The Secret to Keeping Your Best Employees From Quitting

Sean Weisbrot: Davis tell everyone a little bit about what it is you do and then we'll go from there.

Davis Nguyen: So, I run a company that helps aspiring consultants work at firms like McKinsey, Bain, and BCG in management consulting. So what we do is we help students in recent grads land these dream jobs where I. They're getting to make an impact and working with companies, fortune 500 companies, building out their careers as well as in the meantime, also building out skill sets as well.

Davis Nguyen: And this whole company started back in 2017 when it was a side business for me. I was working in education and decided to build a company on the weekends when I was trying to pay off a medical event. And it eventually became my full-time job. Today I have a full team and we've helped over, at this point, close to 700 people. Their dream job is in management consulting.

Sean Weisbrot: And why is it that you chose to do this business specifically? What makes you passionate about it? The really, the, the story takes

Davis Nguyen: back a few years. So I know you've lived in Vietnam, so my family came from Vietnam before I was born, and so they were political refugees from the Vietnam War.

Davis Nguyen: So my family, they actually grew up in South Vietnam. They were farmers and when they escaped, they made it to the United States. And my family, no one had finished even high school at that point. So my mom, for example, WA was hit by a disease. So she didn't even get a chance to finish third grade. And so when they moved to the United States, when you're a political refugee, you don't exactly get to pick where you live.

Davis Nguyen: So it's not like we wanna live in Orange County in California, it's more like, well, which place is gonna accept refugees? And we were accepted in Southside Atlanta. So SouthSide Atlanta at the time was known for a few things. Unfortunately, it was known for high crime rates, low graduation rates, high pregnancy, teenage pregnancy rates, and just low college payment rates.

Davis Nguyen: So, but that was a few places that would take my family. And so when my family settled down in Southside Atlanta. We didn't even know where, what was happening. And I was born shortly afterwards and, and growing up, we grew up in the poorest communities in the United States and our school system at the time was called the worst school system in the us.

Davis Nguyen: So like, think about it, like there's hundreds of thousands of school systems, and yet you're called, you're ranked the worst one. Like, what would you have to do to get to that point? And so I mentioned this because that means careers, like entrepreneurship, management, consulting, and others weren't exactly what I grew up with.

Davis Nguyen: In fact. I joke a lot of Asians say that their parents are tiger parents. My parents were more like panda parents, which was, Hey, as long as you don't get killed, just figure it out on your own. And so that's basically what I had to do. But I grew up and I wanted a little bit more on myself, and so my goal was I wanted to get to the best school possible.

Davis Nguyen: And so when I was in third grade, I was probably eight at the time. I asked, I asked my homeroom teacher like, well, what's the best. Education path, I can go. And she said, well, you probably go to college. I was like, well, what's the best college? And she said, Harvard or Yale would probably be the best. I was like, great.

Davis Nguyen: I wanna go there. And this is a community where we had a saying where people go to jail, not to Yale. And so imagine you growing up and having that stigma there. I was like, well, more people go to jail than you go to Yale. And I was like, well, I wanna go to Yale. And so I would eventually work myself, find a couple, we can talk about this more, but basically found some shortcuts, figured out a way to get help, and eventually would get full scholarships into Yale and Harvard and choose Yale.

Davis Nguyen: And when I was at Yale, it was the first time in my life where I was just surrounded by abundance. Where I went from this community where my family was basically living off a dollar a day in like Atlanta. And all of a sudden I'm in this institution that's known for producing Supreme Court Justices, producing the President of the United States, Life changers CEOs and so forth, and I.

Davis Nguyen: What do I do with all this? And I'm like, well, every summer I wanna work with someone who inspires me. And so I would just reach out to so many different mentors, so many different people I wanted to work with. So these were like these people who I looked up to, like the Susan Kanes of the world. These would be like Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, and so forth.

Davis Nguyen: And I would just code email 'em and just figure out how I can work with them. And I ended up working with a number of these amazing people who I, before I just read about in books and at the end of every summer. They would just say, Hey, Davis, it seems like you wanna be an entrepreneur one day, but you should probably sharpen your business skills first.

Davis Nguyen: We recommend you go into management consulting first. How do you even know what management consulting was? As for anyone listening to this, you don't know what it is. Basically, it is like a business doctor, so whenever a business has a problem it is trying to solve, for example, let's say that a luxury brand is thinking about launching a series of stores in a new country.

Davis Nguyen: Instead of figuring out, well, which one of these. 193 countries are we going to open in? They'll hire a management consulting firm like Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture, Deloitte, to come in, do the analysis and make a recommendation. And these firms get paid millions of dollars for this recommendation because it can make billions of dollars for the brand.

