Lee is the author of “The Boomerang Principle: Inspire Lifetime Loyalty from Your Employees.” She’s an entrepreneur and a CEO with over 20 years experience, building positive high performing work teams. Man, isn’t that what every business is looking for today?
Lee Caraher: I hope so.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: [crosstalk 00:00:26] in life.
David Brower: Good for you. So, how did you get that mission? Where did the epiphany come that goes I gotta go do this?
Lee Caraher: You know, my epiphany I’ve been in business for a long time in my own company for, this year will be our 15th year-
David Brower: Wow.
Lee Caraher: And I sort of woke up one day and go you know it shouldn’t just be this hard. It should just be much easier.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lee Caraher: And I started looking at the things that are pain points and figured out how to make it better and from that in my own company, just am on a mission to share what we learned the hard way so that other people don’t have to do it.
David Brower: Good for you. Good for you. I’m sure there was some ups and downs and probably more downs for a while and then all of sudden you go, oh, well, let’s go that way.
Lee Caraher: Yeah. Let’s go that way.
David Brower: Let’s go that way.
Lee Caraher: There’s a lot of advice for big companies. There’s not a lot … there’s a lot of advice for small businesses and entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized companies, Just about operations.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: Not necessarily how to create a positive really happy workplace that becomes an efficiency machine. The great things we were doing for being covered up by the fact that it wasn’t efficient and I think … our inefficiency was sort of human generated, not process generated.
David Brower: Okay. Okay.
Lee Caraher: And when sort of peel the onion on created a way of working that as much more efficient and also creates a lot more goodwill in the world and has eased our recruiting and our business development so much that just tried to name it and that’s when it became the Boomerang Principle.
David Brower: I’ll be darned. Good for you. Tell me how that works basically. I mean I know it’s more complicated than the question I just asked, but how does it basically work?
Lee Caraher: Sure.
David Brower: I mean where did you find the thing to go, okay let’s get our people to work this way together?
Lee Caraher: Well, the Boomerang Principle is that those companies that allow and encourage former employee to return have a strategic advantage over those that don’t. Because if you create a place where people want to come back to, you create a place where good people don’t want to leave fast.
And in today’s environment, with sort of the comments around, no one’s loyal anymore.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: Everyone job hops. You can’t count on anybody anymore. Those things are not necessarily untrue, but if we change our mindset to say, I don’t want someone just to be loyal to my company while I pay them, I want them to be loyal to my company for their duration of their career. That just sort of opens up a whole nother set of opportunity for a mutual relationship that transcends tenure and can be very lucrative over the long-term in terms of ease of recruiting, ease of business development, bringing people back who have different skill sets later in their career, but who are highly aligned with you and anytime you can shorten the period of time that you’re recruiting or onboarding, you are driving efficiently and happiness into your workplace.
David Brower: Boy, no question. That makes all the sense in the world. And I got it think that bringing people back, helps foster, camaraderie, teamship, that whole thing.
Lee Caraher: Absolutely.
David Brower: Right? It creates a whole different environment internally that-
Lee Caraher: It really does.
David Brower: You didn’t have before. Yeah.
Lee Caraher: I think when I had this epiphany … I used to work for a much larger company, an internationally huge company and I had about 800 people in my organization and because my company’s a public relations and digital marketing firm most of our businesses is time, right?
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: And if you don’t have people, you can’t bill time?
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: Sort of the, At that time, in the economy was don’t lose any people ’cause then you can’t bill all your time. And if you can’t bill time, you can’t make your numbers, etcetera. It was a revolving door of people coming into my office and saying, “I got another job offer. I’m expecting a counter. If you counter me, I will stay.”
But you counter someone and they’re there for six months and they end up leaving anyway, right?
David Brower: Right. Right.
Lee Caraher: One day [inaudible 00:04:46] I’m not countering anymore. I’m done.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lee Caraher: And the next day someone walked in my office. I got another job offer and I said, “Good luck.” And he was like, “Aren’t you gonna counter?” I like, “No.”
David Brower: No.
Lee Caraher: “I’m not countering.” And he was very incensed. And I said, “You know, you’re already out the door, but you can come back. I hope that you come back here when you’ve gotten everything you can out of that next job.” He didn’t come back. He was really pissed. The bad thing was when I stopped countering and started saying to people whatever you want to do, I’m gonna help you do what you want in your career and I hope that you come back here. Everyone stopped leaving.
David Brower: Wow. How empowering is that?
