Local Market Monopoly

Clarence Fisher: All right, welcome back and we are back. And as I told you before, I've got with us today my very, very, very good friend, Kevin Burr, who. Kevin, you were one of the very first podcast guests that I had several years ago when you came on and I actually. I was trying to find out, it was the old podcast. It wasn't even this podcast. So I was trying to say, "Hey guys, welcome back, Kevin Burr, but I'm not even sure if everybody on the LMM podcast even knows who you are. So if you don't mind, I've already given the intro and everything, but tell us a little bit about who you are and what you're doing.

Kevin Burr: You're doing great there, Clarence. Obviously appreciate you having me on as always. I think when you introduced me, you said very, very, very old friend."
Did I say old?
I wanted to figure out. No, maybe I put that in there, but you how we were always kind of like that. Old school, new school type podcast. This is my second time to be on with you and absolutely love the first time. So really looking forward to spending time with you here today. As far as you're wanting to know my bio, is that what you're asking?

Clarence Fisher: Well, I think..

Kevin Burr: People don't know me and I need to share who I am. Okay, let's get after it here. So I am Kevin Burr. I'm the owner of Barracuda Staffing and Consulting. I've got Red River Payroll. I've got a sandwich franchise. I've got a couple other things. Just started a new company called Team Sports Consulting Group. So I stay busy and wouldn't have it any other way. So is that enough about me and now we can move into what I do?

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what's crazy? You do have a lot going on and I see it firsthand. And I always say it's that administration gift that I know you are like, yes, it's a blessing and probably a curse.

Kevin Burr: It is. It is definitely both.

Clarence Fisher: But you make it. What did I read? I read something not too long ago, but it was like people who make things seem effortless in play, it's because of the all-out effort that is given in practice and behind the scenes. And you're a sports fan too, so you totally get that.

Kevin Burr: Yes. You will play like you practice, is what my coaching tells me. I just had a coach that was here in the office, just spent a lot of time with him today talking about human capital management, which is what we're talking about today. At the end of the day, whether you're running a business or you're running a team, it really is that your efforts and your results come from how good your people are. And so knowing how to manage them is probably, in my mind, one of the single greatest assets you can bring to your life. So we believe that people are the greatest asset to power your growth potential. And as long as you're focusing on them, you're building long-term success.

Clarence Fisher: And I see firsthand that you really do walk that out. You had posted, I'm not sure when this was, but about human capital management and that you can either have a process and keep making things better or you can, at this point, fall behind the competition and that you get to choose. And I think the reason we're here is because I feel like that is so true. Human capital management, I very first heard it from you a while back, but now it really is more than a buzzword. It's essential for the processes of onboarding and training and developing and all that stuff. And I've just seen it blow up, blow up, blow up. And now you're doing this thing with teams as well. So I wanted to bring some of it to my crew here. And if we're new to it, maybe they're hearing it for the first or the first few times right now.
Where do we get started with this?

Kevin Burr: In a business aspect, the very first thing to do, good human capital management truly is good communication. Not only is it communication, it actually is a strategy. We tell businesses that if you think operations runs your business, you're actually missing out on what is actually running your business. It's not operations that's running your business, it's people. And so if you keep focusing on operations when it's actually people that run operations, you're getting the cart before the horse. I mean, you got to really understand what is powering your operations. Unless it's robots, people are what is making your organization go round. So the first thing I say to do, and I know this may sound ridiculous, but in our world, the first thing you can do is review your handbook. A handbook is a very simple guideline for which companies and teams and people have at least some form of understanding of what the rules are.
You would never go play a game anywhere and not know what the rules are. In fact, if you started playing the game at some point and you didn't know the rules, you'd say, "Hold on, hold on. Can someone please explain to me what the rules are?" At no point in time would you ever do that. So that's what we say a handbook is. It really is. It's the rules for which teams understand their guiding light. Where can they go to find information when information isn't readily available? So just communicating that. And to hit on something that you just talked about, whether you're communicating it or not communicating it, you have made the choice that human capital management is either really important or not important at all. You have made that decision just by deciding whether or not you're going to be good at communicating to your people.

Clarence Fisher: And I don't know if I am the typical business owner or leader, but when you said it's not about processes, it's not about operations, my heart hurt at that moment.

Kevin Burr: I know it did.

