask this question. Now I'm going to ask it on your one month anniversary, your two month anniversary, and your three month anniversary. So this is the first time I'm asking, but no, I'm going to ask again. So next time you'll be even more prepared for it. What are two or three things that we are doing right now as a firm that we should stop doing? 


The first one might be like, Oh, I like that you, you know, you pay us. Okay. Okay. Great. I'm glad we're going to keep doing that. Don't worry where you get into the second one in the third one is where you're going to start to learn things. And at the end of the first month with a new hire, you say, Hey, and by the way what do you wish we would have told you about in week one that you didn't figure out until later? 


But my theory is they skew good. Most humans, if you say, how can we make it better for the people in the future that might be in your role? They will give you really honest answers. of things that they really would have valued. And then if you're willing to listen to those, not only do you help for the future, but start to give them those things now. 


Another KPI, last one I'll say that I would measure is, do you have a work spouse, a work buddy, a best friend at work? Some people call him a work wife or a husband. Some call him a work buddy, work spouse, work friend. Do you have someone in this office that you like hanging out with when you're not at work? 


Richard James: So does that mean as an employer, you should look for opportunities to create networking opportunities outside or inside the office to allow that to happen organically? 


Joey Coleman: One 


Richard James: hundred 


Joey Coleman: percent. And I also think you should use it in an opportunity as part of your application process. Ask the kind of questions that allow you to build affinity with existing team members from day one. So you ask somebody and say, Hey, what are three things? that your best friends from high school or college know about you, things you love, hobbies you have, things you're really excited about that I wouldn't know about as somebody who just met you. 


And some people are like, Joey, it's weird. You're 51 years old. You love Lego. Yes. I love Lego. I'm comfortable admitting it for steps, admitting you have a problem. It's okay. And. But when, if you knew that in an interview scenario and you knew that somebody who's been on for the team for three years loves Lego, what I would do is I would go to that team member who's been there three years and I'd say, Hey, here's the deal. 


Joe asked, what's the orange sign behind me? People like us do things like us, right? It's what the sign says. It's a Seth Godin quote. The idea is, hey, be aware of who the people are that are like you. In this case, entrepreneurs, people like us do things like us. We don't celebrate. We push through the criticisms. 


We do all kinds of things to get it done. But let's re remember that not everybody is like us. And most of our teams aren't like us. So if they're not like us, how do we have more empathy and understanding for who they are? 


Richard James: By the way, I really appreciate you being here for 90 minutes. I wasn't sure if you're going to have to bolt at 60. 


You think this is a good idea? 100%. And here's 


Joey Coleman: why. Stop and think about the amount of social capital that an existing. employee has to expend by recommending that you hire their college roommate or their sister. Now there's significant other, let me put a little asterisks on that one and come back to it. 


There's significant other that one can get muddy, right? Or their children, immediate family, people that live in the same household, but friends, colleagues, former coworkers, all of that a hundred percent, because for someone to say in a job that they like, And a job that they hope to keep. I want to recommend someone to fill this slot. 


Do you think we should interview that person? I'm like, why are we even having this conversation? Of course you should interview that person because I don't know if you have siblings, but if you're willing to recommend your sibling for the gig, you're putting all your social capital on the line. I'm one of seven kids. 


I understand how this works, maybe differently than some of the others do. Right. But it's like, yes. Now, when it's there. Child or their spouse. You want to have an honest conversation. And you want to say, look, I'm not opposed to having this conversation, but I need you to understand that this is a place of business. 


The other person had to answer only that question. Father, son. Partner associate. And then the person who asked had to continue the conversation under that rubric alone for the rest of that conversation. That solved 95 percent of the issues we were having in the office. Because as soon as we got clear, like, Oh, this is partner associate. 


Fine. Oh, this is father's. Oh, that's a whole separate conversation. It just made life a lot easier. So that's what I would do with hiring family members within the organization. And some of you that work with your spouses, your significant others, that could be a fun question for you to try on as well in the workplace. 


I'm sorry. Are we having a business partner conversation right now or a life partner conversation right now? 


And, and so what kind of, Andy, you're welcome and give clarity to this if you'd like, but I'll read it for you. What kind of special touches can we do for remote workers in the Philippines and Ecuador? And like, I see the value in Amazon gift card and such, but what other general ideas you have with remote workers that you can do? 


Joey Coleman: Yeah, Yandy, anything you want to add to it or you just want me to run with it? 


Blaine Oelkers: So I want to hear about generally, I, I understand the personalization aspect to it, so I'm, I'm figuring that out. I know that one of the guys I do want to hear generally cause then I can get a better idea and a grasp, but I know that one of the guys, he's very good at hikes. 


She crushed a self evaluation. I'm doing a performance review and she wants to do certain trainings. And I'm like, Hey, I'll pay for all the trainings. You want legal wise, legal writing and stuff like that. That's my plan. But I also want to give her like just a gratuitous gift. I want to say, Hey, you've crushed it. 


And this is a show of appreciation. So it's kind of like I'm trying to figure out some ideas generally. Yeah, 


Joey Coleman: love it. So let me fire hose a couple of different ideas because there's general and specific. One of the cool things about working remotely. is we get a window into that person's home. This is why I don't like the faux background. 