Davis Nguyen: And that was my first exposure to management consulting lists through my internships. Like, well, if my mentors believe that I should go into management consulting, I should probably take it seriously. The problem was that. Most people when they go into management consulting plan years in advance that they're gonna go into consulting.

Davis Nguyen: It's not like you just decide one day gonna be a consultant, but for me, I decided one day I just wanted to go and, and during my final year of university, I basically had two weeks before they started the recruiting process. So I had two weeks to figure out how to write a resume, which I didn't need up to that point, a cover letter, which I'm like, well, it's a cover letter.

Davis Nguyen: And then we had to do something called a case interview, which is a technical interview for business problems. I'm like, what is that? And so I had two weeks to figure out what other people have been doing for two years. And similar to getting to Yale, Harvard, I tried to figure out a way to essentially shortcut the process and I eventually would lay in multiple offers and I decided to work at Bain and Company, which was for the culture.

Davis Nguyen: And so I became a management consultant myself. And after consulting I left to join an education company that was going through a startup phase. And during that time, I basically. Had a lot of my pay in the success and profitability of the company, which at the time we were raising money, trying to get money.

Davis Nguyen: So it was kind of like, if anything, it was a negative balance of actually owing money, if anything, for my deal. But at the same time, my mom, who had raised me, my, she never finished third grade and calls me and she says, Hey, it is, I need a medical bill. My family members need $22,000. And I didn't have $22,000 at the time and I couldn't get a loan, I couldn't get a second job.

Davis Nguyen: And I couldn't get a pay raise from the company I was working at, so I needed to form a weekend business. And so this is where the start of my consulting offer actually came, was on the weekend. I decided, well, I'm just gonna help people become management consultants. I'm just gonna work on their resume, their cover letter, and help them prepare for their interviews.

Davis Nguyen: And I did that and that's pretty much how I covered the debt. And I just loved what I was doing and word of mouth still kicked in and eventually I was like, wow, I have two jobs now. I could continue what I'm doing or I can go full-time with my consulting offer. And that's how I ended up choosing the M Consulting offer and going full-time with it.

Davis Nguyen: So the short answer to your that I ended up consulting myself, so I did life changing. Growth and career path you could provide. And then because of necessity, you need to cover a $22,000 debt, and decide to coach other aspiring consultants to get the job. And eventually that's how I ended up enjoying the process, building a team and a company around it.

Sean Weisbrot: That's a fantastic story and I, I'm not sure whether to say it's unique maybe to Asian culture, at least for me, like as a white American, if someone in my family had that kind of a debt. They wouldn't probably come to me and ask me for help. I probably wouldn't ever even hear about them having this issue.

Sean Weisbrot: So, like for example, if you were white, there's a good chance that my consulting offer would've never been created because you may not have even been put in the position that you needed that money. So I think that's a really interesting thing. 'cause I, I saw in, in Asian culture, oftentimes family members, like my girlfriends would be, or my ex-wife would be asked for money to cover things for other family members where like, I never experienced that personally. Or saw people experience that in America.

Davis Nguyen: Oh, that's a, that's an interesting observation. Well, obviously I only have one life to live in, one family, so I only have one lens. I guess for me growing up, yeah, family just took care of each other. So when it came time for me to be able to help my family out it just became natural.

Sean Weisbrot: No, of course. I mean, I. I think it was really cool what you did and I, I think having lived in Asia and, and Europe and, and the US I think, America has a lot of things you can learn from other cultures in terms of actual community and helping each other.

Sean Weisbrot: But let's get to the main topic here. I know that you help people to get these jobs, but you also have experience with the exit interview, so I imagine. You're helping them to prepare for when they're leaving companies too? Is that it?

Davis Nguyen: It’s not quite our main offering, but we do exit interviews in our company when someone leaves because, and in consulting, they do mandatory exit interviews when you leave as well. And I think it's one of the best practices that you can have for any entrepreneur, any company.

Davis Nguyen: It doesn't matter if you're literally a company of two, one plus one ever. You plus one person or you're like 200,000 people. Just having an exit interview I think is just best practice for being able to improve the culture and just being, being an improved quality of the people who are at the company.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay, so what is an exit interview?

Davis Nguyen: So for anyone who has been lucky enough not to have an exit interview means that you've loved your jobs or the company saying care, not have one. so as it sounds right, it is an interview that happens on the exit. So what does an exit mean? It means that when you're leaving the company, it means that you are resigning from the company you're leaving.

Davis Nguyen: The company as you sit down, it could be with your manager, it could be with someone from HR to CEO, but someone sits down and they interview you. Similar to how when you came in, they gave you a job interview on the way out, they interviewed to really find out what's the reason that you're leaving.

Davis Nguyen: And the magic of this is the first time I ever had a. An exit interview. It was through a friend of mine and so the friend of mine, he was working at the time at McDonald's and he was making, at the time minimum wage for him was like $5 and 15 cents. And so he basically left to join Burger King where he was gonna make $5 and 89 cents.

