Jason Cupp: That, to me, is powerful in the element of business, to be able to predict the way that someone's action is going to be in the completion of a task.
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Paul Giannamore: All right, Fat Pat.
Patrick Baldwin: I tracked down Jason Cupp. Jason was mentioned in Jonathan Pototschnik’s interview. Jonathan ran Service Autopilot, used the Kolbe Index, and gave a lot of credit to Jason and Jason's influence through Kolbe with Surface Autopilot and their success. I'm like, “I've got to track Jason down,” so I did it. Look at me.
Paul Giannamore: If you haven't read Jonathan Pototschnik’s episode, Jonathan is a wicked sharp guy and he's accomplished a lot in his life. I've heard from many people now that that was one of their favorite episodes. If you haven't read that, do give it a whirl. Jonathan turned us on to Jason and I have to tell you, he was a fascinating guy to talk to. I didn't know much about the Kolbe Index but Jonathan mentioned it when we interviewed him and there are quite a few surprises in this Jerry Springer of an episode. Patrick, what do you say?
Patrick Baldwin: What do you say we step into The Boardroom with Jason Cupp?
Paul Giannamore: Let's do this.
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Paul Giannamore: Welcome, Jason.
Jason Cupp: Welcome to our world that we're going to spend some time talking about. I’m excited to be here. Seriously, I always love talking with like-minded people about business, ideas, strategies, and all that.
Paul Giannamore: When we were talking to Jonathan, he raised the topic of this Kolbe test. Would you call it an exam, a test, or an inventory?
Jason Cupp: Neither.
Paul Giannamore: An index, right?
Jason Cupp: If I could kindly correct you, Kolbe A Index is the name of what it is. It’s not a test, not a questionnaire, it's an index.
Paul Giannamore: It certainly felt like a test to me. I'd heard about these things. In fact, we've had guests on here before. Mitch Smith, Fat Pat, if you recall, a former division president from Rollins, talked about a variety of different indices. They were different, they were DiSC, and then there was another one.
Patrick Baldwin: The PI maybe.
Paul Giannamore: Maybe that was it.
Jason Cupp: Predictive Index.
Paul Giannamore: Predictive index, that's right, but that's a different thing than the Kolbe index, is it not?
Jason Cupp: That's correct. For most of those DiSC, Predictive Index, and Myers-Briggs, there are hundreds of them out there, they typically measure either your personality. For most people, it’s whether or not you're an introvert or extrovert, whether you're in a motor or not, and those types of things. They measure your intelligence, how smart you are, and what your IQ is. The Kolbe index is something completely different than all of those.
In fact, Kolbe Corp holds an international patent on the ability to measure a person's instincts. The Kolbe A Index measures a person's instincts, which is different than personality and intelligence because it is the natural way that a person goes about performing tasks, completing tasks, staying on task, whether or not they need information to complete those tasks, the way that they communicate, the way that they problem solve, the way that they do, the action of doing, and it tells the path in which a person is going to complete a task. It's a powerful tool, which I'm sure we're going to talk about.
Paul Giannamore: Is part of that test determining how long it takes somebody to complete the test from the time they're sent the link? I'm not particularly good on tasks and you were so kind as to send us links. Fat Pat and I took the Kolbe Index. We're lab rats here in Jason's crazy little study. I got to be honest with you, Jason, I took that thing and I thought, “These questions are ridiculous. There's no way anyone's going to be able to figure anything out by how I'm answering these.” There were 3 or 4 of them, I wasn't even sure what the question was.
Jason Cupp: We can't predict a lot until we get the results back but there is an interesting case study that could be made about when an index is sent from our database to someone and when they take it. In terms of one element, which is how important is the completion of tasks, that's one of the instincts that we measure called Follow Thru. The Follow Thru measures whether or not people are going to prioritize and create lists, follow up structure, create a structure, and all of those types of things.
Those that are structured get the link and they have to complete that task. They typically do it relatively quickly. They might allocate the time, schedule for the next day or later that day, or sometimes they click the link and get it done because their instinct is a desire to complete a task, complete it on time, complete it within the timeframe, and complete the steps in the order in which they were supposed to be done. There is a little bit of theory in that but the theory comes through when we see the results.
Paul Giannamore: I'm wondering, Fat Pat, if you completed the exam before I did.
Patrick Baldwin: Jason would know. I don't know.
Paul Giannamore: I was proud of myself. I got this off my plate relatively early but I have a feeling I probably still did it after Fat Pat.
Jason Cupp: Interesting. Paul completed the index on Monday, September 18th, 2023 at 12:32 PM Central. You were since the link, one week prior, Monday, September 11th, 2023 at 3:16 PM Central.
Patrick Baldwin: Drumroll.
Jason Cupp: Patrick, interesting, you did win by a handful of hours.
Patrick Baldwin: Yes.
Jason Cupp: Patrick took the Kolbe A Index on Monday, September 18th, 2023 at 3:54 PM. You beat him by a margin of less than four hours.
Patrick Baldwin: Who won?
Paul Giannamore: there's no winning and losing in this, Patrick.
Jason Cupp: That's true.
Paul Giannamore: These matrices inform us.
Patrick Baldwin: Whatever. Stop taking Jason's side. Which one fits our profile then?
Paul Giannamore: You have much higher Follow Thru than I do if I have interpreted the results.
Jason Cupp: Paul did take it and I went and looked at the time trials. Paul did take the index about three and a half hours before you did, Patrick.
Paul Giannamore: As a matter of fact, in this particular case, the results are faulty. It shows Patrick has more Follow Thru. I was super proud because I got that off my plate, I had a ton of stuff to do, and I'm like, “Let me just get this thing done.” I was curious as to what the results would look like.
Patrick Baldwin: What's more impressive is you did it without me nagging you.
Paul Giannamore: This is true. Standard occurrence for us.
Patrick Baldwin: Yes.
Paul Giannamore: Every day, I hear, “Did you do this?” I lived my life in that realm, Jason, where I have twenty people constantly badgering me things for stuff but you already knew that. You knew that before you met me.
Jason Cupp: I did know that. I've been doing this Kolbe thing for almost twenty years and interpreted thousands upon thousands of people. I’ve worked with hundreds of teams. The interesting thing is in all of those people that I've worked with, I know a lot more about them than they ever know about me just by the four results of their Kolbe Index.
The interesting thing, Paul, is that you should have probably been nagged because your Follow Thru is a 2, which means that you prefer to create your own timeline. You prefer to complete tasks at your own pace. You love to multitask. It doesn't bother you to have a whole bunch of things going on all at one given time. You still love to complete tasks, don't get me wrong. It doesn't mean that you won't complete tasks, it just means that you're going to do it a little bit within your own box and your own guidelines and at your own timeline and when it's a little bit more convenient for you.
Patrick, on the other hand, is a 7 in Follow Thru, which means that he has to schedule it, put it on a list, maybe make a calendar invite for it, allocate the time, complete the task, check the work, double-check the work, hit the submit button, hit the submit button again, and confirm if the submit button went through. It's important for Patrick, he's a 7 and you're a 2, Paul, that you're a little bit more fluid in the way that you want to complete tasks whereas Patrick is a little bit more deliberate in the way that he wants to complete tasks.
Paul Giannamore: He's got calendar invites to take a dump. He schedules everything.
Patrick Baldwin: They take a long time.
Jason Cupp: How do you schedule that?
Paul Giannamore: I'm trying to figure that out, it's a great idea if you could pull it off.
Patrick Baldwin: This cup of coffee gets it done.
Paul Giannamore: You nailed it. In full transparency, I met Jason for the first time for a quick call to go over the results that we're going to discuss. I didn't have a whole lot of faith in this index but did he nail it. Jason, you nailed all of the attributes. As you were reading off my results, I watched Fat Pat over there nodding and saying, “That's him.”
Patrick Baldwin: I was more confident in Paul's results than my own. I was like, “That's definitely Paul.”
Paul Giannamore: Jason, you've given us an overview. Tell us, for a second, what you use this for and how it's helpful for folks in the business.
Jason Cupp: There are a lot of different uses. I would say that my specific use is to help build great teams. I believe having been an entrepreneur since the age of 12 that one of the greatest things that we can do in our business is develop the best possible team around us. As we develop that amazing team, we, frankly, need some elements of tools to be able to accomplish that, and the Kolbe A index is one of them.
The other thing that it does is allow it to be a great hiring tool. Hiring someone becomes more complex as time goes on and having another tool in our arsenal for making a great hire the first time is powerful. It also helps in conflict resolution between two employees or maybe conflict that exists between a team. We have the ability to use a tool for conflict resolution that's powerful. It also helps individual coaching. Sometimes I'll work directly with a business owner or a CEO or maybe a founder and that is something that's powerful.
The other thing that came up and I hadn't thought about it is I was talking to someone who's thinking about combining their business, which I know you guys are in that business, and they said, “We've got these two business owners and they're going to now be partnered together. How are they going to play well together?” That's another use.
There are lots of different ways that you can use it. I believe that since there's so much emphasis on teams and making sure that businesses have great people behind their great products, anything we can do to make sure that we have another check mark and validation and empowerment of building that team up is something that I think is crazy powerful.
Paul Giannamore: One of the things that I noticed that you did is you provided us individual results but you also combined those results and there was some discourse on there as to how I should deal with Fat Pat and how he should deal with me and so on and so forth. Is that pretty standard in what you do? Instead of just 2 individuals, could you do that for 10?
Jason Cupp: Absolutely. When I reveal results to people, I always tell them that, in the first call, especially when there are multiple people on the call, whether it's 2 or 10, the first goal is for them to understand what Kolbe is and what Kolbe isn't. The second goal is for them to understand their individual results and who they are.
The third goal would be for them to understand their coworker’ or partners’ whatever-it-might-be results. The fourth is how all of that plays together in running a business or a household or whatever it might be. The answer is yes. In almost all of my conversations, I believe that one of the biggest parts of Kolbe is this idea called mutual respect, having mutual respect for another human being and the way that they might go about accomplishing tasks.
It might be different from you but the end result is exactly the same. Absolutely, that's the team part of it. That's two individuals working closely together and the way that they're instinctively wired can impact the way that they're going to go about accomplishing the tasks that they have on any given day in any given circumstance, both personally and professionally.
Paul Giannamore: Are the questions static? If I took that test last week and I take it again two years from now, will it be the same questions?
Jason Cupp: The deck is shuffled, for sure, to create a good algorithm. The general questions are similar but will stack in different ways. I've taken the Kolbe A index four times in my life. I took it for the first time over twenty years ago and I've taken it four times and in those four times, different life situations, and different business situations. All of my results have come back to be exactly the same.