Clarence Fisher: Because that's what I am. Processes, operations. So it's like, "Hey, the SOP is there. Why are you bothering me?" And that sounds like that is the worst way to be. And I always admire how you are able to talk people. And that sounds weird, but it's like talk people. I have had one of my team members in front of you with a very delicate conversation of realizing that the person is not in the right seat. And I know you specialize in that and helping people get people in the right seat, but at the skill that I saw, you handle this very delicate situation with someone who really wants to win in the seat they're in, but clearly not producing, and you handle that. And that's what you do with. I just don't know. It's just awe inspiring to me. And so you're saying the first thing to start with is the handbook and actually being aware that we are going to communicate with our people.

Kevin Burr: Yeah. Whether or not you're communicating or not, you've made the choice and that's what you're telling your team. Either you're telling them, "Hey, here are the rules, and this is what you can do to make it within our organization because we've given you that ability to at least know where the guide rails are at." Or you've given them the notion that there are no rules. Make it up as you go. And that's a strategy as well if that's the type of organization you are. Smaller organizations can live in that world. I'll just be honest with you, it's absolute chaos. Nobody knows what anybody is doing. You end up duplicating efforts and people that don't understand the actual vision of the organization usually run you ragged and in circles. So you end up working on things that aren't that important, to be honest with you. So that's what that's all intended to do.
Handbook and then creating a vision and the vision, the core values, the mission, the purpose, your ideal client. I mean, just communicating all this information to your team is human capital management. And so many times I see=-businesses going, "Oh yeah, yeah, we've got that. Oh, okay, great. So what are your core values?" And they all just look at each other and go, "I don't know. We wrote them down one time." Okay. So you wrote them down, but you don't actually live by them. Because if it was a core value, the word core means this is your centerpiece, this is who you are, this is your guiding light, this is where you come from. And if you're not following that, then it's really not a core value. It was just some words to write down that maybe you wordsmithed at the time to try and make sound important or feel important.
But you didn't actually drive business through those core values. So we say that we hire, we fire, and we promote based upon our core values here.

Clarence Fisher: So it's there. So how does one make sure that the team knows at all times the vision, the mission, the core values? Is this a, "Hey, I'm going to pop quiz anytime or..."

Kevin Burr: You have to share it and you have to overshare it and you have to over-communicate it. If you think saying it one time in a board meeting across the communication lines of either an email or just in person got the job done, you're sorely mistaken. They did not hear you. They did not remember it, and they probably can't live it. But if you talk about it on a regular basis, I do quarterly conversations with all my employees. So I sit down and visit about what performance metrics they hit over the quarter, what performance metrics they didn't hit over the quarter. They know exactly where they're at. We actually give them a score rating of how well they showed the core values within the quarter. In fact, I just met with a team today that they are so intent about seeing that this is a radical change within their organization.
They're going to start reporting their core values that are being seen within the organization daily. And so if they see a core value being demonstrated, they're going to write it down and they're going to report it at their weekly meeting that, "Hey, I saw such and such displayed this core value on this day." And so that is driving home core values within an organization. That's how you change the culture. And what we tell people, everybody wants to have a good culture. That's kind of that buzzword out there. Culture, culture, culture. Everybody talks about it. What I tell people is culture is the outcome of good human capital management. It's not what you're striving for, it's the outcome. If you strive for good human capital management, your outcome will be a good culture. And so that's what we're trying to teach teams. It really is an operational way.
Instead of running your business through your operations, your mode should be to run your business through your people. Your people are the ones that are going to see operations that aren't successful and that need to be changed. Your people are going to be the ones that make those changes. The process itself doesn't just correct itself. I mean, it takes people to notice it, see it, and then actually come up with ideas on how to fix it. So that's why we drive it. 1950s business model is that you run your business through operations, and we are changing the landscape and telling people about it every day about how it's not your operations that are making the major changes, it's the people that are doing it.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. And I'm picking that up. So in practice, let's say our daily huddle that we have every day, and then in one-to-ones each week. Well, even before that, as I'm hearing you, I'm sitting here thinking, okay, so leadership for one has to really actually believe it. If you're going to be saying it and pushing it that hard all the time, I imagine these things have to be things that leadership really have in their heart and in their being, right?

