Today Seth and Jay as they chat with David Hassell, founder of 15Five, a tool for employee engagement. They will talk about measuring engagement, what a post-Covid workplace looks like, and more!
15Five is a human-centered performance management platform that creates highly-engaged employees and top-performing organizations. From engagement surveys and 1-on-1 tools to performance reviews and OKRs, 15Five is the most complete solution that combines software, education, and community to build better managers and retain happy employees. https://lp.15five.com/book-a-demo-max…
Hello, hello, and welcome to another edition of Maximum Growth Live. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, CEO of FirmFlex, finalized, as well as Ruane Attorneys, a civil rights and criminal defense firm here in Connecticut. Alongside me, as always, my good friend, Seth Price, hanging out down in the greater DC area. The managing partner of Price Benowitz, your DC, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina juggernaut law firm, as well as the founder of BluShark Digital, your SEO for law firms, as well as other agencies all across the great states that we have here in the United States of America. Seth, it’s been a while since we’ve been together, so, I wanted to say, how are you doing this week?
Doing well, just got back from Aruba. Awesome family time. You know, a little nervous about Delta going forward, but we are ready to go and hitting everything on all cylinders.
Yeah, you know, we’ve got school starting here in the northeast next week, and from everything I know, I am suspecting sometime in September that my kids are going to bring home Delta, and I’m going to be, be laid up for a while because it just seems to be running rampant. But I have my vaccine, everybody in my office has their vaccine, and we’re hoping to grind it out and get through this, and hopefully, it’s a quick spike and then we’re able to get back to business. Because we are still feeling the ill effects of COVID, so to speak. Our business has not returned to where it should have been by now, and I’m hoping for a more positive third and fourth quarters as we end it because I don’t know how much longer I can sustain this. How’s it going down in your neck of the woods?
Significantly better, again, we’re coming out strong. You know, it was definitely a dip, but I think that the, we trimmed some fat, we had PPP, we put ourselves in a good position, and you know, looking forward, very bullish on what’s going on. I think that, you know, we’ve been working smarter in a lot of ways, and asking some real tough questions, you know, during this time, and we’ll probably talk about this in the future. We did, you know, we basically furloughed or returned a practice group, you know, took it out of the firm, and we, Jim Hacking’s group took over our immigration practice, and it’s amazing that, you know, by focusing on less things, doing, doing less things well, you know. I’m a guy who likes doing a lot of different things, we have lots of different practice areas, but sort of just like, your worst 10% employees, looking at your worst 10%, you know, business lines, and sort of cutting those skews. A lot of labor, a lot of spinning wheels, and not a lot of profit, and trying to identify which ones are profitable. You know, previous shows, we talked giving back some real estate so that we have a smaller footprint going into this new normal, but, you know. Looking at BluShark as a counter thing, business is great, but I’m really, at the moment, struggling to figure out, are we going back to a physical space? We have a lease on the table for a beautiful space, a really cool, the coolest neighborhood in DC, by Union Market, but it’s an open floorplan and am I kidding myself? Like, you know, we’re having somebody coming on and talking about software that helps you get a pulse on what people are doing, and I see freneticness of people changing their mind: “I want to go back to the office. I need to go back to the office. Oh, Delta, have to wear a mask. No, I want to go back to the office,” right? Going day to day, and then like, yeah, screw it, I’ll come with the mask. And so, it’s really been very frustrating trying to get and make decisions for the longer term when people’s feelings are changing in the short term.
You know, it’s really interesting. I’m in a big office park here in Connecticut, and in my building is Prudential. Prudential has 400 employees across, I think it’s like four floors in my building. And I was talking to the guy who owns the deli in the, on the first floor, and he’s really struggling because he was told that Prudential was coming back in September. And now they’ve told them no, we’re not coming back, we’re not coming back, anybody in the office, until January, and when we come back in January, only 120 people are going to be coming back, and oh, by the way, it’s going to be hotel-style, so the max we’re going to allow is going to be 40 people per day coming into the office. So, he’s gone from 400 people coming into his deli to now, he’s expecting 40, and that’s a huge hit to him, and I think a lot of other big businesses are that way. It gives us an opportunity as small businesses, if you’re looking for space, to take advantage of some of these opportunities with these mega landlords, but it also means, is it the right time? I mean, if you’re looking at how other companies are functioning, if you are functional remote, do you just stay that way, and ride this out for another year? And the idea of that is just mind-blowing, that we would be 16 months into it and saying, hey, maybe we get to 24 months or 30 months before we make any hard decisions about office space. And that’s a, that’s, that’s a long time in the lifespan of a small business to have some uncertainty, don’t you think?
No, absolutely. So, I sit here as an apropos guest we have, because part of it is, you know, trying to crowdsource what people want, because if they want space to be coming back to, I’d love to have them there. And, look, for most of our listeners that, you know, there’s some form of the law firm that’s there, but, you know, do people need to be there every day? Certain employees, can they work remote now? We’ve talked about it for months, but I think one of the hardest things is trying to really get a pulse on what people want to help you make those decisions, and we couldn’t have a better guest to talk to us about trying to do that.
Yeah, absolutely, and I think this is going to be one of the topics that a lot of people on the street are going to be talking about while at Maximum Lawyer Conference in October. Hopefully, by then, we have a better sense of it. But tell us a little about who our guest is today, so that we can, we can get to the interview, because I think it’s going to be helpful to a lot of people in our audience.