One of the most powerful things about the Kolbe index is that since we're measuring a person's natural instincts, those natural instincts are born into us, they do not change over time, and they do not change based on events in our lives because they're natural instincts. The statistic is 94% to 97% of the time someone takes a Kolbe A index once and takes it again, the results are going to be almost exactly the same. The reason that's relevant to the question you asked is that I've taken it four times. I would say that I know a decent amount about Kolbe. Every single time I take the index, my results come back the same as I'm answering the questions possibly in slightly different ways.
Paul Giannamore: You anticipated my next question. How many times have you taken it? Has it always been the same? Clearly, it has. That's been over multiple years.
Jason Cupp: I can count on two hands because I'm up to six total people that I've worked with that have taken the Kolbe A Index once, taken it again, and their results have changed. I can count on everybody who’s reading this in hands and toes of the time that people have taken it a second time and the results have come back to be the same again.
The statistic is 94% to 97%. We sometimes occasionally have some people who take it once and take it again and the results change. As I said, most people are curious and want to take it a second time. We're like, “Sure, no problem. We'll issue another index.” That result comes back to be fundamentally the exact same.
To me, that creates reliability and predictability and you can begin to anticipate the way you and your team members around you are going to handle stressful situations, communicate, deal with adversity, complete tasks, and all of those things. That, to me, is powerful in the element of business, to be able to predict the way that someone's action is going to be in the completion of a task.
Patrick Baldwin: Jason, could you or should you use the Kolbe A when it comes to hiring decisions before you make an offer of employment?
Jason Cupp: We strongly recommend it. There are a couple of hoops that you have to jump through to make sure that it's legal and that it passes the HR bench tests. We recommend that Kolbe and what's called the RightFit System is used pre-employment, it's going to be a large determination of some element of success in a hire so we do recommend that, for sure.
Paul Giannamore: On that hiring discussion though, for example, I learned my own results and I do job interviews every single week. If I have a job interview, if I were to say, “Take this test,” the guy takes a test, the question is, don't I need some historical data to compare this against? I wouldn't even know what I'm looking for. Would I want to test everyone in the company and say, “I want somebody like Erica or Lane and I don't want somebody like Franco.” How is it used by an employer?
Jason Cupp: Taking the Kolbe A Index, which is what I issued to both of you, is not a validator of whether or not someone will be able to instinctively operate within that position. There are several other steps that have to go through it. Let's say you're hiring an office administrative person in your business, you would want to issue an index called Kolbe C Index about the office administrator position. That index is usually sent to the person who is the supervisor of the office administrator. They think they answer the questions to the index about what they would want out of an office administrator.
If you've got other people that you would want to offer influence in, maybe that's the owner of the business, maybe that's another office administrator who is an all-star employee, or maybe it's somebody who has some institutional knowledge about the organization, it could be able to offer some input. You can issue Kolbe Cs, which are about a job.
We take the Kolbe Cs and we smash them into what's called a range of success. That range of success then determines what the key instinctual traits are to be able to deliver the range of success in that position. You then take the Kolbe A. For the candidates, we always tell them, “Issue a Kolbe A only to top candidates.”
Let's say you go through your interview process and you come up with two that are awesome. You issue two Kolbe As to those individuals, smash that to the Kolbe Cs into the range of success that gives us a candidate report like when we were all in school, A through F, and that is applicable in terms of whether or not you make a hire or not. It gives that business owner, HR professional, or decision-maker another tool to say, “This potential team member could be an all-star in this position instinctively.”
Patrick Baldwin: Jason, you do a lot more than just Kolbe though. You started your business career. You mentioned entrepreneurial in your teens but you grew a successful landscaping business if I understand right.
Jason Cupp: That is correct.
Paul Giannamore: He did that all with the Kolbe test, right?
Patrick Baldwin: Yeah, it was all on the back of Kolbe.
Jason Cupp: I didn’t. I did it almost entirely without the Kolbe Index. I got to tell you, because it's of interest, when I was 12 years old, the first business that I started was out of my middle school locker selling gum. My dad would take me to Sam's Club, I would buy one of those big tubs of Hubba Bubba gum, and I would sell it in between classes. I will tell you that right outside my office right now is my locker hanging on the wall in my house, locker number 100, where I started my first business. The point is that I was hustling Hubba Bubba bubble gum in between classes when I was 12 years old.
Patrick Baldwin: I love it. Fast forward, it wasn't selling gum that you met Jonathan Pototschnik, it's because you have a history of owning a landscape business, right?
Jason Cupp: Correct. I started, like so many other people, mowing lawns when I was 13 years old. I wanted to buy a four-wheeler, that's what I want to do so I started mowing lawns. Lo and behold, that lawn care landscaping business grew to be a multimillion-dollar corporation, which was pretty cool. I did it for a long time. I exited the business over fifteen years ago and I've been doing this consulting thing for almost twenty years so you can do the math.
The story about meeting Jonathan is a unique one, it has to do with Kolbe. He was forwarded an email chain that I was on and he saw my signature line on my email that said I was a Kolbe certified growth consultant. He had taken the Kolbe A Index through another medium at some other time. He took it and he literally threw it in a desk drawer in a pile somewhere and never got it interpreted and didn't know what it meant. He saw that on my signature line and he called me up.
It's probably 2013 or 2014-ish. He sent me an email and said, “My name is Jonathan Pototschnik. I live down in Dallas, Texas. I took the Kolbe A Index. Would you mind getting on a call with me and telling me what this thing meant?” I said, “Sure,” so we got on a call, and I interpreted the results. We had no clue that we were dancing in similar spaces. We knew a lot of the same people. He said, “Do you have any clients down in Dallas?” I go, “Yeah, I have one in Fort Worth.”
He goes, “The next time you're in town, come over, and let's grab lunch.” It's the famous, as all of our mutual friends know, the lunch that turned into dinner, that's what I call it. We started at lunch, went back to the office, hung out in his office all afternoon, and then we ended up going to dinner. I changed my flight and flew home the next day rather than that evening from Dallas. What we realized at that time was we had incredibly similar mindsets about people, business, money, life, family, travel, cars, and experiences.
We still, to this day, laugh because we have so many similarities in our friends, who we do business with, our mindset, and all that stuff. We went and did a whole bunch of cool stuff together in terms of education. He's a great friend, I cherish him and his friendship, and all the different experiences we've had. It all started because he wanted to have his Kolbe Index interpreted, we got on a phone call and did it.
Paul Giannamore: With all these similarities, do you guys have the same Kolbe A Index scores?
Jason Cupp: Interestingly enough, we're one number apart. We’re similar. We taught at an academy where we had a bunch of people who would jump online with us and listen to us banter for hours and hours on end about business topics. People always ask us, “How can you guys go on for hours and hours about one topic?” It was probably very much related to the fact that we had similar Kolbe Indexes. We also learned how to feed off of one another in terms of the way that we communicated. We would look up at the clock and go, “Holy cow, we have been on Zoom or Webex for five hours talking about one topic nonstop.” People were, by the way, weirdly, still listening, and we don't know why.
Paul Giannamore: It's interesting that you mentioned that he tracked you down to interpret the results because I could see how that would be a problem. The results, in a vacuum, meant nothing to me. The way you walked Fat Pat and me through it, I'm like, “Now I understand what this all means.” When you look at the barren results, they don't mean much, and maybe this might be a good time for us to plow into some of those. You're like a modern-day tarot card reader.
Jason Cupp: It's interesting you say that, Paul. I'll fully admit, I have a dog in the fight but you nailed it. Jonathan isn't alone. People take the Kolbe Index in a variety of different ways and they don't understand what it means. It does need to be interpreted because it's not an evolving result but the way that the results are used is evolving. Your life is going to go on.
I have to tell you, every single morning when I wake up, I know that my results are paramount in the way that my day is going to go. It's evolving in that but my results stay the same, I know it's going to be constant. That requires those results to be interpreted. It also requires when there are complexities that I mentioned earlier like maybe between two individuals or with a team, that's not something you just get to go in and use your Kolbe results, throw it on the conference room table, and say, “Here's my excuse as to why this is happening or that's not happening.” That's not the case.
It requires some element of analysis to understand the why's behind that. I am fortunate to have become Kolbe certified in 2006. January of 2006 was my certification class. Years of doing this and I'm still learning new things. I've also made some mistakes, I'll fully admit that I've made some mistakes in interpretation early on where I didn't quite understand the theory. Now, it's just so much fun to unlock this. It was fun to be with you guys in our call to unlock that and talk through what these things meant and see how those legs could potentially grow as you guys learn more about your results.
Patrick Baldwin: Paul wants you to go on the record and tell everyone what's wrong with me.
Paul Giannamore: Everyone has suspected for many moons that there's a lot of things wrong with me so we might as well just go and let it out.
Jason Cupp: If I might expose one of the first times I talked to Patrick on the phone, I was driving, and I think we ended up talking for an hour, maybe an hour and a half on the phone. Can I say this? Is that okay? You asked me a question.
Patrick Baldwin: Sure. I know what you're going to say.
Jason Cupp: He said, “Can the Kolbe Index explain to me why I'm awkward?” This is what you said, am I wrong?
Patrick Baldwin: This is true. Do you agree that I'm awkward?
Paul Giannamore: Slightly.
Patrick Baldwin: Slightly? That's generous.
Jason Cupp: I'm not trying to pull shade, I'm just simply speaking facts because I'm a fact-based person. My Kolbe result tells me that I deal with facts. Usually, I have the facts correct. Do you recall what my answer was?
Patrick Baldwin: You just said I'm screwed and deal with it.
Jason Cupp: No, that is not what I said. What I said was I don't know, it depends on where your awkwardness lies, and why that's being interpreted as being awkward. Your results could possibly tell me why you feel that you might be awkward or others might feel that you might be awkward.
Patrick Baldwin: Looking at my results, where does that come from?
Paul Giannamore: Patrick, before we even do that, should I get the Mexican in here and ask him why you're awkward?
Patrick Baldwin: No. We can't put that on the show.
Paul Giannamore: That's very true, we can't.
Patrick Baldwin: Why am I awkward?
Jason Cupp: I didn't say you were awkward. You asked me if you're awkward. Let me jump in a little bit to the theory. There are four different action modes in the world of Kolbe, Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Starter, and Implementer. Those who are dominant or Initiating Fact Finder need details, information, and statistics.
Those who are dominant or Initiating Follow Thru need to follow a schedule, need to know what the checklist is, need to know what the steps are, and need to know what deadlines are. You are dominant in both of those. You're Initiating Fact Finder, Initiating Follow Thru. Someone could interpret you as being awkward if you ask lots of probing questions in terms of needing details or information paralysis.