Kevin Burr: They have to display it. Absolutely. Nobody is going to be held to a higher standard than the leadership of an organization. And so if you just have core values on the wall and you tell people this is who we are, but then you turn around and do something else that is against those core values, you need to change your core values because that's not who you really are. We're very intentful when we sit down and we work with businesses. We do all this sort of stuff on how we can fix this stuff. We do it through our business strategy and our HR on demand products that we offer through Barracuda Staffing and Consulting. But it really is just the way that you go about doing it and you have to be intentional about it. And you can't just slap words upon a paper and not believe it or not do it.
That's actually one of the worst things you can do. You'll actually go the opposite direction. So if you're going to do it, you want to make sure you do it and do it well because the results are tenfold versus not doing it.

Clarence Fisher: That makes sense. And it seems like it would make it easier to, as you say, hire, fire and live by those core values if you've actually taken the time. They are real to you, they're real for the company. And as you kind of answering my own question on the daily huddles and the one-on-ones is like, "Hey, this is what we breathe and we eat and we live." So in those moments where we're talking, where we're interacting and working together, it just becomes clear if someone isn't living by our values, which makes it easier to, I guess, let them go if we need to.

Kevin Burr: Yes, absolutely. I mean, ours are be bold, be driven, have a servant's heart, and be a brand ambassador. It's very straight to the point. That's who we are, that's what we believe. And everybody within the organization displays those. And if they don't, they get told that, "Hey, this is not up to who we are, and we need to sit down and visit about that." And you get one strike, and then the second strike, you're going to come sit on the bench. We don't even wait for the third strike. In our culture, we'll say we'll promote you to customer status because that's kind of what we're looking to do if you're not going to abide by it. That's how important they are to us as a team. It's something that we know we can believe in. A lot of people that come aboard our team, they say, "Wow, I've never worked for an organization like this before.
This is new. This is interesting. This is different." And they're right. And it's not like everyone else. We don't allow people back talking or talking behind others' backs. If that situation comes up, you got to have a servant's heart, you got to be a brand ambassador, and you got to sit and visit with each other and talk each other through it and make sure that it doesn't happen again. So we're very intentful about it. We don't let things slide. That's something we hold people accountable on every time.

Clarence Fisher: Very cool. So what other pitfalls do you see that businesses are making? So the handbook coming up with the vision and all that, what other mistakes are we making here?

Kevin Burr: Generally, some of the biggest ones that we see on a regular basis is that there's very little accountability, which means people have either not been empowered to make decisions. And if they make the wrong one, be taught on how to make the right one, holding them accountable, giving them praise and recognition when they do a good job, making sure that they do get noticed for it and told that, "Hey, you did a good job there. Nicely done." Communication is by far and away the biggest one that we hear. We do employee surveys with our clients and help them understand this is what their employees are feeling. And a lot of times those surveys come back and the leadership team is usually a little taken back by them and they're like, "I can't believe they say we're not a very good communicating company. I feel like we do a really good job." And then you start asking some questions and you realize that, when was the last time you communicated that out?
And they're like, "I don't know that we've ever told our team that." Well, see, it's the fact that you discussed it amongst your group. You felt like, oh yeah, that's something everyone should know, but they don't. And so a lot of times you have to say things seven, eight, nine, 10 times. And it's not because people are dumb or they can't understand it. It's just that it takes repetition for them to understand that what's important to you. And so by repeating it seven, eight, nine times, it makes them realize, wow, this is really important. We do that in our interviews here when people are interviewing with us. We're very intentional to talk about our core values. Usually by the second or third time that they're interviewing with us, they'll start shaking their head going, wow, this core value thing's really important to you guys. It's like, oh, why would you say that?
Well, I've heard it from every single person that's interviewed me how important it is. And it's like, well, it's funny that you say that because you don't realize that 90% of the questions that we asked you during the interview process revolved around our core values. And so you wouldn't be sitting here today at this moment had you not shown that you would also be a fit for those core values. So when we say hire, fire, and promote, it truly is. That's the process.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, I like that. That's big. So they're going through the process from the very first contact with you.

Kevin Burr: Yep. And then we redo our vision every year. We'll sit down and say, okay, is this truly who we are and where we're going? Sometimes we've made massive decisions along the way throughout the year that kind of changed where our trajectory is and where we're going. Sometimes we have to get super finite about where we're going, and sometimes it can be a big overarching theme of what we're doing. This last year where we combined the brands, Barracuda Staffing and Barracuda Consulting were two separate companies that I once held. And we decided, you know what? This doesn't make sense. They're both in human capital management. Why don't we put it under one umbrella and call it Barracuda Staffing and Consulting? So our brand now has been speaking to this for the last year, and it just talks a little bit about, it's the powerful synergy between workforce and workplace development.
We're working on our workforce and we're working on our workplace through human capital management.

