Joey Coleman | How to Never Lose an Employee Again

Srini Rao: Joey, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join

Joey Coleman: us. Oh, Srini, it is such a pleasure to be back on the show. It's been a minute since we got the chance to connect, but I am such a fan of your unmistakable approach that I'm thrilled to be back here and thanks to everybody who's joining us and listening in today.

Yeah.

Srini Rao: We had you back here when your previous book, Never Lose a Customer, again, came out and you were in a long list of people that our mutual friend, Clay Heybert, has referred to the show. And usually anytime Clay refers somebody, I don't even bother reading the bio. I just say, yes. Cause Transcribed He's the best referral source in the world

Joey Coleman: when it comes to a human being.

He really is. Lucky to have him as a friend.

Srini Rao: Yeah, absolutely. Given the subject matter of the new book, I wanted to start by asking you what was the very first job that you ever had and how did that end up impacting what you ended up doing with

Joey Coleman: your life? So I need to ask a clarification of this first job that I had that was paid by someone that I was genetically related to or first job that I had where my paycheck was not from someone that I was genetically related to.

Srini Rao: Either one, but the I like to go as far back as high school because I believe that those jobs have a lot more relevance than a lot of us realize.

Joey Coleman: Yeah. So then the first job that I ever had was actually in junior high. And the job I had was my my family has had a farm in Iowa where I grew up that is a century farm, which means it's been in the same family for over a hundred years.

And it's the farm my dad grew up on, his father grew up on. And I did not grow up on this farm, but. I had a chance to work one summer on the farm and our job was they had decided to do an experiment at going green. Now this was back in the day, right? This is back in the 80s and they were like, we're not going to do any pesticides or herbicides or anything that will help knock down the plants, I guess would be the herbicides.

Pesticides is for the plants. Herbicides is for the plants. The weeds and so they're not, we're not going to do any spraying to stop the weeds. As you might imagine, the weeds grew like crazy. And so my dad hired me and a couple of my friends to walk through the field with machetes cutting the weeds down.

This is full on manual labor, junior high work, sunburn, backbreaking work to try to clear the bean fields from the weeds. I have, I cannot for the life of me remember what we were paid, but it was probably something in the single digits of dollars per hour. And it was, A crazy, insane job. And what I will tell you, and you alluded to it, is how did this job influence your career?

I came home the first night after walking and I've got a sunburned neck and arms. My back is killing me, even though I'm young and a little more spry than I am today. It's swinging a machete. It's not fun. And I'm sitting at the dinner table and I'm not afraid to admit that I started crying because I just, I hurt.

I was tired. And I hurt and I was frustrated and it didn't feel like it was worth it. And my dad said, what's going on? And I said, dad I'm just so I don't know how we're going to get through this. Like we did, it feels like we did two rows of beans today and we've got acres and acres to go. This just feels impossible.

And he said, you learned a really valuable lesson today, which I don't know about anybody out there. You love those moments, right? When your parents said you learned a lesson and it's I want to learn lessons. You know what I mean? Even though as adults, we know how important that is. He said. In your life, there are really two ways to work.

You can work with your back or you can work with your brain. And it's your choice which one you get paid for. It's important to be able to know how to do both. I don't have a judgment on which path you choose. There are consequences to both. But make sure you're making a conscious choice. Srini, from that moment forward, for the rest of my life, I was like, I am going to hit the books.

I am going to study. I am going to read. I am going to learn. I am going to work to improve myself so that ideally I can be paid to work with my brain, not my back. And to be very clear, that is not a denigration or a dismissal of anyone who works with their back. It is literally backbreaking work. I've done it.

It's not fun. And I get how challenging it is. I feel incredibly fortunate and blessed and privileged that I've been able to choose a path that allows me to get paid for working with my

Srini Rao: brain. I think you brought up the key word is privilege, right? I think that we often overlook the fact that the people who get to do work with their brains often do so from a place of privileged circumstances.

Joey Coleman: Often. But I will say for those that are listening who maybe do more work with their back and don't feel to have the opportunity to work with their brains, if you improve. your knowledge. If you improve your awareness and your understanding and things that might be a little skewed more brain, I would posit you can transition out of the back faster.

