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Real estate entrepreneurs are the best people. On Real Investor Radio, we’ll cover advanced residential real estate investing topics. We’ll discuss how what you have seen in the headlines will affect your real estate investing business. And we’ll go deep on these topics to help you make better decisions and take specific action.
craig fuhr (00:00.17)
does make things very, very easy.
craig fuhr (00:16.554)
Well, hey, welcome to Real Investor Radio. I'm Craig Fuhr with Jack BeVier. Jack, how are you today?
Jack BeVier (00:23.128)
Doing great, man. Good to see you this morning.
craig fuhr (00:24.822)
Merry Christmas, my friend. You were struggling with the, with the creeping crud over the holidays. You're feeling better now?
Jack BeVier (00:26.733)
Likewise, likewise.
Jack BeVier (00:33.116)
I am I am I feel like half the office caught it last week and was limping into the holiday weekend but coming out of it much better.
craig fuhr (00:42.578)
Well, if your Christmas was anything like mine, Jack, I have a very loud Italian family. So it was actually just good to get back to work just to get some relaxation, frankly. I don't want you to hear that. But man, it is like a chore when you get 25 Italians in a room who all want to talk over each other. So that was my Christmas. And I'm sure yours was not like that.
Jack BeVier (00:51.984)
Hehehe
Jack BeVier (01:06.464)
It was good. We had lots of good family time made the rounds, did like three straight days, you know, morning, afternoon or morning, night, morning, night, morning, night at different places. So we were torn around eight very well. Uh, you know, I need to hit the gym a little bit after that in the wake of it, but that's no, that's par for the course.
craig fuhr (01:22.346)
What was the big Christmas gift Jack? What did Santa bring you that you were excited about this year? Anything?
Jack BeVier (01:27.116)
You know what? My wife and I stopped doing gifts a year or two ago. We just, you know, decided to travel a little bit more and kind of de-emphasized the stuff. We have actually done a bunch of like purging of like our things just to like really try to get as minimalist as possible on stuff. So, um, we're, uh, we're taking a trip to St. Thomas next week. I'm looking forward to that. I guess you could call that our impromptu kind of Christmas, uh, trip to our Christmas gift to each other.
craig fuhr (01:55.278)
That's awesome. Experience over the over the material, Jackie, try to tell that to a 17 year old and a 15 year old and they look at you like you three, you know, you don't need another sweatshirt, but we would love to have some experiences with our children these days. So yeah, well, that's the struggle. But dude, we're coming into the sort of last episode of the podcast for the year here the last couple and folks, we've been talking to a lot of investors over the last few weeks about their plans for 24.
sort of goal planning and you were your idea for the episode today I loved it was sort of, you know, let's take a look at 24 how we're going to be better some of the tools that we use goal setting. So yeah, man, why don't you kick us off with that and sort of tell me what you're thinking in terms of 24 planning and some of the tools that you guys use some of the vendors that you all use just to be better in the business.
Jack BeVier (02:53.292)
Yeah, sure. So we, you know, as we grown Dominion, we, I, I've noticed a, I've noticed a shift in the way that we do goal, uh, like goal setting and year-end planning that I think has been really positive that I wanted to kind of accentuate. I think that there's every, you know, if you're not setting goals, Hey, like you should be right. Everyone, you know, but I feel like everyone knows that or that's, that's not high value add. Um,
I would say for the first five, maybe even 10 years of our company, we would do goal planning, year-end planning and goal setting rather for the next year. They were largely quantitative in nature. It was how many houses are we going to buy next year? How many loans are we going to make? How much do we want to grow the team? Whether it was top line or bottom line.
It was very quantitative. And then we, you know, and then we, as we got better at it, we would break that down to like, Hey, what are the operational things necessary to actually achieving those quantitative goals? But at the, you know, kind of in retrospect after, you know, maybe five, 10 years of that, we'd looked back and realized that we were just talking ourselves into working harder each year.
right? Because we are ambitious people and we wanted to do more. It was fun to hit our goals and then to see what we could do next year. And we got better at it each year. So it was feasible for us to, uh, you know, to, to increase our goals, but it wasn't building the company. Like that goal setting was not growing the, growing the enterprise value was the word that we started to use for it of the business. Um, because it was just,
craig fuhr (04:15.656)
Mm-hmm.
Jack BeVier (04:45.516)
Hey, how good are we at doing the particular revenue or top line producing things, you know, business development, things that, you know, in this case, Fred and I were responsible for respectively.
craig fuhr (04:56.766)
and sort of how much incrementally better can we get to reach those quantitative goals, right?
Jack BeVier (05:02.996)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But at the end of the day, it ended up being like personal goals. And when our personal goals are how many houses we're going to buy, how many loans we're going to do, almost definitionally, right? What that infers without being said is that I'm the acquisitions guy, I'm the loan originator, and that we are the revenue producing employees, right? Like the word, the people who have to do that. And I feel like that is a place
craig fuhr (05:09.389)
Mm-hmm.