Clarence Fisher: Man, human capital management, was that around before you started doing this?

Kevin Burr: Yeah, we looked it up and I had heard it several, several times before, honestly. It was kind of a buzzword that some people were using it, some people weren't. It really is the intersection of workforce and workplace alignment. It's understanding that the right people with the right roles, with the right goals, all working towards the organizational vision. It's this synergy that fosters those engaged employees that have long-term careers with you, that they achieve not only personal, but organizational success. And I know that's a big word salad I just threw at you, but it really is as simple as people do better when they know what the goals of the organization and the vision of it is, and it's comprehended and communicated across those lines. And so they understand what the goal is, they get it, they're communicated to about it regularly, and they're able to have that organizational success and personal success along the way.
So it's all intertwined because we're all people at the end of the day.
We all want to rise up to a challenge if the challenge is possible. And so that's what you're really doing is just giving them that vision to understand what is the challenge? What are we overcoming? And how are we going to get there together? And how do you fit into that puzzle? Because everybody plays a piece. Not everybody's the entire puzzle. Everybody plays a piece. And so you got to make them understand how important their piece is so that they give you maximum effort. Driving out disengagement out of a company. It's really easy to get employees who are disengaged. It's really hard to get people that are disengaged back to engagement. It is possible, but you have to be very intentional about doing it.

Clarence Fisher: What's the percentage of people who are disengaged?

Kevin Burr: When I throw this number out, it's going to hit you right in the forehead. 80%.

Clarence Fisher: What?

Kevin Burr: Yeah, 80%. They're saying right now with the current climate that we're in, 80% are coming to work actively disengaged in the work that they are performing. What active disengagement is they're actually looking for ways not to do their work and get away with it while keeping their job and their paycheck intact. So it's not even, "Hey, I want to go help this company do better." It's, "I want to get by and keep my job at the same time, so I will do the bare minimum to do so."

Clarence Fisher: Is this a new phenomenon or has this been the way for a while?

Kevin Burr: This is actually pre - COVID. So yeah, it's been that way for a while. COVID really kind of sped it up and it turned into what was known as quiet quitting. That's been a term now for the last four years or so. What quiet quitting is you actually just show up to work and not do anything up until the point that you actually get released for not doing anything. And so there's been people on social media that bragged about the fact that they literally did nothing at their job for six months, and it took the company six months to figure out that they did no work.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, wow.

Kevin Burr: And so quiet quitting is a real thing. I mean, it's scary out there and it's incredibly difficult to run a business. When you put everything on the line, not only financially, but emotionally, your time, your effort. I mean, you're a business guy, you know what it takes. And the fact that you hire people and then you pay them and you find out that this is what they're doing. Because quite honestly, you've set up a system in place that allowed them to do it. So being engaged drives engagement of your employees. The biggest reason people quit organizations is not because of the organization itself, but because of the manager for which they're working for. People rarely quit companies. They normally quit managers. So if your managers aren't driving home purpose, vision, and understanding what they're doing, then you could possibly have a major problem underneath that you don't even know exists.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, that hit home. Was just recently speaking with one of my girls who was like, I keep telling them this manager is bad. I can't work with this manager. And there's always the promise of fixing that, fixing that. But she ended up leaving because of what you said, because of the manager, not the company, but not being able to move around from that manager, even another department or something like that. That's wild.

Kevin Burr: Yeah. Employees lose trust in organizations that employ managers who are not engaged themselves. So if a employee sees that, okay, the person that is in charge of me isn't working that hard and they are my manager, first of all, why should I work hard? Second of all, how am I going to move up in this organization when I work harder than what the management does? It really makes you start questioning the ownership next, saying, okay, if the ownership is now investing in this manager who isn't working hard, how is this going to help me working for this organization? One of the things I talked to companies before, and I may have said this, I know I've said it to you before, but it'd be good for your listeners to hear this, that a lot of people, I'm not a baby boomer, I'm younger than that, but I am part of Generation X, which is the generation that came after that.
And what's interesting about us is that we gave companies two to three months after working there to make a decision on whether or not they were going to be a good long-term fit. Baby Boomers actually gave the company that they worked for almost an entire first year to make a decision on whether or not they're wanting to go there. Millennials would give you a full day. The first day they would make a decision after the first day of employment. And so you'd have at least a day on the job of the employees. Generation Z, who's the new generation that's been out that is now working, they actually make a decision on whether or not they're going to show up to the job before they've ever actually worked.

