One Crucial Action To Transform Your Business with Kendra Prospero

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today we'll be breaking down one crucial action to transform your business. To drop these value bombs, I brought Kendra Prospero into EO Fire Studios. Kendra is the CEO of Turning the Corner HR and she delivers expert HR solutions for small businesses. She is a former IBM employee, current Vistage Speaker and award nominee, and is a passionate leader dedicated to transforming workplaces and enhancing employee engagement. And today we'll talk about the biggest lesson that Kendra's learned thus far while being a CEO.

0:39John Lee Dumas:Also talk about how every business challenge is a people challenge, about how to partner with your managers, the TTC way, fractional HR, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kendra and our sponsors. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing, automation, calendar booking, payments, and course hosting all on one platform, plus award-winning 24-7 support. Get a 30-day free trial and my full bonus stack that includes a 50-minute private call with me and much more at highlevelfire.com.

1:16Highlevelfire.com.

1:18John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, are you ready to build something special in the next 50 days? Check out my free YouTube series, 50 Days to Something. Short and strategic step-by-step videos by me, JLD. On day 50, you'll have a valuable asset. And the best part is it's completely free. Visit eofire.com slash YouTube and start day one today. Kendra, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Ah, John. Well, I don't know if it's so much that most people disagree with it, but I think it's just a misconception, which is that I do believe that people think there will come a time when this gets easy, and it doesn't.

2:07Being an entrepreneur, there isn't a time when it just gets easy. I believe we are, or I don't believe. I mean, when you decide to run a company, you are always, always, always, always on a roller coaster. It's up and it's down and it's up and it's down. And I mean, gosh, I don't even know which part is fun anymore. But yeah, after doing this for 14 years now, I mean, it's been, you know, it's, it's been an adventure and I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade it at all, but it definitely doesn't get to a place where it just gets just where it's just easy.

2:41John Lee Dumas:Well, fire nation. One thing I pride myself on with this show is we just bring you the truth. We bring you the honesty, the transparency, the genuineness. And that's why we're talking about one crucial action to transform your business. And I want to talk about your origin story around turning the corner HR and specifically within that, the biggest lesson that you've learned thus far as a CEO. Well, my origin story is this. I was actually a software engineer for IBM for about 14 years. and I really hated my job. I felt like I was dying on the vine. But the parts of the job that I loved were when I was drawn to or drawn into conversations about people and their teams.

3:28I loved talking to my fellow managers about how to get more productivity out of people, how to recruit, how to form a team, all those various things. And I just thought that everybody did that. But it turned out that everyone came to me for that advice, even though it really wasn't my job, my day job. And finally, a friend of mine said, hey, I think you should start a business and do this for money. And so at that time, I was hearing this phrase over and over. I would hear people say, gosh, if I could just turn the corner and be who I really am, I would be so much happier. Or, uh, I, we just turned the corner.

4:07I think we just hired this guy and I think it's going to make a, it's going to be a game changer. So I was hearing that phrase a lot. And I thought, well, that'd be kind of an interesting name for a business. And if I am going to do this, because at the time it was still an if, and so went home, Googled it and found that there was a domain that fit and I bought it and within, and then filed for an EIN number. And then suddenly John, I owned a business. And so, so that was really, you know, completely business planless. But I, you know, definitely knew I was onto something because I sent an email out the day I received my EIN number to all my fans, as I would say, you know, friends and family and people who I liked, you know, liked working with me and such.

4:47And I said, I think I'm going to do this recruiting thing with and helping job seekers. And I'm not exactly sure what it's going to be yet, but I'd love anybody out there helping me with, you know, their eyes and ears out there. And within hours, I had leads. And I guess it just proved to me that I was I did have a gift for something that I didn't realize I was good at. And by the end of that year, from between April and December, I hit six figures as a solopreneur. And so I thought, well, I guess I have a business now. And I never wanted to work by myself. So as soon as I figured out how to make money, so that's a great question for your listeners.

5:22What is the activity that you do that generates revenue. What is it that you have to do? Is it marketing? Is it networking? Is it, is it, you know, present presenting? Like, what is it that makes you money? And once you figure that out, then you kind of know the driving force behind your cashflow. And so that's what I figured out. And, um, I started adding to the team. And so, and now I have this incredible, amazing group of people that I work with and we bring our services, you know, fractionally to small businesses, but not your traditional HR, like compliance and benefits and like the no people and, you know, just the stuff that, you know, HR has a bad reputation for.

5:59We're bringing that really strategic thinking to the table around like, what is your, what are your people problems? How are we going to solve them? How do we prevent them? And so, yeah, that's kind of the backstory. And your final, tell me your second half of that question again.

6:13John Lee Dumas:The biggest lesson that you learned as a CEO? Well, I think the biggest lesson is this. We all are going to wake up in the middle of the night in that cold sweat. Like it just happens when you're running a business, you're going to have that 3 a.m. cortisol dump and you're going to be worried about cash. You're going to be worried about your products, worried about your people, customers, whatever it might be. but I think what makes me different and what I've really strived for is I go back to sleep because I know I have the team that will help me weather whatever thing it is that woke me up. So I know I've got the team that I can count on and I think that's been my biggest lesson is not at all feeling like I am in it by myself.