Jack BeVier (05:32.012)
where a lot of real estate investors are. And frankly, it's where you have to start. I also think it's like this isn't a criticism. That's what you need to do at the beginning. Those are the most crucial things. And frankly, you can't afford to hire that.
craig fuhr (05:48.638)
Yeah. I love the gurus that stand on stage full well knowing that they're talking to 90% of people who are solo prenoirs. And they're just preaching this got to take off all the hats, you got to just do your highest and best, which is great. But when you're just starting out and you don't have the capital to go out and hire the best personnel. Yeah, you're gonna wear a lot of hats. So
Jack BeVier (06:12.716)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're gonna yeah, you're gonna wear a lot of hats. And while it's true, like, you know, what was something that a couple of tools that I wanted to like emphasize today or talk about today are tools that we started to use that actually enabled us to start making that shift. And by the way, it was it was never a one year shift. It was like a multi year took, you know, many years to transition to make that transition. Because you have to afford it.
Right. You have to afford that all that backfilling that the, the gurus are telling you to do so that you can actually start to have a company and not just, um, you know, a cult of personality. Um,
craig fuhr (06:52.674)
Sure. Can you, before we jump into the tools, can you talk about some of those qualitative assessments that, you know, what specifically are you speaking of when you talk about the sort of qualitative versus quantitative?
Jack BeVier (07:08.276)
Yeah, sure. So I think that, um, you know, I think, I think a first order one is, you know, documentation of systems and processes. But I think that thing is that, that idea has been beat to a, you know, that horse has been beaten badly over the years. Everyone knows that. Yes, you have to have systems and processes. Yes. You have to document your system and processes so that you can hire and train people on those. Yes, we know everyone knows. So like that's, and I believe that to be true and it's incredibly important. It's a gating issue to growing your company. So
but I don't want to belabor that because I think everyone already knows about it. Um, something that, and that's where we originally emphasized, and then we did it and then we were like, okay, cool. Like now I got a handbook, but it like, it didn't, I didn't like nothing happened. Right. Like I just, I just had a handbook that I would have to then, I just added more work to somebody, right. That I had to like pay someone to then document their systems and processes. And now they were documented and maybe onboarding was a little bit easier, but it was certainly no springboard for growth. Um,
craig fuhr (07:49.038)
who's following it.
Jack BeVier (08:06.22)
It was a necessary part of the foundation for growth, but it was not a springboard for growth. So a couple of the things that we've, that really...
Jack BeVier (08:18.124)
helped us to actually move forward. Um, we started, uh, and this is just an example. There's many examples, right? So I'm not suggesting that this is like a, you know, a catchall or like, yeah, yeah. Um, but it's, um, so we started, there's the book called Traction. I think a lot of investors know about Traction. If you don't, I highly recommend that you read it. Traction is a book that outlines a model for operating small business in any realm.
craig fuhr (08:28.854)
Yeah, it's not a playbook.
Jack BeVier (08:47.412)
it's very applicable to small real estate businesses, but frankly you could use it for just about any business. And that's this EOS model, entrepreneurial operating system model. And that, and the business model, by the way, there was always a business model behind this stuff, right? The business model behind selling you this model is that there are integrators that act as consultants who come in and help you take your solopreneur business
uh, and, and walk you through the EOS model to do it, to show you how to do it. Um, we never did that. Maybe we should have, I don't know. I read the book, right? I read the book. I read the book again, and then I just acted as our integrator and, um, we took from it what we wanted to. We didn't take everything. Um, but we, you know, we, we took the things that we thought were, it would make the biggest impact. I'm sure that the.
the, um, the, the traction evangelists will tell me that I'm leaving good stuff behind and I should really take a second look at incorporating everything. But Hey, what we did was, was just, um, I took, you know, a number of the concepts from that and, um, late, you know, m- made that the way that we operated the business, the biggest things were, were shorter. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah.
craig fuhr (10:05.082)
we were well I just want to if I may that was that was a while ago jack that was like 2016 for you 2015 16 and you've still been implementing the EOS strategies that you read back in 2015. Is that correct?
Jack BeVier (10:12.152)
Yeah, 10.
Jack BeVier (10:23.084)
Yeah, yeah, we, we implemented it. It made such a big difference, frankly, to my daily life, just like keeping things organized, getting rid of the surprises. Man, the surprises are what like, personally for me, like just kill me. Like when I'm, when I find out as a surprise that something, when I, that something isn't going well or that something wasn't being done, that just like destroys my morale as like an owner of the company, right? Because then I can't sleep.