Right. David Hassell is the founder of 15Five, incredible software, I know it’s been on your radar for over a decade. One of my college buddies, who was planning my UPenn reunion, happens to be in the C-suite team there, and, you know, I was like, “What is this?” I asked him, and I was like,”Oh, we could use that.” And then COVID hit and I was like, oh, the ability to touch employees and get their feedback, and really work with them to figure out what their needs, wants, desires, what’s going right, what’s going wrong, has been really, you know, big. Rolled it out first at BluShark, and now at Price Benowitz. And look, you and I both have, over time, looked at polling of employees, but these guys do it smart, elegant. And I think with this guy, who’s like, an incredible entrepreneur, he was, led the, the EO division in San Francisco, he was with YPO, you know, he’s done and lived in this entrepreneurial world. And as we talk about culture, we talk about all the greats that we’ve had on the show before, or Verne Harnish, and talking about Traction and Strategic Coach and all these different things, this guy is somebody that’s actually giving a useful tool. What he’s built is really a platform that, you know, we talk about all these different pieces, touchpoints and culture, and communication. There are very few things that I’ve seen that have made this much of an impact in trying to connect management and employees.
Yeah, and I’ll, I tried to avoid telling him, but, you know, I signed up for a trial and got the questions automated in the drip campaign. Because, early on, when I heard about it, I thought it was great, but I was like, I can’t afford this software per seat. Now I can and it’s phenomenal, but it’s something that I would highly recommend. I was really excited when we booked him as a guest just because I’ve been a devotee of this type of engagement for a long time. And why don’t we just do this? Why don’t we take a break, we’ll hear from our sponsors, and then when we get back, we’re going to bring in David, we’ll talk a little bit more about 15Five, what it can do, how he’s taken it to the software stratosphere that he’s done. I think, you know, there’s, there’s no time like the present. Let’s just get him in here. What do you say?
Let’s do it.
Alright, folks, we’ll be right back with more Maximum Growth Live.
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We’re thrilled to have David Hassell here, the founder of 15Five. Welcome to the show.
Thank you guys, great to be here.
Yeah, I know Jay’s followed the 15Five for years. I got to know it through a college classmate of mine, John Greenwald, who works with you guys. And it really is one of those things that you don’t really know that you need until you, you know, you can’t imagine what it can do. So tell everybody what you guys do and how it works.
Yeah, that’s great, and it really is, I mean, I think that when we started out, that was the common feedback, people would say, you know, “I didn’t really know I needed this thing, and then when I started using it, I can’t imagine running my business without it.” And we started out with this very simple concept, and it came from my own background, graduating from college as a computer engineer, working at a big consulting company where I had a pretty terrible experience as an employee, and, and I think that propelled me in entrepreneurship a lot earlier than it would have otherwise. And later in my career, I was working with a lot of CEOs and their leadership teams, helping them define, what did they want to create? Where do they want to go in their business? What was their vision? How did they want to get there? And there was this disconnect between the teams and what they wanted to accomplish, and their ability to get their employees on board. And 15Five was originally designed to bridge that gap between leadership, giving them visibility into what’s happening with their team and a pulse on their organization, but also giving the employees a voice and an ability to share everything from, here’s what’s going great about my role, here are the challenges I’m facing, here’s what I’m upset about, here are the things I think you should know that need to be fixed, and just creating this streamline communication from top to bottom in the organization. We’ve since moved on to becoming a full-fledged performance management and employee engagement platform. So we work not only with business leaders, like CEOs or, or in your case, folks who are running law firms, but also with their HR teams.
You know, so, just before COVID, thanks to John, I signed up for both Price Benowitz and BluShark Digital, and I gotta say, like, the timing couldn’t have been better. I know the pandemic is in a positive, but for somebody who, who’s running a feedback for virtual workforces, it’s been a godsend. The idea, and I can say personally, that on the BluShark side, specifically, we have gotten valuable feedback from employees, that is almost impossible to gain during, during a pandemic, you just don’t have those extra touches, those by the ways, those cooler conversations. Talk to me, you know, as an entrepreneur yourself, you know, putting this together, at what are some of the sorts of things that you have seen companies leverage 15Five for? What are some of the things that like, as I say, you don’t know what you don’t know, what are the things that people could hope to find by, by sort of digging deep and rolling the platform out?
