Business Resources One

I've never had much patience for "Can we?" when the real question is "How do we?" Now that almost anyone can find an answer to almost anything from their phone, I have even less. This one's for owners and managers who keep getting the same questions from the same people. Is problem solving something you can coach, or is it baked in? How long do you keep investing before you call it? And how much o...

You've had a seat open for weeks. Then somebody sharp walks in, says the right things, and you leave the interview feeling great. I'd be careful with that feeling. It's usually relief, and relief will approve almost anybody. In this episode I get into three ways to find out what you actually know about a candidate before you make the offer: a real background check, a workplace assessment, and one...

Read enough "impacted by layoffs" posts on LinkedIn and you'd think these things fall out of the sky. They don't. Somebody made a call, usually a year or more before anyone felt it, and the language we've all settled on erases that person from the story. In this episode, I'm not going after the people writing those posts. They're job hunting and gracious is the right play. I'm going after the lead...

There's somebody on your team who makes every meeting a little longer. He questions the new rule, argues with the checklist, and wants to know why before he'll do it. A lot of owners file that under "attitude" and start quietly working around him. In this episode, Mike Voories makes the case that the person driving you nuts might be one of the most valuable people you have, and that the way most o...

A candidate doesn’t need to accept your offer to start learning how your company operates. They see it in every missed deadline, repetitive interview, conflicting description of the role, and unexplained week of silence. A careful hiring process is good. An aimless one isn’t. Five interviews may be justified if each serves a purpose. Taking time may be responsible if the candidate knows what happe...

Your job description might not describe the person you need. It might describe every person who burned you before. The commute radius. The exact software experience. The number of years required. The bilingual requirement. Each one may have a perfectly reasonable story behind it. But there’s a difference between what the job actually requires and the fix you created after the last time something w...

You can hire a great employee with all kinds of potential—and then spend the next six months teaching them to be average. New employees don’t learn the real performance standard from your handbook or onboarding presentation. They learn it by watching the team around them. What gets recognized? What gets corrected? What gets ignored? And what, ultimately, qualifies as good enough? In Episode 60, Mi...

When one employee quits, the damage rarely stops with the empty position. The work does not disappear. It lands on the people who stayed—longer days, more Saturdays, heavier workloads, and the expectation that they will keep carrying it until a replacement arrives. Then, weeks later, another good employee leaves. Most leaders treat those as two separate resignations with two different causes. Ofte...

Seasonal businesses like snow & ice management don’t always lose good employees because of the labor market or a lack of loyalty. Sometimes, the real problem is much simpler: their employees can’t afford the uncertainty of winter. In this episode, Mike Voories explains how off-season income gaps affect retention, limit the quality of your applicant pool, and push dependable employees toward year-r...

You're paying top dollar to land every new hire. But have you checked what that's doing to the pay of the people who've been with you for years? In a labor market this hot, new-hire pay can quietly climb right past what your best, most loyal people make. It's called pay compression, and most owners never see it coming until a great crew leader hands in their notice. In this episode of the BR1 Podc...

Three of every four landscaping deals are now private equity. The owner gets all the advice. The team gets left out. And the team is where the deal actually works or falls apart. In this episode, Mike Voories breaks down what nobody is telling green industry owners about selling to private equity. Not the mechanics of the deal. The people. With about thirty years in the green industry and thousand...

America turns 250 this year. Most companies don't make it past ten. So what actually makes a team last? In this episode, Mike Voories uses America's 250th birthday as the doorway into something every owner wrestles with: why some teams survive pressure while others crack the first time things get hard. The founders couldn't stand each other and still built something that outlived all of them. That...

For years, the people managing your teams were the most engaged employees in your business. Not anymore. Global manager engagement has fallen off a cliff, and the disengagement is bleeding directly into your crews, your operations, and your bottom line. In this episode of the BR1 Podcast, Mike Voories tackles the "Set It and Forget It" promotion trap. We break down exactly why your best foremen an...

We spend massive amounts of time writing job descriptions for mythical creatures that simply do not exist. Then, when we inevitably hire a human being with actual flaws, we spend their entire career trying to fix them. It’s time to stop trying to make your people well-rounded and start pouring gas on the fire of what they already do best. In this episode, Mike Voories breaks down why the obsession...

Silence isn't being nice. Avoiding difficult conversations with your underperforming employees doesn't avoid conflict; it just delays it. And when you delay it, you pay the "Leadership Tax." In this episode of the BR1 Podcast, Mike Voories breaks down exactly why conflict avoidance is destroying your company culture and driving your A-players straight to your competitors. We are tearing down the m...

You look at your high turnover and tell yourself that this generation just doesn’t want to work. But here is the uncomfortable truth: your culture isn't built, it's reflected. In Episode 51 of the BR1 Podcast, Mike Voories breaks down why the root cause of your recruiting and retention problems is staring right back at you in the mirror. We tear down the common excuses and look at the operational...

Are resumes broken? Employers judge a person's entire professional worth on a single piece of paper, while at the exact same time, candidates are blasting out generic, copy-and-paste documents expecting to land life-changing careers. The truth is: both sides are getting it completely wrong. In this episode of the BR1 Podcast, Mike Voories breaks down the brutal truth about the resume trap. We tear...

Your best crew leader just texted. He's putting in his two weeks because the company down the street offered him a dollar more an hour. Your first instinct? Match it. But what if money isn't actually the problem — and throwing more of it at the situation is just delaying the real fix? In this episode, Mike Voories breaks down the biggest myth in employee retention and the three operational failure...

Most employers walk into an interview trying to figure out if someone can do the job. That's the wrong question — technical skills are trainable. What you actually need to know is whether this person will show up, perform, and still be on your team 18 months from now. In this episode, Mike breaks down the 8 things employers should really be trying to learn during an interview — and none of them ar...

You just spent forty-five minutes interviewing a candidate, but do you actually know if they will succeed on your team? Most hiring managers treat interviews like a simple review of past jobs. A resume tells you where someone was sitting for the last five years. It does not tell you how they work. Mike Voories breaks down the "Big 3" of interviewing: Fit, Capability, and Potential. Learn how to ev...

You know that sinking feeling you get three weeks after a new hire starts? The moment you realize the person you interviewed is not the person who showed up for the job. Bad hires don’t just cost you money; they drain your energy, frustrate your best people, and damage your reputation. Today on the BR1 Podcast, Mike Voories breaks down the massive risk you take every time you make a job offer base...

Skipping a background check to save a few bucks is a massive unforced error. It puts your equipment, your clients, and your best employees at direct risk. We break down why screening is no longer optional. You will learn how it actually protects your culture and why the "it takes too long" excuse is a complete myth. Stop guessing and start verifying the facts. Protect your business and build a str...

Last week, we talked about the operational disaster of promoting your absolute best employee into management. You give your top producer a title, they fail, and you lose your best worker. But the answer isn’t to stop promoting from within. The answer is building a system that actually prepares them for the job. Mike Voories breaks down the operational "how-to" of building a real internal promotion...

You took your absolute best worker and made them a manager. Now, production has slowed to a crawl, the crew is miserable, and your former star employee wants to quit. You thought you were solving a leadership gap, but you just created an operational disaster. In this episode of the BR1 Podcast, Mike Voories breaks down the most common—and destructive—mistake business owners make: promoting their t...

You’re down three people. The schedule is backed up, and you just want a warm body. So you hire the first person who shows up. Big mistake. Mike Voories breaks down why the "desperation hire" is a massive leadership failure. Panicking to fill an empty seat doesn't solve your capacity problem—it destroys your productivity and drives your absolute best people out the door. Here is what to expect: -...