Cause I don't know what, cause all of a sudden the fear, the fear, the fear and doubt of, I don't know what I don't know. That's crippling, right? Like I can handle all kinds of bad news. Like you wake up and I get an email and there's bad news, whatever. But like it, but it's the surprise internally that it like just destroys me. And so this, you know, I think incorporating a lot of the process or a lot of the, uh, the tools and techniques, which is really just like, it's, it's about meetings. It's about, it's about setting.
setting goals of varying timeframes, really stepping, walking back those goals and breaking them down into their component parts. So you really create a roadmap from them and then, uh, producing, measuring, measuring everything that your company does and have, and putting a number to pretty much everything that your people do, uh, for you, yourself included. Um, and then watching those
numbers over time. It takes it took a couple years actually, like
craig fuhr (11:58.374)
I wouldn't that that's what I wanted to ask you. So you and I don't know many people in the business, Jack, who haven't read the book Traction. There's that book has been widely adopted, at least picked up and read. And so the question I have that I know that folks who have read it who have not yet adopted must be asking is, you know, there takes there's some serious growing pains in adopting sort of the EOS regimen.
right. And and for those who are just taking a small piece like you did it here at Dominion, versus those who go out and hire an integrator, there's still going to be a significant amount of growing pains in adopting these meetings. Yes.
Jack BeVier (12:43.136)
It's funny you say that. I think that there are growing pains for certain personality types and it's welcome religion for others. And I think that there are a lot of, I think that there are a lot of visionary like personality profiles that would call this painful. And that'll get me to, I don't wanna jump ahead to the other tool that I really wanna talk about today, but.
craig fuhr (12:53.324)
Yeah, yeah.
Jack BeVier (13:10.424)
but it has to do with recognition and vocabulary to talk about different personality types that is actually actionable. But I feel like I think that the you know, the what's the book that talks about the classic visionary integrator combo? There is the listeners will know the so there's this like classic there's this classic combo that.
in many entrepreneurial organizations when you look back that are high performing, where there is a visionary and there's an integrator and they work very well together. They tend to be at the top of the organization. But if you just have a visionary and you have no integrator, then you create a hot mess. And if you have just an integrator and no visionary, well, you have a lifestyle business that doesn't grow. It runs tight, but it's small.
Um, and so to have both, right, to have a growth company that also runs well, you really have to have two different kinds of people, right? You have to have, you definitionally need multiple people in leadership to have a company that both grows and still runs well. And the relationship between those two people ends up being like the, the magic, the secret sauce, right? That, that, um, that, that allows organizations to really take off. Um,
craig fuhr (14:21.802)
and operates for it.
Jack BeVier (14:36.568)
in our capacity, we're not the highest growing company by any stretch of the imagination, but we just so happen to have my partner Fred as the visionary and I happen to be more of an integrator personality profile. And so that was a complete accident. We had no idea when we started working together, we just thought like, oh, I'm different than this guy, but he's smart and vice versa. And we just started working together and it just turns out that we happen to put that
accidental formula in place that has been well documented as like something that we should have known was happening, but we didn't.
craig fuhr (15:11.383)
The book by the way, Jack, is Rocket Fuel, I think is what you're looking at. Also by Gino Wigman, the guy who wrote Traction.
Jack BeVier (15:13.44)
Yes, thank you. Thank you, Rocket Fuel.
Jack BeVier (15:18.08)
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I digress. But I think that my point being that if you're a vision, if you're if you're a visionary who is running a hot mess, you know, I'm being very crass, right? But like, he's running a hot mess. And you know, it, you need to get yourself an integrator, like, that's what you need. And because you're not gonna, you're not you read traction, and you like the ideas on it. And then nothing ever happened. Because, you know, because you went back in and that's your personality, your personality is not to dig back in there.
And so I think that the, the business model around traction to have these third party consultants come in as integrators and roll out traction in your organization. You'll see a shot out of the gun, you know, out of the cannon of, of improvement because you've outsourced your integrator. But then as soon as that guy's contract is up, that girl's contracts up and they're not
part of your organization on a regular basis, you'll start sliding back. Like you 100% will start sliding back. You need to hire someone who's going to be that integrator within the organization on a consistent basis to keep it up. And to them, it's not a growing pain. To them, it's just, OK, cool. These are the rules. Like, yeah, there's some religion to stick to. Like, you know, it's not just we're going to run everything off of feel and emotion.
craig fuhr (16:32.307)
it's liberating for people like that.
Jack BeVier (16:44.012)
Um, so anyway, that just, that's a long digression to your comment, but I couldn't help myself.
craig fuhr (16:49.398)
Can I ask you this? So I've met some great visionaries in the business who did not have integrators. I've also met visionaries in the business, very successful investors, who hired an integrator, Jack, but they didn't empower the integrator. And so I think there's always been a relationship between you and Fred where you felt very empowered to...
you know, as a partner and sort of run the business with a common vision. But as your role at Dominion has evolved and you become busier and busier, Jack, there had to come a time where even you had to have integrators below you. Folks who you had to not only hire, but empower to, you know, to carry out the vision that
I think you have in your role as well, correct?