Davis Nguyen: And on his exit interview for McDonald, like, why are you leaving? I was like. I'm getting paid more for Burger King. It's as short as that. So it basically explains why people are leaving. So he, I would say, was a pretty awesome fry cook. And of course they could keep him, they could keep him. And I, I adapted that, that same thing where when we were at, when I was at Bain, I was doing management consulting.

Davis Nguyen: When people leave, they wanna do an exit interview for three reasons. One is that if you were a superb performer, they would want to know what made you leave. Because if you're someone who could have gone on to have an amazing career, could contribute to the company, create value, they wanna know how can they learn from what triggered you to leave so that if you do, if they do have encounter other similar employees in the future who are like you, they can prevent them from leaving.

Davis Nguyen: Second is, it's a good way for them if it is a, if you're leaving on good terms to build that bridge so that if you do come back, then you have that process and they can keep you. And hopefully retain you longer. Third, if you're a bad employee who is voluntarily leaving, they can learn. Great. How do I prevent similar hires like this person?

Davis Nguyen: So like every three, three ways you can better it from an exit interview or conducting it right is one, you get to keep your superstars for the future. Two, you have a way of bringing back a superstar who's temporarily leaving now. And three, you get to learn how to prevent bad hires in the future. So, a hundred hours of what it is, like a 30 minute to an hour conversation where, or in my friend's case probably lasted two minutes, is a chance for the company to be able to learn how to grow their hiring and retention process.

Sean Weisbrot: So what kinds of questions should people ask? Is there a kind of order to how you ask those questions in order to not create a bias from the person that you're asking these questions for, so you get honesty from them?

Davis Nguyen: So the way that I Always think about the exit interview is if you should start with the strategy.

Davis Nguyen: What is the goal that you're trying to learn? For example, if you wanna test, Hmm, are people leaving because they don't feel like they're growing within the company? Then your questions are gonna be more skewed towards professional development. But if you believe that people are leading because of a manager or a person in the company, you are skewed towards that.

Davis Nguyen: Or money towards money. And so I would take a step back and actually think about what's your objective for this exit interview? And if it's testing a lot of different things, you wanna be able to finish off the questioning from one trend to another. So for example, one of the common questions I get asked is, when people are leaving, you kind of wanna know, how soon do you think about leaving?

Davis Nguyen: Was it like that? Last week, or have they been thinking about this for over a year, but they haven't found the opportunity. So one of the questions I found, and people have been honest about this, is when did you start considering leaving? And from there, when they take you about the time, you can start following up by asking, well, what, what kept you here?

Davis Nguyen: And what keeps them there. You might say, well, they may need, they find an opportunity, which means that, okay, so there might be other people in the company that are currently looking for opportunities, but they haven't found the exit plan that they want yet. And it gives you an opportunity to be able to take everything you learn from the exit interview from this person and apply it back to the company.

Davis Nguyen: And, but once you learn why they're leaving, where, why they leave, why they're leaving, you could dig a little bit deeper to say that the only, like for example, if someone says, oh, I'm leaving because of. I feel like I am not growing within the company. I was like, great. Besides growth, is there anything else?

Davis Nguyen: 'cause sometimes people, they do the exit interview, they just get great growth and it, but if you dig a little deeper, sometimes it becomes other I. Other items. For example, if it's the fact that they feel like they're not growing, they also don't enjoy the team that they're working at. That gives you like, there's something else going on here.

Davis Nguyen: Besides growth. Is it the manager who's not developing this person and they're not giving this person the autonomy that they want? Or is this person just building a talk to culture? And if you, whoever, especially if you're a CEO and growing a team to go in and actually be able to examine that and to be able to figure out what exactly is happening here.

Davis Nguyen: 'cause there's one piece of evidence of one person leaving to prevent. Tons of other people are leaving.

Sean Weisbrot: You were talking about being able to understand the objectives of the exit interview and the motivations of the person being interviewed, so it makes me feel like the person giving the exit interview should be very familiar with the person that's being interviewed. Who should be the one actually running an exit interview?

Davis Nguyen: I found that from practice, the best person to do an exit interview, and you don't have to cap it at just one person. You can do it with, for example, someone who's there familiar with you, like a colleague or a direct manager. But what I find is that if you find someone who is removed from a process who's a lot more objective, that you get answers that go a little bit more in depth.

Davis Nguyen: Because again, imagine that you're leaving because your manager is just a bad manager. You're not gonna tell your manager that, and your manager is not gonna go tell HR or CEO Hey. Sean's leaving because Davis said that Davis is a bad manager. It is like it's just not going to happen. And so what I found has been helpful is to find a neutral person to be able to conduct that interview if you feel like there's gonna be an advisor.

