Mike Matalone

I like to say it's like asking your employees to win a race, but not telling them where the finish line is.

Part of it, whether it's hiring or existing employees, one of the first things to focus on is define success in their role.

Salespeople, we usually do a pretty good job within home improvement, right?

Because we give them specific goals daily, weekly.

But are you doing that for every other employee?

It's good to be here.

Yeah.

So I spent five years with Vistage running three different groups.

So every month I had three meetings with about 45 different members bringing their issues and challenges to the group.

So actually, through that experience, I learned two key things that led to creating the XP3 talent system.

One, as you know, is you've got to have a system and a process for everything in order to scale effectively, consistently and profitably.

Right.

So that was lesson number one.

Number two is I kind of realized that most business problems are people problems in disguise.

Meaning that, you know, the members would bring a challenge that I have cashflow problems or I have a marketing problem or a sales problem.

And when we drill down and ask the clarifying questions to find out, you know, the root of the cause in probably 80, 90% of the time, it was a people problem.

Meaning like you have that problem because you don't have the people who know how to avoid it, solve it, you know, move past it.

And the proof of that was that was the purpose of the Vistage group, right?

They were there to kind of help each other, you know, solve their problems.

And with 12 or 15 members in each group, you know, two or three people probably had already been there, done it.