Even if you stay working in that, you can see yourself as a manager. You can see yourself as a leader in the organization. and not have to be the one swinging machete. Again, recognizing that it often is from a place of privilege. There are plenty of examples of folks who have, through education, through perseverance, through commitment, through opportunities to read, to learn, to study, have been able to transition to more mind work, if you will, as opposed to

Srini Rao: So how did the lessons that you learned from what you call back work end up applying to what you call brain work?

Joey Coleman: Oh in a couple of ways number one when you do back work, you learn that you actually have. More capability and more stamina than you might have otherwise thought because you just have to keep pushing forward. So I learned that during that job that I had gears that I didn't know I had.

Number two, I learned that this was during the summer. Fast forward to when the school year started. I was like, I really should work hard at school. I should really be focused on my homework and studying and reading and listening to my teachers and getting good grades and doing those things.

So I think it produced a combination of both a work ethic and an interest in seeing things a little bit differently and trying to focus on the accumulation of knowledge. as opposed to necessarily the accumulation of dollars. I think when we first start out working, we are enamored as human beings by, oh, I can make some money.

Now, sometimes we're enamored by that because it's the first dollars we've ever made on our own. Sometimes we're enamored by it because we need it to live. I, again, from a place of privilege the money I was making that summer was not to buy food. That money I was making that summer was for me to be able to do fun things I wanted to do with my friends because thankfully I was growing up in a household where the food was being provided by the work my parents was doing.

So I didn't need to earn that money as a junior high student for food and clothing as much as it was for going to the pool or going to the movies or doing fun things with my friends. But I think when we start to shift to thinking maybe more exponentially or more with our brains about what's possible, we can start to scale our earning power and our Possibilities and our impact in a way that we can't do if we're just talking about what can I manually do in a day?

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Srini Rao: Yeah. I think you brought up a really key point and that's work ethic. And I just finished reading the LeBron James biography.

I think so. Oh,

Joey Coleman: nice. I have that. I haven't read it yet.

Srini Rao: It's fantastic. You will learn so much about him that really just surprises you because I think that when we see people who achieve at that level of mastery that are in the spotlight constantly, what we don't see. is what actually goes into it.

And do you realize the work ethic? It's consistent throughout his entire career from the time he was in high school to winning NBA championships. It's been a consistent level of commitment. And some of the most, more fascinating things are that he's been with the same woman since he was in high school, NBA.

He's been really wise to not get caught up in the sideshow which can happen you know, at that level. But the work ethic is what struck me most is that there, a friend texted me the other day and he was like, Hey, Srini, he was like I feel like I'm going through the emotions.

I don't feel inspired. And I remember reflecting on that and I said, you know what, man, I've said going through the motions is part of the deal. That's just part of it. You're not going to feel

Joey Coleman: inspired every day. The reps are what matters. Yeah. It's

Srini Rao: Look, if you're expecting to feel inspired every day, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

That's just not realistic. But speaking of which, so how in the world do you go from what you were doing then to what you are doing now? And you mentioned I think before you hit record that you had a brief period as a lawyer

Joey Coleman: as well. Yeah, I did. One, one final thought on that idea of the the compounding effect of work ethic.

Albert Einstein is famous for saying compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. And most people attribute that quote to the financial benefits of compound interest, right? When you make an investment and it allows itself to build on it over time and you get the benefit of time.

Compound interest on work ethic, I think, is even more powerful than compound interest in your bank account. Because the more you learn, the more you experience, the more you work, day in, day out, trying to be better today than you were yesterday, planning to be better tomorrow than you were today, and recognizing that it's a path.

It's often two steps forward, three steps back, six steps forward, 38 steps back, one step forward, two steps forward, three steps forward, eight steps back, right? It's a process. But that consistent commitment, that consistent focus on growth and learning, that consistent To do the work, to put in the time, to do the reps is what pays off in the end.

The challenge I think as humans is we are so driven by instant gratification. We are so driven by the desire to see the fruits of our labors immediately. But here's the kicker. Look at that phrase, fruits of our labors. If we want a piece of fruit to grow on a tree, we don't snap our fingers and it's there tomorrow.

It takes time. If we want to get that piece of fruit off the tree, we can grab it and take it off the tree, but we're likely going to want to think about washing it, cutting it, preparing. Most things that matter take time. And if you're willing to put in the time and you're willing to put in the work.