Davis Nguyen: Of course, when we were smaller, there were only a couple of us and everyone worked together at our company, then of course we had to conduct it ourselves. But now when we're a little bigger, you're able to take one step further and to be able to have an exit interview with someone who isn't. The immediate manager of that person.

Sean Weisbrot: So then how do you train people to do great exit interviews?

Davis Nguyen: Two things I like to do are, one, have all the questions listed out already, all the questions. That way you're not going in there and winging it. That's the first thing. And two, whoever the designated person to do the exit interview should do. Practice themselves.

Davis Nguyen: So if you're a founder, for example, an entrepreneur who just has. One person who's doing it, you might be the mock person who does it with the person you assign. So if I hire someone tomorrow and I want him/ her to do the exit interview, then I would just sit down with them and just do a mock session where they go through the questions.

Davis Nguyen: But I truly believe having a structured exit interview is better than winging it. So I never have an exit interview without all the questions already listed out. And unfortunately, when you go in there, you microscope everything if you dig a little bit deeper. But you shouldn't go in there with a blank sheet of paper with no in, with no direction of where you're going.

Sean Weisbrot: You had originally said that it's kind of like intuition to really go in there and start asking questions and then feel them out and then. It's kind of like what we're doing right now where I kind of know what I wanna say, but I'm also waiting for you to say something that I can then go deeper on.

Sean Weisbrot: Right. So it's so you're like, have questions prepared, but be ready to basically ignore them in case someone says something that's like full, you know. Like hit off to the right side of the field and you're like, oh crap, I need to go over here.

Davis Nguyen: Sure. So I wouldn't say ignore it completely, but to go in, leave the questions that you want.

Davis Nguyen: But if there is a string that needs to be pulled, feel free to pull that string and encourage the person. Sometimes, at least today, our company's pretty small, so we've had few people leave, but when they do leave, sometimes we do run over the allocated time for the exit interview, and sometimes we'll come back for part two.

Davis Nguyen: And we're able to fulfill it through and just be able to refine the process. So I've, I've never been afraid of having the person who's doing the exit interview to essentially pull on a screen knowing that, hey, when you get back and hit all the other points due, because we want to be able to validate all the hypotheses that we had going into the call.

Sean Weisbrot: So when you're doing an interview, should it be recorded?

Davis Nguyen: So for us it is really up to the person, but most exit interviews I found have not been recorded just because it makes the person feel a lot more comfortable not having recorded. But again, it now our history, our team has preferred not to, but we take notes of it.

Davis Nguyen: But we didn't like video recording the calls. Hypothesis there is that people are just gonna be a lot more honest when they don't see a recording blinking button next to them.

Sean Weisbrot: Earlier you were talking about, like trying to uncover how soon after someone was hired, they had started thinking about leaving and how long they waited until they actually left. There's platforms like Statista that do these kinds of research. Do you know any statistics about this? Like what the average length of time between getting hired and wanting to quit and then actually doing it is, or, statistics around what keeps people in a company, these kinds of things?

Davis Nguyen: So this statistic exists and the thing that I would think about is to look at it less as an average. And look at it more from a position. So for example, we noticed that if you are in sales, for example, you're more likely to leave if there's another opportunity that you can generate a lot more commissions versus other roles. So what I would do is, for anyone who's trying to look for statistics, is to think about what role you're looking for and then go do the research for that particular role.

Davis Nguyen: And so for example, if you're thinking about, well, I have a content team, how long do writers typically stay? There are statistics on that as well. And so instead of looking at averages, which I found has not been helpful for the particular roles. So if it's operations of operations, if it's finance, finance, if it's hr, it's hr, if it's the product, it's product and so forth.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, that would make sense that the statistics would be broken up by that. I was just thinking about content and like I feel like content writers would probably not leave as long as there's a stable salary. I imagine as long as they're writing content that they enjoy writing. I dunno, maybe you know more about that.

Davis Nguyen: Yeah, so for content, we find out there's been three, three types of transitions with our content team. So we go through writers as well. One is that some writers are super content. As long as they have a consistent stream of content that's coming out, obviously they can expect to pay. So they'll stay super content.

Davis Nguyen: Second is that some writers do wanna advance in their career, and so what they'll do is they'll want an editor position, but if you only have one editor, you can't have multiple. And so they'll take another editor. So we, for example, lost one of our. Incredible writers because she was given an editor position at a number a, a content company.

Davis Nguyen: And I was like, oh, that sounds like a great opportunity for where you wanna be. So I was like, we're not gonna keep you hereholding you from your career path. And the third is that some writers, and this happens a lot with some of the big media companies, is that they get assigned a beat ora content variable.

