Podcast Archive
Episode 1 - Michel Falcon InterviewPodcast Transcript
Sukhi Dhillon A…: Welcome to the BLS Podcast. I’m your host and founder of Bridging Legal Solutions, law professional corporation, Sukhi Dhillon Alberga. This is our first podcast in a series of additional episodes, featuring groundbreaking entrepreneurs and professionals coming together to discuss the creativity that inspires them and makes their businesses flourish. To be clear, the podcast is not a platform for providing any legal advice, but strictly an educational tool for our listeners.
Today’s topic is about team culture. We’re going to be asking the question is having a dynamic team culture imperative to business success. To help us answer that question is our guest Michel Falcon, who I’m super excited about having on our first podcast. Michel Falcon is an entrepreneur, restaurateur, advisor, international keynote speaker author who is passionate about his people first culture philosophy. To create customer experience, employee engagement, co mpany, culture strategies, to grow businesses. He has been featured in Faux, Forbes, Time Magazine and Yahoo Finance. He was selected as a spokesperson for McDonald’s Canada and National Hiring Day campaign. We will be discussing his book entitled People-First Culture: Build a Lasting Company By Shifting Your Focus From Profits to People. I’d like to share a couple of interesting facts about Michel as well, he was born in Edmonton, raised in Vancouver and currently resides in Toronto with his lovely fiance Sophia and his dad to his dog, Maggie. He is also a full fledged Canucks fan, but we won’t hold that against him. Michel, thank you so much for joining us today.
Michel Falcon: Thank you very much for allowing me to be a guest Sukhi, I appreciate it.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: Thank you. I wanted to start of if you could share with our audience, our listeners, your remarkable, incredible story and journey, starting from the days of 1-800-GOT-JUNK to now recently opening two new restaurants to the ones that you existing have Baro and Petty Cash. If you could share that journey, that would be awesome.
Michel Falcon: I started my career. I would say initially and he told me that 2007, I was in business school not doing extraordinarily well. And I was in business school because I wanted to learn how to one day grow a business. And at the time I was looking for change or an alternative path to figure out how to do that. One summer, I was playing basketball with my friend Naveed Sharif who was in dental school at the time. And he told me that he had a summer job at this company called 1-800-GOT-JUNK. And Canadians and Americans would be familiar with the company, it’s not a global company but more North American based. But a great entrepreneurial success story where a gentleman named Brian bought a truck in his 20s and started knocking on doors, asking people in Vancouver, “Would you pay me to get rid of things you no longer wanted in your household anymore.”
Of course, I’m paraphrasing the conversation he had. But that company today does hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue and who would think such an obscure business and he very much pioneered that industry. So I found it interesting when my friend Naveed was telling me about the story of the company. I said, “Maybe that’s the way that I should learn how a business grows to become successful.” So I applied there, I got hired in the call center and you could imagine how my parents may have responded. My parents are South American they’re both from Peru they really value post-secondary education and to tell them that I was leaving a school to go work for essentially what was a garbage company, that was an interesting conversation.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: I imagine.
Michel Falcon: But I told them, “Trust me, I believe I know what I’m doing.” I worked there for five years, during that time I really gave myself to my career. I knew that I wanted to grow businesses one day and I needed to learn before you earn is what I would tell myself. So I had friends at the time who were earning a much higher income than me, but I was learning so much and I was getting paid to learn and of course contribute to the success of the company. And I learned there that company culture, wow, it really matters and company culture within this like obscure industry of junk removal and just seeing it firsthand, how it is such a strong competitive advantage. And now keep in mind this was in 2007 where not many companies were talking about company culture yet. Now it’s more a common language but that was my real world MBA. And I’m forever grateful for my time there, and I’m happy to say that I really took the success of the company personally also.
And we can unpack that in a moment of how you get a team to really care about the business when they’re not owners, that’s a core element of being a strong team. From there 2012 I left the company and I started a company called Falcon Consulting Group. Now I’ll tell you that it never became a group because it was just myself, but essentially it was an advisory firm where companies would hire me to teach them what I knew about three core topics, company, culture, employee engagement and customer experience. So essentially help us build systems and processes in our business to ensure that our people like working here, their productive and that our customers like doing business with us because the customer experience was fantastic.