If you're constantly seeking statistics, information, or reading reviews, someone could find that awkward because maybe they don't need that same level of detail orientation. They could also find it awkward because you want to know the process, the steps, the deadline, or the calendar, when something's going to happen, what time something is going to start, and what time it's going to stop. They put the check marks and the steps necessary to get ready for that.
If they're not wired that way, that could feel awkward as well. I don't like the word awkward but that was the word that you used so I'm happy to unpack it. Instinctively, someone who is Initiating Fact Finder, which means they need details, and they’re talking to someone who's not an Initiating Fact Fighter, they don't need details. That can create this disparity of needs in terms of those instinctive requirements called counteracting.
You're going to initiate and someone else might counteract that and sometimes that can create conflict between two people. Someone needs information and someone doesn't need information, how do we make a decision then? That can be a differing of opinion about the way that the decision-making process goes.
Paul Giannamore: I'm going to, in mid-sentence, lob a surprise. Jason, I forwarded you another Kolbe A Index that was taken by Dylan, our producer. It was a surprise. He did it and he would like to pop into the show. He's the one who masters our audio here and other things. I'd like for you to have a little chat with Dylan. Can we do that? Can we bring in a guest?
Jason Cupp: Totally. Bring it on. I can't wait to meet Dylan.
Paul Giannamore: It's unfortunate that we talked about Patrick's awkwardness while Dylan was not on the line because he would have appreciated that. Jason, you're probably taking a look at the results. Dylan's results are quite a bit different than mine.
Jason Cupp: They are.
Paul Giannamore: I know you haven't done a mashup. I'm interested in you doing a Paul and Dylan comparison in your mind when he hops in.
Jason Cupp: This is going to be a fun one.
Paul Giannamore: Looking at my results here, if I look at mine versus Fat Pat, mine is 9263, and Patrick's is 7733. Does that mean I am more intelligent than Patrick?
Jason Cupp: That does not mean that you're more intelligent. If you see the top of our time together, this has nothing to do with intelligence. Yeah
Paul Giannamore: I just thought you were trying to not make one of us feel bad.
Jason Cupp: No. Kathy Kolbe was on this. Kathy Kolbe created the Kolbe Index. She would say everyone's results are perfect and she's right. When you can find the answer to a person's natural instincts, those are perfect results because they're uniquely them. It's cool to see working with people on a regular basis.
We have Kolbe results on almost every single one of our clients and that allows us to know what their decision-making process is going to be, how they're going to work through stress, their businesses, and how they're going to communicate elements. It's cool to see that be played out if you will. I don't think that it makes anyone more intelligent. I do think that knowing the way that they're hardwired in terms of their results is powerful.
Paul Giannamore: Jason, meet Dylan.
Jason Cupp: Hi, Dylan. How are you doing?
Dylan Seals: Hi. Nice to meet you.
Paul Giannamore: You've seen his results before you've seen him. Does he look like what his results told you?
Jason Cupp: He has a Ferrari in the background. How do you get a Ferrari in your office? I want that. I want a Ferrari in my office.
Dylan Seals: You quick-start and blow a hole through your garage wall.
Jason Cupp: That's pretty cool. That's a good idea. Did you just decide one day to blow that wall out and install a Ferrari? What Ferrari is that? Is that a Mondial?
Dylan Seals: Testarossa.
Jason Cupp: Hard to see. You need a better-quality camera.
Dylan Seals: I know and it's not set up right now. I wish I had backed it in like I normally do. I was lazy the other night when I came in. The back of it is what's spectacular. Thank you.
Jason Cupp: I would have been able to tell that it was a Testarossa because the ass of a Testarossa is identifiable.
Dylan Seals: Ain't nothing like it.
Paul Giannamore: Dylan, this is like a Jerry Springer show, I got Jason up on the stage, and I bring somebody out from the back.
Dylan Seals: It's not my kid. I didn't do it. It wasn't me.
Paul Giannamore: Jason was going through some of the results and he started with the first one, which is known as Fact Finder. Jason, I’ll hand the microphone back to you, my friend.
Jason Cupp: Paul shot over an email and he did Jerry Springer me and said, “By the way, I'm going to bring Dylan on.” I didn't even know if Dylan was a real person because I’d been hearing them talk about this other member of his team, the Mexican, who's not been around. He's not been able to produce him. He's tried multiple times to bring him in and apparently, he's disappeared. At any rate, nice to meet you.
Dylan Seals: Likewise.
Jason Cupp: You have a very unique result. In terms of your Kolbe A, I love it. I love all results but this result is unique. You're dominant in initiating quick starts. You're a 9 in Quick Start. By the way, welcome to the 9 in Quick Start brotherhood. I'm a 9 in Quick Start as well. We can trade Quick Start stories. Those of us who have a seven or higher in Quick Start, which means we initiate action in Quick Start, we love thinking outside the box. We love making decisions with our gut. We love multiple solutions to one problem. We love thinking through crazy ways of solving issues.
By the way, a lot of times, we're right even though we might not have anything else behind that decision-making process. I say we because I'm a 9 in Quick Start as well, we love risk, and we love doing things at the last minute. In fact, our best work is typically at the last minute. If you have a deadline of October 1st and it's September 26th, when are you doing that project that's due on October 1st? Come on, Dylan, let's be honest. When are you doing the project?
Dylan Seals: September the 30th.
Jason Cupp: Or October 1st, at the very last minute. It’s a great trait. For those who don't know that you're instinctively wired that way, it boggles their mind. Especially if you're like Patrick with an initiating Follow Thu, you're like, “Why didn't you do this in advance? Why didn't you do it like an elephant, eat it one bite at a time? Why did you do it at the last minute and push yourself right up to the deadline to crank it out?” Either way, it’s completely fine. It’s the way that you're hardwired versus the way that Patrick is hardwired.
That 9 in Quick Start is unique like any other result. You're going to make decisions with your gut. You're going to go with what feels right. You're going to go with that first thing that pops into your mind. You want to go fast. Also, your preferred communication style is talking. Have you ever received that long email? It might be color-coded, bulleted, or have statistics in it. Have you ever received that email?
Dylan Seals: It's painful.
Jason Cupp: You might hit reply and you might go, “Great, when can you talk on the phone?” You might just pick up your phone and call the person or send a calendar invite because there's no way that you're going to reply to all of this detailed orientation. You'll reply to it but you'd prefer to reply to it verbally, “Let's talk through it. Let's crank out the ideas. Let's make the decision.” Once the decision is made, you're done with the decision, and you're moving on to the very next thing. Am I wrong?
Dylan Seals: That sounds accurate.
Paul Giannamore: It sounds very accurate. Jason, while we're on that topic, Quick Start is the third column here in the results. Dylan, of course, is an off-the-charts 9, I am a 6, and Fat Pat is a 3. Jason, you're also in the 9 camp. We understood what a nine is. Let's talk about the middle of the spectrum there and then on the Fat Pat end and what that might mean.
Jason Cupp: The middle of the spectrum is called React, which would be 4 - 6. A 4 - 6 in Quick Start, they'll risk, but they're also going to double-check. Dylan and I, we're going to make the decision, and we're going to go for it. 4 - 6, they're going to be able to think outside the box but they're probably going to lean on what their dominant or initiating instinct is to be able to validate that decision. If it's Fact Finder, they're going to go get the details, they're going to check the process, and so on and so forth. Those that are 1 – 3 in Quick Start are going to be more risk-averse.
Risk, in my world, is not defined as money. A lot of times, when they hear the word risk, especially when talking to business owners and entrepreneurs, they think, “I'm risking my money. I’m risking an investment. I'm ponying up some cash and hoping to make more.” It's also risking your time, reputation, and knowledge. There are a lot of other elements of risk. Those that are 1- 3 in Quick Start are going to be a little bit more risk-averse, they're not going to like change as much, they're not going to like fast movements, and they want to be a little bit more methodical.
Paul Giannamore: Let's go to Follow Thru, the second column. I am a 2, Dylan is a 2, and Fat Pat is a 7. Jason, let's get you into the mix too, what are you?
Jason Cupp: I am a 2 as well. I'm a deuce.
Paul Giannamore: Deuces and sevens. What do we got?
Jason Cupp: 7 in Follow Thru love processes, they love the ability to calendar things, and they love knowing what the steps of things are, like how to accomplish a test. They might love reading a recipe, “Step one is this. Step two is this. Step three is this.” Someone who doesn't like to read recipes and just throws some stuff into a bowl and hopes that it tastes good. They don't want to follow the steps if you will. Those that are 7 or higher in Follow Thru like things to be organized.
Oftentimes, their files are color-coded. They like label makers. Everything has its place. The stapler or the phone is always to the right of the computer, it's never to the left. If you move it to the left, they're moving it back to the right. When I did a lot of live events, I loved grabbing somebody who I knew was 8 or 9 in Follow Thru. Taking somebody's wallet and moving their driver's license to an inside pocket, taking their Amex card, and putting it in my front pocket, taking their cash, and moving their cash around and not organizing it by denomination, and then handing their wallet back to them.
There was this nervous tic, they would be shaking, and they would immediately start moving everything back. They'd then be staring at me because I had their credit card in my pocket. They'd be like, “Can I have my American Express card back?” It made them anxious that things weren't in the place that they would need to be. That's 7 or higher in Follow Thru. Here's another interesting thing in 7 or higher in Follow Thru, they love to focus on one task at a time. It's starting a task and completing a task in a session. They don't like to be interrupted.
A lot of times, we do change agents when we have a distracted 7 or higher in Follow Thru. We get them into a private space, an office with a door, or a cubicle that's away from everybody so they don't get interrupted or distracted because they want to be task-focused and complete things one at a time. You go to the counteract part of Follow Thru, all of us who are 2s can multitask, love to be interrupted, can be interrupted midstream, and we're going to go right back to where we were.
Let's say my phone rings right now and it is my dad, my dad could be 78 in a week, and I'm going to answer his phone call anytime he calls me. I answered my dad's phone call and I go, “Dad, are you okay? I'm recording something online right now.” He tells me that he's okay, I put my phone down, and I continue exactly where I was. It was no distraction. It was no buffering. It was nothing. I'm able to go right back into the task that I'm doing.
I could probably go and read emails and reply to messages on my computer while we're recording and you wouldn't even know that I was doing it because I'm a 2 in Follow Thru. It also means that I do not necessarily need to follow a schedule. I value a schedule above all else. My life is scheduled but that doesn't mean that the end all be all of my life is following a schedule or being on time.
Constantly, in my business, much like all of you, you probably have to shuffle the deck every single day and some things become prioritized or reprioritized, I do it like a champ. I have no problem canceling something. I have no problem needing to move appointments around. It's not out of any disrespect for what I'm doing. It's all about reshuffling the deck and prioritizing things. For Patrick, 7 or higher and Follow Thru, it probably is incredibly painful.
