The Vomit List

Introduction:

This week, Jay Goltz and William Vanderbloemen talk about what it takes—in the throes of an unprecedented labor shortage—to hold on to your best people, the ones whose departures might send you looking for a trash can. They also discuss whether “hire slow” still works, whether it’s a good idea to rehire a former employee, whether it’s still possible to do a meaningful reference check, how to use 360 reviews and personality tests, and finally, whether Jay and William would be ready to sell their business if someone were to come along and offer them twice what they think it’s worth.

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

William Vanderbloemen is founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group.

Jay Goltz is founder and CEO of Artists Frame Service and Jayson Home.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word Productions.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Jay and William. It’s great to have you here. William, we haven’t spoken in a while. How are you? What’s going on?

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, it’s just been a regular year, you know, nothing… Oh, wait, there’s been a Great Resignation. You know, I call this great resignation or COVID job churn or whatever.

Loren Feldman:
I think you called it the COVID turnover, William.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, about a year ago.

Loren Feldman:
Almost exactly to the day. And by the way, I think that’s a better name than The Great Resignation. It’s really about turnover. People aren’t just resigning and, you know, leaving work.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, well, I called it and was bracing for a big rush of churn, in terms of jobs we were being asked to do, candidates coming through our door—that sort of thing. I failed to consider that it might actually happen to me. And so we’ve had our own version of musical chairs this year, but we’re coming out on the other side really, really well.

So here’s a lesson, Loren. Here’s one of the lessons I learned in the pandemic: As a small business owner, if every one of your clients has to close indefinitely, it will change your year. So 2020 was the first year ever that we hadn’t grown. In fact, we shrunk some—less than I thought we would—but our goal for this year has been to be within five to 10 percentage points of 2019, which was our record year ever.

And as it stands today, we’re actually a little ahead of 2019 with fewer people on payroll, and so a lot of churn, even in our own house. But I think we’re coming out on the other side stronger, more efficient, more productive. And we’ve got some new team members who have really added a lot. I try and tell our clients, “Anytime somebody leaves, it’s not a chance to replace. It’s a chance to ratchet up.” And we’re in the middle of doing that ourselves. So it’s been a fun year. I have not worked this hard in a long, long time.

Loren Feldman:
Where do you think we are now, William? What do you expect in the coming year?

William Vanderbloemen:
More. More of the same. Whoever is shaking the tree, they’re not finished yet, and some of that is going to be more of the same dynamics. One that I did not foresee a year ago that I think is an aggravating factor that’s going to prolong this job churn is inflation. And what I mean when I say that, well, depending on where you are in the country, you’re going to have to pay your people 4 to 7 percent more next year just to match the wages this year. And not everybody’s going to do that. And that’s going to lead to some more churn.

Jay Goltz:
Very, very smart. That is true. See, I would call the metaphor differently. I would say the shaking of the tree is continuing, but most of the loose fruit already fell out. I only had, well, really one who I didn’t want to leave. But you’re correct, I believe. We’re ratcheting up the cost-of-living increase, and some people probably aren’t. And that’s going to continue the shaking for some other people.

But I would also say it’s changed the environment, in that there are some people who worked for me for years who needed to move on. They were at the end of their thing. They were already kind of stressed out. And this just put them over the edge. And so I did lose a few like that.

But to your other point, I’ve gotta tell you, I hired some great people. You know, people like to pick on the Millennials. You know what? There’s still some lovely, wonderful, hard working, well-adjusted Millennials out there—plenty of them—and I hired some of them. So I know for a fact that’s true. Is it harder now? Yes, for sure. It’s harder now.

Loren Feldman:
So William, what’s changed about hiring? One of the things you used to hear constantly was, “Hire slow and fire fast,” but is “hire slow” still a thing?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I think “hire thoroughly” might be the way I’d say it right now, because there is a little bit more time under the gun. I mean, it’s like, if you buy a home, you ought to buy it carefully. Well, I don’t know how your market is, but here in Houston, if you see a house you want, you’d better put an offer in right then—and hope you don’t get overbid.

Loren Feldman:
That’s what Paul Downs said to us about hiring people at his shop. He was asking them what they wanted—if he liked someone—and offering them more and trying to get them to sign before they left the room.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, I don’t know that I’d go as far as Paul, but I’m not as smart as Paul. I will say, I actually got through to one of my teenagers with a line the other day, and it’s an old line, but I thought, “Wow, if this gets through to a teenager, it might actually be worth repeating.” And I just said to this teenager, “Hey, if you don’t have time to do it right, you really don’t have time to do it twice.”