That was a very fun time until it wasn’t. And what I mean by that was it was fun because I was in my mid 20s traveling all throughout, primarily throughout North America, but it brought me around the world to go work with companies, to help them with some of the challenges as a consultant, as a keynote speaker at events in Las Vegas, where you’re treated like this wonder kid, it was very flattering. And then it wasn’t because I got lonely. I miss being part of a team, I miss coming to work, collaborating with individuals, solving challenges, I was on my own. And eventually that flight in and out of that city, checking into that hotel wasn’t as cool anymore to me.
So 2016, I partnered up with some individuals here in Toronto and we started a hospitality company and we grew very fast. We grew from zero to nearly $20 million a year in sales, nearly 200 employees in a couple of years, so that was very challenging and I was never in the hospitality industry before. However, whether it’s the law or hospitality or finance there’s a lot of commonalities behind them, especially human behavior. The human behavior of your team and the individuals within that team, how do your customers behave? So there’s a lot of commonalities and some lessons that I’ve taken from other industries and brought it into hospitality.
Then just before the pandemic, I decided that I wanted to create another brand also still in food, but this would be a fast casual restaurant brand. And what I mean by fast casual is it’s kind of grab and go, you go you order and you leave. Or you might dine for 15 minutes or so, but with the other restaurants in the hospitality company the romance is there. You’re there for two hours, perhaps you order a bottle of wine, but I wanted to go down the fast casual route for a number of reasons, one of which is this brand, our slogan is everyday salads and warm bowls with real Peruvian flavors.
I happen to be Peruvian and I know how fantastic the food is. So this is my approach to building a brand, to help North Americans try the flavors of Peru. And we have one location right now, which opened up six weeks ago and we have two more locations opening up in the next month and a half and I’m around eight… actually it’s less than a month and a half. So we’re going to grow fast here also and I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that it’s hard.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: Of course.
Michel Falcon: But nothing worth earning comes easy I find, but that’s my career in a nutshell. The commonality amongst everything that I just mentioned there is the focus on people and it isn’t just a platitude for me. I’m very genuine about it. I believe all the great companies of the world are ones that we should revere and learn from, all have this methodology and I… Say what you will about Starbucks coffee, do they have the best coffee in the world? I wouldn’t argue that. I don’t even think they would argue that. But what they do have is when you go into their stores, you’re in and out, the experience is seamless, the employees genuinely appear like they want to work there. And you might have that barista you go see in the mornings, mine is a gentleman named Perry from Toronto.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: Who know your order well.
Michel Falcon: Please say that again.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: I said who knows your order well as well.
Michel Falcon: He does. We’re connected on LinkedIn. Let’s think of Starbucks, the first company in America to provide benefits for full-time and part-time workers. The first company in America to provide free education, not for two employees talking tens of thousands that want… hundreds of thousands globally, but for those that want to enroll into the benefits program, for those who want to enroll into the free education, think of the impact. And they’re still earning billions of dollars, so that is for me the best type of capitalism. And again, the jobs that they’re creating and the communities that they’re serving.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: You touched on some really interesting points just in your journey in itself and the importance of creating culture too within your employees and your customers and just for your business and your branding. I’d like to dissect that a little bit more for our audience to understand it a little bit more. In your book you state that at the heart of a business culture is valuing employees, taking care of customers and the key to lasting success is people before profit. One of the foundational steps is creating culture with purpose. I love how you used Ryan Holiday’s quote in your book which he says, “You should follow passion and understand purpose.” Can you elaborate on that a little bit more on how purpose ties into building people first culture for a business?
Michel Falcon: It’s essentially, why do you come to work every day? And if it’s just to make money, that’s a very shallow and hollow goal. Do not get me wrong, I am capitalistic in the sense that I do want to earn a profit, I’m not dissimilar to the next individual that I would like the financial freedom to be able to purchase things. But it’s how we go about earning those outcomes that could be re-evaluated. For me, I perhaps I’m naive for thinking this, I don’t believe I am, but I believe one can achieve their goals by helping others achieve theirs. And that’s what I with my team I’m hyper focused on how can I give them education to be able to excel. For example, I have two fantastic team members, Tanya and Marielle where just yesterday I put them in touch with somebody, an entrepreneur that I know here at Toronto named Kristie Harrell because the education can’t just come from me, who do I know that could help educate our team members.
