The Power and Necessity of Daily Team Huddles, Carrots and Sticks

Audio Transcription

grabbed the duct tape and mentally prepare yourself for yet another mind expanding knowledge bomb from America’s number one business coach. Clay Clark.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Matt Klein, welcome back onto the thrive time show. How are things in Denver?

They’re great. We didn’t get snow. It looks like a normal kind of gloomy day, but it’s everything’s good. We got to the end of the year almost.

Well, Hey you, you have made it successfully through the year. Um, you’ve been helping award franchises to great franchisees all throughout this country. You guys are celebrating 13 years in business. There’s over 400 Oxi fresh territories that are now out there. And how many locations do you currently own there? Mr Macklin?

I personally own two in Northern Colorado.

I see you own two Oxi fresh franchises. How many technicians work for you at this point to work with you?

So at the end of the year, now I have two full time guys and I have a floater, which I’m, that person will turn into a full time employee, comes spring time, and then we’ll work on our fourth employee, um, near July ish. That’s kind of what we, we look at.

So I find a lot of people that have a small business, which I believe is what you would classify what you’re doing there is as a small business, a lot of people have a small business and they can’t seem to keep their team, um, together. They can’t steam to keep the team from infighting. They can’t seem to get the team to show up on time and um, no team is perfect. But, uh, talk to me about the, the essential quality of having a daily huddle with your technicians or a daily call with your team and in order to, to, to keep the, the team headed the right way.

Yeah, it’s super important. Um, for me specifically, so I have a daily phone huddle and then, um, my dad who’s now retired is helping me. He does a weekly in-person huddle with them just because I’m a little bit extended from my territory. Prior to that, I was doing those weeklies myself. Uh, I do a once a month, my dad does once a week and I do daily on the phone. And it’s vitally important for multiple reasons. One, in our industry, we have employees that have a vehicle, they have equipment, they have their days, they have their work orders. They sometimes will have checks that they need to turn in. So what we’re doing multiple things. One, we’re basically making sure all the things that they need to turn in for me to be able to close out work orders is it to me quickly, right? So that we can close out those and we can get on.

But more importantly than that, what we’re doing is we’re starting to really build a relationship with these employees to figure out what they’re really strong at, what they’re really weak at, what we need to work on in terms of just them being able to be more efficient with their day, better at their job, better customer service. But we’re also filling the gaps. Um, if you don’t have a conversation with your employees consistently, right. What I see happen in my industry is we’ll see that they’ll start operating with equipment that’s not not up to par or they’ll start cutting corners because they feel like their time is not, um, they don’t have enough time. You know, you, you’re not going to realize what their inadequacies are, whether it’s getting to a job on time or whether it’s not asking for those reviews at the end of the job.

So what we’re doing is we’re checklist item every single thing that they need to do on a daily basis and we’re actually holding them accountable. We’re not having one conversation every month. This is what you’re not good at, right? It’s consistent. If you tell somebody consistently this what you’re doing wrong, this is what you’re doing wrong, this is going to change your paycheck by how you actually operate your day and here’s how you do it better, then you can start working on them and developing their skills so they could become a much, much better employee and the environment in your business become better because everyone’s going in the right direction.

I have found, um, that, uh, there was a book written by Napoleon Hill back in the day called out witting the devil. And uh, he talked about how there’s two different kinds of people out there. And he talked about how, um, the, the person who is intentional with how they live their life and who resets their day every day, and they wake up every day and they say, what did I do well yesterday and what could I do better? Um, that person is very rare and he would call that person a person who’s intentional. But by default, he described that the vast majority of the American population or any population drifts. And he describes that as he says, a drifter is one who permits himself to be influenced and controlled by the circumstances, uh, around, outside of his own mind. He would rather let me occupy his mind to do his thinking than go to the trouble of thinking for himself.

A drifter is one who accepts whatever life throws in his way without making a protest or putting up a fight for what is right. He doesn’t know what he wants from life. And spends all his time getting just that, Hey, drifter has a lot of opinions, but they are not a zone. A drifter is one who is too lazy mentally to use his own brain and that is the reason he goes on to explain how there’s certain people that just whatever life throws at them, they just let it happen. So it’s like if the equipment quits working, they’ve just quit using that part of the equipment. If they run out of checklists, they don’t tell you and they just quit using a checklist. If the phone that the business phone quits work and they just don’t tell you if they get a scratch in the car, they just won’t maintain it. If they need to change the oil in the car, they just won’t do it. If the lawn is growing too much, they just won’t mow it. If they need to brush their teeth, they just won’t brush them. They just drift. And Matt, I think that drifting is a huge problem and local service businesses, what are the areas that would drift immediately? Immediately? You stopped the daily huddles even just for two weeks.