Loren Feldman:
That makes sense. Do you think people by-and-large are adhering to that? My guess is they are not.

William Vanderbloemen:
No, I think it’s quite the opposite. And I think it’s gonna mean guys who are running search firms are gonna be busy again in two or three years when a lot of hires get fired or leave. The number one mistake that I see in staffing or HR or search—whatever you want to call it—is people hire too quickly, and they fire too slowly. The nice way we say it is, “You should have long hellos and short goodbyes.”

And the classic mistake, when people are not under pressure, is to hire quickly. Now they’re under pressure. They’re reading a lot of headlines, telling them, “You’d better grab somebody good and hang on to them and pay them more.” And I think it’s gonna make people who were already prone to rush all the more rushed.

Jay Goltz:
I think we’re letting people off the hook too easily to say they’re hiring too fast. No, they’re hiring stupid, and there’s a difference. Like, okay, call the people back quicker. Call the references quicker, move quicker. I’ve got all that. But I still see people hiring without checking references. And I’m sorry, but I just have found that to be a disaster.

And yes, I would agree with someone, 90 percent of the time, it’s a waste of time to call references. Okay, fair enough. Maybe it’s 80 percent. But for the 20 percent that makes a difference, it’s the world. It’s going to take up so much of your time for that one bad hire that it’s worth calling all the references. So I don’t even think it’s about fast or slow. I think it’s about naivete. “Oh, why am I even gonna bother?” Call the reference.

Loren Feldman:
Well, I don’t think it’s just naivete. I think it’s also what William said: Comparing it to the housing market, people feel like they just have to move. And I’m sure there’s some people out there who are thinking, “You know what? I need people. I’m just going to hire them. And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll figure it out quickly, and I will fire fast.” Don’t you think people are doing that?

William Vanderbloemen:
But Jay, I totally agree with you. Let’s call it the “standard issue reference calls.” They’re worth nothing. I mean, everybody lists their mother as a reference, and never their mother-in-law.

Jay Goltz:
How about the companies they hire to do the reference-checking that ask you nothing? They couldn’t care less. They just want to get the thing done.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, you can thank lawyers and a litigious society for that. But I will say, we’re finding some new ways, some new things we’re exploring with reference checks—because you can only ask, “How long did they work here?” You can’t ask about behavior. There’s so much off-limits.

Jay Goltz:
Wait, wait, wait. I’ve gotta challenge that. I don’t know that that’s true, what you just said. What do you mean you “can’t ask?” You can ask. The question is, maybe they can’t answer, but you can ask. Correct?

William Vanderbloemen:
True. State by state, there are varying rules on what someone can say when they’re asked a question. That’s exactly right. What I think I’m finding is, it’s on you to do background, to do criminal, or hire somebody to do it. We do it all the time for people. When we’re not doing a search, we’ll do the background reference. But when you do background reference, we require a credit check, and some people don’t like that. But it’s legal to ask for it. And I think it shows how people manage their own house. And if they can’t manage that…

Jay Goltz:
Here’s a new problem, as of this morning. My HR person, literally this morning, said, “Jay, I’m going to have a problem if we hire. It’s taking me two weeks to get those checks back.” That’s a problem.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, and you’re beholden to whatever the references will or won’t do. So I just tell the candidate, “I’m not gonna be able to make an offer until I get these references. So you might text them or give them a heads-up that I need to have a phone call with them.” And that’s the only way I know to push it along.

But then another thing that we’re exploring is, if you don’t run a social media check, you should. And you can run a really, really thorough one. And it might show you some things that are helpful to your discernment. And, I know a reference call is like the last firewall before you make the offer, but you might see things that are worth knowing.

Jay Goltz:
I had one lady tell me, when I had a store in New York a few years ago—I did a pop-up, and I knew it was critical that I didn’t make mistakes, because I’m not there—this guy got a letter from his boss saying how wonderful he was. I called her. Within 30 seconds, she told me she had to fire him because he couldn’t get along with anyone else. In thirty seconds, she told me this.

Loren Feldman:
Let’s go back to the social media thing. I’m really intrigued by that. Jay, does your process include checking a candidate’s social media?

Jay Goltz:
Absolutely, absolutely.

Loren Feldman:
There is some controversy about that, William. I’ve read some articles from quote-unquote experts saying that it’s not a good idea to do that, because it’s very likely that you will run into information that you’re not supposed to have about a candidate. How do you think about that?