If you're two minutes late to a meeting or you have to reschedule something cause you're almost like, “I've had this in my calendar for a week. What am I going to do to try to reschedule this?” These are the things that we think about as we look at Follow Thru as one of those action modes. It’s interesting. The cool part about it is you think about business, we frankly need both of those extremes in our business. We don't need all structure and all processes. We need people to think outside the box and be able to multitask and maybe not be nearly as organized as someone who's incredibly organized being a 7, 8, or 9 in Follow Thru.
Paul Giannamore: Let us move on to Fact Finder. Jason, you talked about that a few minutes before Dylan got on. In the Fact Finder, Dylan is a 3, Fat Pat is a 7, and I am a 9. What are you, Jason?
Jason Cupp: I'm a 7. Initiating Fact Finder should be 7 or higher. We need information. We need details. We need specifics. We need research. We love to read reviews. All facts lie in the past. We like to look to the past to be able to predict what's going to happen in the future. We’re detail-orientated. We probably look at words in detail and look at numbers in detail. We can read a financial statement if we've got a background in accounting, statistics, or math. We can read a document and pull out and pick out elements. If somebody says, “What did the P&L say last month?” We say, “We made $122,917.” We’re precise in the way we answer specific questions.
Those who are 3 or lower in Fact Finder will say, “I made about $100,000.” They don't need that level of detail orientation. They can truncate things. They can make decisions without details and without reading reviews. The example I love to take and most anybody who's reading this can relate to this is when you need to buy something online.
Let's call it Amazon. A lot of people buy things on Amazon. Can you buy something on Amazon without reading the reviews? Most people who are Initiating Fact Finders, 7 or higher in Fact Finder, will go down the rabbit hole of reading lots of reviews to be able to make a decision. That can be a $10 item on Amazon. It's di minimis in the whole scheme of spending money.
God forbid, you're doing things like buying a car or buying a home where you have to do lots and lots of research, “What's the community like? What are the taxes like? What are the schools like? Where's the closest grocery store?” Lots of detail orientation when you're 7 or higher in Fact Finder. Like with Follow Thru, businesses need both, they need analysts, they need people to look at detail orientation, and/or they need people to simplify things and make decisions with no details whatsoever.
Paul Giannamore: That sounds pretty accurate. We know each other here in this discussion. That is accurate for Dylan. If I said, “Dylan, what'd you do last year?” He would think for a second and give me a round number. I would probably be different. I would have reels of documents and all sorts of things.
Patrick Baldwin: Dylan, do you buy stuff on Amazon without reading reviews?
Dylan Seals: This is accurate to these results. I will look at the star. Is it 4 or 5 stars or whatever it is in the amount of reviews given? I might pop open the first two. I'll look at the top three products and whichever one the metrics look better, not even digging in the reviews, I’ll just get that one.
Patrick Baldwin: It must be nice.
Dylan Seals: It’s probably a stapler. If it's a camera, I'm going to do a little more research or something. If it's some incidental thing that I need here and there, I'm not going to dig too deep.
Jason Cupp: Here's another interesting thing about those that are Initiating Fact Finder, sometimes I'll have Initiating Fact Finder say, “I'm not detail-oriented. I never read reviews,” or, “I never have to get details about anything.” They make these big blanket statements to me. My job is to validate whether or not that statement is legitimate or not. I'll ask them probing questions. Oftentimes, what I find is that their blanket statement is about a repetitive action.
Let's say they always went to the same restaurant, they didn't even have to look at the menu because they knew they were going to always get the bone and ribeye because that's what they've always done. That would say, “I don't even need to look at the menu. I just got the bone and ribeye.” “How many times have you gotten the bone and ribeye?” “Every single time I've gone to that steak restaurant.”
It's a repetitive action that's happened in the past. They feel like they don't need the detailed orientation. God forbid, it's not a bone and ribeye and now they've got something else that's on the special. They're then going to ask all their questions to determine whether or not they do the bone and ribeye or they get something new because it's new and different. I'm not saying all the time, I can dial it back to, “Is this a repetitive action?”
Paul, you're a 9 in Fact Finder, that's strong to quite strong to use the movie line. The 9 in Fact Finder means that you probably find yourself going down the rabbit hole of seeking data, possibly information paralysis on things that maybe you don't know, or there are high stakes to it, there's lots of risk or elements of decision making that occurs. True?
Paul Giannamore: I consume a tremendous amount of data and I love it and that's what I live in. I was in New York with the Mexican and, case in point, we showed up at a restaurant. I'd never been to the restaurant before. It was an Indian restaurant. I love Indian food. This kid has never even had Indian before and he didn't even care to look at the menu, he's like, “I don't even need the menu.”
Of course, I'm studying this thing, “What do they have here? How do they make this?” I'm reading about the different ingredients and every different dish and see if it's different than my favorite Indian place. After about ten minutes of reading the menu, he grabbed it out of my hand and called me a few choice words, and we carried on with our meal. Yes, I can see how that is. It's pretty accurate for all of us.
Jason Cupp: The Kolbe A Index allows us to get way above the clouds on big things like huge business decisions but then it also can get di minimus like ordering a $10 stapler on Amazon or going to an Indian restaurant in New York City. Jonathan and I are similar in Kolbe results, I'm a 7292, and he's an 8272, or something like that. We're very similar.
Here's another interesting thing. One would think that because we're both Initiating Fact Finders when we go to dinner, we would pour over the menu that we've dealt with. We have this thing only because, and here's where the Fact Finder comes in, we've probably eaten 200 meals together in our life by now. We know that we like a lot of the same things. We'll go to a restaurant and Jonathan or I will say, “Bring us three of your favorite things on the menu and we'll go back to our conversation. Bring us your favorite cocktail. Bring us three of your favorite things on the menu.”
I remember there was one time we were in Barcelona and all this food came out. They're like, “You silly Americans. We're going to bring you all the food and we're going to run this bill out.” It was awesome because we'd rather have the conversation relationally than to sit there and pour over a menu that's maybe in a foreign language.
We know one another so well that if we say, “Bring us your favorite things,” we're going to like the majority of them. Isn't that interesting? Normally, Fact Finders would be like, “What are the ingredients and what is this made of? How do you prepare it? How much is it?” All these different things. At the end of the day, we've proven ourselves to one another because we've spent so much time together that it's like, “We'd rather continue the conversation.” Pretty interesting.
Paul Giannamore: On this very show, oftentimes, I say, “What does the data say?” Does treating something in some way improve retention rates or does it not?” Everyone always has gut reactions. A lot of business owners think, “It's either X or Y because of this.” For me, it always has to be okay, “What does the data say?” I don't care about your gut feeling, I don't care about your instinct, what does the actual data say? We're oftentimes wrong. I say it all the time.
I say in staff meetings and we're on a Zoom and I got people all around the world and I want to dig deep into a particular topic and I can see some eyes rolling. I would imagine if they took the Kolbe A Index, those particular individuals might be a little bit on the lower side of the Fact Finding scale than myself, which I never thought about.
Jason Cupp: That's probably true. They come with some instinctive reason that they're saying, “Let's do it this way,” or, “I can delete the data,” or, “I don't need to go after the data.” Like what Dylan said, he's going to look at how many reviews and what those overarching reviews. He might read the first two and then he's going to click buy.
It’s not the case with you, Paul. Even if it's a $10 stapler, you're going to read reviews, you're going to look at the pictures, and you're going to read more than two reviews. You're probably going to find value in the 4.6 with 3,000 reviews but you're going to read not 2 or 3 reviews. If you find one that's bad, then you're going to want to read all the bad ones to try to validate whether or not the bad review was legit or not.
Paul Giannamore: I'm disappointed that Amazon doesn't have the mean, median, mode, and standard distributions on the reviews. I've got a spreadsheet set up for that so don't worry. I'm not a brilliant mathematician by any means. In fact, I hate math. I'm far more of a literary guy so it's weird but I do like the synthesis and interpretation of data in everything that we do.
I'm glad I have people here who don't care about that sort of stuff. Otherwise, sometimes things don't tend to get done as we all know. We have another column, which is the far right column here on the results page, and this is for the Implementer bucket. Dylan is a 7, Fat Pat is a 3, and Paul is a 3. Jason, what are you on the implementer scale?
Jason Cupp: I'm a 2.
Paul Giannamore: Let's talk about what that means.
Jason Cupp: Implementers are awesome. Those who are 7 or higher in Implementer like to physically do. They value quality, they value tools, and they value doing it. Kathy Kolbe, a handful of years ago, started talking about haptics, using your fingers to do things. A lot of times, people love to use tools to fix things, and they oftentimes have hobbies that are hands-on like woodworking and painting. They love to repair things. Dylan mentioned that he knocked the wall down between his office and his garage. Did you physically knock the wall down, Dylan?
Dylan Seals: No, I paid somebody to do it.
Jason Cupp: Would you, if you had the time?
Dylan Seals: No.
Jason Cupp: Why?
Dylan Seals: I like to stay in my lane where I'm productive at things that move the needle for me and then afford other people the opportunity to do things that they enjoy. Sitting around and coming up with the idea moving that wall is going to improve my life, I did a ton of that, drawing it out, conceptualizing it, and all that stuff.
Jason Cupp: It totally makes sense. Oftentimes, those that are 7 or higher in Implementer are the ones that want to knock the wall down. They want to do the project, that's where their happy space is. You conceptualize something that was different than that, which makes sense. A lot of times, when I'm talking to someone who is a 7 or higher in Implementer, when they have a leaky faucet, they're the ones that want to fix it.
It has nothing to do with money, it has nothing to do with the way they use their time, and it has nothing to do with trying to give somebody else an opportunity as everything to do with. They just love fixing things, they love doing it, and they love the art of completing a task and having it be them that completes it. Those who are 3 or lower in Implementer, like the rest of us, believe that anybody can go and do a task. Think about it from a team standpoint, we don't need to do it ourselves, we don't need to assure ourselves that the quality was there. We believe that others could do it and do it just as good as we would.
The example that I like to give is, and you all know this team member, we're all connected to business in different ways, the team member who needs to validate the results. If a project is being done, they need to see it, they need to touch it, they need to feel it, and they need to go out and make sure that it was done right. They put the check mark in their own box. That's usually someone who’s 7 or higher in implementer.
Those of us who are 3 or lower might say, “Did it get completed?” “Yes.” “Does it look good?” “Yes.” They then go on with their life. They don't need to read the reviews and they don’t need to do anything, they just know that it's done. Those with a 7 or higher, if you look deep into the results, want to demonstrate that it was done right either to themselves or someone else. It's important for them to say, “Come here, come with me, let me show you what this was.” Via photo, video, or hands-on, they like to assure and confirm that the quality is there in every single thing.