Yeah. So there’s few of them obviously, but just then being able to manage their schedule, I find that that drips, right. If you’re not constant checking in on them, then it’s okay to show up to the first job 20 minutes late. Right. Cause they may have the customer service skills to get over that little hurdle of being late. Right. Just by being sweet to the customer or what’ll happen for me that drives me absolutely nuts is they’ve just will Slack on their work order, the easiest part of their job. Okay. So they’ve gotten the job, they did all the things necessary. They did the job correctly, but they won’t fill out their work order so that I can’t close it out.

So you got to get you, you can’t get paid, you can’t get paid. You’re saying

they don’t get paid. So if I can’t close it out, I don’t know. I can’t award them at upsell. If they had an upsell on a job, I can’t actually let them, you know, it just creates more work for me cause then I got to go into the credit card processing company. I’ve got to figure out what happened. So you just have to step the standard. I don’t get it. You don’t get paid. Right. And they’ll start to Slack. It’ll be two this month that they didn’t close out. Right? Next month it’ll be five the month after, maybe 10. Right. And so what they’re doing is creating havoc in your business by not really paying attention to the detail. And they’re not, because you’re not holding them accountable to it.

Right? So

there’s no real, there’s no penalty for them.

So you have a daily huddle, but you all staff, you also have to have carrots and sticks. Talk to me about the carrots and sticks and what would happen if you got rid of the penalty if they just say, you said, guys, here’s the deal. If you don’t close, close out the invoices, you know, I, I really wish you would. But if you don’t, uh, you know, it’s just not going to be good and you didn’t actually do something about it. I mean, what if there was no penalty for them not closing out, make closing out the orders properly? What would happen?

Yeah. Anytime there’s any sort of deviation from a normal job or maybe they’re a little bit behind or maybe they have a difficult customer, they’re just going to not do it. Plain and simple because they know it doesn’t actually matter. They may be frustrating at the time. They have to confess to it, but there’s no real penalty. They’re going to just go on and do it. They’re going to be less efficient every single day. Everything will slip. If they’re slipping on their work orders, they’re going to slip on them getting out of bed. They slip out of getting out of bed. They’re going to slip on actually doing all the details of getting Google review, but they slip on that. They’re going to slip on their product mixtures. Every single piece of the job, if one slips, it has the potential to slip on everything, so you have to basically stay on them with everything because their job is to do the job efficiently, right? Your job is to hold them accountable to that job so they can get better. If your employees are getting worse, the more more they’re working with you. As an owner of a company, you’re not doing your job. You need to make sure you’re building their skills so they’re getting better day to day. They’re developing things. I can take them to a better job down the road potentially.

Uh, Andrew, I want to get your take here on this because you work with a lot service providers. And why do service providers shy away from ever, ever, ever by default ever. I mean it’s like they never, ever, ever, ever, ever put a stick in place. And they never do daily huddles. I mean, why? Why do you feel like that is [inaudible] am I exaggerating? I mean, are all the service providers doing daily huddles? Are they all doing carrots and sticks? How do you see it? Yeah, so most most service providers that I see, when I first started working with them, they don’t have any carrots or sticks or weekly meetings or any sort of consequence or punishment. The biggest thing I see is that they are being held hostage by their employees so they don’t have another option. They’re too afraid that Hey, if I do hold them accountable, something bad’s going to happen.

They’re going to leave and then I’m going to have to do all of the work and I can’t do that. They have this massive fear. So you have to set up a process or a system in place to get new employees, new hires in. You have to create the systems, the checklists, and Matt already has that all created so we can hire and we have processes that we teach our listeners to find good people. But, but by default, Andrew, if you were to start working with, uh, let’s say a hundred clients this year, how many of them have a daily huddle in place and kicks and carrots and sticks? How many of a hundred people out of a hundred new clients, let’s say by default, just a hundred clients, how many of them will have a daily huddle in place and sticks and carrots? Yeah, I’d say there’s about 5%. Five out of a hundred that got that figured out so far. I agree with that. I mean Matt, I mean, do you see, is this a huge problem in the system? If, if you guys weren’t enforcing it strictly and teaching about it and preaching about, I mean, would this be a huge problem for your franchisees if you weren’t hammering this concept home?