William Vanderbloemen:
I’d hire a firm to do it for me.

Jay Goltz:
Wait. Loren, walk us through that? What would that information be that we shouldn’t know about?

Loren Feldman:
William, help me out here: their age… Questions that you’re not allowed to directly ask a candidate will likely turn up on social media.

William Vanderbloemen:
We ask them to sign a release allowing us to do a social media scrub. So they know it’s coming. And if you want to hide your birthday, you can hide your birthday.

Jay Goltz:
People put stuff online that you think to yourself, “Oh my God, why would you go put that online?” But they do.

William Vanderbloemen:
For us, nearly all of our clients that we’re hiring for, we’re hiring a very public-facing person, whether that’s a CEO or head of school or a head pastor. And how they present themselves publicly in the social media sphere is pretty salient to whether or not we need to hire them—even down to silly things.

Like, we have some clients where part of their behavior or covenant for employment is, “You’re not going to drink.” For whatever reason, they’ve got a belief thing, whatever. Well, then why is your social media full of you knocking back cocktails at 10 a.m.? And you can find that out. We can actually filter for, “Is there alcohol in a picture that the person liked?” It’s frightening.

Jay Goltz:
And when you say the word “scrub,” that even sounds aggressive to me. I’m suggesting: You don’t want to scrub anything. You put their name in, and the whole thing comes right up there. And like, if they think it’s okay to put all that stuff out there, that was their choice. So we’re supposed to ignore that it’s out there? That the person who just told you they don’t drink has got pictures of 12 bars they’re in? I mean, they put it on there!

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I think we’re talking about two different things. You’re talking about: Go to their page and take a look. I’m talking about a scrub where everything they’ve liked—

Jay Goltz:
Oh!

William Vanderbloemen:
—whether it’s on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, I get about a 100-page report on. And I don’t even share the whole thing with our client because they wouldn’t hire anybody.

Jay Goltz:
Well, okay, that’s news to me. That one makes me squirm a little bit. But okay, I understand that’s different than what I’m talking about. I’m just talking about going out there to see what they put out there.

William Vanderbloemen:
I think the other thing with reference calls that I’m shifting… I’m shifting, when I do my own reference calls, to two things: “Jay, I’m calling you about Loren. It’s a reference call. You and I both know, reference calls happen at the end of hiring. I’m probably not calling you unless I’m going to hire him. So rather than go through the, ‘Is he a good guy or not?’ why don’t you tell me, if you were in my chair, how would you steward the time I’m going to have working with Loren? What do I need to know to maximize that time?”

And then you get some answers that are really good. Like, “Well, that’s a great question. Now, he’s just gonna get a lot done, but you’re gonna have to tell him every now and then, ‘No means no.’ Like, he’ll keep asking over and over whether he can ask you something on the podcast. You say no. He keeps asking. You say no.” Well, that’s helpful to know going into the thing.

Or another question that I’ll ask, I’ll say, “Jay, we’re probably gonna hire him. When you worked with Loren, how did his presence in the workplace affect your culture? Not just positive or negative. What changed?” “Oh, everybody loves Loren. They love getting along with him. People like being on projects with him.” Well, that’s really helpful, right? Or, “Man, he was productive, and his productivity allowed us to overlook the fact that he was a little awkward.” You can start to get at some things by approaching, “How do they affect us culturally?” and, “If you were me and hiring them, what would you want to know going in?”

Jay Goltz:
I ask one major question, which is, “Are they eligible for rehire?” And I’m telling you, I’ve learned that even though they’ve got lawyers all over them, and they say, “Don’t say anything negative,” I’ve learned that people will not let those words come out of their mouth. They can’t. They just can’t say yes, if they wouldn’t.

Loren Feldman:
They can’t say yes to what question?

Jay Goltz:
Are they eligible to be rehired? Even if they’ve got a room of 12 lawyers screaming at them to say yes, they can’t.

Loren Feldman:
There might be a rule at the company.

Jay Goltz:
I’ve got the answer to that. This is like playing chess. They say, “No, that’s against our company policy.” So then I say, “What if it wasn’t against your company policy?” And then you get the long silence, like they are not gonna lie for this person, I have found. They are not going to have the words come out of their mouth, “Yes, that I would rehire them.” If they left under some bad terms, I have never met a human being who will allow those words to come out of their mouths. So I find that very helpful that they’re not gonna lie for them, and then they have a long silence. And then I say, “Wow, sounds like you’re struggling for an answer—like I would if I fired somebody, and I really didn’t want to stick my neck out.”