Clarence Fisher: How does that happen if you've gone through the interview process and you've been hired? I know this happens because I've seen it happen. I've seen it happen with technicians and they get either another job on the way to the job or for whatever reason, the stress or whatever kicks in. I don't know, but something happens and I've seen it happen, but I guess I don't understand how that happens. You were just hired.

Kevin Burr: So it's instant gratification world. So they're always looking, they're looking at reviews. They may also be looking into the industries. So these people, like I said, baby boomers may work in two industries their entire lives. Generation X, like myself, we would work in somewhere between six to eight industries our entire lives. And Generation Z is now eclipsing 27 different industries during their time. And so you have to understand that if they work from the time, let's just call it 25, because that's honestly when some of them are getting out of school, all the way to 65, they've got 40 years worth of employment. If they're going to change companies 27 times in that 40 years, how many years of service are they actually giving to certain companies? A year and

Clarence Fisher: A half. A year and a half, year and.

Kevin Burr: Yeah, not even that.

Clarence Fisher: Wow.

Kevin Burr: So they might have a few of them in there where they actually stayed at those periods of times, but the majority of them are very short-lived. They didn't make it more than a month or two in those roles. And so they made the decision to get out. And quite honestly, I'm not going to sit, I'm not bashing Generation Z by any means. Quite honestly, there's a lot of companies out there that don't deserve to keep good people. Their processes, their culture, the way they treat people, it's not good. And I'm not going to bash on two major companies out there, but we'll call one a longstanding hamburger company, and we'll talk about another one that's a longstanding chicken company. For whatever reason, this longstanding chicken company that trains its people, that has an amazing culture has very little turnover for the industry standards for which they have.
But the same hamburger company that pays the same amount of dollars per hour, and in some cases they actually pay more than the chicken company, has constant turnover. Why is that? Well, it's the culture. It's the type of culture that they have, and then that culture leads into the types of people that they attract to that company. So one company's just got it better and it's because they've consistently worked on it time and time and time again, over and over again. They drive their culture home, they communicate at a high level, they work with their people, they train them very well. Human capital management is very important to one company, and the other company is just not so much. So that's why you see two companies even within the same industry, one is thriving and one is having a very difficult time.

Clarence Fisher: So when we talk about this, and I'm thinking they've got that many jobs, and then layer on top of that, 80% being disengaged. As an owner, I'm like, yeah, I mean, as hard as it is to do business, it continues to get even harder. How do we get people re-engaged? How do we get them back? You said that it's possible in some cases of that 80%, how many can we get back and how do we get them back?

Kevin Burr: I probably am in the minority on this answer, but I'll give you my answer. First of all, I think if you're a small organization, I think you have to step up and admit where you've come up short. I think that helps initially with the just initial retention of the current employees. I think we live in a society that quite honestly, it's tough, it's hard, but a lot of people are willing to give grace when people admit that maybe they've come up a little short. And so I think the first thing maybe is just admitting that you've made some mistakes and there's some areas that maybe you need to get better at. So that would be the first thing that I would recommend. Admit where you've made some mistakes and then give a plan, some expectations, some things that they're going to see moving forward. And this isn't how you're going to manage them harder or hold them more accountable.
It really is actionable steps that you need to make so that others, so they see that you're engaged and they see that you're involved. One of the things that I do is I send an email out to my entire organization every morning. And it's an email that basically, honestly, I piggyback. There's a guy out there that writes a daily motivational type email. I piggyback off of him and I talk about how this email reached me today, what it means to me, areas that maybe I have come up short in this area or areas where I feel like this has been a major win for me. Someone that pushes goals and processes and vision and all that sort of stuff, that's what this guy does. And so I just piggyback off that. You don't have to be someone that recreates the wheel and does it all himself.
Just borrowing from somebody else, finding out what works for them, and then using some of their material in your own day-to-day. So that's what some of the things that I've done. Just be honest with the team. And then you got to really start.
That's where it really starts though. It doesn't end with, "Hey, I've come up short, give me grace, and I'll just continue to come up short." You can't do that. If you're going to admit it and say it, you really got to make the change. And so stepping in and creating that vision, if you don't have vision, create the vision, communicate the vision, tell them how they're a part of it, what that looks like, how they're going to see and feel once you reach that, what does that look like? Give them reachable steps. Talk about how they're a big contributor to it, and then keep them in the know along the way. People need to know, are we reaching the goals that the organization set forward or are we missing? Because if we're missing, can we recalculate? Can we redo something? Can we make it better?
Or did we set the wrong goal to begin with? And do we need to redo some of that sort of stuff? So it's really just through honest communication with people that they will see the efforts that are being put in, and then they'll want to reciprocate that as well. Or you got the wrong person on the team, honestly. And if you got the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether or not they're in the right seats. If they're the wrong people, you need to make that choice and make that change and get the right people in the right seats. That's a big part of going and growing an organization.