Where it can lead is remarkable to answer your question about my career path has been as eclectic as can be. I went straight from high school to college. While I was in college, I stayed government and international relations. Right after college, I went to law school. I studied international law, I studied national security law, I studied courtroom law, litigation.

While I was in law school and soon after, I had the opportunity to work for the United States Secret Service. I worked in the White House Office of Counsel to the President, and I worked for the CIA. After that, I worked as a criminal defense lawyer. After that, I went and taught at the postgraduate level.

After that, I ran a division of a promotional products company. After that, I started and ran an ad agency for 15 years. And after that, I became a full time speaker and writer. in the area of experience, both customer experience and employee experience. And some people look at that, Trini, and they say, Joey, it looks like you can't hold down a job.

And while there may be some truth to the underlying thread of all of those jobs and all of those positions and the compound interest, if you will, that came from the work ethic of doing all of those different things is that in order to succeed in any of those roles, you needed to have a keen understanding of the human condition.

Why do people do the things they do? And what can we do to convince, persuade, encourage them to do the things we'd like them to do? What I found is by doing those things, it's step and my ability to learn step. I'm realizing now I left out some of the jobs. I was a business consultant. I worked in a bookstore.

I've had a lot of different careers and jobs, but in each one, the more I was willing to double down into my understanding of not only book knowledge, but street knowledge. How people think, how they feel, and how they, I was able to piece together life experiences and stories and learnings and understandings to hopefully turn around and create value for either the folks I was working for, the people that were listening to my speeches, or now the people that are reading my books.

Srini Rao: I couldn't let the CIA thing go. There's no way I was just like, wait a minute, there's no way I can not ask you about that. So the CIA seems like a laboratory for studying human behavior. We actually had an ex CIA agent here as a guest who taught us about spy skills. A guy named Andrew Bustamante was absolutely fascinating.

And I remember asking him to make an assessment on my personality just based on five minutes of conversation with me. And I played it for my mom and she was just like, holy shit,

Joey Coleman: this guy is

Srini Rao: spot on. But what did you learn about human behavior that has informed this entire perspective on work?

From your time in the CIA.

Joey Coleman: Let me share one of the challenges of having worked at the CIA is you can't talk about it. Yeah. A lot of the work that I did was of a top secret and even top secret SCI, which is sensitive compartmentalized information level which I was very honored and privileged to do that work.

Let me tell a brief. semi cleansed story to illustrate a point that I think is valuable for anyone listening, whether they are an employer or an employee. I worked in a certain division of CIA and as part of my work, I was asked to go to a meeting with some folks in a different division of CIA. And while we were in that meeting, before the meeting started I got to the meeting early, pro tip anybody out there, it's sometimes good to show up to meetings early, and I'm sitting there and I'm getting prepared.

And while I'm in the meeting, some of these folks from this other division, this other department are having a conversation about a problem thing. And they've got this challenge and they're lamenting that they have this problem and they haven't been able to solve it despite the fact that they've been working

,

on it for a while.

Now, I'm not part of the conversation, but I'm at the table, they're speaking freely and I'm just out I'm not trying to eavesdrop, but I'm just hearing the conversation. We have the meeting, and the meeting goes well. The meeting's not about this thing they were discussing. And then I go back to my office, and I'm thinking, I think I could solve their problem.

I think I've got an idea of a way to solve their problem that might not be the way that they were talking about trying to solve it, but might actually solve the problem. And so I had a little bit of flexibility in my schedule and over the course of the next three or four days in my spare time at work, because let's be honest, most employees have some spare time at work instead of heading to the water cooler or taking an extra long lunch, I doubled down on trying to solve their problem.

A week later we went to the meeting and after the meeting ended, same group of people, everybody left except the folks who had been talking. I said, Hey, before you leave I heard you last time mentioning that you had this problem. I think I've solved your problem. Here's the stuff. And they looked at it and they were like, we've been trying to solve this problem for years.

How did you solve it? I said I'm a problem solver and it's something that I take a lot of pride in and it's something I have a lot of fun with. And I just thought that maybe because I'm not directly involved, I might come at it a different angle than you did. And so here's what I did. And I unpacked how I did the problem.