Loren Feldman:
Are personality tests still a thing? Or is that too much trouble at a time like this?

Jay Goltz:
I used to use them. They were very helpful. I haven’t used them in years.

Loren Feldman:
Why did you stop, if they were so helpful?

Jay Goltz:
I’ll tell you why: 2008 happened. The world fell apart, and I wasn’t hiring anybody. I just saved some money, and I stopped using them. But should I use them? Is that a good idea? I would say this—this I think I know for a fact—some of them are great, and some of them are worthless. So I think the ones that are great, yeah, they’re probably worth doing, but I just haven’t done it because we seem to be doing okay without it. And I do have a problem with this. I’m a little uncomfortable making someone sit down and spend 40 minutes filling out a personality test and then you don’t hire them, and you’re in that awkward position of, “Was it the test?”

Loren Feldman:
What do you think of them, William?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I think that, first of all, you should be really careful legally not to use or appear to use a personality profile as a litmus test for hiring. Some of them are fine. Others, in some states, it’s like, you can’t do that. And the legal rationale is, it’s like asking the person applying for a flight attendant job to step on the scale. They can’t change what they weigh. It is who they are, and you’re discriminating. So be careful, first of all.

Secondly, I just wouldn’t use them as a hiring mechanism. I think it’s super helpful for onboarding, super helpful for team communication. But some of the best hires I’ve made were not what I would have expected on the DISC inventory, or what have you. Now, we make everybody go through—right now we just use DISC because it’s quick, and it’s cheap, and it’s pretty thorough. And you’re going to do that no matter where you are in the process, so it’s not a, “I got all the way down to the end, and they made me take this test, and then they didn’t hire me.” So we’re kind of covering ourselves there. But I think they’re far more helpful for onboarding and for team communication than they are for discerning who to hire.

And let me just say, hiring is a scary thing. It’s an anxious task. And my experience—13 years of doing this and 2,500 searches—is people want a smoking gun to say, “Yes, we should hire him. No, we shouldn’t.” Some test, some inventory, something that will make the decision for them so they get out of the anxiety of having to make basically a discernment call, which is at the end of the day, what hiring’s about.

Jay Goltz:
Now, you said something that I find funny. You said that the government or a state could say that, “Oh, that’s discriminatory. They can’t change who they are.” What if they’re a total jerk? Is that discriminating?

William Vanderbloemen:
I don’t know the personality profile that asks if they’re a jerk or not.

Jay Goltz:
Well, but you can tell. No, I’ve had some. They go from zero to 10. Where do they fit on the scale of empathy? And some people get ones. I mean, that’s a problem. When I used to use them, I learned to watch out for the ones that pegged the needle, either a 10 or a one. But I agree with you, there’s probably some true discriminatory things in there based on all the things that are protected.

It certainly is going to tell you sometimes that this is not going to be a good employee. I don’t think you can call that discrimination. I think that’s what you call discerning. I don’t want to hire someone who’s not going to be outgoing if they’re a salesperson. And those tests, from when I took them years and years ago, they were amazingly on the money. But I’m also on the same page with you: I’m not really comfortable using them at this stage. We’ve gotten much better at hiring. If I wasn’t much better at hiring, maybe I would tell someone, “Maybe you should use those.” So it’s tricky.

Loren Feldman:
A few weeks ago on the podcast—Jay, I think you were there—the topic of hiring rebound employees came up, bringing people back. And Jay, I think you’d had a good experience with one. William …

Jay Goltz:
Wait, I need to stop you. The truck driver guy quit. He wasn’t making enough money. I said, “You should have talked to us, blah, blah, blah.” He comes back two weeks later. He went to a crummy job. We fixed the pay thing. It was all good. He just quit again. Last week, he gave us one week’s notice.

Loren Feldman:
How long was he back?

Jay Goltz:
He was back since February, and they offered him a $3,000 signing bonus. And this is a horrible company he went to, and he did the same thing all over again. I go, “Gee, you couldn’t give us more than a week’s notice? It’s holiday season.” “Well, you know, they really wanted me there.” “Okay…” And this is fresh, I had to think about this for the next two days. So I thought, “What if he wanted to come back again?” And my new conclusion is: Bringing somebody back the first time, I would call gracious and smart. Taking them back the second time, you’re probably a sap, and you look bad to the rest of the employees. And I believe if he shows up again and wants a job back, I think I’m gonna have to say no.