Clarence Fisher: When you're helping other. What is the most challenging part of this all to you? Because you are very good at coaching this. I've seen the testimonials, I see the testimonials happening live. As I was telling you, I was asking for our 100th episode. I shared all of the biggest mistakes that I've made in business. And I asked, I put it on social media for other business owners to let me know their biggest mistakes. And the very first comment was not hiring Kevin Burr's company to implement human capital management earlier. In doing this, so I say that to say that you are very good at this, but I'm curious, what is your biggest challenge when coaching other leaders and their teams?

Kevin Burr: There's two of them. First of all, for me, I am not naturally a patient individual. I have a great sense of urgency that comes through the assessments that we do, which is also part of coaching. Obviously, you have to have a great understanding of awareness of self so that you can understand others. And that's something that we teach and coach along the way. It's kind of like the foundation, if you will. That's where that conversation was that you and I spoke about earlier, about how you felt like that was a really difficult conversation. But for me, it was pretty easy because I saw that the person's assessment was not what they needed it to be for it to be the role that they wanted to be. And when I talked to them and it made sense to them, then they were able to say, "Yeah, you're right.
This isn't who I want to be. I can't do what the role asked of me. I need to. He's a good person. He was just in the wrong seat. And so we had to try and move him and put him in a different seat. And sometimes that works, and sometimes that doesn't work, quite honestly. It doesn't always work to move somebody from a seat to another seat. But I say you were asking what are some of the common mistakes or common -

Clarence Fisher: Well, the challenges that you have, your biggest challenge when you're coaching other leaders and consulting other people to implement and what you do, what do you feel like are the biggest challenges in what you do?

Kevin Burr: Yeah, I mean, it takes time. You're not going to turn a ship super fast, first of all. It's a big ship. Some of these companies are 100 to 200 to 300 person companies. It's easier to turn around a ship where there's five or six or seven or eight. I mean, that's an easier ship to turn. You've got less people to create the buy-in to actually turn the ship. Whereas when you're dealing with big organizations, there's some of them that I've been working with for three and four years now that they're just now feeling like, "Holy cow, this was amazing. What a great turn." And I know the guy that actually left the review about not working with us earlier, he was actually one of the fastest guys. He had a smaller organization, but he totally bought into what we were teaching, and he turned the ship super fast.
He was not afraid to make decisions. Usually indecisiveness is a problem that I see amongst a lot of business owners. They hear about the problem, they see the problem, but they still don't act on the problem. He was very decisive. He made his decisions very quick. In fact, he took two of his top performers and switched their roles after our first meeting. And we got done after the first meeting and I was like, "So what'd you think?" He was like, "Oh, I've already made this change." And I was like, "Whoa, that's really fast." He's like, "No, it's the right decision after talking to you and listening to this. Yeah, this makes all perfect sense." And within a month, we revisited the people's roles that completely got reversed. Basically, one went from sales to operations and the other one from operations into sales. And when you talk to them that next month, it's like how things are going.
And they're like, "This is awesome. This is amazing. I wish I would've made this change a long time ago. This is great. We're having great success." And that leads me to my last point of that, what are some things that I see that are issues? Sometimes the biggest determining factor that causes no growth or no success later on is current success. So we'll see organizations that experience just a little bit of success through our systems and they'll be like, "This is great. We achieved it." And it's like, well, you've had some success, but don't let that current success drive away future success. Because if you just say, okay, well, we've achieved it, we've arrived. I truly believe that building and growing organizations is not a destination, it's a journey. And so if you decide that you've reached the destination, you're probably going to get passed by.
Your culture's going to suffer for it, and you're going to look up one day and realize that you're actually probably farther away than what you were to begin with. So stay consistent, stay with it. It's a journey. I've just read a really good book here recently called Peaks and Valleys. And what it basically teaches you is that once you peak, sometimes you can go into a valley. And it's because of it's the initial peak, it's that success that creates that next valley. And what you're really trying to do is create a peak plateau mentality that if you do peak, make sure that that's the peak, that's the plateau, and you don't go less than that. So that when you create your next peak, you're building off of that and not going from the valley again back up to where you just were. So I thought it was a really good instinctive book that's very easy to read, but really hit on some really good points about what future success.
Nothing kills future success like current success.

