We recently connected with Kelcey Summers and have shared our conversation below.

Kelcey, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

The hiring and building a team journey at SBE (Service Business Evolution) has been one that I’m excited to share. It has not been easy, and it was not overnight. Where we are today is a place I am proud of. The team we have built is the most talented and collaborative team I have ever been a part of.

We have made bad hires and had no process in place in the beginning, but we learned over the years from that experience. Placing a job ad with a job description and range of pay seemed simple. Googling interview questions was once the way I used to interview. It took some bad hires and bad experiences to make me pause and re-evaluate how we were approaching hiring.

First, it was about who we are as a company. After hiring a leadership coach to work with my leadership team (a $120,000 investment over one year), we established our first set of core values. We would hire based on those values and fire based on those values. Having tough conversations became a little easier because I would relate the issue back to our core values and find the answer many times. Next, I joined a CEO group so that I could learn from other leaders and also share my experiences and expertise with them. That was where I learned the next greatest tip in hiring. It came from one of the other leaders’ experiences hiring a senior leadership position who was a colleague from a previous employer. After accepting the position, 4 weeks passed and 2 days before her start date, she was convinced by that previous employer to stay for more money and better structure. What the leader in my group learned was that he did not continue to build upon the relationship after she accepted the position. From there, my CEO group worked together to bring ideas to the table on how to create a culture and process during the hiring phase that would bind that employee to your company. From there, I brought this to my leadership team and we made it part of our process. Some of this included, 2 different team members inviting that person to lunch. Normally this was during the time they accepted and the two weeks later when they started. Our goal was to make them feel comfortable and part of the team before day 1 so it was not awkward or scary for them. 2nd, we mailed them a welcome basket, filled with fun office supplies, company logo’d tshirt, sweatshirt and candy. Next, we ordered business cards for them (when applicable). Skin in the game. As the president, I would be the last interview. The goal of being the last interview is to make sure they know who is steering the ship, how they mattered in the long and short term goals, what the culture is, how amazing the other leaders in the company and other talented team is, what our core values are, why they fit our team and why we chose them to get to this stage of the interview process (if they got to me, we had already decided we wanted to hire them based on recordings with other leaders during the interview process). In the end, my job is to make sure they want THIS job, to be a part of THIS team. I have had many candidates, now employees, comment on how they could not believe they spent that kind of quality time with the president (and other leaders). That this was one of the reasons they accepted the position, because if that is the kind of culture we have, then they want to be a part of that. Every member of my leadership team has a key role in the hiring process. Some of them tougher than others (the harder interviews for instance), but all come from a place of loving their job, loving this company and being the best leader they can for their teams.

Another change was focusing on our Career page on our website. https://sbeodyssey.com/about/careers We want our future employees to see what they can be a part of. The culture, pictures of us having fun, our core values (who we are and what we stand for), the benefits and employee testimonials. We started creating job ads, not job descriptions. Our VP of Training, Will Smith is one of the best content writers I have worked with and so talented. I can share a few example images. One starts with, “Like to be the key to success” For an inside sales position. Another starts with “Coaching and training is not just a profession IT’S A CALLING.” for our coaching position. These have attracted amazing talent.

Once someone has applied and we feel they could be a fit, we send them a link to take a personality test (and we know who fits our culture best based on years of using it). It is a free assessment https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test. For any of our sales positions, or our training positions, we also use OMG (Objective Management Group) assessments. We are a partner of OMG and also sell these assessments and evaluations. One of the benefits is that it is customizable to your organization and the assessment gives you the best interview questions to use to pull out strengths and weaknesses as well as a complete evaluation upon hire that also tells you how to train them on any weaknesses. Leadership evaluations are also available. These have been key for us. Our Coaching Development Specialist, Aleks Ozgur also created a matrix that shows everyone’s personalities, Enneagram (another great tool), and then even added their Love Language (https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/love-language). This was so creative and eye opening. It’s important to note that we did not use as a team tool, we use as a leadership/management tool to understand WHO our employees are, how they thrive, what drives them and what can de-motivate them. That is key to keeping good people.

It takes a collaborative, innovative team, some good processes and on-boarding, and sometimes some coaching or advice from other leaders to continue to improve processes and be open to change. We live our values and our name certainly fits. Service Business Evolution (SBE) – we are always evolving.

I think experiences (good and bad) are the keys to growth and scaling your business. The only thing I would have done differently would have been to seek advice from other leaders sooner and started leadership coaching earlier. Learning from and giving back to other leaders is a passion of mine, and I will continue to share what I’ve learned as well as continue to gather other great advice to help grow my company and build upon our talented team.