This is crazy. Thank you for doing this. I said, Oh, it's my pleasure. Fast forward about two weeks, I get a phone call. They said, Hey, so we've got another problem and we think you might be able to help us solve it. If you had some spare time, do you want to come to a meeting and learn about it? So long story short, I go to the meeting, I'll learn about the problem about a month later.

I've solved that problem. That turns into a job offer from that division. Now that division had nothing to do with the division I was working. Why do I tell this story? And I appreciate everybody letting me be a little oblique in the specific problem I was solving. The reason I tell this story is something that I tell my two boys who are seven and ten.

Every single, you have choices in life. You are going to be faced with problems. And if you want to have a remarkable life, get really good at solving problem, your problems. Other people's problems, your friend's problems, your loved one's problems, stranger's problems. Be careful as to how you offer to solve their problems or when you interject yourself into their problems.

But if you're someone who can not only spot, but solve problems, you will have a really interesting and fulfilling life. And that is certainly what it's been for.

Srini Rao: I'm totally going to steal that. I'm writing a book of advice for my eight month old nephew. That he won't get until he turns 18 and that is going to go in there, but I'll make sure I credit you.

Joey Coleman: Oh, thanks brother. I appreciate that.

Srini Rao: Yeah. This is the book that nobody's ever going to read. It's meant for him. Oh,

Joey Coleman: but see, those are the books people want to read. I love it. This I'm intrigued what is the advice you would give to kids?

Srini Rao: I love it. That's brilliant. He's eight months old and I thought, you know what?

My sister was like, write a creativity book for children. I was like, I'm not going to write a kid's book. I'm like, but you know what? I will write a book for him and none of you will ever be allowed to read it. And she was like, really? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, I'll put it into a lock box with a key. And should I die before he turns 18?

I will tell you the combination on my deathbed, but you're still never going to read it. So let's get into this idea of never lose an employee again. I was just thinking to myself, I'm like, in The age of the great resignation and the whole idea of a job for life being just absolutely ludicrous.

The idea of never lose an employee again almost seems like a contradiction. So talk to me about what the motivation was for writing this book and then why

Joey Coleman: now? When I originally wrote my first book, Never Lose a Customer, I'd been working in the customer experience space at that point for two decades.

And what I realized About five minutes into my work on customer experience is you can't have a great customer experience unless you have amazing employees who are going to deliver that experience. But I also knew that in most organizations, customer experience is under the purview of marketing and sales and account management and operations, whereas employee experience is under the purview of the human resources department, the HR team.

And in most organizations. Those are completely independent and different silos. They don't spend a lot of time interacting with each other. And let's be honest, and I say this from a place of love to all of my friends in HR, anytime you're in a meeting in a corporate setting and somebody says, we've invited HR to the meeting, that's not usually an exciting conversation that's about to happen, right?

So I realized they had to be two separate approaches. What I realized, though, when I started writing Never Lose an Employee Again, the second book, Is that the same journey that a customer goes through when they first learn about a product or a service and they're curious and they investigate it a little bit and they decide to give it a try and then they start using it and living it and experiencing it and it either works for them or it doesn't.

And if it does work for them, they become a long term fan and advocate and user of that product or service. That same journey of the customer applies to the employee. They hear about a job, they check it out, they're feeling it out, seeing if it's a good fit for them. They're going through the process of getting up on board, they get the offer, they say, yep, I'm all in.

They decide to have their first day on the job. It either goes well or it doesn't. They start to use it or not use it over time. They either feel that this fits or not. And maybe they stay for a long time or maybe they say, you know what? This isn't for me. And they leave. The parallels are very similar, which in many ways is not at all surprising because we're talking about humans going back to our conversation of the human condition.

Why do humans do the things they do and what can we do to influence, persuade, encourage them? To do the things we'd like them to do.

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This is Possibility, powered by Shopify. Sign up for a 1 per month trial at shopify. com slash unmistakable, all lowercase. Go to shopify. com slash unmistakable to take your business to the next level. That's shopify. com slash unmistakable. As I went through the book my immediate thought was, I don't think I've ever had a job where the experience was anything like what you're describing.

In what way? In every way.