Sometimes they overwork in the moment. Sometimes they do more work than what is necessary to deliver a quality product that isn't needed by the client or isn't needed by the organization, it's needed by them. It's very much about them delivering a quality product, and that's important to them to have that quality product out there with their name on it. If it's not quality to their specifications, they will want to try to correct it to get that quality to their specifications.
Dylan Seals: That exactly speaks to me. When I was going through this, the scenario of me being on set with my team and with Paul kept popping into my head, and that's when I was thinking, “If the shot is not right, I'm going to grab the camera and show the cameraman. I want it like this. Leave it like that and care about focus and don't mess with any other settings.” If we're here doing post-production, I'm going to get my hands dirty in the editing room. I get more and more involved as the projects get ready to go out the door to ensure all that quality. That speaks to me a whole lot.
Jason Cupp: You nailed it. The desire that you have to go grab the camera and either do it yourself or visually show someone how to do it is your 7 in Implementer, hands down.
Dylan Seals: It's hard for me to delegate and let it be 80% of what I would have done.
Jason Cupp: That makes sense. I hear that from those that are Implementers all the time. The challenge is this idea of overworking at the moment, trying to hit a quality standard that is uniquely yours. That's awesome, that's your signature, and that's amazing. Patrick and Paul, you know Dylan better than I do because I met him as he came on the Jerry Springer show a couple of moments ago, but I have to imagine that you all see that there are times when you just know that if Dylan's going to touch something, it's going to be done correctly. The quality is going to be there. The quality is not in question.
Patrick Baldwin: I can't even give a sarcastic response to that.
Paul Giannamore: I can.
Patrick Baldwin: Go for it.
Paul Giannamore: Dylan has been dating your wife on the side.
Patrick Baldwin: Whose wife?
Paul Giannamore: This is part of the Jerry Springer aspect of the show. There was a reason we did this, Jason. This wasn't about the Kolbe Index, it’s all a front. I'm running the show from now on.
Jason Cupp: All of a sudden, it's an intervention. Here we are, let’s talk about this. What are you feeling? Tell me about your feelings.
Paul Giannamore: You tell us about your feelings now that you found this out.
Dylan Seals: Speaking of feelings, when I first opened this thing up, it scared the shit out of me because all I saw in that first little thing was I'm an uninformed cocksure jackass who never turns in work.
Jason Cupp: Not true.
Dylan Seals: When I read that I'm low in Fact Finding, I'm even lower in Follow Thru, but I'll jump into something with a Quick Start. Up until the last few minutes, I was fuzzy on what Implementer looked like. Where should I have insecurity about these results? Where should I be like, “These are what I bring to a team and that gets balanced out somewhere.”
Paul Giannamore: Can he put these on a dating profile?
Jason Cupp: You could. They might not understand what it means. I'm not glad that you said that because I believe that that's the way you felt. I saw your results and I saw your results while you were jumping on with us.
Paul Giannamore: He was backstage.
Jason Cupp: I said to myself, “Here's this guy who is this innovative, outside-of-the-box thinker who has tons of solutions to a lot of different problems. They are done with an incredible level of perfection. There's no question at all about the quality of what he delivers. He can make decisions in a flash because he doesn't have to do a lot of research, which is helpful when difficult decisions need to be made fast. He can multitask like the best of them and doesn't need to follow a process to be able to accomplish tasks.” That's what I thought. You went down a road of a lot of, “This is what I'm missing.” I went down the road of, “This is what he's got.”
Paul Giannamore: I saw the look on Jason's face.
Jason Cupp: When I saw those results, Patrick and Paul can attest, I was like, “This is awesome.” I'm not blowing smoke up anybody's skirt, especially Patrick's wife, related to what these results are. I was feeding on the pun earlier.
Paul Giannamore: I appreciate that.
Dylan Seals: Please do.
Jason Cupp: Kathy Kolbe, who developed all this, is number one. She's a mentor of mine. I'm fortunate to call her a friend. I'll see her in a handful of weeks. She'll be celebrating her 80-something birthday. She's still actively teaching the theory. One of the things that I have heard her say in many sessions that I've been with her and in private sessions and then also in public sessions with her is that there is nothing negative about a person's Kolbe result, they're all perfect.
You went to a place of, “This is where my inadequacy is.” I go, “This is a place where you're like this all-star superstar.” I want to be careful that anybody who looks at these results, even though we were joking a lot about him, everybody's results are awesome and they tell you the path in which you're going to go about doing things. All businesses, all relationships, because these things are personal and professional, these instincts don't get turned on or off, whether or not you're in the seat at work, or whether you're in the seat at home having dinner.
There's no turning on and off your instincts, they are with you 100% of the time from birth until death. Go embrace the awesomeness behind it and go build a team with a diverse group of people relative to a Kolbe result and you're going to go out and do awesome things, especially if there's the idea of mutual respect, hands down, 110%. I've seen it hundreds upon hundreds of times in teams and thousands upon thousands of times in people and leaders and people who want to be a change agent in the business.
Patrick Baldwin: To help me understand that, because I understand where Dylan's coming from, he saw the high numbers, his strengths, the low numbers, and his weaknesses, is that the right way to interpret it knowing my threes are where I might have some blindsides and I need extra support in those?
Paul Giannamore: I didn't read it that way. Jason, correct me if I'm wrong here, the numbers are nothing more than indicators on a spectrum so you could easily flop that. We could get the same data if we made the scale inverse, made the 1 a 10 and a 10 a 1. This just tells the story.
Jason Cupp: You're exactly correct, they are a spectrum, they tell the degree of that instinct, or that action mode is what they're called. The reason that the numbers go 1 - 10 rather than 10 - 1 is to try to overcome some of that mindset of, “Do I have an inadequacy?” I would say that I love my 2 and Follow Thru because it allows me to multitask.
I'm in, at times, an emergency business, we solve problems all day long. I can be with you guys right now and I can get a text message from a client who maybe is in some element of crisis. I can continue to record with you and I can jump over to my message and I can reply to them and say, “Is it an emergency?” They say, “No.” I say, “Great, I'm going to call you as soon as I get done with the call that I'm on.” I can do that seamlessly. To me, that's a superpower.
For someone that's a 7 or higher in Follow Thru, they're like. “Can we go on pause for maybe the next five minutes? Can we take a bio break? I need to reply to this.” They become incredibly distracted and they can't focus on multiple things at once. That's also a superpower because they want to be incredibly intent on solving that problem for somebody right now. Which way is best? Neither. Which way is worse? Neither. It’s the way that we’re hardwired.
That degree or that spectrum, as you call it, Paul, which is a good word, tells us how we're going to go about doing it, not whether or not we can do it, or if we're going to have success in doing it. It tells us the way that we're going to go do it, the path, the way that we're going to get energy out of it. Prior to taking the Kolbe A index in 2005, I would lie on the floor of my office at my design-build company at about 3:00 in the afternoon. I was intellectually exhausted running a business with a whole bunch of employees, lots of pressure, clients, and phones ringing.
I was intellectually and sometimes physically exhausted. I'd lay on the floor, I'd set my watch to take a power nap for 15 to 20 minutes to put a little bit of fuel back in the tank. I can't tell you the last time that I was intellectually exhausted because every single day, I am picking up my energy from my 7292. I did zero prep for our time today. I don't have crib sheets. You probably have had guests on the show where they have their bullets, they have an agenda, and they want to get something across. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
My guess is that you probably have people. If you haven't had those folks on the show, you've seen those people out in the space of business where they come in with a list and they have a bulletized item of what they want to do. Sometimes, it's robotic, “My name is Jason Cupp and it's nice to meet you, Patrick and Paul.” They're robotic in the way that they persist themselves, whether that's up on stage, whether that's online, or whether that's in just a regular conversation.
Which is right? I don't know, I'm not here to say one is right or one is wrong but I know that my preferred method, my 7292 which I operate from every single day, is one that gives me energy in the way that I go and do it. You both had an interaction with my Kolbe administrator, Becky, she's on my team, and she runs almost our entire back office. Becky thrives on accomplishing things. She's a 7 or an 8 in Follow Thru. She knows me and how I operate.
It's interesting because when we issued you to the Kolbe indexes, she goes, “Who are these guys? What's their client? How do I set up their account? What are we charging them?” All this kind of stuff. I said, “I'm doing a show with them, none of that. Just do it on the house account, no big deal at all.” That was not within her process. She didn't even understand that. She needs to ask lots of questions. Her Fact Finder kicked in and said, “Who are these guys?” She's asking all the questions. Perfect, no problem.
I gave her two things. Number one, “Do not send their results to them when they take it. That's outside of our process.” Number two, “I don't want to receive the results until both of them have taken them.” She said, “Okay.” She noted that. You did not get your results, right? I go on with doing everything else that I'm doing. I didn't forget about you all. It's in her every single day checking, “Did Patrick and Paul take the Kolbe A Index? Jason's got this thing on his calendar. He’s recording this thing. We got to get them in before then.”
I bet that if you guys hadn't taken them by about Wednesday or Thursday, she would have pinged me and said, “What's going on? I know you got this thing in a week.” Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's a great thing for me and it's a great thing for her. We can operate mano a mano with one another. She understands the way I am.
No offense, I don't want to be thinking about this and wondering whether or not you guys have taken the Kolbe A Index. I have a lot of other things that need to be competing for my brain space, running my business, and working with our clients. It's interesting when you get into just these workflows. Is that bad, Dylan, that you're a 3 and 2? No, it means that you're able to do things quicker. Does that mean that you maybe want to have someone around you with different numbers? Sure. That's what makes a great team. I see it day in and day out, even in my own organization.
Paul Giannamore: On that topic, I could see why you didn't want us to have the results before you had an opportunity to sit down with us. Why did you not want to see one result until you got both of them?
Jason Cupp: Great question. For me, it's the management of time thing. My task list is my inbox. When something's in my inbox and it's incomplete, if I got Patrick's results before Paul, I'm going to delete it anyway, because I'm like, “I'm waiting on another one.” I get it in the best way that I possibly can have people around me that will understand that like Becky, she knows the data behind that. It's the old David Allen thing, Getting Things Done. Your inbox is your task list. I've been doing that for years and years. It's more of my workflow in the way that I manage all of my active tasks.
Paul Giannamore: When I think about our business and I think about this Kolbe A index, it was Jonathan who I first learned about this from. I had heard of it before but it was the first time anyone had ever gone into any detail about it. After having taken it myself, I want my entire firm to take it. How does that work? What specifically do you do with companies?