Davis Nguyen: And there's only so much they wanna write there before they wanna move on. So for example, if you've always been writing about. Celebrity news, and all of a sudden you're like, all right, I'm tired of celebrity news. I'm gonna write about tech. Tech. And off gears, they'll be able to shift. And if the company doesn't offer anything besides celebrity news, there's no reason to stay.

Davis Nguyen: So even if we're in content writing, you fall into those three buckets. So again, its people are super content, as long as you have consistent work. Second, people wanna advance to upper careers. Usually an editor or three people who wanna switch to a different topic matter.

Sean Weisbrot: You said that there's some reason that key people there don't have to use the content. Type employee as an example. how about a, a, a a a developer? Something like that, right? I'm running a tech company. I have developers. What are some reasons that you've heard of that keeps a developer around?

Davis Nguyen: Sure. So obviously there are table stakes. Like are you paying a fair rate that they're happy with, but be beyond a certain point? Money is not the only thing. Motivator. I've seen so many developers, especially living in San Francisco, motivated by people who are leaning for other companies. So what I found is, at least from developers in particular, or people in general, is the top, the quality of work.

Davis Nguyen: So when I think about the types of people who occupy roles, again, there's three types of people I find IT. Happens to define the work and this develops on developers, whatever as well. There are people who would love to be able to do one thing and just stick to that one thing. So individuals, contributors, they just wanna do the one thing, but when the scope of the work changes, then they might wanna change the work as well.

Davis Nguyen: And we found team members in our team who I thought, oh, you're fantastic in this role. Do you wanna take a management role? They do it, they test it, and they're like, this is so stressful. I wanna go back to what I was doing. That's totally fine. So that's one. Second is sometimes. People just want an advancement.

Davis Nguyen: So if you're able to give 'em an advancement, so for example, as a developer, instead of just building your own, call it your own stack, you're able to build the architecture that's like the next step up. And that's like a thing that people wanna be able to advance in their career. So some people wanna stick to it, other people wanna advance.

Davis Nguyen: And third, people want to build a wise skillset. So perhaps they don't wanna be a developer forever, they wanna be able to be a CEO or a CTO of the company. They want a wide exposure to it. Not necessarily being a manager, but a wider set. And so. Being able to give 'em a variety of projects, assuming that it makes sense for the company, keeps 'em motivated.

Davis Nguyen: And so besides money, what I found it's be helpful is the teammates that people work with, the manager that they work with, as well as the type of work they do. Because if you have a bad manager, bad teammates, and you don't enjoy the work, then you're pretty much miserable.

Sean Weisbrot: Now you also mentioned that oftentimes there's a secondary reason. Do you have any kind of clarity on what that secondary reason is, and if they. Are normally willing to share what it is without you asking for it.

Davis Nguyen: Yeah, so the secondary reason will vary from person to person. It does take a little digging during the exit interviews to be able to figure out and to be able to piece it together. But one thing, what I found helpful is that when this, with the candidate, when the ex employee leaves for.

Davis Nguyen: The next opportunity and figuring out where they land and contrasting the difference between your role and what they're currently doing. Now you can kind of pick the paper pieces. For example, if they're doing the same thing, but a company that's paying more, then it's kind of a little obvious.

Davis Nguyen: But if you realize they're taking a pay cut, then you're like, well, it's definitely not money. It's something else there that they're doing that they're not getting from you. And it does take a little bit of game, but I kind of, if you build a culture, so again, it all starts with the culture here is that one or two outcomes will happen, which is one, if your culture is very strong.

Davis Nguyen: Then the person would want to grow the culture 'cause they feel like they were part of the team before they left and they were gonna give you the honest truth. But if you have a bad culture, then you have to take the information, whatever information you can get, assuming that there's some truth to it, reinforce the culture and so that later on when you have these exit exit interviews in the future you have to get the honest answer versus a model truth.

Sean Weisbrot: What are some things you can do or what are some things you, you have heard of or what are some things you have done that has improved the culture? That you realized later actually kept people around where maybe before they would've left if you hadn't, I simply implemented those things or heard of those things being implemented?

Davis Nguyen: Sometimes we found that we promoted people too early. They thought they would want the role and then they're miserable with the role, but they don't want to take a step back in their role because it seems like a demotion. And so one of the things that we do at our company now that we learn from that is we do what are called trial periods.

Davis Nguyen: So before someone actually assumes the role, take it on full time. We let them assume the role. It's like, well look, we're not gonna make a formal announcement. Why don't you try it for a few months? We'll check in. And it does two things. One, it makes sure that you, as the person promoting them, feel like they have the qualities, all the boxes checked in, but also second for them, they can say, well, I'm actually thriving in this role.

Sean Weisbrot: I enjoy this role. I wanna keep this. We had an issue at one point where we were trying to let our lead developer/architect really be a CTO. because most of the time he had just been doing those other things, even though he had the role, the title and that meant one of the developers had to step up into the lead role.