Joey Coleman: Tell me more. I know you break this up into eight stages, I think, probably for the sake of our own sanity, so we can have a framework to work with when we think about this. But even the application phase and the pre screening, the way you described it, I thought to myself this is really not how it usually goes with most companies.

Srini Rao: It's LinkedIn job posting, submit your resume. If the stupid filter, keyword filter catches it, great, you might have a chance. And that's been my experience. And it's okay, same bullshit interview questions in which I became master, masterful at bullshitting my way through them to get the job only to realize I was terrible at the job.

But I think that what struck me most was that you basically have taken the whole idea of never lose an employee again and created it and so that it's a remarkable experience. From the time somebody applies to the job to the time they leave a company. So for people who are listening, give us a basic breakdown of the eight stages.

Then we'll talk about how each of the communication channels you have access to enable you to influence people

Joey Coleman: in those stages. Absolutely. To build off what you had said about having not had that experience in your own efforts to find jobs or go through the employment process, Srini I totally hear you.

And to be honest, part of the reason why I wrote the book is because I know so many organizations struggle with this. They might be good at one of the eight phases or maybe even two or three, very few organizations on the planet. are paying attention to every step in the employee journey and thinking strategically and intentionally about how can I make that the best possible experience because As we have this conversation today, the competition for talent, the effort to draw remarkable people to your organization, have them work hard, have them contribute, have them think hard to allow you to succeed in the marketplace and in the planet and create the kind of impact you want to have has never been more fierce.

And so if you want to stand out, you really need to pay attention to all of these phases. As you mentioned, there's eight phases. They all start with the letter A, the idea here being not to confuse you, but rather that if you're getting all of these phases right, it's like getting straight A's on the report card.

Your employees love you. They think you're given worthy of good marks. So here are the eight phases. The first phase is the assess phase. This is when a prospective employee is considering whether or not they want to work for you. They're checking out your job posting or your advertisement. They're applying or submitting their resume.

They're going through your interview process. They're maybe checking other people that they know on LinkedIn or social media that might work at your organization. They're viewing your careers page. They're doing some research on who you are. They're trying to get a feel for is this the kind of place That I want to invest and spend my time.

We then come to the accept phase. In the accept phase, after the interviews are done, the employer says, that's the one we want. They extend an offer. And if we're lucky, the candidate that we desire accepts our offer. So in the accept phase, the question becomes, are you making the actual extension and accepting of the offer?

something remarkable. We then come to phase three, the affirmed phase. Now, in a customer context or a consumer context, almost everybody listening is familiar with the feeling of buyer's remorse, where we begin to regret the decision we just made to purchase a product or a service. I'd like to introduce folks potentially to a new concept called new hires remorse.

And that is the feelings of fear, doubt, and uncertainty that a newly hired employee has about the decision they just made to accept your offer. See, they might be asking themselves. I should have negotiated harder. Or did I get the best salary that I could have gotten? Or should I have asked for more vacation days?

They might also be in a position that if they're interviewing in with you looking for a job, they're interviewing in some other places too. And they might be saying, Oh I thought my other interview at the other company went well, but I hadn't heard from them yet. And I felt like this offer was going to expire.

So I took this one. But what if the other one would have been a better job? They're in this state of fear, doubt and uncertainty. What are we doing to address that new hire's remorse? We then come to phase four, the activate phase. This is the only phase in the eight phases which last a single day. And that day is the first day on the job.

And in the immortal words of country music legend Bonnie Raitt, what are you doing to give them something to talk about? What are you doing to make that first day on the job so remarkable that they want to sing your praises, say what a great day it was. And when they go to bed that night. Have the feeling of, I think I've found my place.

We then come to phase five, the acclimate phase. This is the phase, Srini, where most businesses absolutely collapse, right? Because they think that onboarding and orientation and training is like a one or a two or a three day experience. It needs to be a consistent, ongoing experience across the entire employee journey.

You have to constantly be reinvesting and making sure that your people understand their role, the requirements, the responsibilities, and the other relationships they have within the enterprise. What are you doing to make sure they acclimate to your way of doing business. We then come to the accomplish phase, when the employee achieves the goal that they originally had when they decided to accept your offer and join your team.

Every employee has a vision of what life will be like in the future if they succeed in this role for the position they're accepting. What are we doing to track their progress towards that and then celebrate with them when they achieve it. We then come to the adopt phase when the employee is loyal to you and only you.