Loren Feldman:
You’re not totally sure?

Jay Goltz:
I’m not totally sure. It depends on whether it’s tomorrow or whether it’s in two months from now, but I’m not happy that he only gave me one week’s notice. Really? I mean, that was just not right. And we always treated him well. I gave him Cubs tickets every year to take his family. It’s kind of—I’m not mad at him. I’m certainly disappointed though. So I think I’m done.

Loren Feldman:
What do you think about rebound employees, William?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, Gail, my exec assistant, I just hired for the fifth time. [Laughter]

Jay Goltz:
Well they say the fifth time’s the charm.

William Vanderbloemen:
I feel like Johnny Carson or something. “How many times have y’all been together?” “Five now.” But she moved one time, her husband’s job took her away, so she left. And then we hired her again, and then she had a baby and was gonna be a mom full-time, and then we hired her again. And then, same thing with the second child when we hired her again. And then I laid her off when we cut back last year.

Jay Goltz:
All right, that doesn’t count. She had good reasons to quit.

William Vanderbloemen:
I fired her. Why would she come back? I kind of wondered if she’d still like me.

Jay Goltz:
…take your call? You wondered if she’d take the call.

William Vanderbloemen:
Exactly.

Jay Goltz:
I did a speech to some business owners about sometimes, you know, you have to fire people and blah, blah, blah. And this guy comes up to me afterwards and he goes, “I have to tell you, I used to work for a big printing company, and we bought a company in Chicago that had 150 employees. We did the math, and we realized, ‘They’ve got too many employees. They should only have 120.’ They put me on a plane and said, ‘Go to Chicago, and you need to fire 30 people.’

“So I come to Chicago. I don’t know what to do. So the first day, everybody who was late, I fired that day. That was easy, day one. Okay, now it’s day two.” He’s just randomly firing people. So he calls Maureen in and says, “Maureen, I’m sorry, but we’re gonna have to lay you off.” She goes, “Wow. I’m surprised. Can I just ask you one favor?” He says, “What?” She says, “When you hire me back, I want you to double my salary.” So he thinks, “Yeah, sure.” I mean, he laughs to himself. “How arrogant is that?” So she leaves.

He’s tired from firing people, so he decides to go back into the production area. He goes back to production. And he says to the guy in charge, “How many orders do we have going through this week?” And he says, “I don’t know. You’re gonna have to talk to Maureen.” “Oh, I just fired Maureen.” “You fired Maureen? She’s the only person here who knows where all the orders are.” He hired her back and doubled her salary. It’s a true story, according to this guy. So yeah, people do come back.

Loren Feldman:
Well, these are different times. William, you gave us one kind of exceptional situation. In general, do you think hiring rebounds is problematic or a good idea?

William Vanderbloemen:
I think it depends on why they left. I’ve had people who left because their career progressed. Like Holly, who you both know. I hired her when she was like 23 or something, and she stayed nine years, did an amazing job as our chief marketing business development person. And she outgrew us. She’s at a much bigger company now, got a bigger job. I’d kind of wonder, “Why do you want to come back?” I’m gonna have to ask a question about that. I trust her, love her work, love working alongside her. But kind of wonder. And I don’t know, have y’all seen Pet Cematary?

Jay Goltz:
I don’t think so.

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, wow. Okay, well, you can’t bring them back all the time. Sometimes bringing them back doesn’t work. That’s the bottom line. There are other times where—you know, Gail. Each time, there was a life circumstance, and then it passed, and I convinced her to come back to work, and it’s been wonderful.

We’ve had other cases—I won’t name names—but where the company outgrew their ability. And they did a great job, but we needed a higher capacity person, and we helped transition them out well. And unless they’re coming back to a different job that fits their capacity, I don’t know even if I’d like working with them, if it’s worth it.

Why did I bring Gail back again? A, I love working with her. I trust her. She’s my sister from another mister. She’s all that. But she has been a part of our culture when it has been at its very best and has institutional knowledge. And we got a lot of new people after COVID churn hit us. More than anything, I said, “Gail, yeah, I’m paying you to be my assistant. But honestly, if I need something done, just say, ‘William, you deal with it. I’m going to go work on culture out there, and I’m going to mentor some of these younger, newer employees.’” So there are times where bringing somebody back has enormous value, not just in their work output, but their cultural influence.

Loren Feldman:
With the labor market so tight, has that affected the way you manage people?