If Marielle in particular her goal that I learned, her career goal that I learned in the interview process is to start a brewery, she’s actually a chemist by trade and a brewmaster, so for me it’s like that’s the goal. If I helped serve her goal over a five-year period because that’s what she said she would like to start at, she said five to seven years, pardon me. If I can show her that I’m committed to helping her start her brewery, by introducing her to individuals who had started breweries before by teaching her how to interview people, to teaching her how to read P&L statements and she feels that support, I believe that she’s going to support me in my business in getting to a hundred stores and beyond.
The same goes with Tanya her goal is in the next few years, she wants to start a Mexican inspired catering company, that’s the goal. And if our team members can view Brasa Peruvian Kitchen, which is my latest brand as almost like their alma mater or like, “This is where I got my star.” How cool would that be? Where it’s like, “Yes, we serve salads and bowls that’s what we sell, but there’s a greater purpose to the company and it’s very much to be a springboard to the next thing. Because guess what? 1-800-GOT-JUNK was my springboard to where I am today, so their paying it forward.
Truth be told Sukhi when I earn something, go to the bank and deposit a check or whatever as that outcome, do I feel happy? Of course for a second, but that’s fleeting. Whereas if we promote somebody like Tanya is going to go from part time to full time to senior team lead in eight weeks that is cool to me, can you see that trajectory so quickly and she earned it and her income is going to go up. So what does that mean? Is she able to support her grandmother in Mexico? Is she able to spend have more income to spend on herself to sign up that exercise class she always… whatever, helping secure people’s livelihoods.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: There’s something to be said about that because when you are paying… it’s almost like paying it forward and you’re giving, you’re empowering. With BLS, we really focus on helping our clients really empower themselves. And that’s what you’re touching upon as well. It’s how do you help people reach their goals and have the same purpose and work together? And when you see each other reaching this monumental moment, it’s celebrating each other and how that in turn makes you feel and the other person I think that’s a great mission and vision to have. And it leads me into the next question I wanted to ask you, which is as a former entrepreneur and manager myself I know hiring the right people is really critical.
I mean there’s a Proverbs, Proverbs 26:10 that says, “Hiring anyone just passing by is like an archer shooting at anything.” You emphasize in the book and even as we’re talking now you seem to be really focusing on investing in your employees, investing in your purpose, helping them reach their goals. Could you explain to us when it comes to the hiring process, what’s the key thing to look for so that you can create that collaboration and that like-minded culture.
Michel Falcon: There’s something that I don’t think is unheard of, but not enough entrepreneurs pay enough attention to it and you mentioned it earlier just about the values of the company. Why do we come to work? Now there’s a mission statement, a vision statement incorporated [inaudible 00:18:57] every organization has heard this or I wanted to change this for this new company. Keep in mind, fast casual restaurants right now there’s a big objection to a labor shortage. For me. I have been very vocal that there is no labor shortage. There is a shortage of people that want to earn minimum wage anymore and get work overworked and not appreciated, finally they revolted and good for them. So when I thought about, “Okay, how am I going to hire this team?” This industry is known for high turnover, minimum wage workers, think of individuals saying, “Oh, you better work hard or you’ll end up working at McDonald’s.”
What’s wrong with working at McDonald’s, that was my first job, I learned a lot, it’s very insulting, So I wanted to recreate how do we attract them? How do we interview them? How do I identify who’s going to come to the party and instead of a mission statement or a vision statement, we have a what’s our work statement, so what is our work? Why did we come to work? What is the what? And it’s to introduce millions of people to the flavors of Peru and the majestic culture of the country. Now why do we work and so the what is what can we physically sell and what’s the goal there. Now why do we come to work? And it is to create a company the world needs more of, one where employees earn great money, achieve career happiness and help us close the equality gap.