They're committed. They've been there for a while. They're in the groove. They understand your cadence. They're contributing. They're having an impact. And what are we doing to make them feel seen, heard, and appreciated? And last but not least, the eighth phase, the final phase. The advocate phase, where our employees become our raving fans, singing our praises far and wide.

They're writing reviews on Glassdoor. Whenever we have an open position for a new hire, they're recruiting their former colleagues, friends, family members to come work at this place because they love being part of this team and they want the best talent and the best people they know to be part of the team

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as well.

So those are the eight phases. Now, here's what I'll say. Some people listening might be saying, Joey, I'm exhausted already. I get it. There's a lot in there. But what I hope you've heard is that there's a lot of opportunity to enhance the experiences you're currently delivering and make them even better to get more engaged, more happily working, more longer retained team members.

Srini Rao: It's funny 'cause going through this book, it, it know, made me want to go back and listen to our old interview because I have an online course and I thought to myself, I'm like, damn, I need to go back and read your other book again and listen to it. I wanna bring back a clip from a recent episode that we had with another portfolio author who wrote a book called Good Enough Job.

And this was something that really struck me and I wanted to bring it into our conversation because I thought it'd make for an interesting jump off point to talk about this whole idea of an employee. Take a listen.

You know what, Josh? Cut this. Sorry. I goofed. So here's the thing that this guy said that really struck me. He said that at the end of the day people who say that companies are like families are basically selling you a bill of goods more or less because he said at the end of the day, a company is not an unconditional relationship.

It's a transactional relationship. So given that how do you think about this idea of never

Joey Coleman: losing employee again?

I'm always careful to comment on other people's perspectives when I haven't had the opportunity to dive deep and fully understand the context, but allow me to springboard off of that with two thoughts, one about calling a workplace family and one about corporations being transactional. Here's the challenge with calling your workplace a family.

We all grew up in different families with different rules, families with different experiences. Some of us grew up in very warm and loving and supportive families. Some of us grew up in families that were very challenging and traumatic and filled with struggle and strife. When you talk about your work family, that is presupposing that everybody on your team has the same definition of family.

Which, frankly, is something that no two humans have the same definition or same experience of family. Even people that grew up in the same household as siblings will have a completely different experience of what it means to be family. So I struggle, too, with calling it family. Where I like to think of it is more of a team.

We're coming together with a specific goal that is going to require all of us to work in concert and harmony together. That's what the best teams in the world are like. And the other interesting thing about teams is no one expects a team to be together forever. Look at the best sports teams. Players come and go.

Stadiums come and go. In fact, the cities they play in often come and go. The team is going to evolve over time and that's okay. But here's where I would contend that thinking of your corporation or your organization as transactional is hugely problematic. If your goal is only to make widgets. And to produce product, then it works to have a factory assembly line approach because you're doing the same thing again and again.

But in 2023 the number of businesses that can succeed producing the same thing over and over again ad infinitum year after year is very limited if not zero. And the reason for that is times change. People change, expectations change, and thinking that transactions work is great for that transaction. But when we come to the next transaction, I want you to remember that we did the first one.

I want you to give me a better deal, something more interesting, something special, something more innovative, something more evolved. The next time we have a transaction, if we think of employees in a transactional setting, that's fine for that day. But the next day I expect you to do something bigger, better, more thoughtful, more meaningful.

If it's just transactional, why am I hanging around? Nothing's changing. Nothing's getting better, nothing's improving. So I think part of the problem is for all too long, corporations have been run like factories. We're here to produce an end product and we don't care who you are as long as you can follow the rules and produce the end product.

We don't live in that world anymore. We live in a world that is, and I would posit that world was never that universally distributed nor a world that anyone was super excited to live in. We want more as human beings. And as a leader, if you're not interested in delivering transformational interactions as opposed to transactional interactions, frankly, it may be time to consider a different role or even just retire.

Because the expectations in the marketplace have shifted. The expectation is for something bigger than a transaction. The expectation is something for something more meaningful, especially in the place where we're spending the bulk of our waking hours. That is our job or our work.

Srini Rao: Yeah. I love that idea of transactional versus transformational.