Sean Weisbrot: And of course they all said they wanted the role, but it was very obvious to me and to my CTO that there was only one person that should have that role. And there was a little bit of unhappiness among the team because that other person got chosen, not because. He did not because they didn't know he was the best one, but because they were the cop.

Sean Weisbrot: But I want this role. And then later on when that person was offered a better opportunity that we couldn't match, we then had those other few people still remaining and they all still wanted the role, but then when we assessed them and they, we talked about it, they're actually like, well, you know, the idea of having that role is great, but actually like, no, I'm just happy being a coder.

Sean Weisbrot: It's like, well. Why were you like so fussy about this crap for the last year and a half if you didn't actually want the thing, the thing, you know,

Davis Nguyen: The hard part right of a business is that people are so, so different and that's all, it's like an evolving process in terms of it too. And that's, yeah, part, part of why I find that the exit interviews are super helpful is that it, it covers, it breaks your limiting beliefs, it establishes other frameworks from moving the culture, but also third, it just gives you a chance to be able to actually validate a lot of the thinking and as long as you're open to it.

Davis Nguyen: It takes a really open mind to be able to, to do this. As in, I have, in previous relationships, I also did what was called an exit date, which is the equivalent of this, but for like, for personal life, and you can imagine that's really fun too.

Sean Weisbrot: What is that like? I'd like to know exactly what it is that makes you wanna break up with me.

Davis Nguyen: So what I would do is that. Previously where my Alicia is, the ones that lasted while, and so let's say my cutoff, let's say it's a year plus, and what I would do is sometimes break because if I'm the one broken up with, then I'll, I'll need to process anytime.

Davis Nguyen: But after the process, anytime, I'll sit down and just reach out and say, Hey. I'd love to have an exit date. Basically, we'll go to a restaurant or we just do it at a coffee shop, whateveryour choice is, and I just wanna ask a couple questions. Now we're removed from the situation, and I just go through and I was like, well, what did you think about bringing up with me? Why did it take you so long to pull the trigger?

Davis Nguyen: What would you have changed? When I was like, it's almost like the savings business aside, but the personal side. So then. But then you can't have someone else do it. At least I haven't found anyone else to do a third party of it. So I actually have to do it. But I have to hold my tongue and like, and this is why I learned the question earlier, Sean, was why not just do it with the person who's most familiar?

Davis Nguyen: Well, you're one-on-one and react. For example, one of my exes said, oh, Davis here, one of the things I wanna change was you get really competitive at board games, not fun to play with you and I, and I was like, okay, but that's the point of board games. But I, the whole back, I was like, well, the point, this is to take feedback.

Davis Nguyen: And so you, you listen and you go through. And you approach you with humility and just take notes. Similar to what I do, I just take notes and ask questions and I proceed.

Sean Weisbrot: I think doing the podcast helped me to talk less and listen more, which is funny because that was something my ex-wife complained about.

Sean Weisbrot: She felt like I wanted to, she felt like I was. Appearing to listen while planning what I wanted to say next. So basically I wasn't, I wasn't actually paying attention. I was appearing like I was paying attention, but then, and I was like, that's not true. But you're right, it's not easy sometimes to not just like, absolutely.

Sean Weisbrot: Say what you wanna say and not hold your tongue long enough to let the other person get out. What they wanna say has been one of the most enriching experiences. So both sides, professionally and personally.

Sean Weisbrot: I've said for a long time that business and dating are very, very similar to one another.

Davis Nguyen: There's a lot of similarities there in terms of, if it wouldn't work in business, it's not gonna work in your personal life. It's not gonna work in your personal life. It's not gonna work in business.

Sean Weisbrot: So what's something that we didn't touch upon that you think is missing from this conversation if the topic is just improving your culture and having these exit interviews the same thing?

Davis Nguyen: You can, it is, ideally you don't even have exit interviews, as in you keep people, key people who are amazing and you're able to hire amazing people. And so for me it's like. Interview is just a feedback loop to be able to help you out when you are, when someone's leaving, but how could you have fixed it in the middle when that person's there?

Davis Nguyen: If there's someone that you wanted to stay for a long time, or better yet, in the hiring process, how could you hire people who were hired? Probably, like I mentioned, if people are leaving that you wanted. Them to leave your company. That's probably a flag for you to figure out where I went wrong in the hiring process?

Davis Nguyen: So again, it goes both ways, which is if it's a superstar leaving, then you can figure out what could make the mistake. But if it's someone who you wanted to leave, well, how could you have rooted them out in the hiring process to begin with? So it goes both ways. And

Sean Weisbrot: if you aren't doing exit interviews now. How do you start to implement them into the culture so that it's something that is done automatically in the future?