Kelcey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Kelcey Summers. I am the President of SBE (Service Business Evolution). I spent many years in my career working with contractors, whether advertising or training and business planning. 10 years ago, I was fortunate to be introduced to one of my mentors, Jim Probst, whom I worked for at George Brazil Air Conditioning & Heating and then SBE. Jim showed me what true leadership was, as well as learning the hard lessons in business along the way. He has always encouraged me to grow a company and a culture I can be proud of and is there to offer advice and support.

At SBE, we provide industry-leading coaching and training for residential home service contractors (HVAC, Plumbing and Electrical). Working with an owner who’s not in the field (or trying to get out of the field) and is hungry and open-minded. Those owners who are stuck, looking for the right next steps to avoid wasted time, missing family moments, and sleepless nights that cause them to quit; Looking for a proven, customized process for training, coaching, and consulting that helps them create a profitable, sustainable business by helping them find the right next steps.

Our 3 Uniques include: 1. We have a proprietary app and dashboard that allows their employees to grow with national rankings and recognition that elevates performance and helps drive competition. 2. SBE has proven, field-tested processes with hundreds of case studies to back it up. 3. Our business evolves with theirs. We adapt and adjust to the ever-changing needs of their business and the market.

Our core values are: Authenticity, Esprit de Corps, Humble Confidence, Driven and Joyful Life Balance. We tell each other the truth, we work together for a common goal, we let our light shine brightly and allow others around us to shine as well. We are driven to accomplish great things while enjoying a work/life balance.

As of 2022, we have a little over 20 employees, mostly in the states of Arizona and Florida and run a 100% virtual company. Today, we have helped nearly 1,000 contractors all over the US and Canada.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

This is an easy one to answer because it was a valuable (and costly) lesson I learned and remember like it was yesterday. It was 2019. We were coming off the best year in sales, and yet we lost almost as many that same year (attrition). It was my mentor (and the previous president before me) who reminded us of who we were when we started the company and how far off track we had gotten. During the last year and a half, we had switched gears to be a stronger financial coaching company to compete with our largest training industry competitor at the time. We changed our onboarding process and started collecting financials from our customers from week one. Very intrusive when they don’t know us that well yet. We were not building a valuable relationship with our customers. We were so busy trying to be a company we were unfamiliar with and losing track of our core, that we lost over 100 customers before learning the value of that lesson.

One we got back to who we were, which was helping contractors take the resources they had to maximize their calls and provide the best customer service, helping them make money through sales and leadership training, our retention rate improved every single month. Today, we have an 86% retention rate, and our goal for 2022 is 90% or better. Staying true to our unique value and not trying to be everything to everyone was a valuable lesson.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Creating a culture of high accountability, recognition and positive reinforcement management style has been key in our business. We were probably 5-6 years old when I realized how uncollaborative we were. The leadership team would meet, make decisions, and roll out the changes. Once we started engaging our team, getting their ideas and feedback, as well as sharing our vision and goals, we turned a corner. We have utilized a few key tools. The Great Game of Business (a seminar I attended with my Admin Manager, Erin Nielsen), taught us the value of minigames. Having the team create games and prizes around company initiatives. It is fun, competitive, and helps the company reach new goals. We have some fun samples of these.

In 2022, we have utilized the EOS (Entrepreneur Operating System) by reading Get A Grip, Traction and What the Heck is EOS as a leadership team. One of our talented trainers started a monthly book club and this book was recommended by a client. The entire leadership team also read it and started implementing right away. We have never been more organized and aligned as we are today. The morale of the entire leadership team has bled into the rest of the team and we then focused on our quarterly rocks, 10 year target, 3 year picture and 1 year plan and communicated it to the team based on this process. I have never been more personally motivated to succeed and my leadership team has been telling me the same.

In addition, we make it part of who we are. We Live and Breathe Our Core Values. Authenticity, Esprit de Corps, Humble Confidence, Driven and Joyful Life Balance.

We have fun; celebrate wins together; create a family atmosphere; listen to feedback from our employees; and recognize their talent daily. Samples are team huddles on Zoom Mon – Weds Fri with Dad Joke Monday, Appreciation Wednesday (recognize a team member who you appreciate for something they did), Flashback Fridays (sharing pics of kids and us as kids, or pets etc); We have an employee newsletter every other week and feature a fun fact about an employee (Guess who) and play Kahoot (app on a phone) to have everyone answer questions that were in that weeks’ newsletter. We do happy hours, fun events, and games.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sbeodyssey.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/service_business_evolution/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SBEOdyssey
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/service-business-evolution
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu8eKPOWhiPABaWMSf6tN1g
• Other: Google Review: https://www.google.com/maps/place//data=!4m3!3m2!1s0x872b0e47f0c00001:0x41043556f2354be5!12e1?source=g.page.m.id