It just, it literally, that gave me about a dozen ideas to think about how to position even the way I onboard people into my online course. Like I said, I'm going to have to go back and read your previous book now.

Joey Coleman: The good news, Srini, and I will say this because folks listening may be saying, wow, again, this sounds like a lot of work and there's a lot of, I see it as a lot of opportunity.

Yeah. The fun thing about customer experience and employee experience is it's never done, but that shouldn't be something to get frustrated about. That's something to get excited about. The opportunity to bring your creativity to the table, the opportunity to make the experience with you. Unmistakably beautiful.

Uniquely special, different than everything else they've experienced. That's the chance to stand out and to have some fun and have some playfulness and to do things different and to keep yourself engaged, let alone the employees you work with, your coworkers, your colleagues and the customers you serve.

Srini Rao: Speaking of creating remarkable experiences, let's go through a few of them. Because you talk about email in person, video gifts and all these different things. I wanted to start with the accept phase in particular because you mentioned tribute and we've had Andrew here as a guest. And that's funny because after we had Andrew as a guest, two of my family members have gotten tributes and I still somehow they haven't got the message that, by the way, the reason I'm giving this to you as gifts is because this is what I want from you guys.

My sister and my dad have both gotten this and I'm just like every birthday, they're like, Oh, we got you money or something else. I'm like, okay. But anyways, I, that story in particular really stood out to me as probably my favorite story in the entire book. Talk to us about a few examples of how to make each one of these stages remarkable and let's

Joey Coleman: start with that one.

Yeah. Let's talk about Tribute. For folks who maybe didn't listen to the episode with Andrew Horne, the CEO of Tribute, who's an amazing human being. I've actually known Andrew for many years, even before he started Tribute. Here's what Tribute does. They have a great service where you can create a Tribute video.

That is a video compilation of people creating individual messages to someone to celebrate a birthday, an anniversary, a special moment in their life. And they've got a great software where it creates a link. You send the link to people. You're like, hey, submit your videos and then you can edit the videos together or work with the Tribute team and they'll edit them together.

One of the cool things about Tribute is their key KPI, their key performance indicator that they use to measure their success, is something called TOJ, Tears of Joy. That is how many people watch their videos Actually cry tears of joy at their receipt. Now, this is the product that they offer in the marketplace, but Tribute also uses their software when interacting with their new employees.

And so what they do is an employee goes through the hiring process, they get down to the point where they're like, okay, this is going to be the employee that we accept in and is going to be part of our team. And they extend an offer. But before they extend the offer, they say to them, Hey, we need to do some reference checks.

So here's what we'd like you to do. We've created this page. We'd like you to send this link to former bosses, former coworkers. If you've got a roommate, a friend, a family member, somebody from school whoever you think can give us a better understanding of who you are as a human being and the value you'll bring to the job.

Now, what's interesting about this screening is it acknowledges the fact that many people, for their references list, actually put their friends and their colleagues, right? And their co workers, people that they know are going to give them a good reference. It acknowledges that, but it also allows them to expand this beyond that list and to send it to anybody who they might have nice things to say.

So they go ahead and put this together and no surprise, the answers come in and often the videos that come in are incredibly powerful. They're incredibly thoughtful. So the train, the team at tribute assembles these into a video and then that candidate gets a video from Andrew Horne, the CEO that says, Hey, Thanks so much for going through our application process and our reference process.

I gotta tell you, when we had our conversations internally, we thought you were amazing. But when it came time to making a decision for who we were going to extend this job offer, there were a couple of stories, a couple of points of view, a couple of perspectives. Of things that we learned about you that really put you over the top.

We'd love to extend this offer to you to fill this position we were interviewing for. And we'd like to share some thoughts from people who really helped us make that decision. And then it cuts away to all of the videos that were submitted by this person's references, their friends, their colleagues, even family members.

Can you imagine receiving an offer that not only came from the company you were in or, but felt like it came from all the people that matter to you? All the people that were references for you, all the people that were talking about how amazing you were, how incredible you were, how much you would be able to contribute in this new role?

It often brings tears of joy, and in fact, 82% of the time when people receive these videos, They cry tears of joy. Imagine that type of emotional feeling at getting the job offer. I don't know about you Rinni, but I've received lots of job offers over the years. I don't actually remember crying any of them.