William Vanderbloemen:
It’s affected the way I’m paying people next year, for sure. And it’s a tight labor market and inflation. And I’ve done a couple retention bonuses early in the pandemic: “So Loren, you’re a key player here. We’re about to go through a really tough year and a half,” or let’s call it a year. “And you know, we don’t really do bonuses, but I’m going to bonus you a year from now. I’m going to give you an extra $10,000, or whatever the number is.”

Loren Feldman:
If I stay.

William Vanderbloemen:
“By the way, it’s a bonus you’re going to get in a year, but actually, I’m just gonna go and give it to you now. Okay, now, I want you to think about this before you say yes, because I’m also going to have you sign a piece of paper that says, ‘I’m accepting this bonus in advance. And if I leave the company for an unfirable offense between now and a year from now, I’ll pay this back with interest.’”

Loren Feldman:
Do people sign that?

William Vanderbloemen:
I had one not and two did.

Jay Goltz:
Wait, did you give this to everybody?

William Vanderbloemen:
No.

Jay Goltz:
How did that work?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I probably shouldn’t say it on a podcast if my whole office listens to it. “Well, I wasn’t on the list.”

Jay Goltz:
That’s what I’m thinking.

William Vanderbloemen:
So I had a friend who used to say, “You need to keep a vomit list.” So what’s a vomit list? He said, “It’s a very short list. It’s probably no more than three people who, if they walked into your office at the end of the day and said, ‘Can I have a minute?’ before you even let them sit down, you’re looking for a trash can because you’re gonna throw up.”

Jay Goltz:
Yeah.

William Vanderbloemen:
And if you frame it that way, I’ve yet to meet a team leader who can’t immediately name the two or three people. And it’s not always the two or three best paid people. It’s like, I have a church that’s going through a building campaign. For them, their finance director for the next eight months is a very important role. They don’t want to have to train somebody new, and so it’s that. Or sometimes it’s an admin person that, I mean, “You can leave in a year, but for right now, through this tough season, I’ve got to have you around. And I’ll pay you a bonus in advance.” And of course, you need to give them time. I give them a week. “You think about it. If you don’t want to sign it, no harm, no foul. I get it. Life changes. You might have something else going on, but it’s yours if you want it.”

Jay Goltz:
All I can say is wow. I just don’t know. Yeah, wow. And now I’m…

Loren Feldman:
Well, if those really are employees who are that crucial to you, I would think if other employees found out about it, that’s a defensible situation.

Jay Goltz:
Oh my God. Seriously, Loren? You think the average person is going to feel okay about that?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, this is what I said. I assume that no meeting is actually private. Word’s going to leak out. How are you not going to tell a friend or a co-worker or whatever? So I just said, “Listen, I like you. You’re great for the team. You do good work. I like working with you. But this bonus has more to do with protecting the company while we’re in a very vulnerable season. Your role during this next year is super critical to the whole team. And for the good of the team and everyone that works here, I’m making this offer to you.” And I don’t even tell them if I do it with anybody else.

Jay Goltz:
So you really can’t be sure whether anyone else heard about it, and they’re pissed about it.

William Vanderbloemen:
No, you can’t.

Loren Feldman:
William, what happened with the person who refused to sign? Did you give the bonus anyway?

William Vanderbloemen:
No, and they had a job offer within three months and left. And they’re in a great situation. It really stunk to lose them, and they weren’t our highest paid person, but—

Loren Feldman:
Did you know that day they were on the way out?

William Vanderbloemen:
I think they probably knew, yeah.

Loren Feldman:
No, did you know?

William Vanderbloemen:
No, but I did after they didn’t sign it.

Loren Feldman:
Yeah, that’s what I meant.

William Vanderbloemen:
And the flip side of that is I have a good friend who is a partner at one of the best management consulting firms there is, and they do this with their compensation. And, you know, if they don’t sign, then I know I’d better be preparing for the day that I do have that meeting, and I need my trash can.

Jay Goltz:
You know what, I have to say, I’m obviously not in the management consulting business. I’m not in a high-tech business. I’m proud and appreciative of the fact that I have had almost no one leave in 43 years—the people where I would vomit, they’re still here. And I feel good about that.

William Vanderbloemen:
That’s great.