Yeah, yeah, well, the very basic things. So, we focus our product on a kind of three different entry points of where a customer might come in, and, actually, now there’s four. And the four kinds of products that we now offer, are called, we have Perform, Engage, Focus and Transform. Three of those are software. One, Transform, is more education-oriented, so we help you and your managers up-level your skills to really be great leaders and great managers. That’s, that’s a separate thing. But in terms of the Focus, Engage, and Perform, we’ll have customers who come in and say, you know, I really want to overhaul my performance management practices to make sure we’re assessing people and helping them and supporting them and growing. The Engage. I want to get an MRI of what’s going on in my organization, understanding the underlying key drivers of why people might be disengaged, and also on a per manager basis, so each manager can have a very customized bespoke plan to help improve their specific team. And then the Focus is, are we, are we aligning the whole company around the right objectives and whatnot. And the thing that runs as a through-line through it all is the, is the product that 15Five is named after, which is this idea of a check-in, where once a week every employee spends 15 minutes a week writing a report that takes their manager no more than five minutes to read, and it’s that cadence of communication. What’s interesting, that you said, you know, now we realize in the pandemic, and we’re working distributed, that we need something like this because we don’t have those touch points. We’ve had a bunch of people who, they’re now coming to 15Five because they don’t feel like they have those touchpoints, but they’re actually realizing they could have used this even when they were all in the same place together because even though you have social conversations, and they may be, they tend to be more unstructured, by having a focused, structured cadence of asking the right questions week over week, even if you’re sitting next to the person, you’re probably going to get even better intel and info from your teammates. And some of the things that, you know, to that point, I’ll just say, you know, we have, we have customers who say, you know, like, even when, you know, we were an early company, we were five people, I said, look, we got to start using the product, this probably doesn’t make sense for us. And literally, on the first week, I learned things about my co-founder that we hadn’t even known through, through using it. So, we hear stories like that all the time. In fact, one extreme was one of my early investors said, I don’t know why people lie to my face, but they tell me the truth in 15Five. And just the quality of feedback, for, you know, for some reason, the way we’ve designed it really is inviting for people to, you know, have, have more courage to open up and share what’s, what’s really going on.
It’s funny to say that because Jay and I, each independently, on the cheap, even before, even I didn’t even know you guys existed, Jay had read about you in ink years ago. But we both did our own drip campaigns on a weekly basis. And it works, sort of, in the beginning, but there definitely was not a sustainability. So, I’ve definitely seen the difference. You hate to, you could think you could do it yourself, but it really, the way it’s all put together, is pretty special. You know, you’ve spent a lot of time dealing with entrepreneurs, both through 15Five, and I believe you were with EO and ran the San Francisco chapter, which must be an insane, amazing group of people out there.
Amazing group of people. Yes.
What are some of the takeaways as you crowdsource, what people, as people use 15Five? What are some of the sort of things that you see like, you know, as people are saying, as lawyer entrepreneurs are trying to say, hey, I want to dip my toe into this. What are some of the sort of immediate bang for the buck? And what are some of the mistakes people use when they’re trying to leverage this technology?
Yeah, I think it’s important to, and look, we have a, we have a bit of a deeper purpose beyond just, well, I shouldn’t say that. We have a deeper human purpose, as a business, where we believe that the best organizations in the world are the ones who can inspire people, to have people be intrinsically motivated, passionate about their work, committed to excellence, all these different things. And historical management practices are really designed, they come out of the Industrial Revolution, there’s a lot of holdovers from that, that are really designed to try to incent people to do more efficient work and get things, you know, get things done. And there’s carrot and stick type management, like you’re gonna get this bonus if you get these things done, and you’re gonna get this punishment if you don’t do a good job, and those types of things. And they do work, they are motivators, I mean, they historically have worked, but they fall short in getting really the best out of people. And so, you know, our big belief is we can create better organizations that win financially and win in the marketplace, by supporting the people in those organizations at thriving rather than at the expense of them. Because you have people there who are more mercanistic, they’re coming in, you know, just for a paycheck, and they don’t really have a loyalty to your organization. They’re going to do the bare minimum to get their promotion, to get their job, to get their paycheck, but are they really going to take care of your customers in the way that you’re committed to? And are they really going to do the best work of their lives? And I would say no. And so, we’ve kind of studied the science of positive psychology and intrinsic motivation and understand, you know, how to really kind of create a more healthy, inspired culture, because honestly, the biggest challenge every CEO and entrepreneur has is people. It’s the biggest line item in your business, it’s the biggest risk in your business, if people aren’t performing. You know, when you, when you are a small team, you have so much influence if you have two or three or five people or even maybe ten, you have so much influence over the specific outcomes. But when you’re like a company like ours, we have 230 people, I can’t control every interaction that’s happening in the company, I can’t control every customer, you know, what we’re building and product, and what we’re, you know, the conversations we’re having with customers. So, we have to have a culture and a group of people who are, have a deep commitment to creating great outcomes for our customers and our business. And, and all of that really comes back to people and culture.
You know, I have a question for you. And this is something that I think maybe some of our audience might be inquisitive of, and you mentioned it a little earlier on. Why do you think that sometimes people are more honest in filling out their, their report? And in that, then in that conversation, because I’ve had people who, I’ll walk by in the hallway and be like, how’re you doing? “I’m doing great.” And then 20 minutes later, I’ll get the, how are you feeling? “Eh.” You know, that type of thing. And I’m saying, you literally, buddy, you just told me you’re doing great, and now you’re being honest with me, because I gotta assume. So, why do you think there’s sort of, that anonymity breeds honesty?