So how can we be this company, a Starbucks like company, where it’s like we’re going to try to pay you as much always. We’re going to come to you to tell you we’re giving you a raise proactively rather than the other way around and much more. Now within that then there’s the core values, which I’ve called how we work. This is how we work and it’s a set of 11 things, one of which is continuous candor. I want us to speak openly and honestly, with respect. We’ve all worked in that workplace before where we have a side conversation about that colleague. There’s no side conversations here. You have a problem with somebody, you go speak to them like an adult with the goal of coming to a positive outcome, with good intentions. Performance and responsibility, I’m going to do everything I can as an employer to pay you more, to give you benefits, to find new mentors and help you start that Mexican inspired catering company.
But you need more, because I think that the culture that we’re trying to build here is something that other people are going to want to join. And perhaps there’s going to be a figurative line of people that want to join us. So if you don’t perform, you’re out, it’s meritocracy and I’m not apologetic about that. Because if I think about you referenced Sophia in my introduction, if you think about a relationship that you have with somebody, a friend, fiance, a husband, a wife, or whatever, the strongest relationships are equal parts. We both contribute to the relationship equally, the same mentality has to be taught in the workplace. And if I don’t feel like the team or the individual is meeting me halfway then they’re gone. I did my part, I paid you, I paid you well, I paid you on time, I gave you all these opportunities.
I’m not going to let you walk all over me, if there’s somebody else that is going to help us perform for this responsibility and nine other character traits. So now I’m very intimate on who am I looking for? Perhaps when somebody is out looking to find a spouse they know what type of attributes they want in this individual. So being very clear on who’s coming to the party and if you think about it, think of how much time we spend planning our 40th birthday party or our wedding or in a special event, we’re very selective, we don’t just invite anybody because we want it to be a good party. If you bring that attitude into it its that party, we have to take that same mentality and be very strict at the door, who’s coming in.
Believe me it makes harder to hire because you’re constantly, if you’re so stubborn with how you hire and the people that are going to come and join the team, you’re not going to be able to say yes to everybody, you have to be extraordinarily stubborn with that. So I’m just about to go from call it four employees to 25 in a month and I’m not just going to hire everybody that applies.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: No.
Michel Falcon: I might have less than a 10% success rate, think of how many people I’m going to actually have conversations with. Though when it comes to summarize my answer, you have to be extraordinarily clear on what it is that you’re building and get really intimate with your thought and document what are these behaviors like that I want in our individuals. For me, one of the things, the non-negotiable for me, I have a couple, one of which is late, being late.
One of the interview questions I ask our team members or sorry, during the interview process, I’ll ask, “What are your unbecoming qualities that I’m going to learn in 30 to 60 days? Just tell me now, let me know from-” No for real and I say, “Let me go first.” And I’m very honest. I say, “I’m very impatient. I’m irritable. I can speak condescending sometimes. I don’t wake up in the morning and being like, ‘I’m going to speak condescending somebody.’ But my irritability is sometimes has me do that and I’m working on it. I’m impatient. I love to work very fast. I don’t like slow.” So I’m laying it all out on the table for the candidate and they might be like, “Whoa, thanks for telling me I’m don’t want to work here.”
Sukhi Dhillon A…: Where’s the exit.
Michel Falcon: Yeah, exactly, “This man needs help.” But I’m being honest, “Just lay it all out on the table. Now you go.” Now a candidate, one time said, “I’m notoriously late.” I can’t help them. That’s my non-negotiable and I had a candid conversation, I was like, “Thank you for being honest with me but I can’t make you an offer. And you don’t want me to make you an offer because if I have to let you go in 30 days, that’s really going to disrupt [inaudible 00:26:33].” So it’s just like let’s be real. Really real. That was a long-winded way… That’s how you build a team, it’s not easy or else everybody would do it.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: And you know what, you do have to invest the time into it. And you do have to be critical. And I love the analogy that you used about relationships and to continue off of that, you found that special person that you’re having a relationship with, now you got to introduce them to your friends and you want to see how that’s going to respond. How do you relate that back to customers and customers experience, identifying customers, getting your team to understand that and make that smooth transition in engaging the customers that way.
Michel Falcon: Education. If you expect your team members to deliver an experience to your customers that we’ve never seen before, you need to teach them what that looks like. What does that feel like? And for me the starting point is understanding different customer personality types. You as a customer Sukhi likely will behave differently than me maybe as a customer, because we likely we might value things that are different so I’ll give you an example. You’re a very engaging person, I’ve had many conversations with you, I would classify you as the socializer personality type.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: Probably right.