Jack BeVier (17:48.44)
Yeah, absolutely. And...
craig fuhr (17:50.182)
And so what does that feel like for a guy who has been so in control of almost, you know, every aspect of the business to have to let that go and really give that person who you feel is a proper fit for the role, you know, that power to sort of carry out the mission.
Jack BeVier (18:15.184)
Sorry. We'll have to edit that out. Yeah, absolutely. I think that the, I think that that's a, what's necessary there is building up of trust, right? The reason that, you know, Fred didn't let me start running stuff right away. We worked together for several years. You know, we worked together for a year on acquisitions before I was making offers by myself. And I was a kid at the time, like even that was early.
Um, and, uh, so I feel like that trust is built over, over some period of time and somebody who, and so like the earlier that you can bring that integrator in and try them out and start to build that trust and just put them next to you. What, what Fred did with me was he just put me in the car. I was, I drove while he was sitting in the passenger seat talking on the phone and I just watched him conduct business for a year.
And I just, as soon as he got off the, I'd be listening, he put the phone on speaker and I'd hear the whole conversation. And then we would be driving to wherever we're driving to. And I'm just asking questions like constantly, right? Just, just learning and soaking up as much as I possibly can. And, and then, you know, and giving feed, you know, giving comments, mostly asking questions though, just to get, you know, just to get his take on things. And I think that. So he was really my mentor in that respect.
and taught me everything that I absolutely everything that I that I know about the business. And through that process, through that process, he began to trust my judgment because he understood that I was like, thinking intently, you know, thinking, you know, thinking as deeply as I could about all of the issues and was going to then go act based off of everything, all the training that he had given me. And I think that that's a great way to do it.
to just put the integrator in the car with you and have them just shadow you for a long period of time. Now, that's a difficult thing when your integrator wants to get paid $150,000, right? Like, and you're trying, you're running a three person organization, five person organization, and you got somebody who comes in and they want to be, they, you know, they, you think they're the right fit, but they're also expensive. Like that's a problem, right? You can't have them down like that for a long period of time. So I also think that like from a practical point of view, we also got lucky cause I was 23 at the time.
Jack BeVier (20:39.736)
And so I was cheap. And that was fine, right? Like I needed beer money and rent. What's that?
craig fuhr (20:44.29)
very hungry. cheap and very hungry. So like it was a perfect combination.
Jack BeVier (20:48.416)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so my point being that it's a trust, it's a trust building exercise. And I have endeavored to bring in we have as a company, not just me, all of the managers, we've endeavored to bring in other integrators into positions of authority. And then as they've gained our trust, we're we let the you know, let the leash out, right? Like
need to be involved in fewer decisions, don't need to run it by me as much. Like it's, you know, it's now there's a, there's a process there though. It's not, it's never day one. They never hit the ground. In my experience, they never hit the ground running. There's always a, at least six month process, more like a year and a half before, uh, where they're just asking you questions about the business until they understand the perspective and
And then they have to trust you, right? That you actually know what the hell you're talking about, right? There's a two way street here. If you want a good integrator, they're smart. And so like they, you have to earn their trust that they actually think that your vision is a valid one and that you're not just leading us down the wrong path. Cause they have no interest in wasting their time with, with that. Right. So that, that takes, that takes a while, um, to build that trust.
craig fuhr (22:03.34)
Yeah.
craig fuhr (22:08.354)
I don't want to mention the folks by name who are one of the best integrator slash visionary combos that I've seen in the business, but I'm sure you probably have heard of both. But the point here is that I think oftentimes the visionary can be very the kite flying in the wind, right, Jack? I've, you know, they've got a mission, they're running a company, they're being pulled in a million different directions, and they have a lot of really great ideas at the same time.
And so great integrators, I think, often, when they're empowered to be their best selves, often sort of act as that hand on the kite. They're holding the kite down. They're pushing back on business ideas that may be tangential to sort of what the business really is or maybe even a lark. A lot of visionaries.
You know, a lot of great entrepreneurs, Jack, wake up with great ideas that they want to implement immediately. And sometimes it's not the right time and it's not the right idea for the business. And I think great integrators, when they're empowered, have the ability to push back. They're not just, the best integrator for me is not a yes person, right?
Jack BeVier (23:24.516)
You get definitely the case, completely agree with that. They have to be able to go, you know, go to share the vision, but go toe to toe in terms of saying like, yes, but that's not what we should, but tomorrow, but to achieve yes, we need to do this and this and this, not no, it's never no, right? Like if you're, if you're, if you get a no integrator though, and that, and that's the, I think an important balance is, is
craig fuhr (23:43.735)
Alright.
Jack BeVier (23:53.632)
Like yes, I, you know, if it's a good idea, right? If it's a crappy idea, how you beat the crappy idea up and it dies. But the visionary understands that it's a crappy idea. If you just proved to them that it's un-executable, right? Cause they, all they want to do is win, you know? So like if you show, if you, if you explain to them how this is not a winning path, they they're off of it. Right. But just because it's a difficult path or it's not a direct straight line, you know, don't you, you don't, you, you don't approach that visionary with no, you approach that visionary with yes. And.
to do that, we're gonna need to do this and this and this and this and this in this order. And so let's get started, right? If you think it's
craig fuhr (24:31.3)
or maybe wrap up some of these other things that were priorities on the plate, and then we'll get to that great idea.