Sure, and I would say that it still is an issue for our franchise. And I’d say every franchise out there because at the end of the day, you know, just like you guys are coaching companies to be better at systems and automation, even though we have a lot of that in place, it still takes you getting in front of your employees, having a conversation, holding them accountable, right? And so you have to be diligent on these little things because if you slip as an owner, I can guarantee you every other piece of your business will slip in some way. So from the very top, if you’re not doing the things necessary to allow your business to move forward and grow that every piece of it, like if you’re not doing it, then how can you expect for your employees to do it? Boys aren’t going to do it. How can you expect your customers to do it?

Right? And so it does really start from the top. I personally have gone through this and I would say probably, I’m always going through this in some way or another, trying to get better and trying to fill in the gaps. Um, but yeah, I mean, it’ll always be a problem with small businesses and I’d say the vast, vast majority will just kind of float, like you said. And then some of the smaller minority will actually do it place and that’s why they stick out. Right. Really successful companies stick out so much because they’re being compared to everybody else.

Have you ever watched the documentary about coach Bob Hurley?

I have, actually.

I was like, there was a 30 for 30 special they did on ESPN, like at once. Um, and uh, it was very interesting because he is an intense man who is, was the coach at the time of, I believe st Anthony’s was the school and the school would, would, was it st Anthony’s? Do you remember? St Mary’s. Okay. So it was Bob Hurley senior. And, uh, it was, uh, probably the best high school basketball coach in American history, if not one of the best. And ESPN did a documentary on this guy and, uh, he was such a good coach here. I guess it’s now, it’s now closed, but it was st Anthony and New Jersey and Jersey city, New Jersey, and he amassed 26. He had mass to 26 state championships and 39 years as a coach, 26 in 39. And if you watch that documentary, he let the players know going into the season, look, we are not going to have a problem academically.

It’s not going to happen. You are not going to be late for practice. It’s not going to happen. And if, if you do have a problem, we as a team will not have a problem because you will not be on our team. And it’s amazing how he took some of the most, uh, challenged economically kids from the worst homes and situations and led those guys to an unbelievable 26 state championships in 39 years. But if you watch the documentary, uh, Matt, he was, he had a few sticks. If you didn’t, uh, you know, do your job. Ah, you know, bill Bellacheck is not the most, uh, happy looking on the sidelines if people don’t do their job. Uh, you think about coach Popovich doesn’t look exactly the most excited when players on the spurs don’t do their job. So what advice would you have for the listener out there who owns a business?

Uh, Matt, who, uh, their number one desire is to be liked by all their employees and therefore they will not put any sticks in place. Just positive. It’s only carrots. It’s only carrots. It’s only positive reinforcement reinforcement. There’s no, no sticks. There’s just, just carrots. They’ve been reading a lot of books about, you know, motivation and they’ve gone to a lot of the, they’d been on like a, uh, like a trust fall with their, with their team. They’ve taken their team to some sort of like trust building camp or you know, you fall backwards and they catch you and they’ve been watching videos and practicing koombaya choir sessions and you know, they’ve been really spending a lot of time team building and they just refuse to put in any, any sticks. It’s only care. It’s what’s going to happen.

Yeah. There you’re going to get taken advantage of. You’re going to allow your employees to start running your business instead of you really holding them accountable. You’re going to be like Andrew said, going to be a prisoner of your own company. Your employees are going to set the standard for what’s happening, right? So every piece of the head that is a negative, right? Um, I can tell you personally, I’ve had employees where I’ve done that, right? I’ve been beholden to them. Uh, I was too afraid to make a decision and you know what happen eventually they just, you know, they remove themselves from the equation because it got so bad. So just chop it off. Start with someone new, realize the, that little hurt in the beginning. It’s going to be so much more beneficial down the road. If somebody is doing more harm than good to your business, don’t wait another second. Just replace them 100% and try to correct bad habits. If you can just get someone that gets it but understand, hold them accountable and do not let them run your business. You run your own.