Jason Cupp: We prefer to issue all of the Kolbe A Index. Because I'm certified, I have to go to continuing education and all these different things. In fact, I'm going to Phoenix for three days or whatever it might be. We licensed the database to be able to hold. We have all of our clients’ Kolbe Indexes into a database. For example, Patrick and Paul, yours are in our databases, and Dylan's is not because he took it somewhere else. No problem. I don't have a problem with that.
I can't, at a team level, interpret Dylan's even though I did it. I couldn't come into your team if you guys went and got all your own Kolbe index because I have to have him in my database so that I can run multiple scenarios in terms of team or hiring or A to As to compare the way two people do it. Oftentimes, what we do is we have a whole back side of our business that issues Kolbe Indexes.
You get a link via your email and you take it. It takes you 10 or 15 minutes at the most to take it online. We prefer a distraction-less environment, turn off phones, turn off email notifications, close the door, take it, click the submit button, and forget about it. We then we'll use it in a variety of different ways, either one-on-one with the team member explaining what the results are via a team meeting Zoom or in person where we reveal the results of all of the people on a team.
Team building exercises, there are all kinds of cool things you can do, live, and in terms of proving the power of instincts and triage, the way that it works in the business, amongst macro teams, and micro teams. Maybe the marketing department or the sales department, the marketing sales department together, and then how the marketing sales department integrates in with the executive management team, all those types of things. There's the hiring component, the conflict resolution component, the long-term employee who's been doing well, and maybe they start to not do as well.
Oftentimes, Kolbe will help me coach them back to excellence. There are all kinds of different roads. We integrate several other pieces into that like things that we call Culture Analysis and Individual Coaching or working with a CEO or a chairman of the board or an executive management team to utilize this tool and integrate it into the DNA of the culture of the business so that it can be something that can have a masterful effect on the way that the business is run from the people element.
One of the things I like to say is I think because of the census of the people who are probably reading as well as all of us who are on this show right now is that we do value the idea of a profit and loss statement and a financial statement and a balance sheet. I believe that people is the equity element that doesn't show up anywhere on a financial statement. One of the most important things that a business needs and requires is most all businesses need an amazing dream team, A team, and A player behind the products and services.
This is a great tool that allows us to get a little bit closer to that. In some cases, a lot closer to it. We have clients, thankfully so, that do issue the Kolbe A Index to their entire team and utilize it in regular refreshes. That's what Jonathan did at Service Autopilot. I don't even know how many indexes we ran. We had a Kolbe A Index on every single employee who joined the Service Autopilot team. I would come in quarterly and sit in the commons room and go over those results with people and also help work through opportunities and issues that would exist between teams or certain top-level hires or whatever that would be.
It's a tool that is fun to integrate into that people equity piece that I think, frankly, is often overlooked. I have a dog in the fight but it is overlooked. People say, “I'm going to hire my friend who I like and they're going to be awesome for my business.” They may be not awesome for their business because you hired them because they're your friend and not because they have the skill, instincts, culture, and personality to be able to integrate well with the existing team.
Paul Giannamore: Do you think there's a danger in over-relying on the results of an index from a hiring perspective?
Jason Cupp: I don't know if there's a danger. It's not the end all be all. When we walk through hiring analysis with our clients, we like to look at three key ingredients. Does the candidate have the skills to do the job? That would be their background history, education, certifications, and what they've done in the past. Do they have the ability to integrate culturally with the existing team, the personality, and the values? Can they adhere to the mission and the vision of the company? Also, the instincts, and that would be the Kolbe piece. Does that right fit process say that there's going to be predictability that they're going to have the instincts necessary to do the job?
If we can put check marks in some of those boxes, all those boxes, and as well as other boxes, background checks, reference checks, salary qualifiers, and all of those other things, then we probably have an A player. There's a lot of things that go into it. I never recommend anyone to make a decision based on one qualifier. It's hard enough to hire the right people right now let alone just hire them on a whim because of some tool. The tool is part of the process and not the process.
Patrick Baldwin: In a recent episode, Paul mentioned having a third party come in between partners, there are a lot of partners, the green space, and pest control, and they're most likely not identical on a Kolbe Index. Do you come and play third-party non-biased advisor to help go through differences in opinions or conflict and help work through partnership resolution?
Jason Cupp: Often and regularly yes and it depends on who they are, what industry they're in, and what our relationship is like. Oftentimes, we develop, thankfully, pretty deep friendships and relationships. We understand the business and the people in the business. Oftentimes, that's the partners. One unique thing is that, oftentimes, as you all probably very well know, partners tend to be family members so that creates another relational dynamic, brothers, a father and son, husband and wife, or whatever that might be. There's a dynamic there that the relationship, the family piece, inserts into it.
I would be lying if I didn't say that I jump into those situations pretty often. Kolbe can be part of it but it's also just understanding the differences between those two business partners and their families and their finances and what they ultimately want out of the business and so on and so forth. There is this middle ground that can exist and that all comes from who's the best communicator or good listener. I would say that I try hard to be a good listener. I listen to both sides of a story and understand the reasons why I'm a Fact Finder.
Paul, I'm going to ask, which is a fact, “Why is this going on? What do you want out of it?” I'll ask probing questions and then I'm going to try to get both of those folks to a common ground where then they can be collaborative. If we can be collaborative in discussion, then we can be cohesive in a united front in that decision-making process. Also, to give permission. Running a business is a lonely place for a lot of people. They don't know who they can trust. They don't know what to say. They don't know when to say it.
Fear is a horrible negotiation tool. I've said that three times and I don't like saying that. When fear enters into an entrepreneur’s mindset, they will likely make the wrong decision. Worry, emotion, and fear can be paralyzing. To have that voice of somebody who’s like, “I'm worried about this,” or, “This is a concern,” or, “I have this difference of opinion with my business partner or a family member or whatever it might be.”
Listening sometimes is the best medicine in that scenario but then there's also advice that can come out of that and that advice comes from, frankly, my years as an entrepreneur running businesses, leading teams, and working with hundreds of clients that we do on a regular basis and knowing that running a business isn't always easy, there are challenges that exist.
Powering through those challenges and the confines of not feeling like you're lonely is probably one of the best doctors that you can go to try to overcome that and stick your head above the clouds and be able to run your business again with the confidence that you had before that anxiety or that stress point began to insert a challenge into your business and your mindset.
Paul Giannamore: This is a timely discussion for me because as we think about our organization here, we continue to grow rapidly. In different parts of our business, we need different mindsets. We need folks who are more like Fat Pat, who are organized, process-oriented, and have the checklists. At other parts of the business, that's detrimental.
What I'm going to do is, Jason, I want to get the party started. I want to fire out the Kolbe Index test to every one of our employees because this will be important. We've got a lot of meetings coming up and this will be helpful. I've already been told by the Mexican that he refuses to take it. Under any circumstance, he will not take it. I might have to see what Jason can do to change his mind. I wish you were here and you'd be able to talk to him.
Jason Cupp: I had it happen with my own mom. She said, “I will never take that thing because I'm your mom. I never want you to have any power over me whatsoever.” Up until the day she passed away, she would never take it. I had a good guess as to what she is, even though I'm not supposed to guess what people's results are. That does happen from time to time, people say, “I'm just not going to take it.” I get it. Maybe he's joking.
Paul Giannamore: No, he's not. He said “You never do anything without a reason. Whatever the results are, you'll take him and warp them to your own benefit depriving me of my rightfully earned money.” It was almost a quote.
Jason Cupp: That's the reason why you have somebody like me because I won't let you do that.
Paul Giannamore: I can make it interesting to you though.
Jason Cupp: Absolutely. These results are never an excuse. You're never going to hear me say, “I'm a 2 in Follow Thru and that's why I didn't get it done.” You'll never hear me say that. If I ever hear somebody say that, I'm going to push back hard on them. It's not an excuse. We still, every single day, have to get things done and there are no excuses. Being an A player means living within your domicile in the way that you're hardwired. Go and do it and crush it every single day. All it does is tell us the path in which we're going to go and do it, that's it.
Paul Giannamore: There is a chance that he might outsource the taking of the test to another individual.
Dylan Seals: I was going to say, Paul, we could probably try, as scary as this might be, to get into his head.
Jason Cupp: Not advisable.
Dylan Seals: Is there ever the case we would take one of these as if we were somebody that we know fairly well?
Paul Giannamore: If we would take one of these as if we were somebody.
Dylan Seals: If I answered all 36 questions knowing everything I know about the Mexican.
Paul Giannamore: You're modeling the Mexican, I see what you're saying. How would he answer that?
Dylan Seals: Is there any benefit to that? If the Mexican were solving a difficult problem, would he rely on skill, research, ability to structure, or experimentation?
Patrick Baldwin: Collectively, let’s do this.
Paul Giannamore: It would be interesting to run that experiment. If you and I sat down and took a test on behalf of the Mexican but also had the Mexican take his own test, I'd be curious to see how well we would do. We can have some fun with this. Have you ever had anyone attempt to model somebody else to take the test to determine how well their outside third-party objective, at least subjective opinion would be in relationship to the target himself?
Jason Cupp: No, not that I'm aware of at least. I can tell you that I've had someone have a shill take the test, like have somebody else take the index to try to get the results that they thought were needed in their organization, it was quickly discovered.
Dylan Seals: Interesting, like the guy that goes in with the fake urine to take the drug test.
Jason Cupp: We had someone take the Kolbe A Index, they didn't want to take it, and they felt that it was going to be a criteria for their job so they had someone else take it. The results didn't equal what was going to be happening in this person's position. A conversation was had with them and in that conversation, they admitted that they did not take the index, they said they had someone else take the index, which they thought that admitting that they didn't take the index was going to somehow solve this integrity issue, which is now exposed that they admitted that they had someone else take the index. Obviously, that was not a good end result for them.
Paul Giannamore: I want to do this and I need to get the Mexican to take this test.
Jason Cupp: Perfect. We can easily do that. That's simple.
Patrick Baldwin: Does Jason have a new client now? This whole Jerry Springer thing was a setup just to have Jason take you on as a client.
Patrick Baldwin: It's hard for him to say no on the record.
Paul Giannamore: On a separate note, you know this, Fat Pat, twice in my life, I've sat immediately next to Jerry Springer on a plane approximately five years apart.
Jason Cupp: Does he really have a toupee?
Paul Giannamore: I don't know, I didn't get into that, but I did ask a lot of questions about his show, which I found interesting. He's dead now.
Patrick Baldwin: What'd you ask him about his show?
Paul Giannamore: Think about one question that anyone who would ever meet Jerry Springer would ask.
Jason Cupp: Is it real?