What’s ironic is it’s not anonymous. I mean, we do have some anonymous feedback in our, in our, in our engagement surveys, but in the, in the check-ins, it’s not. And I, I have, I have theories, we haven’t scientifically proven this, but, but from my observations, and having been in this business a long time and talking with a lot of other CEOs and seeing the pattern, I think it comes down to a few things. One is that we have kind of social norms. Most of us walk around, just like you said, and you say, you know, “How are you? and you say, “Oh, I’m great,” you know, even if you’re not, right? It’s not, it’s not necessarily socially acceptable to go into a whole litany of all the things you’re, you’re dealing with, you know, and your problems, so you’re like, “Yeah, I’m good, how are you? How are you?” And it’s, it’s, you know, it’s just kind of social interaction. The other is, a lot of people have social anxiety. If you’re in a one-on-one meeting with somebody, and there’s discomfort there, and there’s a, there’s a tendency to want to hide and not be forthright. For some people that comes up in groups, for some people that comes up in one-on-ones, some people are more open and vulnerable than others. But most people don’t have that added anxiety when they’re sitting with their computer and their keyboard, which they feel very safe with, even though you’re on the other end of it. And so, in that space of, you know, of kind of feeling more relaxed, and then also being prompted with very specific questions, it’s, you know, it would almost be a little weird to sit down every time you talk to someone and go through each one of these questions, right? But the form invites you to reflect on different aspects of your own. And we recommend the standard structure if you’re a new 15Five customer, a quick check-in on a pulse on how are you feeling about your work this week on a scale of one to five, you can add, you can give context. Always starting with the positive, so saying what’s going well, most of us never ask that question. We’re always so focused on the negative and that puts us in this negative brain state. But if we’re, if we’re actually looking and like, oh, yeah, some things are going well, and we’re having success here, celebrating those wins. It puts you in a, in, it both gets you more grounded in reality, and probably that the world is not as bad as it looks, because we all tend to, you know, the way our brains are wired look for what’s wrong. And then we go into the space of okay, well, what are the challenges we’re facing? And by asking things in that order, it does, it does, there is some science behind it, and it does elicit more of an openness, to be honest and to share the challenges. And as people do that, and as people learn to become more open and vulnerable and realize that nothing bad happened, then trust deepens between the manager and employee. And that’s a big focus of ours, is increasing that trust in those relationships because trust is really at the root of everything.
Now, I gotta tell you something, and I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, you may have. I’m big into systems. I actually use your check-in questions with my family at dinner every night, because it allows, it gives me something to, you know, engage with my kids. I have four kids under 12, and so, pulling stuff out of them is awfully tough, but I want to ask them what’s going, you know, what happenned that was great for you this week? Where did you have a challenge? Where can I help you? You know, my son said to me, I really want to be a pitcher, I travel baseball team, and I’m not getting a chance to do that. So I said, well, let’s get you some lessons and get you in front of your coach, again, that type of thing. And so, it’s been wonderful for me, the systems guy with, with actually engaging with my family. So, I want to, I want to, I don’t know if you’ve heard that from any of your other users, but it’s a tip for people out there, you don’t just have to use it at work.
Right? I love that, it’s so good, and I’m such a big believer in systems and structure to, you know, kind of repeatedly. You know, one of the things that I talk about is how can we model the things that the best managers in the world naturally do, and then systematize that so that it’s like management for dummies, like every manager who does this is going to be a much better manager. In your case, those questions are so powerful, right? Because it gets people to open up and have a dialogue, and so that’s so cool that you’re doing that.
So, I’ve got something. We’ve had past guests like Verne Harnish on, a lot of listeners follow Scaling Up, others are in Strategic Coach, follow Traction, all that stuff. What are your thoughts at, for people, whatever your, whatever your chosen sort of methodology or philosophy you’re doing is, what are some of the ways that, what have you learned as far as leveraging the technologies you guys have developed into some of those different business management groups?
I love that you mention both Verne and Traction and Gino Wickman’s work, I’m big fans of both of them. Verne is now an investor in 15Five, he was an investor in Amplify, the company, a company we acquired back in April, which is the engagement platform, and so, so now is, now is a 15Five shareholder. And I discovered Verne’s work back in 2003, and, I, it was a huge ‘A-ha’ for me of like, oh my God, here’s this structure I can put in place to run my business, which at the time, I was running an ad-tech company in New York City, and it was chaos, and that took a lot of the chaos away. And then when I discovered Traction and Gino Wickman’s work, again, it was like, oh, here’s another take on this. And so, we have customers who are, you know, Rockefeller habits and Scaling Up adherence from Verne and EOS adherence. One of the commonalities that both of those systems look at and the structures, and I will say, that, you know, I had studied those systems, I’d helped companies implement them prior to 2010, and they’re definitely, the idea of communication rhythms and those kinds of business structures was in the background and the design for 15Five. So, a lot of people who practice them say, “Oh, yeah, this makes sense, I understand that,” because they definitely informed my thinking on, on how to, how to do these things. One of the things that’s the commonality there is they both use, they both organize people’s focus around big key objectives, and I think both use the terminology ‘rocks,’ in the systems. And then, you know, in Silicon Valley, people talk about OKRs, which are essentially rocks, but it stands for objectives and key results. So, all businesses, all organizations, have the challenge of how do we get the important but not urgent done? And what are the like, what are the three things that are the most important relative to the 100 or 1000 things that we probably could or should do, and you have to dial those things down and focus, focus energy. I was actually talking with the, the visionary, the current leader at EOS, this past week, and he was saying, “Look, our whole business is about aligning human energy.” And I loved how simple, they boiled it down to that. And so, you know, I had the idea that early on, it’s great if you’re doing rocks and OKRs, and, or, historically might call them MBOs, but most people, what they do is they decide what they’re going to be, they write them down in a Google document, they start off their quarter or their year, and then at the end of the quarter, they look at them and say how’d we do? And the problem is, what are you going to do? Like it’s either done or not, but are, you know, if you’re off track, you’re off track, and there’s, you can’t go back in time. So, with 15Five, one of the things that we did is we said, we already have people checking in with their manager once a week, why don’t we show them their rocks? And they can just quickly green, yellow, red it. So, now you have 13 chances to make sure you’re on track, and if someone goes from green to red, red, in week seven or week eight, you can have a conversation that says, hey, what’s going on here? How do we get this back on track? Do you need some support? So, that’s, that’s how a lot of people will use, who practice EOS or Traction will use 15Five to manage their rocks and the communication between managers and employees throughout the organization. And then also use, you know, the 15Five weekly check-in as one of their key communication rhythms to ensure the company is cascading information the right way.