Clarence Fisher: Very, very good. And I love that book. That's a great small book. So wrapping up, what do you think. Well, I got to ask you this. Before I ask you that last question, I keep saying you're very good at it because I'm telling you, if you're listening to this, and if you can't pick it up by Kevin's answers, there's no hesitation. And I know you're a business owner, you're listening, and you know how you just know by the way someone speaks and the things that they say that they have been there and they're in the trenches right now, not 10 years ago, but right now. What inspired you? What made you start doing this?

Kevin Burr: That's a really good question. I went to school at University of Oklahoma. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. In fact, a funny story is that I actually got kicked out of the School of Business while I was there for not having good enough grades. And it wasn't that I wasn't smart enough, I was paying my own way and I was working too dang much, quite honestly. I wasn't one of those that was given a whole everything in life. I had to earn everything. And so I was paying my way through school at the same time I was going to school and I just didn't quite make the grades. And I ended up going into a counselor and they said, "Well, we regret to inform you that your GPA has fallen too low and we're going to have to ask you to leave the business school." And I said, "Okay, well I'm the client, right?
I'm the customer because I'm paying you to be here." And they're like, "Yeah, that's correct." And I said, "And so you're telling me you no longer want my money?" And they said, "No, we want it. You're just not allowed to be here anymore." And I said, "Well, it sounds to me like you don't want my money and that somebody else may want my money. Should I go to another school?" And they said, "No, you can stay here at the school. You just can't be a part of the business school." And I said, "You know what? I love my alma mater. I think the world of them. I travel around and watch all their football games, but this doesn't make any sense. This is bad business. You're telling me you don't want my money anymore." And I think that was that conversation right there that it was just like even people that are running businesses or running schools of businesses really didn't understand business.
And to me, it was all about trying to take care of the customer and do what's right. One of my business partner coined the phrase, at least he tells me he did, that do the next right thing. And if you're always doing the next right thing, you never have to worry about what you've done. And so that really cemented in my mind that maybe, hey, I can make it in the business world even though I can't make it in the business school because I think I would do things the right way. So got out of school, got a job in the business world, realized I was pretty decent at communicating with people, tend to move up pretty quickly and realized that I could be pretty good at helping people find jobs. And so more than, I think we're at about 14,000 hires. I wrote a book several years ago with your help, and we were over 10,000 hires at that point.
Now we're over 14,000 hires. Now that we've done this, we've been through this, we've built several strong companies and had some good success with it. I realized that that was a pretty good decision that I made back then to stay in the business world, even though I couldn't stay in the business school. I got a degree in sociology, which is the study of people, which is kind of funny because that's what human capital management is. So to bring it all around to you, that's how it worked out. I've read a bunch of psychology books, love the human nature of the brain. Very faith-filled individual. Spent a lot of time reading the Bible and reading about one of the greatest leaders of all time, which is Jesus obviously, and just learning from him on a day-to-day basis and just trying to go out and do that next right thing.

Clarence Fisher: That is awesome. I had no idea you had a sociology degree.

Kevin Burr: Yeah.

Clarence Fisher: Wow, that's

Kevin Burr: Awesome. My parents said, "So you're going to become a sociologist?" And I said, "Well, no, not exactly." And they said, "Well, why are you getting a degree in sociology?" I said, "Well, because I went to the counselor and they said, that would be the thing that I have most credits for, and I can graduate the fastest that way." So that's why I ended up with a degree in sociology.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, well, that works too. That works too. And man, thank you for taking the time. I know you just came off of a big meeting and I was able to pull you to the side and get this incredible, incredible interview and time with you. As we're wrapping up, what do you think our listeners should be doing in the next 30, 90 days, year to achieve that, even if it's just that first big milestone of implementing human capital management?