Jack BeVier (24:37.296)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, yes, and we have these other things that are equally important. How do we wanna rank these things? How do we wanna, let's break this down and set priorities. We have a particular amount of bandwidth, we have a particular amount of things that we wanna get done. Let's rank them. And then if there's something that's on there, on the list that's just not gonna get done yet, but it's worth getting done, all right, let's talk about allocating resources to it. And where are we gonna get these resources, both human and capital, to go accomplish this goal?
Um, so like the yes and conversation I think goes, you know, much better. I'll also put fault, like every visionaries get, always get the bad rap, right? They always get, you know, labeled as the flighty one, the integrators though, if you're a no integrator, well, then you're not going to get there. They're not going to, they're not going to hand you the keys. The visionary is not going to trust you with the keys because they know what they're going to get out of you. A no, you're just, they're, they're not going to want to share their ideas with you because you're a buzzkill.
right? Like they come to you with a, with a great idea. They get really excited about, and you just tell them, no, that's a buzzkill dude. Like no one wants to work with that person. So like I think integrators sometimes were the wrong integrators, right? The ones who shouldn't be in the C-suite, so to speak, um, are the ones that, or at least an example of them are the ones that, um, that can't, uh, that, that just dig their heels in and can't figure out a way to yes. And they just want to know.
you know, or they just want to quote unquote, no. Um, and that's a, that's, that's unproductive, it's unhealthy. And then the visionary ends up getting frustrated and fires this person because they start battling with each other because you just say no to everything they want to do. And they're like, screw this. This isn't any fun anymore, right? Like, like, I don't, you know, the visionary doesn't want to do it. If it's not fun, you know, like they like to go do stuff.
craig fuhr (26:27.358)
Have you run into that Jack over the past several years?
Jack BeVier (26:31.484)
Yeah, I've witnessed it at other companies a fair amount. I've hired the wrong integrators a couple of times where I was trying to backfill myself out and I got too much no. And I ended up getting frustrated myself, right? Like I'm kind of an integrator and I just couldn't get this person on board or it's either like, no, it can't be done or.
it's all fucked up, right? Like, you know, or you get this feedback that like, it's just, it's too much of a mess. We can't do we can't move forward at all. And you know, when I just don't believe that that's true, right? Like, you have to be able to live with some imperfection and growth, you cannot grow at 99% efficiency. If you if you wait until 99% efficiency to grow, you'll never grow right? Like 85 is frankly good enough to grow like we need
people backfilling and making it better and getting it from 85 to 96. But at 96, who cares, right? Like if you can't make money at 96, it was a crappy idea that, you know, like it's not about execution if you've gotten it to 96% good. The idea wasn't good enough, work on something else. So like, you know, I feel like I've got enough high A in me to try to try to draw those distinctions.
craig fuhr (27:48.95)
So we'll get into sort of how you find the right person for the seat in a bit, but tying up traction with a BoJack. As I look at the growth of Dominion over the last several years, I would love to know where you rank implementing traction and the EOS in terms of importance in the growth that you've experienced.
Jack BeVier (28:19.424)
I would put it in top three. I would say documenting our systems and processes, traction, or the EOS model rather itself, what we took from the EOS model. And I would say one of the most important things from that EOS model was the putting a number to every activity in the company, like figuring out a way to measure every activity, put a number to it so that we could see it over time. And man,
three years after we implemented it, I realized that I was still, you know, that I was, I'd missed some stuff, right? Like whenever I got surprised by something that wasn't going well, it was the thing that I wasn't measuring, right? Like if you're measuring it, you never get surprised. But the thing that's going so, so it, but it took several years for me to uncover all the things that we should be measuring. And I use the bar being that if I found out if I was
surprised with bad news, I should have been measuring it. And if I had been measuring it, I wouldn't have been surprised with bad news. So whenever my blood pressure went up through the roof, the problem was not what happened. The problem was that I wasn't measuring that thing for the past three years. And if I had been, then my blood pressure would never be where it is right now.
craig fuhr (29:37.174)
Yeah, one of the things that I love about the traction model is that it, if you're doing it correctly, it forces you to have the difficult conversations, which is another great book, difficult discussions, I think it's called. And you can't, you can only look if you want to get better and you don't want to be surprised and you don't want to have your blood pressure go up, you have to address the big rocks that
all of the big problems in a company and all of the big opportunities and all those things, you have to put a quantitative number on each of those and then you have to address them routinely. And I think that's one of the things that traction does with the meetings that you have. They don't allow you to sort of keep sweeping all of the problems under the rug if you're doing it correctly. Right? Yeah. And then when you have and then
Jack BeVier (30:27.776)
Mm hmm. 100% agree to that.