Perhaps that may be a future joint venture, if we could get the, the EOS online platform, which is pretty cool, but as you see, it sometimes gets set and forget about it for the quarter. Integrate it into something that you’re using on a regular basis, that’d be really cool.
That would be really cool. Yeah, yeah. And I, I love, I love what that team is, has done and built, and we’re, you know, we’re exploring ways that we can, we can support each other.
That’s awesome.
That’s awesome. So, let me ask you this, you know, COVID really sort of changed the game for a lot of small service organizations like law firms, the ones that are watching today, but, but touched a ton of businesses. And so you, with your perspective across the board, because you don’t deal with just service-based businesses like Seth and I run, you deal with other types of agencies, other types of manufacturing businesses, I’m sure, product companies, companies, software companies. How do you think COVID has sort of changed the, the way people interpret their workplace? And more specifically, how do you think that both employees and employers need to change with the new model of how workplaces are going to be, probably over the next 5 to 10 years? Because there’s absolutely going to be this rise in remote and hybrid and hotel-style. And that sort of has, you know, that just happened, you know, 15 months ago, that all of a sudden we went from a 70-year tradition of everyone showing up at the office at 8:30, grabbing a cup of coffee, and then leaving at 5 or 6, to now, who knows where anybody is. So, from an employer’s perspective, what do they need to do? But also, from an employee perspective, what do we need to be cognizant of when we’re dealing with our employees? Because you probably have a better, you know, 1000-foot view than Seth or I do because we’re in the weeds.
It’s such a great question. And it’s, it’s, you know, one of the things I thought was very interesting, is that there were so many CEOs and I’m in, I’m in a number of different networks now, you know, beyond EO, I’m in YPO, and I’m in this thing called Tenex EO, which is mostly tech, tech companies in Silicon Valley. And there was, even, even in technology, there was a pretty strong skepticism that CEOs would have, that if we were remote or distributed, we wouldn’t be as productive. And when, when COVID, when we had that first two weeks to stop the spread, I wrote a very long article on Medium, and it was a guide for CEOs and said, here’s everything I’ve learned about leading remote distributed teams, because you’re going to need it because we’re going to be in this for at least 18 months. And, yeah, so, and people at the time, were like, “Nah, this thing will be done, by the summer,” I was like, no, this is going to be 18 months, maybe longer, and here’s the situation we got, we all have to get good at this right now. Two things were pretty surprising for many of the CEO skeptics I know. One, within about a month, they realized they could get all their work done. They didn’t have to worry about their people not working enough or, you know, messing around and not showing up, they actually had the opposite problem. People were working too much and experiencing burnout, also because of the lack of human connection that they were getting from naturally being in the office. So, so it kind of blew people’s misconceptions about whether can we actually be productive. People, still, a lot of people still have a preference to work together, and that’s great, and I think, you know, I think where the world is moving now is around A. Employee choice. The best people are going to choose, hey, I want to be in a city and I want to be in an office or, they are going to choose, like I live in Sedona, Arizona, we’ve got I’ve got a, you know, a number of tech CEOs have moved to town here, and, you know, two hours from the airport, and I’ve been running the company from here for four years. And so, you know, the best talent is going to choose where they want to be, and if you want the best talent, you’ve got to, you’ve got to accommodate that. And you might just say like, we’re an office culture, and you’ll find the people who love that, but companies who really want to be more broad and maybe explore outside of a regional area, which may actually have some cost advantages, will have, you know, have to create more of this choice. The other thing that a lot of the heads of people that I talked to CHROs and whatnot, they almost universally said, we’ve realized that the emotional and psychological well-being of our people is something we actually have to care about, and to some extent, be responsible for. We can’t, obviously, can’t be responsible for everybody’s mental health, but it is, it has been a real big challenge for people who tend to be naturally, you know, outgoing and more extroverted. Other people who have different situations, some are with their families, and they love it, some are with their families, and like, I need to be, I wish I was out of the house eight hours a day, other people are living alone and dealing with isolation. And so, those can have massive, massive impacts on people’s productivity, and that employee well-being is something that we have to be tuned into and understand, and I think destigmatize some of the conversations around mental health. You know, giving people the opportunity to take mental health days when they need it to renew or reset, and encouraging people to find ways to care for themselves so they can show up and be their best. So, those are a couple of things that I think as leaders, we just need to get really good at, we have to be good at being remote first, even if our preference is being in an office. We have a big office in Raleigh, North Carolina, but now with restrictions, people are back working from home. I think we’ll have a hub model from now on, where we have offices in different cities that people want to do that, and then if you want to work remotely, we accommodate that as well. So, we run the company as if, and we’ve been doing this since since 2012 anyway, but we’ve always run the company as if we’re a remote-first organization, even though we had 50 people in one office, and 50 in another, everyone would show up on Zoom and Zoom meetings, and each have their own camera as if they were in their home, but they happen to be co-located. So, I think that’s, that’s really the model. I think that works best.