So I'll do respect to any of you that have like the faux backgrounds on, because I can't see what your house is actually like. I can't see what your room is like. This is designed this way. So you can see the Legos. So you can see the signs. So you can see the books. So people can ask me, and by the way, I switched the things out from time to time. 


Never Lose An Employee Again - Book Club with Joey Coleman: which we 


Joey Coleman: need to believe that your faith is really important to you. 


And even if we had never met, I could look at that and clock that and say, Oh, That's probably something that's important to him. And then I could lead into the conversation a little bit to see how important it is. Make sure that I'm understanding correctly, as opposed to, oh, they were doing that call from a hotel that day and it's not their background, right? 


And then you kind of lead into it. So number one, look at what's going on in the screen around number two, ask the questions early, ask them as part of the application process. Because they'll happily answer all the questions because they want the job. What's your favorite movie? What's your favorite book? 


So before you even know them, you're good to go. Let's talk a little bit about the Philippines. I have not had the pleasure of visiting Ecuador. I have had the pleasure of visiting some call center type scenario environments and remote worker environments in the Philippines. What I know is when members of the leadership team have come to visit and thrown a party for the people in the Philippines, It has been the equivalent of giving out bars of gold, but it didn't cost bars of gold. 


People went bonkers. The fact that the boss would fly across the ocean to come to my little town and throw a party in the call center and honor us and celebrate us in our traditions and in our model and work to do that hugely value. And for any of you that are growing big teams remotely, do everything in your power to get in front of those people physically once a year. 


Here's what happens when you're a brand new employee for Boudin media. The day before your first day on the job, you get a box in the mail comes via FedEx. It's clearly marked all around it. Do not open until we tell you. And the return address is from your employer. So you've got this box. And you go through the first day and you're like, Hey, I've got the box. 


So they have no idea this is and everybody's there and they're like open the box and they go and they get the box and they open the box, they're going through and they pull out a coffee mug and on the coffee mug are headshot photographs of every member on the team around the world, including this new employee. 


And as the employee looks up from opening the mug, they see all the screens and everyone's holding up their mug, raising a glass in toasting the completion of the first week on the job on the new employee. 


Now they've only been doing this about two years, right? So it's a newer idea that they've adopted, but it's like, how can you create physical talismans that show connection and community? 


Richard James: I love it. Hey, Blaine Oakers, Chief Results Officer, anything? I mean, this has been this has been like idea after idea after idea here. 


There's no reason why people can't get results off of this. Would you agree? 


Never Lose An Employee Again - Book Club with Joey Coleman: A hundred percent. I got three pages of notes, but I took eight pages at the event. So lots of great stuff. And I think really, Joe, I appreciate You distilling it down to, Hey, what can you do next? One hour on your calendar next week. 


There's no reason every single person on this call can't do that. So thank you for that. Joy. Great, great, great session. 


Richard James: My pleasure. Yes. FPS sounds like you've got a lot of great ideas for your new team members starting on Tuesday. 


Can I give you one? 


Joey Coleman: Can I give you one thing? Yes. Okay. Here's the thing. So I love that you have a new team member starting next week. I love that you already plan to have the whole team come to the call and welcome them. I would give the entire team this one assignment for the call. Take a sheet of paper and with a marker or a crayon. 


Right. What's the new team member's name, if I may ask? His name is Jack. Jack, right? Welcome, Jack. Welcome to the team. And do it in your own handwriting with your own color marker. And let everybody into the Zoom before Jack. Have everybody hold their thing up to the camera and block the camera. Yep, exactly. 


MPS: that. I love that. I just wrote that down 


Joey Coleman: and it'll be a huge impact because what it says to Jack is not only did they all show up, but they all took time to make a sign. 


They must actually care about the fact that I'm here. Even if the sign took them, I mean Blaine's post it note sign took him five seconds while I was describing what the model was, right? It's not, again, I'll close on this. It's not about the investment of dollars. It's about the investment of intentionality. 


What are you doing to create the kind of remarkable experiences for your team that will keep them coming back for more friends? You've been an amazing audience. I am such a big fan of this community and getting the chance to present live and get a chance to come and do the book. Needless to say, if there's any way I can support any of you individually or collectively in the future, never hesitate to reach out. 


MPS: Joey, this, this was phenomenal. Thank you for thank you for investing the time to be here with everyone. And I mean, geez, you had the presentation at the event and then you had this, this was its own workshop in of itself. 


This was. Absolutely amazing. 


Joey Coleman: Oh, thanks MPS. And thanks everybody for bringing the great questions. It makes it really easy to share fun ideas when you all come and bring the thunder with great questions and ideas and things you're curious about. Keep it up. You're all rock stars. 


Richard James: Joey, from us to you, if there's anything, everything we can do for you, my friend, we are yours. 


Just, just have to holler. Appreciate you go enjoy your family with the time you have left in your house before you have to travel again. Thanks so much for being here. MPS. That's the pod. 


MPS: That's the pod. 


Richard James: Thanks friends. 


MPS: Thanks 


Never Lose An Employee Again - Book Club with Joey Coleman: Joey.