craig fuhr (30:32.51)
In addition to that, as you start to grow the company, you start to have people in place that are empowered to bring those issues up rather than, oh, I'm sitting at the table in the C-suite and I don't want to bring up the big issues because the spotlight will be on me. No, that traction is sort of an open forum for bringing up those things, which I really love. And I think you guys have really adopted. Yeah. So
Jack BeVier (30:56.749)
Yeah, yeah.
craig fuhr (31:00.458)
We got about 15 minutes left in this episode. One of the other things that we've touched on here, but not really directly is putting the right person in the seat. You said that when you and Fred got together, it was just Kismet that he happened to be a great visionary and you were a really smart integrator. I think that you're, and yeah, I think there's a part of you that's quite the visionary as well, Jack, but talk about how you all have adopted
Jack BeVier (31:18.256)
An accidental integrator, yeah.
craig fuhr (31:28.386)
the cultural index as a sort of a behavioral assessment model for the folks who you've been hiring over the last several years. Because one of the things that I find fascinating about the growth of the company is that there's a lot of people who were here in 2015 and 16 who are still here. And they've grown with the growth of the company. They were integral to the growth of the company. And so when you look back at
an HR manager or, you know, a guy who's been sitting in the loan department for a long time at DFS, you know, if when you're looking at those people, was it accidental that you hired just the right people for the right spot? Or did you think you were that good at assessing talent when you brought them in?
Jack BeVier (32:17.492)
Yeah. So if we, when we got the right person in the right chair prior to implementing this personality survey system, which I'll talk about, there was a complete accident and
Jack BeVier (32:35.3)
then when we use the personality assessment, it was confirmatory that, oh, we got that one right. And we got that one right. And we got that one right. But we got a bunch of the other ones wrong. And they all just organically didn't work out. They just Yeah, it all just those seats turned over. And so I would say, you know, I always had a I always, I always had a difficulty in
craig fuhr (32:48.886)
just fizzled out. Right.
Jack BeVier (33:04.696)
or I think a struggle with hiring struggle with talking about people. In that there's I, you know, I'm a big fan of, or I was raised knowing my dad used to talk about Myers Briggs when I was like 11 years old in the car on the way to school and like on the way to go get Chinese food. Like my dad was like loved personality tests. He thought it was the coolest thing. So he taught me taught me about Myers Briggs. He taught me about disk when I was a kid, like a little kid.
craig fuhr (33:20.704)
Mm.
Jack BeVier (33:32.768)
And I was raised, you know, knowing, you know, knowing my, my personality profile and, and talking about those differences. But as I went, you know, as I went through school and went through business school and got into the workforce, I just like, they didn't seem specific enough to me to be actionable. And they, they seemed like an academic indulgence as opposed to something that I could actually deploy as a decision-making tool and.
craig fuhr (33:49.411)
Mm. Yeah.
craig fuhr (33:59.886)
Exactly. Yes, absolutely.
Jack BeVier (34:03.388)
And, um, and so, you know, I never found a whole lot of use from, um, and, and as a result, uh, when we would hire, we would, you know, try to use what we found to be best practices in terms of, you know, cover letter or no cover letter. And like, do you hire based off of experience? How does it let's define culture? Like, you know, you know, alignment with the company's core values and, you know,
having multiple people do the part of the hiring process. And we tried to align, you know, based off of all of these, you know, quote unquote best practices. And yet we would still have, you know, and yet, you know, six months in, we would be like, this guy's just not working out. This, you know, this woman's just not working out. Like, what did we get wrong? And how do we put our, or a situation would get put in front of them and they would react to it.
craig fuhr (34:50.318)
stuff. Sure.
Jack BeVier (34:57.892)
They were very trained. They knew exactly. They were very trained. They were very experienced. They are, they were very smart people. You know, we were appropriately paying for the position and yet they handled it in a way that I would never have handled it that way. And that would just, and my, my head would explode and I would have this awful thought, which was what is this person's malfunction? Like what is wrong with this person? And
And then they would end up not working out, right? And we were like, you chalk it up to like, oh, we had the, you know, the right person in the wrong chair or the right chair and the wrong person, whatever, like, and you know, we'd say some, some word and then try again. And, um, so I got, uh, I got introduced to, uh, this personality survey called culture index, and there is a very similar one called predictive index. There are two different companies using very similar math. Um,
behind this personality survey. And they have different business models. Culture Index uses more of a consultant basis. They charge consulting fees to help you implement the model. And we've gone that direction. That was very helpful for us. Predictive Index is a little bit more, a little lower price point. The math is just as good. You get a little bit less help implementing it though. So you really have to have that person who's really into it to like,
dig in and understand and then train everybody else. And that's a heavy lift for like for certain. You know, that's a that's a heavy lift sometimes.