It’s funny because that leads to like three thoughts before I pass back to Jay, but first, is exactly that. Which is, I’m sort of struggling right now with our marketing agency, BluShark, because you have people that have been away, we literally turned the keys in at the end of last year, so, it’s been fully remote. We’re using the polling service, they used the polling to a fault, to find what people want. But I’m finding that in this COVID culture, people’s minds change daily or weekly, sometimes faster, you know, from, with Delta coming out, do they want to be in? Now they do, now they don’t want, you know, you might have to wear a mask, then they don’t want to. So is, can you possibly over listen, in the sense that, you know, sort of like with my kids, if I ask them a question, you know, very often they tell me something, if I wait 20 minutes it’s a different answer. You know, when and how it’s asked, is there been any sort of thoughts as to when questions are asked? Just like a Jay and I’ve always talked about, like a. a judge that sent somebody before or after lunch in a courtroom? You know, are there thick cues, even in a disassociated world, where you get different answers, depending on how things are asked, or when they’re asked?
So, it’s a great question. I think universally, people generally want to know that they were heard and their, what they shared was considered. They don’t necessarily always need to have what they asked for fulfilled, and I think that’s an important understanding to have, because otherwise, there are definitely leaders who historically would say, “I don’t even want to deal with the, deal with the feedback because, you know, I’m gonna feel like I have to do all this stuff,” and that’s not the case. I think the important thing is, you know, it is your job to tease out the signal from the noise, and then to, to use all of that as input to try to get to the deeper level and cultivate empathy for what are people going through, and what are the key themes? And, and how could we solve this most effectively that’s also in line with our values and our budget and everything else. And so, I think, to that point, I’m not sure about, you know, kind of the frequency. I do think that, I do think that current events will certainly change how people respond in a moment, and that’s, that’s the interesting thing about, you know, we have this, this, this engagement platform that we bought, a company called Amplify, we recommend people do it three to four times a year, and there’s always going to be some influence over what’s happening immediately, right now, this week in the company or in the world, and you have to kind of like, account for that. And then, but also long term, you should, you should see some, some, you know, some consistent trends. And so, you have to, you have to have the little bit of an intuition about what to, what to pull out and what to, you know, kind of take as truth. And, and I think ultimately, being able to come back to your team and say, here’s, here are some of the things I’ve heard, and here’s what we can do, and here’s what we’re not going to do right now, and I’ve considered all the feedback, and I know, this is a really tough time. And then, you know, trying to craft, you know, whatever, whatever your policies are from a place of, from a place of care and empathy for the different things people are going through. For example, you know, we’re going to be meeting our entire senior leadership team in Austin next week, and we said, look, you know, here, if you want to come, you’ve got to wear a mask on the plane, you’ve got to be vaccinated, and if you don’t, that’s okay too. We’re gonna accommodate, we’ll have zoom, and we want people to feel safe and comfortable. And so, you know, again, give it, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of, a lot of different perspectives on, on whether, you know, that people have around being vaccinated or not. So, you know, we’re not going to force anyone to do that. But also, you know, we’re going to have rules around gathering and being in the office and accommodate people who, who need to make a different choice, for whatever reason, in a way that supports them as well.
I laugh because I just feel like I’ve just gone through this internally. My final question, before I flip back to Jay to conclude, is a lot of our listeners and myself and Jay, have turned to overseas work. Not only did the ripping off the band-aid make us go national, but international. What are some of the lessons learned using 15Five with a global workforce? In one sense, a lot of our listeners and viewers look at it as a virtual assistant, almost like, you know, it’s a widget. I have tried it, I don’t love that term, and some of our guests have talked about, you know, it’s, its team members. But what are some of the things and ways that you’ve seen people leverage this technology to help with overcoming cultural and international boundaries?