Kevin Burr: Like I said, the first thing I would do is I would check to see whether or not they have a handbook. And honestly, if you have more than three employees, you need a handbook. And a lot of people will be like, "Well, we're not big enough. Those laws don't pertain to me." Well, the reality is a lot of those laws still pertain to you. Even if you have one employee, there's laws that you can't get away from, and you could lose everything that quickly. As fast as what you built it, it could be gone if you go against one of those laws. We see it and hear about it on a regular basis, to be honest with you. Get some training in that area. If you need some help, we're more than happy to sit down with you and help with handbooks, the HR on-demand stuff.
My guy that does that here, he's fantastic at it. Does a really, really good job. And it really is that it's not just a protect method, it's a grow method as well. It really can help grow your business because then your employees actually understand what the expectations are. So I would say protect yourself first by having that. Second of all, be looking at how are you communicating to your employees? Non-communication is communication. You've just decided that, quite frankly, your employees just aren't that important to you by not communicating to them. So if that's the case where you're at now, I would make a 180 and start heading the other direction. Learn to start communicating. That goes back to the CFO and the CEO that are talking to each other. And the CFO says, "Well, what if we spend all this money on training and spending time with our employees?" And they end up leaving.
And the CEO says, "Well, what if we don't do anything?" And they end up staying. So many companies end up not doing anything, and the employees end up staying, and they wonder why their business doesn't grow. Invest in your employees, treat them well, and they will take care of you.
If you hold them accountable, they will work for somebody that treats them fair and holds them accountable. What they don't want to do is work for a tyrant that doesn't treat them well. That's when they go and they look for something else. People are not afraid to work for someone that has a vision, that has a goal, and will hold you accountable for that. In fact, they absolutely love it. I get told on a regular basis, "Kevin, I really like it that I always know where I stand with you. Yes, you do. Because I tell you, and we have constant communication throughout my day. And that's just something I'll continue to do because I know it helps my employees, and quite honestly, it helps me. It's a good thing to have that open and honest communication. So many times I learn something new through a new communication with a new employee that it can definitely help.
So look at your systems and your processes when it comes to people. And if they're not up to speed, obviously give us a call. If there's something we can do for you, we'd be more than happy to help.

Clarence Fisher: Awesome. Thank you. And we'll have the links and number in the show notes. Is there a particular place that you want people to go or is it just the main site?

Kevin Burr: They can go to the main site. They can email me directly, [email protected]. I'm more than happy to take those emails and respond back to you and get something set up. I'm constantly meeting and working with new owners and businesses on a regular basis. This is what we do. So yeah, love to have you reach out. Even if it's just for a chat, be more than happy to do so.

Clarence Fisher: Awesome. Let me ask you this. I do have someone who reached out to me that is a listener and on our newsletter from New Zealand. How far out are you able to help those people yet?

Kevin Burr: Yeah, when it comes to the human capital management side, it's not really set to just one area. There are some laws that would be different, and I would recommend that they speak to a employment law attorney for those types of laws if they're living in another country. In fact, some of our states can actually be treated like almost another country in some cases. Employment law is very interesting and it changes from border to border. In the state of Oklahoma, which is where I'm from, we actually almost follow federal law to a T, but there are states that work much differently. And so understanding your local city and state employment laws is really important. Don't go off the fact that you think you know, make sure you do know because that's an area that could really get you in some hot water.

Clarence Fisher: Okay, great, great. Well, Kevin, thank you so much again for taking the time and sharing all this with us. I really, really appreciate it.

Kevin Burr: Well, I always like spending time with you. It's a great thing that you do the way you share, the way you help other businesses out. You've been the marketing guru in my world for a long time. I've reached out to you hundreds of times with things. And I think that's one thing we should probably leave our listeners with is that there's nothing wrong with reaching out and asking for help. And you'll find a lot of times that the expert in your area can do it better than what you can yourself. I utilize a lot of outside services for that reason because they just do it better. They have systems and processes built within their business that makes them the best at what they do, and that's why you utilize an expert. So if you're having needs, an expert in staffing, consulting, human capital management, be more than happy to help.
But if it's on the marketing side, I would not blink at saying Clarence Fisher is who I wholeheartedly recommend. So I'd be reaching out in a second.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. I appreciate you, brother. We'll talk soon.

Kevin Burr: Yep.