Davis Nguyen: I'll do two things. One is the, the next person who leaves or says that they're leaving, start simply just ask you, ask three simple questions to start with. If you don't wanna plan, it's like, when don't you start about leaving?

Davis Nguyen: What's motivating you to leave and what will convince you to stay? Those three questions will help you get started with just a basic framework of a conversation with someone who's leaving and just asking those three questions. And being, of course, as Sean as we mentioned, just being able to listen and just hold back what you wanna say.

Sean Weisbrot: One of the things that I do that you didn't touch upon was I try to tell them how I feel about them, the way they were working. So for example, like when I had the lead developer find a better job with an Australian company, I was like, look, you know, I understand, you know, your situation and that you wanna have this better opportunity that we can't afford to match.

Sean Weisbrot: And, you know, even if we never work together again, even if we never speak to each other again, because our paths just don't cross, I want you to know that you are an amazing employee and I truly value how far you went to make everyone else feel comfortable with what you were doing. So it's a very personal thing, but they can feel that it's from my heart.

Sean Weisbrot: And I think that that's really important. Especially when I've had some team members who are from India and Pakistan and, and the Philippines, where they're used to really not getting praise. Some of them have even admitted to me that they didn't even know the name of the CEO. They had never even spoken to the CEO of the companies that they were working for.

Sean Weisbrot: So the fact that they saw my face,knew my name, and I had actually wanted to have calls with them one-on-one was already really impressive for them. And, so I think. Going further and showing them that I know about their work and what they've done and what people think of them is also even more so that may not be enough to keep them, but at least at a human level, you know that you're doing something that's right and leaving them in a place where they feel really good about themselves, even if they're not gonna continue working with.

Davis Nguyen: Recognition, just feeling like they're appreciated as well as just getting a call, one-on-one as a CEO where the business is. Obviously if you have tens of thousands of people, less sell both. But if you have like a few dozen people, it is very possible for you to literally just get on. One-on-one with them, some periodically.

Davis Nguyen: I do the same thing with our team. Our team isn't a massive point where I can't go one-on-one, and I enjoy it to get to know the team members because again, the exit interview should be like the last thing that you're thinking about. You should be able to pertain to talent as they're at the company and figuring out, having these pulse checks and these meetings.

Sean Weisbrot: There's 13 people for us, so. I don't know the size of your team, but it's like what? What I do at this point is every quarter I'll have a call with them one-on-one where it's not HR related whatsoever. It's all just like, how are you? How's your family? What's going on in your life? And like oftentimes they'll start off by going, well, you know, my work's good, not.

Sean Weisbrot: That's what your managers are for. I don't care about that stuff. Right. Anything that ha Anything related to work ethic or any sort of problems they may be having inside of the company. I don't touch any of that. That's not my responsibility. I just want them to know that I care about them as a human being and I wanna spend time talking to them as a human being.

Sean Weisbrot: at larger scales, obviously it's harder to do those things, but I felt like that was a good way to build a culture that makes people wanna stay. That was one of the ways that I could, I saw I was useful. You know, 12 hours every quarter, not that big of a deal.

Davis Nguyen: Agree. And then going in there, being able to recognize 'em as a person versus, oh, you are this person who's essential to this. And taking known 'em as a human being versus just the role that they play day to day. Huge impact. I agree. Same. I take a very similar approach. Also, I try to do a quarterly, but I also leave my calendar open. So if a team member did want to schedule a time outside of it to voice anything. They have a calendar link.

Sean Weisbrot: Another thing that we try to do is town halls once a quarter. I prefer to do 'em more. My COO's like, it's fine. We could do 'em once a quarter because obviously, you know, the execs have to prepare, right? It's like work to do. So he is like, the less we do them the better. But like, yeah, I agree we should do them.

Sean Weisbrot: And that's when we're just like, we lay everything on the table. This is where we are, this is where we're going, this is why we're going there, you know? Does anyone have any questions? Feel free to say 'em out loud, but. Because the majority of the people we work with are Asian. They don't generally ask questions.

Sean Weisbrot: They're just like, okay, if you, if there's gonna be a question, it's gonna be on like a dm, right? 'cause they're afraid of looking bad or making us look bad. And like the whole point of the town hall is for you guys to know what's going on and ask us questions, right? If you have a problem, there's nothing wrong with talking about it.

Sean Weisbrot: So. You know, it is hard cross-culturally speaking, when, you know, I, and, and my COO, for example, are both American and a lot of the people we work with are Asian. And even though we've both lived in Asian culture for more than a decade, there's still gaps that, even when we, we press them quite deeply, like, God, it's okay. Really, we're not just saying it to be nice, like really it's okay to like to ask questions still. They're like the culture. The society they are from has ingrained in them so much more deeply than what we can attempt to do. Like we just can't beat that out. I'm just glad that the people we hire don't call us sirs.