Michel Falcon: You have it-
Sukhi Dhillon A…: You got me there.
Michel Falcon: … written all over you. So what type of conversations would you appreciate with the bank or whoever. You might talk about the Toronto Blue Jays and how they might make the playoffs that they’re doing really well right now, let’s say assuming you were a Blue Jays fan. You’re talking about the great fall weather we’re having right now with the grocery store team member or whoever, some off topic things. For me, I want none of that. Not because I don’t like talking to people, I just my number one definition of success in doing business with the companies is time. It’s like just getting in and out. Just tell me what I need to do, “Here you go, here’s your payment. I’m out off to the next thing.” So you see how we might define a great customer experience differently. I had a conversation with a gentleman that is building the signage for our stores.
And he called me and wanted to have a longer conversation, as politely as I could I just said, “Hey, I can have it, call me when you need your payment right now.” Because I had other things occupying my time. So perhaps if he had known like, “Oh, Michel a director soft personality type, shorter conversations, short emails too,” that’s just really understanding how is this person defining a great customer experience. And there’s things you can teach your team all throughout the organization, senior roles, junior roles, part-time, full-time to understand those behaviors, to know who you’re talking to and mirror that customer. And that’s where I would start is just the education. Does your team know the difference between customer service and customer experience? Do they understand different customer personality types? Do they know how to manage an irate customer?
Sukhi Dhillon A…: That’s important.
Michel Falcon: I was taught something early in my career, people don’t fail, processes do. So when you think about it, let’s say you have somebody on your team who isn’t delivering a great customer experience, there’s two things that I would evaluate. Have we given him or her the education to know how to deliver a great customer experience or did we just expect… is it something that we wanted, that might be the process that’s failing that team member, the training processes isn’t there. But let’s say you have a good training process, the next process that might fail is the interview process, “How did this team member get hired in the first place? It doesn’t seem like they know how or care to deliver a great customer experience.” It’s like in that process that fails. So I like to do some investigative work inside of the company to understand what’s failing first, is it person or the process. Nine times out of 10, it’s always the process.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: So foundation is really key is what you’re saying on all levels when it comes to building that people first culture, the foundation.
Michel Falcon: Absolutely. We go back to the why we work, what’s our work and how we work, that’s the foundation of the company. I will hire and fire individuals based on the how we work and those 11 traits, that is very foundational education. Think of it in our everyday lives. Education is a child as we grow older, that’s the foundation of what shapes our behaviors as an adult, just a lot of parallels between personal life and commerce and I don’t think we pay enough attention to that.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: That’s a great point. I am going to sum everything up and end our podcast with this final quote from your book, which I think is just on point right now of what we’re talking about as well is and I love the way you put this. You said, “The pursuit to people first is never ending, customers and employee expectation will keep changing and you will have to be ready to evolve as you can stay ahead and exceed their expectations.” I love that.
Michel Falcon: Who said that.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: You did.
Michel Falcon: That’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. It is because this is hard stuff it’s never ending you can’t just build your culture overnight. It’s not a program. It’s not an initiative. It’s a foundation in human behavior, both on the employee side and the customer side is always evolving. So if we want to stay ahead of that evolution, we have to constantly be refining it and it’s not easy.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: And I guess that even in light of the pandemic, I guess that’s kind of the continued word of wisdom, departing word of wisdom you would give to our listeners.
Michel Falcon: Yeah. It’s for me, I kind of have a rule of thumb that every three months you need to be auditing how you’re serving the team and serving your customers. And with the notion of people who build processes too, are you constantly evolving those processes during pre pandemic, during pandemic, post pandemic, what does that look like? It’s always evolving.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your super busy schedule to speak to us today and giving us these golden nuggets of how to build a good people, culture, business, and having business success. I wish you great success in all the two new restaurants that you’re opening and all the other initiatives that you’re going to be working on. And I can’t wait to witness what other fantastic things you’re going to do because it’s all inspiring so thank you.
Michel Falcon: It was my absolute pleasure and thank you for having me as a guest Sukhi.
Sukhi Dhillon A…: Thank you.
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