Lee Caraher: It was incredible because we spent all of our time, I’d reserved budget for countering ’cause that was sort of what we had to do.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: And I took all that resource and I put it into the people who are not looking for other work and all of a sudden, people stopped leaving. For not a good reason. I think it’s, no career’s gonna stay in one place anymore in this … we know that this is a bad move for people. Our economy has told this over and over again. We know when we hire someone they’re going to leave us. So how about putting all the effort into making it the best, most productive environment while people are with us, instead of bemoaning the fact that they’re gonna the leave the company because unless you own the thing, everyone’s leaving ya.
David Brower: Right. Exactly Right. Yeah and the other I would think is when you give them that non-counter pitch and they go into shock for a while.
Lee Caraher: Yeah.
David Brower: Once they leave and go to that new, next job, they gotta be thinking, wow, maybe I should keep Lee’s name in my speed dialer just in case.
Lee Caraher: Yeah.
David Brower: This doesn’t work out.
Lee Caraher: [inaudible 00:06:37] Part of the opportunity, too, is that we’ve created a corporate alumni program. I try to keep everybody that leaves us close to us in an alumni program that has regular communication, that offers, when we have opportunities to offer discounts through our clients, whatever that, that offers that to them, too, that provides some of the information that we provide to our other employees, around training. We put that up in our private network, as well. Every time we have a job opening, we ask our alumni first. Do you know anybody? And then if they bring someone to us, we compensate them.
It’s not a huge amount of dollars, but.
David Brower: Hey.
Lee Caraher: It’s thank you.
David Brower: yeah.
Lee Caraher: And if you have the mechanism to keep contact with people, make it known that you want to keep in relationship with the people who at one time worked for you.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: the inclination for your former employees to keep those relationships alive is much higher.
David Brower: Oh my gosh, the alumni program’s brilliant.
Lee Caraher: Well, thank you.
David Brower: I mean, no, it is. it’s absolutely brilliant. [crosstalk 00:07:51]. Oh my gosh.
Lee Caraher: I mean, the alumni program is an engine for creating the positive things that a boomerang principle says, which is people can return or that people will after they leave you will advocate for you out in the marketplace either as a partner or an employer or as a contractor or whatever, right?
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: [inaudible 00:08:14] Just like colleges and universities are powered by their alumni programs either in recruiting, reticulation or fundraising, corporations can be powered by their alumni programs in terms of recruiting, onboarding and business development. And in this war for talent, talent is gonna be more and more in charge.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: No matter how size the company is, right?
David Brower: Right. Right.
Lee Caraher: And the more we can create those relationships that are not dependent on paying somebody, the stronger those entities are.
David Brower: That’s amazing. The other thing I like about that is whether they work for you or in the alumni program, there a face for your company.
Lee Caraher: Absolutely. And you want people out there saying good things.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lee Caraher: Like I always say to everybody at Double Forte, Double Forte like I said will be 15 years old this year. We’re small company. We’re a five million dollar business. We have 37 people. We’re small.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lee Caraher: I don’t want to be big. I’ve already done that.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: But everyone who comes into my business, I say, “I want you to be here as long as you want to be. As long as your,” you know … we have a very high level of performance that we basically demand.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: With that goes a lot of different opportunities for growth and compensation, different things, but the most important thing to me is that when you leave here, which you will do, that you will be proud of the time you spent with us and you will look back over time and say you know what, that was time well spent in my career. Business today, we have 36 people and right now we have one, two, three, four, five, seven people who have boomeranged back to us.
David Brower: Wow. [crosstalk 00:10:07]. What’s that?
Lee Caraher: Leon or-
David Brower: 20%?
Lee Caraher: About 20%. 20 something percent, right?
David Brower: Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Caraher: But over time, over the 15 years, the number is actually 13 or 14 and then we have another seven people who have become clients and probably 86% of our, 86, 87% of our alumni have very strong ongoing relationships with us.
David Brower: Wow.
Lee Caraher: When people come back, I can say, they don’t come back the same person they left, right?
David Brower: Right. Right.
Lee Caraher: They come back with new experience. We are different because our business, your know, we’re made up of people and every time you add or subtract a person, the Entity changes. But when people are encouraged to come back and they do come back, they bring their own war stories.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: It’s not so good out there.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lee Caraher: And that’s probably true for most companies, right? Most companies have the opportunity to create that goodwill if they bothered to try.
David Brower: Bothered to try.