Sean Weisbrot: 'cause I've worked with some people, like they just immediately want to call you sir. And they're like, no, that, I'm sorry that my name is Sean. Like, not acceptable. I will not accept sir. So at least, at least we get them past that part.

Davis Nguyen: Some people love an open forum and they are okay with voicing it and other people. I make it clear that, hey, if you wanna talk about this privately on one-on-ones, dm, me, slack, me, you can WhatsApp me. Then we can as well, as long as you provide two channels to, for people to communicate either through group or privately, as long as they have a channel to voice it. I find that that is the route to improving that communication line.

Sean Weisbrot: How do you see companies preparing for this recession or are they already in it? How's that? How does that affect com companies and exit interviews and all that?

Davis Nguyen: Some companies are starting with hiring, especially in the tech sector. Some companies are laying off because tech has had a boom and so forth. You watch the news every day, depending on the sector and so forth. Every industry will handle it differently. And again, for me, it's kinda like you take the average, but for me, what's more interesting is to segment those averages out to the parts that make up the average. And every sector and every company will handle it differently in terms of where you go.

Davis Nguyen: For example, there will be voluntary people who wanna transition where the exit interview makes sense. And I know it'll be mass layoffs of teams where obviously they're gonna, they didn't wanna leave, but of course asking the question. So why are you leaving? Well, you just laid me off there. That's gonna be a little bit harder.

Davis Nguyen: So I would still use the exit interviews for voluntary leaving versus the ones that are, you're forcing out. 'cause that's, that's a different reason for why they're leaving.

Sean Weisbrot: When you're doing a mass layoff, should you still be doing an exit interview? And if you do, I. Shouldn't it be more like a career planning type of a thing? Kind of like to help them and kind of like a psych psychological therapy session? Like I feel like it should be different.

Davis Nguyen: The point when I interview is like if people are leaving voluntarily and you wanna learn why they're leaving, especially if you didn't want them to leave, that's where of course comes in.

Davis Nguyen: But for people who you're laying off, I like to personally, and I've seen this done really well, if you basically have. Career coaching, career transition says, Hey, you're fantastic. I'm not making referrals for you to make sure that you land on your feet on the next opportunity. Is there anything else that you'd like to add to all of this?

Davis Nguyen: You'll learn as you go and like the battle scars, this is probably the hardest once, right? For other parts, like for example, marketing or KPIs, you can look at, you can look at the cost per lead. You look for the cost per acquisition for operations, you look at the cost execution, customer's, the response time, but like the HR piece and one of these is like one of those hard parts where for me, it took time.

Davis Nguyen: It took. Great people coming in, great people leaving the company to be able to, to learn all these processes, and it is, it's part of probably one of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur. It's kind of like the moment where you have someone who's fantastic and they leave the company and you just learn from that experience. It is one of those things where you know you're a true entrepreneur. When that happens, you're like, hone great. You made a fantastic hire. You nurture the talent. Darn it, they're leaving. You gotta figure it out. But the most you can do is have the process in place so that the next brain layer, you're able to keep 'em longer.

Davis Nguyen: Because it's like, okay, I would love for my team, every single person who is, who is amazing to stay with me for life, but I'm also realistic that that might not happen and is unlikely to happen. So therefore, what's the best case and move forward as a team.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I seem to have discovered that the average person continues to work with me for a year and a half or so, two years max, except for my COO and CTO who have been around for MO for a lot longer. But, when I look back on my own time as working for other people, I also generally only really stayed around for a year to a year and a half, maybe two max with a specific company before I felt like there was more I could do and I wanted to challenge myself elsewhere. So, especially in tech, although when I was working for other people, I wasn't in tech.

Sean Weisbrot: But, yeah, I, I look at it as my responsibility is to give them as much opportunity to grow. So that when they leave me, hopefully there's someone else already there ready to go. And, and you can do the same thing with them. So I see companies as like career factories. You're there to give people opportunities and, and assume that they're never gonna stay, but that's okay because you're doing something good for them and they did something good for you in the process, hopefully.

Davis Nguyen: Exactly. It's one of the onboarding questions that we always ask people too when they onboard is, what's your dream career after my consulting offer? Of course we wanna help them get there, right? What are the skills they want to be to build because it's, it's. As as, as someone, as the company and the hires ski members, it's pretty much your responsibility to, well, they have ability to do their job and things like that, but you also want to grow them and be the best version of them as possible, because otherwise, if you don't invest in making sure that they're ready for the next role, whatever it is, that then you're basically not getting the best version of them when they are with you.

Davis Nguyen: And so we are realistic with that too. It's like when they do leave, I want 'em to leave with more skills than when they came in.