Jay Goltz:
My graphic designer left years ago. She was great, but I was a little naive. There’s no way if you hire a great graphic designer that she’s not working at New York and a big magazine. I couldn’t hold on to that. But I feel great. She sent me a note one time not long ago. She said, “Jay, you didn’t realize it, but I can sit there in a room full of suits and hold my own because of you.” And I’ve never been prouder of a comment to me that she said, “You didn’t know it, but you were running a women’s empowerment zone there.” But other than her, I can’t think of anybody who left where it was like, “Oh my God,” but I’m sure it will happen eventually.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I think it changes, for me, season to season. Like there are times where at the close of the year—operations, as an S corp—when you’ve got to zero everything out and figure out the budget for the next year, that’s a 90-day window that, “Oh, boy, I really need those people then.” January is usually a mad rush. People, our clients, feel like, “It’s January, so we have new money, a new budget,” whatever that means. So they go hire. And so salespeople are incredibly important, and they’re always important. All of my people are always important. But there’s zones of the calendar where different types of people are mission critical for a window of time. And that sounds cold, but I think it’s really trying to protect the rest of the team.

Jay Goltz:
You know what, because I’m mostly a retailer, if your business was built on having outside salespeople, I could see a situation where the rest of the employees would understand if you said, “Listen, it’s a competitive market out there. We need the sales to keep coming in.” And if they heard about it, I could see where they would swallow hard, but they already have to because they know the salespeople make more money than them anyway. It’s always a problem. But I always say to them, “Well, I could fire so and so, but I’ll have to fire you the next day because we’ll have no business.” I mean, it is a problem, and I’ve had to live on both sides of the world of being a retailer my whole life and then understanding the dynamics of running an outside sales organization, which is 180 degrees different. I mean, you need the salespeople to bring in business.

Loren Feldman:
William, here’s something else that came up recently that I wanted to ask you about. We talked about the idea of giving employees a 360 review, and Jay, in particular, was very uncomfortable—

Jay Goltz:
Cringing was the word I used. I cringe.

Loren Feldman:
—asking employees what they thought of other employees. I’m curious what you think, do you have a strong feeling about 360s?

William Vanderbloemen:
You know, I turned 50 the year before last, and I had a whole new kind of physical that year. And it reminded me of 360s.

Jay Goltz:
Yeah, and was that enjoyable?

William Vanderbloemen:
Fortunately, I don’t remember much of it.

Jay Goltz:
Who wants to know that someone’s going around saying, “Hey, what do you think of William?” Certainly if there’s a problem, I deal with it. Absolutely. But to go ahead and look for trouble and start quizzing people, “What do you think?” I just find that to be extremely uncomfortable and not productive, as far as I’m concerned.

William Vanderbloemen:
I’ll tell you where it has come in a lot more handy. I know they’re necessary. I know they’re good. They’re just not much fun. But in interviewing, I am a 100-percent fan of 360 interviewing.

Jay Goltz:
Absolutely. Or if there’s a problem, I’m all for it. If there’s a problem, to go find out: How bad’s the problem? Go talking to other people. I’m all for that. But to just go do it without any reason in particular…

Loren Feldman:
William, when you say they’re “not much fun,” are you talking about doing a 360 review of yourself?

William Vanderbloemen:
Yes. Receiving the results of your 360.

Loren Feldman:
Well, how do you view it in terms of your employees? Do you do 360 reviews of them?

William Vanderbloemen:
We don’t. Maybe we should. I think the closest we get to that is, like Best Places to Work or culture surveys. We do them all. We administer them for clients all the time, so we self-administer one each year. And invariably, there’ll be anonymous comments about this department or that leader. But that’s not the same thing you’re asking.

Jay Goltz:
That’s where I have a problem. I don’t believe in anonymous anything. I believe I have a corporate culture—like, if they want to do it anonymously, keep it to yourself. I believe: Say something. Say something to your manager. Trust that they’ll take care of it. Trust that you can have a conversation. And I know, by no means do I think people should live in a bubble. I have developed a culture here that I know works, because people will tell me if they think I did something wrong. They tell me right to my face, and I appreciate it. And I thank them. So I don’t think you need that.

I’ll just say for myself, I don’t want to say for anyone else. In my particular case, I believe I’m running a healthy organization that, if somebody’s doing something that’s not right, someone’s going to speak up about it, and we will address it. I could see it being counterproductive to go out—

Loren Feldman:
But you’ve been surprised a few times.

