The Home Service Expert Podcast
Your Hiring Strategy Is Setting You Up to Fail Before Day One | Mike Matalone
24 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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?
CSRs, dispatchers, managers, yeah.
Chapter 2: How did Mike Matalone reduce employee turnover at Window Nation?
Welcome back to Home Service Expert. I am working in Atlanta today, and I got Mike Matalone here. He's an expert in talent strategy, hiring systems, employee engagement, behavioral science, onboarding and retention, and leadership development.
Award-winning speaker, Amazon bestselling author, former Vistage chair and speaker, 20-plus years coaching CEOs and business owners on people's strategy, over 500 keynotes and workshops across the United States, Canada,
in the UK, former chief talent officer at Window Nation, the third largest window replacement contractor in the US, recently started a premium deck building company to prove his own systems work and home services startup based in Bumpass, VA. XP3 Talent Systems is specifically validating people operating system that helps companies hire, train, and retain high performing teams.
Chapter 3: What are the three hiring criteria for effective recruitment?
Offers a 90-day talent mastery program backed by 100% guaranteed results. primary services, construction, trades, and service businesses. Clients include Window Nation, Outback Deck, Contract Exteriors, Jerry's Roofing and Siding. Also authored, Hire, Train, Retain, second edition best-selling book forwarded by Brian Gottlieb, who sold for $150 million.
As of 2026, XP3 is transitioning out of direct recruiting services to focus entirely on training, service, and coaching, partnering with recruiters instead of doing it themselves. I'm excited.
Chapter 4: How does psychological connection impact employee performance?
This episode is all about from hiring with behavioral science to making new hires productive in 30 days to the exact playbook that took Window Nation's turnover from 80% down to 23% in six months. Mike, it's a pleasure to have you on. Thank you, Tommy.
It's good to be here.
Let's just talk a little bit.
Chapter 5: What role do personality assessments play in hiring?
Let's get started on, you started out at Vistage, chair coaching CEOs. What kept coming up over and over that made you say, I need to build a system for this?
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.
Chapter 6: How can AI enhance the interview process?
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.
Chapter 7: What constitutes a 'wow' onboarding experience?
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. So they were speaking from direct experience on how to solve it.
But even if nobody had ever did it, you put 12, 15 smart people in a room together, you could usually come up with two or three potential solutions.
so so those two lessons is what led me to create the xp3 talent system because i started looking around at all the different systems that were available and there were hiring systems on the people side and training systems but i never found an end-to-end system that took the employee through the full life cycle and made them the focus of the business so that's when i decided to create the xp3 talent system which is that full life cycle system
I love it. No, I love systems. I say all the time, there's either no system, the wrong system, or the system's not being followed. Those are the three main reasons. And people are like, well, you know, it's usually a people problem. Like you said, I said, what's the system that picks the people?
And so now we have systems on just the way we hire and pick people and the orientation and onboarding. What do you think is the most critical thing when you hire somebody? Like what are some of the things you've done this a lot? Well, I guess I did it for a long time, but I mostly made mistakes. So when it comes to leadership.
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Chapter 8: How can companies define success for their employees?
Right. We learn from our mistakes. We do. As long as you're learning from them, that's a good thing. Right.
Yeah.
So I'm sorry, your question again was?
You know, when you're picking leaders, what are some of the big no-nos? What are some of the things you have to do?
Yeah. So so from the hiring standpoint, right, I think the biggest mistake that most people make is that they think they can hire a great team. Right. And you can't. Great teams are built. They're not hired.
So meaning even if the person was an A player from your competitor down the road doing the same exact job, same product services, that does not automatically indicate that they're going to be an A player for you. So you have to look at what made them an A player. Was it the culture, the environment they were in? Was it the manager they were reporting to?
And we know for a fact the manager has about 50% impact on that A player, right? How they're trained, managed, coached, right? Was it the tools, resources and systems we were just talking about? Right. So if you can't duplicate that, then, you know, their probability of continuing to be an A player, you know, goes down significantly. So, so it goes back to when I was a window nation, right?
They, they hired me to fix their problem. And I said, I can fix the problem, but I got to use the systems processes and methodology that I know how to use. If you want me to come in and learn yours, you know, I could learn it, but I can't guarantee the same results until I get in there, play with it a little bit, which means I'm probably going to make mistakes.
And, you know, while I'm trying to figure it out and that could take a year or so or longer. So that's some of the key things is stop relying on hiring great people and realize that you have to train and build great teams. I love that. No matter how good.
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