Dr Z one time told me a funny story. He said, clay, if you are feeding your kids, you know, go out to a nice dinner and every time that Havana puts down the fork and tries to get herself some, you know, chicken or something from this nice fine restaurant and some member of your team who’s not good at their job, reaches over and grabs the food out of her mouth and eats it himself. How many times would you let that happen before you’d fire that guy or kick him out of the meal or what you know? And he said, you know, what about with your wife? If your wife, you have to find dinner with your wife and every time that you know, your wife sits down, somebody else takes her seat and he came into one of your employees and he keeps doing, how often would you let her, somebody take the food out of your wife’s mouth?

You know, if, if every time that you went to write a check, you know, for your mortgage and a member of your team ripped it up, you know, if every time that you tried to walk into your office, somebody tripped you, you know, uh, if, if every time you tried to, uh, you know, go, uh, check on the, the golden goose and someone was out there trying to, I figured if Dively if a goose, but goose could lay an egg. If you’re out there trying to get done another golden egg from the goose and you see one of your teammates out there chasing it around with a shotgun, how long are you going to let that happen? You know, and I never thought of it in terms of like, somebody is either hurting your business or helping it. I never thought about that, but when he made that clear distinction in my mind it became very clear and I would just encourage everybody out there.

If you have somebody on your team who is repelling business, they are killing your brand and the brand must come first. The brand must come first and if you’re out there today and you say, you know what I want to team up with the brand has been putting the brand first for 10 plus years, in this case, 13 years. I want to, I want to team up with a brand who has 400 locations. I want to be a, I want to work with. I want to team up with a brand to buy a franchise that has the potential power to create both time and financial freedom for me and my family. I would encourage you to go to Oxi fresh.com today. That’s O X, I fresh Oxi fresh.com. To learn more about buying an Oxi fresh franchise or you can go to thrive time show.com. That’s thrive time show.com, forward slash Oxi fresh to request additional information about buying an Oxi fresh franchise and Matt Klein, uh, at last a check. How much does it cost to buy an Oxi fresh franchise?

Yup. The initial investment to get your territory equipment product and training at our home office in Colorado with 38,900. Ooh, best practice. Is that somewhere around 20 to 25,000 and operational capital available to you actually start your business and get it to a cashflow positive state.

Matt, you are in a positive state right now, man. I tell you, look, you sound like a guy who just finished his Christmas shopping. You know, what am I picking up on the phone? The right vibrations.

I did talk about the worst environment imaginable.

Where’d you go buddy? Where’d you go?

Going into it? Oh, I went to target.

Oh no, no you wouldn’t. You went into the belly of the beast the day before

stuff. For my nieces and it is just an awful,

you went in the day before you went in the day before Christmas in there.

Yep.

I have um, audio if I could cue it up, have you, um, going in there and if it, I just want to make sure my, Andrew, I think this is the right file. The right one. Let me queue it up here. Let me make sure this is the right audio file. This is a Matt going into target on the day of, and we might have to do some editing here because this is a, um, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s, I mean, Target’s intense. It’s a, it’s a tough, it’s a tough time of the year to the day before, the day before Christmas. Let me queue it up here. Uh, and again, if I get the wrong audio, iPods and me queue this up here. This is, uh, let me, let me get here.

What I always this on, man, this is all seven. Oh seven. Yeah. Where were you buying, what were you buying? Pop dark and gift card. Oh, really? Let’s see here. This is all I can see this. There seems to be people fighting over the last minute specials, the doorbusters man. What else were you buying in there? I mean, were you, were you there in the electronics? Nope. Find these little unicorn corn egg thing from my hoopers. Oh, really? Think their problems, they’re probably going to love him for about sounded mid. Sounds like you’re in a pretty intense unicorns. Wow. Okay. Shut up man. I’m you made it out alive,

my friend. I am so thankful you made it out alive.

[inaudible]

Merry Christmas to you and yours and don’t drink too much soy eggnog because they enlarge your nipples. We know from experience, there’s a lot of soy pick dog this time of the year. People try to eat healthy and I could see, you know, this is a beneficial tip and so just don’t drink too much

soy eggnog in moderation drinks on the watch. You take care.