6:57People will say it's so lonely at the top. I don't feel that way. I don't feel lonely at all. I feel like I'm surrounded by an amazing group of people that I can count on. So I think to the listeners, like Bill, if you don't have the team that you feel that way about, you don't have the right team and you need to build that team around you.

7:14John Lee Dumas:Now, something that you did touch upon briefly just a couple of minutes ago is that you believe that every business challenge is actually a people challenge. So how can founders shift their mindsets with this knowledge? The hire well. So get really clear on this. This drives me bananas because it's such an easy problem to solve. And yet founders are pretty stubborn about this. But do not hire your best friend, your college roommate, your neighbor as your first hire, unless you are absolutely certain that they are the key employee that you need. Just because you're buddies with someone doesn't mean they're going to be a great business partner.

7:55I can't tell you how many founders I get the phone call from that say, I'm having founder drama. I've got the wrong guy in my, you know, running my IT, running my product management. They're burning through all my cash. Fix it. Well, I can't fix it at the end. It's over. Like I could have fixed it at the beginning, but make sure you've got the right people on your team, literally. And that requires being really thoughtful. I mean, it requires following an actual hiring process and treating hiring like you would any kind of a business process. Like you wouldn't just bring on a new piece of like equipment or a new software system and then put it, you know, take it live on day one.

8:35You would test it out, play with it, set it up. You do all sorts of things to bring it into your business. And yet we treat hiring as this is like afterthought. No, no, no, no, no. Hiring needs to be the most important decision that you make, especially as you're growing your team. And that process means getting really clear on what are you looking for? What's the personality of the person that you want? What are the behaviors that they're going to demonstrate that let you know that they're the right fit? And what is their skill set that they're bringing to the table? And of course, you know, the other things around the job.

9:08But man, that personality, you got to understand that deeply and how it fits with your culture way up front.

9:14John Lee Dumas:And Fire Nation, we have a lot to talk about around this topic, the TTC way, fractional HR, and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. There are two things I know about you for sure. You're an action taker and you love to learn. Otherwise, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. So I'm excited to share another source of inspiration I know you're going to love, Blinkist. Blinkist is an app that takes the world's best nonfiction books and breaks them down into 15-minute reads or listens. So whether you're commuting, working out, or in between calls, Blinkist delivers insights you can apply immediately without the week it takes to read a full book.

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11:04John Lee Dumas:access to my weekly live office hours, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something Execution Roadmap, and more. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Kendra, we're back and I want to talk about the TTC way and real world strategies that you've used to create an engaged and high performing team. Tell us how it's done. Well, it actually comes down to one thing. so people will often say that they if they hate their job and they leave their job they're going to say i didn't leave the job i left a manager right you've probably heard that before oh yeah and so i was really curious about that because honestly when i was at ibm i had probably 11 managers in my 14 years i was there so i just didn't that whole concept just didn't really resonate with me.

11:59I mean, if that was the case, then they were leaving me, right? Because I had all these managers. But, and so I just wanted to test out that hypothesis. Is that actually true? And actually it's not. It's not that people leave, they leave a manager. It's that they leave an ineffective manager. And so if we can get a manager, when that is you as the founder or your management team below you, whoever, if you've got people reporting to you, you are a manager and you need to be an effective manager. And so the crucial action that has to be taken is to, is to make that happen. How do you make, how do you create effective managers or how do you be an effective manager?

12:41And that is a, you got to be trained. There are numerous skills that are just, they're just learned. They are not things you're just going to be able to figure out through reading a book or winging it, you really need to be trained on how to be a great manager. And so that's a T in a sense, right? The T for train. Then the second thing that is absolutely needed is you've got to be equipped. And when I say equipped, it means like, what's your plan for answering all the questions that your employees are going to have come that they're going to bring to you? I want a bonus. I need more comp. I want to change my title.

13:17I don't want to work with Sally, but I want to work with Joe. I don't want to work from home. I want to work from home. Like whatever it is, like your employees are going to bombard you with questions. If you don't have the right infrastructure in place to answer those, and again, you're winging it, it creates unhappy employees. And so you don't want that. So you've got to get some of that infrastructure in place. So if you think about E for equip, right? Now, the third thing is so critical. And I mentioned it when we were talking about hiring a minute ago, but you really want to make sure that you're hiring people that are aligned with you and that your managers are aligned with you.

13:53And when I say aligned, I mean, do they display and have the behaviors that you really want from them? What do you really expect from your employees in terms of how they act? And then you want to actually turn that into what we would call maybe values, the values that you're going to hire, fire, manage, train, govern, promote, like all the things we have to do as leaders. But you want those values to be kind of your guardrails so that so that you've got a little bit more, again, of a system for making sure you've got the right people and the right managers. And the way you'll know you've got the right values is that you can model them.

14:29And that's M. If you think about those three, those four letters, T-E-A-M, it's team with your leaders. And so you want to train, equip, align and model, be able to model those behaviors. And if you can't do that, you're going to create managers that are just not that engaged. And an unengaged manager is not effective.