Paul Giannamore: Exactly, that was my first question. He responded and said, “What isn't real?”
Jason Cupp: Some PR person taught him how to respond to that question.
Patrick Baldwin: That's philosophical. It's so deep, what is it? It's like the matrix.
Jason Cupp: What isn't real?
Paul Giannamore: The thing about it is not only did I sit next to him on a plane twice, I have been to a dozen Jerry Springer shows over the course of my life because I went to high school in Chicago. We used to skip school and when we'd skip class in the afternoon, Jerry Springer was filmed in the afternoon and he would film two sessions a day. You're underage, can't buy alcohol, and can't go to a bar in the middle of the day, where are you going to go? The closest thing to a strip club or a nightclub for a high school kid is a Jerry Springer show. There are all sorts of interesting folks there. I spent a lot of time on the Jerry Springer show.
Dylan Seals: You didn't go see Oprah tape her show? It was just down the hall.
Paul Giannamore: We were not inspired by Oprah. We were more interested in who we were going to see in Jerry Springer. Think about it, what 14-year-old wants to see Oprah?
Dylan Seals: I was a weird 14-year-old.
Jason Cupp: I celebrated earlier this 2023 my 50th birthday and never did I think that I would meet someone that met Jerry Springer once, let alone twice, let alone went to numerous Jerry Springer shows maybe once. You've got some statistics behind you.
Paul Giannamore: It's part of American culture at this point. Every once in a while, Jerry Springer comes up in a conversation. I'm sitting at a dinner conversation and somebody will say, “Jerry Springer.” I'm like, I've been to at least a dozen of his shows.” The looks on everyone's face when I say that. An interesting story, I will tell you this, we're in the M&A business, and the Mexican beats up on acquirers and buyers all the time, and he slaps them around.
I was once at a Jerry Springer show and we went to the first filming and during the second filming, we rolled out of there and I met a drug dealer who was on the first show who was beating up all sorts of bitches and hoes. We started to talk to him outside. One of my friends said, “Slim G, you sell drugs. On the show, we learned that you're always beating up your customers. It doesn't make sense that you beat the crap out of your customers.” He informed us that he's got the crack nuggets and they're addicted to it and he can do whatever he wants. We've got the crack nuggets.
Dylan Seals: Thus was born a successful career in M&A.
Paul Giannamore: I was inspired by a Chicago street thug drug dealer that I met in an interlude on the Jerry Springer show. Applying that to high finance, we were able to advise Terminix on their antitrust dispositions in Europe.
Dylan Seals: How does that put you, Paul, I'm curious, in a position of leverage?
Paul Giannamore: The whole concept here is that, at the end of the day, we can afford to bargain hard. I don't remember the name of the drug dealer but he was able to beat his customers and they would always come back and pay him money. I told the Mexican that story when he first started and he certainly embraced the beating of acquirers to their dismay and my entertainment.
Dylan Seals: Jason, this is a marketing vehicle for our company. Have you ever heard something so crazy?
Jason Cupp: I didn't think I was ever going to talk this much about Jerry Springer, let alone talk this much about crack nuggets.
Paul Giannamore: You've never had somebody tell you that this guy has been dating your wife. It's been an interesting Tuesday afternoon.
Jason Cupp: There are lots of firsts.
Paul Giannamore: Jason, this has been an enlightening discussion and you have a gifted way of explaining what the Kolbe Index is and how these results work. To me, it was fascinating. Obviously, we all intuitively know that every individual is unique and we all have different instincts and how we handle tasks and process information. Taking this index and then having these discussions with you over the last couple of days has made me think specifically about each member of my team.
It's easy to get frustrated with somebody when they don't do something the way that you do it because you think everyone's like, “This is super easy, get it done in two seconds.” You then realize people process things differently. It's given me a new appreciation for the diversity and distinction between the individuals at the firm. I want to do the test and I'd love for you to hop on with the firm and interpret them. I was thinking about sending my results around to everyone and say, “We should all take this Kolbe A and then get on with Jason to talk about it.”
As we discussed earlier in the show, those results are particularly confusing. I don't think they would mean anything to anyone. People are like, “I don't know what this is.” What's a good way to approach that with the team if I want to do this and how do I do this in a way in which they're not going to feel like, “I wonder what Paul is up to here. If I take this test, can I be fired or am I going to look like an idiot?” How do you communicate that with the staff?
Jason Cupp: Great question. Number one, I would recommend you not send your results to the team for the reasons that you stated.
Paul Giannamore: They’re that bad.
Jason Cupp: It creates more questions than answers not being interpreted. Also, the way that I do these team events, nobody sees their results beforehand, everyone gets them revealed at the same time at that collective team meeting, including yours. You might've seen them in advance. It allows me also to get some equity and relationship with your team because I can use your results a little bit as a poking fun as a case study. We've spent some time together, “Here are some things that Paul did.” That gets people kind of a little bit lighter and laughing and recognizing, “Jason's making fun of Paul.” Not in an inflammatory way, of course.
Paul Giannamore: I welcome that even in an inflammatory way, for sure.
Jason Cupp: What we normally do is you would introduce me and my firm to your firm via email, I then reply to that, hit reply to all, knowing full well that I'm going to hit reply to all, and then I record a video, “This is Jason. I'm sitting here right here in my office. I have my black t-shirt on.” They see I'm a casual guy, “I’m super excited to spend time with you. Paul and I have connected. I recorded this video, they get a little bit of an insight into who I am, my personality, and the way that I communicate.
Hopefully. that will dismantle anybody's concern. “I'm excited to get to know you and reveal your results. Everybody passes. Nobody fails. This isn't a test.” These are all things that I say in this 2 or 3-minute-long snippet video. Usually, it works great. People, even if they're skeptical like you were, and like others might be, they're like, “There's some level of trust. I'm going to extend. I'm going to do this.” When they get on the call, hopefully, I build up that trust as well to help you and your team crush the team-building part, integrate it into the culture, and use it in all the ways that we've talked about.
Paul Giannamore: Perfect.
Patrick Baldwin: Is there an upcharge to do a Jerry Springer style?
Jason Cupp: Yes, there already is enough charge because Jerry Springer has been mentioned so many times on this podcast.
Paul Giannamore: I should have recalled that he said, “If you mention my name, you'll never get a discount.”
Jason Cupp: God rest his soul.
Paul Giannamore: Yes, a good man.
Dylan Seals: I'm glad I dropped into this. When I first opened up the results, I thought about trashing them and not sending them to Paul. I'm glad you were able to dispel my initial misgivings about my result. I'm leaving this feeling empowered. I can just lean into these things that are my strong suits, or at least that's how I'm framing it.
Jason Cupp: Perfect. That's the intent, by the way, it's the way that I hope that they're interpreted. It doesn't always work that way, but certainly happy when it does.
Patrick Baldwin: Jason, I don't mean to put you in a Kolbe box, if you will, but you owned a landscape company. You've consulted for twenty years. I know you’ve spent almost twenty years plus in the Kolbe world. Outside of just Kolbe, you mentioned consulting, and you mentioned crisis management. In terms of consulting, what do you do?
Jason Cupp: I started this consulting business in 2006 because I realized running a business is a lonely place and that people needed a space to feel comfortable sharing the things that kept them up at night. I don't know of a business owner who hasn't had at least one space in their entrepreneurial journey that they've had worry and fear and sleepless nights or not knowing how to solve a problem. There were times in my own career that I felt that way and I didn't know who to turn to.
It's cool, we've talked several times about Jonathan and one of the things that we identified in that lunch that turned to dinner is that he felt the exact same way. Everybody has a story and that story has successes and failures in it. More people probably need to be talking about the failures than they do the successes. I wanted to build a consulting company around that where trust was built up to where anybody could call and share maybe something they've never said to another human being.
It's bizarre because it happens almost every day in our consulting company. We focus on five key areas and the first would be business owners need to understand their finances, understand those metrics, and be able to figure out pricing and what makes them the most cash, cashflow, EBITDA, and income for them. There's this financial part. There's an HR part. We realized that a lot of business owners don't understand human resources and the laws and the regulations and the need for handbooks and hiring strategies and all those types of things.
We've got a section that helps people solve those HR problems. The third would be the Kolbe world where we help people understand their people, their team, hiring, and those types of elements and all the stuff we've been talking about. The fourth would be crisis management we discussed when crummy things happen to people who have good intent in their world. How do they navigate that? Do they need to call an attorney?
Do they need to call a bankruptcy attorney? Do they need to have a hard conversation with their banker, a hard conversation with their client, or a hard conversation with a competitor? Whatever that looks like. We walk them through that as best as we possibly can and point them towards the CPA or the attorney or sometimes it's us to help navigate that scenario.
The fifth is everything else. What is that element that's keeping you up at night? What do you need help with? That might be a marketing plan. That might be ramping up sales. That might be understanding why your overhead is too high and who you need to prune out of the business. It might be that your business is too complex and you need to drive it down to one product and service, the one that's the most profitable. It might be that you have been stale in your growth and what's going to jumpstart that growth? It might be a whole bunch of different things.
Looking under the hood is what I call it and understanding the business. Finding the opportunity that maybe they can't see, even though they're living in it every single day, that could be buying and selling the business, that could be buying and selling their facility, and that could be hiring the next best, greatest employee. That could be making the business smaller. That could be preparing the business for retirement or handing it off to a key team member or whatever it might be. Those are the five sections we operate in.
We're not operationally minded in mind at all. We don't think operationally. We don't figure out how to get it done. We can identify operational efficiencies, usually either in people and/or the financials. We have tools and tricks to fix those but we're not going to roll up our sleeves and go figure out how to create route density in your pest control business or something like that. That's not us. We're not going to go and do that. We can identify that the efficiency isn't there and that they need to figure out, “Here are the fifteen things you need to look at to try to increase that efficiency.”
Patrick Baldwin: Thank you. I would imagine Kolbe touches all five facets.
Jason Cupp: Those are just the buckets. If I really looked at it, I bet Kolbe probably touches 80% to 90% of the people we do business with. I can hands down say every single client we have on a retainer, we have a Kolbe A Index.
Patrick Baldwin: Do you have long-term engagements just like Paul, Dylan, and I do? Is that something that we're missing working with these long-term client engagements that we should have Kolbe indexes with our clients?
Jason Cupp: I think so. I think that is a missing piece. If you have a client and you know that they're an Initiating Fact Finder and they know that you're an Initiating Quick Start and you're trying to help them through a detail-oriented decision-making process, you know exactly what you need to give them to help them make the decision. That's value added. Saving everybody’s time and making the decision-making process a lot easier.