craig fuhr (36:23.318)
Yeah, so.
craig fuhr (36:29.526)
Yeah, for the so let me just explain quickly, Jack's for those of who have heard of these two assessment tools, but haven't necessarily used them. It's really uncanny when you sit down to take the predictive index or the cultural index, you're just looking at words and you're picking out words it's that resonate with who you are, essentially. And it takes about six or seven minutes and the predictive index has been has been shown to be like 98% accurate.
historically over the entire time that it's been around. In fact, it's one of the only tools that can be used in hiring and firing for EEOC purposes, I've read. That said, what you get with each one of these assessments is a pretty big printout of the person. And what you're speaking to is hiring a consultant to come in and basically help you interpret that assessment.
and sort of finding the right fit for the person and the seat. Correct?
Jack BeVier (37:33.28)
Yeah. So the, um, they, they have you, uh, take the survey. Well, sorry. So you start as an employer, right? If you're going to use it in an HR context, a hiring context for HR, you, um, you start with the job description and the hiring manager who, you know, or, you know, the owner of the company hiring manager says, it fills out a survey and then based off of like, Hey, the ideal person you're looking for, for this position, you know, and, and so you,
craig fuhr (37:42.712)
Mm-hmm.
Jack BeVier (38:02.188)
It's called it. They call it a C job. The words don't matter. But, uh, you basically create a typified profile from the job. So you say like, Hey, for this position, after you take the survey, they say, all right, you're looking for one of these three personalities. Uh, uh, yeah. Types. Yeah. And, and then you,
craig fuhr (38:22.318)
traits.
Jack BeVier (38:27.612)
And then you say, all right, I'm looking for, uh, they have different, you know, terms for it. I'm looking for a technical expert for that, uh, for that position. And then resumes start coming in. And as part of the resume process, you take this survey when you apply. So, um, you have to submit your resume and take the survey, which I've actually, by the way, found to be a great screener because if you're not willing to spend seven minutes and take my, my personality survey, like you just want to blast resumes everywhere.
I'm not that into, you're not that, you're not, you're not that into me as they say. Um, and I, and you've made it very clear. You weren't willing to invest seven minutes in my personality survey. So I can probably discard those, those folks anyway. Um, or would want to discard those folks anyway. It's a small barrier to entry, but anyway, so you take this personality survey. And if you're, if you come up as a, as a completely different personality profile than what is typified for this position, don't we don't look at the resume.
craig fuhr (39:00.351)
Mm.
Jack BeVier (39:22.936)
Like you, because the problem is that you will fall in love with the resume. They worked for a competitor was the biggest thing that always got me. I would, I would, you know, I would see somebody who was working for a pro a big property management company, you know, not a direct competitor, but like, you know, in a related field. And I would be like, ah, this person's got like, you know, very relevant experience and then I'd get on an interview with them and the whole time subconsciously.
craig fuhr (39:26.83)
Mm.
Jack BeVier (39:48.224)
I'm just talking myself into this person, right? Cause I just, I want that Morgan properties experience, or you know, you know, Morgan property management experience on my staff, right? Like, and so we ended up just talking ourselves into, you know, flawed as humans as we are, we tend to talking ourselves into the person. And, and they're also, they're giving us a biased view of themselves. We've got a biased view when we go into it, cause we looked at their resume and what I'm supposed to spend like, you know,
craig fuhr (39:58.414)
Hmm.
craig fuhr (40:04.447)
The wrong person.
Jack BeVier (40:17.728)
whether it's 30 minutes or multiple interviews, you do a bunch of rounds or come have them come in for a shadow day, whatever, like it's all an audition, right? And, um, what, one of the things that, um, that these personality surveys will espouse is that, you know, people can behavior modify a lot. They can modify their behavior to fit a situation. Everyone can be, you know, everyone can be very talented in that regard, can be very talented in that regard and put on a completely different
outward, uh, you know, in, you know, Persona in a given situation, but you are yourself when you are alone and when you are stressed, then in those two situations, you are yourself. And if you're looking to hire an employee that you're not going to be, you know, it's, and it's, and it's very tiring to behavior modify. I can do it. Right. But I.
craig fuhr (41:12.119)
Yes.
Jack BeVier (41:12.964)
but I can't do it all the time. I'll be, it eventually drains my battery to behavior modify. And so you wanna hire the personality that fits the chair, the right personality for that chair, because you want their default to be designed, that what is, you know, the person for the chair. So you need a way to measure that. And I was the biggest hater on this, right? Like I'm very quantitative. I hate,
craig fuhr (41:32.908)
Right.