I remember being excited. I remember being thrilled. I don't ever remember any of them producing tears of joy.

I love that,

Srini Rao: that, that. Like I said, that was my favorite story from the entire book. There are sort of five other channels that you talk about which I saw repeated throughout for each one of these phases. And it made me rethink how we use various communication channels rather than just using them as we do standard, like something as simple as an email could become something

Joey Coleman: extraordinary.

Absolutely. There, there's, I believe there's six communication tools you can use when interacting with your employees in the first hundred days and beyond. So we've got those in person interactions, we've got emails, physical mail, snail mail. Phone, which includes phone calls and text messages.

Videos, like we were just talking about from Tribute. And GIFs. And pro tip, if you're giving your employees a GIF that has your logo on it, It's probably more like a uniform than a gift. Okay, let's stop pretending that it's a gift. I'm not anti giving an employee something with the logo on it to make them feel part of the team or feel part of it.

But when I'm talking about gifts, I'm talking about things that you would give an employee that make them say, my employer really knows me. They understand me. They, I have a more personal connection to them. I have a better feeling for who they are and how much they value and appreciate me. So we can use these tools.

In interesting and creative ways to change the conversation and to use the tool in a way that isn't as familiar to that candidate or an employee in a way to further set ourselves apart as being unique as an employer or an employer employee relationship.

Srini Rao: I know you have to get going here because you have another podcast.

So I want to finish with my final question, which I asked you five years ago. So I was interested to see how people answer this question when they come back years later. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something

Joey Coleman: unmistakable?

I think it's two things. One refers back to that conversation that we were having earlier about the compound effect of consistent work and consistent growth and evolution and consistent ethic. And that is the most unmistakable people are people who continue to do the work. They continue to grow. They continue to learn.

They continue to adapt and color and capacity to who they are as a human being. I think that's what really makes someone unmistakable. The second piece of it is that someone is willing to really explore. Who they are and to grow and evolve, not only in their learning and their thinking, but in who they are as a human being.

At the risk of going on a little bit of a political rant here, I think it is very problematic in our society today that we say, Hey, 10 years ago, you held this position and you said X, Y, Z and Z, you were wrong. I would hope so. I would hope that our thoughts, our feelings, our beliefs, our ideas are evolving over time.

I never want anyone to take what I thought when I was 12 and think that I think the same things today, 50. And I certainly hope 100. My thought process, my beliefs, my attitude, my worldview has expanded, has grown, has become more unique, has become more nuanced, has become more empathetic, has become more understanding than it is today.

I think the most unmistakable humans are the ones who are committed to continued evolution and are committed to providing even more value, more experience, more depth, more empathy, more growth, more color a decade from now than they are today. Those are the kind of folks I like hanging.

Srini Rao: Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your wisdom, your stories, and your insights with our listeners.

Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything

Joey Coleman: else? Srini, I so appreciate the conversation as well. And thanks to everybody for listening in. The book is called Never Lose an Employee Again. It's available wherever you like to get books. It was really important to me that we had a hardcover version, an ebook version, and an audiobook version release on the same day.

So however you like to consume books and content and hopefully ideas and knowledge and frameworks, it's available in the format that works for you. You can find me at my website joeycolman. com. That's J O E Y, like a baby kangaroo or a five year old you may know. Coleman, C O L E M A N, like the camping equipment, but no relation.

JoeyColeman. com. There's information there about the new book, Never Lose an Employee Again. There's information there about the companion book, Never Lose a Customer Again, which was my first book. If you're interested in creating remarkable experiences for your customers or your employees, or frankly, yourself, Come to the website, let's get in conversation.

I'd love to serve and help you in that goal in any way that I can.

Srini Rao: Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.

Joey Coleman: This ACAS podcast is sponsored by NetSuite, 36, 000, the number of businesses which have upgraded to the number one cloud financial system, NetSuite. By Oracle. 25. NetSuite just turned 25. That's 25 years of helping businesses streamline their finances and reduce costs. One. Because your unique business deserves a customized solution.

And that's NetSuite. Learn more when you download NetSuite's popular Key Performance Indicators Checklist. Absolutely free. At netsuite. com slash optimize. That's netsuite. com slash optimize.