Lee Caraher: And my new view is that those companies that do bother to try are going to have … and no one’s gonna be perfect.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: But if you bother to try, you’re gonna have a strategic advantage over those companies that don’t. People come back ’cause they have much more responsibility on their own, of their own for their own careers.
David Brower: There you go. Yeah.
Lee Caraher: And that’s really what, we know that companies are not. I mean, the American, we have proved it over and over again that business works for business, right? A company to carry their career and that it’s really a person’s responsibility to create their own career.
Sometimes, particularly younger people might leave before they should because they feel like oh, the company’s not offering me enough, but they go into the world and they find companies that don’t offer, most companies don’t offer what they want, right?
David Brower: Right. Right.
Lee Caraher: In terms of you carry me. And the more we can have people understand that they are the crafters of their own career and if people that come back to you, that’s a choice.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lee Caraher: It’s a choice they’re making to say, you know what? Nothing’s perfect, but this is pretty good.
David Brower: Yeah, so if they’re out there in the workforce looking for someone to carry them is that a millennial mindset?
Lee Caraher: Everyone says it’s a Millennial mindset and I think it’s a entitled mindset. And I don’t think you have to be Millennial to be entitled. My experience is that I’m a Millennial champion and part of my first book is called “Millennials & Management: The Essential Guide to Making it Work at Work” and that was born out of our experience of failing miserably at retaining Millennials and figuring it out.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lee Caraher: I moved from a Millennials are entitled to Millennials are conditioned and not prepared point of view and I did that I was able to, with my, rest of my team sort of create an environment that transitioned young people from college to the workplace without as much pain as really most Millennials, recent college graduates, they’re just not prepared for the reality of work based on the education system and … our culture. As businesses, we can either beat our head against the wall.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: Or we can figure out how to-
David Brower: How to embrace ’em.
Lee Caraher: How to embrace it all because they have so much to offer. They know so much, but they have different definitions of almost everything that a Boomer does and I’m a Boomer.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: So understanding where those things or where those pain points are and getting ahead of them is the key to creating those inter-generational teams that really work well together. Mutual mentorship is probably the most valuable thing you can do in a business environment where you have people who are 20 years apart in age who are really helping each other understand the work place and understand mindsets.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lee Caraher: The thing there what I always recommend is that people … everyone reads something every day.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: What’s my reading list? What’s your reading list? And that, if you’re in a mentor-mentee relationship that you switch lists for a month.
David Brower: Nice.
Lee Caraher: And you read what your mentee is reading or your mentor is reading and all a’ sudden your mind sort of, oh, that’s what’s going in there. No wonder they’re informed that way, right? Because it used to be that we all read the same things.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: But that’s not today’s environment or cable news, on line news environment, it’s such an echo chamber.
David Brower: Right.
Lee Caraher: That we are not exposed to all of the same information, we’re exposed to the information we choose versus the information that is sort of the de facto. One example I have is that in my company we have a book club and everyone reads the same books. I have everybody read the same book every two months. So it’s six books every year.
David Brower: Okay.
Lee Caraher: And at least that make sure that and then we talk about ’em, but at least that is a common input to the team regardless of age.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lee Caraher: So that we have common language, ’cause too often I think, particularly business books, often are read only by management. And that is the biggest mistake I think that management makes is airing where they’re getting their inspiration from. Because or they go into training and they come out speaking a different language and the other people are going what does happened?
There was a training. Management went on a retreat. Exactly. Exactly.
I choose three and then depending on the topics … we do it on topics as well as, so I usually choose three of the six and then other people nominate other books. I have an office in New York and I have an office here … in San Francisco so my business is in two places. And … I do do workshops and speeches and all that kind of stuff on both coasts, as well.
David Brower: Nice.
Lee Caraher: What people should do is go to www.leecaraher.com or follow me @leecaraher on Twitter.
David Brower: Okay, and it’s c-a-r-a-h-e-r just like it sounds. Thank you so much and again plug your books and where people can get those as well.
Lee Caraher: So my books are at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and you can also find them at my website at Leecaraher.com and I hope that they’re helpful to people. And make their companies more happy places.
David Brower: Absolutely. It’s great what you’re doing and man there’s a whole bunch of new light bulbs that went off in my head today. So thank you so much.
Lee Caraher: Thank you.
David Brower: It’s been a pleasure.
Lee Caraher: Thank you for having me. It’s been such a pleasure.
David Brower: You’ve been listening to your 20 Minute Podcast with David Brower and our special guest Lee Caraher and I hope that you listen over and over again and be sure to follow us on Facebook at Facebook /your 20 Minute Podcast