Yeah, it’s a great question. Well, first of all, one of the biggest challenges in international, you know, we span San Francisco to Poland, right now, so, we have a pretty big time differential. And early on, you know, just in terms of organizing teams, we had some teams, you know, who were in the Bay Area, working with teams that were in Europe, and it can be really challenging. And now, you know, we have folks on the East Coast now. So, we try to pair as much as possible squads, you know, between East Coast and Europe, and then between East Coast and West Coast, so that there’s not as big of a time differential. But that does lend itself, you know, to, to more, the need for more asynchronous work and not having as much time zone overlap. So, that’s the first thing I’ll just, I’ll just say. Culturally, I do think that there are cultural differences, and especially if you have different languages. Currently, 15Five, we support all of the, the application and the prompts in English even though some people choose to then, you know, kind of answer in whatever their native tongue is, and that works for some folks and doesn’t for others. We, we practice, as an organization, the English language internally, and so even our employees who are in Poland or Ukraine or Portugal, will engage in English on Slack and in 15Five. And we’ve actually had, you know, we’re a pretty progressive culture in terms of the human values, and really big focus on helping to unlock people’s potential and help them cultivate what we call relational mastery. And so we’ll do things where we have meetings that are specifically designed just to get people to connect and share about themselves and learn about each other. And, you know, one of the things we do is Question Friday, where people come together and one person asks a question, and we all go into breakout rooms and share about, you know, a little bit of our about our lives for 20 minutes on a Friday morning. We used to do, and we still do on Mondays, we start our Monday business meeting, before we go into all the numbers, we, someone for a month comes on and shares a gratitude, you know, kind of anchoring people in the positive. And I remember people saying, like, “Our European engineers would never go for that,” and ours do! Many of them have said, “Wow, this is, I’m not getting this, you know, this isn’t what, this isn’t normal for what, for my life,” and we’ve invited them to come along. So, I do think that culture is an interesting thing. I often talk about how, you know, culture is not something you, as a business owner, you can control, but you do have influence over it. And it really comes to reinforcing certain values and finding people who are aligned with that. And over time, any group of human beings, like if you took, you know, a different person, from every state in the US, from, half from one political party, half from another, put them on a desert island, and left in there for, for 10 years, you’d come back and there’d be a very, very distinct culture, because that’s what happens when people come together, and, and you give it time. Like the, you know, the people who left England and came here in the 1700s, have evolved into what America is today, and there’s a very different culture here than there was, than there is in England. And so, you know, your culture will, it’s like a living system. It’s evolving right now. And so, you know, to that end, you may bring people on internationally who have very different, differences culturally, and it’s important to acknowledge that, but also, I wouldn’t get so, so set in the idea that they, you know, they can’t fit in and, and be part of the culture you’re creating either.
So, my llast issue that I want to discuss with you, is going back historically through our data that we accumulated by using those engagement questions, we actually were able to identify things during COVID, some great ideas, that we were not timely beforehand, that now that we had the time, now that we had the reduction in our active caseload, we were able to start to do some of those pivots, which have, in essence, saved our business because we have continued to flourish and grow because we have that data. Similarly, I have found in some of the, if I look back historically, about the amount of engagement we’ve gotten on some of those questions, I can sort of see trends when, you know. Because we’re dealing with some professionals who may have, you know, particular goals for their career, where we’re just a stopping point on the way, and we found that by, after seeing them leave, going back through the historic data, we can tend to see some markers of, they are less engaged, oh, boy, this may be something, and so we can identify people that may not necessarily be with us for the long term. Can you talk about the value of having that data so that you can look at a bigger picture of your organization over 2 years, 5 years, 10 years? Because I think that’s something that a lot of people miss out on when they’re not engaging with people and tracking it regularly. It’s one of the things that I think is great about your product.
Such a great question. I think it is so true, and I think that, you know, it’s, it’s as important to be reading between the lines as to be reading the lines, you know. If you have somebody who tends to, to be engaged in providing feedback on a weekly basis, and you know, they, they write in a certain way, and all of a sudden, you’re starting to get one line answers, or they’re skipping weeks, that’s, that’s an indication of like, oh, I wonder what’s going on there, and bringing curiosity and so. You know, every manager should be, you know, trained to look for those signs, and then, you know, to having that historical data, you can go and look back and see the differential. There are some things that I think in the future, we may actually try to, try to automate some of that, or at least say, hey, something’s different here, you should take a look at this, and providing some like a heads-up hotspot type, type report. But, but for the most part, I think, yeah, I do think it’s important to have that data because then you can compare and say like, oh, yeah, something’s really different, I can look back six months and, and see what it was like.
I think that would be really useful as a feature because. Anyone can flag it, because, not just only can the employees flag, the managers may not, and something that just sort of says, hey, it may be nothing, but just double check this.
Yeah, for sure.
That’s really great stuff. Anything else?
No, thank you so much for your time. This is, this has been awesome. We, really appreciate it, everything you’ve done and keep up the great work.
This was awesome. Yeah, thank you so much.
Yeah, David, you’ve got a phenomenal product. Like I said, I discovered you years and years ago, and I gotta tell you, it’s been instrumental in allowing me to grow my firm. So, I want to thank you for everything that you’ve done.
Oh, you’re so welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much.
All right, folks, we’ll be right back with more Maximum Growth Live.
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Wow, Seth, I mean, that was a phenomenal conversation, and you know, I love being able to sort of talk to somebody who scaled himself. I mean, like you said, 15Five started off as a 5-person organization, they’re now in the hundreds, across time zones, across continents, and really actually using the product himself, has allowed him to scale I, I have been a devotee of this type of engagement for a long, long time, and I highly recommend it. And we talked a little bit about systems there. I mean, this was just, this is just like, a perfect Jay Ruane segment. I loved it. What were your takeaways?
No, I look, we’ve been using it. I admittedly, it popped at BluShark. Price Benowitz, good, but I don’t think, used as robustly, there’s not the buy-in. Like anything else, you buy software, it works as well as you allow it to be used. But what I, what my takeaways were, was digging deeper into the software to figure out what can we do to get to the next level. Can we somehow get our rocks integrated in there? Something I don’t think we’re doing. And basically, putting the, not just the feedback, but looking at how we can look over time to allow people to measure. I think he summed it up well, because we always talk about it, what’s not on fire, but what are the things that need to still happen? And it’s so tough, even just talking to my law partner, David Benowitz, we always go to the problems, what are the problems, what’s, versus here are the things we need to accomplish this quarter. And I feel like, you know, it follows the Jay Ruane concept of putting those systems in place. And what I enjoyed most, my biggest sort of takeaway from this, was his mind, this guy, has literally seen inside more companies, you could just, as he spoke in the second half of the interview, to see the way that he analyzed, evaluated, and was. We all read Scaling Up, we all read Traction, but the idea that there’s now, to then take those concepts and what everybody needs, create tools there, create systems, because it’s one thing to say systems, it’s another to have them. And you know, whole it’s stroking another check for another piece of software, you know, isn’t the most fun thing in the world. I think that this is one of those ones that like, I really enjoy what we get from it and find it meaningful and find that it allows me a better shot of fulfilling what we learned about from the great authors that we heard, we hear from here.