14:47John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, Kendra just put on an absolute masterclass in the TTC way. Lucky for you, you had that rewind button. You need to go through and listen to that again, because that was fantastic. And Kendra, you believe that fractional HR and leadership training matter. Tell us more about that. People don't like HR. I'm going to be, let's just be real. I mean, it's just not the favorite role. And that's because it hasn't been enabled the way that it should be enabled. And so I am on a lifelong mission to fix that. HR is not human resources. I mean, those two words together don't even make sense. The word human, I mean, when was the last time you used the word human in a sentence, right?

15:31We're going to have humans over for dinner tonight. No. Right. And then resources, it's like dirt or oil. I don't know. But so the term is terrible. However, I do believe that HR, if you think of it more like your heart rate, the lifeblood of your business is actually the most important role on your executive leadership team, because I think we're on the front lines of a, of a people revolution. People are no longer going to tolerate working for just anybody. People are no longer going to tolerate working for companies that don't treat them well. Well, who's going to help figure that out if that isn't your natural wiring as a founder, which most of people it's not.

16:13Somebody needs to be thinking about your people and what they need so that you can retain people, attract and retain people to your team. But if you're not thinking about your heart rate, your lifeblood of your business as your people, you're going to lose people and you're not going to make it. You're going to burn through all that money that you worked so hard to raise or earn, and you're going to burn through it on bad hires and on the wrong people on your team. It's just not worth it. And that's why you need some form of HR. Our team is fractional. So it's high quality. Like everyone on my team has 20 plus years of experience.

16:47So we're not learning on somebody else's dime. So high quality. We are fast. So, cause again, with so much experience, we're quick to answer things and we're cheap. Where else can the world, can you get something that's fast, good, and cheap at all at once? So that's the fractional model. And we bring, you know, the, the human resources side, we bring the recruiting side, we bring the training, we bring all of that fractionally so that it's just affordable for small businesses. It's a no brainer.

17:16John Lee Dumas:Yeah. When it comes to fast, good, and cheap, you always hear you can pick two. You can never have all three. Right, exactly. Now, what do you believe the impact expert HR support and leadership has on the development of business growth? Because at the end of the day, we're entrepreneurs, we're small business owners. We want to know about business growth. So tell us about the impact. It's profitability, 100%. If you are losing people or you have people that are not effective on your team, that is draining money out of your business. It is a slow bleed, but it is nonetheless a bleed. And if you start adding it all up, it's a huge, huge bleed.

17:55And so I like to think of this as a profit center, not as a cost center. Good HR is where you're going to see profitability increase because you are not wasting money and time on people that are not working out. I did. So, John, one of the things I've learned over the years is since the last time we talked is I've gotten really clear on our kind of back of house. So where does every hour go on my team? And I can tell you exactly how much it costs to onboard a new employee, tell you exactly what happens if I were to have an employee that I, you know, let's say kept for three months thinking like, oh, maybe they'll turn the corner and be better, but then they don't.

18:39And I decide to fire them. I can tell you exactly how much that costs. And those numbers are staggering. I did some analysis on this and just based on a$100 ,000 a year employee, you know, average round number. If you have a bad hire that lasts that you keep around for a quarter, it is$64 ,000. So just start to do the math on that. How much wasted time is there? How many times have you turned over someone that you, you know, you didn't get a return on yet? All of those things add up to profitability or to a lack of profitability. So I think it all comes down to the bottom line.

19:14John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, what is your bottom line? And for a lot of people, do you even know? And so, Kendra, what would you want our listeners to walk away with? If there is one value bomb from our entire conversation, what do you want that to be? Hire well. If you do it, if you hire well, it will make everything else in your business easier. I promise you. So Kendra, if Fire Nation's really resonating with what you're saying and they want to hire well, what is your call to action? How can they connect with you? Well, the easiest way to connect is to reach out to me on LinkedIn for sure. So Kendra Prospero, the company is Turning the Corner HR.

19:54That is the website address as well, turningthecornerhr.com. We are extremely active on the speaking trail too. So I am happy to come and do a presentation for your organization to get your leadership team thinking like this. Or if you're running a CEO group and you want to have them hear this message, I have a anywhere from an hour long to a three hour long workshop that ties all this together. That's, you know, helping make a really big impact on a lot of people. So you can also go to Kendra Prospero dot com as well to get that information. So there's lots of ways to find me.

20:29John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with KP and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Kendra, K-E-N-D-R-A in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. Kendra, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Sounds great. Thanks. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Kendra for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world?

21:04John Lee Dumas:If yes, we are now accepting applications for EO Fire. To learn more about becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guest. And I'll catch you there or on the flip side. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing, automation, calendar booking, payments, and course hosting all on one platform, plus award-winning 24-7 support. Get a 30-day free trial and my full bonus stack that includes a 50-minute private call with me and much more at highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, are you ready to build something special in the next 50 days?

21:43John Lee Dumas:Check out my free YouTube series, 50 Days to Something. Short and strategic step-by-step videos by me, JLD. On day 50, you'll have a valuable asset. And the best part is it's completely free. Visit eofire.com slash YouTube and start day one today.