Jay Goltz:
Absolutely. People said something. Sure, absolutely. But they do say something. I mean, most people are not going to come to the boss’s office. But I find that if you go down there and talk to them at their workstation, or the truth chamber, the car. Driving to a dinner together, driving anywhere, they’ll tell you stuff in the car they would have never in a million years told you sitting in an office. So I found there are ways of finding out stuff. Just go talk to people. That whole management by wandering around, I found that that works. You go talk to people, they’ll tell you if you ask them, if you think there’s a problem.

Loren Feldman:
William, I can’t let this go without asking, did you learn anything interesting about yourself when you had that awful process of the 360?

William Vanderbloemen:
I have to go back in five years.

Loren Feldman:
Now, come on.

Jay Goltz:
He’s blocked it out. He’s got PTSD from it, and now you’re bringing up all that stuff. Leave him alone.

William Vanderbloemen:
I think it was an old Plato quote: “The greater part of instruction is being reminded of the things you already know.” So I think the older I get, the more I’m like, “Dang it, am I still making that mistake?” Or you know, “I’m going too fast.” I’m not getting a lot of surprises. Let’s put it that way.

Jay Goltz:
As someone who’s older than you, I can tell you I’ve accepted that I do some stuff that’s wrong, and I’m trying to improve it. I’m always trying to improve it. So I accept it if somebody tells me something. Okay. The part that changed my life is simply the revelation of: I’m somewhat obsessive, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just not going to be perfect. I get it. And I’m going to try. I’m going to absolutely continue to try. But I have accepted that I’m going to screw some stuff up. And it’s okay. Because if you don’t do that, you will torture yourself and it’s not healthy.

Loren Feldman:
Jay, that reminds me, you told us at the beginning of this year that your goal for this year was not to do anything stupid. How’d you do?

Jay Goltz:
Wow. You know what? I’m happy to say I feel really good about it. I’ve had some very difficult management stuff I’ve had to work through, and I think we’ve done a very good job with it. I would say I’ve done well with that. I think I’ve learned from the past, and I think I’ve done very well with that. Now, do you want me to give you my wife’s number and call her up and see?

Loren Feldman:
I’ve got it, Jay.

William Vanderbloemen:
I was going to say, Jay, my morning prayer—it’s not original—was, “Lord, thank you so much that I’ve just had a good day, and I’ve treated people well. And I’ve been honoring, and I’ve been productive. Thank you so much for this day that has just gone without flaw, but I’m about to get out of bed…”

Jay Goltz:
Yeah, no. I don’t want to brag, but I think I’ve made every single mistake you can possibly make in business, and I’ve learned from it. So yeah, I’ve still got a few weeks to screw up. Now, you put some pressure on me, but so far, I think I’ve done well this year.

Loren Feldman:
All right, we’re almost out of time, and this is the last one we’re going to tape this year. So I want to ask you both the same question I asked you both last year, just as a way to kind of gauge what your mindset is. If somebody were to come along right now and offer you twice what you think your business is worth, would you be tempted to sell? William?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, everybody thinks their business is worth more than it is, so it’d be a big number. I don’t know. I think I’d have to drop back and say, “But then what would I do?” Because you can only play so much golf.

I’m doing something now where I try to advise candidates. I say, “Here’s the thing,” and I tell my kids this too: “If you can find something that you’re good at that’s needed, that leaves the world better than you found it, and that you enjoy doing, there’s your perfect job, you get all four of those to overlap, there are very few jobs that do that.” Hopefully, I’ve got a fair amount of time left in a career. I don’t know what that job would be, because right now I’m doing something that I’ve had some modicum of good fortune with. It is desperately needed to our clients. I do think it’s leaving the world better than I found it, and I enjoy it. So it’s hard for me to imagine what I’d do with my time. If I felt like, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime shot. I can secure the future of my grandchildren, and then I can figure out some non-profit to go run.” There’s always room to think. But it would have to be a pretty special offer.

Loren Feldman:
So you didn’t quite say no.

William Vanderbloemen:
That’s right.

Jay Goltz:
All right, let me help. I’m going to say no, because I’ve realized that—I never thought there was a phrase like this—but I have enough money, in that if I got all this money, I don’t know what I would do with it. And I would not be happy watching them destroy the company, because I’m confident they would. And I feel like I owe it to my 130 employees to not do that. So I believe I would think about it for 10 seconds. But no, I don’t believe I would do it, because I like going to work every day. I like my employees, and I feel good about what I’m doing, and I’m happy that I’m in a situation that I could afford to turn that down.

Loren Feldman:
All right. My thanks to Jay Goltz and William Vanderbloemen—for this conversation and for many conversations this year. As always, I really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing, guys.