The answer is yes, I firmly believe that that is something that you should do. My concern with that is executing it, implementing it, and training your team to be able to understand what that is. It's a stroke of brilliance. I'm not talking about typecasting people, I'm just saying giving people what they need to be able to make the decision is powerful.
Patrick Baldwin: Jason, I appreciate you making time for us, I know you're busy. This was awesome. I enjoyed seeing everyone talking through all the different indexes and nodding over here.
Dylan Seals: Paul, I'd like to ask something of our readers before we end the episode, if we could. For Jason's benefit, I'm going to give out the Mexican's phone number and have all the readers text him a link to the Kolbe test so that we peer pressure him into taking this.
Paul Giannamore: That is a wonderful idea.
Dylan Seals: Paul, we have to get to the bottom of this.
Paul Giannamore: We do. Everyone who has gotten even a tiny morsel of value out of The Boardroom Buzz low these many years we have done this if you would kindly text the Mexican. Refer to him as a Mexican. He legitimately is called the Mex. Go ahead, Dylan.
Dylan Seals: It’s 787-664-1133.
Paul Giannamore: Tell him, “Don't suck at life, Mexican. Take that Kolbe Index A, that's all you have to do. I promise you that you're going to get an interesting response.”
Dylan Seals: A very unique response.
Paul Giannamore: If you're sensitive, don't don't do it. Dylan, that's a brilliant idea. I appreciate you coming up with that.
Dylan Seals: If you're going to have me on the show, I gotta bring the noise.
Paul Giannamore: Jason, thank you so much for joining us.
Dylan Seals: A pleasure to meet you, Jason.
Jason Cuppe: Likewise. Good to be with you, guys. Cheers.
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Paul Giannamore: Dylan, it's been a while since you've joined us here in The Boardroom. It's good to see you.
Dylan Seals: Thank you so much. This was spontaneous but I appreciate the invite.
Paul Giannamore: I had a good time today, fellas. I thought Jason was interesting. I didn't know anything about Kolbe. My favorite part of the episode outside of what Jason was saying, and I learned a ton from him, was Dylan coming up with the brilliant idea of passing out the Mexican's phone number.
Dylan Seals: I'm surprised that this many episodes in, we haven't done that before.
Paul Giannamore: I remember one time you guys were down here in Puerto Rico and Fat Pat created some QR code signs that you scan and it goes right to the Mexican's phone number. What did it say, Patrick?
Patrick Baldwin: It was definitely about for a good time call.
Paul Giannamore: You scan it on your phone and it dials up the Mexican.
Patrick Baldwin: It's more or less where we talked about dropping some QR codes, that was probably more of the issue.
Paul Giannamore: I did step in at that time and say, “That's a brilliant idea. I would love to do it to him but it would impact my business.” When Dylan came up with this today, it's entertaining because it's time he got some phone calls. Good idea.
Patrick Baldwin: No apology in advance for anyone who makes contact with a Mexican?
Paul Giannamore: People who follow The Buzz know what they're about to experience when they text him.
Patrick Baldwin: Do yourself a favor and grab someone else's phone and text the Mexican from someone else's.
Paul Giannamore: Not anyone you care about.
Dylan Seals: This is a perfect example of my Quick Start. I didn't do a lot of Fact Finding to come up with this, just do that out there.
Paul Giannamore: You quick started it and implemented it right away so that's good.
Dylan Seals: I don't even have to follow through.
Paul Giannamore: Fat Pat, what do you have to say about the discussion with Jason?
Patrick Baldwin: Twofold. Definitely helps me understand who I am, how I'm wired, and not just personality or intelligence, but instinct, but also looking at both of you all Kolbe index is how we work together and work differently. Definitely eye-opening.
Paul Giannamore: You asked if the index could explain why you're awkward.
Patrick Baldwin: Maybe I did. I did talk to Jason about it because I think I get in my own head a lot. I'm constantly processing and thinking in terms of, “Does that prevent me from communicating well or smoothly?” As I have this run-on sentence as we speak, this is awkward. Dylan's looking away from the camera like, “Patrick is awkward.”
Dylan Seals: I'm looking at your results. I pulled your results up, looking for the awkward indices.
Patrick Baldwin: Does my Kolbe index say awkward?
Dylan Seals: I don't know, Patrick. I don't see anything on here.
Paul Giannamore: While we're on here, let's pull up some results. We have four columns, Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Start, and Implementer. I'm going to pull mine up. Where do we think the Mexican lands on these, Dylan?
Dylan Seals: Follow Thru's got to be high.
Patrick Baldwin: Based on how you talk about his love life, a Quick Start.
Paul Giannamore: You mean quick finish.
Dylan Seals: Follow Thru's got to be high and quick start's got to be high, right?
Patrick Baldwin: What about Implementer? You talk about his extracurricular jobs.
Paul Giannamore: Follow Thru would be low, develop shortcuts, and multitask. It's not high versus low, but it would be a low numerical value. He's probably very low. I'm a 9 on Fact Finder. He's definitely on the opposite end of the spectrum. For me, Quick Start. He's definitely very high on the Quick Start. I know that the only time that he probably works with his hands is when he's by himself in a hotel room.
Dylan Seals: Creating a spreadsheet about how to take the family through Disney World, that popped into my head just a moment ago, is that Implementing? Is that Follow Thru? Who takes the time to make a spreadsheet about the ride wait times at Disney World?
Paul Giannamore: Very true. I guess who also saves their crutches from an accident thirteen years ago and said, “You can still use them at Disney World,” so he doesn't have to wait in line? I don't know where that is on the scale either. You didn't know that, Patrick?
Patrick Baldwin: No.
Paul Giannamore: Every time he goes to Disney, he's injured. He says, “I'm already handicapped.” It's like George Costanza, “Finally, I'm getting credit for it.”
Dylan Seals: Paul, Patrick and I had a lot of exposure, probably more than we'd like to the Mexican, but you're the one that takes the full brunt of it. You can probably walk us through this better than anyone.
Paul Giannamore: He's going to be the opposite of me in a lot of ways. He's going to be the opposite of me from a Fact Finder. I'm 9 so he's going to be on the other end of the spectrum. Quick Start and Follow Thru, Fat Pat, what are you in Quick Start, the green one?
Patrick Baldwin: Three.
Paul Giannamore: He's probably going to be very high. He's opposite of you in Quick Start. Follow Thru, he can't go to sleep at night if there's something on his checklist. It's maddening. If I don't attend to one thing, he harasses me. I don't know what that means.
Patrick Baldwin: It was probably like 9 or 10.
Paul Giannamore: He's going to be a 10 on something for sure.
Patrick Baldwin: Or an 11.
Paul Giannamore: He's going to break the scales.
Patrick Baldwin: In all these years Kolbe's been around, he's going to be the first person to break it.
Dylan Seals: The things listed under not qualities of Quick Start is to conform, to hesitate, and to be afraid to fail, sticking closely to the script, or second guess yourself.
Paul Giannamore: He's never done any of those things.
Dylan Seals: Exactly.
Patrick Baldwin: What if we record Jason and the Mexican’s Kolbe review and put that on The Buzz?
Paul Giannamore: I would love to but he would never acquiesce. Jason, after that discussion, probably wouldn't want that to go public either. I tell you what we'll do, we will come back on The Buzz. We're going to bring Dylan back to dissect the Mexican’s score on The Buzz, for sure. I'd like to not just stop at Kolbe, I'd like to fly a team of international experts in to examine him for multiple days to figure out what's going on in that noggin of his but I'll start with the Kolbe, just the tip as they say.
I thought this was a great discussion. I am going to roll out the Kolbe test company-wide and I will come back and report on The Buzz. We might bring in a few Potomac colleagues here to talk about it. It won't be the Mexican because he won't do it but we might bring some others in and ask them what they thought of that and what they learned.
Patrick Baldwin: It was great having Jason on here and also going through Kolbe. This is fun, especially the Jerry Springer style. Guys, I'm going to see y'all now that you've convinced me to come to Pest World.
Paul Giannamore: Indeed, you'll be seeing Dylan as well, and everyone. Not only will we be doing our standard meetings at Pest World but Dylan and I are going to be filming some Potomac TV sessions out there, and we've got some interesting people lined up. This will be Dylan's first time. Dylan, we're going to have the cameras out there.
Dylan Seals: Popping my pest world cherry.
Paul Giannamore: Yes, along with the Mexican. It's going to be interesting for you all the way around.
Dylan Seals: Patrick, you had to come. You had to be there.
Paul Giannamore: How could you not see this spectacle?
Patrick Baldwin: Someone's got to witness.
Paul Giannamore: We're going to have the cameras out there. Eric's coming with you, right Dylan?
Dylan Seals: He is.
Paul Giannamore: We have handpicked some interesting guests for the Potomac TV show but we have one slot open. Dylan, I thought we'd ask the audience. If you're reading and you have an idea of who you would like to see on Potomac TV and you might even want to see yourself and if you're interesting enough, send us an email. Patrick, what's the email address?
Patrick Baldwin: TheBuzz@PotomacCompany.com.
Paul Giannamore: Send us an email or even better yet, you could even text the Mexican. I can't promise Patrick, Dylan, and I would get the text. If you want to text the Mexican while you're at it about Potomac TV guests, I would love for the Mexican to get on Potomac TV. Dylan and I have tried many times.
Dylan Seals: If we're ever going to get him to be on, it's going to be on this trip. I've resolved to get him on there somehow.
Patrick Baldwin: We'll figure it out.
Paul Giannamore: Readers, please do whatever you can to help us. Help us choose a guest and help us motivate the Mexican to take the Kolbe Index. Thank you in advance. It was good to get the gang back together again, it's been a while.
Dylan Seals: Likewise. Thanks for having me.
Paul Giannamore: Until the next episode.
Patrick Baldwin: See you, guys.
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Dylan Seals: Thank you so much as always for supporting us at The Boardroom Buzz. We know your time is valuable and the fact that you spend 45 minutes or an hour with us means the world. All the media that we put out from Potomac is meant to honor and celebrate you, the service industry owner. As Paul would say, “Yee who toil in the pest control vineyards.”
As part of giving back, we have this podcast, but more than that, Paul and I have been working our tails off over at POTOMAC TV. We've spent a tremendous amount of time, energy, and resources to build out that platform to bring you market updates, to bring you visual breakdowns of the merger acquisition process, and to tell stories and present information in ways that, frankly, it's not possible for us to do on The Boardroom Buzz.
Adding the visual element takes it to the next level. I want to invite you to go to YouTube and find us, it's POTOMAC TV. Potomac.tv will get you there. Go there and subscribe. Check out some videos and leave some comments. Let us know what you like and let us know what you don't like. Let us know what you want to see more of and we'll see you over there.