Jack BeVier (41:42.772)
And given, you know, and I thought I'm like, shit, dad taught me, you know, dad taught me, uh, Myers Briggs. When I was like nine years old, like I'm pretty sure I'm quite familiar with personality surveys. And if there was a good one, like I'd have heard about it, but I hadn't. And I ended up kind of got, and I resisted for almost a year. I was being told by some peers in our mastermind and real, in real investor round table about this tool. And I was the guy just digging my heels in being like, this is fluffy bullshit. I'm not going to waste my time on it. And,
Eventually I just got told like, Hey Jack, you're screwing up right now. You need to just go do just go through the testing and you know, go through the training and I go through these three days or two days, two days of training and I come out the other side, an absolute evangelist. Like I've like, I shifted gears like you've never seen, you know, I was, I'm a born again, you know, personality survey.
craig fuhr (42:34.794)
What was it? What was it? What was that defining thing over that two days that you were like, oh, wow, this stuff is the real deal? Because you are a very you are a very logical, you know, math minded, quantitative guy. That's who you Yeah.
Jack BeVier (42:40.664)
because they were.
Jack BeVier (42:48.064)
Yeah. Uh, it was because they, because the, the consultant had never met me before, had never met any of my people before. And he just starts, he, he starts, he's at the front of the room and he starts just describing our interpersonal relationships. Like he's got a video camera in my office, describes the nature of our relationships together. There's the specific nature of the kinds of conflicts that we have, the way that, the different ways that we act.
react to different situations, the frustration that I'm feeling about them, the frustration they're feeling about me, as if I had spent 40 hours on his couch, right, like talking about this situation. And I'm like, this is crazy. Like it was mind blowing. It was crazy.
craig fuhr (43:26.998)
Yeah, I've got
I've personally seen that Jack where I've been at seminars and well shout out to Mike McCloskey at Humanlytics. I've seen him with Perfect Strangers talk about them after just looking at their initial results, talking about them, their interpersonal relationships, their work relationships, their fulfillment in their position as if he's known them all their lives.
I would say at least five or six dozen times with five or six dozen different total strangers. And I not once, not one time did I ever hear someone say, no, that's not really not me. He nailed it every single time. And I think that's really speaks to the validity of the validity of these assessments and why someone who is as logical and as quantitative as you must have looked at it and said, oh yeah, this is the real.
Jack BeVier (44:28.64)
Yeah. So the biggest thing and the biggest thing as an organization that we got out of it was a vocabulary to talk about the differences in personality profile, different personality type. And so that statement that I said before, that awful thing that I used to think what's wrong with this person was eliminated from the way that I think about people. Like they're not there's nothing wrong with them. They're just different. And there's a specific
craig fuhr (44:38.315)
Hmm.
Jack BeVier (44:57.136)
quantitative way for me to describe how they are different from me. And so in that situation, I would react, I would have reacted differently because there was a way to finish the sentence. I had a quantitative way to finish that sentence. And so one, you can see the problem before it happens. You can see, you don't put that person in that position for them to, for them to, um, react in a way that you don't want them to, you, you should have known that they, you would.
You will now know not to put them in that situation because you will get that result, that other result that you don't want. So you can engineer, you can actually now engineer the machine that you're building. And it's a weird kind of dark way to talk about it, frankly, like there's lots of like, I also think there's lots of like, just philosophical implications to this, but you can now design the machine that you're wanting to that you want to build. And you need a job description.
You know, you can build out the whole org chart that you want to build and you've got the job description to take care of all the systems and processes that we've document that we've already documented, right? So, you know what you need them to do and then you then envision, all right, given the nature of that job description, what's the human being? What's the personality profile of the person that I want in that chair? And then you go and you find that person. And it's much, it's impossible to train.
someone to be someone who they are not. You can teach somebody just about anything, but you cannot teach them to be a different personality. They are who they are. And so to deny that idea or to, you know, to, to rage against that idea is absolute futility. But if you just embrace it and you find the right human and then teach them what they need to know to go execute that position, we've had just materially increased, you know,
percentages of, of right person, right chair on the first try. Um, and, and also it's, and then also it helps in terms of like intra personal management, right? Cause that's another difficult thing. Like once you get above like five people, culture ends, then you need to really talk about culture because then it really matters. It's not just like the call to personality of whoever the owner is, which it kind of can be up to that level.
Jack BeVier (47:22.596)
From that point forward, this machine's bigger than you, and you need to understand the nature of all the actors. And this gave us a way to really talk about that and try to design culture and to see conflict before it happened and to then try to tweak things in a much more intentional way.
because we had a way to talk about it. So anyway.
craig fuhr (47:53.322)
If yeah, for those for those who are listening, I want to dive further into just maybe a couple of the personality types. I don't even know if that's the right term. But just dive into a couple of those specifically, Jack, and certain roles within the company that you've thought, wow, that personality type really fits this role. We're up against the clock on this episode. So we can continue on the next episode, Jack, where had the listeners tune in.
So we're gonna finish up this episode right now take a break and then we'd invite you to come back for episode 28 which we're gonna start in just a second just Click on that next link for episode 28 to continue the conversation on how we're planning to be better in 2024 some of the tools And vendors that are used here at Dominion to help grow the business. So we'll take a break on this episode Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you on the next one