Yeah, you know, that’s one of the things, I mean, we’ve all read Traction, at least a lot of people in our audience have, you have, I have. And one of the biggest things is, like you said, you set your goals and then you come back 13 weeks later, you’re like, okay, did they happen, or did they not? That’s one of the reasons why I created Finalize, and I’m gonna do a pure promotion here, for everyone who’s listening. Last week, we launched a product that literally is simple steps, right? You fill out every night: What do I need to accomplish tomorrow? And it marches you through that process, because just setting a goal isn’t going to get anything done. And in fact, I think what happens is if you set a goal 13 weeks out, but you aren’t taking the steps every day to accomplish it, you get 13 weeks out, it’s not accomplished, you get the objective, you’re less likely to set a goal for the next quarter because you didn’t accomplish the one from this quarter. So, that’s one of the great things about Finalize, is that we are you know, the way the tech works, software, is it’s reminding you every day to get stuff done. And I gotta tell you, I used it religiously while we develop, I mean, it was developed just for me, right? It was developed just for me because I needed it. And then what I did is I had my brother work with me to actually build it out, so other people can use it. And right after we launched two weeks ago, I took myself out of it, just to sort of see how my life would be. And man, I called him up like four days into it, I was like, “You got to get me back into the program because I can’t live without it anymore.” I love having somebody who’s just hammering me with accountability to get stuff done. So, that’s, that’s my little shameless self-promotion there. I hope everybody hearing here doesn’t, doesn’t mind me talking about it, but it’s my current baby, and, and I’m loving it. And then this brings me up to my last thing, and we talked about this at the top of the show, you know, you talked about jettisoning your immigration practice. But really, it was a calculated decision, and you didn’t just walk away from it, you found somebody who can actually use it, take it to the next level. But this is something that I think we need to debate about, and I don’t know if it’s debate, me versus you, or you versus somebody else, or what it is. But the question is, do you add another product line, a new niche, a new vertical? Or do you try to crush the one that you’re in? And this is a lot of people, we know, have said, “I’m going to start up a new firm, I’m going to do it, you know, add a trust and estates practice, because it’s more paper-driven, and I can do that,” and I wonder if it’s worth it, to add a trust and estates practice, if you, for example, are a personal injury lawyer, where that effort and time you put into more PI would actually have a much easier impact on your bottom line. And I think that needs to be debated on the show. What do you think?
I do, and I think I can debate both sides internally, like, with their own voices. You know, I, you know, we love the diversity, it was great when you have issues in one area over another, but you only have so many hours in the day. So, I, you know, we, you know, you and I are definitely like ideas guys, we want to put stuff in place. You know, we always talk about the six-month rule, how does it look after six months. And I feel that when, when things are rolling, you know, some of the, you incubate only so long. I think that the perspective of somebody with one trying to have a second may not be very different than if I have seven, whether I do an eighth or reduce to six. And so, you know, specialize. There’s an entire world of digital marketing, for example, where they profess niche niche niche. And I think it’s genius if you, because you have to build to critical mass and there’s nothing wrong with that. The question is, could you, once you’ve built the engine underneath that, can you diversify? Not to 100 different things, but if there’s, pulling a second skew or a third skew in, gonna hurt your focus from the one, or is it going to give you additional revenue and diversity?
Excellent, excellent. Alright, folks, so that’s gonna leave it with us here today, here on Maximum Growth Live. I want to thank you for being with us. As always, if you want to keep up with Seth, you can do so on his BluShark Digital page, still has running his SEO Insider which is a phenomenal, phenomenal way to keep track of emerging trends and core fundamental knowledge you need to have in the area of digital marketing. And, you know, you may say, well, I’m not the kind of person who knows this stuff or truly understands this stuff., but one of the great things about the interviews that Seth does, and I’m going to promote you, Seth, because I think it’s necessary, is that when you’re having these conversations you learn so much about it, it makes you a better business owner, because 90% of what most of us do is outsource our labor in these particular areas. And when you have even just a little bit of knowledge, you can think critically about when you’re going to engage somebody, are they selling you a bunch of, a bunch of BS? Do they know what they’re talking about? And, and having that I think is really, really important. So, please join Seth on his SEO Insider show. Of course, if you want to talk systems with me, I love ’em, as you heard earlier in the show, you can always join my Systemising Your Law Firm for Growth Facebook page. I share things every day, new systems, and one of my systems that we’ve recently released is that Finalize program. So, please join us with that. But with that said, I’m going to leave you today. Any further thoughts, any questions?
This is great. Good to be back and go, have a great week.
Awesome. All right, folks. We’ll see you next week. Here live on another episode of Maximum Growth Live. Bye for now.
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